Maximos the Confessor
Androprimacy and Sexual Difference

Is the Christian afterlife all male? Greek medicine and Biblical and Patristic exegesis seemed to lead Maximos to that conclusion.

Luis Josué Salés (Author)

9781009492195, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 March 2025

76 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.249 kg

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.

1. Androprimacy and the Sexed Body in Late Antiquity
2. A New Reading of Difficulty
3. Eve and Mary in Maximos' Exegesis
Conclusion
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG]