Review Of Frost, "Incarnate: The Body Of Christ In An Age Of Disengagement" -- By: Robert D. Falconer

Journal: Conspectus
Volume: CONSPECTUS 21:1 (Mar 2016)
Article: Review Of Frost, "Incarnate: The Body Of Christ In An Age Of Disengagement"
Author: Robert D. Falconer


Review Of Frost, Incarnate: The Body Of Christ In An Age Of Disengagement

Robert D. Falconer1

Frost M 2014. Incarnate: the body of Christ in an age of disengagement. Downers Grove: IVP

1. Introduction To The Author

Michael Frost is a leading missiologist with an international voice in the missional church movement, and frequently speaks at conferences throughout the world. Frost co-founded the Forge Mission Training Network together with his friend, Alan Hirsch, with whom he has co-authored several books. He is also the Vice Principal of Morling College and the founding director of the Tinsley Institute, a mission study centre located at Morling College in Sydney, Australia. Many of his books explore missiology in the postmodern age, and are required reading for colleges and seminaries in many parts of the world. Some of these books include, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church (2008, co-authored with Alan Hirsch), The Road to Missional, Journey to the Center of the Church (2011), and most recently, Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People (2015) .

2. The Purpose Of The Book

Frost, in his book, seeks to show his readers how contemporary society has become what he calls excarnational, that is, living a defleshed human existence, disengaged with the physicality of the here and now. He laments that ‘Christianity has become an out-of-body experience-personalized, privatized, customised…’ and sees ‘dualism as one of the chief problems facing the evangelical church’. His purpose for authoring such a book is to critique our age of disengagement in both the secular world as well as in Christianity, and to argue that the church is called to live an incarnational lifestyle, rooted in the physical present. Frost, not only tells us what is wrong with our age and society, but also proposes how the church might live incarnational lives meaningfully in the way of liturgy and worship, and in mission, engaging our communities as the body of Christ.

To make the point, Incarnate begins by providing ancient examples of the ritual of defleshing as seen in the cultures of old, up until medieval Europe, whereby the flesh of the deceased is removed and the bones bleached for burial purposes. Frost draws parallels between this ancient, obscure practice with that of the postmodern defleshing of human experience, or excarnation, as he calls it, calling our age an age of disengagement.

Frost offers a powerful and relevant critique of the contemporary life which lures us into the process of excarnation. One cannot help b...

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