Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
Matthew 5:3, New International Version
http://www.SearchGodsWord.org/desk/?query=Matthew+5:3
My child, listen and be wise: Keep your heart on the right course.
~ Proverbs 23:19, NLT
John 7:
Exposition
John 7 starts with the rejection of Jesus by his own brothers as they prepare to go to the feast of the Tabernacles in Jerusalem. Jesus kept away from the Feast of the Tabernacle. Jesus's time had not yet come, so he decided to keep in Galilee and not travel to Judaea. Some of Jesus's own disciples did not believe in him.
There is evidence for the deity of Jesus -- good, strong,
historical , cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest
person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.
-- John Stott
It was compulsory during the Feast of Tabernacles for all Jewish males within 22 miles of Jerusalem to be in the Temple at the time of the Festival. So Jesus could afford to opt out as he was quite beyond that boundary in the Galilee. It has been commented that there was atleast six months of ministry involved between John 6 and John 7.
Jesus said to them, "The right time for me has not yet come. Any time is right fo ryou. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I keep telling it that its waysare bad. You go on to the festival. I am not going to this festival, because the right time has not come for me." He said this, and then stayed on in Galilee. John 7:6-9.
Then Zebedee's wife came to Jesus. Her sons were with her.
The mother bowed before Jesus and asked him to do something
for her. Jesus said, "What do you want?" She said, "Promise
that one of my sons will sit at your right side in your
kingdom. And promise that the other son will sit at your left
side in your kingdom."
-- Matthew 20:20-21 (ERV)
Why did Jesus go alone to the Temple during the Feast of the Shelters? in secret? obviously because he did not want to attract attention. But he went to the extent of knowingly putting people off the scent, so as to speak, by telling his brothers that he would not be coming to the Festival. One lesson we can understand from the attitude of the ruling authorities to Jesus's absence at the Festival was their active quest for him. Jesus was not the first person to come out of the Judean desert so as to speak claiming a following and preaching liberation in the unsettled times in Palestine during the Roman occupation of the region. They were fully ready to confront him over his projected aspirations to lead the people against the Roman occupiers of Palestine. Its interesting to note in this context the varied opinions that people had about Jesus, as regards his purported ability to lead the people in the face of their joint exploitation at the hands of the Jewish authorities as well as the Roman authorities. As usual the first thing that the Rabbinical authorities had to ask Jesus was where he got the authority to speak as he did, as he was obviously a man without training and 'the right caste.'Verse 18 is crucial here: 'A person who speaks on his own authority is trying to gain authority for himself. But he who wants glory for the one who sent him is honest, and there is nothing false in him.'
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God --
this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to
the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's
will is -- his good, pleasing and perfect will.
-- Romans 12:1-2
http://www.SearchGodsWord.org/desk/?query=Romans+12:1-2
Blessed are the people of whom this is true; blessed are the
people whose God is the LORD.
Psalm 144:15, New International Version
http://www.SearchGodsWord.org/desk/?query=Psalm+144:15
Monday 21 September 2009
Sunday 20 September 2009
Saturday 19 September 2009
Reversal! WHAT JESUS DID! -- http://www.heartlight.org/
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Reversal!
"So the people that have the last place now will have the
first place in the future. And the people that have the first
place now will have the last place in the future."
-- Matthew 20:16 (ERV)
KEY THOUGHT:
Reversal! When God settles all the accounts, then things are going to
be valued by his standards and not the world's standards. The people
whose hearts are yielded to him will be recognized as his children no
matter their lack of rank or riches in worldly society. Those who
recognize their grace at being included in God's Kingdom will be given
places of honor. So our goal as disciples is to value things now as God
will later. Our job as disciples is to keep searching and including the
lost, the last, and the least in the Kingdom and not just those who can
bring us some outward benefit. Remember, God doesn't look at us the way
people do. People look at the outward appearance, but God knows our
hearts.
TODAY'S PRAYER:
O Lord God, your grace to me is marvelous. Your promises are thrilling.
I can't wait until you send Jesus with power and show things as they
should be and reward people based on their character, their hearts, and
their gratitude for your grace. To you be all praise and honor and
power and glory belong, both now and forever. In Jesus' name. Amen.
c/o WHAT JESUS DID! -- http://www.heartlight.org/
Reversal!
"So the people that have the last place now will have the
first place in the future. And the people that have the first
place now will have the last place in the future."
-- Matthew 20:16 (ERV)
KEY THOUGHT:
Reversal! When God settles all the accounts, then things are going to
be valued by his standards and not the world's standards. The people
whose hearts are yielded to him will be recognized as his children no
matter their lack of rank or riches in worldly society. Those who
recognize their grace at being included in God's Kingdom will be given
places of honor. So our goal as disciples is to value things now as God
will later. Our job as disciples is to keep searching and including the
lost, the last, and the least in the Kingdom and not just those who can
bring us some outward benefit. Remember, God doesn't look at us the way
people do. People look at the outward appearance, but God knows our
hearts.
TODAY'S PRAYER:
O Lord God, your grace to me is marvelous. Your promises are thrilling.
I can't wait until you send Jesus with power and show things as they
should be and reward people based on their character, their hearts, and
their gratitude for your grace. To you be all praise and honor and
power and glory belong, both now and forever. In Jesus' name. Amen.
c/o WHAT JESUS DID! -- http://www.heartlight.org/
Follow God's example in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him.
Ephesians 5:1-2 (New Living Translation)
Provided by Christ Notes
Ephesians 5:1-2 (New Living Translation)
Provided by Christ Notes
Thursday 3 September 2009
“The seminary years are a time of journeying, of exploration, but above all of discovering Christ. It is only when a young man has had a personal experience of Christ that he can truly understand the Lord’s will and consequently his own vocation”
Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Seminarians (World Youth Day 2005)
Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Seminarians (World Youth Day 2005)
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Monday 21 January 2008
Ephesians commentary continuation! Read on !!
Paul's Letter to the Ephesians.
-----------------------------------
1:1 In the first verse, Paul is quite clear that he is an 'apostle' of Christ Jesus.....by the will of God. He makes this comment despite not knowing Jesus personally during his life in Roman Palestine. Paul feels justified in Christ himself, in making this comment. His work for Jesus and knowledge of the mind of Christ himself seemingly equips himself to make this comment and appropriate this description to himself. He also sees this as a justification of his calling. Paul feels so divinely called that he can righfully claim divine choice to be known as an apostle of Jesus Christ, if even only by default. Taking Paul's life in toto from his miraculous conversion where Jesus actually appeared to him in a divine visitation on the road to Damascus as he was going to persecute more Christians (Acts 9) to his ceaseless work after that for the sake of Christ's kingdom across the then entire known Meditterranean world, striving against all hardships to propagate the kingdom of God against all odds and against so many powerful forces, including finally all-powerful Rome, maybe we also can say with Paul and definitely with our Lord as well, well done good and faithful servant, you deserve this ultimate accolade of being an apostle of our Lord and one of the chosen few, perhaps the man only really worthy to replace Judas Iscariot, the traitor who betrayed Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.
In the second part of the address of this letter, Paul makes it very clear that he is addressing the believers in Ephesus in today's Turkey, those people in this Greek city in Asia minor who believed in Jesus and called on his name, indeed who are as the verse reads 'faithful in their life in union with Christ Jesus.' The idea's one can derive from this 1/2 verse are tremendous, particularly from an evangelical perspective. Paul, even is his introduction to the letter is actually asking the people in Ephesus to remain faithful as they always have been to Jesus in actual continuous union with him. This indeed is an ongoing exhortation and one that is applicable to all people in Jesus Christ at all times. The exhortation to be faithful to Jesus always. Jesus Christ alone is our heavenly bride-groom and just as we are faithful to our spouse, so also we must be faithful to Jesus, our heavenly bride-groom. Truly our life is and must be spent always in union with our Lord, in constant prayer and supplication, in always thinking about our Lord and in remaining in unbroken communion with him and his presence in our life. The fragrance of Jesus must always be with us, in all that we do, all that we say and all that we think. He must be prime in our thoughts and the first thing we think about when we wake in the morning. We should reach the state when we rise at night just to be in communion with our Jesus. Jesus should be all in all for us, our thoughts at all times should be focussed on Jesus and God, the author and perfecter of our faith at all times.
May we always say only Jesus! his name be praised at all times! Glory be to him!
Amen!
1:2 The second short verse indeed carries on from the first in that Paul quite clearly exhorts the Ephesian church and believers that only God in Jesus Christ could offer them grace and peace.
1:3 Paul exhorts all the believers in Ephesus to thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is again is a reflection of much of Pauline writing, in that there are continuous exhortations to thank God from whom all goodness flows. God blesses us everday with life and air. He lets the wind blow so that we get relief. He cares so much for us that he protects us daily from so many evils. He is truly a good God and most important of all, He gives us each day our daily bread, both physical, material and spiritual. May God be blessed in all things in Jesus Christ. Amen!
1:3b Provided we maintain our (marital) union with Christ, God has promised to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm! What a great promise, to be the divinely ordained inheritors of all God's great blessings spiritual. Can man want anything more in life on this dry earth. Let us praise God from whom all blessings flow. He is truly a good God! Oftentimes we forget this promise of God that He will bless us if we hold on to Christ. Do you yearn for spiritual satisfaction in your relationship with God, then hold onto Christ and ask God through Him. He will provide you with all the blessings you want! Do you want tongues or the gift of healing. Ask God in fasting and prayer and all will be provided as and when you're ready in God's eyes who knows each one of us so well. Praise the Lord! Glory to his name in Jesus Christ! Amen!
1:3 Jesus has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. We must believe this. God will bless us only if we believe. Praise be to Him. All we need to do is to claim these blessings in faith. Praise His Holy Name. All blessings are out there. One just needs to claim them. The secrets made known to us in Jesus Christ are hidden from so many others.
1:4 Paul exclaims that even before the world was made, our sovereign Lord had already chosen us to be His alone throught our union with Jesus Christ as a result of which we would be sanctified and rendered without blemish before our God. Its just incredible to think of and we bow in awe before the grandeur and might of God that He could consider us worthy of being called and loved us sufficiently to give his only Son on the cross for us. A secret so easy to understand and yet so difficult to accept for the vast majority of people on this earth. Truly a secret revealed to babes and those people so inconsequential that they are never noticed by the top-up people of this world, but Christ came to call the humble and the downtrodden. Praise be to Him. May we love God and Jesus so must that we too might offer our bodies in loving and holy sacrifice for the betterment of his kingdom. We can only approach God through Jesus. He alone can save us and make us worthy and clean to face our maker, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Oh reader! if you have never made a commitment to accept Jesus, do so today. He loves you so much and is just waiting for you to make a decision. Say you love Jesus and would like to accept Him as saviour and Lord and he will come into your heart and grant your rest and peace and solace. Then you will discover the secret of a life well lived, you will discover meaning in life and will seek to live for others, instead of yourself.
1:5 God loves us so much that through Jesus, he has made us sons and inheritors of his great Kingdom that will never end, praise be to Him!
God loved Jesus so much that He made Him a living sacrifice for us and our sins. All our sins and evil were wiped away by the blood of Jesus, praise be to Him!
It was God's pleasure and purpose alone that made us His sons! Not our capabilities or gifts, but the Grace of God alone. he alone called us and entrusted us with this divine covenant and great commission. But we must be faithful. Many are the people who have fallen away from the calling. We must not be part of that group but must stand firm so that we get the crown that he has promised to those who are faithful!
1:6 All glory, honour and praise to God in Jesus Christ for the free gift of love that he made available to us in Jesus Christ. Praise Him a million times.
Jesus freely died on the cross of His own divine will that all of us sinners might be granted salvation, hope, joy and delight in Jesus and that we might hope for a better tomorrow in heaven where we shall be called with a multitude of others to praise and worship God.
1:7 The sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, itself almost a replica of another earthly man who was willing to sacrifice His own son to God as a test of his faith fulness, was meant to set us free from all sins and evils. All our sins were forgiven by this one act of Jesus on the cross. The grace of God is so great as to enable him to give it to us in great measure, over-flowing, etc. The grace of God is available for us to take in large measure, much more than we have now and indeed as much as we want. We need to claim our measure of divine grace in full. The Lord says "Ask and you shall receive." God has given us so much grace to live in this world, so much that we never need to complain again. His promises are so vast, praise Him!
Our problem is that we often do not seem to claim the blessings God is so willing to give us. He says again as above in Mathew 7:7-8 that one must ask to receive from God in Jesus Christ. In fact Mathew 7:11 quite clearly states that our heavenly Father is just waiting to give good things to those who ask Him. So go ahead and ask and get good things from God, all asked in the name of Jesus! Praise His Holy Name!
Paul writes in 1:9-10 that God was kind and loving enough to us to make known to us nobodies the 'secret plan' he had conceived before the ages to bring to fruition through Jesus Christ on the cross. The plan which is still to be completed involves the bringing together of all known creation under heaven and earth, with Jesus Christ Himself the Son as Head.
1:11 Paul exhorts us to believe that all things are done according to the divine plan of God, decided much before the ages. Indeed Paul considers the message of God's choosing so important that he frequently repeats it in this letter, emphasizing the 'divine' choosing of each of us based on God's plan made manifest in the ages and revealed in each of us.
1:12 Paul then exhorts the Ephesians as other Church people in Asia Minor called to know God through Jesus Christ as a result of Paul's preaching and the grace and will of God to truly praise God''s glory. Praise Him indeed!
1:13 Paul states that the Holy Spirit alone is our guarantee of freedom willing to bless us exceedingly and shower us with all spiritual blessings. Receiving the Holy Spirit is our divine guarantee of freedom in Jesus Christ!
Once we believe in Jesus Christ, God puts the sign of approval on us by sending His Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of all good things that we will receive in Jesus Christ if we believe, pray and have faith and hope and trust! One thing we can be sure God gives complete freedom to those whom he loves. Let us indeed praise His glory! Complete freedom in Christ in the Holy Spirit! What more does man need!!
-----------------------------------
1:1 In the first verse, Paul is quite clear that he is an 'apostle' of Christ Jesus.....by the will of God. He makes this comment despite not knowing Jesus personally during his life in Roman Palestine. Paul feels justified in Christ himself, in making this comment. His work for Jesus and knowledge of the mind of Christ himself seemingly equips himself to make this comment and appropriate this description to himself. He also sees this as a justification of his calling. Paul feels so divinely called that he can righfully claim divine choice to be known as an apostle of Jesus Christ, if even only by default. Taking Paul's life in toto from his miraculous conversion where Jesus actually appeared to him in a divine visitation on the road to Damascus as he was going to persecute more Christians (Acts 9) to his ceaseless work after that for the sake of Christ's kingdom across the then entire known Meditterranean world, striving against all hardships to propagate the kingdom of God against all odds and against so many powerful forces, including finally all-powerful Rome, maybe we also can say with Paul and definitely with our Lord as well, well done good and faithful servant, you deserve this ultimate accolade of being an apostle of our Lord and one of the chosen few, perhaps the man only really worthy to replace Judas Iscariot, the traitor who betrayed Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.
In the second part of the address of this letter, Paul makes it very clear that he is addressing the believers in Ephesus in today's Turkey, those people in this Greek city in Asia minor who believed in Jesus and called on his name, indeed who are as the verse reads 'faithful in their life in union with Christ Jesus.' The idea's one can derive from this 1/2 verse are tremendous, particularly from an evangelical perspective. Paul, even is his introduction to the letter is actually asking the people in Ephesus to remain faithful as they always have been to Jesus in actual continuous union with him. This indeed is an ongoing exhortation and one that is applicable to all people in Jesus Christ at all times. The exhortation to be faithful to Jesus always. Jesus Christ alone is our heavenly bride-groom and just as we are faithful to our spouse, so also we must be faithful to Jesus, our heavenly bride-groom. Truly our life is and must be spent always in union with our Lord, in constant prayer and supplication, in always thinking about our Lord and in remaining in unbroken communion with him and his presence in our life. The fragrance of Jesus must always be with us, in all that we do, all that we say and all that we think. He must be prime in our thoughts and the first thing we think about when we wake in the morning. We should reach the state when we rise at night just to be in communion with our Jesus. Jesus should be all in all for us, our thoughts at all times should be focussed on Jesus and God, the author and perfecter of our faith at all times.
May we always say only Jesus! his name be praised at all times! Glory be to him!
Amen!
1:2 The second short verse indeed carries on from the first in that Paul quite clearly exhorts the Ephesian church and believers that only God in Jesus Christ could offer them grace and peace.
1:3 Paul exhorts all the believers in Ephesus to thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is again is a reflection of much of Pauline writing, in that there are continuous exhortations to thank God from whom all goodness flows. God blesses us everday with life and air. He lets the wind blow so that we get relief. He cares so much for us that he protects us daily from so many evils. He is truly a good God and most important of all, He gives us each day our daily bread, both physical, material and spiritual. May God be blessed in all things in Jesus Christ. Amen!
1:3b Provided we maintain our (marital) union with Christ, God has promised to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm! What a great promise, to be the divinely ordained inheritors of all God's great blessings spiritual. Can man want anything more in life on this dry earth. Let us praise God from whom all blessings flow. He is truly a good God! Oftentimes we forget this promise of God that He will bless us if we hold on to Christ. Do you yearn for spiritual satisfaction in your relationship with God, then hold onto Christ and ask God through Him. He will provide you with all the blessings you want! Do you want tongues or the gift of healing. Ask God in fasting and prayer and all will be provided as and when you're ready in God's eyes who knows each one of us so well. Praise the Lord! Glory to his name in Jesus Christ! Amen!
1:3 Jesus has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. We must believe this. God will bless us only if we believe. Praise be to Him. All we need to do is to claim these blessings in faith. Praise His Holy Name. All blessings are out there. One just needs to claim them. The secrets made known to us in Jesus Christ are hidden from so many others.
1:4 Paul exclaims that even before the world was made, our sovereign Lord had already chosen us to be His alone throught our union with Jesus Christ as a result of which we would be sanctified and rendered without blemish before our God. Its just incredible to think of and we bow in awe before the grandeur and might of God that He could consider us worthy of being called and loved us sufficiently to give his only Son on the cross for us. A secret so easy to understand and yet so difficult to accept for the vast majority of people on this earth. Truly a secret revealed to babes and those people so inconsequential that they are never noticed by the top-up people of this world, but Christ came to call the humble and the downtrodden. Praise be to Him. May we love God and Jesus so must that we too might offer our bodies in loving and holy sacrifice for the betterment of his kingdom. We can only approach God through Jesus. He alone can save us and make us worthy and clean to face our maker, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Oh reader! if you have never made a commitment to accept Jesus, do so today. He loves you so much and is just waiting for you to make a decision. Say you love Jesus and would like to accept Him as saviour and Lord and he will come into your heart and grant your rest and peace and solace. Then you will discover the secret of a life well lived, you will discover meaning in life and will seek to live for others, instead of yourself.
1:5 God loves us so much that through Jesus, he has made us sons and inheritors of his great Kingdom that will never end, praise be to Him!
God loved Jesus so much that He made Him a living sacrifice for us and our sins. All our sins and evil were wiped away by the blood of Jesus, praise be to Him!
It was God's pleasure and purpose alone that made us His sons! Not our capabilities or gifts, but the Grace of God alone. he alone called us and entrusted us with this divine covenant and great commission. But we must be faithful. Many are the people who have fallen away from the calling. We must not be part of that group but must stand firm so that we get the crown that he has promised to those who are faithful!
1:6 All glory, honour and praise to God in Jesus Christ for the free gift of love that he made available to us in Jesus Christ. Praise Him a million times.
Jesus freely died on the cross of His own divine will that all of us sinners might be granted salvation, hope, joy and delight in Jesus and that we might hope for a better tomorrow in heaven where we shall be called with a multitude of others to praise and worship God.
1:7 The sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, itself almost a replica of another earthly man who was willing to sacrifice His own son to God as a test of his faith fulness, was meant to set us free from all sins and evils. All our sins were forgiven by this one act of Jesus on the cross. The grace of God is so great as to enable him to give it to us in great measure, over-flowing, etc. The grace of God is available for us to take in large measure, much more than we have now and indeed as much as we want. We need to claim our measure of divine grace in full. The Lord says "Ask and you shall receive." God has given us so much grace to live in this world, so much that we never need to complain again. His promises are so vast, praise Him!
Our problem is that we often do not seem to claim the blessings God is so willing to give us. He says again as above in Mathew 7:7-8 that one must ask to receive from God in Jesus Christ. In fact Mathew 7:11 quite clearly states that our heavenly Father is just waiting to give good things to those who ask Him. So go ahead and ask and get good things from God, all asked in the name of Jesus! Praise His Holy Name!
Paul writes in 1:9-10 that God was kind and loving enough to us to make known to us nobodies the 'secret plan' he had conceived before the ages to bring to fruition through Jesus Christ on the cross. The plan which is still to be completed involves the bringing together of all known creation under heaven and earth, with Jesus Christ Himself the Son as Head.
1:11 Paul exhorts us to believe that all things are done according to the divine plan of God, decided much before the ages. Indeed Paul considers the message of God's choosing so important that he frequently repeats it in this letter, emphasizing the 'divine' choosing of each of us based on God's plan made manifest in the ages and revealed in each of us.
1:12 Paul then exhorts the Ephesians as other Church people in Asia Minor called to know God through Jesus Christ as a result of Paul's preaching and the grace and will of God to truly praise God''s glory. Praise Him indeed!
1:13 Paul states that the Holy Spirit alone is our guarantee of freedom willing to bless us exceedingly and shower us with all spiritual blessings. Receiving the Holy Spirit is our divine guarantee of freedom in Jesus Christ!
Once we believe in Jesus Christ, God puts the sign of approval on us by sending His Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of all good things that we will receive in Jesus Christ if we believe, pray and have faith and hope and trust! One thing we can be sure God gives complete freedom to those whom he loves. Let us indeed praise His glory! Complete freedom in Christ in the Holy Spirit! What more does man need!!
Friday 18 January 2008
Carlos Mesters, 'Defenseless Flower,' 1989, p.9
"The (poor) people's main interest is not to interpret the Bible, but to interpret life with help of the Bible. They try to be faithful, not primarily to the meaning the Text has in itself (the historical and literal meaning), but to the meaning they discover in the text for their own lives...The Bible of life was their lives, in which they tried to put into practise and incarnate the word of God. And it was even more: life itself is for them the place where God speaks."
Praise Yah! review by Eliot Weinberger of The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter c/o LRB
Praise Yah
Eliot Weinberger
The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
Out of the mouths of babes; apple of the eye; fire and brimstone; out of joint; sleep the sleep of death; sweeter than honey and the honeycomb; whiter than snow; oh that I had wings like a dove for then would I fly away; the meek shall inherit the earth; tender mercies; clean hands and a pure heart; I have been young and now am old; my cup runneth over; many a time; clean gone; the days of old; I am a worm and no man; his heart’s desire; the heavens declare the glory of god; go down to the sea in ships; at their wits’ end; the valley of the shadow of death; make a joyful noise; go from strength to strength . . .
The 1611 King James Authorised Version of the Book of Psalms – and of course of the entire Bible – is so deep in the English language that we no longer know when we are repeating its phrases. Inextricable from the beliefs and practices of its faithful for four hundred years, it has been transformed from the translation of a holy book into a holy book itself. Poets, however, know from experience that there are no definitive texts, and over the centuries an assembly of angels has been singing the Psalms in its own way: Wyatt, Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, Campion, Milton, Crashaw, Vaughan, Smart, Clare, Hopkins and Kipling among them. Some were setting lyrics to new tunes; some were performing metrical exercises with familiar material; some were expressing private prayer; some were simply writing a poem. St Augustine said that all things written in the Psalms are mirrors of ourselves and it was inevitable that, when English poets were still largely Christian believers, they would look into the mirror of this foundational anthology of poetry, as Chinese poets looked into the Confucian Book of Songs.
In the Modernist era, the poets, as Pound wisecracked, have been more interested in Muses than Moses and though bits of the Psalms have inevitably been embedded in poems, new translations have become the province of theologians and academics. The latest is a handsome edition, complete with the requisite red ribbon, by Robert Alter, and it has arrived accompanied by a joyful noise, widely acclaimed in the press as the Psalms for Our Time.
New translations of a classic text are either done as a criticism of the old translations (correcting mistakes, finding an equivalent that is somehow closer to the original, writing in the language as it is now spoken) or they are a springboard for trying something new in the translation-language, inspired by certain facets of the original (such as Pound’s Chinese or Anglo-Saxon versions, Paul Blackburn’s Provençal, Louis Zukofsky’s Latin). Alter, whose concern is Biblical Hebrew and not contemporary poetry, is in the former camp. As he explains in the introduction, his project is to strip away the Christian interpretations implicit in the King James and later versions and restore the context of the archaic Judaism of the half-millennium (roughly 1000-500 BCE) in which the Psalms were written. His poetics is an attempt to reproduce the compression and concreteness of the Hebrew, ‘emulating its rhythms’ and ‘making more palpable the force of parallelism that is at the heart of biblical poetry’. As for mistakes, it is surprising that the King James apparently has so few. Alter corrects very little, sometimes unconvincingly, though he is more specific on flora and fauna.
His de-Christianisation is largely in the avoidance of frequent King James terms such as ‘salvation’, ‘soul’, ‘mercy’, ‘sin’ and its sister, ‘iniquity’. He translates the KJ line ‘my soul thirsteth for thee’ (63) as ‘My throat thirsts for You,’ explaining in the introduction that although the Hebrew word nefesh ‘means “life breath” and, by extension, “life” or “essential being” . . . by metonymy, it is also a term for the throat (the passage through which the breath travels)’ – a translation, in other words, more literal than the original. Elsewhere, ‘my soul’ becomes ‘my being’, or sometimes merely ‘I’. For ‘sin’ he prefers ‘offence’; for ‘mercy’, ‘kindness’. For ‘iniquity’ he often chooses ‘mischief’, which, in American English, is more likely to be associated with frat-boy pranks on Halloween than treachery in the desert. Thus the KJ ‘they cast iniquity upon me’ (55) becomes ‘they bring mischief down upon me’ and the KJ ‘Iniquities prevail against me’ (65) becomes ‘My deeds of mischief are too much for me.’ The strangest choice of all is the replacement of the often reiterated ‘salvation’ and its cognates with ‘rescue’ (the noun), in ways that seem to have no connection with English as it is spoken: ‘rescue is the Lord’s’ (3) or ‘the cup of rescue I lift’ (116) or the KJ ‘A horse is a vain thing for safety’ (33), which becomes the incomprehensible ‘The horse is a lie for rescue.’
The parallelism that is the organising principle of the psalmodic line (and of much archaic poetry) has been plain in English since the translations of Miles Coverdale in 1535. Coverdale marked the division into hemistiches (or what Alter, following Benjamin Hrushovski, calls ‘versets’) with a colon, a practice followed, inconsistently, by the King James. Bishop Robert Lowth explained it in detail in 1753 in Oxford, and inspired Christopher Smart, who attended the lectures, to use the form for his Jubilate Agno. Alter emphasises this by splitting each line into two, with the second one indented, giving the poem a more ‘modern’ look, but it is hard to see why this is ‘more palpable’ than previous versions. Open any page of the KJ version and the parallelism is quite clear: ‘Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together’ (98) – a line I picked at random – seems little different from
Let the rivers clap hands,
let the mountains together sing gladly
– though Alter is, characteristically, slightly more awkward.
To illustrate how he has rendered the condensed language of the original, Alter, in the introduction, takes an unfortunate example, the famous line from Psalm 23: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ He explains that the Hebrew has eight words and 11 syllables, but the King James translation ‘weighs in’ at 17 words and 20 syllables. Alter has brought this down to 13 words and 14 syllables, an admirable diet, but there are few who wouldn’t prefer the chubbier version to this:
Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,
I fear no harm.
Over the last century, there have been many translation strategies for giving a sense of the denseness of classical languages such as Chinese or Sanskrit: layout on the page, enjambment, the dropping of articles when possible, a reliance on Anglo-Saxon rather than Latinate words. Alter tends to use the possessive. The opening line of Psalm 19 in the King James, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’ becomes ‘The heavens tell God’s glory’; if nothing else, cutting three syllables. Its concluding lines, which are repeated thrice daily by observant Jews, ‘Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer’ are turned into lines that would have the prayerful stumbling:
Let my mouth’s utterances be pleasing
and my heart’s stirring before You,
LORD, my rock and redeemer.
Considering that the Psalms are meant to be spoken or sung, many of Alter’s lines are difficult to say: ‘Your throne stands firm from of old,/from forever You are’ (93) is one for elocution class, and the KJ ‘Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord’ (70) has been turned into a stammer: ‘God, to save me,/Lord, to my help, hasten!’
Translation comes from somewhere, the language and literature of the original, but it also goes somewhere, into the language and literature of the translation language. Too often the experts in one know very little about the other. The cliché that only poets can translate poetry is half true. More exactly, only poetry-readers can translate poetry: those familiar with the contemporary poetry of the translation language, the context in which the translation will be read. On the evidence here, Alter seems to know very little about the last hundred years of English-language poetry.
He is partial to Victorian language, perhaps in the belief that it is more ‘poetic’. The result is that, at times, he sounds more dated than the King James. He’s in ‘death’s vale’ where the KJ was in ‘the valley of death’. His Lord is ‘my crag and my bastion’ (18) where the KJ’s is ‘my rock, and my fortress’. He has a ‘people aborning’ (22) where the KJ has a ‘people that shall be born’, and a ‘sojourner’ (94) for the KJ’s ‘stranger’. The KJ’s ‘I have considered the days of old’ (77) is now ‘I ponder the days of yore.’ And the famous line ‘I have been young and now am old’ (37) has been turned into A.E. Housman: ‘A lad I was, and now I am old.’
Worse, like many writing poems for the first time, he is in love with inverted syntax: the trees ‘fresh and full of sap they are’ (92); ‘they fix to the string their arrow’ (11); ‘His handiwork sky declares’ (19, better known as ‘the firmament sheweth his handywork’); ‘orphans they murder’ (94). Sometimes he merely inverts the King James phrases. ‘For I am poor and needy’ (86) becomes ‘for lowly and needy am I’; ‘The sea is his, and he made it’ (95) turns into ‘His is the sea and He made it’; or similarly, ‘Thy way is in the sea’ (77) is now ‘In the sea was Your way.’ There are inversions on nearly every page and after a while, wonder, one does, if it’s not the swamp of Yoda the Jedi Master we’re in. That sinking feeling hits bottom as early as Psalm 23:
The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
In grass meadows He makes me lie down
(And, almost needless to say, for ‘He restoreth my soul,’ Alter has ‘My life He brings back.’) The incessant inversion, combined with the predilection for possessives, leads to many examples of the kind where la plume de ma tante would become ‘My aunt’s is the pen.’ The first line of Psalm 24 is straightforward in the King James: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.’ Alter’s line needs to be diagrammed: ‘The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness.’
He seems to have no ear for American English, from the alpha (2: ‘Why are the nations aroused,/and the peoples murmur vain things?’) to the omega (150: ‘Let all that has breath praise Yah’ – a construct rather like ‘All who is going should get on the bus’). He is oblivious to American slang, not realising that Psalm 66 (KJ: ‘Make a joyful noise unto God . . . Say unto God, how terrible art thou in thy works!’) in his version (‘Shout out to God . . . Say to God, ‘‘How awesome Your deeds”’) sounds like a Christian rock band warming up the crowd. He sometimes slips out of register: ‘The wicked man borrows and will not pay,/but the just gives free of charge’ (37). And he apparently can’t hear that the line ‘Free me, Lord, from evil folk’ (140) is best spoken in the voice of George Bush.
Inversion, the possessive, the unpronounceable and an unfortunate word-choice all converge in Psalm 18, where he transforms a dull line in the King James (‘As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me’) into: ‘At the mere ear’s report they obeyed me,/aliens cringed before me.’ There are many other lines that would cause the meek to tremble, though perhaps not aliens to cringe. Among them: ‘With their dewlaps they speak haughty words’ (17); ‘All day long I go about gloomy’ (38); ‘Like sheep to Sheol they head’ (49, KJ: ‘Like sheep they are laid in the grave’); ‘All the wrongdoers bandy boasts’ (94); ‘For all gods of the peoples are ungods’ (96); ‘I hate committing transgressions’ (101); ‘I resemble the wilderness jackdaw’ (102); ‘for we are sorely sated with scorn’ (123); and, perhaps the worst of all, the anatomically perplexing ‘The wicked backslide from the very womb’ (58). But fortunately, as Edward Dahlberg once remarked, ‘there are many psalms that even the droning of a priest cannot kill.’
As one reads along, the suspicion grows that perhaps this book is not about the poetry at all, but about the commentary. Usually half, and sometimes more, of every page is taken up by Alter’s notes. Certainly there are many editions where the notes are more interesting than the texts, but the commentary here divides between lexical minutiae, of interest largely to Hebraicists (though this is a heavily promoted mass-market book) and a running exegesis for freshmen, in a relentless reiteration of the obvious. The line ‘My being like thirsty land to You’ (143) is glossed: ‘Rain in this climate and therefore in this body of literature is characteristically thought of as a desperately needed blessing. Hence God’s responsive presence is metaphorically represented as the rain that the parched land awaits to quicken it with growth’ – though one presumes that, by page 493, the reader has already figured out that these people are living in the desert. ‘Sing to the Lord a new song’ (149) needs this explanation: ‘The idea of a “new song” is highlighted in several psalms. In a sense, this is a kind of self-advertisement of the psalmist, as if to say “here is a fresh and vibrant psalm that you have never heard before.”’
It is remarkable that, in some two thousand of such notes, most of them longer than these, very little outside of Alter’s own interpretations is ever mentioned. He takes issue with some of the King James readings and very occasionally disputes some (usually unnamed) biblical scholars, but not once does he cite any of the translations from the history of English poetry, the uses to which individual psalms have been put, the detailed Christian exegeses of everyone from St Augustine to John Donne (and only very rarely the Jewish exegeses of Rashi and Avraham ibn Ezra), or even – except where there are specific references – other passages in the Bible. (This is contrary to Jewish tradition, which tends to pile up citations and defer to the long tradition of transmitted wisdom.) There is one far-fetched mention of Mallarmé, explaining why, in Psalm 65, Alter translates a certain word as ‘silence’. And he defends his transformation of the well-known line ‘sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb’ (19) into ‘and sweeter than honey,/quintessence of bees’ – despite his own injunction against multisyllabic Latinate words and the inappropriate alchemical term – by modestly noting: ‘The English equivalent offered here may sound like a turn of phrase one might encounter in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, but it offers a good semantic match for the Hebrew.’ (The Hebrew had merely put together two words that both mean ‘honey’.)
St Hilary said that the Book of Psalms is a heap of keys that can open every door in a great city, but that it is hard to find which key opens which lock. For translation, the opposite has been true: many poets have discovered many different keys to unlock certain doors.
For emotional power, Thomas Wyatt, circa 1536:
From depth of sin, and from a deep despair,
From depth of death, from depth of heart’s sorrow,
From this deep cave, of darkness deep repair,
Thee have I called, O Lord, to be my borrow.
Thou in my voice, O Lord, perceive and hear
My heart, my hope, my plaint, my overthrow,
My will to rise, and let by grant appear
That to my voice thine ears do well intend.
(130)
For concision and straightforward speech, Arthur Golding – whose translation of Ovid was loved by Pound and plagiarised by Shakespeare – in 1571:
My heart is boiling of a good word.
The work that I indite shall be of the King.
My tongue is the pen of a swift writer.
(45)
(Alter: ‘My heart is astir with a goodly word./ I speak what I’ve made to the king./My tongue is the pen of a rapid scribe.’)
The lute music of Philip Sidney in the 1580s:
How long (O Lord) shall I forgotten be?
What? ever?
How long wilt Thou Thy hidden face from me
Dissever?
(13)
And Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, ten years later, bringing in the whole orchestra:
Lord, crack their teeth! Lord, crush these lions’ jaws!
So let them sink as water in the sand.
When deadly bow their aiming fury draws,
Shiver the shaft ere past the shooter’s hand.
(58)
Thomas Campion in 1612, similarly alliterative, but restoring the psalm to the clarity of a single human voice singing:
Aloft the trees that spring up there
Our silent Harps we pensive hung:
Said they that captiv’d us, Let’s hear
Some song which you in Sion sung.
(137)
(Alter: ‘On the poplars there/we hung up our lyres./For there our captors had asked of us/words of song,/and our plunderers – rejoicing:/“Sing us from Zion’s songs.”’)
Milton, in 1653, the master of syntactical inversion:
Rise Lord, save me my God, for thou
Hast smote ere now
On the cheek-bone all my foes,
Of men abhorred
Hast broke the teeth. This help was from the Lord;
Thy blessing on thy people flows.
(3)
The sheer goofiness of Richard Crashaw in 1648, translating ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ as:
Happy me! O happy sheep!
Whom my God vouchsafes to keep;
(23)
(And later, ‘He leadeth me beside the still waters’ becomes, in part: ‘At my feet the blubb’ring Mountain/Weeping melts into a fountain.’)
Isaac Watts in 1719, making an entirely new song out of ‘O sing unto the Lord a new song’:
Joy to the world – the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King:
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing.
(98)
Christopher Smart in 1765, turning a single line (KJ: ‘He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes’) into one of his typically bright and idiosyncratic stanzas:
His snow upon the ground he teems,
Like bleaching wool besides the streams,
To warm the tender blade;
Like ashes from the furnace cast,
His frost comes with the northern blast
To pinch and to pervade.
(147)
Thomas Merton, who as a Trappist monk recited them every day, wrote that ‘the Psalms teach us the way back to Paradise.’ Indeed, ‘they are themselves a Paradise.’
Curiously, many of Alter’s goals were achieved in the 1960s in the Jerusalem Bible, an English translation by an anonymous committee (though the translation of Jonah has been attributed to Tolkien), directed by Alexander Jones, of a decades-long French project by the (Catholic) School of Biblical Studies in Jerusalem. It is without literary pretension and its literal, plain-spoken minimalism takes one far from the courtly elegance of the King James and into the world of the desert tribes. Its narratives, at times, seem as straightforward and unadorned as Icelandic sagas, those other great tales of vengeful shepherds. And its deadpan translation of the interminable, detailed rules and prohibitions underscores how selective the so-called fundamentalists of our age are: ‘When two men are fighting together, if the wife of one intervenes to protect her husband from the other’s blows by putting out her hand and seizing the other by the private parts, you shall cut her hand off and show no pity’ (Deuteronomy 25.11-12). Moreover, it manages, in the Bible’s deepest strata, to summon up the archaic world where Yahweh was not the only God, but the chief among many gods – Canaanite and other eclipsing figures – simply by naming him. (Alter refuses to do this, in deference to the Orthodox Jewish taboo against saying the name, and resorts to the standard ‘Lord’ in small capital letters.) Here are a few lines from Psalm 29, in the Jerusalem Bible translation:
The voice of Yahweh over the waters!
Yahweh over the multitudinous waters!
The voice of Yahweh in power!
The voice of Yahweh in splendour!
The voice of Yahweh shatters the cedars,
Yahweh shatters the cedars of Lebanon,
making Lebanon leap like a calf,
Sirion like a young wild bull.
The voice of Yahweh sharpens lightning shafts!
The anonymous Jerusalem Bible translators, who make no claim for poetry, have inadvertently written a Beat poem – by Allen Ginsberg or Anne Waldman or Michael McClure – a reminder that the Psalms have set the tone and standard for what an oracular and ecstatic poem should sound like: in English, from the King James to Whitman to Ginsberg; and in the rest of the world from Whitman to Neruda and Senghor, among so many others. Where the usual ‘Lord’ carries millennia of evolving interpretations, and an inherent benevolence, calling Yahweh by his name – as we would a Greek or Hittite or Hindu god – confers a mythological otherness: an unsophisticated warrior god of the neolithic Hebrews, far from the deity now invoked in suburban synagogues.
We tend to remember the songs of praise and thanksgiving, but most of the psalms are preoccupied with vengeance. The psalmist is surrounded by enemies who slander him, bring lawsuits against him, cheat him in the marketplace, and he calls on Yahweh to destroy them. Or the Hebrews are surrounded by hostile tribes and they call on Yahweh to destroy them. Everyone knows Psalm 137, the beautiful song of exile (‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion’), but few remember how it ends, here in Alter’s translation:
Daughter of Babylon the despoiler,
happy who pays you back in kind,
for what you did to us.
Happy who seizes and smashes
your infants against the rock.
Alter comments that the psalm ‘ends with this bloodcurdling curse pronounced on their captors, who, fortunately, do not understand the Hebrew in which it is pronounced’. A cheerful thought, but language is more than the meaning of words and somehow one suspects that if this curse was indeed once spoken aloud, the Babylonians, knowing nothing of the original, would still have been able to translate it.
Eliot Weinberger’s most recent books are An Elemental Thing and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. ‘What I Heard about Iraq’ was published in the LRB in 2005, its sequel in 2006.
Eliot Weinberger
The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
Out of the mouths of babes; apple of the eye; fire and brimstone; out of joint; sleep the sleep of death; sweeter than honey and the honeycomb; whiter than snow; oh that I had wings like a dove for then would I fly away; the meek shall inherit the earth; tender mercies; clean hands and a pure heart; I have been young and now am old; my cup runneth over; many a time; clean gone; the days of old; I am a worm and no man; his heart’s desire; the heavens declare the glory of god; go down to the sea in ships; at their wits’ end; the valley of the shadow of death; make a joyful noise; go from strength to strength . . .
The 1611 King James Authorised Version of the Book of Psalms – and of course of the entire Bible – is so deep in the English language that we no longer know when we are repeating its phrases. Inextricable from the beliefs and practices of its faithful for four hundred years, it has been transformed from the translation of a holy book into a holy book itself. Poets, however, know from experience that there are no definitive texts, and over the centuries an assembly of angels has been singing the Psalms in its own way: Wyatt, Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, Campion, Milton, Crashaw, Vaughan, Smart, Clare, Hopkins and Kipling among them. Some were setting lyrics to new tunes; some were performing metrical exercises with familiar material; some were expressing private prayer; some were simply writing a poem. St Augustine said that all things written in the Psalms are mirrors of ourselves and it was inevitable that, when English poets were still largely Christian believers, they would look into the mirror of this foundational anthology of poetry, as Chinese poets looked into the Confucian Book of Songs.
In the Modernist era, the poets, as Pound wisecracked, have been more interested in Muses than Moses and though bits of the Psalms have inevitably been embedded in poems, new translations have become the province of theologians and academics. The latest is a handsome edition, complete with the requisite red ribbon, by Robert Alter, and it has arrived accompanied by a joyful noise, widely acclaimed in the press as the Psalms for Our Time.
New translations of a classic text are either done as a criticism of the old translations (correcting mistakes, finding an equivalent that is somehow closer to the original, writing in the language as it is now spoken) or they are a springboard for trying something new in the translation-language, inspired by certain facets of the original (such as Pound’s Chinese or Anglo-Saxon versions, Paul Blackburn’s Provençal, Louis Zukofsky’s Latin). Alter, whose concern is Biblical Hebrew and not contemporary poetry, is in the former camp. As he explains in the introduction, his project is to strip away the Christian interpretations implicit in the King James and later versions and restore the context of the archaic Judaism of the half-millennium (roughly 1000-500 BCE) in which the Psalms were written. His poetics is an attempt to reproduce the compression and concreteness of the Hebrew, ‘emulating its rhythms’ and ‘making more palpable the force of parallelism that is at the heart of biblical poetry’. As for mistakes, it is surprising that the King James apparently has so few. Alter corrects very little, sometimes unconvincingly, though he is more specific on flora and fauna.
His de-Christianisation is largely in the avoidance of frequent King James terms such as ‘salvation’, ‘soul’, ‘mercy’, ‘sin’ and its sister, ‘iniquity’. He translates the KJ line ‘my soul thirsteth for thee’ (63) as ‘My throat thirsts for You,’ explaining in the introduction that although the Hebrew word nefesh ‘means “life breath” and, by extension, “life” or “essential being” . . . by metonymy, it is also a term for the throat (the passage through which the breath travels)’ – a translation, in other words, more literal than the original. Elsewhere, ‘my soul’ becomes ‘my being’, or sometimes merely ‘I’. For ‘sin’ he prefers ‘offence’; for ‘mercy’, ‘kindness’. For ‘iniquity’ he often chooses ‘mischief’, which, in American English, is more likely to be associated with frat-boy pranks on Halloween than treachery in the desert. Thus the KJ ‘they cast iniquity upon me’ (55) becomes ‘they bring mischief down upon me’ and the KJ ‘Iniquities prevail against me’ (65) becomes ‘My deeds of mischief are too much for me.’ The strangest choice of all is the replacement of the often reiterated ‘salvation’ and its cognates with ‘rescue’ (the noun), in ways that seem to have no connection with English as it is spoken: ‘rescue is the Lord’s’ (3) or ‘the cup of rescue I lift’ (116) or the KJ ‘A horse is a vain thing for safety’ (33), which becomes the incomprehensible ‘The horse is a lie for rescue.’
The parallelism that is the organising principle of the psalmodic line (and of much archaic poetry) has been plain in English since the translations of Miles Coverdale in 1535. Coverdale marked the division into hemistiches (or what Alter, following Benjamin Hrushovski, calls ‘versets’) with a colon, a practice followed, inconsistently, by the King James. Bishop Robert Lowth explained it in detail in 1753 in Oxford, and inspired Christopher Smart, who attended the lectures, to use the form for his Jubilate Agno. Alter emphasises this by splitting each line into two, with the second one indented, giving the poem a more ‘modern’ look, but it is hard to see why this is ‘more palpable’ than previous versions. Open any page of the KJ version and the parallelism is quite clear: ‘Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together’ (98) – a line I picked at random – seems little different from
Let the rivers clap hands,
let the mountains together sing gladly
– though Alter is, characteristically, slightly more awkward.
To illustrate how he has rendered the condensed language of the original, Alter, in the introduction, takes an unfortunate example, the famous line from Psalm 23: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ He explains that the Hebrew has eight words and 11 syllables, but the King James translation ‘weighs in’ at 17 words and 20 syllables. Alter has brought this down to 13 words and 14 syllables, an admirable diet, but there are few who wouldn’t prefer the chubbier version to this:
Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,
I fear no harm.
Over the last century, there have been many translation strategies for giving a sense of the denseness of classical languages such as Chinese or Sanskrit: layout on the page, enjambment, the dropping of articles when possible, a reliance on Anglo-Saxon rather than Latinate words. Alter tends to use the possessive. The opening line of Psalm 19 in the King James, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’ becomes ‘The heavens tell God’s glory’; if nothing else, cutting three syllables. Its concluding lines, which are repeated thrice daily by observant Jews, ‘Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer’ are turned into lines that would have the prayerful stumbling:
Let my mouth’s utterances be pleasing
and my heart’s stirring before You,
LORD, my rock and redeemer.
Considering that the Psalms are meant to be spoken or sung, many of Alter’s lines are difficult to say: ‘Your throne stands firm from of old,/from forever You are’ (93) is one for elocution class, and the KJ ‘Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord’ (70) has been turned into a stammer: ‘God, to save me,/Lord, to my help, hasten!’
Translation comes from somewhere, the language and literature of the original, but it also goes somewhere, into the language and literature of the translation language. Too often the experts in one know very little about the other. The cliché that only poets can translate poetry is half true. More exactly, only poetry-readers can translate poetry: those familiar with the contemporary poetry of the translation language, the context in which the translation will be read. On the evidence here, Alter seems to know very little about the last hundred years of English-language poetry.
He is partial to Victorian language, perhaps in the belief that it is more ‘poetic’. The result is that, at times, he sounds more dated than the King James. He’s in ‘death’s vale’ where the KJ was in ‘the valley of death’. His Lord is ‘my crag and my bastion’ (18) where the KJ’s is ‘my rock, and my fortress’. He has a ‘people aborning’ (22) where the KJ has a ‘people that shall be born’, and a ‘sojourner’ (94) for the KJ’s ‘stranger’. The KJ’s ‘I have considered the days of old’ (77) is now ‘I ponder the days of yore.’ And the famous line ‘I have been young and now am old’ (37) has been turned into A.E. Housman: ‘A lad I was, and now I am old.’
Worse, like many writing poems for the first time, he is in love with inverted syntax: the trees ‘fresh and full of sap they are’ (92); ‘they fix to the string their arrow’ (11); ‘His handiwork sky declares’ (19, better known as ‘the firmament sheweth his handywork’); ‘orphans they murder’ (94). Sometimes he merely inverts the King James phrases. ‘For I am poor and needy’ (86) becomes ‘for lowly and needy am I’; ‘The sea is his, and he made it’ (95) turns into ‘His is the sea and He made it’; or similarly, ‘Thy way is in the sea’ (77) is now ‘In the sea was Your way.’ There are inversions on nearly every page and after a while, wonder, one does, if it’s not the swamp of Yoda the Jedi Master we’re in. That sinking feeling hits bottom as early as Psalm 23:
The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
In grass meadows He makes me lie down
(And, almost needless to say, for ‘He restoreth my soul,’ Alter has ‘My life He brings back.’) The incessant inversion, combined with the predilection for possessives, leads to many examples of the kind where la plume de ma tante would become ‘My aunt’s is the pen.’ The first line of Psalm 24 is straightforward in the King James: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.’ Alter’s line needs to be diagrammed: ‘The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness.’
He seems to have no ear for American English, from the alpha (2: ‘Why are the nations aroused,/and the peoples murmur vain things?’) to the omega (150: ‘Let all that has breath praise Yah’ – a construct rather like ‘All who is going should get on the bus’). He is oblivious to American slang, not realising that Psalm 66 (KJ: ‘Make a joyful noise unto God . . . Say unto God, how terrible art thou in thy works!’) in his version (‘Shout out to God . . . Say to God, ‘‘How awesome Your deeds”’) sounds like a Christian rock band warming up the crowd. He sometimes slips out of register: ‘The wicked man borrows and will not pay,/but the just gives free of charge’ (37). And he apparently can’t hear that the line ‘Free me, Lord, from evil folk’ (140) is best spoken in the voice of George Bush.
Inversion, the possessive, the unpronounceable and an unfortunate word-choice all converge in Psalm 18, where he transforms a dull line in the King James (‘As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me’) into: ‘At the mere ear’s report they obeyed me,/aliens cringed before me.’ There are many other lines that would cause the meek to tremble, though perhaps not aliens to cringe. Among them: ‘With their dewlaps they speak haughty words’ (17); ‘All day long I go about gloomy’ (38); ‘Like sheep to Sheol they head’ (49, KJ: ‘Like sheep they are laid in the grave’); ‘All the wrongdoers bandy boasts’ (94); ‘For all gods of the peoples are ungods’ (96); ‘I hate committing transgressions’ (101); ‘I resemble the wilderness jackdaw’ (102); ‘for we are sorely sated with scorn’ (123); and, perhaps the worst of all, the anatomically perplexing ‘The wicked backslide from the very womb’ (58). But fortunately, as Edward Dahlberg once remarked, ‘there are many psalms that even the droning of a priest cannot kill.’
As one reads along, the suspicion grows that perhaps this book is not about the poetry at all, but about the commentary. Usually half, and sometimes more, of every page is taken up by Alter’s notes. Certainly there are many editions where the notes are more interesting than the texts, but the commentary here divides between lexical minutiae, of interest largely to Hebraicists (though this is a heavily promoted mass-market book) and a running exegesis for freshmen, in a relentless reiteration of the obvious. The line ‘My being like thirsty land to You’ (143) is glossed: ‘Rain in this climate and therefore in this body of literature is characteristically thought of as a desperately needed blessing. Hence God’s responsive presence is metaphorically represented as the rain that the parched land awaits to quicken it with growth’ – though one presumes that, by page 493, the reader has already figured out that these people are living in the desert. ‘Sing to the Lord a new song’ (149) needs this explanation: ‘The idea of a “new song” is highlighted in several psalms. In a sense, this is a kind of self-advertisement of the psalmist, as if to say “here is a fresh and vibrant psalm that you have never heard before.”’
It is remarkable that, in some two thousand of such notes, most of them longer than these, very little outside of Alter’s own interpretations is ever mentioned. He takes issue with some of the King James readings and very occasionally disputes some (usually unnamed) biblical scholars, but not once does he cite any of the translations from the history of English poetry, the uses to which individual psalms have been put, the detailed Christian exegeses of everyone from St Augustine to John Donne (and only very rarely the Jewish exegeses of Rashi and Avraham ibn Ezra), or even – except where there are specific references – other passages in the Bible. (This is contrary to Jewish tradition, which tends to pile up citations and defer to the long tradition of transmitted wisdom.) There is one far-fetched mention of Mallarmé, explaining why, in Psalm 65, Alter translates a certain word as ‘silence’. And he defends his transformation of the well-known line ‘sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb’ (19) into ‘and sweeter than honey,/quintessence of bees’ – despite his own injunction against multisyllabic Latinate words and the inappropriate alchemical term – by modestly noting: ‘The English equivalent offered here may sound like a turn of phrase one might encounter in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, but it offers a good semantic match for the Hebrew.’ (The Hebrew had merely put together two words that both mean ‘honey’.)
St Hilary said that the Book of Psalms is a heap of keys that can open every door in a great city, but that it is hard to find which key opens which lock. For translation, the opposite has been true: many poets have discovered many different keys to unlock certain doors.
For emotional power, Thomas Wyatt, circa 1536:
From depth of sin, and from a deep despair,
From depth of death, from depth of heart’s sorrow,
From this deep cave, of darkness deep repair,
Thee have I called, O Lord, to be my borrow.
Thou in my voice, O Lord, perceive and hear
My heart, my hope, my plaint, my overthrow,
My will to rise, and let by grant appear
That to my voice thine ears do well intend.
(130)
For concision and straightforward speech, Arthur Golding – whose translation of Ovid was loved by Pound and plagiarised by Shakespeare – in 1571:
My heart is boiling of a good word.
The work that I indite shall be of the King.
My tongue is the pen of a swift writer.
(45)
(Alter: ‘My heart is astir with a goodly word./ I speak what I’ve made to the king./My tongue is the pen of a rapid scribe.’)
The lute music of Philip Sidney in the 1580s:
How long (O Lord) shall I forgotten be?
What? ever?
How long wilt Thou Thy hidden face from me
Dissever?
(13)
And Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, ten years later, bringing in the whole orchestra:
Lord, crack their teeth! Lord, crush these lions’ jaws!
So let them sink as water in the sand.
When deadly bow their aiming fury draws,
Shiver the shaft ere past the shooter’s hand.
(58)
Thomas Campion in 1612, similarly alliterative, but restoring the psalm to the clarity of a single human voice singing:
Aloft the trees that spring up there
Our silent Harps we pensive hung:
Said they that captiv’d us, Let’s hear
Some song which you in Sion sung.
(137)
(Alter: ‘On the poplars there/we hung up our lyres./For there our captors had asked of us/words of song,/and our plunderers – rejoicing:/“Sing us from Zion’s songs.”’)
Milton, in 1653, the master of syntactical inversion:
Rise Lord, save me my God, for thou
Hast smote ere now
On the cheek-bone all my foes,
Of men abhorred
Hast broke the teeth. This help was from the Lord;
Thy blessing on thy people flows.
(3)
The sheer goofiness of Richard Crashaw in 1648, translating ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ as:
Happy me! O happy sheep!
Whom my God vouchsafes to keep;
(23)
(And later, ‘He leadeth me beside the still waters’ becomes, in part: ‘At my feet the blubb’ring Mountain/Weeping melts into a fountain.’)
Isaac Watts in 1719, making an entirely new song out of ‘O sing unto the Lord a new song’:
Joy to the world – the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King:
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing.
(98)
Christopher Smart in 1765, turning a single line (KJ: ‘He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes’) into one of his typically bright and idiosyncratic stanzas:
His snow upon the ground he teems,
Like bleaching wool besides the streams,
To warm the tender blade;
Like ashes from the furnace cast,
His frost comes with the northern blast
To pinch and to pervade.
(147)
Thomas Merton, who as a Trappist monk recited them every day, wrote that ‘the Psalms teach us the way back to Paradise.’ Indeed, ‘they are themselves a Paradise.’
Curiously, many of Alter’s goals were achieved in the 1960s in the Jerusalem Bible, an English translation by an anonymous committee (though the translation of Jonah has been attributed to Tolkien), directed by Alexander Jones, of a decades-long French project by the (Catholic) School of Biblical Studies in Jerusalem. It is without literary pretension and its literal, plain-spoken minimalism takes one far from the courtly elegance of the King James and into the world of the desert tribes. Its narratives, at times, seem as straightforward and unadorned as Icelandic sagas, those other great tales of vengeful shepherds. And its deadpan translation of the interminable, detailed rules and prohibitions underscores how selective the so-called fundamentalists of our age are: ‘When two men are fighting together, if the wife of one intervenes to protect her husband from the other’s blows by putting out her hand and seizing the other by the private parts, you shall cut her hand off and show no pity’ (Deuteronomy 25.11-12). Moreover, it manages, in the Bible’s deepest strata, to summon up the archaic world where Yahweh was not the only God, but the chief among many gods – Canaanite and other eclipsing figures – simply by naming him. (Alter refuses to do this, in deference to the Orthodox Jewish taboo against saying the name, and resorts to the standard ‘Lord’ in small capital letters.) Here are a few lines from Psalm 29, in the Jerusalem Bible translation:
The voice of Yahweh over the waters!
Yahweh over the multitudinous waters!
The voice of Yahweh in power!
The voice of Yahweh in splendour!
The voice of Yahweh shatters the cedars,
Yahweh shatters the cedars of Lebanon,
making Lebanon leap like a calf,
Sirion like a young wild bull.
The voice of Yahweh sharpens lightning shafts!
The anonymous Jerusalem Bible translators, who make no claim for poetry, have inadvertently written a Beat poem – by Allen Ginsberg or Anne Waldman or Michael McClure – a reminder that the Psalms have set the tone and standard for what an oracular and ecstatic poem should sound like: in English, from the King James to Whitman to Ginsberg; and in the rest of the world from Whitman to Neruda and Senghor, among so many others. Where the usual ‘Lord’ carries millennia of evolving interpretations, and an inherent benevolence, calling Yahweh by his name – as we would a Greek or Hittite or Hindu god – confers a mythological otherness: an unsophisticated warrior god of the neolithic Hebrews, far from the deity now invoked in suburban synagogues.
We tend to remember the songs of praise and thanksgiving, but most of the psalms are preoccupied with vengeance. The psalmist is surrounded by enemies who slander him, bring lawsuits against him, cheat him in the marketplace, and he calls on Yahweh to destroy them. Or the Hebrews are surrounded by hostile tribes and they call on Yahweh to destroy them. Everyone knows Psalm 137, the beautiful song of exile (‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion’), but few remember how it ends, here in Alter’s translation:
Daughter of Babylon the despoiler,
happy who pays you back in kind,
for what you did to us.
Happy who seizes and smashes
your infants against the rock.
Alter comments that the psalm ‘ends with this bloodcurdling curse pronounced on their captors, who, fortunately, do not understand the Hebrew in which it is pronounced’. A cheerful thought, but language is more than the meaning of words and somehow one suspects that if this curse was indeed once spoken aloud, the Babylonians, knowing nothing of the original, would still have been able to translate it.
Eliot Weinberger’s most recent books are An Elemental Thing and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. ‘What I Heard about Iraq’ was published in the LRB in 2005, its sequel in 2006.
Wednesday 16 January 2008
Pentecostalim in Brazil! Brazil Greets Pope but Questions His Perspective By LARRY ROHTER and IAN FISHER May 9, 2007 c/o The NYT
May 9, 2007
Brazil Greets Pope but Questions His Perspective
By LARRY ROHTER and IAN FISHER
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, May 8 — Pope Benedict XVI arrives here Wednesday for his first foray into Latin America, hoping to stanch the church’s steady loss of followers in the region. But some of the faithful frankly wonder whether an 80-year-old pontiff from Germany can speak to their needs.
When Pope John Paul II first visited here in 1980, nine of every 10 Brazilians described themselves as Roman Catholics. That percentage has dropped by one percentage point a year for nearly two decades. Today only two-thirds of Brazilians consider themselves Catholics, according to a recent church-endorsed survey.
Much of that ground has been lost to surging Pentecostalism in a region that has traditionally been home to nearly half the world’s Catholics.
“This is why he wants to go there,” Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, a Brazilian and former archbishop here, said in an interview in Rome. “Because he is worried. Because Latin America cannot be lost. I say that Latin America could be lost.” He was appointed last year as head of the Congregation of the Clergy.
“If you lose Latin America,” he added, “it would be a substantial loss, that could be irreparable.”
The trend in Brazil is so worrying that, according to church officials, the pope lobbied to have a 19-day conference of Latin American bishops, which opens Sunday, held here, after seeing the results of the survey.
“Brazil has become a country with a lot of religious mobility, a mosaic,” said Silvia Fernandes, a sociologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who worked on the survey, which had been conducted at the request of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops. “A disposition to change and experiment and to question doctrine has been growing for 30 years now, and Pentecostalism has been the biggest beneficiary because it is a more emotional religion.”
Another recent survey, by the nondenominational World Christian Database, showed that Brazil had recently overtaken the United States as the country with the world’s largest Pentecostal population. Based on numbers that churches themselves provided, the survey calculated that 24 million Brazilians belong to Pentecostal churches, while 138 million are Roman Catholic.
The challenge from Pentecostalism, say theologians and other religious experts, is likely to be one of the most important challenges of Benedict’s papacy. Philip Jenkins, a professor of religious studies at Penn State University who has written several books about the church in the developing world, called the spread of Pentecostalism in Latin America “the greatest single crisis facing the Catholic Church worldwide.”
Some segments of the Latin American church have responded by emphasizing the theology of liberation, which merges faith and politics. Others have incorporated Afro-Brazilian and indigenous rites into the Mass.
Another increasingly popular response has been the emergence of a charismatic renewal movement, which borrows liberally from the Pentecostal liturgy. Its most visible symbol is a young priest named Marcelo Rossi, a former personal trainer who is a devotee of the Virgin Mary and the rosary.
Blessed with matinee-idol looks and a strong singing voice, he draws thousands to the concrete warehouse where he celebrates his televised Masses. He has sold millions of records and even starred in a movie.
“I come here because the Mass is relaxed and informal, gets me more involved than at my old church and transmits a feeling of happiness,” Edilanis Diniz, a 31-year-old store clerk, said one recent Sunday as Father Rossi sang “God is a 10” to a rock ‘n’ roll beat. “I think this is the right path for the church, especially for young people.”
But Father Rossi’s popularity makes some traditionalists here uneasy. He has been excluded from any visible role during the pope’s five-day visit, and has also been cautioned about toning down the entertainment in his worship services.
“Priests aren’t showmen,” Archbishop Odilo Scherer, whom Benedict chose in March to be the new archbishop of São Paulo, said late last month in a clear reference to Father Rossi. “The Mass is not to be transformed into a show.”
As lay people, the bishops and other clergy members gather this weekend in Aparecida, a center of devotion to Brazil’s patroness, the Virgin of Aparecida, they will be looking to Benedict for guidance on these and other issues when he addresses the bishops’ conference there on Sunday.
But there is widespread curiosity, and even some skepticism here, about the personality and beliefs of the new pope. The faithful here will thus be alert for signs from Benedict that this region’s concerns can compete for attention with the central challenge for the church in Europe, namely rising secularism.
“The European church has its reality, and we can feel that this papacy is quite preoccupied with that,” said Agenor Brighenti, a Brazilian theologian who is the author of “The Church of the Future and the Future of the Church.” “But the survival of the church is not the problem we face here in the third world, and so we hope he can feel our reality, too.”
That reality includes poverty, social injustice and a shortage of priests.
At the 2005 conclave that chose Benedict, Cardinal Hummes was seen as a contender to become the first pope from Latin America, and there was much disappointment here when he was not chosen.
When a military dictatorship was in power here, Cardinal Hummes, now 72, was known as “The Workers’ Bishop” because he gave refuge to labor leaders, including Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, now president of Brazil, and sympathized with popular causes.
Benedict, in contrast, “is seen in many quarters as a quintessentially European figure, and I think the early line on him in many parts of the south is, quite frankly, that he doesn’t have much to say to us,” said John Allen, who wrote a biography of the pope. “It is therefore important for him to come across as someone who understands that part of the world and someone whose message is relevant to that part of the world.”
In recent weeks, the pontiff has sought to dilute that image by speaking out on issues of special interest to Latin America, which he described Sunday as “the continent of hope.” Last month, for instance, the Vatican released a letter in which Benedict recommended ways in which rich countries could help poor ones through relaxed trade rules, debt cancellation and medical assistance.
John Paul II’s first trip to Brazil lasted two weeks and included visits to squatter slums that so moved him that he donated his papal ring to one of the communities.
By contrast, and in recognition of his more advanced age and reduced stamina, Benedict’s itinerary does not include any events of that nature. But he is scheduled to visit a treatment center for drug addicts.
“In the course of his activities, seeing how he responds to the problems he faces will allow us to make an evaluation of him,” said Eduardo Moreira, a 56-year-old metalworker from the industrial suburbs here. “We hope that he is coming not just to teach, but also to learn.”
Larry Rohter reported from São Paulo, and Ian Fisher from Rome.
Brazil Greets Pope but Questions His Perspective
By LARRY ROHTER and IAN FISHER
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, May 8 — Pope Benedict XVI arrives here Wednesday for his first foray into Latin America, hoping to stanch the church’s steady loss of followers in the region. But some of the faithful frankly wonder whether an 80-year-old pontiff from Germany can speak to their needs.
When Pope John Paul II first visited here in 1980, nine of every 10 Brazilians described themselves as Roman Catholics. That percentage has dropped by one percentage point a year for nearly two decades. Today only two-thirds of Brazilians consider themselves Catholics, according to a recent church-endorsed survey.
Much of that ground has been lost to surging Pentecostalism in a region that has traditionally been home to nearly half the world’s Catholics.
“This is why he wants to go there,” Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, a Brazilian and former archbishop here, said in an interview in Rome. “Because he is worried. Because Latin America cannot be lost. I say that Latin America could be lost.” He was appointed last year as head of the Congregation of the Clergy.
“If you lose Latin America,” he added, “it would be a substantial loss, that could be irreparable.”
The trend in Brazil is so worrying that, according to church officials, the pope lobbied to have a 19-day conference of Latin American bishops, which opens Sunday, held here, after seeing the results of the survey.
“Brazil has become a country with a lot of religious mobility, a mosaic,” said Silvia Fernandes, a sociologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who worked on the survey, which had been conducted at the request of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops. “A disposition to change and experiment and to question doctrine has been growing for 30 years now, and Pentecostalism has been the biggest beneficiary because it is a more emotional religion.”
Another recent survey, by the nondenominational World Christian Database, showed that Brazil had recently overtaken the United States as the country with the world’s largest Pentecostal population. Based on numbers that churches themselves provided, the survey calculated that 24 million Brazilians belong to Pentecostal churches, while 138 million are Roman Catholic.
The challenge from Pentecostalism, say theologians and other religious experts, is likely to be one of the most important challenges of Benedict’s papacy. Philip Jenkins, a professor of religious studies at Penn State University who has written several books about the church in the developing world, called the spread of Pentecostalism in Latin America “the greatest single crisis facing the Catholic Church worldwide.”
Some segments of the Latin American church have responded by emphasizing the theology of liberation, which merges faith and politics. Others have incorporated Afro-Brazilian and indigenous rites into the Mass.
Another increasingly popular response has been the emergence of a charismatic renewal movement, which borrows liberally from the Pentecostal liturgy. Its most visible symbol is a young priest named Marcelo Rossi, a former personal trainer who is a devotee of the Virgin Mary and the rosary.
Blessed with matinee-idol looks and a strong singing voice, he draws thousands to the concrete warehouse where he celebrates his televised Masses. He has sold millions of records and even starred in a movie.
“I come here because the Mass is relaxed and informal, gets me more involved than at my old church and transmits a feeling of happiness,” Edilanis Diniz, a 31-year-old store clerk, said one recent Sunday as Father Rossi sang “God is a 10” to a rock ‘n’ roll beat. “I think this is the right path for the church, especially for young people.”
But Father Rossi’s popularity makes some traditionalists here uneasy. He has been excluded from any visible role during the pope’s five-day visit, and has also been cautioned about toning down the entertainment in his worship services.
“Priests aren’t showmen,” Archbishop Odilo Scherer, whom Benedict chose in March to be the new archbishop of São Paulo, said late last month in a clear reference to Father Rossi. “The Mass is not to be transformed into a show.”
As lay people, the bishops and other clergy members gather this weekend in Aparecida, a center of devotion to Brazil’s patroness, the Virgin of Aparecida, they will be looking to Benedict for guidance on these and other issues when he addresses the bishops’ conference there on Sunday.
But there is widespread curiosity, and even some skepticism here, about the personality and beliefs of the new pope. The faithful here will thus be alert for signs from Benedict that this region’s concerns can compete for attention with the central challenge for the church in Europe, namely rising secularism.
“The European church has its reality, and we can feel that this papacy is quite preoccupied with that,” said Agenor Brighenti, a Brazilian theologian who is the author of “The Church of the Future and the Future of the Church.” “But the survival of the church is not the problem we face here in the third world, and so we hope he can feel our reality, too.”
That reality includes poverty, social injustice and a shortage of priests.
At the 2005 conclave that chose Benedict, Cardinal Hummes was seen as a contender to become the first pope from Latin America, and there was much disappointment here when he was not chosen.
When a military dictatorship was in power here, Cardinal Hummes, now 72, was known as “The Workers’ Bishop” because he gave refuge to labor leaders, including Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, now president of Brazil, and sympathized with popular causes.
Benedict, in contrast, “is seen in many quarters as a quintessentially European figure, and I think the early line on him in many parts of the south is, quite frankly, that he doesn’t have much to say to us,” said John Allen, who wrote a biography of the pope. “It is therefore important for him to come across as someone who understands that part of the world and someone whose message is relevant to that part of the world.”
In recent weeks, the pontiff has sought to dilute that image by speaking out on issues of special interest to Latin America, which he described Sunday as “the continent of hope.” Last month, for instance, the Vatican released a letter in which Benedict recommended ways in which rich countries could help poor ones through relaxed trade rules, debt cancellation and medical assistance.
John Paul II’s first trip to Brazil lasted two weeks and included visits to squatter slums that so moved him that he donated his papal ring to one of the communities.
By contrast, and in recognition of his more advanced age and reduced stamina, Benedict’s itinerary does not include any events of that nature. But he is scheduled to visit a treatment center for drug addicts.
“In the course of his activities, seeing how he responds to the problems he faces will allow us to make an evaluation of him,” said Eduardo Moreira, a 56-year-old metalworker from the industrial suburbs here. “We hope that he is coming not just to teach, but also to learn.”
Larry Rohter reported from São Paulo, and Ian Fisher from Rome.
A PENTECOSTAL REVIVAL TEXT Acts 2:1-4 by Mark Hardgrove c/o www.churchnetwork.com/suwaneecog
A PENTECOSTAL REVIVAL
TEXT Acts 2:1-4
by Mark Hardgrove
www.churchnetwork.com/suwaneecog
Introduction:
What is a true "Pentecostal" revival? The picture of Acts is often a
far cry from what we see in many Pentecostal churches. First let's look
at what it is not.
A Pentecostal revival is not:
a revival of programs
a revival of human personalities
a revival of pomp and circumstance
I. IT IS A REVIVAL OF....PASSION
When they came down out of the upper room they didn't come down
whispering, they didn't hide in the shadows, they came down with a
revived passion.
True passion always comes out in the speech and actions of the
passionate. If people do not see and hear Jesus in us, then our passion
is lacking. On the day of Pentecost, the passion would not be
contained or concealed in an upper room, it had to make its way, like a
river, into the city, and eventually, all the world.
A few years ago, when Latin America was experiencing phenomenal growth
in the Pentecostal churches, Roland Vaughn said the reason was not
because of education, or facilities, or finances, or programs; "the
reason they are growing," he said, "is because the people have a passion
for God."
James, in his Epistle, said true religion and undefiled is to minister
to the needs of widows and orphans. True religion has enough
compassion to do something about the plight of the outcast of society.
True religion has enough passion to care and to create ministries which
will make a change in people's lives.
There is no Christianity without compassion, and there is no
"com-passion" without "passion." Christ was often moved with
compassion to minister to the masses. Compassion moves us, it motivates
and compels us to do something.
Far from the placid figure portrayed in modern media, Jesus was a
passionate man. He was also moved with passion to rebuke the
religionists, and to clear the temple of money changers.
O for a passionate passion for souls,
O for a pity that yearns!
O for the love that loves unto death,
O for a fire that burns!
O for the pure prayer-power that prevails,
That pours itself out for the lost!
Victorious prayer in the Conqueror's Name,
O for a PENTECOST
-Amy Wilson Carmichael
Paul told Timothy, "Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee..." (2
Tim. 1:6)
A passionless church is a church which has left its first love, it is a
church which is neither flowing with cool refreshing streams nor the hot
therapeutic springs, but is lukewarm, half-hearted, empty, apathetic and
complacent. Don't let the passion die, don't lose your first love
fire!
Oh that the Spirit would blow across the glowing embers of the
Pentecostal movement again and revive within us a passion for the lost,
a passion for prayer, a passion to praise, a passion for God in all of
His splendor!
II IT IS A REVIVAL OF....POWER
They went out in power and turned the world right side up.
Jesus said, "But ye shall receive POWER, after that the Holy Ghost come
upon you: and ye shall be witnesses into me both in Jerusalem, and in
all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
I thank God we serve a God of POWER. Not like gods of wood and stone
which have hands but cannot save, ears but cannot hear, eyes but cannot
see. Not like the gods of secular humanism which have no power to
transform a man, or lift him out of his sins. But our God is an awesome
God. "God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power
belongeth unto God" (Ps 62:11).
But not only does God have power, He wants that Power to work through
us. "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly according to
the power that worketh in us," (Eph. 3:20)
Power for what? Power to shout? I'm like T. L. Lowery, "I started
shouting the day the burden of sin was lifted off my shoulders and I
haven't quit yet! Shouting is not a sign of power, shouting is a sign
of joy!"
We have been given power to witness and to walk the walk. It grieves
me to see people talking about having the Power of the Holy Spirit, but
can't quit smoking, can't quit talking about their neighbors, can't quit
sinning and won't witness for Jesus. If they've got power then there
will be enough power to witness and to live right!
III. IT IS A REVIVAL OF...PRESENCE
The early believers lived in His presence, they walked in the Spirit.
In John 14 Jesus said, "I will not leave you Comfortless" He said, "I
will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He
may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth"
The Holy Spirit doesn't want to visit us on Sundays, or when we have a
revival, the Holy Spirit was sent to "abide" with us. He wants to take
up residence within our heart and soul continually bearing witness with
our spirit that we are the Children of God.
We cannot be satisfied with going through the motion, we must long for
the presence of the Lord, He is the source of revival.
The Psalmist said, "One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I
seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my
life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple"
(Ps 27:4).
CONCLUSION:
Do these attributes of a Pentecostal revival grace your life? If not,
then you need revival. Come and experience the Passion, the Power and
the Presence of Pentecostal Revival in your life.
TEXT Acts 2:1-4
by Mark Hardgrove
www.churchnetwork.com/suwaneecog
Introduction:
What is a true "Pentecostal" revival? The picture of Acts is often a
far cry from what we see in many Pentecostal churches. First let's look
at what it is not.
A Pentecostal revival is not:
a revival of programs
a revival of human personalities
a revival of pomp and circumstance
I. IT IS A REVIVAL OF....PASSION
When they came down out of the upper room they didn't come down
whispering, they didn't hide in the shadows, they came down with a
revived passion.
True passion always comes out in the speech and actions of the
passionate. If people do not see and hear Jesus in us, then our passion
is lacking. On the day of Pentecost, the passion would not be
contained or concealed in an upper room, it had to make its way, like a
river, into the city, and eventually, all the world.
A few years ago, when Latin America was experiencing phenomenal growth
in the Pentecostal churches, Roland Vaughn said the reason was not
because of education, or facilities, or finances, or programs; "the
reason they are growing," he said, "is because the people have a passion
for God."
James, in his Epistle, said true religion and undefiled is to minister
to the needs of widows and orphans. True religion has enough
compassion to do something about the plight of the outcast of society.
True religion has enough passion to care and to create ministries which
will make a change in people's lives.
There is no Christianity without compassion, and there is no
"com-passion" without "passion." Christ was often moved with
compassion to minister to the masses. Compassion moves us, it motivates
and compels us to do something.
Far from the placid figure portrayed in modern media, Jesus was a
passionate man. He was also moved with passion to rebuke the
religionists, and to clear the temple of money changers.
O for a passionate passion for souls,
O for a pity that yearns!
O for the love that loves unto death,
O for a fire that burns!
O for the pure prayer-power that prevails,
That pours itself out for the lost!
Victorious prayer in the Conqueror's Name,
O for a PENTECOST
-Amy Wilson Carmichael
Paul told Timothy, "Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee..." (2
Tim. 1:6)
A passionless church is a church which has left its first love, it is a
church which is neither flowing with cool refreshing streams nor the hot
therapeutic springs, but is lukewarm, half-hearted, empty, apathetic and
complacent. Don't let the passion die, don't lose your first love
fire!
Oh that the Spirit would blow across the glowing embers of the
Pentecostal movement again and revive within us a passion for the lost,
a passion for prayer, a passion to praise, a passion for God in all of
His splendor!
II IT IS A REVIVAL OF....POWER
They went out in power and turned the world right side up.
Jesus said, "But ye shall receive POWER, after that the Holy Ghost come
upon you: and ye shall be witnesses into me both in Jerusalem, and in
all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
I thank God we serve a God of POWER. Not like gods of wood and stone
which have hands but cannot save, ears but cannot hear, eyes but cannot
see. Not like the gods of secular humanism which have no power to
transform a man, or lift him out of his sins. But our God is an awesome
God. "God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power
belongeth unto God" (Ps 62:11).
But not only does God have power, He wants that Power to work through
us. "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly according to
the power that worketh in us," (Eph. 3:20)
Power for what? Power to shout? I'm like T. L. Lowery, "I started
shouting the day the burden of sin was lifted off my shoulders and I
haven't quit yet! Shouting is not a sign of power, shouting is a sign
of joy!"
We have been given power to witness and to walk the walk. It grieves
me to see people talking about having the Power of the Holy Spirit, but
can't quit smoking, can't quit talking about their neighbors, can't quit
sinning and won't witness for Jesus. If they've got power then there
will be enough power to witness and to live right!
III. IT IS A REVIVAL OF...PRESENCE
The early believers lived in His presence, they walked in the Spirit.
In John 14 Jesus said, "I will not leave you Comfortless" He said, "I
will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He
may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth"
The Holy Spirit doesn't want to visit us on Sundays, or when we have a
revival, the Holy Spirit was sent to "abide" with us. He wants to take
up residence within our heart and soul continually bearing witness with
our spirit that we are the Children of God.
We cannot be satisfied with going through the motion, we must long for
the presence of the Lord, He is the source of revival.
The Psalmist said, "One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I
seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my
life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple"
(Ps 27:4).
CONCLUSION:
Do these attributes of a Pentecostal revival grace your life? If not,
then you need revival. Come and experience the Passion, the Power and
the Presence of Pentecostal Revival in your life.
Next pastoral dedication and Sunday service meeting 20th January 2008 5 PM @ South Street Baptist Church, Exeter.
Please all readers come to our pastoral and mission dedication service this Sunday at 5 PM @ the South Street Baptist Church's Palace Gate Christian Centre. Come and be blessed as British Assemblies Of God (BAOG)Pastor Rob from Bristol does the laying on of hands and dedicates three pastoral candidates and their spouses to mission work in London and Exeter among, but not primarily among the burgeoning Asian Christian community in the UK. The meeting will be from 5.00 PM- 8.30 PM all are cordially invited irrespective of national, racial and ethnic affiliations!
Thanks for all your prayers!
Thanks and God's blessings to all who prayed for my Ph. D studies and my meeting with my supervisor. It was a great success and now its full stream ahead with finishing my Ph. D to the glory of God. May his name be blessed!
God bless you!
Dear All,
Hope you had a nice day so far. May God go with you the rest of the day. May the spirit of Jesus be with you and may the Holy Spirit bless you this day and always!
Hope you had a nice day so far. May God go with you the rest of the day. May the spirit of Jesus be with you and may the Holy Spirit bless you this day and always!
Tuesday 15 January 2008
Victory Church News Alert: English service starts: February 2008!
Watch out for details of the start of the new English service on this blogspot in the coming days. Keep praying for our fledgling church, that it will be blessed and the city of Exeter will also be blessed as a result of our prayers and meeting. May Christ and the Holy Spirit be with us all!
Pray for our Pastor!
Pray for our Pastor Abraham and his wife Vincy as they minister mightily across the UK and even in Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world as well as greater Commonwealth. Pray that they will be used mightily in His service!
Pray for all the programs of our Victory Church in the South West of England and in Scotland-Ireland!
Pray for all the programs of our Victory Church in the South West of England and in Scotland-Ireland!
Latest News flash! -January 20, 2008!
For the notice of all reader's!
Pray for the January 20th 2008 dedication service where two of our brothers, Bro. Reji and Bro. Wilson along with their spouses are being anointed as Pastor's to lead congregations in London and Exeter, repectively. Also pray for me, Bro. Sam and my wife Saira as we are dedicated as missionaries-evangelists in Exeter by the grace and to the Glory of God through Jesus Christ alone.
May His name be praised always!
in Christ,
Pray for the January 20th 2008 dedication service where two of our brothers, Bro. Reji and Bro. Wilson along with their spouses are being anointed as Pastor's to lead congregations in London and Exeter, repectively. Also pray for me, Bro. Sam and my wife Saira as we are dedicated as missionaries-evangelists in Exeter by the grace and to the Glory of God through Jesus Christ alone.
May His name be praised always!
in Christ,
Pray for Orissa now!
May I ask all readers right now to pray for the state of Orissa in India, where persecution against Christians is going on right now. Pray that the Authorities and the Government of India will do something instead of denying the problem. Pray that Christians world-wide will put pressure on their Churches and governments to condemn the atrocities and lobby the Indian government to take firm measures against the Hindu fundamentalists responsible for the atrocities and destruction. Please pray for all, Hindu's as well as Christians, that all will come back to normal and that reconstruction and rehabilitation will soon start.
in Jesus name!
in Jesus name!
Interview c/o Catholic News Service: Cardinal Cormac welcomes Polish migrants LONDON - 15 January 2008
LONDON - 15 January 2008
Cardinal Cormac welcomes Polish migrants
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has expressed his hope that Polish migrants living in England and Wales will be able to feel part of the family of the Catholic Church and stressed the great value of their contribution to the Catholic faith.
In a wide ranging interview with Polish Journalist Rafal Laczny, which was first published in December 2007 by Poland's church-owned news agency KAI, he acknowledged that language problems may make it hard for recent Polish migrants to become integrated into the Catholic life of England and Wales. However, he expressed the hope that over time they would be able to become part of local parishes.
In a separate response to recent press comments about apparently different approaches to integration by Polish Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said on Wednesday 9th January 2008: "We have to look at the changing circumstances with the shared desire that the Polish people have their spiritual needs met."
Full transcript of interview with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor by Rafal Laczny
RL. Many Polish people are interested in Great Britain, the main reason is of course is that they can work here but that means they are interested in Catholic Church as well. Can Your Eminence describe the situation and condition of the Catholic Church in England and Wales?
The first thing I would like to say is that the Polish people who come to this country and particularly to my own diocese are very welcome. There are very, very many who have settled here in London and I meet many of them in the parishes, so that, for me, is very good. They will find the Catholic Church here in England strong in the sense that it has a very public witness for what it means to be Catholic, witnessing to our Christian faith in a secular society. Of course the Catholic Church in this country is a minority church, not like in Poland where most of the country is Catholic. Here we are a small proportion of the population of this country, about 5-10%, and therefore the mission is to be strong, to be faithful and to feel free and brave enough to express our Catholic faith in Britain.
RL. You mentioned the secular society and this is only one of the tasks for the Catholic Church in England. Unfortunately many Catholics are leaving the Church.
It is quite true to say that there are a number of Catholics who do not go to Church. Many of them, I suppose, after being baptised and brought up as Catholics have then decided not to practise any more. And therefore I think that Catholics, when they grow up and become adults, have to make another commitment of themselves to their Catholic faith. Of course, I lament when those leave the Catholic Church and do not practise and therefore the task of evangelisation is to show people, especially those who are baptised as Catholics, that this is the real church, this is the community of faith and hope and love, come and renew your Catholic faith, come and join us. Christmas I think is a particular time when people realise that my Christian faith does mean something even if I don't go to Mass every Sunday as I should.
RL. Another problem for the Church is the liberal laws in England. For example, this year is the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act.
I think that many of the moral laws, laws which affect the Catholic Church, are perhaps increasing because the secular culture means that certain social and moral matters, and particularly ethical matters regarding family, are matters in which the government make decisions which impact on the Catholic Church. One is of course the permission of abortion and I and the other Catholic bishops have constantly fought against the wrongness of abortion. It's not only that there are other aspects of legislation to do with adoption, IVF, homosexuality that make it difficult for the Catholic Church. Now we see that certainly what is legal is not necessarily moral. And one's got to be very careful to distinguish that. But with regard to abortion, I did say in a recent letter with the Cardinal Archbishop of Edinburgh, in which we spoke up very strongly against abortion, that we ought to do more to help women who have pregnancies that they don't want to enable them to have their children, to help them, to counsel them, and I think that's very important. And we also said that politicians should, at least as a first step, work to reduce the age at which abortion becomes legal or illegal.
RL. One of the most important tasks for the Catholic Church in England and Wales is dialogue with the Church of England and with the Muslims living in Great Britain. What is the position of this dialogue?
Of course the dialogue with the English Church, the Anglican Church, the Church of England, is very different to our dialogue with Muslims. The dialogue with the Anglican Church, the Church of England, is one that has been going on a long time and we are in many ways very close together. We have many doctrines and the order of church ministry is the same. Sadly, there are many obstacles to full unity with the Anglican Church which have emerged, particularly over the last 20 years, particularly regarding moral matters, regarding matters of ministry and other matters, particularly, I would say, the matter of authority. But that said, we cooperate very well with Anglicans in every part of the country where bishops and priests and people do unite together in a common kind of witness, as much as we are able to do. And that, I think, is very good. With regard to the Muslims, particularly, the dialogue is a different one. I think, it's a dialogue for peace in the world, for certain values that we hold together and I have to say the dialogue has yet to grow, I think, and partly because it's rather difficult to get leadership within the Muslim community that want to interact with us. I think, the question of theological dialogue does not arise with the Muslims because we have a very different concept of God and an interpretation of how He speaks to us. But there can and should be a dialogue, if you like, of culture, of work for peace, values such as the dignity of the human person and the family, these are the sort of things on which, in fact, we can work together for the common good.
RL. Are you optimistic about the dialogue with the Church of England?
I am an optimist, I would say a hopeful person, which is slightly different. In other words I believe that the work of ecumenism is not an optional extra it is part of Catholic teaching, part of the mission of the Church, to be ecumenical to reach out to fellow Christians and see in whatever way we can how do we grow towards that unity which is the will of Christ and I think when things seem very difficult we've got to remember it's the work of the Holy Spirit and that He can do things we can't even dream of.
RL. In Great Britain there are now more than 1 million Polish people, most of them are Catholics. Do you think this has changed in some way the Catholic Church in this country?
I think clearly the million or so Polish who are here are a welcome addition to this country and to the Church. I think that it can be quite difficult in some ways for the Polish people to become integrated into this country. Partly the problem is language it's difficult for Polish people, I think, to learn the English language, to be familiar with it. But I think I am also anxious that they don't become, as it were, a separate church, if you see what I mean, a Polish church for the Poles, another church for the rest of the Catholics. No, I want the Polish people to become integrated into the Catholic life of this country. They will be a great strength to our parishes. Now, this can only be done gradually but I want the leadership of the Polish church in this country and the Polish people themselves to realise that, as soon as they can, I mean as it were learnt the language, to become part of the normal parishes where they will be not only welcome but have a great contribution to make.
RL. So maybe Polish people should evangelise the British?
We all have a task, as Catholics, to evangelise the English. It's my job, your job, it's everybody's job as a Catholic to evangelise. And I think that the Polish people themselves will evangelise by their example. You see in the early church people said those Catholics, those Christians, how they love one another. How they work for the common good, how they are an example. I think the Polish people can at least evangelise in that way. And as they gradually become more integrated into the life of the church will use their own particular gifts, I think, to evangelise the English. I myself come from an Irish background. Well the Irish came over here, like the Polish, many, many hundreds of thousands and they had to become integrated and in a sense now you see their children and children's children evangelising the English by their example, by their witness.
RL. Polish people are a part of the large group of immigrants in Great Britain. In an interview you spoke about a 'grey zone' of millions of immigrants living in England without any elementary rights. This situation is a great task for the Church as well.
I think there are problems for immigrants who come to this country, I think, social problems, problems of justice, the Catholic Church particularly wants to be sure that immigrants, whether they are Catholics or not, are not exploited, that they get a fair wage and therefore are able to live decent lives. I do think that the Polish people in as much as they are part of the Church will realise that they live alongside lots and lots of other people of other ethnic origins. We have in London a most extraordinary mix of 47 ethnic chaplaincies and when I go round the parishes here in London I find people of 20, 30 different ethnic backgrounds and they worship together, they are glad to be together, they belong to one faith. It seems to me that a particular gift to London, I'm talking about my diocese now, of this variety of people who have come to London of different ethnic backgrounds is to show the government and others that people of different ethnic backgrounds can live together, can pray together, can be a kind of witness together to what it means to be a Christian and I think in that sense I think the Catholic Church has a hugely important part to play. But it must not forget to try and help those who are in difficulties in terms of social integration, some of the injustices that are done to immigrants and to remind the government what can and should be done with regard to just treatment of people who've come to this country.
RL. In a couple of weeks we will celebrate Christmas. What could you wish for the Polish community in England?
I wish the Polish people to celebrate Christmas in a Polish way. By that I mean they will pray, they will celebrate the Holy Eucharist, they will be with their families or as many of them as can and celebrate a great mystery, the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery that God became man in Jesus. And I hope that just as Jesus, as it were, was welcome as a kind of stranger when he was born, so that the Polish people won't feel strangers in London, or indeed in any part of the country, that they will feel that they are part of a family, the family of the Church and will know that they are welcomed, that they are esteemed and that their particular contribution to the Catholic faith and Church in this country is much valued by myself.
Source: Archbishops House
© Independent Catholic News 2008
Cardinal Cormac welcomes Polish migrants
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has expressed his hope that Polish migrants living in England and Wales will be able to feel part of the family of the Catholic Church and stressed the great value of their contribution to the Catholic faith.
In a wide ranging interview with Polish Journalist Rafal Laczny, which was first published in December 2007 by Poland's church-owned news agency KAI, he acknowledged that language problems may make it hard for recent Polish migrants to become integrated into the Catholic life of England and Wales. However, he expressed the hope that over time they would be able to become part of local parishes.
In a separate response to recent press comments about apparently different approaches to integration by Polish Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said on Wednesday 9th January 2008: "We have to look at the changing circumstances with the shared desire that the Polish people have their spiritual needs met."
Full transcript of interview with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor by Rafal Laczny
RL. Many Polish people are interested in Great Britain, the main reason is of course is that they can work here but that means they are interested in Catholic Church as well. Can Your Eminence describe the situation and condition of the Catholic Church in England and Wales?
The first thing I would like to say is that the Polish people who come to this country and particularly to my own diocese are very welcome. There are very, very many who have settled here in London and I meet many of them in the parishes, so that, for me, is very good. They will find the Catholic Church here in England strong in the sense that it has a very public witness for what it means to be Catholic, witnessing to our Christian faith in a secular society. Of course the Catholic Church in this country is a minority church, not like in Poland where most of the country is Catholic. Here we are a small proportion of the population of this country, about 5-10%, and therefore the mission is to be strong, to be faithful and to feel free and brave enough to express our Catholic faith in Britain.
RL. You mentioned the secular society and this is only one of the tasks for the Catholic Church in England. Unfortunately many Catholics are leaving the Church.
It is quite true to say that there are a number of Catholics who do not go to Church. Many of them, I suppose, after being baptised and brought up as Catholics have then decided not to practise any more. And therefore I think that Catholics, when they grow up and become adults, have to make another commitment of themselves to their Catholic faith. Of course, I lament when those leave the Catholic Church and do not practise and therefore the task of evangelisation is to show people, especially those who are baptised as Catholics, that this is the real church, this is the community of faith and hope and love, come and renew your Catholic faith, come and join us. Christmas I think is a particular time when people realise that my Christian faith does mean something even if I don't go to Mass every Sunday as I should.
RL. Another problem for the Church is the liberal laws in England. For example, this year is the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act.
I think that many of the moral laws, laws which affect the Catholic Church, are perhaps increasing because the secular culture means that certain social and moral matters, and particularly ethical matters regarding family, are matters in which the government make decisions which impact on the Catholic Church. One is of course the permission of abortion and I and the other Catholic bishops have constantly fought against the wrongness of abortion. It's not only that there are other aspects of legislation to do with adoption, IVF, homosexuality that make it difficult for the Catholic Church. Now we see that certainly what is legal is not necessarily moral. And one's got to be very careful to distinguish that. But with regard to abortion, I did say in a recent letter with the Cardinal Archbishop of Edinburgh, in which we spoke up very strongly against abortion, that we ought to do more to help women who have pregnancies that they don't want to enable them to have their children, to help them, to counsel them, and I think that's very important. And we also said that politicians should, at least as a first step, work to reduce the age at which abortion becomes legal or illegal.
RL. One of the most important tasks for the Catholic Church in England and Wales is dialogue with the Church of England and with the Muslims living in Great Britain. What is the position of this dialogue?
Of course the dialogue with the English Church, the Anglican Church, the Church of England, is very different to our dialogue with Muslims. The dialogue with the Anglican Church, the Church of England, is one that has been going on a long time and we are in many ways very close together. We have many doctrines and the order of church ministry is the same. Sadly, there are many obstacles to full unity with the Anglican Church which have emerged, particularly over the last 20 years, particularly regarding moral matters, regarding matters of ministry and other matters, particularly, I would say, the matter of authority. But that said, we cooperate very well with Anglicans in every part of the country where bishops and priests and people do unite together in a common kind of witness, as much as we are able to do. And that, I think, is very good. With regard to the Muslims, particularly, the dialogue is a different one. I think, it's a dialogue for peace in the world, for certain values that we hold together and I have to say the dialogue has yet to grow, I think, and partly because it's rather difficult to get leadership within the Muslim community that want to interact with us. I think, the question of theological dialogue does not arise with the Muslims because we have a very different concept of God and an interpretation of how He speaks to us. But there can and should be a dialogue, if you like, of culture, of work for peace, values such as the dignity of the human person and the family, these are the sort of things on which, in fact, we can work together for the common good.
RL. Are you optimistic about the dialogue with the Church of England?
I am an optimist, I would say a hopeful person, which is slightly different. In other words I believe that the work of ecumenism is not an optional extra it is part of Catholic teaching, part of the mission of the Church, to be ecumenical to reach out to fellow Christians and see in whatever way we can how do we grow towards that unity which is the will of Christ and I think when things seem very difficult we've got to remember it's the work of the Holy Spirit and that He can do things we can't even dream of.
RL. In Great Britain there are now more than 1 million Polish people, most of them are Catholics. Do you think this has changed in some way the Catholic Church in this country?
I think clearly the million or so Polish who are here are a welcome addition to this country and to the Church. I think that it can be quite difficult in some ways for the Polish people to become integrated into this country. Partly the problem is language it's difficult for Polish people, I think, to learn the English language, to be familiar with it. But I think I am also anxious that they don't become, as it were, a separate church, if you see what I mean, a Polish church for the Poles, another church for the rest of the Catholics. No, I want the Polish people to become integrated into the Catholic life of this country. They will be a great strength to our parishes. Now, this can only be done gradually but I want the leadership of the Polish church in this country and the Polish people themselves to realise that, as soon as they can, I mean as it were learnt the language, to become part of the normal parishes where they will be not only welcome but have a great contribution to make.
RL. So maybe Polish people should evangelise the British?
We all have a task, as Catholics, to evangelise the English. It's my job, your job, it's everybody's job as a Catholic to evangelise. And I think that the Polish people themselves will evangelise by their example. You see in the early church people said those Catholics, those Christians, how they love one another. How they work for the common good, how they are an example. I think the Polish people can at least evangelise in that way. And as they gradually become more integrated into the life of the church will use their own particular gifts, I think, to evangelise the English. I myself come from an Irish background. Well the Irish came over here, like the Polish, many, many hundreds of thousands and they had to become integrated and in a sense now you see their children and children's children evangelising the English by their example, by their witness.
RL. Polish people are a part of the large group of immigrants in Great Britain. In an interview you spoke about a 'grey zone' of millions of immigrants living in England without any elementary rights. This situation is a great task for the Church as well.
I think there are problems for immigrants who come to this country, I think, social problems, problems of justice, the Catholic Church particularly wants to be sure that immigrants, whether they are Catholics or not, are not exploited, that they get a fair wage and therefore are able to live decent lives. I do think that the Polish people in as much as they are part of the Church will realise that they live alongside lots and lots of other people of other ethnic origins. We have in London a most extraordinary mix of 47 ethnic chaplaincies and when I go round the parishes here in London I find people of 20, 30 different ethnic backgrounds and they worship together, they are glad to be together, they belong to one faith. It seems to me that a particular gift to London, I'm talking about my diocese now, of this variety of people who have come to London of different ethnic backgrounds is to show the government and others that people of different ethnic backgrounds can live together, can pray together, can be a kind of witness together to what it means to be a Christian and I think in that sense I think the Catholic Church has a hugely important part to play. But it must not forget to try and help those who are in difficulties in terms of social integration, some of the injustices that are done to immigrants and to remind the government what can and should be done with regard to just treatment of people who've come to this country.
RL. In a couple of weeks we will celebrate Christmas. What could you wish for the Polish community in England?
I wish the Polish people to celebrate Christmas in a Polish way. By that I mean they will pray, they will celebrate the Holy Eucharist, they will be with their families or as many of them as can and celebrate a great mystery, the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery that God became man in Jesus. And I hope that just as Jesus, as it were, was welcome as a kind of stranger when he was born, so that the Polish people won't feel strangers in London, or indeed in any part of the country, that they will feel that they are part of a family, the family of the Church and will know that they are welcomed, that they are esteemed and that their particular contribution to the Catholic faith and Church in this country is much valued by myself.
Source: Archbishops House
© Independent Catholic News 2008
New Information: Details on Orissa Persecution c/o Gospel for Asia Monday, January 14, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
New Information: Details on Orissa Persecution
Gospel for AsiaASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: assistnews@aol.com
ORISSA, INDIA (ANS) -- New details about the severe persecution that Christians faced over the Christmas holiday in Orissa, India, continue to pour in from Gospel for Asia field correspondents. Many of the victims, which include GFA native missionaries and other believers, are still enduring opposition from anti-Christian extremists. The latest incident occurred on January 5 when a group of radicals smashed a plaque that hung on a Jesus Well in their village. The well was recently built by a GFA-related church where native missionary Puru Nilay is pastor.
“I serve the living God, and I will not bow down to anyone except Him,” Matish told the mob. Upon hearing this, they began beating him in front of his family again.
“We want the well, but we do not want Jesus,” the extremists told the believers while the well was being constructed. They also sternly commanded Puru not to place the Christian plaque on the well.
Wanting to give glory to the Lord, Puru and the believers did attach the plaque to the Jesus Well. Then last Saturday, the extremists completely destroyed it. Following the vandalism, they threatened Puru, telling him to stop ministering in their village. The radicals did not damage the well, just the plaque.
Beaten and Humiliated for the Gospel In another area of Orissa, all of the GFA missionaries were persecuted and many have been forced to go into hiding. Matish Junni, the missionary who extremists beat and shaved his head, is serving in this district.
On December 23, Matish and his family boarded a bus to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with a church in a nearby village where he serves as pastor. A member of an extremist group followed them onto the bus. When they pulled into a remote village the radicals told the bus driver to stop and then kicked Matish out of the bus and onto the ground.
After extremists destroyed their church and burned their belongings and home, GFA missionary Anand Nipun and his family are still in hiding.
*Eyes blacked out for security purposes.
Immediately, a group of 30 extremists surrounded Matish and began severely beating him. Although Matish’s wife and children stood by weeping loudly and calling for help, no one came to their rescue. As the beating continued, Matish’s eyes, nose and ears started bleeding, and he fell unconscious.
Then the mob dragged Matish to a local barber shop and forced the barber to completely shave his head. They also applied a red powder to his head and dressed him in their traditional religious garb. Parading Matish around the village, the extremists took him to their temples and tried to force him to bow down to their gods.
“I serve the living God, and I will not bow down to anyone except Him,” Matish told the mob. Upon hearing this, they began beating him in front of his family again. Then finally, one of the radicals told the mob to stop. Before leaving, they stole all of Matish’s belongings and told him never to minister in their area again.
Following the attack, police took Matish into their custody in order to protect him. His wife fled with their children to his uncle’s home in another village. After Matish was examined at a local hospital, the police released him and he joined his family where he is still recuperating.
On December 28, while the family was in hiding, the extremists went to Matish’s home and burned it down. The attack destroyed everything the family owned. Matish and his family are seeking the Lord for His direction in their ministry.
A Church Destroyed
This is the GFA-related church where Anand Nipun serves as pastor. The building was destroyed by anti-Christian extremists.
Anti-Christian extremists in this area of Orissa left a GFA-related church building in ruins on December 26. The believers had used the brand-new building for a Christmas service the day before and were planning an official building dedication service for January 3.
The radicals had opposed the building’s construction by threatening GFA missionary Anand Nipun, the pastor of the church. But because the construction had already begun, Anand and the believers decided to go through with building.
On the morning of December 26, the extremists sent a message to Anand telling him to leave the village immediately or he would be killed. So Anand and his family sought refuge in another village. That evening, the extremists vandalized and destroyed the building. They also wrote on a wall of the church, “Constructing the church in this place will cost you your life.” Then the mob went to Anand’s home and set his belongings on fire inside, damaging much of the house as well.
They Have Nothing but Faith
Extremists burned all of GFA missionary Anand Nipun’s belongings in his home. This is all that is left.
GFA native missionary Bidra Nayak was also forced to seek shelter from angry extremists in the area where he ministers. After being severely threatened, he escaped from the village on Christmas Eve.
The radicals also threatened many of the believers who attend Bidra’s church. One believer even lost his livelihood when a mob burned down the grocery store he owned.
Bidra remains in hiding, as the anti-Christian sentiments are still strong in this village. He is praying that the Lord will make a way for him to return to his ministry there soon.
Countless other reports of continuing atrocities against Christians in Orissa have recently been shared. According to a GFA field correspondent, more than 1,000 homes have been burned and more than 12 people have been killed across the state since Christmas. Several church buildings have been damaged or destroyed as well.
Many Christians, including GFA missionaries, have sought shelter in the forests. Because tensions are still high, there is little hope for them to be able to return home anytime soon.
GFA missionaries are doing everything they can to minister to the people in these areas. They request prayer that the attacks from anti-Christian extremists would stop and their attackers would come to know the love of Christ. They also ask for prayer for the many believers who are being threatened and attacked, that the Lord would give them strength and peace to endure these difficult situations.
New Information: Details on Orissa Persecution
Gospel for AsiaASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: assistnews@aol.com
ORISSA, INDIA (ANS) -- New details about the severe persecution that Christians faced over the Christmas holiday in Orissa, India, continue to pour in from Gospel for Asia field correspondents. Many of the victims, which include GFA native missionaries and other believers, are still enduring opposition from anti-Christian extremists. The latest incident occurred on January 5 when a group of radicals smashed a plaque that hung on a Jesus Well in their village. The well was recently built by a GFA-related church where native missionary Puru Nilay is pastor.
“I serve the living God, and I will not bow down to anyone except Him,” Matish told the mob. Upon hearing this, they began beating him in front of his family again.
“We want the well, but we do not want Jesus,” the extremists told the believers while the well was being constructed. They also sternly commanded Puru not to place the Christian plaque on the well.
Wanting to give glory to the Lord, Puru and the believers did attach the plaque to the Jesus Well. Then last Saturday, the extremists completely destroyed it. Following the vandalism, they threatened Puru, telling him to stop ministering in their village. The radicals did not damage the well, just the plaque.
Beaten and Humiliated for the Gospel In another area of Orissa, all of the GFA missionaries were persecuted and many have been forced to go into hiding. Matish Junni, the missionary who extremists beat and shaved his head, is serving in this district.
On December 23, Matish and his family boarded a bus to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with a church in a nearby village where he serves as pastor. A member of an extremist group followed them onto the bus. When they pulled into a remote village the radicals told the bus driver to stop and then kicked Matish out of the bus and onto the ground.
After extremists destroyed their church and burned their belongings and home, GFA missionary Anand Nipun and his family are still in hiding.
*Eyes blacked out for security purposes.
Immediately, a group of 30 extremists surrounded Matish and began severely beating him. Although Matish’s wife and children stood by weeping loudly and calling for help, no one came to their rescue. As the beating continued, Matish’s eyes, nose and ears started bleeding, and he fell unconscious.
Then the mob dragged Matish to a local barber shop and forced the barber to completely shave his head. They also applied a red powder to his head and dressed him in their traditional religious garb. Parading Matish around the village, the extremists took him to their temples and tried to force him to bow down to their gods.
“I serve the living God, and I will not bow down to anyone except Him,” Matish told the mob. Upon hearing this, they began beating him in front of his family again. Then finally, one of the radicals told the mob to stop. Before leaving, they stole all of Matish’s belongings and told him never to minister in their area again.
Following the attack, police took Matish into their custody in order to protect him. His wife fled with their children to his uncle’s home in another village. After Matish was examined at a local hospital, the police released him and he joined his family where he is still recuperating.
On December 28, while the family was in hiding, the extremists went to Matish’s home and burned it down. The attack destroyed everything the family owned. Matish and his family are seeking the Lord for His direction in their ministry.
A Church Destroyed
This is the GFA-related church where Anand Nipun serves as pastor. The building was destroyed by anti-Christian extremists.
Anti-Christian extremists in this area of Orissa left a GFA-related church building in ruins on December 26. The believers had used the brand-new building for a Christmas service the day before and were planning an official building dedication service for January 3.
The radicals had opposed the building’s construction by threatening GFA missionary Anand Nipun, the pastor of the church. But because the construction had already begun, Anand and the believers decided to go through with building.
On the morning of December 26, the extremists sent a message to Anand telling him to leave the village immediately or he would be killed. So Anand and his family sought refuge in another village. That evening, the extremists vandalized and destroyed the building. They also wrote on a wall of the church, “Constructing the church in this place will cost you your life.” Then the mob went to Anand’s home and set his belongings on fire inside, damaging much of the house as well.
They Have Nothing but Faith
Extremists burned all of GFA missionary Anand Nipun’s belongings in his home. This is all that is left.
GFA native missionary Bidra Nayak was also forced to seek shelter from angry extremists in the area where he ministers. After being severely threatened, he escaped from the village on Christmas Eve.
The radicals also threatened many of the believers who attend Bidra’s church. One believer even lost his livelihood when a mob burned down the grocery store he owned.
Bidra remains in hiding, as the anti-Christian sentiments are still strong in this village. He is praying that the Lord will make a way for him to return to his ministry there soon.
Countless other reports of continuing atrocities against Christians in Orissa have recently been shared. According to a GFA field correspondent, more than 1,000 homes have been burned and more than 12 people have been killed across the state since Christmas. Several church buildings have been damaged or destroyed as well.
Many Christians, including GFA missionaries, have sought shelter in the forests. Because tensions are still high, there is little hope for them to be able to return home anytime soon.
GFA missionaries are doing everything they can to minister to the people in these areas. They request prayer that the attacks from anti-Christian extremists would stop and their attackers would come to know the love of Christ. They also ask for prayer for the many believers who are being threatened and attacked, that the Lord would give them strength and peace to endure these difficult situations.
Pray for Bro. Bijoy & Sis. Moncy!
Dear Readers All in Christ,
Please pray for a Brother of our Victory Church Bijoy whose wife Moncy's brother Wilson died tragically yesterday night of a massive heart-attack. Please pray for the family here in the UK and in India. They are leaving tomorrow for the funeral in Kerala, India.
Please pray for a Brother of our Victory Church Bijoy whose wife Moncy's brother Wilson died tragically yesterday night of a massive heart-attack. Please pray for the family here in the UK and in India. They are leaving tomorrow for the funeral in Kerala, India.
Monday 14 January 2008
José M. de Mesa CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGIZING: FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
José M. de Mesa
CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGIZING: FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
Joe M. de Mesa, a Filipino lay theologian, is professor of Applied Systematic theology at De La Salle University, Manila. He earned a PhD in Religious Studies from the Catholic University, Louvain, Belgium. A member of the Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs, he is also on the advisory board of Concilium. He has written extensively on issues of theology and culture.
Concept of Contextual Theology
Negatively, contextual theology is not adaptation, assimilation or indigenization. It dissociates itself from the assumption that there is only one theology which is considered readymade, perennially valid and applicable to all places and all times. This kind of theology needs only to be learned and passed on from church to church, generation to generation. Contextual theology is a radical critique of such theology and theologizing.
Rather, contextual theology is the doing of theology with keen awareness of contextuality. Contextuality connotes a number of things. It means attentiveness: it listens to the cry of the poor, the marginalized and the excluded, and hearkens to the Spirit active in the history of humankind and in the world. It means conditioning, conscious as it is of being affected by the context in which it is done. But it also refers to its conscious and intentional rootedness in the culture, in religion, in the historical currents, in the social locations and situations of people as well as in gender. Contextual theology, furthermore, is transforming. It takes shape according to the demands of the context, but is also aimed at altering conditions in the Church and in society that are counter to the deep intent of the Gospel. Finally, contextuality means inclusivity as it endeavors to include voices which have been excluded in the participative process of theologizing.
In view of these considerations, it can be asked whether even the very notion of theology itself needs to be changed. In our use of the word, we necessarily bring with us its past, perhaps more as a liability than as an asset.
Philosophy of Contextual Theology
All theology is contextual. Every theology, for good or ill, is conditioned by its context. In this sense, there can be good and bad contextual theology. If context affects theology this way, it must be said that theology done in a contextual manner also affects context and aims at transforming it. Doing theology in a contextual manner means taking experience as a constitutive element in understanding, appropriating and communicating the faith. This implies a dialogue with praxis and requires taking, in accord with the Gospel, a stance vis-à-vis the context. All dimensions of the context, local as well as global, impinging on the local, are taken into account so that contextuality pervades all theologizing, teaching and structuring of theological education. As such, this way of understanding and transforming reality requires an interdisciplinary approach. Its way of theologizing implies the integration of context rather than a negation or separation from the context as was the case in pre-Vatican II theology. Such contextual mindset is not realized by adding some new subjects about contextual theology in a traditional curriculum of theological education, but by a restructuring of it so that all the subjects support the main concern of contextual theologizing.
By way of deepening our reflection on the contextuality of theology, we can consider the points presented by the document, Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the historical conditioning of doctrine (Cf. Neuner and Dupuis 1998:63-4). It states that doctrine, while not merely relative, is nevertheless influenced in four ways: by the question it is trying to answer; by the presuppositions operative in the Church and in society; by the thought patterns being utilized in formulating the doctrine; and by the available vocabulary which can be utilized to express the intent of the doctrine. Thus neo-scholasticism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, can be contextually analyzed in this way. Answering the questions posed by science regarding God’s existence, authorship of creation and significance to humanity, neo-scholastic theology worked with the presupposition that the essence of being human is rationality aimed at true knowledge, utilized the thought patterns associated with “natural” and “supernatural,” and articulated the meaning of “revelation” and “faith” in terms of “truth.”
The diversity of understanding and expression which contextual theologizing engenders leads to the question of the relationship between the local and the universal. This indeed is an important question in doing theology contextually. One can further ask how the contextual way of doing theology will affect the denominational accents in understanding the Christian faith.
Method of Contextual Theology
The basic framework of contextual theologizing is the mutual interaction between the Gospel and the context. It may be described as a mutually radical critique, where a fresh understanding and an impetus to action are given birth to and expressed in an open-ended formulation of theology. Contextual theologizing begins with a risk-taking experience, from one’s context, from below rather than from the bible, doctrine or any church document. To make clear the context of theologizing, a critical analysis of it is imperative. In no way does this imply a devaluation of the Gospel. Rather, it wants to bring out the meaningfulness of the Gospel precisely in context, so that not only will the Gospel impact on it, but that the context may bring out its real meaning through a deconstruction via a hermeneutics of suspicion and a reconstruction of its particular expression.
As we are discussing theological education and the need for interdisciplinarity in contextual theologizing, it may be helpful to look into the area of education itself as a dialogue partner. It has been said in educational circles that in order to teach Johnny arithmetic, one has to know both Johnny and arithmetic. In trying to enhance the learning process in theological education, we may want to consider the theory of multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner (Lazear 1991). According to experts of this way of thinking, the right question is not how smart you are but rather in what way you are smart. Thus learning is not restricted to the logical/mathematical way, but includes the verbal/linguistic, the visual/spatial, the musical/rhythmic, the body/kinesthetic, the interpersonal and intrapersonal as well. We may want to connect to this what has been articulated in our discussions about the importance of incorporating the experience of the beautiful and the appreciation for the arts or even the performing arts. Besides, the Theological Commission of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences has already recommended the development of storytelling as a theological method.1 Stories, like that of the parables of Jesus, are a participatory way of analyzing life situations.
Brain studies point out the manner of thinking done with the left brain or the right brain and suggest that the two sides of the brain should be developed together (Jensen 1998). It has also been discovered that the brain emits different electrical frequencies or waves for different activities. Studies indicate that certain brain waves are conducive to learning. Alpha waves, for example, occur when we are both calm and still aware of our surroundings. At such times, we are most receptive to information. Creativity and insight, on the other hand, are associated with theta waves, which predominate when we are in a state of deep relaxation like between moments of being awake and being asleep. Brain studies suggest too that listening to particular types of music enhances learning.
Contextual theologizing requires attentiveness to the ever changing contexts of societies in which we live as well as to the advances in the various theological disciplines. In relation to this, the growing trend in education regarding “learning how to learn” can benefit professors and students alike in their collaborative study of the various aspects of contextual theology. The accelerated pace of change necessitates continuous learning in the most effective manner (Gross 1991). In short, theological education may find a real partner for inter-disciplinarity in the discipline of education in general, and in brain studies in particular.
Contextual theologizing, because of its inclusive character, may be a fruitful way to transcend the historically-caused divide in churches between a theologically educated clergy and a theologically non-educated laity. As education in the style of contextual theology aims at equipping the church community as a whole theologically (Cobb, Jr. 1994), its development can provide an opportunity and the occasion to ensure the education of the whole people of God. Besides, a theologically educated laity is likely to enrich both the contextual theological process and content. They are normally already immersed in the realities that candidates to priesthood and pastorship still need to be exposed to in their training. As a result their knowledge and understanding of life as well as insight into it come from their first-hand contact and experience of the context, a desirable in present-day theological education as a number of newly developed curricula indicate. Such experiences will throw light on the Gospel even as they allow the Gospel to throw light on their experiences and permeate their lives.
NOTES
1. “Theses on the Local Church: A Theological Reflection in the Asian Context,” FABC Papers 60, 54.
REFERENCES
Cobb, John Jr.
1994 Lay Theology (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Pres).
Lazear, David
1991 Seven Ways of Knowing: Teaching for Multiple Intelligences (Palatine, Illinois: Skylight Publishing).
Gross, Ronald
1991 Peak Learning: A Master Course in Learning How to Learn (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam).
Jensen, Eric
1998 Teaching with the Brain in Mind (Alexandra, Virginia: ASCO).
CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGIZING: FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
Joe M. de Mesa, a Filipino lay theologian, is professor of Applied Systematic theology at De La Salle University, Manila. He earned a PhD in Religious Studies from the Catholic University, Louvain, Belgium. A member of the Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs, he is also on the advisory board of Concilium. He has written extensively on issues of theology and culture.
Concept of Contextual Theology
Negatively, contextual theology is not adaptation, assimilation or indigenization. It dissociates itself from the assumption that there is only one theology which is considered readymade, perennially valid and applicable to all places and all times. This kind of theology needs only to be learned and passed on from church to church, generation to generation. Contextual theology is a radical critique of such theology and theologizing.
Rather, contextual theology is the doing of theology with keen awareness of contextuality. Contextuality connotes a number of things. It means attentiveness: it listens to the cry of the poor, the marginalized and the excluded, and hearkens to the Spirit active in the history of humankind and in the world. It means conditioning, conscious as it is of being affected by the context in which it is done. But it also refers to its conscious and intentional rootedness in the culture, in religion, in the historical currents, in the social locations and situations of people as well as in gender. Contextual theology, furthermore, is transforming. It takes shape according to the demands of the context, but is also aimed at altering conditions in the Church and in society that are counter to the deep intent of the Gospel. Finally, contextuality means inclusivity as it endeavors to include voices which have been excluded in the participative process of theologizing.
In view of these considerations, it can be asked whether even the very notion of theology itself needs to be changed. In our use of the word, we necessarily bring with us its past, perhaps more as a liability than as an asset.
Philosophy of Contextual Theology
All theology is contextual. Every theology, for good or ill, is conditioned by its context. In this sense, there can be good and bad contextual theology. If context affects theology this way, it must be said that theology done in a contextual manner also affects context and aims at transforming it. Doing theology in a contextual manner means taking experience as a constitutive element in understanding, appropriating and communicating the faith. This implies a dialogue with praxis and requires taking, in accord with the Gospel, a stance vis-à-vis the context. All dimensions of the context, local as well as global, impinging on the local, are taken into account so that contextuality pervades all theologizing, teaching and structuring of theological education. As such, this way of understanding and transforming reality requires an interdisciplinary approach. Its way of theologizing implies the integration of context rather than a negation or separation from the context as was the case in pre-Vatican II theology. Such contextual mindset is not realized by adding some new subjects about contextual theology in a traditional curriculum of theological education, but by a restructuring of it so that all the subjects support the main concern of contextual theologizing.
By way of deepening our reflection on the contextuality of theology, we can consider the points presented by the document, Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the historical conditioning of doctrine (Cf. Neuner and Dupuis 1998:63-4). It states that doctrine, while not merely relative, is nevertheless influenced in four ways: by the question it is trying to answer; by the presuppositions operative in the Church and in society; by the thought patterns being utilized in formulating the doctrine; and by the available vocabulary which can be utilized to express the intent of the doctrine. Thus neo-scholasticism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, can be contextually analyzed in this way. Answering the questions posed by science regarding God’s existence, authorship of creation and significance to humanity, neo-scholastic theology worked with the presupposition that the essence of being human is rationality aimed at true knowledge, utilized the thought patterns associated with “natural” and “supernatural,” and articulated the meaning of “revelation” and “faith” in terms of “truth.”
The diversity of understanding and expression which contextual theologizing engenders leads to the question of the relationship between the local and the universal. This indeed is an important question in doing theology contextually. One can further ask how the contextual way of doing theology will affect the denominational accents in understanding the Christian faith.
Method of Contextual Theology
The basic framework of contextual theologizing is the mutual interaction between the Gospel and the context. It may be described as a mutually radical critique, where a fresh understanding and an impetus to action are given birth to and expressed in an open-ended formulation of theology. Contextual theologizing begins with a risk-taking experience, from one’s context, from below rather than from the bible, doctrine or any church document. To make clear the context of theologizing, a critical analysis of it is imperative. In no way does this imply a devaluation of the Gospel. Rather, it wants to bring out the meaningfulness of the Gospel precisely in context, so that not only will the Gospel impact on it, but that the context may bring out its real meaning through a deconstruction via a hermeneutics of suspicion and a reconstruction of its particular expression.
As we are discussing theological education and the need for interdisciplinarity in contextual theologizing, it may be helpful to look into the area of education itself as a dialogue partner. It has been said in educational circles that in order to teach Johnny arithmetic, one has to know both Johnny and arithmetic. In trying to enhance the learning process in theological education, we may want to consider the theory of multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner (Lazear 1991). According to experts of this way of thinking, the right question is not how smart you are but rather in what way you are smart. Thus learning is not restricted to the logical/mathematical way, but includes the verbal/linguistic, the visual/spatial, the musical/rhythmic, the body/kinesthetic, the interpersonal and intrapersonal as well. We may want to connect to this what has been articulated in our discussions about the importance of incorporating the experience of the beautiful and the appreciation for the arts or even the performing arts. Besides, the Theological Commission of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences has already recommended the development of storytelling as a theological method.1 Stories, like that of the parables of Jesus, are a participatory way of analyzing life situations.
Brain studies point out the manner of thinking done with the left brain or the right brain and suggest that the two sides of the brain should be developed together (Jensen 1998). It has also been discovered that the brain emits different electrical frequencies or waves for different activities. Studies indicate that certain brain waves are conducive to learning. Alpha waves, for example, occur when we are both calm and still aware of our surroundings. At such times, we are most receptive to information. Creativity and insight, on the other hand, are associated with theta waves, which predominate when we are in a state of deep relaxation like between moments of being awake and being asleep. Brain studies suggest too that listening to particular types of music enhances learning.
Contextual theologizing requires attentiveness to the ever changing contexts of societies in which we live as well as to the advances in the various theological disciplines. In relation to this, the growing trend in education regarding “learning how to learn” can benefit professors and students alike in their collaborative study of the various aspects of contextual theology. The accelerated pace of change necessitates continuous learning in the most effective manner (Gross 1991). In short, theological education may find a real partner for inter-disciplinarity in the discipline of education in general, and in brain studies in particular.
Contextual theologizing, because of its inclusive character, may be a fruitful way to transcend the historically-caused divide in churches between a theologically educated clergy and a theologically non-educated laity. As education in the style of contextual theology aims at equipping the church community as a whole theologically (Cobb, Jr. 1994), its development can provide an opportunity and the occasion to ensure the education of the whole people of God. Besides, a theologically educated laity is likely to enrich both the contextual theological process and content. They are normally already immersed in the realities that candidates to priesthood and pastorship still need to be exposed to in their training. As a result their knowledge and understanding of life as well as insight into it come from their first-hand contact and experience of the context, a desirable in present-day theological education as a number of newly developed curricula indicate. Such experiences will throw light on the Gospel even as they allow the Gospel to throw light on their experiences and permeate their lives.
NOTES
1. “Theses on the Local Church: A Theological Reflection in the Asian Context,” FABC Papers 60, 54.
REFERENCES
Cobb, John Jr.
1994 Lay Theology (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Pres).
Lazear, David
1991 Seven Ways of Knowing: Teaching for Multiple Intelligences (Palatine, Illinois: Skylight Publishing).
Gross, Ronald
1991 Peak Learning: A Master Course in Learning How to Learn (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam).
Jensen, Eric
1998 Teaching with the Brain in Mind (Alexandra, Virginia: ASCO).
"Christian Revolution in Latin America: The Changing Face of Liberation Theology" by Ron Rhodes
"Christian Revolution in Latin America:
The Changing Face of Liberation Theology"
Part One in a Three-Part Series
on Liberation Theology
by Ron Rhodes
In 1985, a leader of the conservative wing of the Roman Catholic church in Latin America, Bishop Hoyos, denounced liberation theologians, saying: "When I see a church with a machine gun, I cannot see the crucified Christ in that church. We can never use hate as a system of change. The core of being a church is love."[1]
Theological controversies are often confined to seminary classrooms or theological journals. But the controversy provoked by Latin American liberation theology has been public and it has been worldwide - involving the Vatican, orthodox and not-so-orthodox priests, lay people, sociologists, socialists, capitalists, economists, government leaders and their military, and much more. Liberation theology has certainly not been the passing fad some analysts thought it would be when it first emerged in the late 1960s.
Strictly speaking, liberation theology should be understood as a family of theologies - including the Latin American, Black, and feminist varieties. All three respond to some form of oppression: Latin American liberation theologians say their poverty-stricken people have been oppressed and exploited by rich, capitalist nations. Black liberation theologians argue that their people have suffered oppression at the hands of racist whites. Feminist liberation theologians lay heavy emphasis upon the status and liberation of women in a male-dominated society.
This article, the first of a three-part series on liberation theology, will focus on the Latin American variety - examining its historical roots, growth, doctrine, and present status in the world. Primary emphasis will be on how the movement has changed since its emergence in the late 1960s. In Parts Two and Three respectively, I will examine the Black and feminist varieties.
With a few notable exceptions, Latin American liberation theology has been a movement identified with the Roman Catholic church. For this reason, I shall direct most of my attention to the views of Roman Catholic liberation theologians. First, however, we must become acquainted with the roots of this controversial theology.
EUROPEAN ROOTS
Some of the theological roots of Latin American liberation theology can be traced directly to the writings of certain European theologians. Three of the more notable of these are Jurgen Moltmann, Johannes Baptist Metz, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Without going into detail, Moltmann has suggested that the coming kingdom gives the church a society-transforming vision of reality as opposed to a merely private vision of personal salvation. Metz has emphasized that there is a political dimension to faith, and that the church must be an institution of social criticism. Bonhoeffer has issued a call to redefine religion in a secular context. His theology emphasizes human responsibility toward others, and stresses the value of seeing the world with "the view from below" - the perspective of the poor and oppressed.
Though liberationists have borrowed from these theologians, they nevertheless charge the European theologies with being "theoretical abstractions, ideologically neutral, [and] neglecting the miserable, unjust present for some 'Christianity of the future.'"[2] The theological methodology developed by liberation theologians specifically addresses these perceived deficiencies.
MARXIST INFLUENCES
Marxism has also exerted a profound influence on liberation theologians. This should not be taken to mean that they have espoused Marxism as a holistic plan of political action, for they have not. Their interest has been limited to using Marxist categories for social analysis.
According to Marx, man once existed in a simple, primitive state. At that time, there was happiness and tranquility. This primitive state of happiness was disrupted, however, by the rise of economic classes where one class sought to oppress and exploit another for its own economic advantage. Marx believed all of man's problems are the direct result of this class exploitation. He portrayed capitalism as the chief culprit that gave rise to this undesirable state of affairs.
Marx was adamant that man can never be truly happy or free in a capitalistic society. Man, he said, has become an alienated being and does not feel "at home" in a capitalistic environment. However, this alienation will not last forever. Marx believed that history is inexorably moving toward a climactic day when the oppressed workers of the world, the proletariat, will rise up and overthrow their capitalistic oppressors, the bourgeoisie. In the place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms, there will be a harmonious society in which there is equity for all.
THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION
Drawing from European theologies and Marxism, Latin American theologians developed their own theology by radically reinterpreting Scripture with "a bias toward the poor." Let us now briefly survey key aspects of the theology of liberation.
Liberation theology begins with the premise that all theology is biased - that is, particular theologies reflect the economic and social classes of those who developed them. Accordingly, the traditional theology predominant in North America and Europe is said to "perpetuate the interests of white, North American/European, capitalist males." This theology allegedly "supports and legitimates a political and economic system - democratic capitalism - which is responsible for exploiting and impoverishing the Third World."[3]
Like Bonhoeffer, liberation theologians say theology must start with a "view from below" - that is, with the sufferings of the oppressed. Within this broad framework, different liberation theologians have developed distinctive methodologies for "doing" theology.
Gustavo Gutierrez, author of A Theology of Liberation, provides us with a representative methodology. Like other liberationists, Gutierrez rejects the idea that theology is a systematic collection of timeless and culture-transcending truths that remains static for all generations. Rather, theology is in flux; it is a dynamic and ongoing exercise involving contemporary insights into knowledge, humanity, and history.
Gutierrez emphasizes that theology is not just to be learned, it is to be done. In his thinking, "praxis" is the starting point for theology. Praxis (from the Greek prasso: "to work") involves revolutionary action on behalf of the poor and oppressed - and out of this, theological perceptions will continually emerge. The theologian must therefore be immersed in the struggle for transforming society and proclaim his message from that point.
In the theological process, then, praxis must always be the first stage; theology is the second stage. Theologians are not to be mere theoreticians, but practitioners who participate in the ongoing struggle to liberate the oppressed.
Sin. Using methodologies such as Gutierrez's, liberationists interpret sin not primarily from an individual, private perspective, but from a social and economic perspective. Gutierrez explains that "sin is not considered as an individual, private, or merely interior reality. Sin is regarded as a social, historical fact, the absence of brotherhood and love in relationships among men."[4]
Liberationists view capitalist nations as sinful specifically because they have oppressed and exploited poorer nations. Capitalist nations have become prosperous, they say, at the expense of impoverished nations. This is often spoken of in terms of "dependency theory" - that is, the development of rich countries depends on the underdevelopment of poor countries.
There is another side to sin in liberation theology. Those who are oppressed can and do sin by acquiescing to their bondage. To go along passively with oppression rather than resisting and attempting to overthrow it - by violent means if necessary - is sin.[5]
The use of violence has been one of the most controversial aspects of liberation theology. Such violence is not considered sinful if it is used for resisting oppression. Indeed, certain liberation theologians "will in some cases regard a particular action (e.g., killing) as sin if it is committed by an oppressor, but not if it is committed by the oppressed in the struggle to remove inequities. The removal of inequities is believed to result in the removal of the occasion of sin [i.e., the oppressor] as well."[6]
Salvation. Salvation is viewed not primarily in terms of life after death for the individual, but in terms of bringing about the kingdom of God: a new social order where there will be equality for all. This is not to deny eternal life per se, but it is to emphasize that the eternal and the temporal "intersect" in liberation theology. "If, as the traditional formulation has it, history and eternity are two parallel (i.e., nonintersecting) realms, our goal within history is to gain access to eternity."[7] But if history and eternity intersect, "if salvation is moving into a new order--then we must strive against everything which at present denies that order."[8]
God. Liberationists argue that the traditional Christian doctrine of God manipulates the divine being such that He appears to favor the capitalistic social structure. They claim the orthodox view of God is rooted in the ancient Greeks who saw God as a static being - distant and remote from human history. This distorted view of a transcendent deity has, they say, yielded a theology that understands God as "out there," far removed from the affairs of humankind. As a result, many Latin Americans have adopted a passive stance in the face of their oppression and exploitation.
Liberation theologians have thus tried to communicate to their compatriots that God is not impassive. Rather, He is dynamically involved in behalf of the poor and downtrodden. And because God stands against oppression and exploitation, those who follow Him must do likewise. Indeed, Gutierrez says that "to know God is to do justice."[9]
Jesus Christ. While liberation theologians do not outright deny Christ's deity, there is no clear-cut, unambiguous confession that Jesus is God. The significance of Jesus Christ lies in His example of struggling for the poor and the outcast. The Incarnation is reinterpreted to represent God's total immersion into man's history of conflict and oppression. By His words and actions, Jesus showed us how to become true sons of God - that is, by bringing in the kingdom of God through actively pursuing the liberation of the oppressed.
Most liberationists see Jesus' death on the cross as having no vicarious value; rather, Jesus died because He upset the religious/political situation of His time. Leonardo Boff says Jesus' followers fabricated the idea that Jesus' death had a transcendent, salvific significance: "The historically true events are the crucifixion, the condemnation by Pilate, and the inscription on the cross in three languages known by the Jews. The rest of the events are theologized or are pure theology developed in light of the resurrection and of the reflection upon the Old Testament."[10] Jesus' death is unique because "he historicizes in exemplary fashion the suffering experienced by God in all the crosses of the oppressed."[11] Liberationists acknowledge Jesus' resurrection, but they are not clear on its significance.
The Church. Liberation theology does not ask what the church is, but rather what it means "to be the church in a context of extreme poverty, social injustice and revolution. In the context of liberation theology the mission of the church seems to be more important than its nature."[12]
Gutierrez and other liberation theologians say the church's mission is no longer one of a "quantitative" notion of saving numbers of souls.[13] Rather, the church's mission "is at all times to protest against injustice, to challenge what is inhuman, to side with the poor and the oppressed."[14]
Related to the doctrine of the church has been the formation and growth of "ecclesial base communities," since the 1970s. These are "small, grassroots, lay groups of the poor or the ordinary people, meeting to pray, conduct Bible studies, and wrestle concretely with social and political obligations in their settings."[15]
These communities have been effective in showing workers and peasants how to organize for their own social welfare. Gutierrez says that "in most Latin American countries, the church's base communities are the only form of social action available to the poor."[16] Indeed, they have become "the major vehicle for the spread of liberation themes beyond academic circles. By 1980 there were as many as 100,000 base communities meeting in Latin America."[17]
ROMAN CATHOLIC OPENNESS
Since the emergence of liberation theology and its rapid growth via ecclesial base communities, divisive rifts have taken place between Vatican leadership and Roman Catholic theologians in Latin America. Over the past few decades, however, the Vatican has become progressively open to the concept of liberation.
For example, Vatican Council II - held in Rome from 1962 to 1965 - decried the wide disparity between the rich and poor nations of the world. Church leaders therefore proclaimed a "preferential option for the poor." Three years later, the Medellin Conference of Latin American Bishops (1968) denounced the extreme inequality among social classes as well as the unjust use of power and exploitation.[18]
Pope John Paul II has for years devoted himself to establishing a balanced policy on political activism for Roman Catholic clergy. He has staunchly advocated social justice, but has also consistently warned the clergy about becoming too involved in secular affairs and about the dangers of Marxism.
The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the Vatican's watchdog for doctrinal orthodoxy - issued two important statements on liberation theology. The Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation" (1984) warned that it is impossible to invoke Marxist principles and terminology without ultimately embracing Marxist methods and goals. Marxism should therefore be avoided altogether.
Two years later (1986), the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation affirmed the legitimacy of the oppressed taking action "through morally licit means, in order to secure structures and institutions in which their rights will be truly respected."[19] However, "while the church seeks the political, social and economic liberation of the downtrodden, its primary goal is the spiritual one of liberation from evil."[20] The statement accepted armed struggle "as a last resort to put an end to an obvious and prolonged tyranny which is gravely damaging the common good."[21]
This relative openness of the Roman Catholic church was largely responsible for liberation theology's rapid expansion. As we shall see shortly, however, the church's concerns over Marxism have proven justified in view of recent world events. Vatican leadership has breathed a collective sigh of relief that Marxist elements in liberation theology now seem to be waning. SHIFTING SANDS: 1990
Since the emergence of liberation theology in the 1960s, some aspects of the movement have remained constant. In his recent book, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads (1990), Paul E. Sigmund observes that liberation theology stills sees the world as more characterized "by conflict than compromise, inequality than equality, oppression rather than liberation. It also still retains its belief in the special religious character of the poor both as the object of God's particular love and the source of religious insights."[22] Despite these constants, however, liberation theology has also seen significant changes in recent years.
We begin with the observation that 1989 saw almost the whole of Eastern Europe rise up in revolt against Marxist ideology. The major reforms occurring in the Soviet Union and East Bloc nations represent an admission that Marxism has failed.
Michael Novak, who holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., raised a penetrating question in view of recent European events: "What will become of the liberation theologians of Latin America and elsewhere who have so long praised the ideals of Marxist-Leninism, but now must see how hollow they are?"[23]
Novak argues that a close reading of the Latin American theologians suggests that they "have begun to worry that they earlier invested too much credence in the social science they picked up from the universities."[24] For this reason, he says, "liberation theologians in the last few years have become much less hopeful about social structures, and increasingly concerned with issues of spirituality. They seem to be turning less to politics, and more to faith."[25] Sigmund agrees, noting that now "the greater emphasis [is] on the spiritual sources and implications of the concept of liberation."[26] (We shall address this "new spirituality" shortly.)
The shift in perspectives on socialism is one of the most important developments in liberation theology. In the recent writings of many liberation theologians, we find the concession that "the once-favored approach of substituting socialism for dependency or capitalism simply doesn't work, as has been seen in Eastern Europe."[27] Without necessarily deserting socialism, liberationists have shown an increasing ambiguity about what socialism really means, as well as an increasing tolerance of competing systems and an acceptance of Western-style democracy as a legitimate weapon against oppression.[28] Arthur F. McGovern, a Jesuit, comments that "the new political context in many parts of Latin America has led liberation theologians to talk about building a 'participatory democracy' from within civil society. Socialism no longer remains an unqualified paradigm for liberation aspirations."[29]
Another significant development in liberation theology is that its theologians are speaking much less of dependency theory - the idea that the development of rich countries depends on the underdevelopment of poor countries. To be sure, liberation theologians are still predominantly anticapitalist, but many have recognized that dependency theory has rightfully been criticized for some of its fundamental assertions.
The fallacy of dependency theory has been demonstrated by sociologist Peter Berger of Boston University. Berger has pointed out that "the development experience of Japan and the 'four little dragons' of East Asia - Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore - represent 'empirical falsification' of the socioeconomic assumptions of dependency theory and liberation theology." On the other hand, Berger stressed, "there is simply no evidence of successful development by socialist third world nations anywhere or at anytime."[30]
Moreover, the liberationist's solution to the dependency problem - a socialist break with the capitalist world - has looked less attractive to liberation theologians because "the models of socialism either seemed to be bankrupt, or were resorting to market incentives and private enterprise, even inviting multinational investment."[31]
Besides shifts in thinking on socialism and dependency theory, many have had second thoughts about liberation theology because of the bloodshed it has provoked. A Los Angeles Times article focusing on liberation theology in El Salvador notes that "the deaths of some of those who have challenged the establishment have brought sober second thoughts about both the basis and the practice of liberation theology."[32] The article also observes that "such a violent counterrevolution here and in other Latin American nations - along with the failure of Eastern European Marxism and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua to bring social, political and economic justice - have led to calls for a new look at liberation theology."[33] Indeed, "some of the basic analytical assumptions and practical applications of liberation theology are being questioned, not just by the conservative elements of the [Catholic] church but also by some of those thinkers who first conceived the philosophy."[34]
Sigmund has observed that in view of the bloodshed associated with the movement in recent years, liberation theologians are no longer offering the easy justifications of the necessity of "counterviolence" against the "institutionalized violence" of the political establishment.[35] He also notes that the most obvious change in liberation theology "is from an infatuation with socialist revolution to a recognition that the poor are not going to be liberated by cataclysmic political transformations, but by organizational and personal activities in Base Communities."[36]
We have already noted that liberation theologians are focusing more on issues of spirituality. First and foremost, this means that liberation theologians are deriving more of their liberationist concepts from the Bible as opposed to social theory. Early books by liberation theologians focused primarily on social analysis and had very few biblical references. Now the situation is practically reversed: recent books by liberation theologians contain many biblical references and very little social analysis. There is much more "theology" in liberation theology these days. But their methodological approach is still one of a preferential treatment to the poor.
Besides greater rootedness in the Bible, there also seems to be more interest in spiritual disciplines - such as prayer, devotions, exercising faith, and fellowshiping with other believers. Much of this takes place at a grassroots level in ecclesial base communities. Bible studies on "liberation passages" (such as Mary's Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55) are common. The goal is to discover how Scripture applies to specific problems in the lives of the oppressed.
We have noted that liberation theology is predominantly a Roman Catholic movement. An important factor now impacting the movement in Latin America is the explosion of evangelical Protestantism there. "Latin America is no longer the Roman Catholic monolith it once was. Since the late 1960s, the number of Protestants has surged from 15 million to an estimated 40 million, about 10 percent of the population of Latin America."[37] Brazilian bishop Monsignor Boaventura Kloppenburg says that "Latin America is turning Protestant even faster than Central Europe did in the sixteenth century."[38] The overwhelming majority of these Protestants are Pentecostal.
As to why so many are presently turning to evangelicalism, one analyst suggests that "there now is a widespread recognition that liberation theology overlooked the emotional, personal message most people seek from religion. At the simplest level, liberation theologians preached salvation through social change - meaning, in effect, socialism in one form or another. The evangelicals preach individual salvation through individual change."[39]
David Martin, author of Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (1990), suggests that economic advancement is another underlying cause of the Protestant explosion. He argues that "evangelical religion and economic advancement often go together[they] support and reinforce one another."[40] Carmen Galilea, a sociologist in Santiago, said that the typical Pentecostal "is well-regarded. He is responsible. He doesn't drink and is better motivated and better paid. As a result, he rises economically."[41] Pentecostal preaching "puts great emphasis on the demand to develop yourself," thus contributing to the economic rise.[42]
In a recent article in Insight magazine, Daniel Wattenberg suggests that another factor linking Pentecostalism and upward mobility is "the mutual material support available within the Pentecostal faith community (the churches provide a network that often functions as a job or housing referral agency)."[43] Moreover, volunteer work in the church "utilizes peoples' talents and creates opportunities to develop new skills that may give them a sense of usefulness and fulfillment for the first time in their lives."[44] The skills learned in a church context also give an edge to church members in seeking work outside the church.
Big changes are occurring in Latin America, and it remains to be seen where it will all lead. The likelihood is that (1) Marxism will continue to wane; (2) liberation theologians will continue to focus more on issues of spirituality; (3) the Protestant explosion will continue, with an emphasis on personal transformation; and (4) all this will probably have some positive effect on social and economic conditions in the region.
THE BIBLE AND POVERTY
Critics of liberation theology at times come across as though they are detached and unsympathetic to Latin American poverty. No doubt some of these critics actually do lack concern. Before offering criticisms of this controversial theology, therefore, it is important that we first affirm that there is a strong scriptural basis for helping the poor.
In the Old Testament, God gave the theocracy of Israel specific guidelines for taking care of the poor. He commanded that the corners of fields were not to be reaped so that something would be left for the needy to eat (Lev. 19:9-10).
God also promised a special blessing to all who gave to the poor (Prov. 19:17), and judgment to those who oppressed the poor (Ps. 140:12). Robbing and cheating the poor were condemned (Hosea 12:7). Widows and orphans - who were especially vulnerable to oppression - came under special protection from the law (Exod. 22:22-23).
God in the law also made provisions for poor sojourners who were not a part of Israel's theocracy. Gleanings from the harvest were to be left for them (Deut. 24:19-21), and they were ranked in the same category as widows and orphans as being defenseless (Ps. 94:6).
Jesus is very clear about our responsibility to the poor and oppressed. Christ's strong warning that eternal condemnation awaits those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoners (Matt. 25:31-46) shows that the disadvantaged are not merely a peripheral concern of His. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus taught that anybody in need is our neighbor (Luke 10:29f.).
The biblical view of the poor and oppressed is such that God's people everywhere should be appalled at the poverty of the people in Latin America. Liberation theologians and the people of Latin America have a legitimate gripe. Indeed, how can the church in Latin America not act to help relieve the suffering of its people?
Nevertheless, a legitimate and commendable concern for the poor and oppressed must never be used to justify a theological methodology that leads to a gross distortion of Christianity - the only true means of liberation. Evangelicals maintain that this is precisely what Latin American liberationists have done.
A FAULTY FOUNDATION
Inasmuch as the liberationist's views on God, Jesus Christ, the church, sin, and salvation are an outgrowth of his or her theological methodology, it follows that the starting point for a critique of liberation theology would be its hermeneutic. We shall therefore narrow our focus to this one issue.
Method is everything when interpreting Scripture. With an improper methodology, one is bound to distort the author's intended meaning - the only true meaning (see 2 Pet. 3:16).
The word method comes from the Greek methodos, which literally means "a way or path of transit." Methodology in Bible study is therefore concerned with the proper path to be taken in order to arrive at scriptural truth. Latin American theologians have chosen a "path" intended to produce liberation. But have they distorted the author's intended meaning in the process?
The Problem With Praxis
Foundationally, the liberation hermeneutic (which makes praxis the first step, and theology the second) is completely without any controlling exegetical criteria. Vernon C. Grounds is right when he says that "there is no exegetical magic by which new meanings can without limit be conjured out of the Bible under the illuminating creativity of new situations."[45]
In liberation theology, the basic authority in interpretation ceases to be Scripture; it is rather the mind of the interpreter as he "reads" the current historical situation. It is one of the canons of literary (not just scriptural) hermeneutics, however, that what a passage means is fixed by the author and is not subject to alteration by readers. "Meaning is determined by the author; it is discovered by readers."[46]
Only after the meaning has been discovered by the reader can it be applied to the current situation. Certainly we all agree that Christians must practice their faith in daily life. But from a Scriptural perspective, the way a Christian conducts his or her life is based on the objective, propositional revelation found in Scripture. Christians must know God's will as revealed in Scripture before they can act on it. Without a preeminence of Scripture over praxis, the Christian cannot know what to believe or what to do. Evangelicals therefore reject any suggestion that "we must do in order to know, and hope that orthodoxy will arise from orthopraxis [right action]."
An examination of Jesus' use of the Old Testament shows that He interpreted it as objective, propositional revelation (see Matt. 22:23-33). His hermeneutic knew nothing of making praxis the first step for discovering theological truth.
Truth that Transcends Culture and Time
Evangelicals have criticized the inability of liberation theology's hermeneutic to develop a culture-transcending theology with normative authority. Liberation theologians have shown little or no recognition of the fact that there are teachings and commands in Scripture that - owing to their divine inspiration (2 Tim. 3:16) - transcend all cultural barriers and are binding on all people everywhere. Key teachings of Scripture - such as man's sin, his alienation from God, his need for a personal Redeemer - speak universally to the human condition and can never be bound to particular cultures or situations.[47]
Moreover, evangelicals criticize the liberationist idea that theological truth is in a constant state of flux, changing along with the temporal conditions of society. Nunez has noted that "there are chapters of liberation theology that cannot be written at the present time, because they have to be the result of a given practice."[48] Applications of Scripture can change as the temporal conditions of society change - but the Scripture-author's intended meaning from which those applications are drawn are fixed and cannot be relativized.
Alien Preunderstandings
A "preunderstanding" of a preferential option for the poor is the very heart of liberation hermeneutics. Liberationists argue that "the reader of the Bible must deliberately choose his eyeglasses before he begins reading, and that the 'preferential option for the poor' means just that - a deliberate bias or perspective. Without this, the true meaning cannot be known. We must discard our North Atlantic lenses, we are told, and put on Third World ones - we must lay aside the eyeglasses of the rich to use those of the poor."[49]
Relevant to this issue is a small book published in 1983 by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Entitled Explaining Hermeneutics, Article XIX declares: "We affirm that any preunderstandings which the interpreter brings to Scripture should be in harmony with scriptural teaching and subject to correction by it. We deny that Scripture should be required to fit alien preunderstandings, inconsistent with itself."[50] The point of this article is to avoid interpreting Scripture through an alien grid or filter (liberationism, for example) which obscures or negates its true message. This article acknowledges that "one's preunderstanding will affect his understanding of a text. Hence, to avoid misinterpreting Scripture one must be careful to examine his own presuppositions in the light of Scripture."[51]
Now, we must frankly admit that all interpreters are influenced to some degree by personal, theological, ecclesiastical, and political prejudices. Evangelical scholar Emilio Nunez has rightly conceded that none of us approaches Scripture in a "chemically pure" state. This is why Article XIX above is so important: preunderstandings must be in harmony with Scripture and subject to correction by it. Only those preunderstandings that are compatible with Scripture are legitimate.
Graham N. Stanton, Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of London King's College, elaborates on the corrective nature of Scripture: "The interpreter must allow his own presuppositions and his own pre-understanding to be modified or even completely reshaped by the text itself. Unless this is allowed to happen, the interpreter will be unable to avoid projecting his own ideas on to the text. Exegesis guided rigidly by pre-understanding will be able to establish only what the interpreter already knows. There must be a constant dialogue between the interpreter and the text."[52] If this methodology is followed, "the text may well shatter the interpreter's existing pre-understanding and lead him to an unexpectedly new vantage point from which he continues his scrutiny of the text."[53]
Had liberation theologians followed this one procedure, the theology of liberation would have turned out to be a horse of a different color. Indeed, a theologian who approached Scripture with a "preferential option for the poor" would have found - upon submitting this preunderstanding to the correction of Scripture - that his preunderstanding was unbiblical. For, from a scriptural perspective, both the poor and the rich, both the oppressed and oppressors, are afflicted by sin and are in need of salvation. Romans 3:23 says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Our Lord preached the gospel of salvation to the poor (Luke 7:22) but He preached the same message to the rich (Luke 5:32; 10:1-10). God is "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9).
Now, evangelicals concede that God has a special concern for the poor, and salvation is - by His own design - more readily accepted by the less fortunate (Matt. 19:23). Nevertheless, from Genesis to Revelation Scripture has a clear "preferential option" for the fallen.
By submitting his preunderstanding to Scripture, the liberationist would have also discovered that the gap between the rich and the poor is not the cause of man's predicament; it is merely one symptom of it (see Jer. 5:26-29). It was not primarily the bourgeoisie that needed to be overthrown; it was man's sin - his selfishness and greed - that needed conquering (1 Pet. 2:24). It was not fundamentally a political revolution that was needed, but a revolution in the human heart - something found only in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), who came not to be a model political revolutionary but to die on the cross for man's sins as the Lamb of God (Matt. 26:26-28).
We repeat, then, that if we are to understand the author's intended meaning in Scripture (the only true meaning), it is imperative that preunderstandings be in harmony with Scripture and subject to correction by it. Only then will it be possible to develop a truly biblical theology of liberation - a theology that at once emphasizes the fundamental need for liberation from sin, but at the same time stresses the biblical injunction to reach out in compassion to the poor.
A CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICALS
Are evangelicals as concerned as they should be about the plight of the poor and oppressed in our world? And if they are not, is this because there is a defect in their theology that ignores the biblical emphasis on caring for the poor and the needy? If liberationists have approached Scripture with a preunderstanding that "opts" for the poor, is it possible that some evangelicals have unwittingly approached Scripture with a preunderstanding that filters out sufficient concern for the poor and oppressed?
These are difficult questions, and it is incumbent upon every Christian to examine his or her heart on this issue. Certainly, evangelicals have little right to criticize the theology of liberation if they are not prepared to criticize possible deficiencies in their own theology in regard to caring for the poor and oppressed of our world.
Scripture is clear that we have a God-appointed responsibility to take whatever steps we can to help the poor. Yet, at the same time, we as evangelicals must insist that ultimately the transformation of any society depends on the prior transformation of the individuals that make up that society. This is the Christian counterpart to "dependency theory." The revolution so earnestly sought in society will best be accomplished as greater numbers of people in that society experience the revolution of new birth and the ongoing renewal of life in Christ.
NOTES
1"An Attack on Liberation Theology," Orange County Register, 1 Dec. 1985, A10.
2 Harvie M. Conn, "Liberation Theology," in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 388.
3 Dean C. Curry, A World Without Tyranny (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), 68.
4 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1971), 175.
5 Justo L. Gonzalez and Catherine G. Gonzalez, Liberation Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 23.
6 Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983), 592.
7 Ibid., 895.
8 Gonzalez and Gonzalez, 24.
9 Jason Berry, "El Salvador's Response to Liberation Theology," The Washington Post, 4-10 Dec. 1989, 25.
10 Leonardo Boff, Jesucristo y la liberacion del hombre, 292; cited by Emilio Nunez, Liberation Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 232-33.
11 Douglas D. Webster, "Liberation Theology," in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984), 637.
12 Emilio Nunez, "The Church in the Liberation Theology of Gutierrez," in Biblical Interpretation and the Church, ed. D. A. Carson (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984), 174.
13 Gutierrez, 150.
14 Monika Hellwig, "Liberation Theology: An Emerging School," Scottish Journal of Theology 30 (1977):141.
15 Conn, 389.
16 Kenneth L. Woodward, "A Church for the Poor," Newsweek, 26 Feb. 1979, 20.
17 B. T. Adeney, "Liberation Theology," in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1990), 649.
18 Harvie M. Conn, "Theologies of Liberation: An Overview," in Tensions in Contemporary Theology, ed. Stanley N. Gundry and Alan F. Johnson (Chicago: Moody Press, 1979), 344.
19 Paul E. Sigmund, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 11.
20 Don A. Schanche, "Vatican Document Accepts Some 'Liberation Theology,'" Los Angeles Times, 6 April 1986, 5.
21 Richard N. Ostling, "A Lesson on Liberation," Time, 14 April 1986, 84.
22 Sigmund, 181-82.
23 Michael Novak, "The Revolution That Wasn't," Christianity Today, 23 April 1990, 18.
24 Ibid., 20.
25 Ibid.
26 Sigmund, 181.
27 Kenneth Freed, "The Cross and the Gun," Los Angeles Times, 9 Oct. 1990, H8.
28 Sigmund, 196.
29 Arthur F. McGovern, Liberation Theology and Its Critics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 230.
30 Dean C. Curry, "Liberation Theology in 80s: Is There Something New?" Eternity, November 1985, 13.
31 Sigmund, 179.
32 Freed, H8.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Sigmund, 177.
36 Ibid.
37 Daniel Wattenberg, "Protestants Create an Altered State," Insight, 16 July 1990, 9.
38 David Neff, "God's Latino Revolution," Christianity Today, 14 May 1990, 15.
39 John Marcom Jr., "The Fire Down South," Forbes, 15 Oct. 1990, 66-67.
40 Daniel Wattenberg, "Gospel Message of Getting Ahead Inch by Inch," Insight, 16 July 1990, 16.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Vernon C. Grounds, "Scripture in Liberation Theology," in Challenges to Inerrancy, ed. Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce Demarest (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 344.
46 Norman L. Geisler, Explaining Hermeneutics (Oakland, CA: International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, 1983), 7.
47 Ibid.
48 Nunez, in Carson, 173.
49 W. Dayton Roberts, "Liberation Theologies," Christianity Today, 17 May 1985, 15.
50 Ibid., 14-15.
51 Geisler, 15.
52 Graham N. Stanton, "Presuppositions in New Testament Criticism," in New Testament Interpretation, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977), 68.
53 Ibid.
Glossary
exegesis: Derived from a Greek word meaning "to draw out." Refers to the obtaining of a Scripture passage's meaning by drawing the meaning out from the text rather than reading it into the text (which is eisegesis).
hermeneutics: Refers to the science of interpretation. It is that branch of theology that prescribes rules and guidelines by which the Bible should be interpreted.
normative authority: Authority that is binding upon us in terms of what we are to believe and do.
praxis: From the Greek prasso (meaning "to work"), praxis involves revolutionary action on behalf of the poor and oppressed - and out of this, theological perceptions will (liberationists believe) continually emerge. In other words, praxis refers to the discovery and formation of theological "truth" out of a given historical situation through personal participation in the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed.
propositional revelation: The view that God in the Bible has communicated factual information (or propositions) about Himself; the view that God's special revelation in Scripture has been given in propositional statements.
(An article from the Christian Research Journal, Winter 1991, page 8)
The Changing Face of Liberation Theology"
Part One in a Three-Part Series
on Liberation Theology
by Ron Rhodes
In 1985, a leader of the conservative wing of the Roman Catholic church in Latin America, Bishop Hoyos, denounced liberation theologians, saying: "When I see a church with a machine gun, I cannot see the crucified Christ in that church. We can never use hate as a system of change. The core of being a church is love."[1]
Theological controversies are often confined to seminary classrooms or theological journals. But the controversy provoked by Latin American liberation theology has been public and it has been worldwide - involving the Vatican, orthodox and not-so-orthodox priests, lay people, sociologists, socialists, capitalists, economists, government leaders and their military, and much more. Liberation theology has certainly not been the passing fad some analysts thought it would be when it first emerged in the late 1960s.
Strictly speaking, liberation theology should be understood as a family of theologies - including the Latin American, Black, and feminist varieties. All three respond to some form of oppression: Latin American liberation theologians say their poverty-stricken people have been oppressed and exploited by rich, capitalist nations. Black liberation theologians argue that their people have suffered oppression at the hands of racist whites. Feminist liberation theologians lay heavy emphasis upon the status and liberation of women in a male-dominated society.
This article, the first of a three-part series on liberation theology, will focus on the Latin American variety - examining its historical roots, growth, doctrine, and present status in the world. Primary emphasis will be on how the movement has changed since its emergence in the late 1960s. In Parts Two and Three respectively, I will examine the Black and feminist varieties.
With a few notable exceptions, Latin American liberation theology has been a movement identified with the Roman Catholic church. For this reason, I shall direct most of my attention to the views of Roman Catholic liberation theologians. First, however, we must become acquainted with the roots of this controversial theology.
EUROPEAN ROOTS
Some of the theological roots of Latin American liberation theology can be traced directly to the writings of certain European theologians. Three of the more notable of these are Jurgen Moltmann, Johannes Baptist Metz, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Without going into detail, Moltmann has suggested that the coming kingdom gives the church a society-transforming vision of reality as opposed to a merely private vision of personal salvation. Metz has emphasized that there is a political dimension to faith, and that the church must be an institution of social criticism. Bonhoeffer has issued a call to redefine religion in a secular context. His theology emphasizes human responsibility toward others, and stresses the value of seeing the world with "the view from below" - the perspective of the poor and oppressed.
Though liberationists have borrowed from these theologians, they nevertheless charge the European theologies with being "theoretical abstractions, ideologically neutral, [and] neglecting the miserable, unjust present for some 'Christianity of the future.'"[2] The theological methodology developed by liberation theologians specifically addresses these perceived deficiencies.
MARXIST INFLUENCES
Marxism has also exerted a profound influence on liberation theologians. This should not be taken to mean that they have espoused Marxism as a holistic plan of political action, for they have not. Their interest has been limited to using Marxist categories for social analysis.
According to Marx, man once existed in a simple, primitive state. At that time, there was happiness and tranquility. This primitive state of happiness was disrupted, however, by the rise of economic classes where one class sought to oppress and exploit another for its own economic advantage. Marx believed all of man's problems are the direct result of this class exploitation. He portrayed capitalism as the chief culprit that gave rise to this undesirable state of affairs.
Marx was adamant that man can never be truly happy or free in a capitalistic society. Man, he said, has become an alienated being and does not feel "at home" in a capitalistic environment. However, this alienation will not last forever. Marx believed that history is inexorably moving toward a climactic day when the oppressed workers of the world, the proletariat, will rise up and overthrow their capitalistic oppressors, the bourgeoisie. In the place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms, there will be a harmonious society in which there is equity for all.
THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION
Drawing from European theologies and Marxism, Latin American theologians developed their own theology by radically reinterpreting Scripture with "a bias toward the poor." Let us now briefly survey key aspects of the theology of liberation.
Liberation theology begins with the premise that all theology is biased - that is, particular theologies reflect the economic and social classes of those who developed them. Accordingly, the traditional theology predominant in North America and Europe is said to "perpetuate the interests of white, North American/European, capitalist males." This theology allegedly "supports and legitimates a political and economic system - democratic capitalism - which is responsible for exploiting and impoverishing the Third World."[3]
Like Bonhoeffer, liberation theologians say theology must start with a "view from below" - that is, with the sufferings of the oppressed. Within this broad framework, different liberation theologians have developed distinctive methodologies for "doing" theology.
Gustavo Gutierrez, author of A Theology of Liberation, provides us with a representative methodology. Like other liberationists, Gutierrez rejects the idea that theology is a systematic collection of timeless and culture-transcending truths that remains static for all generations. Rather, theology is in flux; it is a dynamic and ongoing exercise involving contemporary insights into knowledge, humanity, and history.
Gutierrez emphasizes that theology is not just to be learned, it is to be done. In his thinking, "praxis" is the starting point for theology. Praxis (from the Greek prasso: "to work") involves revolutionary action on behalf of the poor and oppressed - and out of this, theological perceptions will continually emerge. The theologian must therefore be immersed in the struggle for transforming society and proclaim his message from that point.
In the theological process, then, praxis must always be the first stage; theology is the second stage. Theologians are not to be mere theoreticians, but practitioners who participate in the ongoing struggle to liberate the oppressed.
Sin. Using methodologies such as Gutierrez's, liberationists interpret sin not primarily from an individual, private perspective, but from a social and economic perspective. Gutierrez explains that "sin is not considered as an individual, private, or merely interior reality. Sin is regarded as a social, historical fact, the absence of brotherhood and love in relationships among men."[4]
Liberationists view capitalist nations as sinful specifically because they have oppressed and exploited poorer nations. Capitalist nations have become prosperous, they say, at the expense of impoverished nations. This is often spoken of in terms of "dependency theory" - that is, the development of rich countries depends on the underdevelopment of poor countries.
There is another side to sin in liberation theology. Those who are oppressed can and do sin by acquiescing to their bondage. To go along passively with oppression rather than resisting and attempting to overthrow it - by violent means if necessary - is sin.[5]
The use of violence has been one of the most controversial aspects of liberation theology. Such violence is not considered sinful if it is used for resisting oppression. Indeed, certain liberation theologians "will in some cases regard a particular action (e.g., killing) as sin if it is committed by an oppressor, but not if it is committed by the oppressed in the struggle to remove inequities. The removal of inequities is believed to result in the removal of the occasion of sin [i.e., the oppressor] as well."[6]
Salvation. Salvation is viewed not primarily in terms of life after death for the individual, but in terms of bringing about the kingdom of God: a new social order where there will be equality for all. This is not to deny eternal life per se, but it is to emphasize that the eternal and the temporal "intersect" in liberation theology. "If, as the traditional formulation has it, history and eternity are two parallel (i.e., nonintersecting) realms, our goal within history is to gain access to eternity."[7] But if history and eternity intersect, "if salvation is moving into a new order--then we must strive against everything which at present denies that order."[8]
God. Liberationists argue that the traditional Christian doctrine of God manipulates the divine being such that He appears to favor the capitalistic social structure. They claim the orthodox view of God is rooted in the ancient Greeks who saw God as a static being - distant and remote from human history. This distorted view of a transcendent deity has, they say, yielded a theology that understands God as "out there," far removed from the affairs of humankind. As a result, many Latin Americans have adopted a passive stance in the face of their oppression and exploitation.
Liberation theologians have thus tried to communicate to their compatriots that God is not impassive. Rather, He is dynamically involved in behalf of the poor and downtrodden. And because God stands against oppression and exploitation, those who follow Him must do likewise. Indeed, Gutierrez says that "to know God is to do justice."[9]
Jesus Christ. While liberation theologians do not outright deny Christ's deity, there is no clear-cut, unambiguous confession that Jesus is God. The significance of Jesus Christ lies in His example of struggling for the poor and the outcast. The Incarnation is reinterpreted to represent God's total immersion into man's history of conflict and oppression. By His words and actions, Jesus showed us how to become true sons of God - that is, by bringing in the kingdom of God through actively pursuing the liberation of the oppressed.
Most liberationists see Jesus' death on the cross as having no vicarious value; rather, Jesus died because He upset the religious/political situation of His time. Leonardo Boff says Jesus' followers fabricated the idea that Jesus' death had a transcendent, salvific significance: "The historically true events are the crucifixion, the condemnation by Pilate, and the inscription on the cross in three languages known by the Jews. The rest of the events are theologized or are pure theology developed in light of the resurrection and of the reflection upon the Old Testament."[10] Jesus' death is unique because "he historicizes in exemplary fashion the suffering experienced by God in all the crosses of the oppressed."[11] Liberationists acknowledge Jesus' resurrection, but they are not clear on its significance.
The Church. Liberation theology does not ask what the church is, but rather what it means "to be the church in a context of extreme poverty, social injustice and revolution. In the context of liberation theology the mission of the church seems to be more important than its nature."[12]
Gutierrez and other liberation theologians say the church's mission is no longer one of a "quantitative" notion of saving numbers of souls.[13] Rather, the church's mission "is at all times to protest against injustice, to challenge what is inhuman, to side with the poor and the oppressed."[14]
Related to the doctrine of the church has been the formation and growth of "ecclesial base communities," since the 1970s. These are "small, grassroots, lay groups of the poor or the ordinary people, meeting to pray, conduct Bible studies, and wrestle concretely with social and political obligations in their settings."[15]
These communities have been effective in showing workers and peasants how to organize for their own social welfare. Gutierrez says that "in most Latin American countries, the church's base communities are the only form of social action available to the poor."[16] Indeed, they have become "the major vehicle for the spread of liberation themes beyond academic circles. By 1980 there were as many as 100,000 base communities meeting in Latin America."[17]
ROMAN CATHOLIC OPENNESS
Since the emergence of liberation theology and its rapid growth via ecclesial base communities, divisive rifts have taken place between Vatican leadership and Roman Catholic theologians in Latin America. Over the past few decades, however, the Vatican has become progressively open to the concept of liberation.
For example, Vatican Council II - held in Rome from 1962 to 1965 - decried the wide disparity between the rich and poor nations of the world. Church leaders therefore proclaimed a "preferential option for the poor." Three years later, the Medellin Conference of Latin American Bishops (1968) denounced the extreme inequality among social classes as well as the unjust use of power and exploitation.[18]
Pope John Paul II has for years devoted himself to establishing a balanced policy on political activism for Roman Catholic clergy. He has staunchly advocated social justice, but has also consistently warned the clergy about becoming too involved in secular affairs and about the dangers of Marxism.
The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the Vatican's watchdog for doctrinal orthodoxy - issued two important statements on liberation theology. The Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation" (1984) warned that it is impossible to invoke Marxist principles and terminology without ultimately embracing Marxist methods and goals. Marxism should therefore be avoided altogether.
Two years later (1986), the Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation affirmed the legitimacy of the oppressed taking action "through morally licit means, in order to secure structures and institutions in which their rights will be truly respected."[19] However, "while the church seeks the political, social and economic liberation of the downtrodden, its primary goal is the spiritual one of liberation from evil."[20] The statement accepted armed struggle "as a last resort to put an end to an obvious and prolonged tyranny which is gravely damaging the common good."[21]
This relative openness of the Roman Catholic church was largely responsible for liberation theology's rapid expansion. As we shall see shortly, however, the church's concerns over Marxism have proven justified in view of recent world events. Vatican leadership has breathed a collective sigh of relief that Marxist elements in liberation theology now seem to be waning. SHIFTING SANDS: 1990
Since the emergence of liberation theology in the 1960s, some aspects of the movement have remained constant. In his recent book, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads (1990), Paul E. Sigmund observes that liberation theology stills sees the world as more characterized "by conflict than compromise, inequality than equality, oppression rather than liberation. It also still retains its belief in the special religious character of the poor both as the object of God's particular love and the source of religious insights."[22] Despite these constants, however, liberation theology has also seen significant changes in recent years.
We begin with the observation that 1989 saw almost the whole of Eastern Europe rise up in revolt against Marxist ideology. The major reforms occurring in the Soviet Union and East Bloc nations represent an admission that Marxism has failed.
Michael Novak, who holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., raised a penetrating question in view of recent European events: "What will become of the liberation theologians of Latin America and elsewhere who have so long praised the ideals of Marxist-Leninism, but now must see how hollow they are?"[23]
Novak argues that a close reading of the Latin American theologians suggests that they "have begun to worry that they earlier invested too much credence in the social science they picked up from the universities."[24] For this reason, he says, "liberation theologians in the last few years have become much less hopeful about social structures, and increasingly concerned with issues of spirituality. They seem to be turning less to politics, and more to faith."[25] Sigmund agrees, noting that now "the greater emphasis [is] on the spiritual sources and implications of the concept of liberation."[26] (We shall address this "new spirituality" shortly.)
The shift in perspectives on socialism is one of the most important developments in liberation theology. In the recent writings of many liberation theologians, we find the concession that "the once-favored approach of substituting socialism for dependency or capitalism simply doesn't work, as has been seen in Eastern Europe."[27] Without necessarily deserting socialism, liberationists have shown an increasing ambiguity about what socialism really means, as well as an increasing tolerance of competing systems and an acceptance of Western-style democracy as a legitimate weapon against oppression.[28] Arthur F. McGovern, a Jesuit, comments that "the new political context in many parts of Latin America has led liberation theologians to talk about building a 'participatory democracy' from within civil society. Socialism no longer remains an unqualified paradigm for liberation aspirations."[29]
Another significant development in liberation theology is that its theologians are speaking much less of dependency theory - the idea that the development of rich countries depends on the underdevelopment of poor countries. To be sure, liberation theologians are still predominantly anticapitalist, but many have recognized that dependency theory has rightfully been criticized for some of its fundamental assertions.
The fallacy of dependency theory has been demonstrated by sociologist Peter Berger of Boston University. Berger has pointed out that "the development experience of Japan and the 'four little dragons' of East Asia - Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore - represent 'empirical falsification' of the socioeconomic assumptions of dependency theory and liberation theology." On the other hand, Berger stressed, "there is simply no evidence of successful development by socialist third world nations anywhere or at anytime."[30]
Moreover, the liberationist's solution to the dependency problem - a socialist break with the capitalist world - has looked less attractive to liberation theologians because "the models of socialism either seemed to be bankrupt, or were resorting to market incentives and private enterprise, even inviting multinational investment."[31]
Besides shifts in thinking on socialism and dependency theory, many have had second thoughts about liberation theology because of the bloodshed it has provoked. A Los Angeles Times article focusing on liberation theology in El Salvador notes that "the deaths of some of those who have challenged the establishment have brought sober second thoughts about both the basis and the practice of liberation theology."[32] The article also observes that "such a violent counterrevolution here and in other Latin American nations - along with the failure of Eastern European Marxism and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua to bring social, political and economic justice - have led to calls for a new look at liberation theology."[33] Indeed, "some of the basic analytical assumptions and practical applications of liberation theology are being questioned, not just by the conservative elements of the [Catholic] church but also by some of those thinkers who first conceived the philosophy."[34]
Sigmund has observed that in view of the bloodshed associated with the movement in recent years, liberation theologians are no longer offering the easy justifications of the necessity of "counterviolence" against the "institutionalized violence" of the political establishment.[35] He also notes that the most obvious change in liberation theology "is from an infatuation with socialist revolution to a recognition that the poor are not going to be liberated by cataclysmic political transformations, but by organizational and personal activities in Base Communities."[36]
We have already noted that liberation theologians are focusing more on issues of spirituality. First and foremost, this means that liberation theologians are deriving more of their liberationist concepts from the Bible as opposed to social theory. Early books by liberation theologians focused primarily on social analysis and had very few biblical references. Now the situation is practically reversed: recent books by liberation theologians contain many biblical references and very little social analysis. There is much more "theology" in liberation theology these days. But their methodological approach is still one of a preferential treatment to the poor.
Besides greater rootedness in the Bible, there also seems to be more interest in spiritual disciplines - such as prayer, devotions, exercising faith, and fellowshiping with other believers. Much of this takes place at a grassroots level in ecclesial base communities. Bible studies on "liberation passages" (such as Mary's Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55) are common. The goal is to discover how Scripture applies to specific problems in the lives of the oppressed.
We have noted that liberation theology is predominantly a Roman Catholic movement. An important factor now impacting the movement in Latin America is the explosion of evangelical Protestantism there. "Latin America is no longer the Roman Catholic monolith it once was. Since the late 1960s, the number of Protestants has surged from 15 million to an estimated 40 million, about 10 percent of the population of Latin America."[37] Brazilian bishop Monsignor Boaventura Kloppenburg says that "Latin America is turning Protestant even faster than Central Europe did in the sixteenth century."[38] The overwhelming majority of these Protestants are Pentecostal.
As to why so many are presently turning to evangelicalism, one analyst suggests that "there now is a widespread recognition that liberation theology overlooked the emotional, personal message most people seek from religion. At the simplest level, liberation theologians preached salvation through social change - meaning, in effect, socialism in one form or another. The evangelicals preach individual salvation through individual change."[39]
David Martin, author of Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (1990), suggests that economic advancement is another underlying cause of the Protestant explosion. He argues that "evangelical religion and economic advancement often go together[they] support and reinforce one another."[40] Carmen Galilea, a sociologist in Santiago, said that the typical Pentecostal "is well-regarded. He is responsible. He doesn't drink and is better motivated and better paid. As a result, he rises economically."[41] Pentecostal preaching "puts great emphasis on the demand to develop yourself," thus contributing to the economic rise.[42]
In a recent article in Insight magazine, Daniel Wattenberg suggests that another factor linking Pentecostalism and upward mobility is "the mutual material support available within the Pentecostal faith community (the churches provide a network that often functions as a job or housing referral agency)."[43] Moreover, volunteer work in the church "utilizes peoples' talents and creates opportunities to develop new skills that may give them a sense of usefulness and fulfillment for the first time in their lives."[44] The skills learned in a church context also give an edge to church members in seeking work outside the church.
Big changes are occurring in Latin America, and it remains to be seen where it will all lead. The likelihood is that (1) Marxism will continue to wane; (2) liberation theologians will continue to focus more on issues of spirituality; (3) the Protestant explosion will continue, with an emphasis on personal transformation; and (4) all this will probably have some positive effect on social and economic conditions in the region.
THE BIBLE AND POVERTY
Critics of liberation theology at times come across as though they are detached and unsympathetic to Latin American poverty. No doubt some of these critics actually do lack concern. Before offering criticisms of this controversial theology, therefore, it is important that we first affirm that there is a strong scriptural basis for helping the poor.
In the Old Testament, God gave the theocracy of Israel specific guidelines for taking care of the poor. He commanded that the corners of fields were not to be reaped so that something would be left for the needy to eat (Lev. 19:9-10).
God also promised a special blessing to all who gave to the poor (Prov. 19:17), and judgment to those who oppressed the poor (Ps. 140:12). Robbing and cheating the poor were condemned (Hosea 12:7). Widows and orphans - who were especially vulnerable to oppression - came under special protection from the law (Exod. 22:22-23).
God in the law also made provisions for poor sojourners who were not a part of Israel's theocracy. Gleanings from the harvest were to be left for them (Deut. 24:19-21), and they were ranked in the same category as widows and orphans as being defenseless (Ps. 94:6).
Jesus is very clear about our responsibility to the poor and oppressed. Christ's strong warning that eternal condemnation awaits those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoners (Matt. 25:31-46) shows that the disadvantaged are not merely a peripheral concern of His. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus taught that anybody in need is our neighbor (Luke 10:29f.).
The biblical view of the poor and oppressed is such that God's people everywhere should be appalled at the poverty of the people in Latin America. Liberation theologians and the people of Latin America have a legitimate gripe. Indeed, how can the church in Latin America not act to help relieve the suffering of its people?
Nevertheless, a legitimate and commendable concern for the poor and oppressed must never be used to justify a theological methodology that leads to a gross distortion of Christianity - the only true means of liberation. Evangelicals maintain that this is precisely what Latin American liberationists have done.
A FAULTY FOUNDATION
Inasmuch as the liberationist's views on God, Jesus Christ, the church, sin, and salvation are an outgrowth of his or her theological methodology, it follows that the starting point for a critique of liberation theology would be its hermeneutic. We shall therefore narrow our focus to this one issue.
Method is everything when interpreting Scripture. With an improper methodology, one is bound to distort the author's intended meaning - the only true meaning (see 2 Pet. 3:16).
The word method comes from the Greek methodos, which literally means "a way or path of transit." Methodology in Bible study is therefore concerned with the proper path to be taken in order to arrive at scriptural truth. Latin American theologians have chosen a "path" intended to produce liberation. But have they distorted the author's intended meaning in the process?
The Problem With Praxis
Foundationally, the liberation hermeneutic (which makes praxis the first step, and theology the second) is completely without any controlling exegetical criteria. Vernon C. Grounds is right when he says that "there is no exegetical magic by which new meanings can without limit be conjured out of the Bible under the illuminating creativity of new situations."[45]
In liberation theology, the basic authority in interpretation ceases to be Scripture; it is rather the mind of the interpreter as he "reads" the current historical situation. It is one of the canons of literary (not just scriptural) hermeneutics, however, that what a passage means is fixed by the author and is not subject to alteration by readers. "Meaning is determined by the author; it is discovered by readers."[46]
Only after the meaning has been discovered by the reader can it be applied to the current situation. Certainly we all agree that Christians must practice their faith in daily life. But from a Scriptural perspective, the way a Christian conducts his or her life is based on the objective, propositional revelation found in Scripture. Christians must know God's will as revealed in Scripture before they can act on it. Without a preeminence of Scripture over praxis, the Christian cannot know what to believe or what to do. Evangelicals therefore reject any suggestion that "we must do in order to know, and hope that orthodoxy will arise from orthopraxis [right action]."
An examination of Jesus' use of the Old Testament shows that He interpreted it as objective, propositional revelation (see Matt. 22:23-33). His hermeneutic knew nothing of making praxis the first step for discovering theological truth.
Truth that Transcends Culture and Time
Evangelicals have criticized the inability of liberation theology's hermeneutic to develop a culture-transcending theology with normative authority. Liberation theologians have shown little or no recognition of the fact that there are teachings and commands in Scripture that - owing to their divine inspiration (2 Tim. 3:16) - transcend all cultural barriers and are binding on all people everywhere. Key teachings of Scripture - such as man's sin, his alienation from God, his need for a personal Redeemer - speak universally to the human condition and can never be bound to particular cultures or situations.[47]
Moreover, evangelicals criticize the liberationist idea that theological truth is in a constant state of flux, changing along with the temporal conditions of society. Nunez has noted that "there are chapters of liberation theology that cannot be written at the present time, because they have to be the result of a given practice."[48] Applications of Scripture can change as the temporal conditions of society change - but the Scripture-author's intended meaning from which those applications are drawn are fixed and cannot be relativized.
Alien Preunderstandings
A "preunderstanding" of a preferential option for the poor is the very heart of liberation hermeneutics. Liberationists argue that "the reader of the Bible must deliberately choose his eyeglasses before he begins reading, and that the 'preferential option for the poor' means just that - a deliberate bias or perspective. Without this, the true meaning cannot be known. We must discard our North Atlantic lenses, we are told, and put on Third World ones - we must lay aside the eyeglasses of the rich to use those of the poor."[49]
Relevant to this issue is a small book published in 1983 by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Entitled Explaining Hermeneutics, Article XIX declares: "We affirm that any preunderstandings which the interpreter brings to Scripture should be in harmony with scriptural teaching and subject to correction by it. We deny that Scripture should be required to fit alien preunderstandings, inconsistent with itself."[50] The point of this article is to avoid interpreting Scripture through an alien grid or filter (liberationism, for example) which obscures or negates its true message. This article acknowledges that "one's preunderstanding will affect his understanding of a text. Hence, to avoid misinterpreting Scripture one must be careful to examine his own presuppositions in the light of Scripture."[51]
Now, we must frankly admit that all interpreters are influenced to some degree by personal, theological, ecclesiastical, and political prejudices. Evangelical scholar Emilio Nunez has rightly conceded that none of us approaches Scripture in a "chemically pure" state. This is why Article XIX above is so important: preunderstandings must be in harmony with Scripture and subject to correction by it. Only those preunderstandings that are compatible with Scripture are legitimate.
Graham N. Stanton, Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of London King's College, elaborates on the corrective nature of Scripture: "The interpreter must allow his own presuppositions and his own pre-understanding to be modified or even completely reshaped by the text itself. Unless this is allowed to happen, the interpreter will be unable to avoid projecting his own ideas on to the text. Exegesis guided rigidly by pre-understanding will be able to establish only what the interpreter already knows. There must be a constant dialogue between the interpreter and the text."[52] If this methodology is followed, "the text may well shatter the interpreter's existing pre-understanding and lead him to an unexpectedly new vantage point from which he continues his scrutiny of the text."[53]
Had liberation theologians followed this one procedure, the theology of liberation would have turned out to be a horse of a different color. Indeed, a theologian who approached Scripture with a "preferential option for the poor" would have found - upon submitting this preunderstanding to the correction of Scripture - that his preunderstanding was unbiblical. For, from a scriptural perspective, both the poor and the rich, both the oppressed and oppressors, are afflicted by sin and are in need of salvation. Romans 3:23 says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Our Lord preached the gospel of salvation to the poor (Luke 7:22) but He preached the same message to the rich (Luke 5:32; 10:1-10). God is "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9).
Now, evangelicals concede that God has a special concern for the poor, and salvation is - by His own design - more readily accepted by the less fortunate (Matt. 19:23). Nevertheless, from Genesis to Revelation Scripture has a clear "preferential option" for the fallen.
By submitting his preunderstanding to Scripture, the liberationist would have also discovered that the gap between the rich and the poor is not the cause of man's predicament; it is merely one symptom of it (see Jer. 5:26-29). It was not primarily the bourgeoisie that needed to be overthrown; it was man's sin - his selfishness and greed - that needed conquering (1 Pet. 2:24). It was not fundamentally a political revolution that was needed, but a revolution in the human heart - something found only in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), who came not to be a model political revolutionary but to die on the cross for man's sins as the Lamb of God (Matt. 26:26-28).
We repeat, then, that if we are to understand the author's intended meaning in Scripture (the only true meaning), it is imperative that preunderstandings be in harmony with Scripture and subject to correction by it. Only then will it be possible to develop a truly biblical theology of liberation - a theology that at once emphasizes the fundamental need for liberation from sin, but at the same time stresses the biblical injunction to reach out in compassion to the poor.
A CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICALS
Are evangelicals as concerned as they should be about the plight of the poor and oppressed in our world? And if they are not, is this because there is a defect in their theology that ignores the biblical emphasis on caring for the poor and the needy? If liberationists have approached Scripture with a preunderstanding that "opts" for the poor, is it possible that some evangelicals have unwittingly approached Scripture with a preunderstanding that filters out sufficient concern for the poor and oppressed?
These are difficult questions, and it is incumbent upon every Christian to examine his or her heart on this issue. Certainly, evangelicals have little right to criticize the theology of liberation if they are not prepared to criticize possible deficiencies in their own theology in regard to caring for the poor and oppressed of our world.
Scripture is clear that we have a God-appointed responsibility to take whatever steps we can to help the poor. Yet, at the same time, we as evangelicals must insist that ultimately the transformation of any society depends on the prior transformation of the individuals that make up that society. This is the Christian counterpart to "dependency theory." The revolution so earnestly sought in society will best be accomplished as greater numbers of people in that society experience the revolution of new birth and the ongoing renewal of life in Christ.
NOTES
1"An Attack on Liberation Theology," Orange County Register, 1 Dec. 1985, A10.
2 Harvie M. Conn, "Liberation Theology," in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 388.
3 Dean C. Curry, A World Without Tyranny (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), 68.
4 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1971), 175.
5 Justo L. Gonzalez and Catherine G. Gonzalez, Liberation Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 23.
6 Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983), 592.
7 Ibid., 895.
8 Gonzalez and Gonzalez, 24.
9 Jason Berry, "El Salvador's Response to Liberation Theology," The Washington Post, 4-10 Dec. 1989, 25.
10 Leonardo Boff, Jesucristo y la liberacion del hombre, 292; cited by Emilio Nunez, Liberation Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 232-33.
11 Douglas D. Webster, "Liberation Theology," in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1984), 637.
12 Emilio Nunez, "The Church in the Liberation Theology of Gutierrez," in Biblical Interpretation and the Church, ed. D. A. Carson (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984), 174.
13 Gutierrez, 150.
14 Monika Hellwig, "Liberation Theology: An Emerging School," Scottish Journal of Theology 30 (1977):141.
15 Conn, 389.
16 Kenneth L. Woodward, "A Church for the Poor," Newsweek, 26 Feb. 1979, 20.
17 B. T. Adeney, "Liberation Theology," in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1990), 649.
18 Harvie M. Conn, "Theologies of Liberation: An Overview," in Tensions in Contemporary Theology, ed. Stanley N. Gundry and Alan F. Johnson (Chicago: Moody Press, 1979), 344.
19 Paul E. Sigmund, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 11.
20 Don A. Schanche, "Vatican Document Accepts Some 'Liberation Theology,'" Los Angeles Times, 6 April 1986, 5.
21 Richard N. Ostling, "A Lesson on Liberation," Time, 14 April 1986, 84.
22 Sigmund, 181-82.
23 Michael Novak, "The Revolution That Wasn't," Christianity Today, 23 April 1990, 18.
24 Ibid., 20.
25 Ibid.
26 Sigmund, 181.
27 Kenneth Freed, "The Cross and the Gun," Los Angeles Times, 9 Oct. 1990, H8.
28 Sigmund, 196.
29 Arthur F. McGovern, Liberation Theology and Its Critics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 230.
30 Dean C. Curry, "Liberation Theology in 80s: Is There Something New?" Eternity, November 1985, 13.
31 Sigmund, 179.
32 Freed, H8.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Sigmund, 177.
36 Ibid.
37 Daniel Wattenberg, "Protestants Create an Altered State," Insight, 16 July 1990, 9.
38 David Neff, "God's Latino Revolution," Christianity Today, 14 May 1990, 15.
39 John Marcom Jr., "The Fire Down South," Forbes, 15 Oct. 1990, 66-67.
40 Daniel Wattenberg, "Gospel Message of Getting Ahead Inch by Inch," Insight, 16 July 1990, 16.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Vernon C. Grounds, "Scripture in Liberation Theology," in Challenges to Inerrancy, ed. Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce Demarest (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 344.
46 Norman L. Geisler, Explaining Hermeneutics (Oakland, CA: International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, 1983), 7.
47 Ibid.
48 Nunez, in Carson, 173.
49 W. Dayton Roberts, "Liberation Theologies," Christianity Today, 17 May 1985, 15.
50 Ibid., 14-15.
51 Geisler, 15.
52 Graham N. Stanton, "Presuppositions in New Testament Criticism," in New Testament Interpretation, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1977), 68.
53 Ibid.
Glossary
exegesis: Derived from a Greek word meaning "to draw out." Refers to the obtaining of a Scripture passage's meaning by drawing the meaning out from the text rather than reading it into the text (which is eisegesis).
hermeneutics: Refers to the science of interpretation. It is that branch of theology that prescribes rules and guidelines by which the Bible should be interpreted.
normative authority: Authority that is binding upon us in terms of what we are to believe and do.
praxis: From the Greek prasso (meaning "to work"), praxis involves revolutionary action on behalf of the poor and oppressed - and out of this, theological perceptions will (liberationists believe) continually emerge. In other words, praxis refers to the discovery and formation of theological "truth" out of a given historical situation through personal participation in the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed.
propositional revelation: The view that God in the Bible has communicated factual information (or propositions) about Himself; the view that God's special revelation in Scripture has been given in propositional statements.
(An article from the Christian Research Journal, Winter 1991, page 8)
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