Juan Luis Segundo’s Hermeneutical Circle

This paper examines Juan Luis Segundo's notion of the theological hermeneutical circle as a method for reading Scripture that is continually reshaped by changing historical and social realities. Tracing Segundo's critique of ideology, his notion of “ideological suspicion,” and his insistence that the option for the poor functions as the indispensable hermeneutical key that keeps biblical interpretation from becoming oppressive or merely literal, the study presents the circle's four moments—experiential suspicion, ideological suspicion, exegetical suspicion, and a new hermeneutic—as a continual, practice-oriented encounter between the Word of God and the concrete world of the poor and marginalized.