La Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ. - book reviews

Christian Century, July 13, 1994 by Frederick Herzog

By Gustavo Gutierrez. Orbis, 682 pp., $34.95.

CUSTAVO GUTIERREZ'S new book might get tucked away with other historical biographies. But that would be a mistake. It is indeed a biography of Bartolome de Las Casas, the early Spanish missionary to the New World who exposed the oppression of the Indians and called for the abolition of Indian slavery. But it is also a book that illumines the wider framework of the theology of conquest that has shaped this hemisphere. The tragedy is that this framework has been obscured for North Americans.

In Righteous Empire, Martin E. Marty claimed that the Native Americans could not be excluded from church history. In A Religious History of the American People, Sidney Ahlstrom expanded that insight to include the natives of Latin America. But we have not yet comprehensively worked through Ahlstrom's statement; "American church history begins on Thursday, 11 October, 1492." We have not made a concerted effort to acknowledge the common history that links North America and South America. After reading Gutierrez's book, every theologian, layperson or pastor has a chance to grasp that history.

This book, which contains over 200 pages of footnotes and bibliography, covers Las Casass life (1484-1566), his conversation partners, his superiors (both secular and ecclesial), his own involvement in exploiting the natives, his attempts to stand up for them and the ramifications of these efforts for the theology of his day. Gutierrez focuses on the wretched of the earth whom European Christian conquistadors sent to death. On virtually every page he compellingly cites the case of at least one slaughtered native--one of the millions of innocent men, women and children killed by the invaders.

Gutierrez points out that the main colonizing nations of Europe were proud of their civilizing and evangelizing influence in the Indies. Only Spain "had the courage to hold a comprehensive debate on the ethics and morality of the European presence in the Indies ... In the other countries of the old world, the right to occupy these lands was regarded as too obvious to be questioned."

How do we reflect theologically once a realization of this inferno sinks in? We have to recognize that there are now two basic models of doing theology: the Constantinian model and the emerging model of the Americas. The model of the "new world" has been around since the days of Columbus. That is the point of the book. That is what Las Casas stands for. Yet have we made use of the model?

Karl Barth, who developed the model of European dogmatic discourse for the middle. of the 20th century, took a stand against the cultural appropriation of the Christian faith. With the same concern Gutierrez develops a model for dogmatics for the Americas at the end of the 20th century. For him, God is present among those who seem most unlikely to be like God: the abandoned and forsaken natives. Hi$ book i3 a doctrinal work concerned with church teaching: how the church ought to think based on the Bible, tradition and an awareness of contemporary culture. Gutierrez develops his argument by focusing on the central figure of the early debate and by reflecting on a harrowing history.

Christians in the North might say: "This is all well and good. But this was long ago and far away--it's none of our concern." North and South America have been kept apart for too long, and know too little of each other. It is time to realize the tradition the North shares with Latin American Catholicism and how this tradition shapes our destiny. Luther and Las Casas were contemporaries. Never have the two been woven together in a synoptic way.

For Gutierrez, Las Casas's approach is deeply "rooted in the Bible." Of course, he drew upon philosophy and natural law as well as church law. But a new system of law was on the horizon when Friar Anton Montesino spoke to a little group of fellow Dominicans on an Advent Sunday in 1510 and denounced the cruel and horrible servitude in which Indians were held and appealed to the law of Christ: "Are you not obligated to love them as you love yourselves?" The result was not a two-kingdom doctrine, with a secular kingdom of natural law on one hand and a church based on the law of love on the other. Instead, the church had a mandate to evangelize and acknowledge the Indians as equals in Christ before God and the world.

FOLLOWING AQUINAS, Las Casas explained the nature of this equality by stressing that while the Indians did not belong to the actual church, they did belong potentially. He went beyond Aquinas in arguing that Christ is also the head of the unbelievers since his grace Works on non-Christians, keeping them away from evil and inclining them to hear and accept the Christian faith.

If Christ is the head of the unbelievers, he is present to the maltreated in the way he is present to the poor of the gospel. It seemed clear to Las Casas that Christ identifies with the martyred Indian; thus any maltreatment of the Indian was maltreatment of Christ himself.