THE WAY OF JESUS: SOCIAL ETHICS IN PADILLA’S CHRISTOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF MISSIOLOGY
Introduction
The history of Christianity in Latin America, along with the historical and social contexts in which it developed, has given rise to the need for both reassessment and further development of Christian theology among Latin American Christians. The early Christianization of Latin America and later Protestant influence were generally unmindful of Latin American concerns and tended to promote a focus upon Christian theology that was specifically developed to address Western concerns. As Latin Americans have become aware of this, many have undertaken the theological task for the purpose of developing Christian theology to address their specific concerns. One such theologian is C. René Padilla. Padilla is an evangelical scholar from Ecuador who was educated at Wheaton College Graduate School.[1] He then went on to do his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester where he did his dissertation under F. F. Bruce.[2], [3] Concerned with sociological and economical issues in Latin America and dissatisfied with liberation theology, Padilla has sought to develop an evangelical theology regarding these issues.[4] In his efforts to address missiological concerns and in response to Docetic tendencies among Latin American Christians, Padilla has developed a theology of missions grounded in the example of Jesus.[5] This essay will seek to investigate the development of Padilla’s Christological conception in missiology through an examination of both the historical and social contexts, and Padilla’s theological influences and methodology. The essay will conclude with an evaluation in which Padilla’s theological contribution will be assessed and some an unanswered questions will be raised.
The Historical and Social Context of Latin American Christology
The Christianization of Latin America began with the arrival of the first Spaniards in the late fifteenth century. As Christopher Columbus sailed west seeking a shorter route to India, he came with the agenda of spreading Catholic Christianity and European culture to the people they were to encounter.[6] This not only included religious beliefs and practice, but an agenda of colonialization, along with all of the social, political, and economic ramifications that were entailed in the establishment of Spanish colonies. The result of this undertaking was the colonialization and a syncretistic blend of Spanish Catholicism with the tribal religions to which the indigenous peoples held.[7]
It is important to note that with colonialism came significant exploitation. Land was seized by colonialists and the native peoples were subjected to forced labor under the hands of oppressors. It is significant that this endeavor of colonization was supported by the papacy who sought to establish Catholicism and perpetuate Catholic interests along with the interests of the Spanish monarchy.
Over the coming centuries, Latin America underwent a multitude of changes. Around the time of the French Revolution (1789-1794), there came a move for ecclesiastical independence. Many church leaders, perhaps fueled by a desire power and encouraged by the French and American revolutions, aligned to gain independence from the papacy.[8]
In addition to this development came the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment played a significant role in bringing about its own revolution to Latin American thought and culture. The individualistic notions bolstered by the autonomous epistemology of the modern era gave an unprecedented occasion to question the divine authority purportedly held by the Spanish Crown.[9] In this way, the Enlightenment helped to spawn a kind of political liberalism in which individuals could come to question those whose authority and leadership was formerly viewed as incontestable.[10]
This new political liberalism also provided an open door for protestant missions from the United States that came about during the nineteenth century.[11] Although Protestant Christianity did not really begin to take hold until the middle of the twentieth century, many liberal Latin American political leaders saw Protestantism as a means by which to diminish papal authority.[12] This enabled protestant missionaries to work with a level of protection and support from some of the Latin American sources. [13]
The Development of Latin American Christology
As the early church was developing during the early post-apostolic era, a perspective known as Docetism became a viewpoint that was held among several significant groups.[14] Docetism refers to the failure to acknowledge Christ’s humanity. When the church was yet in its early stages of development, Docetists included those who held that Christ’s divinity was antithetical to the notion of suffering.[15] In addition, there were some Docetic Gnostics who held that all flesh was evil and that Christ could not, therefore, have taken on human flesh.[16] And although there are significant differences, by the early twentieth century, a similar understanding of Christ had arisen among many Latin American Christians.
The Docetism of Latin American can be traced partially to early Protestant missions. Early protestant missionaries in Latin America tended to present a Christ who was primarily concerned with individual salvation.[17] It was in this manner that the message of Jesus came to be presented not so much as a means by which adherents could find salvation from the difficulties of earthly life, but rather as something related mainly to one’s eternal destiny. This resulted in a dichotomy between the earthly and the spiritual realms. This in turn led to the development of a Latin American Christology which was largely soteriological. Bonino explains that in this view, “theology is practically swallowed up in Christology, and this in soteriology, and even more, in a salvation which is characterized as individual and subjective experience.”[18] Emilio Nunez, a native from El Salvador, describes the experience first hand. He writes:
The Christ proclaimed to many of us evangelical Christians gave the impression of being confined to the heavenly heights, from which He dealt with each of us as individuals, preparing us for our journey to glory and promising us that He would come back to the world to solve all the problems of humanity. For the present He had nothing to say about social problems; nor should we become interested in them, because our mission was only to rescue the greatest possible number of souls from the sinking boat of the world. That may seem like a caricature, but it is not. At least it is the way in which many of us who came to the evangelical church in the years of the Second World War perceived Christ.[19]It was this emphasis that helped to foster and exacerbate Docetic tendencies amongst Latin American Christians. In his 1933 work, The Other Spanish Christ, John Mackay noted that the understanding of Christ held by Latin American Christians was one in which his humanity was greatly diminished.[20] Concerning Christ, Mackay wrote, “He is regarded as a purely supernatural being, whose humanity being only apparent, has little ethical bearing upon ours. This Docetic Christ died as a victim of human hate, and in order to bestow immortality, that is to say a continuation of the present earthly, fleshly existence.”[21] In light of this observation, Mackay and others sought to undertake the theological task in order to correct what they perceived to be a significant weakness in Latin American Christology.
The Response Docetism in Latin America
As a missionary concerned with the proclamation of the Jesus of the New Testament, Mackay sought to communicate Christ to Latin Americans in his full humanity. This missiological agenda on the part of Mackay was one in which he sought to present Jesus as the Lord of life whose example was to be followed by those who identified themselves with him.[22] Though an examination of the life of Jesus in the Gospels, Mackay sought to bring focus to the story of Jesus during his early ministry in order to foster identification with Jesus in his humanity.
In later years, Justo Gonzalez picked up the torch initiated by Mackay. In response to Docetic tendencies within Latin American Christianity, Gonzalez endeavored to develop a Christology which would serve as a basis for social ethics.[23] Gonzalez began produce this work in the mid to late 60s and early 70s. Historically, these were times of significant civil unrest and activism in Latin America. Furthermore, Latin American Christians found that their Docetic conception of Christ held by many Latin American Christians did not seem to provide a basis for such activism. Thus, following Mackay, Gonzalez began to articulate a Christology that served as the basis for the action of the church. While Mackay brought back Christ in his humanity, Gonzalez attempted to draw from the example of Jesus, as he was portrayed in his humanity, in order to establish a social ethic that could then serve as a basis for Christian social action.
It was also around this same time that the First Latin American Congress of Evangelism met in Bogotá, Colombia. This meeting of Latin American Christians resulted in the production of the Declaration of Bogotá. This declaration underscored the importance of social action on the part of the Christian church. Shaped by thinking like that of Mackay and Gonzalez, social action, it was affirmed, was exemplified in the life of Christ. This Christological basis for the Christian’s social responsibility is stated in the Declaration which says that “the time has come for us Evangelicals to assume our social responsibility on the biblical foundation of our faith and following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ [emphasis mine] to the last consequences.”[24]
All of these things influenced Christians to embrace a manner of life that sought social transformation through Christian action.
Padilla’s Conception of Jesus as the Missiological Example
The social issues of the Latin American context—issues which have roots going back to colonialism and issues which liberation theology seeks to address—have led Padilla to seek answers in the actions of Jesus as he is portrayed in the Gospels.[25] Padilla affirms that the New Testament Gospels are “essentially reliable historical records.”[26] It is for this reason that the story of Christ contained in the gospels is to be the basis for both Christian practice and evangelism.[27] Padilla believes strongly that there is a need to self-consciously move the theological endeavor back to the biblical text.[28] The Scriptures, he believes, have often become somewhat obscured because the strong emphasis by Western Christians on certain theological formulas that had certain historical significance.[29] This is not meant to deny the validity of orthodox theological doctrinal formulas. Rather, Padilla desires to undertake Christian theology in ways that correspond to the concerns of Latin Americans and which may remain overlooked and/or underemphasized because of the focus on theological formulas that have sometimes come to eclipse Scripture itself.
Working within the same context as Mackay and Gonzalez, Padilla has sought to develop a theology of missions based on Jesus as the missiological example. In this respect, Padilla affirms the presupposition of Gonzalez. “If the Christ of faith is the Jesus of history, then it is possible to speak of social ethics for Christian disciples who seek to fashion their lives on God’s purpose of love and justice concretely revealed.”[30] In the same way that Gonzalez had looked to the life of Jesus as the basis for social ethics, so too Padilla looks to his example as a basis for Christian missions. “To be a disciple of Jesus Christ,” writes Padilla, “is to be called by him both to know him and to participate in his mission. He himself is God’s missionary par excellence, and he involves his followers in his mission.”[31]
This, of course, begs the question of what Jesus’ mission was all about. Exactly what example is exemplified by Christ in the Gospels? For Padilla, Jesus’ mission is about the proclamation of the message of the gospel. The content of the gospel is Jesus Christ as Lord.[32] Jesus Christ, he indicates, “is the content as well as the model and the goal for the proclamation of the gospel.”[33]
Consequently, Padilla (along with many other two-thirds world Christians) understands the Western portrayal of Christ as, in many ways, falling short of the person of Christ presented in the New Testament.[34] The Western Christ, Padilla maintains, reflects too much of Western culture and does not provide those in the two-thirds world with a firm foundation for Christian action.[35] The gospel that is preached by American missionaries, he says, has been too westernized. The message that is proclaimed by Western missionaries “bears the marks of ‘the American Way of Life.’”[36] As a case-in-point, some modern Western missionaries have come to embrace new models of missiology of which Padilla has been critical. These new models for missions are result-oriented approaches that tend to focus on outcomes at the expense of the content of the gospel. Instead of focusing on the proclamation of the gospel, missionaries have sought relevance as a means through which to achieve the desired results. Padilla observes that as missiological methods which can bring in the highest number of conversions and which can produce the most bang-for-the-buck are established as primary, the message of the gospel is being reduced to a formula of marketing.[37] Concerning such approaches, Padilla indicates that the issue is one of theology. The central concern is a question of the content of the gospel. “Preachers for whom relevance is the most basic consideration in preaching are frequently mistaken—they fail to see the link between relevance in preaching and faithfulness to the gospel.”[38] Padilla observes:
It is not surprising that at least in Latin America today the evangelist often has to face innumerable prejudices that reflect the identification of Americanism with the gospel in the minds of his listeners. The image of a Christian that has been projected by some forms of United States Christianity is that of a successful businessman who has found the formula for happiness, a formula he wants to share with others freely. The basic problem is that in a market of ‘free consumers’ of religion in which the church has no possibility of maintaining its monopoly on religion, this Christianity has resorted to reducing its message to a minimum in order to make all men want to become Christians.[39]
An Evaluation of Padilla Christology
Padilla’s contribution to Christian theology from a Latin American perspective is to be commended on a number of levels. First, his recognition that the text of Scripture is primary in the formulation of Christian theology is to be greatly celebrated. Some prominent Latin American theologians have embraced theological systems in which there is, either explicitly or implicitly, a low view of Scripture. Padilla, on the other hand, seems to hold a relatively high view of Scripture as he seeks to undertake the theological task. Secondly, Padilla’s effort to undertake Christian theology corresponding to the concerns of Latin Americans is also very commendable. It seems that Christians in the West often view theology as static. The doctrinal formulations that have come to have wide acceptance in the Christian community are viewed as the all-inclusive end product of theology. But such a view neglects the responsibility of the Christian living in the world today to apply Scripture within his or her social context. It seems that Padilla’s recognition of the need to do theology applicable to the concerns of Latin American Christians is the proper response to this often mistaken notion. A third contribution Padilla makes to the theological conversation flows out from this second point, namely his critique of modern methods of missiology promoted in the West. Christians in the West need to hear Padilla’s call to return to the message of the gospel. Although evangelicals in the West may affirm the centrality of Scripture in much the same way that Padilla affirms it, they implicitly deny the authority of the Bible when they seek to establish missiological methodologies independently of the Scriptures. Regrettably, it seems that while the motives of Evangelicals in the West are generally pure, the implications of a result-oriented missiology are unfortunately not well considered.
But while there is much to be extolled in Padilla’s Christological conception of missiology, there seems to be at least one pressing question in Padilla’s work that remains unanswered. The question is this: Should Jesus’ example necessarily serve as the basis for Christian missions in every instance in which Padilla sees it? Certainly, this is something which Padilla seems to presuppose. And one can easily see why Padilla would make such an assumption given his social context. The Docetic tendencies within Latin American have led Christian theologians in Latin America (following Mackay) to seek a Christology grounded more firmly in the humanity of Christ. The way the new emphasis has come to manifest itself is by returning to the story of Jesus in the Gospels. But how do the stories of Jesus in the Gospels apply to our lives? Do the authors present Jesus only as an example to follow? Could Jesus have done one thing while calling us to do something else? Should we always ask, “What would Jesus do?” Or are there times when it might be appropriate to ask, “What would Jesus have me do?” Perhaps Jesus might have healed a person while a follower of Christ living today might be called upon the care for the person in a different way. In accordance with these questions, Gordon Fee suggests that a narrative does not function as prescriptive “unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds that the author intended it to function in this way.”[40] This seems to be reasonable. And so the question is this: Does Padilla sometimes make the descriptive into something prescriptive? Perhaps this is not the case. Nevertheless, this question does seem to be one that needs to be answered.
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Endnotes
[1] Pablo Perez, “Padilla, Carlos Rene,” Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, A. Scott Moreau, et al., eds., (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 718.
[2] Billy Graham Center, Collection 361, T1. Interview of C. Rene Padilla by Paul A. Ericksen on March 12, 1987.
[3] Perez, “Padilla,” 718.
[4] Ibid.
[5] C. Rene Padilla and mark Lau Branson, eds., Conflict and Context: Hermeneutics in the Americas, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 81.
[6] Emilio A. Nunez C., Liberation Theology, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 19.
[7] Ibid., 18-19.
[8] Ibid., 20.
[9] Ibid., 21.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Tim Dowley, ed., Atlas of the Bible and Christianity, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 150.
[12] Nunez, Liberation Theology, 22.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Gerald L. Borchert, “Docetism,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter Elwell, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 349.
[15] Ibid.
[16] H. D. McDonald, “Docetism,” New Dictionary of Theology, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 1988), 201.
[17] Samuel Escobar, Changing Tides: Latin America and World Mission Today, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 2002), 115.
[18] Jose Miguez Bonino, Faces of Latin American Protestantism, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 112.
[19] Nunez, Liberation Theology, 236-37.
[20] John A. Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 110.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Escobar, Changing Tides, 117.
[23] Ibid., 118.
[24] Quoted in William D. Taylor and Emilio A. Nunez, Crisis and Hope in Latin America, (Pasadena: William Carey, 1996), 414.
[25] Escobar, Changing Tides, 122.
[26] Padilla, Conflict and Context, 81.
[27] Ibid..
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid., 87.
[31] Ibid., 89.
[32] Padilla, Mission between the Times, 9.
[33] Ibid., 62.
[34] Rene Padilla, “Christology and Mission in the Two Thirds World,” Sharing Jesus in the Two Thirds World, eds. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, (Bangalore: Partnership in Mission-Asia, 1982), 18.
[35] Padilla, “Christology and Mission,” 18.
[36] Padilla, Mission between the Times, 16.
[37] Ibid., 17.
[38] C. Rene Padilla, “God’s Word and Man’s Myths,” Themelios 3/1 (1977), 3.
[39] Padilla, Mission between the Times, 16.
[40] Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 106.
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