Witnessing to a Liberating God: On the Hermeneutics and Theology of Obispo Maximo Alberto Ramento (1936-2006)

This paper focuses on Filipino church leader and theologian Alberto Ramento (1936-2006) and adds to the study of this leading Filipino bishop by focusing on his hermeneutics, which gives an impression not only of what his theology stood for, but also of how this theology was anchored in the two main sources that Ramento can be shown as having drawn on: Scripture and history. In order to analyze Ramento’s hermeneutics, use will be made of selected sermons, as a small selection of these has been preserved in the archives of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, as they are being kept in Aglipay Central Theological Seminary in Urdaneta City, Philippines. Although the sermons are few, they do stem from various phases of Ramento’s career and the hermeneutics that can be found in them seems to be rather consistent, which would support the suggestion that they are representative for his interpretation of the faith, i.e., by means of reading Scripture through the lens of Philippine experience and history and by understanding the same in the light of Scripture. Given the importance of the Philippine context in Ramento’s work, the present essay is also a contribution to the history of Philippine contextual theology.