The lacuna around race in (white) Christian theological anthropology has often been pointed out. The canon of academic systematic theology seldom reflects on the implication of modern race and racism for our theological anthropologies and, therefore, fails to provide adequate resources for dealing with one of the most fundamental problems of modern theological anthropology – that the modern human was conceived through a white racial lens. Black theology, in its various streams, has responded with a theological anthropology that consciously disrupted a modern anthropology which thought of ‘man’ as white (and male). This article analyses the sustained work around theological anthropology of South African Black Theologian Simon Maimela. Maimela over a number of years attempted to articulate the theological problem of white anthropology, or the anthropological problem of white theology, in South Africa. Two dominant pillars are identified in Maimela’s theological anthropology and these are connected to the influence of Black theology and African theology on his work, and his attempt at drawing these traditions together. Maimela’s theological critique on whiteness will be discussed and key contemporary implications noted.
In what has become a well-known narrative in Reformed circles, Botman (
As a student of Professor Jaap Durand in the year 1978, I was challenged, together with the rest of the class, to come to a theological evaluation of the problem of apartheid. He refused to accept our usual legal (‘apartheid is a crime against humanity’), political (‘apartheid is undemocratic’) and economic (‘apartheid is an exploitation of human and natural resources’) condemnations of apartheid. (p. 240)
In 1982, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) declared apartheid a heresy; it was not merely a legal, political, economic or even an ethical problem, apartheid was a deeply
As illustration, David Bosch and Simon Maimela presented two chapters in the South African publication following the 1982 WARC decision,
This article explores an alternative avenue in describing apartheid as a theological problem by exploring Simon Maimela’s theological anthropology, arguing that it provides important resources for understanding how race continues to function theologically beyond the confines of apartheid as a political system.
In the rest of this article, I will first highlight the
I take as a basic starting point that notions of race have fundamentally shaped modern conceptions of the human. To follow William Jennings’ argument, this involved both questions of how the people of the world were connected to each other and how bodies related to space in the formation of identity (Jennings
Elaine Robinson’s brief overview of North American theologies, both black
Perhaps no better example can be given than David Kelsey’s (
It is within this silence that I will turn to Simon Maimela’s anthropological reflections as one attempt at naming race in general, and whiteness in particular, within South African theological anthropology.
As a systematic theologian, Maimela reflects on two
Throughout his career, Maimela held that apartheid is at its heart an anthropological problem: the deepest problem with apartheid is that it negates the being of black people (Maimela
when that pessimistic anthropology became embodied in the apartheid ideology and its social structures, it became the greatest single factor that was to result in the division of our racial groups from one another rather than their reconciliation. (Maimela
Without here embarking on a discussion on the extent to which Black theology has a white audience, whether explicit or implicit, and to what extent Black theology should or should not have a white audience, it is still important to note that a number of Maimela’s essays were consciously written with a white audience in mind. As a Black theologian, he was at a number of points asked to reflect on the implication of Black theology for white South Africans in late-apartheid South Africa.
Maimela’s constructive proposal for theological anthropology rests on two pillars that I will describe in my analysis as the democratisation of power and a relational anthropology. In his final argument
It can be argued that in these two pillars Maimela is also attempting to draw together Black theology and African theology, a relation that was under sustained debate during the time when he reflected on anthropology, in particular in Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) where Maimela played an active role (Molobi
Emphasising the anthropological aspects of Maimela’s critique should not be read as an attempt at shying away from the material reality underpinning racism. In 1979 Maimela explicitly identified himself with those who attempt to see class and race together (Hopkins
Therefore the elimination of sin requires greater effort than the conversion of few pious individuals. Its elimination demands a radical liberation and transformation of humanity itself as well as the transformation of society. This happens when men and women together with God struggle to build up a just society (
That said, behind the injustice of apartheid, Maimela described an impoverished and heretical theological anthropology.
I turn first to his constructive anthropological vision, which acts as a mirror for noting the anthropological deficiencies of whiteness. In this vision, we see Maimela (
Even more important it [
Perhaps falling into the trap of a lack of dialogue between systematic theologians and biblical scholars (Middleton
On a more general note, Maimela connects the
Rather, the point in which Maimela’s positive anthropology is most clearly expressed, and which ties together his arguments over a number of years, concerns the power given to human beings. In the
God’s image in humans has to be understood in terms both of human living relationships to their surroundings and of their calling to a dynamic task and vocation of becoming sharers of God’s creative nature. (p. 16)
Maimela’s positive anthropology must be read as positive not only about the value of human beings but optimistic about the potential of human beings to transform their worlds, about the
the idea of divine image should be understood as referring to the divine empowerment of men and women, granting to them of the ability to create and produce the world and to structure human interrelationships for the furtherance of history. (Maimela
He also defines the divine image as humans’ ‘empowerment to become the co-creators with God, within the overall context of divine creativity’ (Maimela
However, the explicit development of human empowerment as a notion in a Black theology of liberation can only be understood when noting Maimela’s insistence on what I would call the democratisation of power. The problem with colonialism is the monopolising of the vocation of creative agency, excluding black people from God’s task of having dominion over the earth and being agents of history (Maimela
While the argument above is drawn from the latest iteration of Maimela’s theological anthropology, in retrospect it is clear that this emphasis on empowerment was key to Maimela’s anthropology from the beginning. As an example, when arguing for a theology of humanisation in 1982, he writes ‘it is in their power to make the world into something in which every human being can enjoy freedom and social justice’ (Maimela
Middleton’s (
As part of an argument explaining to a white audience why Black Power (which Maimela equates with Black Consciousness
This strong emphasis on dominion however warrants at least a brief note on ecology. From a contemporary ecotheological perspective, Maimela could be described as anthropocentric in his optimistic anthropology. There is a strong line of argument in which humans are sketched as being outside of ‘nature’, and where the value of creation is reduced to its support for human life, rather than having value for its own sake.
Without enforcing a too strict division into Maimela’s work, a second and distinct development in his theological anthropology can be discerned. Maimela merges these two lines of argument in numerous places, perhaps most comprehensively in the last pages of
One of the questions that Maimela addresses in a number of places is what the African contribution to the Christian faith would be (cf. Maimela
The result of this relational anthropology is that sin is understood primarily, if not exclusively
This African perspective on anthropology, which looks at life holistically in terms of the multiple relationships in which life is lived, the perspective that lays greater stress on the social wrongs and evils which humans commit against their fellows, is one which
What is important is that he presents his theological anthropology consciously by drawing from experience and culture, in this case what is considered a valuable contribution from African experience and culture. While he presents this as being in line with scripture (Maimela
Concerning the question of sources in theology, there is a moment in Maimela’s work that hints towards a more decisive break with the project of what he would describe as traditional theology. This possible break is found in him throwing down the gauntlet to Black theology. In a 1993 publication, Maimela critiques Black theology for its naïve use of scripture and its attempts at convincing others that its view of God is free from ideological distortion. Rather, Maimela argues that Black theology should take full responsibility for its own claims, arguing that the truth of Black theology is not necessarily found in superior interpretation of scripture, but rather in its moral or practical value: Black theology speaks about God in a way that works for ‘liberating the black people from oppression, thus leading them to realize their fuller humanity’, and the truth of Black theology should be determined by its effectiveness (Maimela
Against this background Maimela’s theological critique of white anthropology, or anthropological question to white theology, becomes clear. I point to three theological critiques, giving a more expanded explanation of the first, which is not directly related to his positive proposals, and a more brief explanation on the last two, which is the mirror image of his positive proposals.
Maimela is quite explicit in stating that the problem of white racism is not found in the classic statements of Christian anthropology or how they are appropriated in contemporary white churches (
There is a problem that Maimela is attempting to describe and make sense of, or perhaps an utterly strange anthropological phenomenon that Maimela (
the concept of ‘man’ in White theology is one of the most difficult for an outsider, that is, one who is not White, to analyse and to try to make sense of. This is because the portrait or construal of what is constitutive of the human that White theology offers its readers strikes a Black person as a creature with which he cannot identify himself. For human self (‘man’) as portrayed in White theology is an incurably dangerous monster. (p. 27)
He continues to make the explicit claim that ‘biblical anthropology and white anthropology are mutually exclusive and contradictory, running on parallel paths that can never meet’ (Maimela
If Maimela’s theology can be described as building on a positive anthropology, then the negative to which this is a response if found in his description of white anthropology. The problem with white anthropology, and given the description above it should be clear that this problem amounts to the heretical in Maimela’s view, is that it holds to a view of humans which says that humans are uncontrollably caught up in cycles of domination and force, having a ‘portrait of a world in which every human self is the enemy of every other human’, where ‘human interrelations can never be creative and positive because ultimately each human poses a danger to all the others’ and finally, ‘White anthropology continues to teach us that humans have uncontrollable fratricidal drives which even the Gospel and conversion cannot tame’ (Maimela
The result is that history is read through this lens, so that history becomes a narrative of conflicts, ignoring the positive and creative interactions between diverse peoples
Secondly, traditional Western theology became so obsessed with the salvation of the individual that it made sin out to be primarily about transgressions against the divine, making it possible for white theology to justify that one can remain racist even though you are a Christian. Writing on this split between the horizontal and vertical dimension to sin he states:
[
This distinction is impossible within the relational anthropology that Maimela presents, where salvation is concerned with the restoration of community.
Thirdly, following from the argument that the implication of the creation
It is against the background of this theological anthropology that we should read Maimela’s core critique on apartheid, which, exactly because of his focus on the anthropological nature of the heresy, is a critique on whiteness rather than apartheid. Maimela’s critique is then not simply on the political system of apartheid but on the anthropology that underlay this system, and because it goes beyond apartheid continues to have a direct implication for our reading of whiteness in South Africa after apartheid. So let me conclude by drawing out some brief implications for contemporary discussions of whiteness.
Maimela’s work is a particular description of the more general recognition that white racism also disrupts the humanity of white people. Working from a Christian vision infused by an African anthropology and a Black liberation reading of the Bible, he cuts the wounds open to reveal aspects of what is broken in white humanity. Following his main constructive proposals, we can summarise this as an anthropology which does not see itself as fully in interrelation with all other people, and that disconnect being human together from an equitable distribution of power and creative agency.
If we are to follow through on Maimela’s anthropology, then we need to constantly keep human dignity and human agency together. The temptation to separate these remain constantly visible when the quest for dignity is reduced to addressing the various material needs of people on their behalf without committing to a society where people have agency in the history that determines their own future and space to creatively contribute to society. This insistence on empowerment and human agency as inherent to a Christian anthropology seem to remain missing in much contemporary discourse, even while dignity is strongly emphasised.
While Kee
Maimela is not blind to the ecclesiological problems resulting from this anthropological heresy. He notes that the response of the white church is to convince white people that they are Christians ‘in good standing’ even though they are ‘sinning against Christian unity and the third article of the Creed’, that is, ‘I believe in One, Holy and Apostolic Church …’ (Maimela
At the heart of Simon Maimela’s theology is a liberating anthropology presented in opposition to a white racist theological anthropology. The core elements of this anthropology are a commitment to the democratisation of power and being human in relationship. The effects of a white anthropology are visible on both sides of a democratic dispensation in South Africa. Maimela’s work therefore presents one aspect of the theological challenge to whiteness in South Africa that remains significant.
This work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The author acknowledges that opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication which is generated by the National Research Foundation supported research are that of the author, and the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
In the 2010
Robinson uses the description ‘theologies of colour’ in the US context, which I translate as ‘Black’ theology into the South African context. I use ‘Black’ to refer to all people oppressed by white supremacy and ‘Black theology’ to refer to those theologies that consciously work from the experience of racial oppression.
A thorough discussion of Kelsey’s silence on race in his anthropology requires a detailed study on its own. David Ford already mentioned Kelsey’s silence on matters of sex and gender (Ford
See, for example, the introduction to
See for example an argument published in the
The 1994 essay
In this, Maimela associates himself with Mosala, whom he places in the same category, and who is perhaps the best known from this time for bringing together Black theology with Marxist class analysis (Kee
The 1997 republication of the first part of the 1994 lecture on what is a human being is presented as a ‘biblical reflection’ on what is a human being. In a much shorter reflection in 1981, he also presents his anthropology as a biblical view (Maimela
Both Landman’s (
Although Maimela’s theological point is clear, his exegetical argument jumps between Genesis 1 and 2 in a contradictory way which attempts to argue his point from the place in the narrative where Eve is created, but leading to contradictory statements since Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 cannot be harmonised on such a narrative level. If we, however, assume that Genesis 1 is the primary text that Maimela works with, then his argument is that since Adam and Eve were both created before the mandate for subjugation, dominion over other humans is clearly excluded from this mandate.
Maimela himself at one point seems to consider Black Power and Black Consciousness to be closely related if not synonymous (Maimela
It is important to read this together with his emphasis on community and interpersonal relations, and the creative and life-giving possibilities when people from different backgrounds connect – in brief, Maimela is not in any way advocating for any form of ‘group self-determination’, this is explicitly about every individual having agency.
See, for example, his argument for the primary task of theology as humanisation, where a strong distinction is made between ‘jungle/Eden’ and ‘city/Jerusalem’, with our task being to work for the latter where he argues that ‘our primary human responsibility to construct, nurture and change social structures so that they might serve human needs better and better’ (Maimela
Maimela argues for an African contribution in at least two ways. One can be described as a naïve reading of both the Bible and the notion of ‘Africa’ by presenting examples of the contributions of those in what is now called North Africa to the Jewish and Christian faith, such as the Egyptians sheltering Abraham and Jesus (Maimela
The primary exegetical argument Maimela repeatedly invokes is that Genesis 3 and 4 need to be kept together, but was separated from each other in White/Western theology so that Genesis 3 was read without noting its implication for the relationships between humans (Maimela
Maimela remains slightly vague on whether sin is exclusively what happens between humans, or whether some transgression against the divine that is not also a transgression against another is possible. See, for example, the contrast between the following two sentences appearing right after each other, where the first is slightly more hesitant, but the second make a stronger claim: ‘Sin is understood
Although Maimela often uses this interplay of an African contribution which Black theologians should pick up and contribute to the broader church, elsewhere he use this exact same words but instead of Black theologians here he refers to African theologians (Maimela
It is, however, possible to also read this as a rhetorical device, bordering on a homiletic strategy, which highlights a shared Christian identity and then indicates how white actions reveal a break with the explicitly confessed Christian identity. Given that Maimela also poses questions to the orthodoxy of Christian (protestant) anthropology, in particularly the way the total depravity of humans are used (Maimela
For this, Maimela explicitly emphasises that a true history of South Africa, while including much conflict, should also indicate ‘cooperative, friendly, and mutually creative efforts’ between indigenous Africans and European settlers (Maimela
Sullivan (
See, for example, his claim that ‘If racism is the agenda then Black theology becomes redundant with the end of apartheid’ (Kee
Sensitive to Maimela’s own call that not even Black theology should present its arguments as final, not even if drawn from scripture, I suggest that Maimela’s earlier picture of white theology as heretical should be presented as coming from a particular position (as does all theological claims).