Liberation Theology of the One-Dimensional “Salvation Machine”

In his 1977 book, the Czech theologian Jan Milič Lochman challenges a one-dimensional view of the saving mission of Christianity. “How often have we been offered portraits of the ‘saviour’ and ideas of ‘mission’ which almost completely ignore whole areas of human life […]” (61). The title of Reconciliation and Liberation upsets the Christian religion’s complacent, even apolitical attitude towards and within a society Lochman calls increasingly technocratic.

Bolstering traditional authority is not the message from Jesus Christ. “He does not give his blessing to the traditional order.” (134) Contrary to the sanitized image of him as harmless, “Jesus is no impartial, easy-going, colourless neutral” (134). A shallow form of religious salvation confuses the gospel message:

“with a desire for appeasement, with facile and vain promises, with a spurious peace which avoids conflicts, conceals real tensions, glosses over real injustices.” (107)

Lochman warns against an overly abstract salvation which he calls “alien to the New Testament” (39). To reconcile or set things right requires liberation from an unjust situation. “In the biblical view, reconciliation and liberation are intimately interrelated.” (75) As historical events, reconciliation and liberation evoke an irreducible tension that is both vertical and horizontal. Lochman challenges the “verticalist distortion” of a one-dimensional dogma he names “the planned and the predictable” (14) “salvation machine” (15). The smooth functioning of a sterile machine represents the convenient dogma of automatic saving without changing anything in life.

“In the extreme versions of this doctrine, the concept of salvation was strictly insulated from secular questions. In consequence, whole areas of human life were put out of reach of salvation” (17).

As if below some higher bureaucracy, the basic material needs of human life seem coldly abstracted away. In a strictly spiritual salvation, a fuller life belongs to the indefinite future. The one-dimensional view from an abstract machine overlooks the side of salvation which is historical. “Far from being something essentially mythological or metaphysical,” Lochman asserts a correction he considers the “concrete historicity of salvation.” (52) His effort to historicize balances the purely spiritual aspects with a socio-historical dimension. To reconcile becomes an event within the social world, neither before nor outside of history.

“Salvation therefore has both historical and social dimensions. The socially oppressed are frequently promised to deliverance. In his saving action, God takes up their cause” (37).

The social cause embraced by a theology of liberation poses a serious challenge to any counter-protest from the religious right. Today’s self-styled Christian nationalists trivialize the New Testament because they dismiss its careful awareness of social conflict. Instead, they give it the disparaging label of ‘wokeness.’ Repulsed by mercy, yet charmed by power, Christian nationalists still claim a biblical basis for targeting vulnerable people with violent abuse. A superficial patriotism reflects the level of cognitive dissonance required for identifying with national authorities, rather than those who, like Jesus, face the aggression of established powers of church and state. Contrary to the routine violence of an unjust society, to wake up is a basic requirement for hearing the good news.

“An alert intelligence and activity, a keen awareness of political realities, these are a vital part of the theory — and practice — of salvation.” (42)

Saving from the realities of political oppression, a true salvation is neither private, nor individual, but universal to the most marginal of suffering souls. Like Christ on the cross, marginalized peoples face reactionary condemnation from established social authorities. Lochman stresses the unholy alliance of church and state which united to persecute Christ. “Both sides of the ‘establishment’ of that time, both ‘Church’ and ‘State’ were in fact threatened […]” (134). Far from omnipotent, the ruling classes are embarrassed and incompetent. Any exclusive and aggressive claim to sovereignty conflicts with the paradoxically higher office of a king who is no earthly king.

“This ‘office’ of Jesus is seldom illustrated as vividly and as clearly as it is in the Lukan version of Jesus’ first sermon (Lk. 4:41–21[sic]). This synoptic passage looms large in contemporary ecumenical theology. It is occasionally referred to as ‘the Nazareth Manifesto’!” (59)

Drawing from the Lukan version of Jesus’ first sermon, Lochman reads an inclusive salvation in which “no distress of any kind is excluded” (61). The version of the sermon in Luke stresses the materially poor, instead of the spiritually poor from the version in Matthew. The difference justifies a radical sense of salvation based on social justice. Still, Lochman anticipates a spiritual objection to his materialism regarding the historical message. “The kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed was concerned with freedom and justice, but also and above all with love and grace.” (63)

“Though the Bible speaks consistently of salvation in terms of basic human needs, even material needs, though it never ignores the question of happiness, food, justice and peace and never minimizes the importance of these things for human well-being, and though the question of salvation can never be divorced from human well-being and any such divorce would be an abstract view of salvation quite alien to the psalmist and to the Old Testament as a whole, nevertheless salvation is not to be equated with well-being or even with the sum-total of satisfied human needs. The biblical witnesses are opposed not only to any abstract idealistic view of salvation but also to any materialistic, pseudo-concrete (i.e. positivistic) identification of well-being and salvation.” (19–20)

Anonymous human needs are neither overly-materialist nor pseudo-concrete for Lochman. He professes a paradoxical vision of religious salvation without religion. Far from the unity implied in the label of religion, Christianity has no monolithic foundation. Since its beginning, Christianity has had competing influences, both Hebraic and Hellenistic in origin (pages 38–39). Genuine scholarship of the New Testament undermines any arrogant and aggressive attitude toward other religions. No one is excluded in the process of liberation from spiritual and material poverty.

“Both in the Old Testament promise and in its New Testament fulfillment, the focus is on spiritual, material, political and social distress, both individual and collective. In principle, no distress of any kind is excluded from the mission of Jesus.” (61)

By his prudent attention, Lochman avoids the hazard of “claiming a Christian monopoly of salvation. Christians have no monopoly.” (35) Still a Christian theologian, Lochman posits a critique of Christomonism:

“We must distinguish here, I believe, between ‘christomonism’ and a ‘christological concentration’. By ‘christomonism’ I mean the tendency to reduce the rich diversity of biblical themes to the name ‘Jesus Christ’ and then to turn to the world and to relate this name to the rich diversity of human history as a whole in a primarily defensive and exclusive way. Such a position, it seems to me, it would be an utter travesty of the biblical record of Christ’s life and work. […] God became a human being, not a Christian.” (33)

A humanized God who is not a tyrant shows mercy. In the gospels, Jesus criticizes those who follow legal details, but forget the higher importance of justice and mercy. These are mere words to the religious right which, so unlike Jesus, scorns the neighbor and the immigrant. The tragic dimension is not lost for Lochman,

“[…] the complacent slogans of western ‘freedom warriors’ […] simply do not know […] real freedom only exists where the question of the access of the underprivileged to life and freedom is given serious consideration.” (150)

On the influence of his living in Czechoslovakia, Lochman refers to “the Christian-Marxist dialogue” as a source of insight. For a sense more familiar in Eastern Europe, “only as we strive for genuine freedom for others do we enjoy genuine freedom ourselves.” (148–149)

“We Christians in the East were keenly conscious of the bottlenecks and the restrictions on freedom in Marxist socialist society.” (149–150)

Friedrich Engels, in his Anti-Dühring, borrows the division between false and genuine freedom from the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Freedom is not independence from nature, but knowledge of the necessity in natural laws as means for achieving ends. Freedom remains abstract unless realized in worthy ends. The negative freedom of independence amounts to introverted fantasy. The abstract notion of freedom contrasts with freedom as an event, as the process of liberation in Exodus or the gospel. With a biblical view of liberation, Lochman enriches the normally self-centered path to freedom:

“From the standpoint of the Bible, the road to freedom does not begin with the Self, nor can it possibly end with the Self. Neither The Exodus nor the history of Jesus revolves around itself. Both are directed towards the neighbor, the others.” (147)

Solidarity beyond oneself is no mere rhetoric (118). A true commitment to freedom for others requires not only a philanthropy of the oppressed, but a pedagogy of the oppressed (139). Lochman characterizes the liberation message “by its radical refusal to simply leave the defenceless to their fate” (138). To avoid conflict in the name of peace is no true peace. In a religious view of conflict, picking sides is not strictly something ideological.

“The Gospel requires us to be partisan. […] Not in any ideological or party-political sense, of course. Jesus does not make himself the focal point of a ‘popular front’ or recruit men and women for the class war.” (62)

Ultimately, Lochman finds Jesus has no political program. To follow the example of defiance means more than a thousand angry words. An act of refusal in the face of power “challenges evil situations and conditions and is a process on God’s behalf” (137). Liberation as an event gives a new meaning to freedom with a location and a timeframe.

“What the vision of Christ’s kingship and glory discloses primarily is the vista of liberation, the sight of the Risen Lord who ‘has burst all bonds’” (70).

Lochman identifies the gospel message of resurrection as an event with a “dethroning” effect. “In the Easter event, all the tyrannical principalities and powers — even the last enemy, death — are dethroned.” (143) The very impossibility posed by reversing death itself has a deconstructive effect that the state cannot assimilate. The message lives a new life as an ungratified, even impossible demand. To identify with Jesus in an unjust society has the permanent effect of demanding the impossible.

“To do so is ‘dangerous’ because devotion to those who suffer, in the spirit of Jesus, means active identification with the oppressed and the outcast — and this often leads to conflict with oppressors and rulers.” (137)

Demanding the impossible exposes powerful institutions as impotent, “at least in the sense that their claim to be finally decisive is denied.” (71) If the possibility of final decision belongs only to God, then to admit as much requires the courage to abolish absolutism and embarrass capitalist meritocracy as merely arbitrary.

Although abolition and liberation are among his effects, Jesus is neither a revolutionary, nor a new governor. “He does not set up new laws in opposition to the old.” (62) Existing laws would be enough, if these were followed by their representatives. Rather than idolizing the force of law as an end in itself, the message promises law as a means to the higher ends of mercy and justice.

Review of Reconciliation and Liberation: Challenging a One-Dimensional View of Salvation (1977) by Jan Milič Lochman (Translated by David Lewis, Fortress Press 1980)