The conceptualisation of Christ's salvation in Kwame Bediako and Thomas F. Torrance and its implications for spiritual security in African Christianity

Abstract

Some African Christians continue to rely on traditional African powers to address their spiritual insecurity since they perceive Christ as foreign to their culture and see the Gospel as primarily a Western phenomenon. Such perceptions raise questions about their understanding of Christ’s incarnation. This study critically examines the relevance of Bediako’s and Torrance’s positive concepts of Christ’s incarnation in contributing to a resolution of the problem of the perceived foreignness of Christ in African Christianity. In dialogue with the incarnational Christological models of Bediako and Torrance, this research study formulates and proposes an Adamic incarnational Christological framework which eradicates the perceived foreignness of Christ in African Christianity. It is my contention that Bediako’s ancestral incarnational Christological model reveals a tendency to diminish the actuality of Christ as God incarnate and encourages syncretism in African Christianity. Conversely, once the biblical-theological foundational status of Adamic Christology has been proven using Scripture, an Adamic incarnational Christological framework demonstrates Christ’s complete identification with African Christians as the New Adam. Torrance’s theology utilises the anhypostatic principle (which affirms negatively that the human nature of Christ is without an independent personal centre) and the enhypostatic principle (which affirms positively that the human nature of Christ finds its centre and expression in the person of the eternal Son of God), to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is not foreign to African Christians, since the human nature He assumed in the incarnation embraces all humankind. From this perspective an Adamic incarnational Christological model proposes that in the incarnation, God in Christ fully identified with all humankind as the New Adam, acting from the ontological depth of his divine-human existence to save African Christians from sin and all its consequences, including death and opposing spiritual forces. Thus, this model addresses African Christians’ spiritual insecurity and emphasises their complete solidarity with Christ as a source of security