Divine Enjoyment: A Theology of Passion and Exuberance

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.

Author: Elaine Padilla
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 12/02/2014
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780823263578

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2015

About the Author

Elaine Padilla is Assistant Professor of Constructive Theology at New York Theological Seminary.