- “For woman is not the image of God, whereas the man alone is the image of God”. It is mentioned in a book called Who Cooked the Last Supper (written by a feminist) but I can barely find any information on it on the net. Can someone verify if Augustine actually said this? Thank you.
Greetings in Christ, Cresh!
Augustine did write these words, but I’m afraid that his meaning has escaped the author of this book. To understand what he’s saying, you would want to read all of Book 12 of
On the Trinity. And if things aren’t making sense, you could back up and read Book 11.
In Book 12, Augustine explains that “whatever we have in the mind common with the beasts, thus much is rightly said to belong to the outer man” and is therefore not of the image of God (
, Bk. 12, Ch. 1.1On the Trinity). Both man and beast “are able both to perceive things corporeal from without, through the senses of the body, and to fix them in the memory, and remember them, and in them to seek after things suitable, and shun things inconvenient”; but man alone uses “higher reason to judge of these corporeal things according to incorporeal and eternal reasons” (
, Bk. 12, Ch. 2.2On the Trinity). This takes us back to Book 11, to see how the two functions of the mind operate:
“What then a body in place is to the bodily sense, that, the similitude of a body in memory is to the eye of the mind; and what the vision of one who looks at a thing is to that appearance of the body from which the sense is informed, that, the vision of a concipient is to the image of the body established in the memory, from which the eye of the mind is informed; and what the intention of the will is towards a body seen and the vision to be combined with it, in order that a certain unity of three things may therein take place, although their nature is diverse, that, the same intention of the will is towards combining the image of the body which is in the memory, and the vision of the concipient, that is, the form which the eye of the mind has taken in returning to the memory, in order that here too a certain unity may take place of three things, not now distinguished by diversity of nature, but of one and the same substance; because this whole is within, and the whole is one mind. …] And unless the will for the greatest part dwells in the higher and interior things, and unless that will itself, which is accommodated either to bodies without, or to the images of them within, refers whatever it receives in them to a better and truer life, and rests in that end by gazing at which it judges that those things ought to be done; what else do we do, but that which the apostle prohibits us from doing, when he says, ‘Be not conformed to this world’?” (
On the Trinity, Bk. 11, Ch.
4.7 &
5.8).
Augustine goes on to say that we
need the functions of the mind that we share in common with the beasts in order to get to heaven because that “cognizance of things temporal and changeable …] is necessary for managing the affairs of this life” (
, Bk. 12, Ch. 12.17On the Trinity).
This should make us think back to what he had said earlier about Martha and Mary, and Martha’s “ministering to a need”:
“For while Martha, her sister, was cumbered about necessary business, which, although good and useful, yet, when rest shall have succeeded, is to pass away, she herself was resting in the word of the Lord. And so the Lord replied to Martha, when she complained that her sister did not help her: ‘Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her’ (cf. Luke 10:30-42). He did not say that Martha was acting a bad part; but that ‘best part that shall not be taken away.’ For that part which is occupied in the ministering to a need shall be ‘taken away’ when the need itself has passed away. Since the reward of a good work that will pass away is rest that will not pass away” (
, Bk. 1, Ch. 10.20On the Trinity).
Here, “Mary” is the mind set on eternal things and “Martha” is the mind diverted by the necessities of life. Of the “mind” exhibited by Mary, Augustine would see an image of God. But of the mind exhibited by Martha, Augustine could say that “in that other [part of the human mind] which is diverted from [the contemplation of eternal things] in the dealing with temporal things, although there may be a trinity, yet there cannot be found an image of God” if not ordered in its actions to God as its end by the “mind” of Mary (
, Bk. 12, Ch. 4.4On the Trinity).
Coming back now… And so, Augustine has built up his image of the mind as divided in function but not in nature:
“And as the twain is one flesh in the case of male and female, so in the mind one nature embraces our intellect and action, or our counsel and performance, or our reason and rational appetite, or whatever other more significant terms there may be by which to express them; so that, as it was said of the former, ‘And they two shall be in one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24), it may be said of these, they two are in one mind” (
, Bk. 12, Ch. 3.3On the Trinity).
