Clement of Alexandria: STROMATA (MISCELLANIES), Part III, Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 19

So the Church is full of those, as well chaste women as men, who all their life have contemplated the death which rouses up to Christ. [2768] For the individual whose life is framed as ours is, may philosophize without Learning, whether barbarian, whether Greek, whether slave--whether an old man, or a boy, or a woman. For self-control is common to all human beings who have made choice of it. And we admit that the same nature exists in every race, and the same virtue. As far as respects human nature, the woman does not possess one nature, and the man exhibit another, but the same: so also with virtue. If, consequently, a self-restraint and righteousness, and whatever qualities are regarded as following them, is the virtue of the male, it belongs to the male alone to be virtuous, and to the woman to be licentious and unjust. But it is offensive even to say this. Accordingly woman is to practice self-restraint and righteousness, and every other virtue, as well as man, both bond and free; since it is a fit consequence that the same nature possesses one and the same virtue. [2770] We do not say that woman's nature is the same as man's, as she is woman. For undoubtedly it stands to reason that some difference should exist between each of them, in virtue of which one is male and the other female. Pregnancy and parturition, accordingly, we say belong to woman, as she is woman, and not as she is a human being. But if there were no difference between man and woman, both would do and suffer the same things. As then there is sameness, as far as respects the soul, she will attain to the same virtue; but as there is difference as respects the peculiar construction of the body, she is destined for child-bearing and housekeeping. "For I would have you know," says the apostle, "that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man: for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. For neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord." [2771]

[2768] [The Edin. Translator says "courted the death;" but surely (meletesanton) the original merely states the condition of Christians in the second century, "dying daily," and accepting in daily contemplation the very probable death "by which they should glorify God."]

[2770] [This vindication of the equality of the sexes is a comment on what the Gospel found woman's estate, and on what it created for her among Christians.]

[2771] 1 Cor. xi. 3, 8, 11.

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