Abstract
Fertility is a complex and contentious topic in biblical theology, touching upon social, cultural, and gender identity issues in the ancient world. It intersects with factors like gender, age, disability, and socio-economic status, notably in the context of slavery. Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar’s story, particularly Genesis 16, highlights the link between slavery and fertility. This study examines John Chrysostom’s interpretation of their narrative (ca. 349–407 CE) to explore these intersections. Chrysostom views fertility and infertility as social, moral, and theological concepts linked to divine intervention. He portrays Abraham as the ideal husband, Sarah as the ideal wife, and Hagar as a deviant slave woman. Theologically, he transforms slavery from a social status to an ontological state and criticizes Jewish identity. Chrysostom’s interpretation supports late antique slaveholding values, making infertility discourse a complex tool with intersectional dynamics in his biblical reception framework.
Keywords
Fertility is one of the more contentious and complex topics in the study of biblical theology. Broadly speaking, issues of fertility and infertility cut to the very core of social, cultural, and gender identity dynamics. In many societies there is a dominant and distinctive discourse that to be a woman, one must be a mother. In ancient Greek society, the transition from parthenos (“young girl” or “virgin”) to gynê (“woman”) involved giving birth and becoming mêtêr (“mother”) (King, 1998, p. 23–24). This centrality of motherhood and childbearing discourse persisted in biblical and early Christian texts (Myers, 2017). In our modern society, not much has necessarily changed. Moss and Baden (2015, pp. 2–7) highlight the continuing social stigmas associated with infertility and childlessness, which become classified in terms of pathology.
Even the language of infertility and childlessness is complicated and sensitive to gender constructions. Moss and Baden (2015, pp. 2–3) provide us with a helpful overview of the terminology and problems associated with it. “Barrenness” is somewhat archaic nomenclature, and along with “fertility/infertility,” we have direct links with agricultural imagery. These terms are usually used to refer to women. A word often used for men’s infertility, but may also include women’s, is “sterility.” We also have problems of whether infertility is a state, a condition, or a choice. The related term, “childlessness”, encompasses a broader semantic scope. One can have voluntary or involuntary childlessness. And all these terms are medically, culturally, but also historically, specific. For this study, I will use the term “infertility” to broadly refer to child-lessness, especially involuntary childlessness.
Infertility, however, is a construction or, as Flemming (2013, pp. 565–590) phrases it, an invention. In her investigation of inventions of infertility in the Classical Greek context, especially from the medical literature, Flemming (2013, p. 565) demonstrates that the Hippocratic Corpus devotes much discussion to the issue of fertility and generation, and “places them alongside the availability of a divine approach to dealing with reproductive disruption, the possibility of asking various deities, including the specialist healing god Asclepius, for assistance in having children.” She shows that infertility as an “essentially reversible somatic state” was, in fact, already invented in Classical Greece (Flemming, 2013, p. 565). Both Moss and Baden and Flemming emphasize fertility and infertility not only as medical or biological issues, but also as ones that involve social and cultural ideas. The construction of fertility and infertility takes place at the intersection of the varying medical-biological, cultural, social, religious, and political discourses (see also De-Whyte, 2018). I will follow in this approach to understanding infertility historically, but also discursively. Biblical-theological approaches to infertility, especially in the Hebrew Bible, are numerous. We have historical-critical and literary approaches to infertility in the Bible, but also approaches from disability studies, gender and feminist biblical interpretation, social-scientific approaches, cultural anthropological interpretations, and so on (a useful and detailed overview of some examples of these approaches may be found in Schones, 2019).
In some societies the issue of infertility and problems associated with it are more acute. In many South African cultures, for example, motherhood is a highly revered state (such societies are often labelled as “pronatalist”), and childless women are often not only marginalized and stigmatized, but even ridiculed and labelled social deviants (Pedro, 2004). A recent volume edited by Kotzé, Marais, and Müller van Velden (2019), with numerous enlightening contributions from South African scholars of religion and theology, showcases the importance of having a comprehensive view, ethically and theologically, of reproductive health. Infertility and childlessness are therefore issues that cannot be more relevant in our current society, in which we also see major shifts in and transformations to (and reactions against) newly conceived gender identities and sexualities.
Questions of fertility in the ancient world inevitably intersect with issues like gender, age, disability, and socio-economic status. Slavery, in particular, is an important factor to consider when working on fertility in antiquity. Kartzow (2012, pp. 38–54) analyses slaves as reproductive capital, that is, commodities that had value based on their fertility and capacity to reproduce. Fertility was especially important for female slaves in Late Antiquity. Many late ancient domestic slaves were probably vernae, or home-born slaves (De Wet, 2015, p. 14). This illustrates how complex slave reproductivity would have been. It would have been rare for a female slave to be manumitted if she was still fertile (Glancy, 2006, p. 161). On the other hand, an infertile female slave would not have much value, and her status and role in ancient society was probably quite precarious. Without considering the implications of enslavement, one is not truly able to understand fertility and infertility in the ancient Mediterranean world. The important work of Kartzow (2012, pp. 38–54; 2015, pp. 396–409; 2016, pp. 89–104; see also, more generally on slavery, Kartzow 2018) on fertility and slavery in biblical literature, especially the New Testament, has paved the way for furthering the analysis into Late Antiquity. Harper’s (2011) thorough analysis of slavery in the late Roman world has definitively shown that slavery was alive and well during this period. Moreover, with the early Christian proliferation of sexual renunciation and virginity, questions of fertility and its link with slavery gained entirely new and complex dimensions—these were often the topics of consultation between Christian pastors and their congregants (Brown, 1988, pp. 327–328). Fertility functioned as a moral-theological discourse which was now, paradoxically, grounded in the principle of sexual renunciation.
Few stories illustrate the close relationship between slavery and fertility like the story of Abraham and Sarah, and their slave, Hagar (from Gen. 16). To better understand the intersections between slavery and fertility in Late Antiquity, this study will examine John Chrysostom’s (ca. 349–407 CE) social, moral, and theological interpretation of the Sarah and Hagar narrative. Chrysostom was initially a monk and then priest in Syrian Antioch and, later, became bishop of Constantinople. Early in his life Chrysostom became known as a preacher and expositor of scripture. He is one of the most prolific Greek Christian authors of Late Antiquity and his corpus not only includes theological and moral treatises and letters, but a great number of homiletic commentaries on many books of the Bible (on Chrysostom’s biography, see Kelly, 1998; Mayer & Allen, 1999; Brändle, 2004). Chrysostom’s views on slavery have been extensively researched (De Wet, 2008, pp. 1–13; 2014, pp. 31–39; 2015; 2017b, pp. 58–80; 2018, pp. 104–145), but his use of fertility and infertility discourse in relation to slavery has not received attention. This contribution is further significant since there is a lack of studies on infertility in late ancient Christianity, despite a major upsurge in understanding intersections between medicine, health, disability, and religion in Late Antiquity. This is notably evident in the work of scholars belonging to the research group known as ReMeDHe (which stands for Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity; https://remedhe.com). Chrysostom and his works have been quite important in understanding these intersections between religion, medicine, and society in Late Antiquity (Mayer, 2015a, pp. 11–26; 2015b, pp. 337–351; De Wet, 2019, pp. 410–463).
We find that some early Christian authors understood infertility as a disease resulting from sinfulness, and fertility and conception as signs of (coming to) faith. For example, in his commentary on Genesis, Ephrem the Syrian (Commentary on Genesis 14) associated infertility with sin, while faith and penitence were lined to fertility (mapryânûtâ, in Syriac). Chrysostom, it has been argued, posits a somewhat different perspective, locating these infertile women in a broader history of faith and salvation that begins with Eve, stretching to Mary, and ending even in Christ himself (Walsh, 1994, pp. 209–223; De Wet, 2017, pp. 1–9). Fertility and infertility now operate as social, moral, and theological discourses, and conception is located within divine activity (or inactivity). In Chrysostom’s framework of biblical reception, infertility discourse functions as a complex strategy, with major intersectional dynamics, which serves to highlight the shift in emphasis from physical birth to spiritual rebirth. By bringing the issue of slavery into the discussion, this intersectionality of fertility and infertility discourse will become more apparent.
We should also take note of the issue of anachronism when dealing with the intersection of slavery and fertility in ancient thought. The historical contextualization of these concepts is by no means simple. It is at times believed that slavery was so “natural” and “ordinary”, even banal, to ancient persons, that we should not expect to see a response against slaveholding in the literary and historical sources. In another publication, I have discussed this problem at length, noting, for instance:
It is then stated that early Christian literature should be read and judged according to the standards of its own ancient context—and that, because of this, modern critiques of slavery in ancient works are anachronistic and historically unfair. At first, the argument may seem reasonable to some. However, once examined and questioned more precisely, it becomes evident that this argument simply cannot stand. The so-called literary and historical context of ancient works is problematic to say the least. By this I am not suggesting that ancient works should be read totally outside of their context, but that, while reading the texts in context … the limits of context should always be kept in mind. We need to understand that the literary and historical “context” of a particular ancient work is not something that “exists” outside of that specific work. … It stands to reason that the individuals who produced these texts were, in most cases, not opposed to slaveholding per se, since being free is what essentially set these authors apart from others. However, these authors are not in the majority; they only seem to be in the majority because, owing to their privileged positions (being in positions of power and influence, and being able to write works deemed worthy of preservation), it is mostly their voices that survive today (De Wet, 2018, pp.6–7 [italics original]).
The historical context is in itself a construction based on an academic process of informed selection of data. But the process of contextual construction should be both reflexive and subversive, reading “against the grain” and with a hermeneutic of suspicion, so to speak. In this way, we are able, in some limited way, to plausibly retrieve some of the voices and individuals lost or silenced in the historical record. This is also why the intersectional approach is mandated in such an analysis. An intersectional reading has the ability to render the social consequences of a particular text less opaque, since we are able to ask specific questions about specific individuals or groups. If we take the intersectional reading even further, we might clarify social the consequences and effects of a particular moral or theological framework in a discursive sense. Thus, it becomes more than just the intersection of individuals located in certain social groupings (which, in themselves, are constructions), but the intersection of discourses, discursive formations, epistemologies, and practices. This approach to Chrysostom’s works is also followed in this article.
Before examining the intersections of fertility and slavery in Chrysostom’s reading of the Sarah and Hagar narrative, first, we need to have a brief overview of what Chrysostom understood regarding the nature and characteristics of fertility and infertility in the general sense.
The Nature and Characteristics of Fertility in John Chrysostom’s Thought
I will begin by delineating four important basic assumptions related to infertility in Chrysostom’s reading of the infertile women of the Bible more generally. First, we observe that Chrysostom is not ignorant of the importance and value of fertility and procreation in his society. In one of his most famous treatises, On the Priesthood 3.13.27–29, Chrysostom writes that, at times, “a daughter is ‘a secret cause of wakefulness to her father’ [Sir. 42.9], and his care for her makes him lose sleep through his great anxiety that she may be barren [steirôthênai] or pass her prime unmarried or be hated by her husband.” In most of his expositions of the infertile women of the Old Testament, Chrysostom refers to men who resent their wives for not being able to bear offspring. In Homily 38 on Genesis 4 (note: I use the translation [slightly adapted] and section numbering of Hill, 1990; 1992, for the Genesis homilies; henceforth for the homiletic series: Hom. Gen.) he praises Abraham for his patience and points out at length that Abraham is not like “the majority of men” (tois pleiosi tôn anthrôpôn) who resent their wives on account of their infertility. In a most interesting exposition of the figure of Leah, Jacob’s first wife (Gen. 29), Chrysostom (Hom. 56 Gen. 14) states:
See God’s creative wisdom: whereas one woman [Rachel] by her beauty attracted her husband’s favor, the other [Leah] seemed to be rejected because lacking it; but it was the latter he awoke to childbirth while leaving the other’s womb inactive [pêroi tên mêtran]. He thus dealt with each in his characteristic love so that one might have some comfort from what was born of her and the other might not triumph over her sister on the score of charm and beauty.
In this exposition, Chrysostom intimates that fertility was a consolation for the lack of beauty, and a strategy to gain a husband’s favor. Fertility was a measure of security for a woman; infertility seemed to have rendered women quite vulnerable in late antique society. Chrysostom is surprised that even after granting Jacob several sons, he is still more enamored with Rachel. He admits one of the main purposes of marriage (and thus sexual intercourse) was procreation (On Virginity 19.1). In another homily, Chrysostom explains:
There are two reasons why marriage has been introduced: both so we might be self-controlled [sôphronômen] and so that we might become fathers. But of these two reasons, the principle of self-control has preference…. For marriage certainly does not result childbearing [paidopoiias], but what does is that Word of God that says, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth” [Gen. 1:28]. Many people who, although they partook in marriage, did not become fathers testify to this fact (Homily on 1 Cor. 7:2–4 3).
Chrysostom’s understanding of Genesis 1:28 is therefore again based on the presupposition that God increases and multiplies, God is the initiator of fertility. In this argument, postlapsarian sexual intercourse within the ambit of marriage is distanced from the divine command to multiply. According to Chrysostom, instead of childbearing, the main function of marital sexual intercourse is to curb lust, as according to Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 7. Furthermore, self-control (sôphrosynê) becomes more important than fertility and childbearing. We will see in the following section how central sôphrosynê is in Chrysostom’s interpretation of the narratives in question.
Second, from a medical-biological perspective, Chrysostom sees infertility as a disease (nosos; see his homily Against Divulging the Sins of Brothers 6) but he does not view infertility as a woman’s problem alone, as is the case with some other ancient thinkers. In Chrysostom’s embryology we see that he subscribed to the idea that both the man and the woman contributed seed during the process of conception. “[T]he one flesh is the father, and the child, and the mother, mixed from the substance of the two,” Chrysostom (Homily 20 on Ephesians 4) explains, “[f]or by the intermixing of their seeds [migentôn tôn spermatôn] the child is again produced, so that the three are one flesh.” In Homily 30 on Romans 4, Chrysostom also refers to the seed of Sarah. This dual-seed theory is found in the Hippocratic Corpus and Galen (Boylan, 1984, pp. 83–112); in contrast, Aristotle suggested that only men supply seed, while the woman’s womb is simply the vessel, like a flowerpot (Whitbeck, 1973, 54–80), for the embryo. In Chrysostom’s view, fertility could realistically be a man’s problem. But how would one determine who is fertile and infertile? Chrysostom (Hom. 38 Gen. 5) explains:
Perhaps, on the other hand, Sarah even suspected that the cause of their childlessness lay not with her alone but also with the patriarch; hence out of a wish to determine it by the course of events she yields place to her slave woman and leads her to the very marriage bed so as to learn from developments whether she should attribute it all to herself…. “He went in to Hagar,” the text goes on, “and she conceived” [Gen. 16:4]. See how Sarah obtains the proof that the cause of their childlessness lay not with the good man but with her own sterility, intercourse leading immediately to conception.
Regrettably, Chrysostom’s expositions provide one possibility of testing infertility. If the husband is able to impregnant a female slave, then obviously the problem lies with the wife. The slave body, in all of his expositions, then acts as a test for male fertility. In Hom. 56 Gen. 19–21, Chrysostom puts forth the same logic in the case of Jacob and Rachel. In these infertility discourses we have in Chrysostom, the slave body functions as a type of medical apparatus for determining, biologically, male and female fertility and infertility. As we have noted, ancient slaves were considered reproductive capital, but their reproductive value did not only lie in the ability to produce offspring (i.e., more slaves) but also in their prospective role in resolving questions of fertility. Furthermore, we even see a measure of what we might call competitive reproductivity of slaves in Chrysostom’s interpretations. Chrysostom (Hom. 56 Gen. 20–21) reconstructs a type of jealous feud between Rachel and Leah, and their slaves (Bilhah and Zilpah, respectively) are made to competitively bear more and more sons for Jacob (see Gen. 30). Slave bodies are used in their fight to gain or keep their husband’s love and acceptance. Both in the Bible and in Chrysostom’s interpretation, the slave bodies in this competition of childbearing again function as reproductive technologies, tools of fertility, in the hands of masters and mistresses (and those who tell and retell their stories) with little thought of the physical and emotional suffering such female slaves would have experienced. These observations, in fact, only scratch surface of the complexity of slave bodies, especially female slaves, as reproductive capital.
Third, Chrysostom understood fertility, essentially, to be subject to the will and activity of God. This principle he inherits from biblical discourse. Chrysostom (Hom. 38 Gen. 4) explains:
You know, of course, you well know how this [infertility] of all things proves for the majority of men a cause of scorn for their wives, just as, on the other hand, they take the contrary as a basis for greater affection, quite stupidly and without reason attributing both sterility and fecundity to their wives without acknowledging that everything comes from nature’s Creator and that neither intercourse nor anything else is capable of ensuring succession unless the hand from above intervenes and prompts nature to birth.
And in Hom. 56 Gen. 15:
“He opened her womb,” [Gen. 29:31] the text reads. Learn from this, dearly beloved, that it is the creator of all who manages all things, awaking even nature itself to childbirth, and that no value comes from intercourse without help being given from on high. You see, the purpose in its saying that “he opened her womb” was that we might realize that the Lord himself wanted Leah to be quickened in childbirth so as to assuage her disappointment. After all, he it is who shapes infants in the womb and gives them life, as David also says: “You laid hold of me in my mother’s womb” [Ps. 139:13].
In all his expositions he makes this point about God’s agency in fertility clear. This is to decentralize marriage and sexual intercourse in the issue of childbearing. Chrysostom makes Sarah say: “[T]he Creator of our nature has rendered me childless…and has deprived me of progeny” (Hom. 38 Gen. 3), and Isaac, “when he saw nature impeded [i.e., infertility], he ran to the Creator of nature and pressed him by his prayer to loose the bonds of nature” (Hom. 49 Gen. 5). When Rachel becomes jealous of Leah and pressures Jacob to provide her with off-spring—saying, “Give me children, or I shall die” (Gen. 30:1 NRSV)—Chrysostom (Hom. 56 Gen. 18) asks her: “Did you not hear that it was not intercourse with her husband that provided the other woman with the birth but the Lord God…. So, why do you demand from your husband what is beyond the power of nature.” Sexual intercourse, which was a result of the Fall, was not the guarantor of offspring if one was fertile. God “opens” the womb. Moss and Baden (2015, pp. 21–69) have shown that fertility and infertility in the Bible were often believed to be the result of divine action or inaction. This is a positive conceptualization of fertility and infertility, since it does “remove the social stigma of responsibility from the infertile woman” (Moss & Baden, 2015, p. 69). It is important for Chrysostom, also, to remove the social stigmas from the infertile women of the Bible since they had to functions as moral exemplars and theological types.
The related fourth point is then obvious: infertility is not necessarily the result of or punishment for sin. This is also an important assumption in light of Chrysostom’s theological framework. “They [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] were in all respects bright and esteemed, but all of them had barren wives, and lived without children until an advanced age,” Chrysostom says, “thus, when you see a husband and wife yoked together in virtue, when you see them favored by God … giving heed to piety, but unable to have children, do not assume that the child-lessness is in any way a retribution for sins” (Against Divulging the Sins of Brothers 6; see also Hom. 49 Gen. 6).
Rather than being punishment for sin, the stories of infertile women had a pedagogical function. In the homily just cited, Chrysostom asks: “What is the meaning of this band of barren ones?” He provides two reasons: to school his audience in moral virtue and to strengthen and inform their theological beliefs, especially regarding the Virgin birth, the resurrection, and the Christian life—all of these being new modes of generation. I will now consider in more detail Chrysostom’s interpretation of the Sarah and Hagar narrative.
Fertility and Slavery in the Story of Sarah and Hagar: Social, Moral, and Theological Perspectives
In the following analysis, I will investigate the intersections between fertility and infertility discourse and slavery in Chrysostom’s interpretation of the Sarah and Hagar narrative, first from a social and moral perspective, and then I will look at the theological reading of the texts and its implications. It will be demonstrated that, from a social and moral perspective, Chrysostom uses the narrative of the infertile Sarah and her fertile female slave, Hagar, to construct ideal marital and domestic dynamics. Abraham is sketched as the ideal husband (see, more generally, also Tonias, 2014, pp. 91–93), Sarah the good wife, and Hagar the stereotypical deviant slave. He asks his audience to observe not only the conduct and behavior of the characters, but also their emotional and moral dispositions. Theologically, we will see how Chrysostom, using Paul’s interpretation of Sarah and Hagar, transforms slavery from a social status to an ontological state, expanding the scope of slavery, and then proceeds to associate slavery with Jewish identity.
Through their preaching and teaching, early Christian authors painted biblical exemplar portraits to communicate their social and moral values. Chrysostom was especially fond of this pedagogical strategy (Lai, 2019, pp. 587–612). Leyerle (2020) has shown how significant narrative was in the success of Chrysostom’s preaching; he used narratives as points of negotiation and persuasion to adopt certain modes of behavior and to control emotions. The story of Abraham and Sarah was no exception to the mandate of relying on stories to “emulate virtue” (mimêsin tês … aretês) (Hom. 38 Gen. 1). When Sarah tells Abraham to go to Hagar, Chrysostom says: “Notice, however, at this point Sarah’s sensible attitude [philosophon gnômên] and the extraordinary degree of her self-control [tês sôphrosynês tên hyperbolên], as well as the patriarch’s unspeakable faith and obedience” (Hom. 38 Gen. 3). In his broader interpretation, as will be shown, the act of allowing her husband to have extramarital intercourse with a slave is not, in this case, morally problematic to Chrysostom. Rather, it is reconstructed as a compromise on Sarah’s behalf. The implications for Hagar are, of course, not considered; as a slave she had to be sexually available and preferably fertile.
Chrysostom, however, did not approve of husbands sexually engaging with their slaves (Homily on 1 Cor. 7:2–4 4–5; De Wet, 2015, pp. 230–237). So, why are Abraham’s actions sanctioned? According to Chrysostom, it is because Abraham did not initiate the action and he did not take Hagar out of lust, passion, and licentiousness (De Wet, 2016, p. 501). “After all, O woman [Sarah], he did not take the initiative in running off to have intercourse with your slave, did he?” Chrysostom hypothetically asks Sarah, “It wasn’t at the spur of lust that he rushed into the affair, was it? He did it in response to you and your direction” (Hom. 38 Gen. 12). Chrysostom has Abraham tell Sarah that “it was not under the impulse of my own desire [apo pathous oikeiou kinoumenos] that I consented to have intercourse with her” (Hom. 38 Gen. 14). The Stoics advocated passionless sex. Desire was a problem. Chrysostom, however, may have acquired this Stoic approach to Abraham’s sexual intercourse via the intermediary of Paul. Martin (2006, p. 65–76) has argued that Paul promoted sexual intercourse without sexual passion and desire. Chrysostom’s interpretation is therefore very Pauline, which is not surprising, considering his great admiration for the apostle (Mitchell, 2002). He is therefore reading the narrative of Abraham and Sarah most likely through the lens of 1 Corinthians 7 and Paul’s advice on marriage. In several of his other homilies, interpreting 1 Corinthians 7, he refers to Abraham and Sarah. When Abraham has passionless intercourse, it is akin to what may have been expected before the Fall. Chrysostom believed that marriage, lust, and sexual intercourse were consequences of the Fall (On Virginity 18.1); before this, God utilized other means of generation and reproduction, as in the case of angels, who are made or fabricated by God without lust or sex. Augustine (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 9.10.18) had similar thoughts about the absence of voluptas (“pleasure”) before the Fall and in the afterlife.
The problem is then not so much related to the act of physically and sexually violating Hagar, it is about the emotional disposition of Abraham. If the action does not sprout from lust, the violator is not culpable. Nowhere does Chrysostom say it is permissible for all men to have passionless sex with slaves—he does not want men to have extramarital sex with slaves at all. Yet, one cannot help speculate on the effect of this reading. It is probable that this rhetoric of Abraham’s passionless sex with Hagar may have resulted in more sexual abuse of slaves since a new excuse was provided from the pulpit.
To get a sense of the ramifications of this type of exegesis, we might consider briefly a statement by Theodoret of Cyrus (ca. 393–ca. 457 CE) in his own exposition of Genesis 16. Theodoret flourished only a few decades after Chrysostom’s death, and in the same region that is Roman Syria. His statements are therefore relevant and appropriate to shed some light on Chrysostom’s context. Theodoret writes in his Questions on Genesis 68:
As an excuse for their own lust many licentious people adduce the example of the patriarch Abraham, who kept a concubine. Every act is to be judged according to the intention of those who perform it. Therefore, let us consider the case of Hagar, and if we should see the patriarch in thrall to lust, we shall brand his conduct as reprehensible. But if his wife pointed out her natural infirmity, admitted that the Creator had made her barren, revealed her own desire for a child, and implored him to have relations with Hagar so that she might reckon that woman’s child as her own, what sin did Abraham commit? Neither nature nor any law promulgated at that time forbade polygamy, and his wife was barren and importuned her husband to have intercourse with the servant girl, not so that he would become a slave to lust, but so they could be called parents, he naturally, and she by adoption.
Theodoret tells us that “many licentious people” (polloi tôn akolastôn) indeed used the example of Abraham “as an excuse” or pretext (aphormê) to justify their sexual immorality, which in this case we might infer to be adultery and the sexual abuse of slaves. We therefore have direct evidence that some people did in fact use the narrative of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar to justify sexual immorality and the sexual abuse of slaves. But then Theodoret relies on the same argument we find in Chrysostom, as well as the legality of concubinage, to justify Abraham’s actions.
I do not think Chrysostom (or Theodoret, for that matter) wanted this sort of emulation but, as with Theodoret, some in Chrysostom’s audience may have seen it as a convenient excuse to sexually violate slaves. On the one hand, Chrysostom (Hom. 1 Cor. 7:2–4 4) exclaims: “So don’t tell me now about the laws of the outside world that drag women who engage in adultery into court and require a public examination and punishment, but don’t require a public examination and punishment for married men who defile themselves with their female slaves.” Technically, Abraham is culpable if this mandate is followed. But Abraham is presented now as an exception based on the absence of lust and pleasure. This type of exegetical inconsistency, common to Chrysostom and later Theodoret, no doubt contributed to the persistence of slavery and the abuse of female slaves in Late Antiquity. It is thus ironic that Chrysostom’s exegesis here regarding the Sarah and Hagar narrative works against his moral pronouncements elsewhere (such as in On Virginity and in Hom. 1 Cor. 7:2–4), proving again how difficult it is, ethically, to promote sound moral values and practices while upholding slavery at the same time.
Moreover, the act of Hagar’s sexual violation is used to paint Abraham and Sarah in virtuous, that is masculine, terms. Abraham’s values of patience and faith were crucial in the early Christian vocabulary of masculinity. Shaw (1996, pp. 269–312) has shown how patience shaped early Christian concepts of masculinity from the earliest centuries, and faith was a discourse in late ancient Christianity that formed the basis of masculine virtue, and was often associated with spiritual fertility (Kuefler, 2001, pp. 161–244). But the masculinity of Sarah’s character is also emphasized. She has a “sensible attitude” (philosophon gnômên) and an “extraordinary degree of self-control” (tês sôphrosynês tên hyperbolên) (Hom. 38 Gen. 3). In Chrysostom’s rhetoric, and in Roman antiquity more generally, the discourse of philosophization was practically the pinnacle of masculinity (as classically demonstrated by Gleason, 1995, and Gunderson, 2000; on philosophization and masculinity in Chrysostom, see De Wet, 2015, pp. 182–183). Philosophers were seen as embodiments of what it meant to be a man. The concept of the gnômê (“attitude; mindset”) in Chrysostom, is associated with the rational faculty of the soul and closely related to the will (Laird, 2012, pp. 25–133). When Sarah is said to have a philosophon gnômên, the implication is that she exhibits a masculine mind-set. It is further highlighted by the one characteristic all philosophers had to have, namely sôphrosynê, which in Chrysostom is akin to self-control or discipline (De Wet, 2015, p. 173). Abraham’s self-control lies in his remarkable ability to have passionless sex, while Sarah’s equally remarkable self-control is seen in the fact that she is not jealous (at first) or bothered to send her husband to another woman, and a slave at that. Using Stoic terminology of emotions here, Chrysostom describes both Abraham and Sarah as not being moved by emotion (pathous ektos; Hom. 38 Gen. 4). In another instance it is said that Sarah was disinterested (apathôs) in the matter pertaining to Hagar (Hom. 38 Gen. 11). Fertility was associated with masculinity, but by highlighting the masculinity of these characters, Chrysostom is implicitly suggesting that, although not physically fertile, they are spiritually fertile. It is this spiritual fertility that God favors which leads to the miraculous conception of Isaac.
It is thus ironic that, despite the apparent extramarital sexual conduct, Abraham is portrayed as the ideal husband and Sarah the ideal wife. It illustrates that despite the early Christian expansion of the scope of adultery to include the sexual violation of slaves (Kuefler, 2001, pp. 161–166; on adultery in Chrysostom, see De Wet, 2015, pp. 231–232), traditional Roman ideas of the sexual availability and violability of slave bodies were hard to shake off, even for someone like Chrysostom, who exclaims: “it is adultery all the same when one has sex with any woman—whether she is openly a prostitute, a slave girl, or any other woman without a husband” (Homily on 1 Cor. 7:2–4 4). There always seems to be a justification or exception, exegetical or otherwise, for the violation of the slave body.
Finally, the exegetical construction of the ideal husband and wife has, as its correlate, the exegetical construction of the deviant slave. If Abraham and Sarah were the epitome of the good husband and wife, then Hagar fits the stereotypical mode of the delinquent, arrogant, and ungrateful slave. Through the construction of the ideal marriage, Chrysostom also constructs, via the image of the fertile and sexually available slave girl, the figure of the deviant slave. Chrysostom here especially focuses on Genesis 16:4, in which Hagar is said to be acting with disrespect toward Sarah after finding out she was pregnant. “This, you see, is the way with slaves [tôn oiketôn to êthos]; if they happen to gain some slight advantage,” Chrysostom says, “they can’t bear to stay within the limits of their station but immediately forget their place and fall into an ungrateful attitude [agnômosynên]” (Hom. 38 Gen. 12). Whereas Sarah had a philosophon gnômên, Hagar is characterized by the opposite, by agnômosynê. In this section of the homily, Chrysostom carefully reconstructs the êthos of slaves. In section 16 of the homily, after reading that Sarah punished Hagar, causing her to flee, Chrysostom again says:
That is to say, probably because she [Sarah] punished her [Hagar’s] insolence, the slave girl took to flight. That is the way with slaves, after all: whenever they are not permitted to have their own way but rather their efforts at independence are thwarted, immediately they throw off the yoke of their masters and take to flight. See once more in this incident, however, how much favor from on high the slave girl also enjoyed on account of the esteem for the just man: since she carried with her the just man’s seed… (Hom. 38 Gen. 16)
Hagar’s fertility was her curse. As reproductive capital, she essentially became the vessel for the seed of her violator—a fact for which she should have felt blessed according to Chrysostom. But she flees from her master and mistress, Chrysostom says, as is the way of wicked slaves. Although the early church advocated the manu-mission of slaves (Harrill, 1995), it never preached for the abolition of slavery or the revolt of slaves (De Wet, 2015, p. 272). Following Paul’s reasoning in his Letter to Philemon, fugitive slaves were expected to return or be returned to their masters (De Wet, 2010, pp. 317–332). But we often forget that the scriptural authority behind Paul’s order to return Onesimus, the slave, to Philemon, his owner, may have been the pericope in Genesis 16, where the Angel of Yahweh instructs Hagar: “Return to your mistress, and submit to her” (Gen. 16:9 NRSV). Chrysostom elaborates on the verse thus:
In response to her admission, “‘I am running away from the presence of my mistress,’” he says, “‘Return,’” go back, don’t be ungrateful to the one who has done you so many kindnesses. Then, since she had enraged her mistress from her superior airs and sense of importance, he says, “‘and submit yourself to her control,’” be subject to her, as befits you, after all. Acknowledge your servitude, don’t ignore her authority, don’t get ideas above your station, entertain no high and mighty thoughts; “‘submit yourself to her control,’” give evidence of your subjection (Hom. 38 Gen. 17).
With the voice of the Angel of the Lord and the Apostle instructing fugitive slaves to return to their owners, the church had the scriptural authority it needed to maintain the status quo of slavery. Hagar, of course, returns. Through the Angel of the Lord, God now re-fashions Hagar into the penitent and useful slave. The result of her return and submission to her owner is that God will multiply her descendants. The slave woman’s fertility and offspring, in this exegetical construction, is inextricably connected to and dependent on her submission and acceptance of her state. Households required technologies of authority such as these scriptural exemplars to regulate and discipline domestic slaves.
Consequently, Chrysostom’s interpretation of the Sarah and Hagar narrative did not only operate on a social and ethical level, but also on a theological level. As Walsh (1994, pp. 209–223) and De Wet (2017, pp. 1–9) have shown, Chrysostom constructs a type of reproductive soteriology, in which the infertile matriarchs function as types for the Virgin birth and, at the end, the spiritual generation (rebirth) of all believers. They also become foils to better understand the resurrection from the dead. Chrysostom often describes fertility and infertility in terms of life and death. Sarah’s infertile womb is described as a “dead womb” (tês mêtras hê nekrôsis) (Hom. 38 Gen. 1), unable to bring forth new life.
But we also see a very close conceptual relationship in Chrysostom’s exegesis between theology, slavery, and infertility discourse. Chrysostom relies, in this regard, heavily on Paul’s interpretation of the Hagar and Sarah narrative in Galatians 4:21–31. He uses typology to explain Paul’s reasoning. Galatians 4:23 reads: “One, the child of the enslaved woman, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise” (NRSV). Paul uses the figures of Sarah and Hagar to establish and affirm a very specific theological and ontological dichotomy, namely the dichotomy between flesh and spirit, sin and redemption. This is a very clear example of how social categories become transformed into moral and theological categories in the exegetical process by means of typology. But we may ask: what happens when a slave body is used as a type? What significations can be deduced from such a utilization of typology, when the type is based on an exegetically constructed social deviant, as we have seen, namely Hagar? In his Commentary on Galatians 4.23, Chrysostom explains this verse thus:
What is the meaning of “according to the flesh”? Since he said that faith united us to Abraham, and this having seemed incredible to his audience, that those who were not begotten by Abraham should be called his sons, he proves that this paradox had actually happened long ago; for that Isaac, born not according to the order of nature, nor the law of marriage, nor the power of the flesh, was yet truly his own son. He was the result of bodies that were dead, and of a womb that was dead; his conception was not by the flesh, nor his birth by the seed, for the womb was dead both because of age and barrenness, but the word of God fashioned Him. This is not the case with the slave; he came according to the laws of nature, and by way of marriage. Nevertheless, he that was not (born) according to the flesh was more honorable than he that was born according to the flesh.
In this reasoning, the slave, Ishmael (and by implication, Hagar) becomes associated with the flesh, in other words, the postlapsarian human condition; that condition that was inseparable from sex, desire, and sin. Isaac’s miraculous birth, as freeborn, is equated with that which is spiritual, heavenly, and divine. He is fashioned by God’s word; God fabricates Isaac as he did creation in the beginning. He ends this section by saying: “Isaac, who was born according to the promise, being a true son and free, was master of all.” Not only is Isaac free and not a slave by virtue of the flesh, but he is also master.
In this typological discourse, slavery is transformed from a social status to an ontological status, thereby also enabling the scope of slavery to be expanded. In reference to Galatians 4:24, Chrysostom says: “Who are ‘these women’? The mothers of those children, Sarah and Hagar. And what are they? Two covenants, two laws. As the names of the women were given in the history, he abides by this designation of the two races, showing how much follows from the very names” (Comm. Gal. 4.24). The argument is based now on the ethnic distinction between the synagogue (Jews) and the church (gentile Christians). In Chrysostom’s argument, Sarah functions as a type for the church and Hagar as a type of the Jews. Jewish subjectivity is now included in the scope of slavery as an ontological status. To be a Jew, in this reasoning, is to be a slave. At the same time, the argument shifts from physical fertility and infertility to spiritual fertility and infertility. “It is not merely that the Church was infertile like Sarah, or became a mother of many children like her, but she bore them in the way Sarah did” (Comm. Gal. 4:28). The synagogue and the Jews, for Chrysostom, are spiritually infertile since they regenerate according to the fleshly slavish state, like Hagar and Ishmael. The church, however infertile according to the flesh, like Sarah, bore spiritual children—here Chrysostom refers to spiritual rebirth or regeneration (anagennêseôs). In this theological framework, Christian identity is equated to freedom, the divine or spiritual nature through regeneration, and thus, honor, freedom, and dominion.
Conclusion
Issues of infertility and fertility, in antiquity, and specifically Late Antiquity, cannot be separated from the harsh realities experienced by slaves, especially slave women. We see clearly from this study how biblical interpretation shaped late culture, especially aspects like fertility and slavery. Unfortunately, Chrysostom’s discourse of fertility, in his reading of Sarah and Hagar, would have affirmed the oppressive values and practices of late antique slaveholding. The reading allows for the possibility of sexually abusing a slave, if there is no lust involved. Furthermore, it seems that slave bodies were used as “tests” for infertility—to determine whether it is the man or woman who is infertile. And not only this, but notion that it is God’s will and divine activity which becomes central in Chrysostom’s paradigm of fertility and infertility, then justifies other problematic interpretations and exegeses by Chrysostom. These might include the abuse of Israelite slave-girls to meet the needs and expectations of a patriarchal and androcentric society, to construct fertility in terms of pathology, be it physical or spiritual, or both, and, for instance, to marginalize and pathologize other groups of outsiders, like Jews, as being in opposition to the will of God.
Thus, if Maxwell (2009), in her study of Chrysostom’s communication skills and practices, is correct that preaching cultivated habits, then it also implies that such harmful habits of domination and sexual violation of slaves would have been cultivated, advertently or inadvertently, through this type of preaching. Slavery and fertility are used as technologies for social, moral, and religious othering. While the upside of this discourse is that infertile women might be less subject to marginalization and stigmatization, slaves and Jews, unfortunately, are relegated to the space of social and ontological pathology (i.e., spiritual infertility) and deviancy. If we account for the gendered language of slavery and fertility, we might also deduce that to be Christian is masculine and Jewish unmasculine. Masculinity is now associated not only with physical fertility, but also spiritual fertility. As Kuefler (2001, p. 248) notes, spiritual expressions of fertility and infertility easily coexist with physical expressions of the same. Yet spiritual fertility now functions as the primary marker of the new Christian masculinity. In Chrysostom’s infamous homilies Against the Jews 1.2.7, he in fact refers to Jewish men as malakoi and women as pornai. As Drake (2013, pp. 85–88) shows, the former gendered invective denotes softness and effeminacy, while the latter signifies licentiousness, a slavish state, and all that is the opposite of sôphrosynê. Finally, the association between slavery, spiritual infertility, and Jewish identity, also links it with death, while the spiritually fertile church is life. In the slavery—fertility framework of Chrysostom, then, Jewish identity is reconstructed to serve as the opposite of (Nicene) Christian identity. In this way, expressions of social identity and religious or theological identity discursively intersect.
As avenues for further research, we might now also take the step to combine or intersect the findings from the social moral, and theological perspectives of Chrysostom. If Jews, for example, are now marginalized and pathologized as slaves, what would the experience of Jewish slave women, for instance, have been in such contexts? One would assume, from Chrysostom’s perspective, almost a double pathologization, one social and one ontological. While we have chosen to separate social and theological perspectives, it should be remembered that in practices of marginalization and pathologization, these perspectives in fact complement and intensify one another.