ABSTRACT
The “material turn” in late antiquity refers to the conceptual shift in the fourth century CE in which Christians pondered the potential for matter, including the embodied human person, to bear divine significance and value. This chapter explores how ordinary Christians were taught to appreciate matter, including their bodies, for encountering and growing in likeness to God. Central to this project were the doctrines of humanity created in God’s image, the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and Jesus’s identification with the needy. Ordinary believers were tutored to embrace the body as a means to encounter God experientially without words (and thus apophatically). The body’s own capacities could reveal knowledge of God that could not otherwise be acquired. Believers’ theophanies were a transformative participation in God which should radiate to the needy, in whom Jesus himself was present. Ascetic purification and rituals created an embodied foundation for receiving, holding, and sharing God.
