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Matthew Lee Anderson’s Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to our Faith is a clarion call to all Christians, but especially to evangelicals: Take seriously a biblically informed theology of the body and its implications for our thought, life, presence, witness, and practices, and repent of our inattention to the body since it is hurting our theology and inhibiting our influence in the world.

“Our body,” Matthew Anderson, writer for Mere Orthodoxy and Evangel, says, citing ethicist Gilbert Meilander, “is our personal presence in the world” (60). He “wants to examine the role the physical body plays in our spiritual, social, and ecclesiastical lives.” He is not just motivated by attending to the formational characteristics of what it means to be human per se. “Grace has a shape,” he says. He is looking for what is distinctly “grace-shaping” about human embodiment. Specifically, he is eager to “engage in a thoughtful, deliberative examination of the body from a distinctly evangelical perspective” (18). Anderson’s goal is “to propose a path for living in the body in our late modern world” (18). The book seems to strike a balance between doing conceptual, expositional, and explanatory work versus proposing a vision that is a livable embodied life in our culture. In 11 well-organized chapters, Anderson lays out this vision, which emphasizes at least the following:

  • Our body is how we are personally present in the world (218).
  • The goodness of creation and the importance of caring for the body (58, 76, 99) are an expression of “creation care” (82) and gratitude (98).
  • The “inner life” is enacted through and with the habits of the body (62, 64).
  • Because the body is created, it has real limits (67), and it is mortal (169–170).
  • By virtue of its sociality, the body is community-shaped (114).
  • Bodily—especially sexual—pleasure and desire are not evil, but our lives should not be led or controlled by seeking to have our pleasures and desires fulfilled (124–25).
  • Above all, Christians should want a view of the body that is “God [“Gospel” or “Word”]-shaped (69, 95).

If I understand correctly the intent of the book’s organization, there is an interesting and useful interplay between chapters that are rudimentary for understanding Anderson’s theology of the body (chapters 3–5, 7, 9, and 11) and other chapters that are relevant to understanding the applied implications of his theological reflection (chapters 6, 8, 10). There is a basic, evangelical humanism etched out in this book. Thus, Earthen Vessels is not only a “theology of” endeavor; it is also an applied theology of the body endeavor. For Anderson puts his vision to work when thinking about pleasure and sexuality (where he also strategically draws from John Paul II’s theology of the body), homosexuality and the “Christian body,” singleness and celibacy, the meaning of spiritual disciplines, and even how to think about yoga, tattoos, cremation, and the role and meaning of our bodies in congregational worship.

Anderson’s supplements not-so-recent contributions in this area, for example, Patrick Lee and Robert George’s Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics or even J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae’s Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. But Anderson’s book should not be pigeon-holed for simply the theology, philosophy, and ethics domain. He is a generalist not burdened by over-specialized, professionalized talk about the body. Moreover, he wants to do more than just stir awareness about the meaning of embodiment. Fundamentally, he wants readers to have a “holy attentiveness,” wherever and whatever they do with their body in the world. Not surprising, then, his work also contributes to spiritual theology, spiritual formation, and Christian social responsibility.

In many ways, Earthen Vessels is an ambitious book, especially for an emerging writer. Nonetheless, I found each chapter to be noticeably nuanced, engaging, well-researched, and confident, yet not audacious. The contribution enriches the standard for “general public” titles that are written by authors with an academically attuned ear.

Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to our Faith

Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to our Faith

Bethany House (2011). 255 pp.

Our bodies matter. Christians today sometimes forget this, dangerously ignoring the importance of their physical selves when it comes to technology, sexuality, worship, and even death. Anderson’s book will help readers learn what the Bible says about our bodies and grow to appreciate the importance of embodiment in our spiritual lives. It will also explore generational differences when it comes to how we perceive and use our bodies. Just as Christ’s body was crucial to our salvation, our own bodies are an important part of the complete Christian life.

Bethany House (2011). 255 pp.

Yet here is where Earthen Vessels could have been strengthened: I would have liked Anderson to have articulated a theology of work and of “everydayness” from the vantage point of his theology of the body. To be sure, he does attempt to connect how a concept of the “mundane” is related to our personal, bodily presence in the world (182). How does our theology of the body contribute toward a theology of work (and, by extension, our view of politics and economics), since our personal presence in the world is mostly “at work” (and here, I don’t only mean simply work as employment)? The realities of work are, arguably, more prevalent in everyday life than the realities of tattoos and pleasure, yet it is not privileged as these are in this book.

Nonetheless, Earthen Vessels offers compelling reasons to celebrate, with gratitude, how it is both humane and Christian to honor the body and honorably live in it with integrity.

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