AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth by Samuel M. Powell, Michael E. Lodahl ISBN: 0-8308-1583-X Publisher: Intervarsity Press Pub. Date: November, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The Discussion Continues
Comment: While at first glance this book may seem a straightforward argument for church practice in the developing tradition of radical orthodoxy, there is a more subtle discussion taking place between essayists. Powell and Lodahl have assembled a collection of essays in which the contemporarily hot topic of church practice and its role in corporate holiness is debated. A careful reading of Embodied Holiness provides the reader with thought-provoking questions concerning the Church's holiness, how the Church is holy and how the Church pursues holiness, as the editors provide two standpoints from which the reader will partake. Appropriate questions are posed to theologians, pastors, students and laypersons alike. Certainly, this is a book worth reading and thinking through.

Rating: 4
Summary: Clearing Up Confusion about the Body of Christ
Comment: Powell and Lodahl have produced a collection of eight radically original essays with enormous significance for anyone seeking to practice Christianity today. I am stunned by the relevance of their critique of contemporary Christianity. These eight theologians essayists (including Stanley Hauerwas, Rodney Clapp, Craig Keen and others) fault modern religion for making spirituality too individualistic and even too "spiritual," that is, non-material. They expose a pernicious dualism that distorts religious practice, and they call for the formation of holy lives through a robust, "corporealized" faith. In their view holy living will only be possible when believers are embedded in vibrant churches where the disciplines are practiced daily. These essays expose two fundamental blunders in contemporary Christianity: (1) viewing spiritual growth as exclusively private and individual, thus nullifying the role of the church; and, (2) assuming that spiritual growth is primarily a matter of the mind, divorced from a physical body. Both errors derive from a Platonized and Cartesian Christianity. Hauerwas explains: "The problem with the language and practice of holiness in modernity is that it has been far too spiritual."

Fully aware that "a momentous intellectual change is upon us, and one that touches on our understanding of human being," the writers maintain that a true spirituality must include the body, both in a physical and a social sense. A true holiness, then, is founded in a communal life, not in isolation, not in a privatized religious piety.

In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis observed, "There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. . . . [God] likes matter. He invented it." Powell and Lodahl are following Lewis as they remind us that true Christianity must be made concrete and visible. Indeed, all holiness is necessarily embodied. (What other kind of holiness could there be?) Embodied Holiness deserves our study because it clarifies Scriptural teaching on how to become holy people through incorporation in a vibrant, local body of believers. Thus, the book provides a powerful rationale for the church in an age that has trouble seeing its relevance. Though it is written out of a Wesleyan tradition, all readers (regardless of tradition) ought to welcome this provocative book, for it offers the best sort of Christian scholarship - informed by the Bible, conversant with the best theology, and practical at every turn. If we are serious about enfleshing the faith of Jesus, of becoming "a holy priesthood," then we will give Embodied Holiness our rapt attention.

Similar Books:

	Title: Sensing God: Reading Scripture With All Our Senses (Cloister Books) by Roger Ferlo ISBN: 1561012025 Publisher: Cowley Publications Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $10.95
	Title: Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice by Stephanie Paulsell, Dorothy C. Bass ISBN: 078794856X Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 07 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95