Theological Reflection in An African Christian WorldView [Vol One]

Authors

Jones Kaleli

Synopsis

The enlightenment project, as experts like Professor Paul Hiebert observes, has not worked in producing for humans healthier and more intimate interpersonal relationships. Today’s advances in electronic technology leaves the human being thirstier, fearful or worried than ever before. For example, we are the most electronically connected humans who ever lived upon the face of the earth and yet we are most empty, most stressed and most depraved in human relationships.

Individuals and nations cannot get along with each other! The divine cry in the human heart has not been fulfilled by any of the known technological breakthroughs. If the world’s problems are to be solved, it will be by human beings, not by machines. Thus, technology and its value is not the last answer to human problems. Indeed, our deepest needs can only be met by that which comes from outside ourselves. In this regard, this book endeavours to answer the following question: Would a renewed return to our traditional worldviews be a move in the right direction? Our hope is built on nothing else than on the finished [past!] work of Jesus Christ on the Cross some two thousand years ago or as the Scriptures say on what God has wrought in Christ by choosing us before the creation of the world (Eph.1:4). It is this kind of thinking that gives legitimacy to the idea of bending backwards in our search for meaning and help! Hence, man should seek meaning in a “nostalgia for eternity,” a mystical equivalent to a journey back to origins, illo tempore, to the Golden Time. Hope may be in remembering the past! Not necessarily envisioning the future! It may be looking at the future that lies in the past! Thus our traditional worldviews may help in connecting mankind with what he has lost! A vital living relationship with the God of Eden. This book is highly recommended to scholars and students of Theology in Africa and beyond.

Utafiti Academic Press

Published

2014

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