Feminist Interpretations of Augustine

2 Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ

2 Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ Anne-Marie Bowery To Augustine’s theological man, woman as a theological datum is the visible incarnation of sexual desire and lust, the carrier of evil and guilt, the occasion of man’s original Fall and subsequent transmission of sin. In ‘‘Beyond Mary and Eve,’’ Margaret Maxey provocatively suggests, ‘‘The theological task of ‘liberating’ women would get underway primarily by This essay is dedicated to the memory of Carl Vaught. His intensely personal engagement with the Confessions inspired so many students, myself included, to take up the words of Augustine and interweave them into their own lives. I would like to thank the Baylor University Research Committee and the College of Arts and Sciences Summer Sabbatical Committee for the financial support I received during this project. Randall Colton, now of Eastern University, was an immensely helpful research assistant during the stages of this project. The members of my various Augustine seminars deserve special thanks for their constant enthusiasm for learning and their willingness to listen to various formulations of this project. Judith Stark provided helpful suggestions throughout the final stages of revision. 70 Feminist Interpretations of Augustine rejecting and counteracting an Augustinian inheritance.’’1 Many dimensions of Augustine’s thought suggest that feminists would do well to follow Maxey’s advice.2 However, we should not prematurely divorce Augustine from feminist concerns.3 Over the past thirty years, scholars have explored the social, political, and historical context in which Augustine wrote.4 Given an increased awareness of Augustine’s intellectual milieu, some aspects of Augustine’s theology support a positive comparison to both his predecessors and his contemporaries with respect to his views about women.5 For example, Augustine’s reading of the Garden of Eden story treats women more sympathetically than either Philo or Origen .6 Furthermore, Augustine acknowledges that women are the spiritual equals of men and he insists upon the salvation of both sexes.7 Augustine ’s Confessions, particularly its detailed portrait of Monica, offers another fruitful avenue for reassessing Augustine’s relevance for contemporary feminist philosophy and theology. In this essay, I argue that Augustine presents Monica as a feminized image of Christ. Augustine’s portrait of Monica allows us to reframe the masculine image of divinity that lies at the heart of the Christian doctrine. Indeed, as Elisabeth Kari Børresen remarks, ‘‘Atypical use of female metaphors describing God or Christ in the Christian tradition can be used as a starting point for a new theology.’’8 In this essay, I survey the range of scholarly interpretations of Monica. First, I address those scholars who regard Monica negatively, either by condemning her for meddling in Augustine’s life or by dismissing her spiritual insights as primitive and emotionally driven rather than intellectual . I also briefly discuss some Freudian analyses that explain Augustine’s preoccupation with Monica as the manifestation of an unresolved oedipal struggle. I then turn toward more positive treatments of Monica. Some scholars see her as an image of the Virgin Mary. Others view her as a symbol of the church. Still others treat her as emblematic of Augustine’s belief in the sexless universality of spiritual experience. In the second section of the essay, I draw upon the work of several scholars who emphasize the mediating role of Monica. I then argue that Augustine uses the figure of Monica to feminize the image of Christ. He does so by presenting her as a model Christian; by describing her ability to ascertain the will of God through her dreams, visions, and spiritual experience; and by describing her mediating presence at each discernable stage in his movement toward Christian conversion. As the Confessions progresses, Augustine portrays their relationship as a microcosm of Chris- The Feminine Face of Christ 71 tian community. The communal nature of their relationship symbolizes the inexorably communal nature of Christian spiritual experience. Finally , I suggest that Augustine’s presentation of Monica provides a useful paradigm for contemporary feminist reevaluations of canonical Christian theology. Looking at Monica in the Secondary Literature Negative Views Eric Ziolkowski perceptively observes that ‘‘in our own century Monica has seemed to intimidate psychologists and church historians (a mostly male bunch), not all of whom view her positively as a mother and wife.’’ A brief survey of the literature bears out his point. Robert Ottley remarks, ‘‘Monica was by no means faultlessly virtuous and wise; she had...