I think the fact that more recent liberation theologies understand that things aren’t so simplistic (one class vs another class) does not necessarily mean black theology (or feminist, or womanist, or mujerista, or Latino theologies) are irrelevant. It only means that there are overlapping relationships of power and oppression; that things are more complicated than we want to make them out to be. Racism isn’t the only kind of oppression that there is, but racism is indeed a real oppression, and because of this black theology is important.

Come of that, if liberation theology in general must hold that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression” doesn’t that rather take the teeth out of the whole “liberation” part of the liberation theology — since it makes salvation a matter of defeating vice, rather than one class defeating another?

I don’t think it takes the teeth out of it at all, nor do I think the change in perception means a reduction of salvation to “a matter of defeating vice.” Salvation is just as integral/holistic as earlier liberation theologies understood it. The teeth are still there, but liberation-salvation is seen to be more complex than it once was.

Come of that, if liberation theology in general must hold that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression” doesn’t that rather take the teeth out of the whole “liberation” part of the liberation theology — since it makes salvation a matter of defeating vice, rather than one class defeating another?

On the bright side, perhaps there’s a good multi-cultural lesson one can take. I recall reading in a book by an Islamic scholar a while back about “greater jihad” and “lesser jihad”. The greater jihad is the struggle to overcome sin and injustice internally. The lesser jihad is the external struggle against source of unbelief and injustice in the wider world.

Could one apply the same distinction to liberation theology?

I would question whether this is a specifically postmodern take. Definitely, I would agree with it. I suspect it could be found in medieval and earlier writers, though, not merely postmodern ones.

It is true to say that God is beyond everything, including our suffering. But God’s being is distinct from all beings, in that they are limited by what they are not, whereas he is not. Otherness is in God. And his full imminence in the world does not in any way compromise his absolute divine transcendence.

I think this is partly what I was reaching for talking about God being “above” our sufferings and divisions. Thinking of periods of suffering in my life, what I primarily recall is a sense of pain descending like fog. Something that enmires one in oneself and what one is experiencing at the moment. During times when I’ve felt that that suffering was being caused by a specific person, much of that fog is, in all honestly, anger and hatred.

Clearly, God has suffered with us, and suffered more deeply than any of us can ever do, and in that sense and in the sense that God is in us, he is certainly with us in our suffering. But while being with us, he is not befogged by it or consumed by any of the uncharitable feelings that suffering often causes in us.

In Christ Jesus there is the convergence of the Son of Man and Suffering Servant of the OT. In his majesty, he takes on suffering,but not some suffering abstractly; no, his glory shines through his suffering innocently all of the real sufferings (sinful and innocent) of humanity. The unidentifiable Suffering Servant is the disfigured Jesus Christ, and his loving and free humiliation reveals to us in its humanity the full nature of divine glory.

DC,

It is true to say that God is beyond everything, including our suffering. But God’s being is distinct from all beings, in that they are limited by what they are not, whereas he is not. Otherness is in God. And his full imminence in the world does not in any way compromise his absolute divine transcendence.

The idea of God taking the side of the oppressed is not an invention of liberation theologians. It’s rooted firmly in scripture. I’m not sure what it might mean for God to be “on the side of caritas.” Scripture plainly says that God is on the side of the oppressed.

Now, I do agree that this can be problematic in that it can be too binary or reductionistic. I doubt your critique of the option for the oppressed is based in any way on the insights of postmodernism, but postmodern theologies would say that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression.” This view takes into consideration that most people and/or groups in the world are both oppressor and oppressed in one way or another. There is no clear divisions between oppressed and oppressor, and many early liberation theologies are therefore too simplistic. Nevertheless, the central insight is true.

If God were not above my sufferings, how could I rise above them by reaching up towards him?

Yet there is an entire theme in Christian tradition of God suffering with those who suffer. I think this is what Mark is getting at too.

“Very much so. If God were not above my sufferings, how could I rise above them by reaching up towards him?”

You’ve got it all wrong here.

You overlook the essential fact that the Christian God turns man’s religious quest literally upside down.

Finite and sinful man tries to re-connect (religire) with his God. The God of Jesus Christ does the foolishly divine/divienely foolish thing and condescends to man. He becomes one of us, God-with-us, Emmanuel.

This is, in a sense, the most interesting part of your response, in that it underlines what seems to me to be one of the key problems with what pieces I’ve read by liberation theologians: the idea that if God does not struggle “on the side” of the opprossed then he is somehow “blessing the status quo”. I suppose this is what people are talking about when they describe liberation theology as fusing a Christian notion of salvation with a Marxist idea of class struggle. And yet this strikes me as highly problematic. If one were to say that God is on a “side”, it is clearly the side of caritas — not the “the rich” or “the poor” or “the whites” or “the blacks”.

Certainly, God does not bless the “status quo”, because the status quo represents a world full on sin in which many people hate and/or hurt others. But it seems in-apt to me to envision God as engaged in stuggle at one’s side against one’s “enemies”. God is calling both the oppressed and oppressors to holiness — but that’s different from being “on the side” of the “oppressed” class in struggling against the “oppressor” class.

Would you similarly claim that God is “big enough” to be “above” whatever suffering you have experienced in your own life? Is God not with you in that suffering?

Very much so. If God were not above my sufferings, how could I rise above them by reaching up towards him?

If I have a bad relationship with my brother and believe that he has deeply wronged me and caused me much suffering, I should not envision God as being on my side in fighting against my brother. I should see God as above the quarrel, imaging how each of us should relate to the other.

Here we can point to a fundamental difference between conceptions of salvation. For Catholics, and for liberation theologians, salvation is both an individual and social reality. Thus, among other things, salvation is a matter of right relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Not a triumph of one over the other, but indeed a demolishing of oppressive relationships followed by reconciliation. For many Protestants and indeed much of liberalism, and apparently yourself, salvation is for individuals and not a matter of relationships.

I gather that no St. Blogs argument is complete without someone accusing his opponent of being a crypto-Protestant, so I suppose I should thank you for getting this out of the way.

Certainly, salvation involves relationships since we are called to a proper relationship with God and with neighbor.

However, it is as individual persons that we are judged by God upon death, not as members of groups such as “rich”, “poor”, “American”, “Mexican”, “black”, “white” or “brown”.

That is why it seems to me that all this business of classes, whether economic or racial, is a distraction when it comes to our relationship with God and with each other. If the goal is for each of us to relate to each other as persons, not as members of identity groups, then why form a whole theology based around identity groups?

And Cone’s obvious point is that God does exist, and that God is on the side of the oppressed. He insists that we must reject understandings of God that put God “above” real struggles which only serve to have a God that blesses the status quo.

God clearly is “big enough” to be above issues of race, and so insisting that he accept one’s racial agenda or else be rejected reads to me as a rather over-arching pride.

God is not “above” the issue of race. God is Emmanuel, “God with us.” Would you similarly claim that God is “big enough” to be “above” whatever suffering you have experienced in your own life? Is God not with you in that suffering?

At root, salvation is not a matter of making sure that the poor triumph over the rich in a temporal sense, but rather that each person triumphs over pride, greed, wrath, etc.

Here we can point to a fundamental difference between conceptions of salvation. For Catholics, and for liberation theologians, salvation is both an individual and social reality. Thus, among other things, salvation is a matter of right relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Not a triumph of one over the other, but indeed a demolishing of oppressive relationships followed by reconciliation. For many Protestants and indeed much of liberalism, and apparently yourself, salvation is for individuals and not a matter of relationships.

Could you possibly thinl he implies an invective to kill God?

I spend rather more time hanging out (intellectually speaking) with Dawkins type atheists than with liberation theologians, so perhaps some will think I’m taking an overly literalist approach to the phrase. I took it to mean, essentiall, “If God may not be seen as supporting our race against those who have historically oppressed us, then we must reject him and scorn him. How, indeed, could a God exist who does not take our side against others.”

So no, I didn’t take it as literally “killing” in a Pullman sense, but rather, “We must reject the idea of God if he isn’t on our side.”.

Now, first off, this strikes me as a rather disrespectful way to talk about God, if you believe him to exist. (And if not, why be a theologian.) God clearly is “big enough” to be above issues of race, and so insisting that he accept one’s racial agenda or else be rejected reads to me as a rather over-arching pride.

It also strikes me as suggesting a troublesome view of our more general relationship with God as savior. Even taking “black” to mean “oppressed” and “white” to mean “oppressor” (and really, what is racism if it’s not conflating race with characteristics which are actually extrinsic to it), it seems to me that thinking in terms of “the destruction of the enemy” turns salvation into a war between two groups of persons, when it is indeed a war within each individual person. At root, salvation is not a matter of making sure that the poor triumph over the rich in a temporal sense, but rather that each person triumphs over pride, greed, wrath, etc.

Is it fundamentally the right Christian approach to defeat strife with strife? Is that the message of the Cross?

So you are willing to apply this logic to the question of america’s war on terror, then?

Absolutely, yes. Though not necessarily in the political sense that you’re looking for.

Strife in itself can certainly never be a goal for a Christian. And following from that, one’s just goal can never be simply to defeat or destroy a specific group or nation. The most that a war may attempt with any justice to achieve is to end some specific temporal situation: remove the Taliban from power, end the Baathist regime, keep North Korea from destroying South Korea, prevent the Confederate states from seceding, etc. But strife must never become directed at the person (defeat Afghans, defeat Iraqis, etc.) rather than the injustice one is seeking to end.

This does not mean we are to overlook what cannot ultimately “be squared” with the Christian kergyma and divine/human truth. It does require, however, at the very least a rejection of the television pundit’s desire to immediately discredit at any cost, for the seek of argumentative spectacle and potical maneuvering. The latter is the worst form, I believe, of what I call, following others, the hermeneutics of uncharity and suspicion. It has no place in the lives of Christian intellectuals who follow the Pauline incentive, “Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.”