A young Monsignor Tharcisse Tshibangu, right, during the era of strongman Mobutu Sese Seko�s rule over Zaire, when Tshibangu was rector of a national university. PHOTO SOURCE: CRUXnow.com

rchbishop Tharcisse Tshibangu (1933 - 2021) is best remembered by the ably and courageous way he argued for a theology with an "African-color" as a student, in series of theological debates between him and the Belgium Prof. Alfred Vanneste, Dean of his Faculty of Theology of the prestigious Lovanium University (Theology Faculty) in Kinshasa in 1960. The famous Kinshasa Theology Faculty symposia (1960-1968), centered on the 'Possibility of a Christian theology with an "African-color".

Without mincing words, the Kinshasa student Tshibangu questioned the type of missionary theology of adaptation in vogue in Africa at the time:

"Adaptation is not simply a matter of personnel, of having African Bishops and lay leaders; nor is it meant only to adapt the liturgy, and reform parish and pastoral structures. Rather it meant giving prominent place to key factors in Africa's world-view, culture and religion� In particular, to African philosophy of life (principles of life-unity (la force vitale), symbolism and intuition. � These are "latent theological seeds" which 'adaptationism' could purify and use as "religious analogous" to illumine theological problems confronting missionary activity in Africa." - (T. Tshibangu, "Vers une th�ologie de couleur africain", in: Revue du Clerg� Africain, 5 (1960), pp.333-352).

The university community of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kinshasa, in a short message on December 29, 2021, announced the sad news of the death on the same day of Archbishop Tharcisse Tshibangu Tshishiku, president of the Board of the Directors of the Universities of Congo, at the University Clinics of Kinshasa where he was admitted.

The prelate who celebrated his golden jubilee as priest in August 2009 and his forty years of episcopate on December 6th, 2010, has been rector and president of the Congolese University since July 29th, 1967. His call unto the glory of the Risen Christ in heaven, came just few days after the death of yet another global African Church leader, anti-Apartheid crusader and chiampion of African theology, the South African Anglican Archishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu.

This makes some to ask, 'Is it a mere coincidence that our Redemeer, Savior and Divine Brother Jesus Christ, just decided to call unto Himself in heaven, these two great sons of African Christianity and pioneer theologians at a time like this?' Whatever is the case, one thing is obvious. Their deaths mark the end of an era in the development and growth of African Christianity and theological thought in the continent. The baton is now with the younger African theologians and church leaders, who as a matter of fact, must not allow the labors of these pioneers in African theology and growth of Christianity in the continent, to be in vain.

Born in Kipushi (Katanga, DR Congo) on 24th April 1933, Msgr Tharcise Tshibangu, after taking Greeks and Latin in secondary school, studied Philosophy and Theology at the Major Seminairy of Moba (former Baudouinville). Thereafter, he pursued his studies at the prestigious Lovanium University (Theology Faculty) in Kinshasa (from 1957-1961) where he graduated in Theology. From 1961-1965, he went for further studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, obtaining a PhD in Theology (1962) and a Habilitation in Higher Education (1965). In 1965, he came back to Lovanium (Kinshasa), where he secured an appointment as a full-time professor until 1966.

After the merging of the various universities of Zaire into the National University of Zaire (UNAZA) in 1971 during the regime of Mobutu, Tshibangu became its rector until decentralizing policy restored autonomy to the various universities. From 1981 until his retirement from active service, he had been Chancellor and President of the Board of Directors of the Universities of the Congo.

He was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of Lubumbashi in 1959, was appointed to Vatican Council II by Pope John XXIII (1966) as a student in Louvain, Belgium; and thereafter appointed as Prelate by Pope Paul VI, who consecrated him as Bishop (1970); was appointed as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Kinshasa (from 1991 to 1992). In 1992, Pope John-Paul II appointed him as the Archbishop of the Diocese of Mbuji-Mayi. Since 01 August 2009, he was Emeritus Archbishop of the Diocese of Mbuji-Mayi until his demise this day.

Msgr. Tshibangu received Doctor honoris causa of the University of Human Sciences of Strasbourg in France (1977). "By awarding the title of Doctor honoris causa to Mgr Tharcisse TSHIBANGU, UCB honored him as the very first Congolese to server as University Rector, and also to thank him for the great role he has played and continued to play in supporting the project of creating and developing UCB."

More significantly, as a student at the Faculty of Catholic Theology (Lovanium University (Theology Faculty) in Kinshasa), he took part in creating and organizing the "Lovanium Theological Circle." Within that setting, there took place the first debates about the possibility of an 'African theology'. These debates would eventually launch the scientific research that contributed a great deal in giving birth to what we know today as African theology. The "Lovanium Theological Circle' of the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Kinshasa soon began to spread like a wide fire to the rest of the continent beginning in 1960.

In other words, Msgr. Tshibangu was from day one, a central figure in giving an African-bent to the celebrated symposial debates on "African Christianity and African theology", initiated in 1960 by the Faculty of the Catholic Theology, Kinshasa. Once again, of special interest were the debates of 1960 and 1968 between Alfred Vanneste, the Dean, and Tharcisse Tshibangu himself, then a student, later ordained a Bishop, who expressed his view in a talk entitled, Vers une th�ologie de couleur africaine (a theology with an African slant)!

Taking as a starting-point the missionary theology of adaptation in vogue at the time, the student Tharcisse Tshibangu (debating with the dean of his Faculty of Theology of Catholic in Kinshasa in 1960, Prof. Alfred Vanneste), questioned the type of missionary theology of adaptation being used in the church's missionary approach to Africa at the time. Without mincing words, he maintained that adaptation was not simply a matter of personnel, of having African Bishops and lay leaders; nor was it meant only to adapt the liturgy, and reform parish and pastoral structures. Rather it meant giving prominent place to key factors in Africa's world-view, and religion.

He mentioned in particular, the African principle of 'life-unity' (la force vitale), symbolism and intuition. According to him, these are "latent theological seeds" which adaptationism could purify and use as "religious analogous" to illumine theological problems confronting missionary activity in Africa. (NB. For more about these debates, See T. TSHIBANGU, "Vers une th�ologie de couleur africain", p. 33ff; id., La th�ologie africaine. Manifest et programme pour le d�velopment des activit�s th�ologiques en Afrique, St. Paul, Kinshasa, 1987.

However, in his responding paper entitled, D' abord une Vraie Th�ologie (First, a True Theology), the Dean Vanneste said that adaptation means rising to a higher level, not descending to a lower. In this way, African theology and Christianity would be part of the worldwide theological endeavor. - (See A. VANNESTE, "D'abord une vraie th�ologie", in: Revue du Clerg� Africain, 5(1960), 346-352; id., "Th�ologie universelle et Th�ologie Africaine", in Revue du Clerg� Africaine (RCA), 24(1969), pp. 324-336.)

As Emmanuel Ntakarutimana, Msgr. Tshibangu's biographer rightly said, "By an 'African-colored' theology, Tharcisse Tshibangu and his group meant to go beyond Africanizing the hierarchy, the lay leaders, the parish and pastoral structures and also the liturgical and para-liturgical rites. In their eyes, it was a question of going back to the 'very spirit of Christianity.' This concern also differs from the problem of giving a soul to and informing the African's life, mentality, way of seeing things and all his cultures by means of the Christian spirit. One ought to go beyond the authors of the Des Pr�tres Noirs s'interrogent (1956) (Pr�sence Africaine, Paris 1963), whose concern was to proclaim the need of Christianizing the African mentality and culture." - (E. NTAKARUTIMANA, "Msgr Tharcisse Tshibangu: Champion of an 'African-coloured' Theology", in B. BUJO & J. ILUNGA-MUYA (ed.), African Theology: The Contribution of the Pioneers Vol. 1, Paulines Publications-Africa, Nairobi 2003, p. 49.)

Having postulated the aim of an "African-colored" theology, Tshibangu argues that the African theologian's work has to be one of defining the procedure to attain the knowledge and the analogies necessary to comprehend transcendent, divine realities. "Does African culture offer such elements as stated?" The spirit of the Gospel should have to be tackled by the making use of these means, Tshibangu argues.

In this context, our young theologian has thus recourse to some African thinkers who have tried to describe Black logic and metaphysics. From the Cameroonian theologian Meinrad Hebga, the Kinshasa student will keep the spontaneous and serene confidence in the veracity of the senses and of the higher knowing powers against the rationalist criticism of Western philosophies.

Common sense, Tshibangu argues, becomes a hermeneutic criterion that avoids subjectivism and its disastrous consequences. It guarantees support within the "cultural patrimony forming an indivisible block of social, moral, juridical and religious truths. The life-giving force, perceived in the Bantu conception of life, supports a play of reciprocal influences and gives a dynamic conception to the living being.

From this standpoint, Tshibangu would describe the key ideas of his vision of "Black Metaphysics", retaining its implicit, intuitive and lived aspects. He shows here his agreement with L�opold S�dar Senghor's famous dictum: "If White reason is analytic by usage, Black reason is intuitive by participation." However, this idea would evidently gain on being ventilated, not to fall into the trap of believing that the Blacks strain themselves in their vindictive desire of recovering their identity. It also invokes the identification of being with the life-giving force that takes the African to live globally, without either separation or abstraction. This touches upon the symbolism of African culture as well as the civilizing spirit and the laws of the Black African culture. The existential ontology thus discovered appeared to them as synthetic, sympathetic and including life as a whole.

From this perspective, T. Tshibangu will mainly retain the spontaneous trust in the powers of sensitive and intellectual knowledge, the value of common sense, the place of intuition, the global, dynamic and vital vision, the respect for mystery and a belief in the world spirit. Within this whole he will perceive, upgrade, and fill the inadequacies in the "stepping-stone" missionary theology of adaptation in vogue at the time, to be not only missiological, but also properly theological as the basis of religious analogy. "These 'stepping-stones' may be useful as material for formulating theological realities in function of expurgated African religious categories."

Although, theology of inculturation has today tried to correct some of the inadequacies in the theology of adaptation of the old. However, at the time Tshibangu was making this argument in an African context, in particular, it was a novelty and courageous attempt by a young African theologian of his age. Who had thought that a people once considered a "tabula raza" (without culture and civilization), are now spoken of having not only culture and civilization so admirable, but also (an African) ontology, to the level of discussing the metaphysical realities of the law of God. Such was the courage of the young Kinshasa theologian, Tshibangu at the time.

The primary concern of Tshibangu was to formulate a theology with an "African-color" that is supposed to develop into a work aiming at the meeting of "authentic African tradition with the original and specific elements of Judeo-Christian revelation." In this endeavor, in the tradition of authors of the Bantu philosophy of "life-giving force" that came before him, especially, the trio, Placide Tempels, Vincent Mulago and Alexius Kagame, Tshibangu (like Mulago), emphasizes the principle of unity of life as an epistemological principle marking African cultures in their internal coherence.

It would seem that the adaptation theology of the old that negates the existence of authentic African culture and ontology blocked in the past, the acknowledgment of this dynamic union of past, present and future in African philosophy and worldview. The African philosophy of the principle of unity of life affected the life of a single human, of a community and of nature and the world. It is commonly known as a holistic vision of life. But with the coming of colonialism and Western philosophy and theology, another epistemology has burst into the scene.

The anthropological consequences of this Western epistemology have, unfortunately, developed the individual by promoting his freedom, without, however, promoting an equally, the community-humanity (life-giving force) dimension of such an individual freedom in line with African thought-pattern, meaning and Ultimate Reality. It has conceived the purpose of life as mastering the laws of nature in view of dominating it; and it has substituted African sense of cooperation with competition and struggle for survival. That is, struggle for a harmonic insertion into a community or into nature.

T. Tshibangu argues that the result of such 'fatal' encounter between African philosophy and worldview with the Western thought pattern and philosophy has been an ever increasing distancing from the principle of unity of life, of the living world, of the visible and invisible universe. It has deeply transformed all, including cultural, political, economic and religious structures. According to Tshibangu, this has led African theological thought to be torn between inculturation, with which to recover the holistic process of life and knowledge, as experimented in various African traditions, and liberation from contradictions and denials of the human entailed in inserting oneself into a Western epistemology of being.

This Western reasoning about being has subtly continued to spread all over the world under other overtones. "Epistemological African vigilance has not been able to challenge globalization in a world that could have structured itself without Africa and at times against it." This is not to say that the holistic traditional view had no weak points or no contradictions. It was however, structured within a cultural whole that gave it internal coherence.

Tshibangu points out that the political and cultural approaches must be interwoven if Christian theology is to deal adequately with the problems with which it is faced. This task, Tshibangu argues, imposes certain conditions on African theologians, who must now channel their theological effort and commitment in a sound and organized way.

In this regard, Tshibangu lists what he termed "Obligations of African theologians", as follows:

Firstly, African theologians must be fully aware of the fact that their Catholic work calls for real spiritual commitment. There can be no theological effort without commitment. One must raise questions about one's own life and about the spiritual destiny of the people with whom one is associated. This presumes a real ability to ask fundamental questions. The theologian must be a person of deep faith and a solidly metaphysical life.

"The theologian cannot do any useful, worthwhile or relevant work unless he or she accepts personal involvement in the theory and practice of life, while making every effort to maintain intellectual and moral sincerity and scientific objectivity." - (T. TSHIBANGU, "The Task and Method of Theology in Africa", in J. PARRATT (ed.), A Reader in African Christian Theology, SPCK, London 1987, pp. 38ff).

Secondly, Tshibangu says that the African theologian must be equally conscious of the intellectual demands imposed by theological work. "Theology is a scientific discipline, grounded on knowledge of revelation and its content, and also based on knowledge of the reality of human beings and the universe." This means, first of all, that the theologian must possess theological knowledge in the strict and formal sense. Vatican II defined it thus:

"Reason illuminated by faith which, with the help of God, seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the mysteries. It does this by learning all it can by way of analogy from nature, by exploring the relationship between the different mysteries themselves, and by considering the ultimate end of humanity."

It also means that the theologian must strive to possess the deepest and most accurate scientific knowledge of humanity and the factors that condition it.

If African theologians want to be rigorous and to be taken seriously, they must be able to go beyond simple commitments. For even if the latter is correct, it may be intuitive and difficult to formulate. Theologians must be able to propose matters in a valid and convincing way to other human minds.

The third obligation imposed on African theologians, according to Tshibangu, is that of their own social commitment. They cannot live as beings apart because they must bear responsibility for their own personal destiny and that of others. They must be involved in their community and their social participation must be as active as possible.

This participation will put them in a position to gain a deeper grasp of the cultural issues posed by their community and the living conditions of their contemporaries. It will help them to pay due attention to the questions raised by the appearance of new values in a given society, by its characteristic perception and conception of things (i.e., its typical epistemological viewpoint), and by the facts and events related to its socio-cultural evolution and development. "If Christian thinkers are not wholly involved in the ongoing process of their society, they can hardly claim to be authentic African theologians."

Fourthly, and closely associated with this overall commitment is the obligation of ecclesial involvement. African theologians must live in fidelity to ecclesial truth. They must of course possess discernment, so that they can know exactly what is defined as certain truth by the Church. But they must equally cultivate courage and take risks in exploring, pondering, and expressing the theological conclusions that derive from their authentic research.

The Churches of which African theologians are members also have a role to play. "They must have confidence in their theologians, unless there is a good reason to feel otherwise. They must support them on the intellectual level of religious practice, encouraging their research, avoiding hasty condemnations, and being careful not to voice fears and reservations for a purely a priori reasons." - ((T. TSHIBANGU, "The Task and Method of Theology in Africa", p. 40).

For T. Tshibangu, if these conditions are met, African theologians can undertake the research that faces us with a real chance of handling it successfully. He concludes by saying that there are variety of tasks to be undertaken by African theologians. Some of these tasks require urgent attention:

"Some have to do with the spirit and traditional values of African religion. Some have to do with national and cultural integration; some have to do with current social development. Some face the Christian conscience in general, but have not yet been resolved by the Churches."

For Msgr. T. Tshibangu, African theologians must also help to clarify and eventually resolve the theological questions that have not yet been solved by the Churches. In some instances an African approach may reveal that the questions are 'false questions' or 'badly framed'. In other instances it will have to offer some contribution towards the ultimate solution.

Tshibangu recognizes the program of research to be undertaken is a vast one. However, he advises that we must organize theological effort and commitment on a large scale if we are to undertake the program and carry it out successfully.

Apart from his stewardship as bishop and theologian, it suffices to mention, at least in passing, that Archbishop Tshibangu, together with other members of the Congolese Catholic Bishops' Conference, and the entire Body of Christ in Congo, welded the storm, as a Bishop and theologian, during the trying period of the dictatorial regime of Mobutu in his country, Ex-Zaire.

In Archbishop T. Tshibangu, one meets a solid and well-balanced African bishop-theologian and social reformer. This is the greatest legacy of Archbishop Tshibangu to the Church in Africa and the world. The combination of these three qualities in the exercise of his ministry, both as a bishop and theologian, will remain forever, as the greatest epitaph in his honor, as an African Church leader and theologian.

Adieu, Archbishop Tharcisse Tshibangu.
May the Angels of God welcome you at the gate of Heaven! Amen.

Fr. Francis Anekwe Oborji is a Roman Catholic Priest, Full Professor and Chair of Ordinarius of contextual theology at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, Rome.