Witnessing: Prophecy, Politics and Wisdom

by Maria Clara Bingemer (Editor), Peter Casarella (Editor)

Overview

Inspired by the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador, this volume gathers reflection on the meaning and role of Christian witness in the world today. The meaning of witness has always carried special weigh in the examples of martyrs. But as the contributors—both from North and South America--here demonstrate, the implications of witness extend in many ways to pedagogy, the role of narrative in theology, spirituality, intercultural dialogue, and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626980877
Publisher:	Orbis Books
Publication date:	10/10/2014
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.42(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Maria Clara Bingemer is the coauthor of Mary: Mother of God, Mother of the Poor. Peter Casarella has written and coauthored several books including A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology.

Table of Contents

Preface Maria Clara Bingemer Peter Casarella ix

1 Testimony: Mysticism with Open Eyes Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer 1

2 Giving Witness, Receiving Testimony Michael L. Budde 13

Introduction 13

Witness as Both Pitch and Catch 14

The Reception of Witness 17

Some Modest Conclusions: Tow Lessons on Receiving Testimony 26

3 Witnesses as Theological Sources Todd Walatka 30

Karl Barth: Witness as the Center of Existence 31

Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Saints as Theological Resources 36

Jon Sobrino and the Witness of El Salvador 41

A Brief Conclusion 43

4 Hearing the Cries of Crucified Peoples: The Prayerful Witness of Ignacio Ellacuría and James Cone Andrew Prevot 45

The Testimony of Ignacio Ellacuría 50

The Testimony of James Cone 54

Conclusion 58

5 Power?Beauty and Prophetic Resistance: A Postcolonial Approach Agnes M. Brazal 60

Power?Beauty Dialectic 61

Power?Beauty in Folk Catholicism 64

Power?Beauty and Prophetic Resistance in Judith 67

Conclusion 72

6 The Witness of the Church at the Side of the Poor: The Past and Present of a Theology of Liberation Paulo Fernando Carneiro de Andrade 73

The Beginnings of a Theology of Liberation 73

The 1970s and the Development of the Method of a Theology of Liberation 75

The 1980s and the Critical Reception of a Theology of Liberation 78

A Theology of Liberation and the Crisis of Paradigms 80

The Originality and Permanence of the Theology of Liberation 82

7 The Future of Political Theology William T. Cavanaugh 86

Political Theology of Content 87

Political Theology of Form 89

8 Martyria: Witnessing, Interculturality, and Secularism Peter Casarella 99

The Ugly Wound of Beauty and the Cry of the Poor 100

Reinhold Schneider: Forging the Language of Social Conscience in a Secular Age 105

Synthesis 110

9 Challenges and Opportunities for Testimony in a Secularized Culture Joao Batista Libanio, S.J. 112

10 The Symbolic Witnessing of the Tinkunaco Rite: Prophecy, Politics, and Popular Latin American Wisdom Juan Carlos Scannone, S.J. 122

The Tinkunaco: Symbolic Encounter of Two Peoples and Cultures 122

A Political Theology is Symbols 124

Cultural Mestizaje and the Vindication of the Oppressed Mother 126

Ambiguity and the Power of Symbols 128

11 Memory, Mysticism, and Testimony J. Matthew Ashley 130

Introduction 130

Johann Baptist Metz: Anamnestic Reason and the Dialectic of Remembering and Forgetting 131

Gustavo Gutierrez and God's Memory of the Least Ones 137

Conclusion: Theology as Hermeneutic of Hope; Mysticism as a Union of Memories 141

12 New Eyes and a New Home: Oscar Romero's Conversion as a Response to Social Sin Michael E. Lee 144

Oscar Romero's Evolutionary Conversion 146

Oscar Romero's Conversion as Seeing Anew 150

Conversion and Returning Home 154

Conclusion 157

13 The Jesuit Martyrs of 1989 and the Situation of the Church and World Today Jon Sobrino 158

Contributors 169

Index 173