Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Purity and Property Rights Regarding Women

The writing of the New Testament marked a large shift in the Christian church. These changes revolutionized Christianity and revolved around the concepts of purity and property. Prior to this shift, there was a heavy emphasis placed on physical purity and there were strict property rights in place, especially with regards to women and children. After the change, there was greater emphasis placed on purity of the heart as well as a shift towards equality between men and women. Louis Countryman discusses these changes in his book, Dirt, Greed and Sex, and he explains what these changes meant as well as how they can be applied today.

As previously mentioned, in the Old Testament, women were regarded as subordinate to men. A man's wife was typically considered his property and the male was the head of the house in the patriarchal society. However, in the New Testament, the bulk of the apostles asserted that men and women were equal in the eyes of God. Countryman notes that one of the principles that we can take away from the New Testament is that, "The gospel can discern no inequality between men and women as they stand before God's grace" (232). This was a monumental shift of power in society at the time. It essentially undermined the whole patriarchal culture that had characterized societal life for centuries. Still, it is important to note that, "Jesus did no reject the concept of sexual property, but he changed the content of it by making husbands the property of their wives as well as wives of their husbands" (226). Today, this notion seems relatively normal. It would be foreign for most of us to live in a society where only women can commit adultery and wives were considered property of their husbands. This was a radical change, but a necessary one. Still, not all of the authors agreed on this subject. Paul went against the notion of sexual equality and attempted to retain the subordination of women in order to preserve the family unit.

The 'liberation' of women continued with a shift from sexual property belonging to the family unit to sexual property belonging to the individual. In Countryman's words, "Where, in late antiquity, sexual property belonged to the family through the agency of the male householder, in our own era it belongs to the individual" (231). Rather than the householder making decisions regarding the sexual acts of the members of the household, each individual became the authority that governed his or her own sexual acts. The important take away from this shift is how it redefines sexual roles. Countryman writes that, "...such a change in ownership will always imply a change in the character and understanding of what is owned" (232). In the case of women, this shift liberates them as sexual beings, but also gives them power; the power to decide whether to have sex, who to have sex with, and under what circumstances. Women today still face double standards, even with the shift in power from the male head of the house to the individual. The key takeaway is that the power shifted and women