A Call to Holiness: Baptism, the Church, and Asceticism in Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum

Katarina Plsson

doi:10.1515/zac-2024-0026

Article Open Access

A Call to Holiness: Baptism, the Church, and Asceticism in Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum

Katarina Plsson

Published/Copyright: November 22, 2024

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity Volume 28 Issue 3

Abstract

Scholarship on the Jovinianist controversy has shown that the idea of baptism as deeply transformative lay at the heart of Jovinian’s thinking. Scholars have likewise held that Jerome, who through his Adversus Jovinianum is our main source to the ideas of Jovinian, did not acknowledge the ecclesiological concerns on which his opponent’s argument was based. This article argues, to the contrary, that Jerome was well aware of the challenge that Jovinian’s ecclesiology implied for ascetic superiority. I show that in his polemics against Jovinian, Jerome did not disregard the importance of baptism, but rather reinterpreted it. The transformation ascribed by Jovinian to the baptismal rite was transferred by Jerome to the postbaptismal life, and more precisely, to the ascetic life. I examine three themes: Baptism as a new birth, baptism as a resurrection to a spiritual life, and the baptized person as a bride of Christ, showing how these were ascetically interpreted by Jerome. I argue that Against Jovinian is a work deeply engaged with the precisely the questions which Jovinian raised, namely about the essence of the church and the relationship between its members.

Keywords: Jerome of Stridon; the Jovinianist controversy; ecclesiology; baptism; asceticism

1 Introduction

In the years around 400, the question of the implications of baptism was fiercely debated among Christian authors. While baptism had since long had the function of marking belonging to a group that socially and rhetorically separated itself from Roman society and implied a clear signifier of not being of “the world,” the Christianization of Roman society raised new questions about Christian identity. As Robert Markus has put it: “In one way or another the debates of these decades all revolved around the question: what is it to be a Christian?”^[1]

This article will assess the question of baptism and Christian identity in the context of the Jovinianist controversy, a debate which is known mainly as a conflict over the value of asceticism. However, there is good reason to believe that beneath the arguments pro and contra asceticism lay questions about the meaning of baptism and membership in the church. We may note that in three of the four propositions expressed by Jovinian, as related by Jerome in his Adversus Jovinianum (393), baptism is mentioned.^[2] It has been acknowledged in scholarship on Jovinian that at the centre of his thought, which was deeply ecclesiological, was an idea of baptism as implying a real transformation and incorporation into the church.^[3] The baptized Christian was thought to become free from sin to the extent that the church is free from sin. Jovinian saw the Christian community as a collective, who, as members of the church, shared its attributes.

If we return to the question formulated by Markus: “What is it to be a Christian?,” Jovinian’s answer was: being baptized with the right faith. According to him, baptism made all Christians equal members of the church. He had arguably come up with this answer as a reaction against what he perceived as ascetical elitism in the church—precisely the kind of elitism found in the writings of Jerome.^[4] Jovinian seems to have feared that ideas like Jerome’s would sever the unity of the Christians, who, in his view, together made up a holy people.^[5]

I will examine Jerome’s ways of approaching Jovinian’s ideas about baptism and the church in Against Jovinian, in which he presents and refutes each of the four theses mentioned above. The work is our main source to Jovinian’s thought and includes extensive quotations.^[6] However, scholars have generally held that Jerome neglected the ecclesiological foundation and the centrality of baptism in Jovinian’s thinking. J. N. D. Kelly writes that Jerome “nowhere comes to grips with, nowhere seems to understand Jovinian’s fundamental thesis, namely that baptism received with genuine faith really does abolish original sin and effects a total regeneration, creating a unified, holy community in which distinctions based on merit are without meaning.”^[7] Allan J. Budzin agrees with this assessment,^[8] and Yves-Marie Duval expresses a similar judgment.^[9] An important exception in this regard is Thomas E. Hunt, who acknowledges that Jerome took Jovinian’s soteriological and ecclesiological concerns seriously.^[10]

I will argue that Jerome did not neglect the question of baptism and membership in the church, which was at the centre of his opponent’s argument. Rather, he reinterpreted, for his own ideological purposes, traditional images of baptism as well as biblical texts which Jovinian had used to support his idea about the unity of baptized Christians. I will discuss Jerome’s reappropriation of baptismal imagery in relation to three themes which were prominent in early Christian theorizing on and expressions of conversion: new birth, resurrection to a spiritual life, and becoming a bride of Christ.

2 New Birth

The Jovinianist controversy took place in a Christian context in which baptism was deeply invested with meaning, which was expressed in the ritual itself, in catechisms and in art. David G. Hunter has pointed out that the impact of Jovinian’s theological interpretation of baptism can only be understood when we consider its connection to Christian experience of the baptismal rite.^[11] Baptism was, in the Christian experience, understood as profoundly transformative, and as an incorporation into a new community.^[12] An aspect of this was the conception of the rite as a new birth, in which the baptized person became a child of God. The font was seen by early Christians as both a tomb in which the old self died, and a womb in which the new self was born.^[13] Connected to the baptismal theme of becoming a new person was the idea of regaining the image of God and the original condition in Paradise.^[14] Taking off old clothes and putting on new ones symbolized a passage from old to new, in putting off the old person and clothing oneself in Christ.^[15]

If we consider the strong symbolism used in theorizing about the meaning of baptism, and not least as expressed in the rite at the time of the Jovinianist controversy, it seems plausible that Jovinian’s ideas of a unified Christian people, all born again as children of God, would have echoed the sentiments of the time to a much higher degree than Jerome’s idea of a hierarchical church with an ascetic elite.^[16] In answering Jovinian’s arguments, and in order to defend his idea of a hierarchy based on renunciation, Jerome had to express an understanding of Christian transformation which relativized the importance of the baptismal rite itself, while transferring the regenerative meaning associated with baptism to the post-baptismal life of the ascetic person.

In Jovinian’s view, all who had been baptized with the right faith were children of God to the same degree. In Against Jovinian, he is said to have made this argument from the idea of God’s seed abiding in the Christian person, expressed in 1 John: “Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way,”^[17] and: “those who are born of God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them, and the evil one does not touch them.”^[18] John 6:56^[19] and 17:20–21^[20] had been interpreted by Jovinian as referring to the equal abiding of Christ in all the baptized, and an equal abiding of them in Christ. Connected to this is Jovinian’s idea of the Christians as one people, “like dear children, participants in the divine nature” (compare 2 Peter 1:4).^[21] His view seems to have been that through baptism, the human being becomes a member of the people of the church and, as a consequence, a child of God and a partaker of the divine nature.

Jerome is not convinced by these arguments from the Scriptures and suggests alternative interpretations. As for the argument from 1 John, he draws attention to how the same author tells his readers to keep themselves from idols.^[22] If the children of God cannot be tempted by the devil, how does it come that they are told to beware so that they are not tempted? Also, it is said in 1 John that if we say that we have no sins, we lie; however, if we confess them, we will be forgiven.^[23] This, says Jerome, is written by someone who has been baptized, and who writes to other baptized persons; thus, baptism does not prevent from future sinning. The reason why John wrote that everyone who is born of God does not sin, Jerome explains, was to make them avoid sinning, and to make them aware that as long as they avoid sinning, so long do they abide (permanere) in the birth of the Lord.^[24] According to Jerome, it is not the case that the mutual abiding results in avoidance of sin, but, to the contrary, that avoidance of sin results in the mutual abiding.

As for the texts from the Gospel of John, Jerome also presents an alternative interpretation, namely, that those referred to were the apostles, to whom Jesus was speaking. If a person has the same degree of belief and the same works as the apostles, then the abiding will be the same for that person as it was for the apostles. In a similar way, the words in John 14:3 (“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am”) are directed, Jerome argues, especially to the apostles, “who have believed, have become perfect, and can say ‘the Lord is my portion.’”^[25]

However, Jerome does not content himself with presenting alternative interpretations of scriptural passages; he also wants to prove that Jovinian’s views rest on erroneous theology. His critique is essentially anthropological, presenting Jovinian as a Manichaean determinist in claiming that the baptized belong to a certain nature, namely, the divine nature; a belonging that precludes change. It was according to this view, Jerome tells us, that Jovinian interpreted the words in Matthew 7:18, about the trees and the fruit. In contrast to this determinist interpretation of the new birth, Jerome wants to show that being a child of God is not a necessary, unreversible condition of the baptized person. He refers to John 1:12–13,^[26] and comments that the Word was made flesh, so that we could pass from the flesh into the Word. However, “the Word did not cease to be what He had been, and neither did the human being lose what he [or she] was by birth.”^[27] It is not according to nature, but according to grace that we are united in God:^[28] “The glory is increased, but the nature does not change.”^[29] When it comes to the parable of the good and the evil trees, Jerome points out that Judas bore evil fruit although he had been a good tree, and Paul, having been an evil tree, bore good fruit.^[30] The conclusion is that baptism does not guarantee a righteous life. Instead, Jerome points to the importance of imitation by free will. The choice is between following Christ or following the devil: “If we receive Christ to dwell in our heart, we immediately chase the devil away. If we sin, and the devil enters through the door of sin, Christ will withdraw at once.”^[31]

The baptismal motif of regaining the original status of Adam and Eve, as created in the image of God, was not lost in Jerome’s writings; however, he limited this re-entry into Paradise to Christian ascetics. According to him, sexual difference had become a reality only after the Fall—the first human beings, created in the image of God, had been virgins: “The bond of marriage is not in the image of the Creator.”^[32] With the era of the Law giving way to the era of the Gospel, the time had come for human beings to live, as Paul advised, according to the fact that “the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none.”^[33] Christ has shown us the reality of human life, that is, the virginal life, and this is the example that we should follow. Imitation of Christ is, for Jerome, essentially imitation of His virginity.^[34]

Jerome refers in this connection to Colossians 3:9–11:

[. . .] seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

This was a text, like Galatians 3:28, that was used by Christian authors to explain the meaning of baptism.^[35] However, according to Jerome’s interpretation, the text does not refer to a transformation taking place in the baptismal rite, but one achieved through asceticism. Putting off the old person and putting on the new is accomplished by doing away with sexual difference—it is in this way that we are born again.^[36] We thus see how scriptural words typically associated with the transformation in baptism are given new significance.^[37]

The understanding of baptism as a new birth was not denied by Jerome, but relativized, since the outcome of this birth was seen as determined by the postbaptismal life, and asceticism in particular. We will now turn to analysing his reinterpretation of another baptismal theme, namely that of resurrection.

3 Resurrection to a Spiritual Life

The idea of baptism as a resurrection went back to Paul’s words in Romans 6:3–5^[38] and was concretized, in the baptismal rite, by immersing the person three times in water, symbolizing Christ’s three days in the tomb.^[39] It has been shown that this Pauline understanding of baptism was developed mainly during the fourth century, becoming the predominant way of understanding baptism.^[40] Jovinian saw baptism as resulting in “a spiritual regeneration . . . In Jovinian’s perspective, the primary effect of baptism is a transformation of the human person from the carnal to the spiritual way of life, from the death of sin into the life of grace, from the old Adam to the new Adam.”^[41] Budzin points out that in this, Jovinian made use of themes from the letters of Paul, as expressed in Romans 5:12–19 and 6:1–11, and Galatians 5:16–23.^[42] From Against Jovinian, we learn that Jovinian had made a distinction between the spiritual (spirituales) and the fleshly (carnales), by which he referred to believing Christians and non-Christians respectively. He imagined each group to share a common fate: They were the sheep and the goats, the saved and the condemned.^[43] Being baptized with the right faith, a person was thought to be spiritually transformed.

Given the strong connection that existed between baptism and resurrection in the fourth century Christian mind, Jerome had to present a different understanding of resurrection, which implied a relativisation of the transformative power of the baptismal rite without neglecting baptism as such. Against Jovinian, he argued that being spiritual or fleshly referred, not to Christians and non-Christians, but to divisions within the Christian community. The basic idea, as we will see in what follows, is that only the ascetics have truly been resurrected in the sense of leaving the fleshly life behind and living according to the spirit.

3.1 Flesh and Temptation

While Jerome, in the beginning of Against Jovinian, had presented his opponent’s second thesis as claiming that the baptized cannot be overthrown (subverti) by the devil, he later rephrased this, making it say instead that the baptized cannot be tempted (tentari) by the devil. Jovinian is said to have added that if a baptized person actually is tempted, it simply shows that he or she has only been baptized with water and not with the Spirit.^[44]

It has been argued that Jerome rephrased Jovinian’s second thesis in order to make it easier to refute,^[45] but I suggest that he had more important reasons for speaking precisely of temptation, a theme on which he develops at length in the following sections (Against Jovinian 2,2–4). It would, after all, not have been very difficult for him to refute the thesis, even if the word was subverti—he would just have to turn to his argument concerning free will and determinism. Jerome’s aim in this part of the work, I argue, is not simply to refute the second proposition (regardless of its actual wording), but to strike at the root of Jovinian’s whole argument. It is the enduring vulnerability of the human being, the flesh, which is the most central aspect of Jerome’s critique of an idea of baptism as irreversibly transformative. Again, theological anthropology is Jerome’s main weapon against Jovinian.

At the centre of this reasoning is the idea of an absolute divide between the divine nature and the human nature, which denies any possibility for the human being to become divine in such a way that he or she cannot fall. Baptism certainly cleanses a person from former sins, Jerome argues, but it does not prevent future sins.^[46] Thus, he does not deny that baptism implies a transformation in the sense of removing past sins and that we, in this regard, may speak of a new person;^[47] what he denies is that this transformation tells us anything about the future condition of the individual. Against what is presented as a deterministic idea of the implications of baptism, Jerome emphasizes the continuing importance of human choice and responsibility in combatting the ever-raging flesh.^[48]

Beneath this reasoning lies an anthropological view, based on Pauline exegesis, of the human soul as situated between spirit and flesh, enduring the fight between the two. Against Jovinian 2,3–4 abounds with evidence to support a view on human existence as a struggle, from the Old as well as the New Testament. Jerome asks: “Does anyone think that we are safe, and that we should be sleeping once having been baptized?,”^[49] and he gives examples from the Scriptures to show that even righteous persons in the Bible were not without fault.^[50] He also makes use of certain scriptural passages to support this argument: “For who shall be pure from uncleanness? Not even one; if even his life should be one day upon the earth”;^[51] and “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin’?”^[52] What the baptized person must do is to continue the fight against the flesh, knowing that he or she will remain tainted as long as remaining on this earth.

3.2 Flesh and Hierarchy

While the notion of the flesh served Jerome’s aim of demonstrating the uncertain condition of postbaptismal life, it was also principal in his argument for a hierarchy of the baptized, based on their degrees of renunciation. In what follows, we will focus mainly on Against Jovinian 1,37–39, in which Jerome discusses passages from the apostles as “examples pertaining to Christian chastity and continence.”^[53] Situated in the first book, in which the main thesis is that virgins are superior to the married, the series of quotations has the function of adding to this argument by demonstrating that, according to the apostles, the distinction between spirit and flesh does not pertain to Christians and non-Christians, but to ascetic and non-ascetic Christians.

Given the importance of Pauline themes in Jovinian’s argument, and the importance of Paul in contemporaneous debates over asceticism,^[54] it is of course essential to examine how Jerome uses Paul for his own purposes.^[55] He begins this exposition with referring to Romans 6:21–22,^[56] making the comment: “I think that death is the end also of marriage.”^[57] Jerome continues to relate, from Romans 7:4–6, how we, while being “in the flesh,” bore “fruit for death;” and how we now, having died to the law, may belong to the risen Christ and bear fruit for God, living “the new life of the Spirit.” In this, Jerome reconnects to the distinction between the two couples of Law-marriage and Gospel-virginity, which he had previously argued for. Marriage is clearly associated with the old covenant, itself being described as a work of the law,^[58] and with a way of life which the apostle, according to Jerome, urges Christians to leave behind. Living spiritually rather than carnally, or according to the law, implies choosing celibacy over marriage.

According to Jovinian, the earthly Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:47–48 (“The first man was from the earth . . . the second man is from heaven”) referred to those on the left hand, who would perish, while the heavenly Adam represented those on the right hand, who would be saved^[59]—all in correspondence with his understanding of the dichotomy of spiritual and carnal, described above. When Jerome comments on the same passage, he writes: “As death came through a human, so the resurrection of the dead came through a human. Just as we all die in Adam, we will all be made alive in Christ. We served the old Adam under the Law—let us serve the new Adam under the Gospel.”^[60] Jerome quotes the passage at length, ending with the words “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable,”^[61] and explains that: “If corruption pertains to all sexual intercourse, and incorruption belongs particularly to chastity, marriage cannot possess the rewards of chastity.”^[62] Thus, according to Jerome, it is not the non-Christians who are in the image of the earthly Adam, but the non-ascetic Christians.

Commenting on Romans 8:1–14, Jerome states, concerning the words that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:8), that those who live the married life are in the flesh, “because they love the wisdom of the flesh.”^[63] Jerome also quotes Paul’s exhortation to Christians to present their “bodies as a living sacrifice,” not being “conformed to this world, but [. . .] transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom 12:1–2). This means, according to Jerome, that although God accepts marriage, we should, in order to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, not consider what God permits but what He wishes.^[64]

Quoting Galatians 3:3 (“Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”), Jerome explicitly directs these words to those who have begun a continent life only to marry later,^[65] explaining that the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23) are supported by continence, which is their very foundation and also their highest point.^[66] Thus, these virtues cannot exist apart from continence.^[67] Jerome then adds the words of Galatians 5:24–25: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” It ought to be pointed out that in referring to the idea of the Christian being crucified with Christ, Jerome touches on a common baptismal theme—however, for him, true imitation of Christ does not take place in the baptismal rite, but in the ascetic life.

Jerome’s mode of argumentation indicates that we are not simply dealing with a description of the superiority of ascetics over non-ascetics, but with an ascetic interpretation of the very meaning of conversion to Christianity. This has the consequence that the ascetics are not so much an elite, in the sense of doing more than is asked of them, as they are Christians in the true sense of the word, in doing exactly what is asked of a Christian. The non-ascetics, on the other hand, are excused for not doing what they ought to. The importance of baptism itself is not disregarded, but rather reinterpreted—the ascetics are the only ones who live in accordance with their baptism. This is explicitly expressed in a previous part of Against Jovinian, in which Jerome describes marriage in terms of slavery, and Christian freedom, consequently, as freedom from the worldly cares associated with that condition: “Why do we, in whose baptism Pharaoh died and his whole army was drowned,^[68] long back to Egypt, and after eating manna, the food of angels, sigh for garlic, onions, melons, and Pharaoh’s meat?”^[69]

Not only celibacy, but also fasting is seen as imperative in the life of the truly converted Christian.^[70] In his second book of Against Jovinian, when responding to Jovinian’s third thesis, Jerome presents plenty of evidence from the Scriptures to show that fasting is essential for a relationship with God. In this context, he mentions baptism, almost in passing, but what he writes is important in relation to Jovinian’s position: First, he draws attention to Jesus’ fasting after His baptism, claiming that by this practice He “consecrated (dedicavit) His baptism”^[71] and showed that in order to combat “the more powerful demons” (acriora daemonia), prayer and fasting is needed—by implication, baptism itself is not enough. Jerome then refers to Cornelius (Acts 10), who “deserved to receive the Holy Spirit before baptism,” through almsgiving and fasting.^[72] These texts point to an emphasis on individual action over rite, but they also contribute to the picture that is emerging of Jerome’s understanding of baptism itself, namely, as indistinguishable from asceticism and finding its very meaning in it.

The consequence of not following the appeal to asceticism, which is implied in baptism, is a lesser reward: When Jerome refers to Galatians 6:7–8 (“. . . you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit”), he makes clear that it is the married, who remains sexually active, who sows to the flesh and reaps corruption.^[73] Baptism is explicitly mentioned when Jerome quotes the words in Colossians 2:11–12 about “the circumcision of Christ”: “when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him.”^[74] The association of baptism with circumcision in Colossians was a theme that had been taken up in Christian theorizing on baptism, as baptism was seen as the new mark of those entering the people of God.^[75] While Jerome in some instances counters this understanding by seeing circumcision as corresponding to celibacy instead,^[76] this would be difficult when dealing with a biblical passage which explicitly speaks of baptism in this connection. Jerome does not, in this instance, give any explicit interpretation of Colossians 2:11–12: It appears in a sequence of quotations without comment. However, from what we have seen being expressed previously in this part of Against Jovinian, we must draw the conclusion, again, that baptism itself is given an ascetic interpretation. This is also how we should understand the following quotations: Colossians 3.1: “if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above”; 2 Timothy 2:4: “No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer”; and Titus 2:11–12: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.”^[77] These quotations have the purpose of showing that once being raised, a person should distance him- or herself from what belongs to this world. From the interpretations given by Jerome of previous quotations from the apostles, we may infer how he understands these as well: The worldly passions to be renounced imply every aspect of sexual life, even within marriage.

From this, we see that the notions of the flesh and the spirit, and of resurrection to a new life, so important in the understanding of baptism as deeply transformative—and which Jovinian himself seems to have made use of to designate all the baptized as spiritual, in contrast to the carnal—are used by Jerome, not to explain the reality of the baptized person, but the conversion to asceticism: the spiritual and the carnal being interpreted as the ascetic and non-ascetic members of the one church. Primarily on the basis of his Pauline exegesis, Jerome embeds in baptism an ascetic imperative. True conversion to Christianity implies turning away from the world and leading an ascetic life. The consequence is that the ascetics are the only Christians who live in accordance with their baptism, while the married are still in the flesh.

I here wish to return to my claim that Jerome does not, as has been argued, neglect the themes of baptism and the church in Against Jovinian, but acknowledges precisely the questions that are at the heart of Jovinian’s theses, although, of course, presenting alternative answers to them, by reinterpreting and reappropriating texts and images used by his opponent. In what follows, our focus will be on Jerome’s use of the image of the bride in relation to the church and its members.

4 The Bride of Christ

When it comes to the image of the church as a bride, two Pauline texts were of great importance in early Christianity: 2 Corinthians 11:2, in which Paul writes that “I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” and Ephesians 5:25–26, in which husbands are told to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [. . .] so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle.” Another important biblical text was, of course, the Song of Songs, which was used by early Christians to describe the church, but also those who were baptized into it.^[78]

Thus, as with the other metaphors from which we have so far approached the Jovinianist debate as we find it in Against Jovinian, it should not surprise us that Jovinian made use of this image in his argumentation. For him, the bride was first and foremost an epithet for the church. As the church was a bride, all its members were too, precisely because of the transformation which baptism into membership of the church implied.^[79]

Jerome, while on the one hand refuting Jovinian by understanding the bride to be the individual celibate—an interpretation that he had expressed in previous works as well,^[80] on the other hand followed Jovinian in allowing an ecclesiological interpretation, albeit an alternative one. According to his division of salvation history into the time of the Law and the time of the Gospel, Jerome clearly connects virginity with the emergence of the church: The winter that has passed, and the rain that is over and gone (Song 2:11), signifies the Old Testament.^[81] Jerome’s association of the image of the bride with the church is also seen in how he relates the words in Song 4:7 (“You are altogether beautiful, my love, there is no flaw in you”) to Ephesians 5:27 (about the church “without a spot or wrinkle”).^[82] As Karl Shuve has drawn attention to, Against Jovinian is the first instance of Jerome presenting “a systematic ecclesiological interpretation of the Song” by associating the virgin bride with the time of the Gospel.^[83]

Jerome’s understanding of the image of the bride in Against Jovinian should be compared to his Letter 65, in which he, as David G. Hunter has shown, also uses the image of the bride to speak of the church as well as the individual ascetic.^[84] In this text, Psalm 45 is read, Hunter argues, in the light of the Song of Songs—those following the bride are divided into different ranks, and according to Jerome’s interpretation, this corresponds to a hierarchy based on renunciation. Hunter’s assessment that “Jerome’s ascetic reading of Psalm 45 has now merged with his ecclesial reading, and the result is a strongly ‘asceticized’ portrait of the church”^[85] is consistent with what we find in Against Jovinian.

When Shuve claims that Jerome’s ecclesiological interpretation of the bride is such that “only the ascetic elite comes into focus,”^[86] this can, I argue, be taken even further: The ascetic elite is not only in focus—they are understood to represent the very essence of the church, from which it is defined. The fact that Jerome’s ecclesiological interpretation is combined, in Against Jovinian, with an interpretation of the bride as the individual ascetic, points in this direction: what he writes concerning the church is directly related to and dependent on his understanding of the ascetic as a bride. Jerome refers to 2 Corinthians 11:2: “[. . .] I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” arguing that it is clear “what he [Paul] did not want them to be,”^[87] that is, anything else that chaste virgins. If Jovinian applies these words to all Christians, Jerome contends, it will only strengthen his own case, since it will show that while everyone is called to chastity, virginity occupies the highest place.^[88]

Thus, Jerome’s understanding of the bride as the individual ascetic should not be seen as an alternative interpretation to the ecclesiological one; rather, these complement each other. The church without spot and blemish is the church in its truest sense, embodied by its perfect members. If Jovinian applied the attributes of the church to all of its members, the opposite logic can be ascribed to Jerome: The church is a virgin because of individual virgins, and a bride because they, through their holiness, have become brides. The church, Jerome argues, has a left eye (compare Songs 4:9), that of marriage, which the Bridegroom accepts because of the weakness of some, but if the right eye, that of virginity, should be blinded, “the whole body would be in darkness.”^[89]

Jerome’s use of the image of the bride adds to the understanding of the church and its members which has already emerged in our discussions of images of birth and childhood, as well as death and resurrection—an understanding according to which only celibates are truly converted to Christianity. Understood as the most perfect way of imitating Christ, virginity is far more than an option, according to Jerome—it is a constitutive element of the church.

5 Asceticizing Baptism

Jerome has sometimes been credited with expressing, and even being an initiator of, the idea of monastic profession as a “second baptism.” This idea is an elaboration of the correlation between certain baptismal elements and the conversion to monasticism, mainly in terms of renunciation, vows, associations with death and new life, and symbolism in the form of new garments.^[90] Research on Jerome’s importance in this history has been centred on the association he made between asceticism and penitence, as effecting a total forgiveness of sins, and the association of asceticism, as a non-bloody sacrifice, to martyrdom.^[91] According to Kelly, Jerome “saw the monk, like the martyr, undergoing a second baptism, a total immolation of self which cleansed him from all the sins committed since the first.”^[92]

The texts that have gained Jerome this standing in the second baptism discourse are Letter 39,3 and Letter 130,7. In the first, written to Paula after the death of her daughter, it is said that Blesilla, four months before she died, was “washed by a kind of second baptism” when converting to the ascetic life.^[93] The other text, written to the virgin Demetrias, describes how the virgin has renounced the world and added a new vow to the baptismal one, saying “I renounce you, devil, and your world and your pomp and your works.”^[94] This renunciation of the devil, which was pronounced (in different versions) in fourth century baptismal rites, is here used by Jerome with reference to conversion to asceticism.^[95]

Considering the centrality of baptism in the Jovinianist controversy, Against Jovinian is strangely absent from scholarly discussions of second baptism and Jerome’s part in this imagination. From my analysis of this work, new light might be shed on the question. I have argued that, although sometimes accused thereof, Jerome did not ignore the issue of baptism in Against Jovinian; to the contrary, he challenged Jovinian’s understanding of its implications. I suggest that Jerome did not see asceticism as a second baptism in the sense of a new initiation, but neither did he see it simply as a higher level of commitment;^[96] rather, he reinterpreted the meaning of baptism itself, asceticizing it. Thus, his rhetoric in the letters mentioned above should not surprise us: What Demetrias does, in giving a new vow, is actually living up to the words of renunciation uttered by all Christians in the rite of baptism. On the other hand, speaking of the person who chooses to marry, Jerome writes: “Let him do [. . .] what he wishes to do, rather than what he ought.”^[97] Thus, there is no sin in marrying—still, it is not what one ought to do. As Jerome repeatedly reminds his reader, to do good is one thing, to avoid sinning is another. Like the dog returning to his vomit,^[98] non-celibate Christians have not undergone the transformation which their baptism was supposed to initiate.

This way of reinterpreting rituals and phenomena considered to be sacred was far from novel—this was, after all, what had taken place in early Christian interpretations of the Jewish law, sacrifices, and the temple. In Reading Renunciation, building partly on Jonathan Z. Smith’s theory of the transferability of the “sacred,” understood in terms of a “system of status,”^[99] Elizabeth A. Clark writes: “. . . details of the Hebrew ceremonial law could be stripped of their earlier content and symbolically appropriated by Christian ascetics to mark hierarchy and difference among Christians in later antiquity.”^[100] Clark’s idea is that the purity of ceremonial spaces is transferred to bodies in early Christian ascetic literature. Now, the question is if only Jewish traditions and practices were thought to be in need of reinterpretation, by which their sacredness might be transferred to a new space. I suggest that in Against Jovinian, the same transfer of sacredness takes place in Jerome’s way of understanding the main Christian initiation rite, as he firmly moves the imagery of transformation from the baptismal font to the ascetic cell.

6 Conclusion

I have argued that in the debate over asceticism which has become known as the Jovinianist controversy, Jovinian and Jerome did not, as previous scholarship has held, write about different things. Jerome did not neglect Jovinian’s concerns, but presented an alternative understanding of Christian identity, and of the relation between community and holiness. “The superiority of virginity” is not only, as Budzin implies,^[101] one aspect of ascetic spirituality which Jerome chooses to focus on in answering Jovinian’s critique—this superiority is his answer to the same question that Jovinian sought to answer: What does it mean to be a Christian? The purity of the church depends, according to Jerome, on the purity of its members—quite contrary to what Jovinian argued. Even when images, such as the “bride,” are interpreted as referring to the ascetic person, this is an ecclesiological statement. Although Yvon Bodin, who argues that according to Jerome, the members of the church are the church,^[102] is right in claiming that the sanctity of the church is connected to the sanctity of its members,^[103] his account fails to show the particular role of ascetics: The celibates are the part of the Temple which makes it holy; the true bride who stands in the centre of less perfect maidens.

It is important to realize that regardless of the legacy of these two authors, at the time, it was Jovinian who represented the more traditional and conservative view. Although he has been described as “countercultural” and presenting a “radical doctrine,”^[104] it was actually his understanding of the implications of baptism that resonated best with the contemporary imagination, as we know it from catechisms as well as the art and architecture that framed the rite. In this context, it is more probable that Jerome would have been perceived as radical—and we know that this was the case.^[105] Thus, it was Jerome who had to fight an uphill struggle in refuting Jovinian, and in order to make a compelling argument, he could not afford to neglect, as previous research claims that he did, the fundamental ideas about baptism and the church which underlay Jovinian’s theses. Realizing the challenge that these posed to his theory of asceticism, he had to take Jovinian’s argumentation seriously. I have argued that he did so by reinterpreting and reappropriating, for his own ideological purposes, the most central aspects of the opponent’s argument: Ideas and images pertaining to the transformation in baptism and the relationship between the members of the church.

Jerome’s ascetic ideology should not be reduced to an idea of certain Christians performing a more holy life than others and therefore having a higher status. Neither should his work Against Jovinian be reduced to a treatise about ethics, a moralizing argument about ascetic superiority. It presents a profound discussion of what the church is and which implications this has for its members.

Published Online: 2024-11-22

Published in Print: 2024-11-20

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/zac-2024-0026

Keywords for this article

Jerome of Stridon; the Jovinianist controversy; ecclesiology; baptism; asceticism

Creative Commons

BY 4.0