14 - Liberationist readings of the Bible

Summary

Liberationist hermeneutics is primarily a way of reading which is the product of late twentieth-century political theology. Liberation theology is known from scholarly books and articles but has its roots in the Basic Christian Communities. The community setting means an avoidance of a narrowly individualist religious reading. Theology is not just a matter of abstract reflection, but reflection on understandings which are based on an active involvement. Christianity lives by the norm of the reign of God in the still unrealized future of creation, not by a fixed, completed past. Radford Ruether's hermeneutical model has many affinities with Clodovis Bof's correspondence of relationships model. Historical study enables the reader to explore hitherto neglected corners of the Bible using a method which reflects all that is best in what Hans-Georg Gadamer has illuminated about the hermeneutical basis of research in the humanities.