Maximos the Confessor: Androprimacy and Sexual Difference (Elements in Early Christian Literature)

Salà s, Luis JosuÃ

ISBN 10: 1009492195 / ISBN 13: 9781009492195

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0003922924

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Maximos the Confessor: Androprimacy and Sexual Difference (Elements in Early Christian Literature)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009492195
• ISBN 13: 9781009492195
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Maximos affirms in various texts (such as Difficulty 41) that sexual differentiation into male and female is inconsistent with the divine intention and will therefore be eschatologically eradicated. His affirmations have elicited a half-dozen conflicting interpretations, such as the metaphorization of these statements, where 'male' refers to drive (thymos) and 'female' to desire (epithymia), which become subordinate to reason (logos). Others maintain that he refers to the resolution of male–female agonistics. Yet others have criticized accounts that mollify the starkness of Maximos' affirmations. This Element goes further in arguing that Maximos tacitly envisions the elimination of sexual difference as sublimation of all sexual difference into male singularity. This Element overviews the exegetical and medical-anthropological precedents that framed Maximos thinking on this subject and examines some of his key texts, including his famed Difficulty 41 and several passages centered on explicating Eve and Adam, and Mary and Christ.