A Clash of Ideologies: Marxism, Liberation Theology, and Apocalypticism in New Testament Studies by Randall W. Reed (review)

As his first major scholarly publication, Randall Reed's work represents an intriguing critical engagement with three colliding discourses in biblical studies: Marxism, liberation theology, and apocalypticism. Reed carefully highlights the manner in which many postcolonial biblical scholars (Richard Horsley, Gustavo Gutierrez, Jose Porofina Miranda, Ched Myers, Michel Clevenot, and others) have sought to combine the ideological insights of Marxism with liberation theology and apocalypticism—with varying degrees of success. The work extensively outlines the theoretical apparatuses of each discourse, identifying what Reed believes to be the essence of each ideological structure, while carefully summarizing key figures and their seminal works. Reed's monograph concludes with a section devoted to the merits of a secularist approach to biblical studies, boldly concluding that there can be no interpretive harmony between Marx and the Christian theological discourse.

Reed's main contention is that the embedded presuppositions of Marxism are incompatible with the theologically driven agenda of Christian liberationists—which requires the immanent intervention of a uniquely divine agent. Reed suggests the supernatural intervention of a supreme being places believers as passive "bystanders" in the final act of liberation (61), and this is necessarily at odds with the Marxist notion of proletariat revolution. For Reed, this has caused logical inconsistencies in the application of Marxist theory to the biblical text, found most notably in the work of Latin American liberationist theologians. Reed notes that in the popular application of Marxist ideological criticism, many biblical scholars have uncritically assumed Christian notions of apocalyptic intervention into the Marxist dialectic, and in this manner they violate the Marxist notion of religion as "illusory."

For Reed, the way forward begins with an abandonment of theological perspectives that are antagonistic to the goals of "true" Marxist liberation. In his conclusion, Reed suggests that there should be no advantage given to the religious perspective in the interpretation of biblical texts, and that we might question the usefulness of the Bible as liberating text (140). Reed highlights the position of privilege that religious perspectives continue to maintain, while suggesting that most post-colonial interpretations are simply re-implementing common social structures and embedded hierarchical presuppositions (136). Reed's ideal interpretive horizon would then be a creative fusion of biblical studies and the New Atheist critique, a rationalist hermeneutic that might question the ethical legitimacy of biblical liberation in a post-Christian context. For Reed, scholars like Tina Pippin, Slavoj Žižek, and Bart Ehrman accomplish such a creative task.

As helpful as this book is in identifying the logical (modernist?) contradiction between Marxism and Christian theology, I question whether we should abandon this meaningful collaboration. What Reed fails to grasp is the manner in which certain cultural systems are able to internalize contradiction as a requisite feature of their own existence. Thus, in his monograph, Reed highlights the work of Slavoj Žižek as an ideal ideological critic, however a closer look at Žižek's own theoretical apparatus reveals a body of work that uniquely contains both Marxist and Christian perspectives. In fact, Žižek might suggest that inconsistency in the symbolic field is a precondition for truthful reflection, therefore the contradictions inherent to Marxism, liberation theology, and apocalypticism are an opportunity to think creatively beyond the standard binarism of Marx or bust.

I am increasingly concerned with publications like this that seek to regulate Marxist biblical interpretation on the basis of interpretive purity. There is a strange irony in white American Marxists telling Latin American theologians to find a different interpretive lens, particularly when people of colour are just beginning to have voice and agency within our discourse. There is no pure Marx: instead the clash of ideological perspectives and the structural contradictions that it engenders is a necessary hole in the symbolic network, a disequilibrium that produces epistemological innovation. Reed's work thankfully represents a helpful introduction...