In the history of Christian theology, there have always been discussions on various issues. Still, they took place within a strictly defined, approved, and regulated dogmatic framework for a long time. The influence of changing socio-cultural circumstances on the formation of theological doctrines remained beyond the limits of research interest. The idea of theology that emerged in the 1960s and 70s as a product of a specific historical and cultural context fundamentally changed the understanding of its essence. The new concept of theology aimed to incorporate a specific socio-cultural context and human experience into its content and was called theological contextualization. This work looks at scientific sources that discuss theology and contextualization in Latin America and aims to give a full-fledged description of contextualization’s impact on theological doctrine in Latin American countries.
Awareness of the contextual nature of theology is a comparatively new phenomenon that has replaced the universalist one. Pears (2009) asserts that the understanding of Christianity as an eternal and unchangeable truth has been characteristic of Catholic and Protestant missionaries in Latin America. However, later there was a shift from the perception of theology as the bearer of universal truth to its understanding as a reflection of local context. The centers of Christian life shifted from the North to the global South – Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where today there are the largest Christian communities in the world.
The need for contextualization within the framework of new approaches in countries outside Western Christendom was dictated by several reasons. Firstly, dissatisfaction with the former Eurocentric understanding of Christianity that prevailed in the theological education in Latin countries during the colonial period (Studying systematic theology). Secondly, the popularity of the historical-critical approach to biblical texts, which is based on the past three hundred years, revealed many contradictions, thereby questioning their authority (Studying systematic theology). Thirdly, in Latin countries, there existed an urgent need to find answers in biblical texts to current problems related to the formation of new independent states and a new identity.
Contextual theology arose in Christian missionary work, which faced the need to change traditional approaches due to the changed socio-political situation in the former colonies, particularly in Latin America. One of the first changes in the missionary approach was analyzed by the Catholic theologian Robert Schreiter (2015) in the book “Constructing Local Theologies.”He emphasized that the traditional approach in theology was no longer able to answer the questions that arose in the course of the collision of universal Christianity and local situations. The problems that occupied the Western church were very far from the problems of people who lived in other socio-cultural contexts (Torrance). A new approach in theology was to reject the application of universal Christianity to any context and shift attention to this context itself to understand what Christianity can bring.
Contextual theology can be interpreted in two ways. In a broad sense, it is an analysis of any theology from the point of view of its dependence on the context in which it originated (Vassiliadis (2017). In a narrow sense, it is a theological response to specific modern social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental problems and situations (Vassiliadis, 2017). One of the most famous advocates of contextual theology, the American Catholic missionary Stephen Bivens (2012), asserted that contextual theology is always carried out as in a dialogue with the past. Contextual theology blends the experience recorded in Scripture with the experience of the present, that is to say, the immediate social and personal circumstances of human life, cultural and religious identity, and the peculiarities of the socio-political situation in a particular country.
If people recognized that Scripture and tradition were evidence of experience, it must also be recognized that contextual theology was similar to what the authors of Scripture and those who formed the tradition did. The main idea of Bivens (2002), expressed in his book “Models of Contextual Theology,” lies in the fact that there is no such phenomenon as ‘theology in general, every theology is contextual, in other words, the contextuality of theology is not optional, but an imperative feature. According to Hiebert (1987), the appearance of Christianity in new places meant that its followers were not brought up in the Jewish Old Testament tradition, Greek philosophy, and Roman civilization. These people were not interested in the metaphysical problem of the essence of God and did not perceive the theories of Western theologians as authoritative. Moreover, the understanding of justice was utterly different in Latin America from the Western one. This circumstance led to a profound paradigm shift in theological thinking related to the emergence of new concepts in other socio-cultural contexts.
The Latin American ‘liberation theory’ arose in the socio-political context of Latin American countries. Barger (2018) states that it marked the beginning of the consideration of traditional theological problems by people in a state of social oppression, mainly the poor and representatives of racial and national minorities. Barger (2018) asserts that these people considered theological dogmas about the essence of God as an expression of Eurocentrism. Moreover, according to her, the ‘white Western European man’ image as a paradigmatic type of person was very far from the actual economic, and socio-political status of many people in Latin countries.
The notion of oppression played a vital part in the formation of theological contextualization. Callahan (2005) interprets oppression as the only key to an adequate understanding of the New Testament message since it was initially addressed to people who had a similar experience. Hoare & van den Toren (2015) state that the principle of Catholic social teaching ‘preferential choice for the poor, which is important for liberation theology, characterizes a special hermeneutic interpretation of Scripture and the practical orientation of theology. According to Barger (2018), liberal theology marked the end of modern attempts to preserve the unproductive myth of the separation of theology. The distinctive feature of ‘liberation theology is the idea that Christian salvation is unattainable without people’s economic, political, social, and ideological liberation. This idea was the result of the reflections of theologians and stemmed from the experience of oppressed people in their struggle with political and economic systems. The theme of liberation expressed both the hope and the purpose of this struggle.
According to the founder of this movement, the Peruvian Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez (2004), the concept of liberation has three different levels: political, historical, and theological. Liberation is primarily a socio-political action that restores social justice and gives people the opportunity to develop a sense of self-confidence (Gutierrez, 2004). From the theological point of view, liberation is freedom from sin and selfishness and restoration of relations with God and other people. Hesselgrave & Rommen (2002) believe that every theology has a political meaning; liberation theology makes this meaning explicit and takes the side of the socially and politically oppressed strata. In other words, it is the ability to transform the universal truth of Christianity about specific circumstances.
Thus, the definition of theology as contextual radically differs from the centuries-old perception of it as a discipline that, being inspired from above, is the bearer of universal truth. The contextual approach to Christian theology implies a fundamental change and perceives theology
as knowledge about God beyond any criticism (McGrath, 2012). Within the contextual approach, knowledge is considered as constantly changing under the influence of changing circumstances. In light of this approach, it can be argued that every theology is contextual, but not everyone is aware of that.
In countries of Latin America, conceptual theology developed as a reaction to socio-political conditions in which people lived, bringing forth the concept of liberation. This concept served to significantly transform the understanding of the biblical truths of Latin Americans. Typical European interpretation of the Bible on South American land has undergone significant changes. Initially seen as a religion that promised salvation to the poor, Christian tradition has managed to find a response to the most acute problems of the South American continent over the centuries. Such social issues as poverty and oppression found their way into religion, changing it from a particularly Western model to a Latin American one. Incorporating these socio-economic challenges into the body of religious doctrines, Christianity has become a religion most revered in the Latin American world.
References
Barger, L. C. (2018). The world comes of age: An intellectual history of liberation theology. Oxford University Press.
Bevans, S.B. (2002) Models of contextual theology. Orbis Books.
Bevans, S.B. (2012) What has contextual theology to offer the church of the twenty-first century? In S.B. Bevans, K. Tahaafe-Williams (Eds.), Contextual theology for the twenty-first century, (pp. 3–17).
Building Systematic Theology: Lesson 1 – What Is Systematic Theology? [Video]. Web.
Gutiérrez, G. (2004). The power of the poor in history. Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Hesselgrave, D.J., Rommen, E. (eds) (2000) Contextualization: Meanings, methods, and models. Pasadena, California. William Carey Library.
Hiebert, P., Critical contextualization, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 11:3 (1987), 104-12.
Hoare, L., van den Toren, B. (2015) Evangelicals and contextual theology: Lessons from missiology for theological reflection”, Practical Theology 8(2): 1–22.
Cahalan, K.A. (2005) Three approaches to practical theology: Theological education, and the church’s ministry, International Journal of Practical Theology 9(1): 64–94.
Marshall, M. Studying Theology and Religion at Oxford [Video]. YouTube. Web.
McGrath, A.E. (2012) Historical theology: An introduction to the history of Christian thought. John Wiley & Sons.
Torrance, A. The Concept of the Person in Orthodox Theology [Video]. YouTube. Web.
Pears A. (2009) Doing contextual theology. Routledge.
Schreiter, R. J. (2015). Constructing local theologies. Orbis Books.
Vassiliadis, P. (2017). The social dimension of the orthodox liturgy: From biblical dynamism to a doxological liturgist. Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu, 9(2), 132-153.