McCall's CV

McCall CS621 TEC PGS 22-32

McCall CS621 TEC PGS 22-32

  • Hispanic Theology is fundamentally contextual.
  • The Hispanic Understanding of “who God is” has been influenced by their language, culture, history, socioeconomic status, religious traditions, and their faith experiences.
  • General Principles for Hispanic Theologies:
    • Committed to engaging in the praxis of liberation.
    • Committed to honoring the ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious diversity within the Hispanic community of faith.
    • Committed to the presaervation of a communal theology.
  • Thus, Hispanic Theologies are essentially an ecumenical dialogue between Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal faiths (hence the book name TEC).
  • Hispanic theologians maitain that the connection between being hispanic and poor is not merely coincidental, but rather a product of oppression.
  • So then, poor Hispanics are such not because of their cultural or moral failure.
  • Hispanic theologians assert that full participation has cost the current 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation hispanics their cultural identity, and that burden is too much to bear, and the price too high.
  • Justo Gonzalez, in Manana, asserts that our current conception of “god”, being imported mainly from Greek philosophy, one which possesses immutability, impassability, and timelessness, is an idol that merely maintains the status quo.
  • Gonzalez maintains that our God is not static, and defies definitive statements of conception, and instead is a god that is defined only in relation to creation and to people.
  • So then, Gonzalez concludes that our theologies must flow only from (“basis”) the incarnation of God in Christ.
  • Hispanic theologies critique the traditional view of God through the lense of oppression (but I ask you if this is not sort of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater?).
  • Hispanic Understanding of the Trinity:
  • Gonzalez argues that the difficulty attempting to understand the Trinity lies in the attempt to reconcile and absolute, immutable God who cannot therefore relate with the mutable creation, with the God of Scripture who loves and acts in history (I do not see this difficulty, as explained by Gonzalez, because any posit to the contrary makes God into a less than omnipotent entity, but merely an omnicompetent responder to humanity instead, which is thoroughly unbiblical, when read expansively).
  • Gonzalez posits that a correct understanding of the Trinity necessarily has socioeconomic consequences, and uses numerous 4th century scholars to make the claim that the acclamation of private property and the accumalation of wealth is contrary to the doctrine of God (I wonder what kind of vehicle he drives?).
  • Tertullian (4th century?), himself multicultural (prob. African), asserts that since the Trinity is best described as “one substance, three persons”, the Trinity is also a doctrine regarding a God who life is based upon sharing.
  • Gregory of Nazianzus states that the Trinity is an interpenetration of three persons that constitutes a dialogue that supports both diversity and unity, or the diversity in the unity.
  • So then, God is a God who lives as three, whose essence is sharing— sharing both love and power.
  • Furthermore, the thrust of Hispanic conceptions of God insist that this understanding of the Trinity is not something to comprehend, but an example to imitate
  • Sharing Love and Power:
  • The sharing Love of the Trinity is inextricably connected with the sharing of Power in the Trinity, and this model should be emulated by humans.
  • Aida Besancon Spencer, in Beyond the Curse, argues that the creation story imprats to us God’s intention of shared power and shared responsibilty within the sexes.
  • As a result of the Fall, Spencer further posits, man has subordinated woman.
  • Gonzalez, in commenting on the story of Adam and Eve, stipulates that “man is not complete by himself” (WAIT. I am not complete without a woman? HELLO? Whatever!— I guess Paul was wrong. Celibacy should be commended by the church, not demanded (RC), and never condemned as “incomplete”).
  • Power is neither something to be grasped, nor something to be shunned.
  • Author conjects that the failure to uphold the responsibility of stewardship by Adam and Eve resulted in disparate power, domination, and inequality in wealth dispersion.
  • Doctrine of God Revealed by Creation
  • That “God is love” is the basis for Hispanic theologies of Creation.
  • “As the living, loving, Creator God, God’s role in creation is dynamic and ongoing, not indifferent, static, or occassional” (I wonder if this author is an Open Theist?).
  • A Jew from Galilee, living under Roman rule, Jesus was at minimum part of a cultural and linguistic mestizaje.
  • Elizondo stipulates that Jesus reveals a “universalizing love”, which in effect is a new mestizaje in which all things are conjunctve (i.e. inclusive).
  • Gonzalez states that “one should not suppose that God was Creator only and has relinquished that role in favor of Sustainer” (I wonder if Gonzalez is a Open Theist?).
  • The doctrine of creation is foremost a statement about present reality and present responsibility.
  • Future Development Trends Suggested by Author:
  • That Feminie faces and theologies of God be developed and promoted (WAIT a minute, God challeged many status quos in the revealed Scripture, and if He wanted to be known as “Mother God”, He would have told us!).
  • Christians should develop an economy of the Trinity, one that has implications to our current system of power and love distribution in our communities and society at large.