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Advanced Worldview Analysis - Lesson 16

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology is an ideology promoted by people trained in Marxism. True liberation theology delivers people from tyranny, poverty and sin.

Ronald Nash
Advanced Worldview Analysis
Lesson 16
Watching Now
Liberation Theology

The Christian Worldview and Economics
Part 10
 

I.  Liberation Theology, Why Keep the Name?

 

II.  Representatives of Liberation Theology

A.  Gustavo Gutierrez

B.  Rubem Alves

C.  Jose Miguez-Bonino

 

III.  Signs of Change in Liberationist Thought

A.  Hostile criticism from Pope John Paul II

B.  Downfall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union

 

IV.  Historical Overview of Liberation Theology

A.  Claimed to be an indigenous phenomenon.

1.  Most learned Marxism during schooling in Europe

2.  North American understanding comes from bad translations

B.  Establishment of Catholic Centers for Social Investigation

C.  The Cuban Revolution

D.  Establishment of the Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM)

E.  Early development among Latin American Protestants

F.  The rise of guerilla movements in the 1960's

G.  Events in Chile

H.  Maryknoll Order and Orbis Books

I.  Nicaragua and the Sandinistas

J.  Vatican Documents and Papal Encyclicals

 

V.  A Critique of Liberation Theology

A.  Interpretation of Luke 4:16-21

1.  Normal - Jesus releases people from their sin.

2.  Liberationists put a spin on it.

B.  True liberation theology will deliver people from three problems.

1.  Tyranny

2.  Poverty

3.  Sin


Lessons
About
Transcript
  • Discussion of the content of a worldview and the criteria used to evaluate worldviews.

  • Discussion of liberalism and conservatism, and statism and anti-statism.

  • Political systems fall along a continuum between the extremes of anarchism and totalitarianism.

  • People favoring statism support extensive government involvement in education and social programs.

  • From a biblical point of view, statism is evil.

  • Discussion of justice on an individual and corporate level.

  • An economy based on capitalism has much less government involvement than an economy based on socialism.

  • Interventionism is a capitalistic economic system in which government gets involved to allow free exchange within a framework of laws.

  • Discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism.

  • Two basic concepts of economics are limited resources and the choices we make that reflect our values.

  • Marxism is an economic system based on the idea of a class struggle with the goal of a classless society.

  • Article from The Free Market

  • The Bible and Socialism, Moral Defense of Capitalism

  • We are responsible to be a good steward of the wealth God gives us to manage.

  • Some of the root causes of poverty are government, social and religious systems.

  • Liberation theology is an ideology promoted by people trained in Marxism. True liberation theology delivers people from tyranny, poverty and sin.

  • Christians ought to care about poverty and oppression. People who hold differing economic and social theories propose very different approaches and solutions to these problems.

  • Discussion of the differences between evangelical liberals and conservatives.

  • Guest Lecturer, Alejandro Moreno-Morrison discussing the inflation of rights.

  • Guest Lecturer, Alejandro Moreno-Morrison discusses legal positivism.

  • A balanced approach toward environmentalism is needed because it can be a serious threat to individual liberty.

  • Discussion of how people work in a capitalistic system to address environmental concerns.

  • The public school system in the United States has fostered functional illiteracy, cultural illiteracy, and moral/spiritual illiteracy.

  • Discussion of the pros and cons of setting up a voucher system to fund the education system.

In this class, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of advanced worldview analysis, starting with an introduction to the concept of a worldview and its importance. You will explore the various components that make up a worldview, including epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and anthropology. The course delves into analyzing different worldviews such as theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, and existentialism. Finally, you will learn about the role of the church and individual believers in engaging with culture and responding to worldview challenges, as well as strategies for effective communication of your own worldview.

Dr. Ronald Nash
Advanced Worldview Analysis
th710-16
Liberation Theology
Lesson Transcript

 

[00:00:03] Now beyond liberation theology. Let me first point out a little bit from the preface so that you understand what we meant. Actually, I guess it was my title Beyond Liberation Theology. I'm reading here from page seven the preface The Essential Claims of this book or two. The first is a descriptive claim for which we intend to show that there is already ample empirical support that liberation theology in the 1990s is changing so dramatically that many of its proponents will soon believe things utterly contradictory to the earlier movement's most important and prominent beliefs. Now, that has proven to be the case in many countries of Central and South America. I think when I read off the names of many of the major representatives of liberation theology, a lot of these people have turned away violence prone message. Unfortunately, the worst excesses of the old liberation theology are still being taught in North America. They're being taught in liberal colleges and seminaries. We're just talking plain old Marxism, along with an occasional push for violent revolution. But unfortunately, this is also, as I indicated before we started to tape, this is also the case in a lot of presumed evangelical colleges and seminaries that often advertise in well-known Christian publications. I'll tell you, the Marxists are having a heyday on Christian college and Christian seminary campuses. Now, the second claim of this book is a normative claim for which we hope to give ample support that these changes in liberation theology are praiseworthy. Thank God many of these heretics have seen the light. But of course, not the Protestants in North America. Indeed, we go even further. We argue that the older earlier versions of liberation theology were mistaken from the beginning. The shape of the new liberation theology, which is becoming more apparent with every passing day, includes views that never should have been permitted from any viable liberation theology.

 

[00:02:32] So when we title the book Beyond Liberation Theology, what we're saying is in many countries, in many parts of the world, the nature of liberation theology has changed dramatically, and it's changing in a direction that is more supportive of the Bible of capitalism and of other important values. Then I quote from Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel. When Neuhaus wrote this, he was still a Lutheran. He has since become a Roman Catholic. George Weigel is a Catholic. He was then president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Let me quote from the second paragraph on page eight. While library and bookstore shelves groan under the enormous weight of the hundreds of books, most supportive that the liberation movement has begotten, this book is the first. That was true when we wrote it, and it is still true. This book is the first to take seriously the suggestions that liberation ism either has entered its inevitable period of decline or is undergoing a metamorphosis so dramatic that in the end it will be a wholly new movement. Oh man, wouldn't that be great indeed. We, the two authors, have argued for years on behalf of a new liberation theology. And in one footnote, I give the names of other thinkers like Michael Novak, George Weigel and Richard Neuhaus, who have done this. And even there for a while, the present Pope, John Paul. The second was supportive of a kind of a new liberation theology. Then I mention my stuff in a footnote. Boy, there's some good books there. Social justice and the Christian Church. I hear that's a good book. Now, here's an important point. If the old liberation theology ought to change, some have asked, why not also abandon the label? Why not just drop the term liberation theology and find some substitute? Given the heavy burden the term liberation theology carries because of its past connotations, that suggestion has merit.

 

[00:04:47] But here is a good reason to retain the word liberation as later sections of this book will argue, No religion in the history of the world has been more concerned with providing human beings with genuine liberation than Christianity. Why give the Liberals and the Marxist? Why give the enemies the bad guys that good term? Why don't we just change the meaning of the term and save it for the Saints? Beyond Liberation Theology is the first book to challenge the monopoly that earlier versions of liberation ism had on the liberation label. It is the first book to argue explicitly that it is time to move beyond the liberation theology of the past and begin to formulate new and more adequate means of dealing with the human need for liberation from poverty, oppression and sin. Of course, all of the left wing liberal professors who chose to continue to expose their students only to the outmoded, worn false teachings of the old liberation theology. They don't want people to know that there is a new form of liberation theology that's been out there from the beginning. Now, let me just say a brief word about the first three chapters. Which I wrote and which I am quite pleased about. That would be the introduction, the first chapter, the second chapter. That's all we're going to look at here. In the first chapter, I lay out the territory. I explain what we mean by a new liberation theology and why there have been movements away from the earlier the old liberation theology. Then chapter one gives you what, in my opinion, and I am humble here and I am subject to correction. I think this is the clearest, shortest, simple, accessible history of liberation theology that you can find anywhere in print.

 

[00:06:54] There are many more muddled presentations of the history of liberation theology. There are many longer histories of liberation theology. But if you want a capsule account of how we got from point A to the portals of hell. Okay. Chapter one gives you that. And then in chapter three, I give you the essence of my critique of the older liberation theology. On page 19, I give you the names of the major representatives of the earlier liberation theology. Gustavo Gutierrez was the guy whose writings probably did the most to get this liberation thing moving. He was born in Peru in 1928. He was ordained a priest in 1959, and his first book relevant to this was titled Theology of Liberation, published in Spanish in 1971 with an English translation in 1973. This was required reading in college and seminary courses from its first English translation in 73 until, well, probably for 20 years. Now, listen to me. Gutierrez, about ten, 12 years ago backed off of his more revolutionary stance. He really was an advocate of violence and revolution, but he backed off of that. More recently, he has been a professor of theology at the Catholic University in Lima, Peru, where I I've lost track of Gutierrez. I don't think he's published anything, at least in the last five years. Ruben Alves Look at that name and remember two things well, several things about Alves. First of all, he was the first person to really write a book about liberation theology. Most people say Gutierrez did, but all of his book came first. His book was published in 1969. Notice what I say about him. He was a Brazilian Protestant. Now listen to me. He was, I am told, such a great preacher in his early years that he was called the Billy Graham of Brazil.

 

[00:09:20] He then made a mistake and he went to the wrong seminary. He went to a seminary in Brazil that was theologically liberal. I will not name the denomination, but you can see it there on page 19. Oh, shucks. Let's go ahead. And I mean, it was affiliated with the Northern Presbyterian Church or today, what is the Presbyterian Church USA? And they had a fellow who taught there for a couple of years named Richard Schall. Now, I'm giving you here just what I understand. It is possible. Look at me, everybody. That I could be wrong when I talk about this. You know I'm not infallible. Richard Shaw was, I understand, a professor of mission at Princeton Theological Seminary. But when he went to other countries, what he did was what some people would say is not missionary activity. It was altering the political ideology of his students. Now, as I say about Alves, Alves started out as an evangelical, but he lost his convictions after studying at the Presbyterian Seminary in Brazil. Today, Alves regards himself as neither a liberation theologian nor even as a Christian. Liberalism took everything away from him, and today he has nothing. I think he writes poetry. I hope someday I can get a book of his poems in my bathroom. His career is a tragic example of the harm that resulted from early efforts to radicalize idealistic young Latin Christians. They took away his faith, and he has nothing left. Now most of the rest of these guys will be Roman Catholics, with the exception of Jose Miguel's. Benigno. Let's look at him. He's at the bottom of page 21, so that after we mentioned Bonino, then everybody else will be a Roman Catholic. Bonino was born in Argentina in 1924 after studying at the Evangelical theology in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then at Emory University and Union Theological Seminary in the United States.

 

[00:11:47] Bonino became the best known Protestant liberationist in Latin America. He's an ordained Methodist clergyman with important ties to the World Council of Churches. You know, in the early days, he was described as an evangelical. I think that was an exaggeration even then. At the time I wrote the book, he was teaching theology at the Evangelical Institute of Advanced Theological Studies in Buenos Aires. That must be some place right there. All right. Now, some of the other guys, Ugo Asman Born in Brazil in 1933, he really turned against Marxism. His turn began a little bit before this book was written. He began to really experiment with the possibility that capitalism or at least that's what he was saying. Now, again, I haven't read anything by asthma in years. Juan Luis Segundo was born in Uruguay in 1925. Oh, One of the really, really weird people here was Jose Miranda, a mexican, who published books with titles like Marx and the Bible. It's a good thing he put Marx first. That's truth in advertising and communism in the Bible, man. Weird stuff. And a lot of other liberation thought he was too extreme even for them. Then Leonardo Boff John Sabrina, a Spanish Jesuit priest teaching in El Salvador. These were the ringleaders of the older Liberation theology, and almost all of them changed, as we indicate, beginning on page 22 and 23. Now, what changed so many of these people? Number one, real hostile criticism from the Vatican and from John Paul. The second. Now, John Paul, The second is a very old man. There are rumors that he may retire from the papacy, which may be the first time that has happened. He's lost a lot of his intellectual powers and so on. But John Paul is second and I got to give him credit here that during those early years of Liberationist movement, he did not hesitate to go to Latin American countries and point his finger in the face of liberal Marxist priests and tell them that their souls were in danger.

 

[00:14:21] It's been a long time since we've had a pope who would do that. John Paul has his other problems, but at least he played a major role in that. A second thing that helped make the change were the revolutions of 1989 and 1991. Now get the picture. You're a Latin American, Roman Catholic, maybe a priest, maybe not. But you've earned a lot of income from the mid-seventies through the late eighties selling your Marxist books to Gringos in America. And they're eating it up. The royalties are just gigantic. Tremendous. And you really have sold your soul to a socialist gospel. And then all of a sudden, all of these revolutions begin to break up across the face of Europe. The Berlin Wall comes down and all of a sudden you are a supporter of Marxism. You're beginning to say, Hey, the poor people of Europe are rejecting everything that I have been preaching for the last 20 years. The poor people of Europe, they're trying to get out of communism. People aren't rushing to get into East Berlin. They're trying to get out of East Berlin. They're not trying to get into Poland. They're trying to get out of Poland. Could I have been wrong? That did a lot to change thinking. The revolutions of 1989. And then, of course, finally it hit the Soviet Union, which collapsed in September of 1991. And again, as I have said many times, I had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But you were there. I was there and I was preaching liberation theology. I'm reading from page 25. Liberation Theology depended heavily on the kind of Marxist thinking that was repudiated in Tiananmen Square and then in Red Square. The old myth that the world was divided into First World, Second World and Third World no longer can be maintained.

 

[00:16:45] Michael Novak argues the Second World was never more than a heavily armed version of the Third World. Boy, that's good. That's good. They tell you, if you haven't read Michael Novak stuff, start doing it. Novak cites Gorbachev's warning that by the start of the 21st century, the Soviet Union may have become a third world country on a par with nations like India. Wow. Did Gorbachev really say that? Yes. Equally damaging to the reputation and morale of liberation theologians are the crimes of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the evils of Cuba's police state. Hmm. Liberation theologian spent two decades preoccupied with socialist methods that the socialist world itself has now abandoned. What can they possibly offer to the poor of Latin America? Answer Nothing. And they never did offer the poor of Latin America anything in the first place. The collapse of socialism, where it once held the status of a cult religion, has exposed the major flaw of liberation theology. The emperor has no clothes. As an economic idea, Novak writes, Socialism is now widely regarded as a mistake based on bad 19th century economics. Let me give Novak a lot of credit here. He's trained for the priesthood. He then decided he wasn't called to be a priest. He married. He has been a faithful Roman Catholic layman for many years, a major author, a good author. He started out you may not know this. Michael Novak started out as a left winger, a radical left winger, and he saw the light. And he has written some of the most important books that criticize the early liberation theology. Michael Novak told me once that he was speaking in some South American country, I think it was Argentina, but it could have been one of the other countries and a large number of nuns.

 

[00:18:55] Now, what's the American impression of a nun? A group of nuns were picketing Michael Novak's speech. And as they were walking around the perimeter of the auditorium in which he was trying to speak, they were shouting in one accord, a two word bit of profanity. There was a cover of Christianity Today back in the days when I used to read it. I could have said that more strongly than I did. And it's a famous cover, and I bet I can find it. And I bet I assume I can find it in my office. It's a picture of two Central American priests opening boxes that are full of weapons of violence, machine guns, rifles. And one of the priests smiles at the other one and says, Ah, I see where our Christian social material has arrived. A lot of these people entered violent revolutionary movements that killed people in order to foment and further the revolution that they thought would finally end poverty in Latin America. All right. Now. The history of this movement, there are basically two causes of liberation theology in Latin America. But before I mention the first of those causes, you must understand that one of the mantras of that movement was hostility towards anything that smacked of dependency, dependency upon the North, dependency upon the West. Liberation theology and Latin America was portrayed as an indigenous movement. It was presented as the first truly Latin American indigenous movement total independence of any Western or northern influence. Now, what was the major way that liberation theology got to Latin America? The answer is through Europe. These priests and nuns left Latin America and went to Europe in the 1950s, in the sixties, to complete their education, and they were turned into Marxists.

 

[00:21:34] Remember the stuff about dependency. The stuff about the first movement in indigenous to Latin America. They picked it up and brought it back. Now, the second cause was, as I've said, in the case of Ruben Alves and ideologically corrupted and turned Protestants. It was Yankees from the North who brought it down with them. There was nothing indigenous about this. Missionaries. Presbyterian missionaries who had no gospel to preach. So from Europe and from the USA. Boom. That's it. And then, of course, it grows. And then it goes back to the USA, where all kinds of left wing ideologues who've been corrupted through the writings of people that we might talk about next week or influenced by the writings of people like Ronald Sider and so on, can't see the difference between a biblical concern for the poor and a marxist controlled ideology called liberation Theology came back to the USA through their writings, which were written in Spanish and then translated into English, and then, of course, went back to Europe. Now, this was in the fifties, in the sixties, developments in Europe and so on. Now these guys came back from Europe and they began to establish this is page 32. I'm not I'm not going to go into all of this stuff. They began to establish Catholic Centers of Social investigation after returning to Latin America. Many of the aforementioned priests and nuns radicalized by other European studies became involved in founding Catholic Center for Social Investigation, where other Catholic intellectuals and clerics who had not studied in Europe were exposed to the radical ideas that were soon to dominate liberation thought. Okay. Then 1959 Castro in the Cuban Revolution, the revolution that finally won Fidel Castro's forces control of Cuba, also played a role in shaping liberation thought in the decades that followed.

 

[00:24:04] Many Latins believe that Castro's apparent success showed both the desirability and the possibility of similar Marxist revolutions in other Latin nations. You can read the rest now. The first of several acronyms. C long standing for the Conference of Latin American Bishops held its first meeting in 1955. Nothing of great import happened at that first meeting, but it got things going. Until we come to see two which occurred in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968. And boy, by that time the forest fire was raging. Now, I'm not suggesting that the Conference of Latin American Bishops was an agent of liberationist policy, but as we'll see, the bishops disagreed strongly over issues raised by liberation thinkers. There was a whole lot of politics going on here. And then there was finally Si LAMB three in Pueblo, Mexico, in 1979, where the pope attended and issued one of his first warnings and attacks upon those who in the name of Marx, would seek to change the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Now I talk a little bit about then on 34 and 35, the development among Latin American Protestants. And I mentioned Richard Schall and other liberal U.S. theologians who toured Latin American seminaries. Now, how did they get into these Latin American seminaries? Obviously, there were some really shallow people who just said, well, let's get all in here. Let's get Paul Leeman in here and let our students hear about the newest ideas in theological indoctrination. And we've seen what it did for people like Ruben Alves and others. Now, I'm going to let you read most of this, but you need to note that in addition to all of this other stuff, the rise of guerrilla movements in the 1960s, guerrilla movements born in nations like Venezuela, Guatemala and Peru, gave Latin leftists two of their greatest heroes.

 

[00:26:31] During 1965, Camilo Torres, a radicalized priest, called on Christians to embrace revolution and ally themselves with Marxism. A year later, Torrez died in a shootout between Marxist guerrillas and Colombian soldiers. And then Che Guevara, Castro's former lieutenant, was captured and killed by Bolivian soldiers. Both became patron saints. I have somewhere in my office a magazine. I contributed to it. But on the cover, there is a picture that is supposed to be of Jesus, but it is really superimposed upon the face of Che Guevara. And in one hand, if I remember this correctly, Jesus is making the peace sign, and on the other hand he's carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. This is what the guerrillas were teaching. Then we have Salvador Allende's rise to power in Chile in 1970. And I know that for most of you who were in the room, and most of you who are listening, that's ancient history. But, boy, did that play a major role. And then the Maryknoll Order, this is page 42, the Maryknoll Order located in the eastern part of New York State, somewhere up the Hudson River. The official title is the Catholic Warren Missionary Society of America, but its Maryknoll is a less technical term. Listen to Richard Neuhaus as he talks about the Mary Nolan. He said this order was established many years ago to win the world to Christ and his church. Many remember Mary Nolan, chiefly for their heroic mission work in China. But things changed dramatically. The Mary Nolan became practitioners of what is politely called religious pluralism. Listen to Neuhaus again. Aficionados of irony will appreciate that years later, after their courageous and sacrificial work and helping take Christianity to China during the rule of Chairman Mao, the Mary Nolan would be promoting the view that China was the most Christian nation in the world, albeit without Christ and his church carrying Carl Honors notion of anonymous Christians to an extreme.

 

[00:28:50] The Mary Nolan movement was the triumph of the missionary enterprise by fiat. I'll tell you, Newhouse knows how to stick the needle in and twist it. What you do is you simply declare a nation as Christian. There may not be a single Christian in the whole country. But why not just say it is the triumph of the missionary enterprise by fiat? That's like saying Afghanistan is now a Christian nation. Iran is now a Christian nation. It is much more convenient than the heroic but apparently misguided course of mariners of all who gave their lives to winning unbelievers for the gospel one by one. So also in the supposed contest between atheism and Christianity and other points like that, okay, then the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and my friend Umberto Billet, with the Sandinistas playing a prominent but by no means exclusive role. The people of Nicaragua overthrew the hated dictator Anastasio Somoza in July 1979, quickly breaking their promises. The Sandinistas consolidated control and began marching Nicaragua down the road to Marxism. Few Sandinista leaders were Christians in any biblical or traditional sense. I would say none of them were under different circumstances, though the Sandinistas might have treated the Nicaraguan church as Castro treated the church in Cuba. But the situation in Nicaragua differed enough to require other tactics. Peasants and workers with strong religious convictions often have been the strongest opponents of communism. So in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas tried to turn them into proponents of the. Sandinista Marxist agenda and you can read more about that. Then we begin to get a series of Vatican documents. Now, I know that the names of these documents and the names of these movements Si Lam, one, two and three, that this this can all get very trying.

 

[00:30:52] But here is the point about these Vatican documents with the first one. Actually, the first one would be a letter that the pope read at sea LAMB three in Mexico in 1979. But then since and what for the Vatican is a kind of rapid order. 1984, you get something title the instruction on certain aspects of liberation theology. And this is very negative, largely written by Cardinal Ratzinger, about dangers, liberation theology posed to Roman Catholics. That was probably the strongest anti liberationist document. Then a couple of years later, you get something on instruction on Christian freedom and liberation, and it becomes a little more watered down, more say, when the Vatican publishes a document. There have been all kinds of hands going over the document, changing it, watering it down. Then you get Solicitud O'Reilly Socialists in 1988 in which this basic position gets even a little more watered down and so on. Now, I'll let you in on a secret. What Umberto Belli does in the last three chapters of the book is a heroic effort to turn these increasingly watered down Vatican documents into some tough minded truth. And it is a magnificent fine job. But this was going on among Roman Catholic conservatives in the eighties, in the early nineties. They had the task of taking whatever the Vatican produced and tried to make it look as critical of Marxism as they could, even though the Vatican was really continuing to move more and more towards a kind of a neutral position. Now, my critique of liberation theology, I'm going to put the book away. I have turned this into a sermon. I don't preach it much anymore because nobody I don't think anybody cares about liberation theology anymore, even though it is being taught in evangelical schools.

 

[00:33:10] Here's how it goes. Luke Chapter four Jesus Comes to Nazareth. This is my text where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read, and the book of the Prophet Isaiah was handed to him and he opened the book and found the place where the following was written. Quote. This is the text that Jesus read. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And then He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down on the eyes of all in the synagogue where fixed upon him. Now, after I read that text. I point out to people that the normal way for any Bible believer today to understand the texts that Jesus read was that this is a description of his earthly ministry and He has come to deliver people from sin, and the deliverance of people from sin is pictured in Luke Chapter four as giving sight to the blind, as releasing the captives from captivity and so on. But then I point out to my audience that there are many people who have, in the last decade, two decades, three decades, found a totally new way of putting a marxist spin on that text. And that what Jesus was really talking about was not delivering people from sin, but delivering people from political oppression to deliver people from capitalism, to deliver people from economic conservatism. Now you ask who is busy twisting that important text, which really defines the nature of Jesus earthly ministry? Who's doing that? People called liberation theologians.

 

[00:35:31] And then I give a minute or two a little explanation of how these people are people who have become Marxists and one of a variety of ways. And the basic purpose of what I'm now going to call their old liberation theology is to simply replace the gospel with an earthly, a political and a marxist orientation. And that this stuff is being taught in all kinds of liberal colleges and seminaries, but it's also being taught in some of our evangelical institutions. Now, I think it is important for Christians to recognize that just because the word liberation has been taken over by Marxists who sometimes are operating under the guise of being evangelicals, we need to preserve the term liberation. We need to resuscitate that term to return its integrity to it. And the way to do that is by distinguishing between a true liberation theology and a false liberation theology. I think there are three ways in which we can identify a true liberation theology and distinguish it from a false liberation theology. There are three kinds of liberation that ought to concern us. First of all, there is liberation from tyranny. That is political liberation. Now, let me tell you what the false liberation theologians were doing in Central and Southern America. They were cozying up to the likes of people like Fidel Castro. Castro was and remains a hero of these kinds of leftists. What people in Cuba need, what people in other nations of Latin America need when their leaders are totalitarians, is that they need political liberation. But the old liberation theology can't present that because the old liberation theology in its commitment to Marxism was supportive of tyrannical, dictatorial regimes. Besides Castro, their heroes included the Soviet Union and all of the peoples of Eastern Europe that they kept captive.

 

[00:38:06] Their heroes included Mao Tse Tung and the dictators of the People's Republic of China. You are not going to get genuine liberation from the old liberation theology. Now, Christians ought to be concerned about the kinds of governments under which people live. And what we should be seeking. The advocacy of countries that represent democratic capitalism. And I go around and I explain what democratic capitalism would be. These would be the poverty and wealth book and so on. So the contrast, the old liberation theology, which supported the worst dictators of Central and South America and the worst dictators of Eastern Europe and so on. Now, the second kind of liberation that the church should be interested in helping people achieve is liberation from poverty. This is economic liberation. And this would include all of the stuff that I've given you so far. The failed versions of socialism, the equally failed versions of interventionism, and the failure on the part of thousands and thousands of pretenders who do not understand the essence, the nature of true capitalism. Now, the third kind of liberation is liberation from sin. This is spiritual liberation. Now notice what I do here. Can we expect any of the old liberationist to give anybody liberation from sin? First, look at what they do with the Scriptures. They have surrendered to false. But. Liberal ways of interpreting the Bible. They don't believe in sin anymore. They don't believe in a savior. In most cases, the Jesus that they portray is not the dying and rising savior. Who died on the cross and who rose again for justification. What they do instead is turn Jesus into a revolutionary. They give him guns. He's there to help kill people. He's there to help overturn. Maybe nations that should deserve overturning.

 

[00:40:35] But he's not going to produce any kind of movement towards a government by the people. So they don't believe in sin. They don't believe in a savior. This is what the liberals have to offer. And this is what many evangelicals don't talk about in their classes on liberation theology. Now, what do we have in the gospel? We have well, exactly what Jesus said. He came to give a sight to the blind. He came to deliver the captives from prison. He came to deliver us from sin. He came to save us from our sins. This is true liberation. Well, after I do this for however much time I need, I then ask people to turn in their hymn books to that great Wesley hymn. And can it be? Well, that is a little outline of my sermon. I guess the only places in the world where that sermon would be needed would be the college chapels of the evangelical movement. And the seminary chapels of the evangelical movement and whomever you can get. Listen to you in Mexico. Right. So that's basically an outline of my approach to liberation theology. And I hope you're going to read the rest of this book with discernment. Thank you for listening to this lecture. Brought to you by biblical training, dawg. Your prayers and financial support enable us to provide a biblical and theological education that all people around the world can access. Blessings. As you continue to study and live out your faith and as you grow in your relationship with the Lord.