Our bodies matter. Christians today sometimes forget this, dangerously ignoring the importance of their physical selves when it comes to technology, sexuality, worship, and even death. Anderson’s book will help readers learn what the Bible says about our bodies and grow to appreciate the importance of embodiment in our spiritual lives. It will also explore generational differences when it comes to how we perceive and use our bodies. Just as Christ’s body was crucial to our salvation, our own bodies are an important part of the complete Christian life.
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What does Christianity have to say about the body? Much more than you might think. Matthew Lee Anderson—one of evangelicalism’s brightest young writers—is a serious student of God’s Word and God’s world, and in this book he patiently and insightfully explores a theology of the body from numerous angles. Rightly seeing the body as a gift from God for our good and his glory, Anderson insightfully shows us what a biblical worldview has to say about the body in relationship to community, pleasure, sex, sexuality, tattoos, death, prayer, and the church. Anderson’s arguments deserve careful consideration. I suspect that many of us will think differently—and more biblically—about the body as a result of this very fine work.
Managing Editor, ESV Study Bible; blogger, “Between Two Worlds”
We evangelicals don’t think we care about the body, but we really, really do. And Matthew Anderson—one of the brightest lights in the evangelical world—helps us care, ponder, think and pray more wisely as we give our bodies as a living sacrifice to Christ.
Senior Managing Editor, Christianity Today
Earthen Vessels is a turning point in the evangelical conversation about the meaning of bodies. If you didn’t even know such a conversation was going on, you are lucky to have Matthew Anderson introducing you to it. If you’ve already been listening in and are as confused as the rest of us, you’ll appreciate the way this book sorts things out, settles accounts, debunks myths, digs for sources, raises neglected issues, and points out the way forward. On nearly every page you can find two virtues rarely combined: surprising new insights and good old common sense. Here is good counsel (solid, soulful, scriptural) about how to be humans, in bodies, under the gospel.
Associate Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University
Tattoos, cremation, abortion, gay sex, yoga, online church: No subject is off limits in Matthew Anderson’s provocative book on the body. Anderson challenges us to deepen our understanding of what it means to be embodied. When it comes to body matters, the body matters. Though few will agree with all of Anderson’s diagnosis and prescription, all who read this book will be challenged to consider how our views of the body line up with (or depart from) Scripture and Christian theology. This is a highly ambitious project that deserves careful consideration.
author of Counterfeit Gospels and Holy Subversion