Oscar Romero's Liberation Theology

1. What does Liberation Theology add to our understanding of “incarnation”? Be sure to describe the traditional understanding of this term. And what do you think of Liberation Theology’s addition? Is it a positive development or not? Be sure to illustrate your response with details from the life and writings of Oscar Romero.

The meaning of “incarnation” as we have seen from this course is the idea that Jesus is the Word Incarnate or the embodied Word. In John 1, we learned about the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-3). Moreover, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Liberation Theology takes the illustration of the Word embodied as humanity and creates an analogy that Christians are embodied as the poor. Liberation Theology suggests that in order for Christians to fully comprehend how the poor are treated, they need to immerse themselves into the situation itself and become

Romero suggests in his speech that the poor have a better knowledge about sin than anyone else. In Romero’s 1980 speech entitled, “The Political Dimension of Christian Love,” Romero says, “Let us in this way remind ourselves of the fundamental fact of our Christian faith: sin killed the Son of God, and sin is what goes on killing the children of God.” Romero says more than just the fact that the poor have a greater understanding of sin because they have experienced so much death. He is talking about sin as strictly spiritual and that sin is derived from a spiritual structure. Thus, he is portraying the idea that death is not just a sin, but rather it has a strong spiritual