doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.34679
Body
and
Religion
bar (print) issn 2057–5823
bar (online) issn 2057–5831
bar vol 1.2 2018 218–221
©2018, equinox publishing
Review
Theology in the Flesh:
How Embodiment and Culture Shape the Way We Think about
Truth, Morality and God
By J. Sanders (2015)
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 293pp.
Reviewed by Kevin Schilbrack
Keywords embodiment; Christian theology; cognitive linguistics;
conceptual metaphor; image schemas; realism
In 1999, cognitive linguists George Lakof and Mark Johnson published
Philosophy in the Flesh, the book that inspires John Sanders’ new title.
Lakof and Johnson argue that from the time one is born, human beings
have bodily experiences of their environments that involve repeated pat-
terns. When one is held, for example, one feels warmth. When one moves
towards an object, one traverses space and gets closer to it. When one flls
a container, the height of the contents gets higher. From these experiences,
one develops distinct prerefective templates of understanding and rea-
soning that Lakof and Johnson call image schemas, schemas with labels
such as ‘source-path-goal’, ‘centre-periphery’ or ‘more is up’. And drawing
on these schemas, speakers build conceptual metaphors such as a friendly
person is ‘warm’, a relationship is a ‘journey’, and as something increases, it
‘rises’. Metaphors like these shape just about everything one can say about
abstract realities like time or life or, as Sanders points out, truth, morality
and God. In short, then, cognitive linguistics ofers a powerful argument
that we should stop saying that thinking is something accomplished by the
mind as opposed to the body.
Afliation
Appalachian State University, USA.
email: schilbrackke@appstate.edu