Benjamin Cabe: The Engendered Soul in Apelles and Tertullian

Can a biological male have a female soul? Can a biological female have a male soul? These questions are at the heart of recent controversies surrounding gender theory, and from Christianity they deserve a theological response rooted in a deep engagement with the tradition.However, up to now, relatively little work has been done to address these questions from the perspective of the anthropology and Christology articulated in the patristic era.This paper represents the beginnings of an attempt to remedy this lacuna. It will focus on the debate between Tertullian and Apelles on the engendered soul, which has been for the most part overlooked in modern patristic scholarship. The original catalyst of this debate was whether or not there is an interval between the creation of the soul and the body. However, as I will show, this debate has significant implications for modern gender controversies. Both Tertullian and Apelles come to admit the presence of gender in the soul. But this conclusion was to be consistently rejected by later church fathers, pointing toward a possible patristic consensus regarding the “sexlessness” of the soul.In the final portion of my paper, I will point to the recent writings of Nonna Verna Harrison and Sarah Coakley, who repeat this patristic consensus on the sexlessness of the soul, but also (as I will argue) diverge from it in important ways.