The Ideal of the Christian Couple: Ign. Pol. 5.1–2 Looking Back to Paul

Abstract

Reflecting upon ethical ideals upheld by the Apostolic Fathers scholars have noted the presence of a ‘positive attitude towards pagan society’, ‘ideas comparable to those of nineteenth-century petty bourgeoisie’, a vision of the church made up of ‘generous householders, well-disciplined children, submissive wives, and reliable slaves’. Commenting on the renunciation of Paul's preference for virginity by the beginning of the second century, Elizabeth A. Clark concludes that ‘… the ordering of the household deemed normal by late ancient pagan society tended to prevail in Christianity as well’. Recent work on the implications of remaining unmarried for the lives of early Christian women has perhaps allowed the tipping of the scale away from the preference for the privileges of virginity towards the ideal of wifely submission to stand out in even fuller relief. The obvious question is why the Christian ideal of the married couple with its apparent openness to Greco-Roman ethics emerges so boldly at the turn of the century. The attractive solution most frequently proposed is, as Clark puts it, that wives exhibiting the characteristic virtues of good domestic order, discretion and modesty, stood as ‘apologists for the new faith’.