The Talmud — a vast collection of ancient Jewish laws and traditions — said it’s better to “burn the Torah [the first five books of the Bible] than it was to teach it to a woman.”
Saint Clement, considered to be the first Apostolic father of the Church, said, “Every woman ought to be overcome with shame at the thought that she is a woman.”
Tertullian, the 2nd-century theologian who developed the doctrine of the Trinity, said of women: “You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God…Woman, you are the gate of hell.”
Saint Augustine, the 4th-century theologian who formulated the doctrine of original sin, said, “Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God.”
And Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, wrote, “The word and works of God are quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”
We shouldn’t dismiss the theological contributions of the early Church fathers, and while it’s (apparently) easy to wave off their misogynistic views as a “product of their environments,” that becomes more difficult the more we dial forward the clock.
