Abstract

SAKUPAPA, Teddy C.. The Trinity in African Christian theology: An overview of contemporary approaches. Herv. teol. stud. [online]. 2019, vol.75, n.1, pp.1-7. ISSN 2072-8050.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v75i1.5460.

This contribution offers a survey of the modern African theological discourse on the Trinity as a distinctive Christian doctrine of God. It is a systematic narrative review of primary literature on the doctrine of the Trinity in modern African theology with a view to identify main trends, key concepts and major proponents. It is argued that the contemporary African Trinitarian Hermeneutics cannot be understood in isolation from African debates on translatability of concepts of God framed first in terms of the reinterpretation of the theological significance of pre-Christian African concepts of God and subsequently as an outcome of African Christological reflection. The article affirms an apophatic resistance to any tendency to take God for granted as recently advanced by Ernst Conradie and Teddy Sakupapa.

Keywords : African communality; African monotheism; African traditional religion; Concepts of God in Africa; Trinity in African theology; Social doctrine of the Trinity; Supreme being.

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