S. Parvis—Irenaeus, Women, and Tradition 161for it and having pity on it.^15 Irenaeus’s God the Father may not be quite as masculine
as he seems (though of course gender characteristics are notoriously fluid, particularly
in a society influenced by a multiplicity of cultures such as the Roman Empire of the
second century). Where Irenaeus does allow a feminine principle to be directly col-
ored by feminine imagery, and particularly the maternal imagery of breastfeeding, is
in speaking of the church.^16 However, once again, this is driven by scripture from both
covenants, specifically Paul (Galatians 4:26, “The Jerusalem above is free, and she is
our mother”) and Isaiah (66:10-11, “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her... that
you may suck and be satisfied with her consoling breasts”).
None of this need be explained by an attempt on Irenaeus’s part to respond to
Gnostic feminine imagery with “orthodox” feminine imagery: it may all have been
firmly fixed in Irenaeus’s thought through simple scripture exegesis before he ever
heard of Ptolemy or Valentinus. But he does leave room for women to take that imag-
ery further if they want to, so long as they assort it with scripture and the straight edge.
As regards Irenaeus’s direct response to divine feminine imagery in the Gnostics,
the evidence is more intriguing, though also oblique. What is particularly notable here
is that he never criticizes the notion of a female God, creator, or principle per se, which
would have been easy to do from various second-century cultural perspectives, scrip-
tural and philosophical.
Instead, his arguments against the female gods and female principles are all objec-
tions to something other than the fact that they are female. His arguments against the
pleroma are arguments from unity. The male and female aeons would inevitably be
united, he argues, because Abyss and Silence, Thought and Truth and the rest cannot
exist apart from one another.^17 Sophia, in particular, could not have separated herself off
from her partner, Will.^18 Instead, they must all be one and indivisible, as befits a true God.
Irenaeus does not target Sophia and Achamoth for being female, as he easily could
have done. Instead, he argues that Sophia’s actions are incompatible with her nature:
nothing that she is supposed to have done is appropriate to Wisdom.^19 He makes fun of
the way she acts like a languishing lover rather than a spiritual being—but the compar-
ison is with a comic male character, and the fun he makes is of her Gnostic authors—
because she should not be languishing in misery because of a hopeless longing for the
perfect Father at all. Instead, she should be happy, because the nature of the perfect
God is to be found.^20
Achamoth, the mother goddess, the detritus of Sophia’s passion, would seem to be
a particularly easy target for misogynist ridicule. But Irenaeus simply argues that she
does not work as a logical entity, because everything that is supposed to make the cre-
ator God weak and unsatisfactory would also make her weak and unsatisfactory. He has
no interest in arguing that female gods as such have no place in the cosmos. Instead,
what interests Irenaeus is to argue that the same God who is creator of the world must
also intend its salvation, and must also be the supreme being; and, in particular, that
creation is not an unworthy act, but one that is entirely worthy of the most high God.^21
Let us turn now to Eve, and the nature of woman as such.^22 Here, Irenaeus is so very
keen to be positive about women that he gets himself into what might be seen as theo-
logical hot water, at least in some traditions. Eve, Irenaeus affirms, was disobedient,