to what extent was jesus merely a political liberator essay

Jesus Christ’s Authority as a Liberator

Jesus’ role as liberator of the marginalised and the poor is seen through his challenges to political and religious authority.

Jesus as a liberator

• For many Christians, Jesus’ challenge to the political and religious authorities of this time presents him as a liberator.
• He was also critical of the values and behaviours of the society in which he lived.

Healing the bleeding woman

• But, as a menstruating woman, she would have also been viewed as impure and shunned under Mosaic law.
• In healing her, Jesus liberates her from both the illness and the marginalisation she faced.
• In doing so, he is challenging Mosaic law and those in the crowd to alter their treatment of such an ‘outcast’ .

Parable of the Good Samaritan

• In the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus challenges conventional thinking in a number of ways.
• Jesus challenges this excuse for the priest and the Levite not stopping to help the man ‘left half-dead’ .

Parable of the Good Samaritan 2

• By doing this, he aims to liberate his audience from this legalistic approach.
• By praising the actions of the Samaritan, Jesus reinforces the pre-eminence of compassion in the law.
• He also challenges (and so liberates) the audience’s suspicion of the Samaritan.

Jesus & the Pharisee

• We see another example of Jesus being a liberator in the story of Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-49).
• Here, Jesus liberates the woman from her sins through forgiveness.
• He does this through his critique on the Pharisee's behaviour and praising of the woman's behaviour.

Jesus' triumphant return

• Another example of Jesus as a liberator is his entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple (Matthew 21:1-13).
• This suggests that Jesus was not going to be who they expected.
• Here, he is again liberating the people from their expectation that he would free them from Roman occupation.

1 Philosophy of Religion

1.1 Ancient Philosophical Influences: Plato

1.1.1 Plato's Understanding of Reality

1.1.2 Plato's Theory of Forms

1.1.3 Plato's Analogy of the Cave

1.1.4 The Purpose of Plato's Analogy of the Cave

1.1.5 Evaluation of Plato's Theories

1.2 Ancient Philosophical Influences: Aristotle

1.2.1 Aristotle's Understanding of Reality

1.2.2 Aristotle's Four Causes

1.2.3 Aristotle's Prime Mover

1.3 Ancient Philosophical Influences: Soul, Mind, Body

1.3.1 Plato & Aristotle's Views of the Soul

1.3.2 Metaphysics of Consciousness

1.3.3 Materialism - Ryle’s Philosophical Behaviourism

1.3.4 Materialism - Identity Theory

1.4 The Existence of God - Arguments from Observation

1.4.1 The Teleological Argument - Aquinas' Fifth Way

1.4.2 The Teleological Argument - Paley & Evolution

1.4.3 The Cosmological Argument

1.4.4 Hume's Criticisms: Teleological & Cosmological

1.5 The Existence of God - Arguments from Reason

1.5.1 The Ontological Argument

1.5.2 Criticisms of the Ontological Argument

1.6 Religious Experience

1.6.1 Introduction to Religious Experience

1.6.2 Mystical Experience

1.6.3 Conversion Experience

1.6.4 Understanding Religious Experience

1.6.5 Issues Relating to Religious Experience - Validity

1.6.6 Issues Relating to Religious Experiences - People

1.7 The Problem of Evil

1.7.1 Presentations of the Problems of Evil

1.7.2 Discussion Points -

1.8 The Nature & Attributes of God

1.8.1 Omnipotence

1.8.2 Omniscience

1.8.3 Boethius - Divine Knowledge, Free Will & Eternity

1.8.4 (Omni)benevolence

1.8.5 Eternity & Free Will

1.9 Religious Language: Negative, Analogical, Symbolic

1.9.1 Apophatic & Cataphatic Way

1.9.2 Symbol

1.9.3 Discussion Points: Religious Language

1.10 Religious Language: 20th Century Perspective

1.10.1 Logical Positivism & Verification Principle

1.10.2 Wittgenstein

1.10.3 Falsification Symposium: Flew & Hare

1.10.4 Falsification Symposium: Mitchell

1.10.5 Discussion Points: Verification & Falsification

1.10.6 Discussion Points: Aquinas vs Wittgenstein

2 Religion & Ethics

2.1 Natural Law

2.1.1 St Thomas Aquinas - Telos & Four Tiers of Law

2.1.2 St Thomas Aquinas - Precepts

2.1.3 St Thomas Aquinas - Real & Apparent Goods

2.1.4 Discussion Points - Natural Law & Doing Good

2.1.5 Discussion Points - Telos & Double Effect Doctrine

2.2 Situation Ethics

2.2.1 Fletcher's Situation Ethics

2.2.2 Fletcher's Concept of Conscience

2.2.3 Discussion Points: Moral Decision-Making

2.2.4 Discussion Points - Agape

2.3 Kantian Ethics

2.3.1 Introduction to Kantian Ethics & Duty

2.3.2 Hypothetical & Categorical Imperative

2.3.3 Summum Bonum & Three Postulates

2.3.4 Discussion Points: Kantian Ethics

2.4 Utilitarianism

2.4.1 The Utility Principle

2.4.2 Act & Rule Utilitarianism

2.4.3 Discussion Points: Utilitarianism

2.5 Euthanasia

2.5.1 Key Concepts for Euthanasia Debates

2.5.2 Discussion Points: Natural Law & Situation Ethics

2.5.3 Discussion Points: Sanctity of Life

2.5.4 Discussion Points: Autonomy & Medical Intervention

2.6 Business Ethics

2.6.1 Corporate Social Responsibility & Whistle-Blowing

2.6.2 Good Ethics & Globalisation

2.6.3 Discussion Points: Utilitarianism & Kantian Ethics

2.6.4 Discussion Points: CSR, Globalisation & Capitalism

3 Developments in Christian Thought

3.1 Saint Augustine's Teachings

3.1.1 Human Nature

3.1.2 Original Sin & God's Grace

3.2 Death & the Afterlife

3.2.1 Heaven, Hell, & Purgatory

3.2.2 Different Interpretations of the Afterlife

3.2.3 Election

3.2.4 The Final Judgement

3.2.5 Discussion Points: Heaven, Hell & Purgatory

3.3 Knowledge of God's Existence

3.3.1 Natural Knowledge

3.3.2 Revealed Knowledge in Faith, Grace, & Jesus Christ

3.3.3 Revealed Knowledge in the Bible & Church

3.3.4 Discussion Points: Reason & Belief in God

3.3.5 Discussion Points: The Fall & Trust in God

3.4 The Person of Jesus Christ

3.4.1 Jesus Christ’s Authority as the Son of God

3.4.2 Jesus Christ’s Authority as a Teacher of Wisdom

3.4.3 Jesus Christ’s Authority as a Liberator

3.5 Christian Moral Principles

3.5.1 The Bible & Love

3.5.2 Bible, Church & Reason

3.5.3 Discussion Points: Christian Ethics

3.5.4 Discussion Points: Love & the Bible

3.6 Christian Moral Action

3.6.1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer & the Confessing Church

3.6.2 Bonhoeffer & Civil Disobedience

3.6.3 Bonhoeffer's Teaching on Ethics as Action

3.6.4 Discussion Points: Civil Disobedience & Bonhoeffer

3.7 Development - Pluralism & Theology

3.7.1 Pluralism & Theology: Exclusivism & Inclusivism

3.7.2 Pluralism & Theology: Pluralism

3.7.3 Discussion Points: Salvation

3.7.4 Discussion Points: Pluralism Undermining Beliefs

3.8 Development - Pluralism & Society

3.8.1 Development of Multi-Faith Societies

3.8.2 Responses to Inter-Faith Dialogue

3.8.3 The Scriptural Reasoning Movement

3.8.4 Discussion Points: Social Cohesion & Scripture

3.8.5 Discussion Points: Conversion

3.9 Gender & Society

3.9.1 Waves of Feminism

3.9.2 Traditional Christian Views on Gender Roles

3.9.3 Christian Views on Gender Roles & Family

3.9.4 Discussion Points: Secular Views of Gender

3.9.5 Discussion Points: Motherhood & Family

3.10 Gender & Theology

3.10.1 Rosemary Radford Ruether

3.10.2 Mary Daly

3.10.3 Discussion Points: Ruether & Daly

3.10.4 Discussion Points: Male Saviour & Female God

3.11 Challenges

3.11.1 Secularism - Sigmund Freud

3.11.2 Secularism - Richard Dawkins

3.11.3 Christianity & Public Life

3.11.4 Discussion Points: Spiritual Values

3.11.5 Discussion Points: Social Values & Opportunities

3.11.6 Karl Marx

3.11.7 Liberation Theology

Jump to other topics

Unlock your full potential with GoStudent tutoring

Affordable 1:1 tutoring from the comfort of your home

Tutors are matched to your specific learning needs

30+ school subjects covered

Jesus Christ’s Authority as a Teacher of Wisdom

The Bible & Love

Skip to content

Get Revising

Join get revising, already a member.

Jesus as a Political Liberator

• Religious Studies
• Christianity
• Created by: hollylouisee.x
• Created on: 09-05-19 10:57
• a Messiah is the person the Jews believe would come and save the Jews and lead them to victory over the Romans
• many parts of the Bible demonstrate Jesus as a confrontational figure, e.g. when he cast out the money changers from the temple
• it has been suggested Jesus was a criminal as he was crucified next to other criminals. this is because he broke the Roman law
• he healed a blind man with a mixture of mud and saliva which represents him breaking the Jewish law in an unclean way
• Jesus challenged religious authority - his teachings of the Sabbath day went against that of contemporary times, such as the Pharisees criticisms of the temples which led to conflict
• "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction"
• Gustavo Guiterrez: religion should be used to help the poor in order to make their lives better and give them a chance to get into heaven
• he did not accept or use the political title himself
• he emphasised peace
• he spoke of a spiritual kingdom of god rather than a wordly one
• "give to Caesar what is Caesar's. Give to God what is God's"
• Judas may have betrayed Jesus because he was not radical enough to be a Zealot
• the church might only emphasise Jesus as the Son of God rather than a political leader for their own benefit
• shows Jesus believe in social unrest with benefits rather than social stability where people still struggled
• "Blessed are the peacemakers"
• "Jesus Christ is the liberator who seeks to be committed to the economical, social and political liberation of those groups that are oppressed and dominated"
• "love thy neighbour as yourself"
• Jesus as a political liberator engages him in the world
• liberation and salvation become the same thing because they both involve struggle and conflict which, although may be fear, is not ignored
• Jesus was more politically driven than later writers like to portray
• Zealots are Jews who called for violent revolution
• However Jesus told them to put the daggers down which suggests he was not a Zealot
• reason 2: his arrival to Jerusalem may have been deliberately organised to show him as the new Messiah
• reason 3: the Romans put him on a cross and put a crown of thorns on his head suggesting he was the leader of a political group against the Romans in power. they may have done this to ridicule him or as a warning
• links to Immanuel Kant

Report Tue 11th May, 2021 @ 11:07

how do u see the full overview of all she has written 

Similar Religious Studies resources:

The Person of Jesus Christ 4.0 / 5 based on 1 rating

Jesus teacher and liberator 0.0 / 5

DCT 0.0 / 5

Jesus - theology OCR Religious studies A2 4.5 / 5 based on 3 ratings

The Person of Jesus Christ 0.0 / 5

Jesus Christ 5.0 / 5 based on 1 rating

The Person of Jesus 4.5 / 5 based on 2 ratings

Jesus the Liberator 0.0 / 5

Quest for the Historical jesus 2.0 / 5 based on 2 ratings

The person of Jesus Christ 5.0 / 5 based on 1 rating

A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

The Person of Jesus Christ

OCR Christianity

The person of Jesus Christ is the question of who Jesus was. There are three options the spec wants you to consider – the son of God, a teacher of wisdom and a political liberator. Proponents of these views point to different aspects of Jesus’ life as evidence for their overall view of who Jesus was.

The Son of God view

Almost all Christians think Jesus is the son of God, but some see him as a lesser being or even as only human.

The Trinity

The Trinity is the doctrine that there is one God in three persons ; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the traditional and mainstream view in Christianity of the nature of God. The trinitarian view holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It claims:

• The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct Persons (hypostases)
• Each Person is fully God; the three are coexistent, coeternal and coequal
• There is one God; the doctrine does not split God into three parts

There were many different views about the nature of God’s relationship to Jesus in early Christianity. In A.D. 325 a council of Bishops was convened by Constantine to settle the dispute over the God’s relation to Jesus. They produced the Nicene Creed which proclaimed the trinitarian view correct. These are its key points:

• Belief in one God
• Christ is the Son of God, “eternally begotten” of the Father
• “Begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father”.
• For our salvation “he came down from heaven”
• “By the power of the Holy spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”
• “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified”.

This was developed by The Chalcedonian Definition which was a decree of the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. The definition claims that Christ has two natures which join together in one being.

“Christ is to us One and the same Son … truly God and truly Man … acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostatis; not as though He were parted or divided into Two persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God.”

The God of Christian monotheism was thereby declared a triune God. He is one Substance ( ‘ousia’ ) yet three Persons (‘ hypostasis ’). Jesus has two natures (human and divine). He is Fully God and Fully Man, joined in hypostatic union. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal.  Jesus’ relationship with God was therefore unique in that Jesus is the second person of the holy trinity. Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God.

The Incoherence of the trinity. The Unitarian liberal theologian Channing argued that the Trinitarian view of Jesus is one of “infinite confusion”. How could one being be both human and divine, weak and almighty, ignorant and omniscient? Something could be either human or divine, but not both. These are two different incompatible states. They are contradictory qualities which cannot inhere in the same being, or that being would have contradictory qualities. Divinity is infinite, humanity is finite; something cannot be both infinite and finite. John Hick agrees and illustrates this argument; to say Jesus is God is like saying that a circle is also a square. Hick goes on to conclude that Christ being a mere human solves the paradoxical implications of the trinity.

“For to say, without explanation, that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was also God is as devoid of meaning as to say that this circle drawn with a pencil on paper is also a square” – Hick.

The trinity is a mystery to be taken on faith. Theologians like Augustine and Karl Barth admit that the trinity is a mystery which must be taken on faith and that all human attempts to fully understand the trinity through reason are misguided. Barth said he was ‘relieved’ that Augustine admitted that his word “person” was just a manner of speaking for the mystery of the trinity, and Barth claims “A really suitable term for it just does not exist”. The application of human reason to understanding God is not something Augustine or Barth would accept.

The success of Barth’s argument here depends on whether they are right that the Bible supports the trinitarian view and also on whether he is correct in his rejection of natural theology and the power of reason to provide us knowledge of God.

The Biblical evidence for the trinity

The word “Trinity” is not in the Bible. However, trinitarians believe that we need the concept of the Trinity because they argue it accurately captures the way that the Bible refers to the relationship between The Father and the Son.

John 10:30. Jesus said, “The Father and I are one”. This quote seems to suggest that The Father and The Son are one being which would entail co-equal and co-eternal. This provides biblical evidence for the trinitarian view. It also suggests that Jesus thought of himself as divine.

Jesus’ “I am” statements from John.

John 1:1-3. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made”.

John 1:14. “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”

“The Word” refers to Christ. These verses from the first chapter of John are traditionally taken to show that Jesus is the Son of God in the unique trinitarian sense of being co-eternal with The Father, because he pre-existed the creation of the world, and co-equal with The Father, because through him all things were made.

Hick’s critique of the Biblical evidence for Jesus’ divinity from John. Hick argued that the historical Jesus did not teach nor “apparently believe that he was God, or God the Son, Second person of a Holy Trinity, incarnate, or the son of God in a unique sense.”

Hick points out that the label ‘son of God’ was a common title in Judaism when referring to a very special human chosen by God, not a truly unique divine person. For example, Adam was called the son of God.

Many scholars, including Hick, make a development argument regarding Jesus’ divinity. John was the latest Gospel written and clear statements of Jesus’ divinity do not exist in the earlier Gospels, which casts doubt on the authenticity of John. The earliest gospel is thought to be Mark, which begins with Jesus’ baptism making no mention of a divine birth and Jesus is depicted as a prophet. Matthew and Luke were written next and mention Jesus’ divine birth. John was written last and presents the son (The Word) as having existed even before the incarnation. Hick’s argument is that Jesus being the son of God in a unique sense was a later invention and thus an idea of human origin. Hick applies demythologisation to the idea of the incarnation, concluding that it conveyed the idea of embodying a conviction in life. Jesus embodied ‘the goodness and love of God’.

However, even in Mark, often thought by New Testament scholars to be the first gospel written, there are presentations of Jesus that seem to suggest his divinity. During Jesus’ baptism God speaks and says: “you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Jesus quiets a storm like God does in the story of Jonah and walks on water like God does in the book of Job.

Bart Ehrman defends the development argument, claiming that it only applies to what Jesus said about himself, not to what the narrative features gospels like Mark suggest about Jesus. Ehrman argues that such features of Mark’s gospel show that Mark understands Jesus to be divine, but that does not show that Jesus himself thought of himself as divine. It is only in gospel of John that Jesus makes clear statements of divine self-identification and although there is dispute over the dating of the first gospels there is considerable agreement that John was written last and is therefore subject to this development criticism, focused on what Jesus said about himself.

Jesus’ miracles

The miracles of Jesus arguably show he was the son of God. He walked on water, turned water into wine, raised people from the dead. A mere human would not have the power to do such things. Jesus’ power to do miracles presumably also shows he thought of himself as divine.

Old testament prophets also did miracles. Couldn’t Jesus’ miracles at most show that he was a prophet, as is thought in the Islamic religion? Moses parted the red sea to help the Jews escape from slavery in Egypt. This is a miracle, yet no Christian thinks it shows that Moses is the son of God.

Jesus had unique control over miracles. Moses parted the red sea, but only under God’s instruction, God telling Moses to raise his staff. Jesus’ power to do miracles seems to be totally under his control. This is most clearly seen in the turning of water into wine miracle because he was reluctant to do it at first before then deciding to do it. This makes it seem that the power to do miracles is completely under Jesus’ control in a unique way.

Reimarus (18 th Century German Philosopher) was the first influential thinker to analyse the historical Jesus; to try and figure out how accurate the Early Church’s presentation of Jesus’ teachings actually was. Reimarus believed that Jesus was just a human who was deluded about being the Messiah. After the Crucifixion, his disciples hid his body so they could pretend he had been resurrected. The disciples then edited Jesus’ claims about an impending apocalypse, transforming them into claims about timeless spiritual truths.

Reimarus points out that Jesus only did miracles to those who already had faith. When ‘sensible’ ‘learned’ people requested a miracle for examination, Jesus refused, so no sensible or learned people could believe in him. Jesus’ miracles were only written down 30-60 years after his death, and in a language that Palestinian Jews could not understand. It was also a time of ‘greatest disquietude and confusion’ where very few who knew Jesus still lived. The gospel authors thus had little fear of being understood or refuted, especially considering they also told Christians that it was soul-saving to just believe and have faith. This made it easy for the gospel authors to ‘invent’ the miracles of Jesus, whether out of well-intentioned deceit or simply their own credulity.

“and both of these, as is well known, prevailed in the highest degree in the early Christian church.” – Reimarus.

The historicity of the resurrection of Jesus

According to the Bible, Jesus rose from the dead three days after being crucified. This is often seen as the most important Christian doctrine. St Paul went as far as to claim that if the resurrection did not happen then faith is pointless. The traditional argument is that Jesus rising from the dead shows that he was the son of God in a unique sense. The question of whether we have good historical grounds for believing that the resurrection happened thereby becomes significant to the debate over whether Jesus was the son of God. No old testament prophets were resurrected. It also suggests that Jesus would have thought of himself as divine.

N.T. Wright defends the son of God view on the basis that the resurrection can be justifiably believed in as a historical event. Wright’s argument for the resurrection as a historical event is that the Jewish theological beliefs on the Messiah and resurrection of the early Christians underwent radical “mutations” that were completely contrary to and thus could not have been derived from traditional Jewish thought. Wright claims that these astonishing transformations in what was a very conservative religion must “force the historian … to ask, why did they occur”. Wright’s proposal is that they occurred because the bodily resurrection of Jesus really happened and the Gospel authors simply wrote down what happened.

The empty tomb and the post-mortem appearances are also part of Wright’s case for the resurrection. The empty tomb being discovered by women followers in what was a patriarchal society where women’s testimony was not valued in court suggests it was not made up. If it were made up, the authors would have made it men who discovered the empty tomb. Wright concludes:

“that is why as a historian I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him.” – Wright.

The hallucination hypothesis. Some argue that Jesus’ post-mortem appearances to the disciples could have been some kind of visionary/religious hallucination and therefore not credible as historical evidence.

Wright responds that visions of the dead was a well-known idea in ancient Judaism, so if the disciples were simply having some kind of hallucinatory vision then they would have viewed and understood him as being taken up into heaven by God to the bosom of Abraham and glorified. They would not have come to the conclusion that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was in fact alive. So, Wight responds to attempts to explain away these experiences as susceptible to a naturalistic explanation by pointing to the understanding of resurrection the disciples came to as not one which would follow from a naturalistic event.

Keith Parsons responds to the argument that the radical transformation of Jewish theology is best explained by an actual historical resurrection. He points out that according to the gospels “Jesus’ ministry contained many heretical elements” e.g. Mark 2, Jesus is condemned as blasphemous for claiming authority to forgive sins. In Mark 2:28 Jesus claims to dictate on the rules concerning the sabbath. Parsons concludes that since Jesus’ teaching was so heretical, the arising of radical beliefs about resurrection and Messianism in the disciple’s minds “hardly seems to require supernatural explanation”. Parsons goes on to suggest the difficulty of deciding on the criteria by which we could determine whether a change in theological thinking was too great to have been of human origin.

The teacher of wisdom view

The moral teachings of jesus.

The Parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11–32) shows Jesus’ teachings on repentance and forgiveness. A man with two sons is asked by the younger one for his share of the inheritance early. He then wastes his wealth and has nothing. He returns to his father and repents, saying he has sinned against heaven and his father. The father forgives him, calling for a feast to celebrate his return. The older brother working in the field refuses to join this celebration though, feeling it is unfair that he worked hard yet received no such celebrations, while the other wasted their wealth and does. The father says to the older brother “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found”.

The sermon on the mount , including the beatitudes. Matthew 5:16-41. The fulfilment of the old Law Murder Adultery Divorce Oaths Eye for an Eye

These moral teachings suggest that Jesus was a teacher of wisdom.

Although Jesus gave moral teachings, they are not the teachings that a mere human teacher of wisdom would have the right to give. For example, Jesus said “You have heard it said, ‘Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:38-39). To take the teachings of Moses and then say ‘But I tell you’ and then give a teaching that completely contradicts those of Moses implies that Jesus thinks of himself as having greater authority than Moses. Arguably only God has that much authority.

C. S. Lewis’ trilemma develops this kind of point. Lewis argued against the view that Jesus was merely a moral teacher, which he regarded as ‘patronizing nonsense’ and an incoherent interpretation of Jesus’ sayings. Lewis argued that the claim to forgive sins which were not committed against yourself is only a moral teaching if ‘the speaker is God’. Jesus could only have been a morally good teacher of wisdom if his claim to forgive sins was backed up by the authority of being God, since only God has a right to forgive sins. There are thus three options; Jesus was either God, insane or evil. He cannot be only a moral teacher.

There are other options however, such as that Jesus’ belief that he was divine was an honest mistake that he was genuinely deluded about. That delusion need not affect his moral reasoning overall and thus he could have been a mere human teacher of wisdom who mostly taught good morals but also incorrectly thought himself divine.

Hick, Bultmann & demythologisation

John Hick claimed that Jesus was not the son of God in a unique sense but was only a human ‘guru’ and moral ‘role model’. Hick was influenced by Bultmann’s approach to the Bible called demythologisation. Bultmann thought that the Bible had become difficult for modern audiences to accept because of how scientifically and historically minded people have become since the enlightenment period. This causes an issue because the Bible contains supernatural occurrences, or ‘myths’, such as the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection.

• The literalist approach was to believe the myths literally by denying the modern advances in knowledge that contradict them. Bultmann rejected this sort of blind faith as spiritually empty.
• The liberal approach ignores the myths and focusing only on the moral teachings found in the Bible. Bultmann rejected this approach because it reduces Christianity to a mere moral philosophy, a set of teachings, rather than an encounter with a way of life.

Bultmann thought there was another approach to the myths in the Bible, which was not to ignore them, nor take them literally, but take them as a record of human spiritual experience which had been put into words fitting ancient culture.

Demythologising is the process of translating myths into language fitting modern culture, revealing the deeper truths about the encounter in early Christianity with a new spiritual way of life; the early message of Christianity which first spread the faith. This might then give modern audiences a confrontation with the call to a spiritual life committed to Christ.

For example, the resurrection and Easter, when demythologised, is not about the rising of Jesus but the raising the early church due to the raising of faith of the disciples which inspired them to preach. Successful preaching and spreading the message of Jesus causes resurrection to take place within individual people.

Hick, following Bultmann, thought that the Bible contains ‘true myths’ meaning ‘not literally true’ but inspiring us spiritually and morally.

Hick concluded that instead of being viewed as historical record, the resurrection story should be demythologized and viewed as symbolising ‘God’s gift of renewal’ and ‘life transcending death’. Jesus did not rise from the dead and was not the son of God in a unique sense.

Jesus’ role in our salvation shows he was divine. Jesus’ sacrifice of his own life to save us from our sins is called the atonement and is something only a divine being could do. A mere human’s death would not have the significance nor power to save us from our sins. Christians believe that Christ’s defeat of death when he was resurrected was an offer of eternal life to all who have faith in him. So, the resurrection story must have been true in order to make sense of the purpose of Jesus’ life in saving us from our sins, which is a prevalent biblical theme.

The moral exemplar theory of the atonement, such as the version proposed by Hick, doesn’t require that Jesus’ death had a literal and direct effect on our sinful state, so his theory of the atonement undercuts the importance of the trinity for salvation. Hick claims that Jesus was just a human and so certainly died, but that the power of his sacrifice was merely as an example of moral life so inspiring that it influences us to be better and thereby saves us from our sins in that sense. So, Jesus didn’t have to be a divine being to save us from our sins.

N. T. Wright’s criticism of Bultmann. Wright claims that the sources we have for history, such as the Gospels, do not merely and simply tell us something about the gospel writers, but that through their writing we can actually learn something about historical events. So, Wright claims Bultmann goes too far when he reduces the meaning of the Gospels to mere expressions of deeper truths about how the writers felt. Wright acknowledges there is some truth to that but claims that the Gospels actually do also tell us something about what happened in the past.

“Of course, in principle, writers who intend to write about other things than themselves will give you quite a lot of themselves en route, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t telling you about things that actually happened. Yes, you have to read them critically, but you have to be a realist as well. So critical realism.”

Critical Realism is the theory that everyone has their own worldview, their own lens through which they perceive the world, which informs, frames and biases their perception. “Realism” refers to the idea that there is a real world that we can perceive and understand, “critical” refers to the idea that we understand the world from our own evaluative perspective.

Wright accepts that ancient texts involve personal expression on the part of their authors which could include the expression of spiritual experience. However, that only justifies taking a critical view of the text. It does not justify abandoning realism by reducing the entire meaning of the text to expression of personal perspective or experience alone, as Bultmann attempts to do.

The Liberator view

Luke 10:25-37 – The parable of the Good Samaritan. The Jewish law said to love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus says to do this to receive salvation. Someone then asks him who counts as a ‘neighbour’. Jesus then told a story of a man attacked by robbers and left for dead on a road. A priest and a Levite walked past, not helping. However then a Samaratan, someone thought of as a lower class of people at the time, stopped to help the injured man. Jesus points out the Samaratan was a neighbour to person in need. “Go and do likewise”, Jesus says. Jesus used marginalised people as examples in his teaching. The message seems to be not to have prejudice or bias against someone because of their group. This was also a radical change from traditional parables which focused on the teachers of the law as exemplars.

Liberation theology – agreed with Marx’s criticism of capitalism. It began in 1964 by young catholic theologians in Brazil who reinterpreted the Christian message to focus on poverty. They believed that Jesus’ true message was in favour of economic justice.

Paulo Friere influenced liberation theology, inventing the term ‘conscientisation’ which describes the awareness someone can come to of the power structures in a society. Freire thought that education should be used to transform society to fix unjust power imbalances.

The preferential option for the poor is a term first used by Father Pedro Arrupe which refers to the way the Bible and Jesus showed a preference for poor people. Jesus also seemed to say the poor and less fortunate were blessed, especially in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount.

For Libertation theologians the Kingdom of God is about fixing this world, not about the afterlife. Christians should work for justice by fighting exploitation and oppression. Latin America was undeveloped and was facing a choice between continued capitalism or socialism.

Liberation theology is a Christian movement in theology and as such it is founded on the teachings and example of Jesus. It’s validity is thus dependent on its being Biblically supported, which is debated. Jesus certainly said many things that seem anti-wealth, but the question is whether they go as far as justifying liberation theology’s view that Christians should do more than charity by taking a structural approach to dealing with the causes of economic inequality.

Jesus said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ – Matthew 19:24.

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where you treasure is, there your heart will be also”. Matthew 6:25-34.

If Jesus is saying give up all your possessions and that there shouldn’t be rich people – that sounds quite anti-capitalist.

Counter interpretation: arguably this at most shows that Jesus thought rich people should give to charity, it doesn’t suggest he wanted to overturn or address the causes of economic oppression/inequality. Kloppenburg , a Catholic Brazilian bishop, makes this point. He first argued that fusing theology and political action diminishes the spiritual message of Christianity. Liberation theology focuses on the injustice and sin in the structure of society, but Jesus spoke about the sin and forgiveness of individual people, he didn’t speak about society in general. There is too much focus on the ability of people to achieve liberation when in fact it comes from God, Kloppenburg argued. Jesus does seem to be pointing out that living for money is bad, but he doesn’t seem to be saying that we should actively try to overthrow the unjust social structures that result from living for money. In fact, when questioned whether Jews should pay an unjust tax, Jesus said yes: ‘give unto Caesar what is Caesers’. That quotes seems to suggest Jesus saw a fundamental disconnect between the human political society and living for God.

Exodus story: involves the liberation of Jews from the oppression of the Pharaoh and arguably shows that God is not only concerned about liberation at the individual level. This could be taken to counter Kloppenberg’s argument. God clearly cares about freeing people from social oppression which seems to back up liberation theology. Christianity sees itself as an expansion of the Jewish covenant to all humanity, which would make this quote relevant to all oppressed people.

Furthermore, if enough individuals followed Jesus’ teachings, the economic consequences would be structural. If individuals following Jesus’ teachings liberates the poor by destroying the structural causes of economic injustice and inequality, Jesus’ teachings should be seen as aimed at that.

The golden thread

The golden thread is Reuther’s idea that there is a theme of liberation, including supporting feminist causes, in the Bible. This is a thread of validity, which we can disentangle from the patriarchal influences. However, the Bible also contains sexist patriarchal themes. These two themes – liberation and sexism – are inconsistent with each other. They cannot both be God’s authentic revelation. If we can find a way to separate the golden thread of authentic teachings which support feminism from the patriarchal threads, then Christianity might be redeemable.

Reuther describes this golden thread as the ‘prophetic-liberating tradition’. It includes:

• God’s defence the oppressed such freeing the Jews in Exodus.
• Jesus’ treatment of marginalised people (including the poor and women).
• Jesus’ criticism of the established religious views that serve to justify and sanctify the dominant, unjust social order.
• Jesus’ moral teachings like the golden rule.

This golden thread is the theme of liberation, which is God’s authentic revelation, the rest is influenced by patriarchal men. Identifying the golden thread gives us a standard by which to compare and judge other parts of the bible and ‘reject’ those that do not fit the liberation theme. The only way for the bible to be feminist is if it rejects the use of God to justify social domination or subjugation. Patriarchy is the idolizing of the male as representing the divine so it must be denounced as idolatry and blasphemy.

Reuther’s golden thread argument depends on her claim that a plausible reading of Jesus’ actions is that they were aimed at liberating of women from the unjust social order. Reuther claims Jesus supported feminist causes, which would suggest Christianity can be redeemed by living up to the example of Jesus. There are bible stories which seem to demonstrate this:

The woman at the well. There were racial, historical and religious tensions between the Jews and the Samaritans, yet Jesus began a conversation with a female Samaritan at a well by asking her for a drink, which was unheard of as the ancient Jewish view was that Samaritans were unclean. She responded by asking how he could ask her such a thing. The disciples are also shocked when they see Jesus doing this. Christian feminists interpret this story as showing Jesus’ willingness to challenge the discriminatory culture of the time.

Just because Jesus thought Samaritan women should not be seen as unclean however does not necessarily go any further than that and therefore doesn’t justify Christian liberal feminism.

The adulterous woman (John 8) is a biblical passage involving a woman who had committed adultery bring brought to Jesus by the Pharisees who asked Jesus if she should be stoned. Jesus said: “let whoever is without sin cast the first stone”. After the Pharisees leave, Jesus tells the woman he does not condemn her, but that she should depart and sin no more. Control of the sexual behaviour of females through violence, imprisoning her within marriage and reproduction is often thought the most significantly destructive aspect of patriarchy by feminists, and it seems Jesus was in favour of the kind of progress that feminists want.

This story at most shows that Jesus was against capital punishment for adultery. He still tells the woman not to sin again and therefore Jesus is still in favour of what anti-Christian feminists regard as a patriarchally constructed conception of ‘sin’.

Jesus said to Martha (Luke 10) that she should not prepare food in the kitchen but join everyone else to listen to his sermon. This could suggest that Jesus was against the traditional social gender roles where women’s job is to prepare food in the kitchen.

Jesus was arguably just saying that his teachings/sermon was more important than preparations in the kitchen – but this doesn’t mean that women’s place overall isn’t in the kitchen. Jesus is not necessarily saying that.

Galatians. Probably the most significant pro-liberation & feminist Bible verse is from St Paul:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ”. Galatians 3:28.

The non-political reading of Jesus & the Bible. There are other ways of reading these passages which suggests they are not aimed at challenging or change social structures. If Jesus was the son of God, his actions and moral teachings might sometimes appear to challenge social order/structure, but that might just be because he treated everyone as spiritually equal .

Treating people equally might give the appearance of challenging the social structures that are responsible for inequality, but arguably Jesus was only intending to bring his message to all humans equally, as the son of God would do. Regarding all being one in Christ according to Galatians, the idea that all are equal in Christ might seem pro-liberation, but arguably it only refers to spiritual equality ‘in Christ’, not social equality in society. Furthermore, consider God’s creating of humans in Genesis 1:27: “male and female he created them.”

Furthermore, there are passages where Jesus seemed explicitly anti-political. He spoke about the sin and forgiveness of individual people, not about society in general. When questioned whether Jews should pay an unjust tax, Jesus said yes: ‘give unto Caesar what is Caesers’. This suggests Jesus saw a fundamental disconnect between social injustice and religious matters. After arrest by the romans, to explain why he did not fight against his unjust arrest, Jesus said that his kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18), which suggests he sees a disconnect between human politics and the kingdom of God.

We could try to defend Reuther by arguing that these anti-political passages are simply not part of the golden thread of liberation.

However, the problem with that is, these passages aren’t explicitly patriarchal or pro-oppression passages. They are only suggesting that Jesus is not concerned with political or social engagement.

Possible exam questions for the Person of Jesus Christ

Easy Was Jesus only a teacher of wisdom? Was Jesus more than a political liberator? Was Jesus the Son of God?

Medium Was God’s relationship with Jesus very special or truly unique? What do Jesus’ teachings on repentance and forgiveness tell us about who he was? “Jesus’ teachings on inner purity and moral motivation show that he was a teacher of wisdom” – Discuss. Can Jesus’ authority be understood exclusively as the Son of God?

Hard Did Jesus think he was divine? Does Jesus’ resurrection show that Jesus was the Son of God? “Jesus’ miracles show that he was divine” – Discuss. “Jesus’ is most defined by his challenge to political authority” – evaluate this view. “Jesus’ knowledge of God expresses his divinity” – Discuss. “Mark 6:47-52 (walking on water) shows that Jesus is the son of God” – Discuss. Assess the implications for the person of Jesus of John 9:1-41 (Healing blind man) Does Matthew 5:17-48 (sermon on the mount) show that Jesus is only a teacher of wisdom? Does Matthew Luke 15:11-32 (Parable of lost Son) show that Jesus is only a teacher of wisdom? “Jesus was a liberator as shown in Mark 5-24:34” (12-year Mensturating woman that Jesus healed) – Discuss What does Luke 10:25-37 (The good Samaritan) tell us about Jesus?

Quick links

Year 12 Christianity topics: Augustine. Death & afterlife. Knowledge of God’s existence. Person of Jesus. Christian moral principles. Christian moral action.

Year 13 Christianity topics: Pluralism & theology. Pluralism & society. Gender & society. Gender & theology. Secularism. Liberation theology. 

OCR Ethics OCR Philosophy OCR essay structure OCR list of possible exam questions

• A common interpretation of Jesus Christ revolves around the concept of liberator. This concept refers to Jesus’ mission to free individuals and society from forms of oppression.
• This interpretation is rooted in the New Testament, where Jesus is portrayed as delivering people from physical ailments, demonic possession, and societal marginalisation.
• Especially in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus declares his mission to be one of liberation, citing the prophesy of Isaiah that speaks of bringing good news to the poor, releasing the captives, and setting the oppressed free (Luke 4:18-19).
• The concept of Jesus as liberator connects with the Christian belief of salvation through Christ. Salvation in this context is seen as liberation from sin, death, and the power of evil.
• Latin American Liberation Theology, a movement that emerged in the late 20th century, particularly highlights the concept of Jesus as liberator. It emphasises the Christian responsibility to fight for social justice and to identify with the poor and oppressed, considering Jesus’ teachings and actions.
• This perspective views Jesus not only as a spiritual saviour, but also as a political revolutionary challenging the oppressive structures of his time.
• Some critics argue that this interpretation of Jesus as a liberator and social reformer departs from traditional theology, which primarily emphasises his divine nature and mission to save humanity from sin.
• Nonetheless, this concept of Jesus as liberator is a powerful image in many Christian communities, inspiring efforts towards social justice and inclusivity.
• When revising, consider various biblical passages that support the concept of Jesus as liberator, such as Luke’s Gospel, and also examine different theological perspectives on the issue. Contemplate factors like historical context, cultural influence, and theological traditions that might shape these interpretations.

• Jesus the Liberator

The OCR RS AS specification says that you need to know about liberation theologians' teachings about different types of sin, structural , social , personal and about their views about J esus the Liberator .

Personal sin:

Sin is an action that goes against the law of God. The traditional concept of sin is that people are responsible for their own personal actions which go against God. Christianity teaches that a person who sin should confess their sin to God, repent (be sorry) and try to avoid repeating that sin in future. Within the Roman Catholic tradition individuals are expected to go to confession regularly and confess their sins to a priest who might give them a penance to do and pronounces absolution on behalf of God.

The traditional view of sin does not allow for any idea of corporate responsibility. An individual is responsible for their own sins.

Social sin:

However, there are other ways of understanding sin. Liberation theologians tend to focus on the idea of social sin. Attitudes like racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and oppression of the poor could all be said to be examples of social sin. Social sin is the collective effect of many personal sins which cumulatively make up attitudes and behaviours that harm other people. Society as a whole has a responsibility for social sin.

Structural sin:

'The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity.'

'Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.'

Gustavo Gutierrez A Theology of Liberation

Structural sin occurs when social sin becomes encoded into unfair laws and structures within society.

• For example, racism is a social sin but becomes a structural sin when turned into laws which created apartheid. 
• In the Latin American context disregard for the poor would be an example of social sin. This becomes structural sin when it is reflected in the policies and laws tied up with land ownership.

Liberation theologians argued that Christianity should engage with structural and social sin and try to bring about change. At Medellin the Bishops agreed that what was needed for true liberation was ' new and reformed structures ' and they said  ' faced with the need for total change of Latin American structures, we believe that change has political reform as a prerequisite .'

This relates to the idea of showing a preferential option for the poor . Gutierrez thought that God himself showed a preferential option for the poor as if he did not side with the oppressed in an unjust world then he would be implicitly siding with the oppressors.

The bishops said that the Church had a duty ' to create a just social order ' and they criticised those who did not work for change saying ' also responsible for injustice are those who remain passive for fear of the sacrifice and personal risk .'

Can sin really be social/structural?

The idea of  corporate responsibility  is one that is found in the Bible (in the Old Testament God frequently held the Israelites as a whole responsible for the sins of some of their number). This may seem unfair, but one could argue that those who do nothing to combat oppression are implicitly involved in contributing to it by allowing it to continue. In this way liberation theologians thought that the Church itself had been guilty of contributing to oppression by not using their power and influence to oppose it.

Pope John Paul II said no:

However, statements from the Vatican have expressed concern about the idea of social sin and structural sin which they think undermine the idea of personal responsibility for our action.

In 1984 Pope John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter ( Reconciliatio et Paenetentia ) in which he made clear that Church views sin in terms of personal sin. He acknowledged that certain situations are very unfair and said that these go against the will of God but he cautioned against blaming the situation rather than the individuals.

'Sin, in the proper sense, is always a personal act, since it is an act of freedom on the part of an individual person and not properly of a group or community.'

'...it is a truth of faith, also confirmed by our experience and reason, that the human person is free. This truth cannot be disregarded in order to place the blame for individuals' sins on external factors such as structures, systems or other people.'

'...to speak even analogically of social sins must not cause us to underestimate the responsibility of the individuals involved. '

'...Whenever the church speaks of situations of sin or when she condemns as social sins certain situations or the collective behavior of certain social groups, big or small, or even of whole nations and blocs of nations, she knows and she proclaims that such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins.'

'.... The real responsibility, then lies with individuals.' 

John Paul II Reconciliatio et Paenetentia (read more of the relevant section here )

The reason why social and structural accounts of sin might undermine personal responsibility is because and individual's action is interpreted as being driven by the the sinful environment that they live. This can be illustrated as follows:

• For example, the idea of blaming apartheid and racism for the treatment of Nelson Mandela would remove the moral responsibility for the individuals involved in his trial. 
• In the Latin American context blaming the latifundia system and the general attitudes towards the poor would seem to absolve individual land-owners of their moral responsibility for their actions. To blame the deaths of Romero and the Jesuit priests in El Salvador on the attitudes of the time and the military dictatorship would seemingly 'let off' the individual soldiers involved in their deaths.

Pope John Paul II was also concerned with the ideological (i.e. Marxist) basis for the idea of structural sin. Marx' historical materialism saw individual action as a product of the economic conditions of the time and believed that structural change was needed to liberate people.

Liberation theologians say yes:

However, liberation theologians like Boff were convinced that it was correct to describe the structures of society could themselves as sinful.

'...unjust structures or oppressors are objectively an evil. For this reason, they are "sin" in the material structural sense. These unjust structures are, to society, what lust is to the individual: they carry and even drag one into evil.'

Leonardo Boff, On Social Sin

Gutierrez made it clear that structural sin needed to be addressed and society needed to be transformed.

'Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society'

Theories about sin relate to the role of Jesus because if Jesus came to liberate people from sin (and the bishops at Medellin reaffirmed that God ' sends his Son in the flesh, so that he might come to liberate everyone from the slavery to which sin has subjected them' ), then Jesus must liberate people from all types of sin.

Jesus the Liberator:

Given that sin has personal, social and structural elements to it it is important that 'liberation from sin' includes methods of dealing with each type of sin.

Gustavo Gutierrez said that people needed:

• Political/social liberation to free them from the laws that entrap them. This would be liberation from structural sin . This would be achieved through praxis and engagement with political/economic issues.
• Human liberation/emancipation to restore their dignity and release them from the bonds of social sin . This would be achieved through conscientisation and a preferential option for the poor.
• Liberation from selfishness and sin to restore relationships with God and others. This would include a more traditional understanding of freeing people from their own personal sins .

The traditional view:

'For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

Romans 6:23

The traditional view is that Jesus liberates people from personal sin by freeing people from the consequences of sin. The Bible tells us that 'the wages of sin is death ' and traditional Christian salvation theology explains that Jesus' death on the cross paid the price of human sin and enabled humans to go to heaven instead of hell. In addition, many Christians believe that the risen Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit as counsel (guide) helps to liberate Christians from their sinful human nature and enable them to live as new people guided by faith rather than by sinful inclinations.

Thus Jesus is liberator, but liberation is largely spiritual and occurs primarily in the afterlife . 

Liberation theologians challenge that view. Gutierrez argues that although we have come to accept the traditional view unthinkingly, this view of Jesus obscures the real person.

'We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon.'

Gutierrez A Theology of Liberation

Jesus the social revolutionary:

Liberation theologians might also use a hermeneutic of suspicion to ask why certain aspects of Jesus' ministry have been overlooked or deliberately ignored by traditional theology. Is it perhaps that emphasising the radical nature of Jesus and the rebellious elements of his message would be unwise for a Church closely associated with those who had political power?

Liberation theologians do not reject this understanding of salvation. However, they believe that other, more political, elements of Jesus' ministry have been left out.

They argue that Jesus challenged the social conventions of his day. He challenged strict interpretations of the Jewish law which 'trapped' people by providing them with standards that they could not possibly live up to. He discribed the religious elite (the pharisees) as hypocrites. He told the rich to give up their wealth and give to the poor whilst at the same time upholding Samaritans and children as examples to be emulated. He preached reversal. 

At the time Jesus lived many people believed that wealth was a sign of God's blessing - thus rich people were good. Disease was viewed as a sign of God's displeasure and implied the person had sinned. Thus by criticising the rich and healing those with disease Jesus was challenging the social order of his day.

Jesus' preaching was reflected in his action. He chose followers from the lower ranks of society (fishermen), he associated with those of ill-repute and outcasts. He healed people of sickness thus 'liberating' them from the things that physically constrained them and stopped them living life to the full.

Thus Jesus was not necessarily the mild-mannered pacifist that people imagine when they think of Jesus. For liberation theologians, Jesus was someone who acted decisively on behalf of the disadvantaged (those who were the underside of history ) and he told his followers to do the same.

Specific examples:

Texts of particular importance include Jesus' what is sometimes called Jesus' ' mission statement ' found in Luke 4 in which Jesus reads from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:16-21

Liberation theologians would point out that Jesus stressed today  (i.e. in this world now) this will be fulfilled. Jesus brings 'good news' to the poor and has come to free the oppressed.

Another important text which demonstrates Jesus' criticism of those with power and his opposition to structures that trap people is Matthew 23 in which Jesus cricitised the pharisees (religious leaders). He said:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

Matthew 23:1-4 & 13 (read whole chapter here )

Later in Matthew's gospel the parable of the sheep and the goats (also called the judgement of nations) says that those who get into heaven will be those who have helped others. By helping others they have effectively done these things for Jesus so that 

'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Matthew 25:35-36

Of course helping others need not necessarily be revolutionary. However, liberation theologians would argue that when structural sin exists the best way to feed the hungry is to remove the things that cause people to be hungry in the first place.

The principle of reversal is also found in Jesus' teachings. In Matthew 19 Jesus told the rich young man that in order to get into heaven he had to give up all his riches and give them to the poor. At the end of the chapter Jesus said:

'But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.'

Matthew 19:30

Note: this links with other areas of LT. It could be part of the hermeneutic (judging) mediation. You could use it to demonstrate how LT use the Bible. Emphasising Jesus' liberating message could form part of conscientisation. Look for these links and use them in your essays.

Liberation theologians believe that Jesus liberated people from social and structural sin as well as personal sin. Consequently, the bible provides theological justification for engaging with structural sin. As a social reformer the historical Jesus engaged with the structures of his day. Liberation theologians would also believe that the risen Christ continues to act on behalf of the oppressed. Thus those who struggle against oppression are accompanied by Christ as they do so. For Sobrino, the resurrection is a message of hope that love will triumph in the end. He wrote:

'The Resurrection of Jesus is...a symbol of hope...I don't see how you can show love...without being in solidarity with the victims of this world. And if you are in solidarity with the victims, I don't see how you can avoid the cross. The theology of the cross is the theology of love in our real world.'

Jon Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy

Academic debates: Was Jesus actually a zealot?

Gutierrez linked Jesus with the zealots who were a Jewish political group who opposed Roman occupation. The question of to what extent Jesus was actually a revolutionary is one that has interested academics. On the one hand there is some evidence that he could even have been a zealot. 

• His disciples were carrying swords when he was arrested.
• Judas Iscariot was one of his disciples and it has been claimed that Iscariot 'knife man' was slang for zealot.
• He was crucified with the title 'King of the Jews' perhaps suggesting that he intended to overthrow the Romans and be the leader of Israel.

However, there is also counter evidence

• He advised people to pay their taxes
• He said 'my kingdom is not of this world'
• He voluntarily allowed himself to be arrested.

It is probable that we will never be able to know for sure!

Evaluation:

There are two main issues at stake here:

• Should theology concern itself with social and structural sin or should the emphasis continue to be placed on personal sin?
• Is it legitimate to regard Jesus as a social reformer/political revolutionary and does such an approach undermine more traditional salvation theology?

What type of sin should the Church be concerned with?

In response to the first issue, liberation theologians would argue that social sin and structural sin cause considerable problems in the world and contribute to the suffering of many people. Christians should be motivated by love to work for justice and in order for justice to be achieved unequal systems need to be abolished. (i.e. engaging with social sin is a necessary condition of creating a fairer society).

John Paul II's response was that although unfair situations are against God's will and should be opposed, the real problem is still individual action. Terms like structural sin are unhelpful because they undermine personal responsibility.

A related issue is the fact that if structural sin has a legal/political element then it presumably has a legal/political solution. To what extent should the Church get involved in politics? Should the Church be focusing on the afterlife (which is arguably more important than this life as it goes on for longer!)? Can Christians use violence to oppose oppression?

Who was Jesus?

The question of whether or not Jesus was a social revolutionary relates to the question of whether we can know anything about the historical Jesus. Scholars are divided both on the issue of whether we can know anything about Jesus and those that think we can know what he was like do not always agree on the details of what he said or did.

Consider whether you think a more political reading of Jesus is damaging to Christianity. Is it reductionist to talk about Jesus bringing social change on earth? Is is possible for him to be both social revolutionary and traditional saviour? 

Ultimately, are liberation theologians teachings on sin and on Jesus authentically Christian or misguided and damaging?

• ESSAY COMPETITIONS
• University Courses

Edexcel IGCSE

• Religious Community

Request Help

• Request IGCSE Help
• God and Creation
• Human Nature
• Knowledge of God
• Interpretation of the Bible
• Person of Christ
• Preferential Option for the Poor
• Land and Environment
• Hermeneutics
• Influence of LT
• Request AS Help
• What is Religion?
• Postmodernity
• Exclusivism
• Inclusivism
• Women in the Bible
• Traditional views on women
• Mulieris Dignitatem
• Secular Liberal Feminism
• Liberal feminist theology
• Reconstructionist Feminism
• Reconstructionist Theology
• Secular Radical/Naturalistic Feminism
• Radical Feminist Theology
• Request A2 Help

A2 Revision

• Essay Advice
• PAST PAPERS (DCT)
• SAMPLE QUESTIONS
• PAST PAPERS (Ethics)

AQA Philosophy AS (new A level)

• Philosophy of religion primary texts

AQA Philosophy A2 (new A level)

• Concept of God

Edexcel website

OCR website

AQA website

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Numismatics
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Social History
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Acquisition
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Religion
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Meta-Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Legal System - Costs and Funding
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Restitution
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business Strategy
• Business History
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Social Issues in Business and Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Systems
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Social Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Sustainability
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• Ethnic Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Politics of Development
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Qualitative Political Methodology
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Disability Studies
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

10 Jesus among the Believers

• Published: March 2023
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

There is a remarkable scene in Luke 12, in which Jesus is asked to divide an inheritance. Significantly, Jesus refuses to do so. Yet the exact meaning of his refusal is hard to establish--until this passage in Luke 12 is compared to a passage in Acts 7, on the life of the prophetic legislator Moses. Once these texts are read in conjunction, it becomes clear that Jesus portrays himself, in Luke , as a prophet who is importantly different from Moses. In what way? Where Moses came as a political judge, Jesus seems to see himself only as a mystical judge. His words, and his "laws," do not judge the body--but only, the soul.

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Extract: Jesus the Liberator

October 27, 2016.

Jesus, the Liberator – the view from the Gospels

Naming Jesus “the Liberator” is practically synonymous with naming him “Saviour,” “Redeemer,” and “Deliverer.” Incidentally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church in referring to Christ’s work, uses the terms “redemption,” “salvation,” and “liberation” in that order of frequency. The apparent tension in Jesus’ preaching about the  kingdom of God yet-to-come and the kingdom already-here is like the two sides of a same coin. One implies the other. The eschatological work of Christ and His Spirit necessarily leads all people towards an authentic social and political progress here and now. The liberating work of the crucified and risen Jesus encompasses not only the age to come, but also the present human life on earth.

O’Collins (1998) gathered from the Gospels some instances of Jesus’ social activism towards the realisation of the kingdom here and now:

5 1. Jesus’ concern with human progress in the social area:

• rejection of divorce by either partner (Mark 10:2-12);

• command to love one’s enemies (Luke 6:27-28);

• foundation for men and women of a new egalitarian family based on obedience to the divine will (Mark 3:34-35).

2. Jesus touching the political life of people, both nationally and internationally:

• extending the divine mercy to tax-collectors, who collaborated with Roman and Jewish leaders (Luke 18:9-14; 19:9-10);

• speaking out against hatred of foreigners in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37);

• prophetically electing the Twelve as a symbol of his desire to reform Israel (Mark 3:13-19).

3. Jesus leading the way in delivering people from bondage with a religious revolution with obvious social and political implications:

• his table fellowship with impure outcasts (Mark 2:13-17; Matthew 11:19; Luke 15:1; 19:7);

• his attitude in welcoming women as disciples (Luke 8:1-3).

Quoting J.P. Meier, O’Collins states that through the beatitudes, Jesus is promising to do in his kingdom “what Israel’s human kings often failed to do: defend widows and orphans, secure the rights of the oppressed, an in general see justice done.” He also expresses his view that in Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, Luke was expressing “what Jesus’ proclamation aimed at: a new religious and social order that would bring liberation for those oppressed by various forms of evil.”

O’Collins further states that “Mark and then Luke and Matthew, when remembering and interpreting Jesus for their communities of faith, acknowledged, or at least implied, that the offer of divine salvation he made through his words and deeds also enjoyed massive social and political repercussions. The new attitudes towards and relationships with others that he encouraged must deeply shape human beings in their progress towards a new society, both here and hereafter.”8 O’Collins, however, points out that the “modern dream of emancipation, through which free and intelligent human beings would everywhere become active subjects of civilised progress rather than remain passive objects of oppression, has collapsed. Along with the rational liberalism encouraged by the Enlightenment, Marxism now counts among the ‘gods who have failed.’”

Therefore, more than ever, we Christians are called to fully live “the ‘Gospel values’ (Redemptoris Missio, 20) as in hope we all journey together towards the final kingdom. In a special, but not exclusive way, Christ’s liberating work continues through the Church, the sacrament of salvation for all human the humiliation of his death.” Scheffler points out that Jesus’ stern command to his disciples not to tell anyone about his Messiahship (Mark 8:3) has been used by many commentators “to try to make Jesus out as a completely a-political figure,” a view that Scheffler strongly disagrees with.

For him, “Jesus’ Messiahship does have political implications, but the difference is that it entails far more than what is contained in national and political expectations. The Lucan Jesus, in particular, is definitely not portrayed as obtaining earthly political power for his own benefit, but as being directed against political power which results in all kinds of suffering amongst people (cf Luke 22:25-27). Jesus’ Messiahship challenged the relevant interest groups of his time to such an extent that they in fact crucified him as a political criminal … He is indeed the Messiah, but for him it does not mean immediate glory and honour, but actually implies that he must suffer, be rejected and die (Luke 9:18-21).”

For Scheffler, Jesus “saves people from all forms of suffering … his redemption activities … (are) probably the basic characteristic of Jesus as he is portrayed by Luke.”15 3. Jesus, the Liberator – the view from Liberation Theology We hope that by now it has become clear that the title Liberator attributed to Jesus has a strong practical connotation, with clear Scriptural roots.

However, it must be pointed out that this title has come to such a prominence in the life and doctrine of the Church only in the last century. It happened through the advent of a new way of doing theology that started in the late 1960’s in Latin America and eventually spread to the whole Catholic world. Liberation Theology seized the title and brought it to the prominence that it nowadays enjoys. Broader Gospel reflections, like the ones made by O’Collins and Scheffler and referred to in the previous section, were motivated by the appearance of liberation theology. Obvious as those reflections might appear for us today, we believe that that they might not have come to fruition, at least not in the pungent and comprehensive ways that they have been phrased, if liberation theology had not arisen.

Yet, it is our thought that the reflection on Jesus the Liberator from the perspective of the Gospels should programmatically precede the reflection from the perspective of liberation theology, even though they are chronologically and historically reversed. With that said, we would like now to turn our attention to liberation theology. But, again, we will make another chronological reversal. By all accounts, this new theological way was born in the continent that has the largest proportion of Christians, and particularly Catholics, in the world: Latin America. And liberation theology in Latin America arose within a particular context: the huge economical, social and political inequalities that plagued that continent in the second half of the twentieth century, and that still do, to a large extent, today.

However, we would like in this section to digress about liberation theology in the broader context of the whole Catholic world. We will leave the analysis of some specific aspects of the Latin American theology of liberation for the next section. beings. Christ’s community serves the kingdom by its preaching, by sharing new life in him, and by its ‘commitment to justice and peace, education and the care of the sick, and aid to the poor and children’ (ibid.)”. “Christian believers should seek to alleviate and eliminate miseryWe will start with a quote from Robert Brown, which to a certain extent explains our decision to talk about Jesus the Liberator before talking about liberation theology: “liberation theologians have … (forced) … us (Western Christians) back to the person and the story (of Jesus Christ), before the theologies developed, and (challenged) us to look with new eyes at material we thought we understood.

In a very important sense, there is nothing ‘new’ here. We have heard all these things before, though they have usually been surrounded by many other things that make the figure of Jesus more palatable to us. Liberation theologians, in other words, are not making up new stories about Jesus; they are simply recalling some of the old stories that have gotten buried in the course of 2000 years.” Peter Phan believes that “future historians of Christian Theology will no doubt judge liberation theology to be the most influential movement of the twentieth century, possibly even since the Reformation.” One can say that the contemporary understanding of Jesus Christ, the Liberator “has targeted various arenas of oppression – gender (white feminist, womanist, and mujerista theology), sexual orientation (gay and lesbian theology), race (Black theology), class (Latin American theology), culture (African theology), and religion (Asian theology), again just to cite a representative few.”18 We would also add political oppression (Middle Eastern theology) to the list.

These references lead us to talk about several liberation theologies. Though some theologies have been predominantly associated with a geographic context, they are not constrained to specific parts of the world. Actually “they are each widespread in all parts of the globe and are often intimately interlocked with each other and mutually reinforcing, so that any genuine liberation theology anywhere must fight against all forms of oppression, be they sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, racism, classism, cultural and religious discrimination, all at once, siding in effective solidarity with victims of all forms of oppression.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Dominican priest from Peru, is one of the precursors of liberation theology. From that perspective he redefines theology as “a critical reflection on the Church’s presence and activity in the world, in the light of revelation. … Theology is reflection, a critical attitude. First comes the commitment to charity, to service. Theology comes ‘later.’ It is second. The Church’s pastoral action is not arrived at as a conclusion from theological premises. Theology does not lead to pastoral activity, but is rather a reflection on it. … Theology, therefore, as a critical reflection on the Church’s presence and action in the world, in the light of faith, not only complements the other two functions of theology (wisdom and rational knowledge) but even presupposes them.”21through working for a world situation in which individuals will be freed from all oppression. The bishops at Vatican II reflected on the manifold nature of this degradation: ‘Never before today have human beings been so keenly aware of freedom, yet at the same time, new forms of social and psychological slavery make their appearance’ (Gaudium et Spes, 4)” The work of Christ, the Liberator, is the core thread between the kingdom here and now and the kingdom yet to come.

Again, from O’Collins, “faith in Christ’s liberating work inescapably implies an obligation to strive for progress towards peace in our world. That earthly life continues to be so brutal for so many is intolerable. Their faith in Jesus our Liberator should impel Christians to take up the cause of those who suffer economic injustice, cultural backwardness or any other form of human misery. Jesus’ account of judgement sets our hope for the coming kingdom in just such a context of responsibility for the alleviation of physical and mental suffering. ‘I was hungry and you gave me food’ (Matt 25:35). The sequence is not: ‘I was hungry and you preached patience to me.’ There is a hard particularity about the duty imposed by the hope for the coming kingdom. … Social and political action proves the truth of our belief in the climax of Christ’s liberating work: the complete redemption to come for human beings and their world.” E. Scheffler, a South African theologian, also extracts from the Gospel of Luke an image of Jesus as the savior or liberator for various kinds of human sufferings: political, economical, social, psychological, physical, and spiritual. According to him, “Jesus himself also suffered on these different levels of life and is also ultimately exalted after his death.

Returning, though, to the original issue of the preferential option for the poor, Michael Cook speculates, after Alfred T. Hennelly, “that ‘the real, though unexpressed, major thesis of The Liberation of Theology is that the entire millennium and a half of Constantinian Christianity has involved a gradual and massive ideologisation of the gospel in favour of powerful and privileged interests in western society.’” As a result, states Cook, the “implication for theological method of this relationship between faith and ideology is that one must continuously engage the concrete situation in order to discover what God is revealing here and now.” To counter this presumed ideologisation, liberation theologians adopted a key, albeit controversial, element of their method: the hermeneutical cycle, or hermeneutics of suspicion, as some critics refer to it. Juan Luis Segundo, a Uruguayan Jesuit, has written extensively on it. Essentially, according to Segundo, it involves four steps: “Firstly there is our way of experiencing reality, which leads us to ideological suspicion. Secondly there is application of our ideological suspicion to the whole ideological superstructure in general and to theology in particular. Thirdly there comes a new way of experiencing theological reality that leads us to exegetical suspicion, that is, to the suspicion that the prevailing interpretation of the Bible has not taken important pieces of data into account. Fourthly we have our new hermeneutics, that is, our new way of interpreting the fountainhead of our faith (i.e., Scripture) with the new elements at our disposal.”

Study with us

Practise Questions 2020

Religious Studies Guides – 2020

Check out our great books in the Shop

Leave a Reply Cancel

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Find Flashcards
• Why It Works
• Tutors & resellers
• Content partnerships
• Teachers & professors
• Employee training

Brainscape's Knowledge Genome TM

Entrance exams, professional certifications.

• Foreign Languages
• Medical & Nursing

Humanities & Social Studies

Mathematics, health & fitness, business & finance, technology & engineering, food & beverage, random knowledge, see full index.

DCT > 2.To what extent was Jesus merely a political liberator? > Flashcards

2.To what extent was Jesus merely a political liberator? Flashcards

• Jesus can be seen as liberator, wisdom teacher or the son of God
• Liberator – someone who frees a person or group of people
• He was more than a liberator to a great extent

paragraph 1

• Zealots – freedom fighters used violence to attempt to rid Palestine of the romans – Simon was a Zealot
• Jesus link to Zealots can be argued to link to him a political liberator
• SUCCESSFUL – he challenged the political authority
• Jesus teaching of the Kingdom of God and being in a future when God will rule can be seen as political – suggests that the power would be taken away from those with authority – God would be the central focus of society and not laws but would be based on love

paragraph 2

• NOT SUCCESSFUL
• He was not merely a political liberator – at the very least he can also be seen as a religious liberator – his main focus was on the interpretation of religion that had been made by politics – for example sermon on the mount, focusing on what you should do and follow in the bible (what the pharisees had got wrong – praying loudly on street corners to be heard)
• This can be seen to make him more of a wisdom teacher than a liberator – through his teachings of wisdom he enabled the liberation of people whether it was on a religious or political level
• His teaching where much more spiritual than political – the teachings of the kingdom of God ‘My Kingdom is not from this world’ – more spiritual in his authority

paragraph 3

• ON THE OTHER HAND
• Jesus came to free people from themselves which can be seen as a move that would be made by a liberator – he wanted to make society better for people as politics made life worse
• His work was around being a political liberator
• Helped to liberate the outcasts in society as one of his main things – looking out for people and helping them – not a violent/ zealot behaviour
• IN ADDITION
• In regards to Jesus and his disciples being a zealot – Jesus said ‘live by the sword die by the sword’ – a very pacifist statement
• As well his disciples where not arrested alongside Jesus – they would have been seen as more of a threat if they were part of a revolution and zealots hoping for power and political liberation
• Jesus was not a political liberator
• He can be seen as more of a wisdom teacher talking of the bible which lead to religious liberation – helping people follow religion correctly and teaching of God – not creating a revolution and uprising against politicians of the time

DCT (19 decks)

• ESSAY There Is No Other Means Of Salvation Than Christ
• ESSAY An All Loving God Would Not Deny Anyone The Chance Of Salvation
• ESSAY All Good People Should Be Saved Regardless Of Faith
• Chapter 11 Pluralsim And Theology Notes
• Exclusivism
• Inclusivism
• CMP Essay Plan
• Knowledge Of God’s Existence
• The Person Of Jesus
• Moral Principles
• Moral Actions
• Pluralism And Society
• Gender And Theology
• Gender Key Terms
• 1. ‘Bonhoeffer’s theology is still relevant today.’ Discuss
• 2.To what extent was Jesus merely a political liberator?
• 3. Assess the view that a Christian can be a theological pluralist
• Corporate Training
• Teachers & Schools
• Android App
• Help Center
• Law Education
• All Subjects A-Z
• All Certified Classes
• Earn Money!

I Think Therefore I Teach

Tips for A level students. Lesson ramblings for teachers (helpful ideas too!)

Examiner’s Report 2018: The Highs and Lows (A Level)

The results are in, now it is time to put the examiner’s mouth to the marks…how did they arrive at these?

The examiners note how the majority of responses follow ‘fairly well – worn tracks.’ Well I felt the same about their comments. On the whole I feel that the examiners are expecting more than these 18 year olds, with three 2 hour exams and 32 topics to remember, are capable of. Does it matter if they follow ‘well worn’ tracks as this is a new cohort with different pressures? Or maybe we should teach it differently (better)?

General comments:

• Showed knowledge from other topics (synoptic links) suggesting an understanding of the holistic nature of the A level
• Lack of focus on exact wording of the Q
• Long introductions, summaries better left until the end
• Most of essay spent on A01 with A02 added at the end – resulting in insufficient depth
• Few students showed signs of having undertaken research. What do they expect? How are students meant to cover the already dense spec in the short time provided and do further research and remember it all including the main parts needed? – Very unfair expectation in my view!
• Comparing scholars is not evaluation – this is simply comparing viewpoints. Students need to justify which perspective works in relation to the Q.

Philosophy:

1. ‘The best approach to understanding religious language is through the cataphatic way.’ Discuss

Good points:

• Good use of Aquinas’ analogy of attribution and proportion, Ramsey’s Models and Qualifiers, alongside own examples or those of Aquinas’ bull/urine or Hegel’s faithful dog
• Close comparison (and therefore analysis) between the cataphatic and apophatic ways
• Symbol used effectively

Bad points:

• Description of examples with no link back to the Q
• Demonstrated more knowledge on apophatic way
• Symbol confused with myth (no longer on spec)

Check out this Mark with Me Preview where I go through an answer that achieved the overall A*:

2. To what extent does Hume successfully argue that observation does not prove the existence of God?

• Variety of Hume’s criticisms, relating them to succinct summaries of the Teleo and Cosmo arguments. (Satisfactory answers wrote copious amounts of descriptions for Aquinas and Paley, leaving little room for Hume).
• Darwin and Tennet’s anthropic principle when used in relation to Hume.
• Analysed Hume’s criticisms, weighing up how successful they are.
• Juxtaposing alternatives such as Big Bang without justify any reasoning as to why applying them.
• Accepting points without question such as Hume’s Epicurean thesis.

3. Assess Boethius’ view that divine eternity does not limit human free will.

Least popular and least well done- insufficient knowledge of key theory.

• Explain in detail Boethius’ reasoning including simple and conditional necessity.
• Effective use of Aquinas’ lofty peak and comparisons to Swinburne’s everlasting ideas.
• Some compared to Anselm’s four dimmensionalist approach but didn’t understand how his views of eternity meant that all moments were in God equally and so God is with us in the moment of choice.
• Linked divine eternity to the afterlife or concentrated too heavily on FW.
• PoE was discussed but only credited when tied to Q.
• Debate surrounding God’s other attributes: omnipotence, punish/ reward and omniscience.

Check out this Mark with Me video where I go through a top mark Boethius answer:

4. ‘Corporate religious experiences are less reliable than individual religious experiences.’ Discuss

Produced the most generic religious experiences responses.

• Many examples used, most commonly Toronto Blessing and Saul’s conversion.
• Good application of William James’ criteria to both types of RE, aiding the argument for/against reliability.
• Useful inclusions of psychological studies and Swinburne’s principles when used in line with argument/ reasoning.
• Less successful examples: miracles or near-death experiences.
• Did not focus on exact wording of question.

Interestingly a general comment made was that requiring three essays in two hours was quite challenging…This is very different from the Philosophy paper which said that ‘most were able to write three full essays, the time spread evenly across the paper.’ Now logically you would have thought that the first exam students sat, would have been the problem paper not the middle one. Were the questions too vague? Were the students less prepared? Or were the examiners expecting too much?

• Evaluate Aquinas’ theological approach to conscience.
• Effective discussion of: ratio, synderesis, conscientia, vincible and invincible ignorance and Aquinas’ focus on reason and how this makes his view on conscience different to others.
• Good synoptic links to Augustine and the Fall to challenge Aquinas’ optimistic ideas of synderesis.
• Misconception that conscience is the voice of God according to Aquinas.
• Analysis of Aquinas was limited to his assertions being religious and old fashioned.
• Candidates wrote at length about material from the old spec often at the expense of more relevant material. (Now this puzzled me a bit. Yes students need to focus on the question and yes any other names added need to be linked to Aquinas in order for it to be relevant but when the spec says wider reading/ research/ scholarly views…isn’t this what students are trying to do? Yes they might be old spec materials but wouldn’t they now class as wider understanding?)

2. ‘”Good” is meaningful.’ Discuss

• Good understanding of: Bradley and Foot for Naturalism, is – out fallacy and Moore’s intuition.
• Links between Ayer’s verification principle and emotivism were often used well and how morality is neither analytic nor synthetic.
• Linking ‘good’ to normative theories often produced superficial answers
• Not focusing on the term ‘good’ as a technical term direct from the spec
• Common misunderstandings surrounding emotivism.

3 . Assess the view that natural law is of no help with regard to the issue of euthanasia.

• Detailed understanding of: primary and secondary precepts, use of reason, real and apparent goods, double effect.
• Effective use of case studies to illustrate a point.
• Good use of how NL protects the vulnerable but does not give adequate focus on Quality of Life.
• Limited to applying only preservation of life.
• Unable to contrast to SE effectively.
• Dominated by lengthy case studies without clear argument.

4. ‘Kantian ethics provides the best approach to Business Ethics.’ Discuss

• Effective use of ‘means to an end’ linking to various scenarios.
• Good understanding of Business Ethics concepts: CSR, whistleblowing and globalisation.
• Examples and case studies used well to advance argument.
• Clever exploration of how Kant would probably have opposed Milton Friedman.
• When compared to Utilitarianism, best answers made good use of Mill’s harm principle.
• Basic coverage of duty/ telling the truth without full exploration.
• Comparisons to Utilitarianism just focusing on pleasure or what most people want.
• Analysis stated but not explored or justified and no judgment reached.

Christian Thought:

I read this section of the examiner’s report with my mouth wide open! I think some of the expectations of what the students were meant to understand in relation to these questions is degree level. From reading the comments, I do not feel that it has been taken into consideration that there are 12 new DCT topic, covering a massive range of views and arguments with quite limited A02 in parts and even less time to cover them all! I will show you what I mean…

• ‘Bonhoeffer’s theology is still relevant today.’ Discuss
• Good use of: discipleship and solidarity – tied in with liberation theology and civil disobedience. Also how recent suffering can be linked to Bonhoeffer to show that Christians have a duty to act.
• A few mentioned Religionless Christianity, no rusty swords and the western void (if I’m honest I’ve not come across these…certainly not in the text books!)
• Cheap and costly grace frequently misunderstood

2. To what extent was Jesus a political liberator?

• Demonstrating understanding of: Jesus wishing to challenge the ruling authorities and aiming for wholesale reform of society.
• Effective use of comparisons to Jesus as Messiah, teacher of wisdom, social liberator and Son of God.
• Well developed Biblical evidence and scholarship from Hick, Lewis, Brandon, Sanders and Aslan (which OCR resource are these all in?).
• Distinguish between Jesus’ role as a social liberator vs a political one, acknowledging that being one does not necessarily imply being the other too (with effective use of biblical examples to support). 
• Over emphasis on other parts of the topic: Jesus as a Zealot, liberator, Messiah, wisdom and Son of God without links to the specific question.

3. Assess the view that Mary Daly’s theology proves that Christianity is sexist.

• Concept of ‘proof’ was interestingly addressed, including evidential examples of how Christianity is and is not sexist.
• Insightful references to Daly’s own bias and how this clouds her judgement affecting her theological views. 
• Acknowledged how the writing, collation and revelation of the Bible were patriarchal and therefore inescapably sexist (despite Jesus’ efforts).
• Students who showed greater awareness of hermeneutics, exegesis and eisegesis were better able to analyse the extent to which Daly proves that Christianity is sexist (is it just me or do you teach students about these areas? I covered these ideas at degree level! W hen this topic is already so dense in information and detail, is it fair to expect students to have a degree level understanding of complex ideas such as hermeneutics as well?)
• Ruether was overused.
• Discussing the extent to which Christianity is sexist in general.
• Use of Unholy Trinity but often ideas not unpicked in full and what these mean for women in practice.
• Many candidates fell into the trap of criticising Daly ad hominem rather than the details of her theology. This means that students often criticised Daly for hating men rather than what they stand for/ practice.
• Not being able to apply knowledge of Daly effectively to the Q.

4. ‘Secularism does not pose a threat to Christianity.’ Discuss

• Analysis of the differences between programmatic and procedural secularism were useful, provided that there was a genuine understanding of the relationship between the State and Church. (This seems a very high expectation, that students have a genuine understanding between Church and State- considering the time allocated to cover topics and the amount of content to cover – do we really have time to explore the depth of the relationship between State and Church as well? Doesn’t this require students having a historical or sociological understanding too, in order to have any hope of exploring these ideas properly?).
• Good examples were used of how the UK is becoming more secular, comparing the UK to other places such as France and USA and also the debate around multi faith schools.
• Some thought the question focused on pluralism not secularism (often merging the two).
• Freud and Dawkins extensively used but not often applied to Q itself (those that acknowledged such ideas do not represent a threat to Christianity in isolation did better).

If you have any thoughts or comments please get in touch 🙂

If you would like to access a breakdown of the national Main Results Tables and Other Results Information please click: JCQ

Note: If you would like to watch more Mark with Me videos where I go through previous exam answers then join I Think Therefore I Teach’s exclusive membership on the Home page. Here you will have access to all 30 revision podcasts, Tired Teacher videos which support essay technique and exam preparation and the Discussion Forum for all your questions.

Share this:

Leave a reply cancel reply.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Discover more from I Think Therefore I Teach

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

• International
• Education Jobs
• Schools directory
• Resources Education Jobs Schools directory News Search

To what extent was Jesus merely a political liberator? [40]

Subject: Religious education

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

23 March 2022

• Share through email
• Share through twitter
• Share through linkedin
• Share through facebook
• Share through pinterest

OCR A LEVEL RELIGIOUS STUDIES THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST FULL MARKED ESSAY

Tes paid licence How can I reuse this?

Your rating is required to reflect your happiness.

It's good to leave some feedback.

Something went wrong, please try again later.

This resource hasn't been reviewed yet

To ensure quality for our reviews, only customers who have purchased this resource can review it

Report this resource to let us know if it violates our terms and conditions. Our customer service team will review your report and will be in touch.

Not quite what you were looking for? Search by keyword to find the right resource: