Customer Reviews

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

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As usual, Matthew Fox takes readers on a spiritual journey of awakening. Full of insight, this book was especially of interest to me beacause of the holistic, Earth-based message found within. I did not find this book especially difficult, although that may be because my field of study is in this area. Perhaps if one merely reads the words it can be. However, it is almost impossible not to connect on a spiritual level with the meaning intended. Sometimes a book must be felt as well as read and Fox seems to write with that intention.

Fox gives one of the most readable and insightful histories of Christian theology available. He distinguishes life-affirming, creation-loving Christianity from a more world-denying, love-controlling theology which has bore more resemblance to Manichaeanism. Whether we find Fox's work faithful or not depends on which of these kinds of theology we believe in. To those who feel Fox attacks Catholicism, I'd point out his equally-critical treatment of anti-creation theology within Protestant tradition. And here, if I may, I'd like to summarize some of my favourite points from the book:

We might assume that the Protestant Reformation rose for the sake of religious freedom. But as Fox points out, most early Protestant leaders actually championed a full return to Augustine's doctrine against free will. John Wyclif (1320-84) contradicted his Catholic Church by teaching that only Adam and Eve ever possessed freedom -- which they lost, both for themselves and all their posterity, as their punishment for disobedience. From that time forward no one alive had any real freedom, but all were slaves to inborn sin. The people of the world should therefore realize that nothing they did or said could be ever acceptable to the Father. No matter what, they would remain hopelessly unworthy of salvation, and deserve only eternal punishment. The good news of Christ was simply that God had overlooked the faults of some people, choosing them for predestined salvation through no merit or choice of their own.

Martin Luther agreed, proclaiming that God's omnipotence rendered each human "unfree as a block of wood, a rock, a lump of clay or a pillar of salt". With such belief he supported slavery, feudal dues, and forced labor as seen in the Bible: "Sheep, cattle, men-servants, and maid-servants were all possessions to be sold as it pleased their masters. It were a good thing it were still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk".

John Calvin made humanity's fallen nature seem obvious as the gap between heaven and earth:

"The mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God ... His heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot produce anything but what is corrupt, and if at any time men do anything apparently good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and deceit, and the heart enslaved by its inward perversity. ...

If God had formed us of the stuff of the sun or the stars, or if he had created any other celestial matter out of which men could have been made, then we might have said that our beginning was honorable. ... But when someone is made of clay, who pays any attention to him? ... [So] who are we? We are all made of mud, and this mud is not just on the hem of our gown, or on the sole of our boots, or in our shoes. We are full of it, we are nothing but mud and filth both inside and out."

Fox goes on to discuss the implications of modern knowledge that we are made of stellar, celestial matter. It's a book that helps us rethink our whole set of assumptions about what holiness is.

--author of Correcting Jesus

I stumbled on this book while websurfing. It seemed promising until I realized it was another book far too couched in Christian language for me to get anything out of it. Most of what Fox talks about is what I had to leave the church a long time ago to find out. Now some intelligent Christian authors are trying to catch up with the diversity of a new culture. Sorry; this book didn't grab me.

The depth of this book reflects the profundity of its author. Matt Fox has always been a genius at research, synthesis and cogent analysis. There are so many interesting, difficult to come by facts which are all presented in the context of understanding our place in the cosmos, our relationship with ourself, our Creator and each other. Thanks again Matt, for all the hard work in bringing this book to "light".

Another great book by Matthew Fox. I humbly suggest you get the musical CD called "7" by Chip Davis (Mannheim Steamrollers)and thoroughly enjoy a new perspective on the sources of energy within and without the body combining Matthew's insights and the music of Chip Davis. Extraordinary.