SOURCE: "Tertullian's 'Political Ecclesiology' and Women's Leadership," in Studia Patristica, Vol. XXI. Papers Presented to the Tenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1987; Second Century: Tertullian, the West, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, Athanasius, edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone, Peeters Press, 1989, pp. 277-82.

[In the following essay, Torjesen examines Tertullian's scathing denunciation of women's leadership in the Church, noting that he saw the Church as a public and political body and, therefore, not the proper domain of women.]

The thesis of this communication is that Tertullian's attitude towards women's leadership is a consequence of his concept of the church as a body politic. First, I would like to refresh your memory of Tertullian's views on women's leadership and then briefly outline his political ecclesiology. This will prepares us for the analysis of three passages on women's leadership where we will see how Tertullian's condemnation of women's leadership is determined by his political ecclesiology.

Women of the congregations familiar to Tertullian assumed a wide variety of activities, teaching, baptizing, exorcising and healing. The leader of the Cainite congregation was a woman and a theologian. Her arguments regarding the nature of baptism occupy Tertullian's rhetorical and exegetical skills for long stretches of his treatise on Baptism¹. Women of other congregations were teaching and debating (contendere, entering into theological discussion)². Women whose teaching activites focused on catechizing probably assumed the responsibility for baptizing their catechumens³.

Tertullian's attitude toward women exercising these ministries is well documented by virtue of his own seething rhetoric. On women exercising the ministry of teaching he says:

And the women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcism, to undertake cures—maybe even to baptize⁴.

It is not permitted to a woman to speak in church. Neither may she teach, baptize, offer, nor claim for herself any function proper to a man, least of all the sacerdotal office⁵.

Nor on the topic of women baptizing is Tertullian's sense of outraged propriety abated:

But the impudence of that woman who assumed the right to teach, she is evidently not going to arrogate to her the right to baptize as well—unless perhaps some new serpent appears, like that original one, so that as that woman abolished baptism, some other should on her own authority confer it⁶.

There are several paradoxes in Tertullian's thought with regard to women—women may not teach, baptize or exorcise or heal, but they belong to the clergy; women may not speak in church, either to discuss or to ask questions, but they may prophesy; under special circumstances even the laity may baptize or offer the eucharist, but under no conditions could a woman do these things. These paradoxes can be resolved if we examine Tertullian's rhetoric in the passages on women and interpret them in the light of his novel understanding of the church as a political body.

Church as Body Politic

Tertullian's description of the Christian community dramatically marks the transition from a concept of the church modelled on the household to a concept of the church modelled on the body politic. From Tertullian's perspective the church was a legal body (corpus or societas) unified by a common law (lex fidei) and a common discipline (disciplina)⁷. Tertullian conceives this society as analogous to Roman society, divided, like it, into distinct classes or ranks which are distinguished from one another in terms of honor and authority. The clergy (ordo ecclesiasticus) form a rank similar to the ordo senatorius; the laity form the ordo plebius.

The clergy as the ordo ecclesiasticus represent and manifest the honor and authority of the church; therefore it is imperative that they exemplify the moral discipline of the church⁸. By virtue of their rank they, like their counterparts the senators, possess certain rights, the right to baptize (ius dandi baptismi), the right to teach (ius docendi), the right to offer the eucharist (ius offrendi) and the right to restore to fellowship after penance (ius delicta donandi.)⁹. Tertullian shows that he is sensitive to the fact that what had once been ministries have become, in fact, legal rights and privileges when he says that the clergy are not to exercise their rank as though they were part of an imperium¹⁰.

De Praescriptione Haereticorum 41

Tertullian's scathing condemnation of women's ministries among groups that he designated as heretical was part of a larger denunciation of the ecclesiastical conduct of those groups. They were "without gravity, without authority, and without discipline". By which he means, there were not clear enough distinctions between catechumens and baptized, between clergy and laity, or between pagan visitors and believers. There was evidently a heated dispute between church groups that were beginning to adopt institutional structures resembling those of Roman society and government and those who persisted in the older organizational pattern modelled on the household¹¹. These latter defended the lack of a rigidly maintained hierarchy between clergy and laity and between catechumens and baptized by claiming it expressed the simplicity of Christ. Tertullian called their simplicity "the destruction of discipline¹². On the other hand these groups called the concern for hierarchy (or what Tertullian calls discipline) pandering (lenocinium), meaning that the concern for showing the proper honors to the proper rank was nothing other than vain attempts at flattery.

These groups which Tertullian attacks have church offices ranked like those of Tertullian's churches and similar rites of ordination by which persons were installed into those offices. What Tertullian seems to be criticizing is the lack of social distance between those of different ranks, the lack of formality (authority and gravity) in maintaining these distinctions. The most intriguing question is what is Tertullian using as a standard for comparison, if the organizational structure of both groups is the same. I would like to suggest that Tertullian's standard is the dignity, gravity and formality with which public affairs are conducted, the tone, or mood found in the municipal assemblies or curia. Against this standard, the "heretical groups" who still espouse the household as the pattern for church life appear to Tertullian as lacking gravity, authority and discipline.

It is in this context that Tertullian attacks women's ministries, "The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcism, to undertake cures—it may be even to baptize"¹³. The sexual connotation of the English word wanton is not inappropriate. The latin term pocaces means bold, shameless, and impudent. When applied to women, it is applied when they are outside of their proper sphere—the domestic¹⁴. Their very presence in the male sphere—the public sphere—means that they are unchaste, unchaste because they have left their proper sphere. Thus the women who are teaching, disputing, exorcising and healing are wanton in Tertullian's thinking because they have left their appropriate sphere. This is echoed again in the sentiment they are bold and audacious enough to teach.

De Baptismo 17

In Tertullian's treatise on Baptism he addresses a very formidable opponent, a woman theologian, leader of the Cainite sect, whose intellectual powers had persuaded many from congregations known to Tertullian to subscribe to her teachings. After defending the validity of water baptism Tertullian in closing turns to the question of who has the right to baptize. The right lies first and foremost with the bishop; because baptism is one of his specific functions, it is a right; however, also of presbyters, deacons and even of the laity. Nevertheless the bishop has the preeminent right over baptism. For the sake of the "honor" (dignity) of the church, the authority of the bishop must be respected in all cases where minor clergy or laity are administering baptism.

The term Tertullian uses to designate the right of clergy or laity to exercise a ministry of the church is a legal term—ius. The laity by virtue of their baptism possess the right to baptize, as they also possess the right to teach and to offer the eucharist. However, although the laity may exercise all of these ministries, women may exercise none of them. Tertullian, among the opening salvos of his attack on his theological adversary, says that women do not even possess the right to teach sound doctrine, much less to create heresies. Here the term he uses is ius docendi. As he concludes his treatise he returns to her again and calls her a wanton (petulantia) woman who has usurped the right to teach.

In Tertullian's new vision of the church as a political body, the church's ministries have become legal rights to be exercised only by full members of the political body. Since women could not be citizens of the state, either by holding office, participating in debate or exercising any public functions, then it was self-evident for Tertullian that neither could they do so in the body politic of the church. The right to minister—teach, baptize, etc.—was not a right restricted to the clergy; they were the rights of all the citizens who were members of the body politic. However, women could not be members of the body politic. In "On the Veiling of Virgins" Tertullian spells this out.

It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any male function¹⁵.

Women's performance of public activities (i.e. exercising the ius docendi, ius baptizandi etc.) meant that they had abandoned the domestic sphere, so again Tertullian describes such women as wanton (petulantia.) And when they exercise any public ministry, they are usurping rights that do not belong to them because they are women; legal rights can belong only to men¹⁶.

De Virginibus Velandis

In Tertullian's mind the church had become irrevocably a public sphere. Women who came to church had, in effect, left the household and entered a public male sphere. Not only their comportment, but also their dress and grooming must reflect a respect for the public-male character of this space. Nowhere is the trauma of this transition from household space to public space more poignant than in Tertullian's passionate treatise on the veiling of virgins. "Young women", he scolds, "you wear your veils out on the streets (in vicis), so you should wear them in the church (in ecclesiis); you wear them when you are among strangers (extraneos), then wear them among your brothers (fratres.) If you won't wear your veils in church, then I challenge you to go around in public without them"¹⁷. But that is just the point, the church had been a private sphere, like a household; it was a place where women could come and go openly and freely as they did in the domestic sphere. What Tertullian is insisting on, is that the church is not a private sphere, it is in fact no different than the market place. The rules of propriety for women that apply in the streets have now been brought into the inner—once domestic—sanctum of the church.

For Tertullian the sense of the church as a public place is so profound that he launches on what must have been a thankless and perhaps futile campaign. The virgins who were part of the ecclesiastical order, part of the clergy, sat in special seats reserved for them as did the presbyters, widows and bishop. Their number and their commitment to a life of chastity was for the rest of the church one of its proudest emblems. These virgins were not veiled, to signify their unmarried state. These young women, unveiled, dedicated to God, were like a public and visible offering to God by the church and a cause for praise and glory¹⁸. Tertullian calls this practice a "liberty" granted by the church to honor the virgin and her choice. As Tertullian formulates it she is honored by being granted the right (ius) not to wear a veil. Tertullian is bitterly opposed to this practice, and more even interesting than his denunciations are the motives behind them.

His biting description of the practice is quite instructive, "for after being brought forward into the midst of the church and elated by the public announcement of their good deed, and laden by the brethren with every honour and charitable bounty" these virgins on public display will no doubt become sexually active. It is the public character of their presence in the church that most offends Tertullian; it is not even so much their unveiledness that makes their presence a "public" presence, rather it is their being publicly honored (like holders of public office). He argues that to grant a virgin dedicated to God the right not to wear a veil and to honor her with this right is the same as honoring her with the right to hold male offices or rank (chap, ix). In conclusion he states flatly, "nothing in the way of public honor is permitted to a virgin"¹⁹.

As before, so also in this context, for women to assume public roles was equivalent to unchastity. In the end, as he tells it, virgins who receive public honors will eventually become pregnant, add to their guilt by attempting abortions and contriving to conceal their motherhood. Public presence is the very opposite of chastity, a virgin "must necessarily be imperilled by the public exhibition of herself"²⁰.

Notes

¹De Bapt. I, 17.

²De Prae. Haer. 41.

³ Several scholars have interpreted such passages referring to women leaders teaching and baptizing to mean that women involved in the process of evangelizing and catechizing also baptized their converts. See Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (New York, 1983), p. 173; H. Achelis and J. Fleming, Die syrische Didascalia uebersetzt und erklart (TU, 25,2; Leipzig, 1904).

⁴De Praes. 41.

⁵De Virg. Vel. 9.1.

⁶De Bap. 17.

⁷ On the church as corpus or societas see E. Herrmann, Ecclesia in Re Publica (Frankfurt, 1980), p. 42; A. Beck, Römisches Recht bei Tertullian and Cyprian (Halle, 1930), p. 58; on lex fidei, Beck, p. 51; on disciplina see Beck, p. 54.

⁸Ex. Cast. 7, De Mon. 12.

⁹ On ius dandi baptismi see Ex cast. 7; on ius docendi see De Bapt. 1; on ius offrendi see Ex Cast. 7; on ius delicta donandi see De Pud. 21.

¹⁰De Mon. 12.

¹¹ E. Schussler Fiorenza identifes the evolution of the household model of church organization, see pp. 285-334. She believes that genderization of church offices took place at this point. Since both materfamilias and paterfamilias exercised leadership roles in the household, I do not see the genderization of leadership taking place until the political model of leadership is adopted.

¹²Ex Cast. 7.

¹³De Praes. 41.

¹⁴ The virtue of chastity is measured by three factors: appearing in public places, clothing and makeup and sexual activities. Thus appearing in public places was sufficient cause to warrant the accusation of wanton; see "Treatise on Chastity", in M. R. Leflcowitz and M. B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome (Baltimore, 1985), p. 104.

¹⁵De Vir. Vel. 9.

¹⁶ In Greek and Roman political theory women could not participate in public life, i.e. holding office, giving speeches or voting. See Aristotle, Politics, 111. 1; Philo, Special Laws, III. 169, Elshtain, J. Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman (Princeton, 1981), pp. 19-54.

¹⁷De Vir. Vel. 13.

¹⁸De Vir. Vel. 14.

¹⁹De Vir. Vel. 15.

²⁰De Vir. Vel. 17.