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Paper on Gustavo Gutierrezʼs “The Density of the Present” Class: Thinking about God

“For me, to do theology is to write a love letter to the God in whom I believe, to the people to whom I belong, and to the Church of which I am a part. It is a love that recognizes perplexisty, even disgust, but that above all brings deep joy.” How a fundamental interrelation of these four primary theological elements--God, people, church, and joy--structures Gutierrezʼs theology?

“The poor are a crucified people.” Gustavo Gutierrez

The Theology of Gustavo Gutierrez has deep roots in its birth continent, Latin

America, In order to understand Liberation Theology, one must be aligned with poverty

as the embodiment of Godʼs suffering, and with the poor as mystics living their hope for

communion with a loving God, amid profound suffering in an unjust and sinful world.

Gutierrez sees in the poor the crucified Jesus incarnate. They are the body of God, the

flesh that Godʼs Word took, once planted in Latin America by the European

missionaries. Seen in this light, the poor are not the theme (i.e., the object) of

theological discourse, but the agents (i.e., the subject) of their living theology. This

theology can and has much to give to the global Christian church.

For Gutierrez, the poor are actors in Godʼs history, claiming their theological

voice, embodying and proclaiming the Gospel to the universal church. For this reason,

he stresses the importance of “listening” to them. He presents “listening” as the first step

in engaging the poor as the agents of their theology. He urges the global church to listen

to the sufferings, hopes, and struggles of the poor in order to learn how the poor live--

not theorize about--their ardent faith in a loving God. Indeed, the poor of Latin America

translate their faith not through Western European mental categories. Their faith does

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not appear as an effort to understand certain experiences in the light of a text, but it is

translated into active involvement, hope expressed into a particular attitude to life.

Gutierres defines theology as a communal enterprise, an ecclesial function. He

attributes to the word “church” its original, Greek meaning, (“ekklesia”, i.e., the people

called out for a common purpose) to describe a Christian community called out to bring

the Gospel to the world. As such, the church exists in the communities of the poor as

bringing the Gospel to the world through their practiced faith. Gutierrez stresses that, in

order to do theology, one must be aligned in solidarity with the ecclesial community of

the poor. Solidarity with the poor is a prerequisite of a committed theology and a

necessary condition for the creation of a serious, scientific, responsible theology.

The theologian who creates solidarity with the poor must understand poverty

along three dimensions: (a) material, resulting from sin that has created social

structures, which exclude the poor from participation in the benefits of creation; (b)

spiritual, expressed as the childlike trust of the poor in Godʼs preferential love for them,

and (c) voluntary, as solidarity with the poor that expresses protest against their

situation and is also a condition of credibility for the evangelizing task.

If theology is “faith seeking understanding”, then theology must be understood

within the framework of faith. Responsible theology starts in prayerful silence, in the

presence of Godʼs mysterium. Prophetic language sees Christ as the link between the

disinherited and the kingdom. Gutierrez sees this theology sprouting in popular sectors

of Latin American and other continents, from the experience of innocent suffering.

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According to Gutierrez, a theology seeking to become a hermeneutic of the hope

of the poor in the God of life is not interested in forging sociopolitical programs for the

poor. He is not interested in a theology of social analysis based on human compassion,

but in a theology that has its real roots in the experience of Godʼs gratuitous love and

faith in the God of life who rejects the unjust and early death--which is what poverty

means. This is a theocentric notion that affords Liberation theology the role of helping

believers to be understood and accepted by the world of the Lord. In this light, God is

the ultimate judge, not the people. This theology proclaims integral liberation, that is a

liberation of the whole person, not simply the oppressive social structures. In this light,

Liberation Theology denies the influence of Marxism and anchors itself in the faith of

Jesus incarnated as the poor.

Liberation theology serves not the Universal but the Particular Gospel. It seeks a

language about God that is anchored in a particular cultural context, within which it

narrates the experience of Jesus and of those who accepted his witness. This is the

“inculturated” Gospel, the Gospel as seen through the mental categories of the people

who received it within their inherent sociocultural context. The inculturation of the

Gospel accepts and allows religious pluralism under one faith. There is one God, one

Word, one baptism, but different creatures. The Word is given by God in order to be

understood and interpreted through different categories.

Liberation theology celebrates the poor as modern mystics, for whom the

experience of oppression has turned out to be fruitful ground for the mystical dimension

of Christian life. In a world that has denied them access to the goods of creation, the

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poor manage to live the mystical dimension of their faith, forging a path between the ills

of poverty, injustice, exclusion, and rejection, and their intimate experience of God on a

basis of love, peace, and joy. They are a people who, amid their daily crucifixion by an

unjust world, find the joy of Easter in their faith and innocent trust in Godʼs abundant

love for them. In Latin America, “Felices Pasquas” (i.e., “Happy Easter”) is a greeting

the poor exchange throughout the year, to proclaim their joy and hope in the resurrected

Christ.

For Gutierrez, the key question of theology is “how to say to the poor, to the least

of society, that God loves them” (p. 179). He invites theologians to seek answers using

a language that puts down roots in the dense and complex condition of the poor,

centers its expression on their social and cultural universe and takes seriously the

narrative dimension of the Christian faith. Celebrating the faith mission of Church in

“giving of its poverty” beyond Latin America, Gustavo Gutierrez sees Liberation theology

as the pastoral action of the future, and as a theology that “takes its stand in story, that

knows how to narrate faith ... a theology that is humble and backed up by personal

commitment, a theology that offers and does not seek to impose, [and] one that listens

before speaking.” (p. 201)

Good theology helps people integrate their faith and the wider world in which they

live. Good theology seeks to be faithful to the Gospel, while seeking to understand

Christian faith in terms of its truth claims, its self-understanding and the meaning of its

convictions and commitments as they take flesh in the human, concrete world and

within a specific, social and cultural context. Gutierrezʼs theology, as good theology, is

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not just a theory about faith, but a testimony to the living Christ, seen in the body of the

poor. My understanding of Gutierrezʼs theology would have been only theoretical if I had

not been experienced Christ in the poor during one of my visits in Latin America. The

incident described below, which occurred in Brazil, illustrates Gutierrezʼs theological

insight that the crucified poor of Latin America incarnate a suffering and ailing, yet

healing and liberating God.

In 2006, I was in Rio Di Janeiro, during the carnival week. On the evening of the

Big Carnival Parade, as I was innocently strolling among the dense crowd, I was

attacked and robbed by four young men. It was an incident common in Brazil--a country

well-known to the world for its suffering from the ills of poverty. The incident was

unexpected. It happened fast and it left me in shock. Even though hundreds of people

witnessed it, no one around me came to my rescue, for fear of the attackers. I was left

on the ground, shaken, crying for help, unable to move, while the crowd continued

walking by me, immersed in the festivity of the evening.

Suddenly, a woman came through the crowd, with her arms open to embrace

me. Speaking in Portuguese, she told me, “Hold on to me.” She lifted me, carried me

away from the crowd, and sat me down. Still holding me in her arms, and without saying

another word to me, she began to pray, calling out to Jesus with a strong, clear, and

commanding voice that became even louder, clearer, and more commanding as her

prayer continued on. Her prayer was a petition for my immediate healing and

restoration. She asked Jesus to come immediately to my rescue and liberate me from

the violation I had just experienced. She asked Him to move quickly inside my heart and

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banish the fear, the pain, and the humiliation I had just suffered. She asked Him to

forgive the people who had caused my suffering, to free them from a life of crime, and to

fill me at once with strength, hope, and renewed energy. She asked Him to be my guide,

my companion, and my protector against all evil, for as long as I would be in Brazil.

Finally she asked Him to dry my tears, bless me with the joy of the Carnival, and move

my steps in joining in the celebration with the rest of the people of Brazil.

As her invocation reached a crescendo, I felt God moving inside me. God

entered my being as a healing force, calming my panic, soothing my pain, quickly

turning my anger into serenity. The woman continued to pray, until I felt completely

restored. I finally let go of her arms and, for the first time, looked into her eyes. I saw a

small, dark-skinned, elderly person, with a powerful gaze, a loving smile, and a face

betraying a lifetime of hard, hard physical labor. She was a street vendor, one of the

millions of the poor of Latin America. I looked around and saw that we were surrounded

by a circle of people, all street vendors, who had prayed with her in silence all along,

until I was healed. I stood up, thanked her deeply, and left. But she never left me. The

power of her faith, the purity of her prayer, and the force of her praying voice invoking a

healing, liberating God, have since been with me. To this day, they are still echoing the

holiest blessing I have ever received, reminding me that Christ walks among us in the

density of the crowd, disguised as the smallest, weakest, most infirm, poorest one. But,

as Gutierrez points out, it is to that one we must listen, for that one is the healer, the

evangelist, the liberator, the living Word of God.