Featured Works -

Jesus as God: Plurality in the Godhead of the New Testament (Series Part 3)

August 23, 2021 3 Comments

Let us quickly review where we are. We began our journey from the end, investigating what post-apostolic church fathers, who lived some 200 years before Emperor Constantine reigned, believed concerning the deity of Jesus. We learned that these influential bishops affirmed the divinity of Jesus, and many of them founded their beliefs on the teaching of the Old Testament besides the New Testament. I cannot stress enough the importance of realizing that the notion of a plurality in the Jewish God was widespread before Yeshua ever permanently put on a body, and it remained for about 200 years after Jesus exited the earth as the Jewish scholar, Alan Segal, details in his The Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism.

Some ignorant critics, including many Muslims, often assert that the Bible never claims that Jesus is God. Some others would say Jesus never claims to be God. Both groups of critics are wrong. The bible documents facts to the contrary. The claim that Jesus is God or, more correctly, is a member of the Godhead is an inescapable conclusion when one considers the data en masse.

Christianity Dissected, Featured Works

Plurality in the Godhead of the Old Testament (Series Part 2)

August 15, 2021 1 Comment

What is Elohim?

In an older article linked here, I wrote about how “God” has taken on a definite meaning in Christianized spaces. I think a sufficient trace of older worldviews still survives in the modern rule that requires us to capitalize “G” in “God” when referring to the Christian God. Such a rule assumes the existence of other gods. Indeed, ancient Hebrews affirm the existence of other gods, the Hebrew God being the most high of them all. The Hebrew God is ontologically superior to the other gods.

The Old Testament uses the term elohim for “gods,” and the range of its application helps explain what exactly “god” meant to the people in the ancient Near East. “Elohim” is plural in form but, according to Hebrew grammar rules, the context can establish the exact referent of the term: if the verb is singular, “Elohim” often refers to the Most High; if plural, it typically refers to other gods. Carmen Imes writes:

“God”(elohim in Hebrew) and “Lord” (adonai in Hebrew) are not names. Elohim is a category of beings who inhabit the spiritual realm; angels are elohim and so are the gods of other nations. Adonai is a title that means “master,” whether human or divine. Both words can describe Israel’s deity. However, the God of Israel also revealed his name, inviting the Israelites to address him personally as “Yahweh.” (6)

Christianity Dissected, Featured Works

Emperor Constantine Did NOT Make Jesus God (Series Part 1)

August 12, 2021 No Comments

Background – An Everlasting Myth?

The matter of the deity of Jesus is one of the most debated issues in Church history. Indeed, we have addressed one piece of the debate here before. The disagreements continue partly because Judaism teaches monotheism, and some people find the idea of multiple persons in the Godhead contradictory. Moreover, the notion of there being three persons in the Godhead is, admittedly, not intuitive, and many a Christian who claims to believe in a trinitarian God cannot adequately defend the doctrine. In our day, it also does not help that there is much historical misinformation on the subject. It is common, for instance, among many who deny thehttps://decolonizedchristianity.org/the-fundamental-error-of-crowthers-critics-series-part-3-fina le/ deity of Jesus to charge that nobody before the 325 AD Council of Nicaea believed Jesus was God. It is an old myth that will probably never go away. Dan Brown, in his famous The Da Vinci Code, puts the following in the mouth of the character, Sir Leigh Teabing:

Christianity Decolonized, Featured Works

White Jesus and Continuing Racism in Africa (Series Part 3, Finale)

June 26, 2021 No Comments

A yet pervasive racism-aiding thinking error among Africans is the assumption that because colonizing white people no longer live in sub-Sahara African States, racism does not – some people even say cannot – exist in these spaces. It is a reasoning colonizer would like very much since it excuses them from the harmful consequences of their destructive escapades on the continent. This illogic sees racism as essentially a matter of how a white person treats non-white persons. Racism, for them, is relational. When construed in this way, racism cannot exist where white people are not present in large numbers and with colonization intent. Relational racism is, however, only a tiny slice—and a comparatively less significant slice at that—of racism. In places where white and black people share spaces, most black people would care less about relational racism as they would institutional racism. In post-colonial Africa, however, the problem takes different forms.

Christianity Decolonized, Featured Works

White Jesus not Informed by Biblical Data (Series Part 2)

June 7, 2021 1 Comment

Having addressed the cultural background of Jesus’ time and the ubiquitous physiognomic awareness recorded in the Hebrew Bible (See Part 1), we are now ready to look into relevant New Testament data. Our minds may have been so thoroughly clogged by the image of a White Jesus that we may be shocked to learn that the Bible says nothing that may help anyone visualize what the historical Jesus might have looked like. Though New Testament writers often portray Jesus as a type of Moses, not a single writer mentions Jesus’ physical trait like Exodus does with Moses. Consider the Gospel of John, for instance. Although John explicitly links Moses and Jesus when he says, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17), he says nothing about the physical form of Jesus. Instead, we get this verse: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). As Joan Taylor remarks, “this does not immediately conjure up an image of a specific person who could be described in terms of height, facial features, handsomeness, beardedness, clothing, or whatever” (2).

Christianity Decolonized, Featured Works

Jesus, Physiognomy, and First-Century Rome (Series Part 1)

June 4, 2021 5 Comments

Background

Thanks to European imperialism manifested through colonization and slavery, one of these images is unmistakable. Indeed, the European Jesus is such a well-developed form that one could endlessly change the face of the image without affecting its recognizability. The White Jesus typically has long, straight hair with a long face instead of a rounded one. He is, of course, always white and often has blue eyes. The White Jesus never wears shorts but a robe and a mantle. As Joan Taylor observes, the image or form of the White Jesus is so distinct that “he can be recognized as miraculously appearing in clouds, on pancakes, or pieces of toast” (1). The rather interesting irony is that the juxtaposed, brown-skinned image above is closer to what the historical Jesus looked like than the universally marketed White Jesus. In first-century Palestine, Jesus would have most likely kept shorter hair as it was customary. If he had long hair, it would be due to neglect and would look nothing like White Jesus’ coiffure.

Christianity Decolonized, Featured Works

My Encounters with the Africa Study Bible: A Review

March 13, 2021 No Comments

The message is simple: use the Africa Study Bible in your studies, for it will immensely help in exposing colonial ideals masquerading as Christian virtues and also arm you with knowledge of Africa’s colossal contributions to the faith.

Some years ago, while assisting in a Sunday School, a lady joined our class. She was a little above the age bracket that I was used to seeing, but she was calm, respectful, and teachable. I do not recall the lesson of the day, but it must have had a citation from the Pentateuch which mentioned ancient places like Cush or Put. Shortly after the reading, this lady raised a question: Why do we, black Christians in black churches, read passages having to do with Africa in such a hurry? On that occasion, her point was that we read through “Cush” or “Put” without mentioning that these terms have real referents that still exist today. We had read the passage like many Christians do the genealogy passages of the bible. After the class, I went to thank the lady for her contributions that day. It was then that I noticed she had an unusual bible with a trademark African design on its covers.

Africa Examined, Featured Works, Yoruba History

Sàngó and the Aláàfin: Ancient Yorùbá Use of Religion in Politics

August 17, 2020 No Comments

Background

Sàngó’s story belongs to the very beginning of the Yorùbá nation, which is believed to have been founded by Odùduwà after migrating from “the East” to Ilé-Ifè. According to Samuel Johnson, Odùduwà might have originated from somewhere near modern-day Sudan or Egypt (5). People lived in the land before Odùduwà and his entourage got there (Johnson, 18); indeed, Odùduwà met Setilu, the father of Ifá worship, in the land (4). As is true of all empires, not all the people in the Ọ̀yọ́ empire were originally natives. Many of the different tribes that self-identify as Yoruba today likely had ancestors who identified differently. As Odùduwà and his army advanced, they absorbed natives of the land into the dominant culture of proto-Yorùbá. As I shall show later, the narrative fed to an empire’s people can be a powerful political tool that confers a common identity and solidarity to a group of people.

Africa Examined, Featured Works

Achebe Rewrites Africa’s History: The Glorious “Primitive Tribes” (Part 1)

March 8, 2020 No Comments

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learnt a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting down a dead man from the tree. Such would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. . . . There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details (147-48).

Africa Examined, Featured Works, Yoruba Beliefs

Yorùbá Creation Account (Series Part 1)

February 4, 2020 No Comments

Àyànmọ́ mi láti ọwọ́ Olúwa ni
Ẹ̀dá ayé kan kò lè ṣí mi nípò padà
Ẹ̀lẹ̀dá mi yé mo bẹ̀bẹ̀ yé
Ẹ̀lẹ̀dá mi gbé mi lékè ayé.

This piece is from a famous track of the legendary Juju maestro, Ebenezer Obey. Roughly translated, the stanza says:

My destiny is from God
No human can change my destiny
Oh, my Head (Creator) I plead
My Creator, help me to be victorious over evil people.