Liberation Theology PDF

Liberation Theology in Late Modernity: An Argument for a Symbolic Approach
Author(s): Andrew B. Irvine

Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 78, No. 4 (DECEMBER 2010),
pp. 921-960
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Liberation Theology in Late
Modernity: An Argument
for a Symbolic Approach
Andrew B. Irvine*
Over the past twenty years, many Latin American liberation theolo
gians concede a loss of initiative in shaping their societies. While
insisting that God acts in history on the basis of a "preferential option
for the poor," they admit it has made little practical difference. I attri
bute this loss to a lack of fit between the apparently empirical prop
osition that God is a being who has and acts upon personal
preferences and the "cultural physics," so to speak, of late modern
social change. I detail this view in terms of three cultural dynamics of
modernization: historical consciousness, evolutionary explanation, and
inter-religious contact. Liberation theologians may reply that the lack
of fit is perennial, but always trivial in the face of inhuman suffering.
Their argument is religiously potent, but does not satisfy metaphysical
doubt regarding the divine option for the poor. Treating God's option
for the poor as, instead, a symbolic engagement with ultimacy
increases the likelihood that the lack of fit is a creative tension, rather
than a fatal mismatch. The article concludes by pointing toward how
such an approach might proceed.
* Andrew B. Irvine, Maryville College, 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville, TN 37803,
USA. E-mail: andrew.irvine@maryvillecollege.edu. The ideas and argument presented here have
been improved by many friends and colleagues over a long time. I especially thank M.T. Davila,
David Tombs, Chris Tirres, Wesley Wildman, Bill Meyer, and the anonymous reviewers for JAAR
for conversation and critique, and Chuck Mathewes and Chad Wayner for their encouragement
and guidance in seeing the piece into print.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December 2010, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 921-960
doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfq022
Advance Access publication on August 10, 2010
? The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
922 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
THE PROBLEM
IN THE SECOND HALF of the twentieth century, searching for
ways to proclaim their gospel in Latin America as both good and news,
many church workers grew convinced that, in actuality, they were
encountering God already ahead of them. They found God in the midst
of the poor. This was contrary to a rather deeply ingrained expectation,
to wit, that the barely Christian multitudes of Latin America needed all
the crumbs of comfort the cultured elite would spare them. To the
church workers' surprise, a new evangelization was already afoot, but
they themselves were the recipients of good news, the poor its bearers.
They had discovered (or, as they might say, rediscovered) that the heart
of the Christian gospel is a God who makes a "preferential option for
the poor." The working out of this experience is the genius of the Latin
American theology of liberation.
More recently, however, this devout insistence concerning the
nature of God is accompanied by profound doubts that it makes much
practical difference. Many societies seem largely to have bypassed the
historical aspirations of liberation theology. Surveying the recent his
tories of eleven Latin American countries, Jeffrey Klaiber concluded:
Paradoxically, for many Latin Americans, especially the progressive

Christians, the return to democracy was a bittersweet experience. For
one thing, the return coincided with the rise of a neo-conservatism in
the church and with the spread of neo-liberalism, which many of the
new democracies had taken up as a new banner. For some observers,
neo-liberalism, with its aggressive campaign in favor of the supremacy
of the market and its lack of social sensitivity, seemed like a reincarna
tion of Social Darwinism. In this context some have asked, Was all
that struggle and bloodshed worth it? (Klaiber 1998: 269)1
Klaiber's generalizations are borne out in the experiences of particular

actors in various places where liberation theology promised to be an
effective force. For example, Ottman's study of four low-income bairros
at the edge of S?o Paulo, Brazil, describes a situation in which the
"symbolism that inspired hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to
the streets just a decade earlier now seems to lack mobilizing power,
and the procession (caminhada) of the people (o povo) into a better
future has come to a halt" (2002: 2). According to Gutmann, many of
the people of Colonia Santo Domingo, Mexico City, "describe
^ee the in some ways even bleaker assessment in the more recent Tombs (2002: 273-292).
Irvine: Liberation Theology in Late Modernity 923
themselves as stifled or propelled by events out of their control_

Precisely disturbed by the failure of professed socialist countries and
movements to realize democratic promises, much less eradicate social
inequalities, those who once believed in the possibility of radically
transforming their societies by the late 1990s often told me that they
preferred not to think too hard anymore about the odds for social
change" (2002: 224). And in the Bolivian altiplano, Orta says, "[w]hile
many continue to be motivated by the social ideals of liberation theol
ogy and a number of its critical theological premises, most contempor
ary missionaries have come to question its application to the Andean
context. By the time my field research began in the late 1980s and early
1990s, liberation theology was widely regarded as a failed pastoral
experiment" (2004: 100).
Consider, then, comments of Jos? Comblin, titled, boldly, "Facts":
The most obvious fact today is that the great revolution that spans almost
the entire twentieth century?the revolution that began in 1917 in Russia
and ends in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union?is over_
Moreover, the many movements said to be "national liberation" move
ments, and even those of guerillas, have found themselves having to
yield, and to enter into the new supposedly democratic systems or be left
powerless. All left movements are going through a crisis of conscience;
they find that they have no program, no specific objectives, and are very
much divided (Comblin 1998: xv).2
The "crisis of conscience" of which Comblin wrote has not been fatal to
the Latin American theology of liberation. Today, numerous contribu
tors work at programs consciously continuous with twentieth-century
liberation theology.3 However, the present study takes as its cue the
critical tension within the movement, between the scandalous insistence
that the essential self-expression of God is to opt for the poor, and the
2Comblins analysis is reaffirmed more recently by Petrella (2004: 2). Studying the important
Brazilian experience, Maclean argues that "for almost two decades, while liberation theologians
recognized the failure of liberation theologies utilizing Marxist analysis to deal with race, gender,
and cultural issues, and modified their stance accordingly, they largely continued to argue as if the
political alternatives remained a static alternative between socialism and liberal democracy. The
alternatives were not only overly starkly drawn," Maclean continues, "but by 1981 they did not
correspond to the emerging realities of Brazilian political life. Further, such an over-sharp
polarization of the alternatives led to an even more serious failure to make alliances with other
classes or associations, thereby [failing at] developing structures and organizations of the people
capable of acting in the political realm" (Maclean 1999: 145).
As Gutmann, Orta, and Ottman acknowledge in their works previously cited. For theological
writings, specifically, see, for example, Petrella (2005) and Althaus-Reid et al. (2007).
doubt, no less scandalous in its way, whether what God is or does has
any intrinsic bearing on the outcome of historical events.
What do I seek to achieve by this, and how does it relate to other
recent discussions of the future of liberation theology? I take the claim
that God opts for the poor as a defining feature of Latin American lib
eration theology. The questions of whether and how to develop this
claim find differing answers among the theologians, but the claim is a
fundamental inspiration. Thus, this study stands in critical sympathy
toward their efforts. Inasmuch as I accept and work from the question
ability of God's preferential option for the poor, it is unlikely they
would recognize my contribution as one with theirs, but it certainly is
not another dismissal of liberation theology. Rather, it is an attempt to
think through the crisis itself as a theological problem, a problem that
would be recognizable by these liberation theologians themselves.
DISTINGUISHING AN APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM

The approach I outline here is different from some notable recent
efforts by others. For instance, Petrella expressly seeks to revitalize the
practical effectiveness of the liberationist program. To do this, he recovers
from earlier liberationist thought the concept of the "historical project"
and seeks to return it to "the central place and role it had during liber
ation theology's heyday" (2004: 11). "Historical projects," Petrella writes,
"brought together thinking about theological categories or ideals such as
the preferential option and liberation and thinking about institutions,"
specifically by channeling those thoughts into concrete efforts for change.
Historical projects thus give content to theological terms, clarify what dis
tinguishes liberationists from other groups that share their goals but not
their ideas (or vice versa), and construct a practical field within which to
reorientate to social institutions and theological norms (ibid.).
There is no doubt in my mind that revived historical projects are
valuable for a revitalization of liberation theologies. However, Petrella
neglects the problem of making out the truth of God's preferential option
for the poor, a problem which, I maintain, is every bit as important as
the problem of making concrete, historical, human mediations of that
purported divine initiative. If, as Petrella seems to imply (ibid.: 11-14),
liberation theology is devoid of content unless and until a historical
project is underway, then the theology of liberation really is defunct.
Daniel M. Bell, Jr. (2001) assesses the situation of liberation theol
ogy in light of the self-styled Radical Orthodoxy, a vigorous anti-secular
perspective in current British and (North) American theological discus
sions. In contrast to Petrella, Bell is intent on claiming Christianity as
an integral and comprehensive form of life. He thus eschews mediation

almost entirely. Instead, he ranges Christianity against Capitalism. As
Bell sees them, the two are contending and ultimately incompatible
spiritual disciplines, rival religions. This interpretation of Capitalism as
a false religion is extremely significant to many practitioners of liber
ation theology, but in Bell's case, at least, the totalization of Christianity
on one hand versus Capitalism on the other renders a far less flexible
critique than Petrella's and, at times, an oddly unreflexive one: Bell con
demns Latin American liberation theologians for betraying the hopes of
the poor, yet draws his characterization of the hopes of the poor directly
from their writings.
The Brazilian theologian, Jung Mo Sung, uses the same motif of
Capitalism as false religion.4 Sung's analysis of the Christianity
Capitalism dynamic is somewhat less dualistic than Bell's. Yet his
version of theology remains a largely "in-house" pursuit, assuming
rather than arguing for the God who opts for the poor, correlating the
symbol rather than questioning it (see, for example, the definition of
theology in Sung 2007 [1999]: 8-9).
Importantly, none of these recent reclamations of liberation theol
ogy opens up for reexamination the matter of the truth of God's prefer
ential option for the poor. This is surprising, given that the common
argument they employ to shape their criticisms of the global socioeco
nomic order relies on the category of idolatry: for the sake of an
Utopian global order, the regime of free market capitalism makes
human beings suffer and die; precisely because it demands such merci
less sacrifice, the utopia is, functionally speaking, a false god; therefore,
capitalism is an idolatrous religion. Perceptively, Petrella observes:
The real question comes after the critique of idolatry: what can we do
instead? What can we propose? In addition, the concept of an idol is
the negative counterpart to a positive affirmation. If the idol is the
only available option it is not really an idol but becomes necessary: it
becomes a god. To show the idol as idol, alternatives are needed.
(Petrella 2004: 11)
The wanted alternative, the rhetoric leads one to anticipate, is a true

God. However, Petrella says nothing of that. Instead, he proceeds
immediately to the discussion of historical projects. Petrella never does
explicitly take up the question of a true God in this work, nor is it part
4Sung, Bell, and Petrella all cite the Costa Rica-based theologian, Franz Hinkelammert, for
crucial development of the motif, especially Hinkelammert (1986 [1977]).
of his step Beyond Liberation Theology (2008).5 That might do while

confidence in the theological concepts to be mediated obtains, but evi
dently many liberationists?trained theologians and laypeople?want
such confidence today.6 Petrella's argument for the revival of historical
projects is powerful, persuasive, and I think probably correct. Yet, the
reticence?or just plain disregard?he exhibits on the question of what
God historical projects are supposed to project, or project themselves
towards, allows a basic problem to remain obscured.
That reticence and/or disregard typifies current efforts at reenergiz
ing liberation theology, at least those efforts with which I am conver
sant. It is just this problem that I seek to open up for consideration. My
turning to a symbolic understanding of God's preferential option for the
poor is motivated in no small measure by concerns at the metaphysical
implausibility of the option as it is typically presented. This marks a
fairly distinctive path, compared with the recent efforts at reenergization
just described. Again, though, I emphasize that the approach toward
which this article points is not intended to replace the approaches of
those whose work I have canvassed already, or of those discussed below.
Rather, it offers a complement to them. It is true, at least in part, that
5Yet, I immediately need to qualify such a sweeping characterization. There is a sense, or

perhaps several senses, in which?if I understand him right?Petrella does speak to the question,
rather than simply assume the God who personally intervenes in history on behalf of the poor. For
one, it may be, as far as Petrella is concerned, that God is historical project(s). Petrella does not
exercise this option in a grand, Hegelian way, and it is difficult to see as yet whether there would
be room for anything approaching Absolute Spirit in Petrella's itinerary. Going further, he may be
content to eschew theological concepts and ideals altogether for the sake of inspiring projects at
the service of the poor. Consider his statement, "I posit that liberation theology's concepts remain
empty without a role for the social sciences in the construction of historical projects" (2004: 37, my
emphasis), and, more bluntly, his rhetorical question at the end of Beyond Liberation Theology: A
Polemic: "Perhaps the future of liberation theology lies beyond theology.... Could the future of
liberation call for the dissolution of liberation theology as an identifiable field of production?"
(2008: 149-150; cf., also Petrella 2007). On the other hand, see his recognition that historical
projects as originally understood by Latin American liberation theologians should prevent both
"the idolatry of society as it stands" and "the idolatry of future revolutionary plans" (2004: 11).
In a second sense, Petrella does cite philosophical considerations, derived from Hinkelammert,
Enrique Dussel, and Sung, that "the reproduction of human life is a universal philosophical and
theological precondition for any normative judgment" (2008: 10). To the extent that the God of
liberation theology institutes or symbolizes this requirement, again Petrella's acceptance of that
God may be taken to be symbolic of an underlying philosophical resolution to the problem of
finding a true God. None of this is evident, though. Perhaps I do not understand Petrella right. I
may be conforming his concerns to my own in exegeting him thus. The basic question I have for
him, then, is whether liberation theology's "God of life" is (to invoke a distinction made by Juan
Luis Segundo and which Petrella adopts) a faithful symbol or a mere ideological instrument?
6Besides the theologians already discussed, see the discussions later in this article of Gonzalez
Faus, Sobrino, Lucchetti Bingemer, and Vigil. From a social scientific literature that extends well
beyond my compass, besides Gutmann (2002), Orta (2004), and Ottman (2002), see also Burdick
(1993), Chesnut (2003), and V?squez (1998).
liberation theology broke with a modern, Eurocentric theological

concern for the "non-believer" (that is, a public skeptical about the
possibility of theological truth), to speak from and to the world of "non
persons" (the poor), and criticized "practical atheism" more than creedal
atheism. Recent writings disclose, though, that these distinctions were
drawn too sharply: liberationists are among the skeptics and non-believers
now too, even if they still rank the importance of questions of the truth
of the divine option well below questions of how to act upon it.7
RELEVANCE OF THEOLOGICAL PROBLEMS TO THE

CRITICAL STUDY OF RELIGION
An avowedly theological reengagement such as this may be of interest
not only to theologians but to a wider community of students of religion
for several reasons. I note three, in order of increasing generality.
First, the approach essayed here reemphasizes a vigorous speculative,
metaphysical component in Latin American liberationist thought that,
as I have already indicated, has largely been neglected. Where the
neglect is an unavoidable function of sharing in the practical and
ongoing struggles of the poor, then credit compassion, of course. Still, it
needs to be redressed. For, as I maintain, the imaginative boldness in
claiming that God opts for the poor ought to be understood as integral
to the liberative potential of liberation theology; but an imagination ill
informed with respect to possible metaphysical contexts may encourage
rash fantasies. One of the best ways to call attention back to the matter,
then, is to discuss it in public, pluralistic venues such as the academy,
where the urgent priorities of any one community are expected to
answer to other and divergent questions.
Second, while the Latin American theology of liberation is in a phase
of critical self-interrogation, it is no spent force with regard to the ques
tioning of Latin American societies, not to mention the global society in
which these societies participate. To be sure, it is a virtue of the academic
study of religion to demonstrate that religious ideas mark but one dimen
sion wherein an understanding of religion may be found. At a minimum,
given the current complexity of scholarly knowledge, it is difficult not to
view the notion that religions can be comprehended through a set of uni
versally valid ideas?as in early modern prospecta of "Natural Religion,"
or in later modern Perennialism?as charming, yes, but sinister. Other
7This goes to show that even if all theologies are contextual, they are so with reference to
multiple contexts. Committing to effectiveness in one context does not cancel the demands of
other contexts?including, perhaps, a metaphysical context.
dimensions and other understandings add to, or vie for, claims to the
adequacy of our understanding, according to the context and purpose of
our interpretations. None of this means that religious ideas are a worth
less or a nonsensical focus for interpretation of societies, though. The
ideas advanced by Latin American theologians of liberation, even if held
less confidently at present, exert continuing and potent influence in
social, political, and economic discourses close to home and far abroad.
They still "speak" to people. Therefore, the study of liberation theology as
theology, that is, as an intellectual discourse addressing and shaping a
society's feel for ultimacy, remains important to the critical study of reli
gion, conceived as multi-dimensional articulation of human concerns
(some of them apparently ultimate, some of them not).
Third, the theological approach essayed here can rearticulate liber
ation theology's critical self-interrogation in ways fruitful for a compara
tive study of religious ideas and practices, for instance between liberation
theologies and versions of Buddhist activism. I have in mind particularly
what others before me have called the nexus between the mystical and
the political. (The mere appellation, "engaged Buddhism," was coined in
part to challenge Western simplifications of Buddhism as a "mystical,"
thus an apolitical, religion.) Admittedly, I do not carry out substantive
test work here (as have, say, Pieris and Lefebure). Nevertheless, it seems
to me that the methodological considerations to come can serve a much
broader constituency than just the community of Christian liberationists.
ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

Pope John Paul II (1987) described the option for the poor as a
"special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the
whole tradition of the Church bears witness." Maybe John Paul was right
in his reading of Catholic tradition (its intent, if not its conduct). Be that
as it may, this study attempts a kind of suspension of the weighty demand
tradition makes for one's assent, so as to gain a surer grasp of the crisis of
confidence in God's preferential option for the poor among liberation
theologians. In our late modern times of sweeping, global social change,
such a suspension of belief is not so arrogant as it may sound. Though the
secularization theory of the earlier twentieth century seems to have been
disconfirmed in most parts of the world, this hardly entails that any par
ticular religious beliefs have been secured?magisterial or not.8
8Berger (2001: 443-454) neatly lays out why and how the secularization thesis?that
modernization results in the declining importance of religion?needs reexamination. Adhering to
Why in particular does talk of God's preferential option for the

poor generate such unease nowadays, even among earnest proponents?
In what follows, I argue that a significant reason for the unease is a lack
of fit between the claim that God sides with the oppressed and the
actual dynamics?the "cultural physics," so to speak?of late modern
social change. I discuss the lack of fit in terms of three cultural chal
lenges involved in modernization: advanced historical consciousness,
the general sway of naturalistic, evolutionary models to explain change
in the world, and extensive inter-religious contact.
Now, clearly, the scope of these shifts encompasses more than just the
attestation to God's preferential option for the poor. The credibility of per
sonalistic theism in general suffers under these conditions, even if its allure
increases. However, to claim that God is not just personal, but personally,
efficaciously active in the world (and not only that, but active particularly
in the defense of victims of history)?this raises the stakes dramatically.
Singly and together, these several streams of late modern, global cultural
change undermine the grounds for confidence in that claim.
At the same time, it must be recognized that one of the most
impressive arguments made by liberation theologians in defense of
God's preferential option for the poor is that it is inherent in the idea
of divine preference to exhibit some lack of fit with the cultural physics
of every empirical human society, and any implausibility is always
trivial in the face of inhuman suffering; the point is to change the
world?not render a plausible account of it. I admit that this argument
is religiously powerful, but I also aim to show that it does not dispel the
threat posed by the above-mentioned challenges, that belief in a God
who opts for the poor will become simply untenable. In the end,
I suggest that one way out of this situation is to adopt an approach that
treats God's preferential option for the poor explicitly as a symbol of
engagement with the divine. I contend that such an approach increases
the likelihood that the lack of fit will give liberationist belief a creative
tension, rather than lead to its collapse.
But now to resume the main thread of the discussion.
At least three principal cultural shifts are at issue in the challenges
modernization lodges against testimony to God's preferential option for
the poor. They are: (1) growing awareness of the historicality of all
knowledge, including "revealed" knowledge; (2) widening acceptance of
his usual "methodological atheism," though, he remains coy about the plausibility of the resurgent
religious commitments he enlists in his argument.
9The conception of theology as "symbolic engagement" is articulated by Robert Cummings
Neville in many places, especially Neville (2006).
a naturalistic, evolutionary account of how the universe, and life within

it, came to be as it is?an account that need make no appeal to divine
preference among or within natural processes; and (3) humbling effects
of interreligious contact upon claims to the absoluteness of any particu
lar religion, and of the putative object (s) of religion as such.10
These challenges really sank home among Christian theologians
during the nineteenth century, though in some cases, their impact was
felt considerably earlier. For example, the Valladolid debate of 1550
between Bartolom? de las Casas and Juan Gin?s Sepulveda over the moral
and legal status of indigenous peoples in the Americas dramatized a chal
lenge to existing conceptions of the absoluteness of Christianity that was
deeply felt by at least some missionaries in the colonies (cf., Hanke 1974).
Today, it is the proliferation of postcolonial conditions that drives the
challenge home, not only to theologians but mostly everyone who now
interacts with workmates, neighbors, passers-by, who live rather differ
ently from them.11 It is in connection with this pivotal reflexion of post
colonial upon colonial orders that liberation theology, among the variety
of ways of doing Christian theology, has focused the signs of the times in
a particularly potent way. All modern theologies struggle with the chal
lenges that follow, but liberation theology confronts them most starkly.
THE FIRST CHALLENGE: HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Regarding the first of the cultural shifts, "Enlightenment" was marked
in Europe by a growing willingness to argue that Christian teachings might
not satisfy the existential concerns of all human beings. The global expan
sion of European power and knowledge strengthened this impulse (see The
Third Challenge), but it grew from within. In particular, eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century historical research into the origins of Christianity
painstakingly detailed ways in which Christianity's founding documents, its
New Testament, were a collection of heavily reflected, diversely inflected
interpretations of Jesus. The documents suddenly looked much less the
10I hold on to terms like modernity and modernization, while letting go, as best I can, of their
Eurocentric accretions, which would have us swallow such fantastical beliefs as that "the West" is the
principal agent of whatever progress the world has witnessed over the last five hundred years. I refer
to late modernity rather than postmodernity precisely because the fallout from European
colonization upon global society has not been, and cannot simply be, left behind us, yet also because
the "alternative globalizations" now emitting from a multiplicity of cultural settings still involve
modernizing processes (see, for example, Berger and Huntington 2002). Important discussions of
the continuing salience of modernity may be found in Bilimoria and Irvine (2009).
11 "Postcolonial conditions," in the plural, since in Latin America postcoloniality emerged from
cultural and political arrangements that differ significantly from those against which anti-colonial
movements in Africa and South Asia struggled in the twentieth century.
testament to salvation than brilliant, if perhaps inadvertent, exercises in

self-accreditation. This fed suspicion that the actual function (reading for
"mission") of the church throughout its history had been to co-opt the
consent of people who would be quite capable of happiness otherwise.
There is no shortage today of critically nuanced evaluations of the
import of these discoveries. Especially germane to liberation theology is a
general view of historical existence as occasioning freedom, a mode of
being capable of converting its own constraints into possibilities (See,
especially, Ellacuria 1993). Yet it is this same view of history which
discovers that the primal shock of existing between constraint and possi
bility?the shock of finding that we must find ourselves?cannot be
deflected by turning to Jesus, "as he really was." In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's
fine phrase, there are no longer reasonable grounds for any kind of "posi
tivism of revelation."12A naive enlightenment of that kind is a possibility
foreclosed. Thus it makes sense that those who would become theologians
of liberation describe a far-reaching transformation of their entire inter
action with the Bible. Prodded by the suspicion that God opts for the poor,
a new set of questions, indeed a new way of putting questions, started to
make sense to them. In short, their hermeneutical horizons shifted, giving
a new aspect to the God of the Bible as to their view of themselves.
We may recognize, therefore, that liberation theologians' affirma
tions of God's option for the poor are not plain empirical assertions
that a liberating God is simply there to be encountered among the
excluded. Exactly who encounters exactly whom in the revelatory event
is indeterminable apart from complex interpretive predispositions that
compose the (shifting) horizon of understanding. This does not mean,
of course, that the liberating God simply is not there; but the predisposi
tions that disposed (and dispose) theologians of liberation to assert that
God is disposed to favor the poor always could be analyzed intermin
ably. It is a pragmatic decision that forges them into a community of
interpreters, confident that God is with them and determined to act on
this confidence (cf., Ellacuria 1993: 251-256).13
I take the notion of historical projects, mediating between revelatory
encounter and social fact, to involve a recognition of the point. When they
12See Bonhoeffer's letters to Eberhard Bethge dated 30 April, 5 May and 8 June 1944, in
Bonhoeffer (1972).
13To be clear, I think this pragmatism is not based on a narrow view that God's option for the
poor will work necessarily, but rather that it is true (by which I mean, true enough, within variable
biological, social, and cultural constraints, to relativize those very restraints), and thus enables the
poor some freedom to free themselves. Liberation theologians might say that it has already
affirmed itself in the measure of progress toward liberation the poor have already realized. This
clarification is called forth by a sensitive essay by Goizueta (2000).
say that God opts for the poor, most theologians of liberation do not
mean that their God is in the process of carrying out a surefire plan for
social and political reform. Rather, they mean something more like that
God energizes the poor to transform the world. Thus, one point of speak
ing of mediation is to register that prevailing plausibility structures are
among the first things that may be transformed under the impact of revel
atory encounter. Where belief in God was an oppressive constraint, now it
becomes an empowering possibility. Nevertheless, mediation is a two-way
function: by their nature, historical projects require some reduction of the
hope of salvation to prevailing plausibility constraints in order to get
something done. This is simply to say that mediations mediate their terms.
In liberationist discourse, this has meant emphasizing that historical
projects do not dissolve the kingdom of God and struggles for liberation
into each other, and thus that the theology of liberation is not idola
trous. What perhaps has been insufficiently noted as a result of this
emphasis is that mediation does not isolate terms from each other,
either. Historical projects create social space in which to focus and
channel the tensions that revelatory encounter engenders, but this space
may also be the medium of a volatile confrontation?political confron
tation of course, but no less importantly confrontation between God
and world as such: if historical projects are not merely the ways of the
world, they are not evidently God's ways, either. Thus, historical pro
jects constantly threaten to prove the promise of God's option for the
poor empty?even if and when they succeed.
But perhaps this point is beside the point, as far as liberation theolo
gians are concerned. Is it not the case, they might reply, that when we
went to the Bible, to reflect on the meaning of what was being revealed
to us, we received confidence in God's constant and preferential love of
the poor? God's option for the poor, taken as an interpretive key to the
Biblical traditions, has unlocked the spiritual strength of poor
Christians in often liberating ways, and not only in Latin America.
Admittedly, the plotlines of the Biblical histories, and the motifs of pro
phecy, poetry, and proverb often turn on a wavering of such confidence,
but paradoxically this strengthens our confidence?for our own uncer
tainty persuades us that here we have not just a literary device but stuff
of Biblical faith. And this is something of what Gustavo Guti?rrez (to
cite just one exemplar) had in mind when he began A Theology of
Liberation by highlighting theology's function as "critical reflection on
historical praxis" (cf., Guti?rrez 1988: 3-12). Is it not bizarre, then, to
identify historical consciousness as a challenge to liberation theology!?
It would seem bizarre, except for Guti?rrez's position that "there is
only one human destiny, irreversibly assumed by Christ, the Lord of
history_There is only one history?a 'Christo-finalized' history"

(1988: 86),14 and that this "history," if it can genuinely be called
history, is the basis of liberative historical consciousness. Absolutizing
Jesus as Christ in this way can sharpen one's critique of praxis but at
the same time may also cheapen the courage it intends to awaken.15
But at any rate, even if we suppose that liberating praxis in any his
torically contingent name anticipates and participates in the "com
plete encounter with the Lord [that] will mark an end of history... in
history" (1988: 97), so as to refer all signs of all times to a single, all
surpassing sign (viz. the "complete encounter" Christ embodies), this
still is an ambition of thought that only would end history. In the
meanwhile, to live historically is to live out a hypothesis (if not
several) about the end of history. This plurality of lived interpretations
subverts the singularity of the single sign; the ambiguity of historical
existence can never be fully and finally cleared up. Even when a
person feels compelled to defy ambiguity and take a stand, she does
so guided by hazy signs of uncertain times. Such defiance may take
on immense religious importance. It may be the stuff of faith. We can
hardly fail to learn this much from liberation theology. But it does not
dispel the "plurality and ambiguity" of history (Tracy 1987)?there
can be no positivism of revelation.1
14I have suppressed a long footnote in which Guti?rrez cites several theologians on the thesis of
the unity of history.
15True, Guti?rrez avoids almost all mention of Jesus as Christ in the paragraphs leading up to
the statement of one human destiny in Christ. He offers one direct scriptural reference (not
surprisingly, Pauline) defending the universal scope of salvation. However, the magisterial texts he
cites evidently presuppose the absolute significance of Jesus, especially the working drafts for the
Medellin bishops' conference. For example: "the center of God's salvific design is Jesus Christ, who
by his death and resurrection transforms the universe and makes it possible for the person to reach
fulfillment as a human being" (Guti?rrez 1988: 85). In some later writings, as Guti?rrez becomes
more cognizant of spiritual traditions beyond his own, he seems to allow that the absoluteness of
Jesus as Christ may be relative to Christians, but the revision is stipulative more than substantive.
The principle, significance, and pitfalls of christological absolutism are elaborated in Wildman
(1998).
16Note, however, that the ambiguity of these late modern times is not simply a universal human
condition, implying a transcendental status quo, against which defiance ever exhausts itself, and to
which it ever succumbs. It has positive dimensions resulting from the accomplishments of actors
who, from a Eurocentric viewpoint, appear marginal. Cf., Mignolo (2000: 21-22):
Today, a world history or a universal history is an impossible task. Or perhaps both are
possible but hardly credible. Universal histories in the past five hundred years have been
embedded in global designs. Today, local histories are coming to the forefront and, by
the same token, revealing the local histories from which global designs emerge in their
universal drive_The impossibility or lack of credibility of universal or world histories
today is not advanced by some influential postmodern theory, but by the economic and
social forces generally referred to as globalization and by the emergence of forms of
There is a somewhat more than hermeneutical aspect to the chal

lenge, then, in that no degree of scrupulousness in interpreting signs
of the times with reference to a divine preferential option for the poor
would certify that God does in fact opt for the poor. The claim that
God does so is a hypothesis that interprets certain "accidental truths"
of history as indicative of the character of the absolute. Lessing's
(1957 [1777]: 53) cautionary word about an unbridgeable ditch
between "accidental truths of history" and "necessary truths of
reason" is worth recalling in this connection, although I decline
rationalistic resignation toward "accidental truths" in favor of a natur
alistic and historicistic appreciation of how they build and shape both
norms of reasonability and symbols of the absolute, such that "necess
ary truths" are hypotheses?confidently held maybe, but hypotheses
still. Claimants always could be perpetuating a theological mistake,
thanks to the shifting connections between evolving symbols and their
changing contexts. Better: claimants always do mistake the object of
theology. To acknowledge this without completely discrediting liber
ation theology's claims, a clearer understanding of the symbolic
nature of those claims is needed.
But indeed, if the present global experience of late modernity is too
diffuse and too harsh to let us rest in good faith with this conclusion,
the second cultural shift, to which we now turn, magnifies and exceeds
the challenge which historical consciousness poses to advocates of
God's option for the poor, and further encourages a look toward a sym
bolic approach.
THE SECOND CHALLENGE: EVOLUTIONARY

UNDERSTANDING
The careful observational and theoretical work of Charles Darwin
and Alfred Russell Wallace gave a revolutionary turn to evolutionary
ways of thinking about the world. "Darwinism" caught on in tandem
with a belief (one seemingly not shared by Darwin himself) that the
theory showed nature's inbuilt tendency to progress. Nonetheless,
Darwin's proposed evolutionary mechanism of random variation and
natural selection remained unsavory to many (see, for example,
Bowler 1993: 36-56, passim). Meanwhile, though, Darwin's hypoth
eses have continued to prove fertile, resilient, and convincing to
knowledge that have been subalternized during the past five hundred years under global
designs I just mentioned?that is, during the period of planetary expansion I call here
modern colonialisms and colonial modernities.
people who would like to explain, without resorting to a priori pur

poses or designs, how the world has come to be as it is. This is the
case in biology, cosmology, and other natural sciences. Also, to a
great extent, evolutionary thinking has blurred the boundaries set up
in the nineteenth century to preserve so-called human sciences as
knowledge distinct from that produced by the natural sciences. The
controversial explanatory goals of evolutionary psychology lie along
these blurred boundaries.
The point to note is that the explanatory "core" of the evolutionary
approach is remarkably stable, even if "unexplained anomalies" remain,
and perhaps no "complete" evolutionary explanation can be expected to
sweep the field (cf., Lakatos 1978: e.g., 47-52). Moreover, continuing
philosophical debate about what does or does not count as empirical
inquiry in the various fields of study should be taken as a sign of the
vigor of "Darwinian" thinking, not of its tenuousness. Accordingly,
theologians today ought to review their claims in light of the secure
integration of humankind into the world(s) of nature. This is a chal
lenge with special metaphysical import for liberation theologians, who
for a long time maintained a radical distinction between human beings
and the other kinds of nature.
The challenge that an evolutionary understanding of the cosmos
presents to theology both magnifies and exceeds the challenge of his
torical consciousness, in that it radically decenters the role of human
kind. We are able to consider our own presence in the universe as a
fleeting, even epiphenomenal, occurrence in a vast natural history.
Although we may still see a general function in that larger history for
values we prize, it is through a drastic abstraction from their peculiar
embodiment in affairs more nearly susceptible to our influence.
Nature's prodigious creativity, that ambivalent index, hardly
amounts to an endorsement of humankind's understandable self
importance. Some deep ecologists might even borrow Lakatos's words
offered in a rather different context, and suggest that humankind is evi
dence that "natural selection may go wrong; the fittest may perish and
monsters survive" (1978: 24, n. 5; cf. Atwood 2003). Even as one of the
tasks of theologians is to endorse this self-importance (lest human
beings cease to aspire to a peculiarly human dignity in their dealings
with all kinds of others), any critical theology has also to probe its
proper limits. A contemporary critical theology must recognize the con
straints urged on human self-importance by evolutionary science, and
in them seek out possibilities. Human history may have emerged as a
distinctive dimension in nature's history, but it is not altogether sui
generis. "Scientific facts" cannot be so cleanly separated from "human
values" as to secure a theological importance for human beings that is

not vulnerable to the fate of other natural kinds.17
No matter the tragedy, theologians who affirm that God has a
special concern for humankind need to reckon with the realization that
the universe was and will be devoid of human worries and delights for
all but a tiny sliver of its temporal extension. Much more must theolo
gians who affirm God has an exceptional concern for the victims of
humanity's inhumanity reflect that the flourishing of all kinds of life
evidently depends upon processes that also waste and destroy life.
Victimage seems to be integral to the design of creation.18
As our knowledge of the universe grows, evidence of divine preference
for nonhuman victims through billions of years of evolutionary history
shrinks proportionately. Not that rumors of a divine predilection for
humankind did not astonish in the past. Still, with the growth of appli
cation of modern evolutionary sciences, there grows also room for doubt
that, with the recent and murky emergence of genus Homo, God's charac
ter abruptly changed, from general moral indiscernibility to a finely discri
minating preoccupation with the doings-to-one-another of just that
creature. Therefore, an appreciation of this challenge also commends a
clearer consideration of God's option for the poor as a symbol.
THE THIRD CHALLENGE: INTER-RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER

A third large-scale, global cultural transformation, complementing the
previous two, is the increasing interaction of religious traditions. These, in
the now-waning world system in which Western powers dominate, have
been on the one hand represented as more autonomous with regard to
17Juan Luis Segundo was keenly aware of this problematic, approaching it in terms of a doctrine
of sin (see Segundo 1974: 7-15).
18Ecological concerns have had a largely energizing effect on liberation theology, especially
inasmuch as poverty constitutes a major obstacle to care for the environment, and inasmuch as
environmental degradation tends to hurt the poor first. Still, the view of nature tends to be either
instrumental or somewhat romanticized. To give an example of the latter, Leonardo Boff writes of
nature's life-giving equilibrium, "Decay and death form part of life. Death is an invention of life.
The cycle promotes the continuation of life, not the perpetuation of the individual. Nature is not
biocentric but ecocentric, because it is related to the equilibrium between life and death in a
perspective of universal maintenance" (Boff 1995: 40-41). That Boff has not consistently thought
through the bloody extravagance of this "equilibrium" seems to be evidenced by the assertion, in
the same volume, that "Spirituality is that attitude which puts life at the center, and defends and
promotes life against all the mechanisms of death, dessication, or stagnation. The opposite of spirit,
in this sense, is not the body but death and everything associated with the system of death,
understood in the widest sense of biological, social, and existential death (failure, humiliation, and
oppression)" (1995: 36-37). Much the same may be said of the ecofeminist liberation theology of
Gebara (1999).
each other than generally may be the case, and on the other hand orien
tated to each other through a highly asymmetrical colonial order. Even
the slight shifts effected toward parity within a shared world society
powerfully fund a sense that claims to absolute and exhaustive revelation
of the divine in any one tradition are reckless and implausible. Awareness
of global diversity within traditions, and multiple religious identity on the
part of a growing number of persons and communities, are quite concrete
ways in which this shift is experienced.
In Latin America, Vatican If s opening to cultural pluralism was a
prominent moment within this transformation. Diego Irarr?zaval writes:
In this area [of interaction between diverse cultures] the Third World
has creatively received Vatican II. From the "evangelization of culture"
we have moved to "inculturations." We are re-discovering diversity in
unity... ; a "living exchange"?not mere adaptation?"is fostered
between the Church and the diverse cultures of people." (Irarr?zaval
2000: 18)19
As already indicated, the theology of liberation emerged as a response

to just this challenge, especially in that stream of liberationist thinking
which has deferred to the dignity of forms of religion molded by the
poor. Whereas the call to "new evangelization" bespeaks official chagrin
regarding the results of prior evangelization of Latin America's peoples,
at least some ethnographers have recognized in popular beliefs, syncre
tic rituals, and so forth, the creative agency of poor peoples in resisting
and appropriating the imperious Catholicism of the conquistadors and
their successors.2
19The ellipses cover Irarr?zaval's citations of declarations from the Second Vatican Council: first
of Lumen Gentium 42, 92, Unitatis Redintegratio 4, 16, and Orientalium Ecclesiarum 2; second of
Gaudium et Spes 44, and Ad Gentes 22. For a more sociological overview of religious pluralism
with reference to Latin Americans and U.S. Latinos, see Espinosa, who reports:
By mid-2000, the number of non-Catholic Christians or Pentecostals, Evangelicals,

Mainline Protestants, Anglicans, Orthodox, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses had
grown to 96 million throughout Latin America south of the U.S. border and 104 million,
if we include U.S. Latinos. Another 38 million Latin Americans practice a world religion
other than Christianity (e.g. Judaism, Bahai, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese folk religions,
Shintoists, and Spiritism, Native American traditions) or are non-religious or atheist. In
total, there are 139 million Latin Americans out of 519 million south of the U.S. border
that no longer identify primarily as Catholic. By 2025, the number of Catholics is
expected to grow to 606 million and the number of non-Catholics is expected to grow to
213 million or more than 30 percent of Latin America. (Espinosa 2003: 41)
20For example, see (in no particular order) Klor de Alva (1982), Scannone (1976), Marzal et al.
(1996), and Parker (1996). For further analysis, see Fern?ndez Beret (1996). Comparison of the
Typically, liberation theologians have taken up the challenge of

inculturation by giving it a sharp and revealing twist. Irarr?zaval, for
example, emphasizes a pastoral and theological route of resistance to
the Eurocentric and modern religious expectations of neocolonial elites
in Latin American societies. He argues that where "some elements of
Christianity are absorbed by [absolute claims for modern habits and
institutions]... exculturation becomes necessary" (Irarr?zaval 2000: 22;
my italics). Irarr?zaval finds resources for the task in lo cotidiano, the
"everyday" plurality and heterogeneity of living culture. Still, and as he
acknowledges in part, this means that his turning to lo cotidiano, pre
cisely as a relativizing experience of plurality, is not straightforwardly
conducive to alternative, more inclusive, norms than those of
Eurocentrism?the predicament documented in various places by all
the ethnographers cited previously.
Once more, the work of Gustavo Guti?rrez is instructive. In a major
essay, Guti?rrez elaborates on the metaphor of "the underside of
history" to develop a telling critique of the oppressive outcomes of a
theology reflective of just one kind of experience of modernity, that of a
colonial Western elite which managed to hold the winning hand in
dealings with colonial subjects abroad and, for that matter, at home. In
their stories of modernity, the beneficiaries of colonialism have for
most intents and purposes treated the poor as "absent from history"
(Guti?rrez 1983: 186).
In reality, Guti?rrez argues, the experience of the poor stands as a
"concrete historical and dialectical contradiction" to the absolutization
of colonizers' modernity (1983: 213). By attending to this contradictory
"power of the poor in history," Guti?rrez joins in exposing and oppos
ing the absolutization of the colonizers' experience: "Living and think
ing the faith from within the immurement of the 'wretched of the
earth' will lead us along paths where we shall not meet the great ones
of this world. Instead we shall meet the Lord" (214).
Here again, wittingly or unwittingly, the path of absolutizing only
another partial experience could be taken ("... we shall not meet the
great ones of this world. Instead we shall meet the Lord"). Yet, in the
world society now emerging, everyday experience challenges absolute
and exclusive claims in behalf of all revelations, not excepting those by
which the poor orient themselves. For now, the point is to show that
Guti?rrez' critique greatly sensitizes us to what elsewhere he names the
approach of Scannone with what might be called a "vanguardist" approach, as exemplified by

Segundo, is offered by Candelaria (1990).
"density of the present"?the tractable complexity of a given moment

(1999).
In advocating an option for the poor, theologians of liberation inten
sify rather than solve the contemporary challenge of greater plurality.21
How does one opt for the poor in a global everyday during which, quite
literally while a worker is sleeping, her livelihood may be outsourced to a
far country, but to the effect of improving the livelihood of another,
whose opportunities otherwise were meager indeed? The global everyday
of late modern times is uneven, asynchronous, unsteadying. The world is
not flat, and there are no straightforward solutions to the problems
shaping our collective lives (cf., Irarr?zaval 2000: 36-41).22 Yet, it is
through being densely differentiated that this hardscrabble terrain pos
sesses a certain tractability. Alternatives to the global design of Western
colonialism can gain some traction. The everyday does not, strictly speak
ing, offer a cogent alternative to a Eurocentric global design. Nonetheless,
the worldwide assertion of lo cotidiano is no mean accomplishment in a
harsh society where those "on top" may glibly pass over the differences
from others that shore up their own communities.23
So again, theology needs to grapple with both the nitty gritty creativ
ity of everyday life and the abstract speculations of metaphysics in order
to navigate and influence the course of late modern social change.
Proponents and sympathizers of Latin American liberation theology need
to do so specifically cognizant of the claims of religious plurality against
absolutist assertions that God in Jesus Christ exercises a preferential
option for the poor; even, perhaps, against assertions that God could so
choose.24 Here, again, a franker symbolic interpretation of God's prefer
ential option for the poor may help.
21This point can be related to the liberationist affirmation of the prior (not a priori) reality of
social conflict. Cf., Maduro (1982) and Guti?rrez (1990: especially 67-80).
22 A different, yet pertinent critique of the purported contemporaneity of colonial beneficiaries
and victims (albeit within the frame of a national culture) is offered by Bhabha (1996). For an
application of Bhabha's critique with reference to U.S. Latino theology, see Irvine (2009: 229-231).
Dussel theorizes this new plurality in the name of "trans-modernity," by which he signifies many
cultures rising beyond reductive claims to universality made for European and North American
modernity, thus deconstructing the dualism of modernity and its "underside" (cf. Dussel 2002:
221-244). On the historical development of the specifically Eurocentric modernity, cf., Dussel
(1998: 50-66).
23I again invoke Walter Mignolo's contrast between "local histories" and "global designs," but
Michel de Certeau's work on the inventiveness of everyday life is seminal here. See, for instance,
Certeau (1984), especially the "General Introduction," and Certeau (1997).
24That Latin American liberation theology can negotiate the new plurality is strongly indicated
by the spin-off of new liberation theologies. Drawing Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and other
religious threads together with the Latin Americans' Christian inspirations into the loose-weave
A FOURTH CHALLENGE
In a recent essay, Gustavo Guti?rrez discusses "three great contem
porary challenges to the faith" (Guti?rrez 2003). The first two overlap
fairly well with the three challenges discussed thus far. The first chal
lenge Guti?rrez names is "the modern (and postmodern) world," which
he analyzes into three key elements: emphasis on the individual, critical
reason, and the right to freedom (91-92). The second challenge is reli
gious pluralism (92-93). The third challenge is so imposing that it must
be felt at times as not just another theological challenge of late modern
times, but as a challenge to the credibility of the theological enterprise
as such. The fundamental challenge of the times, Guti?rrez says, is
"inhuman and antievangelical poverty" (93-96ff).
We all are caught up in a massive, global neglect of the vast
majority of humanity. Pretty much the best of the liberation theologians
have confronted the personal crisis of the value of their life's work by
submitting, not to technical philosophy (not explicitly, anyway) but,
again, to the judgment of the poor. The evangelical power of liberation
theology is displayed in the compelling nature of these theologians'
fidelity to the poor, offered in small, practical ways. In this they have
retrieved an important tradition of fundamental theology, a tradition
that submits that "the greatest argument against the existence of God is
the existence of the poor" (Gonz?lez Faus 1997: 224).25
Jos? Ignacio Gonz?lez Faus writes: "The mere existence of the poor
is a scandal like the cross of Jesus, that seems to negate the justice of
God, a scandal that cannot be theoretically eliminated, but only
redressed and illumined practically" (225). To be sure, Gonz?lez Faus is
concerned with the existence of a just God, understood to be the God
of the Bible, rather than with God sin mas?God "without qualifica
tions," or "without further ado." Yet, this is perhaps just the point. In
the light of the liberationists' own option for the poor, the real "crisis"
to which Christian theology must respond is, and has always been, the
apparent willingness of many affluent Christians?who could do some
thing about poverty?to deny the life-giving gospel rediscovered amidst
the poor. Their denial is not explicit, of course. It comes about, we
might say, con mas?by a thousand little qualifications that preserve
fabric of the global everyday, these theologies show that a divine option for the poor is not
necessarily tied to an absolute claim for Christian symbols.
25Gonzalez Faus cites three figures as evidence of the tradition: the Dominican, Soto, in 1545,
Bishop Bossuet, in the seventeenth century, and Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga of Nicaragua today.
Quotations from texts in Spanish are mine unless indicated otherwise.
privilege and compound the privation of the deprived. Indeed,

Guti?rrez goes to lengths to clarify, in "Theology from the Underside of
History," that, however diverting a problem it has been for Eurocentric
theology, the existence of God sin mas is not the truly fundamental
theological question of modern times. The question about God that
really cuts through the qualifications is this: how could God be invoked
to justify and sanctify five hundred years and counting of the creation
and destruction of a Latin American poor?
Gonz?lez Faus argues that, in the face of ever-greater deprivation of
the poor, perhaps only the preferential option can "save theology from
cynicism" (221).26 Thus, he lists a string of "examples to keep you
awake at night," which document what exclusion means for the poor:
the vast disproportion of wealth and use of resources between the
richest and poorest citizens of the world, trade balances that favor weal
thier countries, trade barriers that limit the growth of poorer economies,
exploitation of child labor in the poorer countries, neglect of public
health, nutrition and education and increase of police and military
powers, and the continuing domination of military spending in the
world economy (235-238). "If all these data do not constitute true
mediations for theology," Gonz?lez Faus argues, "much more than
Aristotelian or Heideggerian philosophy seem to be, or the distinction
between essence and existence or between hypostasis and physisy or
between soul and body or... [sic] then it is that, effectively, which
makes it necessary to 'save theology from its cynicism"' (239).
Indeed, restructuring of formal social institutions often has achieved
little in the way of more equitable participation among all constituents.
The results of economic liberalization have been mixed, to say the least.
Hernando de Soto writes: "From Russia to Venezuela, the past half
decade [1995-2000] has been a time of economic suffering, tumbling
incomes, anxiety and resentment; of 'starving, rioting and looting' in
the stinging words of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad"
(de Soto 2001: 2).
Having noted that "Latin America and the Caribbean consistently
record the highest average level of inequality for any region in the
world," a team studying whether and how Latin American countries
might meet the target, set at the UN Millenium Summit in 2000, of
halving the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty as of
1990 by the year 2015, concluded:
26Gonz?lez Faus takes the phrase from Assmann (1973), the first part of which was translated
into English as Assmann (1976).
[T]he main obstacle to the success of poverty reduction efforts in Latin

America and the Caribbean is that the medicine which is most effective
in treating the poverty that afflicts the region?inequality reduction?is
one that the region seems to find very difficult to dispense. A little
inequality reduction would go a long way towards reducing extreme
deprivation in this region. Yet very few of the region's economies seem
to have been able to generate even small reductions of this type. High
social returns would certainly be yielded by policies that succeed in
redistributing resources to those who need them most and in doing so
at the least possible cost in terms of distorting the incentives that ulti
mately lead to economic growth. Such policies are both feasible and
necessary. (Paes de Barros et al. 2002: 20, 46)27
Despite some significant initiatives to discourage and penalize corrup

tion and other abuses in many Latin American countries, public trust
remains weak and undermined in much of the region. Authors of a
2003 report on transparency and corruption in the region write:
More than a decade after the transition to democracy planted hopes of

reform, the region continues to be preyed upon by networks of elites
who abuse their positions for illicit gain. The very institutions charged
with preventing and fighting corruption are too weak to do so, or com
promised by the influence of the transgressors themselves. As
Transparency International's 2002 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)
so vividly reflects, respondents view South America as one of the most
?if not the most?corruption-plagued regions in the world.
Recent surveys reveal two ominous and interrelated trends: South
Americans believe that corruption is getting worse, and they are
growing more and more dissatisfied with democracy (Wills Herrera
et al. 2003: 103; see also Rodas-Martini 2003).
Five years later, Mitchell A. Seligson and Dominique Z?phyr, discussing

comparative data from the Latin America Public Opinion Project (LAPOP)
in Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2008, state that,
In Uruguay, which represents the best case, fewer than 1 per cent of
the population were asked to pay a bribe in the twelve months preced
ing the interview. Haiti emerges as an extreme case, with one out of
every two adults reporting being victimised. The average for the region
27The countries studied are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
was 22.5 per cent of a country's population being asked to pay a bribe.
(Seligson and Z?phyr 2008: 313)
(LAPOP data enabled a comparison with Canada and the United States
regarding the percentage of survey respondents who reported being
asked to bribe a public employee at least once in the year prior. Even
for the lowest reporting Latin American country on that index?Chile?
the rate was more than five times that in the United states, and roughly
three times that in Canada.)
Moreover, the trauma of torture and violence continues to shadow
Latin America, even where Truth Commissions have had success in
bringing to light the workings and the perpetrators of past repression.
The words of Amnesty International's 2008 annual report are consistent
with annual reports throughout the past decade:
The legacy of the authoritarian regimes of the past lives on in the insti
tutional weaknesses which continue to bedevil many Latin American
countries, particularly in Central America, and in the Caribbean.
Corruption, the absence of judicial independence, impunity for state
officials, and weak governments have undermined confidence in state
institutions. Equal protection may exist in law, but it is often denied in
practice, particularly for those in disadvantaged communities.
Although abusive practices have remained largely unchanged, the
rationale for them has shifted. The techniques previously used to
repress political dissent, have now been turned on those challenging
social injustice and discrimination?such as human rights defenders?
and those they seek to support. (Amnesty International 2008)
The burden of Gonzalez Faus' critique is evident: when social, political,

and economic oppression falls heavier and heavier upon more and
more fellow human beings, can a theologian turn to philosophical
speculation to construe the intelligibility of faith and not generate a
cynically debased understanding?
Never mind the philosophical pitfalls of absolutizing Christian
faith, then, many liberation theologians insist. Confronting inhuman
and anti-evangelical poverty, there is no mistake in proclaiming
God's option for the poor. Whatever other errors they may have
made (in social, political, or economic analysis, say), christological
absolutism is the risk that constitutes Christian faith, they seem to
imply: if we will not risk this, we are already cynics; we share the
faith of Jesus Christ; his life amidst the poor, and his rendition,
torture, and execution in their behalf, at once reveal and realize
God's plan for us.
Some theologians go on to say that affirming God's preference for

the poor is a precondition for the grasp of any truth regarding the
divine. According to Bingemer,
The option for the poor pertains to the very marrow of biblical revelation
and the gospel. The very identity of the God of Christianity is unintelligi
ble without the gratuitous, preferential, crazy and unapologetic [sin expli
caciones] love that God shows for the weak and oppressed of this world,
to the point that that perspective is what marks from beginning to end
the incarnatory process of God's Son. While there is faith on the earth,
the poor will continue to be the privileged ones of God, preferential
object of God's love and attention, and center of interest of every theology
that wants to remain worthy of its name and mission. (1992: 197)
Sobrino amplifies such a claim, saying:
the poor are the authentic theological source for understanding

Christian truth and practice and therefore the constitution of the
Church. The poor are those who confront the Church both with its
basic theological problem and with the direction in which the solution
to the problem is to be found_Christian truth becomes a concrete
universal when seen in terms of the poor. In the poor it acquires the
potential that theology will develop for an understanding of history as
a whole. In the poor we find the primordial conformity with the truth
in its evangelical sources (1984: 93).
And Vigil fully proposes the metaphysical intention of the affirmation

of God's option. The "deepest essence" of the option for the poor, he
says, "is not strategic, nor pastoral, nor mediational, but rather theologi
cal or, better, th?ologal [teologal]" (1993: 119).28 It is, Vigil continues,
28To hazard a generalization, for the Latin American theologians who use the term, what
belongs to the divine character can be called "th?ologal." A person may reflect/conform to/emulate
the divine character without even being conscious of the fact, and this participation in...
divinization, we should probably say but, at the least, salvation, is th?ologal, too, regardless of the
person's degree of ignorance. On the other hand, explicit, thematic reflections upon th?ologal
realities are called theological, and are less lively, less authentic, in proportion to their distance
from those realities. As Ellacuria (1993: 277) put it: "The th?ologal dimension of the created world,
which should not be confused with the theological dimension, would reside in that presence of the
trinitarian lfe, which is intrinsic to all things, but which in human beings can be apprehended as
reality and as the principle of personality. There is a strict experience of this th?ologal dimension
and through it there is a strict personal, social, and historical experience of God."
Javier Melloni defines the "'th?ologal' attitude" as "a path of participation in the mode of being of
God" (Melloni 1997). The distinction then can have much to do with the conception of theology
as a "second act," dependent on the "first act" of practice: practice is the "th?ologal" ground for
theological thinking, the canon of its truth, and the hodos of its method (cf., Guti?rrez 1988: 3-12).
"a principle that, we are certain, belongs essentially to the deepest

depths of Christianity because it belongs to the deepest depths of the
being of God' (ibid.; italics mine). In another place he writes, "God
himself is [the] option for the poor" (118; cf., Vigil n.d.).
It is worth noting that, even in pressing this kind of absolute meta
physical rendition of the gospel rediscovered in the midst of the poor,
Latin American theologians of liberation rarely take the explicit stand
against the witnesses of other faiths that seems implied. They have not
favored absolutization by way of negating others. ("I fully admit," wrote
Juan Luis Segundo, for example, "that authentic types of religious faith
can exist outside Christianity, but my concern here is to position the
Christian faith on our spectrum, if only for practical reasons" [Segundo
1984: 334-335].) The absoluteness of the witness of Jesus Christ comes
from his intensive identification with the poor, in line with a leitmotif
of Jewish Torah; and the Christian church's witness to Jesus as the
Christ preserves that claim to absoluteness, as and where the church
makes Jesus's identification with the poor its own.
Sobrino goes furthest in this direction:
The Spirit of Jesus is in the poor and, with them as his point of depar
ture, he re-creates the entire Church. If this truth is understood in all
its depth and in an authentically Trinitarian perspective, it means that
the history of God advances indefectibly by way of the poor; that the
Spirit of Jesus takes historical flesh in the poor; and that the poor show
the direction of history that is in accord with God's plan. (1984: 93)
On this account of the history of God's dealings with humankind, Jesus

is the Christ in virtue of his unshakeable solidarity with the poor.29
Jesus fully appreciates and acts upon the absolute worth to God of
those treated as worthless. Yet, there is in principle no reason to regard
Jesus as absolutely unique in this regard. To regard him so is to give in
to a terrible religious cynicism. Then if Jesus is proclaimed as the absol
ute presence of the divine, to the exclusion of other candidates, it must
In relation to Thomistic roots of this distinction, see Schillebeeckx (1968), and also XIX Semana
espa?ola de teolog?a (1962).
29In this connection, see also Pixley and Boff (1989), who emphasize a view of the incarnation
as incarnation in a "class" rather than in a person. Does this mean, then, that the real distinction
of Jesus as the Christ is slighted, and the full humanity of the incarnate God is denied for the sake
of a political aim? While the passage could be read thus, a more consistent reading is to gloss it as
a supplement and/or corrective to a distorted interpretation of the incarnation that reflects classist
social domination. Under such construal, the passage exposes a bourgeois, individualistic confusion
of full humanity with "individuality."
be for "practical reasons": Segundo, Sobrino, and the others, they are
Christian theologians?by and large, more or less, after all?trying to
clarify the meaning of Christian discipleship to an intended audience
that includes numberless self-avowed but cynical Christians.
However, if the work of liberation theologians is carried out (not to
mention carried over, into other contexts) without concern for meta
physical probity, then their "practical reasons"?not to mention aes
thetic reasons?for treating Jesus absolutely and exclusively as the
Christ tend to lose a powerful theoretical check against taking on an
importance which has neither theoretical nor practical justification.
Where theoretical (and other) correctives fall away, the likelihood
increases that one or another exigency of the immediate situation will
unduly constrain critical capabilities. That this in fact has happened to
Latin American liberation theologians, at the cost of a disorientating
loss of initiative, underscores the importance of renewed philosophical
inquiry writh regard to God's preferential option for the poor.
PROSPECT: TOWARD A SYMBOLIC APPROACH

I have sought to show that treating the preferential option for the
poor as an empirical description of the character of the divine, while
extraordinarily courageous in the context of Latin American history, is
a contributing factor to the crisis of confidence that has affected theolo
gians of liberation now for close to two decades. I have also argued that
late modern processes of cultural transformation tend to intensify the
sense that claims of God's preferential option for the poor encapsulate a
basically implausible view of reality. For experience informed by the
changing cultural physics of late modern experience, a metaphysics that
insists there is a divine person who intervenes in the world so as to
advance the cause of the oppressed in relation to others may be deeply
attractive, but is deeply implausible. The claim is falsified at least as
often as not, and when it is not, late modern ways of making sense
encourage the supposition that there are many other, more credible
explanations besides it.
For people whose experience is informed by the "cultural physics"
of late modern experience, that there is a God who intervenes in the
world to advance the cause of some special group in relation to others
almost certainly cannot be right. Taken as a symbol, however, God's
preferential option for the poor may yet ring true. Crisis of confidence
notwithstanding, it seems to me that liberation theologians need not be
entirely committed to treating God's preferential option for the poor as
an empirical description of the divine nature. Their continued
commitment despite disappointed hopes evinces an implicit appreci

ation of this point; perhaps developing an explicit appreciation of it
would open up a way to resolve or at least move beyond the current
crisis.
What might such an explicit appreciation look like? Clearly a satis
factory answer to this question lies beyond the scope of the present
argument. However, I conclude by offering some indications of how it
might be approached.
Understanding the divine option as a symbol means saying it is not
absolutely true that God takes the side of victims in history. It may be
true, but this depends on the context and manner in which it is
asserted. In one respect, such an understanding would seem trivial?
hardly an understanding at all. For the issue of the truth of God's
option for the poor has arisen just because it has, in fact, been asserted
in a context: ours. So of course it is contingent and not absolute. But a
far more interesting contingency than this strictly historicist observation
is intended by "symbolic understanding." In brief, when someone (or
some group) says or otherwise acts on the belief that God opts for the
poor, she/he (or the group) employs a complexly conditioned symbol?
God's preferential option for the poor?to engage with the ultimately
inscrutable ground of being, so that transformation of the symbol user
and her/his context can occur.
The contingency intended by symbolic understanding, then, is the
utter dependency of the symbol user upon the absolute ground (most
often called God in Christian tradition), to be, and to become, who she/
he is. What truth the symbol bespeaks of God cannot be understood
without reference to the densely textured imaginative work the claimant
puts into it and takes out of it in the process of transformation. Short
of such reference, the symbol is incapacitated for truth?if it is not
annihilated in the abyssal inscrutability of the divine ground. By a mar
velous reflex, then, the truth of God's preference for the poor is also
contingent upon how the poor and those who share in their life trans
form their situation in relation to the gift of utter dependency.
Thus, there are two poles to the referent of the symbol. The first
call it the distal referent?is that absolute ground, felt to be real, yet
quite beyond determination as an "ordinary" content of experience.
The second pole?call it the proximal referent?is the concrete situ
ation, at once determinate and undergoing redetermination, from and
against which those using the symbol intend it to refer themselves to
the divine ground. Symbolic praxis pulses between these poles: those
who opt for the poor, be they human or divine, make present each pole
in the other, even as they maintain their apartness.
If it is typical of Latin American liberation theology to think of

praxis as "historical mediation," by speaking explicitly of symbolic
praxis, I wish to reassert with the classical Christian theological tra
dition that even if history is the medium of a liberating divine option
for the poor, the substance of such freedom is transhistorical. Thus,
God's option for the poor is not centered in Utopian aspirations of his
torical actors (nor, to say it one more time, in the divine nature sin
mas), but rather finds focus in a deep mystery at the pulsing heart of
being, a mystery that can only be truly encountered through symbolic
praxis. And if speculative philosophical inquiry exposes this mystery,
then it also relativizes itself in the process. Although aiming at a most
general account of experience, the plurality of accounts may be expected
to endure, so that a key test of the correctness of any given metaphys
ical account is pragmatic and ecological?concerned with questions of
being for the sake of questions of living.30 Metaphysics pursued this
way will not solve the scandal posed by religious affirmations of a God
who opts for the poor; it can, however, lend resonance to the outcry of
those who have been made to seem like little people speaking of them
selves in a too-loud voice.
On the face of it, a symbolic interpretation of this kind might seem
to undercut the germinal experience from which the theology of liber
ation grew, that God always already reveals the divine self, personally
and actively present at the side of the poor in their struggle to live.
Nonetheless, understanding God's option for the poor as symbolic truth
actually is consistent with much of the best of Latin American liberation
theology.31 A symbolic understanding also faithfully retrieves the
classic, mystical ontology of the Christian theological tradition, wherein
the active, personal God of the Bible is identified with the ultimately
mysterious ground of being. (That very identification, let it be added, is
for the mystical tradition thoroughly biblical.) Furthermore, a symbolic
30See Raposa (2004) and Schilbrack (2004a, b) for pertinent reconceptions of metaphysical
inquiry. I hinted at a ritual theory of metaphysics in Irvine (2004:64-65). Goizueta (2004) develops
a much older Latin American approach to diese concerns. Dussel (1998) is pertinent, but I have
reservations about his metaphysics, essayed in "An Ontological Critique of the Trans-Ontology of
Enrique Dussel," forthcoming in the journal, Sophia.
31I have in mind especially Guti?rrez' commentary on the biblical Book of Job (1987 [1986]). By
the middle of the 1980s, Guti?rrez' writings clearly reflected his deepening discipleship in the
spirituality of the poor. A certain vanguardism is tempered with closer solidarity. As one result,
Guti?rrez' characterization of theology undergoes a change. The role of critical reflection is never
abandoned, nor the reference point of practice, but the ambience within which critical reflection
on practice has meaning assumes greater and deeper consequence. Thus, Guti?rrez' core
description of theology becomes "thought about a mystery." I give a detailed interpretation of On
fob in the book-length manuscript from which the present article draws.
understanding rooted in that classic ontology can reckon with deep

seated challenges to the plausibility of a divine preference for victims,
challenges that have only worsened for the vast majority of participants
of modernizing cultures.
To restate the core proposal of this article, then: God's preferential
option for the poor is a symbol which, as such, expresses and enables
limited, yet truthful engagement with the ultimately inscrutable ground
of being, leading to a liberating transformation of the symbol users.
Religious symbols are conventional signs of human communities which
have come to function for imaginative engagement with, and partici
pation in, the absolute ground of being (most often called "God" in
Christian tradition). Their coming to function in this way takes place in
ritualization. This is what it means to talk of revelatory events and rev
elatory experience. In the case of liberation theology, God's preferential
option for the poor symbolizes processes of divine engagement at work
in the symbol-users' opting for the poor. To opt for the poor is an
essentially endless task of ritual reorientation of one's life around a way
of accompaniment somehow energized by the divine life. This is a
description of opting for the poor in which, I wager, many liberation
theologians would recognize their own experience.3
Does God actually opt for the poor as most liberation theologians
do? On the one hand, "[t]he ritual... only makes sense in terms of the
perceived disjunct between the ritual act and the world of lived experi
ence_From the point of view of ritual, the world is fragmented and
fractured. This is why the endless work of ritual is necessary, even if the
work is always, ultimately, doomed" (Seligman et al. 2008: 31). On the
other hand, liberation theologians would urge that the endless incom
pleteness of the work of ritual ought not be confused with ultimate
doom. Tragedy is sublated by prophecy (cf., Nava 2001: 169-175).
32The great issue for this approach is how conventional signs come to function as religious
symbols. Why do revelations occur? Does the absolute ground of being have a character sufficiently
determinate as to determine which signs within human discourse can or cannot bear the divine? In
some sense such as this can God be characterized as active in the direction of human affairs? Or, is
the real situation somewhat vaguer than this? Is the absolute ground of being rather so
indeterminate as to be indifferent to any and all symbolizations? Then, is true revelation really and
fully a matter of human wisdom, applied to the task of sorting through the wild abundance of our
own cultural production for what might fit the present time?
These are daunting questions. I cannot settle on a final answer to them here, although as my
discussion to this point indicates, I incline toward a relatively strong vagueness claim regarding
divine character considered in itself. However, I have sought to balance this by an emphasis upon
the neglected normative functions of the wisdom of the poor, especially the ultimately
transformative effects attested in wisdom traditions across cultures, and profoundly explored in
Christian language of deification or theosis.
In the oft-quoted words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado: There

is no way; we make the way in walking it.
CONCLUSION
Never will everyone's experience be uniformly informed by late
modern cultural dynamics, so an account laying down universal truth
conditions pertaining to God's preferential option for the poor is
impossible. Yet those dynamics do contribute to a general ecology of
being. The point of speaking of an ecology conditioned by late modern
cultural forces is to highlight that people interact with those forces. The
conditions of human existence are not mere data; we receive them
actively in order to symbolize places and ways of being for ourselves,
including for ourselves before the divine. Thus, the plausibility of an
ontological hypothesis like God's preferential option for the poor is not
determined only by what is given to us, but also by ways in which we
are ready to take it. The pursuit of metaphysics, then, is a vital part of
creating the future of liberation theology. Metaphysics holds us respon
sible to our experience, and enhances our capacity to take responsibility
for experience. The reflective ambience of metaphysical inquiry fosters
a latitude within which to explore what neglected possibilities given
constraints may hold within themselves. Working out rather more
detailed and systematic accounts of the experience of God's option for
the poor as metaphysically credible, spiritually transformative, symbolic
engagement with the absolute is the task to which this conclusion
points.
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Liberation Theology in Late Modernity: An Argument for a Symbolic Approach

Author(s): Andrew B. Irvine

Paradoxically, for many Latin Americans, especially the progressive

Klaiber's generalizations are borne out in the experiences of particular

themselves as stifled or propelled by events out of their control_

DISTINGUISHING AN APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM

an integral and comprehensive form of life. He thus eschews mediation

The wanted alternative, the rhetoric leads one to anticipate, is a true

of his step Beyond Liberation Theology (2008).5 That might do while

5Yet, I immediately need to qualify such a sweeping characterization. There is a sense, or

liberation theology broke with a modern, Eurocentric theological

RELEVANCE OF THEOLOGICAL PROBLEMS TO THE

ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

Why in particular does talk of God's preferential option for the

a naturalistic, evolutionary account of how the universe, and life within

THE FIRST CHALLENGE: HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

testament to salvation than brilliant, if perhaps inadvertent, exercises in

history_There is only one history?a 'Christo-finalized' history"

There is a somewhat more than hermeneutical aspect to the chal

THE SECOND CHALLENGE: EVOLUTIONARY

people who would like to explain, without resorting to a priori pur

values" as to secure a theological importance for human beings that is

THE THIRD CHALLENGE: INTER-RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER

As already indicated, the theology of liberation emerged as a response

By mid-2000, the number of non-Catholic Christians or Pentecostals, Evangelicals,

Typically, liberation theologians have taken up the challenge of

approach of Scannone with what might be called a "vanguardist" approach, as exemplified by

"density of the present"?the tractable complexity of a given moment

privilege and compound the privation of the deprived. Indeed,

[T]he main obstacle to the success of poverty reduction efforts in Latin

Despite some significant initiatives to discourage and penalize corrup

More than a decade after the transition to democracy planted hopes of

Five years later, Mitchell A. Seligson and Dominique Z?phyr, discussing

The burden of Gonzalez Faus' critique is evident: when social, political,

Some theologians go on to say that affirming God's preference for

Sobrino amplifies such a claim, saying:

the poor are the authentic theological source for understanding

And Vigil fully proposes the metaphysical intention of the affirmation

"a principle that, we are certain, belongs essentially to the deepest

On this account of the history of God's dealings with humankind, Jesus

PROSPECT: TOWARD A SYMBOLIC APPROACH

commitment despite disappointed hopes evinces an implicit appreci

If it is typical of Latin American liberation theology to think of

understanding rooted in that classic ontology can reckon with deep

In the oft-quoted words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado: There

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Certeau, Michel de The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven

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Comblin, Jos? Called for Freedom: The Changing Context of

Dussel, Enrique Etica de la liberaci?n en la edad de la