Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought by Benjamin H. Dunning (review)

Dunning’s book is a fascinating walk through several early Christian texts, each of which tackles the issue of how sexual difference fits into a theological anthropology inherited from Paul. In these schemata, humans are situated between Adam and Christ in the drama of creation and salvation. The question Paul has left unanswered, according to Dunning, is this: If sexually differentiated beings are defined—with respect to their creation and salvation—in terms of these two male figures, then how do Christians account for sexual difference, specifically for the feminine? Dunning tells his readers at the outset that these second- and third-century Christian authors only partially succeed in answering this question, leaving gaps and inconsistencies that ultimately undermine their solutions. Dunning hints that these contradictions and resulting failures prove instructive.

In chapter one Dunning introduces the particular problem faced by platonizing Christians with respect to this larger question. If humans begin and end in one perfect being, what sort of being is it? Male? Female? Neither? He points out that ideals of human androgyny inevitably end up being masculinized.

Chapter two addresses the work of Clement of Alexandria, for whom the erasure of sexual difference is itself a process of the feminine becoming masculine. As Dunning shows, however, because desire takes the place of the female for Clement, this quality can be assigned to males as well. To the extent that Adam can feel desire, he has been feminized. The result is that Clement’s text, against Clement’s own better judgment, undermines the platonizing ideal of “the one” as reliably masculine.

Chapter three illustrates a platonizing work that does not uphold the original androgyne as the ideal, On the Origen of the World (NHC II,5). This creation story, which describes three different Adams, shows how none of these is really what is advertised: The various choice, psychic, and pneumatic elements that initially define each one separately end up overlapping and seeping into one another so that each figure is mixed. This text offers multiple stories of creation and multiple creators and so resists Paul’s Adam/Christ typology.

Chapter four turns away from the platonizing authors to Irenaeus, who responds to Paul’s typology by introducing Eve and Mary into the picture. Irenaeus develops his famous theology of recapitulation, by which Christ makes everything right where Adam made everything wrong. Mary is necessary precisely because the Adam/Christ parallel does not quite take care of what Eve represents, which Dunning calls a “remainder” in Christ’s recapitulation of Adam. Mary is necessary to counter the vulnerability of Eve (the fertile virgin’s vulnerability to penetration) by presenting her own virgin, fertile body as a site of salvation.

Chapter five analyzes Tertullian, who also depends on notions of virginity and also brings in Eve and Mary to address the problem of sexual difference in a theological anthropology that has Adam and Christ at its poles. Tertullian draws a sharp contrast between these pairs of males and females: Adam and Christ are intact; Eve and Mary are penetrable and perhaps penetrated. Tertullian describes Christ’s birth as a penetration of Mary, so that Christ emerges as the only intact virgin. In Tertullian’s world, “a paradigmatic unpenetrated female body cannot be allowed to stand” (147). But then Dunning takes this step further and points out that Christ, because he has penetrated Mary, is no longer a virgin himself. This shows the impossibility “of maintaining a consistent and impregnable position” (149). I assume the pun is intended.

Much of this monograph is elegantly argued, especially when Dunning is working closely with an ancient text. A persistent theme is the way these authors ultimately undermine themselves, which illustrates that categories such as sexual difference, gender, and virginity are not stable. Dunning shows how second- and third-century arguments for the superiority of one group over another (e.g. male over female), or for humanity’s status...