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Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, by Norman Wirzba
Free PDF Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, by Norman Wirzba
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This book provides a comprehensive theological framework for assessing eating's significance, employing a Trinitarian theological lens to evaluate food production and consumption practices as they are being worked out in today's industrial food systems. Norman Wirzba combines the tools of ecological, agrarian, cultural, biblical, and theological analyses to draw a picture of eating that cares for creatures and that honors God. Unlike books that focus on vegetarianism or food distribution as the key theological matters, this book broadens the scope to include discussions on the sacramental character of eating, eating's ecological and social contexts, the meaning of death and sacrifice as they relate to eating, the Eucharist as the place of inspiration and orientation, the importance of saying grace, and whether or not there will be eating in heaven. Food and Faith demonstrates that eating is of profound economic, moral, and theological significance.
- Sales Rank: #217382 in Books
- Published on: 2011-05-23
- Released on: 2011-07-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.98" h x .59" w x 5.98" l, .80 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 266 pages
Review
Advance Praises: "With issues of food security growing ever more urgent, this is an important and timely book, profound and challenging. Wirzba engages with the themes of death and sacrifice that underlie all our eating, exploring the significance of food through the deepest insights of the Christian faith. Anyone interested in the construction of a more sustainable and a more just world, whether their background is Christian or not, should be interested in this book. Truly a tract for the times." - Tim Gorringe, St Luke's Professor of Theology, University of Exeter
"No reader will be able to take a mouthful of food in the same light again after reading this beautifully written and original book. Wirzba achieves admirably what he sets out to do in the introduction, namely, to challenge our ignorance about what we eat in order to bring his readers to a greater and more profound awareness of creaturely interdependence. This book is not just an analytical account of where modern industrial cultures have gone wrong in their displacement from a true appreciation of the sources and relationships involved in food production. It is also a bold and imaginative theological effort in helping modern Christian believers perceive and pay attention to the importance of grace-filled eating and its relationship with the death of other creaturely kinds. Although avowedly not a book about ethics, this book does far more than any straight text on the ethics of current practices might achieve, because it touches the heart of religious sensibility around food and invites a transformative response." - Celia Deane-Drummond, Professor of Theology and the Biological Sciences and Director of the Centre for Religion and the Biosciences, University of Chester
"Food, how we grow it and how we eat it, is having increasingly deleterious effects on our bodies and on the environment. In Food and Faith Norman Wirzba shows that the destructive effects of the modern industrial food system extend also to our souls. He provides a doctrinally rich and biblically grounded repair of the increasing secularisation of food and the cultures of food in Western theology since the late Middle Ages. And against an ecologically destructive and oil-based industrial food economy, he unfolds an agrarian vision in which a sacred respect for the creatures, and dirt, that give us life is restored. This is a beautifully written book on a subject that is of profound import for Christian witness to a pagan consumer culture that shows increasingly callous disrespect for the Creation." - Michael Northcott, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
"Theology at its best: lucid, full of humility, drawing boldly on a wide range of sources, and making innovative connections with a subject vital to all human beings. Warmly recommended!" - Christopher Southgate, University of Exeter
"The last decade has seen growing solidarity among diverse advocates for environmental justice, health and nutrition, animal rights, and gustatory pleasure. Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating adds an important Christian voice to this ongoing conversation from Norman Wirzba. ... Wirzba's vision-that eating Eucharistically is a joyful possibility in our lives, one that gives us a foretaste of heaven-is a marvelously attractive one." --Books and Culture
"Likely to become the go-to book for a theological perspective on the vast field of food issues, _Food and Faith_ is not only thorough - it's also extremely well written. Whether describing a potluck meal at a church supported garden, outlining the history of bread production, or explaining the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity, Wirzba's lucid prose is energizing. This is the sort of heavy-hitting book you can actually talk about over dinner." -- Conspire
"This book is full of ideas and themes that almost leap off the page into the pulpit and pastorial ministry." --Christian Century
"We urgently need to think more deeply, carefully and creatively about food, ethics and theology, and Wirzba's book enables us to do so." --Modern Theology
About the Author
Norman Wirzba is Research Professor of Theology, Ecology, and Rural Life at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of The Paradise of God (2007) and Living the Sabbath (2006), among other titles. He lectures widely on topics related to ecology, agriculture and food systems as they are philosophically and theologically understood.
Most helpful customer reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
A Deep and Abiding Communion
By Englewood Review of Books
[ This review originally appeared in
THE ENGLEWOOD REVIEW OF BOOKS - 2 Sept 2011 ]
At first glance, Food and Faith: a Theology of Eating might seem like the newest in the long and popular line of books for foodies, in which case the question would be "What now?" Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin, end even Wendell Berry have done an effective job of getting their point across, and have seemingly been able to foster in a growing percentage of the American population at least a recognition that the system that provides most of the country with food is flawed to the point of creating widespread disease instead of health in both people and places. Anyone who would seek out yet another book related to the modern food and agriculture industry has likely already heard this information coming and going. But as the subtitle suggests, Food and Faith is not really a food book for foodies. It is a theology book for Christians. Norman Wirzba is certainly sensible to agrarian thought and the works of many writers who would promote more healthful ways of living and eating, and has authored or edited several other related works. What he does here however is to take the subject of food and eating- a subject that many people feel strongly about, although maybe for somewhat vague reasons- and locate it firmly within the realm of the goodness of God's creation.
The fact that food and eating are central to all life is easily taken for granted. The fact that food and eating are intimately tied to the Christian faith is easily overlooked. For Wirzba, life and food and eating and faith are all gracious gifts proceeding from the God of creation. The act of eating is itself fraught with significance, even aside from questions about animal husbandry, land conservation, and nutritional value. Eating establishes us firmly within the world of the living and every time we take a bite we proclaim that we are full participants in creation. We must also acknowledge with every meal and with every bite that life is a gift that is continually given. However, with each sustaining bite we not only receive life, but taste death. The very food that is given by God for our nourishment has required death of another participant in God's creation - whether plant or animal, yeast, microbe or fungus - and those lives in turn have required the deaths of others. To be fully cognizant of the gravity of the gift of food, then, should cause our eating to be both humble and grateful. Wirzba notes that the refusal to accept the deaths of others as an ongoing, life-sustaining gift is in some ways a refusal to accept creation as it is, given by God, on God's terms. He begins the book with a few chapters dedicated to the significance of eating in general as it relates to the way we live in and view the world, and about how the way we currently eat and garden/farm tell a very uncomfortable tale about our unwillingness to accept care and nurture as ways of life and instead pursue quick and mindless consumption.
Wirzba reminds us that the first human drama takes place in a garden, a place that God himself delights in and has sought Sabbath rest in. So aside from being just a source of the gift of food, gardens can themselves be places of gift, places where people connect and observe life and death, not just consume them. In much of the Bible, gardens have been places where people interact with God. The first sin occurred in a garden, and separation from that garden also meant separation from God. As a sign of his obedience, Noah plants a garden after being rescued from the flood. Jesus spent his most prayerful time in a garden. A garden represents care, and the ability to nurture and take delight in a garden signals people's willingness to share God's nurturing spirit, to care and be cared for. Conversely, to view gardens, food, and all of creation as things that exist solely for our own consumption places us in perpetual exile and we continue to reap the consequences of that exile.
After outlining the basic theological issues related to food and eating, Wirzba spends several chapters treating specific themes that appear throughout the Bible that have significance relating to food. He addresses sacrifice, the Eucharist, saying grace, and the possibility of eating in Heaven. Along with these come a host of other related topics including feasting and fasting, vegetarianism, hospitality, delight and gratitude, reconciliation, and resurrection. The chapters are somewhat self-contained and could easily be used as topical study guides, but they also help flesh-out and reiterate the whole idea that there are many ways God has given us to be close to him that involve the simple, day-to-day and necessary act of eating food. Correctly done, partaking in sacrifices was a way for Israel to offer back to God some of the same beautiful gifts he had so freely given and a way to understand the divine perichoresis, the complete and total unending act of giving, receiving and indwelling of the triune God. The Eucharist also is a way to identify with and accept the loving, perpetually given life and death of the Christ. Saying grace is a way to graciously receive the blessing of food and life, but also to recognize that our own lives are and will be given to God and others as gift.
Just as all of these food-centered devices for communicating with and understanding God were given in complete love and for the purpose of God's deep communion with His people, the gifts become warped and cause destruction when they are co-opted and used as fuel for men's egos. Sacrifice becomes violent, feasts become gluttonous, and the Eucharist becomes divisive. Such is the world as it is and has been. Wirzba recognizes that many of the tangible ills prevalent today are reflections of people's misunderstanding, misuse, and rejection of these gifts of God. Rather than dwell on the very human capability and propensity to take a beautiful and well-meant gift and turn it against the Giver, Wirzba continually points to what a right relationship with God would look like. With each chapter, he identifies some of the ways that eating has been done to detrimental effect, but the focus is on God's love and care for his creation and how his created ones can fully receive that care.
It is clear from Norman Wirzba's use of language that he genuinely longs for the deep and abiding communion he writes about. Delight, delectable, nurture, gift, and offering - among others - are words and themes that appear repeatedly in this book. There is a sense conveyed of needing to abide in a more pure relationship with our creator, though for those who are inclined Wirzba's language may evoke some notions of romanticism that are certainly unintended. He has a lovely way of choosing and using words to describe and delve into ideas that could be construed as mundane like eating or gardening. At around 230 densely-packed pages, there is a lot to digest here, and like all rich, filling, and abundant meals the best course of action for most people is probably to share. Food and Faith would be very well-suited to deep study and conversation with a group. Reading, like eating is better when it is done purposefully and with a recognition that what is provided is for the nourishment of God's creation toward a greater love and deeper communion with Him through greater concern and deeper care of each other.
-- Mary Bowling
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Salute!
By Wesley Vander Lugt
If how we live inevitably demonstrates what we believe, then eating may be one of the greatest indicators of our theology. Every time we eat, we are forming and performing our beliefs about God, his world, and our role within it. For many of us, this does not bode well. If our eating habits are self-centered, consumeristic, environmentally inattentive, and relationally shallow, what does this say about our theology? By contrast, Norman Wirzba, Research Professor of Theology, Ecology, and Rural Life at Duke Divinity School, offers a vision for eating that corresponds with a God-centered, others-oriented, environmentally attentive, and relationally robust theology.
The vision begins with God himself, who created the world and humans out of sheer pleasure to reflect the communion of his trinitarian life. It also begins in a garden: a place of perfect peace and embodied relationships. God is the great Gardener, which both literally describes God's creative activity and metaphorically expresses all God's works and ways of cultivating beauty. As his creatures, we have the responsibility to receive and participate in "God's gardening ways."
While this calling applies to every aspect of life, Wirzba notes how the actual practice of gardening is a school for learning the habits of attentiveness and responsibility to God and the rest of creation. Instead of navigating life on our own terms, blind to local conditions, gardening forces us to slow down and serve the soil in order to produce something beautiful. In short, godly gardening is self-giving instead of self-glorifying. "When we garden well, creatures are nurtured and fed, the world is received as a blessing, and God is glorified" (70).
Ever since Adam and Eve's original exile from the Garden of Eden, however, human gardening and eating have exhibited patterns of exile. As a result of human sin, creation is in ecological exile, evident in destruction and contamination of the atmosphere, forests, soil, water, and genetic diversity. We also experience economic exile, where practices that could sustain places and communities are replaced by practices that obscure these concerns in order to procure maximum profit. We experience this exile in our bodies as they bloat and break down, because when profit is paramount, health takes second place.
Amidst these exilic conditions, however, there is hope of return. There is a different way of eating and existing in relationship with creation: the way of sacrifice. Wirzba works his way through the biblical drama, demonstrating how sacrifice is not a violent act in an exilic world, but a fitting way to receive life from death. Not only did the sacrificial system give God's people a visible representation of life received through a substitute death, it was also "the practical context in which people were taught to care for the gifts of animals and vegetable food" (135). When Jesus sacrificed himself as the ultimate substitute, sacrifices for sin may have ceased, but sacrifice continues in the form of a self-sacrificial life, giving ourselves as God gave himself for us. Food is still at the center of our sacrificial service, since the Eucharistic meal is the most salient reminder of and participation in Jesus' sacrifice, as well as a foretaste of the heavenly wedding banquet to come. Furthermore, both fasting and feasting are forms of eating that enable us to maintain and enact this "sacrificial sensibility," receiving and giving food as "the precious gift of a self-giving God" (142). Sharing our food with others, and not just our friends, is another aspect of sacrificial living. Just as the early church needed to learn new habits of hospitality, breaking down division between Jews and Gentiles, we too need to be reminded again and again that meals are places and times to enact reconciliation, not just to satisfy our appetites and keep us alive.
This reconciliation begins with Jesus' sacrifice reconciling us to God and extends to our sacrifices to each other and the rest of the world. As such, we need to recognize that reconciliation includes "animal husbandry, patient gardening, advocacy for farm workers, and sharing food at table" (178). In other words, we either participate in or resist God's reconciling ways every time we eat. According to Wirzba, "saying grace" is an appropriate way to appreciate food's place in the drama of redemption and to receive food as God's gift with thanks and responsive attention. Attentiveness is a central theme in the book as a whole, because Wirzba maintains that attentiveness enables us to recognize our embeddedness in particular places, receive food as a gift, realize the needs of others, and respond to these needs with sacrificial service. In short, attentiveness "manifests a willingness to love the world" (55). Inattention is the predominant characteristic of a consumer mindset; attention is a primary virtue of a Christ-like servant. Do we really notice the food we eat? Are we paying sufficient attention to the whole process by which food is cultivated and distributed? Or are we through inattention participating in violent economies and greedy practices, each driven by self-centered desires? If these questions make you uncomfortable, you may be like Stanley Hauerwas, who confessed in the Foreword that paying attention to these issues is painful, because we see our "unrelenting desire to degrade God's good creation" (ix). It may be more comfortable to remain inattentive, but God is calling us to pay attention.
While Food and Faith unfurls a stunning vision for paying attention to God and the world around us, resulting in more godly habits of relating to food, there are several issues that Wirzba skims over rather than explores in depth. For example, he mentions that "a refusal to eat meat may reflect a refusal to come to terms with the life and death that characterize creation" (133), and even though I appreciate the humility in the "may" here, some readers will long for a more direct discussion of why Stephen Webb might be wrong that vegetarianism is "good eating." And although Wirzba encourages participation in local food economies, promotion of sustainable agriculture, and appreciation of Slow Food values, there is little practical engagement with these movements to help us see what these commitments might look like on a daily basis. I respect that Wirzba intentionally stepped back from these issues to provide a broader vision, allowing us to come to our own conclusions on particular matters and promoting diverse practices. But without specific examples of what this theology of eating means for hunters, farmers' market aficionados, fastidious label readers, Walmart shoppers, or grape-juice-and-tasteless-wafer Communion people, the robust theology may not sink in.
As a result, perhaps the best way to read this book is with a group of friends, discussing and digesting each chapter while enjoying and digesting home-cooked meals. That way, we will be practicing what Wirzba encourages: attentiveness to and enjoyment of food, one another, and God the Gardener and Giver of all good things. If we take this book seriously, we will be people "who not only ingest and digest their food but relish it as the medium of life and love." When we do, we are participating, "however imperfectly, in the paradise of God" (180). I think it is appropriate to end with a toast Wirzba quotes from Robert Farrar Capon in The Supper of the Lamb:
"To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, because it is superfluous.... We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy. Let the bookkeepers struggle with their balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand. God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons. Salute!"
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating
By Dale Wheelis
I had been looking for a way to frame my approach to food and community as a volunteer in my church's kitchen when a fellow volunteer shared a review of this book with me. I have just begun reading the book and already I am enthralled with it. The author's review of the current food industry and how it has evolved, changing our whole view of and approach to food is important to me and something I share with others who come to my table. I look forward to reading the rest of the book and applying it's wisdom to my food choices and my faith journey.
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