Review: Fasting by Scot McKnight
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Scot McKnight’s ‘Fasting’ is part of the Ancient Practices Series edited by Phyllis Tickle. It provides something of an introduction to the practice, but its main concern is with balancing some common misconceptions and potential extremes.
McKnight implicitly critiques two attitudes that have coloured our view our fasting in recent times. The first is pure pragmatism, which sees fasting only as a route to a desired end. The second is dualism, which sees the body as irrelevant to spirituality. Addressing these points is vital; in my experience the combination of these two has left the church slightly bemused as to what fasting does or ‘how it works’. Is it there to free up time for prayer? To help us focus? To beat our bodies into submission? To twist God’s arm? (The last of these most often mentioned as something we know can’t be true, but the number of times it is said suggests that we’re not so sure.)
McKnight alternative to these two attitudes is summed up in his description of fasting as ‘the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life’. It is the whole-body expression in the face of events that are so significant that we have to do more than simply talk or pray. These events might be a tragedy or injustice or realisation of our own failings.
Taking this view fasting can be described as, for example, ‘body talk’ or ‘body grief’ or ‘body hope’. In contrast to dualism, where the body is an inconvenience, this views fasting as part of an embodied spirituality. In contrast to pragmatism, fasting is a response not a means. So, fasting is not a way to make our plea heard, but our pleading is so intense that not eating is a natural consequence. And if there are results, McKnight suggests, they are related primarily to that intensity rather than the fasting.
McKnight makes a valuable contribution to the discussion with this refocussing and I found it very helpful. He takes his alternative view and shows how it works in the examples of fasting found in the Bible and church history. This makes his point clearly and, most of the time, convincingly.
I have two criticisms. The first is that his link to the ‘response to a grievous sacred moment’ formula is a little too relentless. Although it does well in countering the pragmatic/dualistic approach, at times I wondered if pushing a single formula limited the discussion when a wider exploration would have been beneficial.
My second question is related to the push against dualism. I think McKnight’s approach is very helpful, but perhaps more is going on than mere ‘body talk’. I wonder if we would benefit from taking the non-dualistic view further. McKnight is clearly concerned with the abuses and extremes of body discipline that have been associated with fasting in church history. And understandably so: When we get to the point where we are damaging our bodies or characterising them as evil that must be brought in to line, things have gone too far. But on the other hand, if we are truly whole persons, then surely the act of not eating does have an effect on us as whole people beyond ‘body talk’? It would have been valuable to explore the possibility that fasting has a wider formative impact on us. (We might think of James K A Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, showing how liturgical practice can shape us.)
But these criticisms should not detract from the valuable contribution that ‘Fasting’ brings to our understanding of the practice, reminding us that responding as whole beings can be an important part of spirituality.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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