Liberation Theology's Philosophical Foundations

The Peruvian Dominican priest Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928-2024) is credited with coining the term "liberation theology" and giving it its first systematic statement in Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas (1971, translated as A Theology of Liberation, 1973), a work that reframed the theological task itself, defining theology not primarily as abstract doctrinal reflection but as "critical reflection on praxis," on the Church's and believers' concrete historical action in and on behalf of the poor. Gutiérrez drew on a specific reading of Exodus as a paradigm of God's historical action liberating an enslaved people from concrete political bondage, and on the Hebrew prophetic tradition's denunciation of social injustice, to argue that authentic Christian salvation could not be reduced to a purely otherworldly, spiritual matter separate from struggles for social, economic, and political liberation in history.