Gustavo Gutiérrez-Merino Díaz (8 June 1928 – 22 October 2024) was a Peruvian Catholic philosopher, theologian, and Dominican priest who was one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. His 1971 book A Theology of Liberation is considered pivotal to the formation of liberation theology at large. He held the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and was a visiting professor at universities in North America and Europe.
Born in Lima, Gutiérrez studied medicine and literature at the National University of San Marcos before deciding to become a priest. He began studying theology at the Theology Faculty of Leuven in Belgium and in Lyon, France.
His theological focus connected salvation and liberation through the preferential option for the poor, with an emphasis on improving the material conditions of the impoverished. Gutiérrez proposed that revelation and eschatology have been excessively idealized at the expense of efforts to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth. His methodology was often critical of the social and economic injustice he believed to be responsible for poverty in Latin America, and of the Catholic clergy. The central pastoral question of his work was: "How do we convey to the poor that God loves them?"
Gustavo Gutiérrez was born in the Montserrat barrio of Lima on 8 June 1928 to mestizo parents of Hispanic and Quechua descent. He was afflicted with osteomyelitis as an adolescent and was frequently bed-ridden. He had to use a wheelchair from age 12 to 18. He described this time as a formative experience, claiming it instilled the value of hope through prayer and the love of family and friends. Gutiérrez lived in Barranco, and studied at Colegio San Luis; among his close friends during those years was Javier Mariátegui, with whom he later studied medicine. He described this experience as having had a profound impact on his interest in theology.
Gutiérrez initially studied medicine at the National University of San Marcos in Lima in order to become a psychiatrist. He also became involved with Catholic Action, which greatly influenced his later theological arguments.
While in medical school, Gutiérrez realized he wanted to become a priest. He completed his theological studies in the Theology Faculty of Leuven in Belgium and at Lyon in France, where he studied under Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Marie Dominique Chenu, Christian Ducoq, and several others. It was also here where Gutiérrez was introduced to the Dominican and Jesuit ideologies, and was influenced by the work of Edward Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, and Johann Baptist Metz. His time in Europe influenced Gutiérrez to discuss the openness of the Church to the contemporary world. He was also influenced by Protestant theologians such as Karl Barth and social scientists such as François Perroux and his idea of development. In 1959, Gutiérrez was ordained a priest.
While studying in Europe, Gutiérrez was exposed to other, non-religious thinkers who had a profound impact on his ideology and the eventual formation of Latin American liberation theology. At the Faculty of Theology in Lyon, he studied Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud – on whom he did a philosophy licentiate at the University of Leuven – and evolutionary theorists traditionally opposed or discouraged by the church. Marx's discussion of class struggle and the material conditions of poverty provided Gutiérrez a framework for understanding socio-economic inequality.
Foundations of liberation theology
When he returned to Peru in the late 1950s, Gutiérrez began to formulate his understanding of Latin American "reality" – the foundation and driving force of Latin American liberation theology. He wrote: "I come from a continent in which more than 60% of the population lives in a state of poverty, and 82% of those find themselves in extreme poverty." Gutiérrez focused his efforts on the rediscovery of love thy neighbor as the central axiom of Christian life. He contended that the European theology he had studied did have relevance to the oppressive material conditions in Latin America. In 2003, Gutiérrez reminisced that his "parishioners in Lima would ... teach me volumes about hope in the midst of suffering". The relationship of suffering with Christianity would inspire his book On Job, published in 1986. In his parish ministry, Gutiérrez was at one time pastor of the Iglesia Cristo Redentor (Church of Christ the Redeemer) in Rímac, Peru.
Gutiérrez drafted an outline of his theological proposal at the conference "Towards a Theology of Liberation" during the Second Meeting of Priests and Laity in Chimbote, Peru, between 21 and 25 July 1968. In this proposal, he cited on multiple occasions Vatican II's Gaudium et spes and Paul VI's Populorum progressio. To Gutiérrez, the source of the problems of Latin America was the sin manifested in an unjust social structure. His solution to this problem was to emphasize the dignity of the poor by prioritizing the glory of God present in them. This perspective would be refined over the next three years, until Gutiérrez published A Theology of Liberation in 1971.
Largely as a result of his work, Latin American liberation theology thus emerged as a biblical analysis of poverty. Gutiérrez distinguished two forms of poverty: a "scandalous state" and a "spiritual childhood". He noted that, while the former is abhorred by God, the second is valued. Gutiérrez identified that each form of poverty was present in Latin America, wherein one hungers for bread and for God. It is only through the manifestation of a committed faith that the purposes of God can be manifested to man, regardless of the color or social class under which he was born. Liberation theology insists on prioritizing the gift of life as the supreme manifestation of God.
Gutiérrez asserted that his understanding of poverty as a "scandalous state" is reflected in Luke's beatitude "Blessed are you poor, for the kingdom of God is yours", whereas his interpretation of it as "spiritual childhood" has precedent in Matthew's verse, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven". He argued that there are forms of poverty beyond economic.
Gutiérrez saw Christian salvation as something that can be brought about by human action. He argued that Christian liberation has three levels - political ("liberation of the people from the political and economic structures which oppress them"), psychological ("liberation of the human being from those things that do not let him or her take on his or her own destiny"), and lastly theological ("liberation of the person from sin by communion with God"). He saw these three levels as interdependent, and thus dependent on each other. The final salvation of humanity would be carried out through a "historical structure" of liberation, defined by Gutiérrez as emergence of a socialist system. He wrote "that a socialist system is more in accord with the Christian principles of true brotherhood, justice and peace... only socialism can enable Latin America to achieve true development..."
In his support for socialism, Gutiérrez eschewed reformism and called for a social revolution instead. He called Catholics to reject "naive reformism" and insisted that the Catholic Church must "break its ties with the present order', become "one with the poor" and dedicate itself to the "revolutionary cause". In this, he wrote that "only by overcoming a society divided into classes ... by eliminating the private appropriation of wealth created by human toil, can we build the foundation of a more just society". In 1985, when asked if liberation theologians could support welfare-oriented capitalism as a basis for a preferential option for the poor, he replied: "I don't know any who do." He praised Marxism as "simply the best theory available for ensuring that theology is adequately contextual".
Stressing his support for a socialist revolution, Gutiérrez stressed: "Hence we speak of social revolution, not reform; of liberation, not development; of socialism, not the modernization of the prevailing system. ‘Realists’ call these statements romantic and utopian. And they should, for the rationality of these statements is of a kind quite unfamiliar to them." Explaining his solution to the poverty in Latin America, he wrote: "Only the complete destruction of the present state of things, the profound transformation of the ownership system, the coming to power of the exploited class, a social revolution will put an end to this dependency. They alone will allow a transition to a socialist society, or at least will make it possible." Gutiérrez was a friend of Camilo Torres Restrepo, a liberation theologian who heeded his calls for participating in a socialist revolution.