Interpreting a Christian Classic in an African Context: Pluralism and Inculturation in Light of David Tracy and Leonard Santedi

This dissertation examines the question of the reception and conceptualization of the Christian classic in an African context. It argues that every reception is a poietic interpretation of the truth of faith that leads to the invention of new expressions of the same truth of faith and a new-mode- of-being-in the world for, by and within the new community that experiences the encounter with the Christ event. Therefore, being inseparable from contextualization, reception intrinsically implies pluralism and inculturation.

In Africa plagued with violence, war and poverty but also displaying exceptional signs of Christian growth, the dissertation contends, the poietic reception of the Incarnation – God pitching His tent among us – that integrates the hermeneutical criteria laid by David Tracy’s critical correlation method and Leonard Santedi’s paradigm of the theology of invention constitutes an asset to a new way of doing theology that challenges African imagination, and calls for African political, ecclesial and social transformation.

Properly understood, the reception of the paradigm of the incarnation leads to the invention and implementation of a new sociality in Africa: the sociality of conviviality, forgiveness and togetherness founded upon African adherence to the Christ event.

Tokimane, that is to hold one another up, is the concept that adequately, appropriately and meaningfully renders that new sociality of conviviality born of the adherence and acceptance of the mystery of the Incarnation among the Batetela people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tokimane plays as contribution to the theological development of the understanding and the expression of the mystery of the incarnation – God with us – in Batetela culture; it also serves as pastoral program spearhead for the implementation of the new evangelization or evangelization in depth and fosters in Batetela’s political, social and ecclesial imagination a new mode-of- being-in-the world based on reconciliation, forgiveness and peace for integral human flourishing. As theological concept and expression of a new mode-of- being-in the world, Tokimane brings about in the concrete life of the Batetela, and the Africans in general, the foretaste of the new earth and the new heaven Jesus Christ has come to inaugurate.