Enhancing Christian Life: How Extended Cognition Augments Religious Community
Overview
No one is really Christian on their own. But often the religious life is seen as individual, private, and internal—resulting in a truncated, consumeristic faith. And what if that kind of individualistic Christianity is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature?
According to psychologists Brad Strawn and Warren Brown, it’s time to rethink the Christian life in light of current research on the human mind, particularly with a deeper understanding of the process called “extended cognition.” Using insights from neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, they argue in Enhancing Christian Life that persons must be understood as not only embodied and embedded within particular contexts, but also extended beyond the body to encompass aspects of the physical and social world. Embracing a vision of the Christian life as extended into interactions with a local network of believers, they help us discover a fuller, more effective way to be Christian.
After exploring the psychological dynamics of extended cognition, including how the mind is “supersized” by the incorporation of physical tools and social networks, Strawn and Brown consider implications for spiritual practices, congregational life, and religious language and traditions, which they describe as mental “wikis.” The formation of robust Christian life, they show, is a process that takes place within a larger mesh of embodiment and mind—broader, deeper, and richer than we could ever be on our own.
- Examines insights from neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy
- Considers the implications for spiritual practices, congregational life, and religious language
- Explores the psychological dynamics of extended cognition
Part I: The Nature of Christian Life
- Minding Christian Life
- Modern Spirituality
Part II: The Nature of Persons
- Minding Bodies
- Mind Beyond Bodies
- Mind Beyond the Individual
Part III: The Nature of the Church
- The Church and "My Spirituality"
- The “Individual” Life of the Christian
- The Wikis of Christian Life
- Things Said and Unsaid
- Metaphors of a New Paradigm
Want to be a more Christian Christian? Read this book and put its lessons into practice within your church and family. Brad D. Strawn and Warren S. Brown, in Enhancing Christian Life, have caught a new, transformative way of understanding Christian formation. They base Christian formation on modern cognitive psychology that recognizes how intertwined relationships are with our embodied life. What they contribute is a thorough description of the Christian implications of this relational approach for the church and Christian relationships. Their book will make you want to engage more with the church. By doing so, both you and the church will be blessed.
—Everett L. Worthington Jr., author of Forgiving and Reconciling
In case you were under the impression that being a Christian is a solo achievement, Brad Strawn and Warren Brown are here to disabuse you of that misunderstanding. They say it’s a mistake to assume that spirituality is ever an individual, internal, and private matter. For them, it is always an embodied, collective, and spatial enterprise. Written in a lively, down-to-earth fashion, this book has monumental implications for our understanding of both spirituality and ecclesiology.
—Michael Frost, author of Incarnate and To Alter Your World
- Title: Enhancing Christian Life: How Extended Cognition Augments Religious Community
- Authors: Brad D. Strawn, Warren S. Brown
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Pages: 167
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Christian life › Philosophy of mind; Christian life › Extended cognition
- ISBNs: 9780830828401, 9780830852819, 0830828400, 0830852816
- Resource ID: LLS:NHNCNGCHRSTNLF
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T01:48:28Z
Brad D. Strawn (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor of the Integration of Psychology and Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has post-doctoral training in psychoanalysis and is a licensed psychologist. He is coauthor (with Warren S. Brown) of The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology and the Church and coeditor of Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation.
Warren S. Brown is the director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute and professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is principal editor and contributor to Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature and coauthor (with Nancey Murphy) of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?