Gender essentialism in contemporary Orthodoxy has its roots in a variety of sources that were incorporated into nineteenth-century German Romanticism. These include the androgyne of Plato’s Symposium, ideas of preincarnate male and female paired souls in Lurianic Kabbalah, and the writings of the German mystic Jakob Böhme.
Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience do not speak univocally. While their reports may vary, these sources emphasize the dignity of the human person, created in the image of God.
A presentation outlining the current state of the broader academic Orthodox conversation about theological anthropology, gender, and sexuality.
Our salvation comes not by comparing ourselves with others, but in recognizing our own shortcomings and bringing them before God.
A piece originally published on the Public Orthodoxy blog of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University and subsequently reprinted in Toward the Holy and Great Council: Theological Reflections.
A book review of two recently translated works by René Girard has now been published in the Journal of Religion.
Contemporary discourses around sexual identity depend on a couple of elements for their intelligibility. When we speak of homo-, bi-, and heterosexuals, our understandings tend to fall into categories of who a person feels affective attraction for and/or engages in sexual acts with.
Michel Foucault is the commonly acknowledged forerunner in the conversation around discourses of sexuality. In his History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (originally published in French in 1984), Foucault takes to task the "repressive hypothesis."
Foucault was not alone in being troubled by current paradigms around sexual orientation. In a brief aside in her book Feminism from Margins to Center, author, feminist, and social activist bell hooks also critiques the current paradigm, but from a different angle.
Halperin suggests that modern discourses of homosexuality are clouded and destabilized because they are built (consciously or not) on earlier categories.