Gathaka, The Bible and Democracy in Africarhythm of life especially in the Old Testament and in the synoptic gos-
pels.’^28
However we should take caution when it comes to interpretation in as
much as Africans may identify with the culture and stories in the Bible.
Culture is the total manifestation of a people’s self-understanding and
self-expression, through politics, economics, ethics, aesthetics, kinship
and religion. Language, science and technology are the means through
which this self-understanding and self-expression is communicated and
appropriated^29 Goldingay cautions that the biblical characters and their
stories were unique to them and the situations we might be in are quite
different.^30 In as much as Africans can identify with the culture in the
bible the bible characters and events are separated by geography, lan-
guage, race or time. Goldingay thus advices, ‘I have to cultivate both a
sensitive and a critical discipline if I am to perceive where a narrative is
setting an example before me and what that example is, and thus to go
on to work out what significance that example has within the Bible as a
whole and for the modern world.’^31 Here we are reminded of culture
relativism but also note:
OT ethics thus comprise a response to the activity of the redeemer God. But
they are also a response to the creator God, embody conformity to the pat-
tern of natural order, and apply as much outside as inside Israel. They are
standards on whose basis even God himself can be appealed to. Thus one’s
doctrine of creation will comprise an important aspect of the basic orienta-
tion which determines the framework of one’s approach to ethical ques-
tions. Specific importance will attach to one’s theological understanding of
topics such as man, sexuality and other human relationships, land, the state,
and the outworking of human history in general.’^32
Again Goldingay rightly points out that while the Christian ethicist is not
going to take the Old Testament law as God’s last word on behavior, it
seems equally clear that it would be odd for him simply to ignore it as a
possible source of guidance for decision-making over the way of life God
expects of his people.^33 He goes further also to remind us that we cannot
(^28) Mugambi, J.N.K. Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, p 118.
(^29) Mugambi, J.N.K. Religion and Social Construction of Reality, Nairobi; Nairobi Univ.
Press, 1996, 31ff).
(^30) John Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, Inter-Varsity Press,
Leicester, 1981, p 40.
(^31) Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, p 41.
(^32) Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, p 43.
(^33) Goldingay, Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation, p 51.