Robert C. Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195369175
- eISBN:
- 9780199871186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369175.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Pain and illness often register cultural dysfunction. For this reason, bodily pain frequently motivates radical efforts toward cultural and theological reconstruction. This chapter demonstrates the ...
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Pain and illness often register cultural dysfunction. For this reason, bodily pain frequently motivates radical efforts toward cultural and theological reconstruction. This chapter demonstrates the role that bodily illness plays in stimulating religious reconstructions of reality by examining how the radical theological agendas advanced by metaphysical healing groups have been rooted in the private experience of the body and its afflictions.Less
Pain and illness often register cultural dysfunction. For this reason, bodily pain frequently motivates radical efforts toward cultural and theological reconstruction. This chapter demonstrates the role that bodily illness plays in stimulating religious reconstructions of reality by examining how the radical theological agendas advanced by metaphysical healing groups have been rooted in the private experience of the body and its afflictions.
Robert C. Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195369175
- eISBN:
- 9780199871186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369175.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate ...
More
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.Less
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.
