Bearing the Weight of Salvation - Australian eJournal of Theology

Australian eJournal of Theology 15.1 (February 2010)
Book Review / Bearing the Weight of Salvation
Bearing the Weight of Salvation:
The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría
Michael E. Lee
New York: Crossroad, 2009, 256 pp. ISBN 9780824524210
Lee is Assistant Professor of Systemic Theology at Fordham. Footnote 82 lists other
publications on Ellacuría, such as those by Whitfield (1994), Burke and Lassalle- Klein
(2006), Cardenal (1999) and Sols Lucia (1999), Bearing the Weight of Salvation supplies us
with a substantial soteriology as part of the on-going refinement and contextualisation of
liberation theology.
For us at least in the south-west Pacific, Lee provides us here with a theologian’s reply to
the methodological and hermeneutical attacks (Kloppenburg, Vekemans, Trujillo,
Ratzinger) and the Magisterial warnings about liberation theology (ITC 1977-1984).
Ellacuría’s on-location scholarship describes discipleship within a “larger account of
Christian salvation that is philosophical, christological and ecclesiological in nature” (2).
Up till now, Ellacuría’s work had been overshadowed by the death of Archbishop Romero
and others, and the fierce debates on US foreign policy in El Salvador, but it provides us
with a fresh and richer appreciation of this foremost contextual theology as an intellectual
task with in an ecclesial context.
The facts of his martyrdom solidify his intellectual credentials: In the early hours of
November 16th 1989, Ignacio Ellacuría, a Basque Jesuit and naturalised Salvadoran, along
with five other Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter were dragged from their beds
and assassinated at the UCA University by soldiers of the elite Salvadoran military. Worse,
his brain was desecrated across the university lawn in an act of brutal hatred. It is clear
from this martyrdom that Ellacuría had the Markan salt. As rector and participant in the
formation of Central American Jesuits, Ellacuría’s legacy is enormous. Michael Lee has now
brought to English-speaking readers this substantial presentation of this important
theologian’s scholarship upon liberation theology.
Ellacuría’s central metaphor of the leaven in the bread is most helpful. It images his own
proposal for Latin American theology: “an integrated, threefold (noetic, ethical, praxisoriented) method characterising the human confrontation with reality” (5). In short, it
addresses interrelated questions: Ellacuría realises the weight of reality, how he finds the
point to carry or shoulder the weight of reality, and how he advocates Christians can
respond to and take responsibility for the weight of reality. His recourse to “radical
orthodoxy”, says Lee, offered a critical foil against contemporary criticism of Ellacuría’s
work. To answer the reductionist charge, he finds transcendence “in” the world; to rebuke
the false spiritualisation of the Christian mysteries, he applies Jesus’ death in his “crucified
people”; and finally Ellacuría argues that since world and church cannot be separated, the
perennial call to transformation de! mands the ecclesial dimension of “discipleship.”
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AEJT 15.1 (February 2010)
Book Review / Bearing the Weight of Salvation
Ecclesial praxis embeds salvation history in the Church’s “historicization” of the Reign of
God as a history of salvation.
Overall it is very pleasing to find here not only a one-volume description and analysis of
liberation theologies (with useful overviews of Gutierrez and Boff and others) but more
importantly a nuanced outline of “a liberation of theology” (Segundo’s term). This
comprehensive book explains Ellacuría’s threefold soteriology for bridging hope and
nature. It collates, systematises and justifies this most important development in late
twentieth century theology with substantial academic underpinnings, for example,
Ellacuría locates the Medellín documents as stemming from Vatican II. Lee minimises the
Spanish to present a readable and yet intensely compelling and faithful rendering of the
intricate and complicated issues both justifying and attacking liberation ! theology. His five
substantial chapters show Ellacuría locating liberation theologies within the general and
traditional language and concepts of systematic theology. In particular for example,
Ellacuría’s identification of “the poor” clarifies that they are not a socio-economic subset
nor distinguishable in the preferential option, but a symbol of the church itself and its
mission. Lee seamlessly interweaves Ellacuría’s writings within a contemporary
perspective and global framework to great effect. It faithfully renders this modern
martyr’s legacy.
This is a substantial book running to 237 pages, with an Index twelve pages long, and fifty
pages of footnotes. Although beyond the general reader in density and intensity, this book
will be most useful to scholars and students alike. It should be considered for inclusion in
our theology courses.
Reviewer: Dr Gregory Smith, author of “Images of Salvation: A study in theology, poetry and
rhetoric” (doctoral dissertation at Australian Catholic University), teaches in Brisbane and at
The Broken Bay Institute in NSW.
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