AFRICAN THEOLOGY IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT
African theology, or what some people call African Christian theology, could be explained as that theology which reflects on the gospel, the Christian tradition, and the total African reality in an African manner and from the particular perspectives of the African world-view. The task of Bujo’s African Theology is to bring together the fundamentals of Christian faith and the African traditions, to make the Africans feel more at home, to do this; he considered the theology of the Ancestors as a starting point for new Christology and Ecclesiology.
Benezet Bujo is of the view that African theology has to be renewed. His criticisms, in pursuit of a renewed African theology, come along two headings, namely theology and African tradition and inculturation and theology of liberation. According to him, any theologian who wishes to construct an African theology must take the basic elements of the African tradition and interpret them in the light of the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. Bujo argues that what Africa need today is an enlightened catechesis which would enable us to strike the right balance between the ancient African traditions and their current forms. For him, the catechesis is a tool for retrieving those aspects of our African traditions that could be used positively to make Christianity find a deeper root in the African culture.
Bujo believes that catechumenates, classes of religious instruction, and small Christian communities are the places where such a catechesis can be introduced in the present generation so that it can bear meaningful fruits in their lives. As such, for Bujo, the task for African theology today is a vigorous catechesis that gives the Christian message truly African nuances for the spiritual edification of Africans in their cultural context, put differently; the constructive engagement of Christianity with African traditions must bring together the fundamentals of both the Christian faith and the African tradition.
According to Bujo, the person of Jesus and the community of the Church are two fundamentals of Christianity that could be brought into dialogue with one veritably fundamental aspect of African tradition, namely Africa’s ancestor-tradition, from which we could derive an African Christology and an African ecclesiology.
Africans cherish the memories of the words and deeds of their forebears considered to be embodiments of their cultural, religious and moral values. According to him, the elders and more particularly our ancestors occupied a central place in Africa, there by projects a deep meaning to the people of Africa. As such he proposed a new messianic name for Jesus that is, “Proto-Ancestor” or Ancestor per Excellence.” He further explained that the title is not referring to any “so called bad ancestors.” Rather, it refers “only to God fearing ancestors who exercise a good influence on their descendants by showing how the force which is life is to be used as God wishes it to be used.”
The historical Jesus of Nazareth, for Bujo, epitomizes in the highest degree not just one who lived the African ideals of a good ancestor, but one who brought those ideals to an altogether new fulfillment by healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, and raising the dead to life, to mention but a few. Jesus lived his mission for his fellow-humans in an altogether matchless way and left his disciples a final commandment, the law of love. The Last Supper which Jesus took with his disciples is like the final moments a father spends with his children before his death. In the African tradition, the final admonitions of a parent to his children before death are much cherished as it is a time the father blesses his children and pronounces his last will. Viewed from this African perspective, Jesus last will was: serve one another, love one another.
The term, ancestor, only applies to Jesus in an analogical or eminent way, for to treat him otherwise would be to make of him only one founding ancestor among many. Accordingly, the term proto-ancestor is exclusively reserved to Jesus.
Bujo argues that, since it was the same humanity of our African ancestors that Jesus took upon himself, Jesus Christ, therefore, becomes the privileged locus for a full understanding of the ancestors Bujo argues that his proposed title will have much more meaning for Africans than titles such as logos (word) and kyrios (lord) which originated from an extra-African culture.
Benezet Bujo argues that Jesus manifested all those qualities and virtues which Africans like to attribute to their ancestors and which lead them to invoke ancestors in their day-to-day life (p.74.) As a model of morality, let us bring to realization in our lives the memory of his passion, death and resurrection. He summits: “it is therefore clear that the African concept of Jesus as Proto-Ancestor in no way contradicts the teachings of the New Testament. It is not of course that we are treating Jesus as in any crudely biological sense. When we regard him as the ancestor par excellence, we mean that we find in him the one who begets in us a mystical and supernatural life.”
Finally, Bujo’s proposal of an African messianic title for Jesus as proto-ancestor borders on the use of language in theology. Precisely, it touches deeply on analogical predications for God. The question is: how far can our languages go in expressing Christ, God, and other-worldly realities? Particularly, does the title proto-ancestor really capture the being and doing of the God-man, Jesus Christ?
Masumbuko Mununguri: in his book the closeness of the God of our Ancestors argues that the God of our Ancestors is at the same time transcendent that is far off, and immanent meaning near. (p.15) In His explanation of the place of the God of our Ancestors according to African Man, he states that God is sometimes considered an accomplice of man in some circumstances and certain key moments of life. According to him, this God “remains very powerful, very great, very distant, but in his goodness he does not abandon man to his fate in a hostile and bewildering world.” (p.17) he opines that our Ancestors conceive God to be transcendence in many aspects such as outside and beyond time; in terms of space, distance and inaccessibility; in terms of limitlessness; and in terms of his supreme status as Spirit creator. (pp. 18-25)
The God who is presented as transcendent is also said to be Immanent God; a characteristic of God that emanates from the very projection of God into nothingness of man. He observes that the essential quality of Supreme Being is that of being present to the world precisely because it is he who protects the universe. Therefore the God of our Ancestor is Immanence as beneficent Presence (and his presence at the side of man necessitate some consequences for their ‘mutual relationship’); and Immanence as Ambiguous Presence.
God is considered transcendentally Immanent in as much as he is a God who, without identifying himself in history, governs and acts in the universe by his act of creation and of order. He further posits that there is a consensus in Africa that God is inaccessible because he is invisible. But he also holds that all African people expect to feel him in the Ancestors who reside with him as creator and provider, or the living God who gives life and death. Hence Africans turns their gaze, “demanding” and “confident”, towards God as Providence and creator and as Father, author and support of life.
Mununiguri claims that the God of our Ancestors reveal to us his Incarnate Son and in spite of everything, the incarnation of the Son of God remains a mystery for the Africans who cannot accept that God could become man. According to Mununguri, the incarnate Son is “The eldest Son” and the revealer of the Father. Incarnation then finds its significance in the ultimate mission of the Incarnate Word to tell the World about the God of our Ancestors.
Fr Lawrence Sdv
African theology, or what some people call African Christian theology, could be explained as that theology which reflects on the gospel, the Christian tradition, and the total African reality in an African manner and from the particular perspectives of the African world-view. The task of Bujo’s African Theology is to bring together the fundamentals of Christian faith and the African traditions, to make the Africans feel more at home, to do this; he considered the theology of the Ancestors as a starting point for new Christology and Ecclesiology.
Benezet Bujo is of the view that African theology has to be renewed. His criticisms, in pursuit of a renewed African theology, come along two headings, namely theology and African tradition and inculturation and theology of liberation. According to him, any theologian who wishes to construct an African theology must take the basic elements of the African tradition and interpret them in the light of the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. Bujo argues that what Africa need today is an enlightened catechesis which would enable us to strike the right balance between the ancient African traditions and their current forms. For him, the catechesis is a tool for retrieving those aspects of our African traditions that could be used positively to make Christianity find a deeper root in the African culture.
Bujo believes that catechumenates, classes of religious instruction, and small Christian communities are the places where such a catechesis can be introduced in the present generation so that it can bear meaningful fruits in their lives. As such, for Bujo, the task for African theology today is a vigorous catechesis that gives the Christian message truly African nuances for the spiritual edification of Africans in their cultural context, put differently; the constructive engagement of Christianity with African traditions must bring together the fundamentals of both the Christian faith and the African tradition.
According to Bujo, the person of Jesus and the community of the Church are two fundamentals of Christianity that could be brought into dialogue with one veritably fundamental aspect of African tradition, namely Africa’s ancestor-tradition, from which we could derive an African Christology and an African ecclesiology.
Africans cherish the memories of the words and deeds of their forebears considered to be embodiments of their cultural, religious and moral values. According to him, the elders and more particularly our ancestors occupied a central place in Africa, there by projects a deep meaning to the people of Africa. As such he proposed a new messianic name for Jesus that is, “Proto-Ancestor” or Ancestor per Excellence.” He further explained that the title is not referring to any “so called bad ancestors.” Rather, it refers “only to God fearing ancestors who exercise a good influence on their descendants by showing how the force which is life is to be used as God wishes it to be used.”
The historical Jesus of Nazareth, for Bujo, epitomizes in the highest degree not just one who lived the African ideals of a good ancestor, but one who brought those ideals to an altogether new fulfillment by healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, and raising the dead to life, to mention but a few. Jesus lived his mission for his fellow-humans in an altogether matchless way and left his disciples a final commandment, the law of love. The Last Supper which Jesus took with his disciples is like the final moments a father spends with his children before his death. In the African tradition, the final admonitions of a parent to his children before death are much cherished as it is a time the father blesses his children and pronounces his last will. Viewed from this African perspective, Jesus last will was: serve one another, love one another.
The term, ancestor, only applies to Jesus in an analogical or eminent way, for to treat him otherwise would be to make of him only one founding ancestor among many. Accordingly, the term proto-ancestor is exclusively reserved to Jesus.
Bujo argues that, since it was the same humanity of our African ancestors that Jesus took upon himself, Jesus Christ, therefore, becomes the privileged locus for a full understanding of the ancestors Bujo argues that his proposed title will have much more meaning for Africans than titles such as logos (word) and kyrios (lord) which originated from an extra-African culture.
Benezet Bujo argues that Jesus manifested all those qualities and virtues which Africans like to attribute to their ancestors and which lead them to invoke ancestors in their day-to-day life (p.74.) As a model of morality, let us bring to realization in our lives the memory of his passion, death and resurrection. He summits: “it is therefore clear that the African concept of Jesus as Proto-Ancestor in no way contradicts the teachings of the New Testament. It is not of course that we are treating Jesus as in any crudely biological sense. When we regard him as the ancestor par excellence, we mean that we find in him the one who begets in us a mystical and supernatural life.”
Finally, Bujo’s proposal of an African messianic title for Jesus as proto-ancestor borders on the use of language in theology. Precisely, it touches deeply on analogical predications for God. The question is: how far can our languages go in expressing Christ, God, and other-worldly realities? Particularly, does the title proto-ancestor really capture the being and doing of the God-man, Jesus Christ?
Masumbuko Mununguri: in his book the closeness of the God of our Ancestors argues that the God of our Ancestors is at the same time transcendent that is far off, and immanent meaning near. (p.15) In His explanation of the place of the God of our Ancestors according to African Man, he states that God is sometimes considered an accomplice of man in some circumstances and certain key moments of life. According to him, this God “remains very powerful, very great, very distant, but in his goodness he does not abandon man to his fate in a hostile and bewildering world.” (p.17) he opines that our Ancestors conceive God to be transcendence in many aspects such as outside and beyond time; in terms of space, distance and inaccessibility; in terms of limitlessness; and in terms of his supreme status as Spirit creator. (pp. 18-25)
The God who is presented as transcendent is also said to be Immanent God; a characteristic of God that emanates from the very projection of God into nothingness of man. He observes that the essential quality of Supreme Being is that of being present to the world precisely because it is he who protects the universe. Therefore the God of our Ancestor is Immanence as beneficent Presence (and his presence at the side of man necessitate some consequences for their ‘mutual relationship’); and Immanence as Ambiguous Presence.
God is considered transcendentally Immanent in as much as he is a God who, without identifying himself in history, governs and acts in the universe by his act of creation and of order. He further posits that there is a consensus in Africa that God is inaccessible because he is invisible. But he also holds that all African people expect to feel him in the Ancestors who reside with him as creator and provider, or the living God who gives life and death. Hence Africans turns their gaze, “demanding” and “confident”, towards God as Providence and creator and as Father, author and support of life.
Mununiguri claims that the God of our Ancestors reveal to us his Incarnate Son and in spite of everything, the incarnation of the Son of God remains a mystery for the Africans who cannot accept that God could become man. According to Mununguri, the incarnate Son is “The eldest Son” and the revealer of the Father. Incarnation then finds its significance in the ultimate mission of the Incarnate Word to tell the World about the God of our Ancestors.
Fr Lawrence Sdv
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