Liberating Luther: A Lutheran Theology from Latin America by Vítor Westhelle

Abstract

Reviewed by: Liberating Luther: A Lutheran Theology from Latin America by Vítor Westhelle Philip Ruge-Jones Liberating Luther: A Lutheran Theology from Latin America. By Vítor Westhelle. Translated by Robert A. Butterfield. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021. 238 pp. This collection of eleven essays by the late, great Vítor Westhelle consists of articles primarily published in Estudios Teológicos between 1978 and 1998. The translator notes that Westhelle referred to his own writing style as baroque (xiii). The reader will feel a baroque level of complexity, attention to detail, and invocation of transcendence in terms of both the style and substance of his writing. In the Foreword, his colleague Roberto Zwetsch comments that Westhelle’s “legacy will continue to disturb us, disquiet us, and make us think” (vii). He does all of this throughout the book, but I would emphasize the third gift. Westhelle’s work is demanding, not providing a simple and pat proposal, but requiring us to give significant attention to his argument, to push back, and ultimately to do some of the intellectual heavy-lifting on our own. Of the many themes in this book—pick a Lutheran theme and he addresses it in surprising ways,—I will focus on language. Language for Westhelle rarely is direct. Truth communicates through language ironically or paradoxically rather than descriptively. In an intriguing chapter on the story of Cain and Abel, Westhelle shows how language functions within the story. The only communication between Cain and Abel is Cain’s deceptive invitation that lures his brother to a deadly place. Communication always is tempted to destroy the other. So we must tell of the murderous story of communicatively destroying the other because that telling itself is a [End Page 470] shield that keeps us from enacting the violence. “Between me and the other, there is the other story that protects me from communication and does not permit me to speak the genocidal word” (78). And, again, “The beauty of the paradox is that we create the narratives that confront us with our own inviability as creatures, and in so doing, rationally but in amazement, we encounter our own irrationality” (77). This destabilizing of our own sense of security, an exposing of the “imperialism of a language that imposes power” (51), leaves us open to the alternative that we cannot construct for ourselves. What is true of language might be said of any human potential. Lutherans will not be surprised that a theologian of their brood emphasizes that God’s word threatens and destabilizes our false sense of security. But Westhelle demonstrates the error of much of our systematic attempts to enact this commitment: we never get to the place of self-recognition and the necessary confession via generalities. The problem of much Lutheran theology lies in its quick absorption of particular sins into broad universal sin (230). We want to allow the law to speak its accusing voice in generalities, but we are only truly addressed by God’s word in our particularities. Cain had to hear the very specific question about the sin he committed, “Where is your brother Abel?” This is the word that shatters him to his core and throws him upon God’s mercy and what freedom divine shelter will afford him. This, too, is true for the people of God wherever they are. Westhelle says, “hope can be named only by the voice of a people who know and narrate the history of their error, their vileness, their fall” (233). In their hopelessness regarding their own resources, the opportunity for doxology faithfully arises. Westhelle’s book participates in this charged moment of kairotic encounter. Thus his “legacy will continue to disturb us, disquiet us, and make us think” (vii). While those accustomed to graduate level bibliographies might take this on, others might better begin by reading another of his books. [End Page 471] Philip Ruge-Jones Grace Lutheran Church Eau Claire, Wisconsin Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc