For the past two millennia, Europe has been synonymous with Christianity and Christianity has been synonymous with Europe. The Christian identities of other civilisations, especially civilisations of colour, are derived from Europe. In How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind, Thomas Oden argues that this dominant narrative of Western religious history is wrong. Christianity did not spread from Europe to Africa but from Africa to Europe. The earliest intellectual achievements of Christianity were explored and understood in Africa before being recognised in Europe.
Oden's work offers a theological and historical reassessment of what he terms early African Christianity. At a moment when there are over 400 million Christians in Africa, Oden finds it disturbing that African Christians ignore their patristic intellectual heritage. Contemporary African religious thinkers, according to Oden, are too preoccupied with either European intellectual traditions or Sub-Saharan African religious traditions and ignore the African patristic tradition. This book is a call for Africans to rediscover the textual riches of the classical African past.
Many scholars trace the presence of Christianity in Africa for one or two centuries, not two millennia. Between the period of 50–500, Africa provided the richest thought environment for the development of Christian faith. African Christianity, according to Oden, found its first public voice in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a city, Oden claims, whose church was not only established by the apostle Mark but is rightly regarded as an African not Greek city. The Christian leadership of Alexandria had the same prestige as the leadership of Rome and Antioch and was influential in prefiguring academic communities and pedagogies which led to the development of the Western university. A second African city, Carthage (Tunisia), was more influential on the formation of Christianity during the third century than Rome.
Oden's argument for the rediscovery of early African Christianity involves a redefining and reassessing of Christian tradition. Much of what is assumed to be Western and European is actually African. For example, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, who were influential on the development of the Eastern Church, as well as several fathers of Latin (Western) Christianity such as Augustine, Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, are African and should be considered resources in rethinking the African theological canon.
The book's argument rises or falls on whether one accepts Oden's definition of Africa and African Christianity. Contemporary African theologians make a distinction between theology in Africa and theology of Africa. Theology in Africa is any theology written on the continent. Theology of Africa is theology carved out of indigenous African traditions and culture. Oden conflates these two definitions and refers to both as African theology. He understands Africa primarily as a geographical not cultural term. Christianity in Africa and African Christianity are identical for Oden. But geography is a necessary but insufficient condition for characterising one's theological identity. For example, if Karl Barth wrote his Church Dogmatics in China, would that make it Chinese? Critical readers of this book will want to hear more about the African character of the theology of Augustine, Origen and Tertullian. Oden, to his credit, mentions how early African Christianity had a dialectical relationship with indigenous Punic and Berber cultures and Nilotic-speaking traditional religions but he never discusses the intellectual content of these cultures or how Hellenised and Latin-speaking North Africans used these traditions to articulate Christian faith.
This notwithstanding, Oden's text reminds readers that Christianity in Africa did not begin with the coming of European missionaries but has been present since the first century. One of the book's major strengths is its appendix which outlines a research agenda for a reassessment of early African Christianity, along with a 40-page literary chronology of Christianity in Africa during the first century. Oden's work convincingly argues that Christianity is indebted to Africa and that forming a Christian ecumenism necessitates a reassessment and recognition of Africa's classical heritage.
