› › Towards A Christian Theology Of African Ancestors

Towards a Christian Theology of African Ancestors

Author : Thomas Ochieng Otanga

Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers

Page : 239 pages

File Size : 22,80 MB

Release : 2023-04-21

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1666733067

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Book Description

This book examines the similarities and relationship between Christian saints and African ancestors. Further, it analyzes the deep cultural roots of African peoples and the ancestral frame as a point of departure for developing an indigenous African theology. Questions dealt with include: Does the conversion of Africans to Christianity require a break with their African cultural heritage? Who is an African ancestor? Is syncretism a good thing for an African Christian? What contribution can the African church make to the universal church? The author argues that rather than being antithetical to formal Christianity, an African Christian theology of ancestors is an example of how an indigenous African tradition can best express Christianity as well as make considerable impact on world Christianity.



Theology Brewed in an African Pot

Author : Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator

Publisher : Orbis Books

Page : 177 pages

File Size : 28,66 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1608331008

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Book Description

An intriguing introduction to Christian doctrine from an African perspective. Using a framework of excerpts from Chinua Achebe's well-known novel, Things Fall Apart, the author introduces the major themes of Christian doctrine: God, Trinity, creation, grace and sin, Jesus Christ, church, Mary, the saints, inculturation, and spirituality. While explaining basic Christian beliefs, Theology Brewed in an African Pot also clarifies the differences between an African view of religion and a more Eurocentric understanding of religion. Very accessible and engaging, each of the eleven short chapters ends with three discussion questions followed by one or two African prayers.





Jesus Christ as Ancestor

Author : Reuben Turbi Luka

Publisher : Langham Publishing

Page : 478 pages

File Size : 28,78 MB

Release : 2019-08-31

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1783687177

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Book Description

In this critical study, Dr Turbi Luka uses historical-theological methodology to engage in detail with Christologies of key African theologians and conventional theological sources for Christology, including the church fathers Tertullian and Athanasius as well as modern theologians. Turbi argues that existing African Christologies, specifically ancestor Christologies, are inadequate in expressing the person of Christ as Messiah and saviour, the fulfilment of Old Testament prophesies. Providing a new approach, Turbi proposes an African Linguistic Affinity Christology that explicitly portrays Jesus as Christ in a contextually relevant way for Africans in everyday life. This crucial study highlights the need for biblically rooted Christology and for sound theological understanding and naming of Jesus at every level. This book also warns the church in Africa, and elsewhere, to avoid repeating the dangerous christological heresies of the ancient church by remaining faithful to a biblical interpretation and orthodox theology of Christ.



African Christian Theology

Author : Samuel Waje Kunhiyop

Publisher : Zondervan Academic

Page : 271 pages

File Size : 29,68 MB

Release : 2019-04-09

Category : Religion

ISBN : 0310107121

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Book Description

Christian theology evolves out of questions that are asked in a particular situation about how the Bible speaks to that situation. This book, African Christian Theology, is written to address questions that arise from the African context. It is intended to help students and others discover how theology affects our minds, our hearts, and our lives. As such, it speaks not only to Africans but to all who seek to understand and live out their faith in their own societies. Samuel Kunyihop understands both biblical theology and the African worldview and throws light on areas where they overlap, where they diverge, and why this matters. He explores traditional African understandings of God and how he reveals himself, the African understanding of sin and way the Bible sees sin, and how the work of Christ can be understood in African terms. The treatment of Christian living focuses on matters that are relevant to Christians in Africa and elsewhere, dealing with topics such as blessings and curses and the role of the church as a Christian community. The book concludes with a discussion of biblical thinking on death and the afterlife in which it also addresses the role traditionally ascribed to African ancestors.



Towards an African Narrative Theology

Author : Joseph Healey

Publisher : Orbis Books

Page : 574 pages

File Size : 16,85 MB

Release : 1996

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1608331873

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Book Description

Reflects what traditional proverbs used in Christian catechetical, liturgical, and ritual contexts reveal about Tanzanian appropriations of and interpretations of Christianity.



Jesus Christ as Logos Incarnate and Resurrected Nana (Ancestor)

Author : Rudolf K. Gaisie

Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers

Page : 262 pages

File Size : 42,72 MB

Release : 2020-10-16

Category : Religion

ISBN : 1725252856

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Book Description

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 (Nanasɛm) discourse in Akan Christianity.



African Religions

Author : Jacob K. Olupona

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 177 pages

File Size : 14,75 MB

Release : 2014

Category : History

ISBN : 0199790582

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Book Description

This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.



African Religions & Philosophy

Author : John S. Mbiti

Publisher : Heinemann

Page : 312 pages

File Size : 41,87 MB

Release : 1990

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 9780435895914

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Book Description

"African Religions and Philosophy" is a systematic study of the attitudes of mind and belief that have evolved in the many societies of Africa. In this second edition, Dr Mbiti has updated his material to include the involvement of women in religion, and the potential unity to be found in what was once thought to be a mass of quite separate religions. Mbiti adds a new dimension to the understanding of the history, thinking, and life throughout the African continent. Religion is approached from an African point of view but is as accessible to readers who belong to non-African societies as it is to those who have grown up in African nations. Since its first publication, this book has become acknowledged as the standard work in the field of study, and it is essential reading for anyone concerned with African religion, history, philosophy, anthropology or general African studies.



African Religion Defined

Author : Anthony Ephirim-Donkor

Publisher : University Press of America

Page : 160 pages

File Size : 24,52 MB

Release : 2012-07-10

Category : Religion

ISBN : 0761853294

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Book Description

African religion is ancestor worship; that is, funeral preparations, burial of the dead with ceremony and pomp, belief in eternal existence of souls of the dead as ancestors, periodic remembrance of ancestors, and belief that they influence the affairs of their living descendants. Whether called Akw?sidai, Homowo, Voodoo, Nyant?r (Aboakyir), CandomblZ, or Santeria in Africa or the African Diaspora, ancestor worship centers on the ancestors and deities. This makes it a tenably viable religion, because living descendants are genetically linked to their ancestors. The author, a traditional king and professor, studies the Akan in Ghana to demonstrate that ancestor worship is as pragmatic, systematic, theological, teleological, soteriological — with a highly trained clerical body and elders as mediators — and symbolic as any other religion in the world. Ancestor worship follows prescribed rites and rituals, formulas, precepts for ritual efficacy, and festivities of honor with music and dances to provoke ancestors and deities into joining in the celebration.