Ebook: The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage: Dressing for the Resurrection

Why did the influential Christian thinker, Tertullian of Carthage (160-220 C.E.), while addressing the critical issue of salvation of the flesh, write about clothing? Why did he care what Christians wore? Carly Daniel-Hughes answers that in early Christian communities clothing tied to identity and theology. Placing Tertullian’s writings in the Roman culture of dress, she shows that in them men’s dress is used to envision Christian masculinity as non-Roman and anti-imperial. His concerns about women’s dress, however, reveal internal Christian debates about the nature of the flesh and the possibility of its transformation in to a resurrected, glorious body.