Entre a dependência e a libertação: mudanças epistemológicas na teologia latino-americana a partir da apropriação da teoria da dependência pela teologia da libertação

Abstract

Introduction: Liberation theology signaled a theoretical commitment to the community practice of de-privatizing the Christian faith in Latin America, supported by the Idea of liberation and its holistic implications. Consequently, the notion of liberation corresponded to the opposite equivalent of dependence within the methodological framework of the Biblical-theological approach. Thus we present in the research now submitted to evaluation, the conceptual relation that exists between Latin American theology and the criticism of the theoretical structure of underdevelopment, that is, the theory of dependence. Goal: To comprehend the meaning of the opposite correlation of liberation with regard to dependence from its specificities according to the perspective of the liberation intellectuals, and identify the way in which dependence was appropriated to respond to the socio-analytical responsive theoretical framework of these intellectuals, as well as perceive up to what point this manner of theological labor represented an epiphenomenal identity type. Methods: Historicalsystematic research of an exploratory type with a descriptive-analytical orientation, organized on classificatory patterns the layout of which seeks to indicate the evolution within the level of social interaction of the Latin American intellectuals who are disputing for the symbolic goods within the religious field, which is to say, the theological interpretation. The interpretation of the texts gathered here followed a comprehensive hermeneutical pattern presupposed within the weak thought and in the Latin American theological antilogy. Results: Stemming from the observation of the theoretical refraction of dependence toward liberation one can clearly see the epiphenomenological. concept of a Latin American theological intelligentsia as well the reception of the criticism of underdevelopment, of dependence as a hermeneutical unit correlating with the theological work on liberation, which should be learned through a dialecticalconflictual criterion. The concept of liberation thus appears as the theological interpretation of a whole theoretical field assumed indistinctly, that is, the theory of dependence. Conclusion: There is nothing more wrong, therefore, than to assume the opposite correlation between dependence and liberation as an affirmation of similarity between the theorized real (dependence) and the hypothetical conceptualization of the action maxims (liberation) since the option for a general theory (that of anti-imperialism) was received within the theological work in the name of interdisciplinarity. The implicit result was to dispense with the interpreted empiricism in an autonomous way in favor of the mobile human moral in order to recover the prophetic tradition.