“Justified By Faith In Christ Alone!”

“Justified By Faith In Christ Alone!”(Gal.2:11-21).
We started making public the embryonic existence of a research centre for the study of African culture, traditional religions, and philosophy, and for the study of issues of gospel and (African) culture. This is not a pipedream.
We have been
groomed by some of the finest scholars in African theology. These include the late Prof. Kwame Bediako, Gerald O West, Isabel Phiri and many others. We cannot do without the late Profs Andrew F. Walls and Allison Howell, who were not Africans but have a passion for what is truly African
ACI, Akropong, Ghana, where we were groomed, is now a big academic institution whose takeoff was this kind of vision. Whatever we are doing, we are continuing the vision of the late Prof. Kwame Bediako.
During my years of teaching at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, I taught African traditional religions and philosophy and African theology.
There is no doubt that any African who has done theology is an African theologian, but not all African theologians have done African theology. Africans have done mostly Western theology, then force to apply it in the African context.
In African theology, we grapple with the interpretation of scriptures in the light of African socio-politico-cultural and traditional religious contexts. This takes into consideration that the Bible is God’s word presented as a cultural document of a specific culture and also contains many cultural contexts.
In all of these, it is ‘Faith seeking understanding.”
Whatever issues of gospel and culture we are grappling with cannot ignore H.R. Niebuhr’s book, “Christ and culture,” published about 75 years ago. Whether it is Christ of culture, Christ with culture, Christ against culture, Christ within culture, Christ the transformer of culture or Christ above culture, all these find backing from the New Testament, and they are the very reasons for many denominational differences and interpretations of scriptures.
Here is one such difference that Paul had with Peter. “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to hi’s face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.”
In fact, as John G. Saxe states in his poem, “The Blindmen of Indostan,” most Theological wars are generated by such hypocrisies of each blind man insisting that a full description of the elephant is the part they touched.
Paul insists that culture is the container that carries the gift. Once you collect the gift, you either discard the container or send it back.
The gift is the content, not the container! Paul underscores this with this key verse of Galatians: Jews “know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law because by observing the law no one will be justified. “ What Paul is saying is that “Christ is above culture.”
As a matter of fact, we cannot set aside the grace of God for purely cultural reasons. At the same time, we cannot act as if Christ came with any culture or as if he came with a culture.
My friend, do not set aside the grace of God because you want to cling to a certain cultural practice. We are not put right with God through any of those practices. If we are saved through any of those cultural practices, then Christ died for nothing.
Did he die for nothing? For me, I know he died for something. He died to save a wretched sinner like me. How about you?
Weekend prayer: Holy Spirit, help us daily to grow in the knowledge that our faith in Christ alone saves. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.
06/09/2025.