Ignacio Ellacuría

Ellacuría worked between 1930 and 1989 across theologian, philosopher, university teacher, Catholic priest and missionary and 3 further recorded occupations. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

• Era — 20th-century philosophy • Honorific Prefix — The Reverend • Name — Ignacio Ellacuría • Honorific Suffix — SJ • Born — November 9, 1930 • Birthplace — Portugalete, Spain • Place of death — San Salvador, El Salvador • Notable Ideas — "proseguir"

Ellacuría joined the Jesuits in 1947 and was commissioned to the Central American republic of El Salvador in 1948. He lived and worked there for much of his life until his assassination in 1989. In 1958, Ellacuría studied theology with Vatican II theologian Karl Rahner in Innsbruck, Austria. He also lived in Ecuador and Spain. Ellacuría's academic work was an important contribution to "Liberation Philosophy". This school of philosophy stems from the work of Augusto Salazar Bondy and Leopoldo Zea. It focuses on liberating the oppressed in order "to reach the fullness of humanity". Ellacuría was also a strong supporter and contributor to Liberation Theology. There are different types of Latin American liberation philosophy. Ellacuría's thought represents one of the currents within this philosophical tradition. The political implications of Ellacuría's commitment to his ideas met strong opposition from the conservative religious and political forces in El Salvador. This opposition led to Ellacuría's murder by the Salvadoran army in 1989 at his residence in UCA along with five other fellow Jesuit priests and two employees. Their murder marked a turning point in the Salvadoran Civil War. On the one hand, it increased international pressures on the Salvadoran government to sign peace agreements with the guerrilla organisation FMLN. On the other, it helped make Ellacuría's ideas (until then known only in Latin America and Spain) known worldwide.

As many other theologians of his generation, Ellacuría intended to construct a new theology, which he called a historical theology. Methodologically, his view of history followed the Hegelian dialectic tradition, that culminated in Marx's historical materialism. However, in terms of content, he was also critical of Hegel's eurocentric view of history. Ellacuría rejected as well Marx's view of human beings as objects of their material conditions. He stressed the importance of conscience, human praxis and its possibilities for influencing the course of history, and thereby material conditions themselves. Critics have accused him of contaminating theology with Marxism. His thought shares with Marxism a common Hegelian view of history as progress brought about by overcoming contradictions. Some, as Enrique Dussel, would claim that the similarities between liberation theology and Marx's thought are to be found in common origins of the narrative of liberation in the Judeo-Christian tradition of thought. By "historical theology", Ellacuría meant a way of making theology: to reflect about faith from the historical present and to reflect about the historical present from faith. According to him, all theology is conditioned by its historical present. Historical theology intends to acquire conscience about its historical context and to incorporate it fully. The concept of locus theologicus (theological place) is very important in this theology. Rudolf Bultmann developed existential biblical hermeneutics, or the idea that each individual can only read and understand the bible from their personal existential condition, and the biblical text acquires life only if it can awaken an experience of faith in the reader. This generates a hermeneutical circle, since the reader understands the Bible from his historical present and the historical present from the Bible. Ellacuría placed himself in this hermeneutic tradition, and he gave a step further. For Ellacuría, the reader is not just an individual but a community, just like the people of Israel in the Old Testament. This means that community faith comes first, and then individual faith. According to Ellacuría, the value of the Old Testament is not reduced with the New Testament. The New Testament makes the community character of faith from the Old Testament something radical and universal. It makes it radical, because it establishes that the alliance of God with people is much more than a simple code of laws and liturgical rituals; it is an invitation to justice and charity, not as exceptional practices, but as a stable structure. That is why this alliance is established in a law. It makes the faith universal, because the New Testament is communicated to every human being, independently of race, culture, sex, religion or social condition. Liberation theology is then, according to Ellacuría, a new way of doing historical theology in a particular locus theologicus: the historical present of Latin America, where a large portion of the population is oppressed by structures that deny them the possibilities to satisfy their needs and to develop. It arises from the spirit of Gaudium et spes of the Second Vatican Council and the social encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, and more specifically, the Episcopal Conferences of Medellín in 1968 and Puebla in 1978. Such a reflection on the Bible is supported on the historical present of a collectivity that desires liberation from oppression. There is a long biblical tradition about liberation that starts with the Book of Exodus. According to Ellacuría, salvation is accomplished historically, not just individually, but collectively. It is not just about liberation from evil, guilt, personal or social offenses, pain, disease and fetichism. Those forms of liberation only start by liberation from unjust structures like slavery, political domination, psychological and social oppression. Besides the book of Exodus, the Bible also presents other such cases of liberation from oppression as the return from exile in Babylon in the books of Esdras and Nehemiah; the fight against Macedonian occupation in the book of Maccabees; the Beatitudes of Jesus; and the book of Apocalypse in the face of the persecution of Christians in Rome. Other forms of doing historical theology would be for example Feminist Theology; Black liberation theology as developed by James Cone in the fight for civil rights in the United States; African Liberation Theology, that has mostly been applied to South Africa in the fight against apartheid; and Indigenous Theology that stems from Bartolomé de las Casas and other missionaries in the first Spanish colonies in the Americas in the 16th century.

In his commencement address to Santa Clara University in 1982, Ellacuría addressed the challenges implied in relating theology with science. He articulated a relationship between the two in his vision of a university that served the purpose of liberating the oppressed. According to Ellacuría, there are two aspects to every university. The most evident one is that it deals with culture, or, in other words, knowledge and the use of sentient intellect. The second, and not so evident, is that it must be concerned with the social reality, precisely because a university is inescapably a social force; it must transform and enlighten the society in which it lives. Ellacuría believed that a university cannot always and in every place be the same. It must constantly look at its own peculiar historical reality. The Third World is characterized more by oppression than by liberty, more by poverty than by abundance. According to Ellacuría, in such a context a university must do everything possible so that liberty overcomes oppression. He added that the university must carry out this general commitment with the means uniquely at its disposal. As an intellectual community, the university must analyse causes; use imagination and creativity together to discover remedies to problems; communicate a consciousness that inspires the freedom of self-determination; educate professionals with a conscience, who will be the immediate instruments of such a transformation; and constantly hone an educational institution that is both academically excellent and ethically oriented. Ellacuría thought that it is possible for reason and faith to merge in confronting the reality of the poor. Reason must open its eyes to their suffering, while faith sees in the weak of this world what salvation must mean and the conversion to which we are called. Such a university must take into account the preferential option for the poor. This does not mean that only the poor will study at the university; it does not mean that the university should abdicate its mission of academic excellence, an excellence which is needed in order to solve complex social issues of our time. What it does mean, he argued, is that the university should be present intellectually where it is needed; to provide science for those without science; to provide skills for those without skills; to be a voice for those without voices; to give intellectual support, for those who do not possess the academic qualifications to make their rights legitimate.

In August 2023, the Archbishop of San Salvador announced the opening of Ellacuría's cause for canonization.

Ignacio Ellacuría was born on 9 November 1930 in Portugalete. Ellacuría held the nationality of Spain and El Salvador. Ellacuría was educated at Complutense University of Madrid. Ellacuría worked as theologian, philosopher, university teacher and Catholic priest, and the authority record catalogues a further 4 occupations under the same name, among them missionary, writer, regular priest and Catholic theologian. Ellacuría held the posts of rector. Ellacuría was employed by Central American University, San Salvador. Ellacuría worked in Spanish. Ellacuría is placed by the collections within liberation theology. Ellacuría died on 16 November 1989 in San Salvador. Ellacuría is buried at El Salvador.

• Ellacuría, Ignacio, Veinte Años de Historia en El Salvador: Escritos Políticos [VA], three volumes, second edition, San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1993 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, Escritos Universitarios [EU], San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1999. • Ellacuría, Ignacio, Filosofía de la Realidad Histórica, San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1990. • Ellacuría, Ignacio, Escritos Filosóficos [EF], three volumes San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1996–2001. • Ellacuría, Ignacio, Escritos Teológicos [ET], four volumes, San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2000–2002 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Filosofía y Política" [1972], VA-1, pp. 47–62 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Liberación: Misión y Carisma de la Iglesia" [1973], ET-2, pp. 553–584 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Diez Años Después: ¿Es Posible una Universidad Distinta?" [1975], EU, pp. 49–92 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Hacia una Fundamentación del Método Teológico Latinoamericana" [1975], ET-1, pp. 187–218 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Filosofía, ¿Para Qué?" [1976], EF-3, pp. 115–132 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Fundamentación Biológica de la Ética" [1979], EF-3, pp. 251–269 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Universidad y Política" [1980], VA-1, pp. 17–46 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "El Objeto de la Filosofía" [1981], VA-1, pp. 63–92 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Función Liberadora de la Filosofía" [1985], VA-1, pp. 93–122 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "La Superación del Reduccionismo Idealista en Zubiri" [1988], EF-3, pp. 403–430 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "El Desafío de las Mayorías Populares" (1989), EU, pp. 297–306 (an English translation is available in TSSP, pp. 171–176) • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "En Torno al Concepto y a la Idea de Liberación" [1989], ET-1, pp. 629–657 • Ellacuría, Ignacio, "Utopía y Profetismo en América Latina" [1989], ET-2, pp. 233–294 (an English translation is available in TSSP, pp. 44–88). • About Ellacuría • Burke, Kevin, The Ground Beneath the Cross: The Theology of Ignacio Ellacuría, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. • Burke, Kevin; Lassalle-Klein, Robert, Love that Produces Hope. The Thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, Colleville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2005. • Cerutti, Horacio, Filosofia de la Liberación Latinoamericana, Mexico City: FCE, 1992. • Hassett, John; Lacey, Hugh (eds.), Towards a Society that Serves its People: The Intellectual Contribution of El Salvador’s Murdered Jesuits [TSSP], Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1991. • Lee, Michael, Bearing the Weight of Salvation. The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría, New York: Herder Book, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008. • Samour, Héctor, Voluntad de Liberación: El Pensamiento Filosófico de Ignacio Ellacuría, San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2002 • Sols Lucia, José: The Legacy of Ignacio Ellacuría, Barcelona: Cristianisme i Justícia, 1998. • Sols Lucia, José: La teología histórica de Ignacio Ellacuría, Madrid: Trotta, 1999. • Sols Lucia, José: Las razones de Ellacuría, Barcelona: Cristianisme i Justícia, 2014. • Whitfield, Teresa, Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.