Uwarunkowania współczesnych chrystologii afrykańskich

Abstract

Christological academic research in Africa is rather recent. Yet, the Africans have kept searching for answers to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say I am?” from their first encounters with the bearers of the Good News. Most of these answers were hardly noticed by the missionaries because of dominating colonial perspective and attitude towards non-European peoples that unfortunately affected the missionaries, too. The answers noticed were usually rejected as unorthodox on the grounds that African cultural elements and values were unfit for expressing Christian theology. The new search for African identity that emerged in the changing global political and ecclesiastical context of the mid-twentieth Century coincided with a growing understanding that attempts at perceiving Christ from an African perspective were not only gracious concessions on the part of the Church developed in the Western culture but an undeniable right and duty of the Africans. They themselves have to find who Jesus is for them. Many problems of Christians in contemporary Africa stem from the fact that Jesus Christ was presented to them as the answer to questions someone else had asked in another context. These answers have not been helpful in discovering in what way Jesus is the Redeemer and Saviour of the Africans. For that reason Jesus has still been perceived by many Africans as “a stranger” or “a guest” in the African world. However, as one of the African theologians said, it is not faith in Jesus Christ that poses problems for Africans but the way of perceiving Him. Africans do not reject the image of Jesus brought to them from the Western world but want to have a chance to formulate their own answer(s) that will help them to encounter Emmanuel, “the God with us”.