Latin American liberation theology first appeared around 1960, facing vigorous pastoral opposition. (At almost the same time, black theology of liberation appeared in the United States, followed by similar yet different theological perspectives from different parts of oppressed and marginalized humanity.) Liberation theology in Latin America arose from the poverty of the great majority of the Latin American population and the understanding that the reality of the misery was due to a profound social injustice, together with the understanding that this was contrary to the preaching of the life kingdom, central to Jesus’ gospel, and of the need to live with joy and hope the grace of God’s love. From the beginning, this effort to understand our faith had three important questions: What does it mean to do theology? What is the meaning of poverty in biblical revelation? How can we witness resurrection in a context of poverty and death? Those questions are still present. They will be our guide in this brief work.
TALKING ABOUT GOD
Every theology is talk about God. In the final analysis, God is its only subject matter. On the other hand, the God of Jesus Christ is presented to us as a mystery. A sound theology is therefore conscious of attempting something difficult, not to say impossible, when it seeks to think this mystery and speak about it. This fact accounts for the well-known statement of Thomas Aquinas: “We cannot know what God is, but only what God is not.” At the same time, however, God is a mystery that must be communicated and may not be left hidden, because it means life for every human being. How, then, are we to find a way of speaking about God? Adopting the viewpoint of the theology of liberation, I will say that we must begin by contemplating God and doing God’s will and that only in a second step are we to think about God. By this I mean that worship of God and the doing of God’s will are the necessary conditions for thinking about God. Only if we start in the realm of practice will we be able to develop a discourse about God that is authentic and respectful.
Contemplation and commitment within history are fundamental dimensions of Christian practice, thus, there is no way of evading them. The mystery reveals itself through prayer and solidarity with the poor. I call Christian life itself the “first act”; only then can this life inspire a process of reflection, which is the “second act.” Contemplation and commitment combine to form what may be called the phase of silence before God. Theological discourse, on the other hand, is a speaking about God. Theology is talk that is constantly enriched by silence. The great hermeneutical principle of faith, and therefore of all theological discourse, is Jesus Christ. The incarnation of the Son of God is the basis of the hermeneutical circle: from human being to God and from God to human being, from history to faith and from faith to history, from human words to the word of the Lord and from the word of the Lord to human words, from love of our brothers and sisters to love of the Father, and from love of the Father to love of our brothers and sisters, from human justice to the holiness of God, and from the holiness of God to human justice. Theology is a critical reflection, in the light of the Divine Word received in faith, on the presence of Christians in the world. As such, it must help us to see how we are to relate the life of faith to the demands made upon us in the building of a human and just society. It will make explicit the values of faith, hope, and charity contained in this commitment.
In the final analysis, theology helps make service of the church’s evangelizing mission more evangelical, more concrete, more effective. Theology is in the service of the church’s work of evangelization and develops within it as an ecclesial function. In the framework of theology of liberation, the distinction of two phases (first act and second act) is a key element in theological method, that is, in the procedure that must be followed for reflecting in the light of faith. It is not a matter simply of theological methodology but rather implies a lifestyle, a way of being and of becoming a disciple of Jesus.
In the book that tells us of the acts of the first Christian community, the Christian manner of life is given a particular and original name: “the way.” The word is used without any further qualification. To “follow the way” means to conduct oneself in a certain manner; the Greek word hodos can mean both conduct and way or path. Christians are distinguished by their behavior, their lifestyle. Reflection on the mystery of God can be undertaken only by following in the footsteps of Jesus. It can therefore be said that our methodology is our spirituality, that is, our way of being Christians. Perhaps it is because of this connection between Christian life and theological method that the basic ecclesial communities of Latin America are playing an increasingly active role in this development of a theology. For these communities, the commitment to the poor is a capital issue.
All theology starts with the act of faith. In this context, however, “faith” is understood not simply as an intellectual acceptance of the message but also as a vital reception of the gift of the Divine Word heard in the ecclesial community, as an encounter with the Lord, and as love for our brothers and sisters. Here we see the real meaning of St. Anselm’s words. The primacy of God and the grace of faith give the work its raison d’être. In that light, we realize that if Christians seek to understand their faith, they do so, in the final analysis, in order to be able to “follow Christ”—that is, to feel, think, and act as he did. An authentic theology is always a spiritual theology as understood by the fathers of the church.
The fontal character of the sequela Christi is already a long-standing concern in Latin American theological thought. But the concern has become more urgent and richer in the rush of events in recent years (the persecution and assassination of many Christians for their commitment to the poor). In the context of the struggle for liberation, which seeks to establish love and justice among all, a new way is perhaps opening up for the following of Jesus in Latin America. Ever since the Enlightenment, a large sector of modern theology has taken as its point of departure the challenge launched by the modern (often unbelieving) mind. That mind confronts our world of religion and calls for a radical purification and renewal of it.
Bonhoeffer took up the challenge and formulated in a penetrating way the question that is at the origin of a number of theological undertakings in our time: “How are we to proclaim God in a world come of age?” But in Latin America the challenge does not come first and foremost from non-believers but from “nonpersons”—that is, those whom the prevailing social order does not acknowledge as persons: the poor, the exploited, those systematically and lawfully stripped of their human status, those who hardly know what a human being is. Nonpersons represent a challenge, not primarily to our religious world but to our economic, social, political, and cultural world. Their existence is a call to a revolutionary transformation of the very foundations of our dehumanizing society.
In this context, then, the question is not, How are we to talk of God in a world come of age? but, How are we to proclaim God as a Father (or Mother) in a nonhuman world? What is implied when we tell non-persons that they are sons and daughters of God? These questions were the ones being asked in one fashion or another back in the l6th century by Bartolome de las Casas and many others once they had come into contact with the native Americans. In other words, the question being raised today in Latin American is this: How are we to speak of God in face of the suffering of the innocent? This is more or less the theme of the Book of Job. We can in fact claim that a language for speaking about God is arising among us today out of the unjust sufferings but also the hopes of the poor of Latin America.
THE WORLD OF THE POOR
It can be said that in recent decades, the church’s life and thought in its Latin American setting have been marked by what we may call “the irruption of the poor.” This phrase means that those who until now were “absent” from history are gradually becoming “present” in it. This new presence of the poor and oppressed is making itself felt in the popular struggles for liberation and in the historical consciousness arising from these struggles. It is also making itself felt on the social level in the rise of the basic ecclesial communities and in the theology of liberation.
The poor who are irrupting into our history are a people both oppressed and Christian. Latin America is in fact the only constituent part of the so-called Third World that has a majority of Christians. This makes the situation especially painful and constitutes a major challenge to the Christian faith and to the church. These two dimensions must be present in our theological reflection. The Latin American situation is characterized by a poverty that the Latino-American bishops in Puebla call “the most devastating and humiliating kind of scourge” (Puebla, no. 29) and “anti-evangelical” (1159). In the well-known phrase of Medellin (1968 bishops’ conference), the situation is one of “institutionalized violence” (Peace, no. 16). It therefore becomes necessary to analyze and denounce the structural causes of the injustice and oppression in which the poor of Latin America are living.
We are becoming increasingly aware today of what is at stake in this situation, namely, that poverty means death. It is of all this that we are speaking when we talk of poverty and the destruction of individuals and peoples, of cultures and traditions. We are speaking especially of the poverty of the most deprived: Indians, blacks, and women, these last being doubly marginalized and oppressed if they are also Indian or black. We are not, therefore, as has been claimed at times, confronting only the challenge of a “social situation,” as if it were something—death—that has nothing to do with the fundamental demands of the gospel. No, we are confronted here with something opposed to the reign of life that the Lord proclaimed: with something, therefore, that a Christian must reject.
We are convinced that there is no Christian life without songs to God, without thanksgiving for God’s love, without prayer. In the Latin American setting we may ask, How are we to thank God for the gift of life in a situation that bears the stamp of premature and unjust death? There are no easy answers to this question. It is certain, however, that, as the lives of the poor prove, such a situation does not do away with songs of thanksgiving. It does not silence the voice of the poor. It can even be said that Latin America is living in a time of judgment, a propitious moment, a kairos, a call to set out on new ways in Fidelity to the Lord.
Theology always makes use of one or another kind of rationality, although it is not identified with it. The rationality corresponds at any given moment to the cultural universe in which believers are living. Every theology inquires into the meaning of God’s word for us at the present historical moment. Talk of present-day poverty in Latin America leads to an effort to know it both descriptively and by determination of its causes. This determination is effected through analyses and interpretations in the area of the social sciences (we cannot identify social sciences and Marxist analysis). The episcopal documents at Medellin and Puebla, as well as other episcopal documents, have been engaged in precisely that kind of determination. The appeal to the social sciences in the theology of liberation has for its primary purpose to promote a better understanding of the social reality of the Latin American people, the reality in which, as a matter of historical fact, many are living out their faith and hope.
It is in the light of the life that we must assess the situation of premature and unjust death in which the great majority are living in Latin America. The assessment will make clear to us that the deeper meaning of what we call “total liberation” is, in the final analysis, the acceptance of the kingdom of life. In this context, “life” includes all dimensions of the human, in keeping with the all-embracing will of God. It is therefore contrary to the situation of unjust death in which the poor and oppressed are living. For this reason, because the gift of life leads us to reject unjust death, the ultimate motive at work in what is called “the preferential option for the poor” is to be found in the God in whom we believe. There can be other worthwhile motives: the emergence of the poor in our time, the social analysis of their situation, human compassion, acknowledgment of the poor as agents of their own history. But, to tell the truth, for Christians the basis of this commitment is theocentric. Solidarity with the poor and the oppressed is based on our faith in God, the God of life who is revealed in Jesus Christ.
TO ANNOUNCE THE GOSPEL
The “scandal of the cross” sheds light on the situation of unjust death in which so many in Latin America are living. The realization that the Lord loves us and the acceptance of the unmerited gift of the Lord’s love are the deepest source of the joy of those who live by God’s word. Evangelization is the communication or sharing of this joy. It is the sharing of the good news of God’s love that has changed our lives. The point of departure for the work of evangelization is thus always an experience of the Lord—an experience of the Father’s love that makes us his sons and daughters and transforms us by making us more fully the brothers and sisters of all human beings. To proclaim the gospel is to call men and women into an ecclesia; it is to gather them into a community. Only in a community can faith be lived out in love; only there can it be celebrated and deepened; only there can it be experienced as simultaneously fidelity to the Lord and solidarity with all human beings. The God proclaimed by Jesus Christ is a God whose call is universal and addressed to every human being. At the same time, however, God has a preferential love for the poor and dispossessed. Universality is not only not opposed to this predilection but even requires it in order to make clear the meaning of the universality itself. The preference, in turn, has its proper setting in the call that God addresses to every human being.
Three dimensions or levels may be distinguished in the process of liberation: liberation of a social, political, cultural, and economic kind; specifically human liberation with its various aspects; and liberation from sin. In the final analysis, the process is single but not monolithic; various dimensions, aspects, or levels must be distinguished and not confused with one another. Neither separation nor confusion, neither verticalism nor horizontalism.
Only in this way is it possible to preserve both the unity that the free and unmerited initiative of God has bestowed on every area of human history and the relative autonomies without which the coherence of human action and the gratuitousness of grace cannot be asserted with sufficient clarity. The end result is what liberation theology speaks of as a total liberation in Christ. Liberation is at bottom a gift of the Lord. St. Paul tells us that “for freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). This means liberation from sin, which is a self-centered turning in upon oneself. Sin is in effect a refusal to love others and, consequently, a refusal to love the Lord. According to the Bible, sin, or the breaking off of friendship with God and others, is the ultimate cause of the want, injustice, and oppression in which human beings live (see Medellin, Justice, no. 3). The claim that sin is the ultimate cause is in no way a denial that these situations have structural causes and are objectively conditioned. But at the same time, it must also be kept in mind that no social transformation, however radical, automatically brings with it the suppression of all ills.
From this, it follows that the coming of the kingdom cannot be identified with the historical embodiments of human liberation. The growth of the kingdom is indeed a process that takes place in history through liberation, to the extent that liberation means an important fulfillment of the human person and is a condition for a new and fraternal society. Without the liberating events of history, the kingdom does not grow; the process of liberation only destroys the roots of oppression and of the exploitation of one human being by another. This is not the same thing as the coming of the kingdom, which is first and foremost a gift.
From the viewpoint of theological reflection, the challenge we face in Latin America is to find a language about God that grows out of the situation created by the unjust poverty in which the broad masses live (despised races, exploited social classes, marginalized cultures, discrimination against women). This language must at the same time be fed by the hope that heartens a people in search of its liberation. It is in this context of sufferings and joys, uncertainties and certainties, generous commitments and ambiguities, that our understanding of the faith must be continually renewed. It can be said, I think, that a prophetic language and a mystical language are being born in this soil of exploitation and hope. The problem here, as in the Book of Job, is to speak of God in the context of the suffering of the innocent. The language of contemplation acknowledges that everything has its origin in the Father’s unmerited love. The language of prophecy denounces the situation of injustice in which the peoples of Latin America are living, and denounces as well the structural causes of this situation. Without prophecy, the language of contemplation runs the risk of detachment from the history in which God is acting and in which we encounter God. Without the mystical dimension, the language of prophecy can harrow its vision and weaken its perception of that which makes all things new. The aim of these two languages is to communicate the gift of God’s reign as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Being a witness to the resurrection means choosing life and indeed all expressions of life, because nothing is outside the comprehensive embrace of God’s reign. This witness to life (life material and spiritual, individual and social, present and future) is particularly important in a continent marked by premature and unjust death. It is also particularly important in efforts to achieve liberation from oppression. Witnesses to the resurrection can therefore join Scripture in asking the ironic question; “Death, where is your victory?” That is the question suggested by a testimony like that of Archbishop Romero, to name but one among many.
We celebrate this life in the Eucharist, the action that is the primary work of the ecclesial community. When we share the bread, we commemorate the love and fidelity that brought Jesus to his death, as well as the resurrection that put the seal of approval on his mission to the poor. The breaking of the bread is at once the point of departure and the point of arrival of the Christian community. The aim of the theology of liberation is to be a language about God, and to be this in the communion of the church. It is an effort to make the Word of life present in a world of oppression, injustice, and death.