A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE CONCEPT OF GOD IN AFRICAN THEOLOGY: EVALUATING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF JOHN S. MBITI AND MERCY A. ODUYOYE

Abstract

The researchers critically examined the Concept of God in African Theology; focusing especially on the contributions of John S. Mbiti and Mercy A. Oduyoye. The researchers interest is to investigate how John Mbiti and Mercy A. Oduyoye understand the concept of God in connection to the African traditional religio-cultural heritage. The idea is to make the concept of God become more relevant to African Christians so as to make them feel at home within the Christian faith. The researcher employed the use of descriptive and comparative analysis as well as secondary sources that dealt on the subject matter. The researcher discovered that John Mbiti has maintained African Monotheism and African Traditional Religion as a praeparatio evangelica and has arrived at a conclusion that the God revealed in the Bible is the same as the God worshipped in African Traditional Religion. In addition, the researcher discovers that Oduyoye disregards the belief by Africans that man alone represents the image of God. She as well disregards the belief that God is represents male gender. The researchers discovered that Oduyoye believes that just as men represent the image of God so do women represent as well the true image of God. Therefore, the researchers strongly recommend that Theology in Africa should be a contextualized Theology without distorting the message and content of the Holy Bible.