What Has Kinshasa to Do with Athens? Methodological Perspectives on Theology and Social Science in Search for a Political Theology

“What has Kinshasa to do with Athens?” is a quintessential African question that has its origins in the query by North African theologian Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florend Tertullianus): “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (De Praescriptione vii).1 The African version refers to the robust debate on theological method between members of the Kinshasa School of Theology that pitted two faculty members against each other: Tharcisse Tshibangu, the Dean of the Faculty, who championed a theology that would draw its arguments mainly from the African cultural, religious, and intellectual world to make it African theology, and A. Vanneste, on the Kinshasa faculty at the time, who called for a universal catholic theology because an African theology limited only to African thought and culture would be isolationist. Today’s question – what does Kinshasa have to do with Athens? – calls for a different analysis that would still involve using African sources; but I must add that another dimension that requires urgent attention if theological thinking in Africa is going proceed from a broad platform is the relationship between theology and the social sciences. I argue that theological scholarship in Africa should maintain a robust dialogue with the social sciences in order to forge a new and creative discourse on political theology.2 I begin with a brief review of the debate between Abongkhiameghe Orobator and Charles Nyamiti on methodology to demonstrate the imperative of such a dialogue.3 I then present arguments supporting my view