Le dépassement des genres chez les Cappadociens et chez Grégoire de Nazianze en particulier. À propos de la Métaphysique des sexes de Sylviane Agacinski

Abstract

In her Métaphysique des sexes (2005), S. Agacinsky tracks the androcentrism in all the doctrinal aspects of the patristic literature from the five first centuries. She drives it out under three main shapes: a ‘‘metasexual’’ divine masculinity ; a physical and spiritual presexual masculinity in the ‘‘image’’ of God that the feminine alterity compromises ; an ethical ideal of spiritual virility that the - asexual or sexless - eschatological state fullfills. Regarding the paulinian universalism of Gal 3, 28, it does not question the hierarchy of the sexes here below, which is spiritually indifferent. Ambrose of Milan would have been the only one exception to this massive androcentrism. A study of the surpassing of the genders by the Cappadocian Fathers, this paper contests such a vision. It especially considers the case of Gregory of Nazianzus, which Agacinsky’s work ignores, but who has been a feminist in his time. In the Cappadocian theology, the divinity transcends not only sexes, but even genders. At the anthropological and soteriological level, we find a complete equality between man and woman, carnal as well as spiritual, with a shared responsibility in the original Fall. Regarding the ethical ability to live the virtuous, ascetic, life, the woman is even more courageous or enduring. Last but not least, the Nazianzen advocates the equality of rights for both sexes in matrimonial matter.