The Ancestors and Jesus Christ in African Theology - Augustine Chingwala Musopole - Bog

Africans have considered their ancestors the mediators between them and their creator, how come Christianity, it declared that there was one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus. How do African Christians reconcile these two claims? The doctrine of the communion of saints is inadequate since sainthood and ancestorhood are not the same. since Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets among the Jews, it is argued that he did the same with the Africans. John the Baptist questions the viability of the Jewish ancestry in view of the coming of the Messiah. St. Paul has argued that both Jews and Gentiles are children of Abraham based on the faith through which Abraham was justified by God. Jesus fulfills, supersedes, and has become the one mediator. In him the role of the African ancestors is accomplished and they are also fulfilled in him. While the West have related to their ancestors through history, the Africans have done so ritualistically. The God of Jesus is also the God of our ancestors and through their life affirming traditions of wisdom, the also served the living God. They are the living dead in the living God.