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Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology: Opened by the World

Publisher:
, 2023
ISBN: 9781793637499
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In Wonder as a New Starting Point for Theological Anthropology: Opened by the World, José Francisco Morales Torres constructs a new theological anthropology that begins with wonder. He contends that the visceral experience of wonder is an opening up of the human by an excess that saturates the world. This opened-by-ness points to a transforming receptivity as the basis of the person and to an extravagant Generosity that grounds all creation. Thus, wonder, which is grounded in generous Excess, is not only a gift but a demand: it calls for a liberative praxis that resist the forces that flatten the fullness of life into what is ‘useful’ and profitable and that reduce the limitless worth of fellow humans to mere commodities to be exploited and exchanged at the altar of the idolatrous ‘Market’. Wonder reveals a primordial receptivity in the human person, which demands of us an ethic of sustainability that does not reduce the other to commodity, a vulnerability that risks being opened by the other, a commitment to solidarity and liberation that resist the forces of an insatiable, idolatrous Market that seeks “only to steal and kill and destroy.”

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: A Phenomenology of Wonder

Chapter Two: Metaphysics of Participation as the Ontological Grounding for Wonder

Interlude on Generosity: A Trinitarian Reflection on the Holy Spirit as “Giver of Life”

Chapter Three: Opened to the World or by the World?: Toward a Theological Anthropology of Wonder

Chapter Four: The Ethics of Wonder and Generosity: Some Initial Explorations

Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author

In this book, Professor José Francisco Morales Torres offers a systematic account of ‘wonder’ as a philosophical and theological theme. Here ‘wonder’ becomes a key to understanding human existence and human aspiration for transcendence. This quest for wonder is developed in dialogue with the 20th century phenomenology and the metaphysical traditions going back to the Middle Ages. This book, however, is meant to be a contribution to the contemporary study of theological anthropology. This is accomplished wonderfully in a way that makes significant contributions to the contemporary philosophical and constructive theology.

Morales Torres resists the flattening of life with his emergent “theo-thaumatic vision.” Focusing on how humans can be opened by the world, he considers salient resources and themes for a theological anthropology of wonder.

Since a lot of current theological conversation seems to be centered around theodicy, which can lead to reductive visions of God, such that we look for ways of getting God off the hook for the presence of evil in the world, these efforts often leave us without much about this God that is captivating us. There are few wonder-producing dimensions to this vision of God, but Morales’ trinitarian vision of a God whose act of creation is one of generosity is captivating, and thus is quite attractive to me. That he draws on representatives from the three Abrahamic traditions to get there is even more compelling. [An] important study of the role of wonder as a foundation for theological anthropology!

Whether or not “wonder” really can provide a new starting point for theological anthropology, the refracting of reality through a previously underexploited lens always brings things to light that otherwise would have remained in the shadows, and Torres’s worthwhile text does precisely that.

José Francisco Morales Torres is assistant professor of Latinx Studies and Religion at Chicago Theological Seminary.

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