Divine Enjoyment
A Theology of Passion and Exuberance
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This book’s theological and philosophical construction of a God of enjoyment poetically remaps divine love. Posing a critique to the Aristotelian unmoved mover whose intellective enjoyment is self-enclosed, this book’s affective tones depict a passionate God who intermingles with the cosmos to suffer and yearn out of love— even improper love.
Divine Enjoyment leads the reader to a path of excess, first in the form of an intellective appetite that for Aquinas places God beyond the divine self, then more erotically in the silhouette of a lover whose love is like the delectable pain of mystics. Culminating with banqueting, fiesta, and carnival, the book deterritorializes God’s affect, conceiving of an expansively hospitable enjoyment stemming from many life forms
With a renewed welcome for pleasure, the book also upholds a disruptive ethic. Ultimately, an immoderate God of love whose passionate enjoyment stems from the sufferings as well as joys of the cosmos offers another paradigm of lovingly enjoying oneself in relationship with passionate becomings that belong to many others.
Elaine Padilla’s book offers a breath of fresh air into a theological discourse that often dwells on suffering and survival, ignoring our desire and attempts to achieve enjoyment. Her theology of enjoyment emphasizes reciprocal and communal relations between God and God’s creation. Padilla’s poetic, erotic, and aesthetic approach expands theological language about the sacred and offers an alternative metaphysics infused with passion and pleasure.—Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, University of Miami
Brimming with laughter, subversion, and fiesta, Divine Enjoyment leads us with utter grace in a new theological dance. Attentive to the open wounds of human suffering precisely as open ends of a boundless passion, Elaine Padilla has with stunning lucidity and erudition opened a cosmos of erotic splendor, enjoyed by a God of utter permeability and care. Here—with the most sensitive polyamory—Aquinas, Whitehead, Maduro, Marion, and Althaus Reid form with her a carnivalesque ensemble, inviting philosophical theology to its own most vibrant becoming.—Catherine Keller, author of The Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement (forthcoming)
Padilla’s constructive proposal of a theology of a passionate and exuberant God— the God of eros, desire, compassion, suffering, love, and self-transformation— will resonate deeply with contemporary readers of diverse religious persuasions. The book is a highly erudite and breathtakingly creative synthesis of classical theological works. It transforms and enriches our understanding of who God is in a way totally unexpected. It is no doubt one of the best books on God by the younger American theologians.—Peter Phan, Georgetown University
...Divine Enjoyment is a fascinating read which stands out amidst the growing field of feminist, postcolonial, and process-oriented theology for its well-designed cross-pollination of Christianity’s historical figures with contemporary theory. Elegant and poetic, the festive journey of reading Padilla’s work is well worth the adventure.—Reviews in Religion and Theology