cover image Echo of the Soul: The Sacredness of the Human Body

Echo of the Soul: The Sacredness of the Human Body

J. Philip Newell. Morehouse Publishing, $17.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-8192-1874-2

Christians have been accused of maintaining a strict, sometimes detrimental, split between body and soul. Here, Edinburgh's Newell tries to bring body and soul together, urging readers to ""regard our bodies as sacred."" He draws on the Bible, Kabbalistic texts and Celtic spirituality, structuring the book around parts of the body and their various spiritual meanings. Newell insists that the head is ""associated with mystery,"" the arms with strength, the genitals with creativity, and so on, but he never tells us what it means to integrate those insights into daily life. He quotes so frequently from other spiritual writers Meister Eckhart, Bernard of Clairvaux, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Gerard Manley Hopkins that one wonders if Newell really has anything original to say; at places, this reads more like Newell's personal commonplace book. Newell is to be commended for drawing extensively on Jewish sources, which Christian writers usually overlook. And readers who haven't yet caught the Celtic spirituality craze will no doubt find enlightening the occasional discussions of Irish greats like the ninth-century teacher Eriugena. Any Christian who has been attracted to the Eastern chakra system will be thankful to find a Gospel-friendly version of the same basic truths: different parts of the body relate to different aspects of our being, and body and soul can and should be fully integrated. Overall, this is a well-meaning but unsatisfying stab at an important topic. (Apr.)