Godly Expectations: Monasticism and Social Norm Dynamics

Amma Sarah of the Desert Mothers once rebuked a male monastic by saying, “It is I who am a man; and you are like women!”[1] In a similar subversive tone to traditional gender norms she stated, “According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.”[2] The following is a commentary which frames Sarah’s ability to push the normative envelope through the cognitive sciences, not to explain away what made her special, but to argue that she and her fellow women monastics were particularly insightful into human nature and the roadblocks for radicality which come from trying to live a normal life. By choosing the desert, Ammas Sarah, Theodora, and Syncletica and their cohort could explore lines of thought that still teach us more than a millennia after they left the cities to pursue a relationship with their deity.

Figure 1: Amma (Mother) Syncletica of Alexandria (Public Domain Photo from Wikipedia)  

Active Inference is a research program which can model the dynamics of social norm development and enforcement. Brains are described as “prediction machine[s]”[3] which generate expectations about the behavior of the self and others.[4] [5] When these expectations are met, no response is required, but when expectations are not met an individual must reduce their prediction error by updating their normative expectations (learning) or imposing the norm (acting).[6]

An example may be helpful: if I am having a conversation with someone and they say something non-normatively offensive, I might learn by realizing my offense was an inappropriate reaction or I might act by criticizing them for the statement. In the world of Mediterranean antiquity, the social expectations of relevance derive from gender essentialism, the belief that gender norms are innate and natural;[7] Amma Sarah once partially subverted the norms by explaining that she was not a woman “in [her] thoughts,” suggesting her ability to go beyond “nature.” [8] Gender essentialism was a cornerstone of Mediterranean norms for women, such as expectations for:

- Submission to male authority.[9]

- Control over their sexuality and to not sexually “tempt” men.[10]

- Childbearing and childrearing.[11]

Even today, gender essentialists often enforce said norms with violence against women,[12] [13] but there is an argument to be made that some early Christians opposed these norms. We have at least one example of a female apostle,[14] Jesus called for men to take responsibility for their sexual feelings,[15] Paul denied gender essentialism as being true for Christians,[16] and traditional family structures were placed lower on the hierarchy of Christian priorities.[17] While normative uniformity cannot be assumed amongst early Christians, at least some Christians of antiquity seem to have held views which subverted aspects of essentialism. Yet, some forms of Christianity would reject these new norms and go on to be patriarchal like the broader Roman society.[18]

Active Inference is a helpful framework for understanding why some forms of Christianity deradicalized their gender norms and why the Desert Mothers were able to subvert Mediterranean gender norms so effectively. We can conceptualize Christian expectations of social norms as THE KINGDOM OF GOD.[19] The Rome of antiquity did not look like the Christian expectation of the KINGDOM, which would result in prediction error. In response, many Christians of antiquity took action to shape the world to their expectations: they refused to participate in Roman customs which did not align with their vision of the KINGDOM,[20] built hospitals to help the sick, [21] and shifted world history as they converted their friends and neighbors. The action that failed, however, was overcoming the sticky concept of the gender essentialism which early Christians seemed to have denied or deprioritized; many Christians “learned” to accept the expectations associated with gender essentialism because they were unable to effectively alter Mediterranean culture in this domain.

For the Desert Mothers, going into the desert enabled them to join and develop a Mediterranean subculture which better aligned with aspects of KINGDOM expectations. According to John Chryssavgis, the Desert Mothers “[radically broke] with social constraint[s]” tied to gender norms to pursue “freedom from subjection, freedom from possession, and freedom from exploitation.”[22] Because their non-normative actions were not reacted to with punishment or rebuke from gender essentialist Romans, the pursuit of such freedoms were at less risk of being inhibited. Instead, the communities the desert monastics built were able to align with expectations mainstream Christians had “learned” away from.

Christians who stayed in Roman society changed it from the inside, facing uncomfortable compromises along the way, while Christians who avoided the dynamics of norm-enforcing action were able to build radically different types of communities on the outside, though lacking the wide-scale impact in their own era. However, the actions of Ammas Sarah, Theodora, and Syncletica would go on to influence Christian practice for over 1,500 years afterward.[23] [24] By following their radical Christian expectations to the end, strategically leaving a society which would hinder them, their expectations continue to shape Christian and feminist thought today as gender essentialism is slowly replaced with social expectations of gender which are more aligned to the universalism of Paul and the general pragmatic push towards human flourishing.

References

Bishop, Judith L. "They Kept Their Skirts On: Gender-Bending Motifs in Early Irish Hagiography." In Constructing Gender in Medieval Ireland, edited by Sarah Sheehan and Ann Dooley, 115-32. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Chryssavgis, John. "The Desert Fathers and Mothers." Chap. 22 In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Patristics, edited by Ken Parry. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2015.

Colombo, Matteo. "Maladaptive Social Norms, Cultural Progress, and the Free-Energy Principle." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43 (2020).

Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity / Lin Foxhall. Key Themes in Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Guerrero-Molina, Mónica, Juan Manuel Moreno-Manso, Eloísa Guerrero-Barona, and Beatriz Cruz-Márquez. "Attributing Responsibility, Sexist Attitudes, Perceived Social Support, and Self-Esteem in Aggressors Convicted for Gender-Based Violence." Journal of interpersonal violence 35, no. 21-22 (2020): 4468-91.

Heaps, Jonathan, and Neil Ormerod. "Statistically Ordered: Gender, Sexual Identity, and the Metaphysics of “Normal”." Theological Studies 80, no. 2 (2019): 346-69.

Horden, Peregrine. "The Earliest Hospitals in Byzantium, Western Europe, and Islam." Journal of Interdisciplinary History  (2005): 361-89.

Kidd, Erin. "The Virgin Desert: Gender Transformation in Fourth-Century Christian Asceticism." The Lyceum 8, no. 2 (2007).

King, Margot H. "The Desert Mothers: From Judith to Julian of Norwich." 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter 9, no. 1 (1983): 12-25.

Krawiec, Rebecca. "Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity." Chap. 6 In Shenoute & the Women of the White Monastery: Egyptian Monasticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Lin, Yii-Jan. "Junia: An Apostle before Paul." Journal of Biblical Literature 139, no. 1 (2020): 191-209.

McClellan, Daniel O. YHWH's Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2022.

Parr, Thomas, Giovanni Pezzulo, and Karl J Friston. Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022.

Perry, Samuel L, Elizabeth E McElroy, Landon Schnabel, and Joshua B Grubbs. "Fill the Earth and Subdue It: Christian Nationalism, Ethno‐Religious Threat, and Nationalist Pronatalism." Paper presented at the Sociological Forum, 2022.

Salisbury, Joyce E. Perpetua's Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman. London, UK: Routledge, 2013.

Tison, Remi, and Pierre Poirier. "Communication as Socially Extended Active Inference: An Ecological Approach to Communicative Behavior." Ecological Psychology 33, no. 3-4 (2021): 197-235.

Zamfir, Korinna. "Returning Women to Their Place? Religious Fundamentalism, Gender Bias and Violence against Women." Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 17, no. 51 (2018): 3-20.

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[1] Chryssavgis, John. "The Desert Fathers and Mothers." Chap. 22 In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Patristics, edited by Ken Parry. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2015.

[2] Kidd, Erin. "The Virgin Desert: Gender Transformation in Fourth-Century Christian Asceticism." The Lyceum 8, no. 2 (2007).

[3] Parr, Thomas, Giovanni Pezzulo, and Karl J Friston. Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022, 192.

[4] Tison, Remi, and Pierre Poirier. "Communication as Socially Extended Active Inference: An Ecological Approach to Communicative Behavior." Ecological Psychology 33, no. 3-4 (2021): 197-235, 204.

[5] Colombo, Matteo. "Maladaptive Social Norms, Cultural Progress, and the Free-Energy Principle." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43 (2020).

[6] For more information on the action/learning response to prediction error, see Parr, Pezzulo, and Friston, Active Inference, 3-14.

[7] Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity / Lin Foxhall. Key Themes in Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 3-4.

[8] Kidd, "The Virgin Desert.”

[9] Krawiec, Rebecca. "Gender and Monasticism in Late Antiquity." Chap. 6 In Shenoute & the Women of the White Monastery: Egyptian Monasticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002, 122.

[10] Krawiec, "Gender and Monasticism," 122-123.

[11] Heaps, Jonathan, and Neil Ormerod. "Statistically Ordered: Gender, Sexual Identity, and the Metaphysics of “Normal”." Theological Studies 80, no. 2 (2019): 346-69, 365.

[12] Guerrero-Molina, Mónica, Juan Manuel Moreno-Manso, Eloísa Guerrero-Barona, and Beatriz Cruz-Márquez. "Attributing Responsibility, Sexist Attitudes, Perceived Social Support, and Self-Esteem in Aggressors Convicted for Gender-Based Violence." Journal of interpersonal violence 35, no. 21-22 (2020): 4468-91.

[13] Zamfir, Korinna. "Returning Women to Their Place? Religious Fundamentalism, Gender Bias and Violence against Women." Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 17, no. 51 (2018): 3-20.

[14] Lin, Yii-Jan. "Junia: An Apostle before Paul." Journal of Biblical Literature 139, no. 1 (2020): 191-209.

[15] Matthew 5:27-30.

[16] Galations 3:26-29.

[17] 1 Corinthians 7:6-7.

[18] Perry, Samuel L, Elizabeth E McElroy, Landon Schnabel, and Joshua B Grubbs. "Fill the Earth and Subdue It: Christian Nationalism, Ethno‐Religious Threat, and Nationalist Pronatalism." Paper presented at the Sociological Forum, 2022.

[19] This ALL CAPS formalism is taken from literature on prototype theory and cognitive linguistics, as exemplified by McClellan, Daniel O. YHWH's Divine Images: A Cognitive Approach. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2022, 75-109.

[20] Salisbury, Joyce E. Perpetua's Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman. London, UK: Routledge, 2013.

[21] Horden, Peregrine. "The Earliest Hospitals in Byzantium, Western Europe, and Islam." Journal of Interdisciplinary History  (2005): 361-89.

[22] Chryssavgis, "The Desert Fathers and Mothers," 334.

[23] Bishop, Judith L. "They Kept Their Skirts On: Gender-Bending Motifs in Early Irish Hagiography." In Constructing Gender in Medieval Ireland, edited by Sarah Sheehan and Ann Dooley, 115-32. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

[24] King, Margot H. "The Desert Mothers: From Judith to Julian of Norwich." 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter 9, no. 1 (1983): 12-25.