History Shows Church Leaders’ Rigid Sex Binary Is “Theological Choice,” Argues Scholar

Professor Jacqueline Murray

Gender fluidity was once recognized within the Catholic Church, and today’s rigid adherence to a sex binary by some church leaders is a “theological choice,” not an absolute truth, argues one scholar.

Jacqueline Murray, professor emerita of history at the University of Guelph, Ontario, wrote recently about gender and the church in Religion News Service. Murray discusses the ways that the Catholic conversation around gender seem to have intensified in recent months.

In particular, she identifies two events that present drastically different responses to gender, especially gender transition: the recent Vatican declaration Dignitas Infinita, which condemns gender-affirming medical intervention and rejects a fluid understanding of gender, and the coming out as transgender of Catholic hermit, Brother Christian Matson, fully supported by his bishop.

Murray traces the Vatican’s belief in a male/female sex binary, which names the bodily sex and gender identity of a person as inextricable attributes, back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle’s view of women and men as biologically different and hierarchically ordered became influential in the medieval church when theologian Thomas Aquinas incorporated Greek philosopy into Christian theology. According to Murray, Aquinas’ “teaching of binary sex difference imbued Catholic theology, particularly because it appeared to align with the separate and distinct creation of Eve from Adam’s rib in one of the two creation stories in the Bible’s Book of Genesis.”

Yet Murray notes that this view was not monolithic at the time. Another view impacting the medieval church’s understanding of sex and gender came from the Roman physician Galen, whose interpretations of ancient Greek biology were foundational to medieval understandings of medicine.

“[Galen’s] perspective presented a fluid understanding of sex difference, complemented by an equally fluid understanding of gender difference,” Murray explains. Masculinity and femininity existed on a spectrum for Galen, and gender was impacted by elements (e.g., heat/cold and dry/moist) and the balance of the body’s humors. She continues:

“The sexes were fundamentally the same substance, only differing in degree. This interpretation may be closer to the alternate creation story found in Genesis, Chapter 1, in which ‘man’ is created from the same material at the same time, referred to with a plural pronoun: ‘God created man in his own image, male and female he created them.'”

This “fluid and flexible” nature of gender was embraced by parts of the medieval church, Murray asserts, presenting the example of the martyred St. Perpetua, who “saw herself as a man preparing to enter the arena.” Such metaphorical gender “slippages,” in Murray’s words, “reveal that ideas about sex and gender fluidity were part of Christianity from its beginnings.”

Saint Wilgefortis

The scholar offers other examples, too.  

Stories about Sts. Godric of Finchale, Aelred of Rievaulx, and Bernard of Clairvaux describe immersing themselves in icy waters to cool their bodies, seeking to become more feminine because femininity was associated with coolness. Similarly, St. Radegund tried various ways to increase her physical heat to become more masculine, including hot irons and hot coals. Along with temperature, hairiness provided an avenue and marker for the movement along the gender continuum: “Upon death, the bodies of male saints were often found to be soft, smooth and hairless, ‘like a woman,'” Murray notes. For women, the opposite was true. Sts. Wilegefortis, Uncumber, and Liberata all resisted marriage by growing beards.

However, Murray points out that gender fluidity did not correlate with gender equality. Men were considered superior, and women who moved towards the masculine side of the continuum “were praised for this sign of their masculine spiritual progress.” Murray cites St. Ambrose, a prominent theologian and early bishop of Milan, who stated: “She who does not believe is a woman and should be designated by the name of her bodily sex, whereas she who believes progresses to complete manhood.”

Given that the church’s history on sex and gender is far more complex than some church leaders and official teachings admit today, Murray concludes that adhering to a rigid sex binary is therefore a choice, one which impacts not only transgender and nonbinary people, but all queer folks and cisgender women, too. She writes:

“Why, given the acceptance of gender fluidity in medieval religious life, is the 21st-century church so obdurate in imposing hierarchical binary sex difference? Binary sex difference privileges one pagan view of human biology over another, both equally inaccurate. It privileges one creation story over another, to believers both equally accurate. It utterly ignores the insights of contemporary science, medicine and psychology.

“Yet, binary sex difference continues to be the choice — a theological choice — of the church’s male leaders. We can only surmise that they know it is based upon the subordination of women.”

—Phoebe Carstens (they/them), New Ways Ministry, July 24, 2024