The Gnostic Gospels (15 page)

and made major inroads into professional life. Women of the Jewish communities, on the other hand, were excluded from actively participating in public worship, in education, and in social and political life outside the family.
⁷¹

Yet despite all of this, and despite the previous public activity of Christian women, the majority of Christian churches in the second century went with the majority of the middle class in opposing the move toward equality, which found its support primarily in rich or what we would call bohemian circles. By the year 200, the majority of Christian communities endorsed as canonical the pseudo-Pauline letter of Timothy, which stresses (and exaggerates) the antifeminist element in Paul’s views: “Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.”
⁷²
Orthodox Christians also accepted as Pauline the letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians, which order that women “be subject in everything to their husbands.”
⁷³

Clement, Bishop of Rome, writes in his letter to the unruly church in Corinth that women are to “remain in the rule of subjection”
⁷⁴
to their husbands. While in earlier times Christian men and women sat together for worship, in the middle of the second century—precisely at the time of struggle with gnostic Christians—orthodox communities began to adopt the synagogue custom, segregating women from men.
⁷⁵
By the end of the second century, women’s participation in worship was explicitly condemned: groups in which women continued on to leadership were branded as heretical.

What was the reason for these changes? The scholar Johannes Leipoldt suggests that the influx of many Hellenized Jews into the movement may have influenced the church in the direction of Jewish traditions, but, as he admits, “this is only an attempt to explain the situation:
the reality itself is the only certain thing
.”
⁷⁶
Professor Morton Smith suggests that the change may have resulted from Christianity’s move up in social scale from lower to middle class. He observes that in the lower class,
where all labor was needed, women had been allowed to perform any services they could (so today, in the Near East, only middle-class women are veiled).

Both orthodox and gnostic texts suggest that this question proved to be explosively controversial. Antagonists on both sides resorted to the polemical technique of writing, literature that allegedly derived from apostolic times, professing to give the original apostles’ views on the subject. As noted before, the
Gospel of Philip
tells of rivalry between the male disciples and Mary Magdalene, here described as Jesus’ most intimate companion, the symbol of divine Wisdom:

 … the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples were offended by it …]. They said to him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Savior answered and said to them, “Why do I not love you as [I love] her?”
⁷⁷

The
Dialogue of the Savior
not only includes Mary Magdalene as one of three disciples chosen to receive special teaching but also praises her above the other two, Thomas and Matthew: “…  she spoke as a woman who knew the All.”
⁷⁸

Other secret texts use the figure of Mary Magdalene to suggest that women’s activity challenged the leaders of the orthodox community, who regarded Peter as their spokesman. The
Gospel of Mary
relates that when the disciples, disheartened and terrified after the crucifixion, asked Mary to encourage them by telling them what the Lord had told her secretly, she agrees, and teaches them until Peter, furious, asks, “Did he really speak privately with a woman, (and) not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Distressed at his rage, Mary replies, “My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?” Levi breaks in at this point to mediate the dispute: “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you,
indeed, to reject her? Surely the Lord knew her very well. That is why he loved her more than us.”
⁷⁹
Then the others agree to accept Mary’s teaching, and, encouraged by her words, go out to preach. Another argument between Peter and Mary occurs in
Pistis Sophia
(“Faith Wisdom”). Peter complains that Mary is dominating the conversation with Jesus and displacing the rightful priority of Peter and his brother apostles. He urges Jesus to silence her and is quickly rebuked. Later, however, Mary admits to Jesus that she hardly dares speak to him freely because, in her words, “Peter makes me hesitate; I am afraid of him, because he hates the female race.”
⁸⁰
Jesus replies that whoever the Spirit inspires is divinely ordained to speak, whether man or woman.

Orthodox Christians retaliated with alleged “apostolic” letters and dialogues that make the opposite point. The most famous examples are, of course, the pseudo-Pauline letters cited above. In I and II Timothy, Colossians, and Ephesians, “Paul” insists that women be subordinate to men. The letter of Titus, in Paul’s name, directs the selection of bishops in terms that entirely exclude women from consideration. Literally and figuratively, the bishop is to be a father figure to the congregation. He must be a man whose wife and children are “submissive [to him] in every way”; this proves his ability to keep “God’s church”
⁸¹
in order, and its members properly subordinated. Before the end of the second century, the
Apostolic Church Order
appeared in orthodox communities. Here the apostles are depicted discussing controversial questions. With Mary and Martha present, John says,

When the Master blessed the bread and the cup and signed them with the words, “This is my body and blood,” he did not offer it to the women who are with us. Martha said, “He did not offer it to Mary, because he saw her laugh.” Mary said, “I no longer laugh; he said to us before, as he taught, ‘Your weakness is redeemed through strength.’ ”
⁸²

But her argument fails; the male disciples agree that, for this reason, no woman shall be allowed to become a priest.

We can see, then, two very different patterns of sexual attitudes emerging in orthodox and gnostic circles. In simplest form, many gnostic Christians correlate their description of God in both masculine and feminine terms with a complementary description of human nature. Most often they refer to the creation account of Genesis I, which suggests an equal or androgynous human creation. Gnostic Christians often take the principle of equality between men and women into the social and political structures of their communities. The orthodox pattern is strikingly different: it describes God in exclusively masculine terms, and typically refers to Genesis 2 to describe how Eve was created from Adam, and for his fulfillment. Like the gnostic view, this translates into social practice: by the late second century, the orthodox community came to accept the domination of men over women as the divinely ordained order, not only for social and family life, but also for the Christian churches.

Yet exceptions to these patterns do occur. Gnostics were not unanimous in affirming women—nor were the orthodox unanimous in denigrating them. Certain gnostic texts undeniably speak of the feminine in terms of contempt. The
Book of Thomas the Contender
addresses men with the warning “Woe to you who love intimacy with womankind, and polluted intercourse with it!”
⁸³
The
Paraphrase of Shem
, also from Nag Hammadi, describes the horror of Nature, who “turned her dark vagina and cast from her the power of fire, which was in her from the beginning, through the practice of darkness.”
⁸⁴
According to the
Dialogue of the Savior
, Jesus warns his disciples to “pray in the place where there is no woman,” and to “destroy the works of femaleness …”
⁸⁵

Yet in each of these cases the target is not woman, but the power of sexuality. In the
Dialogue of the Savior
, for example, Mary Magdalene, praised as “the woman who knew the All,” stands among the three disciples who receive Jesus’ commands: she, along with Judas and Matthew, rejects the “works of femaleness”—that is, apparently, the activities of intercourse and
procreation.
⁸⁶
These sources show that some extremists in the gnostic movement agreed with certain radical feminists who today insist that only those who renounce sexual activity can achieve human equality and spiritual greatness.

Other gnostic sources reflect the assumption that the status of a man is superior to that of a woman. Nor need this surprise us; as language comes from social experience, any of these writers, whether man or woman, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or Jewish, would have learned this elementary lesson from his or her social experience. Some gnostics, reasoning that as
man
surpasses
woman
in ordinary existence, so the
divine
surpasses the
human
, transform the terms into metaphor. The puzzling saying attributed to Jesus in the
Gospel of Thomas
—that Mary must become male in order to become a “living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven”
⁸⁷
—may be taken symbolically: what is merely human (therefore
female
) must be transformed into what is divine (the “living spirit” the
male
). So, according to other passages in the
Gospel of Thomas
, Salome and Mary become Jesus’ disciples when they transcend their human nature, and so “become male.”
⁸⁸
In the
Gospel of Mary
, Mary herself urges the other disciples to “praise his greatness, for he has prepared us, and made us into
men
.”
⁸⁹

Conversely, we find a striking exception to the orthodox pattern in the writings of one revered father of the church, Clement of Alexandria. Clement, writing in Egypt c. 180, identifies himself as orthodox, although he knows members of gnostic groups and their writings well: some even suggest that he was himself a gnostic initiate. Yet his own works demonstrate how all three elements of what we have called the gnostic pattern could be worked into fully orthodox teaching. First, Clement characterizes God in feminine as well as masculine terms:

The Word is everything to the child, both father and mother, teacher and nurse … The nutriment is the milk of the Father … and the Word alone supplies us children with the milk of love, and only those who suck at this breast are truly happy. For this reason, seeking is called sucking; to those infants who seek the Word, the Father’s loving breasts supply milk.
⁹⁰

Second, in describing human nature, he insists that

men and women share equally in perfection, and are to receive the same instruction and the same discipline. For the name “humanity” is common to both men and women; and for us “in Christ there is neither male nor female.”
⁹¹

As he urges women to participate with men in the community, Clement offers a list—unique in orthodox tradition—of women whose achievements he admires. They range from ancient examples, like Judith, the assassin who destroyed Israel’s enemy, to Queen Esther, who rescued her people from genocide, as well as others who took radical political stands. He mentions Arignote the writer, Themisto the Epicurean philosopher, and many other women philosophers, including two who studied with Plato, and one trained by Socrates. Indeed, he cannot contain his praise:

What shall I say? Did not Theano the Pythagorean make such progress in philosophy that when a man, staring at her, said, “Your arm is beautiful,” she replied, “Yes, but it is not on public display.”
⁹²

Clement concludes his list with famous women poets and painters.

But Clement’s demonstration that even orthodox Christians could affirm the feminine element—and the active participation of women—found little following. His perspective, formed in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Alexandria and articulated among wealthy and educated members of Egyptian society, may have proved too alien for the majority of Western Christian communities which were scattered from Asia Minor to Greece, Rome, and provincial Africa and Gaul. The majority adopted instead the position of Clement’s severe and provincial contemporary, Tertullian:

It is not permitted for a woman to speak in the church, nor is it permitted for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer [the eucharist], nor to claim for herself a share in any masculine function—least of all, in priestly office.
⁹³

Their consensus, which ruled out Clement’s position, has continued to dominate the majority of Christian churches: nearly 2,000 years later, in 1977, Pope Paul VI, Bishop of Rome, declared that a woman cannot be a priest “because our Lord was a man”! The Nag Hammadi sources, discovered at a time of contemporary social crises concerning sexual roles, challenge us to reinterpret history—and to re-evaluate the present situation.