LATIN AMERICAN THEOLOGY 

JOSE MIGUEZ-BONINO 

THEOLOGY AND THE CAPITALISM-SOCIALISM DEBATE 

One of the things that Liberation theologians emphasize is that theology has to address what socio-political and economic praxis it legitimates.  In other words, how does theology endorse or oppose certain socio-economic and political systems and why?

Jose Miguez Bonino is one of those Latin American theologians who addresses those questions. Like most Latin-American theologians, Bonino addresses the direct relationship between theology and social issues in Latin America.  He makes it clear that theology cannot exist in a vacuum and that it cannot operate devoid of its cultural and social context.  

Like Rubem Alves, Bonino was one of the very few Protestant liberation theologians in an overwhelmingly Catholic Latin America.  Alves's ties to the church weakened throughout the years as he came to advocate a "theology of captivity" centering on dreams that will protect humanity from the harsh realities of the real world.  Bonino, on the other hand, continued as an active clergyman who also served as a president of the world council of churches (Ferm, op. cit. p. 39).

Jose Miguez Bonino was born in Argentina in 1924. He attended the Evangelical Theologate in Buenos Aires, as well as Emory University and Union Theological Seminary in the United States.  Ordained to the Methodist ministry in 1948, he served churches in Argentina and Bolivia, and was an official observer of the United Methodist Church at Vatican II.  He served as a professor of systematic theology at the Higher Evangelical Institute for Theological Studies in Buenos Aires (Ibid., p. 125). 

The author of several books, Miguez-Bonino's major contribution to the development of Liberation Theology is his Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the main features of Latin American theology, particularly the conviction that theology must emerge out of the lives of the oppressed in their own encounter with the biblical texts, a process that that Miguez-Bonino calls "hermeneutical circulation."  He traces the development of what he calls a "new breed of Christians" in Latin America, focusing on the Christians for Socialism conference in Santiago, Chile, as pivotal in this development.  This book is also helpful in its treatment of of some of the major agreements and differences among some liberation theologians (Jose Miguez-Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975).

In his writings, Miguez-Bonino devotes considerable attention to the capitalism-socialism debate. He faults the capitalist system for its profit-motive basis (which in Latin America has resulted in the dehumanization of large sectors of the population) and its apparent indifferences to the plight of the poor. These glaring inequalities will continue to exist as long as economic dependence on outside power continues.  In a manner of reminiscent of Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Segundo, Miguez-Bonino suggests a new form of socialism that would eliminate the basis inequalities of the capitalist system yet not be a mere parroting of doctrinaire Marxism.  He takes pains to point out that Latin American liberation theologians are not socialist ideologues fomenting radicals social change.  Rather, they are committed Christians seeking to forge a new society of liberated human beings.  They have become social activists because of their Christian faith, not because of Marxist ideology.  But they have learned that Marxist analysis is helpful in understanding and correcting social inequalities.  In echoing Jose Miranda, Miguez Bonino points out that Marxist analysis to see class struggle, not as a general consequence of sin, nor as a deplorable accident, but-as Calvin himself saw-as a war prompted by greed and power (Ibid., p. 119).

For the Christian community, this means that what is at stake is not a specifically Christian struggle, but basically a human struggle of the oppressed against oppressors.  And Christians, like everyone else interested in social analysis, need to use the best available tools, including but not limited to, Marxist thought.  If at some point revolution and even violence become necessary for the oppressed to receive their due, it is not because of any Marxist dogma, but because the violence of oppressors demands it (Ferm, op. cit. pp. 39-40).

Miguez-Bonino joins Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Segundo, and Rubem Alves, and other liberation theologians in criticizing Jurgen Moltmann and other European theologians for advocating a "critical theory" that claims to remain above all theologies and ideologies as a kind of all-encompassing judge. Such a neutral stance, Miguez-Bonino insists, is impossible (Ibid., p. 40).

Bonino says that there is no divine politics or economics.  He states that this means that we must resolutely use the best human politics and economics at our disposal (Miguez-Bonino here is responding to Moltmann's "Open Letter to Jose Miguez-Bonino."  In his letter, Moltmann contends that Miguez-Bonino and his Latin American colleagues are closer to European political theology than they care to admit and that in their use of critical analysis of European Karl Marx, they are less distinctive than they think they are.  Christianity and Crisis, March 29, 1976).

But he also warns against the tendency among some Latin American liberation theologians to equate Christianity with a specific social program. He calls this tendency the "radical monism' of the new Liberation Theology," a view that makes the love of God and the love of neighbor one and the same ("Historical Praxis and Christian Identity," in Rosino Gibellini, ed. Frontiers of Theology in Latin America., p. 263). 

He states that such that such a stance would lead to "unwillingly deifying the history of humanity. He believes that in such a case, that we would be better to call things by their right name and profess to total immanentism (Ibid., p. 272).

Bonino says the following: "As a Latin American Christian, I am convinced that revolutionary action aimed at changing the basic economic, political, social, and cultural structures and conditions of life is imperative today in the world.  Ours is not a time for mere development, rearranging or correction, but for basic revolutionary change (which out not be to be equated necessarily with violence)...the sociological tools, the historical horizon of interpretation, the insights into the dynamics of the social process and the revolutionary the revolutionary ethos and programme  which Marxism has either received and appropriated or itself created are, however, corrected or interpreted, indispensable for revolutionary change (Grand Rapids, Erdmans, 1976, p.7).

In closing, we can ask if Miguez-Bonino is advocating for a synthesis between Christian and Marxism.  We can also ask if he is a Marxist in disguise.  Is he trying to sanitize Christian theology by utilizing Marxist categories?  

My own response is an absolute "no" to all the questions above.  I strongly believe that he is a committed, dedicated, and sincere Christian who is committed to social justice from both a faith and theological perspective.  That in his work as a believer and  as a theologian makes use of Marxist analysis among others, does not diminish his faith.  Nor does it put him in the category of atheist and agnostic Marxists.  If anything, it places him in the category of those whose commitment to social justice is faith-based and not secularly-based. 

As Ferm, says, Miguez Bonino is especially important both for his concern to develop a Christian political ethic for Latin America and for his contribution to the Christian-Marxist dialogue (Ferm, op. cit., p 40).

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary