UMA TEOLOGIA QUE NÃO NASCEU SOZINHA

A INTERDISCIPLINARIDADE COMO CONDIÇÃO HISTÓRICA DA TEOLOGIA LATINO-AMERICANA

Abstract

Latin American Liberation Theology is often described as concrete and historical because of its method—praxis as the first act—and its context—the structural oppression of Latin American peoples. This article proposes a complementary interpretive key: interdisciplinarity as a historical and methodological condition of that concreteness. Its central thesis is that Liberation Theology emerged within an intellectual environment shaped by dialogue among theologians, philosophers, economists, sociologists, and educators seeking to understand the effects of colonialism and imperialism on the lives of Latin American peoples. Through a reconstructive historical-intellectual analysis, the article demonstrates that this convergence was present from the movement’s earliest stages, was methodologically systematized through the concept of socio-analytical mediation, and was further developed by the following generation through its critique of the idolatry of the market. Although the relationship between Liberation Theology and the social sciences is a well-established topic in the literature—especially since Clodovis Boff’s work on theological mediations—few studies have examined interdisciplinarity as a constitutive feature present from the movement’s very formation. The article concludes that Liberation Theology’s engagement with historical reality is intrinsically linked to its own formative process, which was marked by the collaborative work of different fields of knowledge in addressing problems that exceeded the boundaries of any single discipline.