Abstract
Warren S. Brown and Brad D. Strawn,
The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church
, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2012; 189 pp.: 9780521515931, £62.00/$99.00 (hbk), 9780521734219, £20.99/$28.99 (pbk)
This ground-breaking book addresses a question that is painful for Christians to ask: why do we see so little enduring transformation in the lives of churchgoing Christians?
Answer: the still prevalent dualist model of the human person as a disembodied soul residing in a container/body divorces people from the real mechanisms of human transformation.
In the words of the authors, the book is about viewing persons as bodies, and churches as bodies, not as souls inhabiting bodies (p. 158), a view they argue is truer to Scripture, as well as more resonant with modern neuroscience and psychology. Brown and Strawn describe the dualist model in operation in church life with clarity but without hyperbole. Dualism originally helped to inculturate Christian belief into high Greek culture, yet over time it has extracted the cost of over-individualizing faith. Trinitarian theology has for some time placed relationality at the centre of both divine and church life; this book addresses why this is so vital, given the evolved nature of humans as a cooperating, relational species. The chapters detailing psychology’s empirical stance, backed up by recent neuroscience, affirms how personhood and thinking are formed through social interaction from the earliest moments of life and throughout the lifespan. Human transformation is similarly enabled through such processes. These chapters are particularly strong.
The authors provide a crisp account of contemporary Christian discourse and worship as slipping into gnosticism: an inward focus centred on subjective experience, divorced from social and cultural life. The heart of the book is practical – how should we ‘do’ church? How should we promote human transformation through Christian practice?
Throughout, the authors take an emergentist approach, seeking to avoid the appearance of physical reductionism. Readers wanting perhaps more obvious support for transcendent intervention in human life will be challenged, and will need to carefully absorb how new realities are in fact birthed at higher levels of complexity through emergent processes. The book invites a sequel. The authors’ practical suggestions for promoting physical participation in ritual, learning and worship comprise a safe place to start. The deep personal transformation that the authors have in mind involves authentic interaction, however, ‘walking in the light’ in the context of small committed groups, such as is found among twelve steps programmes. This is a wonderful goal, but churches will need the skills of relationship repair for this: forgiveness, reasonable expectations, non-judgement, personal boundary keeping, communication practices that are non-coercive and that affirm integrity and freedom. The shadow side of group processes, such as conformity, co-dependence, in-group bias and quasi-oppressive ‘regimes of truth’ need to be counter-balanced by individuals who have a strong sense of their own integrity. Perhaps a revised container model of person may still be needed to counter-balance the inevitable risks and mistakes that embodied relationality will entail! This book is a clarion call to taking those first steps towards a longer journey. In all, this book is a joy to read, and is vital for any serious Christian, as well as all those involved in ministerial training.