Liberation through Reconciliation: Jon Sobrino’s Christological Spirituality by O. Ernesto Valiente (review)

Earlier this year, Pax Christi hosted a conference at the Vatican that resulted in a call for Pope Francis to write his next encyclical on nonviolence and the elements of “just peace” (in direct opposition to the Church’s long-held doctrine of “just war”). Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, responded positively to this request, indicating the need for further dialogue on the topic. Whatever form that dialogue will take, its participants—including Pope Francis and Cardinal Turkson—would benefit greatly from adding Ernesto Valiente’s Liberation through Reconciliation to the preparatory reading list. Valiente’s book offers a robust account of the spiritual dispositions required for seeking reconciliation and building peace in the conflicted reality of our world today.

A native of El Salvador, Valiente draws on the Christology of Spanish-born Salvadoran Jesuit Jon Sobrino to construct a liberationist theology and spirituality of reconciliation. Both Sobrino and Valiente write with the conflicted reality of the Salvadoran context as their locus for doing theology and thinking critically about the reconciling role of Christian spirituality in situations of historic oppression, socio-economic injustice, and institutionalized violence. Sobrino himself never elaborates a full-blown theology or spirituality of reconciliation, but Valiente makes the compelling argument that a “theologal” spirituality of reconciliation is latent within Sobrino’s Christology.

For Sobrino, the term “spirituality” refers to the fundamental spirit with which the human person engages the concrete historical reality in which she finds herself. Valiente skillfully elucidates Sobrino’s understanding of reality as “theologal” in its foundation and structure. Although reality is distorted by human sinfulness, God’s grace is “behind” reality, inviting human beings to reconciled communion with God and other human being through compassionate engagement with reality. Such engagement with reality varies across time and space, but three fundamental dispositions mark the life of a human being with spirit: 1) honesty with reality, especially with the crucifixion of reality in situations of suffering and oppression; 2) compassionate fidelity to the ethical and praxical demands of reality, even when such fidelity comes at a cost; and 3) an openness to being carried by the hope and joy offered in and through reality. These dispositions are necessary for any truly human spirituality and, for Christians, they are most fully and definitively embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, the real and true human being “with spirit.” Valiente helpfully details how Sobrino correlates the pattern of Jesus’ incarnation, mission, cross, and resurrection with these spiritual dispositions. Jesus was incarnated amongst the dispossessed and was thus honest with reality in its hardest and most crucified form. He was faithful to the demands of reality through his mission to proclaim the good news of God’s Kingdom to the oppressed, even to the very end, when he faithfully accepted the deadly consequences of his mission on the cross. Finally, Jesus’ resurrection demonstrates God’s commitment to carrying reality with the power and grace of justice for the victims of history and the continued possibility of forgiveness for perpetrators. Christian spirituality entails following Jesus and imitating this concrete pattern of his life and engagement with the real, empowered as he was by the Spirit. Indeed, Valiente rightly asserts that in doing so, Christian disciples come to both know the risen Christ and live as already risen beings themselves.

Valiente’s constructive contribution to Sobrino’s Christological spirituality lies in his explicit rendering of it as a liberationist spirituality of reconciliation. The reality with which human beings must engage is a conflicted reality, just as the reality in which Jesus became incarnate was a conflicted reality. Throughout Scripture, and most definitively in Jesus, God engages this conflicted historical reality with a preference for those who are its victims, those who are represented on Valiente’s book cover in a haunting image of the Salvadoran massacre at Río Sumpul. Such a preference involves confronting and denouncing the sinful...