Author’s Note: The first version of this article was presented in French as a lecture on Thursday 22 February 2024 in Bangui, Central African Republic, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the authorization of the foundation of the Faculté de Théologie Évangélique de Bangui (FATEB) by the Central African government. I would like to thank the President of the Faculty, Dr Nupanga Weanzana wa Weanzana, for inviting me to take part in this event.

Abstract

Touching on the 50-year history of the Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui (FATEB, also known in English as the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology) in the Central African Republic, this article explores the gifts that theology in Africa offers to Christianity worldwide, specifically to the North Atlantic. The African concept of holistic salvation and the integrated nature of theological inquiry in Africa provide two examples. This discussion is grounded in the wider search for a new catholicity in which contextually rooted theologies enrich the church worldwide. 

Introduction

In recent decades, we have become increasingly aware of the Southward movement of the centre of gravity of Christianity from its earlier centres in the Middle East and in Europe and North America to the Global South (f. ex. Jenkins 2002). One of the main factors in this move in the twentieth century has been the staggering growth of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This move to the Global South has revealed just how powerfully the West has dominated modern theology, and it has thus pointed to the need for regional, contextual theologies. We must also ask what the recent heartlands of theology in the North Atlantic can learn from theologies and new ways of theologizing in the Global South. 

This article asks particularly what gifts Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa offers to the church worldwide and particularly to the North Atlantic centres of theologizing. It explores this question with reference to the 50-year history of the Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui in the Central African Republic. In this analysis, it becomes clear that our theologies are not only shaped by our cultural contexts but also by institutional settings (cf. Nagy 2022, 58–59; van den Toren 2024b). After describing the broader move from Eurocentric to Majority World theologies via the contextual theologies that seek a new catholicity, this article will focus on two examples: an African understanding of salvation and the integrated nature of African theologizing. 

From Eurocentric Theology via Contextualization to New Catholicity

Our family had the privilege of being part of the FATEB community in the seminary’s third decade. Over the years, we saw FATEB develop in ways that paralleled the growth of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular, in its evangelical Protestant expression. This local growth was also in keeping with the sweeping development of global theology. Over the second half of the twentieth century, Christian thought shifted from Eurocentric theology, with its centres in the North Atlantic world, to contextual theology. In general, the evangelical world was a step behind mainline or ecumenical Protestantism to grasp this need for contextual theologizing. Let me flesh this process out in more detail.

From its early beginnings the Christian movement was multidirectional (Kim 2009, 73–108; Jenkins 2008). There was not one cultural expression of Christianity. As Christianity moved from Jerusalem, it followed the pattern inaugurated and legitimized by the language miracle at Pentecost. It was translated into ever-new languages and incarnated in multiple cultural forms. Early on it moved into the cultures of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Yet, in much of Europe, this multicultural character was forgotten, especially when the Western church enshrined Latin as its official language. Later, the European Reformation re-valued the practice of translating the Bible into mother tongues, and over the history of modern European missions, this focus on mother tongue translation became a major factor in the indigenization of Protestant Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa (Sanneh 1989; Schaaf 1994). Even though the translation of the Bible into mother tongues helped African believers relate to Jesus Christ in their vernaculars, the practice of theologizing remained centred in the North Atlantic World. While theologians recognized that their work needed to be accommodated to African cultures, this accommodation was most often seen as a concession, not an enrichment. African Christians supposedly needed to grow before they could fully grasp the depth of European theological wisdom (Bosch 1991, 448–50; van den Toren 2014, 106–7).

In the latter half of the twentieth century, though, a movement toward contextual theologizing began as Christians began to search for a “new catholicity” (f. ex. González 1992, 18–37; Schreiter 1997; Van Engen 2007). “Catholicity” here does not refer to Roman Catholicism but to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381) that states, “We believe … in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” The catholicity of the church is its universality. The church has a message for all of humanity. Faith in one God, the Creator of humanity, and faith in Jesus Christ, the one Savior and Lord, unites all Christians. As Paul says, “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6, NRSV).

This catholicity was in earlier centuries mainly understood as the universal validity of a message and practice formulated once and for all. This universal message needed to be spread by centrifugal movement, whether from Jerusalem, Byzantium, Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva, London, or Winona Lake. Yet the growing importance of the churches and theologies of the Global South has contributed to the awareness that all theology is shaped by and should relate to its context. This contextuality is not only true for theology in the Global South but also for theology in North America and Western Europe, where thought was profoundly shaped by, for example, the Reformation and, later, the European Enlightenment. So, globally, we must become aware of our own local cultural blinders and be enriched by others.

Theology’s contextuality enriches the notion of catholicity. It means that, in the language of Andrew Walls, “We need each other’s vision to correct, enlarge and focus our own; only together we are complete in Christ” (Walls 2002, 79). The Cuban-American theologian Justo González interprets “catholicity” in line with the Greek kat’holos as “according to the whole” (González 1992, 22). In the same way that we have four Gospels, each written from a particular perspective because together they give a more complete picture of Christ, we need perspectives from different Christian communities to understand the multi-faceted Gospel. According to González, catholicity not only means that all the nations need the Gospel but also that “the church needs the ‘nations’ in order to be fully catholic” (González 1992, 29). Only alongside others can we grow in our understanding of the Gospel (see further: van den Toren Forthcoming; van den Toren and Bom 2022).

In the North Atlantic world, this awareness that theology should always be intercultural is fairly new. On the other hand, from the first missions movements, theology in French-speaking Africa developed in dialogue with theological voices from North America and Europe. In the process, African readers contributed new insights to worldwide exegetical and hermeneutical conversations (f. ex. Ukpong 1995; for an overview van den Toren, Mburu, and Bussey 2021). However, the relationship between Western and African theological voices has remained imbalanced. In sub-Saharan Africa, all theological disciplines constantly engage with the flood of theological perspectives coming from the North Atlantic world, whereas in the North, intercultural engagement with theological voices from elsewhere is mainly limited to departments of Missiology, Intercultural Theology, and World Christianity. 

My own experience demonstrates this fact. When I moved from Bangui in 2005 to a teaching position in Oxford, I noticed that theological reflection in Oxford was more provincial than in Bangui. Theology in Oxford mainly engaged with its own traditions. By contrast, in Bangui, we were constantly engaging with theological perspectives from the North Atlantic world and with voices from elsewhere in the Global South. At FATEB, theology has always been intercultural. FATEB itself was a product of the burgeoning awareness of the need for theology to be inculturated (Bosch 1991, 420–23). FATEB was established first of all to create a centre for the training of the future theological teachers in French-speaking Africa (Robinson 2020). Yet FATEB soon also created a community that fostered the development of contextual African theology – such as in the work of its third President, Isaac Zokoué (f. ex. Zokoué 1996; see further Koster, Mbuluku, and van den Toren, n.d.). Today, FATEB continues to fulfil this role, as we saw in the two-day symposium that took place during FATEB’s anniversary celebrations. That symposium brought theologians together to reflect on the specific topic of a theology and praxis of disability for this particular context.

I realize that the challenges in the contexts in which many theological institutions in sub-Saharan Africa minister are enormous. Therefore, they must focus on developing contextual replies to their own crises. Yet I also hope that African institutions will contribute to worldwide theological conversations in search of this new catholicity. In what follows, I want to explore two areas in which I believe theological insights from this region can be a blessing to Christians elsewhere. These two areas are the nature of salvation and the relationship between lived theology and the academic enterprise.

Holistic Salvation

A first area in which African spirituality can contribute important perspectives to Christianity worldwide is its understanding of salvation as holistic, embracing all dimensions of life – spiritual, social, and physical. This characteristic of sub-Saharan African Christianity derives from a broader understanding of God’s interaction with creation. African Christianity recognizes that God the Father of Jesus Christ is also the Creator and Redeemer of the natural order. The resurrection of Christ is the firstfruits of the redemption of the entire creation. Until that redemption is fulfilled, the Spirit groans with creation and breathes healing power through it. The early church’s rejection of Gnosticism parallels this fundamentally positive attitude to creation in African Christianity.

Yet the Gnostic temptation to understand salvation primarily in spiritual terms has continued to color Western Christianity for several reasons. 

First, the classical Greek habit of understanding the spiritual and material worlds as ontologically different and to value the spiritual more highly has shaped Western theological categories. (I wish to note, though, that regions where Christianity interacts with South Asian religions, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism, may be equally vulnerable to certain dualistic attitudes (see Ramachandra 1997, 244–50).)

A second factor that has shaped Protestantism and its global heirs is the Lutheran understanding of salvation as “forensic” or legal. In that tradition, salvation means primarily that we are declared righteous through the work of Christ, even if it does not change who we are. Of course, this emphasis safeguards the truth that we are saved entirely by grace – but it neglects another truth, that God saves us in order to change us, even if this change will be partial before the renewal of all things. Furthermore, this forensic understanding of salvation often combines with the so-called “two Kingdoms theory.” This theory holds that, while the Christian identity resides in belonging to the Kingdom of Christ, Christians continue to live in the Kingdom of the world, which will behave habitually in sinful patterns. (Cf. for a classic and influential interpretation of this tradition: Niebuhr 1951, 149–89.) 

A third factor is the development of modern science. Modern science originally grew out of a Christian understanding of the world as “creation” (cf. Torrance 2005, 44–74); increasingly, though, a secular understanding of the world crept in that has no room for God. A fourth factor is the way in which modern secular democracies tend to separate the public and the private. In this division, religion belongs to the private; the public must be kept free from religious interference (cf. Gregory 2012, 129–79).

These factors have shaped Western Christianity and the churches established by its global spread, including in Africa. Certainly, Western Christians not only preached the Gospel but also started hospitals, schools, and agricultural programs. Yet, in the experience of many African Christians, the spiritual and the physical were insufficiently integrated. Even worse, missionary Christianity had little relation to the challenges of life as experienced in Africa. The story has often been told of how this situation led to the growth of African independent churches, to African neo-Pentecostalism (Kalu 2002), and in recent decades to what can be called the Pentecostalisation of many traditional mission churches (Omenyo 2002a; 2002b).

Kwame Bediako called the aspects of African traditional religion that led to these developments the “primal imagination” (Bediako 1995, 91–108). At least two aspects of this primal imagination are particularly relevant for soteriology.

First, African traditional worldviews understand that salvation always needs to be reflected in physical and communal blessings; otherwise, it can hardly be called salvation (cf. Magesa 1997; Omenyo 2002a, 256–57). To be saved means to be blessed in all dimensions of life, to be a flourishing and harmonious person in a flourishing and harmonious community. This perspective aligns with the Old Testament imagery of blessing as living “under their own vines and under their own fig trees” (f. ex. Micha 4:4, NRSV). It also aligns with the multidimensionality of the biblical concept of shalom that encompasses the ecological, political, social, communal, material, and spiritual. 

The second trait of the primal imagination relevant here is that the boundaries between the spiritual and the material world are porous. These spheres constantly influence each other. This fact is true for the relationship between spiritual powers and the material world. But creation can also be called “sacramental,” in the sense that God’s presence can be experienced in the material world that mediates God’s blessings. 

North Atlantic Christianity has in recent decades also seen a move to a more holistic understanding of salvation somewhat like this. Yet, when we compare these developments to African Christianity, we see that the material and spiritual domains of life still remain largely separate in the West. Concepts such as “hope,” “morality,” or “meaning” may be used to connect the physical and the spiritual in Western discourses. Overall, though, Westerners continue to position God and the Spirit as relatively uninvolved in the material dimensions of life. Western perspectives on how God relates to the material world are insufficiently challenged. 

It is interesting to note that in the recovery of a more holistic understanding of the world and salvation in Western Christianity, theologians have looked mainly to Latin American liberation theology and to South African Black theology. Westerners have particularly learned from their understandings of social and structural sin and from their calls to justice and structural liberation. This social dimension is of course an important correction of the West’s individualistic understanding of salvation. Yet one pitfall of these liberation theologies is that, because they rely on Marxism, they can slide into a more secular understanding of the world, in which human beings are the principle agents of redemption. In addition, in Latin America, the conceptualization of salvation as holistic is not the same as it is in sub-Saharan Africa. In Latin America, the focus is more on the integration of the social and personal dimensions of salvation. In sub-Saharan Africa, the focus is more on the spiritual and material dimensions of existence, as shown in a recent study of the understanding of mission in the Redeemed Christian Church of God by Francis Adebayo (Adebayo 2023, 174). Thus, an exchange with African soteriology may be helpful not only for Westerners but also for theologians in other parts of the Majority World.

African Christianity offers an understanding of salvation that integrates individual and communal, material and spiritual dimensions of life. It parallels Christianity in other parts of the world that has grown in the soils of primal religions, such as in Northeast India and Indonesia and among the First Nations in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Specifically, African Christianity can contribute a perspective in which the Spirit enlivens creation as a healing presence. The central role of the Spirit in African theology and the awareness of God’s presence and guidance in all of life may well be integrated in a renewed understanding of providence. Such a pneumatological contribution to the doctrine of divine providence can enrich the doctrine of providence as developed in Western Christianity, which mainly focusses on the role of the Creator as the origin of the laws of nature and yet above it (Polkinghorne 2006; Pinnock 1996, 49ff; Smith 2010, 86–105). 

In this worldwide theological exchange, African Christians may also gain new insights. For instance, certain branches of charismatic African Christianity see events – especially natural disasters and disease – as to such a degree caused by competing good and evil spiritual powers that humans risk being merely at the mercy of these powers. Yet the creation of humankind in the image of God should also be understood as giving human kind the capacity to understand creation, to rule over and care for it. In our time of ecological crises, we know that this dominion should not be understood as liberty to extort creation but rather as a call to stewardship for the glory of the Creator.

Another example of how African Christianity might benefit from insights from other sectors of Christianity worldwide is the relationship between present and future blessings. In certain strands of African Christianity present material blessings are not intrinsically related to spiritual blessings. They risk remain two relatively unrelated spheres of blessing, yet in different ways from the West. Take the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. Its vision is “To make heaven” and “To take as many people with us” (Redeemed Christian Church of God, n.d.). At the same time, the preaching of the General Overseer, “daddy” Enoch Adeboye, stresses material blessings. Yet, this heavenly-mindedness and desire for physical blessing in the here and now stand in tension. Some critics therefore reproach adherents of neo-Pentecostal movements a a utilitarian attitude to faith: People worship and pray in order to obtain material blessings (Tchonang 2009). For some in the RCC, belief in God may indeed be utilitarian. Yet, the centrality of worship for the sake of worship itself suggests that God is also sought for Godself. Discussions with certain theological developments in the North Atlantic world may help solving this tension through a holistic view of salvation that sees creation in all its dimensions as having its telos in Christ (Colossians 1:16). (For further discussion, see van den Toren 2015 and van den Toren 2020.)

This focus on Christ is more in general crucial when developing a theology of integral salvation, in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. The Gospel and the ministry and mission of the church touch on all dimensions of life. The message of the church is therefore not only spiritual and evangelistic, but also aimed at discipleship in the world and service of other, it envisages justice and reconciliation. It has communal, social, political and ecological dimensions. One risk of the encompassing nature of the missio Dei is that the church and theology can be so busy with all these dimensions and aspects of its calling that they forget that it is in Christ that all these dimensions come together, embedded in a broader trinitarian understanding of God as Father, Son and Spirit. God has revealed the purpose of our lives and of the universe in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Yet this does not necessarily confirm what many people– including Christian – understand this purpose of their life to be. It may well challenge the way people, communities and institutions make choices in their lives based on some often implicit understanding of what makes life worth living. In the cross of Christ, we encounter a form of political existence that challenges the powers of this world. In the resurrection of Christ, we gain hope for the renewal of creation, amidst ecological crises, but this well motivate a different style of ecological action than those proposed by others involved in ecological activism and environmental care.

Christians need to be involved in all these areas and Christian theology will touch on all of them. For some Christians it may well be their calling to give most of their time to government, politics, ecological activism or rather to ecological studies, medicine, psychology, political science or wherever the Spirit guides them. Yet, it is the primary calling of the Church to constantly call people back to the centre of all these hopes and activities that can be found in the redeeming work of God in Christ. It is the primary calling of theology to focus on the trinitarian God as the centre of our existence and basis of our hope. All these other domains need attention in a holistic theology, but theology will need to keep relating them to this centre. This is the heart of the Good News. This is the proper contribution of Christian theology and without it theology and the church will soon lose the reason for their existence and stop being of particular value for the world.

The Integration of Academic Theology, Lived Theology, and Contextual Discipleship

A second area in which sub-Saharan African Christian theology has particular riches that it can share with the church worldwide is the integrated manner in which it conducts theology. In Africa, academic theology is usually in continual dialogue with the lived faith of the local Christian community. Furthermore, it is closely connected to the challenges and joys of maintaining this faith in the diverse contexts of wider African regions.

Of course, African Christian theology has a long history of academic inquiry that dates to one of the earliest Christian theological centres – Alexandria in Egypt (Oden 2007). But I am particularly interested in academic theology as it is pursued in institutions brought to Africa by mission agencies and colonial powers modelled after European, post-Renaissance universities.

When African theologians in the modern era started finding their own voices within these academic institutions, they connected with the lived faith of Christian communities as a resource for theological renewal in the academy. For example, when John Mbiti was asked to discuss African Christology, he took as his point of departure a study of Harold Turner on the lived faith of Nigerian Aladura churches as expressed in sermons (Mbiti 1972; Turner 1965). (Cf. on the central place of lived faith in African theology Ngong 2023.)

This practice contrasts with most contemporary academic theology in the North Atlantic world, where distance only seems to be increasing between the academy and the life of the church. Several factors have caused this. One is a tradition of disengaged academic scholarship in which researchers are supposed to remain neutral with respect to their object of inquiry. This idea of academic neutrality has been widely challenged from the mid-twentieth century onward, but it still guides much research. Second, institutional pressures, such as the need for increased specialization, pressure individuals’ academic careers in narrower and narrower directions. Research questions and publications have become highly specialized. Third, several faculties of theology have morphed into departments of religious studies – partly because this fits the neutral approach of the modern academy and the dominant secular perspectives of Western academia. Seminaries or other institutions that are more closely related to the church are not free from these trends, because the way they study the theological disciplines is shaped by models developed in public universities and by related academic fields such as classics, history and social sciences. 

Though, for now, these developments have helped to protect a (diminishing) presence of theology at Western public universities, they have made theology less relevant to the church – or even to everyday human life. As Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun have noted, many academic theologians spend long hours writing specialist articles read by a limited number of colleagues (Volf and Croasmun 2019, 41–43).

I must note that in the West, those of us in the academy do hear a crescendoing call for what is called “lived theology” (Marsh, Slade, and Azaransky 2016), “lived faith” (Immink 2005), “espoused and operant theology” (Cameron et al. 2010, 53–54), or “ordinary theology” (Astley 2002). Other developments that may bring theology closer to the world outside the academy include interest in contextual theologies, contextual Bible reading, intercultural theology, and public theology. An example of a movement in the right direction is the model of Theological Action Research that envisages a dialogue between four “theological voices.” In this model, in addition to operating theology and espoused theology, the theologian must consider the normative theology of authoritative texts and practices (Cameron et al. 2010, 53–56). Yet because these developments tend to occur within theological sub-disciplines siloed from one another, they have little impact on subjects such as Old and New Testament Studies, Systematics, or Historical Theology.

I already noted that African theologians have for a long time shown respect for the lived theology of the community of God. As Jesse Mugambi writes, “I do not associate theology with literacy and high academic learning, even though such skills may greatly enhance theological expression. […] In Africa, there are numerous excellent theologians who cannot read or write” (Mugambi 1995, 19–20). Examples include the preaching of the prophet William Wade Harris or the prayers of the midwife Afua Kuma (Kuma 1981). This organic connection between lived Christianity and theology is also helped by the institutional setting of African theologizing: Most African theologians are themselves active as pastors, priests, or evangelists and are involved in practical ministries and activism. They work also interdisciplinary; or more precisely, they understand themselves primarily as theologians in a more general sense who feed their general theological engagement through their specialization in a discipline they often consider most helpful in this respect. 

Furthermore, most theologizing in the region is self-consciously contextual and intercultural. “Intercultural Studies” or “Contextualization” is not merely a branch of theology for interested students to take but an unquestioned, natural characteristic of theology at large. Contextual problems are so pressing that they shape the questions asked in Biblical Studies, Church History, etc. In this context, “pure” academic theologizing is an untenable luxury. Or rather, the context helps theology to remain true to its calling: to serve the church and the world by seeking God’s desires and plans for specific situations. I see this fact in how biblical scholars at FATEB have engaged in biblical interpretation that serves the region, such as in the various contributions made to the Africa Bible Commentary (Adeyemo et al. 2010).

I do not yet see much formalized study of lived theology in Africa. Two notable exceptions are the work of the Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research on contextual Bible reading (University of Kwazulu-Natal 1985; West 2014) and the empirical work of Laurenti Magesa on the process of contextualization (Magesa 2004). When more sustained, systematic attention is given to the lived faith of particular communities, this research might well present convincing critical counterpoints to theology as it is done in universities in the North Atlantic. 

In addition to the problematic isolation in sub-disciplines, the study of lived theology in the West often gives little attention to questions of authority. The meanings of faith practices are supposed to reside in the life of the community itself. Or, in a Schleiermacherian understanding of theology, the religious experience of the community is itself the primary source of theological meaning. It seems to me that such approaches cannot do justice either to the many lived theologies in the Global South or, equally, to the lived theologies in the West. For most ordinary believers, the meaning of Christian practices does not rest in the practices themselves or in the religious experiences they evoke. Instead, the meaning of Christian practices is in Christ, to whose life and redemption these practices respond. Nor is the authority of these practices seen as a given. Rather, everyday believers understand their lives to be guided by the Word, church traditions, and the Spirit.

African academic theology may well be better placed to engage in this dialectical movement between the lived faith of Christian communities and biblical and systematic theology. African theologians may be more able to make this shift because, in African institutions, disciplines are less siloed, journals and conferences are less specialized, and thinkers share confidence in the authority of the Word of God and in the power of the Spirit. Thus, African academic theology may provide models for theologians elsewhere around the world as they seek to study lived faith in their own localities. 

Concluding Reflections

In 2005, we returned to Europe after eight years in Bangui. I had taken up a teaching position at Wycliffe Hall, an Anglican college in the University of Oxford. I was hugely impressed by the enormous resources of this university. Shortly after coming to Oxford, I attended a conference in Nairobi on the development of doctoral programs in theology for sub-Saharan Africa. There, I enjoyed reconnecting with colleagues from across the region. One of the participants was Andrew Walls, then the eminence grise of the study of African mission and church history and one of the founders of the study of World Christianity. He himself was educated in Oxford, and he started his theological teaching in Nigeria before its independence. At one point, he challenged us not to see Oxford and Cambridge as the standards that African institutions should strive to emulate. Instead, he saw theological research in these cities as a dead end street. He encouraged African institutions to ask what kinds of programs would be most valuable in their contexts and most faithful to their callings from God. I believe that, in these remarks, he was highlighting the fact that so much academic theology in “worldclass” institutions is far removed from the original goal of theology: the desire to search for God and minister to God’s people and God’s world. I hope that the future of academic theology in my own region is not as bleak as he suggested. I do see signs of hope, but I also recognize that some branches of the academic tree may need to fall off before new shoots can blossom. Yet Walls’s basic estimate remains valid: African theologians need to find their own direction to serve their communities and their God without being unduly impressed by other models of theological research and education. They cannot completely isolate themselves from worldwide academic practices, but they can seek to remain a critical voice in global conversations, even if that means accepting a certain marginality in the eyes of others. Western theologians similarly need to have the courage to accept a position of marginality in an academic environment that can see the need for religious studies but has a hard time to understand the nature and value of theology.

I have explored two characteristics of African theology that I consider valuable for the church worldwide: its holistic understanding of salvation and its integrated approach to theology. I could have explored many other areas, such as the role of power in theology (cf. van den Toren 2019) or the practice of theology as a public enterprise. I pray that theology and the church in the West will learn to listen more openly and more intently to the voices and practices from Africa (cf. van den Toren 2024b). For, as the Apostle Paul – a truly intercultural theologian – writes, it is only with “all the saints” the we can understand “the breath, and length, and height, and depth… of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19, NRSV).

Author Bio: Benno van den Toren taught theology at the Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui (FATEB) in the Central African Republic and at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, before coming professor of Intercultural Theology at the Protestant Theological University in the Netherlands. He is Editor-in-Chief of the website African Theology Worldwide. With Kang-San Tan, he recently published Humble Confidence: A Model for Interfaith Apologetics (IVP Academic 2022).

References

Adebayo, Kehinde Francis. 2023. “Theory and Praxis of Social Ministry in the Mission of the Redeemed Christian Church of God.” PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. https://doi.org/10.5463/thesis.254.

Adeyemo, Tokunboh, Solomon Andria, Kwame Bediako, Isabel Apawo Phiri, and Yusufu Turaki, eds. 2010. Africa Bible Commentary. Nairobi; Grand Rapids, MI: WordAlive; Zondervan.

“African Theology Worldwide.” n.d. African Theology Worldwide. Accessed 16 February 2024. https://african.theologyworldwide.com/.

Astley, Jeff. 2002. Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Bediako, Kwame. 1995. “The Primal Imagination and the Opportunity for a New Theological Idiom.” In Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion, by Kwame Bediako, 91–108. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Bosch, David J. 1991. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Cameron, Helen, Deborah Bhatti, Catherine Duce, James Sweeney, and Clare Watkins. 2010. Talking about God in Practice: Theological Action Research and Practical Theology. London: SCM Press.

González, Justo L. 1992. Out of Every Tribe and Nation: Christian Theology at the Ethnic Roundtable. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Gregory, Brad S. 2012. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Immink, Gerrit. 2005. Faith: A Practical Theological Reconstruction. Grand Rapids,  MI: Eerdmans.

Jenkins, Philip. 2002. The next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 2008. The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia- and How It Died. New York, NY: HarperOne.

Kalu, Ogbu Uke. 2002. “Preserving a Worldview: Pentecostalism in the African Maps of the Universe.” Pneuma 24 (2): 110–37.

Kim, Kirsteen. 2009. Joining in with the Spirit: Connecting World Church and Local Mission. London: Epworth Press.

Koster, Yoel, William Mbuluku, and Benno van den Toren. n.d. “Bibliography of Isaac Zokoué.” Collaborative Bibliography of African Theology, African Theology Worldwide. Accessed 13 February 2024. https://african.theologyworldwide.com/bibliography/4278887.

Kuma, Afua. 1981. Jesus of the Deep Forest: Prayers and Praises of Afua Kuma. Translated by Jon Kirby. Accra: Asempa Publisher. https://dacb.org/stories/ghana/afua-kuma/.

Magesa, Laurenti. 1997. African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

———. 2004. Anatomy of Inculturation: Transforming the Church in Africa. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books.

Marsh, Charles, Peter Slade, and Sarah Azaransky, eds. 2016. Lived Theology: New Perspectives on Method, Style, and Pedagogy. 1 edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mbiti, John S. 1972. “Some African Concepts of Christology.” In Christ and the Younger Churches, edited by George F. Vicedom and Jose Miguez Bonino, 51–62. Theological Collections 15. London: SPCK.

Mugambi, J. N. Kanyua. 1995. From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.

Nagy, Dorottya. 2022. “Theory and Method in Mission Studies/Missiology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies, edited by Kirsteen Kim, Knud Jørgensen, and Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga, 56–74. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ngong, David. 2023. “Theology in Africa.” In St. Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology, edited by Brendan N Wolfe and e.a. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TheologyinAfrica.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. 1951. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper.

Oden, Thomas C. 2007. How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books.

Omenyo, Cephas Narh. 2002a. ‘Charismatic Churches in Ghana and Contextualization’. Exchange 31 (3): 252–77.

———. 2002b. Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism : A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana. Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum.

Pinnock, Clark H. 1996. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

Polkinghorne, John. 2006. “The Hidden Spirit and the Cosmos.” In The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism, edited by Michael Welker, 169–82. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Ramachandra, Vinoth. 1997. The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Redeemed Christian Church of God. n.d. “Mission and Vision.” Accessed 10 July 2018. http://rccg.org/who-we-are/mission-and-vision/.

Robinson, John F. 2020. “Early History of the Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui (FATEB): FATEB’s Precursors, Founding, and First Five Years, 1966-1982.”

Sanneh, Lamin O. 1989. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Schaaf, Ype. 1994. On Their Way Rejoicing : The History and Role of the Bible in Africa. Carlisle: Paternoster.

Schreiter, Robert J. 1997. The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Smith, James K. A. 2010. Thinking in Tongues : Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Tchonang, Gabriel. 2009. L’Essor du pentecôtisme dans le monde: une conception utilitariste du salut en Jésus-Christ. Paris: Harmattan.

Toren, Benno van den. 2010. “Can We See the Naked Theological Truth?” In Local Theology for the Global Church: Principles for an Evangelical Approach to Contextualization, edited by Matthew Cook, Rob Haskell, Ruth Julian, and Natee Tanchanpongs, 91–108. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library.

———. 2014. La doctrine chrétienne dans un monde multiculturel. Introduction à la tâche théologique. Carlisle: Langham Global Library.

———. 2015. “African Neo-Pentecostalism in the Face of Secularization: Problems and Possibilities.” Cairo Journal of Theology 2:103–20.

———. 2019. “The Significance of Postcolonial Thinking for Mission Theology.” Interkulturelle Theologie. Zeitschrift Für Missionswissenschaft 45 (2–3): 210–28.

———. 2020. “The Relationship between the Creation Mandate and Mission Mandate: Intercultural Reflections on African Christian Discipleship in a Secularized World.” In Is Africa Incurably Religious? Secularization and Discipleship in Africa, edited by Benno van den Toren, Joseph Bosco Bangura, and Dick Seed, 157–73. Regnum Studies in Mission. Oxford: Regnum.

———. 2024a. “Reading the Bible in the Context of Christianity Worldwide.” In The Bible Throughout the Ages: Its Nature, Interpretation and Relevance for Today, edited by Lydia Jaeger and Craig G Bartholomew, 296–314. The Scripture Collective 3. Grand Rapids,  MI: Zondervan Academic.

———. 2024b. “The Conundrum and Promise of Intercultural Theology in the Western Academy.” International Bulletin of Mission Research, April. https://doi.org/10.1177/23969393231215477.

———. Forthcoming. “Theological Underpinnings and Implications of Intercultural Theologizing.” In T. &T. Clark Companion on Intercultural Theology/Missiology, edited by Dorottya Nagy and John G. Flett. London: T. & T. Clark/Bloomsbury.

Toren, Benno van den, and Klaas Bom. 2022. “Catholicity as a Conceptual Tool for Interculturality in Science and Religion.” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 9 (2): 217–38. https://doi.org/10.1628/ptsc-2022-0017.

Toren, Benno van den, Elizabeth W. Mburu, and Samuel K. Bussey. 2021. “Biblical Hermeneutics.” In The Bibliographical Encyclopaedia of African Theology. https://african.theologyworldwide.com/encyclopaedia-bible-in-africa/biblical-hermeneutics.

Torrance, Thomas F. 2005. Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark.

Turner, Harold W. 1965. Profile through Preaching: A Study of the Sermon Texts Used in a West African Independent Church. London: Edinburgh House Press.

Ukpong, Justin S. 1995. “Reading the Bible with African Eyes: Inculturation and Hermeneutics.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 91:3–14.

University of Kwazulu-Natal. 1985. “Ujamaa Centre.” Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research. 1985. http://ujamaa.ukzn.ac.za/.

Van Engen, Charles Edward. 2007. “The Glocal Church: Locality and Catholicity in a Globalizing World.” In Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity, 157–79. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Volf, Miroslav, and Matthew Croasmun. 2019. For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

Walls, Andrew F. 2002. “Ephesian Moment: At a Crossroads in Christian History.” In The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith., 72–81. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

West, Gerald O. 2014. “Locating ‘Contextual Bible Study’ within Biblical Liberation Hermeneutics and Intercultural Biblical Hermeneutics: Original Research.” HTS: Theological Studies 70 (1): 1–10.

Zokoué, Isaac. 1996. “The Crisis of Maturity in Africa.” Evangelical Review of Theology 20 (4): 354–64.