After Prophecy, Wisdom? Matrices and Legacies of Liberation Theology

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explain the sapiential moment experienced by some Latin American theologies and, in relation to it, the possible emergence of a new look at the origins of the liberation movements of the last century. Firstly, an interpretation of the ethical–spiritual matrix of liberation theologies and the affiliations that have sprung from this experience is summarily presented. Next, an example of the sapiential heirs of Latin American liberation theologies is shown: theogastronomy. Thirdly, a new hypothesis is proposed about the ethical–spiritual matrix presented above, associating it with the women’s emancipation movement. Finally, it concludes with a brief Eucharistic reflection, which gives a paschal meaning to the rereading presented, opening prospects for reconciliation in the contemporary world.

1. Introduction

The form and content of liberation theologies have been associated, from the very beginning of their development, with a kind of prophetic phenomenon (see Aquino Júnior 2016): their explicit denunciations, their search for new utopias, and their proclamation of a transforming faith. Furthermore, their history of misunderstandings, conflicts, and martyrdom tends to confirm this association (see Carvalho da Silva 2022). But are these Latin American theologies viscerally linked to a single biblical matrix or, on the contrary, are they also expressing themselves in other forms, more similar to the biblical Torah and Wisdom, equally assumed and deepened in the Good News of Jesus Christ?

In order to offer some elements of an answer to this question, this article aims to explain the sapiential moment experienced by some Latin American theologies, which can also generate a new look at the origins of the liberation movements of the last century. To this end, in Section 2, we will present a new interpretation of the “option for the poor” as the ethical–spiritual matrix of liberation theologies, as well as highlighting the change in style of some affiliations that have emerged from this experience. In Section 3, we will present, in general terms, an example of the sapiential heirs of Latin American liberation theologies: theogastronomy. In Section 4, provoked by some theogastronomic discoveries, we will propose a new hypothesis about the ethical–spiritual matrix presented in Section 2, associating it with the women’s emancipation movement at the beginning of the last century. This will lead us to a Eucharistically inspired conclusion, eager to reap new fruits from the culinary history of humanity, a source of knowledge and inspiration for the disciples of the One who, when sending them out on mission, says: “eat whatever they serve you” (Luke 10,8).

2. An Ethical–Spiritual Matrix: The Option for the Poverty of Another

Many authors have already dedicated time to analyzing the historical origins of liberation theologies, as well as their specific method of theological reflection (see Libanio 1987). Based on another method and perspective (complementary to the studies already presented), I made a personal contribution to a theological congress (SOTER—Society of Theology and Sciences of Religion), proposing a parallel between the justice–justification relationship in the theological project of the ancient Pharisee Saul of Tarsus (justification being understood as the desire for justice for another who does not have it) and the liberty–liberation relationship in the theological project of Western modernity (liberation being understood as the desire for freedom for another who does not have it). At the end of that communication, the key idea of the hypothesis defended was summarized as follows:

The project of humanity developed in the course of Western modernity [centered on individual freedom] was confronted with a disconcerting experience of God and an unexpected call to conversion, revealing a privileged “place” where God and the human being affirm their freedom together: in the love-election (free choice or “option”) that goes out of itself to care for the life and liberation of another in history. The strength, meaning and depth of the biblical-existential experience of “election” is once again revealed in Latin American lands as the path par excellence of the human-divine process of Covenant, overcoming the affirmation of a salvation that would deny history and the world, as well as the extreme alternatives—“only God” or “only the human being”.

(Adão 2016, p. 29)

The already-known “option for the poor” is here reinterpreted and re-presented as “option for the poverty of another”, highlighting that the biblical experience of “election” can never be self-centered. Ancient Israel, established as a new people, also had to learn to “elect” (make an “option”) for “the stranger, the widow and the orphan”1. Therefore, the formulation “option for the poverty of another” was defended, in that academic communication, as an explanation of the “option for the poor” and as the matrix (like a mother capable of giving birth to children who are, at the same time, similar to her and different from her) and as the beating heart of every theological reflection and practice that claims to be liberating, according to the faith of the biblical people.

In this article, I want to take a further step in the reflection presented in 2016, reaffirming and reorienting a statement made at the conclusion of that academic paper:

The processes led by the liberation movements have allowed new subjects to become visible and emerge, new words to be spoken on the public stage, new narratives that question the narratives built up over centuries. This is a new era of multiple gestations. In each of the many popular movements, we are witnessing the construction of a (new) collective memory, the recovery of values and symbols that were once suffocated, and the construction of new projects related to these values and symbols. Each of these human groups is thus going through a period of constituting its own “Pentateuch”: its narrative, relational, spiritual, institutional and evaluative foundations.

(Adão 2016, p. 29)

The above reflection attempts to read the current reality of many Latin American groups (and those from other continents) from a biblical perspective: the path taken in the constitution of the people of ancient Israel is an inspiring interpretative key to reread the processes experienced by the “freed” of our time. If we accept this way of looking at reality, the prophetic power of liberation movements—including liberation theologies—has thus allowed new narratives and norms to emerge, which were previously suffocated or made invisible by hegemonic systems—be they social, cultural, economic, or religious—which are usually not very sensitive to otherness. The Puebla document (see CELAM 1982) already indicated this diversity that had to be seen and heard (nn. 31–39): poverty-stricken and abandoned children, frustrated and disoriented young people, indigenous and African Americans, landless peasants, workers, the unemployed and underemployed, marginalized urbanites, and the elderly. The same document referred to the desires of women, as well as their situation of marginalization (nn. 834–849). Later, other “faces” would also appear in pastoral and theological reflection: the LGBTQIAP+ movements and, extending the boundaries beyond the human sphere, reflection on animal rights and care for the Earth (see De Mori 2014). The explicit recognition of this otherness appears as a profoundly challenging element for the Church’s action and for theological reflection in a Latin American context.

The development of social, religious, and theological movements relating to each of these groups gave rise to a new phase of Latin American theologies, which can be considered “daughters” of liberation theologies, generated in the matrix of the “option for the poverty of another”. There is talk, for example, of black liberation theology, feminist liberation theology, indigenous liberation theology, etc. It is here that the change from “option for the poor” to “option for the poverty of another” takes on its full meaning. For it is possible—and legitimate—to have a black theology for black people, an indigenous theology for indigenous people, a feminist theology for women. But this would not be yet, in the terms described here, a liberation theology. The extension of the project of a full life to a human group other than the one that elaborates on it is part of the biblical root and the spiritual experience at the basis of liberation theology2.

Why is the analogy of the relationship between mother and daughters useful for understanding the relationship between all these movements? Because, despite being founded on similar values, these new theologies create different methodologies and call on other interlocutors, which no longer correspond exactly to the methodological choices of the first generation of liberation theologians, as we see in the new decolonial approaches (see Tavares 2022). When we continue to read this phenomenon with this biblical key, and following the stages of development of a free people, we can recognize that the format of this new generation of liberation theology is very similar to the wisdom of the biblical world: a phenomenon made possible by the encounter between the people of Israel and the wisdom of other nations. The “Latin American” trait does not disappear, but it is not the most emphasized element, since similar faces, desires, and problems are sought—and found—beyond the geographical space of origin3. To demonstrate the consequences of this phenomenon, this article will present, in general terms, a sapiential theology that is heir to Latin American liberation theologies, explaining its own approach in order to postulate a new hypothesis about the historical origin of liberation theologies.

3. Wisdom, Daughter of Prophecy: The Example of Theogastronomy

In this section, we will look at a very specific type of theology, with a sapiential style and method, that emerged in contexts of “fragmentation”, so common after the prophetic event of recognition of plural voices and projects within the same society. In the book La vie comme nourriture. Pour un discernement eucharistique de l’humain fragmenté (Adão 2023) [Life as food. For a Eucharistic discernment of the fragmented human being], I present the fruits of an open dialog with two contemporary thinkers—the Portuguese biblical scholar and cardinal José Tolentino Mendonça and the Brazilian food sociologist Carlos Alberto Dória—giving rise to a new theological approach that I have called, in some articles, “theogastronomy” (Adão 2022). As the term suggests, theogastronomy is in dialog with people linked to the world of food, in its most public aspect and connected to the cultural and artistic movements of our time, the gastronomic movement. The subtitle of the 2023 book also indicates the need for discernment in times of fragmentation: there are fragmentations that divide and kill, but according to faith, there are also fractions that unify and give life—which is the case with Jesus’ gift of himself at the Last Supper and in the drama of the cross.

An investigation into the relationship with food—as well as, conversely, with hunger—in order to identify the dynamics of life (and death) and the conditions of unification (and division) of a people is of no small interest. One sign of this is the introduction of a culinary insight into biblical and dogmatic studies in contemporary theology (see Méndez Montoya 2009; Wirzba 2014; Barroso 2021). Why? Because, on the one hand, this path takes seriously the “flesh” and the body, the sensitive and non-verbal relationship with reality, touching the human being in deep and very diverse dimensions: physiological, social, cultural, symbolic, spiritual, etc. This approach also opens up a field of dialog accessible to all people, regardless of their academic background, respecting what nourishes them physically and symbolically and helping them to identify a discreet inner movement, an implicit intelligence, and an often unsystematized search.

On the other hand, the social and anthropological sciences have been looking at this subject for almost a century, because the heritage and eating habits of a people can be considered “total social facts”. In fact, the act of eating involves a set of practices that set the whole of society and its institutions in motion, and is therefore among those phenomena that are, at the same time, legal, economic, religious, aesthetic, etc. (see Mauss 2012). Furthermore, this relationship with repetitive and sensitive experiences reveals—or hides!—a set of abstract notions linked to them (see Lévi-Strauss 1964).

Theogastronomy then joins the other food sciences in seeking to approach the food phenomenon from four distinct and interrelated levels:

(a) On the first level, modern gastronomy is about pleasure at the table: going beyond basic needs (without denying them!), it belongs to the realm of joy, creativity, and gratuitousness.

(b) On the second, more reflective level, it corresponds to a system of knowledge aimed at achieving pleasure in the world of food and is thus an ordered culinary knowledge: the techniques, products, history, narratives, tastes, values, and discomforts of a person and a people.

(c) The third level is revealed by the etymological meaning of the word: a gastronomic reflection (from γαστήρ, gastér, “stomach, belly” + νόμος, nómos, “law, norm”) manifests a normativity of the entrails, bringing to light that which is inscribed in our “flesh”—our sensitive, historical, and relational reality—and which often escapes our words.

(d) The fourth level, deeply involved with the previous three, is the properly theological contribution: the gaze of faith is able to see in culinary reality something of the Mystery, recognizing in it a theophanic value, that is, capable of manifesting divine holiness in the countless forms and languages of our world (see Adão 2022).

The theological form taken by theogastronomy deliberately proposes a sapiential approach to reality, which is always in need of discernment (see Rubens 2004). And what does “a sapiential approach to reality” mean? We follow the provocative reflection of a Brazilian Lutheran exegete, Milton Schwantes, in the article Sabedoria: textos periféricos? (2008) [Wisdom: peripheric texts?]. In this article, he describes the Wisdom Writings of the biblical world in this way:

The core of the Writings is wisdom. Together with prayer, this part of the canon is wise. Even the prayers are often configured within wisdom. Contained horizons do not necessarily obscure everyday life. Closed gates don’t end life, but they do shorten it. Storms on the horizon tend to bring people and bodies closer together, because the fear that comes can bring them together. In this way, the Song celebrates life, even though slavery surrounds life. Yahweh is not excluded, but neither is he central. At the center is us, people, and what we do or fail to do. Theology without peace with anthropology is therefore alienation. This is the problem of faith today. On Sundays, God is celebrated without us.

(Schwantes 2008, p. 61)

These words are consonant with those of another expert in biblical Wisdom, French professor Jacques Trublet. For him, the specificity of the biblical Wisdom tradition lies in its attention to the universal questions of humanity (rather than the privileges of Israel), resolutely choosing an anthropological starting point. Consistently and coherently, this tradition puts the categories of revelation specific to Israel in parentheses, in order to speak from the experience common to human beings of other peoples (see Trublet 1995).

If that were not enough, we also have an important reflection by the French hermeneut Paul Ricœur on the parables of Jesus which, in the context of the New Testament, use a sapiential language and method:

The first thing that might strike us is that the parables are radically profane accounts. There are no gods, no demons, no angels, no miracles, no time before time as in the founding stories, not even founding events like the Exodus story. None of that, but precisely people like us: Palestinian landowners travelling and renting out their fields, managers and workers, sowers and fishermen, fathers and sons; in a word: ordinary people doing ordinary things. Selling and buying, casting a net into the sea and so on. Herein lies the initial paradox: on the one hand, these stories are—as one critic put it—accounts of normality, but on the other hand, it is the Kingdom of God that is said to be like this. The extraordinary is like the ordinary.

(Ricœur 2001; Apud Tolentino Mendonça 2008, p. 99)

Theogastronomic understanding thus plays the role of a parable capable of gradually identifying some recipes—failed or successful—for humanization, coexistence, and shared belief in contexts of fragmented plurality, as has been the case with societies and churches in the Latin American context for centuries, but now made visible thanks to liberation movements, including liberation theologies. As if in a game of mirrors, we can also find new clues for our understanding of the world and of faith (Tolentino Mendonça 2008, p. 45), and together with all this, new ways of recognizing the closeness of the Mystery of God, who gives himself as Food for life of the world. This is the perspective that is both analog—comparing apparently unrelated things—and generative—inspiring and generating new understandings—of the method used in that study and in this article (see Theobald and Bacq 2013).

In summary, with the help of J. S. Croatto, we can say that this sapiential approach to reality has three main characteristics: (1) there is a focus on “wise behavior, within the Christian experience, that leads to salvation”; (2) there is a development of “comparison as a rhetorical resource”; (3) it arises in contexts of diaspora, of dispersed communities that encounter—and come into conflict—with others (see Croatto 1998, pp. 24–42). In addition to these characteristics, we can recognize that a sapiential approach considers reading—of the Scriptures, of social reality, and of life itself—as the “production of meaning”: what is sought is to give rise to a plurality of voices, equally authorized and in contact with each other (see Croatto 1986, p. 23).

At the end of my doctoral thesis, I clarify what led me to the choices I made throughout the research:

We still need to make explicit an inspiration which, despite its invisibility, has been essential in structuring the approach proposed here. It is the desire to assume the epistemological consequences of the “evangelical preferential option for the poor”. How has this quest been translated into our study? Our preferential option for the poor presided over our choice to go to the peripheries of the two great logical “systems” that underpin contemporary theology: that of the biblical world and that of the intellectual tradition of the West. Regarding the biblical world, we deliberately adopted a sapiential approach in order to touch, little by little, on the “central” questions linked to the foundations of the Torah and the prophetic phenomenon. In relation to the Western reflective tradition, our study has been able to deal with questions linked to being, existence and ethics, starting from an aesthetic approach to the Bible and reality. However, we didn’t focus on “high” aesthetics, which is more concerned with the plastic arts and music: to help us hear and see the world differently, we preferred to concentrate our attention on the senses of taste, smell and touch. It was this set of options that led us to recognize the kitchen as a place of revelation and salvation.

(Adão 2023, p. 529)

As we see in this quote, the “option for the poverty of another”, as well as being received here as an ethical–spiritual matrix, is also assumed in its epistemological consequences: “gastro-nomy”, in this type of theology, does not concern the empire of luxury, but a concrete way of listening to the silent (and often silenced) “normativity of the entrails” present in so many men and women, and which needs to be nourished and recognized in order for it to bear fruit. This perspective also echoes the sapiential reflection of María Pilar Aquino, who says: “Divine Wisdom nourishes humanity and all that concerns it with compassion, mercy, love and hope”. In addition to the nourishing dimension, the theologian’s reflection also includes the generative dimension: “The Power of Wisdom is to liberate, to create spaces of daily life where well-being, true joy, humanizing affection, liberating knowledge and celebration can be experienced by all people” (see Aquino 2000, p. 141).

Back to theogastronomy, furthermore, I recognize my debt to the Latin American theologies that have preceded my approach, and I highlight the inheritance that I have embraced and received from my predecessors in faith and theological reflection:

At the end of our journey, we would like to say that the theological reflection developed here comes in the wake of the efforts of Latin American theologians to listen to and systematize what the intelligence of faith can tell us about this continent that is so rich and so marked by hunger. This affiliation can be seen in the centrality given to the life of Jesus of Nazareth and his Gospel, in the attention given to community practices, in the search for a more affective and incarnate rationality and in the concern to identify the intrinsic relationship between faith and life, between love of God and love of neighbors.

(Adão 2023, p. 528)

This is one example—among many others—of the search by the new generation of Latin American theologians to enter into dialog with other interlocutors, be they anthropologists, poets and writers, storytellers, psychoanalysts, artists, etc., creating new approaches from this dialog and arriving at new results without abandoning the basic principles and values of previous generations. Similar to feminist theologies, theogastronomy also assumes the inductive method of liberation theologies in dialog with the social sciences, but it adds the perspective of creativity, resistance4, the “primacy of desire”, and the “praxis of affection” (see Aquino 1992, pp. 190–95). Furthermore, by privileging the playful, aesthetic, and gratuitous dimensions of food as a starting point, theogastronomy discerns what is at stake in the free project of a person, a people, or a cultural group, allowing it to bring to light many fundamental agents, made invisible by a gaze that is not yet sufficiently grateful to the many hands, hearts, and minds at the base of a single dish.

However, this heritage and this change in approach can bring about some discoveries that affect the very understanding of the phenomenon of liberation movements and their theological vision. This is what we are going to devote ourselves to in this last expository section of our article.

4. Prophecy, Daughter of Wisdom? An Interpretative Twist

So far, we have reflected on a sapiential phase of some new Latin American theologies—citing theogastronomy as an example—following the analysis of many who recognize them as the fruit of the prophetic phenomenon that preceded them. This view is historically fair and corresponds to the chronological succession of the appearance of new forms of theology after the first generations of liberation theology. However, when we combine some exegetical statements made by Schwantes with other socio-gastronomic statements made by Dória, we can postulate another interpretation—complementary to the one presented so far—for the socio-theological phenomenon that has emerged in the Latin American context.

Schwantes reflects on a discovery by his teacher Wolff (1964), who identifies a relationship between the Wisdom circles and the intellectual roots of the prophet Amos. Faced with this rapprochement between Amos’ javist (prophetic) theology and the Wisdom circles, Schwantes says: “As we bring the javist theological event closer to the cultural and theological event of wisdom, which is universalist par excellence, we will certainly come to understand prophecy in a new way” (Schwantes 2008, pp. 64–65). For the Brazilian exegete, this study provokes a hermeneutical shift in relation to divine intervention in calling each person to their own unique word:

As long as we thought it was possible to attribute the prophetic origins solely to vocational inspiration, to the God who in his absolute difference throws himself at human consciousness, we could pretend that historical-religious mediations were dispensable. If “the word” is only “God’s”, then why bother mediating it?

(Schwantes 2008, p. 64)

As we can see, according to this discovery, wisdom could historically be considered a “mediator” or, according to the title of this article, a “matrix”—a mother!—of this new and surprising word that erupts in every prophet and prophetess. Here, I recall the principle assumed at the beginning of this article: the path taken in the constitution of the people of ancient Israel is an inspiring interpretative key to reread the processes experienced by the “freed” of our time. The interpretative turn presented by Schwantes, with historical–critical foundations, must also challenge us and add new elements to the reflection we have presented so far on the matrix of liberation theologies as a prophetic movement. For this, in a theogastronomic approach, Dória’s socio-gastronomic reflection comes to our aid.

The gastronomic phase of the culinary phenomenon is something relatively recent in human history, notably linked to Enlightenment France and Napoleonic expansion (see Dória 2009). Nowadays, contemporary gastronomy is being renewed thanks to its openness to the diversity of terroirs, the inclusion of cutting-edge technology in the kitchen and the desire for innovation. At the same time, there is a noticeable discomfort in the thinking of those who dedicate themselves to this art in the face of industrial repetition, the risk of culinary intellectualization, and gastronomic elitism that can ignore the hunger and desires of a large part of the world’s population. The gastronomic movement is trying to combat the constant threat of culinary decadence which, according to Dória and Atala, is the result of an excessively mechanical repetition of gestures and a disengaged application of techniques (see Dória and Atala 2008). To avoid such mechanization and lack of commitment, each cook must be able to interpret the wishes of the diners, find good raw materials, and turn them into a source of satisfaction, because “nothing, absolutely nothing, can replace the subjective and affective aspects of the act of cooking” (Dória and Atala 2008, p. 184).

This mechanical repetition of gestures on a large scale and the invention of industrial utensils that disengage the cook’s body have to do with the arrival of men in the kitchen and the migration of culinary art to the public space. But in the history of humanity, grandmothers’ recipe books bear witness to an ancient truth: “culinary knowledge has evolved as an inheritance that is transmitted matrilineally” (Dória 2014, p. 206). To endorse this position, the Brazilian sociologist cites the French ethnologist Georges Balandier:

The kitchen can be seen as one of those “places” associated with women where “differences and discontinuities are marked, and where she [the woman] provides the connections […] and is required there where the borders are and the passages take place: from nature to culture, from reproduction to production, from society to what is outside it, from equality to inequality, from things to signs and symbols”.

(Balandier 1976; Apud Dória 2014, p. 205)

At this point in our reflection, a clarification is necessary: Dória is not arguing that the kitchen is a “naturally” feminine place, but, as a sociologist, he is highlighting a historical fact at the basis of the current gastronomic movement that represented inheritances, ruptures, and silences, in a tension between men and women, between domestic space and public space. At that time, the public space was still closed to the expression of women’s ideas, desires, and knowledge. That is why, according Dória, one conclusion stands out: “more than simple cooking, which is a domestic craft, it is Haute Cuisine that is masculinized in the history of gastronomy” (Dória 2014, p. 210).

After a lengthy analysis about this phenomenon in his article Flexionando o gênero: a subsunção do feminino no discurso moderno sobre o trabalho culinário (2012) [Flexing the gender: the subsumption of the feminine in the modern discourse on culinary work], the sociologist demonstrates that the so-called French “Haute Cuisine” is constituted as knowledge that can travel and spread as a sign of refinement for European aristocracies and those who imitate them, while bourgeois, domestic cuisine, controlled by women and rooted in everyday life, does not travel (Dória 2012, pp. 259–60). Our sociologist of food develops a provocative hypothesis: “the kitchen, being historically so feminine, has absorbed men so much that it is they who are unable to have a ‘masculine’ style, after having usurped for themselves an ‘absolute feminine’” (Dória 2014, p. 215). In this gastronomic case, he denounces—prophetically?—a behavior classified with the harsh term “usurpation”.

Precisely because of the gap between the two culinary styles developed throughout history—the masculine and the feminine, linked to public and private spaces—the Catalan chef Santi Santamaria went so far as to say that the future of gastronomy lies in the “resurrection” of women: “I see the future in mothers and grandmothers. They need to be resurrected. Urgently. We need to shout something like ‘Lazarus! Get up and walk!’ (laughs)” (Dória 2010, p. 197). Dória associates this “resurrection” with the necessary rediscovery of a traditionally feminine culinary sensibility—but one that can and should be developed by everyone, men or women!—which he calls “doing for others”:

“Doing for others”—this donation through a material intermediary such as food—has been the feminine mark of cooking since the beginning of humanity. Recovering the concrete and singular “history of doing for others”, its forms and motivations, seems to be the only way to restore the contours of the feminine in the kitchen. Not only that feminine that has been subsumed in male culture as a technique; but in the singularity of its style that we call here “feminine gastronomic sensitivity”.

(Dória 2012, p. 269)

In an analogical and generative approach, we can recognize a convergence between these two reflections—that of biblical exegesis and that of socio-gastronomic exegesis. There is a kind of knowledge—whether in the Wisdom circles of ancient Israel or in the kitchens of a family home—that underlies the projection of a word and a gesture into the public space—whether prophetic or gastronomic. In both cases, there is no doubt that prophecy also opened up space for new sapiential voices and that gastronomy enabled new culinary discoveries and practices. In the analogical and metaphorical terms assumed in this article, prophecy and gastronomy are the “mothers” of new religious and social phenomena. But, as we have seen in exegetical and sociological analyses, it is possible to identify, at deep levels, their own matrices and heritages.

This analysis opens a new perspective for understanding the complexity of the phenomenon of liberation theologies (as an expression of the complexity of human history). The rapprochement between apparently different realities, both linked to concrete life and the desire to feed and give life to a multitude of people, reveals that “doing for the other” and the “option for the poor” (or “opting for the poverty of another”, as explained in the second section of this article) are similar ethical–spiritual attitudes in the face of other people’s hunger. If the analysis presented in Section 2 of this article makes sense, liberation theologies reinsert into the public space—the dynamics of ecclesial life and reflection on faith—a practical option (“doing” and not just “thinking”) for the lives of the concrete poor and hungry (the “other”, recognized as a subject, with their own ideas and tastes). A more in-depth theogastronomic reflection, using other biblical studies and theological and mystical texts—which are beyond the scope of this article—could argue that, here, we are faced with a “feminine ethical–spiritual sensitivity”, which does not belong to a supposed “feminine nature” essentially distinct from men, but is the fruit of a history of care as well as of the silencing and marginalization of women’s own ideas and desires (see Gebara 2020).

If we accept the reading key that emerges from this theogastronomic approach to the phenomenon of liberation theologies, we can recognize three complementary truths. Firstly, as stated above, feminist theologies of liberation are “daughters” of the first generation of liberation theology, since they initially inherit its methodological aspects and fundamental values. The second, which is equally recognized but deserves to grow in the consciousness of the new generations, is that many women were also “partners” or “sisters” in the gestation of this new way of engaging in theology in a Latin American context, called liberation theology, from the very beginning: either through intense participation in ecclesial movements or in the elaboration of new discourses and new languages to express faith in a context of hunger, injustice, and the desire for more life. As an example of these early partners, I would like to name here three Brazilian professors who have formed and enriched my theological reflection on dogmatic and biblical issues: Maria Clara Bingemer, Ana Maria Tepedino, and Tereza Cavalcanti.

The third complementary truth corresponds to the novelty proposed in this article: “something” from the world of women preceded the emergence of the first generation of liberation theologians. These theologies draw from another source, a “wise mother”, not always visible in narratives about the historical sources of liberation theologies: the movements for women’s emancipation and expression in the public sphere, which gained strength in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Costa 2004). The most important element here is to point out that the narratives about the origins of liberation theology correctly highlight many sources: in the Catholic ecclesial context, the Second Vatican Council; in the intellectual context, theories of dependency; in the social context, social liberation movements (especially the organization of trade unions and peasant movements). But I believe that, in our narratives about the origins of liberation theologies, this “cry” of women that reached the public space several decades earlier—perhaps allowing for this formulation with such concrete consequences, which was the “option for the poor”—deserves greater attention and recognition, broadening our view of the sapiential roots of the phenomenon of liberation5.

In some way—and this has to do with the Trinitarian mystery of Christian faith—we are all children, siblings, and parents, when our life experience is looked at from multiple perspectives and angles. Schwantes’ reflection should, at the very least, make us uneasy about identifying the “circles of wisdom” that favored the origin of the prophetic movements of our times. Dória’s reflection should also alert us to the possible risks of usurping other people’s knowledge if recognition is not properly given. Just as in the Gospels, where some women became the first apostles of the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, each ecclesial movement can investigate its own roots to see if this truth from the very beginning of Christian faith also manifests itself, in its own way, in our current experience of life, faith, and theological reflection.

5. Final Considerations

This article is far from conclusive. Rather, it aims to be yet another contribution to the debate on the self-understanding of this theological phenomenon that emerged and developed in the Latin American context. First, it invites us to focus on the core of the ethical–spiritual experience of liberation theologies, which can generate new languages, new meeting points, new epistemologies, and new movements of transformation: the “option for the poverty of another”. Second, our article also sought to show, by way of an example, the sapiential forms of theology that remain closely linked to the principles and values of post-conciliar Latin American theologies. Third, we seek to provoke curiosity and hermeneutical openness, demonstrating that the approximations between ideas that seemed distant give rise not only to new understandings of the present, but also reformulate and broaden our view of the invisibilities and silencing of the past that persist in our time.

To conclude, I must state that all of this is affirmed, as its foundation and horizon, by the paschal mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the meaning of which was made explicit and anticipated in his self-giving in his last pre-Easter meal. The bread and wine, offered as his donated body and blood, are “fruits of the earth and the labor of men and women”, which the Lord always takes, blesses, breaks, and distributes (see Buyst 2004, 2005). May this brief reflection, eager to collaborate with the reconciliation between prophecy and wisdom, between women and men, between contextual theologies and universal issues, and between ethical sensitivity and scientific method, be a food that helps to identify new flavors in old dishes and that moves us to satisfy hunger, listen to other taste preferences, and receive the gift that comes through the always surprising encounter with God and with our brothers and sisters at the great table of life.