{"id":95,"date":"2011-02-25T02:45:07","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T01:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/?p=95"},"modified":"2011-07-18T00:48:06","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T04:48:06","slug":"fray-bartolomes-advice-to-armchair-theologians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/2011\/02\/25\/fray-bartolomes-advice-to-armchair-theologians\/","title":{"rendered":"Fray Bartolom\u00e9’s Advice to Armchair Theologians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthropologists have Tylor and Frazer. But are there armchair theologians? This term very often has a bad connotation in an academy that constantly strives to be relevant to the public. When considering the sixteenth-century School of Salamanca and theologians such as Vitoria, Cano, and Pe\u00f1a,\u00a0armchair theology seems to be applicable. They have received criticism from some\u00a0for being so removed from the reality\u00a0and praxis\u00a0regarding how to deal with the actual conditions of the Amerindians in the New World.\u00a0\u00a0These Dominicans never set foot on\u00a0tierra firme<\/em>\u00a0like Las Casas or\u00a0Pedro de C\u00f3rdoba\u00a0did so they had to rely entirely on chronicles and eye-witness testimony for their theological and political judgments regarding the\u00a0affairs of the Americas. Furthermore, their relectiones, which were a series of lectures given\u00a0for a few weeks or months\u00a0on a\u00a0pressing social or religious problem facing the Church in Spain, demanded it.<\/p>\n

Of course, there was no shortage of reports for these theologians as they had everyone from Cristobal Col\u00f3n to their very own friar from\u00a0San Esteban, Tom\u00e1s\u00a0de la Torre, and his chronicle of\u00a0the journey along\u00a0with fifteen other Dominicans to the Americas with\u00a0Bishop Las Casas. But with all the reports, often contrasting,\u00a0coming into the Peninsula\u00a0from\u00a0missionaries,\u00a0emissaries, conquistadores, and travelers\u00a0who had all experienced different Amerindian cultures in distinct locales, whose account\u00a0should be trusted? We know that Vitoria based his judgment and subsequent opposition\u00a0to Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Atahaulpa\u00a0in\u00a0Peru from the report of the missionary Vicente de Valverde who came back to Spain in 1534. But it is especially\u00a0interesting to\u00a0consider how\u00a0Las Casas specifically advised his close friend Domingo de Soto on this matter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>From his first relectio De Dominio <\/em>given in the aulas of the Univeristy of Salamanca in 1535, Soto remained deeply suspicious of the entire Spanish\u00a0imperial enterprise in the New World. In that relectio Soto claimed he did not know by what title Spain waged its expansionary program. He says quite\u00a0bluntly, “Re vera ego nescio<\/em>.” The only thing he did claim to know and continued to maintain the rest of his intellectual life was that there was both a right of preaching (ius praedicandi<\/em>) given by Christ and a right of defense (ius defendi<\/em>) intrinsic to nature\u00a0that could serve as the principles of judgment over the controversy. \u00a0Nevertheless, one still needs empirical evidence and expert testimony to apply these basic freedoms to\u00a0properly assess a\u00a0concrete situation.<\/p>\n

It is here that Las Casas enters the discussion to advise his friend. The following analysis is\u00a0indebted to\u00a0Padre Ram\u00f3n Hern\u00e1ndez. More than ten years after De dominio<\/em>,\u00a0Las Casas writes a letter to Soto who is troubled by all the conflicting accounts of what is actually going on across the Atlantic.\u00a0Las Casas proposes a criterion for\u00a0discerning the truth that is as brilliant as it is deceptively simple: the interest or disinterest of the informers. This is\u00a0not far from\u00a0what Gustavo Guti\u00e9rrez refers to as “la perspectiva del poder<\/em>.” Those who profit from the conquest and stealing support the encomienda system whereas those who defend the Amerindians are critical of it. The latter, according to Las Casas, were typically those under religious vows since they were less prone to the things of this world.<\/p>\n

The encomienda and all its real, oppressive structural features was “intrinsically evil” in the eyes of Las Casas. Nearing the end of his life in Spain, Las Casas wrote to his Dominican brothers back in Chiapas that he still considered it as such. The category of evil\u00a0ultimately served as his criterion for gauging interest-disinterest or power-oppression relations. Theologians, especially those\u00a0belonging to the Catholic\u00a0moral\u00a0tradition, know all to well the rhetorical force of intrinsic evil in ethical debates. Often, when\u00a0it is employed\u00a0it becomes a conversation-stopper for not only the addressee but also the speaker. “I’m right and you’re wrong.” But here is why\u00a0Las Casas’\u00a0criterion\u00a0is deceptively simple.\u00a0Although\u00a0he thought the encomienda was evil semper et\u00a0ad semper <\/em>and most certainly thought he was speaking the truth, his application of this criterion compelled him to debate and engage his opponents rather than turn away and dismiss them.<\/p>\n

If one examines his moral analysis closely it is evident how much he depends on an Aristotelian account of practical reason and induction derived from Book VI of the Ethics<\/em>. This is not the place to delve into these matters except to say that Las Casas had no interest in drawing self-evident conclusions\u00a0about pre-existing terms denoting evil from an abstract\u00a0metaphysical account of nature. Of course,\u00a0a thoroughly modern natural law thinker\u00a0might respond that his world was different than ours. He didn’t have to appeal to abstract nature because he lived in a world that already shared a conception of nature. This ignores the fact, however, that Las Casas’ opponents\u00a0fundamentally challenged\u00a0\u00a0his basic descriptions\u00a0 about what constitutes freedom and what is\u00a0true faith. Perhaps it\u00a0was not all that different from us today.<\/p>\n

The bottom line to his moral inquiry is\u00a0that he\u00a0arrived at his conclusions about intrinsic evil\u00a0through a thick engagement with the reality of Amerindian suffering under the encomienda and its relationship to the explicit ends defined by the\u00a0institution and the people who supported\u00a0it. He concluded, following a letter he wrote to Bartolom\u00e9 de Carranza, that the three root\u00a0evils perpetuated by the encomienda here and everywhere were: loss of natural freedom, loss of dominium and jurisdiction, and obstruction of faith. Unlike most\u00a0who invoke the language of intrinsic evil, Las Casas dealt with such a troubling reality prophetically, pastorally, and penitentially. He recognized it was an evil and never feared debating his opponents by using their analytic tools and concpetual frameworks (his mostly\u00a0self-educated canon law arguments attest to this). As a bishop and pastor, he cared deeply\u00a0about\u00a0preserving genuine faith and sought the\u00a0salvation of those in his flock\u00a0who mistreated the Amerindians (this is evident in his withholding absolution to self-professed slaveowners until restitution was made). Lastly, Las Casas never forgot his roots and that his penance and conversion was a gift that opened his eyes to the reality of suffering among the conquered.<\/p>\n

All in all, Las Casas’ advice to Soto should be considered a\u00a0serious contribution to moral analysis for theologians for\u00a0its ability to complicate and clarify\u00a0simultaneously. His conversation with Soto testifies to the nonnegotiable importance that theologians today must place on\u00a0accurate sources derived from the natural and social sciences. But what\u00a0of Soto? Is there such a thing as armchair theology? Sadly, there is, yet Soto was far from guilty of this. As a prior of San Esteban in charge of administering souls, he never failed to care for those under him.\u00a0He never\u00a0forgot the poor in his community and around Spain. In an age where poor laws were being advanced by humanists (e.g. Juan Luis Vives) and aristocrats alike prohibiting begging and restricting social charity, Soto challenged them head on by fighting for the rights of the poor to beg and travel freely (just like mendicants)\u00a0both\u00a0academically\u00a0(see his relecci\u00f3n Deliberaci\u00f3n en la causa de los pobres<\/em>) and socially.\u00a0Not unlike Las Casas, it was his\u00a0religious vows and commitment to God that enabled him to be in solidarity with the victims rather than their oppressor. An armchair theologian\u00a0doesn’t recognize this difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthropologists have Tylor and Frazer. But are there armchair theologians? This term very often has a bad connotation in an academy that constantly strives to be relevant to the public. When considering the sixteenth-century School of Salamanca and theologians such as Vitoria, Cano, and Pe\u00f1a,\u00a0armchair theology seems to be applicable. They have received criticism from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":236,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/236"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}