Jesus and the Gospel in Africa : History and Experience

by Bediako, Kwame

• ISBN13: 9781570755422
• ISBN10: 1570755426
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-30
• Publisher: Orbis Books

Author Biography

Kwame Bediako is director of the Akrofi-Christaller Center in Ghana, a pioneering study center where African pastors, theologians, and historians gather to pool insights into the meaning of Christianity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction by Hans Visser with Gillian Bediako	xi
PART I THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE OF JESUS
Chapter 1 Cry Jesus!
Christian theology and presence in modern Africa	3	(17)
Modern Africa as a heartland of the Christian religion	3	(1)
Christian Africa: The surprise factor in the modern missionary story	4	(3)
Africa and the future of Christianity	7	(1)
Jesus of the deep forest: Theology from where faith must live	8	(7)
African theology: The quest and the discovery	15	(2)
Theology as witness	17	(1)
References	18	(2)
Chapter 2 Jesus in African culture
A Ghanaian perspective	20	(14)
Christian faith and African traditional religion in retrospect	20	(1)
Jesus as divine conqueror in the African world	21	(1)
Jesus and the ancestors in Akan world-view	22	(2)
The universality of Jesus Christ and our adoptive past	24	(1)
The Good News as our story	25	(1)
Jesus as 'Ancestor' and sole Mediator	25	(2)
The epistle to the Hebrews as OUR epistle!	27	(5)
Reading and hearing the Word of God in our own language	32	(1)
References	33	(1)
Chapter 3 How is Jesus Christ Lord?
Evangelical Christian apologetics amid African religious pluralism	34	(29)
Introduction: The biblical records as the fruit of engagement	34	(1)
My route to the problem	34	(3)
Christ, unique in relation to 'other lords'	37	(1)
Christian affirmations-as recognition, not assertion	38	(1)
The unique Christ (1): Religions as traditions of response	39	(2)
The unique Christ (2): What is it that, in Christ, confronts us?	41	(2)
Christian apologetics and the possibility of new theological idioms	43	(1)
Conclusion: Christian apologetics amid other religious faiths-the continuing encounter	44	(1)
References	45	(4)
PART II THEOLOGY AND CULTURE
Chapter 4 Understanding African theology in the twentieth century	49	(14)
African Christian thought in the post-missionary era: Liberation and integration	49	(1)
An early shared concern: the African religious past as a prime theological issue	49	(2)
African theology and the shaping of a method-theology as the hermeneutic of identity	51	(3)
A range of responses-indigenisers, biblicists and translators	54	(2)
The 1990's-into new directions	56	(1)
African theology-a feeling after new languages?	57	(1)
African theology-a relevance beyond Africa?	58	(2)
References	60	(3)
Chapter 5 Africa and the Fathers
The relevance of early Hellenistic Christian theology for modern Africa	63	(34)
'Continuity' and 'discontinuity': Problems of meaning	64	(3)
Some specific areas of relevance	67	(5)
(a) The possibility of Synthesis	67	(1)
(b) The challenge of Pluralism	68	(1)
(c) Theology as Indigenisation	69	(1)
(d) The pre-Christian heritage as a 'tradition of response'	70	(2)
Agenda for the future	72	(3)
(a) African theology and its African critics	72	(1)
(b) The Christian faith as 'a historical category' in the African experience	73	(2)
References	75	(2)
Chapter 6 One Song in Many Tongues	77	(8)
References	82	(3)
PART III AFRICA AND THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
Chapter 7 The Primal imagination and the opportunity for a new theological idiom	85	(12)
Introduction: Prophet Harris	85	(2)
The nature of the primal world view-H.W. Turner's six-feature analysis	87	(2)
The African world and the problem of unresolved multiplicity	89	(1)
Towards a fresh approach	90	(6)
References	96	(1)
Chapter 8 Christian religion and African social norms
Authority, desacralisation, and democracy	97	(11)
Introduction: Christianity's significance in African political history	97	(1)
A new political task: From independence to democracy	98	(2)
The religious roots of African post-independence political authoritarianism	100	(2)
Christianity and the de-sacralisation of authority and power in history	102	(5)
References	107	(1)
Chapter 9 Towards a new understanding of Christian history in the post-missionary era	108	(13)
Introduction: The new global impact of the Third World Church 108 Theologies of the South: a new way of doing theology	111	(4)
Christian History: its new shape	115	(3)
Conclusion	118	(2)
References	120	(1)
Chapter 10 Publications of Kwame Bediako	121