Liberation Theologies: The Global Pursuit of Justice.

Jane Kopas has written an engaging book with an arresting angle: that a deep sense of what it means to be linked to a divine creator provides some thick metaphors concerning personal identity. Using a species of the theology of correlation, Kopas thinks through the anthropological and spiritual implications of such terms as the "hidden/revealing God," "creatureliness," "made in the image of God," and "kinship in creation." Her strategy is to juxtapose the biblical doctrine of creation and the person of Jesus Christ to human stories drawn from her own personal experiences and those gleaned from a wide variety of written sources.

Such an exercise is pregnant with possibility as anyone who has ever really thought (as Saint Augustine and Jean Paul Sartre - to cite contrary instances - have done) about what it means to be dependent on and linked to a creator well understands. Kopas provides her reflections in well-written prose with a quite specific audience in mind: an educated lay audience/or a college class who may well believe in God but are not quite sure what kind of God it is they believe in.

From this brief synopsis it should not be thought that Kopas reflects on a narrowly vertical axis (that is, "myself and God"). Like John Paul II, Kopas understands that the full context of the Genesis creation account demands that human beings be seen in the context of place and in the context of community. That allows her to link her human metaphors not only vertically to the Creator but horizontally to both human and natural ecologies of dependence and limits. She understands our interdependence with others, with creation, and with God not by appealing to the faddish tropes of "creation spirituality" but to the more sober realism (she has some good pages on "finitude" and "sin" - no Pollyanna she) of the biblical/theological tradition holistically conceived. The result is a lively and readable book which shows how a serious college teacher and theologically reflective writer can bring forth from the ancient pages of Genesis both old things and new.

Near the conclusion of his book, Alfred T. Hennelly writes that readers may well feel as if they have gone around the world in eighty days. Well, not quite, but this useful vademecum of liberation theologies does survey recent writings produced, inter alia, by Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, Hispanic- and Black-Americans as well as a rapid summary of ecotheologies, world religions, and recent discussions about the uniqueness of Christ. This is a theological world with which Hennelly is quite familiar, and about which, over the years, he has written abundantly.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church suggests that liberation theologies (the plural is appropriate) never existed while neoconservative commentators now assure us that their day is over. It is, however, an incontestable fact that not only have liberation theologies had a shaping influence on the church but the liberationists have framed issues in such a manner that their questions become unavoidable and the methodologies that they favor are, in one way or another, a powerful influence on how theology is now done. The liberation theologians have brought history and experience to the fore of theological reflection.

Hennelly's work is not a constructive theology nor is it even a comprehensive history of liberation theology; it is rather a horizon tour of the main writers, their significant works, the issues that they raise, and the perspectives from which they raise those issues. The last, I think, is the most interesting question. What the liberationists have in common is the desire to reflect theologically from a quite specific and historically circumscribed situation: What does the gospel mean in the Buddhist world of Sri Lanka (A. Pieris)? Is there a way of holding up Christ, the Alpha and Omega, that is true to the cultures of Africa (Benezet Buzo)? How does a Hispanic-American Catholic woman define her place in the light of her culture (Maria Pilar Aquino)?

It was the great insight of Gustavo Gutierrez, the veteran liberation theologian (and one of the most intellectually insightful), to see that theology would be radically different if it were written in the slums of Lima and not in the seminar rooms of Tubingen. One of the reasons why Hennelly could subtitle his work "The Global Pursuit of Justice" is that all these theologians have in common a sense that there are a lot of people out there who do not share in the common goods of the earth. The best of the liberation theologians (Hennelly would do well to chasten some of the overheated rhetoric and special pleading of some of them) resist the temptation to provide solutions to these great problems, but they see it as a fundamental duty to do, in the words of Richard McCormick quoted by Hennelly, what the Christian tradition does best: be "more a value raiser than a problem solver."

By my estimation, there are about five linear feet of liberation theology volumes in my study. What Hennelly has done is give us a roadmap to work our way through the vast outpouring of those writers who think theologically in places as distant (from us) as El Salvador, Korea, the Philippines, Africa, and Sri Lanka. Each chapter of the book has a suggested reading list and discussion questions as well as a good index and bibliography. It is a user-friendly work which should find a useful place in a classroom setting.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.