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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
There was a widespread assumption in the 1980s that liberation theology had come of age. The early passionate manifestos of those such as Hugo Assmann had been replaced by a deluge of substantial theological works which entered the theological debate bearing the wounds of oppression and injustice in Latin America, and also the clear marks of the European academy. Liberation theology remained highly controversial, but it had to be taken seriously. It suggested a new way of doing theology which was at one and the same time a recovery of older understandings of the nature of theology and rooted in Latin American reality. It plundered and turned on their original possessors the weapons of post-Enlightenment and post-Vatican II theologising, and it was viewed with deep suspicion by most of the authorities in church and state. The movement found resonances and allies in many countries of the Third World, and spread from systematics into biblical studies, ethics and pastoral theology.
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9 Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’, 1984, and Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation, 1986. Also see the documents in Hennelly, parts V and VI.
10 Centesimus Annus, London, Catholic Truth Society, 1991, p. 19.Google Scholar
11 In their very different styles, E. R. Norman (Christianity and World Order, 1979) and Milbank, John (Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Oxford, Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar both dispute the possibility of an equal and productive relationship.
