Rumors of Salvation: Perspectives of Salvation in African Christian Thought David Tonghou Ngong Published in The Routledge Handbook of African Theology, edited by Elias Bongmba, 2020 Taxonomies of Salvation Discourses on salvation in African Christian theology have often focused on the various understandings of salvation in sub-Saharan Africa, as African theology is often understood as sub-Saharan African theology. Thus, in his insightful classification of perspectives of salvation in African theology, the South African theologian, Gerrit Brand, focuses on sub-Saharan African theology to argue that, from an African perspective, Western discourses on salvation have mostly paid attention to the means and how of salvation rather than on the content of salvation. The focus on the means and how of salvation has led Western Christian theology to emphasize the various theories of atonement and debates on the question of who is saved. In Africa, however, the focus on the content of salvation has led many to seek to see evidence of salvation. They seek to see evidence of salvation not in the Calvinistic or puritanical sense of transformed morality and church life but in the sense of the overall transformation of human life – spiritual, personal, social, political, economic, ecological. This focus on the evidence of salvation has led some to see the Christian view of salvation as elusive. To them, the Christian understanding of salvation is like “a fabulous ghost,” which constantly evades people as they try to grasp it. The typology of African theology of salvation which Brand presents therefore focuses on the content or nature of salvation and thus suggests an African Christian contribution to the idea of salvation in world Christianity. In other words, for Brand, an African contribution to the understanding of salvation in world Christian theology is the view that salvation must be made tangible and verifiable in this life rather than perpetually remaining an unfulfilled dream or postponed. Brand classifies African theology of salvation into five types: anthropological, social, cultural, ontological, and vitalistic. Gerrit Brand, “Salvation in African Christian Theology: A Typology of Existing Approaches,” Exchange 28 no. 3 (July 1999): 196. For a longer version of his engagement of the doctrine of salvation in African and Western theology from the perspective of philosophical theology, see Gerrit Brand, Speaking of a Fabulous Ghost: In Search of Theological Criteria, With Special Reference to the Debate on Salvation in African Christian Theology, Contributions to Philosophical Theology (Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften: Peter Lang, 2002). Anthropological understandings of salvation are those that see salvation as the restoration of the person to full humanity. In this case, the loss of full humanity is not often orchestrated by individual sins but rather by the sins of others and other impediments, such as sickness and lack of opportunity. Examples of this view of salvation include the understanding of salvation in black theology, the concepts of ubuntu and ujamaa, the view of salvation in African religions as including elements such as healing, and the prosperity gospel. These views of salvation aim to see the overall transformation of the human person (individual) for the better. The social vision of salvation sees salvation as communal good, that is, salvation is not just about the betterment of the individual person but that of the community. This view of salvation is connected to the first in that it includes the concepts of ubuntu and ujamaa but the focus is on the community rather than the individual. The goal is therefore to seek communal well-being rather than mainly the well-being of the individual. An example of this view of salvation is the understanding of salvation as societal reconciliation, especially seen in countries like South Africa and Rwanda, and represented in the recent theology of Desmond Tutu and Emmanuel Katongole, among others. Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999); Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008). Cultural accounts of salvation see salvation as cultural transformation or the revitalization and revalorization of culture. This is especially seen in inculturation theology that attempts to rehabilitate elements of African cultures that had been condemned by Western missionary Christianity. What is sought here is the salvation of African cultures. The ontological view of salvation seeks to understand whether what is, is what should be. It seeks to understand whether it is possible to attain fulness of life within reality as we know it. In this view of salvation, reality as it is does not make possible the human good. For the human good to be attained, God would need to change reality as we know it. The theologies of liberation and reconstruction would fit this mode of salvation for they see God as interfering in reality to change the nature of what is. It is also found in elements of the theology of inculturation that posit the intervention of the unseen world into the physical world. Finally, the vitalistic understanding of salvation focuses on the African reverence for life captured in the idea of vital force that was introduced into African Christian theology by the Belgian missionary, Father Placide Temples. Here, “life itself is the highest good to which humans can aspire.” Brand, “Salvation in African Christian Theology,” 220. This reverence for life is captured in the often-quoted text from the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10, New Revised Standard Version). Brand sees this vision of salvation as found in African women’s theology that sees the quest for survival as salvific and in the theology of John Mbiti whose spiritual understanding of salvation sees salvation as the transmission of spiritual life to believers. Whatever quarrel one may have with Brand’s taxonomy, his classification has nevertheless done significant service to African theology by, first, giving a framework within which the theology of salvation in sub-Saharan Africa may be understood. His is arguably the only attempt to provide a framework within which salvific discourses in African Christian theology may be understood. Other discourses of salvation in Africa have focused on single ways of thinking about salvation in Africa, such as from the perspective of indigenous religions, Black theology, African women’s theology, Pentecostal theology, Evangelical theology, among others. Focus has hardly been placed on accounting for the different ways of thinking about salvation in African Christian theology. Brand’s work is therefore immensely relevant as a starting point for any understanding of salvation in African Christian theology. One may quarrel with his classification, but his is the single most elaborate attempt to account for the different ways of thinking about salvation in African Christian theology. Secondly, Brand has shown that sub-Saharan African Christian theology makes a significant contribution to global Christian theology through its emphasis on the content of salvation rather than on the means and how of salvation. In this sense, sub-Saharan Christian theology of salvation is similar to the view of salvation in Latin American liberation theology. See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988). This is significant because it alerts us to the important point that African Christian theology may, by and large, be understood as soteriology, that is, discourses about the possibility of salvation in Africa and around the world. Thus, it can be argued that the different forms of theology in Africa are different ways of thinking about what it means to be saved in Africa. They ask whether it is possible to say that an African or African society is saved today, given massive evidence to the contrary. They ask what the Christian faith could offer with regards to the possibility of salvation for Africans in various predicaments. This makes the idea of salvation to be the core of any theological discourse in Africa; in fact, it makes African Christian theology to be soteriology. The claim that African Christian theology is soteriology is central to this chapter. Even though salvation has been recognized as central to constructive theology in the West, Western theology has generally not seen salvation as its starting point. With few exceptions, the starting point for much Western Christian theology has often been the Prolegomenon that attempt to justify the possibility and conditions under which Christian theology may be carried out in the context of the challenges of modern thought or an attempt to think about God first before thinking about the product of God’s relation with the world. We see elements of this in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Frederich Schleiemarcher’s The Christian Faith, and Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics 1/1. Few Western theologians have begun their theology from the perspective of salvation Beginning theology with ethics, as James McClendon does, is a way of beginning theology with salvation. See James Wm. McClendon, Systematic Theology I: Ethics, revised edition (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002). Robert Jensen, on the other hand, follows Thomas Aquinas in beginning his systematic theology with the Triune God. See Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology I: The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). but African theologians generally begin theological reflection by focusing on what the Christian faith offers in the African context characterized by many travails. It can be argued that from ancient to present time, African theological intervention has often begun with soteriology. See, for examples, Jean-Marc Éla, African Cry, trans. Robert Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986); Idem., My Faith as an African, trans. John Pairman Brown and Susan Perry (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988); F. Eboussi Boulaga, Christianity Without Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984); Desmond Tutu, Hope and Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI” Eerdmans, 1984); Idem, No Future Without Forgiveness. This chapter however provides a different taxonomy of salvation based on the view of salvation as health. As the Cambridge theologian, David Ford, points out, understanding salvation as health is faithful to the root word for salvation (which is health) and provides an expansive way of thinking about salvation, considering that “health can be physical, social, political, economic, environmental, mental, spiritual, and moral.” David F. Ford, Theology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 103. Seen from this perspective, no other theme is as central to African Christian theology as the theme of salvation. One limitation of Brand’s taxonomy, however, is that its conception of African theology is limited to sub-Saharan African theology. This prevents him from seeing that some of the ways of understanding salvation which he designates as Western, such as the idea of theosis or deification, is also African and is still found in the Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox church today. By providing a continental reading of the understanding of salvation in African Christian theology, this chapter hopes to expand the understanding of salvation in African theology. It expands the understanding of salvation in African theology by engaging ways of conceptualizing salvation that considers ancient and contemporary perspectives, bringing in voices that are not accounted for in Brand’s taxonomy. This way of understanding salvation in African Christian theology will, methodologically, be historical and constructive. In this regard, salvation in African Christian theology would be conceptualized in two, broad but intersecting categories, namely, the spiritual and traditional and the modern and empirical. Like Brand’s taxonomy, these categories are not mutually exclusive but are rather interconnected. Differences exist in terms of where the accent is placed in each of these broad ways of thinking about salvation. Spiritual and traditional views of salvation would include understandings of salvation that are rooted in ancient African Christianity and African indigenous religious systems. These views of salvation are traditional because they are historically valid ways of thinking about salvation in either African indigenous religions or Christianity. The view of salvation as union with God or deification, as found in the early African and contemporary Coptic Christianity, or as spending eternity with God in the afterlife, as is the case with contemporary African Evangelicalism, are traditional because Christians have historically held these views as valid ways of conceptualizing salvation. The view of salvation as wholeness, as seen in popular African theology such as those of the African Initiated Churches (AICs) and contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, is traditional not because it has been historically accepted in Christianity but rather because it is rooted in African indigenous (traditional) religions. In this context, tradition should be thought of in two ways: as connected to the tradition of the church as honed, for example, in the early church, and as connected to indigenous African religions traditions, as handed down from generation to generation. Because these ways of thinking about salvation are steeped in certain spiritual worldviews and practices, the traditional views of salvation are also spiritual in nature. Alternatively, the modern and empirical ways of understanding salvation deal with how the concept of salvation is brought to bear on the various challenges that have developed in Africa under the modern condition of colonialism, slavery, racism, the nation-state, ecological concerns, among others. An example of this is the various forms of liberation and political theologies in Africa that address issues of racism and the crises brought about by the modern nation-state. These forms of salvation are also empirical because they hope to address a perennial issue in Africa Christian understanding of salvation – that of the elusiveness of salvation (salvation as “a fabulous ghost”): can we see and grasp how Africans are saved today? Is it possible to say that a person or a community has been saved in Africa today? If so, how do we know this? The goal of the empirical understanding of salvation is to ensure that salvation does not remain a rumor. Empirical understanding of salvation would therefore include the understanding of salvation in black theologies, African women’s theologies, and theology of reconstruction, given that their goal is to see visible cultural, socio-political, economic, and environmental changes for the better. The empirical understanding of salvation is connected to the traditional and spiritual views of salvation because the changes that they seek are rooted in a traditional and spiritual imagination. The intimate intersection among the traditional and the spiritual, the modern and the empirical, indicates that salvation in African Christian theology has a holistic ring, seeking the overall health of humans and the world. Spiritual and Traditional Views of Salvation It has recently been argued that Africa has played a significant role in shaping the Christian imagination. See the Thomas C. Oden’s influential but controversial book, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007). This is even more so with respect to the spiritual and traditional understanding of salvation. The spiritual understanding of salvation emphasizes salvation as eternal life understood as ultimate life with God, especially after death. In this scheme of things, the focus of the Christian life is on its eternal destiny, which is its ultimate calling. This view is especially seen among many early and contemporary African Christians. One of its early church proponents was Clement of Alexandria who saw salvation as characterized by ridding the self of all the passions or desires that hold back the soul from reaching perfection and deification. W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 370. It was this form of salvation Clement stressed especially in his “Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?” In that text, Clement reinterpreted riches not as material wealth but rather as the ridding of the desires or passions that inhibit the soul from achieving perfection and deification. Thus, for him, the rich person who shall be saved is not the one who clings to wealth or rejects it, but rather the one who is bereft of the passions or desire that hold back the soul, thus enabling them to make wise use of their material wealth. Clemens Alexandrinus, “Who Is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved?” Books IX-XIX, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: Fathers of the Second Century, American edition, Alexander Roberts and James Donadson, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI and Edinburgh: Eerdmans and T&T Clark, 2001) “He then is truly and rightly rich,” writes Clement, “who is rich in virtue, and is capable of making holy and faithful use of any fortune; while he is spuriously rich who is rich, according to the flesh, and turns life into outward possession, which is transitory and perishing. . . .” Clemens, “Who is the Rich Man?” Book XIX. In the spiritual view of salvation, salvation focuses on things that lasts, such as the virtues, and not on the present, fleeting material life. The present, ephemeral material life, in this scheme of things, is a training ground for this ultimate salvation which lasts forever. Some have put this view of salvation down to the influence of Platonism or neo-Platonism. See, for example, Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 368-388. However, the early Christian writers who held this view did not, like Platonism or neo-Platonism, disparage materiality. For the claim that someone like Origen, for example, was influenced by the Bible to see the material world as good, see Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 136-178. A similar understanding of salvation can be seen in the work of Clement’s successor, Origen of Alexandria, who understood the whole of the Christian life in spiritual terms. Drawing from 2 Corinthians 3:6, Origen notes how the letter kills but the spirit gives life. (This is a biblical text which is also central to St. Augustine’s understanding of reality.) The Christian life, for Origen, was directed towards life with God which is life in the Spirit. Origen’s tripartite anthropology in which a person consists of spirit, intellect (nous), and soul (psuche) combine to show how human life was spiritual in nature and aimed at union with God. The Nigerian theologian, Elochukwu, Uzukwu, has shown how Origen’s spiritual understanding of the person is like West African anthropology, demonstrating that pneumatology is central to thinking about how the world participates in divine life both in Origen and in West African Christianity. Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness, 136-178. A main difference between Origen and West African spirituality, however, is that for Origen human wholeness appears to be projected into the future where the human spirit will ultimately be united with the divine Spirit, whereas in West African pneumatology, wholeness largely focuses on present material and spiritual existence. The spiritual view of salvation is also found in the life of the desert ascetics, such as Anthony of Egypt, and the early African Christian martyrs, such as the Scillitan Martyrs, whom we find at the opening of ancient Christianity in North Africa, and Perpetua and Felicita. Anthony submitted his body to the discipline of the desert, as St. Athanasius reports, in order to rid himself of the passions or desire that keep one focused on enjoying earthly things rather than God. St. Anthony’s life mission appears to have been to overcome the passions so that he may be found righteous to spend eternity with God. Commenting on Anthony’s spirituality, Athanasius notes how Anthony often kept to himself in “his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man’s life.” St. Athanasius, “Life of Anthony,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. iv (Grand Rapids, MI and Edinburgh: Eerdmans and T&T Clark, 1991), section 45. This vision of eternal bliss also captured the imagination of the martyrs. We are told that when the penalty of death is pronounced upon the Scillitan Martyrs for their refusal to renounce the Christian faith, their collective response is “Today we are martyrs in heaven. Thanks to God.” Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, available online at Livinus: Cultuur, geschiedenis en literatuur, http://www.livius.org/sources/content/acts-of-the-scillitan-martyrs/translation/. This also appears to be the disposition of the Ugandan martyrs who were murdered by their king in the 19th century. It is reported that they went to their deaths joyfully because they knew that the death they were to suffer paled in significance to the joy they were to experience with God. When the Ugandan Christians were sentenced to death, one of them is reported to have observed that there is no need to be sad at the cruel sentence because what they suffered now was “little compared with the eternal happiness” which they anticipated. See the brief narrative of the events by Bob French, “The Uganda Martyrs: Their Countercultural Witness Still Speaks Today,” The Word Among Us (August 2015), available at: https://wau.org/archives/article/the_uganda_martyrs/. For more on the Uganda Martyrs, see John F. Faupel, African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs (Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications Africa). In other words, they were prepared to dispense with this life for a better, spiritual life which they hoped to experience. The reported attitudes of the martyrs may be the stuff of hagiography. However, such hagiographies at least make the case for the spiritual understanding of salvation of those who wrote them. African Christianity continue to generate many martyrs even in our own time, especially in the case of Coptic Christianity whose history of martyrdom began from early Christianity to our own time. However, to die a martyr’s death does not necessarily indicate that one adheres to the spiritual understanding of salvation. The spiritual understanding of salvation is not limited only to the above cases but can also be found in other early African theologians such as St. Athanasius, Arius, Cyril of Alexandria, among others. In fact, it has been argued that the central issue in a critical controversy of the early church which largely took place in Africa, the Arian Controversy, was the question of salvation, especially the understanding of salvation as deification. Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, “The Centrality of Soteriology in Early Arianism,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977): 1-8. The central issue appears to have been how Jesus Christ made access to God possible. In ancient North Africa, the spiritual understanding of salvation especially came to the fore with the work of St. Augustine whose spiritual view of reality led him to see material things as signs that point beyond themselves to the ultimate spiritual, immaterial reality, which is God. This is especially seen in his book on biblical interpretation, On Christian Doctrine, where he sees Christians as pilgrims on their way back home to God. While not discounting material things, his understanding of salvation is spiritual in that the focus is not on the things of this world but on the life with God which Christians are called upon to anticipate. See Saint Augustine, Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana), trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996), Book I. This spiritual understanding of salvation has continued to this day in the life of many African Christians, especially as seen in the Coptic Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and some African Evangelicals. It animates the monastic versions of Coptic Christianity, as it did in the earliest century, and is also visible in the theology of Ethiopian Orthodoxy, which has been accused of buying into a dualistic spirituality that focuses on the spiritual rather than the physical world, thus failing to address issues of political and economic import effectively. Girmah Muhammed, “Ethiopian Conceptions of the Human Person and their Implications for Development: Covenant Revisited,” International Journal of Public Theology 3 (2009): 484. In the Coptic Church, spiritual salvation has especially been demonstrated in the life of the ascetic popularly known as Matthew the Poor (Matta El-Maskeen) whose prayer life is said to have lifted him to ecstatic heights. See Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way (New York, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003) Matthew the Poor’s story is very similar to that of St. Anthony in that just like St. Anthony Matthew the Poor shunned wealth for the monastic life in the desert. For Matthew the Poor, the critical issue is not so much the satisfaction of material desires as it is the disciplining of the body so as to experience the bliss engendered by ecstatic union with God. For more on the life and work of Matthew the Poor, see James Helmy, Words for Our Time: The Spiritual Words of Matthew the Poor (Chesterton, Indiana: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2012), Introduction. This transcendence of material life in the understanding of salvation has also been important in African Evangelical Christianity, especially the version represented by the Byang Kato and Tokunbo Adeyemo. See especially, Byang H. Kato, Theological Pitfalls in Africa (Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1975); Tokunbo Adeyemo, Salvation in African Tradition (Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1997). Recently, Evangelicalism in Africa has been redefined to include much of African Christianity so that the boundary between Evangelicalism and other forms of African Christianity does not appear quite clear. In this case, some African Independent Churches and/or leaders have been described as Evangelicals. The effect of this has been that the stress on the transcendent or spiritual found in the salvific discourses of scholars like Kato and Adeyemo, has been attenuated, making way for the Evangelical understanding of salvation to significantly embrace the material world also. For this recent redefinition of Evangelicalism in Africa and its effect on the view of salvation, see A. O. Balcomb, “Evangelicalism in Africa: What It Is and What It Does,” Missionalia 44 no. 2 (2016): 117-128; Tite Tiénou, “Evangelical Theology in African Context,” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, Cambridge Companions to Religion, eds. Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 213-224; Matthew Michael, “African Evangelical Thought: Its History, Trends, and Trajectories,” in A New History of African Christian Thought, ed. David Tonghou Ngong (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 149-174. For a recapture of the spiritual understanding of salvation in African Evangelicalism, see Matthew Michael, Christian Theology and African Traditions (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2013), 167-187. About thirty years ago, African Evangelical understanding of salvation saw the practice of Christian spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, and others, as necessary in fostering Christian character and eventual attainment of eternal life or heaven. That emphasis has since shifted as these spiritual disciplines are often seen as intended to satisfy material needs, thus increasingly connected to the African indigenous understanding of Salvation – a development Kato and Adeyemo had feared. See Balcomb, “Evangelicalism in Africa.” While the spiritual understanding of salvation is traditional in that it is rooted in the understanding of salvation in the early African church, the traditional understanding of salvation discussed here is also connected to African indigenous understanding of salvation, so that the Christian understanding of salvation in Africa is not divorced for how the same is understood in indigenous religions. While indigenous religious understanding of salvation seeks spiritual and material balance, emphasis has been placed on the material side of the equation. Unlike in Christianity, the goal is not to spend eternity with a divinity but rather to foster what has been described as “cosmic balance” or wholeness here in the world. This way of thinking about salvation is however not limited only to African indigenous religions as it is found in indigenous religions around the world and even in what may be described as historical religions, that is those religions that have historical founders, such as Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Adherents of these religions seeks to be spiritually and materially whole. For the African understanding of salvation as wholeness, see Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and human Wholeness; David Tonghou Ngong, “In Quest of Wholeness: African Christians in the New Christianity,” Review and Expositor 103 no. 3 (August 2006): 519-540. In this light, African Christian theology takes seriously the understanding of salvation in African indigenous religions because it is the understanding of salvation of most, ordinary African Christians. It is believed that failure to engage this way of understanding salvation properly would alienate most African Christians. It is this understanding of salvation that has formed the bases of salvific discourses in what has variously been describe as African Independent Churches or African Initiated Churches (AICs). These AICs are said to have captured the imagination of many Africans because they seek to address issues that are critical to Africans in who live in indigenous contexts. These issues include the quest for good health, bumper harvest, offspring, cattle, and the protection from malevolent spiritual forces that may prevent a person or community from experiencing these elements of fullness of life. See, for example, Laurenti Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Tradition of Abundant Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997). Because the spirituality of African indigenous religions is aimed at making these things possible, it is believed that, for African Christianity to take root in African indigenous contexts, these issues have to be engaged. Popular African Indigenous Christian leaders such as William Wade Harris, Garrick Braide, and Simon Kimbangu, were leaders who engaged these issues and so led many Africans to the Christian faith. See Allan H. Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century (Asmara, Eritrea and Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001); J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics: Current Developments Within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana (Leiden: Brill, 2005); David Tonghou Ngong, The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology: Imagining a More Hopeful Future for Africa (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010). It is this understanding of salvation that animates the spirituality of the Ghanaian woman, Afua Kuma, recently popularized by the Ghanaian theologian, Kwame Bediako. Kwame Bediako, Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 3-19. It is also this understanding of salvation that animates the life of the Aladura churches and is critical to the new Pentecostal and Charismatic churches that are now sweeping across the continent, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. While these churches do not neglect the view that salvation is eternal life, their focus is often on the benefit of salvation that accrue in the present life. Thus, their understanding of salvation is traditional not only in the sense that some of its elements, such as the claim that the Spirit of Jesus Christ overcomes all other spirits to enable a flourishing life, may be traced to the early church in Africa, but also because it is connected to African indigenous understanding of salvation. Here, salvation is directed at addressing problems that arise in the African indigenous context. Also, this way of conceptualizing salvation is spiritual not in the sense of privileging the immaterial over material life, as is the case with the privileging of the soul or spirit in some versions of early and contemporary African Christianity, but rather because its material understanding of salvation is funded by an imagination rooted in engagement with the spirit world. In other words, the fullness of life sought in traditional society can only be realized through an appropriate engagement with the spiritual realm. This traditional or indigenous way of thinking about salvation is connected to the modern and empirical understanding of salvation which we address next. Modern and Empirical Views of Salvation The modern and empirical views of salvation aim to address questions thrusts upon Africans by the vagaries of life in the modern world. The modern world is the world of the intersection between Christianity and colonialism, racism and ethnic conflicts, gender and ecological issues, and the state and neoliberalism, especially as seen in the now contentious notion of globalization. These are issues from which and in which Africans in general, and African Christians in particular, seek wholeness. In this context, the salvation sought is one where the problems generated by these phenomena are addressed and human and ecological flourishing assured. The salvation sought under these circumstances is therefore based on developments in modern thought, such as the quest for human rights, environmental justice, and human well-being captured in the contentious language of “development.” See, for example, Stan Chu Ilo, The Church and Development in Africa: Aid and Development from the Perspective of Catholic Social Ethics, second edition (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014). Africa came into the modern world through its encounter with Europe that began in the fifteenth century with the Portuguese circumnavigation of the continent. This event would lead to the enslavement, colonialization, and missionization of African peoples. These are all events that seem to have upended other possible futures for the people of the continent while opening up others that were often problematic. The modern story of the quest of salvation in African Christianity focuses significantly on how to interpret, understand, and proceed with the fateful encounters not only of Africa and the West but of the encounters between Africans, Arabs, and Asians, especially as recently demonstrated with the expansion of China. Against this background, many, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, see the Christian faith as holding possibilities for a better future for their people. They see Christianity as holding the promise of personal, social, political, economic, and ecological transformation that would lead to wholeness. From this perspective, the indigenous (or traditional) and modern understanding of salvation coincide as salvation is understood to include the cultivation of wholeness but this time not only from the machination of indigenous contexts but also from those of modernity. It is from this perspective that the young Kongolese woman, Kimpa Vita, could be seen as one of the precursors of the modern understanding of salvation in Africa when she attempted to appropriate her Christian vision to restore the ruined capital city of the Kongo, San Salvador. When she claimed that Jesus and his Apostles were Africans born in San Salvador, she continued the vision that saw the city as a holy city and made its restoration central to the wholeness of the Kongolese people. David Tonghou Ngong, “African Christianity in Precolonial Times,” in Anthology of African Christianity, Isabel Apawo Phiri and Dietrich Werner, and Chammah Kaunda and Kennedy Owino, eds. (Oxford, UK, and Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches and Regnum, 2016), 26-28. The appropriation of the Christian faith to address some of the pressing problems many African societies face continue into the context of the post-colonial nation-state in African today. One can see this in the Black theology of South Africa and the various forms of political theology in other parts of Africa. Desmond Tutu, for example, drew from the Christian faith to preach against the iniquitous apartheid regime in South Africa and worked for the reconciliation of a divided people after the fall of apartheid. The claim that all human beings are created in the image of God and so should be treated with dignity and respect became a central them in the salvific discourse of Desmond Tutu. His faith in the power of God to intervene in the struggles of oppressed peoples fueled his pastoral ministry. After apartheid ended, he came to focus not only on the language but on the acts of reconciliation as vital means of doing the work of God in the world. Other South African theologians such as Charles Villa-Vicencio and Tinyiko Maluleke are also engaging the process of reconciliation in their theological work. Forms of African liberation theologies such as those of Jean-Marc Éla and Engelbert Mveng have drawn from the Christian faith to denounce internal political machinations and international economic exploitations that continue to suck life out of most African peoples, calling for the appropriation of the Christian faith to enable African flourishing rather than its dehumanization. Engelbert Mveng, “Third World Theology – What Theology? What Third World? Evaluation by and African Delegate,” in Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to Theology, eds. Virginia Fabella and Sergio Torres (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983); Idem, “Impoverishment and Liberation: A Theological Approach for Africa and the Third World,” in Paths of African Theology, ed. Rosino Gibellini (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 154-165; Éla, My Faith as an African. Proposals have also been made about what to do if African societies are going to experience the reconstruction or renaissance that they need in order to flourish in the modern world. While some, such as Elias Bongmba, seek to work within the framework of the nation-state to address these issues, others, such as Emmanuel Katongole, sees the nation-state itself as the problem and thus urge African Christians to work around it rather than through it. See Elias K. Bongmba, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2006); Emmaunel Katongole, The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). Others use the language of reconstruction and renaissance to suggest that the Christian faith may be appropriated for the reconstruction and renewal of the continent. Charles Villa Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); J. N. K. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology After the Cold War (Kenya: East African Educational Publishers, 1995); Kä Mana, Christians and Churches of Africa: Salvation in Christ and the Building of a New African Society (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2004). In all this, it is important to pay particularly careful attention to the language of liberation, reconstruction, renaissance, reconciliation, transformation, and others, that are central themes in soteriological discourses in Africa. Recently, the issue of gender equality has been brought to the fore with the emergence of African women’s theology and gay liberation theology in Africa. Given that salvation seeks human flourishing, the voices of African women have recently alerted us to how much of the thinking about the salvation of African societies have been about the salvation of men rather than women. For women, salvation is sought in the form of equality, inclusion, and the discontinuation of certain abhorrent cultural practices, among others. See Saad Michael Saad, “Iris Habib El-Masry: A Pioneer of Coptic Feminine Theology,” Coptic Church Review 30 no 2 (Fall/Winter 2009): 51-56; Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Introducing African Women’s Theology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2001); Idem., Beads and Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004); Musimbi R. A. Kanyoro, Introducing African Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002). The gender question has also included issues of masculinity and homosexuality, especially in the context of HIV and AIDS. Adriaan S. Van Klinken, Transforming Masculinities in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of AIDS (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). The criminalizing and problematizing of same sex relationships in Africa has led to calls for the re-evaluation of gender issues that deal with masculinity and femininity. The urgency of addressing the issue of sexuality in African theology was demonstrated by the fact that the Journal of Theology of Southern Africa, for example, published a special issue in July 2016 that focused only on the issue of “Sexuality in Africa.” Also see Ezra Chitando and Adriaan van Klinken, eds., Christianity and Controversies Over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 3; Masiiwa Regis Gunda “Contemporary African Christian Thought and Homosexuality: Issues and Trajectories,” in A New History of African Christian Thought, 204-220. Here it is argued that the salvation sought in Africa cannot be holistic if certain segments are excluded because of a faulty understanding of gender and human sexuality. What is clear from the above is that the salvation sought is the salvation that includes human and ecological wholeness in the present and the spirituality that the Christian faith provides is seen as holding the potential to make this salvation possible. These ways of thinking about salvation are empirical in that their goal is to see positive changes in human and environmental life, especially in African contexts. They are modern in that the changes sought are connected to the modern conditions in which Africans find themselves. However, the changes sought have, in many cases, not come to pass. Even though some positive changes have been made, such as the official end of apartheid in South Africa and the end of conflict in some African countries, most Africans still languish in poverty in a neo-liberal, global political economy that seems intent on eliminating them from the face of the earth. Even though reconciliation has been achieved in some African societies, significant discords remain, often evidenced by wars and rumors of war. There are still secessionist movements in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, to name only a few. There are still wars and famine in South Sudan, Central African Republic, and even parts of Nigeria. In South Africa, wealth is being corruptly transferred from White people to the hands of a few Black people, even as many languish in misery. Xenophobia continues to jeopardize the lives and livelihood of many Africans not only in the continent but also around the world. Questions of racism and ethnicity are still eating at the fabric of many African societies. The environment continues to suffer severe strain from an increasing population, deforestation, and general environmental degradation. Women are still being marginalized and being gay is still criminalized in many African societies. The persistence of these issues has led some to wonder whether the Christian faith possess the balm to salve these wounds, especially given that some of the wounds are even being exacerbated by the Christian faith itself. The difficulty of getting a handle on these issues has, as we have seen, led some to think of salvation as a “fabulous ghost.” The rumors are rife that it is possible for these critical issues to be addressed and for Africans to experience significant wholeness of life. However, the possibility of achieving this wholeness appears to be perpetually postponed, leaving some with critical questions about whether it is possible for Christianity to serve as an instrument of salvation in Africa. See, for example, Tinyiko S. Maluleke, “What If We Are Mistaken About the Bible and Christianity in Africa?” in Reading the Bible in the Global Village: Cape Town, eds. Justin S. Ukpong et al. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 151-172. Whither, African Soteriology? What is the future of African theology of salvation? So far, were have seen that there are different perspectives in African Christian soteriology. These different perspectives include the spiritual and the traditional, the empirical and the modern. While the spiritual perspective focuses on the soul or spirit’s eternal participation in the life of God, the traditional focuses on how Africans may achieve wholeness as understood in indigenous religious contexts. The empirical and modern understanding of salvation are aimed at enabling Africans find respite from the difficulties that plague life in the modern world. Central to the understanding of salvation in the indigenous, empirical and modern perspective, is the view that there should be material evidence of salvation. The lack of material evidence of salvation in African Christianity has led some to wonder whether the Christian faith possesses the potential for salvation in the continent. However, do these perspectives of salvation in African Christianity provide an adequate theological understanding of salvation? Clearly, the view that Christians are destined to spend eternity with God is central to traditional Christian understanding of salvation and so this spiritual understanding of salvation should not be ignored. This understanding of salvation also helps Christians to understand that life in this world is not final and so grasping after material things does not hold ultimate significance. Ultimate significance lies in making proper use of things for the glory of God both now and eternally. This view of salvation may have a revolutionary effect in many African societies where modernity has been accompanied by rapacious greed and iniquitous chasing of the material. However, this spiritual understanding of salvation should not be used as an opiate of the people, as Karl Marx saw long ago. Thus, the view that there should be evidence of salvation, as we find in the traditional, modern, and empirical perspectives, need to be taken very seriously. In the end, it would make little or no sense to talk of salvation where we do not have any evidence of its existence. It is from this perspective that some versions of Western Evangelicalism that see people as saved irrespective of the misery they experience in this life to ultimately look like a sham. Further, given that some of the issues that African theologians seek to heal, poverty and health, occasioned by the persistent lack of opportunity for Africans in the modern world, may be addressed through the development of science and technology, it makes significant sense for African Christian soteriology to engage these disciplines. Much of African soteriological discourses has focused on engaging the humanities and the social sciences. It is mostly discourses on health and healing, especially dealing with HIV and AIDS, that have engaged issues of science and technology. In the modern world, however, African soteriological discourse must engage the salvific significance of science and technology. Brief Bio David Tonghou Ngong (Ph.D. in Religion, Baylor University) is originally from Cameroon, Africa, and currently Associate Professor of Religion and Theology at Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is author of The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology (Peter Lang, 2010) and most recently the editor of A New History of African Christian Thought (Routledge, 2017). His research engages the question, from a theological perspective, of what it means to be saved in Africa today. List of References Adeyemo, Tokunbo. Salvation in African Tradition. Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1997. 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Index List Brand, Gerrit Salvation: typology of as “fabulous ghost” as spiritual as traditional as modern as empirical Clement of Alexandria Matthew the Poor