“God Speaks from within History”: The Challenging Witness of Liberation Theology

The development of a theology of liberation in Latin America was a consequence of the profound renewal within the Catholic Church provided by Vatican II (1962–1965) and its application to Latin America. Vatican II dealt with the consequences of global modernization, and of particular importance were issues of poverty and injustice. In Gaudium et spes the church recognized that “a huge proportion of the world’s citizens is still tormented by hunger and poverty.”¹ This dramatic shift in worldview legitimated the process of renewal of the Latin American Catholic Church, which led to its reorientation at two seminal meetings of the Latin American Bishops Conference (CELAM). The first was held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968 and is referred to as CELAM II; the second took place in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979 and is referred to as CELAM III.

Informing these historic conferences were European and Latin American theologians, who were formulating what would soon become a new theology of liberation. These theologians were encouraged by the suggestion of Pope John XXIII to engage in reading the signs of the times.² For the Latin American bishops and Latin American theologians the dominant “sign” was the vast inequality between rich and poor. To work on behalf of the poor became theologically and historically expressed by liberation theologians as “God’s preferential option for the poor.”

There is general agreement that the extensive and varied foundational body of literature on liberation theology began with Gustavo Gutiérrez’s classic work A Theology of Liberation, first published in Spanish in 1971. The depth and scope of its comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis have made it a touchstone for ongoing scholarship and controversy. Of special note is Gutiérrez’s analysis of the biblical meanings of poverty, the New Christendom, the spiritual and the material planes, and the importance of orthodoxy and orthopraxis.³ Worthy of mention are the numerous works by Ignacio Ellacuría, whose early writing on Christology saw Christ as the logos of history, notably Freedom Made Flesh: The Mission of Christ and His Church.⁴ Another prolific theologian, Jon Sobrino, whose writing spans more than three decades and includes chapters in the edited volumes reviewed here, built on one of Ellacuría’s concepts in The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross.⁵ Johann Baptist Metz is frequently acknowledged for his initial conceptualization of a new political theology that considers the impact of the Enlightenment on the established political order, its significance for human freedom, and what this means for religious faith.⁶ Liberation theology has inspired other marginalized peoples to find their own voices and to become actors in their own history.⁷

The majority of the contemporary authors writing in the books under review are part of a second generation of liberation theologians. What characterizes their work is their attempt to recapture the biblical and theological foundations of the first generation of liberation theologians: foundations that were always present and essential but were often overtaken by their unconventional use of socioeconomic analysis as part of theological analysis. The foundational years for liberation theology coincided with the steady drumbeat of the Cold War. The historical context made suspect the introduction of concepts such as “dialectical tension,” “historical praxis,” unjust social structures,” “social sin,” “class conflict,” and “institutionalized violence” within theological scholarship. The...