The supremacy of Christ and the role of ancestors

In one of his later books, Jesus and the Gospel In Africa, Bediako presents an expanded systematic discussion of Jesus Christ and African ancestors. In this discussion he goes beyond the idea of the Communion of the Saints to discussing the implications of Christ’s mediatorial roles. This juxtaposition model works well under the inculturation – transformation operation under rubric 3.7.4. It connects the central belief in the ancestral cult with its affinity in the Christian faith while using the Bible as a source of transformation to the African question

for mediation. According to Bediako, Jesus Christ has to be understood in terms of how he fulfils and replaces the religious needs and aspirations of the African people. He points out that any understanding of Christ in an African spirit-power perspective needs to faithfully reflect biblical revelation and be rooted in true Christian experience (2000:22).

The primal worldview of the African requires that Christ meets the needs within that worldview if he will be of significance to that worldview. This means that if Christ is seen to meet the African spiritual needs in a higher and better way then he can successfully replace the role that the ancestors have been occupying. This is a very important view that Bediako raises, because it touches the very heart of the matter in initiation rites and other African spiritual practices. Christ has to be relevant to people if the people are going to perceive him as assuming a higher and better role than the ancestors. Since there is an anthropocentric stress in the African religious outlook, Christ will need to be seen as operating highly satisfactorily in fulfilling the African concept of salvation as it touches the spirit- power realm, the physical and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives. “And so who Jesus is in the African spiritual universe must not be separated from what he does and can do in that world. The way in which Jesus relates to the importance and function of the ‘spirit fathers’ or ancestors is crucial” (2000:22). This also means that Jesus has to be shown to address the fears contained in the primal worldview. Bediako points out that people need to be clear how Jesus saves them from the terrors and fears they experience in their traditional worldview, (2000:23). Thus by relating a Christian understanding to the realm of ancestors African Christians will be led into living authentic African and Christian lives.

Bediako’s (2000:25-27) discussion of the mediatory role of Christ presents a further helpful apologetic departure point for insisting on the supremacy of Christ in the African approach to mediation. In the traditional view, God is seen to be very remote and transcendent only to be approached through ancestors who are believed to be closer to Him. This transcendence is bridged through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, (Hebrews 9:15). Through the pages of the book of

Hebrews, Bediako (2000:26) argues that Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection play a very important role in bringing an end to the mediation carried out through the ancestral cult. He points out that Christ as the true Elder brother of the Africans shared in the African experience in every way except sin and alienation from God. Now that Christ is in “the presence of his Father, our Father, he displaces the mediatorial function of our natural ‘spirit fathers.’ For these themselves need saving, having originated from among us” (2000:26). This suggests that Christ, as the family member of everyone who believes in him assumes the ancestral role in a higher and infinite way than the primal ancestors. His mediatorial function meets no match as it is an absolute one. Jesus “becomes for us the only mediator between God and ourselves (cf. 1Timothy 2:5). He is the ‘mediator of a better covenant’ (Hebrews 8:6), relating our human destiny directly to God. He is truly our high priest who meets our needs to the full” (2000:26). Bediako further emphasises that Christ’s identification with humanity in order to taste death on their behalf (Hebrews 2:14-15) has opened the door for all who identify with him to be in his divine presence, (Hebrews 10:19-20). As such “this unique achievement renders all other priestly mediations obsolete and reveals their ineffectiveness” (2000:29). Bediako warns that to disregard this incomparable mediation offered by Christ in favour of “ethnic priesthoods in the name of cultural heritage, is to fail to recognise the true meaning and end of all priestly mediation, to abdicate from belonging within the one community of humanity, to clutch at the shadow and miss the substance” (2000:29).

On the function of ancestors and its parallel in Jesus, Bediako points out that since not all who die become ancestors it follows that the validity of the ancestral cult lies in the understanding that it “provides the basis for locating in the transcendent realm the source of authority and power in the community and gives to leadership itself a sacred quality” (2000:30). With this in mind Bediako chooses to classify the ancestral cult in the category of myth with “ancestors being the product of myth-making imagination of the community” (2000:30). This does not mean that the cult becomes worthless, rather this elevates the functional value and significance of the practice. Considered as myth, it “points to the role of the cult

in ensuring social harmony, by strengthening the ties that knit together all sections and generations of the community” (2000:30). As a result the cult of ancestors plays an essential part in “ritual ceremonies that secure the conditions upon which the life and continuity of the community are believed to depend” (2000:30). If the value and function of ancestors lies in their being transcendent references for morality and social order it follows that since they do not originate from the transcendent realm:

It is the myth-making imagination of the community itself which sacralises them, conferring upon them the sacred authority that they exercise through those in the community…the potency of the cult of ancestors is not the potency of ancestors themselves; the potency of the cult is the potency of the myth (2000:30).

Another pointer to the supremacy of Jesus Christ over the ancestors lies in the fact that they do not assume a higher level of existence apart from what there were before they died. In other words, they do not cease to be humans or precisely human spirits. Bediako highlights that “ancestors, even described as ‘ancestral spirits,’ remain essentially human spirits; whatever benefit they may be said to bestow is effectively contained in the fact of their being human” (2000:31). Bediako concludes his discussion by pointing out that there are many things that Christ is that cannot be said of the ancestors. Christ does not rely on the power of any myth for his sustenance and authority. He argues that:

Since ancestral function as traditionally understood is now shown to have no basis in fact, the way is open for appreciating more fully how Jesus Christ is the only real and true Ancestor and Source of life for all mankind, fulfilling and transcending the benefits believed to be bestowed by lineage ancestors (2000:31).