Africa and the Christian Doctrine of God

CHAPTER 3 Africa and the Christian Doctrine of God David T. Ngong Published in A New History of African Christian Thought (Routledge, 2017) Introduction The history of the development of the Christian doctrine of God demonstrates that the language or grammar that came to determine how Christians are to understand God as three in one and one in three (Trinity) was largely developed by African Christian leaders such as Tertullian, Origen, Arius, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Augustine of Hippo. However, when the Christian doctrine of God came to sub-Saharan Africa, it came through western missionaries and the question that was raised was not so much how God was to be understood as Trinity but rather whether Africans were capable of conceptualizing the very idea of God. This question was generally raised in a racist context that devalued much of African cultural ideas in order to justify colonialism and the conversion of Africans to the Christian faith. The first Western adventurers, missionaries, and traders who came to Africa therefore described Africans as a people who lived in darkness, without civilization and without God. The missionaries therefore came to shine a great light of belief in God and to bring civilization to that great darkness (Ilo 2013:132-136; Olupona 2014: xix-xxi). For more on this see Stan Chu Ilo, “Africa’s Place in World Christianity: Toward A Theology of Intercultural Friendship” Toronto Journal of Theology 29/1 (2013): 132–136; Jacob K. Olupona, African Religions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), xix – xxi. These arguments were however made mostly with regards to sub-Saharan Africa or what is also called Black Africa. Northern Africa had already been cordoned off through British imperial cartography and assigned to the Middle East thus ensuring that all the Christians in Roman North Africa and Egypt who made such significant contributions to the development of early Christian ideas, and to Christian doctrine in general, were seen as not African because they were not black. Thus, in talking about St. Augustine, for example, one contemporary American scholar found it necessary to point out that Augustine did not have black pigmentation (TeSelle 2006:1). See Eugene TeSelle, Augustine, Abingdon Pillars of Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006). After noting, in the second paragraph of the Introduction of the book, that Augustine was born in Thagaste which is in Africa, TeSelle writes: “Although he lived on the continent of Africa, he was not a black Sub-Saharan African. The genetic makeup in this territory was first Berber, then Punic or Phoenician (colonizers from the eastern Mediterranean with a language close to Hebrew), and then Roman. They knew about black Sub-Saharan Africans, but contact was through trade, not migration.” Apart from the fact that the claim that Sub-Saharan Africans and Berbers met only through trade rather than migration is not doubtful, one may wonder how a black Sub-Saharan African is different from a black Berber. Even more, why is it needful to deny that St. Augustine was a black Sub-Saharan African? Perhaps it is important to note that the earliest portrait of St. Augustine, made in the sixth century, shows him as a black Berber. For more on this see Chadwick (1986:2) Henry Chadwick, Augustine: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 2. This way of understanding Africa draws a line in the sand, literally in the sands of the Sahara Desert, demarcating not only the development of ideas but also the nature of skin color. And so a demarcation that does not exist in fact (for there is no such line and no such neat color demarcation between northern and Sub-Saharan Africans) has been made to exist ideologically, as the continent came to be severed into two. This severing of the continent contributed in making the God whom some early Christian missionaries brought to Africa to be a racist God. Given that the ability of black Africans to conceptualize God was called into question by some Western Christian missionaries and philosophers, when African Christian theologians began their reflections on the idea of God they had to first establish that they had not been without God, as some Western thinkers had claimed. The context in which African Christian theologians began their reflection on the Christian doctrine of God was therefore a racialized context that prevented them from having a holistic picture of the history of Christianity in the continent. That is why they often began their reflection on the Christian God with the history of colonial Christianity in the continent. This limited perception of the history of the development of the Christian doctrine of God in Africa led African theologians to begin their arguments on the doctrine of God with the idea of God in African indigenous religions – they had to retrieve Africa’s battered idea of God before they could think straight about the Christian God (Idowu 1962; Mbiti 1970). For examples, see E. Boladji Idowu, Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief (London: Longmans, 1962) and John S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa (London: SPCK, 1970). For use of other African cultural ideas to fund the doctrine of the Trinity see Mika Vähäkangas, “African Approaches to the Trinity” in African Theology Today, ed. Emmanuel Katongole (Scranton: The University of Scranton Press, 2002). For a problematization of belief in God in Africa, see Eloi Messi Metogo, Dieu peut-il mourir en Afrique? Essai sur l’indifférence religieuse et l’incroyance en Afrique noire (Paris: Karthala, 1997). The tendency to reclaim the African idea of God or other African cultural ideas to fund reflections on the Christian idea of God is therefore a worthwhile endeavor because it helped African theologians reclaim the maligned views of their people. However, in our desire to reclaim the African idea of God to fund the Christian understanding of God, we should not forget that the views which most Christians have of God today were forged by African Christian leaders. The goal of this chapter is to discuss the contribution which Africa made to the development of the Christian doctrine of God. Drawing from the theological thought of some early African theologians such as Tertullian, Origen, Arius, Athanasius, and St. Augustine, this chapter roots the beginning of the development of the Christian doctrine of God in Africa. Reclaiming this early development of the Christian doctrine of God in Africa may enable African Christians to begin to appropriate a part of their heritage that is often elided when the history of the development of the faith in the continent is discussed. Thus, even as African theologians continue to appropriate ideas in the African indigenous contexts to fund their understanding of the Christian God, they may also learn the grammar of Trinitarian discourse from those early Africans who began the process of reflecting on the Christian God in the continent. See, most recently, James Henry Owino Kombo, The Doctrine of God in African Christian Thought: The Holy Trinity, Theological Hermeneutics and the African Intellectual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Early African Christianity and the Christian Doctrine of God By early African Christianity I mean the Christianity in Roman North Africa and Egypt from about the second to the fifth century. Many of the thinkers who considerably influenced Christian thought as a whole lived in these regions during this period. However, the focus here shall be on their contribution to the development of the Christian doctrine of God. The Christian doctrine of God has to do with how to speak of God as three in one, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early church is often divided into the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West. This division runs right through Africa as Roman North Africa came to be a Latin-speaking region while Egypt came to be Greek-speaking. The development of the Christian doctrine of God in the West and the East took somehow different routes and this contributed to the division that was to emerge between these two churches. Articulation of the Christian doctrine of God in the West was orchestrated by the rise of what is variously called monarchianism, modalism, or patripassianism. What these terms have in common is that they emphasize the oneness or unity of God but not the difference; they see the Father as manifested in the Son rather than seeing the Son as separate from but also related to the Father. Patripassianism, for example, held that the death of Jesus Christ also meant the death of the Father. This is perhaps the position which Praxeas held and Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160–c. 225), a founding architect of Trinitatian language, wrote against this view in his Against Praxeas (Adversus Praxean). Reporting the views of Praxeas, Tertullian writes: “He says that the Father Himself came down into the Virgin, was himself born of her, himself suffered, indeed was Himself Jesus Christ.” Against Praxeas, I, Ante-Nicene Fathers 3. Against this view that God the Father is the one manifested in the life of Jesus Christ, Tertullian posits the belief that Jesus Christ is the Word (Logos) of God who proceeds from the Father and that the Holy Spirit is sent from the Father through Jesus Christ. Against Praxeas, II. Tertullian makes his point with reference to a rule of faith which he states as follows: We . . . believe that there is one only God but under the following dispensation, or οίκονομία [economy], as it is called, that this one and only God has a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her – being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after he had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven and from the Father, according to his own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. Against Praxeas, II. This rule of faith which Tertullian cites came to form the basis of the Christian confession about the triune God and the nucleus of various Christian creeds that attempt to describe this God. According to this rule of faith, the Father is the source of Trinitarian life from whom the Son or the Word (Logos) and the Spirit derive, all belonging to the Godhead and equally worthy of worship. The unity of the Trinity is found in their common activity and power and their difference is found in their “causal relations and eternal irreducibility” or their persona, a concept which Tertullian uses to show their ontological rather than their psychological difference. Thus, persona does not mean a separate individual, as we think of it today, but rather the unique manifestations of the members of the Triune Godhead. For more on this, see Michel René Barnes, “Latin Trinitarian Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, ed., Peter C. Phan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 70–77. Even though Tertullian has been accused of being a subordinationist, Barnard Piault, “Tertullien a-t-il été subordinatien?” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 47 (1963): 181–204. that is, one who sees the Son and the Spirit as somehow lower than the Father, there is no doubt that he began to frame the language that would be used in speaking about the nature of the Trinity, at least for Western or Latin Christians. Thus, it is with absolute justification that Tertullian has been described as “the font of Latin Trinitarian theology.” Barnes, “Latin Trinitarian Theology,” 70. While Tertullian is considered the font of Latin or Western Trinitarian theology, Origen of Alexandria (185–254) framed the terms of the debates about the Trinity in the Eastern or Greek-speaking church. In speaking about the nature of the Trinity as one and three, Origen intimated that the three could be seen as both equal and unequal. Like Tertullian, he saw the Father as the fount of the Godhead and the Son and Spirit as deriving their beings from the Father. Origen however held that the Son is eternally generated from the Father so that there was not a time when the Son did not exist. At other times, however, Origen points out that the Son should not be seen as substantially the same as the Father because the Son derives from the Father. As John Behr has pointed out, “Origen’s main concern here is to preserve the transcendence of the Father: He is the source of all the properties that characterize the Son as divine, and so Father and Son cannot be said to possess these properties in an identical manner. If the properties of divinity were ascribed to the Father and the Son in the same manner, they would have to be considered as equal members of the same class. To avoid this conclusion, Origen intimates that perhaps they should not be said to be the same in ‘essence’ . . . .” John Behr, The Way to Nicaea, Formation of Christian Theology, Volume 1 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 187. Thus, even though Origen held that the Father and the Son are coeternal because being a Father implies having a Son so that there is no time when the Father existed without the Son, his emphasis on the transcendence of the Father and his view that there could be only one first principle, led him to argue that Father and Son could not be of the same substance. He therefore rejected the term homoousios (same substance), a term that became critical in articulating the Nicene faith. Origen’s ambiguous legacy to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity came to a head with Arius of Alexandria (c. 256–336), the presbyter from Libya. Arius objected to the preaching of his Bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, that the divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit are of the same substance or status. Intending to preserve the transcendence of the one God as Origen had done, Arius taught that the Son is generated from the Father but not eternally so – therefore there was a time when the Son did not exist. This view made the Son to be less than the Father, and in the hands of the critics of Arius, this meant that the Son was merely human. Arius’s fault, it seems, is that his focus on the humanity of the Son made him incapable of perceiving his divinity. Arius reasoned that if God the Son is begotten and God the Father is unbegotten, then the begotten obviously has a beginning by virtue of being begotten. Even though Arius’s position seems logical – and Arius was a very logical person – its implications for the Christian doctrine of God were immense and decades were to be expended hammering out what was proper for Christians to say and believe about God. I have written about these issues elsewhere and part of what appears in this section of the chapter has also appeared in my book. See David T. Ngong, Theology as Construction of Piety: An African Perspective (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 42–58. Arius’s challenge led to the First Ecumenical Council, the Council of Nicaea, where a brief statement about the relation between the Father and the Son, known as the Nicene Creed, was drafted. Even though the short statement of faith drafted at Nicaea gave much space to stating how the relation of the Son and the Father should be understood, the question was very far from settled. One sticking point that took a while to be addressed was the word “consubstantial” or “same substance” (homoousios). Now, to say that the Son was of the same substance with the Father was to make a claim that was eerily similar to the claims that had been designated heretical and associated with the name of a Christian leader called Sabellius. This raised the specter of the modalism which Tertullian had argued against. In fact, at this time it was not clear in the minds of many Christian leaders, both those who supported the Nicene settlement and those who did not, that the word homoousios was the proper word to use in describing the relation between the Father and the Son. The question as to exactly how the relation of the Father and the Son should be understood was to rage on right into the waning decades of the fourth century and even into the fifth century. It was during the period after the Council of Nicaea that bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–c. 373) emerged as an important figure in the formulation of the Christian doctrine of God. Athanasius eventually came to see homoousios as central to how the relationship in the Godhead should be understood. Thomas F. Torrance, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity According to St. Athanasius,” Anglican Theological Review LXX1.4 (1989): 397. First, Athanasius argued that the Son should be understood as of the same being (substance) with the Father rather than as having originated from the will of the Father, as Arius taught. According to Athanasius, the Son should not be understood as born of the Father after the Father had already been in existence, as is the case with human beings, but rather as eternally begotten of the Father, as Origen had argued. Peter Widdicombe, “Athanasius and the Making of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Pro Ecclesia VI.4 (Fall 1997): 457. If the Father had eternally been Father, it stands to reason that the Son had always been Son. This conclusion is based on the belief, common in early Christianity, that God does not change, that is, that God is impassible. If God is not always Father, it means that God is passible or changeable. Divine changeability was abhorred in early Christianity because it brought uncertainty into divine life. If God could not be trusted to be today what God was yesterday, it may not be possible to tell what God might become tomorrow. Arius’s view that there was a time when the Son did not exist brought changeability into divine life and so made God untrustworthy. Second, Athanasius argued that in describing the relation between the Father and the Son, it would be proper to refer to them as Father and Son rather than unoriginate and originate. Widdicombe, “Athanasius,” 461. Referring to Father and Son as unoriginate and originate, respectively, may give the impression that their relationship is sequential, rather that simultaneous. His main reason for insisting that we should speak of Father and Son rather than unoriginate and originate is that the former correctly describes the biblical portrayal of God – Jesus refers to God as Father and Christians are called upon to address God as Father (Abba). Understanding God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would not only be biblically apposite but would also describe Christian worship of God, especially as found in the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19. In this text, Christians are called upon to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not in the name of unoriginate, originate, and the Holy Spirit. At this point, it is important to point out that the description of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has been challenged by contemporary feminist theology, which has argued that the notion that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a sexist notion of God. Rosemay Radford Reuther, Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1983, 1993). We are not quite sure how Athanasius would have reacted to this development if he were alive today. However, it is important to be theologically sensitive to the feminist critique of the conception of the Trinity in our time and try to think about the Trinity in ways that do not give the impression that God is ontologically male. As Jesus himself pointed out, “God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in Spirit and truth” (John 4:24, NRSV, modified). This statement demonstrates that God is not ontologically human or male, even though we may claim that God has become human through the incarnation. We should therefore learn to use both feminine and masculine images when we talk about God as Trinity. If theology is the construction of piety, it means that by continuing to describe God in masculine terms, we are encouraging Christians to think of God as male. Talking about the Trinity in feminine terms will begin to change this masculine imagination that has come to characterize discourse on the Trinity. How this is to be properly done is still under negotiation and is an important debate in Christian theology. Third, for Athanasius, the views of Arius were not only based on an erroneous reading of the Bible but, more especially, raised questions about the nature of Christian salvation itself. Khaled Anatalios, Athanasius (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 31–69. As Greg and Groh have argued, Arius was critically concerned about the nature of Christian salvation and that is why he saw the Son as a creature, even though an elevated creature. For Arius, because the Son was passible, his incorporation into divine life was not a given. It was his tenacity in focusing on divine things that finally gave him access into the eternal divine life which he now enjoys. This description of the Son assumes that, like all other human beings, the Son is passible. By uniquely focusing on divine things and so gaining access into divine life, the Son teaches us what we are to do in order to gain access into divine life – be singularly focused on divine things. See Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, “The Centrality of Soteriology in Early Arianism,” Anglican Theological Review 59 no. 3 (1977): 260–278. Here the Son is seen as an example rather than as the divine One whose life, death, and resurrection miraculously reconciles humans and the rest of creation to God. For Athanasius, however, if the Son is a creature, it implies that Christian salvation is based on creaturely act. However, as far as Athanasius could see it, Christians did not claim that they were saved by a creature – Christians believed that they were saved by God. Assuming that the Son was created, even if such createdness is elevated, as Arius did, was to jeopardize the Christian view of salvation. It was in this light that Athanasius insisted that Christians must understand their salvation as orchestrated by God rather than by a creaturely being. All creatures, Athanasius held, are in need of salvation and so could not save themselves. Because only God could save, God became human so that humans might become divine. The Son is therefore the one whose incarnated life, death, and resurrection miraculously reconciles and unites human life with divine life. This idea is known as theosis or deification and has been central to the understanding of salvation in the Eastern churches. When the idea of the divinity of the Spirit was challenge in the 350s and 360s, Athanasius included the Holy Spirit in his argument and insisted that humans are saved through the activity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are equally (consubstantially) divine. He thus contributed to what would become a clearer definition of the place of the Spirit in divine life in what has come to be known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. In this Creed, it was noted that while the Son is begotten of the Father, the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The idea that the Spirit proceeds from the Father was however unintentionally challenged by St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) who stated the influential position that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son (filioque), thus contradicting the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 which had held that the Spirit proceeds from the Father rather than from the Father and the Son. The Western Church embraced the view of St. Augustine on this matter and this contributed to the tension and eventual split between the Western and Eastern Churches. This notwithstanding, St. Augustine made important contribution to Trinitarian theology, a contribution similar to that of Gregory of Nyssa whose Trinitarian theology took careful note of the use of language in theology. Just as Nyssa argued that human language should not be understood as directly applicable to the nature of God, so too did Augustine insist that the fact that God is immaterial should lead us to see that our Trinitarian language should not be understood as having a direct correspondence to the nature of God because God is immaterial. This notwithstanding Augustine argued that the Christian Trinitarian language is a rational description of the nature of God. To demonstrate that it is rational language he drew from various human qualities that may demonstrate Trinitarian relations. Because a human being is the image of God, Augustine argued, it is possible that vestiges of the divine may be found in human nature. Thus, he makes use of analogies such as memory, intelligence, and will, and lover, beloved, and love to demonstrate Trinitarian relations. Augustine never claims that these analogies completely capture what it means to say that God is Trinity. However, he pointed out that the unity of the Trinity is in their being while their distinction lies in their relation. It was in order to counter the view of hierarchy in Trinitarian life that Augustine posited the view that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father, as the 381 Creed posited, may give the impression that the Spirit did not proceed from the Son because the Son is not as divine as the Father. To forestall this misunderstanding, Augustine posited that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son. Augustine’s view of the triune God came to be the official view of the West and so contributed to the split between the West and the East. For more on this discussion of Augustine in this section, see Henry Chadwick, “Augustine,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, eds. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 335–337; Barnes, “Latin Trinitarian Theology,” 78–82; John C. Cavadini, “Trinity and Apologetics in the Theology of St. Augustine,” Modern Theology 29/1 (January 2013): 48–82. Dialog between Western and Eastern theologians aimed at overcoming the division orchestrated by the filioque controversy is currently underway. Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Who are the Orthodox Christians? A Historical Introduction,” The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, eds. Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 4. A question that began to gain increasing attention after Constantinople 381 was how to understand Jesus Christ as both divine and human. The matter about the divinity and humanity of Christ came to a head when a theologian from Antioch called Nestorius (d. 451) was made bishop of Constantinople. A person with the zeal for sniffing heretics, by which he meant the “Arians”, he became a victim of his own theological zealousness. His reasoning about the relationship between the humanity and divinity of Christ went something like this: Given that the Son of God, the Logos, is coeternal with God, as we saw in the argument for the Nicene faith above, it is not possible for this same Son to have been born of a human being like Mary. This would mean that the Son of God was born twice, the first being the origination from the eternal divine life and the second being the birth from a human source. Because it is impossible for the Son of God, the Logos, to be born twice, Nestorius thought, it is therefore not appropriate to describe Mary as the Mother of God (Theotokos), as was commonly done at the time. Mary should rather be called Mother of Christ (Christotokos), the human being. The implication of this reasoning was that it separated the divinity and humanity of Christ in ways that some thought went against what Christians had historically believed about Christ. For more on Nestorius, see Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background, second edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 288–297. A leading opponent of Nestorius who made significant contribution to the development of what is now seen as the orthodox understanding of Christ was the brash and fearful bishop of Alexandria, Cyril (c. 378–444). Cyril’s zeal was a match for Nestorius’ as he used theological savvy and ecclesiastical machinations to make sure that Nestorius’ views did not stand. The basic argument Cyril made was that Jesus Christ should be understood as a single person in whom divinity and humanity was united. For him, therefore, the incarnation of the Son of God, the Logos, meant that the Word took on human flesh without diminishing divinity and without undermining humanity. Focusing on Philippians 2, Cyril addressed the kenotic nature of the divine-human: the Word or Logos humbled himself to become human without diminishing his divinity nor undermining his humanity. Even though the human and the divine in Jesus Christ were complete, Jesus Christ should not be spoken of as being two persons because it was the Logos that became human. Here the human Jesus Christ was, like all other human beings, can be understood only within the context of the Logos. It was the Logos in Jesus that did the salvific work of deifying human beings, helping humans to accomplish what Adam could not accomplish. It was in this light that he used the haunted expression that the Son was mia phusis (one nature) before and after the incarnation. When Cyril talked of the Son being mia phusis, he was not stating that Jesus Christ had only one nature (ousia) but rather that through hypostatic union, the Son of God could be seen as one person after the incarnation. That is, after the incarnation, the Son of God was one person in whom is united divinity and humanity. The unity here should not be understood as a merger or a union in which the two natures (ousia) of Christ, divinity and humanity, are not separate. The unity therefore was not unity of nature (ousia) but unity of two natures in a single person (hypostatic union) who is the Logos, Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ is therefore not two persons, human and divine, but rather one person, the Word or Logos, who humbled himself to become human. Cyril’s tenure as bishop of Alexandria saw some of his opponents flee the city and others murdered. It is said that when he was alive he was feared and when he died some people were happy that he was gone. For more on Cyril, see Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, 298–321. Cyril supported his view by drawing from the way Jesus Christ is presented in the Gospels. In the Gospels, Jesus Christ is presented as equal to God but also as less than God. Borrowing from a method of reading the Bible that had been used by Athanasius, Cyril insisted that where Jesus is presented as being less than divine, we should understand that as referring to his humanity and where he is presented as equal to God, we should understand it as referring to his divinity. It is by reading the Gospels in this way that we would understand the nature of the hypostatic union. Stevenson, Creeds, 305. This way of understanding the notion of the hypostatic union, however, left unanswered how to deal with the issue of the passion or suffering and death of Christ. As we saw above, ancient Christians generally held that divinity is impassible, that is, God does not suffer or change like creatures do. Now, if Jesus Christ was God, how come that he suffered and died when God does not suffer? Was it then possible to say that God suffered and died, as some modern theologians seem to be saying? Jurgen Moltman, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993). According to Cyril, divinity does not suffer and so we can say that the Logos suffered and died only by means of what has been described as communicatio idiomatum (communication of idioms or attributes). This means that we can associate elements of the humanity of the Son to his divinity by virtue of the fact that both natures inhere in the same person. Thus, when we say that Jesus Christ suffered and died, we are not saying that the divinity in him suffered and died, given that it is not possible for divinity to suffer and die. However, when we say that the Son of God suffered and died we are saying that the divinity suffered and died by virtue of the fact that this divinity has been clothed in the human, the imperishable in the perishable. A third argument which Cyril used is the argument from worship. He pointed out that Christians worship Jesus Christ not as two persons, divine and human, or as a human being who has been adopted into divine life but rather as one in whom inheres both divinity and humanity. This is especially manifested, he pointed out, in the “bloodless sacrifice” of the Eucharist in which Christians receive the body and blood of Christ not as the body and blood of an “ordinary person” but rather as the body and blood of the Word. Stevenson, Creeds, 304. Ellen Concannon, “The Eucharist as Source of St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology,” Pro Ecclesia 18 no. 3 (2009): 318–336. Finally, in the incarnation the Word took on the flesh of Mary and was born as a human being. Because the Word took on the flesh of Mary and was born, it is therefore legitimate to describe Mary as the mother of God rather than just the mother of Christ, as Nestorius taught. Cyril’s theology was to form one of the main frameworks used in crafting the Creed of Chalcedon (451), which outlined what it is that Christians were to believe about the nature of Jesus Christ as human and divine. Through the Chalcedonian Formula, the Council of Chalcedon was propounding as tradition an understanding of Jesus Christ that had been arrived at through a long, laborious process and so was setting the boundaries concerning how Christians should understand Jesus Christ. The main points of Cyril’s Christology, especially the idea of the hypostatic union, were found in the Creed. It may also be pointed out that Cyril’s emphasis on the divinity of Jesus is very similar to that of many ordinary African Christians today who think of Jesus mostly as God rather than as a human being who is like all other human beings. However, not all were happy with the understanding of Christ enunciated in the Creed of Chalcedon. After the Council of Chalcedon, there emerged what has been described as non-Chalcedonian churches, including the Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syrian, and Malabarite churches. These churches rejected the Creed of Chalcedon for being a betrayal of the theology of Cyril of Alexandria. Interestingly, both the churches that accepted the Creed of Chalcedon and those that did not, claim Cyril as their representative theologian. The non-Chalcedonian churches have erroneously been called monophysite churches because they were thought to hold that Jesus Christ has only one nature (the divine), as Eutychus taught. However, they insist that, like Cyril, they hold that humanity and divinity were united in Christ, so that after the incarnation, we may speak of Christ as one person. This does not mean that they hold that Christ has only one nature (ousia) but rather that Christ is one person (phusis). The non-Chalcedonian churches therefore see the formula arrived at in Chalcedon as a betrayal of Cyril’s teaching and Nestorian in character because it says that Christ is one person in two natures. Thus, when the Creed of Chalcedon says that Christ was to be acknowledged in two natures, the non-Chalcedonians take this to mean that the Creed is saying that Christ is to be understood as two distinct persons (hypostasis) rather than as one person composed of two distinct substances (ousia), human and divine. What is going on here, as some have suggested, seems to be a confusion of terminology rather than profound disagreement. That is why moves are currently being made to orchestrate dialogue between the non-Chalcedonian and Chalcedonian churches, so as to repair the difference that brought about this painful division in the church. Tsonievsky, “The Union of the Two Natures in Christ;” Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, “Who are the Orthodox Christians: A Historical Introduction,” 3–4. Conclusion Contemporary African Christian theology needs to engage the above debates in formulating the Christian doctrine of God. These debates have had a lasting impact on the development of the grammar of the Christian doctrine of God in the universal church. This grammar was largely crafted in Africa and it would be a shame if African Christian theologians do not actively engage with contributions that their continent has made to the development of the Christian faith. Even though some African theologians sometimes claim that these debates were carried out in foreign idioms, taking note of the terms of the debates may help us have a better understanding of the directions which Trinitarian theology may take because African Christianity is not an island but part of catholic Christianity. Appropriating the Trinitarian theology that was developed in ancient Africa in contemporary African theology does not mean that African theologians would have to abandon creative attempts that have been made, and continue to be made, in crafting a relevant doctrine of God in Africa. What this means is that we should not look at the work of the above ancient African Christians as somehow not quite relevant to contemporary African theology. It is true that these ancient African theologians appropriated Greco-Roman thought in their theological construction. African theology has never been about utilizing only what may be perceived as indigenous African patterns of thought because Christianity has always arrived on the African soil in foreign idioms. Even today, many African theologians draw from different perspectives of Western thought. The fact that the ancient African theologians engaged above expressed themselves in Greco-Roman thought should therefore not be a barrier in owning and appropriating them in African Christian thought today. Claiming these ancient Christians theologically, as we have already done historically, will go a long way to broadening the sources available for the development of contemporary African Christian theology. Recommended Reading Anatalios, Khaled. Athanasius. London: Routledge, 2004. Ayres, Lewis. Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Chadwick, Henry. Augustine: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Kombo, James Henry Owino. The Doctrine of God in African Christian Thought: The Holy Trinity, Theological Hermeneutics and the African Intellectual Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2007. McGuckin, John Anthony. St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2010. ________. The Westminster Handbook to Origen. Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox, 2004. Ogbonnaya, A. Okechukwu. On Communitarian Divinity: An African Interpretation of the Trinity (New York: Paragon House, 1994. Osborn, Eric. Tertullian, First Theologian of the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Weinandy, Thomas G. Athanasius: A Theological Introduction. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Williams, Rowan. Arius: Heresy and Tradition, revised edition. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2001. Total words: 6637