Although the reception of the Eastern father Gregory of Nyssa has varied over the centuries, the past few decades have witnessed a profound awakening of interest in his thought, particularly in relation to the contentious issues of gender, sex, and sexuality. The Body and Desire sets out to retrieve the full range of Gregory’s thinking on the challenges of the ascetic life through a diachronic analysis of his oeuvre. Exploring his understanding of the importance of bodily and spiritual maturation in the practices of contemplation and virtue, Raphael Cadenhead recovers the vital relevance of this vision of transformation for contemporary ethical discourse.
