This week at the theology reading group we are discussing In Search of Christ in Latin America: From Colonial Image to Liberating Savior, by Samuel Escobar. It takes a historical approach to Christology, surveying how ideas about Christ developed over time in Latin America. Particular attention is paid to the changing context: cultural, political, economic, and literary. Previously, I posted about some of the earlier chapters that discuss the period up to about 1950.
Here are some of the things that I appreciate about the book, and why it should be read by those outside Latin America.
A model for doing contextual theology
The many different ways of doing contextual theology. They all have strenghts and weaknesses. Escobar recounts the long and substantial efforts of Latin Americans to do theology in their own context. They took their own context (historical, cultural, religious, literary, economic, and political) seriously, particularly with regard to politics, justice, human rights, and poverty. They brought that context into dialogue with their theology and with the Bible. In particular, they worked very hard to engage with the Bible and biblical scholarship at a deep level.
Respectful and substantial engagement with other views and traditions.
Although distinctly Evangelical, Escobar carefully engages with a wide range of views different from his own (Marxists, liberation theologians, missionaries from the USA, public intellectuals, Catholics, ...). He takes their views seriously, does not caricature or dismiss them, and appreciates, while also sometimes giving significant critiques. It refreshing that the book has a generous and gracious tone.
The view of theology and mission is holistic (integrated) and multi-dimensional. For example, the redemption and reconciliation offered by Christ are deemed to be personal, social, global, and cosmic.
The multi-dimensional perspective on the Kingdom is nicely summarised in a quotation at the beginning of Chapter 10 (page 173).
All these explicit or implicit, understandings of the Kingdom, throughout Christian history, have focused on some aspects of the kingdom at the cost of others, by putting emphasis on its present or future reality, on its historical or eternal nature, its social or personal dimension.
Each interpretation has understood a part as being the whole, thus contributing to a distortion, an eclipse, a reduction of the biblical message of the Kingdom. It is time to risk recovering the totality of the kingdom Gospel, to appreciate its multidimensionality and to take on our commitment to that the kingdom presents to us here and now. This requires sincere biblical exploration.
Mortimer Arias, Venga Tu Reino
I agree as I consider that theology is intrinsically multi-dimensional, and any theological discussion must seek to find a balance between a range of interpretations and intrinsic tensions or dialectics (e.g. the action of humans and the action of God, Jesus being human and divine, grace and law, faith and works, ...). However, too much theology is partisan and excludes such multi-dimensionality.
David C. Kirkpatrick completed a Ph.D. at Edinburgh University on the history of Latin Americans contribution to global evangelicalism. He expresses admiration for Escobar's book in a recent review in the journal Church History.
[Escobar] moves seamlessly across fields to fashion a book for which I know very little comparison.
... one of the particular strengths of Escobar’s book: careful attention to the transnational nature of Latin American Protestantism without overlooking local Catholic and Protestant constructions.
...one of Escobar’s strengths: his willingness to give credit where credit is due, even if it cuts across political narratives or appears to export agency to northern thinkers.
While Escobar pays careful attention to a broad spectrum of literature, his work should dispel at least one surprisingly persistent myth: Latin American Protestants lack their own intellectual tradition.
Perhaps the only weakness I see in the book is its lack of depth in its engagement with the social sciences, including Marxist perspectives, and economics, including discussions of capitalism and socialism. Sociological perspectives are referred to but it is not clear what key methods and concepts from sociology are actually being used.
Escobar presents a view of capitalism and socialism is somewhat one-dimensional and dualistic. Must one choose one or the other? Unfortunately, Latin America has suffered from countries veering to extreme forms of either socialism or capitalism. Both forms have been corrupted by entrenched oligarchies and foreign interference. Some of this history and the associated problems are documented in Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. They argue that a key to posterity is to have inclusive, rather than extractive, political and economic institutions. The iron law of oligarchy is that if the leaders of an extractive political institution are replaced, particularly in a revolution, that the institution will remain extractive.
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