Chapter II : the latin american culture

Abstract

One of the fundamental aspects of the human ontological structure is that of corporality. There is nothing about the human being that is unrelated to his body —not to his actual physical body, but to his corporal existential condition in regard to everything in the world that confronts him. Theology includes this level of being when it speaks of sacramentality. The corporal human condition always demands concrete mediations. Man is not an angel; all that he understands, hopes for, loves, and works for is measured corporally. The totality of these mediations at the level of corporality, such as the physical transformation of the cosmos, we call “culture.” Latin American culture is still in a pre-Christian stage —although it has been affected in many respects by Christianity —and yet it will be the means by which Christian faith and praxis become authentic. Faith can never be equated with culture, but the meaning of the Incarnation (which is fundamentally a Christian belief and affirmation of corporality) is that faith is authenticated to the degree that it affects a culture. Culture is the necessary, inevitable avenue for the outworking of the Christian faith.