Valiente's engagement with Jon Sobrino's Christology is commendable not only in light of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's censure of Sobrino in 2006, but also because it intentionally begins from a pastoral perspective grounded in the author's experiences in El Salvador just after the end of the Salvadoran Civil War. Recalling Sobrino's understanding of the “historical Jesus” as referring to those specific practices that characterized Jesus' earthly ministry—and for which Jesus was eventually executed—Valiente thus locates Christian spirituality within the framework of communal social praxis.

This monograph analyzes a broad swath of Sobrino's oeuvre (much of it unavailable in English translation), and it also responds to the common criticism made of liberation theologies that by presenting historical struggles in terms of oppositional dichotomies—victimizer/victim, oppressor/oppressed, rich/poor—they perpetuate or even exacerbate conflict. Valiente counters such ideas by focusing his reading of Sobrino's Christology through the concept of reconciliation, arguing that a spirituality grounded in the historical Jesus (as Sobrino utilizes the term) necessarily develops a liberating social praxis, one read through the lens of Jesus' incarnation, mission, crucifixion, and resurrection. By incorporating the whole of Jesus' life and not concentrating on just one aspect—say his suffering on the cross—Sobrino's Christology leads to a holistic spirituality that nurtures the full person by meeting the demand for justice while also enabling forgiveness and reconciliation.

The final, constructive chapter offers a Christian spirituality of liberation for the Latin American context that examines the “role of reconciliation in the larger dynamic of salvation” (155). Embracing the eschatological dimension of liberative thought, Valiente transcends the limits of Sobrino's analysis of history as binary oppositions by shifting the focus onto how Christians respond to historical conflict—that is, by focusing on “what theological resources they will have at their disposal to successfully engage a conflicted world” (158). In other words, rather than conceiving liberative praxis in terms of secular political categories—revolution, regime change, insurrection, and so on—Valiente disavows such pragmatic political solutions as false idols that a genuine Christian praxis rejects. Instead, he calls for a nonviolent praxis grounded in forgiveness: “Forgiveness is necessary for both victims and victimizer, but the former are the only ones who, in history, can extend pardon to their oppressors” (172).

It is this latter point, which Valiente correctly identifies as a development of Sobrino's more mature theology, that properly recasts Latin American liberation theology as a contemporary theology of martyrdom. Here violence is not reciprocated with more violence but instead leads to a spirituality of forgiveness: “It requires from us a solidarity that is willing to take up and endure the consequences of sin” (173). To paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in certain contexts Christ's call to follow is an invitation to martyrdom: without glamorizing or fetishizing death, such a spirituality recognizes that although the victim's willingness to extend forgiveness to the oppressor can lead to the oppressor's conversion, it can also lead to further victimization and even death.