Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection: An Ecumenical Dialogue

Appendix

205 @ Aquinas on Women and the Image of God Appendix As the image of God in the human is indefectible and perfectible, the question could be asked, are all women made in the image of God? the short answer is “yes.” “the image of God belongs to both sexes, since it is in the mind, wherein there is no sexual distinction.”1 However, this answer does not by itself suffice to counter the criticism that thomas’ theological anthropology is andropocentric. in considering how the first perfection of the image of God in the human attains its second perfection by actually knowing and loving God, let us go on an excursus to explore thomas Aquinas’ theological account of women. Aquinas’ understanding of gender and the image of God is informed by his reading of scripture (“man is the image of God, but woman is the image of man,” [1 Cor 11:7]) and Aristotle (“the female is a misbegotten male,” [De generatione 2:3]). From these two texts thomas draws a distinction between a primary and a secondary signification to the image of God. the angelic doctor states that in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as God is the beginning and end of every creature.2 the sense of this passage seems to be that the male-female relation is in some kind of analogous correspondence to Creator-creature relation. Man is the beginning of woman, in that according to Genesis 2:22, she came from the side of Adam. the same passage presents man as the end of 206 Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection woman in that she fulfills her first finis operantis in being a helper to the man.3 thus, Aquinas appears to introduce here a distinction between the thing represented by the image and a certain mode of representation that is different for the man than for the woman. in her magisterial survey of Western thought on womanhood, sister Prudence Allen argues that at the level of nature thomas’ understanding of the male-female polarity closely parallels that of Aristotle.4 Men are a more perfect reflection of the image of God, the first principle of human beings. Women in comparison are derivative, passive, and less capable of intellectual and moral virtue. the relation between men and women at this level is analogous to the relation between God and prime matter: man represents actuality; woman represents potentiality. such is the relation between male and female at the level of nature. More accurately, sister Prudence argues that this is only part of the story at the level of nature. Humanity was originally created male and female; God actually intended to create two sexes. By Aristotelian logic, the sexual polarity of men and women should be overcome at the resurrection. Women are the result of an imperfect generation. For Aristotle, the begetting of a woman is a sign that nature has gone. Hence, in a perfect world there would be no women. Aquinas strongly disagrees with this conclusion. two sexes are better than one. As sister Prudence explains, for thomas, “the variety of two sexes within one species is a greater perfection than if there had been only one sex, even if the female is less perfect than the male.”5 the differences between the sexes are real but not so great as to call for the categorization of men and women into different species. to clarify, the lesser perfection of women pertains to the state of the actualization of the state of human nature in the female body. But women are just as capable as men of receiving the theological virtues; they are just as capable of receiving the gift of infused contemplation; they are going to be risen in female bodies, and after the resurrection the difference in perfection will not be determined by the gender of the body but by the merits of the person. After all, the Blessed virgin Mary is the most perfect of saints.6 in sister Prudence’s reading, “st. thomas, by incorporating the intellectual framework of sex polarity as first articulated by Aristotle, put forward a Christian philosophy of sex identity that presented a sex polarity on the level of nature—which moved into a sex polarity on the level of grace.”7 Pia Francesca de solenni advances sister Prudence’s reading by arguing that Aquinas’ epistemology opens the way for “an...