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Summer
Books Gods concern for the powerless a given
CHRIST THE LIBERATOR:
A VIEW FROM THE VICTIMS By Jon Sobrino Orbis Books, 376 pages,
$28 |
REVIEWED By GARY
MacEOIN
In this book, both profoundly personal and profoundly theological,
Jon Sobrino completes his magisterial analysis of Jesus Christ, true God and
true man. The central theme is the mystery of the Resurrection with its promise
of the triumph of justice. The first Christians preached Jesus
Resurrection as Gods reaction to human actions, as the justice God works
for one whom others unjustly put to death.
Sobrinos passionate commitment to the poor, not just those
who have nothing, but especially those deprived by an unjust global system of
the goods to which they are entitled, is the driving force of his theological
reflection. For more than 40 years he has been engaged in intense pastoral work
in El Salvador, raising the consciousness of people who had for centuries been
helpless and voiceless.
With Archbishop Oscar Romero, Sobrino and his fellow Jesuits at
the Central American University defended Salvadorans rights to organize
and to become agents of their own destiny. Sobrino was the one the military
most hated and feared. He escaped the fate of his colleagues, their housekeeper
and her young daughter simply because he was at a conference in Burma when the
military decided the traitors had to be wiped out. Today Sobrino
keeps the memory of the martyrs alive by continuing their work, by insisting
that faith is meaningless if it does not produce the fruit of active commitment
to the crucified people.
Sobrino sees God as saving us not simply by virtue of his power
but, more important, by virtue of Gods love for us, a love made concrete
by giving his own Son on the cross.
Far from being the immutable God of the Greek philosophers, he
saves us in a human way by showing solidarity with us and suffering with us.
This suffering expresses the possibility of Gods being a
God-with-us and a God-for-us, though in order to be so God has to define
himself as a God-at-our-mercy.
As a liberation theologian to whom the centrality of Gods
consistent concern for the powerless and voiceless is a given, Sobrino returns
repeatedly to the centrality of the kingdom.
The Christology of the New Testament developed out of two things:
the experience of Jesus resurrection, and the memory of what was
fundamental in his earthly life. Gradually, however, the second element -- the
notion of kingdom -- was downplayed or shifted to the realm of a historical and
esoteric spirituality, a recurrent tendency still operative today.
The difficulty about accepting the centrality of the kingdom,
Sobrino believes, is not merely anthropological and social in nature but also
theological and ecclesial. It not only leads back to Jesus of Nazareth
but also gives a primary and preferential place to the poor people of the
world. And these people have definite characteristics: They are in the majority
(which makes other groups the exceptions); they are a necessary historical
product (of various world orders); they are dialectically poor
(because there are [the] rich and [the] oppressors); they are marginalized,
despised and excluded (because they do not fulfill the requirements for
humankind as dictated by the ruling cultures).
They call the church into question, as nothing else does,
which means they have always been taken some account of by the church, but they
have not been its central concern. The most serious aspect from a theological
point of view is that the poor have not come to possess the theological status
they deserve according to Jesus.
We, Sobrino insists, are the church called in question by the
poor. What that means, here and now in the 21st century, is to be
actively involved in the most solid reality, that of unjust poverty and
indignity, allowing oneself to be affected by it and responding adequately to
it. In negative terms, if Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and Congo do not affect us
deeply, do not move our hearts and minds, then we are not living in reality in
any shape or form, and not only are we not ethical or Christian or authentic or
saints, but we are not real; we are unreal. We shall have become exceptions or
footnotes.
The path Sobrino invites us to take is a rugged one. But, he
reminds us, we are in good company. We have as companions Jesus of Nazareth
himself, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop
Romero, Ignacio Ellacurria and his companions, Celina Ramos, Juan Gerardi
Conedera -- a whole constellation of witnesses, martyrs who not only bear
witness to Christ but who remake the life and fate of Jesus.
Gary MacEoin lives and writes in San Antonio.
National Catholic Reporter, May 17,
2002
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