Christianity in a Nutshell

by Leonardo Boff

For over fifty years and in more than sixty books, Leonardo Boff has explored the mysteries of the Christian message. In this short work he sets out to describe the essence of Christianity in language that is accessible and meaningful within the contemporary worldview, including the scientific understanding of evolution and the expanding cosmos. His essential How does Christianity fit into the process of the evolution of the universe which is at least 13.7 billion years old? What does it intend to reveal? What message does it bring to human beings? For believers, how does it reveal God and how is God revealed in it?

Boff starts with the intuition that all is Mystery and the bearer of Mystery an inexhaustible source of love, that wishes to be known. This Mystery is God known under a thousand names revealed in Christianity as a communion of Divine Persons. He goes on to relate this Mystery to the story of Jesus and the history of Christianity, which takes part in the common mission of other religious and spiritual paths to keep alive the sacred flame of the divine presence in each person, in history, and in the entire cosmic process.

Genres: Theology

122 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2013

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 “LIBERATION THEOLOGIAN” ATTEMPTS TO EXPRESS CHRISTIANITY BRIEFLY

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. He has 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; Jesus Christ Liberator, Salvation and Liberation: In Search of a Balance Between Faith and Politics]], etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2011 book, “Can what Christianity seeks be stated in a few words?... The ordinary Christian and even the theological community confront a special difficulty when seeking to identify a thread to connect and reconnect coherently the main items of faith and establish a hierarchy within the truths… I am venturing to attempt, as a kind of swan song, to express ‘the minimum of the minimum, or to identify the ‘maximum of the minimum’ of Christianity, in a way that can be understood by people who are showing some fascination for and interest in the Christian message. I will try to express what I have to say within the contemporary worldview as it is presented to us by the earth and life sciences… Ultimately, I am raising a simple question: How does Christianity fit into the process of the evolution of the universe that is at least 13.7 billion years old? What does it intend to reveal? What message does it bring to human beings? For believers, how does it reveal God and how is God revealed in it?” (Pg. 1-2)

He points out, “The Spirit presents dimensions of the feminine: it generates life, cares for every being, arouses the new, and lovingly welcomes creation in itself. In Semitic languages the Spirit is the female, generating principle. Miriam of Nazareth, a simple woman of the people, humble, completely open to Mystery because she is ‘full of grace’ [Lk 1:28], valiant like a prophetess in appealing for God’s intervention… was prepared to welcome the Holy Spirit inside herself.” (Pg. 23)

He explains, “At the end of our rise toward communion as Mystery and of the incursion of Mystery into the evolving universe, wee discover that we are all in Mystery and that Mystery is in us. We are Mystery by participation. We call this presence, in which each retains its own identity, ‘panentheism.’ Panentheism---which should not be confused with pantheism---means that God-Mystery is in the innermost recess of each being, and that each being is innermost in God-Mystery… everything is involved … with God, by God, for God, and through God… the universe ever remains universe and God-Mystery ever God-Mystery. But they will be forever intertwined and will be eternally in communion.” (Pg. 30)

He states, “But [the Incarnation’s] highest expression takes place in the poor and oppressed with whom Jesus identified. They are the privileged ones of Jesus, the first addresses of his message and his love. Where the poor are, there is Jesus. Next, Jesus becomes present in those followers who go to live among the poor and oppressed, becoming one of them, bearing with them the passion of Jesus, which cries out for resurrection. They suffer, are misunderstood… It is they who most incarnate the Son in the form of the suffering servant and persecuted prophet.” (Pg. 42)

He notes, “Jesus did not preach the church but the reign of God. His intention was directed at humankind and was not restricted to a portion of it… He did not have in mind a new religion but a new man, a new woman, a new heaven, and a new earth. Everything would be subjected to the politics of God for his creation, translated as the incipient presence of the reign of God. This reign is in ongoing confrontation with the empire, which is the power of the negative, the current situation of the world and of creation, subjected to the energies of oppression, rejection, sin and death. Both are in constant conflict, and Jesus feels involved in it.” (Pg. 50-51)

He acknowledges, “What is the core of Jesus’ message, formulated in the patterns of apocalyptic culture… then the movement of his followers … preserved in their own manner the memory of the deeds of Jesus … This memory was worked over by the religious concerns and theologies proper to the communities that underlie the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. They obscure the original message of Jesus more than they clarify it. The true figure of his person ends up being hidden in excessive ‘clothing.’ Even so, within that tangle of texts we can identify its undeniable core thrust.” (Pg. 61)

He observes, “What does the reign of God have to do with the utopian structure of the human being? It is one of its best expressions, if not the best. It represents an overthrowing of the existing order and the beginning of the new one. The primary agent is God himself, who has decided to step into the course of evolution and carry out a revolution within evolution. This is why the reign is OF GOD.” (Pg 67)

He argues, “the major world economic lending agencies … collect debt with abusive interest. Peoples are sacrificed to serve the banks that mercilessly collect the debts, even when children are dying of hunger and disease and a whole society enters into a serious crisis of sustainability. Jesus was aware of the harshness of the policy of collecting the many debts made up of the taxes collected for the empire, for the temple, to maintain the priestly caste, to sustain the state apparatus, and for public security… It was in the proposal of Jesus, when he launched his program in the synagogue of Nazareth [Lk 4:18-21], which entailed the liberation of the oppressed to also announce ‘a year of grace of the Lord.’ This year of grace was understood as an eschatological sign… of the ultimate coming of the reign, when all debts would be forgiven.” (Pg. 72-73)

He asserts, “Instead of preaching the Trinity-God, Roman Catholic Christianity remained with Old Testament pre-trinitarian monotheism… Instead of extending the dream of Jesus, the reign of God, it proclaims the church, outside of which there is no salvation, often in alliance with the powerful, and far away from the poor and oppressed. Instead of preaching the RESURRECTION as the greatest event in history… it has tended to proclaim the immortality of the soul, a Platonic belief… Instead of presenting the real Jesus of history, it opted for a Jesus defined in philosophical and theological terms from the councils… Instead of strengthening the COMMUNITY, in which all shared in all, it introduced the hierarchy of persons and division of functions, creating… the clerical body, which knows everything and can do everything, and the lay body, which is supposed to hear and execute. Instead of the communion of goods, a defining feature of the early Christian communities… there has prevailed the individualist spirit by which each lives for himself, each strives to save his or her own soul.” (Pg. 102-103)

This is an interesting change from Boff’s work in Liberation Theology, and reflects his post-Catholic views. It will be of great interest to those studying his views, and their evolution.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

Densely packed with interesting concepts. Honest in critique of the church, with proposed solutions for how to live more fully into the call of Jesus to all who follow, and how not to fall into various reductionisms that diminish the faith and create problems.

[Captain John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book dispenses good knowledge about theology and Christianity.