CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 8
Mission as Action
for God's Justice
I HAVE tried to describe mission in terms of the proclamation, the presence, and the prevenience of the reign of God. The reign concerns the whole history of the human family and of the cosmos. At the heart of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is the petition: "Thy will be done on earth as in heaven." God's will is to be done on earth. The call of Jesus to believe the good news of the impending kingdom leads at once to the call "Follow me." There can be no separation between believing and following, between faith and obedience. The prayer "Thy will be done" is in vain if it is not made visible in action for the doing of that will. Consequently, missions have never been able to separate the preaching of the gospel from action for God's justice.
They have sometimes tried to do so. One can tell the story of missionaries who have set out with the firm determination to do nothing except preach the gospel, to be pure evangelists uninvolved in all the business of "social service." But the logic of the gospel has always been too strong for them. A hungry man comes asking for food, shall he be refused in the name of the gospel? A sick child is brought for help. There are children all around with no opportunity for schooling. And so the missionary has been drawn, in spite of pure theology, into the work of education, healing, social service, "agricultural missions," and a host of similar activities. Out of such small beginnings has grown the vast network of services that has provided the foundation for modern education and medicine throughout most of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as for many of the new crops and agricultural methods upon which whole populations now depend.
And yet there has always been an undertone of questioning about all this activity, even something of a bad conscience about it. Over and over again it has been urged that all this "social service" deflects the attention of missions from the primary business of evangelism. New agencies have been formed, vowing to avoid all this entanglement in secular affairs and to concentrate entirely on the preaching of the gospel. But again and again the simple logic of the gospel itself has drawn them irresistibly into some work of education, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, helping the helpless.
Various arguments have been deployed in the attempt to justify these activities as part of the work of missions. They have been defended as a way of gaining a hearing for the gospel in quarters where there is resistance to direct preaching. They have been defended as a means of building up a strong indigenous church that will itself evangelize its own nation. Thus the enterprise of Christian higher education in India, originally understood as a method of evangelism, was defended in the Lindsay Commission Report of 1931 primarily as a way of training leadership for the Indian church. In the period following World War I it was common to describe these activities as part of the "larger evangelism." One of the most popular missionary texts of the period was Jesus' words, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10), and "abundant life" was interpreted as the abundance of the good things that modern education, healing, and agriculture would provide for the deprived peoples of the world.
It is obvious that this whole discussion, which has been so prominent in the missionary thinking of the past hundred years, has presupposed the colonial situation. Missions came from the colonizing powers to areas that were less advanced economically and technically than the "home" countries. Quite apart from all other arguments, simple compassion called for the sharing of the good things of life. Missionaries in this situation had problems that did not trouble Paul in the first century or even Robert de Nobili in the seventeenth (1609-44). In both those cases the missionary was going to a culture that was as advanced as or more advanced than his own. Paul was under no obligation of compassion to offer educational or medical services to the people of Ephesus or Corinth. The "signs and wonders" that were part of his work as a missionary (Roni. 15:19) carried no colonial overtones.
This part of the work of missions during the colonial period was continued during the period of the dismantling of the colonial empires, under such names as "technical assistance" and. later, "development." The governments and other secular and ecclesiastical agencies in the Western nations built upon and greatly enlarged the work that missions had been doing to provide schools, hospitals, and technical services, to improve farming methods, and to develop new industries. The basic pattern was still that of the colonial period. The prevalent values were those of the Western nations. The world was divided into "developed" and "undeveloped," "underdeveloped," or "developing" nations. Whatever terms were used, the underlying concept was that "development" means moving in the direction taken by the West European and North American peoples and that the social and cultural values that had in the past governed people's thinking in Asia and Africa were to be replaced by those that had governed the Western nations in the two centuries since the Enlightenment.
It is obvious that the whole group of ideas and practices that are focused in the word "development" can represent only a transitional phase. In the first place. even if one could for the moment accept the idea that the values that have governed the evolution of Western societies in the past two hundred years are the proper ones for all humankind to follow, it is morally unacceptable that "development," so understood, should be a process controlled and directed by the rich countries. The people of the world will not permanently accept a situation in which a rich minority determines what and how much knowledge, healing, and skill shall be made available to the rest. In the second place, and more fundamentally, it is by no means self-evident that the rest of the world will or should develop the kind of society that has been developed in Europe and North America during the past two hundred years. The model within which both the "service" activities of missions and the "development" activities of governments have operated during the past hundred and fifty years is no longer acceptable. As far as the missionary thinking of the churches is concerned, one can record a strong movement from the late sixties onward away from the idea of service offered by the strong to the weak, toward actions designed to enable the needy and powerless to become aware of their situation, to understand the forces that control and dominate them, and to organize themselves for their own liberation. A very important part in this movement has been played by the techniques of "conscientization" developed by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. For Freire, all education is either for domination or for liberation. Much of the education offered in the past by mission schools and colleges has been designed to hide from its victims the real nature of the forces that control them and to condition them to accept their own powerlessness. What is required is a kind of education that awakens the consciousness of the oppressed to the reality of their oppression and liberates them to become the authors of their own freedom.
This brings us to the third factor that has called the idea of development into question. During the period of the cold war, the Marxist analysis of the working of capitalism gained much acceptance, even among those who rejected Marxism as a total ideology and recognized the defects of the societies under Marxist rule. It became more and more evident that "development" and "under-development"" were two sides of the same process. During the three decades following the inauguration of the "Development" Decade. the gap in income between the richest and the poorest billions of the world's population was estimated to have widened by a factor of 500 percent. The unregulated operation of the free market was locking the "free" (i.e., noncommunist) world into an economic system that operated with inexorable and uncontrollable power to widen the gulf, both within each nation and between the nations. It was therefore very understandable that during this period there was a strong drive to replace the "development" model with something quite different. The call was now not for the "developed" nations to assist the others to come up to their level, it was the call for action to get the rich off the backs of the poor, the exploiters off the backs of their victims. The tendency was to analyze all situations in terms of a single formula: identify the oppressor and mobilize the oppressed for resistance.
The collapse of Marxism as a world power at the end of the 1980s has to some extent discredited this way of thinking, but it has not solved any problems. Indeed, it has created a situation that is in some ways more intractable. The ideology of the free market now has nothing to limit its claims. There is no visible countervailing power. There seems no sign of a check to its relentless advance. And its destructive potential, both for the coherence of human society and for the safeguarding of the environment, are formidable. The ideology of the free market has proved itself more powerful than Marxism. It is, of course. not just a way of arranging economic affairs. It has deep roots in the human soul. It can be met and mastered only at the level of religious faith, for it is a form of idolatry. The churches have hardly begun to recognize that this is probably their most urgent missionary task during the coming century.
I
The discussion about the role of "service" in the missionary work of the church is thus now replaced by a new discussion. We are no longer thinking about "services" such as have been traditionally offered by the (Christian) rich to the (pagan) poor in the form of schools, hospitals, and agricultural projects. We have now to listen to the missiology formulated within the consciousness of the Christian who is part of the poor world, a missiology centered in the demand for liberation in the name of God's Justice. It is in these terms that we must face in our day the question of the relation between the preaching of the gospel and action for God's justice as part of the church's mission. Does the story that runs through Abraham and Moses to Jesus and from Jesus and Paul and the church to us here and now run on into action for revolution'? Is this what "salvation history" means now'?
The "theology of liberation" accepts as the fundamental starting point that there are not two histories, sacred and profane, but only one, and that "the history of salvation is the very heart of human history." From this it goes on to insist that there can he no dualism between a timeless "spiritual" truth and the time-conditioned concrete historical situation. Therefore true theology does not begin in the realm of ideas. It begins with praxis. As Miguez Bonino says:
It is not merely that theology is at the service of action, as in a way it was in the old Jesuit order: seeing, judging, acting. Rather action is itself the truth. Truth is at the level of history, not in the realm of ideas. Reflection on praxis, on human significant action, can only be authentic when it is done from within, in the vicinity of the strategic and tactical plane of human action.2
And again, as the same writer puts it still more clearly, "There is no truth outside or beyond the concrete historical events in which men are involved as agents.
Liberation theology rejects the idea that truth is a timeless spiritual entity that, so to say, floats above the moving current of history. Salvation is God's action in history, and therefore truth can be known only through participation in this action. In this insistence liberation theology is keeping much closer to the Bible than is the theology that uses the concepts of idealistic philosophy. In the Old Testament the primary model of salvation is provided by the exodus from Egypt. Indeed, this is much more than a model: it is God's supreme saving action. God's revelation of himself to Moses is in the form of a call to go and liberate captive Israel. God makes himself known as the Liberator God. God's cause and the cause of those exploited immigrant workers are the same. The exodus from Egypt and the deliverance from Pharaoh's pursuing army are not described in the record as signs or even as illustrations of God's saving work. Instead, there is a simple identification: this deliverance is God's salvation (Ex. 14:13: 15:2). Israel's God is forever afterward identified as the one "who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." There is no question here of an ideal of justice which stands above both Moses and Pharaoh and to which each makes his own application for his particular case, on the basis of which there could be some sort of compromise solution between the two parties. No, God is on the side of the slaves, and their oppressors are God's enemies. There is no superior position from which a neutral arbitrator could decide between them.
The theologians of liberation in Latin America see their situation in these terms. God's cause is the cause of the exploited peasants and miners. The landowners, the mine owners, the transnational corporations who exploit them for their own profit -all are God's enemies. The church, if it is truly the church of God, can be on one side only. The idea that the church can be a neutral arbitrator, a reconciler between the conflicting parties. or the exponent of a "third way" between active revolt and passive submission is an illusion, a part of the false ideology that is used by the exploiting class to maintain its power over the exploited. Any talk of salvation apart from action for the liberation of the exploited is false. It is part of a false theology that is determined by an idealist philosophy and not by the revelation of God as he is in the Bible. Wherever we look in the Old Testament we find that the prophets and psalmists speak of salvation in terms of actual historic happenings: deliverance from famine, sickness, danger, enemies, and oppression. Therefore, for the biblical writers, to "know the Lord" is not a matter of intellectual contemplation or mystical union; it is a matter of doing justice and mercy in concrete situations. When Jeremiah comments sarcastically on the king's building program, he contrasts the king's conduct with that of the king's father and says: "'He [the father] judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me'? says the Lord' " (Jer. 22:16). Those who claim to know the Lord but do evil are deceived. They are far from God. And the same teaching is given in the New Testament. There is no knowledge of God apart from the love of God, and there is no love of God apart from the love of the neighbor. "He who does not love does not know God" (I John 4:8; cf. 3:14-24).
Love and justice are distinct concepts, but where justice is denied love is certainly denied. If the economic order is such that the owners of land and capital can and do exploit and oppress the workers, then the commandment of love must mean more than marginal acts of personal charity; it must mean action to end exploitation. It must mean actions for liberation of which the Exodus is the model, and this must mean taking the side of the exploited and fighting against the exploiter. Fundamental to the theology of liberation is the refusal to allow a separation between truth and action. Christians who are products of the idealist tradition in Western Christendom will reason somewhat as follows: "There is a truth - the truth of the gospel - that I can learn and know. After that, as a second step. I have to decide how to apply that truth to my situation. I realize that different Christians will apply the gospel truth in different ways. Our judgments are fallible. The gospel is one, but the applications will differ." To this the liberation theologian says, "No! Action is itself the truth."4 You cannot know the truth except by doing the truth, and that means action for the liberation of the oppressed. God was known to Moses only in and through Moses' acceptance of God's call to go and confront Pharaoh with the demand that the slaves be set free.
The Exodus is the central paradigm for liberation in the thought of the theologians we are considering. How are we to relate the Exodus story to the events that form the center of the Christian story - the events of the incarnation, cross, and resurrection? Christians have always seen the events of the Exodus as prefiguring the work of Christ. This goes hack at least as far as the writings of Paul and is embodied in the tradition that lies behind all four Gospels - the relation between the death of Jesus and the Passover. But how are these two stories related'? The relation has often been conceived in terms of a spiritualizing or allegorizing of the Exodus story. In this tradition the Exodus is seen as a sort of parable of the inward and spiritual liberation that Christ has accomplished in his cross. But that view falls back again into the dualism that the Bible consistently denies between man's outward and his inward life - a dualism that, needless to say, is absolutely rejected by liberation theology.
Some theologians have tried to make the connection by making Jesus into a political revolutionary. Elaborate efforts have been made to prove that Jesus was really part of the Zealot movement - the "freedom fighters" of his time. It is certainly clear from the record that the death of Jesus was a profoundly political happening. This is brought out with special clarity in the Fourth Gospel. That his charge, fastened to the cross, read "Jesus of Nazareth. King of the Jews" makes it clear that there were profound political implications in the trial and execution. However, careful scholarship cannot corroborate the claim that Jesus identified himself with the Zealot movement. Indeed, it is difficult to see what conclusions one would draw if it could be proved that he did. In terms of reulpolitik the Zealots were a disaster for the cause of Israel, and if Jesus was a Zealot we seem to have the best possible reason for forgetting him altogether.
A much wiser and more biblical way of relating the two stories is given by one of' the major theologians of liberation. Gustavo Gutierrez distinguishes three senses in which we can speak of liberation. First i political liberation, in which the emphasis is on the conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed. Second is the concept of liberation as the continuous process by which humans throughout history have been assuming conscious responsibility for their own destiny; one might speak of this as the culiurul aspect of liberation. Third, one must speak of spiritual liberation through Christ - liberation from sin and restoration to fellowship with God.
These three levels mutually affect each other, but they are not the same. One is not present without the others, but they are distinct: they are all part of a single, all-encompassing salvific process, but they are to be found at different levels. Not only is the growth of the Kingdom not reduced to temporal progress; because of the Word accepted in faith, we see that the fundamental obstacle to the Kingdom, which is sin, is also the root of all misery and injustice; we see that the very meaning of the growth of the Kingdom is also the ultimate precondition for a just society and a new man. One reaches this root and this ultimate precondition only through the acceptance of the liberating gift of Christ. which surpasses all expectations. But, inversely, all struggle against exploitation and alienation, in a history which is fundamentally one, is an attempt to vanquish selfishness, the negation of love. This is the reason why any effort to build a just society is liberating. And it has an indirect but effective impact on the fundamental alienation. It is a salvific work. although it is not all of salvation. As a human work it is not exempt from ambiguities, any more than what is considered to be strictly "religious" work. But this does not weaken its basic orientation nor its objective results.
Temporal progress - or. to avoid this aseptic term, the liberation of man - and the growth of the Kingdom are both directed toward complete communion of men with God and of men among themselves. They have the same goal. but they do not follow parallel roads, not even convergent ones. The growth of the Kingdom is a process which occurs historically in liberation, insofar as liberation means a greater fulfilment of man. Liberation is a precondition for the new society. but this is not all it is. While liberation is implemented in liberating historical events, it also denounces their limitations and ambiguities, proclaims their fulfilment, and impels them effectively towards total communion. This is not an identification. Without liberating historical events, there would be no growth of the Kingdom. But the process of liberation will not have conquered the very roots of oppression and the exploitation of man by man without the coming of the Kingdom, which is above all a gift. Moreover, we can say that the historical, political liberating event is the growth of the Kingdom and is a salvific event; but it is not the coming of the Kingdom, not all of salvation. It is the historical realization of the Kingdom and, therefore, it also proclaims its fullness. This is where the difference lies. It is a distinction made from a dynamic viewpoint, which has nothing to do with the one which holds for the existence of two juxtaposed "orders," closely connected or convergent, but deep down different from each other.5
Negatively, then, the Exodus story is not to he regarded simply as an allegory of a purely personal and spiritual liberation accomplished in Christ; nor is the work of Christ to be regarded simply as a further example (this time unsuccessful!) of the sort of political liberation described in the book of Exodus. Rather. acts of political (and cultural) liberation in history are signs that point toward the fullness of liberation because and insofar as they themselves share the character of liberation. They partake of the nature of salvation. but they are not the whole of salvation.
This is a much more satisfactory position than either of the two that are denied. But we may question whether it really does justice to all the facts. The difficulty that I feel about it becomes very explicit in the text that Gutierrez quotes as the summary of this part of his argument:
All the dynamism of the cosmos and of human history, the movement towards the creation of a more just and fraternal world, the overcom ing of social inequalities among amen, the efforts, so urgently needed on our continent, to liberate man from all that depersonalizes him - physical and moral misery, ignorance, and hunger - as well as the awareness of human dignity (Gaudium et spec, no. 22), all these originate, are transformed, and reach their perfection in the saving work of Christ. In him and through him salvation is present at the heart of man's history. and there is no human act that, in the last instance, is not defined in terms of it.6
This eloquent passage. which suggests the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, evokes a picture of human history that is more optimistic and much less ambiguous than the picture suggested in the New Testament. In what way, exactly, does "all the dynamism of ... human history" reach its perfection in the saving work of Christ'? How does one interpret the cross in relation to the (perfectly legitimate) aspirations of the Jews of Jesus' time for political liberation? How does one interpret the apocalyptic terms in which the New Testament speaks about the history that is still to be enacted'? Does the picture that is here given enable us to find in practice the right path to walk between the longing that every person should come to know Jesus as his personal Savior and the longing that every person should enjoy the political and cultural freedom that are proper to human dignity'? I have drawn attention to the fact that missions have always been drawn by an apparently irresistible logic into secular forms of service such as education, healing, social service, and the development of agriculture and industry, and to the fact that at the same time they have constantly developed a bad conscience about their service. Is this had conscience to be regarded simply as the result of a wrong theology? It is fairly easy to speak of a "holistic evangelism." which looks both to the liberation of the person and to political and cultural liberation, but how do we hold these together in practice? It seems to me that a somewhat deeper questioning is needed.
The question I have to ask falls into two parts. The first concerns the eschatology implied in liberation theology and the second, its epistemology. Put in simpler terms, we are asking two questions: What is the end to which we look`? How do we know the direction?
II
Let me begin from the point at which I am in total agreement with the theologians of liberation, namely. in the rejection of the idealist view of humans as essentially spiritual. Here we stand together in rejecting the dominant religious traditions of humankind. Our own Western culture has never been able to hold to a biblical view of humans except in an uneasy tension with the pagan view that we have inherited from the Greek and Roman elements in our history. The more ancient, more universal, and more "natural" view of humans is being greatly strengthened in our day through the renewed contacts with Indian religion and culture. The relegation of religion to the private sector of human affairs, which followed the stalemate in the religious wars of the seventeenth century, makes it much easier for this view to be accepted as normal. In this view. "religion" concerns a particular aspect of people's lives, namely, that which is private, personal, interior. It concerns the "soul." It looks for a "salvation" that is outside of history. From this point of view the events of political and cultural liberation are only significant insofar as they contribute to or hinder the development of the soul considered as a spiritual monad. In an extreme development of this view John Hick is prepared to conjure up out of his imagination a multitude of separate universes. each of which has no meaning except to provide opportunities for the evolution of these spiritual monads.'
In contrast to this ancient and dominant view, the Old Testament insists on seeing the human person as a single reality in whom body and soul are two aspects of one being.
In this view the story of humanity and of the world has a significance as a whole. and the life of each person is understood as part of the whole story. This corresponds to our experience of what it means to be human. We become and are human beings through our shared relationships with other human beings as part of the world of organic and inorganic matter. This is the real world that we know. We do not have knowledge of any other world, nor do we have experience of souls that have not become known to us as embodied persons. The Old Testament deals with human nature and destiny in this thoroughly realistic way. Why should there be any difficulty about accepting this? Why has this - which has so much common sense on it side - always remained a minority view as against the "spiritual" view of man?
The difficulty is that human experience constantly contradicts every claim that human life understood in this realistic sense has a significant future. The Old Testament hope in God's salvation falters and crumbles against the repeated triumphs of evil over good. Neither the exodus from Egypt nor the exodus from Babylon brings the final liberation. When and how are we to look for it? And what does liberation mean for those who have died in hope for it but without tasting it?
1. Death is the dark mystery that mocks any hope for a total liberation of humans in history. I have emphasized the realism of the Old Testament understanding of human life. The only human life I know is the life I have received through my parents, which has been nurtured by all the influences of family, friends, teachers, and colleagues and which I now live as part of the common public life of the world and the shared life of family and friends and neighbors. This is human life. But it is not fully described by describing it in this way. I participate in this life as a subject who must accept responsibility for the way I see, listen, and understand and for the way I act. This is an unsharable responsibility. At the moment of decision I am alone. And I must make the decision in the knowledge that at some point not known to me I shall be removed finally from this shared human life before it has reached the goal for which I long and strive. Even the small activities to which I have devoted myself will be left unfinished. Some small traces of what I have done may remain for a few years, but eventually all of it will be buried without a trace under the accumulating rubble of history.
This is the point at which a separation opens up between my life seen as part of the shared life of humankind and my life seen as the personal history that I alone experience from within and that no one else can experience with me. Death destroys the possibility of carrying through to the end the realistic, holistic view of humans given in the Old Testament. It drives a wedge between the two ways of understanding my life. I am tempted, almost driven, into a choice between two ways of finding meaning for my life: to find it only in the future destiny of that subject which is myself, or to find it only in the future of the common human life in which I have shared.
The former choice is the one made in the main religious traditions of the world. The significance, the dignity, the ultimate meaningfulness of human life is secured by the faith that each human soul is offered the possibility of eternal security and joy in it world beyond and apart from the world of historical happenings. But this comfort is obtained at the cost of denying ultimate significance to the public history of which my life is a part. It provides, in the positive sense in which the phrase was originally meant, "opium for the people," an anodyne that can help men and women to endure the suffering of human life. But like all drugs it can be abused, as it has been constantly abused by those in power to prevent the suffering from becoming so unbearable that it erupts into revolution. Opium was administered where surgery was needed.
The second possibility has been most resolutely explored by Marxism. Marxism as an interpretation of history rests ultimately on the Old Testament vision of a meaningful future for the public life of humanity. It is a secularized version of the biblical hope. It achieves its consistency by resolutely turning aside from the other dimension of human experience. Significance is found only in the vision of it future age of freedom and justice for all: the life of the person who dies before the new age has come and who will never share in it has no significance in itself. The human person is simply part of the raw material to be used or discarded in the process of creating a new world. Stalinism was not an accidental outcome of Marxism; it was the logical development of it. And, of course, Marxism is in no way unique in this respect. Human history is strewn with examples of political leaders who have treated the individual human person as expendable in the service of some future utopia.
Is it, then, part of our human situation that we are trapped in a dilemma from which there is no escape: meaning for the human person at the cost of denying meaning for history, or meaning for history at the cost of denying meaning for the human person?
2. The gospel releases us from this dilemma because it deals with that which is its root. We have seen that it is the fact of death that drives a wedge between the two ways of understanding human life, the private and the public. the interior life of the person and the public life in which it shares. But death, in the perspective of the Bible, is a symptom of something deeper. It is, from one point of view, simply a biological fact, a necessary part of the cyclical process by which nature is continually renewed. But this purely naturalistic model does not enable us to understand our personal and public life as they really are. From the point of view of the human search for meaning, death is the negation of all meaning. It shears through the threads on the loom before the weaving is finished. It denies completion to the patterns. It is the outward expression of the fact that all the patterns we are weaving are flawed, that all our achievements are ambiguous, and that none of them leads directly to the perfection we seek. Death, in the vivid language of the Bible, is the wages of sin. It is the outward sign of the fact that neither I nor my achievements are of themselves fit for the kingdom of God. The fact of death - my personal death, the deaths of those with whose lives mine has been intertwined, and the death of the plans I have made, the institutions I have served, and the civilization of which I am a part - cuts across the attractive picture of an unbroken ascent from the origins of the world to the final consummation of history. A chasm cuts across the landscape between the place where I stand and the glorious vision of the holy city that I see on the horizon of my world. The path goes down into the chasm, and I do not see the bottom.
The gospel is good news because in Jesus Christ God has dealt with sin and death, has opened a way that goes down into that chasm and leads out into the uplands beyond it, and has thereby released me from the dilemma in which I was trapped. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus have opened up a way on which I can travel toward the city, knowing that the end of the journey will be a real consummation both of my personal history and of the public history in which I have shared. Jesus committed both himself and his cause completely into his Father's hands and went down the way that leads into the chasm: for himself, rejection, the cross, and death; for his cause, defeat and obliteration. In the resurrection God vindicated both him and his cause and gave to those who were willing to trust and follow him the assurance that the vision of the city is not a mirage. In the gift of the Spirit he gave them - while still in r'ia - a foretaste of the life of the city. Trusting him, therefore, I can follow that way and lose myself in the service of God's cause, knowing that though I cannot create the city, God can raise up both me and my works, purged in the fire of judgment, to take a place in the life of the city. I arn no longer in the dilemma between meaning for the personal life and meaning for the public life. I can live fully the life of a real person, part of the real world of society, history. and nature, and know that, because Christ is risen, my labor in the Lord is not futile (I Cor. 15:58).
One consequence of the powerful grip of a pagan religiosity on the mind of the Western culture that has had the Bible in its hands for so long is the fact that the resurrection of Jesus is constantly spoken of as if it had reference only to the individual human person. It has been treated as the ground of our hope for a personal future. It is this, but it is much more than this: it is the ground of our hope for a new world. Paul carefully spells out the implications of the resurrection. Christ is the "firstfruits of those who are fallen asleep." But the harvest is not just "those who belong to Christ"; it is the destruction of all that opposes God's rule and the subjection of the whole cosmos to God (I Cor. 15:20-28).
For the fullest exposition of the unity of the Christian hope, embracing both the private and the public life of the human person, we turn to the eighth chapter of Romans. The exposition begins with the liberation that has already been accomplished. By giving his Son to die the death of sinful man, God delivered us from the grip of sin and death and placed us under a new jurisdiction - that of the Spirit. (As usual, Paul's fundamental affirmation is cast in a trinitarian form.) This is an accomplished liberation. Like all liberations it is a change of regime. The effect of the new regime of the Spirit is that God's will is done and God's gifts of life and peace are enjoyed (8:1-8).
The regime of the Spirit does not remain a purely inward and invisible thing: it is worked out in the renewal of the whole personality. As the resurrection of Jesus was not a merely "spiritual" event (using this adjective in its loose modern sense of "mental"). so the regime of the Spirit overcomes the dualism of body and spirit and extends to the renewal of the whole person (8:9-11).
The mark of this renewal will be, firstly, deliverance from a servile religion to a filial religion, a religion of sonship; secondly, the presence of hope - because the son is also the heir; and thirdly, the acceptance of the vocation to share in the messianic sufferings through which alone Jesus has opened the way to glory (8:12-17).
This glory ("the glorious liberty of the children of God") and this suffering are part of the calling of the whole created world. The world is under the control of powers ("futilities'"), hut this is only in order to be released into the freedom of sonship (cf. Gal. 3:23-4:7). The pains of the world are the birth pangs of a new world, and the mark of the presence of the Spirit in its will be that we share in these pains as those who are full of hope - patient hope (8:18-25).
At the heart of this pain, when we do not even know how to pray, the Spirit is at work in our inarticulate groanings. which become part of his own beseeching. The agony of the world becomes, through the suffering and groaning of the church and through the work of the Spirit, part of the life in the triune God (8:26-27).
Corresponding to this inward working of the Spirit in the hearts of believers is the outward working of the Father, who orders all things in the cosmos toward the fulfillment of the purpose for which he has called them (8:28). This calling is based upon the predestinating grace of God, who knew them before they were and will be faithful to them until the end, so that in all their tribulation they will be "more than conquerors" (8:29-39).
Here is a marvelously coherent and compelling picture of the participation of the church in world history. History is interpreted here as a struggle for liberation. The Christians have their place in it not just as fighters for liberation but as those who have been liberated. Through the presence of the Spirit they are already free people, hearing in their own lives the freedom that belongs to the end. The community of those who follow Jesus is called to share in the struggle for liberation as those who are full of eager and patient hope: eager, because they have already tasted the freedom to which God calls all, patient, because God is to be trusted to complete that which he has begun.
3. Patience means suffering. It is in the measure that the church shares in the tribulation of the Messiah, in the conflict that occurs whenever the rule of God is challenged by other powers, that the church is also it bearer of hope.
This suffering is not the passive acceptance of evil: it is the primary form of witness against it. It is the way in which we follow Jesus along the way of the cross. Jesus challenged the power of evil consistently right to the end. At the very end, when the limit was reached, he surrendered, not to the power of evil, but into the hands of the Father. This final surrender is not defeat but victory.. It is not opium, but is the victory by which the slain Lamb rules the cosmos. The church is enabled by the presence of the Spirit to share in that victory as it gives itself continually to be offered up in and through the Son to the Father. In this life the church is enabled to share in the victorious passion of the triune God.
There is both a faith that rebels and a faith that accepts, and they belong together. Jesus consistently attacked the power of evil. In no recorded case did he ever advise the handicapped and the sick to accept their lot; his unfailing response to their presence was to put forth his power to heal. He sent out his disciples with a commission to do the same. And yet he also told them that they must of necessity suffer, just as he would have to suffer. This paradox is at the very heart of the gospel: "He saved others; himself he cannot save." It belongs to the mission of the church to the end. The power given to the church to meet the power of evil is just the power to follow Jesus on the road that leads through suffering, through total surrender to the Father, to the gift of new life and a new world.
We are heirs with Christ of that new world, says Paul, "provided we suffer with him" (Rom. 8:17). The nature of that "suffering with" is compassion. In every human society so long as human beings are what we know them to be, there will be unjust suffering. And even if we could expect a perfect world free from all injustices in the year 2000, there would still be those who, suffering unjustly in this century, would die with their wrongs unsighted. What are we to say to them? They are not just wasted products of the creation. the shavings left on the workshop floor when the job is done. They also have a place in the city. Their sufferings can be a participation in the victory of the Lamb. They can be part of the witness (,narturia) by which Christ's victory is won. This is the great theme of the last book of the Bible. Acts of compassion, therefore, acts by which the church tries to share in and to bear the pain of those who suffer, are not an escape from the real business of fighting for liberation, or an alternative to it: they are an authentic part of the victory of the Lamb.
It is, unfortunately, not unusual to find Christians who condemn works of compassion because they "deflect attention from the real issue and only serve to prop up a rotten system." There is here a lamentable mixture of naivete in politics and cynicism in morals. What they are really advocating is that we should exploit the misery of human beings for political ends, on the basis of a naive belief that the destruction of the existing structures will of itself make way for a structure of justice. The history of the past two hundred years does little to support this belief.
One can understand this language as a condemnation of those who refuse to face the need for drastic changes in the structure of society and regard the political struggle as outside of the mission of the church. This condemnation is just, for this view implies an unbiblical and unrealistic view of humankind. Real human beings cannot be understood apart from their place in the public history of their times. It is totally wrong, therefore, to separate the private from the public areas of human life and thereby to remove politics from the sphere of Christian responsibility. To work for the reformation of structures, to expose and attack unjust structures, and, when the point is reached at which all other means have failed, to work for the overthrow of an evil political and economic order is as much a part of the mission of the church as to care for the sick and to feed the hungry. Part of it, but not the whole; and if the legitimate call to political action is allowed to replace the call to compassionate service, then the church has betrayed its gospel.
The goal to which we look is the city that is the perfection of all that God purposes both for our personal and for our public life. But the road from here to there is not a simple ascent. There is no evolutionary process by which the cosmos finally arrives at this goal. Our picture of history - the history of what is to cone - must be shaped less by the idea of evolution than by the New Testament Apocalypse. History is seen in this view under the sign of the cross. God's cause in history is not and can never expect to bear God's cause in the sense that it is the agency through which God's order is established within history. That is the Constantinian dream. Rather, it is called to be the witness to a grace and justice that challenges, judges, and redeems the structures in which we embody our hopes for justice.
4. As I see it, the heart of the matter is exposed when we ask what happens at the Eucharist. Can the oppressors and the oppressed share together in the Eucharist`? The theologians of liberation, if I understand rightly, say no. The oppressors must first cease to oppress. Like Zac- chaeus. they must disgorge their ill-gotten wealth. Only then can they be communicants at the table of the Lord. I see the force of this view. If I have to question it, I do so with hesitation. Yet I must do so. There are situations (and perhaps the theology of liberation comes out of such a situation) where oppression is so clear and blatant that this judgment must be made. But the person who makes this judgment takes a very perilous responsibility. In every society, in every nation. even in every family, there is an element of oppression. We are all so made that we are conscious of the oppression of others and unconscious of the ways in which we oppress. Can there be any limit to the mutual excommunication that would follow if this principle came to be accepted'? Is not the Eucharist the point at which we acknowledge the fact that we are all in sin and that we are accepted only by grace'? Must this not apply even to the great natters of justice between classes, between owners and peasants'? If. in effect, we identify the cause of the oppressed with the cause of God so completely that we bring forward the last judgment into today, do we not cut ourselves off from grace and pave the way for a new tyranny that acknowledges nothing higher than its own judgment'?
The church lives in the midst of history as a sign, instrument, and foretaste of the reign of God. But this does not mean that in the life of the church there can be at any point in time a simple identification of the justice of God with the justice of a particular political cause. The church has too often fallen into that trap. To refuse the identification is not to fall into some kind of idealist or spiritualist illusion. It is not to detach the interior life of the soul from the business of doing justice and mercy in the life of society. It is simply to acknowledge that all human causes are ambiguous and all human actions are involved in the illusions that are the product of our egotism. It is to confess that final judgment belongs to God, and that when people usurp that prerogative they fall into self-destructive blindness.
The issue may be put in another way. If we acknowledge the God of the Bible, we are committed to struggle for justice in society. Justice means giving to each his or her due. Our problem (as seen in the light of the gospel) is that each of us overestimates what is due to us as compared with what is due to our neighbors. Consequently, justice cannot be done, for everyone will judge in his or her own favor. Justice is done only when we all acknowledge a judge with authority over us, in relation to whose judgment we must relativize our own. It is the business of an earthly judge to represent that higher judgment. Because the judge is also a sinful human being, his or her judgment will also be corrupted by self-interest, and the judge may have to be overthrown in the name of the justice of God. A just society can flourish only when its members acknowledge the justice of God, which is the justice manifested and enacted in the cross. If 1 do not acknowledge a justice that judges the justice for which I fight, I am an agent not of justice, but of lawless tyranny.
At this point the Christian has to be aware of the trap set by Marxism. I am not here questioning the Marxist analysis of the nature of capitalism, which I find very convincing: I am speaking of the Marxist understanding of human nature. The most obvious feature of the dedicated Marxist is extreme moralism. For the Marxist, evil is always something external to oneself. It is the "class enemy" that constitutes the locus of the evil against which one has to fight. Consequently there can be no thought of forgiveness and reconciliation. There are only two realities - the oppressor and the oppressed, the exploiter and the exploited. The oppressed and exploited are the exclusive bearers of truth and righteousness. There is no truth or righteousness over them, so to speak, that is able to judge and forgive them. Two things follow from this: (1) When the "oppressed" acquire power, absolutely no check exists upon their use of that power. There is no righteousness over them that can judge them. The result is the kind of ruthless tyranny that we have seen under Stalin and his lesser imitators. Those who identify themselves as the representatives of the "oppressed" are in a position to combine unlimited self-righteousness in respect of themselves with unlimited moral indignation in respect of their opponents. This is the most characteristic feature of the dedicated Marxist. Since there is no transcendent righteousness that can judge and forgive both the oppressor and the oppressed, the way is open for unlimited self-righteousness.
The church can only represent the righteousness of God in history in the way that Jesus did. It is enabled to do this by being constantly reincorporated into Jesus' saving action through baptism and the Eucharist and through the preaching and hearing of the Word, which explains these and applies their meaning to the actual situation. The heart of the matter is reached in the celebration of the Eucharist. Here the ultimate horizon of grace and judgment touches the present moment. Here the church has to learn to live by the grace that forgives but does not condone sin and under the judgment that exposes sin and yet keeps open the way of repentance.
The Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Nairobi, 1975) struggled to express its understanding of the witness of the church in the face of the powers in history that deny God's justice. It said:
The Church's unity is lived in the tension of political struggle. The Church is called to discern and attest God's purpose of justice in history and in the created world, but it is frequently tempted to remain silent in order to preserve "unity," or to divide in a crusading spirit for or against some particular cause. On these difficulties, we have three things to say:
(a) Christians are sinners judged and forgiven, accepting one another as such in Christ. At the Eucharist we are all equal, a company who have no righteousness of God. The Church is thus the place where people with sharply opposed commitments can meet at the foot of the cross within the divine mercy that sustains them all.
(b) But the Church is also a company under Christ's discipline. We are not permitted to ignore or to compromise with sin. We are called to open and vigorous mutual criticism, bearing the pain of controversy, openly testing ethical decisions (including political ones) under the truth of Christ, and seeking always the way of obedience in each concrete situation. Individual Christians may and often should take more radical positions than the Church as a whole can or should do. But there are political issues on which the Church itself must speak and act on behalf of the dignity of God's creatures. To do this is not to "politicize" the Church. Rather, the Church is politicized when it is so tied to a party or a government, a class or an ideology, that it is not free to speak or act.
(c) Open and honest controversy on political issues may lead to agreement or it may lead to polarization. When all things are brought into the light, some will find their refuge in a retreat into darkness. The Church has to learn distinguish in the light of God's Word between sin which can be exposed and forgiven, and apostasy which rejects God's forgiveness and must therefore be rejected by the Church. How can we learn to exercise this discipline and this discernment in situations where our churches are involved in racism, in social, political, or religious oppression, and in economic exploitation'?s
The unanswered question may well close this part of my discussion; it is a warning that there is no way of arriving at a simple statement valid for all times and places about the role of the church in history. We have to learn in each situation to act and then to commit the action in faith to God our Father, in and through Jesus Christ. who has taken away the sin of the world by his cross, following the leading of the Holy Spirit, who alone can give us the wisdom to discern the way. The focus of this living and acting and committing will be the Eucharist. It is by faith that we confess this body, constituted by its sharing in the dying and rising of Jesus, to be the sign, instrument, and foretaste of God's reign in the midst of history. From the beginning it has been a body full of things that contradict its own nature. It is certainly no triumphant host beating down the power of evil. It shares in the character of the gospel as a whole; in it are both a disclosing and a hiddenness of God's reign. Its only sign is and must be the sign of the cross, placed not merely on its altars and its buildings, but on its corporate life.
The implication of this argument for our main theme, namely, the nature of the church's mission, is clearly this: in every situation the church must call all people - oppressors and oppressed alike - to that commitment to Jesus Christ which is expressed and sealed in baptism and continually renewed in the Eucharist. To the implications of this we will turn in the following chapter.
III
Another aspect of liberation theology requires examination. I have criticized its eschatology on the ground that it does not face adequately the facts of sin and death and that its evolutionary picture of the future of humankind is inadequately realistic as compared with the apocalyptic view of the New Testament. We must also look critically at the other end of the liberation theology - its epistemology. I have argued that one of the strong points of this theology is its insistence that theology cannot be done apart from action or, to use the favorite word, apart from "praxis." Gutierrez defines liberation theology as "critical reflection on Christian praxis in the light of the Word."`) Its task is "to penetrate the present reality, the movement of history, that which is driving history towards the future," and this is "a new way to do theology." 1 "It is not merely," says Jose Miguez Bonino, "that theology is at the service of action.... Rather action is itself the truth. Truth is at the level of history, not in the realm of ideas." I If we ask on what the action is based or by what it is directed, Bonino answers that it is based upon a "scientific" analysis of the sociopolitical situation and for this purpose the Marxist analysis is accepted. Not that Marxism is swallowed uncritically, but "it seems to many of us that it has proved, and still proves to be, the best instrument available for an effective and rational realisation of human possibilities in historical life." This approach "makes [it] possible to unmask and denounce the false theologies that cover ideologically enslaving options (theologies of the rich world, theologies of development, `third positions' etc)." 13 Especially emphatic is the denial of the possibility of a "third position." The conditio sine qua non for a true theology is to be committed totally to action for and with the oppressed on the basis of the Marxist analysis of the class struggle. Only from within this commitment can the Christian exercise a critical function in relation to Marxism. The idea that there is a "third position," committed neither to the right nor to the left, within which a Christian can do theology has to he unmasked as the cover under which the interests of the oppressors lie concealed.
1. This powerfully argued position calls for much more competent examination than I am capable of, but it is not possible simply to pass it by. To begin with, it is important to recognize that this is a variant of the Marxist epistemology, which already has a considerable history, even though its application to theology is only now beginning. Although Marx and Engels apparently accepted natural science as the way to knowledge of objective truth, it was inevitable that the Marxist conception of the class-conditioned character of all claims to truth should eventually affect the Marxist attitude toward science. Under Stalin the idea that natural science was an independent pathway to objective truth was denounced as bourgeois illusion. The history of science was rewritten in terms of the class struggle. The story has been told by Michael Polanyi in his book Personal Knowledge:
It began with scattered sniping at the more modern developments of -bourgeois science," in relativity, quantum mechanics, astronomy. psychology, and it culminated in the campaign against Mendelism. The new position was finally established when in August, 1948, Lysenko triumphantly announced to the Academy of Science that his biological views had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and members rose as one man to acclaim this decision.
The universality of science was now definitely repudiated. The claims of bourgeois science to universal validity were unmasked as deceptive ideology, while Soviet Science was directed to rely frankly on its partisan or class character. Owing to the dual mechanism of Marxism, all science is class science, which is to accredit socialist science. Moreover, in serving the Party, science recovers - in a new sense - a claim to universality: the universality of truth is replaced by the inherently righteous and therefore historically inevitable victory of a future Communist world-government.
The dual meanings of "objectivity" and '*partisanship" in this method of accrediting Soviet science are self-consistent. The claims of bourgeois science to objectivity and universal validity are unmasked as false pretenses on the grounds that no affirmation of science, history, or philosophy can he objective and that in reality they are always partisan weapons. At the same time, Marxism claims to have ►nade politics into a science that bases every political action on a strictly objective assessment of the social conditions in which it has to operate, and the unmasking of bourgeois objectivity as partisan is itself an example of this Marxist objectivity. But such objectivity does not claim universality, for it would contradict itself if it claimed - for example - that the bourgeoisie could be persuaded to accept it as objective. Marxism claims for itself therefore to be objective only in the sense of being a weapon of proletarian partisanship. Neither "objectivity" nor "partisanship" is either right or wrong, it is only Socialism that is right (i.e. rising) and Capitalism that is wrong (i.e. decaying). The demand made by Stalin's regime on Soviet scholars to eschew objectivity (in the sense of universal validity) and to be guided instead by Socialist partisanship, is therefore quite consistent with the Marxists' own claims to objectivity.14
The disastrous consequences of this for Soviet science were recognized when the process of "de-Stalinization- began, and the natural sciences were liberated from this ideological control. The same liberation, however, did not operate in respect of the social sciences. Nor can it be said that the study of the human and social sciences in societies outside the former Soviet Union is free from the influence of Marxist ideology. As an example one might quote the so-called "materialist interpretation" of the Scriptures, by means of which the biblical material is understood as being an expression of the will to power of different groups in the history of Israel.
2. [ could wish that the theologians of liberation might reflect on the lessons of this story before insisting that theology can begin to operate only on the basis of the acceptance of the Marxist analysis. One does not need to adopt the sort of metaphysical idealism that they reject in order to deny the statement that "there is no possibility of invoking or availing oneself of a norm outside praxis itself." 15 There is the possibility (as Bonino agrees) of appealing to God's revelation of his being and his promise as witnessed in the text of Scripture. It is true, as Bonino says, "that we always read a text which is already incorporated in a praxis, whether our own or someone else's," but that does not alter the fact that the text of Scripture does function and has constantly functioned as a source of judgment upon the praxis of those who have the Scriptures in their hands.
Certainly the Scriptures teach - as I have insisted - that there is no knowledge of God apart from the doing of God's will. But, it seems to me, we depart from Scripture altogether if we put gospel and "scientific analysis" side by side so that the latter becomes the primary and independent source of our understanding of what is the case and what is to be done. (The matter is very much worse when. in crude popularization of liberation theology, we are told that we shall hear God speaking "in and through our human needs and aspirations." 16) The obedience to which the gospel calls me and apart from which I cannot know God is obedience to the personal calling of Jesus Christ in and through his community. The ultimate model, in terms of which I am to understand what is the case and what is to be done, is furnished by the biblical story. This does not obviate the necessity for a scientific analysis of the political-cultural-economic reality in which I am involved, but this analysis cannot take the place of the fundamental model provided by the biblical story and cannot therefore be the ground for excluding from the communion of Christ's community those who do not accept it.
3. 1 am aware, of course, that the sentences I have just written are open to "unmasking" as the product of my political and economic interests as part of Western European bourgeois society. I do not deny this interest, nor my belief that in the conditions of Western Europe today (which are not those of Latin America) I am called to struggle for the development of a type of democratic society that is committed neither to Marxism nor to unrestrained capitalism. I acknowledge that there are situations where a Christian may well judge that the only option is commitment to the overthrow of an irreformably unjust regime. The community of Christians in Christ allows and requires the mutual acknowledgment of these opposing political decisions, and I therefore reject the liberation theologians' view that their judgment about the nature of Christian obedience requires them to treat their opponents not as sinners to be corrected, but as heretics to be excluded.17 Furthermore, the Marxist language about "unmasking," which has been adopted by the liberation theologians, needs itself to be subjected to examination. Michael Polanyi has analyzed the remarkable way in which Marxism is able to evoke moral passions while concealing its operations under a facade of "scientific objectivity." The effect of this is that moral sentiments emanating from the bourgeoisie are "unmasked" as the operation of the self-interest of it class, while the self-interest of the proletariat is impregnated with a supreme moral value that cannot be questioned because there is no locus of truth outside of proletarian praxis. In relation to the present debate. the point is important enough to justify a lengthy quotation. To understand the process, says Polanyi,
you must imagine that you are filled from the start -as Marx was - with a passion for Socialism and a horror of Capitalism. Looking in this light on the ideals of liberty, justice, brotherhood, you will observe, for example, that the Code Napoleon, based on these principles, was supremely effective in destroying the feudal order and in opening the way for bourgeoisie with its system of private enterprise throughout Europe. You will also note that it has remained the guardian of the capitalist order ever since. Bourgeois ideals will appear, therefore, as a mere superstructure of capitalism, in its opposition both to a feudalism whose rule it has subverted and to the proletariat, whose enslavement it tries to perpetuate. Bourgeois interests will appear to be immanent in bourgeois moral ideals. This is the first kind of immanence, the negative branch of Marxism.
Think now, on the other hand, of Socialist revolutionary action. You are filled with a passionate desire to see the workers overthrow Capitalism and establish a realm of liberty, justice, and brotherhood. But you cannot demand this in the name of liberty, justice and brotherhood, for you despise such emotional phrases. So you must convert Socialism from a Utopia into a Science. You do so by affirming that the appropriation of the means of production by "the proletariat" will release a new flow of wealth now entrammeled by Capitalism. This affirmation satisfies the moral aspirations of Socialism, and is accepted therefore as a scientific truth by those tilled with these aspirations. This is the second kind of immanence, the positive branch of Marxism. By covering them with a scientific disguise it protects moral sentiments against being deprecated as mere emotionalism, and gives them at the same time a sense of scientific certainty, while on the other hand it impregnates material ends with the fervour of moral passion.
One can now see that both branches of Marxism operate by denying to morality any intrinsic Force of its own and that they yet both appeal in this very act to moral passions. In the first case we are presented with an analysis of bourgeois ideals in terms of immanent bourgeois interests, and because the hidden motivation of this analysis is a condemnation of Capitalism, the analysis turns in an unmasking of bourgeois hypocrisy. Since this analysis of moral claims in terms of material interests applies quite generally, it might he thought to discredit also the moral motives of those who do the unmasking. But these motives are safe against unmasking. since they remain undeclared. Indeed, acting through the unmasking of bourgeois ideologies, they arouse powerful moral passions in others - without ever producing any moral judgment. Their propagandistic effect is achieved precisely by enunciating the unmasking in purely scientific terms, which are thus immune against suspicion of a moralizing purpose.
These supposedly scientific assertions are, of course, accepted only because they satisfy certain moral passions. We have here a selfconfirmatory reverberation between the theory of bourgeois ideologies and the concealed motives which underlie it. This is the characteristic structure of what I shall call a dynamo-objective coupling. Alleged scientific assertions, which are accepted as such because they satisfy moral passions, will excite these passions further, and thus lend increased convincing power to the scientific affirmations in question - and so on. indefinitely. Moreover, such a dynamoobjective coupling is also potent in its own defense. Any criticism of its scientific part is rebutted by the moral passions behind it, while any moral objectives are coldly brushed aside by invoking the inexorable verdict of its scientific findings. Each of the two components, the dynamic and the objective, takes it in turn to draw attention away from the other when it is under attack. 18
In accepting as a starting point for their theology the Marxist analysis of the sociopolitical situation, liberation theologians have armed themselves with a weapon against which the bourgeois theolo gian may easily feel helpless. The theologian can, of course, point to what happens when Marxist ideas are clothed with political power. But this is not as easy as it seems, for other Marxist states have probably learned from the experience of the USSR that "de-Stalinization" or its equivalent is too dangerous to he allowed. The new rulers of China seem to be solving the problem by using the Gang of Four as scapegoats for policies that everyone knows were those of Mao Tse-tung. Marxist practice has its own ways of discrediting such bourgeois concepts as "human rights" and "free inquiry." In spite of this vulnerability, I must insist that the Marxist epistemology, which has been thoroughly discredited in respect of the natural sciences, cannot now be consecrated as the new way of "doing theology." It is not in dispute that true theology can only he done in the context of praxis. There can be no "academic theology," if that means theology divorced from commitment, faith, and obedience. On this issue the liberation theologians are right. Where I think they are wrong is in the identification of this commitment with acceptance of the Marxist analysis of society. The commitment is not to a cause or to a program: it is to a person. At the heart of mission there must always be the call to be committed to Jesus Christ in his community. It is at this aspect of the matter that we must now look.