I’m very glad to see you’re interested in building an “authentic Christian, biblical theology” and not an African or Western or any other one. One thing I’ve heard some African theologians reported as saying is, ‘Leave us free to do our own ethno-theologizing!’ For any continental or other-level culture to say that is a danger sign to me. We can and should learn from one another within the Church worldwide, including what in our own cultures, American and Western definitely included, might indeed be errant nonsense.

For your benefit, part of the reason I want to clearly understand you and Imasogie both is that I’ve lived for lengthy periods in two African countries (Congo/Zaire and Kenya) where I think it can matter very much just how/how exactly ontologically real malevolent spiritual entities are construed by different cultures.

All I can manage today on Nairobi time.

With my best regards.

I would ask, Did not Jesus face conflict with real spiritual entities, commonly called “demons” or “unclean/evil spirits,” throughout the Synoptic Gospels, and were not the people of the New Testament therefore rightly concerned with the possibility that these entities might adversely affect their lives? If so, then might it be possible to build an authentic Christian, biblical theology that affirms that such entities are in fact real, and that Christ has won a decisive victory over them through his cross and resurrection?

Christians—African or otherwise—don’t need to start looking for demons behind every rock, but if there’s a demon behind my rock, it’s good to know that Jesus—and not rituals and superstitions of human design—is the answer to getting rid of it.

Since we may be talking past each other to some extent, let’s take it step by step.

First, did Aaron not, in Exodus 32, create for Israel the god whom the people evidently wanted to establish as the one who brought them out of Israel? Similarly, are the gods/idols spoken of in Psalm 115 and Jeremiah 10 not clearly the deaf, dumb, and blind creations of men? What problem, then, with the idea that a people might create its divinities and such?

I suspect we’re in agreement thus far, but maybe not.

So if people in Africa and elsewhere do what Imasogie suggest, it will wean people away from indigenous magical practices and toward Christocentric strategies for dealing with the reality of evil, and our respective mothers and grandmothers will have nothing to worry about.

Makes conversation about God entirely confusing!