John Mbiti rightly notes that Africans are a notoriously religious people. To the African, religion pervades all of life. In our ancestor’s religious intuition, the physical world is not all there is. The cosmos has a spiritual dimension, just as real as the physical world; this spiritual realm has a direct influence over everything that happens. Consequently, nothing happens in this life without spiritual causes. In this matter, we should acknowledge that our forefathers were more insightful than their Western and materialist counterparts. As their heirs, we must cling to this inherited truth: there is more to life and the cosmos than what our senses tell us.
Misguided Notions About the Spiritual Realm
Upon examining our ancestors’ understanding of the spiritual realm, however, we quickly realise that the spiritual world looks like — to borrow Osadolor Imasogie’s expression — a bureaucratic monotheism. With a supreme being, a government made of lesser deities, advisors and perhaps most importantly, lobbyists. In fact, the parallels with some African governments are impossible to miss; perhaps, too apparent to be a coincidental.
Our ancestors’ understanding of the spiritual world looks like a bureaucratic monotheism.
But where did our ancestors’ knowledge of the spiritual realm come from? One might argue that the traditional conception of this hierarchy within the spiritual world is merely a projection of traditional forms of African government. There is a chief and then a council made of people with lower authority and then there are messengers, mediators and all sort of intermediaries who serve the kingdom differently, depending on the circumstances.
It is my contention in this article that because our ancestors’ intuitions concerning the spiritual realm are adopted from the physical world, modelled after worldly pattern, they are misguided. As Herman Bavinck remarks, “belief in a spiritual world is rooted in and profoundly expresses the truth of revelation; only God can make it known to us, and he has done so in Scripture.”
Only God Can Make Reality Known
Our ancestors claim that the cosmos was created by the supreme being. They would attribute to this being properties such as spirituality, omnipotence, eternity, and so on. Interestingly, however, nowhere do they claim to have received the knowledge of the spiritual world from this supreme being.
One of the reasons they haven’t made the claim and cannot in fact make the claim is that the supreme being has nowhere uttered a single word. Despite being potent enough to create the world, this being cannot speak. He hasn’t spoken. Furthermore, in many African theologies, the supreme being is distant, and therefore uninvolved. This being does not bother interacting with humans.
Despite being potent enough to create the world, this supreme being cannot speak.
Some African theologians have contended that the supreme being is the same god as the triune God of the Bible. They claim that Africans are monotheist and their god has the same attributes as the Christian God. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, unlike the supreme being, the God of the Bible is a speaking God. His triune nature makes him inherently a communicating God. Though transcendent, the one and true is also immanent. He has spoken to us, revealing not only the nature of our physical world and the purpose of human life but also, though sparingly, the reality of the spiritual realm and the beings that inhabit it.
Our forefathers’ claims, therefore, lack credibility. They didn’t consult the right sources. To put it bluntly, they didn’t truly know what they were talking about. By contrast, Christian theology insists that what we can know about the spiritual world must come from someone who doesn’t only inhabit it but is also the creator and governor of the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1; Nehemiah 9:6).
Biblical Correctives to our Ancestors’ Understanding
To their credit, our ancestors got a few things right. They perceived a spiritual realm, insisting on various kinds of spiritual beings that inhabit this realm, who have influence over our physical world. This light is a gift from God. However, as the Westminster Confession of Faith rightly points out, what can be known from the light of nature is always insufficient. In fact, it is only enough to seal our guilt before the holy God. Our ancestors knew enough to be kept in bondage, never enough to be comforted.
Our ancestors only knew enough to be kept in bondage, never enough to be comforted.
From what we observe in the world, it is a spiritual battlefield involving forces of good and evil. Our ancestors were correct, postulating that the spiritual world is populated by good and evil spirits. However, they added that the world is governed by lesser deities. In these ancestral beliefs we encounter the limitations of general revelation. The knowing we derive from it is inadequate. Below are three things our forefathers didn’t get quite right, which the Bible thankfully corrects.
1. The Spiritual Realm Isn’t a Chaotic Bureaucracy
The spiritual realm isn’t the cabinet of some distant, indifferent deity, surrounded by self-serving collaborators and a multitude of spirits, capricious lobbyists, who are never tamed or satisfied.
To be clear, the Bible affirms that the spiritual world is filled with spiritual beings. However, unlike our ancestors’ religious intuitions, the Bible maintains that the spiritual world is governed and directed by the sovereign Lord God. Both the spiritual and physical world are under his absolute control and authority. Therefore while these spiritual beings exercise influence in our world, they cannot outstep the boundaries set by God. They cannot act unless God permits.
In the ancestral worldview it’s incredibly difficult to know which spirits are for or against us.
What difference does this make? In the ancestral worldview it’s incredibly difficult to know which spirits are for us and which are against us. It is even harder to know if the spiritual forces we appeased have been satisfied or how many remain to be appeased. Or whether the good spirit will not be jealous of the offerings we made to these other spirits and turn against us and demand to be appeased. If, on the other hand, the cosmos is governed by one sovereign God, we don’t have to live in fear and insecurity.
2. Spiritual Being Are Merely Servants, Not Kings
The Bible is clear that there is only one sovereign Lord and that all other spiritual beings are his servants. As we’ve seen above, this means we need not fear those powers. At the same time, we should be careful not to say more than what the Bible reveals about the spiritual realm. One thing that the Bible repeatedly and explicitly makes clear, however, is that spiritual beings are neither omnipresent, omnipotent nor omniscient. They cannot do what God alone does. Neither can they undo what God has already done. Nor can they oppose what he decrees.
Just as we need not fear angels or evil spirits, we shouldn’t worship them.
Africans are often surprised to realise that the devil is God’s servant. But he is. Although angelic beings or spirits are powerful, they are finite creatures, totally subject to God and in service to his redemptive purposes. In fact, they are even called servants of those who’ve been redeemed (Hebrews 1:14). To that extent, humans are said to be superior to angels (Hebrews 2:5-9). Just as we need not fear them, we shouldn’t worship them (Revelation 19:10; 22:9).
3. Christ is the Sole Mediator Between God and Man
In much traditional African thought, spiritual beings are depicted as brokers, mediating deals between humans and divinities. However, the Bible portrays spiritual beings, especially angels, as spectators. They are involved in the redemptive work only insofar as God sends them to carry a message or joyfully marvel at it. They cannot redeem, atone, propitiate or forgive sins. Therefore offering sacrifices to spiritual beings can neither appease evil spirits nor secure favours from good spirits.
How useless is it to offer sacrifices to these lesser beings?
Angels are not worthy of sacrifice, just as they aren’t worthy of worship. For as we saw in the previous point, they are mere servants. How useless is it to offer sacrifices to these lesser beings? Human sinners need a perfect human mediator, not an angelic mediator. That is why, the eternal son of God had to become human (John 1:1, 14). Christ alone mediates between God and man, because he alone is the God-man (1 Timothy 2:5). No angel could fulfil this function.
This is a profound theological truth worthy of careful meditation. For it demonstrates that God so loves us that he was prepared to give nothing less than his only begotten Son (John 3:16). Hallelujah! That is how God dignifies us. Offering sacrifices to spiritual beings doesn’t only undervalue our humanity it also rejects the superiority of God’s Son. God gives his Son. To turn to spirit mediators ignores the costly love God has shown.
The African Fascination with the Spiritual Realm
Africans have long been fascinated by the spiritual world. Sadly, this fascination serves only to keep people in bondage and fear. But Christians know better. The spiritual world is governed by a good and sovereign God. And because of his reign, as one Old Testament believer encourages us, be glad and rejoice. Similarly, in closing, he warns that all those who worship idols including the veneration of spirits will be put to shame (Psalm 97:1, 7).
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