How Africa Shaped.fm Page 2 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM How Africa Shaped.fm Page 3 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM H A S OW FRICA HAPED C M THE HRISTIAN IND Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity THOMAS C. ODEN How Africa Shaped.fm Page 4 Friday, April 24, 2015 2:04 PM InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected] ©2007 by Thomas C. Oden All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press. InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. 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Design: Cindy Kiple Images: © Mkistryn/Dreamstime.com ISBN 978-0-8308-7556-6 (digital) ISBN 978-0-8308-3705-2 (print) How Africa Shaped.fm Page 5 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM CONTENTS Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Toward a Half Billion African Christians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 An Epic Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Out of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Pivotal Place of Africa on the Ancient Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Two Rivers: The Nile and the Medjerda—Seedbed of Early Christian Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Affirming Oral and Written Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Self-Effacement and the Recovery of Dignity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Missing Link: The Early African Written Intellectual Tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Why Africa Has Seemed to the West to Lack Intellectual History . . . 30 Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 PART ONE: THE AFRICAN SEEDBED OF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY . . . . . 33 1 A Forgotten Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Who Can Tell It? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Pilgrimage Sites Neglected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Under Sands: The Burial of Ancient Christian Texts and Basilicas . . . 39 2 Seven Ways Africa Shaped the Christian Mind . . . . . . . . . . . 42 How the Western Idea of a University Was Born in the Crucible of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 How Christian Exegesis of Scripture First Matured in Africa. . . . . . 45 How African Sources Shaped Early Christian Dogma . . . . . . . . . 46 How Early Ecumenical Decision Making Followed African Conciliar Patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 How the African Desert Gave Birth to Worldwide Monasticism . . . . 52 How Christian Neoplatonism Emerged in Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . 55 How Rhetorical and Dialectical Skills Were Honed in Africa for Europe’s Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 How Africa Shaped.fm Page 6 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM Interlude: Harnack’s Folly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 3 Defining Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Establishing the Indigenous Depth of Early African Christianity. . . . 62 The Stereotyping of African Hellenism as Non-African. . . . . . . . . 66 Scientific Inquiry into the Ethnicity of Early African Christian Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 The Purveyors of Myopia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 The African Seedbed Hypothesis Requires Textual Demonstration. . . 72 A Case in Point: The Circuitous Path from Africa to Ireland to Europe and Then Back to Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 A Caveat Against Afrocentric Exaggeration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4 One Faith, Two Africas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 The Hazards of Bridge Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 The Challenge of Reconciliation of Black Africa and North Africa . . . 79 The Roots of the Term Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Overcoming the Ingrained Lack of Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Excommunicating the North . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Arguing for African Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Defining “Early African Christianity” as a Descriptive Category of a Period of History. . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 How African Is the Nile Valley?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 5 Temptations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Tilted Historical Predispositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 The Catholic Limits of Afrocentrism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Ignoring African Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 The Cost of Forgetfulness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Overlooking African Voices in Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 How Protestants Can Celebrate the Apostolic Charisma of the Copts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 The Christian Ancestry of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 How Africa Shaped.fm Page 7 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM PART TWO: AFRICAN ORTHODOX RECOVERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 6 The Opportunity for Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Surviving Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 The Steadiness of African Orthodoxy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 The New African Ecumenism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Pruning Undisciplined Excesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Burning Away the Acids of Moral Relativism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Orthodoxy: Global and African. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Historic Christian Multiculturalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Reframing Modern Ecumenics Within Classic Ecumenics . . . . . . . 115 7 How the Blood of African Martyrs Became the Seed of European Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Whether Classic Christian Teaching Is Defined by Power . . . . . . . 118 How the History of African Martyrdom Shaped Christian Views of Universal History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Recalling the Exodus as an African Event. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Amassing the Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 The Challenge of Young Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 8 Right Remembering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Remembering the Scripture Rightly Through the Spirit . . . . . . . . 127 The Heart of African Orthodoxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Transcending Material Worldliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Avoiding Racial Definitions of Apostolic Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 9 Seeking the Reconciliation of Christianity and Islam Through Historical Insight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 The Risks Scholars Take . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Conjointly Studying the History of Islam and Christianity. . . . . . . 137 The Rigorous Language Requirements of African Research. . . . . . . 138 Learning from Primary Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 A Personal Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 How Africa Shaped.fm Page 8 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM Appendix: The Challenges of Early African Research . . . . . . . . . 143 Three Aims of Future Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 The Precedent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 The Scope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 The African Center of the International Consortium . . . . . . . . . . 147 The Consortium of Scholars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Assembling the Pieces of the Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Academic Leadership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Maximizing Digital Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Publishing Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Literary Chronology of Christianity in Africa in the First Millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 How Africa Shaped.fm Page 9 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM INTRODUCTION T he thesis of this book can be stated simply: Africa played a deci- sive role in the formation of Christian culture. Decisive intellectual achievements of Christianity were explored and understood first in Africa before they were recognized in Europe, and a millennium be- fore they found their way to North America. Christianity has a much longer history than its Western or Euro- pean expressions. The profound ways African teachers have shaped world Christianity have never been adequately studied or acknowl- edged, either in the Global North or South. My question: How did the African mind shape the Christian mind in the earliest centuries of Christianity? The challenge that lies ahead for young Africans is to rediscover the textual riches of ancient African Christianity. This will call for a generation of African scholars to reevaluate prejudicial assumptions that ignore or demean African intellectual history. Christianity would not have its present vitality in the Two-Thirds World without the intellectual understandings that developed in Af- rica between 50 and 500 C.E. The pretense of studying church history How Africa Shaped.fm Page 10 Monday, June 21, 2010 12:47 PM 10 HOW AFRICA SHAPED THE CHRISTIAN MIND while ignoring African church history is implausible. Yet this as- sumption has been common in the last five centuries in a way that would have seemed odd during the first five centuries, when the Af- rican mind was highly honored and emulated. The evidence is yet to be presented. The search for balance in Western history is warped with ugly distortions until this happens. My task is to show that the classic Christian mind is significantly shaped by the African imagination spawned on African soil. It bears the stamp of philosophical analyses, moral insight, discipline and scriptural interpretations that bloomed first in Africa before any- where else. The seeds spread from Africa north. The term Christian mind points to Christian intellectual history. This includes the history of literature, philosophy, physics and psy- chological analysis. The term African mind points to ideas and literary products produced specifically on the continent of Africa during the first millennium of the common era. TOWARD A HALF BILLION AFRICAN CHRISTIANS There soon may be almost a half billion Christians in Africa. Now esti- mated at over four hundred million (46 percent of the total African population of 890,000,000 according to the Pew Forum), and rapidly growing, a significant proportion of global Christian believers at this time are residents of the continent of Africa. David Barrett projects the continuing growth rate to 2025 as 633 million Christians in Africa. The Christian population of Africa is burgeoning. It is to their fu- ture that this effort is dedicated. Debates in the West will appear triv- ial in relation to what lies ahead in the Global South. The world Christian population is predominantly located in the Southern Hemisphere. That is amply demonstrated already by the careful demographic and sociological writings of David Barrett, Rod-