Tag Archives: Motherhood

Maternal Body: A Review

by Rev. Dr. Nicholas Denysenko

Orthodox theologian Carrie Frederick Frost has published a theological reflection titled Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East (Paulist Press, 2019), with a foreword by Catholic theologian Julie Hanlon Rubio. Frost’s book is a theological treatise on motherhood, from conception through breastfeeding and with a special emphasis on the maternal body. Drawing upon patristic, liturgical, and iconographic sources, Frost delivers a powerful and vivid contribution on the theology of maternity. In addition to her examination of select extant historical sources, Frost brings the evidence into dialogue with her own personal experience of motherhood.

Maternal Body contains five chapters of text covering conception, pregnancy, birthgiving, postpartum, and pregnancy. Frost concludes the book with an epilogue, and shares a selection of icons (printed in color) and notes to complement the text. This book is not an encyclopedic academic treatment of motherhood, and is therefore suitable for a general reading audience. The book’s preference for selectivity does not diminish Frost’s authority in analyzing the texts and presenting a theology of the maternal body. The author demonstrates her confident command of the topic throughout the book. Continue reading →

Maternal Body

by Carrie Frederick Frost

About a decade ago I found myself pregnant with triplets halfway through work on a PhD in theology at the University of Virginia. My husband and I had thought long and hard about having a third child, so the joke was on us when—to our total surprise—we learned at a routine ultrasound that I was carrying not just our third child, but also our fourth and fifth. One of my many reactions to this news was to write a book.

Admittedly, penning a work of incarnational theology many not be the typical reaction to a triplet pregnancy, but there’s really nothing typical about a triplet pregnancy. For me, even though I had been a mother of two for several years already, the prospect of a trifecta of infants raised the spiritual stakes of motherhood: I was deeply driven to know more about how motherhood was understood within the Orthodox Christian theological tradition. Continue reading →