Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality
352
Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality
352eBook
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Overview
Sex is a difficult issue for contemporary Christians, but the past decade has witnessed a newfound openness regarding the topic among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Both the theological trajectory and the historical circumstances of the Orthodox Church differ radically from those of other Christian denominations that have already developed robust and creative reflections on sexuality and sexual diversity. Within its unique history, theology, and tradition, Orthodox Christianity holds rich resources for engaging challenging questions of sexuality in new and responsive ways. What is at stake in questions of sexuality in the Orthodox tradition? What sources and theological convictions can uniquely shape Orthodox understandings of sexuality? This volume aims to create an agora for discussing sex, and not least the sexualities that are often thought of as untraditional in Orthodox contexts.
Through fifteen distinct chapters, written by leading scholars and theologians, this book offers a developed treatment of sexuality in the Orthodox Christian world by approaching the subject from scriptural, patristic, theological, historical, and sociological perspectives. Chapters devoted to practical and pastoral insights, as well as reflections on specific cultural contexts, engage the human realities of sexual diversity and Christian life. From re-thinking scripture to developing theologies of sex, from eschatological views of eros to re-evaluations of the Orthodox responses to science, this book offers new thinking on pressing, present-day issues and initiates conversations about homosexuality and sexual diversity within Orthodox Christianity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780823299690 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Fordham University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2022 |
| Series: | Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Thomas Arentzen is a reader in church history and works as a researcher in Greek philology at Uppsala University and as a senior lecturer in Eastern Christian studies at Sankt Ignatios College, Stockholm School of Theology. He specializes in Byzantine literature and ecocriticism. Publications include The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (2017) and Byzantine Tree Life: Christianity and the Arboreal Imagination (2021), coauthored with Virginia Burrus and Glenn Peers.
Ashley M. Purpura (Edited By)
Ashley M. Purpura is an associate professor of religious studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University. She publishes on gender and Orthodoxy, and is the author of God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium (2018).
Aristotle Papanikolaou (Edited By)
Aristotle Papanikolaou is Professor of Theology, the Archbishop Demetrios Chair of Orthodox Theology and Culture, and the Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He is also Senior Fellow at the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion. He is the author of Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion, and The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy.
Aristotle Papanikolaou is Professor of Theology, the Archbishop Demetrios Chair of Orthodox Theology and Culture, and the Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He is also Senior Fellow at the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion. He is the author of Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine–Human Communion and The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy.
Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-Kypriou holds a PhD in systematic theology from the University of Manchester. She is a research and teaching associate at the International Hellenic University, lecturing on Christian Orthodox feminist hermeneutics, and a trained psychotherapist. Her latest book is entitled Here and Now: Essays on Philosophical Theology Concerning Gaze, Sexuality, Desire and Other Issues [in Greek] (2020).
Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer, Th.D., is a senior researcher and lecturer in the Ecumenical Institute of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. She teaches systematic theology and Christian spirituality. She has written widely on Russian religious philosophy and anthropology within Orthodox theology, including the coauthored monographs The Ways of Orthodox Theology in the West (2015) and Wrestling with the Mind of the Fathers (2015).
John Behr is the Regius Professor of Humanity at the University of Aberdeen, previously having been at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, New York, where he also served as dean. His recent publications include an edition and translation of Origen’s On First Principles and a study of the Gospel of John.
Davor Džalto is a professor of religion and democracy in the Department of Eastern Christian Studies at University College Stockholm. His research interests cover the fields of theology, social and political philosophy, and the theory and history of art. He is the author of numerous books, including Anarchy and the Kingdom of God, Art as Tautology, and The Human Work of Art.
Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religion and History at Brown University. Among other publications, she is the author of Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (2006) and Song and Memory: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition (2010), and coeditor with Margaret Mullett of Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perception in Byzantium (2017).
Michael Hjälm is the dean of Sankt Ignatios College, Stockholm School of Theology. His field of studies is critical ecclesiology, where he makes use of a critical approach toward the practical aspects of the Church, developing theories for improving praxis. His most recent publication identifies the connection between the popular nationalist movements and the Russian Orthodox position on nationalism.
Pantelis Kalaitzidis is the director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, a research center in Greece dealing with contemporary issues for Eastern Orthodoxy. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Academy of Religion (Bologna), and the chair (with Aristotle Papanikolaou) of the Political Theology group of the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA).
Andrii Krawchuk is professor emeritus and past president of the University of Sudbury, Canada. Author of Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine (1997) and coeditor of Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness (2014) and Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis (2016), he is studying religious responses to the Maidan and the war in Ukraine.
Richard René is a PhD candidate at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. He serves in the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). He is the Regional Chaplain, Pacific Region for Correctional Service Canada (CSC) and the director of St. Silas Orthodox Prison Mission.
Bryce E. Rich holds a PhD in Theology from the University of Chicago. He has participated in six conferences on Orthodoxy and sexuality in Finland, Norway, and England.
Ekaterini Tsalampouni is currently associate professor at the Faculty of Theology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She teaches New Testament exegesis and theology. Her research focuses on the sociohistorical background of the New Testament, exegesis and theology of the Gospels and Pauline letters, ecological hermeneutics, and early Christianity.
Dmitry Uzlaner is research fellow at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Russia. The most recent of his books are The Postsecular Turn: How to Think about Religion in the Twenty-First Century (in Russian, Izdatel’stvo instituta gaiidara, 2020), The End of Religion? A History of the Theory of Secularization (in Russian, Higher School of Economics Press, 2019), and Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Problems, Paradoxes, and Perspectives (Brill, 2019, co-edited with Mikhail Suslov).
Haralambos Ventis is an assistant professor of the philosophy of religion in the Department of Social Theology and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He is the translator of Christos Yannaras’s early work Heidegger and the Areopagite: On the Absence and Ignorance of God (2005), as well as the author of The Reductive Veil: Post-Kantian Non-Representationalism versus Apophatic Realism (2005) and Eschatology and Otherness (2019).
Gayle Woloschak is a professor of radiation oncology and associate dean of the Graduate School at Northwestern University. She has a PhD in biomedical sciences from the University of Toledo as well as a DM in in Eastern Christian studies from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Her interests are in evolution, molecular biology, and nanotechnology.
Table of Contents
Foreword | ix
Metropolitan Ambrosius, Helsinki
Acknowledgments | xiii
Sexuality and Orthodoxy: An Introduction | 1
Thomas Arentzen and Ashley M. Purpura
PART I: THINKING THROUGH TRADITION
1 Relationality, Sexuality, and the Desire for God: Historical Resources | 23
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
2 Something New under the Sun: Sexualities, Same-Sex Relationships, and Orthodoxy | 46
Bryce E. Rich
3 Science, Homosexuality, and the Church | 66
Gayle Woloschak
4 Biblical Tradition and Same-Sex Relations: A Difficult Hermeneutical Path | 79
Ekaterini Tsalampouni
PART II: CULTURAL AND PASTORAL CONTEXTS
5 Civil Marriage and Civil Union from an Ecclesial Perspective: The Case of the Orthodox Church of Greece | 105
Pantelis Kalaitzidis
6 Eastern Orthodoxy Identity and “Aggressive Liberalism”: Nontheological Aspects of the Confrontation | 144
Dmitry Uzlaner
7 Salvation and Same-Sex Relations:
An Orthodox Response on the Decision by the Lutheran Church of Sweden | 154
Michael Hjälm
8 Homophobia in Orthodox Contexts: Sociopolitical Variables and Theological Strategies for Change | 172
Andrii Krawchuk
9 Meeting Michelle: Practical Theological Reflections on the Personhood of a Transgender Inmate | 192
Richard René
PART III: THINKING WITH TRADITION
10 A Desire for All Is the Desire for God:
“Sexual Orientation” in Light of Gregory of Nyssa’s Account of Gender, Desire, and the Soul’s Ascent to God | 215
Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-Kypriou
11 Intersex People: Not Physical Mistakes but God’s Image | 235
Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer
12 A Theology of Sex | 247
Aristotle Papanikolaou
13 The Antinomic Eschatological Transfiguration of Christian Eros and Sexuality | 265
Haralambos Ventis
14 Sex, Love, and Politics: An (Un)Orthodox Theological Approach | 281
Davor Džalto
15 From Adam to Christ: From Male and Female to Being Human | 303
John Behr
List of Contributors | 321
Index | 325