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Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and award-winning author Matthew Fox challenges traditional perceptions of good and evil by offering a new theology that lays the groundwork for a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In this revised edition with a luminous foreword by Deepak Chopra and a new preface that brings the book up to date with the cataclysmic events of the new millennium, Fox illustrates how, contrary to mainstream church doctrine, flesh is the grounding of spirit. Fox argues that our culture has concentrated far too much on transgressions of the flesh while failing to take into account its sacredness. Artfully weaving together the wisdom of East and West, he considers Thomas Aquinas's definition of sin as "misdirected love" and applies parallels between the Eastern teachings of the seven chakras and the Western teachings of the seven capital sins. Fox explains how the chakras teach us to direct the love-energies we all possess and proposes seven positive precepts for living a full and spirited life. He invites us to change the way we think about sin and asserts that we can combat and transform evil through love, generosity, letting go, and creativity. Crafting a blueprint for social change, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh points the way toward a deeper and more compassionate way to live while eloquently revealing the means to confront evil both within and without.
505 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1999
30 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Fox
158 books176 followersTimothy James "Matthew " Fox is an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Catholic Church, he became a member of the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the order in 1993.
Fox has written 35 books that have been translated into 68 languages and have sold millions of copies and by the mid-1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following"
Fox has written 35 books that have been translated into 68 languages and have sold millions of copies and by the mid-1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following"
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 24, 2016
Matthew Fox challenges good and evil by crafting a blueprint for social change by weaving together the wisdom of East and West. He applies parallels between the Eastern teachings of the seven chakras and the Western teaching of the seven capital sins. I think the book speaks loudly to our world today that is as Deepak Chopra states, "... littered with the wreckage of anger, guilt and self-judgement." This book is a stark reminder that there are more sins of omission than commission.
December 30, 2020
Fox gives one of the most readable and insightful histories of Christian theology available. He distinguishes life-affirming, creation-loving Christianity from a more world-denying, love-controlling theology which has bore more resemblance to Manicheanism. Whether we find Fox's work faithful or not depends on which of these kinds of theology we believe in. To those who feel Fox attacks Catholicism, I'd point out his equally-critical treatment of anti-creation theology within Protestant tradition. And here, if I may, I would like to summarize some of my favorite points from the book:
We might assume that the Protestant Reformation rose for the sake of religious freedom. But as Fox points out, most early Protestant leaders actually championed a full return to Augustine's doctrine against free will. John Wyclif (1320-84) contradicted his Catholic Church by teaching that only Adam and Eve ever possessed freedom, and they lost it, both for themselves and all their posterity, as their punishment for disobedience. From that time forward no one alive had any real freedom, but all were slaves to inborn sin. The people of the world should therefore realize that nothing they did or said could be ever acceptable to the Father. No matter what, they would remain hopelessly unworthy of salvation, and deserve only eternal punishment. The good news of Christ was simply that God had overlooked the faults of some people, choosing them for predestined salvation through no merit or choice of their own.
Martin Luther agreed, proclaiming that God's omnipotence rendered each human "unfree as a block of wood, a rock, a lump of clay or a pillar of salt." With such belief he supported slavery, feudal dues, and forced labor as seen in the Bible: "Sheep, cattle, men-servants, and maid-servants were all possessions to be sold as it pleased their masters. It were a good thing it were still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk."
John Calvin made humanity's fallen nature seem obvious as the gap between heaven and earth:
"The mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God ... His heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot produce anything but what is corrupt, and if at any time men do anything apparently good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and deceit, and the heart enslaved by its inward perversity. ...
If God had formed us of the stuff of the sun or the stars, or if he had created any other celestial matter out of which men could have been made, then we might have said that our beginning was honorable. ... But when someone is made of clay, who pays any attention to him? ... [So] who are we? We are all made of mud, and this mud is not just on the hem of our gown, or on the sole of our boots, or in our shoes. We are full of it, we are nothing but mud and filth both inside and out."
Fox goes on to discuss the implications of modern knowledge that we are made of stellar, celestial matter. It's a book that helps us rethink our whole set of assumptions about what holiness is.
We might assume that the Protestant Reformation rose for the sake of religious freedom. But as Fox points out, most early Protestant leaders actually championed a full return to Augustine's doctrine against free will. John Wyclif (1320-84) contradicted his Catholic Church by teaching that only Adam and Eve ever possessed freedom, and they lost it, both for themselves and all their posterity, as their punishment for disobedience. From that time forward no one alive had any real freedom, but all were slaves to inborn sin. The people of the world should therefore realize that nothing they did or said could be ever acceptable to the Father. No matter what, they would remain hopelessly unworthy of salvation, and deserve only eternal punishment. The good news of Christ was simply that God had overlooked the faults of some people, choosing them for predestined salvation through no merit or choice of their own.
Martin Luther agreed, proclaiming that God's omnipotence rendered each human "unfree as a block of wood, a rock, a lump of clay or a pillar of salt." With such belief he supported slavery, feudal dues, and forced labor as seen in the Bible: "Sheep, cattle, men-servants, and maid-servants were all possessions to be sold as it pleased their masters. It were a good thing it were still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk."
John Calvin made humanity's fallen nature seem obvious as the gap between heaven and earth:
"The mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God ... His heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot produce anything but what is corrupt, and if at any time men do anything apparently good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and deceit, and the heart enslaved by its inward perversity. ...
If God had formed us of the stuff of the sun or the stars, or if he had created any other celestial matter out of which men could have been made, then we might have said that our beginning was honorable. ... But when someone is made of clay, who pays any attention to him? ... [So] who are we? We are all made of mud, and this mud is not just on the hem of our gown, or on the sole of our boots, or in our shoes. We are full of it, we are nothing but mud and filth both inside and out."
Fox goes on to discuss the implications of modern knowledge that we are made of stellar, celestial matter. It's a book that helps us rethink our whole set of assumptions about what holiness is.
May 12, 2011
a fine, updated, multi-faceted take on the concept of sin. had given up on fox for a while as being too syncretic, but he's back in very good form on this one.
Read
August 1, 2010Read three times, amazing
Read
August 5, 2020So far on page 77 of 504. I don't like this book. It's like reading a whitewashed, wordier version of Thich Nhat Hanh.
— Nov 10, 2019 06:39AM
Page 153 of 504. I still don't like this bok. Reads like a college kid's attempt to document the spiritual insights on their journey of vegan yoga New Age spiritualism. It's basically a microwave re-heated fast food version of Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. I'm done with it.
— Nov 10, 2019 06:39AM
Page 153 of 504. I still don't like this bok. Reads like a college kid's attempt to document the spiritual insights on their journey of vegan yoga New Age spiritualism. It's basically a microwave re-heated fast food version of Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. I'm done with it.
February 3, 2018
I'm still reading this, but wanted to encourage others to read it, too. Matthew is so inspiring and insightful. A real gift to the maturation of religious studies.
My review from The Berkeley Times
Re-membering Wholeness
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/re-mem...
Hiding out in Anodea Judith’s Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System; Matthew Fox’s Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society from North Atlantic Books (Berkeley) have been my antidotes to national news, a slightly maddening social justice Discernment Process at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists and a rapid, exciting and turbid expansion, contraction and re-focusing of Indivisible Berkeley compatriots. Threats to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities as well as health care, the EPA etc. etc. have made poetic, nerdy introverts at heart and seekers of soul like me ride out into groups of like-minded (progressive) yuppies, retired Silicon Valley execs and political science grad students like never before. Since the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, anyway.
Ardently longing for an expression of UNITY and co-support beyond the extremes of alcoholism staring at TV and belligerent brouhahas of Civic Center Park, it isn’t easy. Being green. Or being pink, for that matter; as well as red, black, yellow, multicolored/cultural and/or brown in the Post-Plumpish radical red, white and blue. When 9/11 happened, I had this image of a huge vase, the container of The American People, “United We Stand;” but with tiny, hairline cracks in it all over where the fragments would shatter into an eventual catastrophic pile when merely touched by a puff of disruptive (orange h) air.
Well, that’s happened, and after 30+ years of “self-help,” “body scan” meditations, vitamin pills and affirmations; I have no choice whatsoever except to “be” Mahatma Gandhi’s “the change” I “want to see” in the world outside me as We the People teeter on Crash & Burn.
That isn’t easy, either, so I begin with my body, asking her questions like “Who am I?” and “How did I get like this?” I thought I’d answered long before, listening and teasing out the deeper human needs behind what I perceive as bizarre ego-reactions, nervous twitches and id-grunt demands. Judith has me navel-gazing into my state in the womb through about age five, where she says “the power with” will is born.
My slow hesitations and crone-like detachment evoke fury and frustration from people around me; but a vision of pursuing “The Long View” from a five-day silent (OMG!) Winter Solstice retreat besieged by agonizing osteo-arthritis keeps me “On the Path.” Our spies, rebels and assassins – inside and out – have come home to roost, just as our “chronic conditions” result from habitual internal corruptions and stiflings, of a lack of self-reflective stillness, community clarity and plain old honesty, hope and trust.
Fox, forever the “spark that is enough to burn down the forest” (Deepak Chopra) of the Vedas, sees “misdirected love” in the paralyzing condemnations of the “Seven (Deadly) Sins” from the bottom up, urging a move beyond dualism, mortification and judgment back to celebration of “the Flesh” unified as the 50 thousand year evolutionary maturation of a “technology” beyond compare. Wholeness, “holding on to memories of blessing,” (p.144) paying attention to our “own mystical experiences in nature,” (p. 145) questioning “systemic injustice” (p. 147) balances outer authority with “inner integrity,” turns us into “the Word, made flesh… All of US.” (p. 58)
Oh, that Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood from religious wars back to Cain and Abel had not been shed! Fox says, “There is not a single recorded text of the historical Jesus putting down the body.” Imagine that!
Fox, Matthew, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, Rev. ed., Berkeley, California, North Atlantic Books, [2016].
Judith, Anodea, Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System, Rev. ed., Berkeley, CA, Celestial Arts, Ten Speed Press, c 2004.
My review from The Berkeley Times
Re-membering Wholeness
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/re-mem...
Hiding out in Anodea Judith’s Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System; Matthew Fox’s Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society from North Atlantic Books (Berkeley) have been my antidotes to national news, a slightly maddening social justice Discernment Process at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists and a rapid, exciting and turbid expansion, contraction and re-focusing of Indivisible Berkeley compatriots. Threats to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities as well as health care, the EPA etc. etc. have made poetic, nerdy introverts at heart and seekers of soul like me ride out into groups of like-minded (progressive) yuppies, retired Silicon Valley execs and political science grad students like never before. Since the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, anyway.
Ardently longing for an expression of UNITY and co-support beyond the extremes of alcoholism staring at TV and belligerent brouhahas of Civic Center Park, it isn’t easy. Being green. Or being pink, for that matter; as well as red, black, yellow, multicolored/cultural and/or brown in the Post-Plumpish radical red, white and blue. When 9/11 happened, I had this image of a huge vase, the container of The American People, “United We Stand;” but with tiny, hairline cracks in it all over where the fragments would shatter into an eventual catastrophic pile when merely touched by a puff of disruptive (orange h) air.
Well, that’s happened, and after 30+ years of “self-help,” “body scan” meditations, vitamin pills and affirmations; I have no choice whatsoever except to “be” Mahatma Gandhi’s “the change” I “want to see” in the world outside me as We the People teeter on Crash & Burn.
That isn’t easy, either, so I begin with my body, asking her questions like “Who am I?” and “How did I get like this?” I thought I’d answered long before, listening and teasing out the deeper human needs behind what I perceive as bizarre ego-reactions, nervous twitches and id-grunt demands. Judith has me navel-gazing into my state in the womb through about age five, where she says “the power with” will is born.
My slow hesitations and crone-like detachment evoke fury and frustration from people around me; but a vision of pursuing “The Long View” from a five-day silent (OMG!) Winter Solstice retreat besieged by agonizing osteo-arthritis keeps me “On the Path.” Our spies, rebels and assassins – inside and out – have come home to roost, just as our “chronic conditions” result from habitual internal corruptions and stiflings, of a lack of self-reflective stillness, community clarity and plain old honesty, hope and trust.
Fox, forever the “spark that is enough to burn down the forest” (Deepak Chopra) of the Vedas, sees “misdirected love” in the paralyzing condemnations of the “Seven (Deadly) Sins” from the bottom up, urging a move beyond dualism, mortification and judgment back to celebration of “the Flesh” unified as the 50 thousand year evolutionary maturation of a “technology” beyond compare. Wholeness, “holding on to memories of blessing,” (p.144) paying attention to our “own mystical experiences in nature,” (p. 145) questioning “systemic injustice” (p. 147) balances outer authority with “inner integrity,” turns us into “the Word, made flesh… All of US.” (p. 58)
Oh, that Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood from religious wars back to Cain and Abel had not been shed! Fox says, “There is not a single recorded text of the historical Jesus putting down the body.” Imagine that!
Fox, Matthew, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, Rev. ed., Berkeley, California, North Atlantic Books, [2016].
Judith, Anodea, Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System, Rev. ed., Berkeley, CA, Celestial Arts, Ten Speed Press, c 2004.
April 18, 2012
Well written and clearly articulated, but this book strays too far into liberation and feminist theology for the standard orthodox. That doesn't mean Fox doesn't provide valuable insights.
Want to read
September 6, 2015Sparky has been reading this. Lots of talk about chakras.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews