Gustavo Gutiérrez

Life

Gutiérrez was born in Lima, Peru. He is reported to have been bedridden for a long period during his adolescence because of osteomyelitis. He studied medicine at the National University of San Marcos in Lima before deciding to become a priest. He went on to study philosophy and psychology at Louvain in Belgium, and theology in Lyon, France, and in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1959 and returned to Peru, where he ministered in a poor district of Lima and taught at a Catholic university. Later in life he joined the Dominican Order and taught theology at the University of Notre Dame in the United States. He died in Lima in 2024.

Ministry and Work

In 1971 Gutiérrez published A Theology of Liberation (original title Teología de la liberación) in Lima. The book was subsequently translated into many languages. Liberation theology is a theological movement that takes the realities of poverty and oppression as its starting point and seeks to understand biblical salvation as encompassing not only liberation from sin but also liberation from social and historical oppression. Gutiérrez defined theology as "critical reflection on praxis." He emphasized the "preferential option for the poor," the conviction that God has a special care for the poor.

He is reported to have served as a theological adviser at the Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968. Around 1974 he founded the Bartolomé de las Casas Institute in Lima. His other works include We Drink from Our Own Wells, on spirituality, and On Job, a reading of the Book of Job that addresses the suffering of the innocent. In 2003 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.

Influence on the Korean Church

A Theology of Liberation is reported to have been translated into Korean and published by Bundo Publishing in the late 1970s. During the same period, minjung theology took shape in Korea, led chiefly by Protestant theologians. Scholars frequently compare the two theologies, since both do theology from the standpoint of the poor and the oppressed. Nevertheless, the prevailing assessment is that minjung theology developed independently out of Korea's own historical experience.

Progressive denominations and organizations such as the National Council of Churches in Korea and the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea adopted or drew upon the concerns of liberation theology during the period of the democratization movement. Conservative denominations, by contrast, generally viewed liberation theology critically. This criticism is often tied to a view that classifies liberation theology as a branch of liberal theology.

Assessment

Supporters credit Gutiérrez with turning theology's attention to the realities faced by the poor. They also hold that he recovered the social dimension of the kingdom of God.

He also faced criticism. In 1984 the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Joseph Ratzinger, issued the Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation." The instruction warned that some forms of liberation theology uncritically adopted Marxist social analysis. His writings were also examined during the 1980s, but Gutiérrez was never formally condemned. He maintained that his theology was rooted in Scripture and the tradition of the Church, and he refined some of his wording in later revised editions. Many observers hold that his relationship with the Vatican became more favorable during the pontificate of Pope Francis.

Criticism has also come from Protestant evangelicals. They contend that liberation theology narrows salvation to political and social liberation and weakens the emphasis on personal sin and conversion.