I have found this paper refreshing, learned, stimulating, clear and warm-hearted. The throbbing pulse of Latin American reality can be felt practically in each sentence. It is thus quite different from the majority of theological papers that I have had to read lately.
I find myself in basic sympathy with the urgency of the Latin American quest for freedom and self-affirmation. The situation in this continent is clearly one that makes political and economic liberation a first priority.
I wish my learned and esteemed friend Miguez Bonino were here to answer some questions I have concerning the method he has used for his theological paper. I see that the focus is on "perspective" rather than on the word "theological". This paper cannot be treated as if it were a treatise in systematic theology. It seeks only a front-door key to open the house of theology in Latin America today - a hermeneutic key to relate Latin American reality to the history of post-Kantian western theology. And therefore the question is:- "What is the reality which is the subject of theology.“ It is not God understood in a transcendent sense, but rather God as He manifests Himself in contemporary Latin American reality, which constitutes the subject matter of such a theology.
Thus stated, it implies a certain view of Revelation or of God's action, it seems to me. Debates in the past have usually centred around natural versus special revelation. In Neo-Orthodox theology the issue had been temporarily settled by Barth's patriarchal veto on natural revelation. Now, it seems to me that the doctrine of natural revelation is coming beck in a new form, which I may call "social revelation" or "Revelation of God through His acts in contemporary political and socio-economic reality".
I am basically in sympathy with such a view, since I myself regard the sum-total of the created order,(both time and space) as a manifestation of God's act or energy, which is capable of showing forth the will of God. But I have three questions that I would have liked to put to my friend Miguez-Bonino:
a) Is God's self-revelation in contemporary regional or continental history the only relevant revelation of God to a particular people in a particular place? Are we not in danger of fundamentally misunderstanding the revelation of God, when we take only one aspect of it in near-isolation, without taking into account all the other forms in which God has manifested Himself, particularly in Jesus Christ? I have a feeling that the paper is tempted to absolutize, though only for the time being, one aspect of God's self-revelation
in history.
b) How do we appropriate this revelation of God anyway? Normally, theologians have held that faith is the means by which God's self-revelation is apprehended. I myself would not formulate the matter that way. But I have some difficulty with what Miguez-Bonino says about the means of appropriation of God's self-revelation. To me he seems to be saying that the method to be used is ecological analysis, especially in Marxian conflictive (as opposed to evolutionary or developmental) terms. When appropriated, this revelation creates a coherent set of action-oriented ideas, an ideology which provides the basis for a special praxiology, a programme of action to transform reality through struggle.
I do believe that our human reason is a fairly useful instrument for the analysis and apprehension of reality, whether physical or social. The social analysis of reality is thus an activity of the human mind, a legitimate activity made possible by God. But is it an adequate guide and criterion for the apprehension of God's self-revelation? What difference would there be for example in the analysis of a non-Christian sociologist, and that of a Christian with sociological tools? Are there any other criteria that operate in the Christian's understanding of and response to reality, than those provided by sociological analysis? I wish my friend were here to answer that question for me,
c. My third question relates to the nature of the theological enterprise itself. Miguez-Bonino's language and style give one the impression that he is trying to do scientific theology. Is he using basically the same methodology as the empirical sciences for theology? Does he have a theory of truth and of epistemology behind his paper? I do think that my friend is too intelligent to claim any empirico-scientific basis for his theology, as for example the Marxists would claim. What is he trying to do when he is doing theology? Is his theology meant purely as a link between the Bible in which he professes faith, and the ideology which he has elsewhere acquired and now seeks to relate to Christian thought? Does the theological ideology that results from the enterprise have a geographical limitation, e.g. "for Latin American use only"?
I would like now to mention a few points on which I basically disagree with Dr. Miguez-Bonino:
First, I do not think that a concrete political commitment, delimited historically is the "primordial locus theologicus" from which to begin and in which to articulate theological reflection. This word primordial is certainly a misuse here. Christ and the Apostles certainly did not start from a concrete political commitment. Neither did they begin their teaching always with a socio-political analysis of the state of enslavement in which the Jews and many gentiles were. No, I do not agree that a concrete political commitment is always the starting point for theological reflection.
Secondly, I cannot agree with miguez-Bonino's statement that “for modern man such a (transcendent) kingdom no longer matters, or at least it no longer matters in any sense which permits the Christian theologian to use it as his primary point of reference." I find many modern intellectuals, including Marxists, passionately interested in the Christian's claim to have a relation to a transcendent God. This I say from direct personal experience with some thinkers whom even my friend Miguez Bonino would regard as "modern men", though I still have very little idea that this mythical animal called "modern man“ looks like. I do not think, however, that this modern man's interest is in a verbal formulation of the idea of transcendence, but in the reality of transcendence which escapes the group grasp of tho conceptual and the verbal, and is experienced primarily in worship.
The experience of worship may have gone dead for many Christians, including theologians and bishops, but that is no reason for denying the possibility of addressing the transcendent God in worship. Know that my friend Miguez-Bonino retains this capacity, and it will be a pity m if his words are misconstrued to deny the possibility of addressing the transcendent, or even of making that the starting point of theology.
In conclusion, I want to express again my deep appreciation for the human qualities of the paper, for its warmth and sincerity. I want to make clear that the two main concerns of my friend, which he learns undeveloped, "liberation" and "new man" are traditional Biblical notions, which have a rich plethora of meaning which we cannot exhaust by socio-political analysis.
We all need to re-interpret these concepts in the light of our own situation, but do we need to call that enterprise "theology"? Is it not more Christian anthropology? And such a new anthropology is bound to have definite local colourations in different situations, whether in Latin America, Africa, India or China. Today I find that only China has resolutely come to grips with the notion of "New Man" and is still heroically struggling to give birth to the new Man through intense discipline and strong determination. But Chinese ideology makes no allowance for possibility of addressing God in worship. I do hope that Latin American Christian "theology" will be able to adopt some of the positive elements of the praxiology of “liberation" and "the new man" as worked out in China on a grand scale, but also go beyond both Cuba and China to find a praxiology that does not impoverish Latin American man by a pseudo-secular ideology which claims to be Christian.