A short introduction to liberation theology

Robert McAfee Brown. Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. 1993. 143 pp.

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What is liberation theology? It is a modern style of theology, an apocalyptic style, that begins with people and, specifically with the poor. It asks questions about now, and applies the gospel concretely to real situations and toward real goals. It says the world, because of the kingship of Christ, should not be the way it is.

Brown identifies four recurring themes in liberation theology.

Compromiso. This word is not a Spanish form of the English word compromise. Quite the opposite. It means commitment of the whole person. And a good test of such commitment, says Brown, is one’s degree of concern for children. Y los unicos privilegiados seran los ninos, “and the only privileged ones will be children.”

Hope. This is the existential dimension that Juergen Moltmann discusses in his Theologie der Hoffnung. This is the attitude resulting from living in the Easter light. This is the possibility that change in every way is not only possible but promised.

God’s Presence. The poor can hope because God is with them and sees them, for he himself did not come as a rich man but as a poor one. And, Jesus spoke of bringing good news to the poor. Jesus tabernacled among us; he labored and lived among us.

Preferential Option for the Poor. Certainly, the gospel is for all people. But the Bible begins with the poor, with widow and orphans. The preferential option points to the kind of change necessary to bring about the justice the lordship of Jesus requires. The question put to any reform must be, “Will this or will it not improve the situation of the poor?” And if so, all of society will benefit.

Someone who wishes to practice liberation theology should do their research. They must open their eyes–-especially if they are privileged. "Criticial thinking without hope is cynicism," said the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova, "but hope without critical thinking is naivety." Seeing requires struggle. The insights of social analysis, economists, and the sciences help. But one cannot stand apart and seek to understanding. In order to open one’s eyes (called conscientization), one must personally cross the gap.

“The commitment being described is not a form of intellectualizing so much as one of experiencing and ‘encountering.’ It is not enough to read books about poverty; commitment means encountering poor people. It is not enough to learn about ‘the root causes of poverty,’ . . . it is a matter of learning about and entering into and making common cause with persons who are being destroyed by these root causes, and seeking for legislative–or more drastic–ways to dispose of the causes. And it is the almost universal witness of those who do so, that in encountering the poor they are somehow encountering God, learning that whoever else God is, God is ‘the God of the poor,’ the one who takes their part, who works with and form them.” (56)

Brown lists three emphases of liberation theology clustered around its call for liberation. All three hang together. This is important: one cannot be over emphasized or considered apart from the rest. (1) Liberation from unjust social structures or “structural evil.” (2) Liberation from the power of fate. Nothing is “the way it is.” Things needn’t remain as they are. (3) Liberation from personal sin and guilt. These all hang together because Jesus, among other things, is the liberator and the gospel is an announcement of the personal and political liberation consequent of his reign. A Christian cannot pray the Lord’s Prayer and not include its second half. There is no theology without ethics; no resurrection without hope.

Brown concludes by calling his reader to some next steps. First, we must consciously form communities of Christians committed to Bible reading and contemporary action. Second comes a commitment to the truth, to speaking the truth. We must be truthful with ourselves, with others, and we must speak the truth to the dominant community. And finally, we must take risks.

“I believe there is an eleventh commandment for Christians: Thou shalt not decide that someone else should become a martyr. . . . Christians must seek to discern the kind of witness that is demanded of them, and then go with it.” (119)

Every Christian must do a hermeneutic of their situation and decide what martyrdom—meaning witness–demands of them. And every church, too, has to do the same. The forces and temptations that buffet the individual will be different than those that afflict a church. “Either we believe in a God of life, or we serve the idols of death.” (Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero)

“A sacrifice from ill-gotten gains is tainted
and the gifts of the wicked win no approval.
The Most High has no pleasure in the offerings of the godless,
nor do countless sacrifices win his forgiveness.
To offer a sacrifice from the possessions of the poor
is like killing a son before his father’s eyes.
Bread is life to the destitute,
and to deprive them of it is murder.
To rob your neighbor of his livlihood is to kill him,
and he who defrauds a worker of his wages sheds blood.”

~ Ecclesiasticus 34.18-22, the passage that “converted” Bartolome de las Casas

Dorothy Soelle on the existential origin of feminist theology

"Feminist theology arises, as does every liberation theology, from the experience of being wounded. It grows from the destruction inflicted on the lives of women, whether conceived in economic, political, social, intellectual, or psychic terms. It makes mutilations visible. It arises among women who perceive their situation and take common steps to change it, breaking out of the conventions and forms of the dominant theology and its pact with power. The pact which is made there tenders a cultural task for the church which contradicts its mission and its tradition: the church is supposed to make the victims of our situation invisible; and if this isn't possible, at least the causes of the misery should remain fatefully uncertain. Preachers may tell of Mary and Joseph but should not know the particular homeless in our own cities. They expound on the story of the paralytic and his friends, but whether those suffering from AIDS have friends, they don't know. They mention the 'hungry,' but the feminization of poverty remains outside of their horizon.

"In view of the real suffering of women, the theology and devotional practices of churches show up as strangely blind and ignorant. Among feminist women who have begun to reflect from the perspective of their wounds, there has spread astonishment concerning the dispassionate abstractness of masculine theology, boredom with biblical exegesis removed from experience and praxis, and revulsion against spiritless masculine administration within the institution. 'Therefore I ask God,' writes Meister Eckhart, 'to rid me of God.' There is no heresy but rather the petition for liberation from the prison of a language which is too small for God. Therefore I ask God my Mother--so I understand Eckhart today--to rid me of the God of men." (Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God, Augsburg-Fortress, 1995), 39-40.

Esau McCaulley says his church, the black church in America, has something to say

Yesterday, I finished Esau McCaulley's book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. IVP Academic. 2020. McCaulley's bona fides are beyond question. He has a PhD from St. Andrews. His Doktorvater is N. T. Wright. He teaches New Testament at Wheaton College. He is a priest in the ACNA. He is a black man and a Christian. This is a book McCaulley was born to write. And it is a book with a message: the South got somethin' to say.

These notes are not a book review. Rather, they are a short treatment of some of his ideas. Nevertheless, if you have never read his book, I do recommend it. The faculty and staff of my alma mater, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, read it together. That encouraged me to pick it up; it took five years to find a cheap copy bc I'm a cheapie. Plus, I am very interested in looking at the faith through the eyes of non-white people.

Chapter One: The South got Somethin' to Say

As he grew up, McCaulley found himself caught between two communities in the Black church. One of these was evangelical scholasticism and the academy. The other, social justice and the pulpits. He appreciated the serious scholarship of the former, but its papers and commentarites "displayed little concern for how biblical texts speak to the experiences of Black believers" (12). He also thought they read for a white audience, if they even made it out of the first century. "To me, it was a sign of privilege to imprison Paul and Jesus in the first century (13). But what about the social justice side? Here, scholarship was viewed with suspicion. Getting the exegesis right and whiteness have often gone hand in hegemonic hand. Wasn't exegesis the tool of white churches seeking to baptize slavery in the first place? McCaulley cedes the point but disagrees. Looking at the earliest strate of Black ecclesial leadership, he finds plenty of exegesis--and a thoroughgoing message of liberation and freedom.

As McCaulley argues, God is a liberator. Liberation erupts from God's very character, from out of and to his ontological sabbath shalom.[1] God desires freedom for his people. And his expectation is that his freed people will live lives of holiness, living out their liberation before the world. They participate in God's continual and peaceful call. Any reading of the Bible that says otherwise is in error. Scholarship and justice pick up the liberating cross together in whatever historical situation it is found and partner with one another to discern the mind of Christ for this day.

Handpicking other points of interest

McCaulley goes in for re-examing texts used historically to subdue and subjugate Black Christians. Eschatology is on his mind, the kind of eschatology that bubbles up into every living moment. Eschatology stimulates the church to act for justice and for liberation against the horizon ofeventual and certain shalom. But eschatology is also "not yet." And, in the intervening time, there is mourning.

Speaking of the Sermon on the Mount, McCaulley writes, "To mourn involves being saddened by the state of the world. To mourn is to care. It is an act of rebellion against one's own sins and the sins of the world. . . A theology of mourning never allows us the privilege of apathy. . . Mourning is intuition that things are not right--that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is. Our politicians run on our desires by convincing us that utopia is possible here and they alone can provide it." (65) I do also like his emphasis that this mourning leads to a hope to see elements of the Kingdom of God come to be, its liberation unto justice. And that this involves telling truth. As Luther said, A theologian calls a thing what it is. "Peacemaking is a sign of God's inbreaking kingdom. . . . Through our efforts to bring peace, we show the world the kind of king and kingdom we represent. . . . Therefore the work of justice, when understood as direct testimony to God's kingdom, is evangelistic from start to finish." (Ibid.)

I am caught by this: "For Zecharaiah and Elizabeth, the miracle child is John. For the African American Christian, the miracle is the Black Church born of truly miraculous circumstances and whose witness to Jesus has served as something of a forerunner preparing America to accept a truer and fuller gospel" (84). This fuller gospel is one that, while grounded in respectful and canonically comprehensive exegesis, includes the necessary hermeneutic to place those exegetic results in dialogue with today. Preaching is a public gift of the Black Church.

McCaulley reads with the end in mind. His work is eschatological. He understands the Christian vision of the future--the liberated, risen church--as one that embraces difference: difference of skin, of language, of culture. "These distinct people, cultures, and languages are eschatological everlasting. At the end, we do not find the elimination of difference. Instead the very diversity of cultures is a manifestation of God's glory. . . . Our distinctive cultures represent the means by which we give honor to God. He is honoered through the diversity of tongues singing the same song." (118) Liberation does not lead to the removal of color, thinking of people who claim to not see color. That approach to difference is well-meant, perhaps, but incorrect. "The gospel does not cancel ethnic identities.(113)"

So when McCaully approaches scripture, he considers it in its historical-grammatical context and he considers it eschatologically.[2] In the Easter light, as von Balthasar said. So, he weds the careful tools of the evangelicals with the social energy of the progressives.

Laws of restraint suggest an eschatological purpose

McCaully discusses a way of reading Biblical ethics that I found very helpful. Referencing Jesus's teaching on divorce, McCaully observes that Jesus brings ethics back to creational intent. Let's call this the creational ethic. But, Jesus acknowledges that the law does exist to restrain error. Paul does the same when he says the law is the paidagogos. The law makes pastoral sense of difficult situations. Let's call this pastoral consideration.

Applying this to the slavery question in America. The Bible's teaching around slavery is pastoral consideration. Its teachings limit the worst aspects of slavery. And, as they do their work, they erase the foundation that supports the sinful institution itself. They do this because the creational intent--the deeper ethic--is liberation-unto-freedom. God made all human beings to be his imago in the world. So the limiting effort of the law serves a temporary purpose guided by the deeper and eventually overcoming liberation of eschatological reality, in this case, a free people worshiping God's messiah together.

Scars suffered in the present do not prevent eschatological participation

Finally, there is McCaulley's discussion of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Christ is our reconciler, our liberator to shalom in the Kingdom of God. One would not have thought a eunuch could ever be liberated. Weren't his public wounds permanent? He was not only a a Gentile, but he was permanently impure by the nature of his injury. As McCulley reminds his reader: eunuch's were despised. The man suffered the injustice of castration from the community at large, and "in a culture with strictly defined gender roles, he would be seen as aberrant" (110). But the eunuch is in fact liberated. He "found hope in the shamed Messiah whose resurrection lifts those with imposed indignities to places of honor." And "The eunuch [was always] an image bearer [of God]. Christ showed the eunuch who he truly was." McCaully's point is that blackness, like castration, does not prevent Jesus's liberating act from fully delivering black men and women to wholeness, dignity, and value in the Kingdom of God, to "God's eschatological vision for the reconciliation of all things in his Son." Christ's redemption is a liberating act for all people who for whatever reason suffer indignity and shame. Christ has made a place for them all in the kingdom.

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[1] I hope one sees the divine mission underneath this mention of liberation.
[2] cf Theology Along Three Axes

Six ways the Bible contributes to philosophical ethics

Ethical philosopher Dr. Arthur F. Holmes suggests six contributions the Bible makes to philosophical ethics.

1. It gives a theological basis for our [Christian] moral obligation, in terms of our obligation to the will of God, the creator and lawgiver.
2. It gives an account of the relation of morality to God's purposes in creation, our perversion of those purposes through sin and our restoration to righteous living by the grace of God.
3. It teaches us the principles of justice and love which describe God's character and should also characterize us.
4. It reveals the moral law of God, declaring duties in many areas of human life. This is summarized in the Ten Commandments and spelled out by precept and example throughout Scripture.
5. It demonstrates that from love for God and gratitude for his mercies come the motivation and dynamic for moral living.
6. It depicts the ideals and promise of the kingdom of God that Christ came to establish, first in our hearts and lives and eventually throughout the entire world.

Holmes goes on to say that studying philosophical ethics is right for people informed by the Bible because a framework is needed for evaluating and applying its principles that arise and are applied in different times and places. "We can learn to distinguish universal and unchanging principles that transcend cultural and historical differences from case applications in culturaly variable situations." Ethics can lift itself out of "case applications" and construct a useful framework that brings consistency to today's decision making. This too allows for dialogue across the cultures of our time.

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Arthur F. Holmes. Ethics: Approaching Moral Decisions. Contours of Christian Philosophy. ed. Stephen Evans. 2nd ed. InterVarsity Press. 2007. pp. 16-17.

Chuck Alley of "The Living Church" writes a short description of love

"There is not anything self-serving about God's love. God's love is not an emotion--a good or warm feeling that God has when he thinks of us--because God's love is not emotional but rational. Love is the essence of God. The supreme illustration of God's love as an enacted love is found in John 3:16 . . . . We learn that God's love was manifested in his giving for the good of everyone, regardless of whether they chose to receive the gift. . . . The love of God was revealed to us through his actions. Those actions are taken for our good and without any expectation of return. Love at its heart is an act of grace. It is not dependent upon the worthiness of its target, but simply the need of those on whom it is lavished. In addition, the quality of love is not measured by its effect upon the recipient, but rather on the intent of the lover. Love is not expressed, however, as a kind thought or good feeling toward another. It is an action taken for the best of the neighbor. If we want to love, then we must act. If we wait until we 'feel' love before putting love into action, then it is unlikely we will ever get around to loving. The rational nature of love is revealed by the fact that if we continue to act in love toward other people, we will ultimately find ourselves feeling love for them. Thus, it is not impossible for us to love our enemies or those who persecute us. In fact, love has nothing to do with liking someone. To love is to practice doing what is best for the other person--without any expectation of personal return." (Feb. 16, 2025 p. 40)