relate to creation stories and the fall (Gen 1-3).82
82 See e.g. Cloke (1995:25-56) who, in her discussion of the Fathers’ view of womanhood, argues that the patristic attitudes about women take their root in the writings of “the Apostle Paul; for them the first and greatest Christian writer” (Cloke 1995:25). She rightly indicates, that Paul in 1 Cor 11:3 was expounding Gen 1:26, 2:7, 2:21 on the subject of the image of God in relation to man and woman.
This will hopefully reveal how their exegesis of these texts which in most cases suppressed a woman even more than the texts did, continued to shape the theology of the church, as well as the church’s tradition with regard to women in subsequent centuries. I will, for instance, briefly highlight the influence of this theology on the perception of woman in the medieval period, and among the protestant reformers, through to the twentieth century in the Church of England. In the Church of England, the Genesis and Pauline texts meet the British Empire, where they reinforce the Victorian constructions of gender. In this chapter, I will show that the Fathers, who are using biblical texts to construct their insights regarding women, share similar perceptions to the ‘secular’ Greek and Roman perceptions of women that were described in chapter three. This connection will be explored at the outset, by tracing these views to the construction of masculinity in the ancient world. The chapter will show that the Fathers, like Paul, were functions of the ancient world, its culture, and the Roman Empire. Consequently, the chapter argues that gender construction has to be historicized. It will show that the perception of a woman in relation to a man and also to God, has journeyed and been modified from one author to another and continues in that vein, even today. The chapter will therefore demonstrate, how tradition is constructed and passed on from one generation to another, sometimes through distortion. In this case, unfortunately, the tradition about the perception of Imago Dei in woman has circulated as the ‘Word of God’ in the history of the church, through repetitious citations and interpretations from generation to generation.
The distorted perception has been safely preserved through Jewish and Christian literary and legal systems, including Church Councils and Constitutions which have been handed down in the form of Church Canons, Laws and Traditions from one generation to another. In this case, as Oduyoye (1986:130) expresses, “(t)here is no doubt that the image we have of ourselves as Christian women and men and of our community and the language we use in speaking of ourselves have been shaped by these thinkers.”
While the Church Fathers and the early traditions invoked these texts to subordinate women, in recent times Christian feminist theologians have invoked anthropology to deconstruct the distorted traditional perceptions of Imago Dei in woman in the writings of the Fathers and to re- affirm God’s image as present in both sexes. In this chapter therefore, I will use their writings to critique the Fathers’ distorted perception of Imago Dei in a woman. Although their critiques have offered us much by way of re-affirming God’s image in both sexes, I will argue that the critique of feminist theologians can be strengthened by a study of masculinity, since feminist critique is focused on how woman is constructed, rather than on the social construction of man. A study of masculinity would bring a balanced focus about taking account of not only the construction of woman but also that of man which after all has largely shaped the gendered perception of the image of God in the writings of Paul and the Church Fathers. Only such a balanced focus can lead to a fuller picture of the image of God, in both woman and man.
The constraints of space and time do not allow for any detailed and comprehensive discussion of over two thousand years of gender construction in the church. However, I will sketch, as fully as I can, the way in which this text has been taken up and appropriated throughout the Christian age. My findings are grounded in the works of a few scholars, such as Elizabeth Clark (1983);
Michelle Gonzalez (2007); and Seal Gill (1994), among others. Each of these scholars has comprehensively examined gender relations in her particular period of focus.
This chapter is significant for the entire thesis because it links the preceding chapters with the following ones in two ways. Firstly, it historicizes gender construction beyond Paul and the Roman Empire by tracing it to the ancient world. Thus, the chapter gives further illumination to chapter three and four that Paul constructs his theology of gender and consequently his perception of Imago Dei upon an existing distorted tradition about gender identity. Secondly, tracing the gendered understanding of Imago Dei, derived in 1 Cor 11:1-16, in the history of the Christian tradition (in the Church Fathers, the Protestant Reformers, and in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries), naturally leads to an investigation and evaluation of the ways in which this theology influenced the perceptions of Imago Dei in its interaction with my pre-colonial Kenyan context, western missionary Christianity, and the ACK, in chapters six and seven. Chapter five therefore shows how the distorted tradition of gender identity has journeyed from one author to another even today, creating a distorted perception of Imago Dei in relation to gender.