How Celibacy is About Power

The scripture that contains Thecla’s story, The Acts of Paul and Thecla, reads like a gospel written explicitly for women. Because no one comes to save Thecla. (Well, not until the very end – and that’s only after she baptizes herself. And spoiler alert, it’s only the women in the crowd who join her in her efforts of saving herself.) Again and again throughout her story, Thecla has to draw from a strength within her she never knew existed.

So even though Thecla has little to no power according to the world she was born into, she finds a rare form of courage (from the Latin “cor,” meaning heart) and begins trusting her own desire. And her heart no longer wanted to meet the expectations of others. So, Thecla refuses to marry, which went against Roman law. And, I think the reason that Thecla refuses to marry is rooted in her refusal to participate in an economy of worth that sees her body as a commodity.

The few religious scholars that have written about The Acts of Paul and Thecla have interpreted Thecla’s refusal to marry as a spiritual imperative for purity. As a feminist theologian though, I have a very different interpretation. I see Thecla’s refusal to marry as having everything to do with power and how she went about reclaiming control over her body at a time when she wasn’t free to do so. Thecla wanted to opt out of the patriarchal confines that insisted she be given away by her father and handed over to her husband like a piece of property. Thecla refused to marry, I think, because she refused to be owned; she refused to be controlled.

I read an article recently online about how celebrity Julia Fox hasn’t had sex for over two years. She says celibacy is a way for her “to take back control.” This is why I think Thecla refused to marry, almost two millennia ago, rather than to reinforce the antiquated patriarchal norms that a woman is more valuable the more virginal she is. I think Thecla’s refusal to marry is about regaining control. It’s about a woman’s desire to simply, powerfully become her own person.

And the issues that Thecla faces in order to remain her own are the same women face now. Here’s an example. A powerful politician named Alexander sees Thecla walking beside Paul in a big city in ancient Turkey and decides he wants her right there in the street. Paul, who was supposed to be supporting Thecla’s ministry as a mentor, immediately disowns even knowing her and flees the scene. Thecla is left there to defend herself. She goes into full-on Krav-Maga mode, tears his robe, and screams. This brings public humiliation to Alexander. So, in a supreme case of ancient gaslighting, Alex demands that Thecla be sentenced to death by wild animals in the arena for refusing him. Thecla is treated as if she is the one who harmed the powerful politician, as if she is to blame. Thecla is reviled, and made to wear the word “sacrilege” while she awaits being sentenced to death. There are many systems of power in place in the 1st century and many laws that will protect Alexander’s entitlement. There are no laws to protect Thecla.

And this same scene plays itself out mercilessly again and again today.

What sets me on fire about this particular piece of scripture is that it’s the women in the crowd that recognize, identify even, with Thecla and refuse to see themselves as separate from her. So, it’s the people with the least political power in the arena in the 1st century, as Thecla is set upon by wild animals, that pool together what they happen to have on them – roses, cardamon, nard, and begin to throw it all at the animals, which ends up lulling them into a listless stupor. And Thecla is unharmed. And even though Paul had refused to baptize Thecla when she asked him before their fateful run-in with Alexander, Thecla in that moment realizes that everything she needed to save her already existed within her – so she goes ahead and baptizes herself right there in the arena. And this is when we arrive at the passage in her scripture that has echoed within me for decades, “And the women all cried out, in a loud voice, as if from one mouth.”

Author and public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon defines power as “the ability to make a particular perspective seem universal.” Seeing women and girls as commodities, controlling and monitoring the female body, denying women and girls the right to health care, to education, to dress as they self-define, to be and exist without fear of assault no matter where we are or what we are wearing, to hold equal political power – all of these modern day issues are what Thecla addresses in her story that dates back to the 1st century. She fights against the pervasive perspective that she exists because of what her body can provide. When Thecla decides that her body is her own, and that she alone will decide what happens next in her story – this is when all hell breaks loose, and everyone who said they loved her abandons her. This is also when Thecla leaves the realm of what’s conditional and begins to relate to what’s unconditional instead. And this is what begins to give Thecla an otherworldly power – or a very human, hidden form of power. This is when Thecla begins to exist foremost to the unconditional love she finds within her as she defiantly, and triumphantly becomes her own.

With only more love,
​M.