1.2.2 Igbo World View
A People is known through an understanding of their world-view. This is clearly expressed by O. U. Kalu who maintains that:
A thorough grasp of the world-view of any given group of people is a fundamental prerequisite for the understanding of the rest of the interconnected beliefs, ideas, values and practices of the groups. This is because the people’s world-view or ideology (in modern parlance), is their unified picture of the cosmos and reality as a whole, explained by a system of concepts which orders the natural and social
46 M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu. “Some Fundamental Problems in the Application of Lexicostatistics in the Study of African Languages.” In Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, Bd. 21(1975), 6-17.
47M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu. An Igbo Civilization, 8
rhythms and every other event, as well as determines the place of individuals and communities in them.48
Cosmologically, Igbo people believe in the existence of two worlds, which interact with each other yet are divided between “the physical and the spiritual world.”49 The physical world is inhabited by living human beings, plants, and animals of all kinds, while the spiritual world is the abode of the spirits of the dead ancestors and the gods. Arinze buttresses this idea by maintaining that “[t]he objects of Ibo religious belief and worship in the strict sense are three: God, non-human Spirits and the Ancestors.”50 In another place the author writes, “[v]ery common is belief in spirits, both non-human spirits and human spirits who are the ancestors.”51 The Igbo also believe strongly that the living and the dead communicate in a mysterious way. Most of the modes of such interactions between the living and the dead are expressed in Igbo idioms, proverbs, story-telling, and gestures, as well as through natural disasters. “The traditional Igbo achieved in their own particular way such an ordered vision of reality. Using the criteria of time and space which seem to encapsulate all other experiences, they perceive the universe as a tiered structure: the sky above (Elu Igwe), the solid earth (Ala), and the underworld (Ala-Mmuo). Each of these spheres is an inhabited region.”52 The regions interact with one another through ritual sacrifices from humans.
Thus, Igbo cosmology is centered around the maintenance of human life. “Igbo traditional world-view is fundamentally a religious one. Man’s fortune and destiny are conceptualized in dynamic and delicate relationship with the activities of numerous spiritual beings and forces believed to inhabit the various regions of the cosmic order. However, the enhancement of his life
48 O. U. Kalu. “Igbo Traditional Religious Systems.” in A Survey of the Igbo Nation. 352.
49 Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria, 11–12.
50 Francis A. Arinze. Sacrifice in Ibo Traditional Religion., 8.
51 Francis Arinze. “Christianity Meets Igbo Traditional Religion,” in Interface Between Igbo Theology and Christianity, ed. Akuma-Kalu Njoku and Elochukwu Uzukwu (New Castle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), 11.
52 O. U. Kalu. “Igbo Traditional Religious Systems.” in A Survey of the Igbo Nation, 352.
remains the most vital consideration in the entire perception and scheme of things.”53 This religious centeredness in Igbo world-view motivates their quest for the divine. Hence, “there is sufficient evidence to conclude firmly that the Igbo belief in the Supreme Being is a vital element of the world-view.”54 The Igbo also believe that Chukwu or Chineke as the creator of all things takes special care of all. “There is also a general belief that God creates and cares for each individual person. This is expressed in the Igbo belief that when God creates each person, he gives him a chi guardian spirit.”55 According to John Umeh, “… the Igbo traditionally believe that nothing can ever exist without a Chi irrespective of whether or not that thing is human or spiritual…”56
In this regard, Arinze continues to emphasize the fact that “prayer and sacrifice figure very much in Igbo Traditional Religion…. the idea of the priesthood is also strong. Human beings are expected in their lives to be attentive to the moral laws of right and wrong, as expressed by customs, directives from the ancestors and moral taboos. To ignore them would be to court trouble from the ancestors or from the spirits.”57 Therefore the Igbo naming system also follows a pattern that depicts the circumstances which prevailed when a child is born.
Uchendu notes that besides naming children after their parents, “other names may be given to show the market day on which a child is born.”58 The Igbo belief in a Supreme Being is also conceptualized in the names they give their children. In the view of Kalu, “The names Chukwuka, Ifeanyichukwu, Onyekachukwu, Chukwuemeka, Chukwulozie, Ikechukwu, Olisanumba among numerous others render some of the major attributes of God as conceptualized by the traditional
53 Ibid, 353.
54 Ibid, 354.
55 Emefie Ikenga – Metuh., and Christopher I. Ejizu. Hundred Years of Catholicism in Eastern Nigeria 1885- 1985:
The Nnewi Story - A Historico- Missiological Analysis. (Nimo, Nigeria: Asele Institute, 1985), xvi.
56 John A. Umeh. After God Is Dibia: Igbo Cosmology, Divination & Sacred Science in Nigeria Volume One. (London: Kamak House, 1997), 130.
57 Francis Arinze. “Christianity Meets Igbo Traditional Religion,” 11–12.
58 Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria, 60.
Igbo”59. Children could also be named according to belief in the ancestors who are presupposed to be the living-dead, with such names as Nna-Nna (the father’s father), Nne Nnaya (the father’s mother), Nnamdi (my father lives), and many others.
The Igbo also have organized market days, seasons of the year, and monthly calendar as well as traditional festivals, such as the “new yam festival,”60 which is celebrated throughout Igboland. Isichei argues that “[a]ll observers agreed that the Ibo world view was overwhelmingly a religious one.”61 This is very remarkable and one reason that the early European missionaries to Igboland needed to study the Igbo religiosity and decipher the handwriting on the wall. “Igbo traditional religion is conspicuously concerned with the worship of various classes of divinities.
Every traditional Igbo group has its own pantheon, comprising all the deities acknowledged in the place. Some of these are regarded as arch-deities and identified with the origin and destiny of the people.”62 This is an eloquent witness to the fact that Igbo people communicated with God, the deities and the ancestors in their cultural ways before Christianity came in their midst. To be overwhelmingly religious means that Igbo people were seeking for salvation in their traditional way and would have advanced further ontologically. From this knowledge of Igbo cosmology, we shall now examine culture itself for a better understanding of the term. Though many authors have delved extensively into the realm of culture, ours is a brief analysis.
1.2.3 Towards a Further Understanding of Culture
59 O. U. Kalu. “Igbo Traditional Religious Systems,” in A Survey of the Igbo Nation, 354.
60 Simon Onyewueke Eboh. African Communalism: The Way to Social Harmony and Peaceful Co-Existence.
(Frankfurt am Main, London: IKO – Verlag fur Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 2004), 106.
61 Isichei, The Ibo People, 80.
62 O. U. Kalu. “Igbo Traditional Religious Systems.” in A Survey of the Igbo Nation, 355.
Culture is the sum total of a people’s way of life from birth till death. It is the expression of a people’s manner of marrying, giving birth, rearing a child, living with neighbors, praying, dancing, artwork, mode of dressing, language, gestures, and burial rites. According to Anthony Gittins, “We can begin, therefore, with these common intuitions: that culture is about people-in-society, about how they live, and about how individuals and groups are both similar to and different from others.”63 In the view of Georg Langemeyer, “Culture is the specifically human way through which persons perceive and shape their reality, that is, their own selves, their fellow human beings and the world they share. Human beings are creatures who possess and who produce culture.
Culture is closely linked with religion yet must be distinguished from it. ... Religion and culture, however, remain related to one another.”64
Subsequently, Gittins affirms, along with T.J. Gorringe, that “[c]ulture describes how people live, the shape of their daily lives, their worlds of meaning, communication, symbols, ritual, and more; it is ‘concerned with the spiritual, ethical, and intellectual significance of the material world. It is, therefore, of fundamental theological significance.’ Since we cannot survive without culture, it is equally impossible to detach faith from culture….”65
From the above we can see that culture is God’s gift to humanity. Therefore, culture is an ally of religion, which helps human beings to approach God as creator. Chris U. Manus affirms this interwoven relationship between religion and culture by saying that “[a]s far back as 1947, Christopher Dawson had recognized the nexus between religion and culture. He asserts that both realities are often inseparable, for religion cannot escape the necessity of being incarnated in a
63 Anthony J. Gittins. Living Mission Interculturally: Faith, Culture, and the Renewal of Praxis. (College Ville, Minnesota: A Michael Glazier Book. Liturgical Press, 2015), 34.
64 Georg Langemeyer. “Culture” in Handbook of Catholic Theology. Wolfgang Beinert and Francis Schussler (eds.,). (New York: A Herder & Herder Book, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000), 158.
65 Anthony J. Gittins. Living Mission Interculturally, 62. Gittins also quoted from, T. J. Gorringe. Furthering Humanity: A Theology of Culture. (Hants, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 3.
culture.”66 Every human being, every country and ethnic milieu emanates from a specific cultural setting. This explains why we talk of Western culture, African culture, American culture, Christian culture, and others. Charles Kraft, in analyzing the ideas of the famous anthropologist, E. B. Taylor (1871),67 maintains that
[e]ach of us is thus shaped in the nonbiological portion of our being by the culture into which we are born. We are shaped by a culture transmitted to us by the adults in our life. Humans thus may be regarded as shaped and culture-transmitting beings. But we not only are shaped by and participate in the transmission of our culture; we also influence it and contribute to its reshaping.
Indeed… humans originally created culture.68
In this same vein, Shorter observes that “[c]ulture is what a human being learns, or acquires, as a member of society. It comprises the learned aspects – as opposed to the inherited aspects – of human thinking and human behavior.”69 Hence, culture is the way we reveal ourselves to others and the way others reveal themselves to us.70 In this regard, it sounds convincing, then, that culture embraces every aspect of human endeavor and the society we live in. Taylor quotes Vincente Kiaziku in maintaining that “… everything is culture. And, if we contrast nature and culture, the latter is all that man acquires or produces with his ingenuity and his effort.”71 Floyd defines culture from the practical point of view. “The term ‘culture’ refers to those aspects of life of a people which relate to their attitudes, objectives, and technical abilities. It is the people’s
66Chris Ukachukwu Manus. “Methodological Approaches…,” 7.
67 Most authors including Charles H. Kraft and Aylward Shorter, and Thomas Barfield refer to the definition of culture given by Sir Edward Taylor as the most celebrated definition. For them, Taylor defines culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” See Shorter, Toward a Theology, 4. See also Charles H. Kraft, Christianity in Culture, 45; Thomas Barfield. (ed.,). Dictionary of Anthropology. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 98.
68 Charles H. Kraft. Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1979), 47.
69 Shorter, Toward a Theology, 4.
70 Cf. Orlando O. Espin. “Traditioning: Culture, Daily Life and Popular Religion, and their impact on Christian Tradition.” in Futuring Our Past: Explorations in the Theology of Tradition, ed. Orlando O. Espin and Gary Macy.
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2006), 4, 18, no. 4.
71 Vincente Carlos Kiaziku. Culture and Inculturation: A Bantu Viewpoint. (Nairobi, Kenya: Pauline Publications Africa, 2009), 33.
accustomed ways of living, their social organization and their productive (or destructive) activities in seeking to nurture their society.”72
So far, our analysis of culture shows how important this concept is and how it will help us to understand its relationship with religion. Shorter gives a clue about this relationship by noting that “[c]ulture is therefore essentially a transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a pattern capable of development and change, and it belongs to the concept of humanness itself. It follows that if religion is a human phenomenon or human activity, it must affect, and be affected by, culture.”73 Religion is obviously a human activity because it involves the entire human being in relation to God and creation, life and death, and the afterlife. In this sense, it is human activity and, as such, a part of human culture. Hence, Igbo Traditional Religion is part of Igbo culture.
However, because culture is dynamic, no single culture is the model for all to follow.
Different people have different cultures, which is the aspect we need to emphasize more as it pertains to the Church, its worship patterns, and the missionary evangelization of peoples around the entire world today. The diverse nature of culture marks it out as being ready to be enriched as well as to enrich others who may not have been familiar with a given cultural ambience. Hence, a static culture is dangerous because it allows little or no room for change. A vibrant culture admits change and allows interaction with people from varying cultural backgrounds. In this process when the Christian religion encounters a new culture dialogue is the meeting ground. This dialogue between the Christian faith and culture gives birth to mutual understanding and cementing of the relationship. This will lead us to analyzing another important aspect of culture dealing with faith, which is referred to as inculturation.
1.2.4 What is Inculturation?
72 Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 45.
73 Shorter, Toward a Theology, 5.
Inculturation is still a neologism in Church circles, though it has long existed in other forms of Christianity. For instance, Orthodox Catholicism has a long history of inculturation, which explains or justifies their non-centralized understanding of Christian liturgy and living experiences. For this reason, Uzukwu argues that “[i]nculturation is popularly described in Roman Catholic official and nonofficial documents as the incarnation of the Christian message in cultures.
The idea of incarnation is derived from the Christian experience of the incarnation of the Word.”74 The Church of the twentieth-century has witnessed many changes and challenges since after the Second Vatican Council, which took place between 1962 and 1965.
This Council, which marked a turning point in both the method and process of the Church’s evangelization, paved the way for a paradigm shift toward engaging in dialogue with cultures instead of upholding the monologue of the early missionary enterprise. In the African context, Uzukwu uses the analogy of marriage, wherein dialogue plays a significant role. “Marriage involves a dialogue between two families, kindreds, or clans, which is concluded as a covenant or pact. Inculturation involves a dialogue between the whole way of life of African…. and the Christian message. The end result is an intimate bond between African cultures and the Christian message.”75 This expression of bond makes inculturation authentic because it brings people of different cultures together. “Authentic inculturation must be simple and transformative with enduring values which have a deep meaning in the lives of the people. Its importance in theology today, especially in the mission countries, cannot be overstressed.”76
74 Uzukwu. A Listening Church, 6.
75 Ibid., 6–7.
76 Patrick C. Chibuko. “A Practical Approach to Liturgical Inculturation.” in AFER, 43 no. 1- 2 (Feb-Apr 2001): 2–
27.
Different mission regions have cultures, languages, and contexts peculiar to them, which the Church ought to take into consideration in the process of evangelization. As the church and the Gospel message expand, many cultures are encountered. The monocultural method of evangelization carried out by early European missionaries to Africa and other parts of the developing world needs to be modernized to reflect the cultural contexts of the receiving mission lands. As the Church encounters diversity and plurality of cultures, her missionary outlook changes to embrace these diversities and to make the Gospel message part and parcel of the receiving culture. Schineller expresses this view in an analysis of the diversity and plurality of the global world and of how nations differ culturally from one another. No one nation is exactly the same with the other and this is where the Church should emphasize the need for inculturation.77
Most theologians associate the earliest attempts at using and defining inculturation with the Society of Jesus.78 For instance, Shorter argues that Fr. Joseph Masson used the term before 1962 when the Second Vatican Council started and that Fr. Pedro Arrupe used inculturation also in a letter to the entire Jesuit Society in 1978.79 Both Shorter and Schineller present the definition given by Arrupe as follows:
The incarnation of Christian life and of the Christian message in a particular cultural context, in such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question, but becomes a principle that animates, directs and unifies the culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring about a
‘new creation’.80
This definition received wide acclamation by theologians; and, as such, inculturation should be the guiding principle that animates and transforms a people’s culture to embrace the
77 Cf. Schineller, A Handbook on Inculturation, 6-7.
78 Cf. Carl F. Starkloff. “Inculturation and Cultural Systems (Part 1).” in Theological Studies 55 (1994): 66–81.
79 Cf. Shorter, Toward a Theology, 10.
80 Pedro Arrupe. “Letter to the Whole Society on Inculturation,” qtd. in Shorter, Toward a Theology, 11. See Schineller, A Handbook on Inculturation, 6. See also Olikenyi, African Hospitality, 50.
Christian faith in their local context. Therefore, Schineller sees inculturation as not only pertaining to culture or cultural issues but also as having a Biblical foundation in the Gospel of John (1:14) which “goes back to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.”81 Based on this Biblical foundation, Carl Starkloff affirms, “Any theory of inculturation in a Christian context depends fundamentally on biblical interpretation and church history. It must examine in depth the relationships between the church and cultures, starting from the beginnings of the community in the New Testament era and in the formative age of patristic theology, and continuing on through Christian history.”82
In the view of Marcello Azevedo—and which a look at Christian history seems to bear out—a turning point has been reached in the ways the Church is carrying out its missionary activities around the entire world. This turning point is the major focus of the conciliar and synodal documents and recent papal publications as could be seen in the following excerpt:
Since the Second Council of the Vatican, and especially since the Synod on Evangelization (1974) and the subsequent publication by Paul VI of Evangelii Nuntiandi (8 December1975), theological reflection and ecclesial praxis have demonstrated a deepening sensitivity to the relation between faith and culture, which has come to be denoted inculturation. Inculturation is not a theological, missiological, or pastoral fad, it is an essential quality of revelation, evangelization, and theological reflection.83
If this is the case, one might ask certain pertinent questions: How does inculturation help to promote people’s understanding of the Christian faith? How would the interaction between faith and culture pave the way to a real incarnation of the Gospel message into the lifestyle of a people, considering their behavioral patterns, their manner of worship, and their mode of accepting the Christian faith? Is inculturation only a concept on paper, or is it for practical implementation?
If this is the case, one might ask certain pertinent questions: How does inculturation help to promote people’s understanding of the Christian faith? How would the interaction between faith and culture pave the way to a real incarnation of the Gospel message into the lifestyle of a people, considering their behavioral patterns, their manner of worship, and their mode of accepting the Christian faith? Is inculturation only a concept on paper, or is it for practical implementation?