Celebration of the life and ministry of Samuel Escobar

I want my words to be a testimony of gratitude to the Latin American Theological Fraternity for the 45-year experience of what I call ‘doing theology in community.’ For many people, theological work is a solitary task, and in the North American and European academic environment, it is sometimes a competitive task. In contrast, what I have most appreciated about the experience of doing theology in the LTT has been what I call ‘doing theology in community.’ As we celebrate these four and a half decades of life and theological reflection in the LTT, let us strive to continue our theological work in community.

Samuel Escobar Aguirre, 5 June 2015

It is time to celebrate the life of Samuel Escobar, to do so with joy and a deep sense of gratitude to him for the fruitful sowing he has done in his ministry around the world. Samuel is an example in many areas. He was an evangelical intellectual and activist, a theologian of the way, a teacher who taught us to think about faith, a stimulator of vocations, a brilliant expositor of the Word, an entertaining conversationalist, a rigorous writer, a pastor, a brother, a friend, a beloved husband, father and grandfather.

Samuel Escobar's articles, books, sermons, and lectures have nourished the faith and intellect of several generations of Hispanic American evangelicals. His body of work is the result of many intense days spent putting his reflections, discoveries, and challenges on paper for those seeking a thinking faith and an intellect fired by the pursuit of Christ in the wounded lands of Latin America.

Samuel Escobar, like no other Latin American evangelical theologian and intellectual of his generation, took the vocation of writing very seriously. He had to develop it in the midst of multiple activities that did not allow him the best conditions to sit down and reflect and put his thoughts into writing. He combined his role as an evangelical activist and evangeliser with the difficult task of being an intellectual in a context where thinkers are viewed with suspicion and even disdain. He was, in the best sense of the word, an evangelical intellectual who knew how to dialogue with the changing world in which he lived.

A year before the founding of the FTL, Escobar participated in the Latin American Congress on Evangelisation (CLADE I), which took place in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1969. At that event, his voice represented a kind of independence from those who simply aspired to follow the theological and evangelistic agenda of North American missionary organisations. Reading Samuel Escobar's speech today (entitled Responsibility of the Church), while imagining the reactions of the more conservative sector, can give us an idea of his boldness and clarity in calling for a return to an integral Gospel.

At CLADE I, Escobar stated that it was time to end the harmful idea that separated evangelisation and social action: ‘In Latin America, there has been a tendency to identify concern for social issues with theological liberalism or with a cooling of the evangelising struggle. We must once and for all put an end to this regrettable confusion. There is sufficient basis in the history of the Church and in the teachings of the Word of God to affirm categorically that concern for the social dimension of evangelical witness in the world is not an abandonment of the fundamental truths of the Gospel, but rather a taking to its ultimate consequences the teachings about God, Jesus Christ, man and the world that form the basis of that Gospel.’

In 1974, at the International Congress on World Evangelisation in Lausanne, Switzerland, it fell to two Latin Americans to shake consciences to the core. One was René Padilla, the other Samuel Escobar. The latter called for a careful review of what was understood by evangelisation, as he believed that the Gospel was being reduced and replaced with formulas that diluted the richness of the biblical message.

In his speech, whose careful wording reflects his decision to distance himself from existing poles within the Protestant world, Samuel Escobar said that 19th- and early 20th-century liberalism sought to adapt to the rationalist mentality and presented ‘a social gospel in which a God without wrath was going to save a sinless man through a Christ without a cross.’

[destacate]Samuel identified as a temptation the desire to ‘reduce the Gospel and mutilate it by removing from it the demands of the fruit of repentance'[/destacate]The core of Escobar's criticism in Lausanne was directed at triumphalist evangelicalism, concerned with achieving conversions without stopping to consider that perhaps the converts were converting to a version of the Gospel very different and distant from what Jesus taught. Thus, Samuel identified as a temptation the desire to ‘reduce the Gospel and mutilate it by removing from it the demands of the fruit of repentance and every aspect that might make it unpalatable to a nominally Christian but truly idolatrous society. By all means, the church must be alerted to the needs of the millions who have not yet heard the Gospel. But with equal zeal, we must insist on the need to maintain the entirety of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, whose demands cannot be cheapened. No sense of urgency for quantitative growth of the Church should lead us to silence any part of the whole counsel of God'.

In June 2015, on the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Latin American Theological Fraternity, Dr Escobar Aguirre gave a talk in which he referred to migratory flows, both forced and voluntary. He shared his experience as a migrant in several countries and spent more time on the lessons learned from living in Spain since 2001: ‘I am currently a Latin American migrant in Spain. Throughout my life, my family and I have been migrants in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United States and now Spain. In all these countries, I had to visit the consulates and immigration offices of the respective governments and submit many documents for a complicated bureaucratic process. Because of this life circumstance, I have returned to reading the Bible and the history of Christianity, paying attention to the phenomenon of migration. I feel like a Anabaptist, and the Anabaptists of the 16th century were migrants, forced to emigrate from one country to another because of their faith.’ He emphasised that poor migrants, like the Anabaptists, left behind a missiological and ecclesiastical model far removed from power and wealth.

During the celebration, he also praised the theological output of different generations of the FTL, mentioning that he valued the Anabaptist movement's community theology. He referred to the global evangelical landscape and how vital churches are unexpectedly emerging in different groups and societies. He did not fail to express his opinion on popular Protestantism and Pentecostalism, often disparaged by sectors that consider them upstarts, and encouraged the audience to consider that the plurality of Pentecostalisms is both a challenge and an opportunity for renewal for the entire Latin American Protestant spectrum.

[destacate] The challenge remains to compile the scattered writings of Escobar, group them thematically, and introduce new generations to a thinker who dared to discern the pulse of the times[/destacate]Escobar was an avid reader and knowledgeable on many subjects. His interests ranged from Latin American literature to history and sociology, pausing to engage in dialogue with philosophers and thinkers, encompassing missiological production, drawing on theology, and reflecting on contemporary politics and cultural trends. For a great reader like Samuel Escobar, it must have been very painful to have to leave behind several personal libraries built up in the different countries where he lived. It was impossible for him to carry so many books with him during his various moves, and this forced him to start building a new collection in each new residence.

Samuel Escobar, the writer, must have been under pressure. He had no substantial funds or retreats where he could devote himself solely to writing. He said it himself: ‘In the Spanish-speaking world, there are few writers who live solely from their literary work. That is a luxury that only the great figures of the “literary boom” can afford, whose books sell by the hundreds of thousands. In the Spanish-speaking evangelical world, there is probably no writer who lives solely from his writing. The act of writing is a constant battle against time, against the pressures of pastoral work, teaching, domestic duties, and evangelical tours. Perhaps that is better, because in this way the written word will always be close to life and can be more relevant.’ Writing and life are intertwined in Escobar's work.

In the case of Samuel Escobar, much of his output has remained in magazines, book chapters, and works that have been out of print for many years. The challenge remains to compile these scattered writings, group them thematically, and introduce new generations to a thinker who, like one of his teachers (Gonzalo Báez-Camargo), dared to discern the pulse of the times.

Thank you, dear Samuel, for embodying what you learned from the man who so greatly influenced your thinking and ministry, Juan A. MacKay: to do theology not from the balcony, but from the way.

Carlos Martínez García, sociologist, writer, and researcher at the Centre for the Study of Mexican Protestantism.

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