Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)

109 Pages·2011·23.78 MB·English

by  Benjamin H. Dunning

Specters ofP aul
DIVINATIONS: REREADING LATE ANCIENT RELIGION
Series Editors: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger
Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought
A complete lise of books in the series is available from the publisher.
Benjamin H. Dunning
PENN
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
This scene has never been read tor what it is, tor what is
at once sheltered and exposed in its metaphors: its family
metaphors. It is all about fathers and sons, about bastards
unaided by any public assistance, about glorious, legitimate
sons, about inheritance, sperm, sterility. Nothing is said of the
mother, but this will not be held against us. And if one looks
hard enough as in those pictures in which a second picture
faintly can be made out, one might be able to discern her
unstable form, drawn upside-down in the foliage, at the back
of the garden.
-Jacques Derrida, Dissemi12ation
(with rctcrence to Plato's Phaedrus)
There was first the strangeness of Paul.
-Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves
x Contents
Bibliography 217
Index 243 Introduction
Acknowledgments 251
Sexual Difference and Paul's
Adam-Christ Typology
One of the central games oflifc in most cultures is the game,
or more specifically the multiplicity of games available in that
rime and place. 1l1c effort to understand the and unmaking
of gender, as well as what gender makes, involves understanding
the workings of these games as games, with their inclusions and
exclusions, multiple positions, complex forms of bodily
activity, structures of feeling and desire, and stakes of winning,
losing, or simply playing. It involves as well the question of how
gender games collide with, encompass, or are bent to the service of:
other games, t(1r gender is never, as say, the only game in town.
Ortner, Mttking Gender
Sexual difference is the site where a the relation
of the biological to rhe culrural is
must and can be
answered.
-Judith Ruder, Gender
French philosopher Alain Badiou opens a manifesto on his theory of the sub
ject with the question, "Why Saint Paul? Why solicit this 'apostle' who is all
the more suspect for having, it seems, himself such and whose
name is frequently tied to Christianity's least open, most institutional aspects:
the Church, moral discipline, social conservatism, suspiciousness towards
Jews?"1 Nevertheless, Badiou does solicit Paul, even going so far as to christen
2 lmroduaion Sexual Difference and Paul's Typology
him "our contemporary." On this Badiou is not alone; he participates At stake here is the problem difference and its relation to the
in a broader resurgence of interest in apostle among continental philoso- Pauline text. ~[be ghosts of the militant missionary and militant revolutionary
phers and critical theorists. 2 lhe figure of Paul, it appears, has emerged (or arc conjured primarily by the issue of cthnoculrural-religious difference in
reemerged) at the forefronr of critical thought regarding questions of human Paul's writings. But for the apostle, the cultural difference oflsracl is nor unre
subjectivity and political action. Srill, why Paul? Or, as Badiou "What lated to another crucial form of human difference: that of the sexed, gendered.
does Paul want?"' And what does it have to do with us? and sexualized human body.H This latter mode of difference Badiou would also
Paul's proclamation of the Christ event has always lent itself ro multiple seek to render inoperative, reading Paul as necessarily "traversing and testifY
interpretations-and the current philosophical conversation is no exception. For ing to the between the sexes in orderf(1r it to become indifferent in
Badiou (and for another prominent continental philosopher, Slavoj Ziiek), the the universality of the declaration.
apostle announces a universalizing operation whereby truth emerges by radically However, I will maintain in this book that in interpreting the Pauline
subtracting irselffrom the differences of ethnicity, culture, and sex/sexuality.4 In text, the problem by a specifically sexual difference cannot be pur to
contrast, numerous historians of New Testament have firmly maintained rest so easily -and rhat it too generates irs own specters that have nor only
that Paul envisions not a universalizing subtraction, but rather a historically and haunted the Christian theological past, but continue to haunt our contempo
culturally specific "grafting" of the non-Jewish nations of the world onto God's rary present, thereby calling into question any easy or stable division between
chosen " the people ofisrael. 5 In this way, he does nor Israel's ethnic the two temporal registers. Consequently, the book will explore the ghosts
particularity or cause it to become inoperative, bur instead declares a way for engendered by the tensions and aporias in Paul's reflections on what it means
Gentiles to be included in God's promise of faithfulness to Israel. to be an embodied human being, poised between rhe creation of Adam and
Regardless how one settles this debate, these two divergent of the final resurrection (a stare already prolcprically anticipated in the resurrec
Paul are both attended by ghosts-haunting figures rhar are specific to the tion of From rhe standpoint of contemporary feminist theology and
readings' respective claims and that have proven stubbornly persistent. Survey other modern concerns, sexual difference does not fit nearly or easily into this
ing the contemporary intellectual field of Pauline interpretation, John Caputo Yet, far from being only the bane of contemporary interpreters, as I
elucidates this point well: ''Down each road lies an ominous specter. Down will show, this anthropological conundrum was already haunting many of
the one, the extra ecclesiam nul/us est, the work the militant missionary Paul's as early as the second century.
who wants to conven everyone to the religion oflsrael, now fulfilled in Christ, It is well known that androcentric perspectives-in both ancient and
which requires a work of global missionary conversion, of world Chrisrianiza modern forms-have traditionally attended interpretation of the Pauline
tion. Down the other, the specter of the militant revolurionary ready to spill text. In response, Dale Martin has proposed that the historical analysis of gen
blood on behalf of his view of what the universal is."6 Neither of these specters der in Paul's can be useful nor to rebut the apostle's own androcentrism
generated by rhe Pauline text can be sequestered safely in the ancient past. but rather "to disrupt ... a current 'common sense' of the text, and indeed
Rather, they continue to press upon generations of the apostle's interpreters all one that portrays itself as the correct historical exegesis."10 Here the alteriry
the way down to us-as the contemporary philosophical interest in Paul dem of hiswry may function to destabilize a modern binary model sex/gender,
onstrates. Caputo notes that for Badiou and Ziiek "the fear of these specters one that necessarily entails "a dichotomy of and reciprocity between male and
[is] a fear oF truth ... the product of what they consider a timid post modern female," and is typically taken for granted by many contemporary inter
pluralism."" For these philosophers, then, the in question needs to be preters. As Martin sees it, historical work can undercut this binary's claims to
overcome by pursuing some definitive (if as yet unarriculated) resolurion to be a rranshistorical by showing us another way of thinking operative in
the ongoing difficulties that the specters pose. Yet I want to suggest that this the ancient world. Bm once this destabilization has been performed, he sug
dimension of Pauline "spcctrality" may in fact point in another direction, re gests, we ought to "rfree) ourselves from the hegemony of historical criticism"
flecting some constitutive instability at rhe heart of Paul's project that resists and instead pursue interpretive projects that open up "all sorts of new ways of
any final resolution. being human, nor just two and nor just combinations of two ... The gender
4 Introduction Sexual Difference and Paurs Typology 5
made possible by the new creation in Christ opens as yet unknowable ways forward. Instead, I have in view a failure of coherence-one that was not by
of gendering human experience, combinations of which we cannot foresee as any means acknowledged by the ancient thinkers in question. In other words,
long as we retain the dualist male-female limitation."11 although these attempted solutions promise a conceptual stability to sexual
In making this case, Marrin relies heavily on a rather sharp distinction difference, each actually contains the seeds of its own undoing, unraveling on
between ancient (and misogynistic) understandings of gender that he sees op terms internal to the argument itself.
erative in the Pauline text and the proliferation of queer variations on gender If this is the case, then feminist and queer theology need nor entirely
that become possible when we read differently as contemporary readers. By abandon history in favor of the comparative instability of Martin's "gender
contrast, while I agree with the thrust of Marrin's ethical-theological plea, I queer" contemporary moment.17 Rather, through a close examination of these
want to argue that we need not give up on history (or even historical criti anthropological breakdowns that necessarily litter the historical field, that
cism) quite so quickly. Indeed, the concept of Pauline "spectrality" that I have field may, in become a site for a different kind of transformation-one
in view renders a clean temporal separacion untenable. And while I concur in which the Christian theological tradition's failures themselves hear witness
with Martin and others that both Paul's text and much of the broader early to the insight, summarized by philosopher Judith Butler, that ..-!be body is
Christian tradition are characterized by a thoroughgoing androcentrism, r will that which can occupy the norm in myriad ways, exceed the norm, rework the
nonetheless maintain that there are conceptual resources within this ancient norm, and expose realities to which we thought we were confined as open to
tradition that could facilitate, at least obliquely, a constructive project like transformation."u 'Thus the specters of Paul to be examined in this book may
Martin's-without having to locate that project entirely outside the domain offer, in the failures to which they testifY, a viral set of historical resources for
of history. constructive feminist and queer rheological projects in the present.
Accordingly, in the analysis follows, I will seek to demonstrate that
the androcentrism in question-while undeniably pervasive and deeply
problematic-was nor a singular phenomenon historically. Rather, the an A Contradictory Apostle?
drocentric stances the earliest Christians rook on the origin, meaning, and Paul on Women in Galatians and I Corinthians
ultimate destiny of the differences between women and men display a remark
able rough-and-tumble variety. This variety, I will argue, is at least in part a As is well known, Paul appears to contradict himself in notable ways through
response to a set of interpretive problems generated by the Pauline text. That out his various discussions of sexual difference and its significance. On the
is to say, a significant number of early Christian thinkers approached the prob one hand, he famously maintains in Galatians that "there is no longer Jew or
lem of sexual difference in conversation with the vision being human that Greek, there is no longer slave or free. there is no longer male and female (ouk
they discovered in Paul's letters. And the diversity of androcentric positions eni arsen kai thely); for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal NRSV).
that they produced signals, I contend, a perduring problem at the heart of But on the other hand, when he cites a similar formula in I Corinthians, he
Pauline theological anthropology: the difficulty of situating sexed human sub conspicuously drops any reference to gender: "for in the one Spirit we were
jects (female and male) within an anthropological ti·amework hookended by all baptized into one body-Jews or Greeks, slaves or we were all
two enigmatic figures-Adam, the first human, on the one hand, and Christ, made to drink of one Spirit" (r Cor n.r3, NRSV). Elsewhere in the letter, the
the "second Adam," on the other. apostle seems to advocate a very different vision from the one put forward
What I hope to show, then, is that the set early Christian thought- in Galatians. While he may allow for a certain reciprocity to the marriage
experiments that tried to solve this problem in reasoned, consistent, and satis relationship in r Corinthians 7, other passages poim to a deeply hierarchical
fYing ways are, by and large, failures. Here I do not intend the term "failure" perspective.11 'Ihe familiar directives of I Corinthians I4 ("women gyn
to be taken in a social or political sense. Indeed, a number of "solutions" aikes] should be silent in the churches. for they are not permined to speak,
this study will examine lived on to become hegemonic ways of thinking about but should be subordinate [hypotttssesthosai], as the law also says. If there is
the sexed body in various trajectories of Christian thought from antiquity anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands [tous idious andrtts)
6 Introduction Sexual Diiiercncc and Paul's Typology 7
at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church," 1 Cor I4.34-35', of God he created him; male and female he created them," NRSV, translation
NRSV) reveal a profoundly patriarchal point of view-so much so, in fact, slightly modified).21 For Meeks, the early Christian appropriation of this myth
that some have argued that the passage must be considered a later scribal in had an emphasis on restoration in Christ to rhe primary androgynous image,
terpolation. 1 And r Corinthians n.2-r6 (a passage whose authenticity is nor and rhus led to practices of gender equality, at least in Pauline churches. Yet
('
in question), while nor so patently dismissive of women as speaking agents in scholars building on Meeks's work have increasingly asserted that ancient ap
the church, nonetheless depends on a cultural logic of descending hierarchy: peals to androgyny (whether primordial or soteriological) envision not equal
God-Chrisr-man-woman ("But I want you to undersrand that Christ is ity between the sexes, bur rather what Marrin calls "a unity in masculiniry."li
the head of every man [pantos mzdros], and the husband [ho arter] is the head Martin argues that in the sphere of early Christian soreriology, what we term
of his wire [gynaikos], and God is rhe head of Christ," r Cor IL3, NRSV). "androgyny" is better understood as "the subsuming of the weaker female into
Interpreters of Paul are rhus left with a hermeneutical conundrum when it the stronger male, the masculinization of the female body, the supplying of
comes to questions of women, sex, and gender. Daniel Boyarin concisely sums male 'presence' (hear, for instance) for the former experience of female 'ab
up rhe problem: "On the issue of gender ... Paul seems to have produced a sence' (cold, understood as lack of fire)."24 In rhis view, then, the early Chris
discourse which is so contradictory as to be almost incoherent. In Galatians, tian vision of returning to an androgynous stare implies not sexual equality
Paul seems indeed to be wiping out social differences and hierarchies between bur the primacy of the male.~~j
the genders, in addition to those that obtain between ethnic groups and socio In an important 1998 essay, one that ties together in a small space themes
economic classes, while in Corinthians he seems to be reifying and reempha developed at length in other work, Daniel Boyarin unpacks some of the ways
sizing precisely those gendered hierarchical differences. Pauline scholarship these masculinisr presuppositions regarding androgyny could function in an
has responded to this interpretive dilemma variously. Some scholars have cient thought. According to his account, Paul and other early Christians fol
sought to relegate the most patently problematic passages in r Corinthians lowed rhe Hellenistic Jewish tradition of Philo of Alexandria. 'lhey therefore
to a secondary status, construing rhem as a kind of practical concession on understood embodied sexual difference to be a kind of "fall" from a primal
Paul's parr to the immediate circumstances in Corinth. 'Ibey rhen foreground spiritual androgyny, and they looked forward to the eschatological hope of
the vision of Galatians 3.28 as a putatively radical "breakthrough," thereby transcending this division spiritually (though at the same time retaining, for
attempting to read an overarching egalitarian impulse (however qualified) in the most parr, fleshly sexual hierarchies). lhis transcendence of sex could be
both Paul's texts and Paul's own intention lying behind those texts.1 Others, accomplished through either: (r) a return ro the primal androgynous state;
H
following the immensely influential lead of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, have or (2) a redemptive collapse of the female into the male. Yet neither option
read against the grain of rhe text, looking to recover this egalitarian impulse leads in Boyarin's view to an unproblematically liberative vision for equality
not in Paul's authority or intention but in the faint textual traces (in the Pau between rhe sexes. Rather both point to a "gender parity ... founded on a du
line corpus) of other early Christian voices--voices that Paul's letters work to alist metaphysics and anthropology in which freedom and equality are for pre
render invisible in only partially successful ways.1 gendered, presocial, disembodied souls and are predicated on a devaluing and
"
What the two sides of this debate seem to have in common, however, is disavowing of the body."271hus for Boyarin, although early Christian thinkers
the understanding that some sort of concrete, practical message of liberation undoubtedly deployed the myth of the primal androgyne variably, in each
for women and men can legitimately be read our of (or behind) Galatians case the result ultimately amounts to "a reinstatement of masculinism: "The
3.28.""' Bur this shared assumption has also been called into question by schol androgyne in question always turns out somehow to be a male androgyne."
ars attempting to situate Paul in relation to what is commonly called "the Returning, then, to Paul-and more specifically, to the implications of
myth of the primal androgyne." In a groundbreaking article, Wayne Meeks invoking the primal androgyne in order to understand the apostle's position
argued that the baptismal formula underlying Galatians 3.28 has in a view a on women and sexual difference: if Galatians 3.28 refers not to social egali
soteriological return to an androgynous state modeled on the creature of Gen tarianism bur to an ancient androgyny myth, then, as Lone Farum asserts, it
esis 1.27 ("So God created humankind [haadam] in his image, in the image cannot be regarded as a "breakthrough" of any sort.28 Instead, she suggests,
8 introduction Sexual Difference and Paul's Typology 9
the vision of Galatians is one in which "male and female gender arc both proper place and significance of sexual difference? Dennis Ronald MacDonald
annulled as a sexual duality in favour of male/man as an entity of asexuality, has characterized the early second~century tradition in terms of a stark polar~
according to Gen. 1.27a.''29 According to this line of argument, the hicrarchi~ ization on gender-related issues (and other scholars have rightly questioned
cal directives of 1 Corinthians cannot be discarded or relativized as practical the strict dualism of the conflict model he proposes55). But surely MacDonald
concessions to the specific Corinthian situation. Rather, contemporary inter~ is onto something when he notes that "the most important single source of
prcters of Paul must take seriously the fact that both I Corinthians and Gala~ the polarization was the complexity of Paul himself."36 That is to say, there
tians 3.28 are grounded in a fundamentally androcentric theology of creation was (and is) something complicated about Paul's texts when it comes to the
that Paul in no way undercuts. If this view is correct, then Paul's position on issue of sexual difference-a disjointedness that resists consistent interpreta~
women, sex, and gender emerges as a fundamentally coherent one. 'lhe ring~ tion. And this complexity emerges most forcefully, I will argue, not at the level
ing proclamation of Galatians that in Christ there is no longer male or female of the gender passages in Galatians and I Corinthians, but rather in terms of
proves consistent with the hierarchical vision of r Corinthians, insofar as both broader issues of theological anthropology in Paul's thought.
are conceptually predicated on the eventual eschatological transformation of one of my central contentions is that Paul's theology of creation and
feminine difference into a male-centered "androgyny."30 resurrection, although not explicitly dealing with sexual difference, is in fact
crucial to understanding how later generations of early Christian thinkers ap
proached the problem. 'lhe human body is a philosophically troubled issue
Paul's Adam-Christ 'Iypology
in Paul's text, generating in turn a cluster of pressing anthropological ques~
tions. What constitutes the created, material body? What relation does that
'D1is argument regarding the masculinist presuppositions of ancient androg~ body have to the resurrected, escharological body? Will the latter body also be
yny is increasingly accepted in scholarly circles. And I would concede that material, and if so, in what way? And what does Christ's death and resurrec
the scholars such as Boyarin and Fatum who have built upon it to read Paul tion (as well as the various transformations operative on Christ's body) mean
as a coherent thinker of sexual difference in his own historical context have, for the relationship between the two bodies--created and resurrected? Paul
on the whole, made a persuasive case.31 But reconciling Paul to himself is delves into these questions primarily by appeal to an Adam-Christ typology
not the focus of this book. Instead, I will take as my starring point the ways (Rom 5 and I Cor rs), looking to Adam and creation through an eschatologi
these apparent contradictions in the apostle's text continued to press on his cally inflected lens as a way of thinking through not only what the human
interpreters, even in the generations immediately following Paul. For while body is but also what it will be . .lH
it is possible to provide a compelling harmonization of Galatians 3.28 and I In Romans s.n-2I, Paul articulates a robust parallel between the figures
Corinthians that situates both on an androcentric axis, some sort of tension Adam and Christ, characterizing Adam as "a type of the one who was to
between the two texts (and the interpretive possibilities that each opened up) come" (Adam hos estin typos tou metlontos) and exploring the way in which "if
continued to be felt all the same in the developing tradition. This can be the many died through the one human's trespass (to tou henos paraptomati),
seen as early as the late first century in the increasing shift toward an ethos of much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the
"love-patriarchialism" in the Deutero-Pauline Epistles-and the concomitant one human (en chariti te tou henos anthropou), Jesus Christ, abounded for the
reworking the Galatians trope to eradicate any reference to the erasure many" (Rom 5.14, 15, NRSV, translation slightly modified). In this passage,
of gender (Col 3.11).15 'Ihe well-known divergence in interpretation of the the parallel hinges primarily on the shared scope of these two paradigmatic
Pauline legacy with respect to women's roles that can be seen in the Pastoral figures, Adam and Christ, in their representative functions. That is, Paul is
Epistles versus the Acts ~/Paul and 7JJec/a reveals a similar sort of friction.14 concerned ro demonstrate the ways in which "the many" !"the all" (hoi pol
But, to take a step back from the so~called "gender passages" of the Pau~ loilpantas) participate in the respective dominions of these two paradigmatic
line corpus, whar aspects of Paul's larger theological project worked to gen~ human beings: the creation, as represented by Adam, and the eschatological
crate and sustain this ongoing sense of anthropological anxiety around the resurrection to come, as represented by Christ ("just as one human's trespass
10 Introduction Sexual Difference and Paul's Typolo~:,'Y rr
led to condemnation for all, so one human's act of righteousness leads to justi statement (I Cor I5.39-53). He argues that "What is sown is perishable
fication and lite for all," Rom p8, NRSV, translation slightly modified).'0 phthora), what is raised is imperishable (en itphtharsia) .... It is sown a physi
Bur while Adam and Christ are alike in representing all of humanity, the cal body (soma psychikon), it is raised a spiritual body (somtl pneumatikon)" (r
emphasis of the Romans passage is actually on dissimilarity. Paul Ricoeur ob Cor 15-42, 44, NRSV). This contrast between "physical" and "spiritual" bodies
serves that "It was St. Paul who roused the Adamic theme from its lethargy; by allows Paul to reinterpret Adam's created body in light of the escharological
means of rhe contmst between the 'old man' and the 'new man,' he set up the body of Christ:
figure of Adam as the inverse of that of Christ, called the second Adam. Yet
the antithesis is not so pronounced as to render the figure of Adam irrelevant -ums it is written, "'Ihe first human, Adam, became a living being"
tor rheological anthropology as it pertains to believers in Christ during Paul's (Egeneto ho protos tmthropos Adizm eis psychen zosan); the last Adam
present moment. On the one hand, Paul refrains from indulging in any specu became a life-giving spirit eschatos Adam eis pneuma zoopoioun).
lation about Adam in terms of the derails of the Genesis creation story (both But it is not the spiritual (to pneumatikon) that is first but the physi
Eve and the serpent are notably absent) or their possible typological parallels cal (to rychikon), and then the spiritual. ']be first human was from
in the redemptive economy of Christ. On the other hand, however, Adam the earth, a human of dust (ho prtitos anthropos ek ges choikos); the
still matters~the question is precisely how. While some modern interpreters second human is from heaven (ho deuteros anthropos ex ourttnou).
have chosen to downplay or even efface the ongoing importance of Adam for As was the human of dust, so are those who are of the and as
Pauline rheological anthropology/i3 what we ought to highlight here is the is rhe human of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we
centrality of a particular kind relationship, one in which the human subject have borne the image of the human of dust, we will also bear the
stands poised between creation and eschaton-Adam and Christ-and must image of the human heaven. (I Cor 15.45-49, NRSV, translation
be conceptualized in terms of both. slightly modified)
As for the place of the human body in this rheological matrix: while
consideration of the body is absent from Romans 5, in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul Unlike Romans 5, here the various details of the Genesis creation narrative
uses the Adam-Christ typology to explore the question of the body's present (beyond just the figure of Adam) are of paramount importance."' And within
state and future destiny. Here again the parallel emphasizes contrast-this this larger context of speculation on creation, Paul contrasts Adam's
time in terms of the antithesis between death and resurrection as figured characreri7~d in Genesis 2.7 as "from the dust of the ground" (NRSV; LXX:
in Adam and Christ respectively: "For since death came through a human charm apo tes ges)-with that of Christ, the anthropos of heaven.
being (di' anthropou), the resurrection of the dead has also come through Consequently, on anthropological level, believers in Christ find them-
a human being (di' antbropou); for as all die in Adam, so all will be made selves in a complicated in-between space. Marrin summarizes this situation in
alive in Christ" (1 Cor. 15.21-22, NRSV). Marrin has drawn attention to the terms of simultaneous participation in both the pneumatic/heavenly realm
strongly somatic dimension of this parallel as it plays out in the passage: and the psychic/fleshly/earthly one: "Christians currently partake of two
"The body of Adam is the location of death, and it is human participation natures: because they possess pneuma, they share something with the heav
in that body, even after baptism, that makes possible a Christian's enly natures; because they are also made up of sarx and psyche, they share
ence of death at all. Christians, although incorporated into the body of something with the earth, Adam, animals, birds, fish, and even dirt (r5.J9-40,
Christ through baptism, arc still burdened, at least until the resurrection or 47-48)."46 But Martin also rightly cautions against too easily equating Paul's
transformation of their bodies at the eschaton, by their participation in the term pneumatikos with the colloquial sense of its common English translation
body of Adarn.""4 "spirirual"~insofar as the carries with it later (modern) connotations
Later in the chapter, Paul proceeds to unpack the implications of Adam of immateriality. Rather, as he shows through an extensive examination of
and Christ's typological relationship for the body in both the present time and the extant philosophical and medical evidence, "for most ancient theorists,
the anticipated resurrection at the eschaton by means of a dense and enigmatic pneuma is a kind of 'stuff that is the agent of perception, motion, and life
f2 Introduction Sexual Dif1erence and l'aul' s Typology r_:;
itself; it pervades other forms of stuff and, together with those other forms, for early Christians as they sought to theologize the body in a concep
constitutes the self."47 tual field already overdetermined by the Pauline text: sexual difference simply
On this reading, then, Paul does not in view a transf~xmation to a does not fit in any obvious or uncomplicated way into a theology of creation
purely "spiritual" (immaterial) existence. On the contrary, while the apostle is and resurrection grounded in an Adam-Christ typology. And this dilemma, I
unequivocal in his stance that flesh and blood have no place in this eschato will argue, continued to exercise an indirect influence that long outlived Paul,
logical state (r Cor I5.50), the spiritual body pneumatikon) is still very haunting Christian discourse on the question of sexual difference into the
much a body in some meaningful sense. As Martin argues, "The transforma second and third centuries and beyond.
tion expected at the eschaton will cause the Christian body to shed the lower
parts of its current nature and left with the purer, transformed part of the
pneuma. Christians will have bodies without flesh, body, or soul-composed Complexities of Sexual Difference in the Ancient World
solely of pneumatic substance-light, airy, luminous bodies."•iH Here the logic
Categories and Terms: Sex, Gender, and Sexual Difference
of participation so central to the Adam-Christ typology as a whole is applied
specifically to the body: "The presupposition underwriting Paul's argument Throughout this book, I make recourse to the well-known categories of "sex"
here is that the nature of any body is due to its participation in some par and "gender," and also (most frequently) to "sexual difference"-a generally
ticular sphere of existence." Far rendering bodily existence ultimately less familiar category, at least in many Anglo-American contexts. Each of these
irrelevant, then, the Adam-Christ typology in I Corinthians 15 actually serves terms has a complex and contested history within feminist (as well as
to fi1reground the theological urgency questions about the body. But if the various overlapping and intersecting disciplines/discourses)-far more com
moves Paul makes here are accepted, then these questions must be asked and plex, in fact, than I can do justice to here. However, in the interests of clarify
answered with a view both to image of the human of dust" eikona tou ing for the reader how I am deploying these terms to analyze early Christian
choikou) and "the of the human of heaven" (tf'n eikona tou epouraniou). history and theology, some brief explanation of each and what is at stake in
So, returning to the central question at hand, does sexual differ- rheir differences seems appropriate.
ence fit? Or more precisely, where does one situate the figure of Eve-and 'D1e analytic distinction between biologically given sex and socially de
the difference that her specifically female body represents-within a theology termined gender has undergirded many important feminist analyses of Paul's
configured around the bodies of Adam and Christ? Paul's version of the Adam thought and of early Christian history.4'' But, as .Jorunn 0kland points out,
Christ typology does not address these questions in any systematic manner. scholars would do well to question the assumption that "they know what Paul
In fact, both Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15 seem utterly to ignore the issue. means by g_yne ... and that the word is a relevant and innocent signification
But tor post-Pauline Christians wrestling with Paul's texts-and doing so in of people with female bodies (biologically and/or culturally marked). ]hat
a Roman imperial environment in which notions of gender were increasingly is to say, given that the cultural assumptions operative in antiquity about an
unstable-this terrain proved not so easy to navigate as it might initially seem. thropology, medicine, and human bodies were vastly difh:rent from our own,
In terms of a general framework, the Adam-Christ typology worked well we cannot with any confidence the term g_yne (commonly translated
enough as a way to articulate an ovcrarching (and sexually generic) anthropol "woman" or "wife") in Paul's lerters to the realm of either biological mate
ogy. But in terms of the specific question of sexual difference, Paul's typologi rial or the social and cultural inflections of that material ("gender")
callink between creation and resurrection produced a theological ambivalence or even to the complicated interplay both. So while Paul and other early
about the figure of Adam. Christians clearly believed that men and women were different from one an
To put this simply, is Adam the first human in the representative sense, other in complex and variable ways, what 0kland calls into question here is
or the first man in the specifically male sense, or somehow both? This in turn the usefulness of the sex/gender distinction tor analyzing this complexity
raises a corresponding question: does Paul speak about Christ as anthropos not only in Paul, but also in other ancient texts, as well as texts produced in
in the broader sense or as specifically male? Here a real dilemma emerged non-Anglo-American cultural and linguistic conrexts.'1
14 Introduction Sexual Differmce and Paul's I)
'lhe problem that the sex/gender distinction seeks to sort out is not a distinction and argued for the analytical primacy not of but
new one. However. as Toril Moi notes, this particular way of parsing the rather of "sexual difference," a term drawn from psychoanalytic As
distinction did nor enter feminist theory until the 1970s, when it came to Julia Kristeva it, "Sexual difference-which is at once biological,
function as a defense an all-encompassing biological determinism: iological, and relative to reproduction-is translated by and translates a
"When one pictures sex as pervasive, there can be no difference between male in the relationship of subjects to the symbolic contract which is the
and masculine, female and feminine, sex and gender. ... Historically, then, contract: a then, in the relationship to power, and
gender emerged as an attempt to give to biology what belongs to biology, no What is at stake in this terminological move is the
more and no lcss.'''1 Yet subsequent feminist theory has found reason to com an that somewhere between either the rigidities of the '"~·tm'nr
plicate this picture-beginning with the term ''gender."'' Joan Wallach Scott's distinction or the collapse of that distinction into a space where
seminal 1986 essay, "Gender: A of Historical Analysis," argues is as it does on Freudian categories such as the psyche and
that it is not enough for as an analytic category to attend to the social the unconscious-never identical or reducible to the body but ar the same
and cultural dimensions with biological sex. Rather, what must be time somehow implicated in it-the term "sexual difference" slides flu
analyzed is the interrelation this axis with another: the signifYing function idly between marked bodies, their psychic representations, and their
of gender as "a primary field within which or by means of which power is constitution in historically variable cultural imaginaries. It thereby establishes
articulated."" In Scott's the term "gender" acquires greater the the sexed body, be it in the present or the ancient Mediter
analytical purchase. But this move also renders any clear-cut distinction be ranean past, as a project that must always take place in relation to language
tween sex and gender somewhat muddier. and the field of power.
Judith Buder has developed this line of critique through her now classic In the background of the term "sexual difference" lies an elaborate geneal
argument that even category is not a fixed and toundational given, ogy within psychoanalytic discourse rooted conceptually in the theories of
and therefore cannot be mapped onto "nature" as "gender" is mapped onto Freud and Jacques Lacan, but associated as a term primarily with the work
"culture." Rather sex is and secured through the pertormance of of Luce r,,, For lrigaray, sexual difference functions as the fimdamen
gender.'r' While not denying the materiality of the body, Buder maintains tal (and irreducible) ground from which the tradition of Western phallogo
that even the concept of matter has a that we need to inter cenrrism must be critiqued and subjectivity rethought. This is a project with
rogate critically tor the ways in which it is "fully sedimenred with discourses both constructive-philosophical and decidedly political dimensions. Bur
on sex and sexuality that prefigure and constrain the uses to which the term what about difference" as an analytic tool-one that (while indebted
can be pur."17 In this way, the sexed body must always be thought in terms of in many ways to is not necessarily wedded to the specific goals
materiality, bur marerialiry itself must be "rethought as the effect of power, as Jrigaray's philosophical and political project? Is this the only term we need
power's most productive effect."'H From this genealogical perspective, bodily some theorists seem to tor critical analysis of socially located, embod-
sex emerges as "an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. ied subjectivity in both the present and the past?66
Ir is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, bur a process whereby Here Amy Hollywood cautions that resorting solely to the concept of
regulatory norms materialize 'sex' and achieve this materialization through a proves inadequate, insofar as it depends, "as does
forcible reiteration of those norms. We can see in this trajectory exemplified on a slide between sex difference, subjective
by Scott and Butler a theoretical shift away treating and "gender" as and sexualiry."r, For in this slide we run the risk
self-evident categories that can be used unproblematically to analyze so-called of axes that, while always problematic, at the same time can
"real women." What emerges instead is an emphasis on significa- also provide critical necessary for unpacking the dense complexities
tion, discourse, and power I argue, that can prove beneficial of subjectivity. 1hus Hollywood argues, while tully acknowledging what is
for studies of early Christian thought such as the one I pursue here.60 problematic in the distinction as classically tormulared, that there
A related and overlapping line has attacked the sex/ is a need for an vocabulary that can verbalize the seams and interstices