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How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind
- Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
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Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.
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objectivity
- By Caleb on 07-16-24
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Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
- Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C.S. Lewis
- By: Chris R. Armstrong
- Narrated by: Jon Gauger
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Many Christians today tend to view the story of medieval faith as a cautionary tale. Too often, they dismiss the Middle Ages as a period of corruption and decay in the church. They seem to assume that the church apostatized from true Christianity after it gained cultural influence in the time of Constantine, and that the faith was only later recovered by the 16th-century Reformers or even the 18th-century revivalists. As a result, the riches and wisdom of the medieval period have remained largely inaccessible to modern Protestants.
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A splendid introduction to Medieval faith from an Evangelical perspective
- By Daniel on 03-07-20
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Whose Bible Is It?
- A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages
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Winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, Jaroslav Pelikan is Professor Emeritus of history at Yale University and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This examination of the history of the Bible reflects half a century of study and research by the author. In Whose Bible Is It?, Pelikan traces the transformation of the Bible from its earliest oral traditions to its modern forms.
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Too Verbose Not Enough "Big Picture" Bible History
- By Stephen on 07-05-11
By: Jaroslav Pelikan
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The Book That Made Your World
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Whether you're an avid student of the Bible or a skeptic of its relevance, The Book That Made Your World will transform your perception of its influence on virtually every facet of Western civilization. Vishal Mangalwadi reveals the personal motivation that fueled his own study of the Bible. Learn how the Bible transformed the social, political, and religious institutions that have sustained Western culture for the past millennium, and discover how secular corruption endangers the stability and longevity of Western civilization.
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loved this look on the Western World
- By DM on 11-03-20
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Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
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Of the many recent books on the historical Jesus, none has explored what the latest biblical scholarship means for personal faith. Now, in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg addresses the yearnings of those who want a fully contemporary faith that welcomes rather than oppresses our critical intelligence and openness to the best of historical scholarship. Borg shows how a rigorous examination of historical findings can lead to a new faith in Christ, one that is critical and, at the same time, sustaining.
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first thing he did was deny Christ's deity.
- By Amazon Customer on 03-15-19
By: Marcus J. Borg
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The Lost History of Christianity
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The Lost History of Christianity will change how we understand Christian and world history. Leading religion scholar Philip Jenkins reveals a vast Christian world to the east of the Roman Empire and how the earliest, most influential churches of the East---those that had the closest link to Jesus and the early church---died. In this paradigm-shifting book, Jenkins recovers a lost history, showing how the center of Christianity for centuries used to be the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, extending as far as China.
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Worthwhile with caveats
- By Telorast on 03-05-13
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The Catholic Church [Modern Library Chronicles]
- By: Hans Kung
- Narrated by: Robert O'Keefe
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
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In 1979 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew Hans Kung's missio canonica. Pope Paul VI approved the censure saying, "We are obligated to declare that in his writings he fell short of integrity and the truth of the Catholic faith." Through a 1980 agreement with the Vatican, Kung is now permitted to teach, but only under secular auspices. In this acclaimed Modern Library Chronicle, Kung examines the Catholic Church through its many reformations, focusing on the people and events...
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Theologian's Accurate View of Church Development
- By Jack on 01-12-06
By: Hans Kung
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Atheist Delusions
- The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies
- By: David Bentley Hart
- Narrated by: Ralph Morocco
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
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In this provocative book one of the most brilliant scholars of religion today dismantles distorted religious "histories" offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion and advocates of atheism. David Bentley Hart provides a bold correction of the New Atheists’s misrepresentations of the Christian past, countering their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.
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A Conversion Experience.
- By Ted on 12-01-14
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Church History 101
- The Highlights of Twenty Centuries
- By: Sinclair B. Ferguson, Joel R. Beeke, Michael A. G. Haykin
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 1 hr and 45 mins
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Church history is important because it shows us how God's faithful dealings with his people in the Bible continue in the ongoing life and work of Christ in our world. If you have ever wished for a short book highlighting church history's most important events that will enlighten your mind and pique your interest, this is the one you've been waiting for. Three prolific church historians collaborate their efforts in Church History 101 to present you with a quick listen of church history's high points.
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Knowledge of the Church's History: Essential
- By Caleb on 03-26-20
By: Sinclair B. Ferguson, and others
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What listeners say about How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-25-22
Great resource
A great job by the reader. This is a very scholarly book which will cause you to look up words but great nonetheless. Add this to your library if you’re serious about historical Christianity!
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- RJS UNLIMITED LLC
- 02-07-23
Something Christians need to know
This phenomenal book is a History for every Christian. Learning about all aspects of Christianity should be mandatory and taught.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sean Salfarlie
- 09-03-19
Great start to Early African Christianity.
Started off slow, but ended great hitting alot of areas. Looking forward to more Odens books on here.
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- Jonathan
- 08-08-23
Great Start
Great Start on a great topic. I look forward to future research on this topic
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- Lindsey
- 01-02-21
Great History
Tremendous overview of Christian influence throughout Africa . a great history that has not been recorded
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- Erica Silver
- 02-11-24
Excellent Historical Analysis
Love the digging deep in to the African roots of Christianity, learned much and gave me a hunger to know more on this subject.
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- Michael Flowers
- 08-01-22
Massive Implications for the World
This is must reading for the history of theological development. The sad thing is the not so hidden attempts to twist the narrative of the contribution of African luminaries.
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- adrienne
- 12-24-21
very detailed
This is an amazing and informative book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in how Christianity arrived in Africa centuries before it was in Europe.
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- Adam Shields
- 02-26-20
Worth reading even if not perfect
Summary: Much of the early church was African. The west has largely forgotten its African character and misremembered the importance and reach of the African church.
One of the important points here is very similar to the one made in this article about the rise of the Nation of Islam that it has been the misuse of Christianity that has led to African (or African American) rejections of Christianity as a White religion. European Christians, especially post Hegalian, viewed the early church fathers as necessarily being European in character because they were essential to the development of Christianity. This ignores the reality that most of the early church fathers were ethnically and culturally African. Most of them spoke Greek and/or Latin, but that is because those were common trade languages. Today we would not say that Bishop Desmond Tutu was European in character because he speaks and writes in English. And that also ignores those that were not writing in Latin or Gre,ek such as St Anthony, who was illiterate, but the only surviving letters we have from him (that were dictated) were in Coptic.
A point which I had not heard before was that the consular format of the early church councils, which are today the basis of what is and is not considered orthodoxy and heresy, were developed by African Christians for use in Africa before they were used in the broader ecumenical councils.
Where I think that Oden gets into a problem is evaluating modern movements. He is a good theologian and historian but tends to paint modern movements too broadly to be helpful. In his section on ecumenicism, there are people that fit into his critique, but many that do not. And because he is not nuanced enough in that critique (and I want to be clear that this would be very difficult), I suspect there are people that will dismiss the clearer theological and historical work as also suspect.
Oden makes a very good case for the diversity of the continent and the need to account for all of the continent when discussing history, but I think he then becomes much more narrow when discussing the modern church, which has an equally diverse and messy origin. I want to affirm the historical work of the church in Africa, but modern Christian movements that have been influenced by Europe or the United States do not cease to be African. I want to affirm his point that many of these modern movements would benefit from a rediscovery of ancient African Christianity, but it does become paternalistic to argue against a modern African post-colonial or post-modernist approach as less African than historical African Christianity.
And I think this is where his initial inclination that he should not be the one writing this book matters. Where he is most helpful is the historical work. Where he is the least helpful I think, is the modern evaluation and suggestions. Where White outsiders should help is equipping more Africans for language and cultural studies. And writing books about history and cultural studies may be appropriate. But I do think that Oden was right to be hesitant as a scholar from the US to enter into this area of research. That being said, this is worth reading. There is very much that is good here and only small portions that I think verge into unhelpful.
There is a helpful section (really about 1/4 of the book) at the end that is a brief timeline that helps walk the reader through the African contributions to Christian history. Several reviews complain that this is just a bare introduction, and that is right. There needs to be much more, but I don’t think that Oden was the one to do that (he has since passed away). He provided much leadership in getting the western White mainline and evangelical church to pay attention to the ancient church, which is what led to his work on the early African church. It is interesting to me that this is a path that I have seen many others follow as well. The church is far more diverse, and that history and content really does matter more, than what many US Christians believe. It matters that many protestants view church history as the early church through the age of the apostles and then skips to the reformation. It also matters that even those that want to understand broader Christian history tend to only want to look at the Western church. And it also matters that even those that do want to read Augustine or the Desert Fathers or others want to make them into proto-Protestant Europeans instead of African Christians that existed before the east/west split or the Catholic/Protestant split. The work Oden is doing here is essential, but this book isn’t written for the average Christian but the scholar. That isn’t to say the average person cannot read it, I certainly did, but it is not targeted at me.
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-08-20
Really awesome information!
Wow! I didn’t realize just how much Africa did influence Christianity. Lots of good information. I only gave this book 4 stars because the last 2 hours of the book is just information for Africans to get involved in advancing this information.
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