Abstract

CASTRILLON RESTREPO, José Fernando. Liberation Theology and Its Utopian Crisis. Theol. Xave. [online]. 2018, vol.68, n.186, pp.20-45. ISSN 0120-3649.  https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.tx68-186.ltiuc.

Liberation theology developed as a theology that focused on the injustices lived by the poor. The 70’s and the early 80’s were the peak of liberation theology with the main production of its authors. However, the enthusiasm for this theology and its academic production began to decrease in the middle of the 80’s. By exploring some theoretical elements of the first generation of liberation theology, we attempt to show that there is a crisis in the former liberation theology, and also that modern utopian reason is at the core of the origin of this crisis. Finally, this article critically analyzes the naive utopian belief in the emergence of ideal worlds in history and its influence on the vision of praxis in liberation theology as well as on modern social thought.

Keywords : Liberation theology; Utopian reason; Praxis; Teleology; Modern social thought.

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