Clothed in the Body: Asceticism, the Body and the Spiritual in the Late Antique Era

Hunt examines the apparent paradox that Jesus' earthly existence and post resurrection appearances are experienced through consummately physical actions and attributes yet some ascetics within the Christian tradition appear to seek to deny the value of the human body, to find it deadening of spiritual life. Hunt considers why the Christian tradition as a whole has rarely managed more than an uneasy truce between the physical and the spiritual aspects of the human person. Why is it that the 'Church' has energetically argued, through centuries of ecumenical councils, for the dual nature of Christ but seems still unwilling to accept the full integration of physical and spiritual within humanity, despite Gregory of Nazianzus's comment that 'what has not been assumed has not been redeemed'? Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Abbreviations......Page 12 1 Introduction......Page 14 2 Greek Insights into the Human Person......Page 22 3 Biblical Understandings of Flesh, Body and Soul......Page 44 4 Desert Teachings on the Body and Asceticism......Page 60 5 ‘Virgins of God’: Manly Women and Transvestite Saints......Page 76 6 ‘Enemy’ or ‘Friend’: Climacus’ Integration of the Body......Page 92 7 The Syrian Perspective on Asceticism......Page 106 8 Key Syrian Sources: Apocrypha and Anonymity......Page 126 9 Pseudo-Macarius, Messalianism and Synaesthesia......Page 138 10 ‘Clothed in the Body’ as a Metaphor for Incarnation......Page 150 11 Heterodox Christologies and the Heresiarchs......Page 172 12 Orthodox Patristic Formulations......Page 196 13 Conclusion......Page 216 Bibliography......Page 220 Index of Biblical Terms......Page 244 General Index......Page 246