Africa’s Single-Tiered Ontology: A Way Through the West‘s Fact-Faith Divide(Studies in Theology)

Following the Enlightenment, the church in the West has been influenced by secularization and the dualistic separation of the material and spiritual world. The privileging of reason alone as the final arbiter of truth has created a fact-faith divide, with long-lasting consequences.

In this book, Dr. Trevor H. G. Smith proposes that the African church holds the remedy for this divide through what he calls their single-tiered ontology. This ontology views reality through a unitive perspective, where the seen and unseen, the natural and supernatural, are understood as integral to understanding the world. Employing the methodology of tacit observation, Dr. Smith brings Western cultural understandings of the world into conversation with African understandings to reveal that the African theologian's dedication to biblical truth provides a more fruitful apologetic approach to assist the global church in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In this volume Trevor Smith enriches the growing collection of works on World Christianity. Smith uses a concept of single-tiered ontology to explore the importance and complexities of a spiritualized African world and its unhindered, taken-for-granted impact on the physical or seen world.

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, PhD

Presiding Bishop, Methodist Church Ghana

Baëta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostalism,

Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana

This new study of the African theological scene ought to be a key text shaping the theological curriculum in Western institutions, as well as providing helpful textual support for curricula in theological institutions in Africa.

Gillian Mary Bediako, PhD

Former Deputy Rector,

Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana

Dr. Smith's exploration of the African ontological witnesses to Jesus, as a non-African, is a welcome resource on the dynamics of the African contribution to World Christianity.

Rudolph Gaisie, PhD

Director, Andrew F. Walls Centre for the Study of Early African Christianity,

Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana

What does African Christianity have to say to the rest of the world? Theologian Trevor Smith argues that African cultures understand reality through a lens he calls "a single-tiered ontology," and introduces the hermeneutics of "analogical continuity" uncovering a hidden reality that African Christians can share with us.

Richard Haney, PhD

Executive Director, Emeritus,

Frontier Fellowship

In this work, Trevor Smith demonstrates a great appreciation for a marked reality of African life and thought. This book should be a source of encouragement to African scholars in their pursuit of theology rooted in the African soil, while also serving as a call on Western scholars to come and appreciate what they are missing by ignoring the theological output of African scholars.

Benhardt Y. Quarshie, PhD

Former Rector,

Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana

Here, Dr. Smith not only masterfully highlights a particular African dimension, he honestly invites his own counterparts in the West to learn and engage with it. His work promises the development of interpretive tools for both analysing theological scholarship and for producing truly integrative theological thought.

David Emmanuel Singh, PhD

Institutional Link Tutor,

Middlesex University, UK

Incisively and irenically, Smith makes a compelling case that Africa's way of seeing life and reality as a single, unitive whole - without the Enlightenment dichotomies of material and spiritual, natural and supernatural - is closer to the biblical understanding of reality.

Diane Stinton, PhD

Associate Professor of Mission Studies and World Christianity,

Regent College, Canada