Mtu ni Watu: The Holy Trinity in Africa—Ancient and Contemporary Approaches

Abstract

The classic definitions of God and Trinity involving the concept of personhood are grounded in the lexical fields of ancient theological and philosophical discourse. They raise the question of the extent to which a believer is required to enter into those worldviews and conceptualities. If a semantic approach is adopted, it becomes apparent that a term like “person” may be re-accentuated according to context. This is an approach which is itself found within patristic methodology, not least in the transitions from Hellenistic philosophy to Greek Christian theology, and then from Greek to Latin. With this method in place, readers may approach such terms using materials derived from their own culture and context, not just those of antiquity. The Kiswahili proverb, Mtu ni watu (a person is people), provides an example of such a term, used to define personhood. Its adoption means that African Christians may approach a core doctrine of the Christian faith easily from their own cultural perspective without requiring a grounding in European thought and history, using a methodology already adopted by their Christian ancestor, Augustine of Hippo.

1. Introduction

At the heart of Christian theology lies the understanding that God is identifiable as a person: “God is Incomparably Personal” (Oden 1987, p. 84). This personhood, in its most basic forms, is manifested in God’s identification as “I” and his naming in the Scriptures: both of these resist pantheism, polytheism, agnosticism, and atheism (Oden 1987, pp. 85–87). The identification of God as a person lies at the heart of trinitarian debate and persists into the modern period. Yet the word “person” resists a single, universal definition. Not only is there variety in the Greek and Latin terms used, but these do not remain static.

Such realities advert the reader to two linguistic truisms. First, that simply pursuing a single meaning for a term is inadequate. This point is made clear in James Barr’s brutal critique of etymological lexical approaches. He rejects any lowest common denominator, meaning or etymology which claims to be more than an instance of “valid and intelligible (though always provisional) substitutions” (Barr 1961, p. 216). Nor does a single meaning underpin every usage of a word: the “illegitimate totality transfer” (Barr 1961, p. 218; see also Sierksma-Agteres 2016, p. 120). Rather, a lexical meaning, which gains meaning from the place of a lexeme in a sentence (sentence semantics), the broader narrative of the tradition (discourse semantics), and the word itself (lexical semantics) emerges, “related to the outside world” (Brinton 2000, p. 11). The different instances in the comparanda are juxtaposed with each other. But then the linguistic needs to be augmented: comparison is to be contextual (Segal 2001, pp. 352–58).

Second, Mikhael Bahktin’s “re-accentuation” allows language users to give words new shades of meaning for their own purposes; meaning may adapt according to context (Bialostosky 1989, pp. 220–21; Booker and Juraga 1995, pp. 14–15). Here, all the elements which make up an act of communication (object, speaker, listener, utterance, intertext, and language) are open to change (Halasek 1999, p. 24). Newsom outlines this phenomenon in theological discourse:

Ordinary words, words traditionally important for self-representation, such as ‘righteousness’ or ‘spirit’, may be given a slightly different nuance by being associated with a different range of terms or employed in unusual constructions…

The presence of traditional elements is extremely important. They allow a person entry into the discourse because of their familiarity and the value attached to them. In the re-accentuation of terms, however, and in the new utterance that is created out of those traditional elements, it is possible to create the sense that one is only now understanding the true meaning of words that had long been familiar and important. The subject who is called into being is also experienced as at once familiar and new, a self that is recognizable but truly known for the first time.

(Newsom 2001, pp. 6–7)

Here a concept is understood as follows:

Concepts are located within the shared activities and forms of life, rather than in the transitory uses of words…

Concepts exist prior to any given utterance and have relative stability. Concepts are discursively constructed. We could not suppose that an environment (such as a building site) is sufficient for all the interlocutors to understand the activity they are engaged in, so that they are able to construe appropriate meanings to others’ words. That ‘context’ has to be evoked discursively.

(Blunden 2012, p. 59)

Furthermore, and this significance of this will become apparent later:

not only may the same words be used with different meanings, but also so may different words be used to express the same concept.

(Strijdom 2007, p. 43)

These linguistic and conceptual phenomena allow us to recognise that a word like person and its related terms will be polyvalent, even within a single language. Thus, when the term is translated, further varieties emerge which may nevertheless still be viable expressions.

The essay which follows will explore how an ancient African theologian, Augustine of Hippo (354 CE–430 CE), negotiated the adaptation of Greek and Latin trinitarian terms in circulation in his day. It will be proposed that his methodology is fundamentally biblical, informed by precedents outlined by Luke in Acts of the Apostles, notable in the accounts of Pentecost and Paul in Athens. From this perspective, what emerges is an ancient theological method which will allow for the delineation of a contemporary African trinitarian theology which embodies a biblically based methodology, as adopted by an ancient African ancestor and theologian, and the understandings of God as person which he strove to preserve and elucidate in his construction of a theology for his ancient North African context.

2. Personhood in Hellenistic and Patristic Thought

Patristic theology identifies the personhood of God with the term hypostasis. It literally means an underlying fundamental state, and emerges, in this usage, from the terminology found in Hellenistic philosophy: it is close in meaning to ousia. The pre-history of these terms needs to be sketched out.

Abstract feminine nouns (-ia) emerged in the 5th century BCE (Long 1968, pp. 21–26, noting that Long does not include ousia; Nails 1979, p. 71). In the Platonic dialogues, three usages are found: property or wealth, the property of an activity or person, and an ontological component (Nails 1979, p. 72). This last may be used on its own, in relation to genesis, in contrast to non-being, or fundamental with “intensive modifiers” (Nails 1979, pp. 72–73). The upshot of this is:

that οὐσία qua abstract feminine noun, is not used to refer to the ontologically fundamental by Plato (except where modified). My claim is not that Plato uses οὐσία as a technical term for that which is “one order lower than τὸ ὀν in the great hierarchy of being” but simply that οὐσία, as a newly coined term, simply did not mean to Plato “that which is ontologically fundamental.”

(Nails 1979, p. 75)

As a consequence, translating it as “being”, “reality”, or “existence” may be inaccurate (Nails 1979, p. 76). Better, perhaps, to consider it the “-ness”: the property of a person or object. This does not, however, remain static or universal. Within the different schools of Hellenistic philosophy, ousia is used variously. So, in Aristotle,

The term “substance” is used, if not in more, at least in four principal cases; for both the essence and the universal and the genus are held to be the substance of the particular, and fourthly the substrate. The substrate is that of which the rest are predicated, while it is not itself predicated of anything else. Hence we must first determine its nature, for the primary substrate is considered to be in the truest sense substance.

(Aristotle, Metaph. 7.3 (1028b); Aristotle 1933, pp. 315, 317)

As with Plato, ousia is not identified with to on (essence). Rather, it is linked primarily with the substrate (hupokeimenon):

In other words, the substrate refers to the object itself, of which we can talk about its essence, genus, and species. Thus, it emphasizes the unique existence of an object, i.e., its individuality. The other senses of ousia (sic) refer to the universal aspect of an object, by which an object is defined or categorized. They anchor on what an object has in common with other objects.

(Xia 2025, pp. 65–66)

It is now appropriate to consider the term hypostasis, which is similar to, if not synonymous with, hupokeimenon (Lampe 1961, p. 1449b). Like ousia, it relates to the individual object. Neither has been identified with to on. This is true in other Hellenistic traditions, like Stoicism, where ousia and hypostasis may appear synonymous, not least because existence without a material component is an impossibility (Stead 1994, pp. 175–77). Similar ideas would become a part of Neoplatonist thought: the contrast of the one and the many, of forms and copies, was not, for them, a contrast of ousia and hypostasis (Stead 1994, p. 177). Thus, it may be concluded that there was no universally agreed-upon usage for these terms in the Hellenistic philosophies which would gift such terms to Christian theology.

Given such contestation, conflation of the two terms continues in Christian usage. Furthermore, earlier usage defies a “technical theological meaning…prior to Origen (and Gregory of Nyssa)” essentially functioning as synonyms (Ramelli 2012, pp. 309–11). Only later, in the Cappadocian fathers (Basil of Caesarea [c.330 CE‒379 CE]; Gregory of Nyssa [c.335 CE–c.395 CE]; Gregory of Nazianzus [c.329 CE‒c.389 CE]; Amphilochius of Iconium [c.340 CE‒c.395 CE] and Macrina the Younger [c.327 CE‒c.380 CE] (Haykin 2023, p. 10), does a settled and clear distinction of one ousia and three hypostaseis emerge later. Prior to that, the varieties of usage also mean that the terms may have been contested, with no agreed-upon meaning when used individually or in combination. Their proximity to Augustine must raise a question of whether the meanings of critical Greek terms had been stabilised by the time Augustine wrote Trin.—in the late 420s CE at the latest (Wilson 2019). We may also note that physis may be used instead of ousia in earlier material (Ramelli 2012, p. 306).

As ecclesiastical Latin developed, translated terms also came into use: substantia or essentia for ousia, and substantia or persona for hypostasis. Tertullian (c. 155/160–c.220 CE), the first Christian theologian recorded using Latin, preferred substantia to essentia (ousia), and persona for hypostasis (Brown 1996, p. 276). Lat. persona indicates that a third term had been used in Greek: prosōpon. It had been compromised by its associations with Sabellianism (Behr 2004, p. 299). However, Tertullian’s use of persona to refute this heterodoxy (Muller 1985, p. 223) meant that these negative associations were not applicable to Latin trinitarian debates. However, as shall be seen in the remarks to follow, the terms adopted by Augustine were not fixed by precedent.

3. God Does Not Remain Greek, Even in Antiquity

In the introductory chapters of his Must God Remain Greek? (1990), Thomas Hood was deeply critical of the close alignment of Christian theology with Graeco-Roman culture and language. The title of his book was deliberately provocative, but his conclusions are right: God is neither Greek (literally), nor needs to be presented solely in its conceptualities, even if, as we have suggested already, these themselves were polyvalent. One of the critiques which could be made of that volume was its reductionism: failing to identify the variations between Judaic, Hellenistic, and Latin conceptualities, which, at any rate, were not discrete, like “billiard balls” (Alexander 2001, p. 69), but had “porous” boundaries (Hengel 1991, p. 252). Time matters, too. A generalising method is open to the critique made by Camille Paglia of one piece of classical scholarship that:

[it] jumps around amateurishly from the fifth century (whose many phases he [the author] does not see) to the middle or late fourth century, back to the fifth, then to the early sixth, then to the late fourth or early third, and back to the late sixth, all of which is funnelled, like gravel pouring off a truck, into conclusions about “classical” Athenian attitudes.

(Paglia 1992, p. 189; also Parker 1983, pp. 15–16)

An equally unnuanced reductionism of the theology of emerging Christianity must equally be avoided.

The historical fact that is Tertullian and the body of Latin Christian theology which emerges in the Latin West is a second indicator. Latin theological terminology does not map exactly onto its Greek counterparts: changes in nuance are obvious (Fokin 2013).

Lastly, the distinctive African elements which Oden (2007) could identify in the theological output of Egypt and Alexandria, of Carthage and Libya, must not be obscured. North African experience illustrates these points of convergence. Tertullian (c. 155/160–c.220 CE), the first in North Africa to write in Latin, exemplifies this. In addition to such historical and sociological considerations, the refusal to restrict Christian theology to a single Christian milieu has its origins, not just within cultural or historical reality, but within the theological contours of the New Testament itself, as found within the book of Acts.

4. Contextual Theology in Acts 2 and 17: Pentecost and the Areopagus

Acts 2 makes it clear that the adoption of human languages, and the acceptance of culture that it entails, is part of the Pentecost experience. Claims that it indicates a single heavenly divine language which believers now comprehend, reversing the Babel story and introducing a new divine metalanguage, are untenable. The text clearly indicates that believers hear in their own languages (tē idia dialektō—“in the native language of each”; Acts 2:6 NRSVue). This stands for xenolalia: “the actual speaking, miraculously, of an unlearned foreign language” (Hovenden 2002, p. 3). It reveals unity in diversity, not uniformity. It points to recognisably human languages and dialects rather than glossolalia (that is, “tongues”, unidentifiable languages—King and Selvendran 2019, pp. 89–90). Even Frank D. Macchia, who endorses the notion of the divine metalanguage, cannily states that Pentecost:

resists making any single language or idiom absolute in significance but rather embraces and transcends eschatologically all human languages and idioms.

(Macchia 2006, p. 3)

Whilst agreeing that no human language is privileged, the problem here is that such a divine metalanguage is absent from the account. Tē idia dialektō, focused on the hearing of the various nations, on their languages, simply does not support such a claim.

Nor should Pentecost be read as a return to a blessed and universal primordial language (Beale 2004, pp. 201–3; Bruce 1970, p. 86; contra, Haenchen 1985, p. 174; Hovenden 2002, pp. 86–88; Marshall 2007, p. 532). The Babel narrative ends with a fragmentation of humanity into different language groups meant to frustrate the rise of a single ideology or imperialism (Sacks 2016, pp. 193–94). Pentecost does not entertain such a scenario transferred from a human to a divine polity. It offers all people, regardless of culture or ethnicity, the opportunity to recognise and engage with God within the familiarity of their own culture.1 A qualification must be inserted: while everything found in a culture is not necessarily in harmony with Christ, neither is everything opposed to him. This can be seen in Paul’s reaction to, and appropriation of, different cultural elements within all of Judaism, Hellenism, and Romanitas (King 1997).

If Acts 2 reveals the importance of language, Acts 17: 16–34 reinforces the intercultural dimensions of theology by showing how concepts may be handled. Luke’s depiction of Paul speaking in the Athenian Areopagus shows the adoption of Graeco-Roman rhetorical techniques in the introductory material in the appeal to the “unknown god” (Acts 17:23): a captatio benvolentiae designed to attract the sympathy of his audience (Flemming 2005, p. 75; Malina and Pilch 2008, p. 126). His remarks then engage with contemporary philosophy. Acts 17:28a (“In him we live and move and have our being”—NRSVue) is a philosophical commonplace King 2021, p. 75), attributed to Epimenides but possibly edited or created by Luke (Dibelius 1956, pp. 48–50; Malina and Pilch 2008, p. 128) It is followed by a second maxim (“For we, too, are his offspring”—Acts 17:28c, NRSVue), taken from the Phaenomenon of Aratus (315/310 BCE–240 BCE):

From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring…

(Aratus, Phaenomena, 1-5a; Callimachus and Aratus 1921, pp. 206–7)

However, Paul has already re-accentuated the phrase by the insertion of the qualification “From one ancestor” (Acts 17:26). Usually taken as a reference to Adam, this grounds the quotation in a Scriptural rather than a Stoic (?) frame of reference (Malina and Pilch 2008, p. 128; King 2021, p. 76; Parsons 2008, pp. 246–47. For critique of the Stoic reading of Aratus, see Gee 2013, pp. 5–7). The method revealed here allows for the adoption and adaption (re-accentuation) of popular wisdom within a theological method, even if this may be more accurately described as Lukan than Pauline. This method involves the re-accentuation of the existing material with elements drawn from the Christian myth.

Our next concern is the interpretation of these two events by Augustine of Hippo, and the theological method which emerges. This, too, is a re-accentuation.

5. Ancient African Contextualisation: Augustine of Hippo

Both passages from Acts feature in Augustine’s writings. They allow for the identification of the roles of language and concept in his theological method.

In Acts 2, Augustine identifies the value which the account gives to language and culture. In so doing, he offers a non-miraculous understanding. The miraculous tongues of Acts are replaced by recognition of the value and variety of human languages. He refers to the passage on several occasions. In Tract. ep. Jo. 6.10, he points out that the miraculous nature of Pentecost is a thing of the past (Significatum est illud, et transit—that was a sign, but is passed—Augustine of Hippo n.d.-a, PL 35, translation by the authors): the practice of love is more important than miraculous speech.

Elsewhere, his focus turns to the implication for language. In Enarrat. Ps. 54.11, a passage which seems to indicate a unity of language effectively promotes a variety of different dialects or languages within the single language of the church:

Because of arrogant folk, the languages were divided: through the humble apostles they have been gathered together. A spirit of pride scattered the languages, But, when the Holy Spirit came on the disciples, they spoke in the languages of all, and were understood by all. The scattered languages were gathered together. So, if folk still rant and are non-believers (Lat. gentiles), he leaves them having different languages. Those who want a single language should come to the church since, in the flesh, there is a plurality of languages, but the heart of the faith has just one.

(Augustine of Hippo n.d.-b, PL 36, translation by the authors)

This does not entail that there is only one language for Christians, but rather that the language of the church, which we might, in light of Tract. ep. Jo. 6.10, consider to be love, is variously expressed. Support for this comes from Enarrat. Ps. 147.19:

The whole body of Christ now speaks in the languages of all. Those languages it does not speak, it will. For the church will grow until it includes all languages. Whatever you have lacked, it has supplied. Keep a firm grasp with us of what has come, so that you may gain that which has not yet come within reach. I speak in all languages, and yearn for you to speak. I am in the body of Christ; I am in the church of Christ. If the body of Christ now speaks all languages, then I share in all languages. I have Greek, Syrian, Hebrew. I have all languages, for I am one in all nations.

Thus, a miraculous account has been re-accentuated to produce a fundamentally linguistic and conceptual method. Here, diversity has become a sign of unity. But this unity need not demand uniformity even within the adoption of a single language.

This can be seen in the language which Augustine adopts in his writings about the Trinity. Augustine writes in Latin rather than Berber—a decision likely to be shaped by the sociolinguistic environment of his own journey and the Roman Empire. As “language is a means that facilitates or hampers people’s participation in politics” (Neke 2003, p. 21), this may have effectively compromised what exactly he wished to say.

Augustine appears to depart from the formulations of Tertullian, who formulated the Latin una substantia, tres personae, preferring una essentia, tres substantiae, with the explanation, “I give the name essence to what the Greeks call ousía, but which we more generally designate as substance” (Trin. 5.8; McKenna 1963, p. 187). This appears to remove a potential ambiguity as substantia could mean either ousia or hypostasis. Augustine’s preference clarifies the formula found in Basil the Great (mia ousia, treis hypostaseis) through a possible etymological analogue: hypostasis/substantia (where both include the notion of a substrate; Brown 1996, p. 276, underlining ours). In doing so, Augustine indicates that the translation of these complex terms is not an exact science. His next comment includes the admission that:

They indeed also call it hypóstasis, but 1 do not know what different meaning they wish to give to ousía and hypóstasis. Certain of our writers, who discuss these questions in the Greek language, are wont to say mian ousían, treis hypostáseis, which in Latin means one essence, and three substances.

(Trin. 5.8; McKenna 1963, p. 187; also Brown 1996, p. 276)

The issue of translation becomes even more complex when his additional usage of persona to translate hypostasis appears:

Hence, in order that we might have some words for the ineffable, and so might be able to speak in some way about that which we cannot fully express in any way, the phrase was employed by our Greeks, one essence, three substances. But the Latins said instead, one essence or substance, three persons [personae]. As we have already said, in our language, that is, in the Latin language, essence usually means nothing else than substance… What then are these three? If we say three persons [personae], then they have in common that which is meant by person [persona]. Hence, in their case, if we follow the customary manner of speaking, person [persona] is either their specific or their generic name.

(Augustine of Hippo, Trin. 7.4; McKenna 1963, pp. 229–31, Latin terms added for clarification)

This adoption of persona was potentially provocative because the Gk. prosōpon had fallen out of favour in some circles because of its associations with modalism (Behr 2004, p. 299). However, Greek issues need not recur in Latin circles. Persona did not have these same connotations. If anything, the problem was reversed in Latin. Hypostasis was problematic in the eyes of Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, Jerome, and Augustine, because of its adoption by Arian theologians and its prior rendering as substantia (see above, Augustine, Trin. 5.8; Muller 1985, p. 223). Thus, Augustine’s adoption of persona in Trin. 7.4, when combined with the noted preference for essentia rather than substantia (Trin. 5.8), suggests an ultimate resolution of una essentia, tres personae which has removed the problematic and ambiguous substantia from the equation. His methodology indicates that the clarity of the concept in his preferred language is more important than the preservation of the terminology found in another language. However, the recognition of the inadequacy of language, and, thus, the provisionality of any phraseology, hovers in the background.

In Serm. 150, Augustine interprets the Areopagus speech. If his work on language indicates a diversity in unity, that is reiterated here. The diversity of languages indicated a unity grounded in love; the diversity of conceptualities reveals a unity of purpose:

In common, all philosophers strove by dedication, investigation, discussion, by their way of life, to lay hold of the blessed life. This was their one reason for philosophizing; but I rather think the philosophers also have this in common with us. I mean, if I were to ask you why you believe in Christ, why you became Christians, every single one of you answers me truthfully: “For the sake of the blessed life.” Therefore the urge for the blessed life is common to philosophers and Christians.

(Augustine, Serm. 150.4; Edmund Hill, O.P. and Rotelle 1992, p. 31)

Here, the African theologian is in total agreement with the modern French philosopher, Pierre Hadot, who pointed out that the ancient philosophical concern with “living well” is a priority, which gives those projects a completely different shape from Western post-Cartesian philosophy (Hadot 2002, pp. 2–4). Thereafter, the diversity appears: the different traditions (Christian, Epicurean, and Stoic) may share a common purpose, but the Christian is considered pre-eminent, superior to the Epicurean focus on the body and the Stoic on the soul (Serm. 150.5; Edmund Hill, O.P. and Rotelle 1992, p. 33):

Here we have three people set before our eyes, an Epicurean, a Stoic, a Christian. Let us question them one by one.

“Tell us, Epicurean, what thing makes one blessed.”

“Bodily pleasure,” he replies.

“Tell us, Stoic.”

“A virtuous mind.”

“Tell us, Christian.”

“The gift of God.”

(Augustine, Serm. 150.8; Edmund Hill, O.P. and Rotelle 1992, p. 35)

Notwithstanding Augustine’s patently rhetorical analyses, which verge towards being caricatures, what emerges here is the recognition of a basic orientation, affirmed as valid, but in need of correction.

Augustine’s interpretations of Acts and the methodology which emerge reveals two significant elements: the recognition that the task is more than words and theorising may bear, and that what takes place need not be an exact preservation of the linguistic and conceptual constructs which have gone before in other languages, but rather re-accentuations which work in the new cultural context. These may even include the rehabilitation of terms which might be viewed as problematic, but are not so viewed by the one re-adopting them. What can be seen is an approach in which the original terms and concepts are not taken to be completely definitive, but there is room for variation or improvisation that retains a fidelity to the tradition which has gone before: diversity in unity.

Within African conceptualities the diachronic nature of community is embodied in their continued role and function, not least as “bands of cohesion and coherence…acting as guardians of ethics, family traditions, and community customs” (Hood 1990, p. 223). Thus, Augustine, as an African ancestor, continues to function in those capacities: his method of translating language and concepts may be applied today in contemporary African theological discourse. There is a place for modern African languages and concepts within the diverse unity of the church. Recognising that African worldviews, like their ancient counterparts, share a basic commonality, there is room for a dialogue between the traditions, in which the insights given by engagement with the stuff of Christian faith will lead to greater wisdom.

6. Modern African Contextualisation: Person in African Wisdom

Proverbs are a recognisable and universal phenomenon in African wisdom traditions (Golka 1993; Healey and Sybertz 1996; Mburu 2019, pp. 139–50, esp. pp. 143–45). In African perspectives, the wisdom of sages, elders, and advisors was not published but has stayed alive and active through oral tradition. African culture has been and continues to be embedded in proverbs to preserve religion, ethics, and morals (Mbiti 1990). A similar pattern was practiced in New Testament circles, in which oral traditions preserved and disseminated the Gk. euaggelion (good news) in the early church (Boyd and Eddy 2010, pp. 65–75; Gerhardsson 1998).

The notions of “person” and “personhood” with accompanying reflections on the nature of humanity and community are significant concepts with African “vitalogy” (Nkemnkia 1999) or philosophy (e.g., Gyekye 1997, pp. 35–76; Ihuah 2021; Menkiti 1984; Molefe 2019; Musana 2018). Noting that this is primarily a human and anthropological discussion, the following remarks adopt and adapt such concepts for discussion of the Christian Trinity. The adoption of African human concepts within Christian theology is not without precedent (Schreiter 1991; Wachege 1992), and, indeed, underpins analogical theology from the Christian scriptures onward (below).

One proverb, found in a number of wisdom traditions, speaks to personhood being recognised as both “relational” and “communal”, characteristics of African worldviews (Boe and Kuyonga 1938, p. 9). In Kiswahili, it is expressed as Mtu ni watu—a person is people (Abubakar 2011, p. 70; Kimilike 2008, p. 313, hereafter MnW). There are “similar maxims in most other Bantu languages” (Thornton 2009, p. 19, fn. 2). Parallels are found, for example, in IsiZulu (Umuntu ngumuntu ngabuntu—“I am because we are, since we are, therefore I am”; Mbaya and Mbaya 2025, p. 136), Kiluyia (omundu nabandu), Xhosa (umuntu ngumuntu ngabuntu), Dholuo (ndano en gi: all from Owakah 2023, p. 68), and Kihangaza (umunthu niwe yiha Ubuntu—Alfred Sebahene [author’s vernacular]). The Dholuo proverb is found amongst Nilotic speakers like the Luo as well as in Bantu ethnicities (whilst noting there has been a porous boundary in some areas between the ethnicities “from time immemorial”; (Odak 1995), p. 230).

Making community a necessary attribute of a person (mtu) allows God (“Incomparably Personal”—Oden 1987, p. 84) to be a person, a singularity, yet a community or plurality of persons (watu) in Godself. The proverbial usage renders obsolete the distinction of the one and the many, of singularity and plurality, however paradoxical that may seem to non-African eyes, rejecting any polytheism. Nor does it demand a social trinitarianism (for an overview, van den Brink 2014, pp. 332–36) of the kind which may be identified with tritheism, and be at odds with classic formulations (Spencer 2019, p. 189). Noting that no identification is being made here with such theories, simply the claim that MnW obviates the issue of number, any such criticism may be countered by Daniel Spencer’s comment:

The precise attributes of each Trinitarian person will of course vary from account to account, but all seem to agree that at the very least, all are persons ‘robust enough to constitute a genuine “other”’, and as such ‘are three centres of consciousness, will, and action’Or, as Cornelius Plantinga will have it, on ST the Trinity is ‘a society or community of three fully personal and fully divine entities’.⁸ This latter characterization of ST highlights an obvious stipulation for any genuine Trinitarian theory: the hypostases must be, in a relevant sense, truly divine. This, at any rate, is a non-negotiable for all Social Trinitarians who weigh their orthodoxy against the Nicene and Athanasian creeds.

(Spencer 2019, p. 190)

Thus, the issue is not social trinitarianism per se, but what kind. For our purposes, the theology envisioned through MnW tallies with the comment of the Athanasian Creed: “every Person by himself to be God and Lord”.

A further objection might be offered: does the use of mtu, which is usually associated with human personhood, risk an overly anthropomorphic picture which is inadequate to talk of God? Two points need to be made here. The first is the inadequacy of all human language to describe God perfectly or fully. If we hearken back to Pentecost, the adoption of all dialects outlined above rejects any single language being mandatory or superior. Our patristic ancestors encouraged both apophatic and kataphatic discourses, cognisant of the shortcomings of all language and recognising that a full description or definition of God is simply beyond words (this is still recognised in the identification of mysterianism within trinitarian speculation: Bray 2023, pp. 804–8). The second is that both the Jewish and Christian scriptures endorse the adoption of human identification, symbolism, and metaphors to describe God (e.g., Abba/Father [e.g., Mark 14:36; Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6], Shepherd [Ps 23], even, perhaps, Paraclete [e.g., John 14:16]), omitting from the discussion those terms which might gain a human association from the Incarnation of the Logos/Word. Any demand that human imagery be rejected automatically falls foul of Dennis Bray’s remarks about the:

…analogia analogissima: Father, Son, and Spirit. The concepts of Father and Son are drawn from human interpersonal relationships, and spirit/breath too is a human-based metaphor.

(Bray 2023, p. 804)

The re-accentuation of such analogues in the semantic domains and lexical fields associated with God never makes those terms co-terminus with their use in human domains. So, God the Father is never just a human father. They may be analogous, but they are not identical. A similar point can be made about the vocabulary used for God’s action. God’s love and community are not circumscribed by human activity:

Far from being independent self-sufficient individuals, however, their identity is constituted by the reciprocal personal relationships of love in which they eternally live and have their being. According to many adherents of social trinitarianism, it is this perichoretic communion which accounts for the divine unity. Given its unbreakable bond of perfect love, the divine communion clearly surpasses any human community.

(van den Brink 2014, p. 347)

Within dogmatic formulations, mtu need be no more restricted to a purely human domain than the Lat. persona, so frequently associated with masks and theatre, but rarely if ever with God outside Christian literature (Glare 1982, p. 1356). Barr’s observations, already cited, remain apposite.

Interestingly, the Kiswahili use of mtu (a human person) rather than utu (human nature, humanity, humanness; personhood—all abstractions) is analogous to the Hellenistic usages of ousia (embracing the substrate) rather than to on. The lexicology insists on “person”, not an abstract “personhood” (utu). To construct a proverb, Utu ni watu (personhood is people), or simply assume that “person” and “personhood” are interchangeable, pays inadequate attention to the subtleties and nuances of the Kiswahili and completely loses the point being made by MnW. This model arguably shares with the Cappadocians a focus on person and community rather than nature and substance (van den Brink 2014, p. 334). John ZIzioulas’s description makes clear that the appropriation of such language to the discussion of God differs from usage in human contexts:

It is impossible, therefore, to say that in God, as it is the case with human beings, nature precedes the person. Equally and for the same reasons it is impossible to say that in God any of the three persons exist or can exist in separation from the other persons. The three constitute such an unbreakable unity that individualism is inconceivable in their case. The three persons of the Trinity are thus one God, because they are so united in and unbreakable communion (koinonia) that none of them can be conceived apart from the rest. The mystery of the one God in three persons points to a way of being which precludes individualism and separation (or self-sufficiency and self-existence) as a criterion of multiplicity. The ‘one’ not only does not precede—logically or otherwise—the ‘many’, but, on the contrary, requires the ‘many’ from the very start inorder to exist.

(Zizioulas 1995, pp. 48–49)

African communitarianism, exemplified by MnW, equally abhors such individualism and articulates this same pattern. The communitarian understanding offered by MnW rejects the problems presented by Western conceptualities, which commenced with the ancient Greek attempts, from the pre-Socratics onwards, to reconcile the one and the many (Bunnin and Yu 2004, p. 489). And it does so with breathtaking simplicity. If “the literature of Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament display a concept of monotheism which is differentiated enough as to allow for a plurality of identities within one divine being” (van den Brink 2014, p. 348, also pp. 341–43), so does MnW. Whilst three being one and one being three remain frequently a paradox or an impossibility within the debate, remain a persistent criticism of trinitarian theology, and provoke considerable analytic reflection (for a full discussion, Tuggy 2025), they are simply an irrelevance within African conceptualities like MnW in which numerical concerns are irrelevant.

7. Concluding Remarks: Missional and Apologetic Consequences

The Augustinian methodology, an ancient African one based on the exempla in Acts and transposed to the modern world, permits African languages and conceptualities to function within theological discourse. It further affirms the traditional concept of the values of ancestors in shaping thought: listening to and learning from Augustine. Whilst some may baulk at this, the similarities that exist theologically between such views and the communion of saints in ecclesial contexts (Hood 1990, p. 224), or the identification of previous scholars as authorities within academic circles, speak to analogues.

The engagement with Christian tradition and African wisdom leads to a claim for greater knowledge. Here, MnW moves beyond a social or anthropological category but becomes theological as well. Community is not just desirable as a human activity, but is divine, embedded in the very person of the creator of the cosmos. It is a valid theological claim to be held because language allows for a diversity in unity. African communitarianism may articulate Christian theology as well as the classical philosophical categories.

MnW articulates the key point of trinitarian doctrine within the conceptuality of African culture without reference to the complex European debates. The missional benefits are self-evident. In fact, it offers a simplification of a core doctrine. Furthermore, Africans do not need to become Europeans. Indeed, we might ask how many Europeans today take such steps. Might Europeans usefully learn from Africa? Bishop Frank Weston’s critique of the European theology of his day comes to mind:

Now into the glory of our Calvary breaks the voice of prelatical and priestly liberalism. And its message, what is it? It is that Africans cannot possibly understand the Gospels, Church or sacraments until they re-interpret them in the light of modern European thought! Poor Africans: not yet among the wise of European thought.

(Weston 1919, pp. 68–69)

To accord European theology the privileged status of a “view from nowhere” (Nagel 1986) fails to recognise the variety of perspectives which may be accorded to investigators, theological as well as scientific:

A mountain that is a landmark to a navigator, a source of wealth to the prospector, a many- textured form to a painter, or to another a dwelling place of the gods, is changed by the attention given to it. There is no ‘real’ mountain which can be distinguished from these, no one way of thinking which reveals the true mountain.

Science however purports to be uncovering such a reality. Its apparently value-free descriptions are assumed to deliver the truth about the object, onto which our feelings and desires are later painted. Yet this highly objective stance, this ‘view from nowhere’, to use Nagel’s phrase, is itself value-laden. It is just one particular way of looking at things, a way which privileges detachment, a lack of commitment of the viewer to the object viewed. For some purposes this can be undeniably useful. But its use in such causes does not make it truer or more real, closer to the nature of things.

(McGilchrist 2010, p. 28)

A proposal like this realises Weston’s view. Re-accentuating notions of personhood in line with African traditional wisdom removes such unnecessary theological steps and grounds Christian faith in the culture of those who hear (tē idia dialektō). Yet, this production does not contradict the fundamental first-order propositions of patristic trinitarian theology: three persons in one unity. The mountain is simply viewed from a different perspective. And, as Augustine trenchantly points out, given the inability of the terminology in Greek to fully describe the nature of the Trinity, there is no room for any language, even Greek itself, to claim such a privileged position.