LATIN AMERICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY
DO WE REALLY DRINK FROM OUR OWN WELLS?
ENRIQUE DUSSEL
One of the issues of examining Latin American theology, or for that matter, any theology which emerges from the so-called "Third World" is raising the question of comparison and validation. How does Third World theology compare to and differ from classical Western theology?
A related question would be if Third World theology, more so than Western theology, seeks to "recapture" the essence of the faith of early Christianity or is it a deviation? After many centuries of the incrustation of Western theology in the Church, it is second-hand nature to believe that anything that comes from Euro-America is "universally valid in all times and in all places."
Let us now turn our attention to Enrique Dussel. Dussel has made his mark primarily as a church historian. Born in Argentina, Dussel received his licentiate in philosophy from the University of Mendoza in Argentina, his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Madrid, a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne, and a licentiate in theology from the Catholic Institute in Paris. For several years he taught at Cuzo University in Mendoza until his activities on behalf of liberation forced him out of that post. He also taught in the University of Mexico City (Ferm, op. cit. p. 126).
Dussel served as President of the Commission on the Study of the History of the Church in Latin America. Dussel's major study is A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation. Jose Miguez Bonino refers to this book as "the best conceived and realized one-volume history of the Church in Latin America (A History, back cover).
In his writings, Dussel comes across more as an interpreter and synthesizer of the main features of Latin American theology than as an original thinker. For example, he is critical of the European "Theology of Hope" for its failure to seriously take into account indigenous economic and political factors. In so doing it "has disemboweled hope and even turned it into opium (Dussel, Ethics and the Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978, p. 62).
He favors socialism over capitalism, but a socialism that need not be Marxist. For Dussel, the original sin in Latin America has been colonial domination based on capitalism. But he faults Marxism for its failure to affirm the Other, which leaves it with a closed system lacking a transcendent reference with which to critique itself. Dussel agrees with Miguez Bonino in preferring the term "people" to "class" in describing the oppressed. Although the term "people" is admittedly ambiguous, it does go beyond class distinction to encompass grassroots communities in their political, economic, and cultural dimensions, a people who must play a leading role in its own liberation (Enrique Dussel is one of the first Latin American Liberation theologians to openly abjure ecclesiastical discrimination against women. He writes: We feel confident that in the future we will see women priests, women bishops, and some day-and why not?-a woman pope. There is no theological or genetic objection: the woman is a human person (Ethics, p. 113).
Dussel also argues that we must recover the analogical dimension of Catholic theology. According to Dussel, the problem with traditional theology is that it universalized a particular European theology and abstractly superimposed it on Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Dussel argues that the Third World must be free to develop its own distinctive methodologies and theologies, while participating analogically in Christ's universal church. Dussel believes that the universalization of the particular is idolatrous, for it amounts to a denial of the Other. Acceptance of the Other relativizes all particular systems. To be sure, theology must be historically grounded, but we must beware of absolutizing the finite, whether it be in Europe or Latin America. Analogically speaking, only the Other can be absolutized; in this sense Dussel can insist that there is one theology (Ferm, op. cit. p. 46).
But Christians must also be "atheists of the fetish"-that is, they must be critical of human systems (In Torres and Eagleton, Theology in the Americas, p. 290).
For Dussel, the only authentic criterion for judging whether we are truly on the side of God is whether "we struggle unto death for the poor. That is an objective concrete Christological criticism: 'I was hungry; you gave me to eat.'" (Ferm, op. cit., p. 47).
Like so many of his Latin American colleagues, Dussel points to idolatry as a critical problem for Christians: believing in false gods only lulls one into somnolent complacency and an acceptance of the status quo. For Dussel and his colleagues today, the only way to escape from idolatry is to show a preference for the liberation of the poor. To put it another way, the death of God means in reality "the death of the other human being. (Ibid.)"
Atheism in itself is not the problem; for when one claims to be an atheist, the question should be asked, Atheism with respect to what conceptualization of God? Chances are that the answer to that question would reveal many Christian atheists among the poor and oppressed (Ibid.).
With respect to the reign of God, Dussel uses the terms "not yet" and "already" to indicate that in Jesus the reign has in one sense already come, but in another sense is "not yet'" until the poor become liberated humanizing beings: If there were no poor, then either we would be "already" in a reign without any not "not yet" or would be in an idolatrous reign of this world ("The Kingdom of God and the Poor," International Review of Missions, April 1979, p. 115).
In his deep sensitivity to the plight of the poor, Enrique Dussel reveals his principal concern, a concern that is in no way compromised by his scholarly skills as a historian (Ferm, op. cit, p. 47).
En fin, what we find in this article, is that Dussel, like his other Liberation counterparts, pursues the ongoing integration between the theoretical dimensions of theology with the existential reality of those for whom theology seeks to speak. For Dussel, the dichotomy between physical and spiritual is totally a false one. We also find that he does not place theology and social action in a sequential pattern. For him social action and theology go hand in hand.
In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer.
Dr. Juan A. Carmona
Past Visiting Professor of Theology
Tainan Theological College/Seminary
