A Pied Theological Cosmology: Alejandro García-Rivera’s Gift to Science

The work of the late Alejandro García-Rivera has been overlooked as a contribution to theological engagement with science. A significant obstacle to appreciating it as such is the view that his theological cosmology marks a problematic shift from Latinx theological aesthetics to an uncritical engagement with the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. This article engages his oeuvre in response to that critique. Using Hans Urs von Balthasar’s concept of “theo-drama,” it argues that García-Rivera not only fits Teilhard into the broader mosaic of his work successfully, but that García-Rivera’s final work illumines his whole oeuvre as a “gift to science.” It shows how García-Rivera adapts his account of the beauty in the “little stories” of the pueblo to little places in the natural world, in order to help us see their beauty as an objective reality calling us to participate in their care. Thus, the article portrays García-Rivera’s body of work as a way to engage the scientifically-minded through a sensibility for natural beauty, born of mestizaje, popular piety, and the cross.