More on Liberation Theology

I want to thank the authors of “Today’s Oppressed: True ‘Exodus’ Heirs” (Others Say, June 3) for their courteous reply to my column of last February. The perspectives of these who live closer to the heart of Latin American liberation theology differ from those that guide the North American.

I am unable to see the relevance of the Marxist analysis for any advanced nation of today, however difficult its problems may be. Specifically I find it difficult to believe that such an analysis can be applied to a modern state without the loss in such areas of human freedom as are essential to the creative life of a people. Closely related to this is my feeling that revolution in a modern state is an anachronism. As such, it will inevitably move toward reactionary excesses, unacceptable to any Christian community.

I have a different theological understanding of the Exodus motif. Israel became a chosen people not because they were oppressed in Egypt but because of the sovereign will of God, which was first revealed with the call of Abram. Although the Exodus gave them one more push toward nationhood, their oppression by the Pharaohs added nothing to their vocation. Theologically, I find the statement that the Exodus was “God’s initial revelation of himself to Israel … in the context of deliverance from oppression …” unwarranted by either history or dogma. And I don’t see how it justifies the demand for a certain socio-economic system.

I am also perplexed by the insistence that the terms “injustice” and “violence” are synonymous. Latin American theologians seem semantically confused and misleading in equating economic exploitation (and this has without doubt characterized many of the policies of nations of the Northern Hemisphere) with violence, and thus affording a justification for armed violence as a means of securing justice.

It must be recognized at this point that I have never personally known the hopelessness of grinding poverty. Coming from a Swiss immigrant family, I cannot escape from a mentality that sees hope in working within an existing system; this difference in perspective no doubt colors my response to the demands of the theology that defines salvation as deliverance from an existing order. When the term capitalism is used by liberation theologians, they really mean the current world order, not merely the order of a few favored peoples.

Latin America occupies a peculiar place among the developing nations. Since it is basically Christian, it is natural that its religious leaders are concerned about economic and social issues.

With respect to the matter of the use of the term “universal salvation” by such writers as Gustavo Gutierrez and Hugo Assman, let me say that the objection raised by the Others Say article seems to rest upon imperfect inspection of sources, particularly the one to which I referred. Although articles for the Current Religious Thought page are not usually documented in detail, I should have called more specific attention to the words found on page sixty-seven of Assman’s volume, Theology for a Nomad Church. There Assman quotes directly from the writings of Professor Gutierrez to the effect that “the unvarnished affirmation of the possibility of universal salvation has radically changed the way we look at the Church’s mission in the world …”, and almost immediately pronounces the demise of “the old dualisms of natural-supernatural, nature-grace and so on (which) no longer express opposites.”

If language means what it is usually understood to mean, this latter quotation has little or nothing to do with the rejection of extra ecclesia nulla salus. Rather, Assman immediately attaches to the claim that the purely Salvationist understanding of the Church’s mission has been superseded, a denial of that which stands at the heart of the Evangel, and which is essential to the undergirding of the Great Commission. That is to say, if the Church’s mission subsumes all, including the “supernatural,” under the “natural,” what is left of her kerygma?

Since I have never known the hopelessness of real poverty, I cannot escape from viewing liberation theology in different colors.

A further word may be said at the point of the article by the theologians from San Jose that disclaims the assertion that liberation theologians see North American capitalism as the major cause of the misery of Latin America. Does not much of the more radical literature from South America denounce as enemy number one the multinationals? Is it not the constant charge that the development that is represented by the presence of North American industrial projects has served largely to create Latin America’s dependency? A candid reading of the literature will, I think, bear out the contention that liberation is seen in terms of the breaking of this dependency from abroad.

Finally, it needs to be mentioned that Latin America occupies a peculiar place in the world of developing nations; its countries are basically Christian. This makes the processes for improvement much different from those needed in non-Christian developing lands. It is natural therefore that its religious leaders should seek to effect a synthesis between the insights of the Church since Vatican II, and the needs for large-scale social and economic change. My question is whether many of the theological interpretations of Latin American liberation theology may be reached at too stiff a price—the price of the loss of the major mandate of the Lord of the Church to disciple the nations rather than to focus the energies of the Church too narrowly upon the “salvation of history.”

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