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The Ideal of the Christian Couple: Ign. Pol. 5.1–2 Looking Back to Paul
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Extract
Reflecting upon ethical ideals upheld by the Apostolic Fathers scholars have noted the presence of a ‘positive attitude towards pagan society’, ‘ideas comparable to those of nineteenth-century petty bourgeoisie’, a vision of the church made up of ‘generous householders, well-disciplined children, submissive wives, and reliable slaves’. Commenting on the renunciation of Paul's preference for virginity by the beginning of the second century, Elizabeth A. Clark concludes that ‘… the ordering of the household deemed normal by late ancient pagan society tended to prevail in Christianity as well’. Recent work on the implications of remaining unmarried for the lives of early Christian women has perhaps allowed the tipping of the scale away from the preference for the privileges of virginity towards the ideal of wifely submission to stand out in even fuller relief. The obvious question is why the Christian ideal of the married couple with its apparent openness to Greco-Roman ethics emerges so boldly at the turn of the century. The attractive solution most frequently proposed is, as Clark puts it, that wives exhibiting the characteristic virtues of good domestic order, discretion and modesty, stood as ‘apologists for the new faith’.
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References
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39 Virgins are probably being included here in an official group of chaste women who were dependent on the church for support and/or were members of an order that provided service to the church. See discussion in Schoedel, Ignatius, 252.
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43 Trans. RSV.
44 See MacDonald, Pauline Churches, 32–42.
45 This is how Malina reads the text; see New Testament, 116.
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51 Note that Tertullian uses the presence of monogamist clergy in a marriage ceremony as an argument against second marriage. See De Monogamia 11.
52 For extensive discussion of the relationship between early Christian marriage teaching and pagan ideals see Brown, P., ‘Late Antiquity’ in A History of Private Life vol. 1 (ed. Veyne, P.; Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap, 1987) 246–51, 259–66Google Scholar; Yarbrough, Not Like, 31–63. Schoedel identifies marriage as one of the many areas where Ignatius expresses a relatively positive attitude towards pagan society; see ‘Theological Norms’, 50.
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56 See discussion Fox, R. L., Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1988) 370–4Google Scholar; on the relationship between the Christian imagery and the Jewish texts where Israel is described as God's bride and idolatry is compared to fornication see pp. 370–2.
57 For trans, of 2 Clem. employed here see note 20 above.
58 Schoedel, ‘Theological Norms’, 50; cf. Brown, The Body, 58–9.
59 On the details of the Augustan legislation of 18 BCE and 9 CE (lex Julia et Papia) in general see Gardner, Women, 77–8; on adultery see pp. 127–31. See also Brown, The Body, 23–5.
60 See Portefaix, Sisters, 118.
61 See Gardner, Women, 81–2, 224; see also Portefaix, Sisters, 29–30.
62 See Portefaix, Sisters, 23–8; Gardner, Women, 132–4, 222–9. Note that P. Brown has linked the appeal of early Christian morality to the condition of the socially vulnerable members of moderately well-to-do households; see ‘Late Antiquity’, 261.
63 On the influential role of women in the second-century church see Grant, ‘Second-Century Christianity’, 27–9. On the women mentioned in Ignatius see especially Fiorenza, In Memory, 247–8; see also Schoedel, Ignatius, 252–3, 280.
64 Schoedel, Ignatius, 23.
65 On asceticism in 2 Clem. see MacDonald, D. R., There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (HDR 20; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 42–3.Google Scholar
66 See Schoedel, Ignatius, 272.
67 Ibid.
68 Ign. Magn. 13.1–2 is especially interesting to consider here. In this exhortation language calling to mind the drawing together of opposites is intertwined with central religious convictions in an effort to instil harmony in community life. On polarities in general see Schoedel, Ignatius, 23–8.
69 Note that studies of modern sect development have illustrated not only that sects do not always evolve into denominations, but also that sects may move through successive stages of inward and outward orientation. See Isichei, ‘From Sect’, 180–1.
70 See Brown, ‘Late Antiquity’, 259.
71 On food see Theissen, G., ‘The Strong and the Weak in Corinth: A Sociological Analysis of a Theological Quarrel’, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1982) 132–7Google Scholar. On mixed marriage see MacDonald, ‘Early Christian Women’.