Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought. By Benjamin H. Dunning. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. x + 252 pp. $55.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)This study finds a new and productive way to explore the problem of sexual difference, not only in Paul, but also in second and third century writers who draw on Paul's Christ/Adam typology. Dunning goes beyond the well-worn discussion of the contradictions in the explicit gender passages in Paul (for example, Gal. 3:28 and 1 Cor. 11:2-16) to consider the way Paul's theological anthropology, especially his use of the Adam/Christ typology, create a fundamental problem regarding sexual difference. Dunning argues that these early Christian writers were intent on interpreting creation (Adam) and redemption (Christ) as a single event of signification--the eschaton was to be viewed in relation to creation. At a time when there was widespread philosophical interest in monism, the oneness in Christ called also for a oneness at creation. Thus, for some early Christian writers, Adam became representative of the primal androgyne, prefiguring the similarly non-differentiated state in the eschaton. As Dunning rightly notes, the sex/gender hierarchical logic of the ancient world presupposed that (paradoxically to us) in its perfection this primal androgyne was necessarily masculine. The problem with this theological anthropology, as Dunning identifies it, concerns the body of Eve, that is, the female body. Where does it fit in a theology framed by the masculine bodies of Adam and Christ? Working his way through a number of early Christian writers Dunning attempts to trace what he terms a "large-scale discursive failure" (154) to present a coherent resolution to the haunting presence of the female body.In addition to building on the significant body of work that is now available on sex and gender in antiquity, the book is theoretically influenced by a range of postmodern theorists, with Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Slavoj Zizek, among the most prominent. The debt to these theorists is evident throughout the work, but perhaps most explicitly in the introduction and the conclusion. For example, the author is influenced by Derrida and Zizek in his frequent use of the terms "specter" and "haunting" to indicate the way that the problem of sexual differentiation continues to make its presence known in various adoptions and adaptations of Pauline anthropology. In the conclusion, Dunning's indebtedness to these postmodern theories is clear in his suggestion that the failure to resolve the presence of the feminine is not an ethical failure, but points to the possibility of an "eschatological vision of the human that could still admit of fragmentation, partialness and undomesticated difference . . ." (155). With this emphasis on difference, Dunning positions his conclusions as a potential resource for feminist and queer theology.Following the introduction, which gives an account of the problem of sexual difference in Paul's thought in terms of ancient conceptions of the sex/gender continuum, the book is divided into two parts--the "Platonic Woman" and "Flesh and Virginity." The first part deals with early Christian writers who were influenced by platonizing philosophers as they drew on Paul's Adam/Christ typology. …