Confrontation with our culture has recently been put on the agenda by Lesslie Newbigin, in Beyond 1984 and Foolishness to the Greeks. Broadly speaking his position theology has sold out to Western culture, and the opposing perceptions of the Gospel need to be reclaimed and affirmed against prevailing assumptions.

Nicodemus is the hero of many a Trinity Sunday sermon.2 The leader of the Jews, the master of Israel, comes humbly to Jesus, by night to the Light of the World. He does not believe much (like the preacher perhaps), but he has the heart of the matter, ‘We know that thou art a teacher come from God’. Jesus teaches him the profound truth of man's need for rebirth, and he is converted. He stands up for his faith pluckily against the hostility of his peers — ‘Does our Lawjudge a man…?’; and in the end it is he who buries Jesus, with a royal anointment of a hundred litres of myrrh.

The notion of a post-mortem disembodied existence of the soul followed by resurrection on the last day has been part of traditional Christian theology for centuries. Though some modern theologians are unhappy with this doctrine and have tried to re-interpret it or reject it altogether, it cannot be denied that traditional Christian theology has always taught this. This view was held by many of the Church Fathers and by the Reformers. Today it is still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant Churches.

Together, Calvin's Geneva Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism had an exceptional influence on Karl Barth's theology. Barth seems neither to have learned these catechisms as a child nor taught them in his own confirmation classes as a pastor. But as a theologian, he later developed a particular and persistent interest in both.1

There are, for purposes of this paper, two remarkable facts about Christianity on the African Continent. The first is its antiquity. There seems to be every likelihood that it was as early as its very inception that Christianity, as part of its rapid sweep across the first century Graeco-Roman world, reached Africa as well. The New Testament contains a number of hints that suggest that places such as Ethiopia, Egypt (particularly Alexandria) and Cyrene could vie with each other for first position. In any case, by the second and third centuries, the African Church could boast of such great leaders and thinkers as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian; and a century later of the highly influential Augustine of Hippo. The significance and influence of these men extended well beyond Africa. After that, with the exception of Egypt and Ethiopia, there is a lacuna in our knowledge of Christianity in Africa. The next significant centuries are the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in respect of North, West and Central Africa, and the nineteenth century in respect of virtually the entire Continent. In short, Christianity is not a newcomer to the African Continent. Ups and downs of various kinds it has experienced here as it has done elsewhere; so also, in respect of a number of areas, major gaps affecting its continuous and unbroken existence down the centuries. Nevertheless, a newcomer to the Continent it is not.