\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Theological Western African theology Four terms in The argument in this brief essay is that the universalising project of African theology has proceeded in the same vein.\u00a0 <\/span>As a theological African Evangelical theology is easily lured by Western liberalism.\u00a0 <\/span>Or we might say that Western liberalism, How can African Evangelicalism resist theological liberalism?\u00a0 First, African colleges and seminaries must resist this pull by training Second, African colleges and seminaries need to recognise that the theological Third, African colleges and seminaries need to understand what the West Fourth, the legitimate concern of being practical and relevant in theological education should not be interpreted as a mandate to move traditional, classical studies to ‘Practical Theology’ (see my\u00a0<\/span>A Classic Theological Curriculum<\/a>\u00a0and my\u00a0<\/span>A Practical Solution for Practical Theology<\/a>).\u00a0 With the New Testament writers, we need to affirm that there is nothing more practical than the proclamation of the Gospel and the teaching of the Scriptures.\u00a0 A focus on practice turns us away for proper Biblical and theological studies to sociological studies.\u00a0 This is where theological liberalism has ended up in the West.\u00a0 African Evangelicals need to resist this in their legitimate concern that classical theological education is practical and relevant to African realities.<\/p>\n Fifth, the liberalism of the West that valued universalism has turned into postmodernism, with its values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.\u00a0 These new values, replacing freedom and equality, are meant to deconstruct hegemonies and advance the cause and position of those perceived to have been victims. This means replacing those with power and privilege–or those somehow perceived to have these–with those perceived to be or have been victims.\u00a0 It does so by seeing people according to their group, not as individuals. The result of this in the West is a new racism and sexism aimed to dislodge white males.\u00a0 In Africa, the concern over colonialism still rules the discussion sixty years on, and in South Africa the legacy of Apartheid still drives social concerns.\u00a0 African Evangelicals need to remember that God does not respect persons–nationalities, social positions.\u00a0 Rather, He calls people to ministry, and the Church’s role is not to set up worldly criteria for selecting ministers but criteria that will recognise whom He has called.\u00a0 We should be concerned about orthodoxy, capabilities, character, and calling for ministers (see my\u00a0Tradition Enquiry for Theological Studies, Part Four: An Indicative Bibliography for Enquiry in the Evangelical Tradition(s)<\/a>,\u00a0The Character of Ministers in the Pastoral Epistles<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0A Brief Note on German Pietism (Jakob Spener), Evangelicalism, and Church Renewal Today<\/a>).\u00a0 Extolling authors and ministers because of their nationalities or race is simply not Christian, and it easily leads to the demise of orthodoxy.\u00a0 (See my\u00a0The New Virtues of a Failing Culture<\/a>\u00a0and my\u00a0Thoughts on and Lessons from the Antioch Mission<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Africa has no special claim on \u2018holistic\u2019, \u2018relevant\u2019, \u2018contextual\u2019, and \u00a0 Theological Liberalism in the West was substantially an Enlightenment project.\u00a0 It sought to broaden or generalise theological understanding by making it universal through the reason and religious experience in common with all human beings.\u00a0 It was, therefore, construed as relevant across social groupings and at the intensely personal level.\u00a0 Just how, then, could theological […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96987,151626,151627],"tags":[9229,47448,20691,130828,26879],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-324520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-higher-education","category-theological-education-in-africa","tag-african","tag-evangelicalism","tag-liberalism","tag-theological","tag-translating"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nLiberalism in the West was substantially an Enlightenment project.\u00a0 <\/span>It sought to broaden or generalise
\ntheological understanding by making it universal through the reason and
\nreligious experience in common with all human beings.\u00a0 <\/span>It was, therefore, construed as relevant
\nacross social groupings and at the intensely personal level.\u00a0 <\/span>Just how, then, could theological liberalism
\nat all be a feature of African theology, with its concerns for relevance to
\nAfrican experiences and contexts?\u00a0 <\/span>Even
\nmore, what does it have to do with African Evangelicalism?
\ntheological liberalism found Christian theology too confining.\u00a0 <\/span>Theologians did not want their theological reflection
\nto be confined by Scripture.\u00a0 <\/span>They found
\ntheology to be too confining in an environment that championed reason.\u00a0 <\/span>They reduced the Son of God to a good moral
\nteacher.\u00a0 <\/span>They understood the essence of
\nChristianity to be the threefold creed not of Trinitarian orthodoxy but of the
\nfatherhood of God, the brotherhood of mankind, and the infinite worth of the
\nhuman soul.\u00a0 <\/span>They located doctrine in
\nreligious experience such that the uniqueness of the Christian faith was
\ndiluted in the ecumenical and universal search in all religious quests.
\narose as a postcolonial enterprise, fulfilling the desire of Africans to do
\ntheology.\u00a0 <\/span>Just what did that mean\u2014or
\ndoes it mean?\u00a0 <\/span>For some, it meant to do
\ntheology as it was taught by the conservative missionaries who brought
\ntraditional Christian faith to the continent: a study of Scripture, an
\nunderstanding of Christian doctrine, the history of the Christian Church, and
\nits ethics.\u00a0 <\/span>For others, it meant to do
\ntheology in a different way.\u00a0 <\/span>These
\nscholars tended to reject theology from both the liberal and conservative
\nperspectives.\u00a0 <\/span>They had\u2014and have had\u2014two
\nconcerns: to honour Africa, its history, people, and African traditions, and to
\naddress \u2018African realities\u2019, that is, the issues facing Africans today.\u00a0 <\/span>These two concerns can be translated into the
\nconcerns of \u2018contextual theology\u2019 and \u2018public theology\u2019.
\ngeneral parlance today that reflect contextual and public concerns in
\npostcolonial contexts are: holistic (spiritual and practical theology),
\ntransformational (holistic theology bringing social change), relevant (theology
\nthat begins with and answers present needs), and \u2018African not Western\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span>The \u2018African\u2019 emphasis can be construed as
\nhonoring certain aspects of African traditional religion, particularly the
\ncommunitarian rather than individualistic emphasis in African communities and,
\nrelatedly, some continuing role for dead ancestors in the li<\/span>ving community.\u00a0 <\/span>One emerging
\nscholar in Evangelicalism in the 1980s was Byang Kato, who opposed the
\ndirection of this trajectory.\u00a0 <\/span>He saw it
\nas anti-orthodox and anti-Evangelical.\u00a0
\n<\/span>He died in a tragic accident at an early age and could not continue his
\nchallenge to developments separating African theology from Evangelical
\ntheology.\u00a0 <\/span>The scholars in Africa representing
\nthe opposite gained control of the conversation, at least insofar as their
\nideas made it into print and established the literature for African theological
\nreflection.
\nWestern liberalism and the contextualising project of African theology are cut
\nfrom the same cloth.\u00a0 <\/span>To understand this,
\nwe need to understand that the universalising project of Western liberalism was
\na contextual project<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>It reflected both the Enlightenment\u2019s emphasis
\non reason and the existentialist emphasis in Western philosophy of human
\nexperience.\u00a0 Existentialism also held that existence precedes essence, and this, applied to theology, meant that the Africans, or African existence, could shape theology apart from some orthodox ‘essence’.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Moreover, the emphasis on
\nreason was a rejection <\/i>of Christian
\ntheology of the Church.\u00a0 <\/span>The Church\u2019s
\ntheology had understood theological reasoning to be done a certain way, as interpretation<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>First, theologians were interpreters of Scripture<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>Second, they were interpreters of the Church\u2019s theology<\/i>\u2014its theological
\ntradition.\u00a0 <\/span>This was the case, though
\npracticed differently, for Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant scholars up
\nto the Enlightenment.\u00a0 <\/span>Post-Enlightenment
\ntheologians who rejected theology as interpretation turned it into theology as
\nreflection upon philosophical and theological ideas.
\nproject <\/i>already devised by liberal Protestantism, it sidelines Biblical
\ninterpretation and the study of historical theology, and it rejects such
\ninterpretation as constricting, non-contextual, irrelevant, colonial,
\nnon-transformational, and not holistic.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Liberal theology had already defined theology as existing above
\ntradition by virtue of reason and below tradition by virtue of human
\nexperience.\u00a0 <\/span>African theology exists
\nabove Christian tradition <\/i>by
\nfocussing study on African tradition <\/i>and
\nbelow Christian tradition by focussing much more narrowly on contemporary African realities\/needs<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>Whether as Western liberal theology or as
\nAfrican theology, the study of Scripture as the mode of theological enquiry and
\nof the Church\u2019s history and theology are rejected.
\ntranslated into African theology these past fifty years, is attractive
\nto African Evangelicalism.\u00a0 <\/span>The allure is
\nto replace the study of Christian tradition with African tradition
\n(\u2018contextualism\u2019), and it replaces theology as Biblical interpretation with
\ntheology as reflection on African realities (\u2018political\u2019 or \u2018practical\u2019
\ntheology; see my\u00a0<\/span>The Church on the Public Square: Challenges for Public Theology<\/a>).\u00a0 <\/span>A truly Evangelical response
\nto this African attraction to liberalism would involve an articulation of how
\ntheology must proceed from <\/i>Biblical interpretation and how it is an extension,
\nnot rejection, of historical theology.<\/p>\n
\nstudents to be more Biblically literate <\/i>than
\nin the West and as capable in Biblical
\ninterpretation<\/i> as Western seminaries (or as capable as they once were).\u00a0
\n<\/span>It will only do so when it recognises that the Bible is not simply a
\nresource for theology, to be engaged for our
\n<\/i>agendas and for rhetorical purposes.\u00a0
\n<\/span>It is God\u2019s authoritative Word and, as such, defines us theologically
\nand ethically, both corporately and individually.\u00a0 <\/span>It analyses, critiques, and defines us.\u00a0 <\/span>We interpret the Bible so that it will
\ninterpret us. It determines and shapes our culture more than it needs to be contextually
\napplied.
\nenterprise is not first to be creative but conservative.\u00a0 <\/span>From the beginning of the Church, the
\ntheological goal was to live faithfully under the Word of God and thereby to
\nlive faithfully to God.\u00a0 <\/span>Good teachers in
\nthe Church were those training believers in the faith that was once for all delivered
\nto them (Jude 3).\u00a0 <\/span>Faithless teachers
\nwere those attaching Christian tradition so closely to the non-Christian
\ncontext that it was reshaped by that context, whether its theology or ethics.\u00a0 <\/span>The lure of being relevant and contextual is
\na faith-altering lure that distorts Christian doctrine and alters loyalties to
\nGod and Scripture to align with culture and context.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nforgot, that the Gospel is not some philosophy but the power of God for
\nsalvation to everyone who believes, whether the Jews or the Gentiles (Romans
\n1.16).\u00a0 <\/span>We do not \u2018translate the Gospel\u2019
\ninto culture but are baptised into Christ by the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 <\/span>Transformation by the Gospel trumps cultural translation
\nof the Gospel.\u00a0 <\/span>Translation in its
\nvarious senses is important, but for the sake of communication, not
\ntheology.\u00a0 <\/span>The error of Israel was to go
\nafter the other gods of other nations.\u00a0
\n<\/span>The heresies rejected in the New Testament church were the heresies mentioned
\nin the letters to the seven Asian churches in Revelation 2-3, heresies of accommodation
\nto non-Christian beliefs and practices in the culture.\u00a0 <\/span>Instead of speaking of \u2018African theology\u2019,
\nthe African Church needs to speak of \u2018Christian theology\u2019 in Africa.
\n\u2018relevant\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span>Its postcolonial impetus
\nresides in Western liberation theologies.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Its African spirituality is not essentially different from liberalism\u2019s
\ninterest in religious experience, despite the contextual flavour.\u00a0 <\/span>Western liberalism has critiqued orthodox
\ntheology as non-holistic for its emphasis on spiritual matters and has
\ncritiqued dogmatic theology for its not being relevant to human needs and not
\nbeing contextually sensitive.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact,
\nthe criticism African theology makes of Western theology leads African theology
\ninto the same theological errors of the West.\u00a0
\n<\/span>Both broaden theology so that the message
\nof the Gospel <\/i>gets diluted among other pursuits while also being viewed as only <\/i>a theology and not the power of God<\/i> in Christ Jesus.\u00a0 <\/span>Jesus is removed from the centre of theology
\nand Biblical interpretation.\u00a0 <\/span>Both pursue other agendas, and the cross and resurrection become metaphors
\nwithout power.\u00a0 <\/span>The person of the Holy
\nSpirit is replaced with a \u2018spirituality\u2019 that is never properly defined.\u00a0 <\/span>Evangelicals in Africa often think that they
\nare safe from Western liberalism, but by adopting the theological programme
\nthat they do they actually proceed on the same trajectory, just with a slightly
\ndifferent accent.\u00a0 Rudolf Bultmann’s existential theology was a European contextual theology.\u00a0 It, like African theology, pursued relevance and context apart from Scriptural authority and the Church’s orthodox tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"