Book Review – Jesus and His Abba by Leonardo Boff

Jesus and His Abba: A Little Christology
Leonardo Boff
Orbis Books, 2024

This little book - just 113 pages - changed the way I view Jesus, “The Our Father,” the Holy Spirit, and mission. In writing this review, my goal is not to summarize the book. Rather, I want you to buy the book, read it, study it, and pray with it. 

Leonardo Boff (86), is a Brazilian theologian and philosopher known for his liberation theology. He became a Franciscan in 1959 and was ordained a priest in 1964. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith silenced him in 1985 for a year. He left the Franciscans and the priesthood in 1992. According to Goodreads, he has 281 books on their platform and his most popular book is Introducing Liberation Theology. 

Boff validated for me a fundamental approach I take to missiology. First, there is an objective reality. I adopted Roger Schroeder’s definition - “mission is proclaiming, serving, and witnessing to God’s Reign of love, salvation, and justice.” (What is the Mission of the Church, page 3). I also crafted, with others, a subjective definition of mission as the desire to go beyond oneself, step outside our comfort zone, cross some type of border, to be with and for others, in their context, for their well-being, with the Gospel as our guide. Boff, in this brief meditation on Jesus, stresses his subjective experience of “sonship” while professing him as Lord and Savior. 

These two approaches to mission - objective and subjective - surface five themes for mission in Boff’s meditation on Jesus and his Abba. I say meditation, because Boff notes that he authored over 800 pages on Christology. 

Context. Boff begins with Jesuology, the study of the personal, historical, and contextual study of Jesus of Nazareth. He begins with Jesuology, a new concept for me, because flesh precedes the spirit. He pens a delightful reflection on how “Jesus was potentially present in that tiny dot full of matter, energy, and information that later exploded.” He recalls the “concrete, human, Semitic history” in which Jesus lived as well as the dynamics of his childhood home with a “nurturing mother” (Mary) and the heroic, “strength, and security” of a father figure (Joseph). As missioners, we cannot divorce ourselves from our origins. Nor will we become “native” to the people we live among. We can hope for adoption - they of us and we of them. We dwell among others as one who serves and, in doing so, are served in astonishing ways. 

Hunger. Boff writes a beautiful reflection on “The Our Father.” “Abba,” for God, is “without parallel in all Jewish literature.” It is a childish word for God. Yet, Jesus uses it 170 times. Abba reveals a “relationship of intimacy and total trust such as one has in everyday life, with one’s father or grandfather.” A trust that responds to “three fundamental hungers of every human being.” First, there is someone who embraces us in a definitive way just as we are. Second, there is an ultimate and final meaning for all that exists; a kingdom. Finally, bread as “the daily food that guarantees the continuity of life on Earth.” Mission continually calls us back to the fundamentals of life - food, meaning, and trust. 

Beloved. There was a moment when Jesus, “the son of the carpenter,” fully experienced his sonship of “God-Abba.” That moment, according to Boff, is the “baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.” Jesus joined the crowd and allowed himself to be baptized by John. “It was precisely at this moment that Jesus came to the full and lucid awareness of being the beloved Son of the Father.” The overflow of Abba’s love in Jesus for humanity had never happened before. In theological language, “God-Abba has communicated himself fully and unreservedly to Jesus of Nazareth. Through his beloved Son, he is in our midst. Jesus is God present in our fragile and mortal flesh.” This is the heart of Boff’s meditation. Mission begins in baptism (ours) and ends in baptism (theirs) as we journey together as beloved children of God in and through the Son of God, Emmanuel. 

Abba. The subjective experience of Jesus as the beloved Son of God, changes our “objective” understanding of God. Monotheism becomes Trinitarian Monotheism. “In the beginning is not the solitude of the one, but the communion of the three.” Boff claims that “in all religions except Christianity, human beings seek God. In the Jesus tradition, however, it is God who seeks human beings.” Jesus, the beloved Son of God, is forever on mission, spreading his message of love, salvation, and justice to the poor and rich alike. Missioners are sent by Jesus, through the Church, to do the same. 

Passions. Jesus has three “passions” according to Boff. The first, drawn from the Gospel of John, is the absolute unity between Jesus and Abba - the “Father and I are one.” The second is the kingdom of God, “with a political and holistic connotation.” The kingdom “represents an absolute revolution, utopia finally achieved, of the new man and the new woman, of the new heaven and the new earth.” The Church is the sacrament of the kingdom - its sign and instrument. What are the goods of the kingdom? Love is lived, justice done, solidarity actualized, compassion nurtured, and care creation is alive. There the “kingdom of God is realized.” The third passion is his love for the poor and the invisible. As Pope Francis is fond of saying - “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Missioners are agents of God’s kingdom, witnesses to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and “hounds of heaven” sent “to the ends of the earth.” 

My prayer: This “review” prompts you to buy the book and read the first 28 pages. It will take less than an hour. You will be hooked and will read the whole book. I further believe you will read it a second time - with highlighter in hand - to get closer to Boff’s own passion for Jesus. For me, studying will not be enough. I will pray with Jesus and His Abba so Boff’s life-long love of the Son of God will refresh, revive, and renew my own. 

Don McCrabb, D. Min. 

Don McCrabb is a pastoral theologian serving the formation needs of the Synodal Church in Mission. He retired as Executive Director of USCMA in 2024 after nine years of service.