One of the things being circulated in the media about Ratzinger / Benedict is his staunch opposition to something called Liberation Theology. In a nutshell, LT is a view of the Bible which says that Jesus’s prime role was as a Liberator. This is a variation on the concept of “Redeemer” which says that Jesus “washed away our sins.”

Jesus as liberator though, is perhaps a bit more gnostic interpretation of what Jesus did. Rather than seeing Jesus as a sacrifice (read: ransom) on behalf of our sins, certain gnostics say that Jesus was murdered by the archons or rulers of the world, because he came to teach people ways to liberate themselves from their grasp and to transcend earthly reality by way of reconnecting with the divine spark within them.

Nowadays though, the reason the Vatican is so opposed to Liberation Theology is because of it’s apparent ties to Marxist movements, especially in South and Central America in the 1970’s. Liberation Theology supposedly fused with Marxist ideas about overthrowing authoritarian governments, redistributing wealth, and stuff like that. Or at least that’s what the Vatican claims.

I suspect the truth is rather different.

What’s really at stake here is the concept of authority. Liberation Theology shares a great many similarities to the political bugaboo of Anarchism. Anarchism has been given a black eye of course and intentionally equated in the minds of the masses with “chaos.” Actually, it merely means “without rulers.” It’s a system of government where people decide for themselves, and form small collective communities where authority is equally distributed among all. In other words, it’s a close cousin to “true” democracy (which is far far far from what we have in America today).

Liberation Theology is such a threat to the Vatican because if you extrapolated it to it’s ultimate conclusion, followers would end up having to “liberate” themselves from the outside artificial authority of the Vatican. This is why Ratzinger as leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Inquisition) was always so adamant against LT: because if embraced, it would ultimately unravel the church.

Again, this is not the first time the Church faced such a threat. The first time was with Gnosticism, which rested ultimate authority in the individual’s personal experience of the divine, rather than through the institution of the Church. Then too, Gnostic thought was vehemently denounced, followers persecuted, and their writings all but eradicated.

A surviving Gnostic text, the 17th of the Odes of Solomon offers clues to the original language which gnostics used to describe Christ. Line 4:

My chains were cut off by His hands, I received the face and likeness of a new person, and I walked in Him and was saved.

And lines 10-12:

And I shattered the bars of iron, for my own shackles had grown hot and melted before me.

And nothing appeared closed to me, because I was the opening of everything.

And I went towards all my bound ones in order to loose them; that I might not leave anyone bound or binding.

Such statements in banned gnostic texts are anything but an exception. You can find them all over. Their similarity to “Liberation Theology” should already be apparent after even only a few lines.

Interestingly, another similar movement is happening outside the confines of the Catholic Church, one which thrives on questioning, dismantling and rebuilding the tenets of the Christian faith. It’s called the Emerging Church Movement. Not coincidentally, many mainstream Protestant Christian churches in America have denounced the Emergent movement as a threat to church. Which only makes sense, because it invites you to question, discuss and disagree - doing so all outside the ordinary confines of the institution. Notable Emergent author Brian McLaren explains:

“Sometimes, I think the Bible is more of a question book than answer book; it raises questions that bring people together for conversation about life’s most important issues”

This is the most interesting aspect of the Emerging Church to me. This focus on questions rather than answers - very closely allied to the idea I’ve been working on of reconfiguring how we use religions as “search engine technologies”. I think the other important implication with the Emergent Church, but also Liberation Theology and Gnosticism, is that once you start questioning, and looking beyond, it never stops. You can take it all the way to the top and apply it to other kinds of control systems as well. And this, of course, is the great fear not only of the Vatican, but of governments all over the world.