The Incarnation of God in the Age of Globalization. Marx's critique of economics in Enrique Dussel’s thinking and the draft of a structural format of Christology and Soteriology

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Bründl
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 396925551

Most current Christological drafts articulate historicizing and individualizing aspects of the Incarnation of God and its significance for salvation. These drafts, if at all, only marginally discuss the relevance of the Christian gospel for the structural phenomena of exploitation and oppression, under which especially the countries of the so-called “Third World” suffer. Thus, contexts which systemically negate life are disregarded. The Theology of Liberation recognizes a structural problem in this finding, according to which the classical theology has no adequate categories for the criticism of poverty and oppression. That is why classical theology cannot express faith’s promise of salvation in any convincing form.At this point, the innovative Marx reception of the Argentinian-Mexican liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel opens new perspectives for the field of theology. Using Marx’s category of “living labour”, he analyses the reality of the poor, which is consistently negated from the point of view of capital. Beyond Marx, Dussel tries to methodologically establish the critique of capitalism in a positive, divinely ordained draft of community whose biblical point of reference is Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God. His productive handling of the biblical promise of salvation is able to initiate a new approach for systematic theology, which structurally opens up the soteriological significance of God’s incarnation and thus complements the individualistic approaches.So far, Dussel’s oeuvre has mainly been discussed with regard to philosophical-ethical aspects. The aim of the research project is, on the one hand, to explore Dussel’s reception of Marx, which is for the most part only available in Spanish publications. On the other hand, the project aims to systematically and theologically elaborate on the significance of Dussel’s philosophy of liberation from this starting point. In particular, Dussel’s comprehensive category of “community”, which claims the right to life especially for the poor, is to be made fruitful for the development of a structural format of Christology and Soteriology. Here humanization forms the categorial framework for an innovative redefinition of the universal meaning of the salvation of God’s incarnation. This redefinition enables theology to fundamentally relate to the actual world in an adequate manner. Thus, it becomes possible to concretize and make the Christological and Soteriological considerations plausible in a way that critically refers to reality.Such a structural approach, which is complementary to classical Christology und Soteriology, is, on the one hand, able to achieve an adequate awareness and perception of mechanisms of inhumanity and to elaborate on their genuinely theological significance. On the other hand, this new format is especially appropriate to illustrate the relevance of Christian theology for the major questions of today’s globalized world.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants