How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity

Written by Dr. Thomas C. Oden, PhD

Narrated by Tom Parks

Africa has played a decisive role in the formation of Christian culture from its infancy. Some of the most decisive intellectual achievements of Christianity were explored and understood in Africa before they were in Europe.

If this is so, why is Christianity so often perceived in Africa as a Western colonial import? How can Christians in Northern and sub-Saharan Africa, indeed, how can Christians throughout the world, rediscover and learn from this ancient heritage?

Theologian Thomas C. Oden offers a portrait that challenges prevailing notions of the intellectual development of Christianity from its early roots to its modern expressions. The pattern, he suggests, is not from north to south from Europe to Africa, but the other way around. He then makes an impassioned plea to uncover the hard data and study in depth the vital role that early African Christians played in developing the modern university, maturing Christian exegesis of Scripture, shaping early Christian dogma, modeling conciliar patterns of ecumenical decision-making, stimulating early monasticism, developing Neoplatonism, and refining rhetorical and dialectical skills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781515944188

Reviews for How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind

[Nderitu Pius · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book for the straight no-hold barred truth on African Christianity in relation to the rest of the world. This is more than history, this is a golden book GOD BE GLORIFIED!!! Try it and have a few things straightened out on your Christian understanding of history.

[Joseph Albet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is wonderful, a lot to learn here about the beauty of Africa.

[Jordan La Borde · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Easily and precisely proves that orthodox Christianity takes its cue in almost every area from African scholars who are nevertheless often deemed non-American. E.g. Athanasius, Tertullian, and Augustine. One downside is it serves only as a launch board to future research and dialogues with western Christian and Muslim perspectives.

[christinasbookshelf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book and I am frustrated by it.Overall, the book is a very repetitive persuasive essay that Africans should study the illustrious history of Christianity on their continent because it does exist. There are many documents in Amharic, Arabic, and other languages that document that history, but they are buried in dusty archives and haven't been translated into more widely known languages or had scholarly study of them in modern times. It frustrated me because I know that this long history exists already!What I loved is that he makes the argument that we should not classify the Mahgreb & Egypt as "not African." He argues that much of the scholarly work done in Egypt and Algeria during ancient/early medieval times was based upon or inspired by the work being done in Ethiopia and southern Sudan. The flow of wisdom was going from the south to the north. I do know that the Christian history of Ethiopia is certain, and the Christian history of Sudan quite old along with Egypt. Also, we modern people have no idea what "race" (a scientifically untenable concept) most of these African scholars of any location were. The Romans had no concept of race, just citizen and non-citizen--and citizenship could be purchased.The absolute best part of the book is the Appendix, which lists every known Christian historical event in Africa up to 1000 AD/CE. This is many, many, many pages long! Completely worth the cost of the book for sure!!!I rate this book a 5-star book just because of the appendix. If it weren't for the appendix, I'd give it a 2 or 2.5 because the main body is mostly a call to action with a few interesting history tidbits thrown in, most of which I already knew, but I've studied this subject as much as I can. But that appendix!!!I'm hoping that more research will be done to study old forgotten documents in Africa to shed more light on this subject. Much of this has been left in storage for centuries in churches, mosques, synagogues, and other libraries.