Understanding the concept of God's pathos in Hosea : one of the keys for the religious and socio-political transformation of the Sub-Saharan part of Africa since 1960.

Abstract

This thesis has been written at a time when sub-Saharan African people are facing great religious and socio--political challenges in their history. These challenges have been such since 1960. Many questions regarding identity, religion and socio-political situations have been raised. This includes questions relating to God and the oppressive religious and socio-political leadership class and the oppressed people of sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed this thesis tries to face the question of God's pathos, making connections or looking for resemblance between Hosea's time and the religious and socio-political situations of sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore the main purpose is not to go back to the large already explored debate about the question of God's pathos over centuries, but to see how God's, Hosea's and sub-Saharan African people's pathos interact each with other, and how such an interaction could be used for the religious and socio-political transformations of the sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of methodology, we introduce a new paradigm called tautegory in place of the typical allegorical, holistic, literal, typological, inculturation or liberation approaches used by most of African scholars. This new paradigm warrants the creation of a new theological framework. We think this new framework could correspond to sub-Saharan culture. This new paradigm could also be used to throw new light on how to resolve some theological contradictions that classic theism has brought through the missionaries' work in the sub-Saharan African context.