Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

167omnipotently refers to this as the ‘Thou.’ 452 Boff and Boff refer to this inincarnational terms as God the Son who “assumed unto himself the totality ofhuman life.” 453Such understandings of God are generally understood as a commitment toand faith in an absolute entity. As Segundo claims,... in and through faith, we absolutize one concrete pedagogicalprocess in history, placing it above and before any other suchprocess. We entrust ourselves to it in a free act that cannot helpbut be an absolutization, since we give our all to it. And toabsolutize this process is to say that God, the Absolute, is guidingit in some special way. 454Tracy claims that a commitment to the cause of liberation requires adeparture from both relativist and absolutist tendencies in favour of a universalistethical appeal to justice. 455 However, it can be argued, in the case of the biblicalGod for example, that a commitment to an absolute being can include allegianceto an omnipotent being who is “[a] faithful God ... just and upright ...”(Deuteronomy 32:4); 456 implores the followers of Yahweh, through the OldTestament prophets, “... to do justice, and to love kindness ...” (Micah 6:8); 457 andthrough Jesus, proclaims a justice ethic by bestowing blessedness upon the poor(Luke 6:20), 458 and calling for the hungry to be fed (Matthew 25:35). 459 In otherwords, the liberationist appeal to justice can be regarded as intrinsic to thecharacter and proclamation of an absolute entity, such as the Old Testament andChristian conceptualisations of God.The appeal to an absolute being may suggest unalterable and eternaledicts of omnipotent origins that lead to unalterable understandings of truth.However, it can be argued that absolute truth does not refer to truth being infiniteand unalterable but, instead, refers to “no truth more absolute to which it is452Gadamer, Truth and Method, xxiii.453 Boff, Leonardo, and Clodovis Boff. Salvation and Liberation: In Search of a Balancebetween Faith and Politics. (Melbourne: Orbis/Dove, 1985), 54.454 Segundo, The Liberation of Theology, 179.455 Tracy, On Naming the Present, 136.456 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, Holy Bible,Old Testament, 187.457 ibid., 866.458 ibid., 64.459 ibid., 29.