A Critique of H. Kroesbergen’s The Language of Faith in Southern Africa (2019)

ABSTRACT The essay offers a critique of Hermen Kroesbergen’s 2019 book titled The Language of Faith in Southern Africa: Spirit World, Power, Community, Holism. Kroesbergen holds that, far from offering additional information about reality (designation), in the African grammar of faith, references to the spirit world, power, community and holism, are in fact responses to the world (connotation): they provide a way to deal with that which cannot be explained, controlled or predicted. Special attention is given to Kroesbergen’s creative account of a “material quality” of words. Three major criticisms of the book concern respectively: (a) the unfair dismissal of the role of African and Black theologies, (b) distracting references to the future of a global church considered from a distinctly Western perspective, and relatedly, (c) lack of an explicit link between Kroesbergen’s personal commitment to the idea of a global church and his reflection on an African language of faith.