Ancestral Christology vis-à-vis Postmodernism

Towards a Reconstructive Guest Christology in Continental Africa

Abstract

Recent theological trends among, African theologians have advocated for theological reflection on the Christian faith in the light of the African socio-cultural milieu. Certainly, there are obvious challenges that always goes with contextual theologies. For instance, African Christology, a theology centred on the study of Christ from an African perspective and which is born out of this approach, has given birth to Ancestral Christology. The challenge facing this type of Christology is that most of the so-called postmodern Africans do not have adequate knowledge of cultural elements and do not appear to appreciate this indigenous rooted christology. This research article seeks to clarify Ancestral Christology, as espoused by Charles Nyamiti and Benezet Bujo in the context of Postmodern Africa, and evaluates its impact on the spirituality of postmodern people. It moves on to construct a Reconstructive Guest Christology, from a socio-cultural perspective, as a methodology in constructing African Ancestral Christology. The Reconstructive Guest Christology portrays Christ as the one who reconstructs lives at individual, cultural, social-economic, liturgical, structural, communal, and at the universal levels. To this end, it strives to restore wholeness, lost dignity, spiritual justice, fairness, and reconciliation through love which are central to Jesus’ solidarity with humanity. It is hoped that this would appeal to postmodernists as they participate in Christ’s divine providence. The material in this article is conceptually and methodologically designed and gathered through an extensive review of relevant literature.