Slow Adventism
Ecclesiological Holzwege
- Theology
- Publisher: Wipf and Stock
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
A "fast Adventism," as much as a hypertrophic body, is not necessarily more performant. "Faster" and "bigger" are not necessarily synonyms of health or flourishing. In order for somebody or something to flourish, it may be necessary to recover incompleteness, vulnerability, and slowness as necessary and primordial conditions for becoming human. Full and plethoric entities are inappropriate and unprepared to flourish because they are not touched by a beneficial emptiness that is essential for surviving and entering into relation. As much as persuasive and touching melodies presuppose and include silence and pauses, so healthy beings are not plethoric but intermittent and interrupted entities; they are "reasonable beings," who have learned to perceive life's systole and diastole as mechanism that support life in its contractions and expansions, in its affirmation and flexibility, in its giving and receiving in the context of the multiple relationships that life offers and demands from us.
Endorsements (5)
“In this thoughtful and challenging book, the always-probing Hanz Gutierrez Salazar reflects a deep commitment to his faith tradition by provocatively pushing readers to attend to their locations in the world while expanding their conversation partners. That he does so in dialogue with such breadth of reading and depth of scholarly engagement both models what he asks of his community and makes the work deeply relevant to all people of faith in search of a way.”
“In this copiously researched and brilliantly argued book, Seventh-day Adventist philosopher, theologian, and physician, Hanz Gutierrez Salazar in Florence, Italy, offers a differential diagnosis of his own denomination as well as Western culture which it transmits everywhere it goes. His assessment is that both are addicted to an obsessive and compulsive quest for outcomes that are, among other things, swift, simple, standardized, and statistical. The remedy is not merely to slow down but also to make a radical turn in the direction of what he calls ‘orthopathy.’ He repeatedly asserts that European Adventism is closer to this than Global Adventism. Provocative? Yes! Convincing? You decide!”
“This is a book to be read slowly. Not because its thesis requires demanding unraveling, but because it demands that we take time to listen to voices we have largely overlooked. With expansive range and remarkable depth, the fact that human flourishing is part of the mission of the church is explored ‘off the beaten track’ (holzwege) through familiar and unfamiliar territories. To be truly healthy is to be open to ‘incompleteness, vulnerability, and slowness.’”
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