Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: Review Of "The Genesis Of Gender"
Author: Scott Corbin

Eikon 6.1 (Spring 2024) p. 110

Review Of The Genesis Of Gender

Scott Corbin

Scott Corbin is a lay pastor at Trinity River Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX.

Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2022.

Abigail Favale has written a book that does many things at once. Formerly a professor in feminist theory, Favale’s book is some parts memoir, other parts historical survey; some parts polemic against the cultural revolution, other parts invitation into the mystery of Christianity. It’s difficult to review a book like this. One could focus on Favale’s stinging critique of the so-called “gender paradigm” — that is, the “radically constructivist view of reality, then reifies it as truth, demanding that others assent to its veracity and adopt its language.” Or one could focus on her stimulating diagnoses of transgenderism, or still more. She not only explains concepts that are often befuddling to lay readers not well-versed in the talmudic textual world of gender theory, but gives her readers the feel for why these things are so compelling in the first place.

Eikon 6.1 (Spring 2024) p. 111

I write this review as a convictional evangelical Protestant, writing to other evangelicals like myself. The Genesis of Gender is a wonderful book that I hope gains a wide readership among evangelical co-belligerents. Favale understands that the Christian vision of man and woman is not only true, but compelling when seen on the inside. If the Christian witness is going to be compelling to a lost and dying world, Christians must testify to the internal coherence and beauty of the Christian life.

Catholicism

The Genesis of Gender joins the litany of conversion narratives in the Roman Catholic tradition, from classics like John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, to contemporary accounts like Sohrab Ahmari’s From Fire by Water. At its heart, it’s a memoir about conversion — an exitus-reditus from cultural evangelicalism to radical feminism and finally to rest in the arms of the Roman Catholic Church. This may sound loathsome to the evangelical readers of this review, and no doubt for some this will be a bridge too far. But if one is patient to hear Favale’s story, it can serve evangelical readers as a twin encouragement and rebuke.

The encouragement for an evangelical readership is the hope that Christians can have for the lost, especially those bewitched by graven ideologies. Favale does not mince words about the bankruptcy of feminism and the “gender paradigm” — the “radically constructivist view of reality, th...