Introduction
When God asks the first woman what she has done, she replies from behind the fig leaves, “The serpent deceived me” (Ὁ ὄφις ἠπάτησέν με, Gen 3:13). This is the only time that deception is mentioned in Genesis 3, and it leaves unanswered the question of whether the first man was deceived. Two early Christian texts take advantage of this ambiguity in alternative ways. In 1 Tim 2:9–15, the Pauline author takes silence as negation: “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Tim 2:14).Footnote 1 In Or. 37 (SC 318.270–319), a homily on Jesus’s teaching about divorce in Matthew 19, Gregory of Nazianzus fills the silence instead with affirmation: “The woman sinned, and so did Adam. The serpent deceived them both” (ἀμφοτέρους ὁ ὄφις ἠπάτησεν, Or. 37.7 [NPNF 2.7:340]).Footnote 2
Immediately after their interpretations of Gen 3:13, both 1 Timothy and Gregory turn to how the woman can be saved. Again, Gregory diverges from 1 Timothy. While for the Pauline author, the woman is saved through childbirth (1 Tim 2:15), for Gregory, she is saved the same way as the man—by the death of Christ (Or. 37.7). Gregory’s divergence from 1 Timothy is surprising because he endorsed 1 Timothy as Scripture.
This article first argues that Gregory raises the reading of Eve found in 1 Timothy but denies both its configuration of Genesis and the implications it draws. The next section surveys the reception of 1 Tim 2:14 in other early Christian authors, using Elizabeth A. Clark’s categories of ascetic reading practices, and finds in Gregory of Nyssa a precedent for a subtly transgressive rewriting of 1 Timothy 2 that moves from deception to salvation but replaces childbirth with an alternative remedy.Footnote 3 To corroborate that Nazianzen is in fact engaging with 1 Tim 2:14, rather than disregarding it, the final two sections explore how Eve and other women function elsewhere in his corpus and how his own interpretive principles could make sense of his surprising relation to 1 Timothy. The article concludes that Gregory may be transgressing 1 Timothy after the pattern of Jesus transgressing the Mosaic law on divorce in the oration’s central passage, a spiritual transgression.
Genesis 2–3 in 1 Timothy and Gregory
The purpose of 1 Timothy is to “stabilize” the household of God (cf. 1 Tim 3:15).Footnote 4 One factor destabilizing the household is false teachers (1 Tim 1:3–7, 19–20), who advocate ascetism and forbid marriage (1 Tim 4:3), and who seem to have had success in influencing some women in the community (1 Tim 5:15; cf. 2 Tim 3:6). The author responds by encouraging young women to raise children and attend to the home (1 Tim 5:14), not to pursue an autonomous celibate lifestyle (1 Tim 5:11–13; though cf. 5:9–10), and he sharply forbids women from teaching roles in the assembly.Footnote 5
The women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve [cf. Gen 2:7]; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor [cf. Gen 3:13]. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. (1 Tim 2:9–15)
These instructions, the author thinks, will secure order in the assembly and shield the community from the false teachers.
The author’s selection of Genesis 2–3 to justify these instructions is not all that surprising. It describes the creation of the man and woman (Gen 2:7, 22), the woman’s deception (Gen 3:6, 13), her subordination to her husband (Gen 3:16), and the nature of childbirth (Gen 3:15–16). It indicts the man for listening to the woman’s voice (Gen 3:17) and identifies Eve as a mother (Gen 3:20).Footnote 6 The author configures these features in such a way as to provide absolute foundations for these instructions: because Adam was formed before Eve, men take precedence over women (1 Tim 2:13; cf. Gen 2:7, 22), and because Eve alone, not Adam, was deceived and fell into transgression, women cannot be trusted to handle the truth, especially in speaking roles directed toward men (1 Tim 2:14; cf. Gen 3:6, 13, 17).Footnote 7 There is hope, however, and a role, for the woman yet: she will be saved by means of bearing children, as long as those children prove faithful and virtuous (1 Tim 2:15; cf. Gen 3:15–16, 20).Footnote 8 As Margaret Y. MacDonald puts it, “even the route to salvation for women in this text … is seen to be a different one from that of men.”Footnote 9
The author’s interpretation of Genesis can be boiled down to three elements.Footnote 10 First, Eve receives primary blame for the fall, and the author explicitly denies that Adam was deceived. Second, both creation (Gen 2:7, 22) and the fall (Gen 3:13) indicate the inferiority of Eve to Adam. Third, all women inherit Eve’s essential inferiority: men take precedence over women, and women are untrustworthy as teachers.Footnote 11 These three elements can be contrasted with the interpretation of Gregory.
In Or. 37, given before Emperor Theodosius in Constantinople around 380, Gregory encourages changes in adultery and divorce legislation by interpreting biblical passages about marriage (cf. Ep. 144).Footnote 12 After starting with some preliminary theological comments and introducing the primary passage (Matt 19:1–12) to be exposited (Or. 37.1–5), Gregory addresses inequality in the punishments for adultery, in response to a question from the emperor’s court.
What was the reason why they restrained the woman, but indulged the man, and that a woman who practices evil against her husband’s bed is an adulteress, and the penalties of the law for this are very severe; but if the husband commits fornication against his wife, he has no account to give? I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve this custom. They who made the law were men, and therefore their legislation is hard on women…. There is one maker of man and woman, one sod of clay for both [cf. Gen 2:7], one image, one law, one death, one resurrection, in the same way we were born from man and woman….
How then do you demand chastity, while you do not yourself observe it? How do you demand that which you do not give? How, though you are equally a body, do you legislate unequally? If you enquire into the worse—the woman sinned, and so did Adam. The serpent deceived them both [cf. Gen 3:13]; and one was not found to be the stronger and the other the weaker. But do you consider the better? Christ saves both by his passion. Was he made flesh for the man? So he was also for the woman. Did he die for the man? The woman also is saved by his death. He is called of the seed of David; and so perhaps you think the man is honored; but he is born of a virgin, and this is on the woman’s side. The two, he says, shall be one flesh [cf. Gen 2:24; Matt 19:5]; so let the one flesh have equal honor. (Or. 37.6–7 [NPNF 2.7:339–40])Footnote 13
After concluding with the Pauline allegory of that first marriage (Eph 5),Footnote 14 Gregory moves on to discuss second marriages and virginity.
Gregory’s selection of Genesis 1–3 to justify the equal treatment of men and women under marital law is, again, not entirely surprising. It includes both male and female in the image of God (Gen 1:27), describes the married man and woman as one flesh (Gen 2:24), and portrays both the man and the woman eating the fruit and being cursed by God (Gen 3). Gregory configures these features so as to provide ultimate foundations for his legislative recommendations. One maker, one image (Or. 37.6; cf. Gen 1:27), and one flesh (Or. 37.7; cf. Gen 2:24) mean one equal treatment for men and women. Because Adam and Eve were formed from one lump of dust (χοῦς, Or. 37.6; cf. Gen 2:7), because both were deceived by the serpent and both sinned (Or. 37.7; cf. Gen 3:13), and because both are saved in the same manner, by the death of Christ, who came from the virgin’s womb no less than the line of David (Or. 37.7; cf. Gen 3:15), men and women deserve equal honor.Footnote 15
Gregory’s interpretation of Genesis 2–3 thus diverges from 1 Timothy’s. First, Gregory does not blame Eve more than Adam for the fall, and he specifies that Adam too was deceived. Second, neither creation (Gen 2:7, 24) nor the fall (Gen 3:13) indicates an inherent inferiority in Eve. Third, Gregory does not subject all women to the shadow of Eve’s original failure because Christ became human and died for the woman.Footnote 16 Both 1 Timothy and Gregory allude to Gen 2:7 and 3:13 and then discuss salvation (σῴζω) in order to advocate for a particular relation between men and women. But while 1 Timothy exploits differences between Adam and Eve in Genesis 2–3 to justify inequality in the author’s community, Gregory exploits similarities between Adam and Eve in Genesis 2–3 to advocate for more equality in the empire.
Gregory’s reading cannot be seen as independent of 1 Timothy. Gregory treats 1 Timothy as Scripture: it is in his canon list (Carm. 1.1.12.35),Footnote 17 he identifies it as authentically Pauline (Or. 2.69; 21.10), and he employs its language for theological arguments (Or. 30.13). His regular use of various portions of 1 Timothy indicates his intimate familiarity with its content and language.Footnote 18 Gregory would have been familiar with the differences between his own and 1 Timothy’s readings of Genesis. Even if Gregory is responding to contemporaneous Christian arguments that mediate the reasoning in 1 Timothy, he would have known where else it could be found—especially after the careful reflection that went into the publication of his orations. The orations are not transcripts of haphazard biblical homilies that he never returned to, but “self-conscious, highly finished works of late antique prose,” whose “complexity of style and thought suggests at least heavy reworking,”Footnote 19 and his letters (see Ep. 51–54) indicate that he revised his works for publication in the 380s.Footnote 20
Nor can Gregory’s reading be seen as merely an alternative to 1 Timothy’s. It is true that Gregory likely did not feel constrained to interpret every Old Testament passage exactly as it had been interpreted in the New Testament, and Gregory himself can offer multiple interpretations of the same Old Testament passage (e.g., cf. Or. 37.7; 38.12; 45.8). However, Gregory’s reading is not just different from 1 Timothy’s but almost its exact opposite, its mirror image. Both discuss the equality or inequality of men and women. Both allude to Gen 2:7 and 3:13. Both appeal to different stages of salvation history. Both move from deception to salvation, which cannot be explained by their shared source text. Both employ antithetical syntax, with 1 Timothy’s first–then (Ἀδὰμ πρῶτος … εἶτα Eὕα) and not–but (Ἀδὰμ οὐκ … ἡ δὲ γυνὴ) replaced by Gregory’s both–and (ἡ γυνὴ, τοῦτο καὶ ὁ Ἀδάμ and Ὑπὲρ ἀνδρὸς … τοῦτο καὶ ὑπὲρ γυναικός).Footnote 21 But each comes to the opposite conclusion of the other. Further, Gregory frames his reading as a rejection of other options,Footnote 22 specifically raising the reading in 1 Timothy, only to deny both its configuration of Genesis and the implications it draws.
Gregory, therefore, must be seen as in some sense transgressing 1 Timothy’s reading of Genesis. An obvious possible factor is the opposing stances toward asceticism in the two writers. The Pauline author is on the defensive against teachers who forbid marriage (1 Tim 4:3), while Gregory praises celibacy as better than marriage (though marriage is good and honorable) (Or. 37.10). There is a common anxiety around 1 Tim 2:9–15 among those who share Gregory’s sensibilities, apparent in the spiritualizing interpretations of τεκνογονία (1 Tim 2:15) as generating spiritual offspring, bearing virtuous fruit, or the virgin birth of Christ.Footnote 23 The reception of this passage in early Christianity more broadly may therefore clarify what Gregory is up to.
1 Timothy 2:14 in Other Early Christian Writers
The seminal work on how early Christian interpreters find ascetic meanings in biblical passages that seem out of step with the renunciatory agenda is Elizabeth A. Clark’s Reading Renunciation: “once a Biblical text … was deemed sacred literature, it could not be rejected, only interpreted … hermeneutical strategies had to be devised to provide satisfactory explanations of apparent Scriptural divergences.”Footnote 24 Clark identifies eleven particular strategies,Footnote 25 and she addresses 1 Timothy in particular,Footnote 26 but apart from passing comments,Footnote 27 she does not cover 1 Tim 2:14. However, this passage is ripe for Clarkian assessment because 1 Tim 2:9–15 diverges from the condemnation of Adam in Romans 5 and the ascetic inclinations of 1 Corinthians 7 by exculpating Adam and locating the salvation of women in the birthing room. Early Christian interpretations of 1 Tim 2:14 that respond to these contradictions within the Pauline corpus largely confirm Clark’s overall construal and illustrate several of the strategies she identifies, with one potential exception that is especially relevant to Nazianzen, and they provide the context in which Gregory’s surprising interpretation can be understood.Footnote 28
Many authors, exhibiting something like what Clark calls “ ‘close reading’ of problematic texts,”Footnote 29 reinterpret the phrase “was not deceived.” Some of them make the denial less than absolute: Adam was not deceived first (Theodoret of Cyrus, Comm. 1 Tim. ad loc 2:14; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. 1 Tim. ad loc. 2:14; Ambrose, Parad. 12 [56]) or not deceived by the serpent (Theodoret of Cyrus, Comm. 1 Tim. ad. loc. 2:14; Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Tim. 9.1), rather than not deceived at all. While those authors reinterpret “was not deceived” to explain how Adam was less culpable, Augustine does the same to explain how Adam was, if anything, more culpable,Footnote 30 in Clark’s terms combining “close reading” with “intertextual exegesis”:Footnote 31
It was not without reason … that the apostle said, “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived” (1 Tim 2:14). For she accepted what the serpent said to her as if it were true, while he was unwilling to be separated from his only companion, even when it came to sharing in sin. He was no less guilty on that account, however, if he sinned knowingly and deliberately. That is why the apostle does not say that Adam did not sin but that “Adam was not deceived.” For he is plainly referring to Adam when he says, “Through one man sin came into the world” (Rom 5:12). (Civ. 14.11)Footnote 32
Perhaps the most creative reinterpretation of the phrase is in Ephrem the Syrian,Footnote 33 who thinks that Paul is ironically taking up Adam’s blame-shifting perspective, similar to what Clark calls “reclassification of authoritative voice” (Comm. Gen. ad. loc. 3:10).Footnote 34 Ephrem engages in something like what Clark calls “talking back” to Adam:Footnote 35 “But if he gave you a wife, Adam, he gave her as a helper and not as a harmer, as someone who receives instructions, rather than as one who gives orders” (Comm. Gen. ad. loc. 3:10).Footnote 36
One of the striking findings of Clark’s study is that allegory was less useful for the ascetic project than we might expect. Nonetheless, Clark lists a number of examples where allegory justifies renunciation, including in Origen.Footnote 37 To these could be added the allegories of 1 Tim 2:14 by Origen and Didymus the Blind, who reinterpret “Adam” and “Eve” instead of “was not deceived.”Footnote 38
You should not be surprised that she who is gathered out of the dispersion of the nations and prepared to be the bride of Christ, has sometimes been guilty of these faults. Remember how the first “woman was seduced and was in the transgression” [1 Tim 2:14], and could find her salvation, so the Scripture says, only in bearing children; which for the present purpose means those who “continue in faith and love with sanctity” [1 Tim 2:15]. The apostle, therefore, declares what is written about Adam and Eve thus: “This is a great mystery in Christ and in the church” [Eph 5:32]; he so loved her that he gave himself for her, while she was yet undutiful. (Origen, Comm. Cant. 2.46)
Paul’s words … evoked Christ and the church: “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” [1 Tim 2:14]…. Interpreting the woman as the church and Adam as Christ, an intelligent person would take the passage allegorically and consider whether the human race, from which the church developed, by becoming guilty of transgression proved responsible for the descent of the Savior and his implementing the divine plan by which he became “curse” and “sin”—not that he was these, but took them on for our sake. (Didymus, Comm. Gen. ad. loc. 3:12)Footnote 39
Adam corresponds to Christ, who was without transgression, and Eve corresponds to the whole church, women as well as men—an example of what Clark calls “changing sex” or “gender-bending,”Footnote 40 as well as an illustration of her observation that in Origen the sin of both men and women is sometimes associated with femininity.Footnote 41
One final example may evade the boundaries of Clark’s categories. Gregory of Nyssa resolves the tension between 1 Timothy’s domestic emphases and his own ascetic tendencies by reimagining how Eve’s failure is reversed (cf. 1 Tim 2:15).
The grace [of Christ redeeming humanity] is reported by a woman [Mary Magdalene in John 20:17–18]…. For because, as the Apostle says, “The woman was deceived and fell into transgression” [1 Tim 2:14], and led the way of rebellion against God by her disobedience, for that reason she became the first witness of the resurrection, so that she might correct by her faith in the resurrection the disaster her transgression caused; and just as, having become at the start minister [διάκονός] and advocate [σύμβουλος] to her husband of the serpent’s words, she consequently brought a beginning of evil upon the world, so, by bearing to the disciples the words of him who had slain the rebellious dragon, she might become a pioneer [ἀρχηγός] of faith for mankind, the faith by which appropriately the first sentence of death is revoked. (C. Eunomium 3.10.16 [PG 45.883–1122])Footnote 42
Since Eve’s failure consisted of faulty teaching (cf. Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Tim. 9.1), her redemption consists in Mary Magdalene’s faithful teaching of male disciples, basically the opposite of the point 1 Timothy is making (1 Tim 2:11–12, 15). Nyssen accommodates the problematic text by means of a subtly transgressive rewriting, following 1 Timothy’s path from the woman’s deception to her salvation, but replacing the birthing room with the garden of Jesus’s tomb—nearly identical to the progression of thought in Or. 37.7.
Many of these interpretations reflect early Christians’ canon within the canon or what Clark calls “the hierarchy of voice”: the theology of Romans and social outlook of 1 Corinthians often take precedence over the domestic emphases of the Pastorals. A similar preference certainly helps explain the rejection of the interpretation of Genesis in 1 Timothy 2 by Gregory of Nazianzus as well. But the early Christian reception of 1 Tim 2:14, especially the passage in Gregory of Nyssa, indicates that there may be more to say about Nazianzen’s relation to the passage. Although Clark does not comment on Or. 37.7, she classifies Or. 37.6 as a “hierarchy of voice”:
Commenting on Matthew 19:9, Gregory argues that Jesus does not mean to fault only a woman’s porneia, but a man’s as well. Gregory frames a speech for Jesus, more expansive than the words assigned to him in Matthew, that corrects the presumption that only husbands may initiate divorce…. Gregory’s (“feminist”) Jesus explains how such a pernicious practice could have arisen: men who made the laws were hard on women but not on themselves. God, by contrast, deems that porneia is not permitted for either sex…. Blessing and punishment should fall on the sexes equally. Here, “Jesus” authoritatively rewrites his own words in Matthew to curtail the greater sexual freedom allowed to men.Footnote 43
Clark’s language of “rewriting” may apply to Or. 37.7 as well: not a rewriting of Matthew’s Jesus by Gregory’s (feminist) Jesus, but a subtly transgressive rewriting of 1 Timothy 2 by Gregory himself,Footnote 44 “talking back” to the apostle. Gregory of Nyssa provides a Cappadocian precedent for this, but Nazianzen’s rewriting would be simultaneously more brash (explicitly denying the reading in 1 Timothy) and more effacing (by not explicitly mentioning 1 Timothy). So what Gregory is transgressing is not so much fourth-century interpretation—though he does diverge from some contemporaneous interpreters who, for example, take salvation by childbirth literally (Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Tim. 9.1–2; see also Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. 1 Tim. ad loc. 2:15; Ambrosiaster, Comm. 1 Tim. ad loc. 2:13–15)—but the Pauline text itself. The plausibility of this construal of Or. 37.7 is corroborated by the presence in Gregory’s writings of an ambivalence toward 1 Timothy based on juxtapositions of Eve with early Christian women, as in Gregory of Nyssa’s subtly transgressive rewriting.
Women in Gregory
Gregory of Nazianzus portrays four biblical and Cappadocian women—the virgin mother, Mary Magdalene, his sister Gorgonia, and his mother Nonna—as reversing the failure of Eve, sometimes in language almost identical to his Cappadocian companion. The two from his family are also described as subtly challenging, while ostensibly respecting, 1 Timothy’s restrictions on women. Gregory’s descriptions of these women justify his interpretive moves in Genesis 2–3, corroborate his ambivalence toward 1 Timothy 2, and thus indicate a potential motivation for his subtly transgressive rewriting.
The Virgin Mary is repeatedly described as undoing the failure in the garden. Christ was born of a virgin to grant mercy to Eve (Carm. 1.2.34.192). “The reason for the generation and the virgin, for the manger and Bethlehem,” Gregory explains, is restorative recapitulation: “the generation on behalf of the creation, the virgin on behalf of the woman, Bethlehem because of Eden, the manger because of the garden” (Or. 2.24 [NPNF 2.7:210]). And this healing extends to all women: “But when Christ came by way of a holy Virgin Mother, … he hallowed womankind, and shook off bitter Eve” (Carm. 1.2.1.197–200 [Gilbert, 96]).Footnote 45 In particular, a later virgin, by appealing to the Virgin Mary when under threat, herself conquers the devil (Or. 24.10–11; cf. Carm. 1.2.1.203–208).
Like Gregory of Nyssa, Nazianzen juxtaposes Eve with Mary Magdalene. In Or. 45, he encourages listeners to participate in the Pascha by identifying with characters from the passion and resurrection: “If you hear, ‘Do not touch me’ [John 20:17], stand far off, have reverence for the Word, but do not be sorrowful. For he knows those by whom he was seen first. Keep the feast of the resurrection; help Eve, the first who fell, and her who first greeted Christ and made him known to the disciples” (Or. 45.24 [Harrison, 184]).Footnote 46 Mary Magdalene, “who announced his resurrection from the dead to his disciples,” is thus along with the virgin mother part of how “womankind [is] sanctified” (Or. 24.17 [Vinson, 154]).Footnote 47 And the command to “help Eve” (Or. 45.24 [Harrison, 184]) indicates that others can participate in Magdalene’s reversal.
One of those participants is Gregory’s sister Gorgonia. In his funeral oration after her death around 369 or 370 (Or. 8 [SC 405.247–301]),Footnote 48 Gregory concludes a series of exclamations about her perfections, “O bitter taste, and Eve, mother of our race and our sin, and deceptive serpent, and death—all overcome by her self-mastery!” (Or. 8.14 [Daley, 70–71]).Footnote 49 This reversal of Eve indicates that, in one sense, women are not inherently inferior to men: “O woman’s nature, defeating that of men in our common struggle for salvation, proving that female and male are differences of body, not of soul!” (Or. 8.14 [Daley, 70]). Further, the virtues by which Gorgonia proves Gregory’s anthropology reflect an ambivalence toward 1 Timothy 2.
On the one hand, Gorgonia submitted to the customary restrictions on women. She acquiesced to her husband as head (Or. 8.8) and teacher (διδάσκαλος) (Or. 8.11). She was slow to appear in public (Or. 8.9). She avoided external adornment with gold (χρυσός) or expensive (πολυτέλεια) clothing, and she clothed herself instead with self-control (σωφροσύνη, Or. 8.8), decorum (κόσμιος), and modesty (αἰδώς) (Or. 8.10). Despite her wisdom, she often refrained from speech according to the limits of feminine godliness, exhibiting praiseworthy silence (σιωπή) (Or. 8.11). And she produced godly offspring (Or. 8.8, 11). Gregory thus frames Gorgonia within several New Testament passages’ expectations for godly women (1 Cor 11:2–16; 14:33–36; 1 Pet 3:1–6; Tit 2:3–5).Footnote 50 But some of his language is shared only with 1 Tim 2:9–15 (σωφροσύνη, κόσμιος, αἰδώς), and Gregory’s praises proceed in a similar order as that passage: from adornment (Or. 8.10; 1 Tim 2:9) to silence (Or. 8.11; 1 Tim 2:11–12) to Eve (Or. 8.14; 1 Tim 2:13–14).
Gregory’s descriptions of Gorgonia, however, push the limits of the restrictions in 1 Timothy. The industrious homemaker of Proverbs 31 is only a shadow of the greater, more perfect Gorgonia (Or. 8.9). She outwitted her marital status by approximating celibate devotion even within the domestic context (Or. 8.8). She was “so open to the word of God—or rather, … so made her mind the guide of her tongue—that she could always speak of the judgments of God” (Or. 8.9 [Daley, 68]). In fact, “all those who lived around her accepted her advice and exhortation as absolute law” (Or. 8.11 [Daley, 68–69]), and she “brought her husband to act in agreement with her” (Or. 8.8 [Daley, 67]). As Raymond Van Dam summarizes, “In one perspective he stressed how Gorgonia had respected, and even embodied, very conventional paradigms of female behavior…. In contrast, another perspective that Gregory used in this panegyric seemed to hint that his sister’s behavior had also quietly challenged these constraints on typical female behavior.”Footnote 51 Gorgonia is hardly easily deceived or completely submissive to men, and she pursues salvation by transcending domestic limitations. With Gregory’s help, she even breaks generic boundaries. “It is with this text,” Virginia Burrus observes, “a decade earlier than Gregory of Nyssa’s tribute to Macrina, … that a woman becomes the subject of a Life for the first time in the surviving literature of the ancient Mediterranean.”Footnote 52 The oration is “a rhetorical act that makes public what is properly private … a subtly transgressive exposure.”Footnote 53
Therefore, Gorgonia reverses Eve’s failure by means of a life that ostensibly submits to restrictions like those in 1 Timothy—adorned with virtue not cosmetics, silent in the appropriate contexts, and producing godly offspring—while simultaneously subtly transgressing them. And she learned this way of life, Gregory says (Or. 8.3–6), from our fourth female figure.
Partway through his funeral oration after his father’s death in 374 (Or. 18 [PG 35.985–1044]),Footnote 54 Gregory pauses to praise his mother Nonna (Or. 18.7–12; cf. Or. 7.4; 8.4–5), including her role as a second Eve in the conversion of her husband.Footnote 55
She indeed who was given to Adam as a help meet for him, because it was not good for man to be alone, instead of an assistant became an enemy, and instead of a yoke-fellow, an opponent, and beguiling the man by means of pleasure, estranged him through the tree of knowledge from the tree of life. But she who was given by God to my father became not only, as is less wonderful, his assistant, but even his leader [ἀρχηγός], drawing him on by her influence in deed and word to the highest excellence; judging it best in all other respects to be overruled by her husband according to the law of marriage, but not being ashamed, in regard of piety, even to offer herself as his teacher [διδάσκαλος]. Admirable indeed as was this conduct of hers, it was still more admirable that he should readily acquiesce in it. (Or. 18.8 [NPNF 2.7:256–57])
Like Nyssen’s Mary Magdalene, Nazianzen’s Nonna is an ἀρχηγός who overcomes Eve by means of a teaching role over a man.Footnote 56 Gregory’s descriptions of Nonna also reflect an ambivalence toward 1 Timothy 2. She agreed to be “overruled by her husband” (Or. 18.8 [NPNF 2.7:257]), she eschewed exterior ornamentation (Or. 18.8), and she kept silent during holy assemblies, except in liturgical responses (Or. 18.9–10). But she was an equal match for her husband in virtue (Or. 18.7; 8:5), she attained a level of piety normally inaccessible to a married woman (Or. 18.8–9), and she influenced her husband with “reproaches” and “admonitions” (Or. 18.11 [NPNF 2.7:258]; contra 1 Pet 3:1). As Verna Harrison observes,
She must have conformed outwardly to accepted rules of feminine behaviour, but she could hardly be called a submissive wife…. Gregory seems to be encouraging female achievement as far as he can within the constraints of social context and Pauline and deutero-Pauline scripture…. Yet these restrictions neither mold nor manifest [Gorgonia’s and Nonna’s] inward character, which they express by working around the rules.Footnote 57
In 1 Timothy, women are inferior to men, but for Gregory, Gorgonia “proves” that women can match and even “defeat” men in virtue. In 1 Timothy, women are forbidden from teaching or exercising authority over men, but Gregory praises Nonna for apparently breaching those restrictions. Yet Gregory’s relation to 1 Timothy is ambivalent because, although he portrays Gorgonia and Nonna as subtly subverting the domestic restrictions on women, he also praises them for formally submitting to them. This ambivalence may derive in part simply from the contradictory cultural values around women’s behavior that communities had to navigate in antiquity, including the original audience of 1 Timothy themselves,Footnote 58 which may indicate that the tensions between Gregory and 1 Timothy’s instructions are less significant than they first seem. But more importantly, Gregory’s emphases are out of step with 1 Timothy’s interpretation of Genesis in particular. In 1 Timothy, all women are confined to Eve’s shadow, but for Gregory, the four biblical and Cappadocian women reverse Eve’s failure. These women thus may exert a hermeneutical pressure on Gregory’s reading of Genesis that nudges it out of compliance with 1 Timothy’s and may help indicate what motivated Gregory’s subtly transgressive rewriting.Footnote 59
However, this still leaves unexplained how Gregory could justify engaging in a subtly transgressive rewriting of Scripture and the manner in which he did so. There is no way of knowing what Gregory was thinking, and he may not have explicitly worked out the dissonance for himself. But it’s worth asking whether any implicit logic, built upon his own interpretive principles, could make sense of this transgression—how this surprising reading fits into his interpretation more broadly.Footnote 60
Letter and Spirit in Gregory
Gregory’s endeavor to rise from the letter to the spirit of Scripture may help explain his subtly transgressive rewriting of Scripture.Footnote 61 He regularly appeals to this distinction (Or. 6.17; 31:21; 38.2). In one sense, the letter is fitting and worthy of its deeper sense: although some doctrines are concealed in a robe or envelope, the envelope is not “indecent,” and the robe is “by no means to be condemned” (Or. 4.117; cf. 45.11).Footnote 62 Gregory’s interest in the letter is apparent in his many detailed grammatical arguments (e.g., Or. 30.4, 10–11; 41.15).Footnote 63 But in another sense, some passages “hide their mystical beauty under a mean-looking [εὐτελής] cloak” and can thus do harm (κακόω) to the majority by their apparent meaning (Or. 2.48 [NPNF 2.7:215]; cf. Or. 40.20; 45.11). Gregory warns against slavery to the letter (Or. 31.24) or loving the letter as a cloak for impiety (Or. 31.3), and he advocates “escaping from the oldness of the letter,” passing “over to grace from the law” (Or. 2.97 [NPNF 2.7:224]), and letting the letter give way to the spirit (Or. 38.2; cf. Carm. 1.2.3.27–29). His goal is to advance “from a mere literal or symbolic interpretation to a still wider view, as I proceed from one depth to another, calling upon deep after deep, and finding light after light, until I attain the highest pinnacle” (Or. 43.67 [NPNF 2.7:418]). Three aspects of rising from the letter to the spirit are relevant to Gregory’s stance toward 1 Timothy.
First, in the most general sense, rising from the letter to the spirit means moving from figure to reality (Or. 2.97). This can take several forms.Footnote 64 One is imagining Old Testament figures as types for Jesus or the church’s worship, such as when Gregory engages in a detailed allegory of Christ and the life of virtue in “the mystery of Pascha … these things the law sketched beforehand; these things Christ fulfilled, the dissolver of the letter, the perfecter of the Spirit” (Or. 45.21 [Harrison, 181–82]). Another is drawing typological analogies between one’s experiences and biblical narratives, such as when Gregory identifies himself as a Jonah figure fleeing his post (Or. 2.106–110).Footnote 65 And another is probing the commandments for “two meanings, one in the letter, the other in the spirit” (Or. 6.17 [Vinson, 16]; cf. 20.12), such as when Gregory interprets a command about unblemished priests (Lev 21:17) as symbolic for the integrity of the soul (Or. 2.94).
Not only does the incarnation afford new insights into the Old Testament (Or. 38.2), but the coming of the Spirit affords new insights into both Testaments during the time of Gregory. “The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself … that by gradual additions … the light of the Trinity might shine upon the more illuminated” (Or. 31.26 [NPNF 2.7:326]; cf. Carm. 1.1.3.24–31). “It was not safe” to reveal fourth-century theology in the first century (Or. 31.26 [NPNF 2.7:326]). Gregory relates this progression in revelation to a progression in customs. At first idols are removed, then sacrifices, then circumcision—and more changes are coming (Or. 31.25; cf. 45.12–13; ll. 34–60 in the addition between Carm. 1.1.9.18–19).Footnote 66 “Paul is proof of this,” Gregory explains, “for having at one time administered circumcision [Acts 16:3], and submitted to legal purification [Acts 21:26], he advanced till he could say, and I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution [Gal 5:11]? His former conduct belonged to the temporary dispensation, his latter to maturity” (Or. 31.25 [NPNF 2.7:326]).Footnote 67 Gregory thus has a category for the apostle taking stances that are no longer correct.
A second, more specific aspect of rising from the letter to the spirit is transitioning from marriage to celibacy. The introduction of celibate communities after the reign of marriage under the law is itself a transition from letter to spirit in history: “he dismissed the laws of the flesh, with mighty words the letter gave way to the spirit, and grace came in the midst; then, truly, radiant virginity illuminated mankind” (Carm. 1.2.1.201–203 [Gilbert, 96]; cf. 1.2.3.27–29). And commands about marriage must be probed for some meaning that pertains to celibacy.Footnote 68 In Or. 37, Gregory interprets Jesus’s teaching on marriage in terms of the celibate’s relation to the heavenly bridegroom (Or. 37.10–12) and their avoidance of spiritual adultery (Or. 37.17, 19), and he encourages the married to approximate such weddedness to Christ even within the domestic setting (Or. 37.10), like Nonna (Or. 18.8–9) and Gorgonia (Or. 8.8). From this perspective, the idealized domestic woman in Proverbs 31 is only a shadow (σκιά) that is not yet perfected (τέλειος) (Or. 8.9). Strikingly, Gregory even treats the teaching of Jesus on celibacy (Matt 19:12) as the letter: “I think that the discourse would sever itself from the body, and represent higher things by bodily figures; for to stop the meaning at bodily eunuchs would be small and very weak, and unworthy of the Word; and we must understand in addition something worthy of the Spirit,” namely, “spiritual chastity” in the pious soul (Or. 37.20 [NPNF 2.7:343]).Footnote 69
The third aspect of rising from the letter to the spirit is exercising compassionate flexibility around biblical laws.Footnote 70 Gregory begins Or. 37 with an extended reflection on how Christ humbled himself to share in human weakness in order that all humanity might be raised up. He takes on all kinds of evil names (Or. 37.1). He shines light in the darkness of Galilee and persuades “people to rise up from the letter and to follow the spirit” in Judea (Or. 37.2 [NPNF 2.7:338]). He even sleeps and weeps to bless pillows and tears (Or. 37.2). “For this reason great multitudes followed him,” Gregory summarizes, “because he condescended to our infirmities” (Or. 37.5 [NPNF 2.7:339]). With this framework established, Gregory turns to the primary passage of the oration (Matt 19:1–12) and to the questions about adultery and divorce that have been posed to him. The influence of that framework can be seen, for example, in Gregory’s comments on second marriage. In Prov 30:33, says Gregory, “the Word … seems to deprecate second marriage” (Or. 37.8 [NPNF 2.7:340]). Nonetheless, in what will become Eastern canon law from this point forward, Gregory does not forbid a second marriage, and for a third, he advocates only a penalty (Or. 37.8). As John A. McGuckin explains, “Christ’s word of law … is seriously meant as the right way … but … the overarching principle of Christ’s law also has to be invoked, that is the compassion which is the motivation for all his legislations and commandments, a compassion that seeks to rescue and save the mass of humankind.”Footnote 71 This compassionate flexibility is also apparent when Gregory praises his mother and sister for circumventing biblical restrictions (Or. 8.8–9, 11, 14; 18.8–9, 11).Footnote 72
Gregory’s reasoning in Or. 37.6–7 explicitly and implicitly employs these three principles. He interprets Adam and Eve in light of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ (Or. 37.6–7). He defends the honor of women based on the virgin birth (Or. 37.7). And he appeals to Christ’s redemptive condescension for both man and woman and exhibits compassion for the woman’s perspective: “they who made the law were men, and therefore their legislation is hard on women” (Or. 37.6 [NPNF 2.7:339–40]).
These principles also provide some room for Gregory to take a critical stance toward 1 Timothy. Commands in the New Testament, including 1 Timothy, can constitute the letter, especially if they pertain to marriage, which corresponds to the old dispensation. As letter, the commands in 1 Timothy may exhibit some “meanness” on the surface that needs to be reckoned with or some strictness that needs to be tempered with the compassionate flexibility of Christ the lawgiver.Footnote 73 As Pauline, the stances in 1 Timothy, at least in principle, may be immature and subject to further evaluation in the light of the greater glory that has since been revealed.
The hermeneutic of 1 Timothy itself works in almost the opposite direction of Gregory’s. Its reading of Genesis encourages women to find salvation through marriage and childbearing, reflects little compassion for the women’s perspective, and builds ultimate foundations for inflexible restrictions. Perhaps this reading was so irretrievably tied to the letter, broadly conceived, that Gregory could not accept it, but instead had to imagine new foundations for a more spiritual take on women’s place in the family. Where 1 Timothy found order in the formation of man and woman, sequentially and positionally, Gregory found one clay from which both were formed (Gen 2:17). Where 1 Timothy found an exceptionally guilty mother of equally deceivable daughters, Gregory found a woman equally yoked with a guilty husband, who will be rescued by the virgin mother’s womb (Gen 3:13). In the terms of Gregory’s own hermeneutic, one might say his reading is not just a subtle transgression, but a spiritual one.
Yet there is one final explanation that could not only justify Gregory’s transgression but also clarify what exactly he is doing. Gregory has been approached by the emperor with a legal question about divorce and remarriage (Or. 37.6), so for his biblical passage he selects the story where Jesus is approached with a legal question about divorce and remarriage (Matt 19:1–12). Jesus demands that men show greater patience because the existing law is unfair to women (Matt 19:8–9; so Or. 37.8),Footnote 74 and Gregory demands that women be freed from showing limitless patience because the existing law is unfair to women (Or. 37.6–7). Jesus, while respecting the authority of biblical law (Matt 19:8), transgresses part of the law based on an appeal to the garden (Matt 19:3–7). Gregory, while respecting 1 Timothy, transgresses part of 1 Timothy based on an appeal to the garden (Or. 37.7). Gregory, in line with his typological practice of interpreting all characters and events in his life through the lens of a biblical counterpart,Footnote 75 takes his stand as a Jesus figure, approached with a similar question, and responding in a similar manner. Gregory’s justification for transgressing Scripture’s reading of Scripture is Jesus Christ.
In Or. 37.6, Clark finds the strategy of “the hierarchy of voice,” with Gregory’s “feminist” Jesus trumping Matthew’s Jesus. In Or. 37.7, I find instead the (Jesus-like) Gregory himself as the more authoritative voice, who speaks back not to Matthew’s Jesus but to 1 Timothy’s Paul. This type of engagement with 1 Timothy would not exactly be unprecedented because many authors, exploiting Paul’s own category in 1 Cor 7:6, describe instructions about marriage in 1 Timothy (and elsewhere) as concessions that can be disregarded in other circumstances or by those with stronger spiritual resolve (Chrysostom, Hom. Heb. 18.2; Iter. conj. 3; Jerome, Jov. 1.14–15; Epist. 123.3–7; cf. Augustine, Incomp. nupt. 2.12).Footnote 76 In fact, some authors even explicitly compare this to the passage of Gregory’s oration: just as Jesus abrogated Moses’s concession to Israel’s hardness of heart, so the Spirit can later abrogate Paul’s concessions to the weak (Tertullian, Mon. 14; cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 4.15.2). But Gregory is exceptional in challenging the scriptural argument underlying 1 Timothy’s instructions about women.
Conclusion
Gregory’s subtly transgressive rewriting of 1 Timothy’s reading of Genesis may constitute not so much a disregard for 1 Timothy as a particular kind of appropriation that builds on an interpretive tradition, a spiritual transgression. It is one more instance, albeit a somewhat radical one, of the interpretive practice Gregory exhibits throughout Or. 37, which Ben Fulford calls
a faithfully critical approach to the understanding of biblical teachings, even those of Jesus himself. Gregory’s hermeneutic of Christ’s kenotic love for humanity provides a critical principle for understanding the pedagogical force of Scripture and resisting regressive readings to which it might otherwise be vulnerable, and a framework within which to exploit intertextual possibilities that accord with that principle.Footnote 77
Although the extent is limited and the motives may be mixed,Footnote 78 in Or. 37 an ancient theologian centers women’s concerns to subtly challenge restrictions on women in precisely those texts he holds in highest esteem. Gregory thus provides a precedent and resources, not just among critics of the tradition or along the margins of the tradition (important considerations in their own right), but near the heart of the tradition itself for letting personal experience with different groups of people inform how we read biblical passages about them.Footnote 79 This oration also furnishes a category with which contemporary readers of the New Testament might theologically conceive of certain historical-critical or theory-driven analyses of problematic passages: redirecting toward the New Testament itself the Matthean Jesus’s attitude toward the Mosaic law. Subtlety about the difficulty of certain passages may be less fundamental after the historical and theoretical turns than it was before them, but contemporary theologians might benefit from reflecting on the positive role that subtlety could play in transgressive readings in certain contexts, along with the dangers it could pose.
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