The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology

Daniel G. Groody, Daniel G. Groody

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780268080815
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Since the publication of Gustavo Gutiérrez's 1973 groundbreaking work, A Theology of Liberation, much has been written on liberation theology and its central premise of the preferential option for the poor. Arguably, this has been one of the most important yet controversial theological themes of the twentieth century. As globalization creates greater gaps between the rich and the poor, and as the situation for many of the world's poor worsens, there is an ever greater need to understand the gift and challenge of Christian faith from the context of the poor and marginalized of our society. This volume draws on the thought of leading international scholars and explores how the Christian tradition can help us understand the theological foundations for the option for the poor. The central focus of the book revolves around the question, How can one live a Christian life in a world of destitution? The contributors are concerned not only with a social, economic, or political understanding of poverty but above all with the option for the poor as a theological concept.

While these essays are rooted in a solid grounding of our present "reality, " they look to the past to understand some of the central truths of Christian faith and to the future as a source of Christian hope. Following Gustavo Gutiérrez's essay on the multidimensionality of poverty, Elsa Tamez, Hugh Page, Jr., Brian Daley, and Jon Sobrino identify a central theological premise: poverty is contrary to the will of God. Drawing on scripture, the writings of the early fathers, the witness of Christian martyrs, and contemporary theological reflection, they argue that poverty represents the greatest challenge to Christian faith and discipleship. David Tracy and J. Matthew Ashley carry their reflection forward by examining the option for the poor in light of apocalyptic thought. Virgilio Elizondo, Patrick Kalilombe, María Pilar Aquino, M. Shawn Copeland, and Mary Catherine Hilkert examine the challenges of poverty with respect to culture, Africa, race, and gender. Casiano Floristán and Luis Maldonado explore the relationship between poverty, sacramentality, and popular religiosity. The final two essays by Aloysius Pieris and Michael Signer consider the option for the poor in relationship to other major world religions, particularly an Asian theology of religions and the meaning of care for the poor within Judaism.

Part One

THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL REALITY OF POVERTY

Chapter 1

MEMORY AND PROPHECY

GUSTAVO GUTIÉRREZ

On the eve of the Second Vatican Council, September 1962, John XXIII would suggest an innovative pastoral and theological perspective when he spoke of the church of the poor. “Before the underdeveloped countries,” he said in an oft-cited text, “the church is, and wants to be, the church of all people and especially the church of the poor.” If this proposition had few immediate repercussions, the intuition behind it did have an impact in the following years.

It expressed a sensibility to the new questions humanity was asking itself and a willingness to listen to what God is telling us throughout history. That is, it suggested a reading of the “signs of the times,” an invitation to adopt a view that was perceptive, critical, and at the same time hopeful, sensitive to the positive elements of the historical moment—regardless of how difficult that moment might seem—but also alert to the dark clouds on the horizon.

It is significant that at the fortieth anniversary of the pope’s statement and of the opening of the council we find ourselves reflecting theologically on the paths that were opened on that occasion and through which the Christian community in Latin America’s life and understanding of faith took shape. The perspective that John XXIII articulated manifests itself in the prioritized commitment to the least of society, which is formulated as the preferential option for the poor.

In the summer of 1967, I was welcomed to the University of Notre Dame by Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., and other friends, and I began work on the biblical significance of poverty and of the poor. In July of 1968 I taught a class at the University of Montreal and began writing on what we would later call the theology of liberation.

The expression preferential option for the poor was constructed piece by piece, starting from the experience of many people who belonged to many different Christian communities, as well as lay movements, in solidarity with the poor around the years when the episcopal conference at Medellín took place. The focus was later picked up by the Puebla conference, giving the phrase the recognition we know currently in many different areas of the Christian churches and indeed outside them as well.

The preferential option for the poor is not merely a phrase. It is a style of life that has inspired much commitment on three diverse but interrelated levels: the pastoral level, perhaps the most visible; the theological level, as a point of view for doing theology; and, as the basis of all this, the spiritual level, pertaining to the following of Jesus.

In this chapter, I emphasize the second of these levels, namely how the option for the poor relates to theological reflection. However, the option for the poor has a theological dimension because it is situated between the proclamation of the Gospel and the secuela Christi, or spirituality. What I find interesting is the theological challenge that comes from the situation of the poor, as well as the place and scope of the option within the theological task. Thus I am not merely mentioning one aspect of this option but rather going to the heart of it: it is a theocentric option, centered on the gratuitousness of God’s love. Because God’s love is universal, nothing and no one lies outside it; at the same time, God gives priority attention to the insignificant and the oppressed. The term preference in the phrase preferential option for the poor recalls both dimensions of God’s love: universality and preference. By going to the root of these concepts we can understand the meaning of the option for the poor.

The preferential option for the poor was manifested with precision and beauty by a person who knew how to be in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of the lands that are today known as the Americas. I am referring to the Dominican missionary Bartolomé de las Casas, who in the sixteenth century said of the foundation of his defense of Indians’ rights (and later of the rights of Africans, who were violently incorporated into the history of this continent): “God has a very vivid and recent memory of the smallest and the most forgotten.”¹

This text shall inspire three reflections. First we will consider the memory of God as the foundation of the option for the poor. We will then ask who the poor are and how we understand poverty. We will conclude with some perspectives on the tasks that lie ahead of us.

THE MEMORY OF GOD

The understanding of faith begins, historically speaking, from the location of the human person and the location in which believers profess their faith. From there they reflect, inspired by the memory of God, which is a “central concept in the biblical understanding of God.”² Their own memory of the initiative of God’s love is always present. This is the framework for the faith life of the follower of Jesus, which is also that of a “faith seeking understanding.”

The Present of Our Past

In the Bible, memory is not principally, or exclusively, related to the past; its primary link is with a present that projects into the future. The past is there, but to give depth and fullness to the present moment of the believer. To phrase it another way, precisely and briefly, as Augustine did: “Memory is the present of the past.”³ If it evokes a previous event, it is because of the relevance of that event to the present. In both the First (Old) and Second (New) Testaments, expressions abound that say that God is at work in the world today and that consequently God’s followers must make decisions in the present moment. Memory in the Bible goes beyond the conceptual; it points toward a conduct, a practice designed to transform reality. To remember is to have in mind, or care for, someone or something. One remembers in order to act. Without this, memory lacks meaning; it is limited to being a kind of intellectual gymnastics.

This is a memory that grasps time, subverts whatever cynicism and indifference have accumulated there over the years regarding the least ones of history, and converts it into a permanent, exigent, and creative present of the way to God, of commitment to the poor and struggle for the construction of a just and friendly world. This view presupposes a particular sensitivity to the time in which our lives take place and in which the reign of God begins to unfold, the coming of which we request in the fundamental Christian prayer.

Time acquires, in this way, an urgent, salvific, and human density. Far from being an abstract category, or from being limited to a tiresome chronological succession, time becomes, thanks to memory, a space where we encounter the face of Jesus, the Son of God made flesh, and a space for encounter with others. In time are rooted two liberties, God’s free self-revelation in the gratuitousness of love and the human freedom to accept this gift; the first calls forth and constitutes the second.

The present of the past takes us back to the importance that the Bible gives to the present moment. The present is about the here and now of the salvific presence of God, which biblical texts like Deuteronomy insist upon—“The Lord has concluded this alliance with us here today” (Deut. 5:3)—as well as Luke’s Gospel: “This scripture is fulfilled today” (Luke 4:21). Historical events constitute a challenge to commitment and reflection. It is necessary to live the moment with force and creativity. In our age, we find ourselves before uncertain and particularly challenging signs. They invite us to a discernment that will allow us to get to the essential without getting wrapped up in what is secondary or tangential, the trees that hide the forest. They call us to situate ourselves before the future, starting from the present.

For these and other reasons, biblical studies insist on the difference between history and memory.⁴ The connections are clear but subtle; memory is not history, if we understand history as a simple narrative of past events, and memory is more than an actualization of what happened. It is a present that has its fount in the always active and ever-faithful love of God. This is a key to comprehension that makes “of history a theophany,”⁵ a revelation of the God who calls us to life and rejects any form of unjust death. It places us, at all times, before the alternative that we find in Deuteronomy, a book that brings with it a rich theology of memory: “See, today I put before you life and good, evil and death … blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:15, 19).⁶

The God of the Bible is a God who remembers, a God who does not forget the covenant established with his people. A number of texts in Scripture allude to this. For example, “God remembers his covenant, his given word, for a thousand generations,” says Psalm 105:8–9 at the beginning of a listing of all God has done for Israel in the past, the reason for giving thanks today and always. We are here before an evocation that is permeated with tenderness, despite the fact that many times the people turn away from the received precepts (see Ps. 106:45, the twin of Ps. 105).⁷ Human beings’ love for God has its roots in divine liberty and gratitude and not in the behavior of those God loves: “He has remembered his loyalty and fidelity to the house of Israel” (Ps. 98:3). It is, in effect, about the loyalty and fidelity of God.

Loyalty (Hebrew: emunah, firmness) gives meaning and strength to the established covenant. This is what makes God trustworthy, demanding and at the same time willing to forgive. Although it seems paradoxical, God forgets the people’s faults because he is a God who remembers: he remembers the promise of love and the covenant (see Wisd. 11:23–24). Indeed, the prayer of the believer is frequently directed to this divine memory: “Remember, Yahweh, that your compassion and loyalty are eternal” (Ps. 25:6, see also Ps. 74:2; 89:51, 119:49). God’s mercy and capacity for love go beyond even the Jewish people; this is what Jonah learns, though at great personal cost, according to the short text, one of the jewels of the First Testament, that tells us his story. Sent to Nineveh to announce the punishment that its conduct deserves, Jonah seeks to shirk his assignment out of fear that the warning will give the inhabitants, who have humiliated and oppressed his own people, the chance to repent and that Yahweh will then forgive them. In the end, however, Jonah is compelled to deliver the message that results in the city’s being spared.

Making God’s Memory Our Own

In the First Testament, whenever a pact was made, two wills were represented. Because of this, in the Bible, God’s memory fosters the memory of the people who believe in him. Deuteronomy is a clear witness to this connection between God’s memory and the behavior of the believer.⁸ The giving of the law and the norms of conduct begins with “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that Yahweh your God led you out of there” and similar phrases (Deut. 5:15, 15:15, 16:12). The liberating act of Yahweh provides the meaning and the model for social life within Israel but also toward the stranger and the immigrant (Deut. 24:18).⁹ The way God treats his people is the paradigm for how those who believe in Yahweh should act.

In the Second Testament, we find the same perspective. “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34) is the new commandment of Jesus to his disciples and in them to us. The free and gratuitous love of God, the heart of biblical revelation, is the model of action for the believer. It is the most important content of the memory that indicates the path for the community of Jesus’s disciples, whose commitment is, precisely, to be a sign of that love in history.

Care for the poor is expressed, therefore, in a central theme of the Bible: Jubilee. In a very concrete way, the celebration of the Jubilee gives norms for the social relations of those who recognize Yahweh as their God. These norms of justice and rights are expressed in a primary way by solidarity with and care for the most vulnerable. The Jubilee takes place in history as an event that points constantly toward the return of society to its roots and to faithfulness to God’s will for life: a society of equals in which justice and rights are established. Believers do not place themselves in a dark corner of human history to watch it go by; they are present in it, not spectators but participants in the historical process.

Therefore, the Bible invites us to make God’s memory our own. One of the essential components of this memory is the priority of the oppressed and forgotten ones. Let us take a particularly meaningful text, one that is alluded to in the Gospels, as an example: Deuteronomy 15:1–11.

The fundamental assertion is “There should be no poor among you” (Deut. 15:4). The goal toward which Israel should be directed in its practice of Yahweh’s precepts appears with total clarity. It is a rejection, without concessions, of poverty—not only as an economic condition but as a global condition of insignificance and of premature and unjust death. To overcome poverty, to propose to oneself the construction of a society without poverty, is to recognize, in practice, the gift of life that comes from God. Thus this is a matter of great complexity, for in it lies the reason for being the people of God.

To this statement the text, in a more realist mode, adds conditionally: “If there are poor among your siblings … do not harden your heart or close your hand to your poor sibling, but open your hand and lend what he needs to remedy his poverty” (Deut. 15:7–8). The obstacles to reaching what is proposed do not negate the imperative of giving primary attention to persons in need; even less can they be the motive for a cynical desire to leave things as they are. On the contrary, proper conduct is dictated, precisely and exigently, by the proposed goal: to open one’s hand to the sibling in need in the effort to forge a nation without poverty.¹⁰

One cannot deny the persistence of poverty in human history. Thus the text goes one step further and a few verses later affirms what was previously expressed conditionally: “The poor will always be with you” (Deut. 15:11).¹¹ This statement does not invalidate the search for a society without poverty; rather, it provides an additional reason to reiterate the attitude we have already seen: “Open your hand to your sibling, to the poor, the destitute in your land” (Deut. 15:11).¹² The ideal, what we should strive for, is that there be no poor; if there must be some, the conduct of the believer should be that of opening one’s heart and one’s hand to the poor.

“In Memory of Me”

At the beginning of the church an important encounter took place in Jerusalem among those largely responsible for the proclamation of the Gospel. It was resolved that a kind of division of labor would be undertaken: some would continue to proclaim the Gospel to the Jewish world where it arose, and others would take the good news to the Gentile world. It was not easy, as Paul testified, to see the universal character of the message of Jesus. At the end of this meeting, the pillars of the church at Jerusalem, James, Peter, and John, recognized the meaning of Paul’s work. As they accepted his task they told him, and the others, that they should “remember the poor.”¹³ This was a point on which they all agreed, as various texts of that epoch attest (the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles of James and Paul). Paul claims simply and firmly, “It is something we have tried to do with all our effort” (Gal. 2:1–10). The recognition of this dimension of the church’s mission happened early on; the meeting at Jerusalem is believed to have occurred circa AD 40 or 50, and the epistle to the Galatians was composed soon after that.

The text has frequently been interpreted as a direct—almost unique—reference to the help offered to the Christian community in Jerusalem. Some indications point in that direction. For example, in many places the texts speak of Paul’s preoccupation with the organization of a collection to benefit the mother church (see Rom. 15:25–29; 1 Cor. 16:1–4; 2 Cor. 8:1–15; 9; Heb. 11:29–30). It would be tangential to analyze these texts here.¹⁴ In them one can perceive a connection between the realization of the collection and what is affirmed in Galatians. But even the passage that asserts this ...