Using the ideas of Clifford Geertz, Adolf Portmann, Charles Taylor, and others, I seek to develop and expand Polanyi’s account of language and its role in our human way of being bodily mindful in the world. The expansion of Polanyi’s ideas on language in the evolutionary rise of Homo sapiens and in the moral and mental development of the child does two things that I believe are important: (1) obviates the need to appeal to an incorporeal thinking substance - i.e., dualism - to ground the reality of human transcendence, and (2) highlights the place of natural language in the irreducibility of human mentality.

In Reforming Theological Anthropology, F. LeRon Shults draws from work on relationality in other disciplines to suggest ways in which theological anthropology might profitably be reformulated. While the task is worthwhile, the method promising and the results suggestive, much fine-tuning remains to be done.Paul Lewis review is followed by a brief response from F. LeRon Shults