Summary: | This dissertation offers an immanent critique of gender essentialism in the stream of the contemporary Orthodox Church influenced by the "Paris School" of Russian emigre theologians and their heirs. It uses an interdisciplinary approach to bring into conversation patristic reflections on gender, personalist theological anthropology, insights from gender and queer theory, and modern biological understandings of human sexual differentiation. Though seemingly unrelated discourses, the project reveals unexpected points of convergence as each line of thought eschews the gender binary in favor of a more open-ended spectrum of possibilities. The study concludes by drawing out some theological implications of the preceding findings as they relate to the ordination of women to the priesthood, same-sex unions and sacramental understandings of marriage, definitions of family, and pastoral care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) parishioners.
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