Saturdays, 9:00 - 11:00 am CT
September 14 - November 2, 2024

M.C. Escher said that "wonder is the salt of the soul." The implication is that souls that lack wonder are bland and prone to spoilage. We saw the truth of this in the Modernism of western culture: a radical sense of disenchantment with the world led many into a kind of soul atrophy that made the world seem to be nothing more than an engine of despair. As we recover from the cultural hangover of the Modernist nightmare, we are reawakening to the truth that the world is the kind of place best approached in wonder, and that the best human life is one well seasoned with an expansive sense of wonder.

And yet, there has not been much sustained theological reflection on the nature and role of wonder in human experience. The lack of special attention given to wonder in the theological tradition left the Church without a ready-made response to the Modernist crisis of wonder. Now that society is turning back to enchantment, it is even more important that the Church be equipped with a rich theological understanding of the dynamics of wonder and its role in grounding human lives on the truths of spiritual reality.

This course will attempt to do just that. Wonder is a response: therefore, it must be a response to something. We will look at the created world and examine the aspects of it that make it the occasion for wonder. We will also look at the soul itself, examining what the proper conditions for wonder are. And we will, most importantly, examine the phenomenon of wonder itself, developing a theological account of it that places it into the context of the life of Christian discipleship.