Abstract
In this volume, Africa is treated as a single geographical entity with a cultural diversity that is tempered by inevitable sharing and mutual enrichment across time and space. With this view, the authors avoid a prevalent tendency to consider ancient Mediterranean Africa too Roman to be African, with a consequent failure to appreciate the continent’s original contribution to early debates that shaped Christianity. That pitfall avoided, the volume provides a comprehensive, if somewhat incomplete, overview of Christian thought in Africa in the last two millennia. While the introduction provides a good summary of the history of Christianity in Africa, the whole volume is properly a history of ‘African Christian thought’ – in many ways the first of its kind – which deliberately highlights Africa’s dominant intellectual contribution to the development of Christian theology, especially Christology and ecclesiology.
The first part of the book examines thought from Africa in the first five centuries of Christianity. Alexandria in Egypt and Carthage near today’s Tunis were global centres of intellectual production. Prominent were figures such as Tertullian of Carthage (c.160–220), Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215), Origen of Alexandria (185–254), Cyprian of Carthage (c.200–258), Athanasius of Alexandria (c.296–356), and Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Their ideas shaped what became mainstream understanding of the message of Jesus as found in the Scriptures and the implication of that message on the understanding of God as a trinity of persons on the one hand, and of the nature of human relationships with that God within a community called Church on the other. Indeed, their ideas provided the building blocks for the summary of what is believed (the creed), which is still accepted by Christians across many denominations. More importantly, their ideas are shown to have been drawn from and shaped by African experiences. For example, heresies (rejected views about the faith), which marked Mediterranean Christianity, are said to have emanated from a culture that mulled over multiple possible views of the same things and, in the end, helped the Church clarify its own faith.
The second part consists of seven brief chapters, each dealing with the evolution of ideas around a topical subject in African theology. Inculturation and liberation stand out as theological pillars around which so much else has revolved since the Second World War. Within this general view, individual chapters are more focused. Theology produced by mainstream churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church, sought to fit within a changing postcolonial African context while independent churches with evangelical inclinations sought to interpret Scriptures in a manner that affirmed certain African cultural practices. Black liberation theology in South Africa reflected the fight for equality and democracy in the apartheid era while ideas produced by women theologians sought to liberate women from oppressive cultural practices. A chapter on homosexuality brings to the fore a pertinent subject that is, however, poorly attended to in African theology.
I suggested that this volume is incomplete; indeed, the editor outlines themes for which competent authors could not be found (p. 22). Unfortunately, among these themes is Orthodox thought from Ethiopia, which could have provided a glimpse into an indigenized Church that defied all odds to last exuberantly from the fourth century to the present. Also missing is any Christian thought from Africa’s middle Christianity from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Space could have been found, for example, for the ecclesiology that sustained the indigenized Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo. These omissions notwithstanding, I cannot think of a better introductory book on African Christian thought, complete with a recommended reading list at the end of each chapter, which makes it handy for classroom purposes and for research guidance.