Stromateis 4, Chapter 8 and the Interpretation of Galatians 3:28
How this verse informs the argument of Stromateis 4 does not become apparent until chapter 8, when Clement turns to the subject of women. After listing a number of pagan philosophers and other courageous men celebrated in Greek literature, he asserts:
The whole church is full of those who throughout their lives practice the death into Christ, a death that makes alive (των μελετησόντων τον ζωοποιόν θανατον εις- Χριστόν) - women who exhibit self-control (σωφροσύνη) as well as men.
For the person who follows the Christian way of life - whether barbarian or Greek, slave, old man, child, or woman - can cultivate philosophy even without study. (4.8.58.2-3)Here and in the rest of chapter 8, Clement moves back and forth between the philosophical tradition and the Bible. The biblical component of his argument is drawn especially from the letters of Paul.[1215] Many verses are quoted; others are indicated only by a word or a phrase.
“Practicing death” derives from Phaed. 67e where Socrates defines philosophy as the “practice of death” (μελετη θανατου).[1216] Clement’s references to women, men, and slaves indicate that once again, as in the introduction to Stromateis 4, he has in mind the contrasting pairs of Gal 3:28. The word “barbarian” suggests that he has conflated the Galatians text with the similar passage in Col 3:11: “where there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.”
Contemporary biblical scholars generally assume that Gal 3:28 and Col 3:11 reflect an early Christian baptismal formula,[1217] but there have been widely divergent interpretations of the meaning and implications of the phrase “no male and female” in Gal 3:28.
Dale Martin traces three main types of interpretation.[1218] The traditional hierarchical reading, common through the ages and represented in the twentieth century by some conservative, evangelical scholars, takes the text to mean that the sexual distinction has no importance in matters of salvation (“in Christ”) but holds that it says nothing about redefining male and female roles in the church or in society.[1219] On the second, liberationist interpretation, Gal 3:28 teaches the full equality of women, in social spheres inside and outside the church as well as in regard to salvation.[1220] Martin advocates a third alternative, which he calls the radical feminist view.[1221] This builds on an argument by Wayne Meeks that the phrase “no male and female” is based on an exegesis of Gen 1:26-7 as referring to an original androgyny, a state that is to be fully restored in the eschaton but is anticipated now in baptism.[1222] Martin argues that the verse is not about equality at all but rather about overcoming sexual division, in such a way that “the lower female aspects of all human beings would be subsumed into the superior, perfected, and (as it seems to us) male body.”[1223]As surprising allies in this third way of interpreting Gal 3:28, Martin claims early Christian interpreters such as John Chrysostom, the author of the Acts of Thomas, and Julius Cassian (as quoted by Clement in Strom. 3.13.92-93). All these authors, Martin argues, reflect a particular understanding of androgyny that he claims was dominant in early Christianity, in which the unification of male and female is envisioned as a “swallowing up” of the female in the perfected male.[1224] For these three patristic authors the vision of androgyny supports an ascetic ethic. Julius Cassianus, for example, cites the following verse from the Gospel of the Egyptians as justification for sexual asceticism:
When Salome asked when the answer to the questions she raised would be revealed, the Lord said, “When you trample on the garment of shame and when the two become one, and the male is one with the female and there is neither male nor female.” (quoted in Strom.
3.13.92.2)Clement rejects the dominant ascetic interpretation of the text Julius quotes and of the similar verse in Gal 3:28, which he introduces into the discussion (Strom. 3.3.93.1-3). “Nonetheless,” Martin argues, “Clement’s reading also assumes the abolition of sexual difference and can in no way be read as raising the status of the female.”[1225]
This passage in Stromateis 3 concludes with Clement’s own brief suggestions about several different ways of understanding what “male” and “female” mean in Gal 3:28 and the Gospel of the Egyptians: (1) they refer respectively to anger and desire, both of which need to be eliminated; (2) they symbolize spirit and soul which are united under the Word; (3) they point to the time when the soul leaves the physical world, in which female is distinguished from the male, and becomes a unity that is neither male nor female.
Martin does not discuss the interpretation of Gal 3:28 in chapter 8 of the Stromateis, presumably because Clement does not quote the text here but only alludes to it. Nonetheless, I would argue that the Pauline verse has informed the argument of this chapter in a significant way. To some extent this chapter confirms the generalizations Martin makes about patristic interpretation of the Galatians text, in that Clement, like the Fathers Martin cites, and like radical feminist interpreters, picks up on the androgyny implied in the Galatians text. But Clement also emphasizes the equality of male and female - if not in the social sphere, then in the areas he considers most important: the pursuit of virtue in the present life and the soul’s status in the future, heavenly life with God. As already noted, Clement states in paragraph 58 of this chapter:
The whole church is full of those who throughout their lives practice the death into Christ, a death that makes alive - women who exhibit self-control (oM^pMouvq) as well as men. For the person who follows the Christian way of life - whether barbarian or Greek, slave, old man, child, or woman - can cultivate philosophy even without study.
(4.8.58.2-3)In the paragraphs that follow, Clement focuses on the pair “male and female” from Gal 3:28. He makes three interrelated points: (1) as human beings (άνθρωποι), women and men share one common nature, even though their specific nature as males or females differs (59.1); (2) virtue is the same for both women and men (59.1-3); and (3) the souls of men and women are the same,[1226] even though their bodies are different and they have different activities (60.1).
These points are reinforced through quotations of other Pauline texts. First Clement cites three verses from Paul’s discussion of women prophets in 1 Corinthians 11:
v. 3) But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ.
v. 8) Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
v. 11) Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. (Strom. 4.8.60.2)
It is not surprising that Clement quotes verse 3, which suggests a sexual hierarchy, or verse 8, which grounds this hierarchy in the order of creation described in Genesis 2. But it is interesting that he also quotes verse 11, which emphasizes the interdependence of the sexes. Apparently he sees this verse as support for his argument that both sexes are called to the life of virtue, for he adds the comment: “For just as we claim that a man must exercise self-control (σωφρονα είναι) and be master over the pleasures, in the same way we would say that a woman should be self-controlled and practiced in battling against pleasures” (60.3).
To give further Scriptural support to this point, Clement quotes Paul’s description of the battle between flesh and spirit in Galatians 5:16-23 (60.4-61.1). The list of virtuous qualities mentioned in Gal 5 include selfcontrol (εγκράτεια),[1227] kindness, faith, and love. To these Clement adds ανδρεία, courage or fortitude, etymologically a male virtue and one of the four cardinal virtues in Greek philosophical tradition.[1228] To show that the Bible, too, demands ανδρεία, he quotes Jesus’s command: “To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer also the other cheek” (Luke 6:29). Clement stresses that the virtue of ανδρεία takes a particular form for Christians, who do not train their women to demonstrate courage in war, like the Amazons, but hold that even men should cultivate peace (61.2-3).
D.