Susanna Krizo

I forgot to mention that Augustine equated the man with reason and the woman with the irrational appetite within one human being in an effort to make the man the ruler from creation, however he wrote also that Gen 1 clearly states that God created a man and a woman and that these two cannot be considered as representing the reason and appetite within one human being. The reason for this contradiction is that in the first mentioned instance he used allegory, which was common in the Alexandrian school of theology, in the second, he used the method of a literal interpretation.
Augustine’s attempt clearly shows also that he understood marriage as a one body unity, for why else would he argue that the man and the woman represented two parts of the one soul. He was also adamant that the word “head” when applied to Christ always denoted the unity he has with his body, the church.