Browsing by Author "Rudolf Kuuku Gaisie"

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    The Logos as Nana (Ancestor) – An Assessment of Ancestor Christology in the Light of Logos Christology from an African Missiological Perspective
    (Justice Ofosu-Appiah, 2015-03) Rudolf Kuuku Gaisie
    The study assesses the exploration of Ancestor Christology in contemporary African Christianity against the backdrop of the application of Logos Christology within the first three centuries AD of Graeco-Roman Christianity. This exercise is done with the perspective of the three stages involved in the conversion process of traditional thought in Christianity as identified by Andrew Walls, namely, missionary, convert and refiguration. The application of Logos Christology within these identified stages, from the foundation of the Gospel of John to Justin Martyr and finally Origen, reveals respective stages of Logos Christology, viz., suggestive, clarificatory or elucidative and innovative. The exploration of Ancestor Christology in Africa, when examined within the three stages of the process of conversion, can be seen as having gone through the corresponding three stages with its refiguration or innovative stage yet to be exhaustive. It is then argued that at the refiguration stage, Ancestor Christology should be more conscious of indigenous terminology of the term for ‘ancestor’ and also the translated Scriptures. In line with this, an Akan reading of the Prologue of the Gospel of John with the Logos (Asɛm) as subject matter is dialogued with the Akan conception of *nana* (ancestor) as conceptually delineated by J. B. Danquah. The Logos-Ancestor (Nanasɛm) discourse invites reflections from ‘academic’ and ‘grassroots’ levels as well as addressing some of the expressed limitations of Ancestor Christology that have usually stemmed from its non-indigenous terminology appropriation.