African Christian Theology

by Samuel Waje Kunhiyop

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

Genres: Theology, Christian

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 2012

Reviews

[Cody Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is somewhere between 3.5–4.0. Kunhiyop gives a solid, basic treatment of systematic theology from a Reformed perspective, but he does so while touching on cultural and theological issues that Africans face (such as revelation and African Traditional Religion or the growth of Pentecostalism in Africa). While there is much to commend about the book, I thought the chapters on ecclesiology and eschatology were the weakest. His treatment of ecclesiology seemed intentionally to appeal to a very broad evangelical treatment of the topic, while his premillennialism definitely shows throughout the chapter on eschatology. Overall, this is a good resource for those in an African context wanting to get a basic understanding of Christian doctrine.

[Mwansa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book after reading African Christian Ethics by the same author. I liked that book so much I wanted to see what this book would be like and unfortunately this book was not to the standard.

The book begins by portraying that common grace has bestowed African culture with some general revelation of who God is just like all other cultures but just like other cultures the knowledge is incomplete because it is not as clear as the special revelation of the revealed word of God. I was with him that far.

The next section of the book which is the largest part of the book exams it extends all the way to the end then showed different African cultures and tribes views on certain aspects of theology and then showed what the Bible makes clear on each of those subjects. My issues with the book begin there.

African cultures are too segmented and diverse for such an overview, this is something I realized then more I read the book. But even more so I found that for each topic Master Waje only had at most a page or two on the general African view of the theology before showing what the Bible says. By the third chapter you begin to ask what exactly the point of it all is because it begins to look more and more like systematic theology that is pretty summarized and with the occasional African footnote. Maybe that was the aim of the book but if that was the aim then it doesn’t achieve that particularly well either.

Bottom line is the name of the book doesn’t exactly fit with the content or the summary on the jacket in my view and I am left thinking just like there is no Western Christian Theology, even though some people think so, there is no African Christian Theology either

[Akotowaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provided a pretty decent basic overview of Christian theology. It's almost encyclopedic in some sense. I think it would be useful for anyone who wants to have an understanding of the more theoretical technical aspects of Christianity. I definitely learned terms that I didn't understand before and got some insight into some theoretical reasons for how church history has developed which I didn't previously know. What this book didn't do is deliver on the reason why I picked it up in the first place: understanding African Traditional Religion first, and then looking at it in relation to Christian theology. The treatment of African Traditional Religion felt cursory and broad to me, nowhere close to the amount of detail that I would have liked, but I have a feeling that some of the resources in the Further Reading, Notes, and Bibliography will be more useful to me in that regard, so I'll give it that.

[Dr. Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable resource - survey of traditional evangelical theology with application to African context. Worth consulting regularly.

[Stan Rea · Rating 4 out of 5]

DTL book.

[Neil Kruger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful in general, but falls short of consistently achieving its aim of evaluating African beliefs and traditions in light of a biblical worldview.

[Sara Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly readable book that gave a sound and thorough systematic theology with key insights to how it is understood in the African cultural context. I would recommend this book to pastors and leaders in Africa or among the African Diaspora as well as westerners who minister or live in such contexts. I would also encourage any who want to loosen their ethnocentric grasp on theology to read this book, even if they have little or no experience of African cultures. Seeing theology from another perspective deepens our own understanding of Scripture.