Holiness in African Perspective
The term matakatifu leaves room for confusion in Kiswahili. Matakatifu is clearly related to kutakaswa, which is to be cleansed of untoward spiritual powers, i.e. evil spirits. As a result what is matakatifu in Kiswahili that should biblically be hagios can be taken as katharos. (Although I have included Kinyore terms in my table, I will not comment on them in this paper. I leave the Wanyore to consider them further.)
The research underlying the above table is limited to just three Biblical passages. Extending our investigations to more Bible passages, and from the Old to the New Testament, could lead to the discovery of additional complexity.
The Swept House
43 “When an impure [akathartos] spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean [sesaroemenon, no mention of ‘clean’ in the original Greek] and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked [poneirotera] than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked [poneira] generation” (Matthew 12:43-45).
This teaching of Jesus implies that merely chasing out a spirit is not enough. That is to say, katharos is not enough. A katharos state leaves no defence against evil spirits. By implication hagios is needed as a means of defence against incoming evil spirits. This is the basis for the renowned Church of God doctrine, that hagios can be complete (olotoleis), thus apparently barring access to evil spirits (Thessalonians 5:23).
Cleansing the Temple
In Luke 19:45-48 (and also Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-19, John 2:13-22) it seems that people were expecting Jesus to cleanse Jerusalem (render it katharos by chasing away the Romans), but Jesus was preoccupied with making Jerusalem holy (rendering it hagios) through his action in the temple. The use of the English term ‘cleansing’ for what Jesus did in the temple seems to be unfortunate.
Conclusion
I raise this issue in this Maarifa lecture because it seems to be in various ways consequential for African society. The African understanding articulated above has at least two consequences:
- Theological education materials from the West tend to presuppose that issues of akathartos are already dealt with and past. They focus on the achievement of hagios. Secular texts presuppose that hagios has also been achieved. This leaves little room for dealing with African issues of akathartos. While African churches are heavily occupied in dealing with akathartos, such has little or no recognition in theological literature, especially that which is in English or other European languages.
- The achievement of hagios is a positive. In many respects, dealing with akathartos is an attempt at doing away with a negative. The emphasis in Africa on dealing with akathartos, where even biblical reference to hagios is taken as being to katharos, leaves African Christianity with the rest of African culture being pre-occupied in dealing with negatives instead of building positives.
The solution of the above difficulties requires close attention to language uses, especially translation of theological texts and discourses between European and African languages. Failure to consider translation sufficiently carefully can result in the occlusion of very real African issues out of sight of formal Christian theological education as widely practiced.
PR
This paper was originally presented as a Maarifa Lecture, Kima International School of Theology, Maseno, Kenya, 19th June 2013.
Notes
[1] The Old Testament Greek terms I have included in the above are from the Septuagint (Brenton 1851). Bible quotes in English are from the NIV.
[2] Taken from Young (1982).
[3] “whereas the common may be either pure or impure the sacred may not be impure …”.
Bibliography
Brenton, Sir. Lancelot, C.L., 1851. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. London: Hendrickson Publishers.
Milgrom, Jacob, 1991. Leviticus 1-16 – a new translation with introduction and commentary. New York: The Anchor Bible, Doubleday.
Harries, Jim, 2007. ‘Pragmatic Theory Applied to Christian Mission in Africa: with special reference to Luo responses to ‘bad’ in Gem, Kenya.’ PhD Thesis. The University of Birmingham. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/15/ (accessed 2nd January 2010).
Mojola, Aloo Osotsi, 2003, ‘Holiness and Purity in the Book of Leviticus – a problem in the Luyia dialects.’ A paper presented at AICMAR – AST, Butere, Kenya on August 12-15, 2003. (Also published in AICMAR Bulletin, Volume 3, 2004, pp41-53.)
Young, Robert, 1982, Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible. London: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
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