The Poor in Liberation Theology

Pathway to God or Ideological Construct?

Tim Noble

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781845539894
• eBook ISBN: 9781317543718
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Liberation theology has, since its beginnings over forty years ago, placed the poor at the heart of theology and revealed the ideologies underlying both society and church. Meanwhile, over this period, the progressive church appears to have stagnated and the poor of Latin America have turned increasingly to neo-Pentecostalism. 'The Poor in Liberation Theology' questions whether the effect of liberation theology is to provide a pathway to God or really to construct idols out of the poor. Combining the conceptual language of the philosophers Jean-Luc Marion and Emmanuel Levinas with the methodology of the liberation theologian Clodovis Boff, the volume outlines how liberation theology can work to ensure the poor do not become an ideological construct but remain icons of God. Drawing on a wealth of material from Latin American and Europe, the book demonstrates the continuing validity and importance of liberation theology and its further potential when engaged with contemporary philosophy.

1 In search of the poor in liberation theology

Introduction

Why have liberation theologians found it so hard to define those whom they see as subjects of history and of theology? In this chapter I investigate what liberation theologians mean when they refer to the poor, by engaging with what some of its major representatives have to say on the topic.¹

In a dialogue organized between liberation theologians and the French cultural anthropologist and literary critic René Girard, Leonardo Boff offered the following assessment of liberation theology: “I think that the theology of liberation, on its strictly theological level, has two fundamental categories: the category poor, oppressed (and along with that, God of the poor, God of Life, etc.), and the category Kingdom of God.”² Although the two categories are closely related, I will concentrate on the category poor.³ My aim in this chapter is to provide at least an overview of the different ways in which liberation theologians have understood the poor, in as far as possible using their own words. I have, however, sought to organize the material around a number of headings, which seem to me to encompass the different lines the attempts to portray and represent the poor have taken.

Thus, I begin with a brief summary of liberation theology accounts of the biblical record. This leads to an examination of the idea of God as God of the poor, the poor as icons of Christ, the Church as church of the poor, and finally a consideration of the option for the poor.⁴ I focus on only a few authors or works, representative of the range of opinions without being necessarily exhaustive of every possible nuance. Underlying this examination are two questions which will be pertinent for the remainder of this book, and which are informed by my readings of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion.⁵ The first concerns the ways in which the otherness of the poor is construed; the second focuses on the extent to which the poor are presented as iconic. In other words, my reading of the treatment of the category poor in liberation theology is structured, at least partially, by my aim in this work, to see if and how liberation theology has a methodology which permits it to allow the poor to remain iconic while not becoming idolatrous. This I will do through the perspective afforded by Marion and Levinas. Thus I do not enter deeply into the socio-economic questions concerning the reality of poverty, even though these are foundational for liberation theology’s methodological approach.⁶

Theological approaches to the poor in liberation theology

Liberation theology’s biblical basis

Liberation theology, like all theology, seeks a biblical basis for its affirmations.⁷ Thus, from the beginning, it has sought to find biblical parallels or grounds for its insistence on the primacy of the poor as locus theologicus.⁸ Given that there has been a relatively large amount of scholarship on this, and that it is a fundamental presupposition of liberation theology, I do not intend to address it here in any detail. For that reason, I simply point to some of the works on the theme, to indicate that liberation theology has read the Bible as addressing the poor, or the injustice committed against them. It has been more interested in this as a starting point for justifying theological concern for the poor today, rather than in detailed study of the poor in the worlds of the New and Old Testaments.⁹ It has particularly focused on passages which it sees as requiring systemic change, rather than simply “assistentialism”, though recognizing that such passages are also present.¹⁰ The poor are also seen as those from whom justice is withheld. Thus, anawim or ani are those who are downtrodden or broken, because they are, to use anachronistic language, alienated. As Alvaro Barreiro notes:

The poor person is the defenceless human being, who has no opportunity to assert his or her rights before the justice system, because it is in the hands of the unjust, the violent, the powerful. Therefore that person is a victim of humiliation, abuse, and all kinds of injustice.¹¹

In a setting where life is understood in terms of social inclusion or exclusion, the social dimension of poverty is stressed even more than its economic or political facets.

In the New Testament, liberation theology – both biblical scholars and systematic theologians – refers most frequently to the synoptic gospels.¹² Jon Sobrino, arguably the leading writer on Christology in Latin America, insists on a reading of the gospel narratives within a hermeneutical circle which begins from the standpoint of the poor.¹³ Thus the life, death and resurrection¹⁴ of Jesus are viewed as having something transformative to say to and about the poor. Sobrino does this through his focus on the ministry of Jesus as proclaimer of the Kingdom, a proclamation which is good news for the poor, and in his reflection on the death of Jesus on the cross in solidarity with the crucified people.¹⁵

As an example, we can look at the Good Samaritan.¹⁶ The way Jesus rephrases the lawyer’s question in this parable – “Who is my neighbour?” (verse 29) becomes “Which of the three … proved himself neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?” (verse 36) – is suggestive of Levinas’s claims concerning the priority of the other. That is to say, it is my neighbour who chooses me, and the parable asks, then, in essence, which of the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan responds to that choosing, which of them allows himself to confront the face of the other with all the concomitant demands.

It may thus be instructive to look briefly at some responses to this parable from Sobrino and Gustavo Gutiérrez.¹⁷ Gutiérrez looks at the parable on several occasions, beginning with A Theology of Liberation. In a section on Christ as neighbour, dealing primarily with the story of the last judgement in Matthew,¹⁸ Gutiérrez notes that it was “the Samaritan who approached the wounded man and made him his neighbour. The neighbour … is not the one whom I find in my path, but rather the one in whose path I place myself, the one whom I approach and actively seek.”¹⁹ Here the onus is clearly on the Samaritan as the one who actively seeks out his neighbour.

In a later collection of essays Gutiérrez returns to this theme twice in brief remarks. On the first occasion, there is already some movement away from the previous position. He notes that the poor are pre-eminently our neighbours, because they are dehumanized: “Their ‘distance’ from the present socioeconomic order and the dominant culture makes the poor, the other, our neighbour before anyone else, as we have been taught from the outset of liberation theology by the parable of the Good Samaritan.”²⁰ Thus already the poor are beginning to move from victimhood, existing primarily for the Samaritan to demonstrate his neighbourliness, to those who demand to be “enneighboured”, to have us respond to them as neighbours.

In the second essay, there is an even clearer Levinasian tone.²¹ Gutiérrez writes:

The text does not offer us a definition of the category “neighbour” nor a speech on charity or human solidarity. We stand before a simple but compelling comparison that calls us to have the capacity to be moved in the presence of a person who is abused and suffering and to effectively act to help that person.²²

Now the Samaritan – and thus by extension every Christian, every human being – is called on to respond to the one who has claims on us, the other, and above all the other abused and suffering. The progression in thought is not commented on, but it is there – from the poor as victim whom I choose to help to the poor as the one who commands and whom I am called in some way to assist, or even to replace.

For Sobrino, in the first place, Jesus himself lived as a Good Samaritan.²³ Above all else, this means in Sobrino’s view acting out of pity. Thus the primary response to the encounter with the other in his or her suffering is one of pity, albeit a pity that must lead to action: “Jesus’ pity was not just a feeling, but a reaction – and so action – to the suffering of others, motivated by the mere fact that this suffering was in front of him.” Pity is “a basic attitude and practice”.²⁴ This is part of the “ethical indignation”, often seen as central to liberation theology.²⁵ The danger of putting the pity of the observer at the centre of the story, however, is that it emphasizes the power of the Samaritan over the inability of the victim. The former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once famously observed that “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions – he had money as well.”²⁶ Does the exercise of pity depend on the power of the one who pities?

Sobrino perhaps answers this when he observes that the parable of the Good Samaritan “is concerned with how to respond rightly to God”.²⁷ The distinction between, on the one hand, the priest and the Levite, and on the other, the Samaritan, is primarily a religious one, between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. What the story demonstrates is the centrality of orthopraxis as a confirmation of orthodoxy, for what is important “is to do God’s will, which … consists in going forth in support of victims”.²⁸ In other words, at the heart of the Samaritan’s actions is the desire to do God’s will, which enables him to transcend religious and ethnic divides, fear, even common sense. Pace Mrs Thatcher, the parable is not praising his business acumen nor the notion of charitable giving, but rather shows that one’s neighbour is identified, or identifies him- or herself to the extent that we seek, in Sobrino’s words, to correspond “to the reality of God”.²⁹

There is a third treatment by Sobrino of this parable when he looks, within the context of his thinking on the “mercy principle”, at the “Samaritan” church.³⁰ Sobrino first describes what he sees as the point of the parable, the description of the perfect or complete human being.³¹ Such a person is one who “interiorizes in the depths of their being the suffering of the other – in the parable unjustly inflicted punishment – in such a way that it becomes a part of them and the internal, primary and ultimate principle of their acting”.³² This response on an individual level, the reaction which has become so internalized as to become also first action, is something which Sobrino argues should exist on a larger level, namely that of the church. Moreover, the greatest wound to which the church is called to respond is that of poverty, which only a church that is de-centred can manage.³³

The poor today

Definitions of poverty are difficult.³⁴ However, “to make international comparisons, [poverty] is conventionally measured by the proportion of people with incomes (on a household basis adjusted for family size) which are less than half the country’s median income.”³⁵ Even this, however, does no more than offer a rough and ready guide for comparing levels of poverty between countries. It does not, for example, reflect on the adequacy of the median income of a country for meeting basic needs, nor does it entirely eliminate problems created by the inequality of wealth distribution. Liberation theology’s picture of the poor is normally rather impressionistic³⁶ than strictly economic or social.³⁷

Thus the understanding of the poor is in effect a secondary activity, a reflection on a pastoral practice.³⁸ That is to say, there is no pre-determined concept of poverty which is applied to a particular situation, so all attempts at categorization are to that extent post hoc. Thus poverty is to be condemned, and to be seen as the result of unjust and deliberate structures and policies, while the poor, those who are affected by this poverty, are the people of God. Leonardo Boff claims that to speak of the church as the people of God “means the Church of the poor, understanding poor in its direct, empirical sense”.³⁹

As with his reading of the Good Samaritan, Gutiérrez has developed in terms of his reflection on who the poor are. He himself acknowledges this in his introduction to the revised version of Theology of Liberation. He writes:

The increasingly numerous commitments being made to the poor have given us a better understanding of how complex their world is. For myself, this has been the most important (and even crushing) experience of these past years. The world of the poor is a universe in which the socio-economic aspect is basic but not all-inclusive. In the final analysis, poverty means death. … At the same time, it is important to realize that being poor is a way of living, thinking, loving, praying, believing, and hoping, spending leisure time, and struggling for a livelihood.⁴⁰

The poor are often already broken down into different groups in his writings – exploited classes, despised ethnic groups, marginalized cultures. The p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. In search of the poor in liberation theology
• 2. Constructing and deconstructing idols
• 3. The other as icon or idol
• 4. Clodovis Boff: keeping the dialectical tension
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index