Liberating Black Theology E-Book

Anthony B. Bradley

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 311

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

When the beliefs of Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, assumed the spotlight during the 2008 presidential campaign, the influence of black liberation theology became hotly debated not just within theological circles but across cultural lines. How many of today's African-American congregations-and how many Americans in general-have been shaped by its view of blacks as perpetual victims of white oppression? In this interdisciplinary, biblical critique of the black experience in America, Anthony Bradley introduces audiences to black liberation theology and its spiritual and social impact. He starts with James Cone's proposition that the "victim" mind-set is inherent within black consciousness. Bradley then explores how such biblical misinterpretation has historically hindered black churches in addressing the diverse issues of their communities and prevented adherents from experiencing the freedoms of the gospel. Yet Liberating Black Theology does more than consider the ramifications of this belief system; it suggests an alternate approach to the black experience that can truly liberate all Christ-followers.

Leseprobe

Liberating Black Theology: The Bible and the Black Experience in America

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony B. Bradley

Published by Crossway Booksa publishing ministry of Good News Publishers 1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Dual Identity inc.

First printing, 2010

Printed in the United States of America

All Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-1147-9

ISBN-10: 1-4335-1147-9

PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1148-6

Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1149-3

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2355-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bradley, Anthony B., 1971–Liberating Black theology : the Bible and the Black experience inAmerica / Anthony B. Bradley.        p. cm.    Includes bibliographical references.    ISBN 1-4335-1147-9 (tpb) — ISBN 978-1-4335-1148-6    1. Black theology. 2. African Americans—Religion. 3. Black power—United States. 4. Liberation theology—United States. 5. Cone, James H.6. Victims of crimes—United States. I. Title.BT82.7.B725             2010230.089'96073—dc22                                                             2009026653

VP        19  18   17   16   15   14   13   12   11   1014    13   12   11   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

To my parents,Walter and Delores Bradley,and toBen Hill United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia,where I first learned about black liberation theology.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Setting the Stage: Defining Terms andTheological Distinctions

2 America the Broken: Cone’s Sociopolitical Ethical Context

3 Cone’s Theological Scaffolding

4 Victimology in the Marxist Ethics of Black Theology

5 Biblical Interpretation and the Black Experience

6 Is There a Future for Black Liberation Theology?

Further Reading

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful and indebted to many people, without whose encouragement and aid this book never would have been completed: to Dr. K. Scott Oliphint and Dr. William Edgar for their patient long-suffering as they worked to shape my studies at Westminster Theological Seminary and make this project address critical issues; to Dr. Stuart Silvers, Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University who is solely responsible for flipping my brain’s ignition switch; to the other three members of the “Fab 4,” my fellow students Lane Tipton, Travis Campbell, and Flavien Pardigon; to my friends at the Institute for Human Studies at George Mason University for giving me timely categories to think critically about social ethics; to my friends and colleagues at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, especially Rev. Robert Sirico, Kris Mauren, Jerry Zandstra, and Samuel Gregg, for providing funding and time to complete this project and for providing an unprecedented model of academic freedom; to friends and former colleagues at Covenant Theological Seminary, Dr. David Jones and Dr. Daniel Doriani, for providing me with initial and continued encouragement and support during my entire PhD program; to the Callejas family for providing me much needed breaks in Guatemala; to my editors Amy Ballor, Lauren Simpson, and Katie Moon without whose help this project would have been unreadable; to Adam Eitel and Jake Meador, my research assistants; to the amazing team at Crossway Books that helped to bring this project to life: Al Fisher, Justin Taylor, Jill Carter, and Ted Griffin; to my entire family for their tireless and consistent belief in me when others did not; and finally, to the triune God from whom all blessings flow.

Introduction

Before Sen. Barack Obama ran for president of the United States in 2008, most people in America, including those in the black church, had never heard of black liberation theology. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, made international headlines when, in his support of Obama, he spoke about blacks suffering in America at the hands of “rich white people.” Wright reminded us that Jesus was a poor black man who suffered under the oppression of rich, white people just as Barack had in his life. Wright was accused of being a racist for the seemingly racist comments made against whites and for black empowerment. Trinity UCC openly adopted a “Black Value System” written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee, chaired by the late Vallmer Jordan in 1981, which includes things like a commitment to the black community, the black family, a black work ethic, and so on. America was introduced to a church that said:

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian. . . . Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.1

When asked, Wright confessed that his teaching and the teaching of his church were nothing more than the views of a Christian tradition following black liberation theology, and in just a few months America became a black liberation nation.

I should probably write both Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright a thank-you note because otherwise not many Americans would have been at all interested in black liberation theology, a focus of my research for the past decade, during the 2008 presidential campaign. When Wright’s views became more public, it seemed as if I was on the radio every day, explaining to whites and blacks alike what black liberation theology is and what it means today. Glenn Beck asked me to write three articles for his newsletter and interviewed me on his radio program as well as on CNN Headline News. The black liberation nation was fully inaugurated.

This short book is meant to be introductory in nature. It’s short but substantial. What is unique about this study is that it is interdisciplinary, engaging theology, sociology, anthropology, and economics. I use the term black theology to broadly encompass writings on Christianity in religious studies by a wide spectrum of black authors including theologians, authors of biblical studies, ethicists, and the like. This discussion will explain what black liberation theology is, recognizing that many nuances will be missing. I primarily focus on the role that victimology has played in the rise and fall of black liberation theology. I argue that the major flaw of black liberation theology is that it views people perpetually as victims. Thomas Sowell’s and John McWhorter’s works were hugely helpful for me on this point, and their voices echo throughout the book.

At the end, I suggest an alternate strategy for developing a redemptive-historical approach for understanding the black experience in America while remaining faithful to Scripture and orthodox Christianity. The thesis is that James Cone’s presupposition of black consciousness construed as victim supplies a fundamentally flawed theological anthropology for later developments in black liberation theology, leading to the demise of black liberation theology. In other words, reducing black identity primarily to that of victim, albeit at times inadvertent, contributed to the decline of black liberation to obscurity (that is, until Barack Obama ran for president).

In the 1970s a Presbyterian theologian by the name of Cornelius Van Til predicted that black theology was eventually going to land flat and would not be helpful to blacks in the long run. As Alistair Kee now confirms in his book The Rise and Demise of Black Theology, that prediction came true. Kee argues that black liberation theology is dead. Black liberation theology was doomed from the beginning because its initial biblical and theological presuppositions were grounded in the reduction of the black experience in America to that of victim. Early in the development of black liberation theology, black theologians like J. Deotis Roberts clearly pointed out core weaknesses but, like most other critics, simply did not go deep enough to the presuppositional level.

Victimology also wove its way through the social ethics of black liberation theologians and set the stage for the adoption of Marxism as an ethical framework for black liberation theology after Cone. Furthermore, victimology set the stage for the development of black liberation theological hermeneutics by a rejection of “white” theological method for one that distinctively embraces the black experience, including the unique experience of black women articulated by womanist theologians.

This book suggests that for any black theology to serve the black church in the future, it must be formulated within biblically constrained presuppositions. Contextualizing the redemptive story in the black experience, then, can be done with the strictest fidelity to the will of God for human persons and creation, personally and structurally, as revealed in the Scriptures. Black theology has a future only if it presupposes the triune God and seeks to interpret the black experience through the lens of the whole of Scripture.

The outline of the book is simple. Chapter 1 gives a basic overview of the movement, offers some key terms, and gives a trailer as to where this study is headed theologically. Chapters 2 and 3 give a fairly detailed introduction to the work of James Cone, the chief architect of black liberation theology, and his theological emphases. Chapter 4 explores the role that victimology has played in opening up many black theologians to embrace a form of Marxism as the ethical framework for the black church. Chapter 5 details the story of why black theologians rejected traditional biblical interpretation on the grounds of Eurocentrism and offers a possible scheme that challenges the fact of white racism but remains faithful to the biblical text. Chapter 6 is the “now what?” chapter. In this book I offer an introduction to those who have critiqued Cone and others and offer what is essential for a Christian theology that is faithful to the text and also deals with personal and structural sin.

1 See http://www.trinitychicago.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=27.

1

Setting the Stage:Defining Terms and TheologicalDistinctions

The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most seg segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.1

BARACK OBAMA

This book explores the identification of the human person primarily es hum lack begin as a victim in black liberation theology, beginning with the work of James Cone, and suggests an alternate strategy for developing a Christian approach for understanding the black experience in America while remaining faithful to Scripture and orthodox theology. The overall thesis is that Cone’s starting point for black identity as victim supplies a fundamentally flawed theological anthropology for later developments in black liberation theology. The flawed anthropology set the stage for the demise of black liberation theology beyond major recent criticism.2 To explore the scope of this claim we must fully be introduced to the work of James Cone, the chief architect of black liberation theology.

WHAT IS BLACK THEOLOGY?

A clear definition of black theology was first given formulation in 1969 by the National Committee of Black Church Men:

Black theology is a theology of black liberation. It seeks to plumb the black condition in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, so that the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the achievements of black humanity. Black theology is a theology of “blackness.” It is the affirmation of black humanity that emancipates black people from white racism, thus providing authentic freedom for both white and black people. It affirms the humanity of white people in that it says “No” to the encroachment of white oppression.3

The context of the statement may explain, in part, the intensity of the statement. This definition was forged at the height of the civil rights movement, when the black church began to focus its attention beyond helping blacks cope with national racial discrimination and move on to applying theology to address the unique issues facing blacks, particularly in urban areas. Bruce Fields explains that black theology seeks to make sense of the sociohistorical experience of blacks in the light of their confession that God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.4

While black theology affirms blackness, that theology should not be construed as an antiwhite reactionary theology. The notion of blackness is not merely a reference to skin color but rather is a symbol of oppression that can be applied to all persons of color who have a history of oppression, as well as to other marginalized groups such as homosexuals.5 Black liberation theologians seek to apply theology in a manner that affirms the humanity of blacks in ways that they believe were previously denied. Saying no to being oppressive helps whites no longer to see their oppression as normal and gives blacks an understanding that their lives matter to God.

Black theology begins with the life experience of oppression and formulates theology respectively. The overall emphasis of black liberation theology is the black struggle for liberation from various forms of white racism and oppression, and it views the imperatives of the Christian gospel to that end.

VICTIMOLOGY AND BLACK THEOLOGY

John McWhorter’s articulation of victimology will be used in this study to denote a more robust understanding of the victimologist’s way of thinking. McWhorter’s description provides a critical context for comprehending the long-term effects of reducing the black experience to that of victim. In the end, victimology perpetuates a separatist and elitist platform that provides no opportunity for racial reconciliation.

Victimology is the adoption of victimhood as the core of one’s identity.6 It is a subconscious, culturally inherited affirmation that life for blacks in America has been in the past and will be in the future a life of being victimized by the oppression of whites. In today’s terms, it is the conviction that, forty years after the Civil Rights Act, conditions for blacks have not substantially changed.7 It is most clearly seen in race-related policy and through interpersonal evaluation among blacks. Ironically, notes McWhorter, the forced desegregation of the United States in the 1960s actually exacerbated victimology. During this time period, it became acceptable for blacks to confront whites with their frustration and resentment. This freedom of expression gained in the 1960s, coupled with a postcolonial inferiority complex, provides the historical basis for victimology.

McWhorter raises good concerns about grounding one’s identity in the condition of being a victim despite abundant evidence to the contrary. The overall result, says McWhorter, is that “the remnants of discrimination hold an obsessive indignant fascination that allows only passing acknowledgment of any signs of progress.”8 Many blacks, infused with victimology, wield self-righteous indignation in the service of exposing the inadequacies of the “other” (e.g., white person) rather than finding a way forward. The perpetual belief in a racial identity born out of self-loathing and anxiety often leads to more time spent inventing reasons to cry racism than working toward changing social mores and often inhibits movement toward reconciliation and positive mobility.9

Focusing on one’s victimhood often addresses a moral desire—it is a salve for insecurity. McWhorter maintains that many blacks are rarely able to see racial issues outside of the victimologist milieu and are trapped into reasoning racially in terms of the permanent subjugation of blacks by whites. He concludes that holding so tightly to the remnants of discrimination often creates more problems than it solves.

McWhorter goes on to explain that victimology often perpetuates racial tension. Blacks are encouraged by one another to “know your history.”10 The communicative function of said mantra is not aimed toward knowledge per se but toward remembering oppression and iniquity so it does not happen again. The irony of victimology is its tendency toward revisionist histories and creating an ethos that, a hundred years ago, would have precluded racial equality. Victimology, in other words, is perpetuating problems for black America, not solving them.

McWhorter articulates three main objections to victimology: (1) Victimology condones weakness in failure. It tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality.11 Behaviors and patterns that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or are presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns. (2) Victimology hampers progress because, from the outset, it focuses attention on obstacles. For example, in black theology the focus is on the impediment to black freedom because of the Goliath of white racism. (3) Victimology keeps racism alive because many whites are constantly painted as racist with no evidence provided. These charges may create a context for backlash and resentment, which may fuel attitudes in the white community not previously held or articulated.

Perhaps the most significant tragedy of a victimologist’s approach, in McWhorter’s view, is that it creates separatism.12 Separatism is a suspension of moral judgment in the name of racial solidarity that is an integral part of being culturally black in America today.13 The black experience is the starting point and the final authority for interpreting moral prescriptions, both personally and structurally. Separatist morality is not a deliberate strategy for accruing power; rather, it is a cultural thought—a tacit conviction that has imbued the culturally black psyche. Separatism is a direct result of victimology because whites are viewed in eternal opposition to the black experience; black America construes itself (albeit in many cases unintentionally) as a sovereign, cultural authority.

Separatism generates a restriction of cultural authority, a narrowing of intellectual inquiry, and the dilution of moral judgment. Mainstream American culture, when refracted through the lens of victimology, renders even the most ubiquitous cultural products and ideas “white.” For example, Manning Marable, a professor at Columbia University, has explicitly exhorted black scholars to focus exclusively on “black issues.” In doing so, he squelches intellectual curiosity (a basic good) outside the purview of the black American agenda.14 Separatism is the sense that to be truly black, one must restrict his allegiance to black-oriented culture and assent to different rules of argumentation and morality. Few blacks, however, would admit that this is true. The truth, writes McWhorter, is that “the culturally black person is from birth subtly inculcated with the idea that the black person—any black person—is not to be judged cold, but considered in light of the acknowledgment that black people have suffered.”15 In the victimologist’s worldview, black suffering is the proper lens through which all else is to be evaluated.

Ultimately, McWhorter warns against separatism. Separatism has, in the name of self-protection, encouraged generations of blacks to set low goals. Blacks have settled for less, not just in respect to racial integration, but also in respect to being human persons.

What James Cone and those who followed him came to develop is not only a theology predicated on the autonomous black person as a nearly permanent victim of white aggression but also a separatist theological system, all in the name of contextualization. This newly developed theology, based on victimology, not only jettisons orthodox Christianity but also impedes opportunities for ecclesial reconciliation.

DISTINCTIONS IN TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANTEACHING

The natural question after being introduced to black liberation theology is to inquire about the major differences between this tradition and orthodox Christianity that would serve as the basis of critique. In other words, how does black liberation theology compare to what Christians have traditionally taught? In order to clearly delineate the objections that historic Christianity might raise against James Cone and other black liberation theologians, it is necessary to introduce a few key distinctions that demonstrate the dislocation of black theology from the rest of Christian orthodoxy. This section also will serve as a trailer of sorts to the comparative points throughout the book. As an example, I have chosen the theological presentations of Herman Bavinck and Louis Berkhof to summarize a general orthodox position on various themes in Christian theology.

The Doctrine of God and Scripture

God presents himself in the biblical story as the divine “I AM” (Ex. 3:14–15), the creator of heaven and earth and the great redeemer of his people. Orthodox Christianity has known God by his eternal love, power, and sovereignty as creator and redeemer. This God, as summarized by Louis Berkhof, is articulated in Scripture as a God who redeems. His attributes include his self-existence (Ps. 33:11; John 5:26), immutability (Num. 23:19; Heb. 6:17), infinity (1 Kings 8:27; Jer. 23:23), perfect knowledge (Ps. 139:1–16; Heb. 4:13), wisdom (Rom. 11:33; Col. 1:16), goodness (Ps. 36:6; Matt. 5:45), love (Rom. 15:9; 1 John), holiness (Ex. 15:11; Isa. 57:15), righteousness (Ps. 99:4; Rom. 1:32), veracity (Num. 23:19; 2 Tim. 3:13), sovereignty (Eph. 1:11; Rev. 4:11), and omnipotence (Gen. 18:14; Matt. 3:9; 26:53).16

What Cone and those who follow him fail to do is ground black theology in the full authority of the Scriptures. This fundamental presupposition regarding God and his Word is the only proper starting point for constructing any theological vision. As we will see in subsequent chapters, this is a central belief that many black liberation theologians jettison. If we do not begin with God in our understanding of the human person, we will not develop a proper understanding of what the human person is in the fullest possible sense.

Herman Bavinck provides a cogent understanding of this theological first principle.17 Bavinck teaches that all knowledge of God comes to us from his revelation and that we, on our own, cannot appropriate its content except by sincere and childlike faith. Bavinck is quick to note that theology must be grounded in how God presents himself directly, not in the self-reference of the human person. If theology is not grounded in Scripture but is instead grounded in the mind of man, the entire edifice of theology, however skillfully and creatively constructed, collapses like a house of cards. No knowledge of God is possible except that which proceeds not from human experience but from and by God (Matt. 11:27; 1 Cor. 2:10ff.). It is God’s self-knowledge and self-consciousness that serves as our knowledge of him. Without the divine self-consciousness, there is no knowledge of God in his creatures. Bavinck continues:

The knowledge of God in his creatures is only a weak likeness, a finite, limited sketch, of the absolute consciousness of God accommodated to the capacities of the human or creaturely consciousness. But however great that distance is, the source (principium essendi) of our knowledge of God is solely God himself, the God who reveals himself freely, self-consciously, and genuinely.18

The self-revelation and self-communication of God, argues Bavinck, is what makes theology even possible. The aim of theology, in contradistinction from a Conian approach, can be no other than that the rational creature know God and, knowing him, glorify him (Prov. 16:4; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 3:17).19

What we will find in Conian and post-Conian black liberation theology, however, is that the goal of theology is to study the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ. The end is not the glory of God but the dignity of the black experience in America. This is a significant divergence from orthodox Christian theology.

The object of God’s self-revelation, argues Bavinck, is to introduce his knowledge into human consciousness and through it set the stage for the glorification of God himself through the Spirit. Bavinck argues for three crucial foundations for theology: (1) God as the essential foundation, the source of theology, (2) the external cognitive foundation, which is the self-revelation of God as recorded in the Holy Scriptures, and (3) the internal principle of knowing, the illumination of human beings by God’s Spirit.20

The following chapters present the consequences of discarding this approach and replacing it with a view of God and Scripture interpreted through the lens of the black experience. What Cone and those who followed him may not have realized is that orthodox theology was in no need of dismissal and that interpreting the black experience in America would take on not only a different vision but would also present ways of knowing God that are inconsistent with the biblical story.

The Doctrine of Sin and Human History

If the knowledge of God begins with God’s self-revelation, then so do issues in anthropology. “When man fell it was [his] attempt to do without God in every respect. Man sought his ideals of truth, goodness and beauty somewhere beyond God, either directly within himself or in the universe about him.”21

These conclusions are drawn from the theological articulation of biblical anthropology and from the pattern of the redemptive story found in Scripture. Herman Bavinck describes a shared dimension of human persons as sinful resulting from the Fall. The universality of sin is derived in Genesis 3 from the fall of the first human beings, which provides a nonracial common anthropology.22 The consequences and punishments pronounced in Genesis 3:16ff. have direct bearing not only on Adam and Eve but also on their descendants and presuppose a communal guilt even in the present age. Because of the Fall, human history was forever changed and now becomes, says Bavinck, a history of sin, misery, and death. All human persons are now sinful by nature (Gen. 6:5; 8:21). In the New Testament, the universality of sin is explained beginning with Adam’s disobedience (Rom. 5:12ff.; 1 Cor. 15:21ff.). Bavinck summarizes it this way:

(1) Upon the one trespass of Adam, God pronounced a judgment consisting in a guilty verdict and a death sentence; (2) that judgment was pronounced over all humans because, on some fashion that Paul does not further explain here but that can be surmised from the context, they are included in Adam; all were declared guilty and condemned to death in Adam; (3) in virtue of this antecedent judgment of God, all humans personally became sinners and all in fact die as well. God apprehends and regards, judges and condemns all humans in one [representative man], and also they all descend from him as sinners and are all subject to death.23

Regardless of our racial or ethnic backgrounds, we have a common solidarity in sin. Moral depravity, says Bavinck, is characteristic of all people by nature and does not merely arise later in life as a result of one’s own misguided deeds. It must be remembered that humanity is not simply an aggregate of individuals but a dynamic and organic unity of one race—those made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27). As such, all the members of the human race can be a blessing or a curse to one another, and increasingly so to the degree that they themselves are more outstanding and occupy a more pivotal role in human associations.24

Jesus Christ is the remedy for sin. Bavinck maintains that when Christ descended to the earth, he became poor, though he was rich (2 Cor. 8:9); but when he rose and ascended to heaven, he took with him a treasure of merits that he had acquired by his obedience “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).25 Jesus Christ as Savior provides deliverance from sin and all its consequences and offers participation in supreme blessedness. The pinnacle of the benefits provided by Jesus’ deliverance is reconciliation and atonement. Christ’s sacrifice, notes Bavinck, has objective significance. In our solidarity in sin, God manifests his wrath against sins regardless of race, class, or any other distinctions among persons (Rom. 1:18; Gal. 3:10; Eph. 2:3). As sinners, we are God’s enemies (Rom. 5:10; 11:28) and are in need of being reconciled to him through Jesus Christ alone. This reconciliation is not unilateral. “Not only must we be reconciled with God, but God, too must be reconciled with us in the sense that, by giving Christ as expiation (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10), he puts his wrath upon him and establishes a relation of peace between himself and human beings (Rom. 5:9–10; 2 Cor. 5:18–19; Gal. 3:13).”26

The fact of the Fall and the accomplished redemptive work of Christ serve as the true foundation for the liberation of black people. The fruits of Christ’s sacrifice are not restricted to any one group of people because of our common human solidarity as sinners. Bavinck describes three benefits that accrue from the reconciliation of God through Christ: “(1) juridical—that forgiveness of sins is our justification, mystical—consisting of the Christ being crucified, buried, raised, and being seated with Christ in heaven, ethical—through regeneration and being made alive, (2) moral—consisting in the imitation of Christ, economic—in the fulfillment of the Old Testament covenant and the inauguration of the new covenant, and (3) physical—in our victory over the world, death, hell, and Satan.”27

The fact of sin, and the Fall then also, sheds light on the reality of structural or systemic sin. Within the context of America’s short history, one need only look at the centuries of racial tension to discover that at times sinfulness has led entire institutions to organize to oppress blacks. This is not necessarily a result of the institutional structure as such—the church, for example—but is rather a result of the fact that structural sin is also a consequence of the Fall, as sinners assume positions of influence and power. Bavinck explains that for those in positions of authority and power, their own life and conduct decides the fortunes of their subordinates, elevates them and brings them to honor, or drags them down and pulls them along to destruction.28

Social injustice is rooted in a human history of sin. Structural sin must be evaluated on the same philosophical ground as personal sin because structures have actors (i.e., men and women) who have a shared solidarity in sin. The proper theological orientation on this issue will promote a proper ground for understanding, moving those structural problems toward the good.

ANTHROPOLOGY IN BLACK THEOLOGY ASDEPARTURE FROM TRADITIONAL ORTHODOXY

Nearly forty years after the first development of black liberation theology, the system has reached a dead end even with the light brought to this discipline by Jeremiah Wright. Black liberation theology is not the dominant theological platform in most black churches across America. How did this happen? One need only look to the leaders of the second generation of black liberation theology to discover just how far afield black liberation theology has ventured because many theologians denied orthodox starting points such as the final authority of Scripture, biblical definitions of sin and redemption, the doctrines of God and redemption by means of substitutionary atonement, and the like.

As we shall see in the chapters that follow, today’s black theology, in the Conian tradition, has redefined key doctrines, some might argue, and thus nearly turned Christianity into a completely different form of Christianity. We see this, for example, in the anthropology of Cone’s chief disciple, Dwight N. Hopkins, one of the most brilliant and prominent second-generation black liberation theologians in the world and a former student of James Cone who is now teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Hopkins’s views on anthropology, which provide a representative snapshot of the consequences of Cone’s initial vision and trajectory, reveal the outcome of developing a theology that does not begin with God’s condescended revealing of himself to human beings in nature as well as in the Scriptures (Rom. 1:18–32).

Hopkins, in contrast to the traditional orthodoxy outlined in this chapter, holds that the ultimate “presuppositions” for a Christian theological anthropology must be rooted in “culture, selves/self, and race.”29 Here reducing black identity to that of “victim” supplies a flawed theological anthropology that lives on in black liberation theology decades after Cone’s initial works.

According to Hopkins, culture is the totality of human labor, a fluid dynamic of mutual effectivity between material base and ideational superstructure.30 Labor as a theological category sheds light on the dimensions of one’s existence within particular cultures. A person’s inner characteristics and ethical practices, adjudicated by community, determine the quality of one’s aesthetic beauty within culture. Hopkins introduces the notion of a generic “spirit,” which locates one’s personal identity in the following way: “Healthy spirit, in contrast to demonic spirituality, is the creativity unfolding in culture and vivifies both human labor and the aesthetic.”31 Spirit, in Hopkins’s vision, mediates a sense of service to those who are on the economic and social peripheries of the world with a sense of hyperindividualism.

The second presupposition in Hopkins’s theological anthropology is the notion of selves and self. Selves and self craft culture out of human interaction. A priority for a community of selves is developed in relation to individual selves. Hopkins writes, “The idea of selves brings together communal values (that is, sharing, mutual aid, caring for others, interdependence, solidarity, reciprocal obligations, and social harmony), community (that is, interpersonal relations), and common good (that is, the end product or goal defined by what is materially and spiritually fitting for the collective selves and individual participants).”32 In ongoing dialogue between individual selves, people can be liberated from personal psychological demons as well as from outside oppression. It is this construction that secures the uniqueness of the self.

The third starting point for Hopkins’s theological anthropology is race.33 Race “localized in the United States (though having global implications, given the hegemony of U.S. monopoly capitalist empire) means explicitly combining biological or God-given phenotype with malleable sociological characteristics.”34 Race, for Hopkins, is constantly reflective of the “white supremacist spirituality” that is pervasive in theology today with only occasional exceptions. 35 Since, according to Hopkins, the global human race evolved out of Africa, theological anthropology must develop through this “rational fact” because it underlines the “dangerous but spurious popular and scientific notions about Europe as the land of human origins.”36 White supremacy triumphed in the theological categories, ideas, and imperatives during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in Europe and North America. As such, this white supremacist tradition created the anthropological categories that led to oppression of Africans and their descendants in the West.

Beginning here, Hopkins holds that God has a special affinity for the African-American poor and affirms the positive cultural and political traditions and practices of this community.37 In Hopkins’s view, poor blacks remain perpetual victims. The contribution of the black poor to our understanding of culture, selves, and race provides an example of God’s preference for the poor. Christianity remains a means for poor blacks to achieve upward social mobility and economic liberation. As such, the mission and work of the kingdom of God are reduced to meeting material, political, and social needs for poor and working-class blacks. The continuation of Marxist categories, as will be explored later, provides a seamless adoption of the secular humanists’ presuppositions without antithesis.38

Forty years after Cone’s initial work, anthropology in black liberation theology recasts what it means to be human, not in relation to God, but in relation to social structures as the starting point. In this vision, two key presumptions remain: (1) all whites have methodically sought to dominate blacks, which has “produced and continues to replicate an increased impoverishment of black folk economically and politically,” and (2) poor blacks are only poor because of structural, premeditated oppression.39 The premeditated perpetual oppression is, in part, associated with the Leninist idea that the poor are poor because the wealthy take from them. White theological systems not only keep blacks oppressed but also provide them with a deficient theological system to understand their own experience in light of culture, the self, and race. Full humanity is not achieved as a consequence of union with Christ but rather through being a participant in the liberation of poor and working-class people caught in structures and conditions of oppression—i.e., solidarity with victims. Ethics is reconstituted in terms of issues exclusive to black communities.40 When social arrangements are reordered by race and class (but primarily by class in the case of blacks), authentic liberation occurs. In order for liberation to happen, whites must redistribute wealth and intellectual property and raise the standard material prosperity of all peoples in order to attain true equality. Otherwise blacks will remain victims.

The second generation of black liberation theology adopts a fundamental anthropology that believes that “all human beings are created with a spiritual purpose (or transcendent or ultimate vision) to share in the material resources of the earth.”41 This sharing has special priority when considering people at the margins of society. The individual, then, only has meaning in service to others, especially in the redistribution of unearned wealth. What makes a person human is that he is involved in service to the most vulnerable in society. To further demonstrate this idea, Hopkins, like many second-generation black liberation theologians, appeals to black folktales, not the Bible, as the paradigm and authoritative proof texts for empowering poor blacks. Black folklore shapes his theological anthropology by utilizing the following four paradigms or genres:

First, the black trickster type deploys the discourse of reversal as linguistic sign and as ethical play and reveals a spirituality of human flourishing. Second, the black conjurer figure works with nature to manipulate spiritual powers of all creation for human advancement. Third, the outlaw type commands an array of diffused ambiguity, with a spirituality of individual desire. Fourth, the Christian witness figure most consistently yields empowerment for the most vulnerable, thus a spirituality of compassion for the poor