Do women not have souls?

[Digitonomy]

Ok, here’s some passages from Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, by Uta Ranke-Heinemann. The book is virulently anti-Catholic, and tends to take the worst possible interpretation of any event or document in the Church’s history. On the plus side, her work is well-researched.

Chapter V, p 74-5.
The prevailing view in Antiquity was Aristotle’s notion that the animation of the masculine fetus did not take place until 40 days after conception, while the female fetus acquired a human soul only 90 days after conception. Before then the fetus had first vegetable, then an animal soul (On the History of Animals 7, 3, 583b). This temporal difference in the genesis of the soul in men and women would not have been simply a matter of time, but of human quality, since the soul belongs to man sooner than it does to woman. The soul, i.e., the essence of humanity, is something masculine rather than something feminine.

A similar idea about the inferiority of women probably underlies the Old Testament: According to Leviticus 12:1-5 a woman is unclean 40 days after the birth of a son, 80 days after the birth of a daughter. The 90 days before the emergence of the female soul in Aristotle and the 80 days of uncleanness in the Old Testament are fused together in Christian tradition, so that a soul was attributed to the female fetus 80 days after conception.

 

[Digitonomy]

More from that book (this seems to be along the lines that Sherlock and Grayton were stating):

Chapter XVI, p 190-1.
We may note in passing that as bad as this degrading of women by the Church was, it must be made clear that the worst accusation - that the Church doubted women had a soul or were human at all - is untrue. One often hears and reads that at the second Synod of Mâcon (585) the participants disputed whether women had souls, but that never happened. Souls were not the issue. Gregory of Tours, who was there, reports that a bishop raised the question, “whether woman could be called homo.” Thus it was a philological question (though raised because of the higher value that men placed on themselves): homo in Latin means “person” as well as “man,” as do cognate words in all the Romance languages, and as “man” does in English. The other bishops, Gregory reports, referred the questioner to the story of Creation, which says that God created man (homo), “male and female he created them,” and to Jesus’ title “Son of Man”(filius hominis), although he was the son of a virgin, and hence the son of a woman. These clarifications settled the issue: the term homo was to be applied to women as well as to men (Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 8, 20).

 

[Digitonomy]

Leaving aside Ranke-Heinemann, it also occurs to me that the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, which has received a lot of attention in recent years (especially with that dopey movie “Stigmata”), has as its last verse

Simon Peter said to them: Let Mariham go out from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Look, I will lead her that I may make her male, in order that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

It seems the misunderstanding that women had a lesser or even absent soul has been kicked around since the early years, and as we know bad ideas are hard to stamp out.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

digitonomy:

Leaving aside Ranke-Heinemann, it also occurs to me that the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, which has received a lot of attention in recent years (especially with that dopey movie “Stigmata”), has as its last verse It seems the misunderstanding that women had a lesser or even absent soul has been kicked around since the early years, and as we know bad ideas are hard to stamp out.

In case anyone missed the link explaining where this soulless ladies story comes from ​

It’s amusing and sad that people swallow the “Gospel of Thomas”, but object to the canonical ones - the GoT Jesus is not very Jewish, and the GoT is not really even a Gospel - it’s a body of sayings, with no organic connection, or development of ideas. ##

 

[Black_Jaque]

For anyone who can’t grasp the difference between actual Church teaching and the personal thoughts and opinions of some ancient theologian - simply look at contemporary circumstances.

1,000 years from now, someone is going to dredge up a copy of Gary Wills’ literature, some Call to Action pamphlets and say, “See what the church taught at one time!”

 

[FelixBlue]

mlchance:

Catholic teaching is that all living things have souls. Whether those souls are immortal is another question.

It is ironic that a Buddhist levels this accusation. According to Buddhism, we do not only not have souls, we do not even have existence. We are illusions begetted by the first falsehood: the ego, or awareness of the self.

– Mark L. Chance.

I’m not Buddhist, but just to correct you: B’s do believe in human existence, just not permanent human existence (which, from the phenominalogical standpoint is true…but not fully so).

 

[theMutant]

The claim that the Catholic Church taught that women do not have souls is one of the favorite slanders against the Church - especially the Church of the Middle Ages - since the “Age of Reason” began. However, look at all of the great women saints from that time! Additionally, look at the greatest Saint in all of Catholic teaching - Mary!

I recommend a book called “Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths” by Regine Pernoud. She has a chapter related to this very claim.

 

[mlchance]

FelixBlue:

I’m not Buddhist, but just to correct you: B’s do believe in human existence, just not permanent human existence (which, from the phenominalogical standpoint is true…but not fully so).

But Buddhism also posits that existence is ultimately illusory, and that there is no soul. It is one of the fundamental paradoxes of Eastern thought that the law of noncontradiction, one of the cornerstone’s of logic, doesn’t really matter. Thus, according to Buddhism, we exist, but don’t exist.

– Mark L. Chance.