Segundo responds to this climate by addressing these words and their meaning and how a Biblical perspective can be applied to the political world.
Assuming he is successful in completing this hermeneutic circle in his evaluation of the situation in which liberation theology finds itself in Latin America, a summary of the content of each of these stages in Segundo’s case helps to organize our summation of what it is he is doing in his book.
Third, he arrives at a plethora of logical conclusions, new insights, and provocative questions all of which inspire new directions, alternative suggestions for, and aggressive challenges to status quo theologies and assumptions.
In his review of the current context, he notes that the average Christian is bonded to God through an unchanging liturgical calendar with Sunday services and sacraments.
“To the majority of Christians it undoubtedly means that God is more interested in nontemporal things than in solutions for the historical problems that are cropping up.” [4] He hypothesizes “that sacramental theology has been influenced more by unconscious social pressures than by the gospel message itself.” [5] He supports this hypothesis by quoting from Hebrews 10:9-10 and 14, which states that all people have been consecrated for all time.
Segundo sees this as a problem because “The influence of unconscious social factors on the elaboration of Christian eschatology is one of the key points for any liberation theology.” [6] Failing to find a sociology that can understand the current situation adequately and verify its hypothesis with scientific certitudes, Segundo is forced into politics.
The relationship of religion and politics:[7] At this point, Segundo also stops to remind the reader of the statement by Gustavo Gutiérrez that “theology comes after.” To explain this Segundo says, “real-life conduct depends in part on knowledge and appreciation of the context which cannot be deduced from the divine revelation” [8] and “We live and struggle in the midst of decisive contextual conflicts without science being able to provide any ready-made option in advance.
Once a human being has made some general option, science or scholarship can point out some set of instruments that would dovetail with his option.”[9] But even this does not address the value of what we are doing.
The line of argument Segundo has followed so far leads him to an important question that was being asked by various Latin American theologians at the time, “Is it possible to know and recognize the liberation message of the Gospel at all without a prior commitment to liberation?” [11] He concludes the section on politics with an analysis of the Christian Democratic party in Chile and its role in the election of Allende.
Non-empirical choices are made presuming they will lead to satisfaction, giving direction to the means and ends used to attain it.
Rather, through the process of historical encounters with the objective font of absolute truth, bound with a changing context humans came to recognize ideologies.
“While faith certainly is not an ideology, it has sense and meaning only insofar as it serves as the foundation stone for ideology.”[13] To complete the Hermeneutic circle, Segundo surveys all of Christian history, including the early church as chronicled in the gospels.
Karl Barth noted this ambivalence and stated that faith is not a human disposition for winning divine salvation, rather a recognition of the fact that redemption has been granted for all.
[14] He finds himself at the third stage, experiencing theology in a new way, in which he determines that it is impossible for humans to escape the grasp of ideologies and the historical situation.
This poses serious problems for the Church’s traditional claim to possess absolute certitude regarding the doctrines of the faith and interpretation of scripture, but allows Segundo to conclude that humans have the capacity to confront and formulate new questions inside historical situations without “being driven to retreat to the security of past beliefs and the status quo”(125).
The new hermeneutic he finds himself with in the fourth stage is what he labels as the distinction between “mass man” and “minority elite” and the interaction of these social realities with theology.