Archives

  • Hekima Review No. 66 May 2023

    In his literary classic What Is Not Sacred, Laurenti Magesa alludes
    to a triadic empirical-transcendental-sacramental constituent of
    African spirituality. This manière d’être resonates with the biblical
    claim (Gen 1:31) that everything created is good. However, human
    relation with creation does not always guarantee sacramental and
    transcendental experiences. How then should creation be appropriately
    admired, understood, and embraced without tragic consequences? An
    aesthetic assessment of what is (not) sacred deserves due investigation.

  • Hekima Review No. 65 Dec 2022

    Attention is shifting in recent times from contextual theology to intercultural
    theology, from inculturation to interculturation. The
    discourse on this practice is not new. About thirty years ago, in
    1993, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger declared to the Bishops of Asia: “We
    should no longer speak of inculturation, but of the meeting of cultures
    or of interculturality.”

  • Hekima Review No. 64 May 2022

    On the eve of African independence, the Christian theological discourse
    in Africa was still elaborated in the logical continuation of
    the foundation of Christianity, that of a pre-Christian culture in a
    historicist perspective. By 1956, African priests had begun to radically
    question the Christian colonial salvation, a fact which some have seen
    as the beginning of African theology. After nearly 65 years, one wonders
    where we are in the practice of this discipline, which was initially
    very promising. Indeed, African theology had the wind in its sails after
    the Second Vatican Council. During this assembly, Pope John XXIII
    opened the windows of the Church to the world. T

  • Hekima Review No. 63 Dec 2021

    The year 2021/2022 offers a unique opportunity to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Conversion of St Ignatius to a radical following of Christ. Injured
    in battle at Pamplona on 12th May 1521, Ignatius lay convalescing in his family
    home in Loyola reading the Life of Christ and the Lives of the Saints through much of
    July and August. By September, those around him began to suspect that ‘he wanted
    to make a very great change’ in his life, having seen several outward changes. Among
    those changes was his growing appreciation of the value of religious poverty, a value
    which was to characterise the life of the religious order he founded, the Jesuits.

  • Hekima Review No.62 Dec 2020

    “But, where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Rom. 5:20b), declares St. Paul. The biblical text echoes hope in apparently hopeless situations. The COVID-19 pandemic, arguably, constitutes a sin that has brought about lots of suffering around the globe. People cannot travel as much as they would like to for fear of contracting or spreading the disease. Churches have experienced closure to the effect that religious practitioners cannot freely gather to give praise to their Creator. Schools closed pending amelioration of the COVID-19 pandemic. People have prematurely lost their jobs, and an endless list of lamentations accompany the pandemic.

  • Hekima Review No. 61 May 2020

    Over the past few decades, there has been an increased level of selfconsciousness
    on the African continent. Our political self-consciousness has
    grown, our economic self-consciousness continues to see a steady rise, and our
    theological self-consciousness has significantly advanced. One factor that
    explains this growth in consciousness is the realization of the value of Socrates’
    famous aphorism, which I paraphrase as Africa know thyself and to thyself be
    true. Self-knowledge and self-examination is, therefore, a critical determinant in the
    development of our theological consciousness into theological self-consciousness.

  • Hekima Review No. 60 Dec 2019

    In Mark 12:13-17, we see an encounter between Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Herodians. The latter groups of people attempt to trap Jesus through their questions about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus is clever enough not to fall into this trap. He eventually silences the Pharisees and the Herodians with what has become a famous maxim: "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's:' This encounter Jesus had needs to be unpacked for it bears important consequences, not just in a religious paradigm, but also in a socio-political framework. The various characters in this narrative can be given symbolic meaning.