La interpretación de la Biblia en la Teología de la liberación, 1971-1984

Abstract

This study focuses on a particular, concrete point, that of the methodology for the interpretation of the Bible employed by those Latin American theologians most representative of liberation theology between the years 1971 (year of the publication of Gustavo Gutiérrez' book, Teología de la liberación), and 1984 (date of the first of the "Instructions" about liberation theology published by the Pontifical Biblical Commission and signed by Josef Cardinal Ratzinger). G. Gutiérrez (Peruvian), Leonardo and Clodovis Boff (Brazilians) and Pablo Richard (Chilean) have been chosen for this study. Liberation theology is the fruit of a "second act", that is to say, of reflection from the Bible on a primary fact: the oppression and the injustice of which the poor in Latin America are victims. The first step in this theology is the establishing the existence, "with wrath and compassion", of this reality, eminently political. The following step is the examination, in the light provided by sociology, of the causes that explain this unjust situation. In this examination Marxist doctrine, or at least the political theories of socialism, influence the process in an important manner. The third step is to inquire into the totality of Scripture from the perspective of the oppressed. The historico-critical method of hermeneutics, a rational method, is replaced by a new " scientific rationality" that springs from the praxis of those who expect of socialism the liberation of the oppressed. Frequent recourse is made to the Exodus story, always quoted in a partial, rapid and undisciplined way. The practice is committed of seeking texts from the Bible that seem to each author the most efficacious for demonstrating theses previously established by the analyses of sociological origin. © 2009 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.