How does one goes on “traditioning” the hopes of the people who struggle, survive, and at times thrive, in spite of ongoing threats to their survival? Given that those with privileges and those without them all share a social world constructed through the unequal distribution of power and resources, how do we tackle the challenge of traditioning not in the name of the least of these, but with them, and do so with an openness to being questioned? More importantly, how do we turn attuned hearing, perceptive sight, and nimble imagination to the task of learning from and being challenged by the “least of these,” the poor of the earth—poor and long suffering by the creation of unequal social arrangements legitimized by abuses of power—economical, political, education, and religious? In Idol & Grace: On Traditioning and Subversive Hope, Orlando Espín puts forward a compelling answer to such questions. In what follows, I attempt not to summarize in a nutshell the argument of a work filled with insights about the theological task, challenges to taken for granted assumptions of received bodies of knowledge and traditions, admonitions to live emboldened by the powerful message of an executed Galilean peasant, Jesus, and an ethics fueled by the hope for a more compassionate and justice-filled mañana. As philosopher Hilary Putnam once put it, “Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs in one.”

The argument Espín puts forward in this lucid text, the work of a powerful and vital theological imagination, a masterful teacher comfortable in multiple bodies of knowledge at the height of his craft, prompts us to take with all seriousness that it is not what we may claim or believe doctrinally that bears witness to good news of the executed Galilean peasant, but the things about which our lives bear witness. What can explain the power of that news, and the meaning of being a church, is how the subversive hope “that has led them demonstrably to bet their lives together for a world built on compassion, justice, and dignity for all” (132). Idol & Grace, as a poem, deserves to be read, once in silent contemplation, then again aloud as a practice to hear the voice resonating against the body and the filling of the space around us, and read yet again as a eucharistic act of community-making, transforming and empowering. In reading this text, those of us fortunate enough to have shared bread and wine, or un cafecito, with Espín, will hear the voice of a dear mentor, friend, and stellar human being. We hear his passion and laughter through the pages of the text, but more importantly, we understand the seriousness, y el compromiso, with which Espín takes the ways of knowing and expressions of faithfulness of those marginalized. What now is vital is his willingness to dialogue with the marginalized, among the marginalized, and in the languages of the marginalized (127). I pray that my preceding comments be not taken as hyperbolic; this text addresses itself to us in a most subversive grace-act posing the question: Do we dare to take a bet on the living in hope for the living and in so doing be the church?

As meaning-making and sharing creatures, however imperfect, we make attempts to extract the essential from our experiences; the meaningfulness with which we nourish ourselves, and which we hope to pass on as memory. But such essential extractions from our experiences, from our everydayness, are slices of larger webs of significations, utterly human acts, beautiful and complex as they are misshapen by power dynamics and precariously limited. Memories of who we are as individuals and communities are also tricky and risky things to be passed on. They have the capacity to heal as to hurt, to built as they can destroy. And yet, for those daring to bet on the living and to go on filled with hopes, esperanzas for a better tomorrow, acts of interpreting quotidian experiences are cornerstones to saying anything that is meaningful of faith and tradition—whether Christian or not. We recall moments of beauty and pain, like the smell of the flowering rosebush or the prickle of its thorn, as put in the verse of Nancy Morejón, Rosa, “Hablémosle, nuestra es su espina [Rose. “Let’s speak to it, its thorn is ours (43)]. We latch onto experiences, made into memories to make sense of who we are as individuals and community: we celebrate our ways as we often attempt to dominate others. At times, domination opens the door to being haunted by memory.

There are haunting moments in Espín’s Idol & Grace: On Traditioning and Subversive Hope. Haunting in that they let the ghosts of voices repressed through marginalization appear, speak, and challenge idolatrous understandings of faith. Charles Lemert has said that when ghosts appear “they are more than the living. They visit with impunity, by their own pleasure. The living cannot easily shake them off because even the courageous would rather not hear what they have to say” (6). Espín dares to listen to the marginalized and more than listen, to converse with their perspectives; he brings them to the theological feast not as guests but as hosts. My point is not to hint toward a hauntology of tradition in the work of Espín akin to Derrida’s critique of the tradition of Marxists’ critiques of capitalism, or Avery Gordon’s counter-conjuring to Social Theory. But rather to suggest that, similarly to the ways in which ghosts disrupt the ruling organization of social worlds that resulting from the unequal mix of domination, resistance, and survival, and as ghosts touch forces us to come to terms with the living and those who perish under the undue burden of marginalization, Espín’s proposals ask us to revisit, and in so doing disrupt, what we have taken for granted in terms of the meaning(s) of the tradition(s) we hold to be truth, how we arrive at the judgment that they are true, and the ways in which we opt to transmit them. Or, put differently, to challenge “the self-idolatry of many among the ordained, the learned, and the pious” and urge us, whether ordained, learned, or pious, to radical acts of giving primacy to compassion and justice as guiding principles in our particular traditioning of our faith experience (123).

I want to lift one of those moments of Espín’s work that will remain with me above all else: “Even if God did not exist, the transformation of the world into a new reality of compassion, justice, and inclusion remains the most extraordinary, meaningful, and subversive dare to humanity. . . . That a peasant was executed resonates as real daily life in most of the world; it has for more than two millennia. That a peasant dare to dream of a daily world of compassion and justice also resonates as real daily hope in most of the world; it resonates very meaningfully and dangerously” (122). Because I am a religious humanist, an agnostic with Christian sensibilities, I cannot but hear the ethical challenge at my feet. Do I dare to believe, and because I believe, act in ways to be an agent of transformation of the current world into one a bit more compassionate, un poquito más justo, and striving to be more inclusive? Answering this question, if I read Espín correctly, is what is at stake in faithful traditioning, and this answer cannot be spoken from the privileged epistemological, ontological, and methodological voice of the powerful. It resonates from within the cries of the oppressed.

Espín calls us who dare to be faithful the living message of our traditions, to work through the ethical failings of leaving out the vast reservoir of knowledge of those who have been left out of history. He calls us, then, to be savvy interpreters of the contextual cotidiano. Les Back, as Espín, has argued that focusing on the everyday life prompted us to be attentive to what goes on around us, those mundane encounters that may we may pass up was not important. “It also means we have to think about the wider spectrum of life experiences from the despair and social damage to the ordinary triumphs of getting by” (821). For Espín, “the voices and lives of the immense majority of humans who could not write or whose artifacts were not preserved by nature or humankind cannot be left out of history.” More important, and herein lies a subversive ethical direction that urges of to take faith as seriously as our humanity in its possibilities and limitations: “Faithfulness to history and tradition is also faithfulness to the meanings and hope constructed by the victims” (43). And thus, we have to proceed with utmost care heeding the warning that, because we are humans, everything we do is a cultural act; there is no human space outside of culture. But we also have an ethical obligation to work for a better tomorrow with the cultural tools, traditions being one of them, that have been handed down to us and have contributed to shape us, and that we shape and pass on.

As a sociologist, I find that Espín’s proposal to move from tradition to traditioning is akin to Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s argument for the decolonial potentials of theory. That is to say that theory, as tradition, can also be mobilized for humanizing ends. Linda Tuhiwai Smith proposes that theory is important for decolonial struggles, and thus, methodologies need to be decolonized in order to inform theories with liberatory potentials. This should be so because theories contain within them “methods for selecting and arranging, for prioritizing and legitimating what we see and do. Theories enable us to deal with contradictions and uncertainties. Perhaps more significantly, it gives us space to plan, to strategize, to take greater control over our resistances. The language of a theory can also be used as a way of organizing and determining action” (1999, 38). Tuhiwai Smith has also said that “what makes ideas ‘real’ is the system of knowledge, the formations of culture, and the relations of power in which these concepts are located” (1999, 48). In order to do so, however, the theorist needs to be actively self-reflective, and thus, proceed informed by the insights provided by automethodology, another possible way of referring to lo cotidiano.

Sandra Pensoneau-Conway and Satoshi Toyosaki have argued that automethodology involves “knowledge and theory about method about the self . . . knowledge and theory about method by the self and knowledge and theory about method for the self” (385). Because of this, then, “the line between the ethnographic self and the ethnographic other becomes blurred, as the seemingly distant two are merged into (an albeit slippery) one.” In this sense, “the autoethnographic self is a particular kind of full body social actor, constituted, interrogated, revised, and reconstituted within the liminal, intersectional, discursive, and performative space where these multiple layers of ethnographic gazes interact. Autoethnography is a living text which renders a careful understanding of the complexities of cultural identities” (386). Any automethodology, then, aims at taking seriously the realities of the theorists as culturally bounded agents aiming at understanding and responding to the world around them in ways truthful to who they are and their contextualities. Such is also the task of those actively engage in traditioning.

A conclusion signals a closing of, a stop of this discussion; instead, and in the spirit of Espín’s work, in lieu of a last word, I want to say, “Thank you, Orlando, for such a wonderful conversation! I hope to speak with you again soon.”

Orlando Espín’s provocative book Idol and Grace: On Traditioning and Subversive Hope refuses to allow professional ministers or academic theologians to be content with abstract formulations of Christian faith, however intellectually satisfying they may be. Such expressions, as Espín persuasively argues, truly serve Christianity only when they “tradition the hope that Jesus of Nazareth was right regarding the dawn of the reign of God and the God of the Reign” (129). The point of doctrine or theology, Espín argues, is not to reduce the lived faith of Christians to mere acceptance of statements of belief (which Espín rejects as “doctrinification”), but rather to express that faith in such a way that new generations continue to “bet their lives” on the subversive hope of Jesus of Nazareth.

I am interested in briefly exploring here the implications of Espín’s account of Christian traditioning for an emerging ecumenical consensus about the purpose (or mission) of the church. Numerous recent church documents declare that the task of the church is to be a sign and instrument of union with God and unity among humanity (and, as often further specified, with the non-human creation as well). This understanding of the church’s mission, drawn from Orthodox theology, is explicitly stated in the ecclesiological documents of the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et spes. More recently, this idea that the church’s mission is to witness to and work for (or, be a sign and instrument of) the oneness of all in God has been affirmed in documents of the World Council of Churches (especially the recent The Church: Towards a Common Vision) and in numerous other ecumenical and denominational statements.

At a time when the role of Christians in society, and especially the value of a faith community, is unclear to many, this widespread ecumenical agreement has the potential to have broad impact on the life of the church. It behooves us to determine, then, whether this is an appropriate exercise of traditioning as understood by Espín: a statement of faith that will serve Christians in their everyday lives of witness to the hope of Jesus of Nazareth. Or might it instead be a theological fad, perhaps even one that distracts Christians from the truly subversive hope they are called to embody?

In light of Espín’s praxis-oriented approach to traditioning, the first question we should ask of this statement of the church’s mission is: what kind of unity is the church seeking when it serves as an instrument of the unity of all in God? After all, fascism is a form of unity, joining the community in obedience to an authoritarian god-like leader. Global capitalism is another kind of unity, incorporating the whole world into a market-dominated economic system that leaves little room for non-market values and, as Espín astutely notes, increasingly renders “disposable” those people who do not serve the needs of the market (50).

Surely neither fascism nor capitalism represents the unity the church is called to foster. But what do these various church documents mean by unity? Without clarifying what kind of unity the church seeks, and on whose terms, the mission of the church is at best vague, and at worst pernicious in proffering a platitude that can be endorsed for opposing purposes.

Espín provides a first clear direction for defining this unity by pointing out what should be (but is not always) obvious: Jesus of Nazareth is at the center of Christianity and should be the starting point for any theology (1). Given that, as Espín repeatedly reminds us, Jesus bet his life on the subversive hope that God is transforming the world in accord with God’s limitless compassion, it follows that the unity the church aims for, in itself and in society, must be a compassionate, just, and inclusive unity. A church that follows Jesus of Nazareth must then seek to bring together all of humanity in a limitless compassion that is extended especially to the poor, the devalued, and the disposable ones.

Church documents (such as Gaudium et spes) do often affirm that the unity the church seeks is not a bland sameness but rather a universally inclusive unity-in-diversity. Too often today uniformity is mistaken for unity, when in fact uniformity negates unity. Simply put, without difference, there is nothing to unite. As Espín emphasizes, a God who is limitlessly compassionate is a God who values each person as who s/he is in her/his cultural, racial, gendered, and personal particularity. The unity of God’s reign is not served by a church that enforces a hegemonic uniformity, but rather by one that welcomes and celebrates the diversity that individuates people and cultures.

What these church documents do not always clearly communicate, however, is that the unity of God’s reign is thoroughly opposed to the ubiquitous and unjust human power asymmetries that make the world “outright cruel toward most human beings and abusive toward most other living creatures” (94). Christians should bet their lives (as Jesus did) on a God who, as revealed in the crucifixion of Jesus by the unjust powers of his day, calls us to solidarity—to seek our common good—with all of the countless and too often nameless victims of history: babies killed in war or dead from treatable disease or starvation, their devastated parents, the families divided by migration, the trafficked children treated as mere commodities, to mention just a few of the systemic cruelties of our world. Any church that wishes to serve the ultimate unity of all in the God of Jesus must, as Espín’s work clarifies, actively subvert this status quo, seeking instead a unity in which all are joined in a compassionate care extended especially to the most excluded, the most disregarded, the most suffering among us.

The church cannot serve the unity of God’s reign, then, unless it fosters a unity that is subversive of society at its core and not merely at its periphery. A Christianity that embodies the hope of Jesus is not a faith that will merely soften the edges of the current injustices, but one that recognizes and acts against the profound oppression, the denial of equal worth and dignity, that is structured into our social systems and perpetuated by our institutions (especially by the global capitalism that determines so much of contemporary life). Unity in the God of Jesus of Nazareth is not a surface harmony to be created on the basis of a fundamentally abusive and unequal status quo, however “nicely” Christians may treat others. The task of the church, as Espín clarifies, is to challenge foundational cruelty and injustice so that true human unity can be achieved.

This ecclesial, communal hope is thus also and especially a practical hope—a hope that, as Johann Baptist Metz has similarly argued, Christians can truly defend only through their actions. As Espín further emphasizes, an authentic Christian faith is lived as kenosis, the self-giving risk of one’s life through which Christians respond to the revelation that God is giving God’s self for us and for all of the world. Perhaps few would dare to deny this claim, since the command to love God and one another has been so central to Christian faith as passed down (or traditioned) through the centuries. Nevertheless, church doctrines and theology continue to need Espín’s reminder that self-giving love is the dangerous sine qua non of all Christian life and therefore of any adequate Christian theology.

Ignoring (or forgetting) the centrality of this fundamentally practical hope, much of contemporary ecclesiology focuses on debates about the church’s (too often presumable static) nature and structures, rather than on the church’s mission to live its hope. Espín’s theology of traditioning, with its emphasis on Christian faith as a praxis of hope in God’s transformation of the world, restores to its proper primacy the mission of the church to contribute to an inclusive, diverse, and just unity in the world. I believe it follows that ecclesiological debates about the church’s nature and structures are appropriately a secondary stage of traditioning. These are efforts to express (for the benefit of future generations) the historically and culturally conditioned ways that Christians have organized church life to serve the church’s mission by fostering Christian experience of and response to God’s transformative grace.

Espín’s theology of traditioning also makes a significant contribution by reminding us that Christian hope is ultimately eschatological. To be sure, Espín endorses as central to Christianity the belief that God is actively transforming the world now. Christian hope, then, is partially (or proleptically) achievable in history, and so this hope must be an active hope expressed in cooperation with the divine action. Nevertheless, no particular historical project, however much it seems to support inclusion, diversity, and justice, should be treated as the final goal of history, lest it become a present idol (demanding sacrifices!) rather than a future and liberating hope. The fullness of God’s reign will only be realized beyond history; Christians’ ultimate hope is for a perfection of love in a universal community beyond time.

Both the eschatological and the paraxial dimensions of Christianity’s subversive hope are implied in the Catholic emphasis on the church itself as a sacrament (which I would argue is a good example of the theology of the church’s sacramental nature supporting rather than displacing the church’s mission). Since Catholic teaching defines a sacrament as a sign and instrument of God’s transforming grace, the description of the church’s task as to be a sign and instrument of unity in God is clearly intended to convey to Catholics that the church is a sacrament and, indeed, a sacrament of our ultimate union with God. This is obviously an eschatological sacramentality, pointing as it does to our final goal: the consummation of history in God. And, insofar as the church is to witness to and work for greater unity in the world, the church’s task requires the practice of inclusive compassion that Espín has identified as the living of subversive hope.

A sacramental view of the church also further supports Espín’s position that Christians must be engaged in transforming the world at all levels. In sacraments, sign quality and instrumental effectiveness are inseparable: a sacrament is a representation of God’s grace that is so effective that it communicates to the world the grace that it represents. While this underscores the church’s responsibility to embody in its communal life the just and inclusive unity in God, as many political theologians currently emphasize, the church must also work for that greater inclusivity and justice in the broader world. After all, God’s compassion and offer of transforming grace are universal. Any dichotomy between the church as a witnessing community and the church as a socio-political agent in the wider political realm is utterly inadequate to the Catholic understanding of sacrament as both a sign and an instrument of the grace of a God whose love knows no bounds.

However, a sacrament must not become an idol. Sacraments communicate partially but not fully the eschatological goal of graced union with God. Espín aptly observes, “All we can say about the Mystery is necessarily limited, cultural, perspectival, transient, neither definitive nor absolute and for us” (83). The church as sacrament shares in the life of God, but the church is not God and is the church not the fullness of the reign of God on earth. Christians must beware the idolatry that would mistake the sacrament of God’s compassion for the full reality of God or of God’s realm.

As I hope to have suggested here, Espín’s theology of traditioning thus points to potential strengths and weaknesses in the current ecumenical focus on the church’s mission to unify. This may be an appropriate and valuable expression of Christianity, provided the commitment to the inclusive and just reign of a compassionate God is clearly expressed. Any adequate Christian belief, including any statement about the church’s sacramental task, must impart the practical, eschatological, and thoroughly subversive hope of Jesus for a transformed world. Otherwise, even in the name of unity, Christians may replicate power asymmetries, create new idols that deny hope, absolutize the status quo and its sacrifices, and thus betray Jesus of Nazareth’s fully monotheistic and non-idolatrous faith in the active coming of God’s compassionate reign.

Orlando Espín’s Idol and Grace is one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books that I have read in a long time. It is a slender volume (only 132 pages, though followed by 60 pages of notes jam packed with interesting clarifications and asides), but I found myself pausing on nearly every page to ponder Espín’s arguments and my own perspective on the tasks, methods, and content of Catholic theology. Espín offers such a clear, passionate, and definite vision that one is forced to affirm, apply, dissent, or clarify at almost every turn. I am very grateful to be able to write a response. My focus will be on what I took as the book’s central challenges and perspectives for how one should go about doing theology. I will unpack these and then raise a few points of concern on issues where I am fundamentally in sympathy with Espín but where I would like further clarifications.

It is tempting to simply place Idol and Grace within the general movement of Latino/a theology. This would certainly be accurate, if incomplete. Espín is an influential theologian in the movement, and emblematic Latino/a theological themes (for example, the hermeneutical importance of lo cotidiano and social justice) fundamentally shape Idol and Grace. However, Espín’s the book should not be seen as simply a contribution to one “school” of Christian theology. It surely is part of the discussion within Latino/a theology, but it is more than this. It aims (a) to offer an account of how Christian faith undergoes change in history (“traditioning”) that is attentive to cultural, social, political, economic, and other biases inherent to the process of “handing on” the faith and, accordingly, (b) to provide a way forward that preserves Jesus’s message of subversive compassion and that is attentive to the voices of the marginalize majority in the People of God. This is an argument for how every theologian should do theology.

The question of Espín’s book is how to “tradition” Western Catholic Christianity—how to shape the inevitable and ongoing transformation of Christianity—in such a way as to deepen its commitment to justice and break the ties with hegemonic and oppressive systems of thought and power. Every religion undergoes a continual process of traditioning and this process takes place in cultural, social, political, and economic worlds marked by structures of power. In his famous Louvain address, Oscar Romero warns, “By commission or omission, by associating themselves with one or another social group, Christians have always had an influence upon the socio-political makeup of the world in which they lived. The problem is about the ‘how’ of this influence in the socio-political world, whether or not it is in accordance with the faith,”1 Espín affirms this point, but focuses even more intensely on the reverse shaping: how the socio-political makeup of the world necessarily impacts the self-understanding of Christians. Once this is recognized, methodological questions become intrinsically—though not reductionistically—ethical and political.

At the core of the book I found a refreshing humility in the theological task and hopeful confidence in the power of those at the margins to “tradition” Christianity against dehumanizing idolatry. Theological humility is demanded in the face of what I discern as a three-fold limitation placed upon all human speech about God. (1) God’s revelation, as the self-donation of God, can only be understood by humans using human concepts, and this inherently limits the perspicuity of our language as we cannot rationally “master” divine truth. (2) God’s revelation may be above all human constructions, but the human beings who receive revelation are inescapably cultural beings and thus every understanding, interpretation, and definition of revelation are inevitability wrapped in distinct cultural worlds (shaped as they are by structures and biases). (3) Speech about God—in texts, theological treatises, conciliar definitions, liturgical texts, whatever else—can be dangerously overemphasized in comparison to the lived response to God’s compassion in the daily lives of the People of God. Whenever these three limitations are not recognized, our conceptions of God and faith become idolatrous. Espín helpfully quotes Giorgio Agamben twice on this point: “The only true representation is one that also represents its distance from the truth” (61, 81). Or as Espín puts it, “[The] discovery of self-contingency is a sine qua non condition for critiquing our own historical, cultural, universality, thereby avoiding the self-idolatry of our historical, cultural universe” (69).

The way forward for Espín is a dialogical and intercultural sensitivity to the lived faith of the People of God and, in particular, the lived faith of the marginalized who make up the majority of the People of God. Without idealizing the poor or the virtues of popular Catholicism (see pp. 109, 115, and 187, for example), he passionately argues that a resistance to Eurocentrism and other idolatrous conceptions (including a conception of faith that is only attentive to texts, which historically means being attentive to only the literate elite) demands such a dialogical and intercultural perspective: “If western Catholicism claims that the Church is the People of God, and the People of God are factually of and in the Third World, then there can be no legitimate western Catholic ecclesiology that ignores or dismisses the conclusion that the real faith of the Church is the faith of the real People of God” (18, his emphasis). It is in the lived faith of the People of God—in Popular Catholicism (25)—that one encounters most powerfully a subversive hope in the compassion of God. Theology must be responsive to this lived faith, broadening the voices at the theological table and recognizing the inherent power dynamics in every intercultural dialogue (70–71).

There are many points in Idol and Grace that are worthy of further discussion. I found myself pausing often to think about the nature and challenges of intercultural theology, the remaining positive function of doctrine and creeds (particularly the Nicene Creed), and the language of compassion (instead of, for example, mercy) throughout the book. Hopefully some of these themes will come up in other responses or the discussion to follow. Below I raise three questions—with the third being the most extensive/critical.

An Academic or Pastoral Exemplar?

It may be troubling to initially focus on theologians in response to Espín’s book. Much of the volume is a call to stop (a) focusing so exclusively on classical theological texts to the exclusion of other voices and (b) thinking of professional theologians and voices from the elite as the primary forces of traditioning. Nevertheless, the book does make clear demands upon theologians and ecclesiastical leaders. Espín hopes that his work “can help challenge the unethical naïveté of many theologians, philosophers, and social scientists, who continue to assume that their work is about ‘books talking with books’ and thus continue to dismiss (by ignoring) the faith of the real church” (184n83). Historically speaking, it would seem that few theologians have followed the path laid out by Espín. It is also an immensely complex path. For example, an engagement with the lived faith of the marginalized demands an eagerness to learn, but also careful and critical discernment of sin and idolatry within this lived faith. Espín is clear that a turn to lo cotidiano must not devolve into a simplistic romanticization.

Given that much of Idol and Grace is an argument about method how tradition is and should be transformed, I am curious to hear whom Espín would point to as an exemplar of his theological vision. I recognize that this may be a foolish request—there is the whole tradition of Latino/a theology which has adopted key elements of this vision for decades now! Nevertheless, I am always looking for concrete examples to accompany abstract or methodological discussions. My own thoughts turn to Oscar Romero, but I also wonder if Romero embodies too much of a speaking for the oppressed (see the illuminating discussion of the danger of “assistentialism” on pp. 126–27) even as he clearly embodies (at least in my mind) a subversive compassion that endures with the marginalized and resists the hegemonic powers which seek to silence the poor (and concretizes the teachings of Medellín and Puebla to which Espín offers some support [185n89]).

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis

Throughout Idol and Grace Espín confronts what he calls the “doctrinification” of Christianity: the temptation to see doctrine as the central content of Christianity and the measure of faith. Espín is clear throughout that doctrine does have a positive function within the Christian community, but that it is also easily manipulated, particularly when it is seen as absolute. He writes:

The faith of the people of God has no need for doctrinal validation. Consequently, orthodoxy without a foundation and corroboration in demonstrable orthopraxis becomes an idol, because it pretends that correct “mental” assent is more important than being compassionate. Our doctrines must catch up to compassion in order to be useful to Christians, because what is said to help explain revelation cannot then contradict or dispense with the self-revealing God who is compassion, and because no doctrine or sum of doctrines can ever claim to be revelation as Jesus is. (100–101, his emphasis)

Given the emphasis on compassion and right discernment, I wonder if Jon Sobrino’s account of “orthopathy” would be a helpful addition to Espín’s theological categories. Sobrino defines this as “the correct way of letting ourselves be affected by the reality of Christ” 2 as a willingness to see in Jesus what one did not expect to see and to be moved to live as Jesus did. This category would seem to fit well with Espín’s discussion of prayer as “an attitude, a risk, and an openness to the Mystery we call ‘God’” (29).

A More Substantial Concern: The Message of Jesus

Espín provides a strong, detailed account of the nature and purpose of Jesus’s preaching. He summarizes this as follows: “God is transforming this world, in its structures of power, in its structures of ownership, and in its very understandings of what ‘religion’ is, to make this world a different world that reflects the compassionate will of God. . . . Christianity stands or falls on the reasonable hope that God, as Jesus said, is really intervening in this world, transforming it according to God’s compassionate will” (6). The basic ideas in this passage are repeated throughout the book as the core of Jesus’s message and the central content of Christian hope and revelation (see 89–92 and 118, among other places). I am in broad agreement with a vision of the ministry of Jesus as fundamentally oriented by compassion. However, the function, foundation, and formulation of the passage above keep circling uneasily through my mind. For the sake of conversation, I will state my concerns as starkly as possible.

As already noted, a core thesis of Espín’s book is the non-absolute character of all human speech. Non-idolatrous and interculturally-open speech is speech in which “the original claim does not present itself as necessarily applicable or correct or ‘true’ for all possible recipients and in all possible cultural contexts” (65). Espín’s own formulation, therefore, cannot be absolutized in a straightforward sense either—it is human speech and thus culturally, historically, socially, and politically conditioned. He would undoubtedly say the same. Nevertheless, in Idol and Grace the description of the core message of Jesus given above seems to function as a sort of unmeasured measure of true Christianity; I am having difficulty conceiving a substantial—rather than semantic—qualification to the formulation that Espín would accept.3

In terms of the foundation of Espín’s account, he places heavy weight upon historical Jesus scholarship—it is a “non-negotiable condition that the proclaimed Jesus and his message actually reflect the historical Jesus” (176n40)—and his view is that such scholarship affirms his description of Jesus’s core message. The bibliographic notes to the opening of the book convey the impressive level of engagement that grounds Espín’s account of the historical Jesus. Nevertheless, I am left wonder to what extent his account of Jesus’s core message is actually dependent on such scholarship. Is the centrality of subversive compassion dependent on historical-critical verification? A concrete example would be helpful here. A strength of Espín’s portrait is his fidelity to the Jewishness of Jesus. As part of this he recognizes Jesus as an interpreter of Torah:

Not the only one, certainly, but one of the more radical. His understanding of revelation and covenant reflected the reality, needs, and concerns of his fellow Galilean Jewish peasants. The “will of God” seems to have been paramount in Galilean Jewish village contexts in Jesus’ day, a will expressed in Torah, yet misunderstood by those (mostly from the cities) who attempted to doctrinify and codify Torah, reducing it to compliance with ritual and purity requirements and with proper tithing. Jesus proposed a different, radical interpretation of Torah, wherein a compassionate way of life outweighed all other demands and practices. (2)

This account of Jesus’s halakhic views is crucial to Espín’s argument given the recognition that Jesus was Jewish. I should be clear, again, that I am sympathetic to an emphasis on compassion in describing the message of Jesus. But I am also persuaded by the work of John Meier that “the fragmentary nature of the legal teachings of the historical Jesus that have come down to us suggest a further important but negative insight. In Jesus’ halakha (as far as we can know it), one cannot discern any moral or legal ‘system’ containing some organizing principle or center that makes sense of the whole.” 4 Most of Jesus’s halakhic discussions are probably lost to us and two of his most certain views—an absolute prohibition of divorce and oaths—are not connected to the organizing principle of compassion in the texts we have. This is not to say that Christian theologians can’t make such connections or follow Luke in connecting love of neighbor with the Samaritan’s compassionate mercy but this is not the same as claiming that such readings are grounded in the historical Jesus. According to Meier, to the extent something broader can be claimed about Jesus’ view of the totality of the Torah, it would be something like “love of God and the love of neighbor as the first and second commandments of the Torah, superior to all others. Love—of God first and of our neighbor second, in that pointed order—is supreme in the Law.”5 I don’t want to simply pit historical Jesus scholars against each other here: Herzog vs. Meier! Instead, I am more interested in the function of this scholarship for Espín. If Meier is correct, what does this do to Espín’s account of the core of Jesus’s message?

Finally, I would suggest a more substantial revision to Espín’s formulation of Jesus’s core message. Implicit in the quotations above, Espín strongly pushes against an account which sees Jesus focusing on individual salvation or the “salvation of souls” (2, 176). This fits well with Espín’s reading of the resurrection of Jesus as primarily the affirmation that “Jesus was right about God” (God is intervening compassionately in the world) (6). Or as he describes it later, “Christian claims of his resurrection are clearly referring to his having spoken and acted according to the will of God. In other words, God agreed with Jesus regarding the Reign of God and the God of the Reign, and raised him in order to demonstrate that agreement” (89). Christian theology is always in danger of separating or collapsing the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Most pertinent here is the danger of collapsing the significance of the resurrection to merely a divine affirmation of earlier moments—usually either a reduction to his liberating message or his atoning death. Both, I would argue, are incorrect theologically and historically. For example, in line with historical-critical scholarship, it is important to recognize the origination of belief in resurrection in an apocalyptic context as both a protest against oppression and hope for the victims of that oppression. Even if Jesus should be seen as “a martyr, not a victim” (6), the resurrection must still be placed in the context of hope for God’s compassion toward the dead (see 2 and 4 Maccabees in particular). There is always the danger that such hope may lead to an evasion of history and/or an ignorance of the gracious presence of God’s transformative compassion in history, but the opposite danger is a too-narrow vision of divine compassion and solidarity. As Johann Baptist Metz urges, Christian solidarity should be “understood in a strictly universal sense: a solidarity that proves itself not only in relation to the living and to coming generations, but also in relation to the dead.” 6 And in my own view, prayers to and for the dead within popular Catholicism also support such a vision: a hope in God’s compassion toward the dead, a strength that comes from their presence in the community, and a call to live compassionately and as agents of change in the face of suffering and injustice.

Dr. Espin is creative and somewhat original in his approach, suggesting that we refer to “traditioning” as a verb rather than to speak of “tradition” in a historical sense as accustomed within Western Catholicism. He goes to great lengths to emphasize that “tradition” or “traditions” are ideas, doctrines, beliefs, and teachings of the church that were produced within specific contexts. This is all true.

Therefore he suggests it is problematic to use “tradition” to support present day doctrines. Espin views this as problematic for various reasons: (1) the doctrinification of doctrine, which he views as the overlooking of the contextualized constructions of these teachings, and perhaps the most important for Espin is (2) the idolatry infused into such a perspective. Prof. Espin states that: “Traditioning, as process, is the best antidote for the idolatrizing tendencies in the doctrine of a propositional deposit of faith” (13). Espin makes it clear that the theological process or traditioning is how we should consider the creative process of understanding our faith anew as created through very specific lived reality—“Lo Cotidiano.”

In turn, this contextual understanding of the faith is and should be passed down from generation to generation. Espin spends a great deal of time (more than I deem necessary) explaining how “tradition” is really not a static reality, but that all theologizing is contextual and therefore will change with the changing circumstances. In reality, this insight is neither original, creative, or innovative. Basic ethical studies have examined and overanalyzed this dynamic for ages.

Much of what Espin purports in this regard has also been established in Latin American theologies as well as US Latino, and Black theologies of the ’70s and ’80s. The late Dr. Orlando Costas often expounded upon the contextualization of the gospel, going back to his 1974 ground-breaking text on The Church and Its Mission: A Shattering Critique from the Third World. I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Espin’s assertions of the contextualization of theological propositions, however, he seems to be working with static theological foundational beliefs and constructs, which he does not seem to view as also representing contextual theologies or “traditionings.”

For example, he speaks about the reign of God, with a particular nuance of what that construct meant for the marginalized and elites. Espin speaks of God as a mystery and unknowable, as if these were eternal and absolute truths that had not been subjected to the very process of traditioning. He seems to suggest that his understanding or interpretation of Jesus’ ministry and person was not itself a contextualized understanding from a specific historical moment. Weren’t the writings and teachings of the New Testament itself also part of the traditioning process? If so, how do we tradition the very notion of the reign of God? After all, basic exegetical studies and leading biblical scholars have identified the very term as having a definite political and historical rootage and usage. Espin suggests that “subversive hope” is a fundamental permanent thread in Christian belief. Was not the notion of subversive hope, or simply hope, a specifically contextual response (reframing) traditioned by the early disciples to the crucifixion of Jesus?

It seems to me that there have always been several “traditions” operating simultaneously one with another. However, Espin does not suggest how we are to choose which tradition should be identified as subject to traditioning, and subsequently analyzed through this lens. How is it possible to even think about God as mysterious and unknowable outside of a specific and nuanced concrete historical, cultural, and political context? This is a bit problematic to ignore, yet Espin bypasses the very presuppositions with which he claims to be proposing and offering analytical insight. Espin seems to be acutely aware of these complexities as he states: “No single individual or group of individuals can any longer pretend that a truly ‘general,’. . . ‘worldwide’ or even ‘intercultural’ approach to traditioning (and/or to the contents traditioned) can be valid beyond the always limited cultural contexts and perspectives within which it was proposed. Thus I also make no claims in this regard” (xvi). However, knowledge of an epistemological problem does not provide a solution nor should it allow us to move forward as if it has been resolved.

For the past few decades, I have paid close attention to the intensified work and growing contributions of Postcolonial Studies and Criticism. Some of my work has focused on the value and liberational impact of these weapons of intellectual warfare. If we have learned anything at all regarding this often cryptic and even disparate myriad of interdisciplinary tools of analysis, it is that the very notion of absolutes is up for grabs. At times the argument has gone off the charts and serves to undermine even any semblance of sanity or conversation, but Espin’s point is well taken: social location and ideological formation cannot be ignored and swept under the rug. Even the very words of Jesus that the New Testament witnesses claim are his, are a product of a “traditioning” process.

My suspicion is that Espin’s own “traditioning” has gotten the best of his helpful and thought-provoking analysis. As a Protestant/Evangelical scholar with Pentecostal roots, I am rather sensitive to the overemphasis on “tradition” as in the Roman Catholic experience. In Protestant/Evangelical and Pentecostal communions, while tradition cannot be ignored, the fact remains that most of our churches and professionals still take rather seriously, and front-load, the place of Holy Scripture and the Word of God. The latter is what theoretically places into check the tradition, and not vice versa. However, as many who are on the inside can readily admit, this is not always practiced.

In the Roman Catholic experience, the Vatican speaks authoritatively from within the tradition, not necessarily seeking its declarative basis or magisterial guidance from Scripture. This is not to say that the Pope is unbiblical. The point is that Espin might be working from his own “traditioning,” and failing to consciously recognize that the very notion of “mystery” and the “unknowable” has come out of a particular tradition, cultural context, and historical grounding. There is no mystery without something that we know or assume even before we approach the text, the tradition or the question. Rudolf Bultmann was quite frontal about the “preunderstanding” with which we operate, and Karl Mannheim used the German term Seinsgebundenheit to suggest that all (not just some) our understanding, analysis, and conversations are rooted in a given ideological, cultural, and historical mooring.

While the contribution of Espin is helpful in the conversation regarding “tradition,” I would submit that we need to push the discussion harder and further to include the very notions of God’s reign, and God’s mystery as also part of the “traditioning” process, regardless of orthodox gatekeepers, and more fundamentalist authorities that might find this uncomfortable or even threatening. It was the Latin American liberationist thinker and writer Juan Luis Segundo that pushed this matter to the extent that he challenged Liberation Theology to consider that, at the core of its usefulness and power, is the question of hermeneutics and methodology. During a time when “absolutes” are thrown around with such frequency and intensity, Segundo’s claim that a “hermeneutics of suspicion” might just be the liberating grace for doing theology is more significant and appropriate than ever.

I would invite an open conversation to consider the parameters and various facets of this most important and timely discussion. Dr. Espin has revitalized a fertile course of study and reflection. Let us now continue this work with all intensity and productivity