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The Political Significance of Latin-American Liberation
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11192 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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3 / 1986 |
5,399 Words |
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Richard L. Rubenstein
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The 1973 appearance of the English translation of A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez introduced North America to perhaps the most influential theological voice to emerge from Latin America in recent decades. This book and the writings of other Latin American liberation theologians marked a radical departure in both the motive for writing and the content and method of theology. Unlike traditional theologies, including the North American "radical theology" of the 1960s. Latin American liberation theology has a practical political objective, the revolutionary transformation of Latin American society, by force, if necessary. Although liberation theology takes issue with the atheism of Marxism, it shares many of Marxism's political objectives. On almost all political and social issues, liberation theologians are far morel likely to side with the Marxists than with those who regard capitalism, inspite of its problems, as offering humanity a freer and more hopeful future.
The genuinely radical character of the new theology can best be understood by a comparison of its methods and motives with those of traditional Euro-American theology in the modern period. In a very important sense, skepticism and doubt have been the parents of modern theology. The theologian has normally regarded his vocation to be the defense of his religious tradition against the skepticism of the unbelievers and the temptation to unbelief with the believer. Thus, a principal function of theology has been dissoance-reducation. Theology seeks to foster dissonance-reduction when significant items of information regarded as credible by the believer are perceived to be inconsistent with established religious beliefs, values, and collectively sanctioned modes of behavior.
The function became especially important as a result of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The fundamental insight of the Enlightenment is that humanity has come of age, that it requires no transcendent authority but only the free and unconstrained use of reason to understand the world and to shape a felicitous human destiny. Immanuel Kant has characterized the enlightenment as follows:
The Enlightenment represents the emergence from immaturity. Immaturity is cradled in the incapacity to make use of one's own understanding without another's guidance…Sapere aude! Have the courage to make use of your understanding! This is the motto of the Enlightenment.
Some of the more practical consequences of the Enlightenment were spelled out succinctly by Hegel:
Right (i.e. law) and [social] Morality came to be looked upon as having their foundation in the actual present Will of man, whereas formerly it has referred only to the command of God enjoined ab extra…
Of necessity, the Enlightenment's legitimation of the autonomous use of reason as the hallmark of mature humanity was problematic for religious tradition. The Roman Catholic Church claimed that in matters of faith and morals, it is humanity's divinely certified "teacher of truth." Although the Church encourages free enquiry in science and technology, there is a point beyond which it cannot go in permitting the use of autonomous reason in matters of faith.
As is well known, in the case of Protestantism, the Bible rather than the
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