Spirituality and Social Embodiment

Spirituality and Social Embodiment. Edited by L. Gregory Jones and James J. Buckley. Directions in Modern Theology. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997. 173 pp. $24.95 (paper).

Spirituality and Social Embodiment is a volume in the Blackwell Publishers' series, "Directions in Modern Theology," aimed at envisaging the contemporary theological task in new ways. The goal of this collection of essays is to contest a contemporary understanding that sees spirituality primarily in inward and mystical terms and to advocate instead an interpretation of Christian spiritual traditions as grounded in material and political realities that call one beyond the self. The editor invites the reader to consider these essays either individually, together in their given order, or in an order of the reader's choosing (p. 1). This is good advice inasmuch as the topics are quite disparate with some essays treating the theme more explicitly than others.

There are four essays on medieval figures. L. Gregory Jones criticizes certain strains of contemporary spirituality, exemplified in Thomas Moore's Care of Souls, as "shaped by consumer impulses and captive to a therapeutic culture" (p. 4). Jones contrasts what he sees as generic treatments of the spiritual life with Bernard of Clairvaux's advocacy of particular, ongoing, disciplined Christian practice (p. 5). A. N. Williams complains that many contemporary forms of spirituality opt for a kind of syncretism divorced from any doctrinal foundations (p. 53). Lamenting the present split between theology and spirituality, she turns to Aquinas as an antidote, tracing his vision of theology in the Summa theologiae as a single, unified science, his conviction that the most practical of human affairs is related to contemplation of God, and his understanding of theology itself as a form of union with God (p. 61). F. C. Bauerschmidt objects to what he sees as a contemporary misunderstanding of Julian of Norwich that abstracts her spirituality from her "historical situatedness in all its medieval and anchoritic peculiarity" (p. 76). He reconstrues Julian's Revelations as a particular reading of the Christian tradition that commends a specific form of human social existence, characterized by trinitarian love and compassion (p. 76).

David S. Yeago seeks to correct a common interpretation of Luther's concept of salvation and the church as purely inward. Yeago claims that in the early writings, Luther adopted the dualistic categories of his opponents which led to an emphasis on the inward, invisible nature of the church. He argues that in his later writings, Luther holds that "that which is inward and spiritual can never stand on its own" (p. 106). For Luther, "the church is distinctive on account of the particular character of its public gathering. The inward is given through the outward" (p. 108). These chapters seek to recover attention to the outward as well as inward manifestations of the spiritual life. In so doing, they address a topic of widespread interest in contemporary spirituality, i.e., the recovery of the material, bodily, social aspects of the Christian life.

The remaining essays probe the story of Jesus in the New Testament in search of foundations for an ethics that is focused on the common good rather than on tribal and competitive interests (Rowan D. Williams), analyze the state of the church in England and its need to reclaim the public, political nature of its faith (Nicholas Lash), and argue for the specific agency of African Americans to discover and live as authentic Christians in the face of grotesque distortion of that faith in the sin of racism (p. 164; Willie James Jennings).

Several of these essays will appeal to those who are in search of a more integrated understanding of the spiritual life-one that sees the spiritual as grounded in, and inseparable from, particular, material, historical and political realities. The authors demonstrate that many major figures in the Christian tradition escaped the narrow confines of various dualisms, especially an exclusive focus on interiority at the cost of the external, public, embodied dimensions of the Christian life. Understood in this way, the spiritualities treated are a resource in our search for a more holistic contemporary spirituality.

Less successful is the portrayal of contemporary spiritualities which are more diverse and complex than several of these authors allow. At times, they set up contemporary positions as "straw dogs" in the interest of demolishing them to make their points. For example, Bauerschmidt's choice of Karen Armstrong's portrayal of Julian of Norwich in Visions of God: Four Medieval Mystics and Their Writings is hardly either exhaustive or representative of the extensive work being done on Julian today for audiences within and beyond the academy. The recovery of aspects of the tradition advocated in this volume will be successful only with a more balanced treatment of contemporary efforts to articulate the spiritual life. This includes respect for contemporary struggles and acknowledgment of successes as well as perceived failures.