Jesus Christ as Logos Incarnate and Resurrected Nana (Ancestor)

An African Perspective on Conversion and Christology

Rudolf K. Gaisie

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781725252851, 9781725252868
• eBook ISBN: 9781725252875
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

This book seeks to demonstrate the significance of Ancestor Christology in African Christianity for christological developments in World Christianity. Ancestor Christology has developed in the process of an African conversion story of appropriating the mystery of Christ (Eph 3:4) in the category of ancestors. Logos Christology in early Christian history developed as an intricate byproduct in the conversion process of turning Hellenistic ideas towards the direction of Christ (A.F. Walls). Hellenistic Christian writers and modern African Christian writers thus share some things in common and when their efforts are examined within the conversion process framework there are discernible modes of engagement. The mode of Logos Christology that one finds in Origen, for example, is an innovative application of the understanding of Jesus Christ as Logos (incarnate); a new key but not discontinuous with the Johannine suggestive mode or the clarificatory mode of Justin Martyr. African Ancestor Christology is at the threshold of an innovative mode and the argument this book makes is that this strand of African Christology should be pursued in the indigenous languages aided by respective translated Bibles; a suggested way is a Logos-Ancestor (Nanas?m) discourse in Akan Christianity.

Chapter 1

Christology and the Process of Conversion

The encounter between the life of Jesus and contemporary first-century Jewish culture is a paradigm for assessing gospel and culture issues.1 The early Jewish disciples of Jesus responded to him by employing Jewish cultural elements. The disciples turned Jewish inheritance towards “a new direction” in Jesus resulting in a transformed inheritance and a Jewish “model of thought and life that was ‘Christian’ because Christ was at its centre.”2 Thus the growth in the disciples’ view of Jesus Christ and his impact on their lives reveal a link between Christology and the process of conversion.

The Experience of the Early Disciples in the New Testament

The primary concern for the early Jewish followers or disciples of Jesus Christ was not so much with the nature of his being as to the significance of his words and works.3 Though his life primarily evoked religious or spiritual sentiments, Jesus’ words and actions also resonated with the political expectations of his followers. Jesus’ close associates were not devoid of this tendency towards political liberation even after his death and resurrection (Acts 1:6). Following Jesus for these individuals involved a cultural reworking of seeing their life and the destiny of their nation in view of the events prior to and after the resurrection. What remains instructive for all subsequent followers of Jesus is his desire for the opinion of what his close associates thought of him. It is hard to guess whether the disciples anticipated Jesus’s identity question (known as the “Christological question”)4 in the time and manner it came. Though apparently unanticipated it was a “momentous question” that “marked a turning point” in the education of the disciples.5 The same question was asked twice. The first question for the opinion of others is rendered differently in the Synoptics,6 while that for the disciples’ view is the same in all the three accounts (“Who do you say I am?”).7 The time and place where the question was asked and the immediate events prior to that are presented differently. However, the immediate events following Peter’s declaration are the same in all three accounts.8

Following Peter’s confession that he is the “Christ [Messiah], Son of the living God” or “the Christ of God,” Jesus employed the title “Son of Man” in his discourse as is typical in the Synoptics. If the “Son of Man” title explicitly suggested Messiahship then the identity question would have been quite unnecessary. An implicit Messianic connotation, however, may have served at least two purposes. It could have been an exercise for the disciples to voice out what they may have assumed all along as well as an opportunity for Jesus to ascertain and correct his disciples’ opinion of him before his last days in Jerusalem. The lesson following Peter’s confession was about Jesus’ imminent suffering, death and resurrection as part of the destiny of the Christ of God. The identity question provided the opportunity for Jesus to review the disciples’ perception and expectation of him. The disciples were to have a clearer perspective of Jesus by virtue of their proximity. The opinion of the others did not connect Jesus as Messiah.9 Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the Messiah points to a personal encounter and experience of Jesus that precedes any (cultural) Christological affirmation.

Christology in Cultural Context

Jesus as the Messiah was itself a cultural insight. The God of Israel is the living God who in Jewish conception is the God of all flesh.10 Peter’s declaration of the Messiah as the Son of the Living God suggests (at least at this stage) a universal significance of Jesus. Whether this was so, and how that affected Peter’s view of Jesus, is beyond the present discussion. However, Peter’s choice of words in responding to who he had come to see Jesus to be were within the spectrum of Jewish religious vocabulary. Peter had a “Christological journey” as his view or understanding of Jesus and his significance was a learning process for him. The verbal declaration was not the endpoint of his view since that needed some clarification and maturing in his experience with Jesus the Messiah. Yet prior to that declaration he held some form of Messianic views of Jesus of Nazareth.11

Quite a lot had happened between Jesus and the disciples before the identity question episode as found in the Synoptics.12 The disciples’ recognition of Jesus as Christ (Messiah) in the Synoptics appears as a “gradual development,” unlike the Fourth Gospel where Andrew and Philip recognized that early in their discipleship.13 Peter, like his colleague disciples, shared in the general traditional Jewish conception of the image of the Messiah. It was in the medium of this cultural world, with the foundation of the Jewish Scriptures intertwined with human traditions, that the revelation of God’s Son was enacted. Peter’s idea of a Messiah in connection to Jesus, though valid, was incomplete in scope and significance and was eventually transformed in the process of time. Thus, like the title Messiah, the scope and significance of cultural elements are transformed in their use in Christology.

The cultural element employed in people’s response to Jesus Christ serves as an avenue for a deepening impact...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Christology and the Process of Conversion
• Chapter 2: Jesus Christ as Logos (Incarnate)
• Chapter 3: The African Experience of Jesus
• Chapter 4: The Idea of Nana (Ancestor) in Akan Traditional Life and Thought
• Chapter 5: Ancestor Christology and the Process of Conversion in African Christianity
• Chapter 6: The Logos as Nana (Ancestor)
• Conclusion
• Bibliography