First, the book takes a truly inter-disciplinary approach. It is remarkable to witness Smith’s interaction not only with philosophers of a wide variety, including such notables as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Bordieu, and Paul Ricoeur, but also with scholars from other disciplines, such as literature, evolutionary biology, neuro-science, and cognitive science. This exemplifies how to engage in scholarly endeavor more integrally and holistically in the midst of highly specialized culture of academia. Secondly, theologically speaking, Smith brings in ecumenical conversation partners, ranging from Peter Ochs (Judaism) to Oscar Wilde (Anglican/Catholic), and many others. Overall, Smith invites the readers to the journey of understanding the human person, as the book claims to be about philosophical anthropology, focusing on the human person as liturgical animals (3).
For all the book’s openness toward other academic disciplines and religious traditions, I find it a little difficult to accept Smith’s musings on technology, especially following from the subheading, i-Phonization of World(view) (137ff). Smith’s warnings of the potential harm of social media in the following statement, “users can severely underestimate the (de)formative power of cultural artifacts”(144), ought to be well-taken. Nevertheless, his negative perspectives on technology, especially such social media as Facebook and Twitter, remind the reader of his previous comments on the owls (114), quoted from Mark Johnson’s Meaning of the Body, by which Smith argued for the plasticity of the juvenile owls to prismatic glasses in contrast to the less flexible adult owls to the same glasses. While this might not be directly applicable to human bodies, it nevertheless conveys that the teenagers who are now used to living with social media might be able to adjust themselves in a positive fashion that Smith could never foresee now. Besides, technological advancement is no longer optional; one has to take technological advancement as part of the given in contemporary life, and avoiding it, as Smith did, will be less and less possible, given the dominance of technology in our lives at the current pace.
On a final note, Smith’s emphasis on narrative inescapably intertwined with the body as epistemic vehicle has inspired me to reflect further on how we teach theology in seminaries and divinity schools. In brief, my question is this: if narrative is so important, as Smith persuasively contends here, how do I, as a future scholar of religious education, bring in the life narratives of students in the classroom, so as to engage them with the story of Christianity? I envision that spiritual formation occurs when the students’ narratives, in intersecting with the Christian narratives, find better ways of telling their own life stories through the forms and contents of the gospel. Even so, the question is, how do religious educators do this? The inquiry goes on.
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