I’ve recently been taking an online continuing education course through the Faculdade Unida de Vitória in Brazil, where we read the works of Latin American theologians from various Global South nations each week, and then meet with them virtually to discuss their insights and projects. It has been an eye-opening and transformative experience.
Issues of justice, equality, poverty and oppression obviously loom large in the conversations. This is to be expected given the social location of the authors. But the methodology and perennial questions they ask did not arise merely in the wake of Gustavo Gutiérrez, Juan Luis Segundo, and Jon Sobrino. As far back as the 4th century, theologians like Saint John Chrysostom were reflecting on examples of inequality and their interrogation of people of faith:
“Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside while he is cold and naked. … For God does not want golden vessels, but golden hearts. … Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all.”
Similar sentiments are found in the writings of Saint Ambrose: “Naked and needy, in want of food, clothing, and drink are we first brought forth into the light of day; naked does the earth receive those whom it had brought forth; it knows not how to enclose within the tomb the expansive boundaries of one’s estates, or the excessive extremes of one’s possessions.”
Photo by Dave Hernandez
Saint Basil puts it even more bluntly: “To the hungry belongs the bread that you hoard. To the naked belongs the clothes that you store in your closet. To the barefoot belongs the footwear that rots in your house.” His implication is easy to infer, that wealth and privilege have robbed the poor of their due.
Catholic theologians of any era always operate out of a fundamental position of trust — namely that the Gospel does in fact have significance for how we ought to live, work and build relationships. Yet, there is an increased need for what theologians today call a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” This is the ability to dig deeper, to question and, in fact, “to judge” ideological superstructures. To ask, for example, why band aids have until now assumed that “flesh colored” is Caucasian, or why all crash test dummies are male bodies. We need to ponder and interrogate anew what we as a society, culture, and church have made “normative” and why. Theologian Hugo Córdova Quero describes this suspicion as “a heuristic principle that guarantees the unveiling of occluded realities.”
Such an approach is in some ways a cognate of the posture that allowed the Church Fathers above to cross-examine the currents they saw at play in the communities of their different eras and locations, which to be fair were all formed in the Mediterranean basin, itself open to a suspicious probing of its claim to be literally “the center of the world” (medius terra). An honest geographical assessment would recognize that this would instead be found in countries like Ecuador, Colombia, Uganda, Kenya and Indonesia.
None of this is to contest the historicity of the faith, or the “scandal of particularity” which obviously recognizes that Jesus Christ was a specific person in a specific place and specific time who made specific decisions and taught specific things. Our church was in fact born on the shores of “Our Sea” as the ancient Romans called it, and that region has made contributions to human civilization. But it has also brutalized countless peoples from other locales. We need simply to demand that we reflect upon the reality that naming such a fact is necessary to life as a Christian today. Suspicion or doubt are not the opposite of faith. Assumed certitude is.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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