Luther on gender relations--just one reading of Genesis?

It is not easy to assess the impact of biblical texts on the understanding of the relationship between men and women during the Reformation at a time when Genesis 3 is echoed on grocery bags of a major U.K. supermarket chain in the question "Why did Eve want to move to New York?--She fell for the Big Apple!" From a biblical scholar's point of view, the most intriguing aspect of the subject "women after the Reformation" is the claim to authoritative scriptural support for a particular concept of gender relations and the place of women in society. In the following observations on Luther's sermons on Genesis, which he delivered two years before he got married himself (in 1525), the biblical background of his views on sexuality, chastity, and marriage is addressed.

Passages that carry the argument in Luther's numerous sermons, treatises, and pamphlets on these issues are from both the Old and the New Testament. They include among others Genesis 1-3; 1 Timothy 2:8-15; 1 Corinthians 7; 11:2-16; 14:26-40; Ephesians 5:21-33; 1 Peter 3:1-7; and, not to be overlooked, Romans 6:12. These words of the Scriptures are complemented by biblical examples, not least the stories about Deborah (Judges 4) and Huldah (2 Kings 22). (l) There can be no question about the authority of Scripture for the reformers in the sixteenth century. One might wonder whether scriptural authority for them extended to matters of ordinary life in family and society, but one will soon find that this was clearly the case, notably with regard to marriage. (2) Thus the Reformers' use of the Bible could be seen as providing a model for reflecting upon gender relations in the light of the biblical tradition today.

On the other hand, it is a commonplace that the Bible has lost its authority in many areas of modem life, that our situation today is characterized by pluralism, and that people are free to make their own choices and therefore adopt an enormous variety of lifestyles. It seems important right at the outset to acknowledge this aspect of choice over against any hasty attempts at claiming a normative status for recommendations of particular forms of relations between the sexes even if these come close to what certain biblical texts seem to demand. (3) The foremost aspect of this change may be seen in equal access to education--Luther never met a female fellow student at university!

Reading Moses

Because the situation of women in today's world seems so profoundly different from their situation in earlier centuries, the following analogy suggests itself as one reads Luther's comments on gender roles in his interpretation of Genesis: Just as the biblical tradition is no longer an authoritative source of information about the age and the origin of the world, it can no longer be quarried for normative assertions about gender relations. The history of biblical interpretation shows that until the late eighteenth century--and in some circles even beyond that time--the Bible allowed everyone who read the Genesis story of creation to think they knew that the earth was almost 6,000 years old (Archbishop Ussher's famous date for the creation was 4004 B.C.E.) and that, for example, plants and trees had covered the ground even before the sun had been formed. Geology and the other natural sciences helped to overcome such ideas.4 In an analogous development, the Bible, which shaped the predominant view of the role o f women right into the twentieth century, has lost its status as a standard for defining gender roles. Feminism and the social sciences may not have the same scientific character as geology and the natural sciences, but their effect on certain forms of reception of the Bible is just as strong, no matter whether it arises from a new human self-awareness or from an accumulation of knowledge. (5)

A brief discussion of Luther's reading of Genesis 1-3 will serve to explain and justify the suggested analogy. Three preliminary points should be noted. First, Luther did, of course, consider those chapters as authoritative divine teaching through Moses, not as the expression of religious insights by anonymous authors from the First or Second Temple periods in Judah. Second, as several New Testament writers refer to the text, Luther also takes writings such as 1 Timothy or Corinthians into account, and this immediately sets his interpretation in a context of concerns about fornication (1 Cor7:2) and discipline. Third, the sermons of 1523 show a remarkable intersection of, not to say confusion between, exegesis and church politics. Luther's comments on sexuality and marriage are informed by his opposition to celibacy and monastic vows rather than by any concerns with the role and self-esteem of women. Tracts such as those on marriage (1519, 1522), his defense of the escape of a group of nuns from a monastery ( 1523), or his appeal to the Knights of the Teutonic Order (1523), as well as his exposition of 1 Corinthians 7 (1523), date from about the same period as the sermons on Genesis. (6)

Sexuality and marriage

As far as the role of women is concerned, the sermons offer three main arguments. To start with, Luther understands human sexuality in terms of its power of reproduction. As such, it is a natural force that holds human beings in its grip, male and female alike. Luther takes the words of the divine blessing in Gen 1:28, "be fruitful and multiply," to mean that human beings cannot and must not resist this generative sexual power, except in those very rare cases where freedom from its overwhelming force has been granted by a special gift of God. Where Luther refers to the story of the fall, he distinguishes emphatically between the loss of the "image of God" and the continuation of this natural force of sexuality, though now corrupted by a sense of sexual pleasure. (7) Gender relations or the personal identity of a man or a woman are only conceived of in the perspective of this understanding of sexuality as a power of reproduction--in a far more radical way than is the case in 1 Corinthians 7, it would seem.

Luther then insists that the social shape in which this natural force ought to find its realization is marriage. He already asserts this in his interpretation of Genesis 1 and only confirms it when he comes to Genesis 2. Thus he states, "It has been decreed by God that you ought to be married, there is no free will here." Accordingly, he notes in his comments on the biblical motif of the woman as a man's "helper," "Women were created to no other purpose than to serve a man, and to be a helper in procreation." (8)

It may be worthwhile to pause for a brief discussion of these first two points and their exegetical merit. One wonders whether there is any reason here to speak of a heightened appreciation of sexuality, of a higher estimation of marriage and of women, or whatever other apologetic formulae one finds in standard works on the Reformation. It would be more appropriate to note that in such passages women are reduced to one function--to bear and to raise children. And this concept underlies all the rest of what Luther has to say about the relationship between men and women. In his biblical theology of creation, Genesis 1 becomes a source of the notion of human generative power as a natural force, and, taken together with Genesis 2, also of the notion of the estate of marriage as the one divinely ordained form in which this power ought to realize itself.

Against this reading of Genesis, two exegetical objections may be raised. First, Luther seems to understand the biblical concept of blessing in Gen 1:28 in accordance with the Aristotelian category of a causa finalis, the purpose for which something exists. He may, after all, have received a too profound philosophical education at the University of Erfurt! (9) Whereas in the biblical text God graciously endows human beings with the power of generation, in Luther's anthropological thought, God through his blessing defines the inescapable destination of human beings, namely to procreate. This understanding becomes even more problematic where Luther claims that unlike the original creation "in the image of God," this destination has not been affected by the fall (except for the aspect of pleasure). A second objection would be that Luther's narrow and one-sided interpretation of the biblical motif of a "helper" is not justified. (10)

Subordination

Against the background of these deeply held beliefs, the third and widely known aspect of Luther's conclusions from Genesis 1-3 with regard to gender relations is not surprising: subordination (to use a New Testament term: 1 Tim 2:11; 1 Cor 14:34; Eph 5:21f.; 1 Pet 3:1). Curiously, in his sermons on Genesis this aspect is not even counterbalanced by the aspect of mutual love as it is, for example, in Ephesians. Luther misses no opportunity to stress the primacy of the male partner. Why did God give Adam the commandment not to eat from the tree of knowledge even before Eve had been created (Gen 2:17)? This shows that a woman should not receive the Word of God without mediation; rather Eve was to learn it from Adam. Thus, Luther concludes, "even before the fall the ruling power and governance was with the male person." It is therefore not fully convincing when it is claimed that according to Luther "women would have remained equal to men in all respects" if Eve had not sinned. (11) Why is the Hebrew designation 'issa (woman) derived from 'is (man) in Gen 2:23? This shows that the woman owes her name to the man and that, again, "he retains the ruling power." Why does God ask in the singular, "Adam, where are you?" (Gen 3:9)? This shows "that God confers the office of ruling, teaching, and preaching to the male person." Similarly on Gen 3:20 with a reference to 1 Pet 3:7. Is this really what the biblical text is about? (12)

From the perspective of biblical studies, it appears that Luther's view of women is embedded in a reception of the biblical tradition that culminates in a convenient assertion of certain preconceptions. I doubt whether today we would call these anything but discrimination against women--notwithstanding Luther's claim to scriptural support forhis views. Historians may argue about whether or not the Reformation had a liberating effect for women. But if one studies the core concept as it is developed in biblical interpretation, any sense of freedom for women seems to have been eclipsed.

Even where the concept of priesthood in the Catholic Church is replaced by the concept of ministry in the Protestant setting, women are excluded from "teaching and preaching." While this position may follow from texts such as 1 Timothy 2, there is no reason why it should also be anchored in Genesis 1-3. An inquiry into Luther's reading of Genesis thus makes us aware of the contrast between what he accepted and propounded as normative Christian teaching and what has become common sense today. The concept of gender relations as it was developed during the Reformation has become part of the history of ideas (13) just as have traditional, biblically based assumptions about the age and the origin of the earth.

The Bible's authority

I do not here address the issue of the significance of the Reformation for the emergence of modem biblical criticism. However, I would like to balance my critique of Luther's use of the Bible for defining gender relations with acknowledging two fundamental points where reference to his work remains a great stimulus for contemporary exegesis. The first is Luther's insistence on the authority of Scripture. It should not be denied that the biblical tradition is the proper standard for Christian theological thought, even if we have come to realize that God does not dwell within the words of the Scriptures in the way the Reformers and their successors for many generations saw it. Second is Luther's unambiguous orientation towards the gospel and faith. It remains a central tenet in Christian theology and church life that God is perceived with the eyes of a faith that entails justification. However, we have come to realize that there is greater freedom to develop a variety of distinctive ways of life in family and s ociety than the Reformers would have admitted. Luther's preoccupation with monastic vows and other similar issues of his day prevented him from fully realizing the consequences of what even he himself points out in some passages of his exposition of 1 Corinthians 7. (14) We should therefore not look for guidance where we meet with inconsiderate and prejudiced views on gender relations in Luther's reading of Genesis, but instead we should sharpen our sense for the Bible's contribution to protecting human dignity.

(1.) The text-critical and hermeneutical decisions behind Luther's use of Dan 11:37 would require a separate discussion (Antiochus IV, that is, the Antichrist, that is, the Pope, "will show no regard for married women").

(2.) See, for example, the emphasis on marriage in a list of the reformers' achievements in Luther's preface of 1528 to a book by Steffen Klingsbeyl: Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) 26:530-33.

(3.) See, however, the argument in favor of a plain-sense reading of the Bible in Christopher Seitz, "Sexuality and Scripture's Plain Sense: The Christian Community and the Law of God," in Homosexuality, Science, and the "Plain Sense" of Scripture, ed. David L. Balch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 177-81.

(4.) An outline of this development can be found in Claude C. Albritton, The Abyss of Time (San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper & Co., 1980); a survey of nineteenth-century controversies in Peter Addinall, Philosophy and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

(5.) For contemporary thought concerning the situation of women one might refer to Martha C. Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

(6.) For the texts see WA vols. 2, 10/2, 11, 12; most of them are also in Luther's Works (LW) 44, 45, 28. The sermons on Genesis are in WA 14 (manuscript transcriptions) and WA 24 (the German and Latin printed editions of 1527), hut not in LW. The later lectures on Genesis of 1535(-45) are in WA 42 and LW 1 (where the page numbers of WA are given). It is worth comparing Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Matrimony of 1518: Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), vols. 25/26:129-45, 528-29; 71:85-95.

(7.) See WA 24:50-54; WA 14:111-14.

(8.) The quotes are from WA 24:54 and 79 (my transl.), cf. WA 14:126-27.

(9.) See his remarks on university reform in To the Christian Nobility of 1520: WA 6:457-58 (LW 44:200-207). The lectures of 1535 contain several digressions on Aristotle, cf. esp. WA 42:93-95 and 102.

(10.) The emphasis is slightly different in the lectures of 1535, however, generatio (procreation) is still defined as second only to the praedicatio nominis Dei (proclamation of the name of God), WA 42:87-89.

(11.) Charmarie J. Blaisdell, "Women in the Lutheran and Calvinist Movements," in Triumph over Silence: Women in Protestant History, ed. Richard L. Greaves (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985), 15-16. Although this view does occur in the lectures of 1535, it is also contradicted there: WA 42:87 against 51. See also Merry E. Wiesner, "Nuns, Wives, and Mothers: Women and the Reformation in Germany," in Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe. ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 12.

(12.) WA 24:72, 80, 107, 113 (my trans.).

(13.) See the intriguing study by James G. Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), esp. 57-62 and 120-23 on Luther.

(14.) Notably on vv. 17 and 24; WA 12 (LW 28): 126, 131.