Recension de mes deux ouvrages dans Le Monde Diplomatique de Juillet 2009, Lectures p. 24 (https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2009/07/CONCHIGLIA/17578)
AFRIQUE.
Le Dieu Crucifié en Afrique et Panorama des Théologies négro-africaines anglophones. – Benoît Awazi Mbambi Kungua, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2008, deux tomes : respectivement 330 pages, 31 euros, et 283 pages, 27,50 euros.
Théologien érudit, l’auteur propose une interprétation de la crise africaine, qu’il date de l’« irruption de la modernité occidentale au XVIe siècle » – traite, esclavage, colonisation, néocolonialisme. L’élaboration d’une théologie de la libération holistique devant, selon lui, permettre le dépassement de la médiation épistémologique, politique du christianisme colonial. La tâche peut paraître rude si l’on songe aux conditions de l’accueil de l’Évangile par les Africains ; celles d’un « processus barbare et déshumanisant d’annihilation anthropologique ». Contrairement à l’Amérique latine, où l’éclosion d’une pensée chrétienne libératrice s’est située dans la lutte de la majorité de paysans pauvres contre une minorité capitaliste rapace, en Afrique noire c’est l’homme lui-même qui a été vidé de son humanité, qui a été « annihilé », écrit-il. D’où la spécificité d’une théologie africaine de la libération, et l’émergence d’un « christianisme solidement arrimé dans la culture, la métaphysique et la mystique négro-africaine ». Un terrain fertile, dont ont surtout profité les Églises évangéliques du spectacle importées des Amériques.
Augusta Conchiglia (Journaliste au Monde Diplomatique).
- Recension de mes 2 ouvrages en anglais par le pasteur évangélique Robert J. VAJKO.
Robert J. Vajko
Evangelical Alliance Mission, Bloomington, Indiana, US
Courriel : bobvajko@gmail.com
Voici en quels termes il clôt sa brillante recension de mes ouvrages :
« Whether one agrees with his writings or not, anyone wanting to understand African sub-Saharan theology as seen by an accomplished African thinker needs to work his way through Awazi’s analysis – a “réappropriation” of Western scholastic theology in the direction of a theology more immersed in the mystical and liberation theology of Moltmann and Metz, and centered in the crucified and risen God who suffers along with the oppressed and longs for their liberation »
Robert J. Vajko
Evangelical Alliance Mission, Bloomington, Indiana, US
Courriel : bobvajko@gmail.com
Robert J. Vajko
Evangelical Alliance Mission, Bloomington, Indiana, US
Book Reviews / Mission Studies 28 (2011) 117–148, p.129
Panorama des théologies négro-africaines Anglophones. By Benoît Awazi Mbambi Kungua, Paris, France, L’Harmattan 2008. Pp. 283. €27.50. Le Dieu Crucifié en Afrique. By Benoît Awazi Mbambi Kungua. Paris, France, L’Harmattan, 2008. Pp. 330. €31.
- Mission Studies
- ISSN: 0168-9789, Online ISSN: 1573-3831
- DOI: 10.1163/157338311X573652
- Volume 28, Issue 1, pages 129-131
- © Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Panorama des théologies négro-africaines Anglophones
Le Dieu Crucifié en Afrique
Panorama des théologies négro-africaines Anglophones. By Benoit Awazi Mbambi Kungua. Paris, France, L’Harmattan 2008. Pp. 283. €27.50. Le Dieu Crucifié en Afrique. By Benoit Awazi Mbambi Kungua, Paris, France, L’Harmattan 2008. Pp. 330. €31.
Given the amazing growth of the church in sub-Saharan Africa, one dare not be ignorant of the new theologies developing there. Benoit Awazi Mbambi Kungua, professor of modern philosophy and metaphysics at the University of St. Paul in Ottawa, Canada, gives us a multi-disciplinary survey in the first of these two books. What he calls his “heuristic and hermeneutical hypothesis” is that “The western and missionary Christianity planted in Africa during its military, political, and cultural colonization will become effectively and authentically black African if, and only if, African Christians lay foundations characterized by theological and hermeneutical liberty in re-appropriating the mystical, theological, metaphysical, and political resources of the Christian faith by a long, patient, and demanding labor” (15, my translations here and below). The French word “réappropriation” identifies his concern to take theology strongly influenced by Western culture and thought patterns and rebirth it to fit the African context.
He summarizes his views of the various theologies by stating that the answer to this new appropriation lies in the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation. The specific contribution of Africans will be characterized by what he describes as a certain mystique (16). He lists key traits of black African culture, starting from the primacy of God over nature and moving all the way to what he calls “the black African theo-therapy of holistic liberation” (16), thus developing a more holistic approach particularly in the light of the invisible world so important in African thought.
The book is divided into two main sections. The first deals with the principal currents of Anglophone black African theology and the second with black African liberation theologies in the context of neoliberal globalization. The positive aspect of this tome is its tremendous sweep of African Anglophone theologies in one volume. The author criticizes Western theologies that tend to downplay praxis – a dimension powerfully developed in African theological approaches. This volume shows the relevance of a more globally-oriented theology developed in the light of various cultural contexts.
Nevertheless, this reviewer is concerned lest, in seeking to contextualize, the context takes precedence over text in the building of a theology. A. O. Balcomb divides African theologies into theologies of being (focused on African identity; north of the Limpopo) and theologies of bread (emphasizing liberation; south of the Limpopo). To what degree, one might ask, does “being” or “bread” skew theology ? This reviewer wonders to what degree Awazi is aware of more recent research showing Africa as the seedbed of Western theology. Does this not change the idea that Africa was westernized in her theology ? Thomas Oden’s 2007 How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity challenges Awazi’s assumptions.
Two technical matters also need pointing out. First, the table of contents tends to confuse main headings, which in some cases have only one sub-heading. Second, the author calls evangelicals “évangélistes” instead of “évangéliques,” the proper appellation in French.
In his second book, Le Dieu Crucifié en Afrique, Awazi considers the theologies of Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Baptist Metz, which he believes are crucial for the development of a truly African theology that will deal with African needs today. This volume is divided into three parts. The first presents the theological approaches of Moltmann and Metz. Awazi explains, “Our reading of the political theologies of J. Moltmann and J. B. Metz is an interpretation and a reflective re-appropriation and critique which will put into work the subtle triple hermeneutic involving understanding, explanation, and application” (11–12). This triple hermeneutic is certainly important in order to move from Scripture to theology but, in spite of his concern to apply this for the African context, it seems to this reviewer that Awazi is using a theology molded in a European context and birthing it in Africa. He explains the conceptual center of Moltmann’s thinking in The Crucified God: “J. Moltmann radicalizes the Lutheran break-through in an understanding of the crucified God by an integration of the cross into the very center of the intra-Trinitarian relations in God himself” and “the specific character of the Christian faith consists in the conjugation of the cross and the trinity” (51). This mutuality or perichoresis leads to suffering on the part of God, which in turn leads to a meaningful theology for the downtrodden and oppressed.
He parallels this with Abraham Heschel’s pathos de Dieu theology that he will develop more fully later on in his book. Out of God’s suffering comes a concern for suffering and righteousness seen in what Awazi calls “holistic liberation theology.” This move comes about as a “confession of faith in the crucified God that calls the believer to an active engagement alongside all movements that fight for sociopolitical and cultural liberation of all popular layers of society who are excluded from the benefits of the technology and information of globalization” (65). Yet this reviewer doubts that this conceptual leap from Moltmann’s interpretation of the Trinitarian suffering of the cross to a political theology can be justified through the concept of perichoresis, the mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. Some would question whether either of Moltmann’s concepts – his notion of hope or of the inner suffering of the Trinity – can be the basis for the building of a complete theology.
Awazi then considers the importance of a philosophical and epistemological critique, and presents the analyses of Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, and Martin Heidegger in relation to the present techno-scientific ideology that strongly influences present-day Africa. He shows his aversion to the dominant “instrumental reason” and “unidimensional” approach that reduces humans to automats. He criticizes “the scientific and instrumental rationality of Western modernity [that is] forgetful of the religious and transcendent dimension of man” (232). In particular this approach violates the African worldview on the relation between the visible and the invisible. The answer for Africa is, according to Awazi, the theory of “communicative action” as elaborated by Habermas (194).
The second part seeks to lay the foundations for what Awazi calls a black African Christology of sociopolitical liberation as seen by three African theologians: Engelbert Mveng, Eboussi Boulaga, and Jean-Marc Ela.
In the third part, he seeks to lay the foundations for a black African Christology of holistic liberation. Awazi states that an all-out attack on sorcery and black magic based on the supremacy of the crucified and risen God is the key to a new freedom for Africans. He states that charismatic churches are able to make an epistemological break from the Western theology of the past that had little place for the invisible world of the supernatural – including both benevolent and malevolent beings, a weakness already explained by anthropologist Paul Hiebert, who called it “the flaw of the excluded middle” in Western worldviews.
Awazi closes with an attempt to see how “divine suffering” as interpreted by Abraham Heschel and how what he calls a “geographical, phenomenological, and theological reading” of 1 King 19:1–19 can help in understanding the mystical part of a truly holistic theology of liberation.
Whether one agrees with his writings or not, anyone wanting to understand African sub-Saharan theology as seen by an accomplished African thinker needs to work his way through Awazi’s analysis – a “réappropriation” of Western scholastic theology in the direction of a theology more immersed in the mystical and liberation theology of Moltmann and Metz, and centered in the crucified and risen God who suffers along with the oppressed and longs for their liberation.
Robert J. Vajko
Evangelical Alliance Mission, Bloomington, Indiana, US
Courriel : bobvajko@gmail.com
