Articles by Taylor Ross
Political Theology, 2022
For six decades, Fredric Jameson has been cellaring a “Marxist hermeneutics” of Hegelian vintage ... more For six decades, Fredric Jameson has been cellaring a “Marxist hermeneutics” of Hegelian vintage that would not simply offer a competing method of literary criticism but actually sublate other such “interpretive master codes” in the single story it has to tell. Rather than representing an ideological predecessor to some putatively “scientific” form of Marxism, says Jameson, Hegel’s philosophy lends dialectical materialism an otherwise neglected capability to “cancel” rival perspectives while simultaneously “preserving” their characteristic insights. Such is the hermeneutical standpoint from which the six-volume The Poetics of Social Forms wagers its history of cultural production. The present essay treats the latest installment in this project by tracing the development of “allegory” through the rest of Jameson’s corpus. It does so to show that the religious undertones of the concept announced in the title of Allegory and Ideology provide an unexpected key to Hegelian-Marxism’s promised resolution to the “conflict of interpretations.”
Studia Patristica CXV, 2021
Open Theology, 2021
The present article asks after Gregory of Nyssa's debts to Basil the Great, and this by reexamini... more The present article asks after Gregory of Nyssa's debts to Basil the Great, and this by reexamining two texts the former wrote shortly after the latter's death: De hominis opificio and Apologia in Hexaemeron. It does so on the premise, mostly promissory for now, that Gregory's efforts to sort through Basil's legacy in his late brother's wake was part and parcel of the Nyssen's career-long project to reprise Origen of Alexandria under a "pro-Nicene" banner. Defending his elder sibling's apparently incomplete Homiliae in Hexameron while also disputing their basic premise, that is, gave Gregory an opportunity to negotiate the dialectic of dependence and distinction that ultimately determined his reception of earlier authorities, including the great Alexandrian they both revered. With that much longer story in sight, this article focuses on Gregory's deployment of horticultural metaphors, especially in the Apologia in Hexaemeron, to describe his stance toward both Basil and Origen. Closer scrutiny of these images alongside his more technical means of differentiating between himself and Basil suggests that Gregory considered his own work to be both a natural development of his predecessors and, precisely thereby, the immanent perfection of their thought.
Book Chapters by Taylor Ross
Building the House of Wisdom: Sergii Bulgakov and Contemporary Theology: New Approaches and Interpretations, 2024
Greek and Byzantine Philosophical Exegesis, 2022
Conference Papers by Taylor Ross
This paper inspects one piece of “Egyptian treasure” in Fr. Sergei Bulgakov’s storehouse—Plotinus... more This paper inspects one piece of “Egyptian treasure” in Fr. Sergei Bulgakov’s storehouse—Plotinus’s initially puzzling doctrine of intelligible matter—in order to clarify the triform taxonomy of “nothing” he limns in his early Unfading Light. Embellishing this Plotinian term of art beyond our author’s otherwise vague allusions to its “sophianic” implications promises to elucidate Bulgakov’s subtle distinction between emanation and creatio ex nihilo, even as it illuminates the Russian theologian’s recovery of Neoplatonic insights under the auspices of revelation.
Duke Graduate Conference in Theology, 2016
Docetism threatens the way humanity and divinity is understood. In the same way that the flesh of... more Docetism threatens the way humanity and divinity is understood. In the same way that the flesh of Christ was thought to be illusory, it continues to be thought that the particularities of bodies obscure the recognition of humanity. Bodies marked by race, gender, and disability are often seen as suspect, and the full humanity of these bodies is denied.
In this paper we will look at Gregory of Nyssa’s defense of the incarnation found in his Catechetical Oration. Gregory argues against the belief that the divine cannot be united with the human because of the body’s mutability. Against this objection, Gregory argues that the mutability of human bodies is not itself evil; change can either lead to good or to evil. Through the incarnation Christ defeats the devil—who cannot recognize the divine because it is united with mutable humanity—and regains the allegiance of humanity by reorienting humanity toward God.
Building on Gregory’s refusal to dismiss the changeable body as evil, we turn to Stanley Cavell’s description of embodiment as the condition of being “separate, but not necessarily separated.” Separateness is the inescapable condition of finitude, but separatedness is our own doing. In the same way that the mutability of humanity opens up the potential for becoming more or less like the good, separateness opens up the possibility for either relationship or alienation. This helps to explain the way the devil misses the Christ’s divinity; inasmuch as the devil views flesh as hopelessly evil, flesh cannot be anything other than a veil to the good.
This account not only affirms the goodness and importance bodies, but also opens up possibilities for exploring the usefulness of Gregory’s non-essentialist anthropology for those seeking to address the damage done to theological anthropology by oppressive conceptions of raced, gendered, and disabled flesh.
Book Reviews by Taylor Ross
Reading Religion, 2018
Link: http://readingreligion.org/books/mother-god-theology-sergius-bulgakov
Reading Religion
Link: http://readingreligion.org/books/maximus-confessor-european-philosopher
Stone-Campbell Journal, 2014
A review of A Reader's Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers, Daniel B. Wallace, Brittany C. Burnette,... more A review of A Reader's Lexicon of the Apostolic Fathers, Daniel B. Wallace, Brittany C. Burnette, and Terry Darby Moore, eds. (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2013), which appeared in Stone-Campbell Journal 17.2 (Fall 2014): 295-296.
Online Publications by Taylor Ross
What has Alexandria-or Antioch, for that matter-to do with the Society of Biblical Literature? At... more What has Alexandria-or Antioch, for that matter-to do with the Society of Biblical Literature? At first blush, it would seem like the quasi-scientific aspirations of source criticism, say, stand further from the exegetical habits of both Didymus the Blind and Theodore of Mopsuestia than either of their respective commentarial practices stood from one another. Theirs was a "pre-critical" approach to the Bible, far removed from the scholarly assumptions under which historical criticism and its late modern heirs routinely operate. Such was the "superiority" of patristic and medieval exegesis, we're sometimes told: they approached the text with a posture of humility instead of a hermeneutic that would stand over and against the text, mistaking the very Word of God for a specimen to be studied.
Church Life Journal, 2019
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Articles by Taylor Ross
Book Chapters by Taylor Ross
Conference Papers by Taylor Ross
In this paper we will look at Gregory of Nyssa’s defense of the incarnation found in his Catechetical Oration. Gregory argues against the belief that the divine cannot be united with the human because of the body’s mutability. Against this objection, Gregory argues that the mutability of human bodies is not itself evil; change can either lead to good or to evil. Through the incarnation Christ defeats the devil—who cannot recognize the divine because it is united with mutable humanity—and regains the allegiance of humanity by reorienting humanity toward God.
Building on Gregory’s refusal to dismiss the changeable body as evil, we turn to Stanley Cavell’s description of embodiment as the condition of being “separate, but not necessarily separated.” Separateness is the inescapable condition of finitude, but separatedness is our own doing. In the same way that the mutability of humanity opens up the potential for becoming more or less like the good, separateness opens up the possibility for either relationship or alienation. This helps to explain the way the devil misses the Christ’s divinity; inasmuch as the devil views flesh as hopelessly evil, flesh cannot be anything other than a veil to the good.
This account not only affirms the goodness and importance bodies, but also opens up possibilities for exploring the usefulness of Gregory’s non-essentialist anthropology for those seeking to address the damage done to theological anthropology by oppressive conceptions of raced, gendered, and disabled flesh.
Book Reviews by Taylor Ross
Link: http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2016/11/15/book-note-late-ancient-knowing
Online Publications by Taylor Ross
In this paper we will look at Gregory of Nyssa’s defense of the incarnation found in his Catechetical Oration. Gregory argues against the belief that the divine cannot be united with the human because of the body’s mutability. Against this objection, Gregory argues that the mutability of human bodies is not itself evil; change can either lead to good or to evil. Through the incarnation Christ defeats the devil—who cannot recognize the divine because it is united with mutable humanity—and regains the allegiance of humanity by reorienting humanity toward God.
Building on Gregory’s refusal to dismiss the changeable body as evil, we turn to Stanley Cavell’s description of embodiment as the condition of being “separate, but not necessarily separated.” Separateness is the inescapable condition of finitude, but separatedness is our own doing. In the same way that the mutability of humanity opens up the potential for becoming more or less like the good, separateness opens up the possibility for either relationship or alienation. This helps to explain the way the devil misses the Christ’s divinity; inasmuch as the devil views flesh as hopelessly evil, flesh cannot be anything other than a veil to the good.
This account not only affirms the goodness and importance bodies, but also opens up possibilities for exploring the usefulness of Gregory’s non-essentialist anthropology for those seeking to address the damage done to theological anthropology by oppressive conceptions of raced, gendered, and disabled flesh.
Link: http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2016/11/15/book-note-late-ancient-knowing