ABSTRACT
Through an examination of the ideas about wonder proposed by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Michel De Certeau, Dorothe Sölle and other major 20th-century theologians, philosophers and literary critics, this essay explores the concepts of ‘rapture’ and ‘rupture’ characteristic of the experience of wonder. It also explains that, as a consequence of the almost physical impact caused by the external cause of wonder, the ‘wondering subject’ undergoes a transforming existential experience. This happens in everyday life as much as in the realm of aesthetics, a place where beauty and theology meet and where wonder appears as a distinctive element common to both art and ethics.
