Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels

by Rodney Clapp

A 2004 Publishers Weekly Book of the Year; 2004 Quills Award Nominee

Tortured Wonders shows how orthodox Christian spirituality "never gives up on the body." Rodney Clapp begins by addressing the incarnation of Christ and the resurrection of the body, and the place of sacraments in Christian spirituality. Then he takes up the likes of Elvis and Bambi to explore the spiritual consequences of our contemporary obsession with celebrity and the fear of death. He calls us to embrace our creatureliness through a string of irresistible Is there sex in heaven? What is the most "biblical" posture for prayer? Can we learn anything from non-Christian spiritual traditions?

Pastors, counselors, and anyone interested in Christian spirituality will appreciate this lucid and insightful book.

Genres: Theology, Spirituality, Christianity, Nonfiction, Christian Living

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in 2005, and from memory found it rather weak.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this book and am sad that I ended up disagreeing with so much of it. The subtitle of this book "Christian Spirituality for People, not Angels" is what grabbed me and Clapp wonderfully develops this theme in warm, humorous, and humane ways. And that helped me. I liked the questions he raised and was impressed by his frequent grounding of his thinking in historic Christian orthodoxy (quoting from St Augustine more than anyone else). I liked how he grounded his initial thinking on our physicality in the doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection, and how he disabuses his readers of ways of thinking about spirituality that are more in line with Gnosticism than Christianity.

But I was disappointed with how he delt with some of his own questions and the direction of his answers (on such issues, for example, as homosexuality, the exclusivity of Christ, and eternal punishment). His wrong-headedness on these issues push his book off of my recommended reading list on to my "watch out - this could be dangerous!" list. Too bad.

[Ryan and Sara Wendt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book on Christian spirituality of the body for people and not angels!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me 2 years on and off to read. Overall solid, but not crazy interesting to me. The best part was the 18 page chapter on mortality.

[Donovan Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate Spirit 105.3 (my local Christian radio station). If you like that radio station and I hurt your feelings, I apologize. In all honesty, I really do not want you to have hurt feelings, but I find Spirit 105.3 less wholesome and family friendly (as they advertise) and more vomit-inducing otherworldly fakery. Of course I am painting this station in broad strokes and I have no special insight regarding the spiritual lives of its disc jockeys, but every bit of spiritual advice I hear on air sounds like it came from the front porch of a wooden house in a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Enter Rodney Clapp and his book Tortured Wonders. In a way, Clapp’s premise in this book is a rebuttal against a “Spirit 105.3” spirituality. While our local Christian radio station seeks to disconnect the soul from the body promoting a Christian spirituality fit for people playing harps in heaven, Clapp reminds us that God created the human body and said that it was good.

Clapp splits Tortured Wonders in half. The first section, titled “Classical Christian Spirituality,” details Orthodox Christianity and the themes that pushed it towards an angelic spirituality. Part two, “Christianity in the Light (and Darkness) of the 21st Century,” depicts the ways in which an Orthodox spirituality could translate to our modern culture.

Clapp writes:

“As human beings, as tortured wonders, we are each of us ‘in between.’ We think, we speak, we dream, we pray, so we set ourselves apart from animals and the rest of creation. And yet we are also animals – like them, we are embodied; like them, we are born, we eat and live for a spell, and we die. We humans, then, are luminal creatures, teetering on the threshold between the divine and the bestial” (177).

It follows from this quote that Christian spirituality demands a more holistic approach. Too often, Christians define Orthodoxy as a religion of the mind. Through apologetics and prayer, classical and modern Christians actively participate in mental workouts. Clapp counters in arguing that Orthodox Christianity contains a spirituality of body and mind.

Our bodies are constant reminders that we own a one-way ticket to death. While some cover up sneezes with a handkerchief and others defy aging through Botox, human beings are incapable of outrunning death. Simply put, every day we wake up, we are one day closer to death. Understanding this concept, Clapp contends that a spirituality of the body ought to be a Christian practice.

Personally, Tortured Wonders has influenced me to pay close attention to the treatment of my body. I admit that I have fallen prey to an exclusive spirituality of the mind. This book has encouraged me to begin running, not for the sake of obtaining a good appearance, but for the purpose of submitting my body to something that I’d rather not do. Similarly, I am more aware of the food nourishing me. Eating is a spiritual act. It is done in community and the source of nourishment ought to be considered. If I eat processed foods, then I am consuming a food that is not only unhealthy, but also loaded with sugars and salts added for the purpose of tricking my anatomy to enjoy it the most. Thus, eating natural foods bring the benefits of health and moderation.

Tortured Wonders succeeds in expanding the breadth of what we consider spirituality. Although it is not a page turner, the themes present in the book provide a unique perspective. I recommend Tortured Wonders to anyone who is interested in a holistic approach to spirituality.

Originally posted at http://wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com

[Longfellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea that is the intended focus of Clapp’s book, which is hinted at in the sub-title: “Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels.” The intended emphasis here is on the reality that people have physical, earthly bodies, and that spirituality involves more than merely the spirit, heart, or mind.

I like this because it immediately attempts to address the fallacy that as Christians we should see our bodies only as a source of temptation, weakness, and evil. Rather, our entire being—including our physical bodies—is pronounced “good” by our Creator.

While this is a worthy focus, I do feel at times that Clapp stretches a bit in attempting to relate all his ideas to this particular theme. In his concluding chapter, for example, he spends the last several pages exploring the qualifications for salvation, leaning somewhat toward suggestions previously offered by C.S. Lewis, Rob Bell, and probably other writers more theologically focused from earlier ages. I appreciate this view, though I don't see how it directly relates to what I understand to be his intended central focus. In fairness, while Clapp emphasizes this spirit + body reality, his ultimate goal as a Christian writer is to offer insight into the unified message of Scripture, and Tortured Wonders certainly fits within this worthy scope.

His writing style is neither too difficult nor too easy. Given his topic and his approach toward it, it seems he intends laypersons as his audience, though well-educated ones without a doubt; his vocabulary and writing style at times trend toward the academic, falling short of a theologian’s high style but remaining formal and requiring concentration, especially when explaining concepts and ideas. Other times his writing is more casual, usually when he is sharing illustrations or stories for analogous purposes.

In the first half of Tortured Wonders Clapp outlines historical views of the church regarding spirituality and spiritual practices, emphasizing baptism and the Eucharist in particular as physical approaches to spirituality. He consistently terms these historical views “orthodox Christian spirituality” in an effort to clearly define for readers the foundations of spirituality that he believes must remain essential for Christians today, even as we adapt our views of spirituality to current times. In the second half of the book, Clapp addresses modern day culture and applies these foundational perspectives to our current milieu, both Christian and secular.

I enjoy Clapp; many of the ideas explained in Tortured Wonders are familiar to me to some degree, though there are many spots where a keen illustration or explanation provided me with a fresh perspective or a clearer understanding of something than I previously had. His explanation of liberalism near the end of the book is one of the best examples of this. Overall, I was more profoundly affected by his book of church history, A Peculiar People, but this contrast in reading experiences had more to do with the new knowledge Peculiar People provided me rather than any particular difference in quality between these two books.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars may be overly generous for a book that does a bit of wandering, but I enjoyed keeping company with Clapp as he talked about spirituality (despite the freight the word bears today), defining "Orthodox Christian spirituality" as "participation and formation in the life of the church that is created and sustained by the Holy Spirit." And as he makes clear, this spirituality is in the body, not cut free from the body and dwelling on high like the angels.

The reason Christian spirituality must be embodied is Christ. In the incarnation "Humanity will be assumed and resumed, restored to its pristine wholeness and reset on the path to the maturation and fullness of that wholeness." And the end goal, "the greatest and most blessed Christian hope, accordingly, is not the escape of the individual soul from the body to heaven; it is the bodily resurrection to life everlasting as an intergral human whole." Our expectation is always to more fully participate in the life and communion of God.

Clapp talks about classical Christian understandings and how an orthodox Christian spirituality might be embodied in th 21st century. He talks about our modern individualism versus the more communal understanding of the Biblical world. He talks about human desires and our urge to fulfill them with consumer goods. He talks about sex and even more centrally about death and the modern fear of it. He also speaks about the remedy in our spiritual practice, especially in the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. I appreciated his defense of the sacraments against those who hold they are just memorial. Clapp's grasp of Church history and his willingness both to confess the church's faults and rehabilitate the besmirched (around issues like sexuality) is also excellent. The book is not a complete theological anthropology and I have issues of emphasis and of omission, but I really did like thinking alongside it. There is much to come back to here.

[Frank Peters · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book that I wanted to like, but unfortunately did not. The entire premised behind the book is something that I agree with strongly, so I was entirely on the side of the author. But the book was not at all style in that it was essentially all style and no substance. The author clearly enjoys writing, while I don’t really enjoy writing for writings sake, but rather am hungry for content that is interesting, useful, uplifting, educational or even entertaining. The majority of the book did not fit any of these categories. I was not interested in most of it and I learned almost nothing, etc. There were thankfully a few theological analogies that were very useful for thought, but there was very little else of any substance. Perhaps I am too much of a modern and this was more post-modern than I am comfortable with. Outside of the main thesis, the author seemed unwilling to make any objective statements, while I am interested in pursuing truth. The book seemed like it was penned by a relativistic postmodern version of Philip Yancey.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A provocative presentation of orthodox Christian spirituality in very modern earthy terms. Author emphasizes that spirituality must be grounded in the bodiliness of being human rather than spiritualized as if we are angels. Structured around creation, incarnation, and resurrection, all if which involve the whole human , including the body, Clapp explains what an embodied spirituality means in a modern/postmodern world in regard to relationships, community, sex, diet and exercise. The approach is not without its flaws. His commitment to orthodoxy means his answers to such issues as homosexuality, exclusivity of Christ, and eternal punishment make are inadequate. The first half of the book is great but the second half that deals with these issues are disappointing even though the writing is good.

[Ben Chenoweth · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me ages to read this book, basically because it is fairly heavy-going. (I struggled with his sentence structures more than once. Was it just me or does his prose need more commas?) But the content was good. He has a helpful presentation on the sacraments, and I was challenged by something he said about disciplines. But it wasn't very memorable, unfortunately.

[Bernard Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

This man has something profoundly helpful and relevant to say to the Christian church of today, especially in the form that western Christianity has taken in these latter decades.

[Jim Vaden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every good Christian book on spirituality should have a section devoted to farting. This one does, and I heartily approve.