The Fifteenth Annual REFORC Conference will take place May 19-May 21, 2026, hosted by the University of Wrocław (in cooperation with the University of Cologne and the University of Bonn).
The fundamental Christian doctrine of incarnation, which asserts that in the person of Jesus, the Logos took on the material form of human flesh, positions materiality as the central category of Christian thought and religious practice. Thomas Aquinas, in adapting the Aristotelian theory of hylomorphism (the dualism of form and matter) to the sacrament of the Eucharist, strengthened the ambiguity towards matter in Christian thinking. On one hand, the doctrine of incarnation leads to the sanctification of earthly matter. On the other hand, the heritage of Aristotelian anti-materialism manifests itself in Christian criticism of the material world as an obstacle on the path towards salvation.
The materiality of Christian religious practice, expressed through the veneration of holy matter in the Eucharist, sumptuous staging of liturgy and magnificent church furnishing, was repeatedly a subject of discussion in the pre-Reformation era. For the reformers, it became a crucial point of criticism, leading to a reevaluation of the role of materiality on both the doctrinal level (resulting in new concepts of the Eucharist) and in everyday religious practice (causing both iconoclasms, a new understanding of ecclesiastical architecture and arts, and a new wave of church building and furnishing campaigns).
More information will follow.
