Liberating Eschatology: Reevaluating Early Liberation Theology and Marx’s Critique of Religion

Christ and the Holy Spirit, both in the early Church and throughout the historical development of Christianity, have served to bridge the mysterious divide which exists between God and humanity. In the earliest congregations, and throughout the consequent theological developments of the Church through history, the God-world relationship has taken on a variety of conceptual forms. These are premised and discussed with regard to the meaning and significance of divinity of Jesus, his Messianic function in the world, and the indwelling of humans through the very presence of God in the Holy Spirit. And yet, despite these most basic premises of a Christian worldview which attempt to identify some link between God and the world, there remains an inscrutable legacy of binary and dualistic appraisals of ontology as it concerns the natural and the supernatural, the physical and spiritual, spirit and matter, and so on.

Marx's critique of ideology and his reframing of consciousness on material grounds, identifies a weakness in contemporary expressions of religion and ideology. A more unified vision of the relationship between God and man, or likewise, the participation of man in the divine life of God, plays a foundational role in recasting a Christian response to Marx's ontological critique of religion. Specifically, a reconsideration of the theology of the early Church, offers grounds for a non-dual, ontological understanding of the transcendent (i.e. spirit and matter).¹ Following this, we uncover in the early church a strong witness to the immediate material import predicated by the immanent nature of the kingdom of God. By a reconsideration of the ontological unity in the relationship between God and man, the notion of eschatology, as it may be traditionally conceived within a dualistic framework, takes on a shape consonant with Marxist conceptions of existence as individual in society and world.

This analysis will begin by exploring how early Liberation theology, specifically Gustavo Gutierrez, appropriated Marxist thought in his reconsideration of eschatology and the church's function in the world. Gutierrez recasts traditional theological categories of salvation and the eschaton using immanent, material interpretations of the scriptural message; he writes, in the opening chapters of his A Theology of Liberation, "the rediscovery of the eschatological dimension in theology has also led us to consider the central role of historical praxis." Thusly, he orients social, economic and political liberation directly within the function of the church in the world. In so doing, a theology of liberation concretizes the salvific work of Christ as occurring in and through the church. For Gutierrez then, the church becomes the vehicle for the eschatological manifestation of Christ and God in the world.

However, despite, these responses to Marx in reshaping theology to account for the historic material circumstances of people in the world, liberation theologies lack a properly developed response to Marx's critique of religion: the ontological aspects, ideological implications and the mediating connections between them.² In his criticism in The German Ideology specifically, Marx underscores the basic function of "idealism" as inverting reality by placing man as a subject to what is in essence a predicate of his own experience.³ This, likewise, buttresses ideological subject-formation which fails to account for the reality that ideology itself is developed out of the life-process and material circumstances of an individual. In turn, religion leads both to alienation of man from himself, and the exploitative misuse of dominant ideologies by ruling classes to reconcile people to evil in the world.⁴ Marx develops this critique likewise in the introduction to Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, as well as his response to Bruno Bauer, On the Jewish Question. Theologies of liberation, like that of Gutierrez, are pointed and effective in the way they reconcile the alienating and oppressive tendencies of ideology. What is underdeveloped is the way in which theology can accommodate for Marx's ontological critique of religion. In failing to provide a ontological basis for religion that embraces the historical and materialist orientation of Marxist critique, it is arguable, however, that the ideological improvements are divorced of their efficacy.⁵ Gutierrez, and others like José Miguez Bonino, do point toward the theological bases for ontologically reconciling Christianity with Marxist critique by asserting more unified grounds of existence between God and the world. However, they fail to develop a framework that sufficiently addresses the conceptual necessity of a reworked ontology of humankind.⁶

In the final section of this analysis, we will exegete some excerpts from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans using the lens of Marx's critique of religion. A close reading, in its historic context, can respond to Marx's critique and show, in fact, how his own criticism of religion and ideology are actually preceded by Paul's theology. First, the analysis will show how Paul can be read as a partner in the battle against ideology as a vehicle of alienation. And additionally, it will point to Paul's emphasis on the Spirit as a more precise ontological basis for religion and therefore the foundation for a legitimate appropriation of Marxist critique within Christian theology that is not subject to epistemological or ideological formulations.

It should be emphasized—it is not merely that Christian theology must reshape its identity to make accommodations for Marxist criticism. Nor that theology must "compromise" in an attempt to remain relevant. If either of these are the starting point, then one risks simply proceeding with what is both bad Marxism, and bad Christian theology. Rather, the heuristic for this analysis, simply stated, is that Marx's critique of religion, and vision for a future society were already present in the early church. And it is in this spirit, following an exposition of Paul in concert with Marx's critique of religion, that we will conclude by recapitulating the basic ontological premise of a theology of liberation which reenvisions the immanent nature the eschaton, and the kingdom of God. This non-dual understanding of the transcendence of God stands in consonance with the Messianic role of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the God-world relationship. By amending this insufficiently developed ontology in early Liberation theologies, and building on it with a reinterpretation of Paul's epistles, we find ourselves in a place where theology can adequately dialogue with the Marxist perspective on history.

The goal of this analysis will be to identify a path forward for Christian theology in appropriating Marxist historical materialism: that is, the unified ontological grounds of existence in the divine life of God through the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit. While we intend to identify this ontological basis, what is done here must be followed by more thorough pneumatological development, (e.g. what is the role of the Holy Spirit in history?) that shows how this approach can contribute to both Christian and Marxist thought. In conclusion, we will preface further development, by reframing one particular realm of thought that can be more deeply considered in response to our proposed ontological framework—eschatology. Ultimately, through Gutierrez, Marx and Paul, we discover that the power of the Holy Spirit, in freeing us from the domination of ideology, also liberates us from the alienating power of eschatology itself.