Continuing our series on Cultural Identity we are joined by Dr. Octavio Esqueda for a discussion on Latin American Theology. Dr. Esqueda is Professor of Christian Higher Education and the Director of the EdD and PhD programs at Biola University. As an expert in higher education and the Spanish Reformation, Dr. Esqueda provides a helpful overview of the history of Latin American Theology as well as some of the key tenets of Hispanic Evangelical Theology, which includes the importance of communal theology, a holistic sense of mission, an inclination towards hope, and an intentional positioning as a theology from the margins. As part of this discussion, Dr. Esqueda helpfully explains that justice is always social, and that Spanish Bible readers are more inclined to recognize this than English readers of the Bible because the key Greek and Hebrew terms translated sometimes as “justice” and sometimes as “righteousness” in English are all translated with cognates related to justice in Spanish. Along the way Dr. Esqueda provides a nice mix of the anecdotal to go along with the historical, incorporating stories about his own personal faith journey growing up in Mexico and also some of the insights he gained while doing his doctoral work on theological education in Cuba. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Grace Sangalang Ng.
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