The 40th anniversary of the birth of the Theology of Liberation was celebrated from the 7th to the 11th of October in the Humanitas Institute of the Unisinos University of the Jesuits, in São Leopoldo, Brazil. The principal representatives of Latin America, especially, its first formulator, Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez, were present. Curiously, in that same year, 1971, unaware of each other, Gutierrez in Peru, Hugo Assman in Bolivia, Juan Luis Segundo in Uruguay, and I in Brazil, considered the founders of this type of theology, published our writings. Was it not the presence of the Spirit that inspired our Continent, marked by so much oppression?
To outwit the organs of control and repression of the military, I published an article titled: Jesus Christ the Liberator, (Jesucristo el Liberador), every month of 1971 in Sponsa Christi (The Spouse of Christ), a magazine for women religious. On March of 1972 I gathered those articles and dared publish them as a book. I had to go into hiding for two weeks, because the political police were searching for me. The words, «liberation» and «liberator», had been banned, and could not be used publicly. Editora Voz’s lawyer had a hard time convincing the vigilant agents that it was a book of theology, with many footnotes to German literature, and that it was not a threat to the National Security of the State.
Why is the book (now in its 21st edition) so unique? Founded on a rigorous exegesis of the Gospels, it presented Jesus of Nazareth as liberator of the many human oppressions. He had to directly confront two of them: the religious in the pharisaical form of the strict observance of religious laws. The other, political one, was the Roman occupation that implied recognizing the Roman emperor as «god» and witnessing the penetration of pagan Hellenistic culture in Israel.
Against religious oppression, Jesus posits a major «law»: unconditional love of God and thy neighbor. The neighbor is to Jesus every person with whom one comes into contact, especially the poor and the invisible, those who do not count socially.
To the political he posited, instead of submission to the empire of the Caesars, announcing of the Kingdom of God, a crime of lese majesty. This Kingdom implied an absolute revolution of the cosmos, of society, of each person, and a redefinition of the meaning of life in the light of God, called Abba, namely, loving father full of mercy, that would make everyone feel like His sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of each other.
Jesus acted with the authority and conviction of one sent by the Father to liberate a creation wounded by injustice. He displayed the power to placate tempests, cure the sick, resurrect the dead and fill all people with hope. Something truly revolutionary was going to happen: the emergence of the Kingdom that is of God and also, through His commitment, of humans.
The conflict Jesus created on these two fronts led Him to the cross. He did not die in His bed surrounded by His disciples, but was executed on the cross, as a result of His message and practice. Everything indicated that His utopia had been frustrated. But something unheard of happened: the grass did not grow on His grave. Some women announced to the apostles that He had been resurrected. The resurrection must not be identified with the reanimation of a corpse, as in Lazarus, but as the appearance of a new being, no longer subject either to time-space, or to the natural entropy of life. This is why He could go through walls. He would appear and disappear. His utopia of the Kingdom as a transfiguration of all things, not being realized globally, became concrete in His person through the resurrection. It is the Kingdom of God concretized in Him.
The resurrection is the main event without which Christianity cannot be sustained. Without that blessed event, Jesus would be just one of the many prophets sacrificed by the systems of oppression. The resurrection means the great liberation and also an insurrection against this type of world. The one who was resurrected was not a Caesar or a High Priest, but one who had been crucified. The resurrection gives meaning to all those crucified throughout history for justice and love. The resurrection assures us that the executioner does not triumph over the victim. It means the realization of the hidden potentialities in each of us: the appearance of the new man.
How do we understand that person? The disciples called Him by every title; Son of Man, Prophet, Messiah, and others. In the end they concluded: a human such as Jesus can only be God. And they began to call Him, Son of God.
To announce Jesus Christ as liberator in the context of the oppression that existed and still persists in Brazil and in Latin America was and is dangerous. Not only for the dominant society but also for the type of Church that discriminates against women and the laity. This is why His dream will always be retaken by those who refuse to accept the world as it exists now. Perhaps this is the secret meaning of a book written 40 years ago.
Leonardo Boff