9 2harrison

Women, Human Identity, and the Image of God: Antiochene Interpretations
Nonna Verna Harrison
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2001,

pp. 205-249 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/earl.2001.0023
For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/earl/summary/v009/9.2harrison.html
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HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD
205
Women, Human Identity,

and the Image of God:
Antiochene Interpretations
NONNA VERNA HARRISON
Most early Christian writers regard the divine image as the core of human
identity and afrm that women, who are fully human, bear the image of God.
Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia are exceptions. Though
stating clearly that women share the same human nature as men, they read
Gen 1.26 in terms of 1 Cor 11.7 and identify the divine image as a kind of
exclusively male authority. Theodore species that the human imago Dei is a
visible viceroy representing the invisible God to created beings. Adam failed in
this task, which the assumed man Jesus fullled. For Theodore the divine
likeness, which women also share, is an imitation of many divine attributes,
including creativity. Theodoret of Cyrrhus moves toward the Greek patristic
mainstream, stating that woman is at least image of the image and eliding
Theodores distinction between image and likeness, thus including many
human characteristics besides authority in the imago Dei.
Most of the early Christian authors regarded by the mainstream churches

as fathers agree that women are created in Gods image. This belief
accords with Gen 1.27, Male and female he created them, which is
often linked in the exegetical tradition with Gal 3.28. In most patristic
theology the imago Dei is regarded as constitutive of human identity and
is essential to the process whereby humans attain salvation. To deny its
presence in women would be to deny that they are genuinely human and
that they can be saved, a conclusion the fathers would have found unthinkable in light of the New Testament witness and ecclesial experience.
However, some early Christian writers are exceptions to this consensus.
To my knowledge, the most rigorous and consistent account of an anthropology in which women lack the divine image and are inherently inferior
Journal of Early Christian Studies 9:2, 205249 2001 The Johns Hopkins University Press
206
JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
to men is that of the anonymous Latin writer known to modern scholars

as Ambrosiaster.1
Tertullians exaggerated rhetoric in the treatise On Female Dress 1.1.1
2 is notorious. There Eve, the devils gateway, is accused of having
destroyed the divine image in Adam, and every woman is characterized as
another Eve destined for a life of shame and penitence.2 Yet this rhetoric
does not represent Tertullians whole attitude toward women. The treatise he addresses To His Wife concludes with a beautiful description of
their partnership in all aspects of Christian life.3 The loving mutuality,
equality, unity, and collaboration between husband and wife expressed in
this text reveal the same human nature and vocation in both spouses and
disclose the range of human faculties and modes of activity generally
associated by the fathers with the core of human identity and salvation
and thus with the divine image. It may be that Tertullian says different
things on different occasions to suit his rhetorical needs in various contexts. However, what he says to his wife can be understood as consistent
with his noninclusive concept of the divine image in On Female Dress if
he understands the image as naming something other than the core of
human identity. That is, given the New Testament and ecclesial experience of women as fully human and fully capable of being saved, which
Tertullian eloquently acknowledges to the woman he loves, their noninclusion in the imago Dei mandates a disjunction between the image and
human identity as such. In this essay, human identity is understood as
referring to those characteristics that distinguish a person as truly human.
This article will explore the relationship between the image of God and
1. See Kari Elisabeth Brresen, Gods Image, Mans Image? Patristic Interpretation
of Gen. 1,27 and 1 Cor. 11,7, in Image of God and Gender Models in JudaeoChristian Tradition, ed. K. E. Brresen (Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1991), 19294, and texts
cited there. See also David G. Hunters excellent article, The Paradise of Patriarchy:
Ambrosiaster on Woman as (Not) Gods Image, JTS n.s. 43 (1992): 44769. He
demonstrates that the anonymous writers views are not typical of the patriarchal or
misogynist attitudes of his time as one might suppose, but rather a closer scrutiny
of western and eastern interpreters, both prior to and contemporaneous with
Ambrosiaster, will show that his interpretation of the image texts is virtually unique
in its characterization of womens status (455).
2. On Female Dress 1.1.2 (SC 173:44). See Elizabeth Clark, Ascetic Piety and
Womens Faith: Essays in Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press,
1986), 2526. For a signicant attempt to place this text in a broader context and
present Tertullians views of women in a more positive light, see Daniel F. Hoffman,
The Status of Women and Gnosticism in Irenaeus and Tertullian (Lewiston: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1995), 145207.
3. CCL 1:39394.
207
human identity in the anthropologies of the Antiochene exegetes Diodore

of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Our
investigation will show that, while all three of them afrm that women
are fully human, the earlier two, at least, deny that women are made in
Gods image. Thus for them, as for Tertullian, there is a disjuction between the imago Dei and human identity as such. Diodore and Theodore
articulate these concepts in interesting ways that differ from the better
known anthropologies of the Alexandrian and Cappadocian fathers and
subsequent Christian thinkers who, like them, have understood the divine
image as a central dening characteristic of humanity. Although Diodore
and Theodore were revered as fathers in the East Syrian church and their
interpretive methods are greatly appreciated by modern Western scholars,
the Fifth Ecumenical Council held at Constantinople in 553 placed them
outside the mainstream of the Greek and Latin traditions.4 So their anthropology, like the rest of their theology, represents an alternative version of early Christian thought. By studying them we can discern how
their understanding of woman is linked to their distinctive approaches to
Christology and exegesis. This, in turn, can shed light on the theological
foundations of the afrmation of womans full and equal humanity that
characterizes the Alexandrian, Cappadocian, and Byzantine traditions.
This paper will analyze Diodores and Theodores understanding of the
human being as made in the image of God and the meaning of their denial
of womens inclusion. We will then consider the extent to which the later
Antiochene interpreter Theodoret of Cyrrhus modies the positions of his
two predecessors. Because this material is often fascinating and has received insufcient attention from scholars,5 and since almost none of it
has previously been translated into English, we will quote substantial
excerpts from primary sources. However, because of the conciliar
4. For an overview of the history and theology of the church of Antioch, see D. S.
Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
5. There is an excellent brief survey of this material with citations of many key
texts in Sergio Zincone, Il tema delluomo/donna immagine di Dio nei Commenti
paolina et a Gn di area antiochena (Diodoro, Crisostomo, Teodoro, Teodoreto),
Annali di storia dellesegesi 2 (1985): 10313. My paper will explore the same themes
in greater depth.
A major study, Frederick G. McLeod, The Image of God in the Antiochene
Tradition (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), appeared after
this essay was written. While there is some overlap, the range of materials he covers
and his interpretations of the texts in question differ signicantly from those offered
here, so both studies should prove useful. Later notes will identify some signicant
issues he raises and points where our readings diverge.
208
condemnation, Diodores and Theodores commentaries on Genesis and

many other writings have survived only in a fragmentary form, so the
conclusions we can draw from this evidence will of necessity be tentative
and incomplete. This essay will also prove incomplete in that it does not
include the fourth major Antiochene interpreter, John Chrysostom. He
was a student of Diodore and a fellow student of Theodore, and Theodoret
read his homilies and was inuenced by them.6 However, his writings are
so extensive and the various views he expresses toward women, asceticism, and marriage at different times are so complex that they cannot be
considered adequately within this brief study.7 I have discussed his understanding of women and the image of God elsewhere.8
DIODORE OF TARSUS
Not much of Diodores exegetical writing has survived, but he recounts
his understanding of the divine image in a fragment commenting on Gen
1.26 preserved in Theodorets Questions on Genesis. The teaching expressed in this passage provides the starting point for much subsequent
Antiochene reection on the human as imago Dei. Diodore presupposes
that being made in Gods image is unique to human beings and thus
cannot refer to any aspect of the human condition that is shared by the
animals or the angels. This clearly represents a reaction against Origen,
for whom the angels also bear the divine image.9 The later Antiochene
6. Jean-Nol Guinot, Lexgse de Thodoret de Cyr (Paris: Beauchesne, 1995),

81119.
7. See Elizabeth A. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979), who argues that John maintained
throughout his life the negative view of marriage evidenced in his early ascetic
writings. Martin George presented an excellent master theme on John Chrysostoms
Changing Views on Christian Marriage at the Twelfth International Conference on
Patristic Studies in Oxford, August 2126, 1995. Unfortunately, it is not included in
the proceedings. In its absence, see David C. Ford, Women and Men in the Early
Church: The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom (South Canaan: St. Tikhons Seminary Press, 1996), who demonstrates that the mature Chrysostom is not a misogynist
and has a warm appreciation of marriage. However, his recommendation that the
great preachers preferences regarding social structure be implemented by todays
Christians suffers from a failure to take adequate account of the cultural differences
between the Mediterranean world in late antiquity and contemporary society.
8. Women and the Image of God according to St. John Chrysostom, forthcoming
in Paul Blowers et al., In Dominico Eloquio/In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic
Exegesis in Honor of Robert L. Wilken (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
9. See Henri Crouzel, Thologie de limage de Dieu chez Origne (Paris: Aubier,
1956), 14779.
209
exegetes share his presupposition but develop it in different ways. Unlike

the Alexandrians, Diodore also links Gen 1.2627a with 1 Cor 11.7
instead of Gen 1.27b and Gal 3.28, and thus denies that women are made
in Gods image. Later we will see how Theodore and Theodoret follow
him but broaden his perspective. Let us quote this important fragment in
full:
Some have considered that the human being is in the image of God through
the souls invisibility. But I do not agree, since an angel is also invisible, and
a demon is invisible. Hence it is also necessary to say this much, that indeed
the male among humans and the female possess the same nature in body
and soul. Why then does Paul say that the man is the image of God but not
also the woman, if indeed the human being is an image of God according to
the principle of the soul? For he says, For since man is the image and glory
of God, he ought not to cover his head; but woman is the glory of man
[1 Cor 11.7]. If then he who ought not to cover his head is the image of
God, it is clear that she who covers it is not the image of God, though she
is of the same soul. How then is the human being an image of God? It is
according to dominion, according to authority; and the voice of God is a
witness of this, which says, Let us make the human being according to our
image and likeness, and adds this, and let them have dominion over the
sh of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and the beasts of the earth, and
what follows. Hence just as God reigns over all, so also the human being
reigns over earthly things. So does not the woman also control the things
she chooses? But she has the man as head, who governs the other things.
And the man is not subordinated to the woman. Therefore the blessed Paul
said rightly that the man alone is the image of God and his glory, but the
woman is the glory of the man.10
Signicantly, Diodore afrms that women possess the same nature in

body and soul as men. This means that, for him, the divine image is not
identied with the core of human identity. Hence his denial that women
are made in Gods image does not entail a corresponding denial of their
full humanity. It appears that, like Tertullian writing to his wife, the
Antiochene teacher would still afrm that women and men share the
same ontology, human faculties, and activities, and thus can share the
same vocation and eschatological hope as Christians, even though, like
Tertullian preaching On Female Dress, he denies that they are made in
Gods image.
10. Fragments on Genesis 1.26 (PG 33:1564C1565A). Translations from Greek
throughout are mine unless otherwise noted. The same fragment is also found in
Theodoret, Questions on Genesis 20 (PG 80:108C109A); and in Joseph Deconinck,
Essai sur la Chane de lOctateuque avec une dition des commentaires de Diodore de
Tarse qui sy trouvent contenus (Paris: H. Champion, 1912), fragment 9, pp. 9596.
210
Another fragment commenting on Gen 2.23, Now this is bone from

my bone and esh from my esh; she will be called woman, since she was
taken from the man, strongly conrms this impression. Diodore makes
the point that only Eve comes into being from a man, whereas all
others are from man and woman and the law of marriage. Then he
considers why she was taken from his side. The answer is so that not
only would all things in life be regarded as good, but forthwith also father
and mother, who are united into one esh, would value each other. Then
Diodore observes that Gen 2.23b does not seem to follow, for if Eve is a
woman because she is from the side of Adam, those [fem.] after her are
not women since they are not from the man but are born of a married
couple as noted above. Very interestingly, Diodore explains this non
sequitur as resulting from the Septuagints mistranslation of the Hebrew
text:
But an error by the translators has been said to have occurred, for the text
did not say woman (gun) but the [fem.] human being ( nyrvpow).
For the [masc.] human being is named Isa (Isa), the sound being
strongly aspirated, while Eve [is named] Isa (sa) after the [masc.] human
being ( nyrvpow). And this seems to me to follow rather [than the
other].11
It is intriguing to wonder where Diodore obtained his mostly accurate

knowledge of the Hebrew text, where the man and woman are named ish
and ishsha, seemingly masculine and feminine variants of the same word.
There was a large and active Jewish community in Antioch and surrounding areas in his time, and he probably had dialogue partners there.12 In the
fragment the Hebrew words are transliterated into Greek as identical.13
This underlines the exegetical point about the identity of human nature in
men and women even more clearly than the Hebrew does. The aspiration surely refers to the sh sound, which is lacking in Greek. Diodore
renders the identity expressed in the Hebrew Isa but lost in the differ-
11. Fragment 13, Deconinck, Chane, 99.

12. See Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1983). For similar rabbinic ideas about this Genesis text that were
perhaps akin what Diodore could have learned from his Jewish interlocutors, see
Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993), 3160.
13. In Deconincks text, the rst Isa is capitalized since it is at the beginning of
a sentence, but Diodore would have used uncials, which lack a distinction between
upper and lower case. Let me thank an anonymous reader for JECS for bringing this
to my attention.
211
ence between gun and nyrvpow by employing the rare form

nyrvpow. This term, which has no exact English equivalent except perhaps a human being to whom the pronoun she then refers, expresses
precisely Diodores point that woman is fully human in the same way that
man is.14 The fact that he can rightly nd this concept expressed in the
Hebrew text and mistranslated in the Septuagint demonstrates his erudition as an exegete.15
We do not know what Diodore may have said on the topic of women
and the imago Dei apart from these fragments, but his comments here
represent an early version of Antiochene anthropology. The disjunction
between the divine image and core human identity raises questions about
how each is to be understood. Moreover, the simple identication of the
divine image in Gen 1.26 with authority is overly narrow and needs
further explanation. Following Origen, Basil of Caesarea is typical of the
Alexandrian and Cappadocian traditions in that he identies the dominion of Gen 1.26 literally as rule over the earth and the animals and
guratively as mastery over the beasts within oneself, i.e., disordered
passions.16 These two kinds of dominion belong to men and women alike.
Diodores rejection of Alexandrian allegory17 does not allow him to interpret the dominion in Gen 1.26 as an ascetic and spiritually transformative
self-mastery possible with Gods help for all people who choose to practice it. Instead, he keeps the biblical texts notion of rule over the earth
and, citing 1 Cor 11.7, adds the rule of men over women. Thus, in
contrast to what has become standard in Christian anthropology, his
concept of the divine image serves to divide humankind rather than unite
it, and places one half of the human species above the other instead of
14. For further examples of nyrvpow, see Palladius, Lausiac History 9, ed.
Robinson, TSt 6 (1904): 29; idem, Dialogue 16, 17 (SC 341:31820, 344); Basil of
Caesarea, First Homily on the Creation of Humanity (SC 160:21216); and analysis
of the words meaning in these texts in my review of Gillian Cloke, This Female Man
of God: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350450 (London:
Routledge, 1995), in JTS n.s. 48 (1997): 694700.
15. McLeod, Image of God, 2224, completely misses this fragments citation of
the Hebrew and mistranslates the text accordingly. However, he recognizes a parallel
between Antiochene and rabbinic exegesis and suggests possible Jewish inuence on
the Antiochene fathers (16). Diodores fragment strongly corroborates this possibility.
16. SC 160:18694. For Origen, see Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 197206.
17. See texts in Louis Maris, ed., Extraits du commentaire de Diodore de Tarse
sur les Psaumes. Preface du commentairePrologue du Psaume CXVIII, Recherches
de science rligieuse 9 (1919): 79101; with English translation in Karlfried Froehlich, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984),
8294.
212
afrming the intrinsic dignity of all people. In support of his conclusion

he refers to the social structure taken for granted in his culture, in which
women do not exercise authority, but men exercise authority over women.
The Antiochene exegetes sought to understand biblical events within
the stream of human history and avoided viewing them as icons making
present in symbolic form a spiritual realm transcending history.18 Hence
Diodore understands the original creation of humanity, and by implication Paradise before the fall and Gods original intention for his human
creation, in terms of the social conditions of his own culture in his own
time. In rejecting Alexandrian methods, Diodore and Theodore abandoned interpretive tools that could have enabled them to view the identity
and destiny of women in a broader perspective. Allegory enabled the
Alexandrians to create an interpretive distance between different levels of
meaning that opened a space within which they could conceptualize
human identity in terms of alternative social structures they perceived as
reecting the ethics of the kingdom of God, such as those of ascetic
communities. Allegory could thus serve as a means of cultural critique
and cultural transformation.19
THEODORE ON MALE AND FEMALE
Theodore of Mopsuestias denial that woman is made in Gods image
comes in a brief fragment commenting on 1 Cor. 11.7: He says woman is
the glory, but in truth not also image, . . . since the glory looks to
obedience, but the image to authority.20 Here, as with Diodore, the
imago Dei is linked to authority, and the same Pauline verse is cited as
grounds for excluding woman from it. However, Theodores concepts of
woman and of the image prove to be far more complex than this fragment
indicates.
Like Diodore, he reects on how human identity is present in women
and men in his interpretation of the creation of Eve in Gen 2. This
material is contained in a series of fragments extracted from catenae and
18. Bradley Nassif, Spiritual Exegesis in the School of Antioch, in New

Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, ed.
Bradley Nassif (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 34377.
19. See David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient
Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
20. Karl Staab, ed., Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche aus Katenenhandschriften Gesammelt und Herausgegeben (Mnster: Aschendorff, 1933), 188. It
is mistakenly labeled as a comment on 1 Cor 11.8.
213
edited by Robert Devresse.21 Theodore begins by stating that the creative

work announced in Gen 1.27 is completed in Gen 2.18ff., and he draws a
parallel between the fashioning of Adam and that of Eve: For then [it
said] Male and female he created them, and following this it says that
just as the male came into being, so also did the female; in harmony with
the creation of Adam that of Eve is found to be conjoined.22 Theodore
goes on to say that the words poisvmen at bohyn, let us make him a
helper, in Gen 2.18 (LXX) echo the poisvmen in 1.26, which shows
that the female is not something strange conceived later as a modication of the original creative plan. He infers that male and female have the
same nature and that God exercised equal care in fashioning both of
them. The fragment continues:
And God said, It is not good for the man (nyrvpow) to be alone, let us
make him a helper in accord with him (kat atn). For the plan of God is
shown in these words, that it is good that a helper for him in accord with
him also come into being.23
In this passage, Theodore takes care to show that woman is similar and
equal to man and of the same nature even though she is created after him
and as his helper. He immediately draws the conclusion that she is equal
to him in soul and has the same capacity for holiness, good works, and
ascetic struggle:
Moreover, the words let us make have likewise been placed here, since
instruction is also necessary for the female, who indeed ought to be in no
way inferior to the male in the teachings and principles of piety, as also the
blessed Paul says, except there is neither man without woman, nor woman
without man in the Lord [1 Cor 11.11]. For though indeed in bodily
things the female is in some sense secondary, in regard to the soul she is
likewise immortal and rational, in no way inferior to the male. She labors
equally in works of piety, and in the struggles for uprightness presented [to
us] she is alike beneted.24
Signicantly, the Antiochene shares the idea that men and women are
alike in soul though different in body and that, accordingly, they have the
same moral and spiritual capacities and tasks and the same ultimate
21. Anciens commentateurs grecs de lOctateuque, RB 45 (1936): 36484.
These texts and other related ones are again published with useful commentary in
Robert Devresse, Essai sur Thodore de Mopsueste (Rome: Biblioteca apostolica
vaticana, 1948), 1223, which we will cite.
22. Devresse, Essai, 15 n. 2.
23. Ibid., 18 n. 1.
24. Ibid.
214
vocation to holiness and salvation. This is a commonplace among the

Greek fathers. It is found, for instance, in Clement of Alexandria and the
Cappadocians.25 In the next fragment, Theodore draws an ontological
conclusion that parallels his practical afrmation of womans moral and
spiritual equality with man. He infers from the fact that Adam could not
nd a helper like himself among the animals that, in contrast to them,
woman, as a human being, is like man, equal in honor and not at all less
than him according to essence (kat tn osan).26
From these fragments we can discern Theodores overall understanding
of how God created humans in Gen 12. He does not explain the presence of two creation accounts in terms of a double creation theory, as
Philo, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa do, each in a different way. Instead
he understands the creation of Adam in Gen 2 as a description of what
God did to create the human being in his image and likeness as stated in
Gen 1.26. The womans creation follows in Gen 2.18ff. In these texts he
uses nyrvpow in a noninclusive sense to refer to the man, but he adds
that the woman is also fully human, like the man in essence and nature
and the same in soul. Hence by implication the divine image in Gen 1.26
appears to be present only in the male, as in Diodore. Yet although
Theodore says this when commenting on 1 Cor 11.7, he does not say it
explicitly in the extant fragments on Genesis. This suggests that, like
Diodore, he also makes a clear distinction between the image and his
understanding of human identity as such.
Another fragment comments on the creation of Eve from the side of
Adam in Gen 2.22. Theodore says that God took a little bit of material
from the man and built it up into a woman so that she would be of the
same essence as the man. He explains that because God had already
created the essence of humanity ex nihilo he did not make Eve out of
nothing because then she would have had a different osa from Adam.27
Theodore explains further that only the womans body is derived from
the body of the man, while through the divine activity alone the soul
came to be. That is, as God molded Eves body from Adams side he
simultaneously implanted a soul into her. Theodore adds that the same is
25. Clement, Pedagogue 1.10.11.11.2 (GCS 123:9596); Miscellanies 6.100.23

(GCS 154:482); Basil, Homily on the Martyr Julitta (PG 31:240D241A); Homily on
Psalm 1 (PG 29:216D217B); First Homily on the Creation of the Human Being 1.18
(SC 160:21216); Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 8.14 (PG 35:805B).
27. Ibid., 19 n. 3.
215
true for every human being, thus clearly expressing a creationist theory of
the souls origin.28 Further, he holds that this is also true of the nonrational
animals.29 Presumably God implants a soul in each child as its body is
generated by its parents. This theory accords well with Theodores belief
that men and women are alike and equal in their souls, since the soul of
each is created directly by God in the same way. His belief in womans
secondary bodily status corresponds to his assertion that Eves body is
derived from the side of Adams body.
Theodores comment on Gen 2.23 expresses his strong sense of the
unity between husband and wife in marriage:
The name of woman is a manifestation of the conjunction and marital
union, through which they are intertwined with each other and united with
each other in one esh. But also if the name is common it is no wonder that
everything else is; for she has come into being of such a nature for this
[purpose]; a common name comes into being appropriately for those who
have the same nature.30
Another fragment adds the following:

For it is quite clear that it was by divine inspiration that Adam recognized
through seeing her that Eve came into being from himself, and from where
and in what way [this occurred], and that in a certain pattern and for the
sake of order every woman is oriented toward her own husband. God
revealed these things to him in the time of ecstasy.31
Here the ecstasy must refer to Adams sleep during the creation of Eve.
These fragments show that, like Diodore, Theodore has a positive view of
marriage and regards it as central to the human condition. Accordingly,
he afrms the unity, equality, and consubstantiality of husband and wife.
However, in accord with the story in Gen 2 and the structures of late
antique society, this is clearly an asymmetrical and androcentric conception of marriage, and Theodore even says that woman came into existence for the purpose of being a wife. Elsewhere he asserts that God rejects
Adams excuse that Eve gave him the fruit because the woman has been
given that you should command her, not that you should consult her and
28. According to the creationist theory, God creates each soul directly and implants
it into the body when the latter comes to exist through procreation. An alternative
view, which Theodore would not accept, is the traducianist theory, in which the
childs soul as well as its body derives from the parents.
30. Ibid., 20 n. 1.
31. Ibid.
216
be guided in your activities.32 Thus, Theodore believes that the husbands

authority over the wife is mandated by God even before the fall.
Among ancient writers such ideas follow when marriage serves as the
paradigm dening human identity. In contrast, the Alexandrians and
Cappadocians characteristically treat asceticism or monasticism as the
paradigm disclosing the core of human identity. For them women are not
necessarily created to be wives. Men and women have essentially the
same nature, vocation, and eschatological hope, just as monks and nuns
have the same way of life. However, we saw in the fragments cited earlier
that, as regards holiness, good works, and ascetic struggle, Theodore
would agree with these conclusions.
Before leaving our discussion of Theodores understanding of women,
we must consider one more text which expresses a perspective very different from those we have considered thus far. In a fragment commenting on
Gen 3.17 he considers why God, foreknowing that Adam would disobey,
gave him the opportunity to do so through the commandment. The
interpreters answer is that God knew mortality would be of advantage to
a fallen, sinful creature since it would teach him the grave consequences
of disobedience, limit the evil he could do, and ultimately enable his recreation in a state free from sin and death. For these reasons Theodore
believes that, from the outset, God fashioned humans in a way that would
prepare them for a mortal mode of existence.33 He declares that the
gender distinction provides evidence of this: For the very pattern of male
and female shows that [God] prepared the human being for the mortal
life by making manifest straightway the power of procreation.34 Thus,
gender is created to enable humans to reproduce in a fallen world.
Here Theodores assertion closely parallels Gregory of Nyssas theory
of human origins. The idea that God fashioned the gender distinction in
foreknowledge of the fall and to provide a partial remedy for mortality
through procreation is a distinctive feature of Gregorys well-known speculation in On the Creation of Humanity 1617.35 Theodore is also similar
to the Cappadocians in his concept of the human person as microcosm
32. Ibid., 22 n.1.
33. PG 66:640C641A. See Richard A. Norris, Jr., Manhood and Christ: A Study
in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 182
84. This book remains an excellent study of Theodores anthropology as it bears on
his Christology; it is not a discussion of his concept of masculinity. If written today it
would have a different title.
34. PG 66:641A.
35. PG 44:188A192A. See my article, Verna E. F. Harrison, Male and Female in
Cappadocian Theology, JTS n.s. 41 (1990): 44171, and literature cited there.
217
and connecting link between the intelligible and perceptible levels of

creation, though he develops it in his own way, which we will study
below. One wonders whether Theodore might have borrowed from this
source.36 Alternatively, one wonders whether the ideas about transcending gender that modern scholars know best from Gregorys writings may
also have been current in the inuential ascetic communities that lived
around Antioch in the fourth and fth centuries. After all, the exegetical
school of Diodore and Theodore had its setting in an ascetic community.
This connection between anthropology and asceticism will become much
stronger in Theodoret of Cyrrhus. He was an ascetic bishop who was
closely acquainted with many male and female ascetics and wrote of their
lives and practices in his Religious History, and this is reected in his
understanding of women and human identity, as we shall see.
Gregory of Nyssa connects the idea that the gender distinction exists to
make provision for the fall to a belief that it is not part of Gods ultimate
intention for humankind and that it will be absent in the resurrection
body, which is freed from mortality and thus has no need for procreation.
One wonders how far Theodore would agree with him in this. A key
concept in the Antiochenes theology is the doctrine of the Two Ages, that
is, a contrast between the present age, when humans are subject to sin and
death, and the age to come characterized by sinlessness and immortality.
Since he links the distinction between male and female to mortality, could
he have envisaged the possibility that it will be absent in the very different
condition of resurrection and immortality? We will see how Theodoret
develops these ideas further along lines similar to those Gregory suggested. Because Theodores writings have survived in fragments, it is
unclear how much of the later Antiochenes thought is already present in
his teaching. To the extent that he agrees with Gregorys speculations, he
hints at an understanding of human identity very different from what we
nd in most of his writings. His anthropology involves tensions, but he
may envisage their resolution in the eschaton. We will return to this issue
later.
THEODORE ON THE DIVINE IMAGE
Like Diodore, Theodore presupposes that the divine image in the human
being must be something unique to him, not a characteristic shared by the
36. McLeod, Image of God, emphasizes the importance of the microcosm motif to
Theodore and makes the useful suggestion that he may have derived it from Stoic
sources, but he seems unaware of the parallel with the Cappadocians.
218
animals or angels. Yet, in a long fragment preserved with Theodorets

Questions on Genesis, he dismisses the suggestions of other commentators, that the image somehow consists in authority, reason, or intellect,
since these properties also belong to the angels.37 Thus, besides critiquing
Origen, Theodore appears to use Diodores own presupposition to critique him. After citing biblical texts that ascribe the imago Dei to the
human being, he draws the following conclusion:
But if the human being alone in these [Scriptures] has come to be an image,
it is clear beforehand, as this has been declared regarding this one [i.e., the
human] alone, that some property belonging to the one named is the cause;
but neither is he alone intellectual, nor rational, for we say that the invisible
powers are also such. Nor indeed is it authority, for we see that this also
belongs to the invisible powers. . . .38
A series of biblical citations about angelic authority follows, and then a

suggestion that the heavenly bodies also have authority:
And it is said concerning the luminaries, the great light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night [Gen 1.16]. Thus David calls them
authorities, saying, the sun as authority of the day and the moon and stars
as authorities of the night [cf. Ps 136.89]. How then is the human being
said to be an image through such things as these, which he shares with
many created beings, while only he is said to be created according to the
image of God? Whence it is clear to us that one certain thing is present as
the cause according to which that one alone [i.e., the human] is thus named,
in which none of the [other] created beings participate, inasmuch as they
are not participants in this name [i.e., the image].39
If the luminaries have authority, this suggests that Theodore may share
the belief of Origen and many others in antiquity that the stars are living,
rational beings.40
In this passage Theodore argues strongly that the image cannot consist
in authority, though we have seen that in the fragment on 1 Cor 11.7 he
does identify it with authority, as Diodore does, and thus excludes woman
from it. How can we account for this apparent inconsistency? We could
suggest that he is not a systematic thinker but an interpreter who follows
the biblical texts he studies, thus saying different things in different exegetical contexts. However, sometimes scholars content themselves with
37. PG 80:112A.
38. PG 80:112B.
39. PG 80:112C113A.
40. See Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1991).
219
such an assessment when what is needed is rigorous conceptual analysis.

Sergio Zincone is on the right track in suggesting that Theodore links the
image with authority in the Pauline context, but when discussing creation
as such in the context of Genesis he addresses the problem of the human
as image of God in more general terms.41 In fact, he places it in a broad
cosmic perspective, to which we will now turn. Our discussion of the
cosmic function of the human being as image of God will allow us to
understand in what sense it is identied with authority and in what sense
it is not.42
At the beginning of the same long fragment Theodore compares Gods
relationship to his creation with a kings relationship to a city he has built:
It is as if a certain king built a great city and adorned it with many and
varied works, and when it was nished ordered a large and comely image of
himself to be placed in the middle of the city as evidence of the citys cause.
Of necessity also the image of the king who built the city would be honored
by all in the city, that they might acknowledge through this the citys creator
because he had given it to them as a dwelling. So also the Fashioner of
creation, when he had made all things in the world and beautied it with
various and diverse works, introduced the human being last as an image
akin [to himself]. Thus all the creation was manifestly given for the service
of the human being.43
This passage refers to the Roman practice of placing statues of the emperor throughout the empire. In his absence his image would be honored
as if it were the emperor himself. One recalls how John Chrysostom
intervened in a civic crisis that arose when protesters publicly dishonored
the emperors statues at Antioch and the whole city was threatened with
punishment for treason.44 According to Theodore, God establishes the
human being as his representative in the created world, so that all created
beings, angels as well as animals, would honor and obey him as a way of
serving God, just as loyal Romans honor the emperors statue. Yet if God,
unlike the emperor, is present everywhere, why does he need a human
representation to focus his creatures reverence for him? Theodores answer is that the human being is visible while God is invisible:
Every image, while itself seen, points to what is not seen. So it cannot
happen that an image is made which is such as not to be seen. For it is
41. Immagine di Dio, 1056.

42. For a lucid analysis of this material, see Norris, Manhood and Christ, 14046.
43. PG 80:109AB.
44. See J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John ChrysostomAscetic,
Preacher, Bishop (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 7282.
220
plain that this is the reason why it is customary to make images among
those who make them for the sake of honor or affectionso that there is
a resemblance of those who are not seen.45
As Richard Norris explains, Theodore understands the divine image as

expressing primarily a relationship between the human being and other
creatures, in which they serve him as Gods visible representative.46 In
order to fulll this function, he also has to obey God, though Adam failed
in this. The human persons relationship to the divine Archetype is thus an
external one, consisting of piety and moral behavior. It is not an ontological relationship of contemplative assimilation and participation in divine
life, which is how the Alexandrians and Cappadocians understand the
human as image of God.47 In short, Theodore envisages the human being
as related to the Creator primarily through authority and obedience.
After describing the analogy of the kings statue, the fragment cited
above explains how the human being must be linked to all other creatures
in order to represent God to them and receive their service on his behalf.
Theodore thus articulates a version of the ancient idea of the human
being as microcosm. Here his thought parallels that of the Cappadocians,48
to whom he may be indebted either directly or indirectly; but he develops
it in his own way:
If he is created as a compound of the fruits of air, and earth, and water, and
light which heaven bears in itself, the enjoyment of all these things
necessarily belongs to the human being; while a certain inferior role has
been allotted to the irrational animals, which are appointed for service to
human beings. The blessed Paul teaches that the invisible powers all serve
the divine plans for our prot, saying, Are they not all ministering spirits
sent for service on behalf of those who will inherit salvation? [Heb 1.14]
Hence it is clear beforehand that, since God has planned the creation of all
things as one world, and all creation is composed of different natures,
mortal and immortal, rational and irrational, visible and invisible, having
willed that they be gathered into one, he fashioned the human being as a
connecting link (sndesmon) of all things. Thus all things are united to him
45. On the Epistle to the Colossians 1.15 (H. B. Swete, ed., Theodori Episcopi
Mopsuesteni in Epistolas B. Pauli Commentarii, 2 vols. [Cambridge: University Press,
188082], 1:26263; tr. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 140).
46. McLeod, Image of God, stresses the important point that the divine images
visibility indicates that it must be located in the body as well as the soul.
47. Richard A. Norris, Jr., The Problem of Human Identity in Patristic Christological
Speculation, SP 17.1 (1993): 14759, 156.
48. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 38.11 (SC 358:12426); Gregory of Nyssa, On
the Soul and the Resurrection (PG 46:28BC).
221
through service, so as to join the whole of creation in himself, and that he

might be a manifest pledge of friendship for all. For this reason [God] has
given him both soul and body, the one visible, akin to visible things,
composed of earth and air and water and re, and produced from the fruits
made from these things; the other intellectual and immortal and rational,
similar to the invisible and rational beings. Hence the creation is not joined
to him only through service but also by the kinship of nature. Rather,
because of the kinship according to nature and for the sake of service all
things are joined to him. They labor agreeably on behalf of the one related
and akin [to them].49
The idea of the human being as sndesmow is a key concept in Theodores

anthropology. For him this is what constitutes the image of God. But
notice that he envisages the human as linked through participation with
all other creatures, not with God. Within the creation the relationships of
authority and obedience express an underlying communion of nature and
being. In contrast, the human relationship with God, though also one of
obedience, is more external. This means that the human in some sense
mediates creaturely reverence and obedience to God and divine authority
to creatures, but does not mediate divine life to them since the divine and
the human remain external to each other. Theodores position thus differs
fundamentally from the classic concept of the human as microcosm and
mediator later articulated by Maximus the Confessor as a creative synthesis of the Alexandrian and Cappadocian traditions. In Ambigua 41, Maximus explains how the human task is to unite all levels of creation in
himself so as to unite all of them to God.50 The nal division of being to be
bridged in this process of ascent is that between the created and the
uncreated. The human mediatorial role is thus a royal priesthood that
unites all created beings so as to raise them up and offer them to God and
in turn mediate Gods life to them. The human is joined to all creatures as
microcosm to enable him or her to mediate divine communion, transguration, and divinization to the whole cosmos.
For Theodore, instead of mediating Gods life to other creatures, the
human being serves only as a viceroy to whom Gods authority has been
delegated. Thus, although Theodore does not identify the divine image
with authority per se, he does identify it with a specic kind of authority,
the central mediating role through which the microcosm unites all created
49. PG 80:109B112A.
50. PG 91:1304D1316A; Andrew Louth, ed. and tr. Maximus the Confessor
(London: Routledge, 1996), 15562. See also Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
Open Court, 1995), 13743.
222
beings to himself. He envisages Adams identity and with it the imago Dei
primarily as kingship, a role that Eve and other women presumably
cannot share.51
Signicantly, as Rowan Greer and Richard Norris observe, the concept
of divinization in the sense of human participation in God has no place in
Theodores theology.52 However, Nabil El-Khoury explains that Theodore
does have a concept of divinization, which he understands as meaning
sinlessness and immortality in the age to come. It also involves an indissoluble union between soul and body through the resurrection, thus
enabling the redeemed human being to serve effectively and permanently
as sndesmow and microcosm, thereby drawing all creatures into a cosmic
unity.53 Here again, this entails an ontological communion of the human
with other created beings, not with God. Theodore appears to have
redened divinization, which in his time is a traditional Greek patristic
term, within his own theological framework.54
To be sure, Theodore believes that Adam failed in his royal task, but
51. McLeod, Image of God, believes that, whereas Diodore, Chrysostom, and
Theodoret identify the human imago Dei as (male) authority, Theodore rejects this
idea and substitutes his idea of the image as the connecting link of the universe whose
role is primarily revelatory and cultic, and thus priestly. In my view this thesis
overlooks the fact that, when angels and earthly creatures honor God by revering and
serving his human image, this mediation is constituted as a relationship of authority
and obedience.
He suggests, probably rightly, that the assumed man Jesus is Theodores real
paradigm of the human image of God, and that Adam is a type preguring Jesus, who
alone truly fullls the role of image. In this context, the concept of the human being
as one who is revered and served as Gods visible manifestation becomes more
understandable than if the primary reference is to Adam or the male as such.
52. Rowan Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Exegete and Theologian (London:
Faith Press, 1961), 15: It was Theodores greatest insight to realize the difculties
involved in this notion of redemption as divinization. Greer does not explain what
these apparent difculties are. One could equally suggest that the impenetrable wall
between divine and human is the fundamental problem with Theodores theology.
One of the primary consequences of such a wall is to make any genuine divinization
impossible. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 169, makes a similar point that there is no
trace in his thought of the idea that salvation consists in divinization, and hence
that the creaturely nature of man is not compromised. However, the classic Greek
patristic concept of divinization does not in any way compromise human creaturehood.
53. Nabil El-Khoury, Der Mensch als Gleichnis Gottes: Eine Untersuchung zur
Anthropologie des Theodor von Mopsuestia, OrChr 74 (1990): 6271. See Theodores
long fragment on Rom 8.19 in Staab, Pauluskommentare, 13738.
54. Another such redenition occurs in a fragment where Theodore says that
humans are called gods because of their kingship, which manifests an analogue to
the divine activities of ruling and judging. The text appears in Devresse, Essai, 14 n.
2. This is an aspect of the divine likeness, discussed below.
223
Christ completes it, and in the age to come he enables other humans to
share in this mediatorial work through communion with him. More
precisely, this redemptive work is accomplished not by the divine Logos
but by the assumed man conjoined to him in the incarnation. Theodore
explains this to new converts in one of his baptismal catecheses:
You have become the unique body of Christ, since its head is the assumed
man, by whom we have familiarity with the divine naturewe who expect
in the world to come to receive association with it, because we believe that
the body of our humiliation will be transformed and that it will become the
likeness of his glory [Phil 3.21].55
Thus, Christians become ontologically united as one body with the human Christ, and in the next age hope to share with him in the resurrection
of the body together with immortality and sinless obedience to the divine
will. Through communion with the assumed man Jesus, this brings familiarity and association with God, but not participation in the divine nature
in an Alexandrian sense. As a result, the ultimate human vocation of
serving as the cosmic center, connecting link, and mediator of divine rule
will be fullled by the totus Christus, that is, redeemed humankind united
with Jesus as head. The divine image has its eschatological fulllment
primarily in this head, but also in the collective body through union
with him.
As Frederick McLeod recognizes, Theodore emphasizes the communal
dimension of human identity, and for him this unity is actualized differently in the Two Ages. In this sinful and mortal life, Adam is the source
and unier of humankind, whereas in the age to come, and through hope
in the present age, Christ becomes the source of life and unity.56 The
interpreter explains this in his commentary on Gal 3.28:
Adam is the principle of the present life for all. And we are all one human
being by reason of nature, for truly each one of us belongs to this common
group, as if limbs [of a body]; so truly also in the life to come Christ is the
principle, and all we who share with him the resurrection and the
immortality that follows the resurrection become as one toward him, as
each of us belongs to this common group in like manner as a limb [to a
body]. Then, accordingly, neither male nor female is seen, for one neither
55. Catechetical Homilies 9.17 (Raymond Tonneau, ed. and tr., Les Homlies
Catchtiques de Thodore de Mopsueste [Rome: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana,
1949], 24243; tr. Norris, Manhood and Christ, 170). See also the Syriac text with
English translation in A. Mingana, ed. and tr. Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Nicene Creed, Woodbrooke Studies 5 (Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1932), 103.
56. See McLeod, Image of God, 21819.
224
marries nor is given in marriage; neither Jew nor Greek, for neither is
there a place for circumcision in an immortal nature, that the uncircumcised
might be distinguished from the circumcised; neither slave nor free
person, for all such unevenness has been abolished.57
Thus, like many Greek fathers, including Clement of Alexandria, the

Cappadocians,58 and, as we shall see, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Theodore
believes that the gender distinction will be absent in the age to come, since
it will be superseded by the unity of the body of Christ, as will other
causes of human division such as class and ethnic differences.59 We observed in a text cited above that he sees gender as given by God for the
purpose of procreation to provide a partial remedy for the mortality
caused by the fall. Theodores linking of gender with marriage here suggests the same perspective. The immortality of the age to come renders
procreation, and hence marriage and gender, unnecessary. Interestingly,
he also explains the lack of distinction between Jew and Greek in the age
to come as arising through the absence of the primary bodily marker of
Jewish or non-Jewish identity in an immortal human nature. This suggests that he may well believe the organs of generation will themselves be
absent in the resurrection body, since they will have no function when
death no longer occurs.
At this point, the tensions in Theodores anthropology regarding women
and human identity are ultimately resolved, as all human persons who are
saved presumably share alike in the image of God which belongs properly
to Christ as last Adam, though the interpreter does not say this explicitly.
In this life women do not share in the divine image since they lack male
authority, yet men other than Jesus do not fully share in it either because
of the sin, cosmic fragmentation, and mortality caused by the fall and the
consequent failure of the human task of mediation.
As is well known, for Theodore, even within the person of Christ, the
57. Swete, Pauli Commentarii, 1.57, who has provided the Greek text of this
passage as well as the ancient Latin translation.
58. Clement, Miscellanies 6.100.34 (GCS 154:482); Basil, Homily on Psalm 114
(PG 29:492C); Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 7.23 (PG 35:785C); Gregory of Nyssa,
On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep (Werner Jaeger, ed., Gregorii Nysseni Opera
[Leiden: Brill, 1960], 9:63).
59. McLeods interpretation of this text, in Image of God, 219, as asserting that in
the age to come the gender distinction is still present though it is rendered meaningless
by unity in Christ, is not supported by the text itself or by Theodores agreement with
many other fathers on this point.
225
disjunction between divine and human remains.60 Although he speaks of

a conjunction between the two natures within Christ, they remain distinct
and largely self-enclosed. He would not accept the Cyrilline concepts of
hypostatic union and the interchange of properties between the Saviors
divine and human natures. Instead, he envisages the man Jesus as an
autonomous human subject, a living temple who freely receives the indwelling of the divine Logos and obediently cooperates in his saving
work. This assumed man becomes the second Adam, the king of the
renewed creation.
Thus, because Theodore envisages the divine and human natures as
related to each other only externally even within Christs own person, he
regards the created realm as essentially self-enclosed and largely autonomous. This realm is dominated by the human being as center and head
who serves as the visible representation of divine authority. This means
that Theodores anthropology is largely anthropocentric, whereas the
Alexandrians and Cappadocians have a theocentric anthropology in which
human identity is dened in terms of participation in the divine. For the
Antiochene, the imago Dei consists in cosmic authority, whereas for the
Alexandrians it consists in a loving communion with God in which the
human being receives the imprint of the divine Logos as the core of his or
her own identity.
These differences have implications relating to gender. For Theodore,
the paradigm of human identity is a kingship dened primarily through
external relations of authority and obedience. Because of this his anthropology is ultimately not only anthropocentric but also androcentric, particularly in this age, although the gender division is overcome eschatologically. Originally Adam bears the divine image but Eve does not. In
contrast, for the Alexandrians human identity is centered in loving receptivity, communion, and participation in the life of God. For Cyril and his
followers, the autonomous human subject who receives the indwelling of
the divine Logos, becomes his living temple, and obediently cooperates in
his saving work is not the assumed man but the Mother of God. In
60. See the extant fragments of treatise On the Incarnation edited in Swete, Pauli
Commentarii, 2:290312, and translated in Richard A. Norris, Jr., ed. and tr. The
Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 11322. See also
Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition I: From the Apostolic Age to
Chalcedon (451), 2nd ed., tr. John Bowden (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), 421
39. A Christology with this structure is already present in Diodore. See Rowan A.
Greer, The Antiochene Christology of Diodore of Tarsus, JTS n.s. 17 (1966): 32741.
226
Byzantine theology she becomes the great exemplar of human identity,

the human person who perfectly fullls the vocation to be Gods image
and likeness. It is no accident that the fth-century Christological controversy began when Theodores student Nestorius refused to accord her the
title of Theotokos. In Alexandrian and Byzantine theology she takes the
place occupied in Antiochene theology by Theodores assumed man.61
THEODORE ON THE DIVINE LIKENESS
To complete our discussion of his anthropology, we need to consider one
further aspect of Theodores interpretation of Gen 1.26. Like many early
Christian writers he distinguishes between the image of God and the
likeness. His understanding of the divine likeness in the human being has
lasting signicance. It discloses further aspects of the Antiochenes view of
human identity in ways that are quite interesting, not least because most
of them are not linked to gender.
In fragments of the Genesis commentary identied by Franoise Petit,
he explains that, in order to function as a divine image for other creatures, the human being, like the emperors statue, has to exhibit a likeness
to the Archetype. He characteristically calls this likeness a mmhma, an
imitation:
Then to the [words] according to the image [Scripture] ttingly adds the
likeness. Since God has made the human being with the function of an
image, as I have said, for this reason he has ttingly granted him also to
possess a certain imitation of the divine attributes, though indeed he falls
far short of that essence to the extent that an image normally falls short of
61. However, Sebastian Brock notes that in the fourth- to sixth-century golden
age of Syriac Christian literature and subsequently, the Syrian Orthodox Church
(Monophysites) and the Church of the East (Nestorians) approached Mary in
the same way and borrowed Marian hymnography from each other, and he observes
that this is surprising for the following reason: Nestorius is well known to all as
having rejected the title of Theotokos, bearer of God, for Mary, and in view of this
one might have expected the East Syrian liturgical texts to be less concerned than their
Syrian Orthodox counterparts with the role of Mary, but this is in fact far from the
case: the general tone of both traditions is very similar. In actual fact, the Christological differences that separate the Syrian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox (Chalcedonian)
Churches and the Church of the East do not appear to have had much effect on their
attitudes to Mary, at least outside technical theological discussions (Introduction to
Jacob of Serug on the Mother of God, tr. Mary Hansbury [Crestwood: St. Vladimirs
Seminary Press, 1998], 2). The writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia considered in this
article are probably the kind of technical discussions Brock has in mind here.
227
an archetype, yet likewise he bears imitations and reections of that

majesty.62
Notice that Theodore emphasizes how far the human imitation falls short
of the divine model. This language occurs repeatedly in his discussions of
the human as likeness to God. As Frederick McLeod has observed, the
likeness in this sense is an analogy between human and divine characteristics.63 That is, humans relate to other created beings in ways that mirror
the ways God relates to his creatures, though rather distantly. Again this
concerns modes of connectedness linking the human center to the rest of
the created world. Theodore would not understand the likeness the way
Gregory of Nyssa does, as a human participation in all the divine attributes.64
A subsequent fragment from the same source explains how this likeness
is necessary to the human beings function as cosmic mediator and unier,
and further emphasizes the radical difference between imitation and
Archetype:
That [the human being] himself and all [created beings] on his account
might through the image approach God, who is invisible to all the creation
according to his own essence, and cannot be seen by the creation unless
through some image manifested to allas far as the image which some
painter by his own art makes of a human being would have only the form
of the model, but not the thing in realityGod has made his own image to
have this special [characteristic], giving him even in regard to things proper
[to God] a part of their reality, though the imitations necessarily fall short
of this ineffable essence to the extent that an image normally [falls short] of
the one of whom it bears only an imitation.65
Thus, the human likeness resembles God only in the way that an outline
or shape painted on a canvas resembles the living person depicted there.
Theodore identies four aspects of human likeness to God. They are
described in a series of fragments cited by John Philoponus as identied
62. Franoise Petit, Lhomme cr limage de Dieu: Quelques fragments grecs

indits de Thodore de Mopsueste, Mus 100 (1987): 26981, fragment 3, p. 276.
This article also contains an excellent summary of Theodores understanding of the
divine image and likeness in the human being.
63. The Antiochene Tradition Regarding the Role of the Body within the Image
of God, in Maureen A. Tilley and Susan A. Ross, eds., Broken and Whole: Essays
on Religion and the Body (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), 36.
64. Catechetical Oration, ed. J. H. Srawley (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1956), 2324; On the Creation of Humanity, PG 44:156A, 184D; On the
Christian Profession, Jaeger, Opera, 8.1:13435.
65. Fragment 9, Petit, Fragments grecs, 280.
228
and analyzed by Robert Devresse. The rst is perhaps the most insightful
and rings true in the twenty-rst century. Theodore regards human creativity as a likeness of divine creativity:
The human being creates things that [previously] did not exist, being a
certain imitation of the divine [activity] in this; for indeed a house, and a
ship, and a city, and a wall, and a harbor, and a bench, and a bed, and
everything both small and great that at some time is made, creates what did
not before exist.66
This passage follows another reminder that the human imitation greatly
falls short of the divine. Theodores fragment ends by adding another
tantalizingly brief analogy between divine and human faculties of perception: For we see and hear, as indeed God sees all things and hears all
things.67 This sums up his approach to human modes of likeness to God.
He identies how the imitation resembles the model yet notes the radical
difference. Thus both see and hear, but human perception is limited while
God perceives everything.
The second kind of human likeness to God is an analogy between the
divine innity and omnipresence and the activity of the human mind. As
God is present everywhere, the human mind can traverse heaven and
earth in thought and imagination. The difference is that God is wholly
present in every place simultaneously, whereas our minds move from
place to place, and in this way we are made present only in thought, not in
reality.68 Here again the contrast between the painted outline and the
esh-and-blood model is relevant. The third mode of likeness to God is
human kingship, authority, and judgment, to which Theodore adds the
minds activity of making critical decisions. Clearly this is closely linked
with his understanding of the divine image.69
The fourth mode of likeness is also interesting. Like Augustine, Theodore
nds an analogy to the Trinity in the internal structure of the human soul:
There are two powers of the God and Father, God the Logos and Son and
the Holy Spirit, and they come forth alike but not identically from the
Father. But our soul also has two powers, reason (lgow) and life, according
to which the soul lives itself and gives life to the body.70
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
Devresse, Essai, 13 n. 4.
Ibid.
Ibid., 14 n. 1.
Ibid., 14 nn. 23.
Ibid., 14 n. 4.
229
Since the evidence survives only in fragments, any attempt to synthesize

Theodores understanding of men and/or women as Gods image and
likeness risks missing something important, just as his distinction between image and likeness could not be clearly ascertained without the
texts Petit published in 1987.71 Nevertheless, the overall picture can be
summarized as follows: (1) Theodore believes that women are fully and
equally human and identical to men in soul though somewhat inferior in
body. Men and women share the same human nature and essence, both
have rational and immortal souls, and both are equally capable of holiness and salvation. (2) The divine image consists in the primary human
vocation to be a connecting link uniting all created beings into one cosmos and a king all creatures are called to honor and serve as the visible
image of the invisible God. Since this is a kind of authority, it belongs to
men but not women, at least in this life, and it is genuinely fullled only in
Jesus the last Adam, the man assumed by the divine Logos. (3) The divine
likeness, which is necessary to the human function as image and representative of God in creation, includes many human attributes and activities
analogous to those of God, though the imitation always falls far short of
the Archetype. These include creativity, the unlimited explorations of
thought, faculties of perception, critical decision-making, and the souls
life and animation of the body. Clearly, all these things are shared by
women and men alike since they are identical in soul. Only kingship,
authority, and judgment can be understood as exclusively masculine. This
implies the paradoxical conclusion that for him women to a large extent
possess the divine likeness although they do not possess the divine image,72 at least in this life. (4) He links the existence of the gender distinction to mortality and the consequent need for procreation, to marrying
71. Though it does not provide additional information on the topic of this essay,
there is an interesting set of Syriac fragments on Gen 3 with French translation in R.
M. Tonneau, Thodore de Mopsueste: Interprtation (du livre) de la Gense (Vat.
Syr. 120, ff. IV), Mus 66 (1953): 4564.
72. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends, 56, notes that John Chrysostom
asserts in his homilies and sermons on Genesis that women can possess the divine
likeness through virtue but lack the divine image, which consists in authority. Despite
scholarly disagreements, this summary of his anthropology appears quite plausible
when his thought is compared to the views of Theodore, his Antiochene friend and
colleague. It makes far less sense if one seeks to understand it in terms of the
standard Orthodox belief that the likeness is an intensication of the image, a
freely chosen and graced actualization of potentials inherent in the image, which it
thus presupposes. On the basis of such assumptions the presence of a human likeness
to God without the image would be ultimately incoherent and thus unthinkable.
230
and being given in marriage. Accordingly, he believes that the gender

distinction will no longer exist in the resurrection body, since it will be
immortal. This enables him to afrm the full inclusion of all humans who
are saved in the ultimate human vocation after all.
From what we know of his position, not all anthropological questions
can be resolved with certainty. God endows the man with his likeness so
as to enable him to function as his image and representative, but the
woman is also endowed with many aspects of the likeness although she
cannot fulll this function in the present life. Presumably this is because
she, along with the man who images God incompletely in this life because
of sin, can become a full image of God and thus use her divine likeness for
its intended purpose in the age to come through participation in the totus
Christus. More fundamentally, one can ask where Theodore ultimately
locates human identity, in human nature as such or in the divine image?
For him these are clearly two different things, at least in this life. Women
are fully human and share with men the same capacity for holiness in this
age and immortality and incorruption in the age to come. Both hope for
the resurrection, in which soul and body are indissolubly reunited, thus
making the connecting link between spiritual and material creatures permanent and completing the unity of the cosmos. Yet at least in this life
only man possesses the divine image and can serve as that connecting
link, the king in whose service all created beings come together. Or maybe
this pertains only to two men, the prelapsarian Adam and Jesus. So is
human identity located in the rationality, holiness, and salvation that all
can share or the cosmic authority from which some are excluded? Theodore
is ambivalent. He believes that women are fully human but stops short of
drawing all the logical conclusions of this belief.
THEODORET ON MALE AND FEMALE
While remaining deeply rooted in the Antiochene exegetical tradition,
Theodoret of Cyrrhus broadens its perspective and places it in a larger
context. Though greatly indebted to Diodore and Theodore and largely
faithful to their interpretive methods, he moves away from many of their
more extreme positions. He has clearly read Greek patristic theologians
and interpreters of other schools, and he enters into dialogue with their
ideas, sometimes borrowing from them and sometimes critiquing them.
His exegesis is balanced, judicious, and often insightful, and his prose
style exhibits a clarity and succinctness often lacking in that of Theodore.
As Derek Krueger observes, By his own description, his biblical exegesis
plotted a middle course between the often extreme allegory associated
231
with Origen and the perceived literalism of Theodore of Mopsuestia.73

Though he deserves much more attention from modern scholars than he
has received, the classic study of G. W. Ashby provides an excellent
introduction to his extensive work as a biblical commentator and his
relationships to the earlier Antiochene exegetes and to his contemporary
Cyril of Alexandria, whose exegetical work is also vastly understudied.74
However, Jean-Nol Guinots monumental study of Theodorets exegesis
must now be considered denitive.75
In commenting on 1 Cor 11.7, Theodoret seeks to move beyond the
position of Diodore and Theodore so as to reconcile the Pauline verse
with Gen 1.27:
The human being is an image of God neither in body nor in soul but only
in dominion. Accordingly, as he is believed to be ruler of all things on the
earth, he is called the image of God. But as the woman is subject to the
authority of the man, she is the glory of the man, and as it were an image
of the image. For she herself rules other things, but she is obedient and
receives orders from the man.76
Here Theodoret appears to be reworking the interpretation articulated by

Diodore in the fragment cited at the beginning of this essay. He surely
realizes that the earlier exegetes simple exclusion of women from the
divine image is inconsistent with Gen 1.27, so he afrms initially that
every human being possesses authority and thus can be named as image
of God. He then seeks to show how this afrmation can be consistent
with 1 Cor 11.7. In accordance with the presuppositions of late antique
culture, he echoes Diodore in acknowledging that woman rules over some
things but is herself subject to mans authority. His conclusion differs,
73. Typological Figuration in Theodoret of Cyrrhuss Religious History and the

Art of Postbiblical Narrative, JECS 5 (1997): 393419, 407. See also Guinot,
Exgse de Thodoret, 27681, 80126.
74. Theodoret of Cyrrhus as Exegete of the Old Testament (Rhodes University,
Grahamstown, South Africa, 1972). Ezchiel Montmasson, Lhomme cr limage
de Dieu daprs Thodoret de Cyr et Procope de Gaza, EO 14 (1911): 33439 and
15 (1912): 15462, contains some useful insights. However, unfortunately he
conates Theodorets thought with ideas expressed in the fragments by Origen,
Diodore, and Theodore included in the Migne edition of Questions on Genesis 1.20
(PG 80:104B117A). These fragments derived from the catenae are now generally
recognized as interpolations and are not included in the critical edition of the text. So
Montmasson mistakenly concludes from Diodores fragment, quoted near the beginning of this essay, that Theodoret believed women are not made in the image of God.
75. Cited in n. 6 above.
76. PG 82:312C.
232
however, in that he regards her as somehow an image of the image.

That is, insofar as she shares in human dominion over the earth, she must
truly participate in the divine image in some measure, at least through the
mediation of the man. His share in the imago Dei is perhaps greater or at
least more direct because he possesses authority in ways that she does not.
Theodorets position thus moves beyond the interpretations of his
Antiochene predecessors. Yet he retains the same fundamental perspective since at least here he still denes the divine image exclusively as
authority.
In Questions on Genesis 1.30, Theodoret considers why God formed
the woman from the side of Adam. Following Diodore and Theodore, he
understands the manner of Eves creation as disclosing a profound unity
and likeness between men and women. Moreover, like his predecessors he
links this afrmation to a very positive theology of marriage:77
The Creator of nature planned to lead families to concord. On account of
this, he fashioned Adam from the earth but the woman from Adam, so that
they would also be shown [to have] the same nature, [and] he implanted in
them a certain natural affection for each other. For if indeed things have
been created thus yet men ght against women and women against men,
what would they not do if he had fashioned the woman from a different
source? Wisely, therefore, he both divided [them] and joined [them] together
again. For marriage brings families together into one. For, [Scripture]
says, the two will be one esh. And procreation testies that this is true.
For through marital intercourse, one fruit grows from both, from the mans
sowing and from the womans nurturing, achieving the goal under the
Fashioner of nature.78
In this concept of a single human being divided when Eve is made from
Adams side and reunited in marriage, there is perhaps an echo of the
primordial androgyne described by Aristophanes in Platos Symposium.79
Yet there is also a practical, ethical goal of uniting families and overcoming tension between the sexes through marriage and family affection. It is
signicant that Theodoret acknowledges the existence of such a tension.
The union between husband and wife has a further purpose, namely
procreation. Like many of the ancients, the bishop of Cyrrhus regards the
77. On this topic, see G. W. Ashbys important article, Theodoret of Cyrrhus on
Marriage, Theology 72 (1969): 48291.
78. Natalio Fernndez Marcos and Angel Senz-Badillos, eds., Theodoreti Cyrensis
Quaestiones in Octateuchum: Editio Critica (Madrid: Textos y estudios Cardenal
Cisneros, 1979), 3233.
79. It might also have a Jewish source. For intriguing rabbinic parallels, see
Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 4246.
233
fathers semen as becoming the substance of the childs body while the
mothers womb provides a nurturing environment in which it can grow.80
He envisages God as supervising the whole procreative process.
Theodoret develops these points at greater length in his Remedy for
Greek Illnesses 5.5457. He rst speaks of the marital union and explains
that procreation occurs through that little semen transforming itself into
a thousand forms, and the soul which is then created and bound to the
body, and of course after the childbirth the divine aid [present] to guard
and guide.81 Note that, like Theodore, he clearly holds a creationist
theory of the souls origin. He then afrms that the different races and
ethnic groups all share the same human nature since they are all derived
from a common source. He traces the unity of humankind as such back to
the creation of Eve from Adam:
The author of our creation account has taught that the Creator fashioned
one man from earth and made the woman from his side, [and] from the
union of these [two] he lled the whole world with human beings as their
children and their descendants have in turn increased the [human] race. For
it would have been very easy for him to command and at once ll earth and
sea with inhabitants, but lest one suppose that human beings are different in
nature, he ordered that from that one pair the thousand tribes of humans
come into being.82
Thus humankind forms a single family whose unity is rooted in the

primordial marriage between Adam and Eve. This passage and Questions
on Genesis 1.30, cited above, parallel John Chrysostoms famous Homily
20 on Ephesians.83 Guinot has demonstrated that Theodoret was indebted to Chrysostom and particularly to his Pauline exegesis.84 We can
probably discern his inuence in these texts.
Theodoret goes on to say that the creation of Eve grounds unity and
likeness between men and women as well as unity among different ethnic
groups:
Surely for this reason also [God] did not fashion the woman from some
other source but took from the man the starting point of her creation, lest,
if she had a different nature, she would take the opposite path from the
man. Surely because of this also [God] gives the same laws to men and
80. See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 2562.
81. SC 57.1:243.
82. SC 57.1:244.
83. PG 62:13536.
84. Exgse de Thodoret, 64466.
234
women, since indeed the difference is in the form of the body and not in the
soul.85
Notice that Theodoret follows Theodore in asserting that the gender

distinction pertains to mens and womens bodies but does not exist in
their souls. Like his predecessor he concludes from this that their ethical
and religious capacities and duties are the same, and that both can hope
for the same eschatological rewards:
For like man, woman is capable of reason and understanding and the
apprehension of her duties and can know as he does what to avoid and
what to seek. And it sometimes happens that she discovers better than the
man what will be useful and becomes a good advisor. Therefore not only
men but also women must go to the divine temples, and the law that
requires men to share in the divine mysteries does not prevent women, but
it prescribes that they equally with men be initiated and participate in the
mysteries. Moreover, the prizes for virtue are set before women as before
men, since the struggles for virtue are common to both.86
Theodorets welcome suggestion that women can be good advisors could

serve as an appropriate response to Theodores condemnation of Adam
for listening to Eve when he should have commanded her. This passage is
saying that, since women have the same moral abilities and responsibilities as men, they need the same means of divine grace to help them fulll
their duties, namely, church attendance, baptism, the eucharist, and the
ascetic struggle inherent in the life of all Christians.
Theodorets appreciation of women is clear also in his handling of the
difcult text in 1 Tim 2.1415. He struggles to reconcile the epistles
statement that Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived
with Genesis 3 by observing that Eve was deceived rst, she picked the
fruit and she admitted that the serpent beguiled her. Yet he adds that she
has been deprived of excuse, having been persuaded by the serpent, but he
has little defense, as led on by the woman. In other words, after all,
Adam was deceived too. Theodoret concludes that one must also see
that the divine Apostle arranges his words with a view to the need lying
before him.87 Ashby remarks that this is perhaps the nearest an ancient
commentator has ever come to accusing St. Paul of twisting the sense of
Scripture to suit his own intentions.88 Theodoret then interprets 1 Tim
85.
86.
87.
88.
SC 57.1:244.
SC 57.1:24445.
PG 82:801C804A.
Marriage, 487.
235
2.15 as referring to all women and adds that they are not harmed by Eve
unless they wish it. That is, they will be punished if they misuse their free
choice as she did hers, not because they share her femaleness as such.
Moreover, according to Theodoret, women are of very great value when
they bear fruit through faith and love and preserve holiness and moderation.89 He has turned the negatively charged language of the epistle into
an occasion to compliment devout and virtuous women.
In the material we have discussed so far, Theodoret follows in the footsteps of his Antiochene predecessors though with a few signicant modications. Yet there are two other important texts where he appears to
take a different tack, though Theodore has hinted at such a development.
He discusses the origin of the gender distinction at some length in a way
that recalls the Cappadocians and, in particular, Gregory of Nyssas famous speculation in the treatise On the Creation of Humanity.90 Theodoret
compares the human creation with the creation of the angels and the
nonrational animals, and, like Theodore, he links the need for gender and
procreation to mortality, but he develops the point further than what we
nd in his predecessors extant fragments. He says God foresaw that the
fall would occur and make humans subject to death, thus entailing their
need for a mode of existence like that of the other animals rather than the
angels. God therefore created them in a way that would enable this need
to be met.
The rst of these passages comes in Questions on Genesis 1.37, where
Theodoret asks himself how a good God could impose such a harsh
punishment for the eating of a small morsel of fruit, not only on Adam
and Eve who sinned but on their descendants, as well. He offers several
responses,91 including this:
The God of all has an immutable nature, and he sees as having already
happened the things that have not yet happened. And at once foreseeing
and foreknowing that Adam would become a mortal through transgression
of the commandment, he prepared his nature for this beforehand, for he
fashioned the form of the body into male and female. Since mortals need
procreation for the continuation of their species, their bodies are fashioned
in this way. The immortal nature does not need the female, and for this
89. PG 82:804A. In his commentary on the same verse, Theodore anticipates much
of what Theodoret says in this passage. See Swete, Pauli Commentarii, 2:9496; and
McLeod, Image of God, 21617.
90. PG 44:188A192A.
91. Ashby summarizes this passage in Theodoret as Exegete, 59.
236
reason the Creator brought into being at once the [full] number of the
bodiless ones.92
Like Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret argues that God foreknew the fall and,
in anticipation of it, introduced the gender distinction into the human
creation to prepare people for mortal existence. Notice that this does not
mean the fall is the cause of gender, but rather through procreation
gender is a partial remedy for its consequence, death. In contrast, the
angels are immortal and hence have no need for procreation or for the
gender distinction that makes it possible. These ideas are so distinctive as
to suggest strongly that Theodoret was indebted to Gregory either directly or indirectly through Theodore or some other intermediary, though
this view may also have been current in the Antiochene ascetical circles to
which he had close ties. However, it is interesting that he avoids the need
for Gregorys hypothesis of a mysterious angelic mode of generation by
asserting that in the beginning God created all the angels at once.
Notice that he characterizes the absence of gender in the angels by
saying that they do not need the female. As we shall see, he repeats this
language several times in Remedy for Greek Illnesses 3.8894, cited
below, and one wonders what concept of gender lies behind it. Does he
think of all the angels as male?93 Apparently not, since he says that the
division of humans into male and female is linked to their mortality. This
ambiguity presupposes an androcentrism that may be at least in part
unconscious. That is, Theodoret notices the presence of gender in rational
creatures as an issue only in the form different from his own, i.e., the
female. There are people who insist that inhabitants of their native region
do not speak with an accent although everybody else does. Similarly, for
92. Fernndez Marcos and Senz-Badillos, Quaestiones, 38.

93. For a crosscultural analysis of the many complexities involved in the symbolism of the androgyne, see Wendy Doniger OFlaherty, Women, Androgynes, and
Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 283334. She
suggests (284) that androgynes are usually males who have assumed female characteristics, and that such male androgynes are generally positively valued while females
who have assumed male characteristics are negatively valued. This generalization may
be true in Hindu mythology and the other mythologies she discusses, but it does not
provide an adequate account of early Christian ideas. For example, highly praised
women martyrs and ascetics are often described as having acquired masculine
characteristics or even being functionally male. See Kerstin Aspegren, The Male
Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis,
Women in Religion, 4 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1990). Although the case
cannot be fully argued here, my suggestion is that notions of androgyny in early
Christian concepts of God, angels, and human beings involve a genuine transcendence
of gender.
237
Theodoret maleness is the default mode of humanity. Thus, he tacitly

overlooks maleness when thinking of humanity as such and disregards
the fact that procreation, for whose sake gender comes into being, involves using the male as much as the female. His reasoning actually points
toward the conclusion that the immortal angels do not need either one.
However, the characteristic Antiochene interpretation of Genesis 2
may also lie behind this ambiguity.94 We saw how Theodore identies the
human being created in Gen 1.2627a with the creature molded of earth
in Gen 2.7 and understands this as the man Adam. The woman is subsequently created from his side in Gen 2.2122. Given this sequence of
events, it would be easy for Theodoret to envisage the female as something added on to humanity as such, whereas maleness is inherent in it
from the outset and is not initially distinct from it. Maleness is only
manifest as a distinct reality when Eve is separated from Adam and in her
person femaleness is added to the human substance taken from him.
Thus, perhaps Theodoret simply reasons that such an addition to the
angelic nature would be superuous. Maybe he has integrated Gregorys
concept of the origin of gender into a characteristically Antiochene anthropology in such a way that the Cappadocians idea of humanity as
initially androgynous, at least in Gods original plan, is unconsciously
interpreted to mean an initial maleness.
Having contrasted the human and angelic creations, Question 37 on
Genesis describes the creation of the nonrational animals and compares it
to the way humans were created in anticipation of the fall:
Of the mortal animals [God] created two of each kind, male and female;
and he bestowed on them the blessing to increase, for it says, Increase and
multiply [Gen 1.22]. So also he formed the human being male and female
and gave them the same blessing, Increase and multiply and ll the earth
and subdue it [Gen 1.28].95
Then, interestingly, Theodoret adds that, forseeing the fall, God also gave
the rst humans instructions about what to eat in Gen 1.2930 even
before he commanded them to avoid the forbidden fruit. The exegete
observes further that food belongs to mortals, for an immortal nature
does not need nourishment, and teaching this the Lord said, After the
resurrection they neither marry not are given in marriage, but they are as
angels in the heavens [Matt 22.30 and parallels]. That is, food, like
94. Ashby, Marriage, 489, makes this point with regard to the parallel text in
Remedy for Greek Illnesses 3.8894, which we will cite and discuss below.
238
procreation, is necessary only for mortal beings, not for the angels. It
follows that much of the way of life God provided for Adam and Eve in
Paradise was established as a providential remedy for the fall, namely a
whole biologically congured mode of existence involving eating as well
as marriage and death.96 Further, in the resurrection humans will share
the angelic mode of existence rather than that of the animals which are
mortal by nature, and they will have immortal bodies freed from biological necessity. All this is presupposed in the otherwise inexplicable exegetical leap from the discussion of food to Matt 22.30. These ideas are
characteristic of the Alexandrians and Cappadocians. If, as seems clear,
Theodoret has adopted this theology, he would probably agree with the
Cappadocians that the gender distinction, like eating and digestion, is
absent in the resurrection body. The text goes on to refer to the resurrection directly. Having spoken of procreation as a partial remedy for death,
Theodoret concludes by afrming that, from the beginning, God also
foresaw a denitive remedy for death through the incarnation of the
Only-Begotten and his resurrection.97
Theodoret discusses some of the same issues in his Remedy for Greek
Illnesses 3.8894, which concerns the angels. He begins by explaining, in
contrast to Greco-Roman ideas, that they are not gods but worship and
serve the Creator. Christians do not worship them but regard them as
more honorable than humans although they are the humans fellow slaves
in relation to God.98 The text then speaks of the absence of gender in the
angels and contrasts the angelic and human creations in ways that are by
now familiar:
We do not divide the bodiless nature into male and female, for truly this
division is [only] needed by the nature subject to death, for since death
reduces this [nature] to slavery, marriage through procreation compensates
for the loss. For as it is a kind of repaired immortality, the Creator devised
procreation for the mortal animal. Therefore in truth it is necessary for
those who have a mortal nature to use the female, but for those who have
become immortal the female kind is altogether superuous. For they do not
need increase since they do not undergo decrease, nor sexual intercourse
since they are free of bodies. The creation of humans and angels supports
my argument. For on the one hand God did not immediately make a great
many human beings but fashioned one man and one woman and through
96. See Teresa M. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early
Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 161219.
98. SC 57.1:196.
239
their union has lled all earth and sea with their kind. On the other hand,
he has not created the nature of the bodiless ones in a couple, but he made
them all at once, for in truth he introduced from the beginning the myriads
he thought t to exist. Because of this the use of the female is truly
superuous for them, since being immortal they do not need increase, and
as bodiless they do not have sexual intercourse. In truth we also name them
holy as possessing nothing earthly, but they are removed from earthly
passions and their work is dancing in heaven and singing hymns, as well as
the services they are commanded to do by the divine will.99
At least here it appears that, for Theodoret, the only things that are
distinctively female are womens roles in sexual intercourse and procreation, which he regards as burdensome in contrast to the angels freedom
to worship and serve God without bodily encumbrances. Yet clearly this
is not all that he sees in women. He genuinely recognizes the qualities of
reason, faith, and virtue he ascribes to them in texts cited above. Yet these
are universally human characteristics shared by men as well. We can
conclude that, for Theodoret as for the Cappadocians, the core of human
identity is linked to attributes that all humans can share, not to those that
pertain to some but not others, such as gender. Notice that in this passage
the female, and by implication the corresponding aspects of maleness
involved in procreation, is superuous for those who have become immortal. This again suggests that the gender distinction will be absent in
the resurrection body.
The text goes on to explain that the theological articulation of ideal
human identity through a comparison with the angels instead of the
animals has in view a specic category of people in the Christian community, namely, the ascetics:
Imitating [the angels] way of life, many human beings have embraced the
service of God. They have ed bodies and lawful intercourse as dragging
them away from divine things, and have abandoned their country and race
that they might transfer all their concern to divine things, and no bond
hinders their mind from striving to hold fast to heaven and see the invisible
and ineffable beauty of God. . . . But if those [ascetics] conjoined to bodies
and troubled by many passions of all kinds embrace a bodiless and exalted
way of life proper to heavenly beings, how could one describe the life of the
bodiless natures, passionless and free from care?100
As Theodoret explains in the Religious History, throughout his life he was

acquainted with many of the holy men and women who lived just outside
99. SC 57.1:19697.
100. SC 57.1:197.
240
Antioch where he grew up, in his diocese of Cyrrhus, and elsewhere in the
region. He says that, before his birth, his mother was converted to a
devout life by a hermit named Peter the Galatian, who healed her of an
eye disease. When his parents were unable to bear a child, his father asked
a blessing of another holy man, Macedonius, who promised that God
would give them one, who would then be dedicated to Gods service from
birth. It was his mother who insisted that his dedication be carried out,
and she took her child to see Peter every week to receive his blessing.
Theodoret was close to his parents, but after their death he was free to
pursue his own ascetic vocation as a learned monk in a cenobitic community. Then as a bishop he continued in his ascetic lifestyle. He used the
access permitted by his high ecclesiastical ofce to visit even the most
reclusive ascetics, to observe their way of life, seek their guidance, and
give them pastoral care.101
Given his experience in his immediate family, it is not surprising that
Theodoret strongly afrms the equality of men and women in virtue and
the service of God. He recounts how, at their rst meeting, Peter the
Galatian exhorts his mother to stop wearing cosmetics, jewelry, and other
adornments. He describes her as a picture painted by God and likens her
feminine adornments to the clumsy and disrespectful work of an unskilled artist painting over the work of a great master. Therefore, Peter
concludes, do not ruin the image of God, or try to add what he has
wisely not given.102 Thus, as Krueger observes, God is understood not
only as the artist who creates Theodorets mother but also as the model
whose image she bears.103 The condemnation of cosmetics and elaborate
female dress is a patristic commonplace, but different writers emphasize
signicantly different reasons for it. In the text cited at the beginning of
this essay, Tertullian mandates penitential shame for women who are
identied with Eve as the cause of the fall and the ruin of the divine image
in Adam. Chrysostom, the radical advocate of the poor, decries the expense of high fashion and declares that money spent on it should instead
be given as alms.104 Gregory Nazianzen, who, like Theodoret, is the
loving son of a strong and devout mother, like him contrasts the painted
face with the greater beauty of the divine image.105 This contrast entails
101. R. M. Price, ed. and. tr., Theodoret of Cyrrhus: A History of the Monks of
Syria, Cistercian Studies 88 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1985), xixiii.
102. Religious History 9.6 (SC 234:418); Price, History of the Monks, 84.
103. Typological Figuration, 418.
104. Homily on John 69.3 (PG 59:38081). See Blake Leyerle, John Chrysostom
on Almsgiving and the Use of Money, HTR 87 (1994): 2947.
105. Oration 8.10 (PG 35:800B801A).
241
an important theological point, and the fact that it is a commonplace only

makes it more signicant. Writers who in other contexts locate the imago
Dei constitutive of human identity somewhere other than in the body
here nd it in the human face, in a womans face, at that. When understood in this way, the refusal of devout women like Gregorys mother
Nonna and Theodorets mother to wear make-up is a strong afrmation
of their human dignity.
In Religious History 29.1, after recounting the exploits of many ascetic
men, Theodoret makes a point of including ascetic women as well. He
introduces this discussion as follows:
After recording the way of life of the heroic men, I think it useful to treat
also of women who have contended no less if not more, for they are worthy
of still greater praise, when, despite having a weaker nature, they display
the same zeal as the men and free their sex from its ancestral disgrace.106
Note that, according to Theodoret, virtue and holiness overcome the

inherited shame that burdens women. He does not explain the source of
this shame, whether it is due to Eves role in the fall or age-old cultural
prejudice. In any case, women ascetics demonstrate their freedom from
this disgrace by their actions and show that women are not bound by
their nature but can choose between sin and virtue. As Irne Hausherr
has observed,107 the double-edged compliment ascribing greater praise to
women for ascetic achievements because they have a nature weaker than
that of men needs to be read in light of a text in the epilogue On Divine
Love with which Theodoret concludes his history. He declares that only
great love for God has enabled the ascetics, whether male or female, to
achieve their heroic feats, for it was not through condence in the
strength of the body that they became enamored of what is beyond
human nature, transcended the limits imposed on it, and jumped beyond
the bounds xed for contestants in piety.108 The Religious History is full
of tales describing unimaginable bodily strength and endurance. In this
context, the weaker nature ascribed to woman is simply her physical
nature. Just as today the best women athletes are no less great than the
men although statistics show that they cannot jump quite as high or run
quite as fast, in ancient Syria women ascetics may have had to struggle
harder than men to perform the same bodily austerities. However, the
106. SC 257:232; Price, History of the Monks, 183.

107. Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel,
Cistercian Studies 116 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), 273.
108. SC 257:256; Price, History of the Monks, 191.
242
main point is that both achieve feats that surpass the capacities of human
nature, whether male or female.
Theodoret only recounts the lives of three women ascetics, but he
concludes his discussion by acknowledging the presence of countless
others throughout the Christian world of his time:
There are many others, of whom some have embraced the solitary life and
others have preferred life with many companions. . . . Myriad and defeating
enumeration are the philosophic retreats of this kind, not only in our region
but throughout the East; full of them are Palestine, Egypt, Asia, Pontus, and
all Europe.109
The text then explains why this has occurred, strongly afrming as in
Theodorets other works cited above that men and women are alike and
equal in their true nature, capacities, vocation, and eschatological hope as
human beings:
From the time when Christ the Master honored virginity by being born of a
virgin, nature has sprouted meadows of virginity and offered these fragrant
and unfading owers to the Creator, not separating virtue into male and
female nor dividing philosophy into two categories. For the difference is one
of bodies not of souls: In Christ Jesus, according to the divine Apostle,
there is neither male nor female [Gal 3.28]. And a single faith has been
given to men and women: There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one
God and Father of all [Eph 4.56]. And it is one kingdom of heaven which
the Umpire has set before the victors, xing this common prize for the
contests.110
The lives of innumerable female ascetics therefore testify to spiritual

equality between men and women. Their common way of life demonstrates that human nature in both genders is the same. Here as elsewhere
Theodoret states that the difference is located in their bodies and not in
their souls. This conrms my understanding of the womans weaker
nature in Religious History 29.1 as only physical and of little importance to him. Notice also that, although the paradigm of virginity as selfoffering to God is Christs mother, it is a virtue common to men and
women alike who follow her example.
In Theodorets time, the ascetics occupy a distinctive social location
apart from the usual culturally constructed norms of gender as well as
race and nationality. They often provide the paradigm for early Christian
understandings of human identity and thus the preferred starting point
243
for anthropological reection. This results in an emphasis on characteristics and capacities shared by all human beings alike. In contrast, in late
antique culture generally the model human being is usually the male head
of an aristocratic household. This paradigm shift to the ascetic model
embodies a strong critique of mainstream Greco-Roman social values.
Such ascetically based Christian anthropologies are characteristic of the
Alexandrians and Cappadocians and focus on the divine image and likeness of Gen 1.2627 as dening the human. The earlier Antiochenes, as
we have seen, begin their anthropological reection from a different
social location, that of the married man, and correspondingly have a
different exegetical focus, Gen 2. Following hints in Theodores writings
and in accord with his ascetical orientation, Theodoret combines the
ascetic or Cappadocian view with that of his Antiochene predecessors to
produce an anthropology that is a hybrid of both patterns. The angels,
who transcend the gender distinction and procreation, are the model for
human beings, but their life is described asymmetrically as an absence of
the female. Theodoret is ambivalent toward marriage and procreation.
On the one hand they wondrously aid Gods creative work and bind the
human race into one family, but on the other hand all this is only needed
because of the fall and the consequent mortality, and it will be superseded
in the resurrection by an immortal mode of existence like that of the
angels. In this life the ascetics anticipate the eschatological goal and what
will ultimately be the true human identity by struggling to imitate the
angels as far as is possible for embodied, fallen mortals.
THEODORET ON THE DIVINE IMAGE AND LIKENESS
Even though Theodore of Mopsuestias comments on the rst three chapters of Genesis have survived only in fragments, the existing evidence
depicts a rich and detailed picture of his thought regarding the human as
image of God. What Theodoret writes on the subject in his Questions on
Genesis is much briefer, but it provides a clear summary of some of his
great predecessors main points, though with subtle but signicant modications. Question 1.20 asks, What is meant by that which is according
to the image? Theodoret critiques some other interpretations before
articulating his own. He says that the imago Dei is not the souls invisibility since the angels possess this characteristic even more than humans do.
However, one must not suppose that the human body is an image of God
because Scripture uses anthropomorphic language about Gods eyes, ears,
mouth, etc. Such language is an accommodation to human weakness, but
God is Spirit [John 4.24], which means he is simple, without composition
244
and without form.111 Theodoret then summarizes part of Theodores

teaching about the human being as connecting link of creation:
Moreover, some of the teachers have understood the [words], Let us make
the human according to our image and likeness [Gen 1.26] thus. Having
made the perceptible and intelligible creation, the God of all fashioned the
human being at the end, as if having placed a kind of image of himself in
the midst of inanimate and animate beings, the perceptible and intelligible,
so that the inanimate and animate beings might offer their service to this
one [i.e., the human] as a kind of tribute, while the intelligible natures
might show kindness to created things in their care of this one.112
The text then cites biblical verses that speak of angels serving humans.
Theodoret incorporates these ideas into his discussion without comment.
Next he turns to the traditional Antiochene concept of the divine image
as authority:
Some have said that the human has come into being according to the image
of God in regard to dominion. They have provided a most clear proof,
citing [the words of] the Creator: And let them rule the sh of the sea, and
the birds of the sky, and the beasts, and all the earth, and all the reptiles
that creep on the earth [cf. Gen 1.26]. For just as he himself has
sovereignty over all things, so he has given to the human authority over the
nonrational animals.113
Notice how the last sentence makes an analogy between Gods authority
over the universe and human authority over the animals. This summary
of how authority constitutes an image of God actually mirrors precisely
the way Theodore characterizes the various kinds of divine likeness. As
we saw above, he says that we see and hear, as indeed God sees all things
and hears all things.114 He identies how the human likeness faithfully
imitates the divine model but also radically falls short of it. After noting
the analogy between divine and human modes of authority, Theodoret
immediately adds, One also nds other imitations of the Archetype.115
There follows a lucid summary of the kinds of human likeness to God
identied by Theodore. McLeod believes that in this passage Theodoret
follows Theodore in distinguishing between image and likeness,116 but a
close reading of the text suggests rather that he is subtly blurring his
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
Fernndez Marcos and Senz-Badillos, Quaestiones, 2324.

Ibid., 24.
Ibid., 25.
Devresse, Essai, 13 n. 4.
Fernndez Marcos and Senz-Badillos, Quaestiones, 25.
Antiochene Tradition, 37.
245
predecessors distinction. He has identied image as authority as precisely

the kind of imitation Theodore labels as likeness. The result is to place the
other human analogues to divine attributes and activities alongside authority and include them in a broader concept of the imago Dei. These
include creativity, ruling and judging, omnipresence in thought, and the
image of the Trinity in the human soul.117 This enables Theodoret to
recongure the anthropology of his great predecessor so as to incorporate
the distinctive Antiochene insights into an understanding of the human as
image and likeness of God that is much closer to the mainstream of the
Greek patristic tradition.
He provides an insightful analysis of human and divine creativity that
adds to what his predecessor says in the fragment cited earlier:
In imitation of God who has created, the human being also fashions houses,
walls, cities, harbors, ships, dockyards, chariots, and countless other things.
On them there are depictions of the sky, sun, moon, and stars, pictures of
human beings and images of nonrational animals. Yet the difference in
[modes of] fashioning is innite. For on the one hand God fashions all
things, both from things that exist and from things that do not exist, and
apart from labor and time. For his expectation immediately brings into
being what was planned. On the other hand, the human being needs matter
and also tools, planning, reection, time, labor, and other skills to produce
what comes into being. For the builder needs the metal worker, and the
metal worker [needs] the miner and the charcoal maker, and all alike [need]
the wood-cutter, the vinedresser and the farmer. Thus each skill is assisted in
a related task by the other skills. Yet indeed thus the human being in
fashioning imitates to some extent the Creator, as an image [imitates] the
archetype.118
As Ezchiel Montmasson observes regarding this passage, one could not

better characterize the difference that separates the works created by God
from those that come from human hands.119 Moreover, Theodoret takes
account of what is today called art as well as what the ancient Greeks
called arts (txnai), i.e., craftsmanship, agriculture, and manufacturing.
He describes the human interdependence and cooperation inherent in the
division of labor. This patristic appreciation of multifaceted human creativity as included in the image of God has great contemporary signicance. It could provide a good starting point for theological reection
about human culture and civilization.
Theodoret next observes that the human being reigns and judges in
118. Ibid., 2526.
119. Homme cr, 15:156.
246
imitation of God, but with the difference that, unlike God who knows
everything that happens, human judges need prosecutors and witnesses to
supply them with information. The exegete then makes some interesting
observations about divinization language and the distance between imitation and archetype that recall Theodores apophatic reserve. He almost
implies that the imago Dei in the human being is merely a matter of
words, not of ontological reality:
Thus also the human has been called god, since he is called image of God;
For a man, it says, ought not to cover his head, being the image and
glory of God [1 Cor 11.7]. But again the God of all has the divine nature,
not a mere name, while the human, as image, has only the name, having
been deprived of the thing itself.120
This suggests that Theodoret would not follow the Alexandrians and
Cappadocians in their belief that, for a likeness between divine and human attributes and activities to exist, it must in some genuine way be
grounded in a participation of the human in the divine nature [cf. 2 Pet
1.4], though of course there cannot be an identity between them.
The citation of 1 Cor 11.7 in this context is curious. One wonders
whether Theodoret places it here to downplay the linkage between male
authority and the divine image emphasized by his predecessors. However,
this citation also underlines the fact that Theodoret is still discussing the
divine image here, not a likeness distinct from the image.
The text then notes the analogy between Gods omnipresence and the
ability of the human mind to be present everywhere, though only in
thought and imagination. In contrast, God is present everywhere in
essence and in wisdom, and his power is uncircumscribed. Then Theodoret
says an analogy to the Trinity is present in the human soul with its
rational and lifegiving faculties, though in the human image these faculties are without hypostasis. He explains that in God the three hypostases
each genuinely subsist, and they are united without confusion.121 In all
these examples of human imitation of the divine, Theodoret has added
precision and clarity to what we know of Theodores account from extant
fragments.
In conclusion, it is evident that Theodoret reafrms the positive aspects
of what his Antiochene predecessors say about women, particularly in
their understanding of the creation of Eve and of marriage. He also
mitigates some of their negative attitudes by afrming that women share
121. Ibid., 2627.
247
the divine image, at least indirectly through men, and suggesting that
authority is only one among many aspects of the human image of God.
He also adopts Gregory of Nyssas view of human identity as primarily
located in characteristics all people share, and regards the gender distinction as a provision meant as a partial remedy for the fall rather than a
fulllment of Gods ultimate creative intention. However, given the
Antiochene anthropology based on Genesis 2, he appears to have interpreted this Cappadocian theory in an androcentric way. His understanding of human identity, like that of Theodore, is complex, fascinating, and
suggestive, but it contains unresolved tensions and creates some problems
that it cannot solve.
CONCLUSION
Let us now attempt to summarize what the three Antiochene exegetes say
about women and the divine image. Citing the Hebrew text of Gen 2.23,
Diodore of Tarsus afrms unequivocally that women fully share the same
human nature as men, that marriage is good, and that, accordingly,
husbands and wives should honor each other, especially in their roles as
parents. However, he identies the divine image of Gen 1.2627 with
authority and interprets this text in terms of 1 Cor 11.7 to show that
women lack authority and therefore also lack the image of God. This
produces a certain incoherence in his anthropology, since the divine image is separated from human identity as such. For him women and men
are united in their common human nature, as shown by the creation of
Eve from Adams side, but they are divided by the fact that men possess
authority and women do not. Thus the divine image actually serves to
divide humankind rather than uniting it in a way that afrms the dignity
of each person, as has become standard in mainstream Christian thought.
Theodore of Mopsuestias interpretation follows the same pattern but
with further, often insightful developments. Like Diodore, he strongly
afrms the value of marriage and the full humanity of woman, who is
equal to man spiritually and has the same moral and spiritual vocation as
he does. Theodore believes that the gender distinction is present in the
body but not in the soul. For him womens bodies, which come into being
through biological procreation, are different from and inferior to those of
men, but their souls, being created directly by God, as are the souls of all
humans and animals, are the same as those of men.
Following Diodore, Theodore denies that women are created in Gods
image, citing 1 Cor 11.7 and identifying the image with authority. However,
in extant fragments of his Genesis commentary he differs from his teacher,
248
rejecting the idea that the image is authority as such but identifying it with
a specic kind of authority. That is, he develops the concept of the human
being as a sort of viceroy of God, a visible representation of the invisible
Creator whom angels and animals serve as a way of honoring God. The
human king as microcosm unites the created world and mediates between
God and the creation, though this mediation consists in external structures of authority and obedience rather than an inner, ontological sharing
of divine life. For Theodore the divine image names a relationship of
other creatures to the human being more than a relationship of the
human with God. In his anthropology as in his Christology, there is an
ontological wall between the divine and the human. The result is that
loving receptivity and communion with God are decentered in human
identity while authority is emphasized, so Theodores anthropology is
unbalanced in an androcentric way.
Theodores discussion of the divine likeness contains several fruitful
ideas of how humans imitate divine attributes and activities, most of
which pertain to women as well as men. These include perception and
rationality but also, very interestingly, an imitation of the Trinity within
the human soul, and human creativity broadly understood as embracing
cultural activities such as art and technology, agriculture and manufacturing. These insights clearly have contemporary theological relevance. However, Theodore asserts that these various modes of likeness to God were
given to the human being to enable the fulllment of his royal mediating
role as divine image. This points to another incoherence in Theodores
anthropology, besides the difculties he shares with Diodore noted above.
According to Theodore, woman has been given most of the divine likeness but she does not share mans royal vocation as image of God,
although the purpose of the likeness is to enable the fulllment of this
vocation, so its presence in woman appears to have no purpose, at least in
this life. This incoherence is resolved in the age to come, when Theodore
believes the gender distinction will be transcended and all redeemed human persons will be united in Christ, the last Adam, and together with
him fulll the human task of cosmic mediation and unication.
While sharing many of his views, Theodoret moves beyond Theodore
in subtle but signicant ways. When reading Gen 1.2627 with 1 Cor
11.7, he afrms that women along with men possess authority over the
earth, and that, if man is Gods image, woman is at least an image of the
image. He also blurs the distinction between image and likeness, thus
including the characteristics Theodore associates with the human likeness
to God in his concept of the divine image and thereby broadening it to
include many other things besides authority.
249
Like the other Antiochenes, Theodoret has a positive appreciation of

marriage, but following hints in Theodores writings and in accordance
with his own vocation and life experience, he also articulates anthropological themes current in the ascetical movement that are very different
from those of Diodore and Theodore. Since the ascetic lifestyle and the
kind of sanctity that can emerge in it are the same for men and women,
unlike their differing social roles in late antique marriage, Theodorets
understanding of gender and human identity includes ideas familiar to us
from the Alexandrians and Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa,
in combination with those of his Antiochene predecessors. In particular,
he regards the angels, in whom there is no gender distinction, as models
for humans to imitate. This emphasizes that the true aim of human life is
fullled in the worship and service of God, love for neighbor, and the
practice of the virtues, not the biology of procreation or the cultural
norms of the late antique household. Ascetics linked the core of human
identity with these characteristics and activities, which all humans could
share whether or not they engaged in rigorous ascetic practices and regardless of their social location within the household. Theodoret, like
Gregory of Nyssa, emphasizes these universally human characteristics.
Like Gregory and Theodore, he says that, in foreknowledge of the fall,
God introduces the gender distinction characteristic of the nonrational
animals into the human creation to enable procreation as a partial remedy for mortality. For Theodoret gender is thus a secondary feature of
human identity. Accordingly, he suggests that, in the resurrection, which
the ascetics anticipate in this life as far as is possible, the gender distinction is no longer present. However, he incorporates this idea into the
Antiochene understanding of human identity based more on Gen 2 than
Gen 1, so he sees the female, like Eve who is created last, as added on to
human identity as such. Hence, unlike the Cappadocians, when he says
that angels and resurrected humans lack the gender distinction, he expresses this by saying they have no need for the female. Thus he still has
an androcentric bias, though perhaps less than did his predecessors Diodore
and Theodore.122
Nonna Verna Harrison teaches at the Institute for Orthodox Christian
Studies, Cambridge, England, and lives in Berkeley, California
122. Let me express my appreciation to Daniel Boyarin, Susan Ashbrook Harvey,

and an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into
this article.

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Women, Human Identity, and the Image of God: Antiochene Interpretations

Nonna Verna Harrison

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2001,

For additional information about this article

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

Women, Human Identity,

Most of the early Christian authors regarded by the mainstream churches

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

to men is that of the anonymous Latin writer known to modern scholars

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

human identity in the anthropologies of the Antiochene exegetes Diodore

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

condemnation, Diodores and Theodores commentaries on Genesis and

6. Jean-Nol Guinot, Lexgse de Thodoret de Cyr (Paris: Beauchesne, 1995),

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

exegetes share his presupposition but develop it in different ways. Unlike

Signicantly, Diodore afrms that women possess the same nature in

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Another fragment commenting on Gen 2.23, Now this is bone from

It is intriguing to wonder where Diodore obtained his mostly accurate

11. Fragment 13, Deconinck, Chane, 99.

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

ence between gun and nyrvpow by employing the rare form

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

afrming the intrinsic dignity of all people. In support of his conclusion

18. Bradley Nassif, Spiritual Exegesis in the School of Antioch, in New

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

edited by Robert Devresse.21 Theodore begins by stating that the creative

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

vocation to holiness and salvation. This is a commonplace among the

25. Clement, Pedagogue 1.10.11.11.2 (GCS 123:9596); Miscellanies 6.100.23

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

Another fragment adds the following:

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

be guided in your activities.32 Thus, Theodore believes that the husbands

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

and connecting link between the intelligible and perceptible levels of

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

animals or angels. Yet, in a long fragment preserved with Theodorets

A series of biblical citations about angelic authority follows, and then a

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

such an assessment when what is needed is rigorous conceptual analysis.

41. Immagine di Dio, 1056.

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

As Richard Norris explains, Theodore understands the divine image as

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

through service, so as to join the whole of creation in himself, and that he

The idea of the human being as sndesmow is a key concept in Theodores

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Thus, like many Greek fathers, including Clement of Alexandria, the

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

disjunction between divine and human remains.60 Although he speaks of

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Byzantine theology she becomes the great exemplar of human identity,

HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

an archetype, yet likewise he bears imitations and reections of that

62. Franoise Petit, Lhomme cr limage de Dieu: Quelques fragments grecs

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HARRISON/WOMEN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

Since the evidence survives only in fragments, any attempt to synthesize