Solidarity with Victims

...We are born into this sin: and it is only through conversion that we are able to gain a distance from that culture, decode the messages we have received, see the world for what it is, and enter upon a perspective of justice that promotes the reconciliation of humanity...

...In particular it must be accompanied by a critique of religion...

...What is needed is the negation 6f the negation...

...Theologians here speak of a correlation, not a paradox, between the two spheres...

...It is based on an action-related understanding of truth, and it is inevitably contextual...

...The contemporary message coming from bishops and pope, relying on this new Christian experience, also affirms that Christian faith has a justice dimension...

...Gregory Baum MATTHEW LAMB'S new book is a major contribution to political and liberation theology at the foundation level...

...This explains why a book dedicated to solidarity with victims is written in a manner that very few victims of society will be able to understand...

...Under the impact of neo-orthodoxy many theologians stressed the paradox between faith and reason and hence the lack of proportion between the faith that generates love and political reason that generates action...

...We can no longer afford simply to utter critiques of society: we must criticize the presuppositions and their long-range consequences implicit in these critiques...

...Faith is a praxis: it includes a commitment to the victims of society, a vision of society defined by the divine promises, and a way of life that engenders action on behalf of justice...

...Liberation theology argues that even the meaning of the sacred and the entry into holiness are mediated through the concrete historical conditions in which people find themselves...

...In traditional theology, truth was seen essentially as independent of practice...

...Liberation theology has existed in the U.S.A...

...Christians hold that this hope is grounded in the biblical promises...

...Theology of the Americas is one of the Christian networks in the U.S...

...He introduces the reader to the methods and insights of Critical Theory and points to the particular contribution made to this movement by American critical theorists...

...Liberation theology is, therefore, a challenge to previous theological trends...

...Latin American radicals have produced liberation theology, German critics of middle-class society have produced political theology, Christian women struggling against their subjugation in church and society have created a feminist theology, and black people and Mexican-Americans have created their own freedom theologies...

...Since the structures of domination vary from place to place and since the different sectors of society are affected by them in diverse ways, liberation theology is contextual...

...It is based on action, it leads to action, and its norm lies in its transformative power...

...Over the last decade Christian experience has forged a new and unprecedented link between faith and justice...

...It represents rather a theological movement, or better still a theological school, firmly rooted in Western intellectual history, in critical dialogue with other theological trends and contemporary social science, that offers guidance to the church as it exercises its mission in an increasingly troubled world society...

...This is true for Western capitalist society where a value-free, technological rationality has taken over and created an increasingly programmed mass society ruled by an economic elite, and where people deprived of their traditional religion have turned to secular ideologies or new religious cults...

...Christians struggling for social justice in third world countries and under third world conditions in Western societies have acquired a new sense of discipleship and faith commitment to Jesus Christ...

...At the same time, the enlightenment critique of society and culture has gone wrong...

...It is within the confluence of these two intellectual traditions that Lamb works out the philosophical foundation of liberation theology...

...The first phase, then, in the struggle for justice is negation...

...As an extreme reaction to this, some modern theological thinkers argued that Christian truth is in the doing and that theoretical formulations remain at best approximations, extrinsic to the truth that is done...

...From the grasp of Christian truth action was supposed to flow, but this action remained extrinsic to the truth...

...By clarifying its methodological presuppositions he has established this new trend at the center of the Christian theological debate...

...We live in a culture of injustice that distorts consciousness and makes us see the world, and ourselves in it, in a prejudiced manner...

...Oppression is inflicted upon people through the irrationalities in the social, political, and economic institutions in which they live and through the cultural and religious symbols that legitimate these institutions...

...Allow me to introduce some of the themes studied by Lamb...

...In chapter 3, Lamb creates a useful typology that allows the reader to locate various theological traditions in regard to their understanding of truth and in particular their perception of the relation between theory and practice...

...that promotes this multi-faceted liberation theology...

...The source is the Hegelian-Marxist intellectual tradition, represented in an original manner by the Frankfurt School in the twenties and their philosophical approach called Critical Theory...

...The test that establishes the correlation belongs here to the theoretical order...

...The past we inherit must be critiqued dialectically: its destructive content must be overcome in a movement that at the same time recovers and surpasses the positive achievement of the past...

...In Eastern European Communist societies the same value-free, technological rationality has been made to serve the purposes of the ruling bureaucratic class, and people are deprived of their civil liberties...

...In the U.S...

...This is one of the sources of Lamb's intellectual world...

...Much of modern theology, however, defends an intrinsic relation between Christian truth and political practice...

...Traditional theologies claim universality: they do this either by arguing that man's encounter with the sacred transcends the conditions of history or that personal transformation from sin to holiness has universal applicability...

...Mainstream culture-and religion easily belongs to this-disguises the injustices of the social order...

...What is truth...

...But because he lays the foundation for the presence and future of liberation theology in schools of theology and religious education, his highly theoretical study is of enormous practical importance...

...Liberation theology, as we said above, is a praxis...

...Lamb has worked out a special reading of Lonergan in his doctoral dissertation, published by Scholars Press, which inserts the methodology of the Canadian thinker into the dialectical, historical perspective' derived from German idealism...

...Liberation theology does not forget the sacred nor personal transformation but it relates these to what it regards as primary, namely the work of grace in overcoming domination...

...Lamb writes theology for theologians...

...Is there room for liberation theology in the faculty of theology...

...Marxist humanism turned into a system of mechanistic control in part because it did not retrieve in a new key the metaphysical foundation of the dignity of persons...

...Lamb unfolds this methodological approach as the appropriate explanation of the Christian belief that truth is a saving reality, that the truth shall make us free...

...It is a great achievement...

...Yet eventually, the various theological schools are to be brought together in a single Christian mission to serve the reconciliation of the human family...

...All this Matthew Lamb's book does successfully...

...It is imperative that in the negation of the inherited traditions, we try to retrieve in a new key the humanizing achievements of the preceding historical phases...

...Some theologians argue that divine revelation is mediated to the political order through an appropriate theory...

...We notice that these liberation theologies differ significantly from other theological orientations...

...Matthew Lamb's new book establishes it at the center of the theological debate...

...for a long time...

...Enlightenment reason turned into technological rationality in part because it did not retrieve the metaphysical foundations of reason as instrument of human liberation...

...This is the message of the statement "Justice in the World" made by the 1971 Synod of Bishops...

...He does this not, following David Tracy, by recognizing the inevitable pluralism of theology, each school correcting the one-sidedness of the others, but rather by recognizing various historical phases or moments in which theologians clarify the meaning of the Gospel and transcend the limitations of a previous phase...

...The first chapter deals with social sin...

...is emerging a theological trend, critical of empire and domination, that promotes the values of community and participation...

...Where do words such as negation, negation of the negation, and the dialectics of history come from...

...this negation is generated by the hope that human life can be different, that society can be changed, and that people in the pursuit of their reason can become the agents of change...

...The other source of Lamb's intellectual world is Christian theology, especially the thought and method of Bernard Loner-gan...

...Hand in hand with this new Christian experience has gone the development of a theology that seeks to mediate this faith praxis to the various parts and levels of society where people suffer domination and strive for justice...

...Other theologies place at the center of attention the encounter with the sacred or, in more recent times, on the Spirit-created transformation of the person...

...In order to defend its place in the seminary and the university, and thus its influence on the formation of the clergy, the shaping of Catholic teaching, and the guidance of Christian spirituality, liberation theology, while primarily a pastoral wisdom addressed to ordinary Christians, must clarify its theological foundations, argue against theologians who have discredited it, and set forth its truly original way of mediating the Christian faith in the conflicts of contemporary society...

...Liberation theology focuses on the justice dimension of faith, on God's judgment on social sin and on the divine promise for the newness of life...

...The institutional infrastructure is securely held in place by the blessings pronounced on it by the symbol-makers of society...

...Political and liberation theology, on the other hand, argue that the correlation between revelation and political practice is established not by a correct theory but by involvement and transformation...

...The test of truth is the Word of God alone: political theory and practice remain so ambiguous in a sinful world that they are extrinsic to the Christian's quest for fidelity to the Gospel...

...It becomes clear that liberation theology is not a marginal concern, nor an inconsequential import from Latin America, nor an activist preoccupation with social change, nor a politicization of the Christian message, nor a theological trend gone one-sided through an excessive emphasis on justice...

...Active political engagement for the reconstruction of society must be accompanied by a critique of culture, including philosophy and theology...

...In the final chapters Lamb demonstrates through his analysis of Rahner's and Lonergan's theologies, that he is able to defend the viewpoint of liberation theology and yet remain open to other theological schools...

...In chapter 2, Lamb deals with what he calls "the end of innocent critique...

...This negation, we note, is not based on nihilism or cynicism, nor does it reflect cultural relativism or indifference to truth...

...What is Christian truth...