Gnostic Anti-Sexuals
Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female by Brian Patrick Mitchell
reviewed by Allan C. Carlson
Brian Mitchell’s observations on male/female relations first came to my attention in 1989 through his book Weak Link: The Feminization of the American Military. Having served for seven years as an infantry officer and intelligence agent in the U.S. Army, Mitchell described how the massive entry of women into the armed forces after 1970 had already disrupted American fighting capacities and shattered the traditions, morale, and performance standards of the military academies at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs. He warned that unless promptly countered, this feminist-inspired “march of folly” resting on the suppression of masculinity and a quest for androgyny and relying on systematic deception within the Pentagon, would soon cripple American battlefield effectiveness.
Alas, matters actually turned out worse than he had feared, and the feminization of the Army, Navy, and Air Force is now largely complete. Moving on in life, Mitchell went from military journalism to theological studies, and he eventually became a protodeacon in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Old interests and questions, though, remained. His doctoral dissertation has now been published as Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female.
The “Anti-Sexual” View
This is a timely and important book, original in conception, richly documented, and persuasive in argumentation. On questions of sex, marriage, and family, Mitchell contends that believers in the early Christian centuries faced two rival philosophies. One of these, the “anti-sexual” perspective, had originated among the Greeks in the fifth century b.c., encouraged most specifically by the Platonists. They saw women as inferior beings, especially burdened by their bodies. The demands of the body also held men back from fully engaging ethereal realms. The only purpose or “good” of marriage was for breeding, but even this was best left to inferior men.
Early Christians inherited the “anti-sexual” approach from the intellectual world around them, and some gained further encouragement from several scriptural passages. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul famously wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye all are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). Jesus himself told the Sadducees that “in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels of God in heaven” (Matt. 22:30). Some pushed these words beyond their direct meanings, allowing marriage only as a concession to weakness, blaming the body for sin, and framing male and female as beast-like additions to human nature. A few went further, casting marriage as fornication and declaring an end to the sexual distinction.
Mitchell counts Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius Ponticus, and Maximus the Confessor among the early Christian writers tending in the “anti-sexual” direction. He gives special attention to Origen (184–253). A native of Egypt, Origen moved to Alexandria after his father’s martyrdom and appears to have fallen in among the Encratites. This radical Gnostic sect preached against marriage and childbearing, associating male and female with division and death. As found in the heretical Gospel of the Egyptians: “Salome asked the Lord: ‘How long shall death hold sway?’ He answered: ‘As long as you women bear children.’” Origen also embraced the Encratite goal of eliminating male and female so as to become sexless spirits made in the true image of God. As Jesus is quoted in the equally heretical Gospel of Thomas: “Every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Inspired by another scriptural passage, Origen went so far as to have himself castrated, becoming a eunuch “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matt. 19:12). Less drastic actions within the “anti-sexual” school included the celebration of sexual asceticism, especially lifelong celibacy and virginity, as spiritually superior to marriage and breeding.
The “Pro-Sexual” Approach
The philosophical rival to this approach was “pro-sexual,” casting male/female distinctions, marriage, and coitus itself as fully in harmony with human nature and individual telos. Among the ancient Greeks, Homer—most notably—held to this view. As he has Odysseus declare, “Nothing is greater or better than this, when man and wife dwell in a home in one accord.” However, a little over half a millennium later, the devoted husband and father Aristotle was “almost alone” among his peers in his positive take on marriage (“Man is by nature a pairing creature”).
Allan C. Carlson is the author of numerous books, including Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis and The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity. He attends St. Paul Lutheran Church in Rockford, Illinois. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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