A New History of African Christian Thought

From Cape to Cairo

David Ngong, David Tonghou Ngong, David Ngong, David Tonghou Ngong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780415857543
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135106263
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

David Tonghou Ngong offers a comprehensive view of African Christian thought that includes North Africa in antiquity as well as Sub-Saharan Africa from the period of colonial missionary activity to the present. Challenging conventional colonial divisions of Africa, A New History of African Christian Thought demonstrates that important continuities exist across the continent. Chapters written by specialists in African Christian thought reflect the issues—both ancient and modern—in which Christian Africa has impacted the shape of Christian belief from the beginning of the movement up to the present day.

1	Theological Significance of Africa and Africans in the Bible
	David Tonghou Ngong

Introduction

Christianity in Africa has often been seen as a foreign religion and there is a sense in which this may be correct. Given that contemporary Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa is a product of Western Christian missions, it is possible to say that this form of Christianity is foreign, the protestations of influential scholars such as Andrew Walls and Kwame Bediako notwithstanding.¹ However, Christianity has a longer history in the continent than its history in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Thus, a reflection on the place of Africa and Africans in the Bible will reveal that Christianity is, to a significant degree, a religion that has its roots in Africa and that Africa has a central place in the Christian story of salvation. The history of Christian thought in Africa should take into account the fact that Africa’s engagement with the Christian faith does not only begin with the history of Christianity but rather with ancient Israel itself.

The late Nigerian biblical scholar Justin Upkong pointed out that tracing Africa’s connection to Christianity and to the Bible was motivated in part by the need to counter negative images of Africa that are connected to the Bible and to show that Africans are not new to the Christian faith.² The African American biblical scholar Cain Hope Felder sees the need to study the place of Africa and Africans in the Bible as itself liberatory and thus connected to modern forms of liberation theology.³ Beginning the exploration of the history of Christian thought in Africa with a theological discussion of the place of Africa and Africans in the Bible inscribes the continent in a discourse in which she is often mistakenly seen as a latecomer, thus forestalling the marginalization of the continent in the understanding of the provenance of the Christian faith.

Significant work has been done in identifying the place of Africa and Africans in the Bible but it appears that a thorough theological study of the place of Africa and Africans in the Bible still needs to be done.⁴ It is our contention that such theological reflections should stand at the beginning of tracing the history of Christian thought in Africa. While Africa and Africans contributed significantly in salvation history, beginning from the religion of ancient Israel to the Christian faith, this chapter focuses only on a few significant moments, such as ancient Egypt’s contribution in the formation of Israel’s identity (including its view of itself as a people, its cultic practices of circumcision and worship at the Temple), the development of Israel’s wisdom literature, and the ideas of the resurrection and the Trinity which are central to the Christian faith. It also looks at the theological significance of Jesus’ refugee status in Egypt, the conscription of Simon of Cyrene to help Jesus carry his cross, the Ethiopian Eunuch’s encounter with Philip in Acts 8, and the presence of two African churchmen in Acts 13.

Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel

The story of ancient Egypt and ancient Israel begins with the story of the Exodus. Even though the historicity of many of the elements of the Exodus narrative has been called into question, their theological import can hardly be gainsaid. Exodus, in the imagination of ancient Israel, could be seen as the narrative of their creation as a people. It may therefore be seen as a second creation narrative in the Hebrew Bible. As one scholar aptly notes,

the exodus deliverance is depicted as the act by which Israel was brought into being as a people and thus as the beginning point in Israel’s history. In the time of the fathers [sic], God had revealed his [sic] Presence to individuals, had delivered and blessed, made promises to and sometimes judged them. But in the exodus, he revealed his Presence to a whole people and called them to nationhood and a special role by relating himself to them in covenant. This special role becomes a kind of lens through which Israel is viewed throughout the rest of the Bible, and … shapes much of the theology of the OT. It is this special role, indeed, that weaves the Book of Exodus so completely into the canonical fabric begun with Genesis and ended with Revelation.⁵

In other words, before the story of Israel narrated in Exodus, God had dealings with individuals such as Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, and Joseph. However, this all changed in Exodus: there, God begins to have a relationship with Israel as a people and there the creation of Israel as a people begins. Exodus is therefore a second creation narrative in the sense that the creation of the cosmos narrated in Genesis is followed by the creation of a people with whom God wishes to engage the cosmos. It follows from this that the creation of Israel took place in Africa. The significance of this is that Israel may never be adequately understood without its connection to Africa because Africa is the Mother of Israel. Israel therefore has an intimate relation to Africa, the place that birthed her as a people. The history of Israel can therefore hardly be narrated without considering its relation to Africa because Africa stands at the very beginning of this history and continues to be part of this history to this day. This intimate connection between Israel and Africa is based on more than the now accepted fact that all human beings originated from Africa; rather, it is based on Israel’s specific claim to have emerged as a people in Egypt. That God is believed to have created Israel as a people in Africa places Africa at the center of the Jewish and Christian story of salvation. At the beginning of this story of salvation, therefore, is Africa. That Africa and Africans have been and continue to be part of this history in a big way should therefore not be surprising. The current explosion of Christianity in the continent could therefore be seen as a continuation of Africa’s participation in this salvific narrative.

However, the circumstances under which Israel was created in Africa merit careful reflection because Israel situates the story in the despicable context of slavery. From the Joseph saga in Genesis 37–50, we see that the story of Israel in Egypt is the story of fraternal betrayal and refugees enslaved. Even though the Exodus narrative has been inspirational in the development of liberation theology in general and African and African American liberation theologies in particular, the fact that the enslavement of Israel takes place in Africa is something that calls for careful reflection. In the first place, Joseph, who later rescued the rest of his family from famine, was sold by his own siblings to merchants who took him to Egypt. Thus, Joseph, through whom Israel was to begin its rise as a people, came to Africa because his own people did not want him and Africa, providentially, became a place in which he flourished. It was because he flourished in Africa that he was able to help his family when there was famine in Canaan. Further, it was this famine in Canaan that led Joseph’s siblings to come to Egypt, thus establishing themselves there as a people. But as they began establishing themselves in Egypt, they fell into servitude and so Africa becomes for them both a life-giving and a life-denying place.

The story of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt inspired important themes in liberation theology, especially African American liberation theology. However, given that the Israelites were enslaved in Africa, the Exodus narrative should not be seen only as a narrative of redemption in African theology. It is rather the narrative of Africa as both a life-giving and life-denying place to those who have called and continue to call Africa home. Thus, unlike African American liberation theology which has read the narrative of the Exodus mainly as a narrative of liberation, African theology should read the narrative as double-edged. Here Africans are not only the people who need liberation – this would be to privilege the narrative of victimhood which the Cameroonian scholar Achilles Mbembe has correctly critiqued as an inadequate reading of history.⁶ The Exodus narrative calls for the reading of Africa and Africans as both perpetrators and victims of oppression.⁷ In many contemporary and especially Pentecostal church circles in Africa, it is often common to hear Egypt associated mainly with the oppression of Israel. This is, however, an inadequate reading of the situation because what happened to the Israelites in Egypt began as a good thing – the granting of refugee status to the needy. This good thing, however, turned sour when the Israelites were enslaved. Such exploitation appears to be a significant part of the story not only in Africa today but in the rest of the world where economic and other migrants often experience significant suffering. The question of migration and exploitation is therefore central to the story of Israel in Egypt and in our time; it should be important to African theology today. In fact, when looked at closely it would be discovered that the Christian faith in particular and the Abrahamic religions in general developed in the context of migration, beginning from the migration of Abraham in Genesis 12.⁸ The Abrahamic religions therefore do not need a theology of migration because they are themselves theologies of migration in both a physical and spiritual sense. These are religions that developed because people physically moved and also because people changed their spiritual dispositions. They continue to call on people to make both movements to this day.

Egypt is not only the place where Israel’s identity as a people whom God often snatched from the jaws of near annihilation began to be formed; it is also the source of many of Israel’s cultic practices, some of which have become part of the Christian faith today. Central to Israel’s relationship with God is the act of the covenant enacted through circumcision. As narrated in Genesis 17, to identify themselves as the people of God, every male child in Israel was to be circumcised. As scholars now acknowledge, this act of circumcision did not originate with the Hebrew people. It was a practice which they encountered in Egypt during their sojourn there. Even the act of housing a god in a temple, which became a center of worship for Israel, is a practice Israel also encountered in Egypt.⁹ This practice became a central tenet in Israel because God came to be seen as especially present at the Temple in Jerusalem, where worship became centralized.

Two other important elements of Israelite life which were influenced by Egypt include elements of Israel’s wisdom literature and the belief in the resurrection of the dead. Most Old Testament scholars agree that Israel’s wisdom literature, especially as found in the Book of Proverbs, was deeply influenced by ancient Egyptian wisdom. First, the Egyptian concept of ma’at, which may be seen as the discernment and actualization of the proper order (justice, truth, righteousness) in nature, was influential in the development of Israelite wisdom. The Old Testament scholar Roland Murphy has described this consensus as the “ma’atizing of biblical wisdom.”¹⁰ In ancient Egypt, ma’at was seen as the way to the good life both in this life and in the hereafter. Ma’at or the way of justice was seen as the means that ensured that one’s memory did not pass away from this world because, according to God’s command, people are “remembered because of goodness.”¹¹ Just as Egyptian wisdom was seen as leading to the good life, ancient Israel’s wisdom was also seen as paving the way to the good life. The parallels have especially been drawn between the works of the famous Egyptian sage Amenemope and Proverbs. Just as Amenemope saw his work as “the teaching of life” that instructs the novice on how to interact well with the world for their own good, Proverbs 1:1–6 is couched in similar terms.¹² Even more, scholars have seen direct similarity between Proverbs 22:17–24:22 and the wisdom of Amenemope, noting that the text from Proverbs was directly lifted from the work of Amenemope.¹³ Apart from the influence which the work of Amenemope had on Proverbs, it has also been shown that there are other sayings in Proverbs that were influenced by Egyptian wisdom literature.¹⁴ Against the domination of Western missionary Christianity, African theologians had long maintained that God had intercourse with Africans before the missionaries arrived. This is nowhere more pronounced than in the fact that African (Egyptian) wisdom is the source of Israel’s wisdom. Lest it be remarked that ancient Egyptian wisdom is not the wisdom of sub-Saharan Africa, it would be important to note the mixed nature of ancient Egyptian identity, as was shown in the introduction of this book and the fact that ancient Egyptian proverbs have some parallels to African proverbs today. Take for example the work of the ancient Egyptian Ankhsheshonq who noted: “He who is bitten of the bite of a snake is afraid of a coil of rope.”¹⁵ Growing up in Cameroon this proverb was stated thus: “Anyone bitten by a snake will leap in fear when they encounter a millipede.”

Apart from the fact that Israel appropriated African wisdom, the central event that led to the birth of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is said to have been foreshadowed in ancient Egypt in the narrative of Isis, Osiris, and Horus. Isis is a famous Egyptian goddess who was widely worshipped during the Greco-Roman period and whose image has been said to influence the depiction of Mary and the Christ child.¹⁶ However, her fame is derived in part from her power to bring life out of death. Distraught when her brother-husband, Osiris was murdered by her other brother, she was determined to bring him back to life. This she did by collecting the body parts of Osiris, putting them together, and resurrecting him. In fact, it is after his resurrection that they had their son, Horus. Thus it is that Isis, Osiris, and Horus have been seen by some as manifestation of the Christian idea of the Trinity, suggesting that both the idea of the resurrection and the Trinity had their roots in Africa.¹⁷ Given this background, it can be seen that central ideas of the Christian faith are in fact not new to Africa; Christianity actually has deep roots in Africa. It may even be seen as an African religion because many of its ideas can be traced to Africa.

Africa and Africans in the New Testament

One who reads the New Testament without an eye for the place of Africa and Africans in it may hardly notice that Africa and Africans hold a central place in the economy of salvation depicted in the New Testament. The centrality of Africa in the New Testament narrative is especially demonstrated in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 2 narrates how the birth of Jesus, who was said to be the king of the Jews, agitated King Herod. Sensing that Jesus was a threat to his kingship, he wanted the child murdered. He wanted to know the whereabouts of the child from t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Note on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Theological Significance of Africa and Africans in the Bible
• PART I Early African Christian Thought
• PART II Modern African Christian Thought
• Index