Liberation Theologies | Bibliography | Biblical Roots
Chapter 1: The Biblical Roots of Liberation Theology
The Sources
1. Bloom, Harold. The Book of J. David Rosenberg, trans. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.
Argues that the author of the oldest biblical texts, parts of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, all written c.950 BCE, was a woman, “J,” and that her portrayal of Yahweh is that of a childish male. Beautiful prose and poetry translations that will long be as controversial as the contention that their author reflects the deep wisdom and sensibility of the female who understood both creation and liberation.
2. Carmody, Denise Lardner. Biblical Woman. Contemporary Reflections on Scriptural Texts. New York: Crossroad, 1988.
Discusses a collection of texts from both Old and New Testament with the proposition that a study of these texts can be a liberating experience. The book situates texts both historically and contextually and suggests modern implications. In the Old Testament it deals with legal status, the family, women’s role in Israelite society, the biblical image of the ideal woman, and the feminine aspect of wisdom. In the New Testament it treats such themes as women as disciples of Jesus and a reinterpretation of many key texts long seen through patriarchal eyes.
3. Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. On Earth As It Is in Heaven. Jews, Christians, and Liberation Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
Examines the Jewish prophetic tradition with a close eye toward demonstrating the common heritage of the Judeo-Christian theology of liberation.
4. Croatto, José Severino. Exodus. A Hermeneutics of Freedom. Salvator Attanasio, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
His purpose is to add epistemological considerations to the theology of liberation: how was the kerygma of liberation treated in the Bible? Croatto finds that an emphasis on captivity is an essential antidote to the triumphalism that reemerges in an emphasis on liberation, even though liberation is the key to a new theology. Such a theology, however, must be one of process: the struggle from captivity, rather than one of achieved liberty. Chapters deal with hermeneutics, Exodus, the Prophets, Genesis as a liberation text, and the prophetic in Jesus and in Paul.
5. Dawes, Gilbert. Let My People Go. A Study Old and New; and The Exodus. A Bible Study. Detroit, MI: CFS National Office, 1980.
Dawes is a Methodist minister who analyzes Moses, Leviticus, and Jesus in terms of modern class struggle, giving special emphasis to the cause of liberation in the U.S. today.
6. Gottwald, Norman K., ed. The Bible and Liberation. Political and Social Hermeneutics. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.
This is an exhaustive collection of essays by biblical scholars of the “social scientific” and materialist schools. Includes studies of social class, the role of women, political structures, and the Bible in political, theological, and Marxist interpretations. Contributors include Gottwald, Carlos Mesters, Phyllis Bird, Carol Meyers, E. Schüssler Fiorenza, Arthur McGovern, Juan Luis Segundo, Alfredo Fierro, Sergio Rostagno, and David Lochhead, among others.
7. —. Tribes of Yahweh. A Sociology of the Religion of Liberation Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979.
Essential reading on how religion was formed by, and lived in, the daily life of a people. Exhaustive analysis of the literary and historical sources, and the socioeconomic and political structures of Israel from a structuralist point of view. Gottwald sees Yahwism as a new system of social egalitarianism that brings the themes of liberation to the forefront. A good example of the cultural materialist school, and excellent background.
8. Lochhead, David M. The Liberation of the Bible. Saint Louis, MO: World Student Christian Federation of America, 1979.
A popularizing introduction to the hermeneutics of a materialist interpretation. The author insists that the Bible must be read with an emphasis on its context. Liberation theology is the only vigorous program that relates faith to the context of life.
Lochhead concludes that his book is not a theology of liberation but a prolegomenon to a Canadian theology of liberation that takes into account not the marginalization of the majority of North Americans, but our very affluence. While we free the Bible itself from an ideology that seeks to comfort the wealthy and powerful, we will discover a praxis that allows us to side with the poor and the oppressed.
9. Lohfink, Norbert. Option for the Poor. The Basic Principle of Liberation Theology in the Light of the Bible. Linda M. Maloney, trans. Berkeley, CA: BIBAL Press, 1987.
This brief overview analyzes our understanding of God and the poor both in the ancient Near East and today. Topics include Exodus in its historical context, the Exodus theology of Israel’s birth, and the “Poor of Yahweh” in the New Testament.
10. Moltmann-Wendel, Elisabeth. The Women Around Jesus. John Bowden, trans. London: SCM, 1982.
This is a brief, but excellent, study both of the larger issues involved in the feminist study of the Bible and in a reexamination of several long-neglected or misinterpreted women around Jesus. The author states that the impetus for her work came from a Bible study group conducted by none other than Ernesto Cardenal at Solintiname, where the poet, liberation theologian and minister of education for Nicaragua actually played down the importance of women in the Jesus movement in response to a peasant woman’s discovery of their power and strength.
Moltmann-Wendel introduces her study by noting that such attitudes have long been with the church, and that much of the evidence for the role of women in the Jesus movement and in the early church was deliberately destroyed in the first centuries, especially during the struggle against Gnosticism, in which women played an important role. She then briefly reviews the patriarchal tradition within the church and the role of men in composing and selecting the canon of the Bible. Much of the current struggle to regain insight into women’s role must therefore shed this tradition and exercise a theological imagination that will bring women back in touch with these roots.
Several examples of women who play major parts in the biblical narrative of Jesus and his mission are presented. Each is a fascinating study in itself, rich in thoughtful reflection and information on the rediscovered tradition of veneration that these women enjoyed into the Middle Ages and as late as the Baroque, especially in art. Figures include Martha and Mary, Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, the unknown women who anointed Jesus, the group of women at Jesus’ passion in Mark, the activist mothers in Matthew, and the figure of Joanna in Luke.
11. Pixley, George V. God’s Kingdom. A Guide for Biblical Study. Donald D. Walsh, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
A hermeneutic of the “kingdom” in the New Testament as infused with Old Testament meanings. In contrast to modern interpretations of the “kingdom” as an otherworldly reality, Pixley offers a new reading in light of the option for the poor. Topics include cultic celebrations of Yahweh as king, the relationship between the tribes of Israel and Yahweh’s kingdom, the “kingdom” as an ideology of the Israelite state, as a foundation of the hieratic society of first-century Palestine, and Jesus’ internalization of God’s kingdom to emphasize equality, justice, and abundance, all of which are meanings of liberation.
In the modern world religion has often masked forms of domination. Both Catholic and Protestant churches in the U.S. have used the theology of the kingdom as an ally of imperialism. The new theology must therefore criticize theologies created for a dominating church. Only experience will tell whether the Gospel will indeed be good news for the poor and the oppressed.
12. —. On Exodus. A Liberation Perspective. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
Provides a new translation and a new reading of the book from the perspective of Latin American liberation theology.
13. Schaberg, Jane. The Illegitimacy of Jesus. A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
A close reading of the birth and infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke reveals not a mythologizing of divine miraculous birth, but the reality of illegitimate birth on the margins of society, a marginalization that reveals God’s true nature and intent. Only by recognizing the dignity and power of those on the margins – the world’s outcasts and “sinners” – can we understand the nature of Jesus’ mission and why he is the Son of God.
14. Schillebeeckx, Edward and Bas van Iersel, eds. Jesus Christ and Human Freedom. New York: Herder & Herder, 1974.
Freedom and liberation as essential themes of Christology in essays by Duquoc, Neuner, Lash, Schillebeeckx and others. Includes texts by Gutiérrez, Scannone and Adler.
15. Swidler, Leonard. Biblical Affirmations of Woman. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.
The author’s goal is to search out biblical texts and traditions that bear positive images of women, as opposed to a critique of biblical texts that further the tradition of misogyny. Chapters deal with the feminine imagery of God in the biblical and postbiblical periods, positive and negative portrayals of women in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition, and women in the New Testament and Christian tradition.
16. Tetlow, Elisabeth Meier, Women and Ministry in the New Testament. Called to Serve. 2d ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985.
The present exclusion of women from the ministry is based on a misinterpretation of the role of women in the Jesus movement and in the first century. Tetlow uses the results of current biblical scholarship to examine the social and religious background and the meaning of ministry.
Chapters examine the status of women in Greek, Roman and Jewish societies, the biblical foundations of ministry, female ministry in the New Testament and early church. She concludes that Jesus called both men and women to the ministry and that first-century practice followed him in this. Good bibliography, mostly on ministry.
17. de Villiers, Pieter G. R. Liberation Theology and the Bible. Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1987.
Essays by M. B. G. Motlhabi, F. E. Deist, J. H. Le Roux, and de Villiers on liberation theology, Marxism and the Bible, and readings of Isaiah and the Gospels from a liberation perspective.
18. Walzer, Michael. Exodus and Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
“Revolution” here means “this-worldly redemption, liberation, revolution.” Walzer’s insight into the revolutionary nature of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt in Exodus derives from his experience of the Black civil-rights movement of the 1960s, where Exodus became the central religious text. The text has long been of great potency for liberation theology.
The Politics of the Gospels
19. Bammel, Ernst, and C. F. D. Moule, eds. Jesus and the Politics of His Day. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
A collection of essays that sets out to examine the thesis that Jesus was somehow allied with the Zealot movement of armed resistance to Rome. Topics discussed range from Jesus’ relations to the Zealots, his religious opposition to establishment Judaism, the sources for the trial of Christ, the revolt of 70 CE in Christian tradition, Jesus’ reputation as a brigand in the anti-Christian polemics of the pagans, the question of the tribute coin, Jesus’ claim to bring “no peace but a sword,” the question of the two swords brought by the Apostles just before his arrest, the political charges against Jesus, and his trial. The overriding conclusion of the collection is that Jesus was announcing a new kingdom that went beyond political aims but that inevitably brought him and his followers into conflict with the established order. Well annotated with an excellent index to biblical citations.
20. Belo, Fernando. A Materialist Reading of the Gospel of Mark. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
This is the fundamental text of materialist readings of the Bible. By “materialist” the author does not mean the opposite of “spiritual,” but “structuralist,” the socioeconomic, political and cultural background of the biblical narrative and its text. Belo was self-admittedly heavily influenced by the Parisian structuralists: Althuser, Barthes, Foucault, Bataille, and Deridda, among others.
While his work shares much of the concerns of the liberation theologians of the Third World – that theology must be based on the practical reality of people’s lives – the lives he bases his work on are those of the intellectual elites of the First World. This is biblical theology from the top down, not the bottom up. Despite its insistence that it is a book for “subtle subversions and transformations,” it remains a heady work of the First World that, like its European colonial antecedents, seeks to coopt and control the creations born out of the spiritual and intellectual resources of the Third World.
Belo’s work has opened up discussion of the scriptures to the considerations and concerns of class, power structures, forms of control and liberation; yet it is more important as an intellectual analog to liberation theology than an essential component of the movement.
21. Cardenas Pallares, José. A Poor Man Called Jesus. Reflections on the Gospel of Mark. Robert R. Barr, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986.
This careful textual analysis reveals a Jesus whose life was an option for the poor and the marginalized.
22. Cassidy, Richard J. Jesus, Politics and Society. A Study of Luke's Gospel. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.
While Jesus and the Zealots were on opposite poles of the world of action and ideas, Jesus’ teachings were still powerfully revolutionary, and he was considered dangerous to the Roman Empire. Cassidy examines Luke as a historian, Jesus’ social teachings, his attitudes toward political rulers, his trial and execution, the political situation in Israel at the time, social and economic factors, and the various political factions vying for supremacy within Judaism. Well annotated, excellent bibliography.
23. —, and Philip Scharper, eds. Political Issues in Luke-Acts. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.
Essays on politics and society as they existed in Jesus’ time. This means that the secular notion of politics as divorced from religious issues bears no meaning in this context. The themes discussed therefore include Jesus’ new meaning of peace, the issue of tribute to Caesar, reciprocity in the ancient world, the status of women, reconciliation and forgiveness, martyrdom, the innocence of Jesus, the blame for Jesus’ execution, and an analysis of Luke’s audience.
24. Donders, Joseph G. Reflections on the Gospels. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1980-87.
Open-verse readings from the Gospels for the liturgical calendar, stressing Jesus and those around him as human, poor, suffering, and searching for liberation. Includes:
25. Hope Drawing Near…C Cycle. 1985.
26. Jesus, Heaven and Earth…A Cycle. 1980.
27. The Jesus Option…S Cycle. 1982.
28. Liberation, The Jesus Mode…B-Cycle. 1987.
29. Echegaray, Hugo. The Practice of Jesus. Matthew J. O’Connell, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984.
Focuses on what in the fourteenth century was hotly debated as the question of the “poverty of Christ and the Apostles.” The comparison is apt, for the Franciscans of the Middle Ages were as deeply committed to bringing peace and justice to the oppressed and marginalized of the world as are today’s liberation theologians. Echegaray examines the life of Jesus in the Gospels and his option for the poor and attempts to analyze what poverty – material, social, and spiritual – means and how it can be applied today.
30. Esler, Philip Francis. Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts. The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Topics include the socio-redaction criticism of Luke-Acts and objections to this form of interpretation; an analysis of the community of Luke’s audience and Luke’s method of addressing them, the issue of the Jesus movement as a sectarian one in Judaism and its strategies, the theme of “table fellowship” as a breaking down the walls between Jews and Gentiles among the first Christians, the issue of the Law, the prominence of the Temple in Luke-Acts, and the themes of poor and rich, including Luke’s theology of the poor, which like liberation theology stressed a this-worldly – as well as other-worldly – dimension to salvation. Finally, the author addresses the themes of Rome and the political dimension in Luke-Acts.
31. Fierro, Alfredo Bardaji. The Militant Gospel. An Analysis of Contemporary Political Theologies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books; London: SCM Press, 1977.
Fierro’s work is a direct challenge to that of Belo (20). He reviews the several varieties of contemporary theology that have a social militancy, including, in Chapter 7, forms of liberation theology, from a decidedly European point of view. Extensive bibliography.
32. Hellwig, Monika. Jesus, the Compassion of God. New Perspectives on the Tradition of Christianity. Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1983.
The book’s purpose is to approach Christology and the preaching of Jesus from the questions raised by liberation theology and liberation movements; and soteriology is the key to her Christology. Discusses the tasks of Christology, the process of a constructive Christology, and what the believer takes Christ to be in a pluralistic world. The book also attempts to demonstrate how liberation may be understood in each of the great world religious traditions: detachment and liberation (Buddhism), law and liberation (Judaism and Islam), redemption and liberation (Marxism), nonviolence and salvation (Jesus and Gandhi).
33. Hendrickx, Herman. Peace, Anyone? Biblical Reflections on Peace and Violence. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, 1988.
More than just absence of war, biblical concepts of peace are essentially those of justice and nonviolence on a personal and societal level: they seek to overcome the exploitation of the weaker by the stronger. This book focuses on the axis where peace issues merge with those of justice and thus contains important theoretical background for the theology of liberation.
34. —. Social Justice in the Bible. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, 1985.
Traces the roots of social justice in Mesopotamia and Egypt, in Israelite history, and in the Hebrew Bible through the Torah, Prophets and Wisdom literature. Then traces the concept in the Gospels, Acts and James. Good background.
35. Herzog, Frederick. Liberation Theology. Liberation in the Light of the Fourth Gospel. New York: Seabury, 1972.
Herzog’s task is to attempt a new “black theology” for the white middle class of America based on John’s Gospel, for the fourth Gospel provides a key toward understanding liberation in history. This theology is an option out of the “death of God” that still preoccupies the white middle class and its church, in stark contrast to the God of liberation that gives hope to the wretched of the earth.
Liberal theology, Herzog contends, only reinforces the consumerist focus on the self, a private self that is a luxury of the leisure class. Thus liberal theology’s focus continues to be religion’s adjustment to things as they are. Liberation theology, on the other hand, focuses on Christ, but within time and place.
John’s Gospel, Herzog finds, is the most coherent presentation of Jesus as the liberator of the oppressed. It is a gospel deeply rooted in the Jewish covenant community, not as is so often claimed of John, an otherworldly, mystical gospel but one of prophetic protest against the oppressive forces within religion and society. Herzog thus invites us to a new reading of John, not verse for verse, but according to the major themes of the gospel. These include an analysis of God (John 1:1-18), the Liberator (1:19-7:53), humanity (8:1-12:50), the liberation church and the counterchurch (13:1-17:26), and the liberated method (18:1-21:25).
36. Horsley, Richard A. The Liberation of Christmas. The Infancy Narratives in Social Context. New York: Crossroad, 1989.
This is an excellent example of liberation theology from a First-World perspective, for it stems from the experience and concerns of a largely middle class, North American audience. Horsley begins with the fundamental reality of North American consumerism and waste, especially as it centers around the celebration of Christmas. While the U.S. consumes 70% of the world’s resources annually, 40% of this consumption occurs during the Christmas buying season: thus nearly 30% of the world’s resources are consumed on the North American celebration of “Christmas.”
Horsley then places Christmas squarely in the center of a sentimentalized, yet thoroughly materialist civil religion, where the consumption and ownership of goods is the North American belief system. Like liberation theologians all over the world, Horsley explains that, despite the best efforts of the priests of this civil religion to distinguish economics and politics from religion, Christmas, and the religious significance that it contains, cannot be separated from economics and how we live. It is not a choice of religion or economics, he stresses, but of styles of life that revere or that destroy life and the resources of the planet and its oppressed peoples. His book is, therefore, an attempt to get back to the Biblical meaning of the Christmas and infancy narratives: to set them within a very specific socioeconomic and political context and from this analysis to draw some conclusions for our own situation both in the United States and in areas of the world where U.S. policy results in the misery and oppression of the majority of the people.
Topics include the roles of kingdoms and empires in the birth stories: what did Caesar and Herod represent in forms of tyranny and exploitation, who were the Magi and what was their prophetic and messianic role; who were the Jewish people, what was the condition of their piety, and what does Christ’s birth in a stable, on the margins of society, mean for that society; what were the forms of popular resistance to Rome, the role of women in the infancy narratives and the Jesus movement, the challenges to patriarchy and the power of the priestly class that they represented; who were the shepherds and what was their sociological and theological meaning?
Far from denuding the birth and infancy narratives of their charm and magic, Horsley recaptures it for a society glutted on acquisition. His analyses of the three songs of liberation sung by Mary (the Magnificat), by Zechariah, and by Simeon reveal the power, mystery and joy in liberation brought by Christ’s coming; since Jesus’ birth was an event of political liberation, as this close reading of the texts makes clear.
Horsley concludes with some parallels to the political theology of the seventeenth-century Puritans in New England, and to the peasants of Solintiname in Nicaragua in the 1970s and 80s. The book ends with a review and rejection of the nineteenth century’s attempt to mythologize the birth and infancy narratives by placing them in the tradition of the “hero birth.”
37. Jervell, Jacob. Luke and the People of God. A New Look at Luke-Acts. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press, 1972.
Not seen.
38. Kappen, Sebastian. Jesus and Freedom. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977.
Kappen writes for a young audience in India, using a radical adherence to Jesus’ message to critique contemporary Christian practice. There exists, he contends, a stark contrast between the practice of Jesus and his disciples and that of the institutional church. In chapters 1 and 2 he relates the biblical Jesus to the life of the poor in today’s India; while in chapters 3 to 9 he addresses key biblical texts that prophesy a “new humanity.”
39. Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man. A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989.
This book has been widely acknowledged as one of the most important works of biblical interpretation in recent years. It sets Jesus’ mission firmly within the context of the Roman occupation of Palestine, the oppression of the Jewish people, and the attempts by some of Jesus’ contemporaries to liberate their people by violent means. Employs a variety of critical tools that go beyond traditional biblical studies.
40. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1960.
The classic statement of the position that the individual Christian’s morality and the Gospel call to perfection has nothing to do with the morality of politics or the secular world, and that the Christian message is at heart nonpolitical. A major objection to any definition of theology as active and engaged with social justice.
41. Rensberger, David K. Johannine Faith and Liberating Community. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988.
A refreshing shift away from interpretation of John as the “spiritual” Gospel to a close study of the Johannine community and the socio-political meaning of the text: the conflict with the Synagogue’s attempts to hereticize and marginalize the nascent Christian movement within its midst after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Nicodemus and the blind man are key figures to this interpretation: both in the obvious tension involved in a “Nicodemian” attempt to remain within an orthodox context and in the sense of the rich man’s solidarity with the poor. Rather than being indifferent to the realm of “politics,” John was fully aware of the predicament of the Pharisees and their collaboration with the Roman occupiers and the rival claim of Jesus made during his trial.
Rensberger concludes with a study of John and the roots of liberation theology. John’s Christology, he contends, is not other-worldly but clearly for the oppressed. The love ethic is a strong indication that Jesus shared the sense of alienation and struggle against the world’s powers that marks the lives of the marginalized. Good bibliography.
42. Schottroff, Luise, and Wolfgang Stegemann. Jesus and the Hope of the Poor. Matthew J. O’Connell, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986.
A collection of essays by such biblical materialists as Kuno Füssel, Jürgen Keglen, Dorothee Sölle, and Luise Schottroff. The church’s option for the poor today occasions this rereading of the Gospels and a new understanding of Jesus’ mission. A good example of how the First-World materialist school of theology derives many of the same insights as that of Third-World liberation theologians. Despite these insights, however, such theology is born out of European theology departments, not from the lives of the poor. It is academically “in solidarity” with a radical option but offers little of real substance for a First-World audience except informed sympathy. For an excellent example of how First-World theology might actually lead to liberation of First-World Christians see 36.
43. Schottroff, Willy, and Wolfgang Stegemann, eds. God of the Lowly. Socio-Historical Interpretations of the Bible. Matthew J. O’Connell, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984.
This collection of essays, largely from Europe’s materialist school of biblical studies, emphasizes the context of biblical revelation: the social, economic and political setting of God’s message of liberation and redemption. In this these essays parallel the efforts by liberation theologians to set their God-talk amid the realities of poverty and oppression of today’s Third World, yet without the foundation in existential reality.
Topics include the historical Jesus and his followers among the outcasts of the earth: the tax collectors, prostitutes, beggars, sinners, and ill. A discussion on the historical evolution of the problem of voluntary poverty of Jesus and the disciples strikes the reader as archly academic in light of the quite involuntary poverty of the mass of the world’s population today and the real liberation theology that has risen from it.
44. Stegemann, Wolfgang. The Gospel and the Poor. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
This book results from the author’s interest in developing a “theology of the poor.” It discusses the poor in the Gospels, the meaning of poverty and the poor in that context, the New Testament’s confrontation with poverty, in the Jesus movement, its meaning for Christian discipleship within the Roman Empire and its social ethos, within the developing class structure of the Christian church, and in terms of our own affluence.
45. Topel, L. John. The Way to Peace. Liberation Through the Bible. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979.
An introduction to the biblical roots of the Judeo-Christian response to oppression and injustice. Topics include the roots of liberation theology, just government, law and society, the biblical accounts of the origins of sin, the call to justice, the kingdom, the personal liberation preached by Paul, and Christian responsibility in light of the Sermon on the Mount.
46. Yoder, John. The Politics of Jesus. Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1972.
Concentrates on Jesus’ peace message, but concludes with an interesting discussion on the role of the lamb in the Apocalypse and the place of suffering, sacrifice, and martyrdom in Christian doctrine. Suffering, Yoder contends, is not noble in itself, but is the price that the peacemaker must be willing to pay for following Jesus in the world. Nonviolence is thus a revolutionary position, for it rejects power relationships and even the temptation to take power to relieve oppression. The politics of Jesus are thus the rejection of self-righteousness, even of the nonviolent variety and the acceptance of the powerlessness that the poor and the oppressed live with. Good background for the political stance of liberation theology.
The Epistles and Apocalypse
47. Cassidy, Richard J. Society and Politics in the Acts of the Apostles. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
Based on a new reading that demonstrates how the early church can be an effective model for ethics and social action today. Chapters deal with the portrayal of Jesus and Rome in Luke, the social movement of the Apostles in Jerusalem, the politics of the Jerusalem community, the social status of Paul and his opposition from both non-Romans and the Roman authorities, and Jesus’ disciples and their relationship to Roman rule.
48. Maynard-Reid, Pedrito U. Poverty and Wealth in James. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
The impulse for this study is the new sociological exegesis of the Bible, but one based on a study of the documents. The author examines the social stratification of the first century CE, the poor and the rich in Jewish and Christian literature, James’ attitude toward the rich, the merchant class, the farmers and the poor to demonstrate that James’ Epistles clearly demonstrate an option for the poor. This is a good example of the theological approach to scripture that is absorbing much of the lessons of liberation theology: that real conditions and people must be at the heart of religious talk and life.
49. Russell, Letty M. Imitators of God. A Study Book on Ephesians. United Methodist Church, 1984.
Not seen.
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