Reverend Gregory Crofford – Sunday, 2 February 2014 “Kwame
Bediako reflects on Jesus as ancestor”
Kwame Bediako (1945-2008) was a Ghanian Christian theologian.
With a PhD from Aberdeen, he was Director of the Akrofi-Christaller Memorial
Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology in Ghana. In the collection
edited by William Dyrness, Emerging Voices in Global Theology (Zondervan,
1994), Kwame Bediako contributed the chapter, "Jesus in African Culture: A
Ghanian Perspective." In it, Bediako addressed a variety of Christological
issues as seen through eyes of Akan culture. Of special interest is the way
that he developed themes in the Book of Hebrews that resonate with Akan
culture, particularly the function of the ancestors. Besides our Lord's
function as sacrifice and High Priest, Bediako framed Jesus in terms of the
greatest ancestor (pp. 117-118):
Jesus Christ surpasses our natural ancestors also by virtue of
who he is in himself. Ancestors, even described as 'ancestral spirits,' nonetheless
remain essential human spirits; whatever benefit they may be said to bestow
upon their communities is therefore effectively contained by the fact of their
being human. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, took on human nature without loss
to his divine nature. Belonging in the eternal realm - as the son of the
Father (Heb. 1:1, 48; 9:14) - he has
nonetheless taken human nature into himself (Heb. 10:19) and so, as God-man, he
ensures and infinitely more effective ministry to human beings (Heb. 7:25) than
can ever be said of merely human ancestral spirits.
It is interesting to note that for Bediako, humans having
spirits that survive the demise of the body is not questioned; it is an
unexamined presupposition of his worldview and that of his people. [For a
comparison of the two views, dualism and holism (monism), see my The Dark Side
of Destiny: Hell Re-Examined (Wipf and Stock, 20013), chapter 5 - "What
Are We, Anyways?," available here). Beyond the first-order question of the
existence of ancestral spirits, it may be asked:
Does calling Jesus the greatest ancestor in some way subordinate
the Second Person of the Trinity to the First?
While we acknowledge the reality of the Incarnation, the
"Word Becoming Flesh" (John 1:14), does not the use of the word
"ancestor" as applied to Christ demote Him in substance and nature to
a merely human order of being? In essence, in the Akan worldview, the Chief
when enthroned takes on sacred character (p. 104) as intermediary. Yet the fact
that there is a moment in time when this
status is conferred upon an ancestor is problematic when Jesus is then called
"ancestor." It seems to evoke the ancient heresy of adoptionism,
where the merely human Jesus of Nazareth supposedly became the Son of God at
the moment of is baptism by John. In any case, Bediako wrote widely, and this
is my first exposure to his writings. It is possible that he has answered this
objection elsewhere, so I will keep an eye open to this concern as I dig
deeper.
Kwame Bediako believed strongly in the importance of Christology
done from an African perspective. Contextualization means speaking to listeners
in ways that meet them where they are. According to Bediako, this is part of
the cultural adaptability that has made Christianity "culturally translatable"
and the "most universal" of world religions (p. 119). As in any
culture around the world, it will take wisdom from the Holy Spirit to do so in
a way that remains true to Scripture and orthodoxy.
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Greg Crofford | February 3, 2014 at 4:36 am | Tags: Emerging
Voices, Jesus as ancestor, Kwame Bediako | Categories: Christian theology in
Africa | URL: http://wp.me/p1xcy8-Yc
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