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Hope and Solidarity: Jon Sobrino’s Challenge to Christian Theology

2009; Duke University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2009-075

1527-1900

Douglass Sullivan-González,

Religious and Theological Studies

This collection of essays answers a charge: did Father Jon Sobrino’s books Jesucristo liberador: Lectura históricoteológica de Jesú de Nazaret and La fe en Jesucristo: Ensayo desde las víctimas, contain “certain imprecisions,” “errors,” and “notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church” (p. 255)? Latin American historians, social scientists, theologians, lay people of the faith, and those who just enjoy a good argument are going to relish this edited tome, a collection of “answers” to the charges set forth by the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Steven J. Pope has led an exceptional group of committed theologians and social ethicists to respond to the “significant questions” raised by the CDF, “to take seriously both the concerns of the [CDF] and the theological insight offer by Sobrino to the church” (pp. xi – xii). This book is a living response within the faith designed to challenge and cajole the catholic (read universal) church into engaging theology from within the struggles and vicissitudes of life in Latin America. It is part of a grassroots response to the CDF’s queries.Those of us who became Latin Americanists in the 1980s cringe at any charge by the CDF: Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Gutiérrez, two notable Latin American clerics and theologians at the time, suffered direct engagements by the church’s disciplinarian board. Though Gutiérrez survived his charge, Boff suffered an imposed censure of one year and maintained the ranks until further conflict with church officials convinced him to withdraw from the priesthood. The historical context for this challenge is extraordinary. The former head of the CDF during the 1980s is now the current Pope of the Church, Benedict XVI (aka Father Joseph Ratzinger). Father Jon Sobrino received the notification of the CDF challenge on November 26, 2006, ten days and 17 years after the horrendous assassinations of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the Universidad Centro América in San Salvador. (Talk about political and ecclesiastical “tone deafness”!) Yet, the CDF’s challenge does us all a favor: it asks those of us who thrive spiritually and historically on the writings, the life, and commitment of Sobrino to reexamine his works with discipline and renewed commitment.The CDF’s theological interrogatives and hesitations form the framework of the book. The CDF challenged Sobrino’s methodological presuppositions, his Christology, his ecclesiology, and his soteriology (the understanding of the salvific value of Jesus’s Death). Thus, 18 authors drawn from a list of “Who’s Who” in the Americas, both young and seasoned theologians and ethicists, pen their responses in very careful and deliberate ways. Several of the essays engage the CDF’s insights directly and make for fascinating reading to those of us who struggle with theological concepts. Some of the authors prefer a more distant approach, examining Sobrino’s work and forcing the reader “to connect the dots” with the CDF’s disagreements.Take for example the article by the Jesuit padre Jorge Costadoat, who currently directs the Centro Teológico Manuel Larraín and teaches at the Catholic University of Chile. With very fresh prose, Costadoat thumps both the CDF and Sobrino for their weak theological arguments. The padre writes that the CDF criticisms “are notable because they either do not apply to [Sobrino’s] case or they reveal the theological weakness of the Congregation’s expert who composed them” (p. 127). Though he notes that his criticism “accepts the main thrust of Sobrino’s work,” he charges that Sobrino “is guilty of some methodological simplifications” (p. 128). He cites Sobrino’s identification of historical victims with the Body of Christ as “problematic” since it conflates both the church and the peoples of the Third World into a conceptually confused corpus.Dean Brackley, professor of theology at the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador, challenges the CDF’s criticisms of Sobrino’s methodology in a more subtle, penetrating way. Citing Juan Luis Segundo’s challenge to theologians who “do theology principally by deduction from authoritative texts,” Brackley retold the parable of the Pharisees’ disagreement with Jesus over healing the withered hand on the Sabbath. Segundo, wrote Brackley, asserted that the “Pharisee’s starting point is the Torah,” and Jesus begins with the man’s crippled hand. That is the appropriate starting point, for the “Sabbath exists for people like this man, and not vice versa. Starting from elsewhere, the Pharisees fail to grasp what the Torah, and God, requires” (p. 12). He who has eyes to read, let him read!The edited volume contains the CDF’s notification as two appendixes. Holding the CDF’s charges in one hand and reading the essays in the volume makes for a fascinating read. In many ways, this edited volume will serve as a primary text for those who look back in time to discover the struggles to live the faith in contemporary Latin America.