Confronting the Mystery of God: Political, Liberation, and Public Theologies
Gaspar MartinezMartinez brilliantly contextualizes each of these thinkers. In broad strokes, he sketches postwar Germany, postcolonial Peru, and the "American century", and shows how each man was formed by his era. He also examines the lines of influence and relationship between these theologians and some of their "nontheological" contemporaries. Metz and Adorno, Bloch, and Benjamin; Gutierrez and Paulo Freire, Jose Carlos Mariategui, and the novelist Jose Maria Arguedas; and Tracy and thinkers from Eliade and Ricoeur to Gadamer and Derrida.
Martinez convincingly illustrates how each of these theologians in recent years has focused more directly on the mystery of God, entailing greater emphasis on spirituality and mysticism, with the consequence that the more properly theological their theologies have become the more they have become negative theologies.