A Virgin Is a Woman

They use the word woman as though it fits nobody except a female who has been with a man. So I have to show that this word properly belongs to the sex itself and not to one rank within the sex, and that virgins are taken in by it along with everyone else. [a]

When God made this second kind of human being to help the man, that female was called woman on the spot — while she was still happy, still fit for paradise, still a virgin. “She will be called woman,” Adam said. So there you have the name. I do not say it was already a name shared with a virgin; it was hers properly. From the very beginning it was assigned to a virgin.

But some cleverly insist that it was said with the future in view — “she will be called woman” — as though she were going to be one once she had given up her virginity, since Adam went on to add: “For this cause a man will leave father and mother and be glued fast to his own woman, and the two will be one flesh.” Then let the people who hold that subtle view answer me one thing first. If she was surnamed woman with a view to the future, what name did she carry in the meantime? She cannot have gone without a name that expressed what she was at the time. And what sort of theory is it that a person given a definite name for the sake of the future had nothing at all to be called in the present? Adam gave names to all the animals, and to none of them on the ground of some future condition; he named each from the purpose its own nature already served, calling it by whatever it had shown a bent for from the start. So what was she called at the time? Every time Scripture names her, the name she carries is woman — before she was ever married — and never virgin, all the while she was one.

At that point it was the only name she had, and nothing prophetic had yet been said. When Scripture records that “the two were naked, Adam and his woman,” that has no flavor of the future about it, as though “his woman” were a hint of “his wife.” It says it because his woman was in fact unmarried, having been made out of his own substance. “This bone out of my bones,” he says, “and flesh out of my flesh, will be called woman.” This, then, is where our own habit of calling our wives our women comes from — however improperly we may sometimes speak in doing it. Nature knows it without saying so, and the soul’s own divine element has drawn the usage into ordinary speech without anyone noticing — as it has drawn in many other things too, which I can show elsewhere take the origin of what people do and say from the Scriptures. The Greeks, too, use their word for woman in the sense of wife even more than we do, and yet they have other words that properly mean wife. But I would rather credit the usage to Scripture as a witness.

For when two are made one flesh by the marriage bond, the “flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones” is called the woman of the man out of whose substance she begins to be reckoned once she is made his wife. So woman is not by nature a word for wife; wife is a word for a woman in a certain condition. In short, you can be a woman without being a wife, but you cannot be a wife without being a woman — the thing cannot so much as exist. So Adam settled the name of the newly made female, which is woman, and explained what she already was; and having sealed the name to her, he turned at once to the prophetic reason and said, “For this cause a man will leave father and mother.” The name stands as far apart from the prophecy as the prophecy stands from the woman herself. Adam did not speak it about Eve. He spoke it with an eye to the females who were to come, whom he named in the mother-spring of the female race. Besides, Adam was not going to leave a father and mother — he had none — for Eve’s sake. So what was said prophetically does not apply to Eve, because it does not apply to Adam either. It was foretold about the situation of husbands, who would leave their parents for a woman’s sake; and that could not happen to Eve, because it could not happen to Adam.

If that is how it stands, it is plain that she was not surnamed woman on account of something in the future, since that future thing did not apply to her.

Add to this that Adam himself published the reason for the name. After saying “she will be called woman,” he said, “since she was taken out of man” — and the man himself was still a virgin at the time. I will speak about the word man in its own place as well.

So let no one read a prophetic reference into a name that was derived from another meaning altogether. All the more since it is plain when she did receive a name founded on something future: at the point where she is surnamed Eve, a personal name this time, because the name that came from her nature had gone before it. If Eve means “the mother of the living,” then look: there is a name given from the future. There she is announced beforehand as a wife and not a virgin. That is the name of a woman about to marry, since it is out of the bride that the mother comes.

So this case too shows that she was not called woman at that time on account of the future — she who was so soon to receive the name that would suit her future condition. That is answer enough on this part of the question.

Now let us see whether the apostle keeps to the standard of this name as Genesis has it, applying it to the sex, and calls the virgin Mary a woman just as Genesis calls Eve one. Writing to the Galatians he says, “God sent his own Son, made of a woman” — and she is admitted to have been a virgin, however much Hebion resists it. I grant, too, that the angel Gabriel was sent to “a virgin.” But when he blesses her, he ranks her among women, not among virgins: “Blessed are you among women.” The angel knew that even a virgin is called a woman. [g]

To these two arguments there is a man who thinks he has made a clever answer: that because Mary was betrothed, she is called a woman by angel and apostle alike, since a betrothed girl is in a manner of speaking a bride. But between “in a manner of speaking” and the truth there is difference enough — here, at any rate. Elsewhere, I grant, we do have to take it that way.

Here, though, they did not call Mary a woman because she was already married, but because she was no less a female even if she had never been promised to anyone — because this is the name she was called by from the beginning. Whatever the standard type came down from must settle the question in advance. Otherwise, so far as this passage goes, if Mary is here put on the footing of a betrothed girl, so that she is called a woman not on the ground of being a female but on the ground of being assigned to a husband, then it follows at once that Christ was not born of a virgin, since he was born of a betrothed woman — who by that very fact will have stopped being a virgin.

But if he was born of a virgin, betrothed and yet untouched, then admit that even a virgin, even an untouched one, is called a woman. And here there is not even the appearance of speaking prophetically, as though the apostle in saying “made of a woman” had named a woman still to come, that is, a bride. He could not be naming a later woman, one Christ was not to be born from — a woman who had known a man. He meant the woman who was there at the time, who was a virgin, and who was called a woman all the same because the word properly belongs to her: claimed for a virgin by the standard set at the beginning, and so claimed for the whole class of women.

Next let us take up the reasons themselves that lead the apostle to teach that the female ought to be veiled, and see whether the same reasons hold for virgins as well. Then the name shared between virgins and non-virgins will be established from this side too, once the same causes that make the veil necessary are found in both cases. [j]

If “the man is the head of the woman,” then of course he is head of the virgin too, since the woman who marries comes out of the virgin — unless the virgin is some third class of creature, a freak with a head of her own. If “it is shameful for a woman to be shaved or cropped,” then of course it is shameful for a virgin. Let the world, God’s rival, answer for it if the world claims that close-cut hair becomes a virgin the way flowing hair becomes a boy. The one for whom shaving or cropping is equally unbecoming is the one for whom covering is equally becoming.

If “the woman is the glory of the man,” how much more the virgin, who is a glory to herself as well. If “the woman is from the man” and “for the man’s sake” — well, that rib of Adam’s was a virgin first. And if “the woman ought to have authority upon her head,” the virgin all the more justly ought to, since the very heart of the reason given belongs to her.

For if it is on account of the angels — the ones we read of as having fallen away from God and from heaven through craving after females — who can suppose that what those angels longed for was bodies already defiled, the leavings of human lust, and not rather that they were set on fire for virgins, whose bloom is what makes even human lust excusable? That is what Scripture suggests: “And it came to pass, when men had begun to grow more numerous upon the earth, that daughters were born to them; but the sons of God, having caught sight of the daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all whom they chose.”

Here the Greek word for women does seem to have the sense of wives, since marriage is what is being spoken of. But when it says “the daughters of men,” it plainly means virgins, who would still be reckoned as belonging to their parents — married women are reckoned their husbands’ — whereas it could have said “the wives of men.” In the same way it does not call the angels adulterers but husbands, since what they take are unmarried daughters of men, who it said above had been born, and that too points to their virginity: born first, and here married to angels. I know nothing else about them except that they were born and afterward married.

So dangerous a face ought to be put in the shade — a face that has thrown down stumbling blocks as far away as heaven. Then, standing in the presence of God, at whose bar it stands charged with driving the angels out of their own borders, it may blush before the other angels too, and may hold down that old wicked freedom of its head, a freedom now not to be shown off even before human eyes. But even suppose the females those angels wanted were already spoiled. Then all the more would it have been the duty of virgins to be veiled on account of the angels, since it would have been all the more possible for virgins to be the cause of the angels’ sinning.

And when the apostle goes on to add nature’s own verdict — that an abundance of hair is an honor to a woman, because hair serves her for a covering — then of course it is the virgin above all whom this marks out. Their whole ornament lies just here: massed together on the crown, the hair wholly covers the very citadel of the head with a ring of hair.

The opposites of all these considerations are what make it right for a man not to cover his head: because nature has not given him a surplus of hair; because being shaved or cropped is no disgrace to him; because it was not on his account that the angels went wrong; because his head is Christ. So, since the apostle is dealing with man and woman — why she ought to be veiled and he ought not — it is clear why he said nothing about the virgin. He let the virgin be understood inside the woman for the very reason that kept him from naming the boy, who is understood inside the man; he took in the whole order of each sex under the words proper to each, woman and man. [o]

In the same way Adam, while still untouched, is called man in Genesis: “She will be called woman,” he says, “because she was taken out of her own man.” So Adam was a man before there was any marriage bed, exactly as Eve was a woman.

On both sides the apostle has made his ruling apply plainly enough to the whole species of each sex. Briefly and fully, with a well-made definition, he says: every woman. And what is every, but of every class, every order, every condition, every rank, every age — since every means the whole and entire thing, defective in none of its parts? And the virgin is a part of the woman.

About not veiling the man he says every in just the same way. Look at the two different names, man and woman, with every one attached to each, and two rules that cut apart from one another: on the one side a rule of covering, on the other a rule of baring.

So, then: if saying “every man” makes it plain that the name man belongs even to one who is not yet a man, a boy still growing; and if, since the name is shared by nature, the rule of not veiling the one who among males is a virgin is shared too as a matter of discipline — why is it not settled by the same reasoning that when woman is named, every woman who is a virgin is taken into the fellowship of the name, and so taken into the community of the rule as well?

If a virgin is not a woman, then a growing boy is not a man. If the virgin goes uncovered on the plea that she is not a woman, let the boy be covered on the plea that he is not a man. Let the same virginity get the same indulgence. Since virgins are not compelled to be veiled, let boys not be ordered to go unveiled.

Why do we half accept the apostle’s definition as absolute where it says “every man,” without launching into inquiries about why he did not name the boy as well, and then half dodge it, though it is just as absolute where it says “every woman”? “If anyone is contentious,” he says, “we have no such custom, nor has the church of God.”

He shows that there had been some contention on this point, and to stamp it out he uses the shortest words he can: not naming the virgin, on the one hand, so as to show that there is to be no doubt about her being veiled; and naming every woman, on the other, where he would have named the virgin if the question had been confined to her. That is how the Corinthians themselves understood him. In fact, to this day the Corinthians veil their virgins. What the apostles taught, their own pupils endorse.

Now let us see whether the rules of church discipline about women have an eye to the virgin, in the same way that the arguments drawn from nature and from the matter itself have been shown to apply to her. [q]

A woman is not permitted to speak in the church. Nor is she permitted to teach, or to baptize, or to make the offering, or to claim for herself a share in any function belonging to men, let alone in any priestly office. Let us ask whether any of this is lawful for a virgin. If it is not lawful for a virgin — if she is placed under the same terms, and the requirement of humility is laid on her along with the woman — then where does this one thing come from that is lawful for her and not for any other female whatever?

If a woman is a virgin, and has set out to make her flesh holy, what privilege does that earn her that runs against her own condition? Is the reason she is let off the veil that she may be conspicuous and marked out as she comes into the church? That she may put the honor of her holiness on display in the freedom of her head? A worthier distinction could have been conferred on her by granting her some privilege of a man’s rank or office.

I know for a fact that in a certain place a virgin under twenty years of age has been placed in the order of widows. If the overseer was bound to give her some relief, he could of course have done it in some other way, without damage to the respect discipline is owed, so that no such marvel — not to say monster — should be pointed at in the church: a virgin widow. And it is the more freakish because not even as a widow did she veil her head. She denies herself both ways: as a virgin, in that she is counted a widow, and as a widow, in that she is styled a virgin.

But the authority that licenses her to sit in that seat uncovered is the same authority that allows her to sit there as a virgin — a seat to which, besides the sixty years, women are elected only at long last, and not merely women of one husband, that is, married women, but mothers into the bargain, yes, and women who have brought up children. The point of it, of course, is that their training by experience in every kind of affection should have made them able to help anyone readily with counsel and comfort, and that they should none the less have travelled the whole course of testing by which a female can be tried. So true is it that nothing in the way of public honor is permitted to a virgin on the ground of her position.