Irenaeus

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Chapter Fourteen

Irenaeus, Women, and Tradition

Sara Parvis

Q

uestions of gender have from time to time been identified as key to Gnostic thought

and writing. For Elaine Pagels, gender was central to Gnosticism’s implicit critique

of patriarchal Christianity.^1 For many other scholars, images of the feminine have con-

tinued to be a refreshing part of what Gnosticism had to offer.^2 As feminism has been

replaced by gender studies in scholarly attention, this interest has continued. It has

recently been argued by Jonathan Cahana that the rationale of Gnosticism can best be

made sense of as a form of queering of ancient theological and social gender norms.^3

It should be noted that there have also been voices on the other side. Michael Wil-

liams, in his seminal and wide-ranging study Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument

for Dismantling a Dubious Category, has questioned whether the relative prominence

of feminine imagery in “Gnostic” texts is much more than simply a sign of their greater

accommodation to ancient religious norms than the more hardline, “deviant” Jewish

and Christian traditions.^4 He also argues that “Gnostic” exegesis is not appropriately

characterized as the exegesis of “value reversal” (what would be called “queering” in

contemporary parlance).^5

Whether notions of gender are quite as central to Gnostic, or biblical demiurgic,^6

traditions in general as Pagels and Cahana imply, Irenaeus is clearly aware that the

alternative traditions he is dealing with appeal to women in particular, and in a num-

ber of different ways. I want to argue here that one of the subtexts of Irenaeus’s The

Refutation of Knowledge Falsely So Called (Adversus haereses) is a defense of the space

for women within mainstream Christianity. Indeed, I shall argue, it is a double defense:

both an articulation of the space that Irenaeus claims already exists for women in the

mainstream Christian community, and a sanctioning of it by the strongest sanctions

he is able to bring to bear.

It is easy to argue that the Gnostics, as they appear in Irenaeus’s work, have better

news to offer women than he does, both in the second century and now. First, in con-

trast to the apparently male creator God of Judaism and Christianity, the highest divine

beings in the Gnostic myths described by Irenaeus come in male and female pairs.^7

The male God of the Old Testament is still there as creator, and still says “I am God,