A Christology of Liberation in an Age of Globalization and Exclusion

Abstract

We live in an age of globalization and exclusion. In light of this reality and context, I argue that a Christology of liberation is a critical resource that enables excluded people to resist, redeem and re-imagine globalization. The reality of globalization and exclusion is the setting and situation in which the Christology developed here takes shape. I critically analyze economic globalization, its neo-liberal ideology and the negative consequences of this type of globalization—economic and social exclusion of the poor and vulnerable. Finally, I reflect on a theological, more specifically, Christological response to this situation drawing on the Christological contributions of Jon Sobrino and Edward Schillebeeckx. Chapter one offers a descriptive and critical account of neo-liberal globalization and exclusion, and analyzes theological responses to this situation. Chapter two turns to the Christology of Jon Sobrino to describe and analyze some of the main tenets of Sobrino’s Christology. I argue that, at the heart of Jon Sobrino’s Christology is the liberating good news of the crucified and risen Jesus. The liberating good news enables people who have suffered de-humanization and have become victims of neo-liberal processes of globalization to resist, redeem, and re-imagine globalization. Chapter three focuses on Edward Schillebeeckx’s Christology. Here, as in chapter two, I offer a descriptive account of some of the main tenets of Schillebeeckx’s Christology. I argue that, according to Schillebeeckx, the story of Jesus, the living one, who in his liberating praxis reveals what it means to be human and what God is like, bears universal relevance, particularly as it relates to human suffering. Indeed the experience of salvation in Jesus empowers and requires believers to engage in a liberating praxis where there is unjust suffering and a peoples’ humanity is threatened. This story and experience enables people who suffer unjustly and whose humanity is threatened by neo-liberal processes of globalization to critique the neo-liberal ideology undergirding these processes and to resist, redeem, and re-imagine globalization.