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The Rebirth of African Orthodoxy

Return To Foundations

Abingdon Press

SEMINAR 1

RETURN TO THE FOUNTAIN

Classic African Christian teaching in the patristic period (100 — 750 AD) pre-ceded modern colonialism by over a thousand years. Many young African women and men are now reexamining these lost roots. They are hungry for accurate information on their brilliant Christian ancestors.

Here are ten sessions of a seminar in which the rebirth of African orthodoxy is examined in terms of its hopes, methods, and conclusions.

A seminar hinges on a regular session reading that forms the basis of a probing discussion where all voices are respected. This dialogue could be held among students or laypersons, friends, or even family members — anyone who has caught the vision of early African Christianity and wants to test its feasibility. It may be led by an educator or pastor or parent or skeptic who might wish to explore the consequences of these ten introductory reflections. Aware that learning in many parts of Africa is a social process shared in a community and not simply by an individual reading a book, this plan of study is designed more for interaction than individual reflection.

The sessions can be completed in a weekend retreat or weekly sessions or any time frame, but preferably in no more than a semester. The two parts of the course could be done in a laid-back way in five days with a half day for each seminar topic; or more concentrated in two intensive days by preparing entirely beforehand through reading all ten introductions before meeting. The ten seminars are made available free in digital form to African seminarians through the Kindle eBook loan program funded by the United Methodist Publishing House and Discipleship Ministries, a UMC agency.

These discussions could occur anywhere within global Christianity, but are focused primarily on Africa and Africans living either on the continent or in the vast African diaspora. Investigators from any nation or ethnicity can enter the sacred archive of this treasured African library (see Bibliography Part A). Both lay and professional persons have equal claim to this heritage.

Nothing in this study requires confession or consent; it is rather about classic Christian confession and consent while leaving it to each conscience as to how to respond. The seminar permits ample room for debate, comparison of perspectives, and further refinement. These sessions can be taken independently of my two previous books How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind and The African Memory of Mark, though both books will be useful for any who wish to read further about the rebirth of African orthodoxy.

Although this topic is best experienced in a dialogue, it is possible to read all these seminar introductions as a single book. If you do not have seminar partners, you can do it alone.

The original Rebirth of Orthodoxy was written primarily for a North American audience. After it was translated into Arabic in Egypt and Amharic in Ethiopia, the need for an international edition was clear. Then a persistent request came from sub-Saharan Africans that it be translated into other languages of Africa. This required a complete overhaul focusing on the rebirth of African orthodoxy.

The metaphor of "returning" in the subtitle refers to educators, theologians, pastors, and lay readers who are coming home to early African Christian sources. Many have wandered far away. They seek sufficient reasons to return to ancient African writers.

A. REDISCOVERING THE EARLIEST AFRICAN BIBLICAL INTERPRETERS

The leading indicator of the rebirth of African orthodoxy is the widespread study of the earliest African Christian writers. African orthodoxy is reappearing as a distinct genre of investigation because its earliest texts are enjoyed by countless Africans and many around the world.

Consensual orthodoxy is preferred to the term generic orthodoxy. Generic refers to that which is commonly held in a group or class. But generic is a thin adjective far less descriptive of the active voluntary consent given to the apostolic witness over twenty centuries. This form of "African orthodoxy" already exists as a fact of our time. (See Bibliography.) It is a palpable movement of confession and renewal within the divided churches as an answer to the hunger for roots within chaotic modern culture. It is an emerging global reality. The work of the Holy Spirit is deepening the spiritual unity of the international community of baptized believers. Documenting the evidences for African orthodoxy is what we are about in this book.

Africa's Role in the Global Consensus Formed Early from Apostolic Teaching

In recent years a flurry of activity has centered on the wonder of reading the Bible alongside its earliest interpreters. This has had special importance for Africans.

The most active stimulant for the recovery of African orthodoxy is the translation and interpretation of early African ways of reading scripture. This field is called the history of exegesis, from the Greek term for interpretation ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] exegesis). Patristic exegesis is part of the history of biblical study that was initiated in the earliest Christian centuries. Where the word "patristic" occurs, read as patristic/matristic, since numerous women were participants in the interpretation of early Christian scriptures — Macrina, Amma Theodora, Paula, Marcela, Melania the Elder, Fabiola, Eustochium, and others (see Bibliography Part B). Africa's role in early exegesis has been immense.

An extraordinary effort is underway to reclaim the earliest African commentators on scripture. The study of the early African church fathers and mothers is an active subsection of contemporary biblical and historical investigations. The most robust work is being done by young African biblical scholars.

When Bible study is guided by the first African interpreters of scripture, it comes alive with personal testimony, moral intensity, and worthwhile insight. It burns from within. By contrast, when Bible study is guided exclusively by modern Euro- American biblical interpreters it is typically imprinted by western values. African students of the Bible easily recognize the difference.

Modern African theology has been plagued by an unwanted and unneeded dependency upon modern western ideas. This has occurred after a century in which the most ancient African Christian ideas and achievements have been largely ignored, even demeaned.

In the modern period Africans often sought education, approval, and a personal legitimacy from western elites. Not so today. They are more often looking for ancient African wisdom uncontaminated by skewed modern western ideologies.

An Unexpected Outcome of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

Over one third of entries in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture came out of Africa. This can be verified by comparing references from primary sources. Though less than 10 percent of Christians lived in patristic Africa, they contributed more than 30 percent of the stored wisdom of the church fathers and mothers on understanding the Bible.

A major involvement in this journey for me has been the project for which I have been personally responsible as General Editor — the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS). This vast twenty-year effort stands as primary scholarly evidence of the rebirth of orthodoxy. Its preparation began in 1990 and by 2010 the intensive study of patristic exegesis was complete.

The ACCS is the work of an international team of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox scholars, translators, and editors who reconstructed for the first time in centuries a massive (twenty-nine-volume) classic patristic commentary on the whole of scripture. These early voices echo today from the languages of Africa written in the third to the seventh centuries, especially in Greek, Coptic, Latin, and Ge'ez.

So many of the best of these earliest interpreters come from the African continent. In 2003 The Church's Bible (CB) edited by Robert Wilkin began its first volume. These two series (ACCS and CB) have drawn many global evangelical and Catholic voices into the discussion. They did not go unnoticed in Africa.

The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture is similar to the chains (catena) of patristic recollections that conveyed the thoughts of the first Christian commentators. The catena writers of the fifth century and following were very selective in remembering those comments most worthy of being written down in a collection. A comment did not enter the catena without having been used, valued, and transmitted by ardent readers over several generations. That was a powerful winnowing process that tended to keep the finest, and arrange them verse by verse. They became classic arguments for all subsequent Bible readers to consider, and the primitive template of the modern commentary.

The Early Interpreters of the Christian Scriptures

Now we have accessible an abundance of powerful primary texts from early Africa about biblical passages as they were viewed by Cyprian, Origen, Tertullian, and Clement, as well as the leading Patriarchs Dionysius, Peter, Alexander, Athanasius, and Cyprian — all Africans, born on African soil. Together they form a huge collection of profound reflections and homilies on scripture. I spent almost two decades of my life editing all the volumes of this general patristic commentary before I firmly grasped that so many of such high quality and influence came from Africa. That recognition elicited the Center for Early African Christianity.

Virtually every verse of scripture has been examined by Africans writing earlier than 750 AD. The observations, debates, musings, and deliberations of early African Christian minds may now be scrutinized through the whole range of scripture and taught to a newly receptive African audience. The high intellectual quality of these African writers is evident.

Origen and Cyprian set the patterns for early Bible commentaries that became exemplary precedents for Bible study in Jerusalem, Caesarea, Antioch, and Rome. The Cappadocian commentators (Basil the Great, Gregory Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, as well as John Chrysostom) depended heavily on African sources. Later the major European commentators such as Ambrose, Jerome, Leo I, and Gregory the Great stood on the shoulders of the Africans and Cappadocians.

This body of scriptural interpretation shows evidence of an emerging worldwide, consensual approach to the study of Scripture. It now is obtainable in both print and digital forms so that any who wish to think with the best minds of the early church can do so. They can see these minds at work on a particular passage of scripture.

The Whole Canon of Scripture Defined and Systematically Researched in Africa

The canon of scripture itself was explicitly defined for eastern and western Christianity in Africa. The biblical canon is the church's book that lists the writings of the first witnesses to be read in church. A canon is a list of writings that advise Christians of all cultures on which writings from the apostolic beginnings have been most widely received as reliable. The canon of holy writ, received by the faithful of all times around the world, remains the crucial criterion for orthodox doctrine, polity, ethics, and social teaching. The Hebrew Bible is always included in the Christian canon.

These lists existed in many parts of world Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, but none of these lists was regarded as acceptable by virtually all parties. It was not until the Egyptian Patriarch Athanasius wrote his Paschal letter of Easter 367 that a list was provided that in due time became most widely received by worshipping communities of the East and West, later including many Protestants. The prevailing western canon harks back to the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (393), whose acts were confirmed by the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419 under the authority of St. Augustine.

The three commonly held criteria for books being included in the New Testament canon were:

1. all agreed that they must be of apostolic origin based upon preaching of the first generation of witnesses;

2. they must have received worldwide consent by major Christian communities of the ancient world; and

3. they must be approved for public reading in church when gathered for Holy Communion at the Lord's Table.

These were the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that remain of unparalleled interest to believers everywhere, and nowhere more attentively than in Africa.

Thus African Christianity as represented by the ancient churches of Alexandria and Carthage played a major role not only in defining the canon of scripture but in interpreting it in a way that became a model for liturgy and scripture study in the later major patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome. Antiochene historical interpretation relied heavily on Alexandrian models of plain sense, moral, spiritual interpretation, even while amplifying them and correcting their limitations.

The Persistence of African Writers among the Earliest Commentators on Scripture

Serious readers of scripture have long wished that these early commentaries might be accurately recovered, translated, and thoughtfully examined. This longing had largely been ignored by the last two hundred years of Enlightenment-period biblical scholarship, which has instead focused attention on European rational, empirical, historical, literary, and critical methods.

Now, for the first time in recent centuries, these earliest layers of classic African Christian readings of biblical texts are widely available in common-language translation for pastors, teachers, parents, and lay leaders. The Institute for Classical Christian Studies Press is publishing a multivolume African Library that will bring many of these biblical and doctrinal sources together.

Virtually no portion of Hebrew and Christian scripture was neglected in the investigation of these early Christian writers. In Africa especially they studied the Bible with deep thoughtfulness, carefully comparing text with text, often memorizing large portions of holy writ, especially the psalms, canticles, and New Testament Gospels and Letters.

The African writer Didymus the Blind (c. 313 — 398), for example, was a biblical scholar in the Church of Alexandria whose famous Catechetical School he directed for almost half a century. Due to his blindness since childhood, Didymus had to memorize the Scriptures by having others read them to him. Despite his impaired vision, his memory was so powerful that he mastered the scriptures as well as the liberal arts. His work On the Trinity is an ordered recollection of scriptures harvested from his prodigious memory.

Today African believers are asking how they might grasp the meaning of their sacred texts by utilizing the great minds of the ancient African tradition. Since the times of Cyprian and Origen these interpretations have illuminated world Christians in the deeper study of scripture.

The Holy Spirit has a history. A decisive portion of that history occurred on the African continent. Whenever this history is systematically forgotten, it is a blessed task to remember it, and to do so accurately. A sustained effort is required to recover hard-won achievements disregarded over time.

The Inspiring Voices of Orthodox Women in the Formation of the Consensus

There are many others who speak in the same voice as these most widely acknowledged consensual teachers. These include the faithful women of the early church whom the Holy Spirit inspired to create and sustain the ecumenical consensus. Among them are names of women previously cited — Macrina the Younger, Paula, Marcela, Melania the Elder, Eustochium — as well as Olympia, Amma Sarah, and Amma Theodora, and later holy women such as Teresa of Ávila, Catherine of Siena, and Hildegard of Bingen who were named Doctors of the Church in the Latin tradition. None of the more generally acknowledged Doctors of the Church have led the ensuing tradition to rebellion against the classic consensual teaching, including Phoebe Palmer, who followed the "old religion" and quoted the ancient Christian writers. Many of the above women were charged with the spiritual formation of women, but all had a wide following among all the faithful. If the criterion for holy teachers of the church at the time of Vincent of Lérins (fl. 430s AD) is pertinent here, as we will discuss in the last chapter, there were many women saints and martyrs, some living ascetic lives and others in marriages with families.

Countless orthodox women over two millennia have articulated and followed the classic Christian consensus. Obviously no male father of the church could have ever existed without a mother, and among patristic writers the most notable mothers are Monica, mother of Augustine, and Macrina the Elder, Emmelia the revered grandmother of three influential theologians: Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste.

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Excerpted from The Rebirth of African Orthodoxy by Thomas C. Oden. Copyright © 2016 Thomas C. Oden. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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