
Constructive Theology and Gender Variance
Transformative Creatures
Susannah Cornwall(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 13. February 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
431 pages
978-1-108-79191-5 (ISBN)
Description
Some Christians are anxious and uncomfortable about gender diversity and transition. Sometimes, they understand these issues as a rejection of God's intention for creation. Gender diversity has also been assumed to entail self-deception, mental ill-health, and dysphoria. Yet, humans are inherently transformative creatures with a vocation to shape their own worlds and traditions. Transformative creaturely theology recognizes the capacity of gender to shape humans even as we also question it. In this book, Susannah Cornwall reframes the issues of gender diversity and transition in constructive Christian theological terms. Resisting deficit-based discourses, she presents gender diversity in a way that is positive and non-oppositional. Her volume explores questions of the licit limits of technological interventions for human bodies, how gender diversity maps onto understandings of health, and the ethics of disclosure of gender diversity. It also brings these topics into critical conversation with constructive Christian theologies of creation, theological anthropology, Christology, and eschatology.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-108-79191-5 (9781108791915)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
11/2022
Cambridge University Press
€134.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Susannah Cornwall is Professor of Constructive Theologies in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter and Director of the Exeter Centre for Ethics and Practical Theology (EXCEPT). She is the author of Un/familiar Theology: Reconceiving Sex, Reproduction and Generativity (2017); Theology and Sexuality (2013); Controversies in Queer Theology (2011); and Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology (2010).
Content
Part I. Setting the Scene: 1. Introduction: transformative creatures; 2. Detransition, impermanence, and the innocence of changing one's mind; 3. Existing Christian theological responses to transition: being transformed/being, transformed; Part II. Telling Truths: 4. Autonomy and trans people: authenticity, responsibility, recognition; 5. Gender transition, truth-telling and artifice; 6. Self-protection or 'gender fraud'? Ethics and the burden of disclosure; Part III. Limits, Technology, and Health: 7. Technological interventions and licit limits: on the alteration and augmentation of bodies; 8. Trans people, health, and diversities of order; 9. Fertility, generativity, and gender theology in the operative mood; 10. Transforming humanity: gender, race, and animality; 11. In Christ, everything has changed: Christology and creation; 12. Transformative creatures reprised: theological anthropology and eschatology.