Spring 2025 · Vol. 54 No. 1 · pp. 141–143
Book Review
Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ
Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024. 148 pages.
The question of what it means to be human is perhaps among the most pressing of our time (or any time). How we answer this question affects our social relationships, our politics, the culture(s) we create or reject, and what we think is possible in the world. Articulating a coherent, compelling, and well-grounded theological anthropology is at the heart of what animates Gordon Carkner’s new book, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture. Carkner sees a Western world mired in an existential identity crisis, seeking p. 142 to escape the constraints of the given created order that is seen as inherently deficient or limiting. He seeks to ground human identity and flourishing in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, rather than what he calls the various “Gnosticisms” of our time.
Carkner describes himself as a “meta-educator” whose interests lie in promoting faith and cultural dialogue with graduate students and faculty at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC). For a relatively small book, it is ambitious in scope. It is structured in five parts. Part one contrasts ancient and modern Gnosticism with what Carkner calls “Incarnational Spiritual Culture.” All forms of Gnosticism, Carkner argues, seek to somehow engineer human reality to escape or avoid the imagined constraints of embodied existence. But true human flourishing can only take place when we embrace the conditions of our creation, the conditions Jesus himself entered and transformed in the incarnation.
Parts two and three urge readers to consider the possibility that to be human is to be in a profound sense addressed by God. We are invited to open ourselves to a God who speaks, who offers wisdom, whose love and mercy permeate the cosmos. This is, of course, most fully and finally expressed in Jesus—the one whose love and mercy and way of life represent the fullest and most beautiful expression of what it means to be human. Part four pushes back against the default individualism of our time, arguing that we can only learn who we truly are as human beings in the context of community and relationships defined by mutuality and trust. The book ends with a discussion of how the good society we all intuitively long for is (and can only be) grounded in the transcendent goodness of God.
In Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture, Carkner covers a lot of territory and cites many impressive and influential thinkers and movements. At times, the book can feel a bit chaotic and disorganized, almost like the author is trying to do too much in too little space. Quotes, cultural references, and personal anecdotes occasionally feel disjointed or out of place. To cite but one example, the very last paragraph of the book, which comes at the end of a chapter exploring what it might mean to have a personal relationship with Jesus, ends with a reference to the great Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel is an impressive thinker, to be sure, but it’s unclear why a Jewish rabbi who didn’t obviously embrace Jesus in any orthodox way would be cited as evidence for the importance of embracing Jesus as the way to make sense of human nature and our existential condition. This book would have perhaps benefited from a tighter focus and a bit more editorial input.
Having said that, those who are curious about our cultural moment with all its opportunities and contradictions, those who are animated by p. 143 the quest to understand who we are and what we are here for, will find food for thought in this book. As Carkner says, “We urgently need to engage the veracity of incarnational spiritual culture—intellectually grasp it, feel it in our bones, live in solidarity with the miracle” (44). I couldn’t agree more, and I commend Carkner’s book to all who are open to this possibility.
