Feminist Interpretations of Augustine

9 Augustine on Women: In God’s Image, but Less So

9 Augustine on Women: In God’s Image, but Less So Judith Chelius Stark Does Augustine consider that women, as well as men, are made in the image of God? The number and variety of articles that deal with this vexed and difficult question have increased greatly over the past thirty years. Any consideration of this topic must at the outset acknowledge the very early and groundbreaking work of Kari Elisabeth Børresen, who considered this question in Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Women in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (1968).1 Since then Børresen has written extensively on the topic and has more recently moved away from seeing ‘‘Augustine’s definition of female subservience as a Godwilled part of the creational order’’ to a more positive assessment of Au- 216 Feminist Interpretations of Augustine gustine on this point.2 However, she also qualifies this assessment by stating that her ‘‘more positive assessment of Augustine results from a more negative judgment of his doctrinal framework, namely, the malecentred conformity of both scriptural texts and their subsequent interpretation .’’3 Two recent studies, one by E. Ann Matter and the other by David Vincent Meconi, provide readers with excellent reviews of the literature on this question and take a stand on the issue.4 Both authors argue that Augustine considers women to be made in the image of God, but only in the spiritual sense. Meconi develops a fully textual argument and claims that Augustine is not nearly so reluctant to accord women full imago status as other writers and critics maintain. These two authors, Børresen, and others have contributed a great deal to the debate thus far and support the view that Augustine accords women imago status, at least in a spiritual sense.5 Nonetheless, this essay shows that in other senses, that is, precisely as women—embodied, gendered , and sexually differentiated—Augustine does not consider women as women to be the image of God and certainly not so fully as men. Moreover, not surprisingly, Augustine does not attach these same quali- fications (considered by Augustine to be impediments) to men in any of the discussions that he conducts about their status as image of God. Men are always accorded full status as image of God without any hesitation or further debate on Augustine’s part. Previous studies do not fully address these issues in comparative ways, nor do they fully draw out the implications of Augustine’s own statements on women and their status, especially in light of the conditions he stipulates for women. This study addresses a number of questions arising from the stipulations Augustine makes about women: first, why are women considered to be made in God’s image in a spiritual sense and with multiple conditions attached to this status; second, why does Augustine qualify the imago status for embodied, gendered women when he does not do so for men; and third, what implications can be drawn from Augustine’s own thinking about the stipulations he makes about women and their imago status? In this essay I focus primarily on Augustine’s great work The Trinity, especially book 12, from which most of the earlier studies take their starting point. In an important section of book 12 Augustine attempts to reconcile Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 11:7–8 with Genesis 1:26–27. This is the key text on the question about women’s imago status in The Trinity that must be addressed and analyzed. However, in addition to ana- Augustine on Women 217 lyzing this central text, it is important to understand the setting, the tone, and the broader arguments that Augustine is making in book 12 within which his comments and dilemmas about women appear. Some relevant texts from other of Augustine’s writings are also brought to bear on this analysis. His project in The Trinity provides the bigger picture for his comments on women. An overarching principle in The Trinity is Augustine’s support for the Nicene formulation of the Trinity as divine unity expressed through the absolute equality of the Father, Son, and Spirit. The three-ness in unity was the bedrock understanding of the Trinity that Augustine explored and expounded against the lingering elements of Arianism (with its view of a kind of divine subordination of the Son to the Father and a different sort of divinity for each...