Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture, Gordon E. Carkner (Foreword by Iain Provan). Wipf & Stock (ISBN: 9798385203772), 2024.

Summary: The Incarnation and our quest for identity, addressing the rootless identities of modern gnosticism and expressive individualism.

We expressed it as “finding ourselves” in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. But the quest for identity didn’t end with Baby Boomers. Over the course of my life, I’ve witnessed a succession of “quests” to find identity in acquisitiveness, political causes, one’s ethnicity, sexuality and gender, and in a kind of designer spirituality cobbling together beliefs and practices drawn from diverse source into a personal enlightenment package. Yet, as Charles Taylor has observed, the fragility of our identity is evident in the ways we wall ourselves off from others as “buffered selves.” We find ourselves at times alienated even from our embodied life let alone an objectively existing Transcendent.

Gordon E. Carkner, drawing on the insights of Taylor, Christopher Watkin and others identifies this fragile identity as rooted in modern forms of Gnosticism and articulates a robust alternative rooted in the Incarnation. He begins by contrasting both ancient and modern forms of Gnosticism with spirituality rooted in the Incarnation. He notes the disdain of Gnosticism for the body and for the Transcendent entering our embodied existence. It is an attempt to achieve a spirituality both apart from the body and a God who created bodies.

Carkner proposes instead that identity may be rooted in a God who has spoken, in an I-Thou relationship brought to its height in the incarnate Christ, marrying the spirit and embodied life. Thus, he gives dignity to our embodied lives. Going on, he explores the idea of Christ as the Wisdom of God. Jesus embodied wisdom, the fulfillment of our quest to live well. Specifically, Carkner draws on the work of Hans Urs Von Balthasar in elaborating six pillars of incarnational wisdom. He points to James Davison Hunter’s idea of “faithful presence” as an example of how Christians incarnate that wisdom in culture.

Whereas Gnosticism is evident in a “will to uniqueness” or “expressive individualism,” Incarnational spirituality leads to embodied communities, expressed in “one-anotherness.” The quest for autonomy truncates the self, leaving people open to manipulation while embodied communities provide stability, perspective, and resilience. And finally, the Incarnation brings a Transcendent connection to our ethics and understanding of goodness, rather than the individual defining and sourcing their ethics within themselves.

In summing up, Carkner has distilled extended philosophical discussions into a vision for incarnational spirituality. Consequently, every sentence is loaded with meaning, requiring close reading. He offers an alternative to the fragile and fragmented identities of post-modernity. All of this is rooted in the ancient Christian belief in the Incarnation. Carkner frames our contemporary quest for identity in terms of the classic contrast between Gnostic and Incarnational spirituality. That God became man addresses our alienation from ourselves, from others, and the Transcendent. And it provides a basis for community and the pursuit of the good.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.