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The Mythology of Begetting and Sex in the Church Fathers' Writings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat

Abstract

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The intervention of the divine in human history, more precisely the transition from fiction to incarnation that is peculiar to the origins of Christianity, marks a turning-point in our understanding of the genealogical principle. With a Son of Man who is also Son of God and his Mother's Father, there is no paternity and, more generally, no genealogy that is not reversible. To this questioning of elementary kinship structures we should add the contesting of the hitherto accepted distribution of genders and sexes. The superimposition of the Holy Family and the Trinity created an uncertain sex whose effect is to uncouple sex from its functions, in particular procreation. Hence a circulation and instability of sex. It is from this viewpoint that we should see the notion of an androgynous Christ and the Church Fathers’ thinking on the resurrected body.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , November 2005 , pp. 15 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

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