Christianity without
Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity
Author:
Eboussi Boulaga
Reflection by John Lee
PRÉCIS
Eboussi Boulaga,
in his book Christianity without
Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity, states the purpose of his work as to
explicate and base an African critique and recapturing of Christianity. For
this purpose, Eboussi explores the West’s domination of Christianity in Africa,
and offers an interpretation of the missionaries message and of African
resistance to ‘middle-class Christianity’. In the clarification of his unique
term “fetish,” Eboussi argues that the term “fetish” is not to describe the
traditional African religion as such, but rather the Christianity imported by
the missionaries to Africa. By asserting that European and American fetishes do
not belong to the essence of the gospel, Eboussi claims that African
Christianity cannot be established on imported fetishes. On this basis, Eboussi
intends to reinvent the African Christic model, and contends that African
churches must demonstrate unity and interest in one another by being
self-determining and functioning as total parts of their own society
BOULAGA’S SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS
Eboussi’s
hermeneutical starting point of his argument is the question of Christianity’s
inculturation through contextualization: 1) whether the identity of
Christianity can be conceived of fully and everywhere from within the same
credo, the same rites and with reference to one scripture and one sole Lord;
how one is to live Christianity when it is imposed as the religion of the
dominant; how one understands the revelation and the word of God when they
authorize “too human a conception, and make of monotheism a political problem.”
Eboussi points out that persons, words, or books afford direct access to God is
“fetishism” and argues that the Judeo-Christian notion of revelation is a
dangerous anthropomorphic conception demanding a sacrifice of the intellect or
duplicity, and further claims that Africa can do without Western fetishes.
In his critique of
missionary activity in Africa, Eboussi argues that the Christianity is aligned
with colonial powers and implanted itself by uprooting Africans from their own
world view thus the black remains a pagan. Eboussi points out the resistance of
Africans against the bourgeois Christianity and finds hope in the growing
resistance to middle-class Christianity through African spirituality which he
sums up “African spirituality does not ‘go without saying’. Eboussi asserts
that African spirituality is based on an active speech or part of a living,
locally situated subject which is part and parcel of that subject’s content, a
part of its reality; abides through the bond among the generations, and through
healing and festival. Eboussi concludes that African Christians have the
intellectual and moral obligations to experience the solidity of this
spirituality, and not to be too hasty to exclude it from the quest for wisdom,
truth and happiness.
Eboussi
reinterprets the Christic phenomenon and claims that the Christic model is a
“model that has become” as the product of history with a view to the
transformation of history, i.e., the product which is bound up with the
singularity of a particular locality and temporality. In his discussion on the
“Christic model,” Eboussi, through his reinterpretation of Christ’s life, death
and resurrection by relating them particularly to myth and community, expounds
a Christology based model by engaging his local experience without neglecting
historic elements in Christian experience. “Persons are not the means of the
revelation of God, but hey are God’s
real and finite re-presentation,” states Eboussi, and claims that “God
comes in the representation and configuration of society and the world, but only
in personal form, only by the emergence of persons.
Eboussi asserts that God is
“spoken” of by the totality of fulfilled human existence, and thus the Christic
model does away with anthropomorphisms and with Scriptures that rivet
anthropomorphisms to a deadly literalness so that the Christic model leaves
nothing but an “anthropology of God.” Eboussi claims that Christic model is not
an abstraction, but the implementation of what a fulfilled person is: God’s
image, God’s representation. “Person,” here implies society which is justified
only in its self-transcendence and only insofar as it places itself both in a
world perspective and in the perspective of the end of history. Eboussi thus
claims that the emergence of this model is bound up with the singular event
that is Jesus of Nazareth and the event of his life. Therefore Christic model
is a journey which gives the creative force of meaningful community, a
community of persons that leads the people to exercise their ministry of
reconciliation.
THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
Eboussi asserts
that when God becomes incarnate God takes on the history and culture into which
God enters and confers upon them, by reason of humanity and in human beings, a
divine nature and foundation. Eboussi’s constructive recapturing of
Christianity based on his understanding of revelation as “lived-representation”
is convincing. I agree with Eboussi’s claim that one can speak of God only in
the language of “as” since God comes only in personal form and only by
emergence of persons. However his criticism on the positivistic notion of
revelation is not appropriate, and his use of myth in his discussion on the
Mother Theme cannot be justified since in his use of myth, myth itself appears
to be his own limited understanding or interpretation of myth.
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