Faith and Place: An Essay in Embodied Religious Epistemology

Written by Mark Wynn Reviewed By Geoff Fulkerson

Faith and Place is yet another book in the fluid, rapidly emerging field of a theology of place. Though self-situated within this body of literature (cf. viii), Wynn's work is unique, moving the subject more closely to the doctrines of God and man, and emphasizing primarily the value that place-knowledge holds for reforming religious epistemology, that is, for offering a kind of knowledge of God that is intrinsically action-guiding, involving our concrete engagement in the material world.

As chapter 1 frames the problem, Wynn's primary aim is to account for the “differentiated religious significance of place” (i.e., why we consider certain placesmore religiously significant than others) that is congruent with the Christian doctrine of God's omnipresence. Moving beyond what Wynn believes to be two inadequate solutions to the problem of place—psychological accounts, which are reductionistic, and metaphysical accounts, which are overbearing—Wynn offers a “middle ground,” emphasizing the “place-relative character of religious belief and practice” (p. 5). Moreover, Wynn sees an analogical problem in religious epistemology, which tends towards models drawn either from scientific or phenomenological approaches to knowledge. Problematically, both of these accounts “occlude the connections between religious knowledge and our practical, engaged knowledge of the material world” (p. 8). Knowledge of place, then, offers possibilities for a new approach to religious epistemology, and this religious epistemology that includes “our practical, engaged knowledge of the world” allows for (even depends upon) places as religiously significant.

Chapter 2 develops this argument by narratively highlighting three models of the differentiated religious significance of place. First, particular places may be of religious significance as microcosms of the world (genius loci of the genius mundi). Second, knowledge of place is not grasped through theoretical formulation (detached reflection), but through bodily appropriation; for places are “affectively structured and intrinsically action-guiding” (p. 39). Third, places are bearers of history. Chapters 3-4 develop the theological core of this proposal, highlighting three analogical relations between God and place: both are supra-individual (ch. 3), both narratively mediate agency, and both ground human identity (ch. 4).

Chapter 5 returns to the knowledge of place, briefly gleaning from four contemporary spatial theorists (Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu, David Seamon) to highlight how places are bodily appropriated. Chapters 6-8 presents three case studies/implications through which he works out the religious significance of place: pilgrimage (ch. 6), natural and built environments (ch. 7), and the priority of poetic discourse (aesthetic knowledge) in knowing places (ch. 8). In all three cases, Wynn highlights the “practical-affective-intellectual integrity” of the lived body in place (p. 199). Chapter 9 briefly offers some concluding thoughts, giving the last words to Edmund Cuisck, poet, good friend of Wynn's, and inspiration for this book.

This book makes a significant contribution to the theology of place. By connecting knowledge of place to knowledge of God, Wynn moves the conversation of place in a more explicitly theological direction. Moreover, his development of an embodied epistemology as religiously significant has great promise, perhaps corresponding with and possibly grounding much of the recent saptiential/character turn. Many will resonate with his suspicion of forms of knowledge that tend toward detached speculation. Many, too, will resonate with his emphasis on narrative, unity, and identity. On the whole, the book successfullyshows the kind of knowledge that is tied to place.

Yet Wynn falls short in developing what is promised. While there is great potential for this religious epistemology, his explanationis less than clear. Wynn too easily conflates God with place and seems to defend a kind of panentheism (ch. 3 equates God with context). This is the “bolder” thesis of the book, which equates place with God and leaves a kind of “personal” God far different from the one that most of us trust in. But even with his more modest proposal (the religious significance of an embodied epistemology), the positive implications are less than straightforward. It is significant that quite frequently when Wynn attempts to establish the differentiated religious significance of place, he turns to secular analogies. Pilgrimage is compared to graves and wedding rings, for example. This is not inherently wrong, and indeed it might illumine the bodily aspects of various religious practices. These analogies illustrate how a bodily epistemology works in knowing a place, but not necessarily of God.If the kind of knowledge that Wynn is interested in is primarily knowledge of God, one might have expected more consideration of explicitly religious practices: prayer, worship, confession, repentance, trust. Does it matter where I pray, for example, whether in the solitude of my room, in the corporate assembly of the church, or on the busy streets of a city as I walk to work? When such practices are the primary orientation of a religiously embodied epistemology, it is less than clear (at least in Wynn's work) what an embodied epistemology offers us. Moreover, an important implication that follows from Wynn's argument is the relative value of various practices and whether the same practice (i.e., prayer) should be distinguished based on its various locations.

Wynn's disinterest in these questions, however, seems embedded in a larger problem. For Wynn, God is (revealed) in every genius loci, each having its own atmosphere and thus its own corresponding set of embodied appropriations. Yet a Christian theologian must insist that God has not revealed himself in the cogency of every local narrative (and the form of life there promoted), but in the one particular narrative. It is not placeper se that is revelatory, but rather the particular places/contexts where God has willed to reveal himself. In Wynn's promotion of genius loci as microcosms of God, he seems to jeopardize the uniqueness and particularity of the Christian message itself.

In summary, while Wynn confuses God and place and fails to adequately work out the religious implications of an embodied epistemology, his joining of these important concepts significantly advances the conversation, presenting an epistemology that is intrinsically action-guiding and raising possibilities about the connection between God and place. A more biblically minded reader, for example, might have new resources for thinking about covenant theology, whereby knowing God is not merely an assertion of propositional truths, which we then subsequently apply in our religious practices, but a fitting involvement in the context of the covenant, through which God is mediately known in our embodied engagement with the world. The key concepts and the precise theological relationship between them, however, will have to wait for another to be more clearly expounded.


Geoff Fulkerson

Geoff Fulkerson
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, Illinois, USA

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