The
theme for our weekly instalment, ‘Biography of the Week’, in the month of
January is African Philosophers. Each week, the biographies and works of
philosophers hailing from Africa will be celebrated. Of the numerous past and
present philosophers Africa has produced, the four sages we are covering are John Samuel Mbiti, Kwasi Wiredu, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze and Valentin-Yves Mudimbe. This week we begin with John Samuel
Mbiti.
John Samuel Mbiti
“I am because we are and, since
we are, therefore I am.”
-John Samuel Mbiti
John Samuel Mbiti, “the father of contemporary
African theology”, is a philosopher
and as of 2005 an Emeritus professor at the University of Bern and a parish
minister to the town of Burgdorf, Switzerland. Collecting and synthesizing
indigenous concepts of God, myths, stories, prayers, and proverbs into a
religiously oriented “African worldview.” Mbiti, in his works, explores the
complex relationship between African and Christian ontology theology, and
ethics.
Born
on 30 November 1931 in Mulango, Kitui, Kenya, Mbiti is one of six children of Samuel
Mutuvi Ngaangi and Velesi Mbandi Mutuvi of the Akamba people. He was the first
child to survive childbirth, thus he was given the surname ‘Mbiti’ which
literally means ‘hyena’ and symbolically means ‘a child vowed unto God’- the
surname being in effect a prayer in thanksgiving and for survival. As a child, Mbiti worked in the fields and herded
stock; he also went to the local missionary school called the African Inland
Church. After that Mbiti attended primary school at Kitui before attending
Alliance High School in 1946 near Nairobi.
Mbiti’s development as a promising young Christian academic
is, however, only half the story. He is a member of the Akamba people, who
occupy Ukambani, an area in eastern and south-central Kenya. As a boy and a
young man, Mbiti was systematically and deeply immersed in Christian life and
doctrine. His education was Christian and Western; it was not traditional and
African. There was, however, another, informal education for young Mbiti—Akamba
stories and the art of storytelling.
It was the combination of his Christian academic training and
his informal education that inspired Mbiti to write his first novel, Mutunga Na Ngewa Yake,
while attending high school. He went on to write a second novel, however, the
missionaries responsible for assessing and recommending publications lost the
only manuscript.
Having completed high school, in 1949 Mbiti went
to study at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, which was an
external college of the University of London. Majoring in English and
Geography, Mbiti was the one of University’s first students to graduate with a
degree. As a student, Mbiti was also involved in the Christian life of the
University community and it was during this period that he decided to take up
the ministry.
After graduating with a BA in 1953, Mbiti taught for some
time at his home school in Kenya. Around this time, he started collecting
traditional stories and proverbs. Mbiti then went to the United States of
America (US) to study at Barrington College (now Gordon-Barrington College).
After a period of two years, Mbiti obtained an AB and a Th.B at Barrington
College. He then went back to Kenya to teach at the Teacher Training College at
Kangundo, and at the same time doing iterant preaching. Mbiti was offered the
William Paton Lectureship, which saw him back in the United States as a
visiting lecturer at the Sally Oak Colleges from 1956 to 1960.
Mbiti went on to do his doctoral studies in New Testament
studies at Cambridge University, and obtained his Ph.D. in 1963. While at
Cambridge he met his wife Verena Siegenthaler from Switzerland whom he married
in 1965. The Oxford University Press published the results of his research in
1971 as New
Testament Eschatology in an African Background: A Study of the Encounter
Between New Testament Theology and African Traditional Concepts. Mbiti’s
approach to the problem of syncretism has always been religious, but initially
it was specifically theological. In New Testament Eschatology in an African
Background, Mbiti inquires into the deepest psycho-spiritual grounds
whereupon Africans and Christians might meet. These grounds are eschatological;
that is, they draw on a concern, shared in traditional Akamba society and in
Christianity, with the ultimate destiny of human beings. For each, as Mbiti
reads the Akamba and the New Testament, this destiny is both otherworldly and
corporate. After a relatively brief period of several generations as
“living-dead,” the Akamba lose individual personhood to a generalized spiritual
status in the endlessly receding past, the Tene. Christians, too, understand
their being spiritually, but not in the distant past—nor, Mbiti argues, in the
future. Instead, they see their spirituality in the present/presence of Christ,
whereby individuals become a “many-in-one.”
Ordained to the Anglican orders in 1963, Mbiti
served for fifteen months in St. Michael's parish at St. Albans, near London.
From 1964 to1974, he was lecturer and later professor at Makerere University,
Uganda, teaching New Testament, theology, African religion, and other world
religions. Mbiti also assisted in the chapel ministry.
His skills as a researcher and an author
resulted in his well-known African
Religions and Philosophy first
published in 1969. It was Mbiti’s first work to challenge Christian assumption
that traditional African religious ideas were "demonic and
anti-Christian". His sympathetic treatment of traditional religions was
based on massive field work. Mbiti is clear that his interpretation of these
religions is from a firmly Christian perspective, and this aspect of his work
has sometimes been severely criticized. Considered by the author to have been merely a compilation
of lecture notes brought together at his students' request, the worldwide
response to this publication came as an unexpected surprise to him. With time
Mbiti produced an increasing number of publications that have made an impact on
the African theological scene. The next two decades saw the publication of
(among others) Concepts of God
in Africa (1970), Love and Marriage in Africa (1973), The Prayers of African Religion (1975) and Bible and Theology in African
Christianity (1986). Besides
his well-known books he has published over 400 items including books, articles,
essays, poems, and book reviews in the fields of Christianity, theology,
biblical studies, ecumenics, literature and African religion.
From 1974 to 1980 he served as director and
professor at the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches at the
Château de Bossey in Geneva. After that he took up full time parish ministry in
Burgdorf in the Reformed Church of Bern, Switzerland, where he served from 1981
until he retired in 1996. From 1983 to 2003 he taught on part-time basis at the
Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, as professor of the Science of Mission
and Extra-European Theology. He has been a visiting professor at various universities and
seminaries in Africa, Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the
U.S.A. In recognition of his contribution to the church and academic knowledge,
he has been awarded three honorary doctorate degrees: LHD (h.c.) in 1973 by
Barrington College, U.S.A., the Dr. Theol. (h.c.) in 1991 by the University of
Lausanne, Switzerland and the D.D. (h.c.) in 1997 by the General Theological
Seminary, New York.
Mbiti played a most important role in placing
biblical studies and cultural heritage in the midst of the theological process.
His main thrust and contribution in publications and teaching have been in the
framework of African Heritage, Biblical, Ecumenical and Inter-religious studies.
He maintains that the Bible is the guide and indispensable tool of theological
reflection and articulation; that theology is the product of the universal
church in its local and global dimensions; and that the peoples of Africa
remain largely and deeply religious in outlook and practice. He sees the
theological task in Africa as being enormous, and feels that individual
theologians can best tackle it in the spirit of the proverb that says:
"One person cannot embrace the baobab tree."
He is married to Verena Mbiti-Siegenthaler and
they have four children, a son Kyeni Samuel, and daughters Maria Mwende, Esther
Mwikali, and Anna-Kavata.
Selected Works:
Akamba Stories. Oxford Library of
African Literature. Oxford University Press (1966)
Poems of Nature and Faith.
Poets of Africa. East African Publishing House (1969).
African Religions and Philosophy. African
Writers Series. Heinemann [1969] (1990)
Concepts
of God in Africa. London: SPCK (1970)
New Testament Eschatology in an African
Background. Oxford University Press (1971)
Love and
Marriage in Africa. London: Longman (1973)
Introduction to African Religion. African
Writers Series. Heinemann [1975] (1991)
The Prayers of African Religion .
London: SPCK (October 1975)
Bible and Theology in African Christianity.
Oxford University Press (1987)
African Proverbs.
Pretoria: UNISA Press (1997)
Sources:
The theme for our weekly instalment, ‘Biography of the Week’, in the month of January is African Philosophers. Each week, the biographies a...
Numerous
visiting professorships led Wiredu to various universities are around the
world. In Nigera, Wiredu holds a professorship from the University of Ibadan,
Nigeria (1984). In the United States, he also holds several visiting
professorships from the University of California, Los Angeles, California (1979–1980), University of Richmond, Virginia (1985), Carleton College, Minnesota (1986) and Duke University, North Carolina (1994–95, 1999–2001). He has published articles in Logic, Epistemology and
African Philosophy and has written entries in encyclopaedias and anthologies. His book Philosophy and an
African Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in
1980. Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies was
jointly edited by him and Kwame Gyekye and published in 1992 by the Council for
Research in Values and Philosophy, New York. His Cultural Universals
and Particulars: An African Perspective, (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press) appeared in 1996. He also edited A Companion to
African Philosophy, published by Blackwell in 2004.
