Introduction: Meko – Mafiga Matatu
There is a Kiswahili proverb: Mafiga mawili hayaivishi chungu – two stones would not properly hold a cooking pot.Footnote 1 The meko (a stove) is made from mafiga matatu (three stones). Interpreted from African perspectives, the meko is well known as a composite of various elements. Its symbolic emphasis is based on how parts work together. Meko philosophy is not complete until the relationships between parts is also emphasized. The three stones, from ‘African mindset and needs’,Footnote 2 stand for relationships of responsibility.Footnote 3 Unlike the Western or Eurocentric (post-)Enlightenment philosophy where a person, in this case ‘one stone’ is responsible for their own choices and rights, based on individual moral responsibility with personal autonomy and accountability, the African approach is ‘relational’ and ‘communal’:Footnote 4 Mtu ni watu (Kiswahili) – A person is people.Footnote 5 There are ‘similar maxims in most other Bantu languages’.Footnote 6 Parallels are found, for example, in IsiZulu (Umuntu ngumuntu ngabuntu – I am because we are, since we are, therefore I am),Footnote 7 Kiluyia (omundu nabandu), Xhosa (umuntu ngumuntu ngabuntu), Dholuo (ndano en gi)Footnote 8 and Kihangaza (umunthu niwe yiha Ubuntu).Footnote 9 The Dholuo proverb shows that it is found amongst Nilotic speakers as the Luo as well as in Bantu (noting there has been a porous boundary in some areas between them ‘from time immemorial’).Footnote 10
The three meko stones stand collectively and share both a sense of responsibility and a communal feeling of otherness.
For Kwame Bediako, this African approach is also biblical and speaks of the nature of God: ‘the Bible is the story of God’s relationship with humanity’.Footnote 11 This relationship is supposed to be preserved through ‘persistent sacrifice’. Bolaji Idowu writes about this: it is a means of maintaining an established relationship between an adherent and his object of worship [liturgy]…whatever is offered [food crops, birds, animals, liquid etc. as example of materials used for sacrifice among most African communities] and how it is offered [any kind laid on an altar or otherwise] depends on the nature of the particular cult as well as the occasion of the sacrifice.Footnote 12
The concept of interdependence, shared existence and participation in God’s life as symbolized in the mafiga matatu or meko needs to be explored further. First and foremost, it symbolizes the message of the gospel. The good news that life in Christ creates a community where people depend on, care for and flourish with one another.Footnote 13 This is Ubuntu philosophy which affirms the interconnectedness of life, meaning [the Creator] God, humanity and creation.Footnote 14 It also calls people into a community of shared responsibility, mutual care and holistic flourishing.Footnote 15 The idea of mutual care helps members of the community to appropriate understanding and philosophical underpinning of their faith, prayer life and ethical interaction as they seek to live the atonement.
This understanding bears more weight when it is brought into the conversation with the gospel in African life and thought. The emphasis on relational obligation within a particular community setting, as opposed to the Western individual accountability based on rights and duties of an individual, brings to the fore another important concept of meko in that it stands for interdependence of the three stones. This is more even more theologically and ethically powerful because beyond the sense of integrated unity, interdependence speaks of relational harmony, whose disruption is a matter of grave concern:
The change means individuals are severed, cut off, pulled out and separated from corporate morality, customs and traditional solidarity. They have no firm roots any more. They are simply uprooted but not necessarily transplanted. They float in life like a cloud. They live as individuals, but they are dead to the corporate humanity of their forefathers.Footnote 16
So it is with the doctrine of the Atonement, in which Christians are often tempted to focus on a single element, phrase or theory. It is better recognized as a compound: mafiga matatu or meko.
The doctrine should not be presented solely as an intellectual or epistemic concept. This can be done when it is described as a statement of faith or belief. However, recent studies of faith (pistis, fides) have resisted such a narrow definition. It needs to include both a relational element and the notion of allegiance.Footnote 17
Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Bene Vivendi
The meko is analogous to an ancient dictum which also demands a broader foundation for doctrine. It emerged before the post-Cartesian and Enlightenment impulses to individualism.
In 435 CE, Prosper of Aquitaine coined the phrase, lex orandi statuat legem credendi (the law of prayer constitutes the law of belief),Footnote 18 often abbreviated to lex orandi lex credendi (way of faith, way of prayer). While this is sometimes criticized for privileging liturgy over doctrine,Footnote 19 it has also proven possible for the reverse to take place: for liturgy to be viewed as a corrective to worship, which is then considered secondary.Footnote 20 Neither is needed: the pair may be placed in a hermeneutical dialogue,Footnote 21 allowing them to be ‘mutually formative’.Footnote 22 Prosper’s intention appears to have pointed this way, viewing both elements as ‘mutually causative’:
In such a mutually causative relationship, we begin to discover ways in which liturgical practice does have normative and constitutive consequences in the life of the church. We also discover the ways in which our life together reshapes liturgical practice. If we cannot claim that this particular practice produces that particular belief, we can at least argue for and hope that ‘engagement in the church’s practices puts us in a position where we may recognize and participate in the work of God’s grace in the world’.Footnote 23
Theology is both doctrinal and liturgical; it is not reserved for the academy.Footnote 24
However, there was also a third element to be brought into the equation: the practice of living well (lex bene vivendi, agendi or bene operandi).Footnote 25 So, the whole becomes lex orandi, lex credendi, lex bene vivendi (way of prayer, way of faith, way of living well). In, short, an ethic.Footnote 26 Theology functions on ‘on the intellectual, moral, and religious planes’.Footnote 27 To jettison any of these three is to sell theology short. Thus, a theological modality is endorsed in which belief, liturgy and ethics are mutually causative and informative: a theological meko. This will provide the shape for the following study of the Atonement.
The Atonement
The doctrine of the Atonement is the technical term used when Christians try to explain how Jesus’ life, death and resurrection achieve their goal. There are several different interpretations of what Atonement means. One is recapitulation: the notion that Christ lives and dies to compensate for Adam’s disobedience (Irenaeus).Footnote 28 There is also Christus Victor: that Christ pays a ransom and tricks the Devil.Footnote 29 It is most famously seen in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis).Footnote 30 Or there are the views that the cross pays a debt we owe to God (Anselm)Footnote 31 or is a moral exemplar, that Christ’s example of belief causes humanity to reform (Abelard).Footnote 32 There is penal substitution: the view that Christ pays a legal or juridical penalty to remove human sin.Footnote 33 Any one of these may have a single focus which sets aside all the others.
Each of these is a possible explanation: all would claim a Scriptural foundation. Different words and phrases may be used to describe the results: salvation, redemption, reconciliation, and even theōsis. This last term may be unfamiliar. Its most famous expression in Athanasius’s On the Incarnation of the Word: ‘He became man that we might become God’ (54).Footnote 34 More frequently used in Orthodox theology, it has increasingly appeared in examinations of the hopes and expectations set out in the gospel of John.Footnote 35
All of these competing theories are open to the charge that they privilege or neglect particular elements related to thinking about the Atonement (love, justice, sin). In some hands, they may lead to the conclusion that ‘Jesus died for our sins so that we can do what we like’.Footnote 36 Alternatively, they offer undesirable outcomes such as the cheap grace famously delineated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church…
…Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before…
… Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves…
… Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.Footnote 37
These powerful words anticipate what will become apparent later: the need for a human response in both an orthodox and orthopractic engagement with Atonement. The proliferation of theories also begs the question of whether adherence to any single one is needed.
The Atonement and Anglicans
Here, the vexed issue of Anglican identity needs to be adverted. An umbrella term, embracing a variety of theological perspectives, it resists uniformity in from its very beginnings. Despite myths which would identify it as an English phenomenon, that movement is not isolated. Beside it runs a Scottish Reformation which includes a recognizably episcopalianFootnote 38 and arguably reforming CatholicFootnote 39 trajectory which runs concurrent with the English manifestation. Aided and abetted by the Stuart dynasty, but within a more avowedly Calvinist context in which it shares, this distinctive Scottish expression persists through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when its continued loyalty to the Jacobite or Stuart cause would lead to its expulsion from the Scots Kirk in 1689, and ultimately to years of suppression after the Jacobite uprising of 1745–1746, which ended grimly on the blood-soaked moor of Culloden. Yet, it did not die, but thrived and went ‘international’.Footnote 40 The bishops of that non-juring Jacobite episcopal tradition would consecrate Samuel Seabury as the first bishop for the newly independent United States of America and gift that church their distinctive eucharistic liturgical tradition. The diversity between these two traditions may run deeper than thought: for the Scottish Episcopal Church, after its suppression and, ironically, freedom from state interference in its ecclesial polity, would only adopt the 39 Articles as a doctrinal touchstone at the 1804 Convocation of Laurencekirk,Footnote 41 and this has subsequently been repealed.Footnote 42 Assent was never demanded by the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, or The Episcopal Church, as it is now known, despite the potential hiccup that such a nomenclature might lead the unwary to assume it is the only Episcopal Church.
Notwithstanding the historical complications of Anglican identity, the 39 Articles (whether viewed as a touchstone of Anglican Orthodoxy or merely as historically significant) do not provide a single, exact explanation of Christ’s work, nor do the historic Creeds. In this respect, they differ from other contemporary confessions in which a particular theory of Atonement, penal substitution, appears to be the default setting (e.g., the Westminster Confession of Faith).Footnote 43 However, even if ‘the referred imagery for the atonement is legal’, traces of other theories appear in the confessional documents.Footnote 44
Calvin appears crucial in the traction gained by penal substitution, even if not without its critics:
After Calvin, penal substitution became so widespread as to be almost ubiquitous, at least among Protestant churches…penal substitution became a normal way of narrating the atonement for early evangelicals; it was the normal way of atonement for almost all protestants as the eighteenth century revivals began.
Given this virtual doctrinal hegemony in the early decades of the eighteenth century, it is surprising to find penal substitutionary understandings of the atonement widely repudiated and attacked as the eighteenth century dawned.Footnote 45
This analysis raises a number of questions, not least as the degree to which penal substitution was a creation of the first Reformers, not least Calvin, and whether its later popularity, even ubiquity, is any guarantee of its validity.
Returning to the 39 Articles, Article 2 is the most relevant text, stating that Christ: ‘truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men’.
In Article 31, ‘perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the world’ is also linked to sacrifice. It rejects the medieval Catholic practice of ‘sacrifices of Masses’: the Mass seen as re-living Christ’s sacrifice. Any explanation of how Christ’s work might do worse than start with the concept of sacrifice: a point well made by Edward J. Bicknell in his classic analysis of the Articles.Footnote 46 The founders of Anglicanism recognized the diversity of explanations, and, in their wisdom, refused to make any single theory definitive.
Anglicanism believes not in sola scriptura (Scripture alone), but in prima Scriptura (Scripture first and foremost).Footnote 47 The notion of sacrifice cannot simply be set aside because of theological, ideological or cultural prejudices. That simply reflects the reader’s views and denies the Scriptures their own potential to challenge. It is thus appropriate to consider what they say about Atonement. It is apparent that sacrifice is a significant point of reference, whether agreeable or not to modern contexts, to anyone who claims to take Scripture seriously as a theological building block.
The Atonement and Sacrifice in the New Testament
The explanation that Jesus’ death is a sacrifice is clearest in that he died at Passover. This was (and remains) a significant Jewish feast. In Jesus’ time, it was viewed as a sacrifice, the culmination of pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. It followed a typical pattern of sacrifice: the offering of a victim followed by a meal.
All four Gospels connect Jesus’ death with Passover. In the first three Gospels (the Synoptics), Jesus eats the Passover Seder (meal) with his disciple and identifies his body with the food consumed (Mark 14:22–24; Matt 26:26–29; Luke 22:14–23). In John 19:31, a different timing is found: Jesus’s death occurs on the Day of Preparation as the Passover lambs are sacrificed in the Temple before the Seder. Both, in their different ways, reveal Jesus’ death as a sacrifice.
Hebrews expands these ideas further: identifying Jesus as both priest and victim. He offers a sacrifice superior to any previous earthly sacrifice (Heb 4:14–5:10; 7:1–26; 9:11-10:18). Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5:7 (etuthē), is even clearer: ‘Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us’. This has not always been preserved, and sometimes even been altered. This is what the Greek thu- means, not the mealy-mouthed ‘offering’ in the paraphrase found in the APBA.Footnote 48 It is hard to escape the conclusion that this is a wilful mistranslation.
That sacrifice, moreover, is a once and for all, completed event, as is indicated by the Greek tense (aorist). Replacing ‘sacrifice’ with ‘offering’ is typical of the way a straightforward Greek verb is revised by worldviews or theological positions which are uncomfortable with the idea of sacrifice and seek alternatives.
For sacrifice is a term which is problematic for the heirs of the various British and continental Reformations. In their keenness to distance themselves from medieval Catholicism, they tended to reject much of the language of sacrifice, despite the fact it is so common in the New Testament: ‘this same topic of sacrifice that split Western Christendom at the Reformation’, not least because of eucharistic theology.Footnote 49
Two other issues exacerbate this. The first is:
that sacrifice is related narrowly and exclusively to sin and seen purely in terms of propitiation and expiation.Footnote 50
The second sees God as the object rather than subject of sin so that:
Sacrifice is reduced to a largely passive and mechanical exercise performed by humans to please or appease the deity.Footnote 51
Both reduce the scope of sacrifice and produce a caricature. This may be ideologically acceptable in some quarters but is not sound theology. As soon as Christ is recognized as victim and, thus, God as subject, their inadequacy is laid bare:
The God who is revealed in Christ is continually sacrificing himself, as much in the activity of creation as in the work of redemption.Footnote 52
The rejection of sacrifice seen at the Reformations persisted in an increasingly secularized world. Alternative explanations were demanded. Christ’s death was to be interpreted on the world’s terms,Footnote 53 not the New Testament’s. Sacrifice remains a problem for the modern West, starting from the Reformation period and then through the Enlightenment.Footnote 54 A significant example is found in the writings of René Girard, for whom the scapegoat breaks the cycle of violence but is stripped from its historical and mythic contexts.Footnote 55 But this is not a universal problem.
Atonement as Transaction: A Veritable Babel
With the sidelining of sacrificial language and concepts, other texts came to the fore. In particular, Mark 10:45 and its parallels became significant: ‘For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’ (NRSVue).
Words never mean just what their root is: the etymological fallacy. The Old Testament theologian, James Barr, reminded us that words only have meaning in their context – and that is how their meaning should be explored, not in their genesis.Footnote 56 For lutron, the word for ransom, that would imply, literally, ‘loosening’, which is not the most helpful of meanings. ‘Setting free’ or liberating’ are better. Even the translation ‘ransom’ does not have a single interpretation. It can refer to monies paid to a kidnapper, pirate, pawnbroker, or to the buying back or redemption of people or property seized in war or taken by violence. Ransom, in other words, may be a response to legitimate or criminal actions. Context matters. Mark 10:45 does not point directly to any one of these meanings: it remains polyvalent.Footnote 57 Even these translations do not exhaust the potential breadth of the term.
The range of meaning extends further. The most common association of lutron in the ancient world is with slavery.Footnote 58 So it would mean freedom from slavery, either by owners, a third party, or by the slaves themselves. In our world which claims to have grown beyond slavery (though slavery, indentured labour and people trafficking persist), this understanding of the word has vanished. What a tragedy! It would still be a powerful claim and message, literally as well as spiritually, for millions, not least those trafficked within our own communities. This interpretation ties in beautifully with the famous and early imagery of Phil 2:7 – Jesus, ‘taking the form of a slave’, sets humanity free from slavery to sin.
So far, all these models of exchange or redemption to explain the meaning of ransom have a monetary ring to them. However, they do not exhaust the semantic possibilities of lutron and its cognate, luō. So, ‘to insist that the single word “ransom” (Gk. lutron) implies the full logic of the law court seems hard’.Footnote 59
A number of biblical texts are used to support the idea of penal substitution, but their original context is sacrificial. Isaiah 53 (the Suffering Servant) may be quoted to support a penal theory, but it lends itself more to a sacrificial understanding. This passage may inform Mark 10:45, not through a direct quotation, but as a summary of the work of the Servant: a guilt offering which makes covenant relationship possible.Footnote 60 Alternatively, there may be a sacrificial cross-reference to the scapegoat (Lev. 16:20–22).Footnote 61
The sacrificial dimension is also true for the many ‘Lamb of God’ passages (e.g., John 1:36, Rev 5:6). The taking away of sins is a key reason for sacrifice: cleansing, purification or the removal of sin. Lambs do not usually appear in court. New Testament notions of Jesus being ‘numbered with transgressors’ (Luke 22:37, cf. Isa. 53:12)Footnote 62 and ‘pouring out’ his blood (Matt 26:28)Footnote 63 also use the language of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the arena of their world. The texts used to support the idea of penal substitution, without exception, may be read through sacrificial lenses. Avoiding the language and imagery of sacrifice is a monumental category mistake.
The sacrificial understanding of luō and its associated terminology is seen elsewhere. The Greek (LXX) text of Job 42:9 contains a phrase (eluse tēn hamartian autois dia Jōb) which may be translated, ‘he pardoned their sin for the sake of Job’.Footnote 64 ‘Pardoned’ is a translation of eluse: ‘he loosened’. However, this concept of loosening need not be read as either a substitution, a mechanical transaction or a legalism. Even Romans 3:24–25 which admits the possibility of a legal background in its use of ‘justified’ (Gk. dikaioumenoi) immediately juxtaposes this with the language of slavery, manumission and redemption (Gk. apolutrōseōs) and sacrifice (Gk. hilastērion).Footnote 65 Yet even those categories demand clarification. God no more needs sacrifices than debt cancellation or penalties.Footnote 66 Sacrifice is not the heart of the matter:
…what atoned in biblical and Jewish thought was the spirit of repentance and submission to God’s will that was expressed through the performance of the whole rite.Footnote 67
The prophets and psalmists repeatedly advise that placing all confidence in the blood of sacrificial victims alone is an error (Ps. 40:6–8; 50:8; 51: 16; Isa. 1:11–31; Jer. 7:21–23; Hos. 6:6). Sacrifice is a complex phenomenon (another meko?) in which a focus on a single element – here, the death of the victim and its supposed purpose – is liable to distort.
Underlying all the transactional models or interpretations lies a single recurring problem. Why is God bound by a system in which a return has to be made? It is as though some fulfilling of justice, debt or honour needs to be done, and needs to be seen to be done. Judaism answered this is the negative: ‘there is no type of necessity to which Israel’s God is subject’.Footnote 68 God being bound by any such necessity indicates a flawed theology. God is not bound by ‘implacable law’.Footnote 69
Consider this from the perspective of justice. Mercy, pardon or clemency can be granted without denying the reality of an offence. It never means that the crime or offence has disappeared:
A pardon is not the equivalent of an acquittal. Being pardoned does not mean that court records or criminal history will be deleted or expunged.
A pardon clears a person from all consequences of the offence but does not eliminate the conviction itself.Footnote 70
God exercising clemency or mercy in no way compromises justice. Some parables indicate this very practice and so criticize all exchange or redemption models, not just penal substitution. God simply cancels out sin – and there is nothing to be paid in return. The Jubilee (Deut. 15:1-18) suggests behaviour in which debts are cancelled, and repayments may be foregone. This Sabbatarian practice suggests that human economics mirror a divine paradigm.Footnote 71 In both the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matt 18:23-35) and the Parable of the Two Sons (Luke 15:11–32), God is so depicted. Ironically, in the latter, his clemency earns him the opprobrium of the son who stayed at home. There is no need for exchange. It is as simple as that. Of course, this lies open to a brutally simple challenge : that all God has to do is simply forgive and nothing else. The whole Incarnation becomes irrelevant. This shows the problem of only looking at transactions. There is an alternative approach: to base our understanding of the Atonement on relationship.
Atonement and Covenant
The model of relationship which immediately presents itself is covenant. In the covenants of the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament, it is important to remember that there are two necessary behaviours: invitation and response. God makes an invitation, and humanity accepts, but also needs to respond in ways that conform to the will of God. This aspect avoids the problem of a universalism in which disciples’ behaviour is irrelevant. In the covenant model, they may still be held to account. It also rejects the arrogance of the elect parodied in Burns’ Holy Willie’s Prayer Footnote 72 or Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.Footnote 73
All the heavy lifting is done by God, who invites, but also demands a human response. Human agency is woefully inadequate for the task. That is the lesson constantly repeated in the history of Israel: the failure of God’s people to respond properly to his covenant. In the Incarnation, God undertakes both the initial invitation and the working out of the response. It is performed for humanity by Jesus and accessible to those who become his disciples.
Covenants are sealed with blood: a concept better suited to the altar than the courtroom. Hebrews makes explicit the connection of Christ’s sacrifice to a covenant (Heb 9:1–22). Not only does Jesus do the hard work but also models the correct kind of response to God for his disciples. This is why it is important that any theory of Atonement includes the dimension of ‘moral exemplar’. Indeed, the biblical patterns stress its necessity:
Even if the need for some type of atonement for past sins is posited, it must be remembered that what atoned for sins were precisely repentance and a commitment to obedience on the part of the people.Footnote 74
Thus, what emerges when the atonement is approached from this relational angle is a meko in which faith, ritual and living well all cohere: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex bene vivendi. Its connections to sacrifice may be preserved and fit particularly well with African contexts.
A Return to Sacrifice
Across the sub-Saharan Africa, sacrifice is still practised. Even where not directly practised, it is at least considered a significant part of everyday religious experience: A live issue, so as to speak. In many ethnicities,Footnote 75 sacrifice is not a relic from the past but continues to shape the religious thinking, rituals and behaviour.
Within African Traditional Religion, the name customarily given to long-existing African beliefs and practices distinct from Christianity and Islam,Footnote 76 sacrifice is practised for a number of purposes and with specific significance. These may be summarized as follows:
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1. Human access to divine power to enable the growth of crops and abundant yield and harvest,
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2. Averting devastating effects of the anger of offended deity,
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3. The establishment of mystical union with a deity,
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4. Communal meals with deity,
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5. Propitiation for the forgiveness of sin,
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6. Exorcism and purification, and
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7. Protection against sickness, enemies, death, good health, long life, peace, prosperity and safety in travelling.Footnote 77
It should be further noted that whilst this list mention sacrifice to the deity, these may also be performed for ancestors or spirits.Footnote 78 Within the Shambaa nation (Tanga region, Tanzania), sacrificial rites serve a number of purposes: to affirm social bonds, to preserve the memory of the ancestors and the recently departed, for the good fortune of the community, social solidarity or to indicate royal status.Footnote 79
The significance of such embedded practice to theology is acknowledged by many. For example, Tite Tiénou and Paul Hiebert contend that ‘all theologies are embedded in histories and worldviews that shape the way they see things’.Footnote 80 This further entails that there is no culture free or history free theology, since theological reflection inevitably arises within particular cultural and historical settings. So, while the West and secularizing ideologies adapt ritual to fit their own worldviews, Footnote 81 in Africa, such changes have not been necessary. There is no need to seek fresh culturally appropriate alternatives to replace what has become arguably redundant.
It is important to know that sacrificial actions remain a vibrant part of behaviour, the third stone of the meko. They tend to be accompanied by acts of worship, where practice of songs, accompanied by indigenous music instruments, and dance normally form a core practice: ceremonies, celebrations and rituals including ‘reciting of clan lineage’.Footnote 82
However, negotiating the engagement between culture and Gospel can be a contentious issue. Advocates for the adoption of cultural phenomena may be criticized for practising syncretism: ‘the phenomenon of one religion borrowing elements from another religion’.Footnote 83 Stephen Bevans suggests that it is a necessary and universal practice which has sometimes been stigmatized:
Christians have always been syncretic. Syncretism is a natural response to the incarnation—God involving Godself with the messiness of this world. Colonialism and racism, however, have blinded us to this truly radical grace, and so perhaps an embrace of syncretism can help us finally see aright.Footnote 84
However, whilst this demands a re-evaluation of the practice, it does not rule out objections to some theologies and practices which have emerged. Byang Kato notes what contextualization actually is; ‘an effort to express the never changing word of God in ever changing modes of relevance’.Footnote 85 This does not mean that every such expression is acceptable. He was deeply critical of what he saw as an incipient universalism, contrary to the soteriology of the Bible, which was supported by some of his predecessors and contemporaries.Footnote 86 The implication of this is that efforts to adopt African traditional motifs in the Christian theological task should not compromise what is regarded as biblical truth. Thus, the adoption of such motifs which does not promote universalism, or equally undesirable consequences, may persist: they are not automatically ruled out of order. It should be noted that, whilst Kato was critical of theologians like John S. Mbiti, or at least, aspects of their work, a common insistence of a biblical foundation is stressed by African theologians including not just Mbiti but also Charles Nyamiti.Footnote 87 Indeed, there is an increasing agreement between Catholics and Protestants on the foundational role of the Bible.Footnote 88
Kato’s comments still hold good for a majority of African Christians who understand the need for a locally appropriate but uncompromisingly Christian and biblical theology:
An indigenous theology is a necessity. But must one betray Scriptural principles of God and His dealing with man at the altar of any regional theology? Should human sympathy and rationalism override what is clearly taught in the Scriptures? Many voices in Africa and outside the continent are answering these questions in the affirmative.Footnote 89
Kato’s conclusion, whilst accepting the need for indigenous theology, is of course, the opposite. The first chapter of his doctoral thesis warning is still valid: [t]he primary purpose of this book is to sound an alarm and warn Christians on both sides of the argument concerning the dangers of universalism. These dangers are theological pitfalls indeed: ‘to forewarn is to forearm’.Footnote 90 Along with this, he points out the danger of cultural universalism either in claiming a superior value or the potential to be applied globally (and so replace supposedly lesser cultures). All are flawed: ‘a result of the fall, our culture became affected by sin [and] idolatry and immorality have characterized every culture’.Footnote 91 Once parity is recognized, what are needed are ‘bridgeheads by which the Christian Gospel could be effectively transmitted to the African peoples’Footnote 92 while continuing to affirm that ‘[t]he Gospel is a revolution in which Jesus Christ is at the centre as the Lord of Faith’.Footnote 93 Indeed, the revelatory focus on the Triune God and the saving work and person of Jesus Christ lies also at the heart of Samuel Kunhiyop’s theology even if he would view some of Mbiti’s claims as suspect.Footnote 94 These theologians share fundamental principles about the Christian God but disagree on the implications of these in regard to the their relation to indigenous theologies. Whilst some, like Mbiti, see continuity and fulfilment in Christ, others, like Kato and Kunhiyop, reckon rejection and replacement. None, ultimately, reject the primacy of the biblical revelation.
For our purposes, it should be noted that the meko theology proposed here makes no claims for outcomes which would fall into universalism or compromise, or a choice between fulfilment or replacement. That lies beyond our scope: all that is offered is a method.
Similarly, Bergmann and Vähäkangas reminds us that the incarnation was contextual: God had to come from heaven and take human form to reach humanity in its context without compromising his message and mandate.Footnote 95 This serves as a reminder that God communicated within our human context, to pass on (relationship – the second stone of the meko) content (understanding – the first stone) in a cultural form (the third stone – behaviour). This means that it is still legitimate and even necessary for meko theology and Christian message, linking sacrifice and atonement, to be expressed liturgically within African culture as a full expression of the gospel truth.
This can all be done through the lens of sacrifice, which needs no replacement, and may be adopted as a lens without a rejection of the central sacrificial models of the Bible. Indeed, they will on occasion, demand a setting aside of traditional beliefs about both the purpose of sacrifice, and those to whom it is offered. For, within African Christian contexts, the kind of sacrifices once offered to ancestors or spirits are no longer appropriate, nor are outcomes such as appeasement.Footnote 96 The parameters of sacrifice are now clearly delineated by the Scriptural depiction of Christ’s sacrifice. Kwame Bediako’s exposition of the relationship between Christ’s sacrifice and those which preceded it may be transferred into the analogous contexts provided by African rituals and practice even in the here and now: shadows to Christ’s substance.Footnote 97
Every bit as important, they embrace not just doctrine, but relationships and behaviours that embrace both ritual and ethical dimensions: orthodoxy and orthopraxis. It may be objected that the model advocated above is peculiarly focused on ritual. That is not the case. Ritual represents life: our lives therefore must replicate the behaviours exemplified by the eucharistic sacrifice and theology: forgiveness, etc. That is not all. For as the eminent liturgist Alistair Stewart reminds us, eucharistic practice is symptomatic of the wider way in which we deal with eating, food and its production. In a world where too many live in with hunger and poverty, our theology and practice of the eucharist must have wider ethical consequences, not least because many cultures today, especially participate in a scenario like the following:
A culture of food production (in the United Kingdom at least) that depends on the expropriation of traditionally held land overseas for the growth of cash crops and locally on the factory farming of animals, on the employment of seasonal workers living in squalid conditions, and on the dependency of the farming industry on a complex system of subsidies while supermarket chains profit and while millions depend on food banks.Footnote 98
Maybe such cultures are so corrupt that eucharist cannot transform them,Footnote 99 but, at the very least, ‘everyday eating [should be] sacralized through a realization of the presence of God’.Footnote 100 Liturgy to inform and shape behaviour.Footnote 101
Conclusion
When viewed through the lenses of sacrifice and covenant, it becomes apparent that the two belong together in any understanding of the Atonement. They also include a liturgical or ritual expression. There is more to Atonement than holding a theory, or even a right view of it. Atonement demands a lived behaviour which models that work to the world (a missional and moral dimension). As Ian Bradley points out,
The Christian revelation points us to the truth that growth and progress are only possible through self-limitation and surrender and that sacrifice, understood as a two-way process of giving and responding, dying and rising again, lies at the heart of our relationship with our Creator and Redeemer.Footnote 102
This response includes liturgy. Atonement is experienced when disciples share in the Eucharist: the remembrance of the once and for all sacrifice. This occurs at every celebration – no matter how distant in time or place from the first-century CE Palestine of Jesus. But this, and it is a critical point, is NEVER a repeating of the once and for all sacrifice (1 Cor 5:7). It is the way in which God in his wisdom allows us to experience the saving work of Jesus done once. It is a singular command which Jesus asked of his followers: Do this in memory of me – do this to make me present!Footnote 103
Whatever further description is given, the point remains the same: Christians obtain forgiveness of sins through the saving work of Jesus in his life, death and resurrection. He has done the work beyond human capability and opened up the gates of heaven, hope and salvation so that we might become, through his gift or grace, what he is. This is a three stone meko in two respects: made of three key beliefs – Christ, covenant and sacrifice; experienced through Scripture, behaviour and liturgy.
