“Let us kiss him whose embrace is chastity. Let us have intercourse (copulemur) with him with whom marriage is virginity”Footnote ²: thus Paulinus of Nola, a late-ancient aristocratic bishop and ascetic practitioner, exhorts his friend Severus to share in a sexless, but nonetheless sexually construed, marriage with Jesus.Footnote ³

Paulinus's exhortation should not be summarily dismissed as an egregious example of metaphor run riot, for paradox and reversal were staples of early Christian rhetoric; metaphor in particular, as Averil Cameron claims, stood “at the heart of Christian language.”Footnote ⁴ Yet metaphor is not merely an intra-textual linguistic form: the metaphor of the “celibate Bridegroom,” I shall argue, performed useful service in the everyday world of early Christians. Depicting Jesus as “Bridegroom/Husband” might suggest softer, warmer associations of divinity than images of Jesus as King in relation to his subjects or Master in relation to his servants. Despite its epistemological incoherence, the metaphor of “celibate Bridegroom” enabled Christians simultaneously to valorize the institution of marriage while lauding (in a titillating manner) sexual continence.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, and equally important, by styling a commitment to virginity or to celibacy as “marriage,” it reinserted Christian ascetics within a familiar domestic economy. Although a young virgin's rejection of earthly nuptials might shock the aristocratic society of the late Roman Empire, she could nonetheless be imagined as someone's wife.Footnote ⁶

Despite its utility, the metaphor nonetheless raised perplexing problems in its intersection with other exegetical, theological, and pastoral discussions of the era. Was Jesus to be represented as the sensual lover of the Song of Songs,Footnote ⁷ or as the ascetic prophet who proclaims “no marrying or giving in marriage in Heaven” (Matt. 22:30; Luke 20:35)—or both? What might be implied about resurrected bodies—including that of Jesus—if Christians were to be “married” to him in the hereafter? Should bishops and spiritual advisers, consoling bereaved widows, encourage them to hope for a reunion in the afterlife with their deceased husbands if they were, or were to be, “married to Jesus”—bigamy presumably being no more sanctioned in heaven than on earth? Such theological and pastoral problems, however, did not hinder the metaphor's popularity, as its long life in later Christian discourse suggests. The “work” performed by this marital metaphor provides a revealing glimpse into the precariousness of early Christian meaning production and its relation to forms of everyday life. First, however, some reflection on how metaphors function.

I. Metaphor Theory

To “bear across,” “to transfer”—metaphorein in Greek, translatio in Latin—suggests the root meaning of the word “metaphor.” Yet mere etymology does not explain how a transfer of meaning is accomplished. Ancient and modern theories of metaphor lend varying degrees of assistance.

Ancient theories of metaphor as elaborated by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian only partially illumine the problem this essay addresses, since they assume that metaphor betokens a “likeness” or “resemblance” that clarifies or enhances meaning, lending a “brilliant patina.” Metaphors, on this reading, should not sound too “foreign” or “far-fetched.”Footnote ⁸ If they do not clarify or ornament, they seem “out of place” (improprium),Footnote ⁹ appear “ridiculous” (geloios),Footnote ¹⁰ and perhaps even descend into “jibberish” (barbarismos).Footnote ¹¹

Metaphor, Cicero posits, stems from the poverty (inopia) of language, from an attempt to name that which has no name—but with time, the metaphor born of impoverishment becomes popular in that speakers find it agreeable and entertaining.Footnote ¹² Metaphors, he counsels, should not appear to have forced their way into discourse “without permission.”Footnote ¹³ Since metaphors simultaneously substitute and displace—a word has been put into a position that does not truly belong to it—users should be on guard lest the metaphor seem a usurper.Footnote ¹⁴ Elaborating Cicero's theory, Patricia Parker describes metaphor as a “Gastarbeiter” who “must be as civil as possible, an outsider on his best behaviour.”Footnote ¹⁵ Her image is apt: if metaphors do not perform their work, they will be deemed unwelcome, intruding “guests.”

The patristic metaphor of the “celibate Bridegroom” might by these standards seem a failure, an unhelpful Gastarbeiter who should be denied entry: aside from its ornamental function, it appears on the surface to obscure rather than to clarify.Footnote ¹⁶ The pagan commentators mentioned above, I suspect, would likely have considered this metaphor among the far-fetched, inappropriate, and ridiculous, against which they warn. Yet, as Cicero wrote, metaphors are born to fill a need, to supply a lack—and from this perspective, “celibate Bridegroom” does its work. The metaphor's conceptual murkiness seems the very means of its utility,Footnote ¹⁷ rendering helpful assistance in early Christian theological and ecclesiastical life.

To be sure, an incoherence attends all “literal” approaches to metaphor, since the reader or hearer must know how to make the correct association, excluding those that are inappropriate or even absurd. John Searle offers an amusing illustration of the problem: when Romeo says of Juliet, “Juliet is the sun,” hearers and readers must rule out that he means “Juliet is for the most part gaseous” or “Juliet is 90 million miles from earth.”Footnote ¹⁸ How “correctly” to restrict the meaning of the comparison, to understand what has been “withdrawn” and what added, is here the issue: “uptake” is important.Footnote ¹⁹

Modern commentators on metaphor sharply debate how metaphor functions. Some theorists eschew consideration of context and speaker's intention,Footnote ²⁰ while others underscore its necessity.Footnote ²¹ Some accord metaphor an epistemological status as a “cognitive instrument” capable of creativity,Footnote ²² of contributing new information,Footnote ²³ while others claim that metaphor functions only on an emotive level, performing its work by the feelings it induces.Footnote ²⁴ Still others, adopting a phenomenological approach, emphasize the “new reality,” the “redescription” that metaphor opens up.Footnote ²⁵

One important theory of metaphor, “interanimation,” first posited by I. A. Richards and now developed by Janet Martin Soskice,Footnote ²⁶ holds (in Soskice's version) that metaphor is “cognitively unique” (that is, that it offers a concept that cannot be expressed in another way), gives “two ideas for one,” and takes into account intention, context, and reception.Footnote ²⁷ Soskice argues that metaphor draws upon two sets of associations, without positing two distinct subjects. “Lively” metaphors enable us to keep on expanding the “associative networks,” suggesting “new categories of interpretation,” “new entities, states of affairs, and causal relations.”Footnote ²⁸ Theologian David Hart adds that theological metaphors fuse “distinct aspects of the tradition in one particular locution,” gathering “more and more elements of the tradition around it, and sustain[ing] them in a kind of dynamic and changing unity.”Footnote ²⁹ Our metaphor, I shall suggest, does just that—although by gathering new realms of theological discourse to itself, it sometimes provoked new conceptual problems.

Jacques Derrida's discussion of metaphor in his essays “White Mythology”Footnote ³⁰ and “The Retrait of Metaphor”Footnote ³¹ add further points for consideration. After rehearsing his familiar themes that all language, including philosophical language, is metaphorical,Footnote ³² and that a quest for origins, for “the virginity of a history of beginnings,” is futile,Footnote ³³ Derrida makes two points that are especially suggestive for our case. Metaphor, he posits, produces “surplus-value”:Footnote ³⁴ something more results from metaphor's “work” than the minimum required to keep ordinary expression going. Such surplus value resonates with the notion of supplementarity (signifying both substitution and accretion) that Derrida developed in Of Grammatology:Footnote ³⁵ the metaphor “overflows,” adds a “supplementary trait”—but also takes away something.Footnote ³⁶ Thus metaphor contains an “internal multiplicity” in its double movement of supplementing and withdrawing.Footnote ³⁷

In passing, Derrida encourages scholars to study how significations become metaphorical by “being transported out of their own habitat” or disciplinary homes (for example, biology or economics), both spatially and temporally conceived: words have “pasts” that leave their traces on subsequent meaning.Footnote ³⁸ Derrida here cites Georges Canguilhem's exploration of the use of metaphor in the life sciencesFootnote ³⁹—and his elaboration is suggestive for our endeavor.

The particular example of metaphor that Canguilhem explores is cellular theory. From what arena does the “cell” in “cellular” derive? Not from the “cell” of the monk or that of the prisoner, Canguilhem argues, but from that of the bee making its honeycomb. When the metaphor of a cell in this sense is appropriated by scientific theory, an almost unconscious “notion of the cooperative work of which the honeycomb is the product” is assimilated along with the image; “over” the biological theory there “hovers” an unspoken approbation of the mode of bees' activity, the “affective and social values of cooperation and association.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Canguilhem's “hovering” associations resonate both with Derrida's “traces” that produce surplus value, and with Soskice's “associative networks”: these are the mechanisms that lend metaphoric statements their power.

II. Metaphor Theory and the “Celibate Bridegroom”

Religious metaphor—with which we here deal—is especially prone to (alleged) misinterpretation. Soskice notes that if the metaphor of “God the Father” is pushed too far, it runs into absurdity; for example, God's Fatherhood implies that he has a wife.Footnote ⁴¹ Fourth-century debates over “Fatherhood” and “Sonship” within the Godhead illustrate how metaphor could lead theologians astray if they pressed the human analogy in a theologically “inappropriate” direction.Footnote ⁴²

In the case of “celibate Bridegroom,” the adjective “celibate” puts a restrictive brake on the sexual association of “bridegroom”: as Derrida suggests, metaphor withdraws as well as supplements. “Like a bridegroom in certain—but not in all—respects,” the addition warns. Yet even as “celibate” subtracts something expected from the nuptials, the metaphor suggests something richer: a vision of newly intimate relations with the divine, of an eternal life of bliss, of an ecstatic coupling with the Savior. The warm associations of marriage for ancient Romans of a certain status—the potential enhancement of wealth, property, inter-familial alignments, and political influence; the reproduction that ensures the continuation of the family line—contributed a positive “charge” that continues to “hover over” the metaphor.Footnote ⁴³

Yet this attempted extrusion of the sexual by the addition of “celibate” was not complete, nor could it be if patristic writers wished to derive surplus value from the metaphor's erotic overtones, to promote celibacy as an object of desire. “Sex,” an eroticized originary discourse or habitat, continues to “hover over” the exhortation to sexual renunciation.Footnote ⁴⁴

Metaphors, like all figurative language, can operate “outside” as well as “inside” the text.Footnote ⁴⁵ Ancient allegory, David Dawson suggests, “actually engaged social and cultural practice in the ancient world.” It entered the contest over “social and cultural identity, authority, and power.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Allegory, he concludes, could be and was deployed “to endorse, revise, and subvert competing world views and forms of life.”Footnote ⁴⁷

The metaphor of the “celibate Bridegroom” likewise performed “work” in the extra-textual world: it both contributed to and mediated the debate over the relative values of celibacy, marriage, and embodiment, whether here and now or in the afterlife. It held together “marriage” and “celibacy” in a creative tension that reflected the Church's need to affirm the worth of each.Footnote ⁴⁸ “Celibate Bridegroom” seems a singularly fitting illustration of Hart's description of metaphor's fecundity, to which I alluded above:

Let us now turn to examine the originary habitats of the metaphor's components that contributed both to its conceptual incoherence and to its service as a truly exemplary Gastarbeiter in the service of Christian doctrine and life.

III. Scriptural and Early Christian Habitats

Scriptural verses collided—but created surplus value—in the production of the metaphor “celibate Bridegroom.” As I argue in Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity, ancient interpreters liberated biblical verses from what modern scholars might deem their historical context and textual emplotment, repositioning them to promote the superiority of abstinence.Footnote ⁵⁰ Yet insofar as those contexts continued to “hover over” the new usage, these redeployments engendered further paradoxes. A good case is provided by scriptural references to bridegrooms and lovers.

The representation of Israel as the bride of God in the book of Hosea, in Isaiah 54, and in Jeremiah 3 doubtless encouraged the notion of God as metaphorically “marriageable.” More centrally, the images of bridegroom/lover in the Song of Songs and in Psalm 45 (a royal wedding psalm) proved rich sources for later Christian interpreters. Nonetheless—in contrast to Christian appropriation—this bridegroom or lover was neither imagined as the Messiah,Footnote ⁵¹ nor, in his original habitat of the Hebrew Bible, was he understood metaphorically—although by late antiquity, Jews could interpret the Song of Songs as allegorically expressing the love between God and Israel.Footnote ⁵²

The first biblical depiction of the Messiah as Bridegroom is found in Paul's words to the Corinthians: “I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband” (II Cor. 11:2). Next, the image of Bridegroom (understood as Jesus) surfaces in the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins who await the delayed Bridegroom (Matt. 25:1–13), and in the parable of the Wedding Banquet for the king's son (Matt. 22: 1–14)—both of which parables counsel sober readiness for the eschaton, not sexual exuberance. Then in the Gospel of John 3:29–30, John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the anticipated Bridegroom and himself as the Bridegroom's friend, who must “decrease” while the Bridegroom “increases.” The metaphor is further domesticated and adapted to ancient Roman social structures in Ephesians 5 by its inclusion in a Household Code that demands the ready subjection of wives to husbands and the chastity (“without spot or wrinkle”) of the wife, on the model of Christ the Bridegroom's marriage to his bride, the Church.Footnote ⁵³ Finally, Revelation 19:6–9 depicts the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb of God, Christ. These biblical identifications of Jesus as Bridegroom, however, might appear problematic once sexual renunciation was deemed a chief marker of Christian commitment: now, the qualification of “celibate” was needed to blunt the sexual association.

Nowhere, Averil Cameron argues, did the paradoxical, seemingly “irrational” aspects of Christian exhortation emerge more forcefully than in language pertaining to virginity and celibacy.Footnote ⁵⁴ With the rising evaluation of ascetic renunciation, “marriage” might seem a less cogent image with which to depict the Christian's relation to Jesus. Indeed, already in I Corinthians 7 and in Jesus' response to the Sadducees (that there will be “no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven” [Matt. 22:30, Luke 20:35]), the demotion of “real-life” marriage found assistance.Footnote ⁵⁵ Yet if Jesus the Bridegroom, like his Bride the Church, could be depicted as “without spot or wrinkle” (cf. Eph. 5:27)—which connoted, to the fourth-century ascetic enthusiast Jerome, “without the contamination of sexual intercourse”—the metaphor became not just acceptable, but productive.Footnote ⁵⁶ And if Jesus' nuptials were to be endlessly delayed (a motif promoted by the New Testament teaching of the delay of the Parousia), his unconsummated marriage could remain suggestive yet “unsullied.”

Early Christian interpreters of the Song of Songs and of Psalm 45 routinely, and ingeniously, turned the hero of these texts into the Bridegroom, Christ, and represented him as married—quite polygamously—to virgins, to widows, to men, to the Church, and indeed, to all Christian believers. Although the erotic association of “Bridegroom” could not be erased—the original habitat of nuptials “hovered over” the metaphor—skillful interpretation might adjust it to its new home in Christian ascetic culture, betokening (rather tamely) God's steadfast love. Yet the metaphor does not escape its originary habitat: the return of the repressed ensures that the “celibate Bridegroom” still emerges as erotically desirable. Some examples will illustrate the point.

Bishop Alexander of Alexandria in the fourth century (according to Athanasius's report) exhorts the virgins under his care to learn from Scripture that Jesus, both their brother and their Bridegroom, is “radiant and ruddy” (Song of Songs 5:10), the one to whom they should cling and “beside whom you sleep.”Footnote ⁵⁷ John Chrysostom, a few decades later, argues that since unmarried men and women committed to celibacy were espoused to Christ, their living together, even in a sexless relation, constitutes “adultery” or “fornication.”Footnote ⁵⁸ He warns virgins not to settle for any earthly partner, since the Bridegroom Jesus whom they will receive as their Spouse is “hotter” (sphodroteros) than any man.Footnote ⁵⁹ The erotic language of the Song of Songs is introduced to display to these women the wonders of their heavenly lover. Doubtless one of the attractions of the “celibate Bridegroom” metaphor was that it enabled the Christian ascetic to luxuriate in the “heat” without suffering the “corruption.”

IV. Change of Locale

With the failure of Jesus' speedy return to usher in the Kingdom, the reunion of Jesus with his devotees was thought not to occur in an imminent eschaton on a transformed earth, but in a heavenly afterlife. Accordingly, patristic exegetes from the third century onward transmuted Paul's stated reason for counseling celibacy (the expectation of an imminent eschaton [I Cor. 7:26, 29, 31]) into the hope that celibacy on earth would reap for the renunciant a partnership with Jesus after death. That “the time is short” and “the form of this world is passing away” was handily reinterpreted to mean that Christians should prepare for an imminent death,Footnote ⁶⁰ that human lifespans are but seventy years.Footnote ⁶¹

Afterlife as an ascetic's marital union with Jesus now merges in patristic imagination with biblical passages pertaining to the Last Judgment. Slight interpretive license could meld the judgment throne (Matt. 25:31–46) with a bridal chamber, a thalamos. Will the ascetic woman be worthy of her Bridegroom's call (“Come O blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”)Footnote ⁶²—or will she be ejected from the bridal chamber, to feed the goats on Jesus' left hand (Matt. 25:32–34)?Footnote ⁶³ Now, it is virgins who, if they fail to prepare for themselves a suitable wedding garment (so an anonymous author of a treatise On Virginity threatens) will find themselves “cast into outer darkness” where “men will weep and gnash their teeth” (Matt. 22:11–13).Footnote ⁶⁴ Those destined to be Brides of Christ should ready themselves, through ascetic renunciation, to meet their Groom at death.Footnote ⁶⁵ The merger of Judgment seat and thalamos threatens punishment to those who fall from chastity but doubtless enlivens the prospect of the Judgment for the sexually abstinent. The New Testament exhortation to readiness for an immediate eschaton now “hovers over” the encouragement to sexual renunciation.

V. Jesus' Brides and Life “Outside the Text”

Who might qualify as a Bride of Christ? Ephesians 5 identifies her collectively with the Church, and this association resounds throughout dozens of patristic writings.Footnote ⁶⁶ With the progressive asceticizing of Christianity, however, the Bride of Christ could also easily be identified with individuals who had committed themselves to lifelong virginity.Footnote ⁶⁷ Particular virgins (for example, Eustochium, Paula the Younger, Demetrias,Footnote ⁶⁸ and MarcellinaFootnote ⁶⁹) now emerge as Christ's “Bride” with predictable regularity. The theme of those committed to celibacy as betrothed or married to Jesus the Bridegroom is also common in the ascetic literature of the early Syrian Church.Footnote ⁷⁰ Likewise, unnamed consecrated virgins receive exhortation from the bishops who stood guard over them. Thus from John Chrysostom,Footnote ⁷¹ Augustine,Footnote ⁷² Athanasius,Footnote ⁷³ Ambrose,Footnote ⁷⁴ and Basil of AncyraFootnote ⁷⁵ comes the constant refrain that these virgins are—or are to be—Brides of Christ. The Bride's “spotless and unwrinkled” condition is lifted from its original habitat (Christ's union with the Church [Eph. 5:27]) and reassigned to the individual virgin whom Christ will marry.Footnote ⁷⁶

Likewise, biblical texts condemning adultery and divorce are cited to warn consecrated virgins of the dire end that awaits them if they stray from fidelity to their Spouse, Jesus.Footnote ⁷⁷ For a consecrated virgin to share a house with a man likewise committed to celibacy is now classified as “adultery” or “fornication.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Cyprian of Carthage offers a startling analogy calculated to frighten such couples into submitting to (his) episcopal authority: if a human husband saw his wife reclining next to another man, would he not take his sword in hand? What then will Christ think when he sees his dedicated virgin lying with another? Christ will use the “spiritual sword” of divine punishment against her on the Day of Judgment, Cyprian concludes.Footnote ⁷⁹ John Chrysostom also chastises such virgins: does the woman not know that as the betrothed of Christ she is to be free of all “spot and wrinkle” (Eph. 5:27)?Footnote ⁸⁰ Athanasius likewise cautions that consecrated virgins are a “garden locked” (Song of Songs 4:12), entry to which is granted only to “the gardener,” Christ (presumably an allusion to Mary Magdalene's mistaking the risen Jesus for a “gardener” in John 20:15).Footnote ⁸¹ In these examples, Jesus is cast in the role of the jealous husband or lover, who will wreak vengeance on his “adulterous” fiancée or spouse.

Most striking (and revealing of the “gender trouble” that afflicts our metaphor) is Methodius of Olympus's treatise, the Symposium, patterned after Plato's treatise of the same name. Methodius exchanges Plato's male pederasts for Christian female virgins who, like their Platonic exemplars, discourse on love. Among the interesting discursive shifts of Methodius's treatise is that the Brides of Christ are carefully distanced from any association with reproduction, unlike Plato's symposiasts for whom the fecund “reproductivity” of erôs stands at the forefront of discussion.Footnote ⁸² Methodius's virgins fail even metaphorically to reproduce: although Methodius represents the Church, Paul, and even God as “mothers,” maternity is a state to which the virgins never even figuratively advance.Footnote ⁸³ Despite the value of Plato's dialogue to Methodius as a literary model, the theme of love's “reproductivity” is entirely suppressed.

Far from “reproducing,” Methodius's virgins do not get so far as “sex.” Methodius's virginal symposiasts, Brides of Christ,Footnote ⁸⁴ process toward the divine thalamos to receive the “nectar” of Christ the BridegroomFootnote ⁸⁵ (himself the chief of virgins [archiparthenos])Footnote ⁸⁶—but never get a toe across the threshold. One reason for this hesitation, I posit, may lie in the situation of bishops and virgins “outside the text.” Deployment of the theme of Jesus as Bridegroom and the virgins as his Brides is obstructed precisely at the point at which ecclesiastical life called for caution.

Although we know little about Methodius's circumstances and the problems he faced as a bishop, it is not unreasonable to posit that he, like many of his episcopal colleagues about whom we are better informed, worried that consecrated virgins might “fall.” Christian virgins might be styled as “temples” and as “sacred vessels”Footnote ⁸⁷—but temples are peculiarly liable to despoliation.Footnote ⁸⁸ And if these “temples of the Holy Spirit” were despoiled, the Church's reputation both at home and abroad suffered.Footnote ⁸⁹ Patristic texts reflecting this despoliation anxiety are abundant: the slightest suspicion that a virgin might be on the path to deflowerment is enough to sound the alarm.Footnote ⁹⁰ The need to uphold the purity of the Church here called for caution: the metaphor of the celibate Bridegroom embracing his virginal brides needed reining in at this crucial associative moment. Something needed to be “withdrawn” from the metaphor's association.

Here intrudes still another extra-textual consideration that further altered the associations of Christ the Bridegroom: most adult Christians in the early centuries were or had been married. Restricting access to Christ the Bridegroom solely to virgins ran up against a more egalitarian stream of Christian theology. Depicting Christ as married to all the members of the Church, including the chaste married, challenged ascetic elitism. As Augustine writes, dampening the pride of celibates, we “do not dare to sever the bodies of married Christians from the members of Christ.”Footnote ⁹¹ Likewise for Chrysostom: the entire Church, including sexually experienced widows and the faithful married, could be subsumed in the category of “pure virgin” (II Cor. 11:2)—since, as Augustine adds, it is not the virginity of the body that makes a believer “Christ's virgin.”Footnote ⁹² For both theological and pastoral reasons, the Church Fathers deemed it wise to represent Jesus as an equal-opportunity Bridegroom.

In addition to the faithful married, widows constitute another category of non-virgins who may aspire to be “Brides of Christ.” Although the Fathers strongly advise against widows' earthly remarriage, they depict them as “brides” welcomed to the heavenly nuptial chamber by Jesus: Jesus, they are assured, does not reject those among them who have kept celibate since their bereavements. Tertullian, enjoining his wife not to remarry after his death, urges her (and others) to devote her “youth and beauty” to God; with Jesus, such women will “live,” “converse,” and “touch” (I John 1:1; Luke 24:39; John 20:17).Footnote ⁹³ Jerome styles the widows Furia and Paula as the Queen of Psalm 45 who at death will receive the King as spouse. They too—not only those who early devoted themselves to lifelong virginity—will hear Jesus sing to them verses from the Song of Songs: “You are all fair, my love; There is no flaw in you” (4:7); “Arise, my love, my fair one” (2:10).Footnote ⁹⁴ John Chrysostom, for example, reassures widows that while the passion of earthly suitors may flag when they contemplate the widow's “used goods,” Christ stands ready and eager to accept themFootnote ⁹⁵—indeed, not as sexually experienced matrons, but as “pure virgins.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Yet here, unlike on earth, their new “marriage” seems not to count against them as remarriage. Joining themselves with the heavenly Bridegroom carries the further advantage that he, unlike earthly husbands, does not die: since death has no dominion over Christ (Rom. 6:9), the widows will enjoy an eternal union.Footnote ⁹⁷

Nor does a sexually dissolute past preclude a Christian's virginal espousal to Christ. Thus Origen, commenting on the story of the harlot Rahab who aided the Hebrews in their capture of Jericho, posits that even former prostitutes can be united to Christ as “chaste virgins to a single spouse” (II Cor. 11:2); they can be “washed and sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 6:11).Footnote ⁹⁸ The Church, too, was a harlot, John Chrysostom reminds his audience, but one who can be transformed into a virgin; thus, he reasons, the harlot married to Christ paradoxically acquires virginity by marriage.Footnote ⁹⁹ Bolstering this argument were verses from the Song of Songs implying that the Bride, “dark but comely” (1:5), will be “whitened” by Christ:Footnote ¹⁰⁰ a proclamation not of (alleged) beautification for the sake of sexual desirability, but of sin's remission.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Most surprising, patristic writers—such as those whose correspondence opened this essay—insist that males as well as females can be “married” to Christ. The Song of Songs again proved central for their exegesis. Thus Jerome, consoling his friend Pammachius on his widowerhood, urges him to “seek him on your bed at night whom your soul loves” (Song of Songs 3:1), to confess, “I sleep, but my heart wakes” (5:2). If the Bridegroom flees, Pammachius should search the streets for him (5:6—contrary to Jerome's advice to female virginsFootnote ¹⁰²); offer him your breasts, your learned bosom, he exhorts Pammachius.Footnote ¹⁰³ John Chrysostom, pleading with his friend, the “fallen Theodore”—“fallen” because he had become smitten with a woman—argues that because Theodore has attached himself to the Heavenly Bridegroom through his pledge of celibacy, it would now be “adultery” to join himself to an earthly wife.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Moreover, in the Acts of Thomas, Judas Thomas represents himself as one of the Wise Virgins with blazing lamp who will receive the Lord.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ And Gregory of Nyssa, for his part, assures readers that since there is “no male and female in Christ” (Gal. 3:27–28), men as well as women can enjoy a marriage to the Heavenly Bridegroom.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Early Christian ascetic discourse, as is here evident, offers provocative riches for “queer theory.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷

What might these representations of Christ the Heavenly Bridegroom—profligately espousing himself not only to virgins, but also to the widowed, the married, the sinful, the soiled, and males—portend? That the image could be so indiscriminately manipulated suggests that, despite the progressive asceticization of Christianity, patristic authors, even ascetic enthusiasts such as Jerome, did not wish to foreclose marriage to the Heavenly Bridegroom to those who were not women, not perpetual virgins, and not sinless. Here a near-universal message of redemption, construed as “marriage,” appears to trump the elitism of ascetic Christianity: the entire church, sinners and saints, can gain entry to the heavenly thalamos. The “celibate Bridegroom” who (potentially) joins himself to all and sundry Christians, his virginal Brides, provided a powerful image of salvation for late-ancient Christian writers: it gathered to itself associations of divine forgiveness and redemptive love.

VI. Bodies in the Afterlife

Although Christian commentators insisted that nuptial imagery pertaining to Christ and the believer must be taken in a purely spiritual and bodiless sense, the original habitat of the imagery of the Bridegroom/lover still hovered over their discussions. Here, our metaphor spun into the associative orbit of eschatological speculation.

A particular problem might arise over the question of whether the heavenly state involved the resurrection of the physical body. Early Christian literature contained disparate representations of the afterlife and of Jesus' resurrected appearance. Although Paul claims that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor. 15:50), Christians came to affirm that the very flesh of the Incarnate One was at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Jesus was deemed to have had a specifically male body while on earth—the story of his circumcision (Luke 2:21) was here essentialFootnote ¹⁰⁹—but had chosen to remain a “voluntary celibate”;Footnote ¹¹⁰ he could have reproduced had he so wished, since he was no eunuch.Footnote ¹¹¹ But did he retain these “male” characteristics in Heaven?

The status of Jesus' body post-death was, to be sure, rendered ambivalent by the conflicting reports contained in the Gospels. Jesus offers “doubting Thomas” the chance to touch his body (John 20:27) and urges his startled disciples to “handle” him to test his “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:36–40). He invites the disciples to join him for breakfast (John 21:12–13), and, in another pericope, eats a piece of broiled fish (Luke 24: 41–43). Post-resurrection, the women who have come to Jesus' tomb are said to grasp his feet (Matt. 28:9). Yet Jesus walks through closed doors (John 20:19), and remains unrecognized by his followers on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–16). Such diverse representations left open how Christians should imagine the resurrection bodyFootnote ¹¹²—and gave no clue as to the “maleness” of Jesus' heavenly form. Were humans to be resurrected with sexual organs? Would “woman” even be in heaven?Footnote ¹¹³ What might these diverse representations imply for marriage to a heavenly Bridegroom? Could Jesus in heaven be “touched”?

The exegetical site that prompted the most commentary on women's ability to “touch” Jesus' resurrected body was John 20:17, Jesus' injunction to Mary Magdalene, “Touch me not.” Given the Fathers' wariness of cross-sexual “touching”—here, recall I Corinthians 7:1, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman”Footnote ¹¹⁴—the reason for Jesus' disallowance pointedly intrudes. Was it simply because Mary Magdalene was a woman? Patristic writers largely rejected this solution:Footnote ¹¹⁵ numerous episodes in the Gospels suggested that women had “touched” Jesus.Footnote ¹¹⁶ The Fathers usually explained Jesus' disallowance of Mary's “touch” by her (alleged) lack of faith, her doubt in his resurrection.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Nonetheless, their appeal to John 20:17 to warn celibates “not to touch”Footnote ¹¹⁸ suggests that sexual implications lingered beneath (or, in Canguilhem's phrase, “hovered over”) the official exegesis. Interpretations of this passage leave open the question of whether Jesus can now be “touched” by women in heaven—a theme of obvious relevance to the construal of Jesus as a Bridegroom. Paul's comment in I Corinthians 6:17, “he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him,” here proved readily exploitable by patristic authors. “Becoming one in spirit” suggested a discourse about union with Jesus that avoided the implications of bodily contact.

Here, patristic authors frequently resorted to the teaching ascribed to Jesus, that there would be “no marrying and giving in marriage in heaven”; the resurrected would be “like the angels” (Matt. 22:30; Luke 20:35–36). That virgins here and now might be assimilated to this angelic state was, predictably, a favorite motif of ascetic enthusiasts.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Indeed, John Chrysostom stresses that virgins might even rate higher than the angels, since the latter purportedly do not have flesh, blood, and passions against which they must war.Footnote ¹²⁰ This Gospel verse could also be deployed to discourage the remarriage of widows, who likewise are exhorted to imitate the celibate angels in heaven.Footnote ¹²¹

But were angels bodiless and hence incapable of sexual activity? The ominous narrative in Genesis 6:1–2 of the “angels” who, lusting after the daughters of men, descended from heaven to mate with them countered the assumption that these heavenly beings lacked bodies. Tertullian cites Genesis 6 to warn virgins to cover their heads: “a perilous face casts stumbling blocks even so far as heaven,” he intones.Footnote ¹²² The (Pelagian?) treatise On Chastity argues that angels are not exempt from marriage merely because they are spiritual substances: the angels of Genesis 6 stand as a case in point.Footnote ¹²³

The debate over the nature of the resurrection body, including its sexual status, was fanned to white-hot intensity during the Origenist controversy at the end of the fourth century.Footnote ¹²⁴ Earlier in his career, Jerome, presumably following an Origenist exegesis of Ephesians 5, had claimed that wives (coded as “bodies”) will in the afterlife be transformed into men (coded as “souls”). Diversity of sex will cease, there will be “no male and female” (Gal. 3:28), and we will be “like the angels” (Matt. 22:30; Luke 20:35–36).Footnote ¹²⁵ Paul's claim that “corruption cannot inherit incorruption” (I Cor. 15:50) here implies for Jerome that sexual intercourse (“corruption”) is excluded from the heavenly afterlife; the best rewards will be assigned to the “incorrupt” Christians who have remained free from the “stain” of sexual activity.Footnote ¹²⁶ On the basis of Jerome's exposition, his erstwhile friend (but now enemy) Rufinus charged that women were asking if their “poor, weak bodies are to rise”—or will they rather receive the “nature of the angels”?Footnote ¹²⁷

Indeed, under attack, Jerome cannot retreat fast enough from his earlier view of the transformability of bodies and their effective dissolution in the afterlife.Footnote ¹²⁸ Now, Jerome repeatedly proclaims that real flesh and blood, not some amorphous “spiritual body,” will be raised. We will be equipped, he avers, not just with our blood, veins, bones, and sinews, but also with our sexual organs: “John will be John, Mary will be Mary” is his constant refrain.Footnote ¹²⁹ But, Jerome continues, we will not use our sexual organs, even though we will possess them.Footnote ¹³⁰ Resurrected bodies will feel no lust for sexual relation, thus fulfilling the prediction that there will be “no marriage in heaven”:Footnote ¹³¹ rather, all the inhabitants of heaven will make the choice of celibacy.Footnote ¹³² Reflecting on the celibate angels, Jerome now argues that Jesus' words do not mean that the denizens of heaven are incapable of marriage, as are stones and trees; it is from loftier motives that they renounce the option.Footnote ¹³³ Controversies over the resurrection body thus intertwined with ascetic aspirations in the interpretation of the angelic status. If angels in heaven did not marry, how much less could the heavenly Jesus be conceived of as “married”?

In ways such as these, conflicting biblical passages pertaining to the nature of the resurrection, especially the resurrected body of Jesus and its “touchability,” complicated the metaphor of Jesus as Bridegroom. Affirming that the afterlife would be peopled with male and female bodies strongly supported the Christian belief that God in creating flesh-and-blood human had pronounced them “good,” but nonetheless suggested something more graphically physical about marriage in heaven than ascetic commentators might wish. Yet the “supplement” added by the imagination of a heavenly marriage to Jesus lent a charge to eschatological speculation.

VII. Pastoral Concerns: The Consolation of Widows

Next, I turn to a pastoral issue that likewise provoked early Christian reflection on heavenly union with Jesus and the state of the body in the afterlife: the consolation of widows. Bishops and spiritual advisers, attempting to comfort grieving widows, often assured them that they would later join their sentient but “sleeping” husbands in Heaven, thus encouraging them to desist from remarriage.Footnote ¹³⁴ But might not widows' reunion with their husbands in heaven preclude their union with the Heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus? As two important rites of passage, marriage and death are linked. Here again, metaphor and eschatological speculation are drawn into the other's associative network.

Two passages in John Chrysostom's writings prompt reflection. The first, his exposition of I Corinthians 7:39–40 (that widows will be happier if they do not remarry), claims that Paul's very language—the husband “sleeps”—implies that the husband will “wake up” in the resurrection; why, Chrysostom argues, does the widow not await a reunion with him in the afterlife rather than contemplate remarriage?Footnote ¹³⁵ In this case, appealing to the continuing marriage with the dead husband is deployed to forestall a second marriage on earth.

Yet in his letter of consolation To a Young Widow, Chrysostom suggests to the grieving widow a different scenario, namely, that God now takes the place of her dead husband. The wording of I Timothy 5:11 (that young widows were “waxing wanton against Christ”), Chrysostom argues, proves that widows have Christ as a spouse.Footnote ¹³⁶ Nonetheless, Chrysostom next, somewhat confusingly, reassures the young widow that she will receive back her husband Therasius, an “emigré” to heaven, not in his former “corporeal beauty” but in “a lustre of another kind.”Footnote ¹³⁷ In that eternal life in heaven, she will enjoy “perpetual intercourse” (sunoikêsai … ton aiôna) with Therasius, he concludes.Footnote ¹³⁸ What is the reader—and the (probably perplexed) young widow—to understand by this mixed message? Will she be married in heaven both to Therasius and to Christ? Or will she be married to Christ while she remains on earth, and later, in heaven, to Therasius? Although Chrysostom doubtless aims to dissuade the young widow from remarriage by holding out better options for her in the hereafter, the original habitat of marriage imagery “hovers.”

That such motifs of consolation literature are not unique to John Chrysostom or to Greek-speaking Christianity is illustrated by Jerome's letter to a widow, Theodora, on the death of her husband, Lucinius. In an earlier epistle, Jerome praises this wealthy Spanish couple's devotion both to ascetic practice and biblical scholarship; they have chosen to live as partners in the spirit, not in the flesh.Footnote ¹³⁹ Upon Lucinius's death, Jerome writes to console Theodora, encouraging her in her widowhood. She should take comfort in knowing that she will shortly be rejoined with her husband; not dead, but “sleeping,” he will be roused (in some indefinite) hereafter. Even now, Lucinius sees her (his “sister,” indeed, his “brother” through sexual renunciation) from his heavenly abode, and is preparing a place for her beside him. Yet, Jerome continues, seemingly retracting the implications of his words, in the resurrection there is “no marrying and giving in marriage,” and we shall be “like” the angels (Matt. 22:30). Nonetheless, we shall still inhabit human bodies: “Paul will still be Paul, Mary will still be Mary”—and Jerome launches an attack on heretics' dissolution of bodies in the afterlife.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Although Tertullian had instructed his wife that in their heavenly reunion there would be no resumption of “voluptuous disgrace between us,”Footnote ¹⁴¹ Jerome depicts the sexually abstinent couple in heaven as scarcely “married” at all, despite his attempt to console the bereaved. Thus although the pastoral consolation of grieving widows prompted Christian writers to conjure up a heavenly reunion of married couples as comfort, such “consolation philosophy” might complicate the representation of the widow's marriage to the Bridegroom Jesus. Here, as in the case of the bodily resurrection in the afterlife, our metaphor collided with eschatological speculation in intriguing ways—yet in ways that served helpful pastoral functions in the here and now.