Theology according to Gustavo Gutierrez

Our understanding of Latin American brand of liberation theology will be elucidated more if we will know Gutierrez concept of theology. The excerpts below can be found in his work entitled Liberation Theology: A Documentary History. Here Gutierrez develops the main ideas for his theological vision in the years to come. This is the seed of his later theological development. Gutierrez believes that theological reflection is always the result of decisive action—the bestowal of the social justice among the poor. Here is the passage:

Let us examine what we mean by theology. Etymologically speaking, theology is the treatise or discourse about God—which really does not sell all very much. The classic meaning of theology is an intellectual understanding of the faith—that is, the effort of human intelligence to comprehend revelation and the vision of faith. But faith means not only truths to be affirmed, but also an existential stance, an attitude, a commitment to God and to human beings. Thus faith understands the whole of life theologically as faith, hope and charity.

If, then, we say that faith is a commitment to God and human beings, we affirm that theology is the intellectual understanding of this commitment. It is an understanding of this existential stance, which includes the affirmation of truths, but within a broader perspective.

Faith is not limited to affirming the existence of God. No, faith tells us that God loves us and demands a loving response. This response is given through love for human beings, and that is what we mean by a commitment to God and to our neighbor.

Consequently, when we speak about theology, we are not talking an abstract and timeless truth, but rather about an existential stance, which tries to understand and to see this commitment in the light of revelation.

But precisely because faith is above all existential stance, it admits a differentiation according to circumstances and the different approach to the commitment to God and human beings. To say that faith is a commitment is true for all ages, but the commitment is something much more precise. I commit myself here and now. The commitment to God and to human beings is not what it was three centuries ago. Today I commit myself in a distinctive manner.

When we speak of theology, we mean a theology that takes into account the variation according to time and circumstances. From this we can deduce three characteristics.

1. Theology is a progressive and continuous understanding which is variable to a certain extent. If it were merely the understanding of abstract truth, this would not be true. If theology is the understanding of an existential stance, it is progressive; it is the understanding of a commitment in history concerning the Christian’s location in the development of humanity and the living of our faith.
2. Theology is a reflection—that is, it is a second act, a turning back, a reflecting, that comes after action. Theology is not first, the commitment is first. Theology is an understanding of the commitment, and the commitment is action. The central element is charity, which involves commitment, which theology arrives later on.The pastoral consequences of this are immense. It is not the role of theology to tell us what to do or to provide solutions for pastoral action. Rather, theology follows in a distinctive manner the pastoral action of the church and is a reflection upon it.
   

3. It is the intellectual understanding of a commitment; theology is an endeavor that must continuously accompany that commitment. The pastoral action of the church will be a commitment to God and the neighbor, while theology will accompany that activity to provide continual orientation and animate it. Every action of ours must be accompanied to orient it, to order, to make it coherent, so that it does not lapse into a sterile and superficial activism.

Theology, therefore, will accompany the pastoral activity of the church—that is, the present of the church in the world. It will accompany that activity continuously, to help it to be faithful to the Word of God, which is the light for theology.

Gustavo Gutierrez and hope

I wonder why I haven’t read any of Gustavo Gutierrez writings before. As far as I can remember, we were never given any reading assignments from his works when I was still at the seminary. He rightly deserves to be named as the “father of liberation” theology. Other liberation theologians owe their thoughts from him. As a theology student from the third world, I couldn’t understand why most Asian theologians and theology students have overlooked the importance and implications of his ideas to the situation of a continuing struggle of the poor in many Asian countries which parallel the context from which Gutierrez’s theology springs. His theology about God's preference for the poor, I believe should be extensively studied by the theologians whose nation have been struggling against oppression and their people are living in extreme poverty. His theology gives hope to the believing poor and somehow would inspire them to put their faith in practice. Gutierrez understands that Christian community should understand and practice the message of Christ and their relationship with their God. James Nickoloff writes of him:

The potency of Gutierrez’s theological vision surely derives from the Pauline triad on which he takes his stand: faith, whose biblical opposite is fear; hope, which gives to all false “realism”; and love, which alone can overcome sin and allow God to reign “on earth as in heaven.” Genuine faith is nothing more (or less) than a courageous trust in “thing unseen”: Christian faith means placing one’s life in the care of the unseen God of Jesus Christ. Hope, which Gutierrez carefully distinguishes from optimism, is rooted not in human powers but in God’s promise and fidelity to that promise. Finally, deeds of love—and not words alone—give flesh to faith and hope. It should not surprise anyone at the close of the twentieth century that such faith, hope and love meet resistance in many quarters.

Those who know the life and thought of Gustavo Gutierrez best recognize the courage he shares with people he has chosen to stand alongside, namely the despised and unimportant of the world who struggle to recover the life given them unconditionally by the creator but stolen from them by others. Courage shapes Gutierrez’s practice and his theory; indeed, courage is required to link the two dialectically, as Gutierrez suggest they must be. While fear silences tongues and paralyzes hands, faith and hope, cultivated with courage, loosen tongues to protest the outrages of history and animate hands to reshape that history.

I’m reading in between (busy) times the book edited by James Nickoloff entitle Gustavo Gutierrez Essential Writings. The book is a compilation of important passages from Gutierrez’s books and Nickoloff enriches the books with his scholarly insights. I’ll be posting quotes and comments here as I make progress reading the book.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Ben for his generosity in giving and sending me the book through the post here, in the farthest end of Thailand where theology books like this are virtually non-existent. You have been a blessing, bro!

Many faces of oppression

The oppression of human beings by other human beings has many different faces. It can take the form of political oppression, economic exploitation, social exclusion, cultural estrangement and sexist humiliation. It takes other forms too. But it is ways a crime against life. For human life is life in community and communication. Life means 'loving your neighbour as yourself', not 'subdue him and make him submissive'. To oppress other people means to cut oneself off from God too, for if a man does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen' (1 John 4.20)

Oppression always has two sides. On the one side stands the master, on the other side lies the slave. On the one side is the arrogant self-elevation of the exploiter, on the other side is the suffering of his victim. Oppression destroys humanity on both sides. The oppressors acts inhumanely, the victim dehumanized. The evil the perpetrator commits robs him of his humanity, the suffering he inflicts dehumanizes the victim. Where suffering is experienced in the pain of humiliation on the one hand, evil spreads on the other.

Jurgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, p185

Whenever my mind starts to wander reading Moltmann, he would say something that would glue back my eyes on the pages. It is because he would say something that so real and concrete. As if he is describing something familiar, something that happens around me.And here Moltmann vividly contrasts the difference on the quality of life of the rich and the poor, oppressors and the oppressed and both of them need liberation.One from suffering and the other from the evil they commit.