Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology

In the preface, Jon Sobrino talks about how his co-editor, Ignacio Ellacuría, was murdered in 1989, two years after they had begun planning the structure, themes, and authors for this book. They had already received most of the manuscripts when Ellacuría was murdered at the Central American University, “along with his fellow Jesuits Segundo Montes, Joaquín López y López, Juan Ramón Moreno, Ignacio Martín Baró, Amando López, and two humble women of the people, Julia Elba and her daughter Celina” (Loc 98). On top of the devastating and tragic loss of their lives, their manuscripts were burned when the soldiers destroyed their offices. Sobrino writes, “the martyrdom of Ignacio Ellacuría, theologian, author, and co-editor—is fundamental, concrete reality, and to a certain extent irreplaceable for an understanding of the content of this book” (Loc 98). He says the only way the theology of liberation can be understood is amidst oppression.

This book highlights the main themes in liberation theology as organized by a systematic approach to theology. It emphasizes that the liberation theologian is not someone sitting comfortably in an ivory-tower in academia. Instead, they are “theological activists” with “one foot in the center of reflection and the other in the life of the community.” The theology of liberation is done from the perspective of the poor, fighting for their liberation. Liberation is the shaping principle of this theology. This theology (and this book) seeks to give a voice to the oppressed, to stand against injustice. The emphasis is always on praxis - that the theological reflection is borne out of the lived experience and lived theology on the ground: “The radical originality of the theology of liberation lies in the insertion of the theologian in the real life of the poor, understood as a collective, conflictive, and active reality. [...] This first act of liberation theology marks the anteriority of a faith praxis over the theological theoretization of that praxis (second act)” (Loc 332). Along with this focus on praxis and “God's preferential option for the poor”, as Gutierrez calls it, the other big theme that emerges is the central focus on the reign of God as hope but also as the thing we are called to work towards now as we seek to liberate people from oppressive structures even here on earth:

“The reality of the Reign of God is such that, if, by an impossiblity, human beings had no hope, its content would be a logical contradiction. Hope, then, is essentially necessary for an understanding of what the Reign of God is. [,,,] Not that the poor (at least in Latin America) have no transcendent hope in a resurrection; they surely do. But for them, to live right now would be as much of a miracle as to live after death. They see the opposite of hope not only in death, but in the impossibility of life here and now. This is why their hope, when they have it, is so radical. The theology of liberation, then, asserts that in order to grasp what the Reign of God is, not just any hope will suffice. Only the hope of the poor will do. The hope of the poor must, in some manner, be adopted as one's own. But once this has been accomplished, one also has a better systematic understanding of what the Reign of God ought to be: a promise of life in the face of the anti-Reign.” (Loc 1732)