La Teología de la Liberación

Abstract

This article reviews very briefly the origins of Liberation Theology and its evolution, marked almost from the beginning by opposition from both within and outside the Church, and by its capacity to open itself to criticism and change. Then the author reveals its theological structure: its founding experience, which is a spiritual experience of the unjust poverty that the poor of Latin Amercia suffer, and its method, based on the three classic steps of see-judge-act. Thirdly, the author indicates two principal theological contributions: the inversion of the relation between theory and praxis, and the decided option for the poor, taken on in fact by the universal Church; the article also criticizes its deficiencies, which come from a certain difficulty in integrating its discoveries into the theological tradition of the Church. Fourthly, the article synthesizes Liberation Theology as an attempt to reflect upon faith from modern culture, and within a perspective of fundamental theology, which underlines the question of the credibility of Christian faith. Finally, in a closing prospective, the article identifies four priority core problems that this theology must resolve if it wants to have a future (clearing up certain aspects of the option for the poor, of the conditions for doing a theology of history, of its method and of its pastoral dimension) and wonders about the role of university theology in the future of Liberation Theology. © 2009 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.