Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T13:05:13.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Apocalypticism in Political and Liberation Theology: Toward an Historical Docta Ignorantia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

J. Matthew Ashley
J. Matthew Ashley*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This article examines political and liberation theologies as instances of apocalypticism, focusing in the work of Johann Baptist Metz and Jon Sobrino. The first section develops a heuristic framework for identifying and analyzing apocalyptic discourse in general, using the historical work of Bernard McGinn and the rhetorical analysis of Stephen O'Leary. The second section applies this framework to Metz and Sobrino, arguing that their theology is a legitimate, provocative, and instructive instance of apocalyptic discourse today, in part because of the way it integrates apocalyptic eschatology with Christology. In a final section, the intelligibility proper to this apocalyptic discourse is discussed by arguing a correlation with mystical theology with its discursive pair of cataphasis and apophasis. Just as this pair finds its context of meaning in the practice of contemplative prayer, apocalyptic affirmations and the reserve expressed in the eschatological proviso find their context of meaning in the practice of opting for the poor.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 2000 , pp. 22 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2000

References

1 This paper was developed from a talk presented at the annual meeting of the College Theology Society in Dayton, Ohio, in 06 of 1995. I should like to thank those who attended for their encouragement and comments. I would also like to thank my colleagues, Brian Daley, S.J., Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., John Cavadini, and Lawrence Cunningham, for their generous and knowledgeable comments.

2 Lindsey, Hal, with Carlson, C. C., The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970).Google Scholar Lindsey followed up with The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon (King of Prussia, PA: Westgate Press, 1980)Google Scholar and The Messiah (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1982/1996).Google Scholar Of course, Lindsey is only one of the many practitioners of “premillennial dispensationalism” in the United States. For an overview, see Boyer, Paul, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

3 “The Christmas Covenant,” U.S. News & World Report 117/24 (12. 19, 1994): 64.Google Scholar

4 As reported by Lynn Neary: “Digital Rapture,” Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio, 1/12/99.

5 For apocalypticism's presence outside of the United States, see the pertinent articles in the Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, 3, ed. Stein, Stephen (New York: Continuum, 1998).Google Scholar See also the essays collected in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, ed. Robbins, Thomas and Palmer, Susan J. (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar, esp. Mullins, Mark, “Aum Shrinrikyō as an Apocalyptic Movement,” 313–25.Google Scholar

6 See Lowe, Walter, “Prospects for a Postmodern Christian Theology: Apocalyptic Without Reserve,” Modern Theology 15/1 (01 1999): 17–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Evangelium Vitae, nos. 102-5.

8 See Bultmann, Rudolf, “New Testament and Mythology” in New Testament and Mythology, and Other Basic Writings, trans, and ed. Ogden, Schubert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 5.Google Scholar

9 For the biblical background, see Collins, John J., The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984).Google Scholar My historical overview relies on introductory materials in Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., trans, and ed. with an introduction and new preface by McGinn, Bernard (New York: Columbia University Press)Google Scholar, and Apocalyptic Spirituality, trans, with an introduction by McGinn, Bernard (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1979).Google Scholar See also the historical overviews by McGinn and Marjorie Reeves in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions, ed. Patrides, C.A. and Wittreich, Joseph (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 2–72Google Scholar, as well as the recently published Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, 3 vols., ed. Collins, John J., McGinn, Bernard, and Stein, Stephen (New York: Continuum, 1998).Google Scholar

10 McGinn refers to these two options as the “a priori” and “a posteriori” use of apocalypticism. The Book of Revelation is primarily of the former type; the legend of the Last World Emperor in the Middle Ages is an instance of the latter. See Apocalyptic Spirituality, 8-11.

11 McGinn, , Visions of the End, 10.Google Scholar

12 I use this in the sense suggested by Toulmin, Stephen, in his magisterial work Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: Free Press, 1990).Google Scholar Drawing from the Greek roots of cosmos and polis, Toulmin describes it as the idea (or ideal) of a single order which integrates the order of the natural world (cosmos) and the order of the human community (polis) in one overarching order: cosmopolis (see 67-9).

13 O'Leary, Stephen D., Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 14.Google Scholar

14 On Lindsey's “common sense” reading, with its roots in Scottish Common Sense philosophy, see O'Leary, , Arguing the Apocalypse, 143–47.Google Scholar

15 Collins, Adela Yarbro, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 141.Google Scholar

16 See Markus, Robert, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

17 See, for instance, Barkun, Michael, “Millenarians and Violence: The Case of the Christian Identity Movement” in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, 247–60.Google Scholar

18 The early history of the Anabaptists is a case in point. See George, Timothy, “The Spirituality of the Radical Reformation” in Christian Spirituality II: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Raitt, Jill (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 356–66.Google Scholar

19 It is often hard to avoid the suspicion that liberal and left-wing critics of religious apocalypticism favor nonapocalyptic communities because they are more “manageable” and less likely to stand in the way of liberal, progressive, or radical projects for engineering a “more human” (read, “less religious”) world.

20 I am adopting here Roger Haight's proposal that any theological interpretation of the symbols of Christian Scripture and tradition be judged by its fidelity to the Christian tradition, its ability to energize and empower human freedom, and its intelligibility against a modern horizon of understanding. See Haight, Roger S.J., Dynamics of Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1990), 210–12.Google Scholar The criterion of intelligibility will be taken up in the last section.

21 Metz, Johann Baptist, A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, trans, and ed. with an introduction by Ashley, J. Matthew (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1998), 47.Google Scholar

22 When asked to pinpoint the difference between his theology and Rahner's, Metz once said “Some day Rahner will die, and he will be greeted by God the Father with this question: ‘My dear great Karl Rahner, what have you done to the apocalyptics of my son.’” Rahner's response: “You may be right, you may be right; but, how are you going to get this across [durchsetzen]?” (from Maher, Mary, “Historicity and Christian Theology: Johannes Baptist Metz's Critique of Karl Rahner's Theology” [Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1988], 12, 110Google Scholar). See my discussion in Interpretations: Mysticism, Politics and Theology in the Work of Johann Baptist Metz (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 187–88.Google Scholar

23 Sobrino, Jon, “Theology in a Suffering World: Theology as Intelluctus Amoris,” trans. Pedrozo, José and Knitter, Paul F., in his The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 29.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 30.

25 For Metz, see “Theology as Theodicy?” Passion for God, 54-71.

26 As Sobrino himself asserts: “[T]he message of apocalypticism is one of hope in the power of God to remake an unjust world and to do justice to its victims” (Sobrino, Jon, La Fe en Jesucristo Ensayo Desde las Víctimas [Madrid: Trotta, 1999], 66 [my translation]).Google Scholar

27 Sobrino, Jon, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View, trans. Burns, Paul and McDonagh, Francis (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 46.Google Scholar

28 See Sobrino, Jon, “The Crucified Peoples: Yahweh's Suffering Servant Today” in 1492-1992: The Voice of the Victims, ed. Boff, Leonardo and Elizondo, Virgilio, Concilium 1990/1996 (London: SCM Press, 1991): 120–29.Google Scholar (Also Jesus the Liberator, 254-71). Sobrino freely acknowledges that he learned this concept from Ellacuría.

29 See Sobrino, , Jesus the Liberator, 93–95, 161–62.Google Scholar Sobrino argues for a hermeneutical principle of “historical discernment” that clearly draws from the central meditation on “the two standards” in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. See, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans, with a commentary by Ganss, George E. S.J., (St. Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 65–67 (nos. 136-48).Google Scholar

30 Sobrino, Jon, “Introduction: Awakening from the Sleep of Inhumanity,” trans. Planas, Dimas, in The Principle of Mercy, 9.Google Scholar

31 He tells us, e.g., that “the sole object of all this talk [about crucified peoples] must be to bring them down from the cross” (“The Crucified Peoples,” 120). Completing his two volumes on Jesus Christ, Sobrino declines to call what he is doing a “christology” in the traditional sense, but a presentation of Jesus as “an open parable” which calls upon us to take up a cognitive, evaluative, and finally active stance, not just toward Jesus but toward all reality (see La Fe en Jesucristo, 14).

32 Sobrino, “Awakening from the Sleep of Inhumanity,” passim.

33 Sobrino, , “Companions of Jesus,” trans. Livingstone, Dinah, in Sobrino, Jon, Ellacuría, Ignacioet al., Companions of Jesus: The Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 49.Google Scholar As the subtitle suggests, another increasingly prominent theme in Sobrino's thought which could be explored for its apocalyptic resonances is that of martyrdom.

34 Sobrino, , Jesus the Liberator, 183–86.Google Scholar

35 This tendency is accepted by and large by evangelical premillennial dispensationalists, who evoke the sense of crisis by pointing to increasing personal immorality and godlessness. For all of its untimeliness, this marks their use of apocalypticism as ultimately a quite modern phenomenon.

36 Metz, J. B., Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 5th ed. (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1992), 166 (my translation).Google Scholar See Faith in History and Society, trans. Smith, David (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 170f.Google Scholar Metz follows this apophthegm with another that defines religion, and defines it apocalyptically: “The shortest definition of religion: interruption.”

37 Metz, , Passion for God, 105.Google Scholar Metz's play on the Kantian ideal of Mündigkeit (from Kant's essay, “An Answer to the Question, What is Enlightenment?”) bears comparison to Sobrino's use of the other Kantian metaphor of awakening.

38 See Metz's powerful unveiling of this myth: “Hope as imminent expectation of the struggle for forgotten time: noncontemporanous theses on the apocalyptic view” in Faith in History and Society, 169-79. See also Followers of Christ: Perspectives on the Religious Life (Mahwah: NJ: Paulist, 1978), 75–83.Google Scholar

39 Sobrino, “The Crucified Peoples.”

40 Metz, , Passion for God, 134.Google Scholar

41 See, e.g., “The Church after Auschwitz” in Metz, , A Passion for God, 121–32.Google Scholar

42 Sobrino, , Companions of Jesus, 18 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

43 Ibid., 19. The meditation referred to is from the colloquy that closes the meditation on sin, early in the “First Week” of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises (pp. 42f., nos. 53-54). The earlier reference is to the meditation on the incarnation, with which the “Second Week” of the Exercises begins (56-58, nos. 102-9).

44 Metz, , Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 156Google Scholar (my translation; see Faith in History and Society, 176).

45 It could be argued that liberation theology's critique of “developmentalism” in Latin American economic policy implies Metz's critique.

46 Sobrino, , Jesus the Liberator, 260.Google Scholar

47 Consider this from Rahner, a theologian who was by no means hostile to either political or liberation theology: “I have nothing against liberation theology or political theology. But didn't Johann Baptist Metz let himself be taken in by Ernestor Cardenal? I was present in Frankfurt when Cardenal explained that the kingdom of God had begun in Nicaragua, that there were no prisons there anymore, that everyone loved one another… I won't have anything to do with such nonsense!” (Rahner, Karl, Faith in a Wintry Season: Conversations and Interviews with Karl Rahner in the Last Years of His Life, ed. Imhof, Paul and Biallowons, Hubert, trans, ed. Egan, Harvey D. (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 51;Google Scholar see 146.

48 For a history of attempts to grapple with the issue of contemplation in action, culminating in the Rhineland mystics, see Mieth, Dietmar, Die Einheit von Vita Activa und Vita Contemplativa in den Deutschen Predigten und Traktaten Meister Eckharts und bei Johannes Tauler (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1969).Google Scholar

49 See, e.g., Ellacuría, Ignacio, “Fe y Justicia,” Christus 42 (08 1977): 26–33;Google Scholar and 42 (10 1977): 19-34, esp. part 3, “La Contemplación en la Acción de la Justicia.” 32-34. See also the transcription of Ellacuría's lectures on Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises: “Lectura Latinoamericana de los Ejercicios Espirituales de san Ignacio,” Revista Latinoamericana de Teología 1 (1991): 111–47.Google Scholar For a brief but provocative argument of this position on Metz's part (which shows strong affinities with Hans Urs von Balthasar's approach) see Metz, , “The Theology of the World and Asceticism” in Theology of the World, trans. Glen-Doepel, William (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 101–4.Google Scholar

50 Using Bernard McGinn's provisional definition of the mystical element in Christianity, as “that part of its beliefs and practices that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and reaction to what can be described as the immediate or direct presence of God” (The Foundations of Mysticism, Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1992), xvii.Google Scholar

51 See McGinn's remarks making precisely this emendation to the use of “presence” in his definition: ibid., xviii-xix.

52 Sells, Michael, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 2f.Google Scholar

53 The parallel in Metz lies in his advocacy of solidarity with the vanquished of history, and the spirituality of “suffering unto God” that it entails. On this, see Metz, , “Suffering Unto God,” Critical Enquiry 20/4 (Summer 1994): 611–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as my discussion in Interruptions, 153-67.

54 Sobrino, Jon, The True Church and the Poor, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984), 154.Google Scholar

55 Ibid 157f. (emphasis added). It is worth noting that this essay was originally given at a conference honoring Karl Rahner, held in Milwaukee in 1974. See “Current Problems in Christology in Latin America” in Theology and Discovery: Essays in Honor of Karl Rahner, S.J., ed. Kelly, William (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), 189–221.Google Scholar Sobrino's article starts with explicit and laudatory reference to the centrality of Rahner's view of the notion of the absolute mystery of God (189). This is, of course, the concept that Rahner used to elaborate a modern mystical theology, and one that Sobrino elsewhere acknowledges “continues to accompany me even today” (Principle of Mercy, 2). My argument here is that Sobrino is “transposing” this concept (and by association, the tradition of mystical theology it involves) into the “key” of liberation theology.

56 Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, 7.2. Translated in Bonaventure, trans, and ed. Cousins, Ewert, preface by Brady, Igantius O.F.M., (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1978), 112.Google Scholar

57 Ibid., 54.

58 See n. 28, above. For a different approach to the same insight, see Gustavo Gutiérrez's correlation of the struggle for liberation, the exodus narratives, and John of the Cross' use of the symbol of the dark night: Gutiérrez, Gustavo, We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. with a foreword by Nouwen, Henri (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984), 83–89, 129–31.Google Scholar

59 The isomorphism between the logic by which Bonaventure expresses the mystical itinerary and the work of Jon Sobrino, the Jesuit, is more than just coincidence, given the importance of Bonaventure and the Franciscan tradition he decisively shaped for Ignatius of Loyola. See Cousins, Ewert, “The Franciscan Roots of Ignatian Meditation” in Ignatian Spirituality in a Secular Age, ed. Schner, George (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984), 51–64.Google Scholar

60 Gutiérrez, , We Drink from Our Own Wells, 130.Google Scholar See also, “John of the Cross: A Latin American View,” trans. Nickloff, James B., in Gutiérrez, Gustavo, The Density of the Present: Selected Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999), 137–46.Google Scholar

61 Sobrino, , “Companions of Jesus,” 55 (emphasis added).Google Scholar