Published in: Cultural Encounters 3/2 (2007), 9-25 Leonardo Boff – a Protestant Catholic Rudolf von Sinner * I have been asked by the editor of a volume on Leonardo Boff’s thinking, and by Boff himself, to reflect on the relations of his thinking with Protestant theology, which I accepted with great honour and pleasure.1 In this way I can show my thankfulness for the great learning that Boff’s theology has granted me, and I can also try to go deeper into it from a Protestant Evangelical perspective, more precisely from an Evangelical-Lutheran perspective. This is because it is in the Evangelical-Lutheran tradition that I carry out my ministry today. 2 Another reason is that Boff treasured Luther’s contribution in a special way as is evident in the following quote: “He [ Luther] is one of the fathers of the modern emancipatory spirit and one of the doctors Christianity has in common. In him there is undeniably a liberating aura and a courage for protesting that relates directly to the Latin American theology of liberation.”3 In the title I called Leonardo Boff a “protestant Catholic” in the sense of being a theologian with a very broad vision, “catholic”, in the broadest meaning possible, truly cosmic. At the same time he has shown himself to be “protestant” in the sense of confronting, with courage, the ecclesiastical power and the dogmatic “steam roller” so to speak, of some influential theologians so as to elaborate his theology based on the Gospel and on the challenges of the concrete context. It is, *
Rudolf von Sinner, from Switzerland, was ordained in the Swiss Reformed Church (1994) and obtained his doctorate in Theology from the University of Basel/Switzerland (2001). After working during two years for the Ecumenical Coordination of Service (CESE) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, he was installed as professor in the chair of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialog at the Escola Superior de Teologia, in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and admitted into the ministry of the The Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB). The original version of this text was published as “Leonardo Boff – um católico protestante”, in Estudos Teológicos 46/1, 2006, 152-173. Heartfelt thanks go to Marie Ann Wangen Krahn and Allan Krahn for providing the translation. Quotes not available to us in English were translated by Marie from the Portuguese. 1 See my doctoral dissertation Reden vom dreieinigen Gott in Brasilien un Indien: Grundzüge einer ökumenischen Hermeneutik im Dialog mit Leonardo Boff und Raimon Panikkar (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 59-195; also “Ecumenical Hermeneutics for a Plural Christianity: Reflections on Contextuality and Catholicity” Bangalore Theological Forum 34, 2, 2002, 89-115 (available online on http://www.religion-online.org/ showarticle.asp?title=2455 since May, 2003). 2 It is remarkable that, in the last 20 years, a variety of works have been published by Protestant authors, many of them Lutheran: Luís Marcos Sander, Jesus, o libertador: a cristologia da libertação de Leonardo Boff [1983] (São Leopoldo: Sinodal, 1986); Kjell Nordstokke, Council and Context in Leonardo Boff’s Ecclesiology: The Rebirth of the Church among the Poor [1990] (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996); Rudolf von Sinner, Der dreieinige Gott als Gemeinschaft: Beobachtungen an Leonardo Boffs sozialer Trinitätslehre [1993] (unpublished Thesis for the Licentiate in Theology, University of Basel: Faculty of Theology, 1994); Silfredo Bernardo Dalferth, Die Zweireichelehre Martin Luthers im Dialog mit der Befreiungstheologie Leonardo Boffs: ein ökumenischer Beitrag zum Verhältnis von christlichem Glauben und gesellschaftlicher Verantwortung (Frankfurt a. Main: Lang, 1996); Euler Renato Westphal, O Deus cristão: Um estudo sobre a teologia trinitária de Leonardo Boff [1997] (São Leopoldo: Sinodal, 2003); Valério Guilherme Schaper, A experiência de Deus como transparência do mundo: o pensar sacramental em Leonardo Boff entre história e cosmologia (unpublished doctoral dissertation in Theology; São Leopoldo: Escola Superior de Teologia, 1998); Claus Schwambach, Rechtfertigungsgeschehen und Befreiungsprozess: die Eschatologien vom Martin Luther und Leonardo Boff im kritischen Gespräch [2001] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). There is still the study by Baptist theologian Antonio Carlos de Melo Magalhães, Christologie und Nachfolge: Eine systematisch-ökumenische Untersuchung zur Befreiungschristologie bei Leonardo Boff und Jon Sobrino (Ammersbek: Verlag an der Lottbek, 1991). These works of major academic depth are those I currently know of in German and Portuguese. 3 In his preface to the book by Walter Altmann, Lutero e Libertação. Releitura de Lutero em perspectiva latinoamericana (São Paulo: Ática, 1994), 7 [English translation: Luther and Liberation, a Latin American Perspective, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2000, without Boff’s preface]; cf. also the chapter: Lutero e a libertação dos oprimidos, recently reedited in: Leonardo Boff, Ética e eco-espiritualidade (Campinas: Versus Editora, 2003), 132-147. There, Boff highlights three elements that he believes to be very important in Protestantism: the Protestant principle (Paul Tillich), always critical of idols and the sacred power; the recovery of the liberating potential of the Gospel and the faith that puts works of liberation into motion, being that God is the one who takes the initiative; ibid., 146f.