Seebach in defense of St. Augustine on women

Persönliche Homepage Prof. Dr. Larissa Seelbach

"Augustine distinguished with reference to every human being between the outer human being, the homo exterior, and the inner human being, the homo interior.  While only the inner human being is in a position to know God, only the outer human being encompasses the specificities of human sexuality.  With respect to the outer human being the woman is placed on an equal footing with the man, since both possess an asexual soul.  Only with respect to the outer human being is the woman subjected to the man, since her bodily and social position corresponds ultimately to the traditional patriarchal subordination of the woman.  In reference to th[is] image-bearing [(Gottesebenbildlichkeit)] it is [at Gen. litt. 7.24/35] therefore said [that] 'we can only correctly understand the words to his image with reference to the soul, and the words male and female as having reference to the body.'
     "Augustine in no way doubted the image-bearing of the woman as homo, and from that point of view grappled with [(stand . . . vor)] the problem that in 1 Cor 11:7 Paul appeared to champion another understanding.  There [Paul] says, 'For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.'  According to this [passage] a pre-eminence over and against the woman would correspond to the man as image and glory of God.  This Bible passage was of value to Augustine for its capacity to harmonize with [(galt es . . . in Einklang mit . . . zu bringen)] his own understanding of the image-bearing of the woman according to Gen 1:27.  His decision to interpret 1 Cor 11:7 figuratively, and thereby to defend the wording of Gen 1:27, 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them', was pathbreaking.  Augustine saw in the outward distinction between man and woman an illustration of the differentiation within the human soul, independent of whether th[e soul in question] belongs to a man or to a woman.
     "Within every human soul [there] was[, for Augustine at Gen. litt. 3.22/34-24/35, but] in every case figuratively speaking, a male and a female element [(ein jeweils bildlich zu verstehendes männliches und ein weibliches Element)].  Both [of these] elements [of the human soul] functioned with respect to one another as [did] man and woman in society.  To the superordinate position of the man [in society] corresponded the function of the 'contemplation of eternal truth', [or] sapientia, and to the position of the woman [(der weiblichen Stellung) in society] appeared to correspond the subordinate 'management of temporal affairs', [or] scientia.  The male [element] alone connoted sapientia [and] possessed direct access to the eternal and divine.  And for this reason the man would—again in the figurative [(übertragenen)] sense—be [(wäre)] treated always [as] image-bearing [(gottebenbildlich)].  In the figurative [(übertragenen)] sense—[but] not in the real [(wirklichen) sense]!—the figurative [(figurativen)] woman, [and] therefore scientia, would rise to no image-bearing [(Gottebenbildlichkeit)].  The image-bearing of a real [(realen)] woman, whose asexual soul was the seat of [(beherbergt, harbored)] the figurative [(übertragenen)] male function, or sapientia, as well as the figurative [(übertragenen)] female function, or scientia, is not belittled [(geschmälert, diminished or curtailed)] by this intra-psychic distinction of function."

     Larissa Carina Seelbach, "'Das webiliche Geschlecht ist ja kein Gebrechen, sondern Natur:  Augustins Wertschätzung der Frau (the title, also (?), of a 302-page dissertation published in 2002), Augustinus-Studientag 2004, Toscanasaal der Residenz, Würzburg, as published on the Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung website, but also on pp. 71-91 of Würde und Rolle der Frau in der Spätantike:  Beiträge des II. Würzburger Augustinus-Studientages am 3. Juli 2004, ed. Cornelius Mayer unter Mitwirkung von Alexander Eisgrub =Res et signa 3 =Cassiacum 39, no. 3 (Würzburg, 2007).

"no one should . . . suppose that the creator of sex despised sex"

      "To heal souls God adopts all kinds of means suitable to the times which are ordered by his marvellous wisdom. . . .  But in no way did he show greater loving-kindness in his dealings with the human race for its good, than when the Wisdom of God, his only Son, coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, deigned to assume human nature; when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  For thus he showed to carnal people, given over to bodily sense and unable with the mind to behold the truth, how lofty a place among creatures belonged to human nature, in that he appeared to men not merely visibly—for he could have done that in some ethereal body adapted to our weak powers of vision—but as a true man.  The assuming of our nature was to be also its liberation.  And that no one should perchance suppose that the creator of sex despised sex, he became a man born of a woman [(et ne quis forte sexus a suo creatore se contemptum putaret, uirum suscepit, natus ex femina est)]."

     St. Augustine, De uera religione xvi/30, trans. Burleigh, LCC 6, 239.  Latin from CAG as reproduced in Past Masters =CCL 32, 205-206.  I.e., no one should suppose that the Creator of the sexual difference despised the sexual difference.

The preacher as adversary

 "So who is the adversary? [(Mt 5:25)] The word of God. The word of God is your adversary. Why is it your adversary? Because it commands things against the grain which you don't do [(Quia contraria jubet, quam tu facis)]. . . .
     ". . . Because the word of God is your adversary in giving such commands, I am afraid that I too may be some people's adversary because I am speaking like this. Well, why should that bother me? May he who terrifies me into speaking make me brave enough not to fear the complaints of men. Those who don't want to be faithful in chastity to their wives—and there are thousands of such men—don't want me to say these things. But whether they want me to or not, I'm going to say them."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 9.3 on the ten strings of the harp, trans. Edmund Hill, WSA III/1, 261-262.  Latin:  CCL 41, 105-151; PL 38, cols. 76-78 (75-91).

"God, who does not know sleep, . . . rouses us from sleep that we may ask"

"By [the Parable of the Importunate Friend at Midnight (Lk 11:5-8/13)] we are to understand that if a man, roused from sleep, is forced [(excitatur)] to give unwillingly in answer to a request, God, who does not know sleep, and who rouses us from sleep that we may ask [(qui nec dormire nouit et dormientes nos excitat, ut petamus)], gives much more graciously."

     St. Augustine, Letter 130 to Proba (c. 412) VIII/15, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, FC 18 (1953), 388 (376-401).  Latin from CSEL 44, 58 (40-77).

A refusal to reduce one's morals to the measure of one's behavior

     "For if a man lives with a woman for a time, until he finds another worthy either of his high station in life or his wealth, whom he can marry as his equal, in his very soul he is an adulterer, and not with the one whom he desires to find but with her with whom he now lives in such a way as not to be married to her.  The same is true for the woman, who, knowing the situation and willing it, still has relations unchastely with him, with whom she has no compact as a wife.  On the other hand, if she remains faithful to him and, after he has taken a wife, does not plan to marry and is prepared to refrain absolutely from such an act, surely I could not easily bring myself to call her an adulteress; yet who would say that she did not sin. . . ."

     St. Augustine, De bono conjugali 5, as trans. Wilcox (FC 27), p. 15.  Larissa Carina Seelbach, "'Das webiliche Geschlecht ist ja kein Gebrechen, sondern Natur:  Augustins Wertschätzung der Frau (the title, also (?), of a 302-page dissertation published in 2002), Augustinus-Studientag 2004, Toscanasaal der Residenz, Würzburg, as published on the Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung website, but also on pp. 71-91 of Würde und Rolle der Frau in der Spätantike:  Beiträge des II. Würzburger Augustinus-Studientages am 3. Juli 2004, ed. Cornelius Mayer unter Mitwirkung von Alexander Eisgrub =Res et signa 3 =Cassiacum 39, no. 3 (Würzburg, 2007).  "Later, however, Augustine left no doubt about the reprehensibility of his earlier behavior.  In his treatise De bono conjugali he put [it] with unmistakable clarity. . . .  This is precisely what Augustine himself had done, in that he had treated his second concubine as, so to speak, a 'temporary solution.'"
     Presumably the way he treated his first concubine (?) Augustine covered in the paragraph immediately preceding?

The "oblique" "diagonal of the now"

"If nothing is decided in time, nothing is saved in time.  It is necessary, therefore, to save time from its indecision."

"According to the diagonal of the νῦν, each instant can (and must) be experienced as the last—as the occasion of the decision for or against [the decision that] Christ [made, in obedience to the will of his Father, once for all], as the opportunity to put an end to the time of indecision.  The Last Judgment can intervene at every moment in which that decision can be made, i.e. at any [(chaque, every)] instant whatever of our meaningless [(insensé)] time.  'Behold, now (νῦν) is "the time of favor"; behold, now is "the day of salvation" (Is 49:8)' (2 Cor 6:2).  From [the moment of] my death I am all of a sudden introduced into the absolute, where everything has been decided [(où tout s’est joué)]."

     Jean-Luc Marion, "Une fois pour toutes," Communio:  revue internationale catholique no. 249 (2017/1):  15, 23 (9-25).  The poem "Colossians 3:3," "Our life is hid with Christ in God," is of course by George Herbert.