Liberation Theology

WOW! It's been a long time since I have done this blogging thing.  I have been crazy busy, and I just have not made time to post.  This opportunity to post comes as a result of a class I am taking this semester called World Christian Perspectives.  I just finished reading a book by Gustavo Gutierrez called A Theology of Liberation.  His context is Roman Catholicism in Latin America, and he is writing about doing theology in that context.  At points it is not easy to read, but after completing the book and discussing it in class I am very appreciative of the opportunity to engage his ideas.  FYI - he is the most widely known voice in Liberation Theology, but he is not the only voice.  As with all movements, there is no one singular expression of a movement, and Guiterrez is merely a representative in this group.  There are others that are much more evangelical in their orientation.  Nevertheless, the following is a brief book review that will hopefully inspire you to pick up Gutierrez, Padilla or some other book of theology from outside of your context to help you sharpen you understanding of the global nature of the church and her theology.


By the end of the book I very much appreciated this read as a challenge to my paradigm for understanding and doing theology.  The first half of the book is a little slow, but there are key moments wherein his methodology is revealed and his interests are disclosed.  While it is poorly written, in the first half, lacking clarity, it is necessary to read to understand his theological project.

Essentially, Gutierrez is a Roman Catholic that wants to think through the implication of salvation, assuming the Word, the Roman Catholic tradition and the tragic history of the Latin American people in Latin America.  Methodologically, he wants to begin his theological reflection with orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy.  He wants to avoid the traditional Western approach whereby our right beliefs are the central starting point and then only to we move to right action.  His criticism is that in our beloved Western tradition wherein we cherish the rational individual we do not sufficiently, sometimes ever, get around to orthopraxis involving the community.

Key to understanding his theology is the central nature of incarnation, the Exodus as the model for salvation, and eschatology.  He sees in Christ's ministry the fulfillment of the Jewish (human) hope for salvation as expressed in the Exodus, a New Exodus so to speak.  For him the model of salvation is material and changes the material nature of the world.  Therefore, the eschaton has indeed come in Christ's death and resurrection.  Therefore, our work is about working out a material salvation for all the earth and its oppressed people's.

There is much to admire in his theology.  It emphasizes the realized nature of the eschaton in Christ's first advent, the need to take much more seriously the material nature of salvation in scripture and the obvious, but neglected, theme in scripture that God sides with the poor.  However, his theology raises some difficult issues as well.

First, it appears that there is little room for a future eschaton.  He seems to see all the benefits of Christ available in full right now.  If so, why does the church need to look forward to Christ's return?  In fairness, he probably downplays the "not yet" nature of the eschaton since for so many it becomes the intellectual excuse to do little about social injustices, expecting these things to become resolved at some point in the future.

Second, he sees the material liberation of the oppressed as part of salvation even if the church plays no role in the liberation.  For example, the events in Libya these months represents a salvific act wherein the people are throwing off the chains of evil.  This idea stems from some his Catholic tradition wherein grace and nature are not seen as separate spheres.  There is grace from God outside of the church in nature "supranaturalizing" nature.  He does not see this liberating activity as necessarily an expansion of the Kingdom, but it can be a prepatory action for the Kingdom.

Third, his theological project is an attempt to do theology from his own context which is a context deeply suspicious of Western interests.  However, his political and economic critiques and corrections stem directly from Marx, the prototype of Western Modern, albeit leftist, thinking.  He offers no rationale for challenging the Western way of doing theology but not challenging an increasingly popular Western critique of the politics and economics of capitalism.

Theology is always culturally contextual.  If you doubt that assertion I would challenge you to read the early church fathers and find out how different there concerns and questions were, shaping their view of scripture rather differently from our 21st century American views.  It is a healthy exercise to read theologies from different cultural and theological traditions to makes us sensitive to our own contextual blind spots.  Gutierrez will go a long way to challenging your tradition.