Salvation and Liberation

by Leonardo Boff

English, Portugese (translation)

Genres: Theology

Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Leonardo Boff, born as Genézio Darci Boff, in Concórdia, Santa Catarina, Brazil, on the December 14, 1938. He is the grandson of Italian immigrants from the region of Veneto who came to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in the final part of the nineteenth century. He received his primary and secondary education in Concórdia - Santa Catarina, Rio Negro - Paraná, and Agudos - São Paulo. He studied Philosophy in Curitiba - Paraná and Theology in Petrópolis - Rio de Janeiro. He joined the Order of the Franciscan Friars Minor in 1959 and received his doctorate in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Munich - Germany, in 1970.
For 22 years he was the professor of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology at the Franciscan Theological Institute in Petrópolis. He has served as a professor of Theology and Spirituality in various centers of higher learning and universities in Brazil and the rest of the world, in addition to being a visiting professor at the universities of Lisbon (Portugal), Salamanca (Spain), Harvard (United States), Basel (Switzerland), and Heidelberg (Germany).
He was present in the first reflections that sought to articulate indignance toward misery and marginalization with discourse, which later generated the Christian faith known as Liberation Theology. He has always been an ardent of the Human Rights cause, helping to formulate a new, Latin American perspective on Human Rights with, “Rights to Life and the ways to maintain them with dignity.”
He has received honorary doctorates, in Politics from the University of Turin (Italy) and in Theology for the University of Lund (Sweden). He has also been honored with various awards, within Brazil and the rest of the world, for his struggles on behalf of the weak, the oppressed and marginalized, and Human Rights.
From 1970 until 1985 he participated in the editorial council of Editora Vozes. During this time he participated in the coordination and publication of the collection, “Theology and Liberation” and the entire edition of the works of C. G. Jung. He was Editor-in-chief of “Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira” from 1970 to 1984, of “Revista de Cultura Vozes” from 1984 to 1992, and of “Revista Internacional Concilium” from 1970 to 1995.
In 1984, he was submitted to a process by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, former Holy Office, in the Vatican. This was due to his theses linked to liberation theology exposed in his book "Church: Charism and Power. In 1985 he was condemned to “obsequious silence” and was removed from his editorial functions and suspended from religious duties. Due to international pressure on the Vatican, the decision was repealed in 1986, allowing him to return to some of his previous activities.
In 1992, under renewed threats of a second punitive action by authorities in Rome, he renounced his activities as a priest and ‘promoted himself the state of laity.’ “I changed trenches to continue the same fight.” He continues as a liberation theologian, writer, professor, widely hear conference speaker in Brazil among other countries, also as an adviser of social movements of liberating popular matrix, as the Landless Movement and the Base Ecclesial Communities (CEBs), between others.
In 1993 he was selected as professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).
On December 8, 2001 he was honored with the alternative Nobel prize, “Right Livelihood Award” in Stockholm, Sweden.
He presently lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area on the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. He shares his life and dreams with the defender/educator of Human Rights from a new ecological paradigm, Marcia Maria Monteiro de Miranda. He has also become the “father by affinity” of a daughter and five sons, sharing the joys and sorrows of responsible parenthood. He lives, accompanies and recreates the unfolding of life in the “grandkids” Marina, Eduardo and Maira.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE TWO THEOLOGIANS EXPLAIN PRINCIPLES OF LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Leonardo Boff (born 1938) is a former priest, as well as a theologian, philosopher and writer, who is currently Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Ecology at the Rio de Janeiro State University. After being ‘silenced’ by the Catholic church for his supposedly ‘Marxist’ views, he ultimately left the Franciscan order and priesthood. His brother Clodovis Boff (born 1944) is a Catholic theologian of the Servite Order, philosopher, writer and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná.

They have written/cowritten many books, such as Introducing Liberation Theology Faith On The Edge; Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor; Francis of Assisi: A Model for Human Liberation; Church: Charism & Power: Liberation theology and the Institutional Church; Christianity in a Nutshell; Jesus Christ Liberator; Salvation and Liberation: In Search of a Balance Between Faith and Politics; Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations; Feet-on-the-Ground Theology: A Brazilian Journey; The Bible, the Church, and the Poor, etc.

Leonardo wrote in the first chapter of this 1979 book, “The principal interest of liberation theology is to generate activity on the part of the church that will aid the poor efficaciously. Everything must converge toward practice (love). The real question is: What praxis will ACTUALLY, and not just seemingly, be of help?... How can we bestow efficacy on Christian love? The key is to know reality better---to understand better the mechanisms that produce poverty, and the avenues that can lead its victims away from it.” (Pg. 4-5)

He recalls, “Faith emerged not as a brake, but indeed a spur, a moving force. This was the context, in the mid-1960s, of the first deeper reflections of what would later be called the theology of liberation. Inasmuch as the problems were mainly economic, political, and educational, what Christian tried to see was the theological relevance of their commitment in the area of economic, political and educational liberation. Does economic and political liberation not have a theological dimension? If it does, then a commitment on the part of Christians to economics and politics involves a commitment to God, to the kingdom to salvation.” (Pg. 17)

He summarizes, “The common point of departure of all the various tendencies within the one theology of liberation is ethical indignation at the misery of social reality, and the demand for a process of liberation that will overcome this contradiction. But … a variety of accents can be identified… A liberation spirituality is the spiritual moment that gives rise to the theology of liberation… A liberative rereading of the scriptures is another accent… A rereading of the liberation content in theology is still another current… Theological reflection on an analysis of reality can incline in various directions… The people as an agent of its own liberation is another theme… A popular pedagogy of liberation makes enormous use of the contributions of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, author of [[ASIN:014025403X Pedagogy of the Oppressed]]… A rereading of history from the viewpoint of the defeated … The theory of the theology of liberation is still another of the varied accents within a single theology of liberation… These are the principal tendencies within the one single theology that is surely the most fruitful one in the church today.” (Pg. 25-30)

Clodovis points out, “What is the faith meaning of liberation? What does faith have to say about the struggle for emancipation? In what sense, and under what conditions, does this struggle actualize the kingdom of God? It’s not going to be just ANY liberation that will do it. There are liberations that lead only to a worse slavery… The liberation a Christian is after is one that accords with the gospel ideas of justice, peace, and a community of brothers and sisters… one that realizes, in history, the transhistorical notion of the kingdom of God.” (Pg. 75)

He wrote a dialogue, in which the ‘Theologian’ stated, “The kingdom comes for persons in their capacity as agents of history, not in their capacity as the beneficiaries or objects of historical transformations… The kingdom, in politics, is on the side of the subjects, the agents---not on the side of the objects.” (Pg, 90-91) The ‘Priest’ in this same dialogue points out, “Saying ‘Jesus Christ is Liberator’ is the same thing as saying ‘Jesus Christ is the Redeemer’ or ‘Jesus Christ is the Savior.’ Here’s the only difference: ‘liberator’… has a higher charge of meaning. Didn’t the first Christians… take the most expressive titles that were in vogue and apply them to Jesus?... Then why can’t we do the same thing?” (Pg. 99)

The Priest adds, “Reduce everything to politics and you’re … sowing the seeds of a terrorism to follow. You won’t be able to listen to Beethoven, because he’s bourgeois… You’ll have to worry about who is going to ‘bug’ the conjugal bedroom to see if the love being made is reactionary or revolutionary. The same thing will happen in theology. You won’t be able to read… John of the Cross until it’s been censored. The verses from the gospels that don’t seem to run along the lines of your basic political preconception will be expunged.” (Pg. 103)

The Theologian summarizes, “the mission of the church, as sacrament, is to INTEGRATE social liberation---horizontally---by publicly proclaiming and celebrating, in sacrament and sign, the fact that social liberation INTRINSICALLY integrates salvation---vertically. Why? Because this social integration guarantees the supranatural integration of human liberation, on the level of sacramental instrumentality.” (Pg. 114)

The Theologian concludes, “liberation is the social emancipation of the oppressed. Our concrete task is to replace the capitalist system and move toward a new society---a society of a socialist type… But this salvation, this kingdom, is to be found WITHIN the process of liberation… Faith gives us to perceive this mysterious presence of salvation within liberation, and theology seeks to express it in a critical and methodical way… Salvation is not to be found only in liberation, but liberation … in its dominant dimension in the context of our concrete situation today, in our dependent Latin America… Our faith… is NECESSARY in our concrete history, as a guarantee that liberation will move in the direction of the kingdom, in the direction of salvation.” (Pg. 116)

Leonardo and Clodovis have since diverged in their thinking, but this earlier work will be of great interest to those studying Liberation Theology.

[Drick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this little primer on Liberation Theology off a reduced price book table, but it was one of the clearest expositions of the basic tenets of liberation theology I have every come across. Written by the Boff brothers, both Brazilian priests/ theologians they are answering some of their critics in the Roman Catholic Church, but in so doing make a clear case for LT being a legitimate and necessary theological approach in a time of huge disparities. While it was written nearly 30 years ago (1984), it speaks to the huge issues of poverty, racism and global capitalism of today.