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to Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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Liberation Theology in Late
Modernity: An Argument
for a Symbolic Approach
Andrew B. Irvine*
Over the past twenty years, many Latin American liberation theolo
gians concede a loss of initiative in shaping their societies. While
insisting that God acts in history on the basis of a "preferential option
for the poor," they admit it has made little practical difference. I attri
bute this loss to a lack of fit between the apparently empirical prop
osition that God is a being who has and acts upon personal
preferences and the "cultural physics," so to speak, of late modern
social change. I detail this view in terms of three cultural dynamics of
modernization: historical consciousness, evolutionary explanation, and
inter-religious contact. Liberation theologians may reply that the lack
of fit is perennial, but always trivial in the face of inhuman suffering.
Their argument is religiously potent, but does not satisfy metaphysical
doubt regarding the divine option for the poor. Treating God's option
for the poor as, instead, a symbolic engagement with ultimacy
increases the likelihood that the lack of fit is a creative tension, rather
than a fatal mismatch. The article concludes by pointing toward how
such an approach might proceed.
* Andrew B. Irvine, Maryville College, 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville, TN 37803,
USA. E-mail: andrew.irvine@maryvillecollege.edu. The ideas and argument presented here have
been improved by many friends and colleagues over a long time. I especially thank M.T. Davila,
David Tombs, Chris Tirres, Wesley Wildman, Bill Meyer, and the anonymous reviewers for JAAR
for conversation and critique, and Chuck Mathewes and Chad Wayner for their encouragement
and guidance in seeing the piece into print.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December 2010, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 921-960
doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfq022
Advance Access publication on August 10, 2010
? The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
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922 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
THE PROBLEM
IN THE SECOND HALF of the twentieth century, searching for
ways to proclaim their gospel in Latin America as both good and news,
many church workers grew convinced that, in actuality, they were
encountering God already ahead of them. They found God in the midst
of the poor. This was contrary to a rather deeply ingrained expectation,
to wit, that the barely Christian multitudes of Latin America needed all
the crumbs of comfort the cultured elite would spare them. To the
church workers' surprise, a new evangelization was already afoot, but
they themselves were the recipients of good news, the poor its bearers.
They had discovered (or, as they might say, rediscovered) that the heart
of the Christian gospel is a God who makes a "preferential option for
the poor." The working out of this experience is the genius of the Latin
American theology of liberation.
More recently, however, this devout insistence concerning the
nature of God is accompanied by profound doubts that it makes much
practical difference. Many societies seem largely to have bypassed the
historical aspirations of liberation theology. Surveying the recent his
tories of eleven Latin American countries, Jeffrey Klaiber concluded:
^ee the in some ways even bleaker assessment in the more recent Tombs (2002: 273-292).
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 923
The most obvious fact today is that the great revolution that spans almost
the entire twentieth century?the revolution that began in 1917 in Russia
and ends in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union?is over_
Moreover, the many movements said to be "national liberation" move
ments, and even those of guerillas, have found themselves having to
yield, and to enter into the new supposedly democratic systems or be left
powerless. All left movements are going through a crisis of conscience;
they find that they have no program, no specific objectives, and are very
much divided (Comblin 1998: xv).2
The "crisis of conscience" of which Comblin wrote has not been fatal to
the Latin American theology of liberation. Today, numerous contribu
tors work at programs consciously continuous with twentieth-century
liberation theology.3 However, the present study takes as its cue the
critical tension within the movement, between the scandalous insistence
that the essential self-expression of God is to opt for the poor, and the
2Comblins analysis is reaffirmed more recently by Petrella (2004: 2). Studying the important
Brazilian experience, Maclean argues that "for almost two decades, while liberation theologians
recognized the failure of liberation theologies utilizing Marxist analysis to deal with race, gender,
and cultural issues, and modified their stance accordingly, they largely continued to argue as if the
political alternatives remained a static alternative between socialism and liberal democracy. The
alternatives were not only overly starkly drawn," Maclean continues, "but by 1981 they did not
correspond to the emerging realities of Brazilian political life. Further, such an over-sharp
polarization of the alternatives led to an even more serious failure to make alliances with other
classes or associations, thereby [failing at] developing structures and organizations of the people
capable of acting in the political realm" (Maclean 1999: 145).
As Gutmann, Orta, and Ottman acknowledge in their works previously cited. For theological
writings, specifically, see, for example, Petrella (2005) and Althaus-Reid et al. (2007).
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924 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
doubt, no less scandalous in its way, whether what God is or does has
any intrinsic bearing on the outcome of historical events.
What do I seek to achieve by this, and how does it relate to other
recent discussions of the future of liberation theology? I take the claim
that God opts for the poor as a defining feature of Latin American lib
eration theology. The questions of whether and how to develop this
claim find differing answers among the theologians, but the claim is a
fundamental inspiration. Thus, this study stands in critical sympathy
toward their efforts. Inasmuch as I accept and work from the question
ability of God's preferential option for the poor, it is unlikely they
would recognize my contribution as one with theirs, but it certainly is
not another dismissal of liberation theology. Rather, it is an attempt to
think through the crisis itself as a theological problem, a problem that
would be recognizable by these liberation theologians themselves.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 925
The real question comes after the critique of idolatry: what can we do
instead? What can we propose? In addition, the concept of an idol is
the negative counterpart to a positive affirmation. If the idol is the
only available option it is not really an idol but becomes necessary: it
becomes a god. To show the idol as idol, alternatives are needed.
(Petrella 2004: 11)
4Sung, Bell, and Petrella all cite the Costa Rica-based theologian, Franz Hinkelammert, for
crucial development of the motif, especially Hinkelammert (1986 [1977]).
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926 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 927
7This goes to show that even if all theologies are contextual, they are so with reference to
multiple contexts. Committing to effectiveness in one context does not cancel the demands of
other contexts?including, perhaps, a metaphysical context.
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928 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
dimensions and other understandings add to, or vie for, claims to the
adequacy of our understanding, according to the context and purpose of
our interpretations. None of this means that religious ideas are a worth
less or a nonsensical focus for interpretation of societies, though. The
ideas advanced by Latin American theologians of liberation, even if held
less confidently at present, exert continuing and potent influence in
social, political, and economic discourses close to home and far abroad.
They still "speak" to people. Therefore, the study of liberation theology as
theology, that is, as an intellectual discourse addressing and shaping a
society's feel for ultimacy, remains important to the critical study of reli
gion, conceived as multi-dimensional articulation of human concerns
(some of them apparently ultimate, some of them not).
Third, the theological approach essayed here can rearticulate liber
ation theology's critical self-interrogation in ways fruitful for a compara
tive study of religious ideas and practices, for instance between liberation
theologies and versions of Buddhist activism. I have in mind particularly
what others before me have called the nexus between the mystical and
the political. (The mere appellation, "engaged Buddhism," was coined in
part to challenge Western simplifications of Buddhism as a "mystical,"
thus an apolitical, religion.) Admittedly, I do not carry out substantive
test work here (as have, say, Pieris and Lefebure). Nevertheless, it seems
to me that the methodological considerations to come can serve a much
broader constituency than just the community of Christian liberationists.
8Berger (2001: 443-454) neatly lays out why and how the secularization thesis?that
modernization results in the declining importance of religion?needs reexamination. Adhering to
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 929
his usual "methodological atheism," though, he remains coy about the plausibility of the resurgent
religious commitments he enlists in his argument.
9The conception of theology as "symbolic engagement" is articulated by Robert Cummings
Neville in many places, especially Neville (2006).
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930 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
10I hold on to terms like modernity and modernization, while letting go, as best I can, of their
Eurocentric accretions, which would have us swallow such fantastical beliefs as that "the West" is the
principal agent of whatever progress the world has witnessed over the last five hundred years. I refer
to late modernity rather than postmodernity precisely because the fallout from European
colonization upon global society has not been, and cannot simply be, left behind us, yet also because
the "alternative globalizations" now emitting from a multiplicity of cultural settings still involve
modernizing processes (see, for example, Berger and Huntington 2002). Important discussions of
the continuing salience of modernity may be found in Bilimoria and Irvine (2009).
11 "Postcolonial conditions," in the plural, since in Latin America postcoloniality emerged from
cultural and political arrangements that differ significantly from those against which anti-colonial
movements in Africa and South Asia struggled in the twentieth century.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 931
12See Bonhoeffer's letters to Eberhard Bethge dated 30 April, 5 May and 8 June 1944, in
Bonhoeffer (1972).
13To be clear, I think this pragmatism is not based on a narrow view that God's option for the
poor will work necessarily, but rather that it is true (by which I mean, true enough, within variable
biological, social, and cultural constraints, to relativize those very restraints), and thus enables the
poor some freedom to free themselves. Liberation theologians might say that it has already
affirmed itself in the measure of progress toward liberation the poor have already realized. This
clarification is called forth by a sensitive essay by Goizueta (2000).
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932 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
say that God opts for the poor, most theologians of liberation do not
mean that their God is in the process of carrying out a surefire plan for
social and political reform. Rather, they mean something more like that
God energizes the poor to transform the world. Thus, one point of speak
ing of mediation is to register that prevailing plausibility structures are
among the first things that may be transformed under the impact of revel
atory encounter. Where belief in God was an oppressive constraint, now it
becomes an empowering possibility. Nevertheless, mediation is a two-way
function: by their nature, historical projects require some reduction of the
hope of salvation to prevailing plausibility constraints in order to get
something done. This is simply to say that mediations mediate their terms.
In liberationist discourse, this has meant emphasizing that historical
projects do not dissolve the kingdom of God and struggles for liberation
into each other, and thus that the theology of liberation is not idola
trous. What perhaps has been insufficiently noted as a result of this
emphasis is that mediation does not isolate terms from each other,
either. Historical projects create social space in which to focus and
channel the tensions that revelatory encounter engenders, but this space
may also be the medium of a volatile confrontation?political confron
tation of course, but no less importantly confrontation between God
and world as such: if historical projects are not merely the ways of the
world, they are not evidently God's ways, either. Thus, historical pro
jects constantly threaten to prove the promise of God's option for the
poor empty?even if and when they succeed.
But perhaps this point is beside the point, as far as liberation theolo
gians are concerned. Is it not the case, they might reply, that when we
went to the Bible, to reflect on the meaning of what was being revealed
to us, we received confidence in God's constant and preferential love of
the poor? God's option for the poor, taken as an interpretive key to the
Biblical traditions, has unlocked the spiritual strength of poor
Christians in often liberating ways, and not only in Latin America.
Admittedly, the plotlines of the Biblical histories, and the motifs of pro
phecy, poetry, and proverb often turn on a wavering of such confidence,
but paradoxically this strengthens our confidence?for our own uncer
tainty persuades us that here we have not just a literary device but stuff
of Biblical faith. And this is something of what Gustavo Guti?rrez (to
cite just one exemplar) had in mind when he began A Theology of
Liberation by highlighting theology's function as "critical reflection on
historical praxis" (cf., Guti?rrez 1988: 3-12). Is it not bizarre, then, to
identify historical consciousness as a challenge to liberation theology!?
It would seem bizarre, except for Guti?rrez's position that "there is
only one human destiny, irreversibly assumed by Christ, the Lord of
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 933
14I have suppressed a long footnote in which Guti?rrez cites several theologians on the thesis of
the unity of history.
15True, Guti?rrez avoids almost all mention of Jesus as Christ in the paragraphs leading up to
the statement of one human destiny in Christ. He offers one direct scriptural reference (not
surprisingly, Pauline) defending the universal scope of salvation. However, the magisterial texts he
cites evidently presuppose the absolute significance of Jesus, especially the working drafts for the
Medellin bishops' conference. For example: "the center of God's salvific design is Jesus Christ, who
by his death and resurrection transforms the universe and makes it possible for the person to reach
fulfillment as a human being" (Guti?rrez 1988: 85). In some later writings, as Guti?rrez becomes
more cognizant of spiritual traditions beyond his own, he seems to allow that the absoluteness of
Jesus as Christ may be relative to Christians, but the revision is stipulative more than substantive.
The principle, significance, and pitfalls of christological absolutism are elaborated in Wildman
(1998).
16Note, however, that the ambiguity of these late modern times is not simply a universal human
condition, implying a transcendental status quo, against which defiance ever exhausts itself, and to
which it ever succumbs. It has positive dimensions resulting from the accomplishments of actors
who, from a Eurocentric viewpoint, appear marginal. Cf., Mignolo (2000: 21-22):
Today, a world history or a universal history is an impossible task. Or perhaps both are
possible but hardly credible. Universal histories in the past five hundred years have been
embedded in global designs. Today, local histories are coming to the forefront and, by
the same token, revealing the local histories from which global designs emerge in their
universal drive_The impossibility or lack of credibility of universal or world histories
today is not advanced by some influential postmodern theory, but by the economic and
social forces generally referred to as globalization and by the emergence of forms of
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934 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
knowledge that have been subalternized during the past five hundred years under global
designs I just mentioned?that is, during the period of planetary expansion I call here
modern colonialisms and colonial modernities.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 935
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936 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
17Juan Luis Segundo was keenly aware of this problematic, approaching it in terms of a doctrine
of sin (see Segundo 1974: 7-15).
18Ecological concerns have had a largely energizing effect on liberation theology, especially
inasmuch as poverty constitutes a major obstacle to care for the environment, and inasmuch as
environmental degradation tends to hurt the poor first. Still, the view of nature tends to be either
instrumental or somewhat romanticized. To give an example of the latter, Leonardo Boff writes of
nature's life-giving equilibrium, "Decay and death form part of life. Death is an invention of life.
The cycle promotes the continuation of life, not the perpetuation of the individual. Nature is not
biocentric but ecocentric, because it is related to the equilibrium between life and death in a
perspective of universal maintenance" (Boff 1995: 40-41). That Boff has not consistently thought
through the bloody extravagance of this "equilibrium" seems to be evidenced by the assertion, in
the same volume, that "Spirituality is that attitude which puts life at the center, and defends and
promotes life against all the mechanisms of death, dessication, or stagnation. The opposite of spirit,
in this sense, is not the body but death and everything associated with the system of death,
understood in the widest sense of biological, social, and existential death (failure, humiliation, and
oppression)" (1995: 36-37). Much the same may be said of the ecofeminist liberation theology of
Gebara (1999).
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 937
each other than generally may be the case, and on the other hand orien
tated to each other through a highly asymmetrical colonial order. Even
the slight shifts effected toward parity within a shared world society
powerfully fund a sense that claims to absolute and exhaustive revelation
of the divine in any one tradition are reckless and implausible. Awareness
of global diversity within traditions, and multiple religious identity on the
part of a growing number of persons and communities, are quite concrete
ways in which this shift is experienced.
In Latin America, Vatican If s opening to cultural pluralism was a
prominent moment within this transformation. Diego Irarr?zaval writes:
In this area [of interaction between diverse cultures] the Third World
has creatively received Vatican II. From the "evangelization of culture"
we have moved to "inculturations." We are re-discovering diversity in
unity... ; a "living exchange"?not mere adaptation?"is fostered
between the Church and the diverse cultures of people." (Irarr?zaval
2000: 18)19
19The ellipses cover Irarr?zaval's citations of declarations from the Second Vatican Council: first
of Lumen Gentium 42, 92, Unitatis Redintegratio 4, 16, and Orientalium Ecclesiarum 2; second of
Gaudium et Spes 44, and Ad Gentes 22. For a more sociological overview of religious pluralism
with reference to Latin Americans and U.S. Latinos, see Espinosa, who reports:
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938 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 939
21This point can be related to the liberationist affirmation of the prior (not a priori) reality of
social conflict. Cf., Maduro (1982) and Guti?rrez (1990: especially 67-80).
22 A different, yet pertinent critique of the purported contemporaneity of colonial beneficiaries
and victims (albeit within the frame of a national culture) is offered by Bhabha (1996). For an
application of Bhabha's critique with reference to U.S. Latino theology, see Irvine (2009: 229-231).
Dussel theorizes this new plurality in the name of "trans-modernity," by which he signifies many
cultures rising beyond reductive claims to universality made for European and North American
modernity, thus deconstructing the dualism of modernity and its "underside" (cf. Dussel 2002:
221-244). On the historical development of the specifically Eurocentric modernity, cf., Dussel
(1998: 50-66).
23I again invoke Walter Mignolo's contrast between "local histories" and "global designs," but
Michel de Certeau's work on the inventiveness of everyday life is seminal here. See, for instance,
Certeau (1984), especially the "General Introduction," and Certeau (1997).
24That Latin American liberation theology can negotiate the new plurality is strongly indicated
by the spin-off of new liberation theologies. Drawing Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and other
religious threads together with the Latin Americans' Christian inspirations into the loose-weave
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940 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
A FOURTH CHALLENGE
In a recent essay, Gustavo Guti?rrez discusses "three great contem
porary challenges to the faith" (Guti?rrez 2003). The first two overlap
fairly well with the three challenges discussed thus far. The first chal
lenge Guti?rrez names is "the modern (and postmodern) world," which
he analyzes into three key elements: emphasis on the individual, critical
reason, and the right to freedom (91-92). The second challenge is reli
gious pluralism (92-93). The third challenge is so imposing that it must
be felt at times as not just another theological challenge of late modern
times, but as a challenge to the credibility of the theological enterprise
as such. The fundamental challenge of the times, Guti?rrez says, is
"inhuman and antievangelical poverty" (93-96ff).
We all are caught up in a massive, global neglect of the vast
majority of humanity. Pretty much the best of the liberation theologians
have confronted the personal crisis of the value of their life's work by
submitting, not to technical philosophy (not explicitly, anyway) but,
again, to the judgment of the poor. The evangelical power of liberation
theology is displayed in the compelling nature of these theologians'
fidelity to the poor, offered in small, practical ways. In this they have
retrieved an important tradition of fundamental theology, a tradition
that submits that "the greatest argument against the existence of God is
the existence of the poor" (Gonz?lez Faus 1997: 224).25
Jos? Ignacio Gonz?lez Faus writes: "The mere existence of the poor
is a scandal like the cross of Jesus, that seems to negate the justice of
God, a scandal that cannot be theoretically eliminated, but only
redressed and illumined practically" (225). To be sure, Gonz?lez Faus is
concerned with the existence of a just God, understood to be the God
of the Bible, rather than with God sin mas?God "without qualifica
tions," or "without further ado." Yet, this is perhaps just the point. In
the light of the liberationists' own option for the poor, the real "crisis"
to which Christian theology must respond is, and has always been, the
apparent willingness of many affluent Christians?who could do some
thing about poverty?to deny the life-giving gospel rediscovered amidst
the poor. Their denial is not explicit, of course. It comes about, we
might say, con mas?by a thousand little qualifications that preserve
fabric of the global everyday, these theologies show that a divine option for the poor is not
necessarily tied to an absolute claim for Christian symbols.
25Gonzalez Faus cites three figures as evidence of the tradition: the Dominican, Soto, in 1545,
Bishop Bossuet, in the seventeenth century, and Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga of Nicaragua today.
Quotations from texts in Spanish are mine unless indicated otherwise.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 941
26Gonz?lez Faus takes the phrase from Assmann (1973), the first part of which was translated
into English as Assmann (1976).
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942 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
In Uruguay, which represents the best case, fewer than 1 per cent of
the population were asked to pay a bribe in the twelve months preced
ing the interview. Haiti emerges as an extreme case, with one out of
every two adults reporting being victimised. The average for the region
27The countries studied are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 943
was 22.5 per cent of a country's population being asked to pay a bribe.
(Seligson and Z?phyr 2008: 313)
(LAPOP data enabled a comparison with Canada and the United States
regarding the percentage of survey respondents who reported being
asked to bribe a public employee at least once in the year prior. Even
for the lowest reporting Latin American country on that index?Chile?
the rate was more than five times that in the United states, and roughly
three times that in Canada.)
Moreover, the trauma of torture and violence continues to shadow
Latin America, even where Truth Commissions have had success in
bringing to light the workings and the perpetrators of past repression.
The words of Amnesty International's 2008 annual report are consistent
with annual reports throughout the past decade:
The legacy of the authoritarian regimes of the past lives on in the insti
tutional weaknesses which continue to bedevil many Latin American
countries, particularly in Central America, and in the Caribbean.
Corruption, the absence of judicial independence, impunity for state
officials, and weak governments have undermined confidence in state
institutions. Equal protection may exist in law, but it is often denied in
practice, particularly for those in disadvantaged communities.
Although abusive practices have remained largely unchanged, the
rationale for them has shifted. The techniques previously used to
repress political dissent, have now been turned on those challenging
social injustice and discrimination?such as human rights defenders?
and those they seek to support. (Amnesty International 2008)
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944 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
The option for the poor pertains to the very marrow of biblical revelation
and the gospel. The very identity of the God of Christianity is unintelligi
ble without the gratuitous, preferential, crazy and unapologetic [sin expli
caciones] love that God shows for the weak and oppressed of this world,
to the point that that perspective is what marks from beginning to end
the incarnatory process of God's Son. While there is faith on the earth,
the poor will continue to be the privileged ones of God, preferential
object of God's love and attention, and center of interest of every theology
that wants to remain worthy of its name and mission. (1992: 197)
28To hazard a generalization, for the Latin American theologians who use the term, what
belongs to the divine character can be called "th?ologal." A person may reflect/conform to/emulate
the divine character without even being conscious of the fact, and this participation in...
divinization, we should probably say but, at the least, salvation, is th?ologal, too, regardless of the
person's degree of ignorance. On the other hand, explicit, thematic reflections upon th?ologal
realities are called theological, and are less lively, less authentic, in proportion to their distance
from those realities. As Ellacuria (1993: 277) put it: "The th?ologal dimension of the created world,
which should not be confused with the theological dimension, would reside in that presence of the
trinitarian lfe, which is intrinsic to all things, but which in human beings can be apprehended as
reality and as the principle of personality. There is a strict experience of this th?ologal dimension
and through it there is a strict personal, social, and historical experience of God."
Javier Melloni defines the "'th?ologal' attitude" as "a path of participation in the mode of being of
God" (Melloni 1997). The distinction then can have much to do with the conception of theology
as a "second act," dependent on the "first act" of practice: practice is the "th?ologal" ground for
theological thinking, the canon of its truth, and the hodos of its method (cf., Guti?rrez 1988: 3-12).
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 945
The Spirit of Jesus is in the poor and, with them as his point of depar
ture, he re-creates the entire Church. If this truth is understood in all
its depth and in an authentically Trinitarian perspective, it means that
the history of God advances indefectibly by way of the poor; that the
Spirit of Jesus takes historical flesh in the poor; and that the poor show
the direction of history that is in accord with God's plan. (1984: 93)
In relation to Thomistic roots of this distinction, see Schillebeeckx (1968), and also XIX Semana
espa?ola de teolog?a (1962).
29In this connection, see also Pixley and Boff (1989), who emphasize a view of the incarnation
as incarnation in a "class" rather than in a person. Does this mean, then, that the real distinction
of Jesus as the Christ is slighted, and the full humanity of the incarnate God is denied for the sake
of a political aim? While the passage could be read thus, a more consistent reading is to gloss it as
a supplement and/or corrective to a distorted interpretation of the incarnation that reflects classist
social domination. Under such construal, the passage exposes a bourgeois, individualistic confusion
of full humanity with "individuality."
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946 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
be for "practical reasons": Segundo, Sobrino, and the others, they are
Christian theologians?by and large, more or less, after all?trying to
clarify the meaning of Christian discipleship to an intended audience
that includes numberless self-avowed but cynical Christians.
However, if the work of liberation theologians is carried out (not to
mention carried over, into other contexts) without concern for meta
physical probity, then their "practical reasons"?not to mention aes
thetic reasons?for treating Jesus absolutely and exclusively as the
Christ tend to lose a powerful theoretical check against taking on an
importance which has neither theoretical nor practical justification.
Where theoretical (and other) correctives fall away, the likelihood
increases that one or another exigency of the immediate situation will
unduly constrain critical capabilities. That this in fact has happened to
Latin American liberation theologians, at the cost of a disorientating
loss of initiative, underscores the importance of renewed philosophical
inquiry writh regard to God's preferential option for the poor.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 947
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948 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
30See Raposa (2004) and Schilbrack (2004a, b) for pertinent reconceptions of metaphysical
inquiry. I hinted at a ritual theory of metaphysics in Irvine (2004:64-65). Goizueta (2004) develops
a much older Latin American approach to diese concerns. Dussel (1998) is pertinent, but I have
reservations about his metaphysics, essayed in "An Ontological Critique of the Trans-Ontology of
Enrique Dussel," forthcoming in the journal, Sophia.
31I have in mind especially Guti?rrez' commentary on the biblical Book of Job (1987 [1986]). By
the middle of the 1980s, Guti?rrez' writings clearly reflected his deepening discipleship in the
spirituality of the poor. A certain vanguardism is tempered with closer solidarity. As one result,
Guti?rrez' characterization of theology undergoes a change. The role of critical reflection is never
abandoned, nor the reference point of practice, but the ambience within which critical reflection
on practice has meaning assumes greater and deeper consequence. Thus, Guti?rrez' core
description of theology becomes "thought about a mystery." I give a detailed interpretation of On
fob in the book-length manuscript from which the present article draws.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 949
32The great issue for this approach is how conventional signs come to function as religious
symbols. Why do revelations occur? Does the absolute ground of being have a character sufficiently
determinate as to determine which signs within human discourse can or cannot bear the divine? In
some sense such as this can God be characterized as active in the direction of human affairs? Or, is
the real situation somewhat vaguer than this? Is the absolute ground of being rather so
indeterminate as to be indifferent to any and all symbolizations? Then, is true revelation really and
fully a matter of human wisdom, applied to the task of sorting through the wild abundance of our
own cultural production for what might fit the present time?
These are daunting questions. I cannot settle on a final answer to them here, although as my
discussion to this point indicates, I incline toward a relatively strong vagueness claim regarding
divine character considered in itself. However, I have sought to balance this by an emphasis upon
the neglected normative functions of the wisdom of the poor, especially the ultimately
transformative effects attested in wisdom traditions across cultures, and profoundly explored in
Christian language of deification or theosis.
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950 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
CONCLUSION
Never will everyone's experience be uniformly informed by late
modern cultural dynamics, so an account laying down universal truth
conditions pertaining to God's preferential option for the poor is
impossible. Yet those dynamics do contribute to a general ecology of
being. The point of speaking of an ecology conditioned by late modern
cultural forces is to highlight that people interact with those forces. The
conditions of human existence are not mere data; we receive them
actively in order to symbolize places and ways of being for ourselves,
including for ourselves before the divine. Thus, the plausibility of an
ontological hypothesis like God's preferential option for the poor is not
determined only by what is given to us, but also by ways in which we
are ready to take it. The pursuit of metaphysics, then, is a vital part of
creating the future of liberation theology. Metaphysics holds us respon
sible to our experience, and enhances our capacity to take responsibility
for experience. The reflective ambience of metaphysical inquiry fosters
a latitude within which to explore what neglected possibilities given
constraints may hold within themselves. Working out rather more
detailed and systematic accounts of the experience of God's option for
the poor as metaphysically credible, spiritually transformative, symbolic
engagement with the absolute is the task to which this conclusion
points.
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Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 951
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