Le Retour au Paradis: La relation entre la sanctification de l'homme et l'ascese sexuelle chez Tertullien. By KRIS DE BRABANDER.

Abstract

Tertullian’s denunciation of Eve as ‘the door of the devil’ (diaboli ianua—De cultu feminarum 1.1.2) and his increasingly strident polemics in favour of chastity have given him a reputation for misogyny. Brabander’s study provides a detailed analysis of one aspect which has contributed to this: Tertullian’s view of ‘l’ascèse sexuelle’ (which in this context appears to mean sexual abstinence as a path to salvation) and its relationship to ‘sanctification’. The book argues that ‘l’ascèse sexuelle’ was a fundamental and consistent theme of Tertullian’s theology. Brabander’s argument centres on Tertullian’s belief that in paradise Adam and Eve remained virgins (p. 182) so that sexual continence not only safeguards the sanctity acquired at baptism, but is itself the instrument that leads to sanctity (p. 144). Those who practice ‘l’ascèse sexuelle’ thus anticipate the return to paradise at the eschaton when homo in paradisum revocatur (De monogamia 5.3). Brabander’s approach is to look at the issues in three ways. First, he analyses the vocabulary of sanctificatio and its cognates in the Old and New Testament, then in Tertullian. He concludes that the notion of sanctity evolves linguistically in the early Christian period, and that, for Tertullian, implicitly earlier and explicitly in the later De pudicitia, sanctimonia was synonymous with sexual purity (p. 100). The vocabulary analysis is supplemented by two annexes showing where Tertullian uses sanctus and related words, and the scriptural passages he cites which contain them. In the second part Brabander puts this in theological context, showing Tertullian’s emphasis on ‘l’ascèse sexuelle’ in his protology, soteriology, and eschatology, and providing a comprehensive description of Tertullian’s views on each. The protology chapter explores Tertullian’s perception of the integritas of the virginal paradisal state (p. 176) by analysing his statements on the creation of humankind, the fall, and the expulsion from paradise. The chapter on soteriology emphasizes the centrality of baptism and the need to retain the ‘seal’ of baptism through leading a moral life, of which the highest manifestation is virginity. This was the natural state of the Christian because Christ himself was not only born of a virgin but by being chaste re-established the primordial condition of humankind to which we should aspire if we want to realize within ourselves our lost integritas (p. 208). The third chapter in Part II shows that this state is realized at the eschaton where ‘l’ascèse sexuelle’ becomes instrumentum aeternitatis (p. 265). Part III analyses Tertullian’s writing to show how he defines ‘l’ascèse sexuelle’ in practice. The four categories discussed are virginity, widowhood, continence, and self-castrated eunuchs. The primacy of virginity is reiterated, as for Tertullian virgins already belong to the family of angels (p. 296). Brabander supports his arguments with extensive textual examples and an analysis of Tertullian’s terminology of ‘chastity’, concluding that he prefers pudicitia to castitas or castimonia (p. 317).