Gimme That Old-Time Feminism: Jean-Claude Larchet on Gender and Revolution (II)

A note to readers:  The following is part two (of two) of Pdn. Brian Patrick Mitchell's review of Renewing Gender: An Orthodox Perspective, by Jean-Claude Larchet, published by Holy Trinity Publications, Jordanville, NY. Part one can be found here.

The Scandal of Subjection

Larchet is surprisingly inventive in avoiding indications of asymmetry between the man and the woman. In his commentary on Psalm 1, St. Basil the Great asks why it begins “Blessed is the man” using the word aner and not anthrōpos. Aren’t women included in the blessing? He answers that they are, but it was sufficient for the Psalmist to mention only the man as the hēgemonikoteron, “leader of the two,” from hēgemonikon, a Stoic term widely used by the Fathers to mean the “leading, governing, or principal part,” e.g., man in relation to creation, the soul in relation to the body, the nous in relation to the soul. Larchet, however, translates hēgemonikoteron as merely “the part which is mentioned first” (127). He also says the story of Eve’s creation in Genesis 2 “emphasizes the weakness and dependence of the man” on the woman and that the prophecy that “a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife” “seems to set the adult male in a relationship with his wife resembling the relationship of children to parents” (64). 

Very oddly, Larchet says God does not “judge” or “blame” Adam or Eve for eating of the tree. “What followed their common sin is not presented as a Divine punishment, but more as a consequence of what they did,” he writes (70–71). As support, he cites St. Irenaeus saying that God does not curse Adam and Eve, He only curses the serpent and the ground Adam must work (fn 184, 187). But here Larchet confuses judging and blaming with cursing and sentencing. God curses the serpent as punishment, but He sentences Adam and Eve for their own good, saying to Eve, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception . . . and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Gen 3:16). The Fathers commonly understood this verse as a divine decree. St. Irenaeus himself says “both nature and the law” place the man over the woman to explain why God punishes Miriam much more than Aaron for challenging Moses in Numbers 12 (Frag 73). Likewise, St. John Chrysostom quotes Gen 3:16 to explain why the Apostle Paul added "as also saith the law" (1 Cor. 14:34) in support of the silence required of women in church. Larchet, however, gives Gen 3:16 a strictly Maximian interpretation, saying “but here [in Gen 3:16 ] it is a question of the passion of desire and the passion of dominion. God presents them as a consequence of the fall and the effect of sin” (108). Never mind that the Greek of Gen 3:16 does not actually mention “desire”; it says instead “your turning back [apostrophē] shall be to your husband.”

Larchet does not believe in the subjection of the woman. He writes that St. Paul’s analogy of husbands and wives to Christ and the Church is Eph 5:21–33 “appears to institute a hierarchy” and then denies that it does, saying emphatically, “There is no hierarchy here” (106–107). He takes the words “submitting yourselves one to another” (Eph 5:21) to mean not just mutual submission but mutual obedience, saying, “Obedience, the pillar of monasticism, is also found in the couple, not just obedience to the Divine Will, but also obedience to each other” (113). Yet husbands are never told to obey or “be subject to” their wives in Scripture or the Fathers, and there are other forms of submission besides obedience. There is deference, when one person graciously allows another to choose or go first. There is also condescension, when a person of rank accedes to the wish of someone below him, as when Abraham condescends to beget a child by Hagar at the urging of Sarah, and when Our Lord condescends to change water into wine at the behest of Our Lady. The rest of Eph 5 as well as Col 3:18 tell us how we are to submit “one to another”—husbands by being loving and giving, wives by being subject and reverent. (This is in my 2021 book Origen’s Revenge, which Larchet appears not to have read.)

How Shall We Now Live?

For all Larchet says in Part I about the undeniable reality of a broad range of sex differences, he says nearly nothing in Part II about how those differences should be respected, except that feminists should value marriage and motherhood more. (Pope John Paul II does the same in his Theology of the Body—lots about the value of femininity, nothing about the value of masculinity, as if only women have a special role to play in the human drama.) Larchet seems to believe that since sex is biological, boys and girls will be different enough naturally to need no encouragement to be different—no limits placed on what girls may do or what boys may do. He also seems to believe that any encouragement to conform to the fallen world’s arbitrary gender roles will likely make too much of male and female, inhibiting Christianity’s “transfiguration of gender.” 

Similarly, for all Larchet says in Part II in favor of transfiguring gender to “rise above the inequality and opposition of gender” (55), he says nearly nothing about what that might mean for the Church today. Altar girls? Deaconesses? Priestesses? One must read his endnotes to find a single brief mention of a very weak and strictly modern excuse for why only men may be priests: Priests “are icons of Christ during the liturgy so they must be of the masculine sex because that was the sex of Christ. It is for this symbolic reason and not because of sexist discrimination that women cannot exercise the priestly role” (217). 

As it happens, we don’t need Larchet to tell us where his transfiguration of gender will lead: We can see it all around us. Moderate feminism, by denying the gender order and insisting that male and female doesn’t matter, has paved the way for radical feminism and the whole LGBTQ+ revolution. If that is not enough, we also have Carrie Frost’s 2023 book Church of Our Granddaughters, in which she details her own vision of the Church based on her “incarnational model” of male and female, which is essentially Larchet’s egalitarian complementarity. Both models are little more than old-fashioned, different-but-equal feminism. And what does Frost want? Everything up to and including a “conversation” about women as priests and bishops.

Larchet argues that the way most Westerners now live is the way Orthodox Christians should live because “social structures have evolved” and a “strong egalitarian mentality” has taken hold. (160). But such thinking is half a century behind the times. Fifty years ago feminism was ascendant. Feminists were celebrating victory after victory. The Equal Rights Amendment was nearly ratified. The federal service academies were forced to admit women. The full effects of feminism were yet to be seen. The men who came of age in that era could not see where the feminist revolution would end or how we could possibly return to a more traditional way of life, so they went along with little resistance, shrugging off the warnings of the few of us writing against feminism in those days.

Today, however, young men see what a disaster feminism has been for society and themselves. Feminism has alienated men and women by turning women into arrogant narcissists who see masculinity as childish if not “toxic.” It has taught women to put their freedom and their careers first, well before marriage and children. It has also favored women in education and employment, giving women less reason to marry while also making it harder for men to make enough money to attract a mate and support a family. Consequently, more and more men are giving up on marriage, seeing women as not worth the trouble or the risk. The measurable results of these changes are declining marriage and birth rates causing the demographic collapse of the indigenous populations of the world’s most feminist countries.

More and more men are also rethinking male-female relations and coming to the conclusion that the old ways were better. More and more are also flocking to the Orthodox Church because it is more respectful of old ways—old ways of worship as well as old ways of men and women living together. Yet there are those in the Church who are telling these men to stay away: Stay away if you are coming to the Orthodox Church to be more manly, because, as one hierarch has written recently, masculinity is “not an Orthodox term” and “is not a term that has any traditional place in Christianity” because the aim for both men and women is “to become a human person.” Larchet himself writes of a certain “gender fluidity” in Christianity (169) and of the “femininization of Christian men” (175), stressing the need for men to be more like women and let women be more like men.

The best thing about Larchet’s book is that it makes quite plain the choice the Orthodox must make. If our most Origenist Fathers were right about male and female, then the Church has always been wrong in seeing more to male and female than desire and domination. Maximus would have us believe God never intended us to be male and female and that our salvation depends on shaking them off, but the Apostles and Fathers have taught us to practice living as either male or female every day of our lives, even in prayer, when women are to pray covered and men are to pray uncovered, per 1 Cor 11. One could invent a different understanding of St. Maximus to avoid admitting he was wrong, but why? Better to admit it: His early, unnecessary speculation on male and female is an ill-considered survival of Origenism assuming an extremely narrow and negative view of male and female inherited from Platonism and serving now as an excuse for a feminist revolution within the Church. Larchet proves this.

About the Author

Protodeacon Brian Patrick Mitchell, PhD, is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and a widely published scholar of Orthodox theology and Church history. A former soldier, journalist, and Washington bureau chief, he holds a PhD in theology and an MTh in Orthodox studies from the University of Winchester. He is the author of several books, including Origen’s Revenge: The Greek and Hebrew Roots of Christian Thinking on Male and Female and The Disappearing Deaconess. Fr. Brian has lectured at numerous universities and seminaries, including Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, and continues to write on topics at the intersection of faith, culture, and tradition.

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