Geffrey B. Kelly and Matthew D. Kirkpatrick
Liberation theology is one of the most important and provocative theological developments of the last century. Although it was largely forged in Latin America in distinction from the theologies of Western Europe and North America, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is often cited as a significant inspiration. Julio de Santa Ana and Beatriz Melano, Methodist theologians from Uruguay and Brazil respectively, offer moving first-hand testimony of Bonhoefferâs impact on the development of Protestant liberation theology from its beginnings in the early 1950sâtwenty years before Gustavo GutiĂ©rrezâs seminal work, A Theology of Liberation, brought a systematic overview to the attention of the West. Melano argues that it was Bonhoeffer who gave the ISLA and Christian student movements the language and hermeneutical framework on which to base their discussions. Santa Ana agrees, stating that âthe Protestant contribution to [liberation theology] cannot be explained without his influence.â Indeed, âNo other Western theologian influenced these discussions as deeply as Bonhoeffer.â However, for Santa Ana, Bonhoeffer should not be considered a âforerunnerâ to liberation theology as his influence was âmaieuticââit was not necessarily his conclusions, but rather his questioning and way of framing the issues that helped clarify the theological landscape and present the ages old problems in a new light.
Santa Anaâs article is written somewhat in contrast to Catholic liberation theology. He argues that where Bonhoeffer was foundational to Protestant liberation thought from its beginning there are few traces of Bonhoeffer in its Catholic counterpartâat least up until 1976, when his article was written. Although these statements are too bold, Santa Anaâs article highlights that Bonhoeffer was received differently and at different times by Protestant and Catholic theologians and, perhaps, that he came far later to the more well-known Catholic circle. While the question of whether Bonhoeffer himself can be classed as a liberation theologian will be considered at the end, this essay will argue that, even though perhaps coming far later, Bonhoefferâs influence on Catholic liberation theology was far more pervasive and substantial than his âmaieuticâ effect on Protestant thought. To this end we will focus attention on the thought of Gustavo GutiĂ©rrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jon Sobrino, and consider four of the central concerns of liberation theology: (1) solidarity with the oppressed, (2) the âsuffering God,â (3) a radical hermeneutic shift and, (4) the demand that the church live up to its promise to be Christ to the world. As will be seen, all of these coalesce in the kind of Christian community Bonhoeffer wanted to see become the vortex for a renewed Christianity in the postwar era.
Solidarity with the Oppressed
Those who have looked to Bonhoeffer for inspiration in dedicating their lives to liberate oppressed peoples often cite that dramatic commentary from Christmas, 1942, addressed to Bonhoefferâs family and fellow conspirators, entitled âAfter 10 Years.â In words that reflect the history of Nazi malevolence and Christian compassion that had animated his own decision to join the anti-Hitler conspiracy, Bonhoeffer tells of their need to view the happenings of history, not so much from their commanding position, but with the eyes of the victims.
It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.
This view has endeared Bonhoeffer to those whose ministry lay in helping the downtrodden of Third World countries. GutiĂ©rrez himself uses Bonhoefferâs words repeatedly as a way of illustrating to Western theology the heart of a theology of liberation. His own call of doing theology âfrom the underside of historyâ echoes this sentiment of the view âfrom below.â
Although this perspective appears in Bonhoefferâs influential prison theology, we find its seeds far earlier. In 1927, at the time of writing his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer had not yet seen the profound suffering caused by the Nazi regime or the Second World War. However, he reveals even here a firm concern for the downtrodden of society. In a section entitled âChurch and Proletariat,â Bonhoeffer describes the German church as a bourgeois institution that has failed to take seriously the growing identity and needs of the proletariat. It had become to them simply âthe stultifying institution that sanctions the capitalist system,â as he would describe it in his âLectures on Christologyâ a few years later. Reflecting something of Kierkegaardâs passionate derision of the church, Bonhoeffer offers a stinging attack on how the church excludes the masses by its irrelevant sermons and appeals to a secure, comfortable, educated, and morally stable form of life. Revealing a clear resonance with his preface to Discipleship, Bonhoeffer argues that the gospel message must be set free to speak to all people where they are, rather than conformed to the requirements of this church or that preacher. The church must not simply find a way to enfold the proletariat into itself, but must rather be transformed by this âinfusion of new blood.â He admits that he does not know what the church will ultimately look like, nor what words could be proclaimed to transform it. This, he argues, must rather remain the responsibility of the Deus absconditus, the hidden God, who will âspeak here a divine word that is unknown to us.â These words bear marked similarity to the convictions of Bonhoefferâs prison theology that, following their betrayal of the oppressed and suffering, the churches must gain a new form and language with which to speak to a new peopleâboth of which remained unknown.
Bonhoeffer is by no means uncritical of socialist ideology. He rejects both the bourgeoisie and proletariat as having abstract, unchristian foundations. However, he recognized that it was perhaps the socialist proletariat that mirrored far better the notion of true Christian community than the âvoluntary associationâ of the bourgeois church. Although Bonhoefferâs experiences were very different by the time he was writing from prison, we already find here something of the importance of the âview from belowâ that defines his later work and proved so influential to liberation theology. Even in its earliest expressions, Bonhoefferâs ecclesiology is not founded on a charitable paternalism that seeks to absorb the weak or oppressed into the church, but rather affirms and encourages their voice to transform the church, and for them to be recognized as Christ to others. As he would preach from a London pulpit a few years later, there can be little more dangerous to Christianity than the âaristocratic attitudeâ of benevolence and beneficence towards the oppressed. Rather, it is the strong who must submit in reverence towards the weak.
A few months after completing Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer took up an âinternship in ministryâ in Barcelona. Although he had grown up in the aftermath of the First World War, Bonhoeffer appears to have been particularly affected by the poverty he saw around him. In an Advent sermon, he reminded his parishioners that the face of Jesus Christ was theirs to behold in the faces of the grubby poor. They faced, he said,
the terrifying reality, Jesus is at the door, knocking, in reality, asking you for help in the figure of the beggar, in the figure of the degenerate soul in shabby clothes, encountering you in every person you meet, Christ walks the earth as long as there are people, as your neighbor, as the person whom God summons you, addresses you, make claims on you.
These were the people, he reminded them, who were the ig...
