Macrina: The Forgotten Woman Who Helped Shape Early Christian Theology

One of the critiques of Christian theology is that it has been largely framed by men - and thus is susceptible to masculine views of God and humanity. I can only speculate on this, but I have often privately thought that behind the Cappadocian Fathers’ generous theology lay the influence of women. It began with their grandmother, who was a martyr and continued through their wealthy but pious parents.

Macrina was the elder sister and she never married. She was apparently beautiful and intelligent but her betrothed died young and she remained ‘married to Christ’ for the rest of her life. She based her celibacy on her faith in the resurrection - arguing that her betrothed was ‘not dead but alive in God’ and so it would be a sin to marry another.

She was clearly a brilliant and strong minded woman, who influenced her younger brothers to pursue faith in Christ. She converted the family’s estate into a monastic community. Her younger brother Gregory of Nyssa noted that ‘such parts as you would think incomprehensible to young children where the subject of her studies’ - thus highlighting his respect for her precocious intellect.

In this talk I dive into the dense dialogue between Gregory and his sister in the epic work entitled ‘On the Soul and the Resurrection’. They are talking about the passions - rather than sin per se - and the model that Macrina builds up is very rich and very different from what we are used to. Frankly I find her model much more helpful in trying to live a good life, than the traditional morality based approaches to discipleship that we used to today. She bases her model of good living on a very deep model of humanity made in the image of God. So rather than seeing holiness as defined by a moral code, she sees it defined by the vocation of humanity to channel creation upwards towards the knowledge of God. Thus she leaves us with a discipleship model that is positive not just negative.

I take time to read out some her passages at length so you can get a sense of the power of her thinking. The actual book is short but pretty condensed so I am trying to put its arguments in accessible Plain English. I hope you enjoy it.

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