On one hand the evidence in favor of his thesis is laid bare for all to see and has been throughout the history of the Church. Indeed history is very clear on this point, theologians such as Origen, Tertullian and Augustine where all born and raised on the continent we today call Africa. The origins of the monastic movement are grounded in the deserts of Egypt. By the oral tradition of the Church, Mark the gospel author and apostle lead the church in Alexandria. Even many of the earliest heresies the church fought against had their origins on the continent of Africa.
On the other hand, is the question I lead with, What do we mean by Africa? Oden points out what was once deemed Africa is not how we understand it today. “In ancient times the term Africa referred to the indigenous nous people of coastal Mediterranean Africa in modern northeastern Tunisia. While in early times the term Africa first referred to the peninsula we today call Tunisia, it gradually became applied to all of Mediterranean Africa west of Egypt. During the first Christian millennium Africa was the provincial term designating all the lands from Tripolitania (now western Libya) all the way to the Atlantic (Morocco)-from from Tripoli (Oea) to Tangiers (Tangis)” (Kindle location 657). How should we label those early African Christians when they themselves may not have had a concept for such a thing as “Africa” as we now understand Africa.
What I found myself doing as I read through this book, was wrestling with my own historical and geographical prejudices. Have I mentally framed Augustine, and other Church Fathers as something other then Africans? Why have I framed them this way? Does my own mental framework injure the truth of these saints? Do Nigerians, Kenyans, Rwandans understand these Church Fathers to be African in the same way they might consider themselves as African. This of course assumes Nigerians, Kenyans, and Rwandans consider themselves African first as opposed to national or tribal identity first.
It seems to me an exercise in geographical perception. Personally, I do not consider myself primarily as North American. I don’t consider myself, primarily as a Wisconsinite or a Midwesterner. Neither does the term American fully do justice to my geographical identity as it leaves out something of the Midwesterner’s love of common sense. And for that matter my geographical identity is not even close to what I consider my primary self identification. On some basic level of geography Oden has taken two hundred pages to state what is clear for all to see. But indeed this may very well be the point, it is not clear for all to see. Years of enlightenment prejudice and racism have smeared Africa’s place in the story of Christianity’s development and growth. Racism has muddied the waters of intellectual history.
To be honest I have always seen the Church Father or the desert fathers as connected culturally with Rome and the culture of the late Roman Empire before I ever stopped to consider their physical locations. The geographical marker I most associate with those Church Fathers is North Africa which is again a manifestation of prejudice to consider North Africa as separate and distinct from Sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed Oden states, “Sub-Saharan Africa is a term that belongs to geography. Black Africa is a color designation grounded in the tragic fact of racism. North Africa is a location. Africa is a continent. None of these designations is more or less African. All are in Africa. All are African” (Kindle Locations 643-645). But this seems to beg the question. How indeed did Augustine and the Church father’s understand their identity?
Regardless of my wrestling with terminology and questions of semantics, I value this book. Oden’s work attempts to clear the air and challenges our prejudice even if there are lingering questions. When I think of arguments made by some quarters that deem Christianity, “A white man’s religion” this book will be the first volume I will reach for on my shelf. Christianity may have in the last 1500 years a complex and rich pedagogy of beliefs and practices in Western Europe, but the foundations where laid first in what we now call African soil. Oden’s valuable book sets the corner stone of this argument clearly in place.
To that end however I do have a historiographer’s beef with Oden. There is not one place were Oden provides citations for his claims. Nor does he give very specific references to people or places. For example, take the following comment concerning Origen.
There can be no doubt that Origen grew up in Africa, wrote much of his work in Africa and then transmitted his extensive African library and teaching to Caesarea Palestina. It is a strange and demeaning ing criterion to apply to Origen the odd assumption that because he was adept at many languages he was not very African. By his metaphors, the greatest biblical interpreter of early Christianity shows many indications of being indigenously African, whatever his specific ethnicity. (Kindle Locations 536-539).
What metaphors? Who has pointed this comparison out? What makes Origen’s metaphor’s particularly African? What or where are the original metaphors? It is claims like the above that drove me crazy. I do not doubt the sincerity of Oden’s claims or the validity of the claims. As a scholar I would hope Oden would show me his sources, so that I may go and investigate on my own, but he does not. This leaves me frustrated and disappointed.
One cause for the lack of citations and detailed analysis is that Oden understands just how much Early African Church studies has been neglected. Indeed, in the book he pleads with African scholars to do the hard and complex work of cementing the ties between African cultures and the Church Fathers’ writings. Scholars have throughly studied the connections between Cranmer and the cultural backdrop of England. Likewise scholars have rigorously examined Paul and his background. However, nothing remotely close has been undertaken, it would seem, concerning African Church father’s and their cultural heritage. Thus Oden is left pleading with his audience to do the scholarship necessary to enlighten the events of history. Personally I can not wait for the scholars to start writing. The African continent is at the center of much of what is making the Christian Church vibrant and dynamic in our world today. I for one can only hope the intellectual productivity of the African Churches will match their zeal for orthodoxy and mission. Hopefully Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan are producing scholars that will head Oden’s plea.
As frustrated with aspects of this book and what was missing from its pages, I was thankful for the overall contribution of the book. Indeed How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind seems like a necessary step in correcting our perceptions of the early church. One of the necessary questions it seems to me that needs to be answered is, “How did the early Church understand their political and geographic identity?” And then, “How did that identity shape their work and writings?” As I put down this book I have more questions and a shift in my perspective as it relates to the early Church Fathers. When a reader comes away from a book in such a way it is always a good thing.
