Prompt for this essay, led by Professor Tod Swanson at Arizona State University.

"Prompt: In the Cult of the Saints, Peter Brown wrote “This book is about the joining of Heaven and Earth, and the role, in this joining, of dead human beings” (Brown p1). Please write an essay using two or more of the assigned readings such as Augustine, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Genesis reading or Plotinus (in addition to the Brown quote, and do not use outside readings) to explain the ways in which gender and sexuality were believed to cause the separation of heaven from earth, soul from body, and consequently eternal life from human beings. Explain how people of late antiquity believed that sexuality caused death. Also explain what kinds of gendered or sexual behavior were believed to bring heaven and earth back together again and thus overcome death. Do you think advances in astronomy, geography, or biology change this late antique understanding of how sex causes death? How? Remember that your title should be in the form of a question. Your thesis statement should answer the title question and should be underlined."

This essay introduced me to one of my favorite Apochryphal texts The Acts of Paul and Thecla, which is considered one of the earliest feminist texts for it's representation of a woman's capacity to choose her own path in life. I think it is one of those that is necessary reading to understand who I am as a person despite having only heard of it in my mid 20s. It was also in this essay where I began to truly fall in love with my degree path, given the ways that religion is woven into the functions of society regardless of how outwardly religious somebody might be. Analyzing and understanding those parts of sociopolitics has seemed to be understated, if ignored in my opinion.

When reckoning with concepts of death and resurrection, how does Christianity address gender?

Throughout the readings of the week, faith reflects freedom in the same ways it reflects oppression; within these themes is the overarching belief that faith also grants freedom from death – if you do it right. With the belief of man and woman being reflective of soul and body respectively, the idea of connecting Heaven to Earth is present in relationships described by Saint Augustine. Additionally, Plotinus describes a kind of ego death as a means of religious emergence, where one gives up material belongings in favor of deep humility. Applying these to not only the story of Eve and the tree of knowledge, but also Thecla and her dedication to Paul’s direction relating to God can bring forward how Heaven and Earth are processed and connected through gender.

As Earth is a copy made of the blueprint of Heaven, so too is the body of the soul, and woman of man. When Eve is seduced to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she then seduces Adam to do the same – the body is seduced by desire, and thus seduces the soul to act on that shared desire. As such, she faces the harsher of punishment: “To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pangs in childbirth exceedingly great; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you (Genesis 3:16).’”

The wrath of God has brought pain as punishment to woman, ascribing to her the responsibility for misleading man after she had been misled – or, alternatively bringing her pain for the role she took in her own autonomy. In a later story, God rewards this bid for autonomy when it comes from Thecla as she uses the word of god to defend herself from a man’s advances (The Acts of Paul and Thecla, p.451-452). Throughout her narrative, Thecla takes up a mantle of godliness, yes, but she also shows the possibility present to other women who might feel oppressed by the society they live in (The Acts of Paul and Thecla, p.452). The story of Thecla wraps up with the woman taking on a man’s wardrobe to reunite with Paul as a ‘true believer/practitioner’ of God’s word (The Acts of Paul and Thecla, p.543), either as an act of subservience to God’s recognition of masculinity being the core of the soul, or a radical gender nonconformity to the time.

Ultimately, in earning a good or bad death through worship of God or lack thereof, gendered roles of soul and body remain at play between the lines of many stories. Heaven touches those who worship, first those who are men, and then later women if they prove themselves especially worthy. Man is responsible for guiding woman, according to Saint Augustine’s concept of making marriage good. This assumed holiness of men presiding over women acts as a means of denying autonomy, whilst also rewarding it in specific circumstances as determined by God’s belief in worthiness. Women sacrifice more in his name, and face doubts from holy men all along the way (The Acts of Paul and Thecla, p.451). Such is present in the roles assumed and recommended by Ephesians, where women are subordinate to their husbands, and children to their parents in a patriarchal hierarchy.

The genesis of misogyny exists in the narrative of holiness, and finds its way into daily modern life in ways that aren’t unlike that of antiquity. Disbelief of women’s virtue – religious or conceptual of innocence – is a constant undercurrent to western life as we reckon with attempt after attempt to reign in acts of autonomy like abortion and marriage or divorce. Humanity likes that which it can control, and in many cases that is also other human’s desiring control over one another. Worthiness and meritocracy have religious holdovers that primarily oppress as people seek to proselytize rather than give grace and understanding.

Citations

Ascent to the Union with the One, Plotinus

On the Good of Marriage, Saint Augustine of Hippo

The Acts of Paul and Thecla

Genesis 2:4-3:24 New Revised Version

Ephesians 5:21-6:9 New Revised Version

These citations are not arranged in a particular style due to the ways that Professor Swanson provided source materials; he gave PDF scans of the relevant chapters from each source (aside from sections of the Bible).