Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - TF the First

Nimi, This is just brilliant.

Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Elias

On 1/1/2022 10:28 AM, Nimi Wariboko wrote:

Dear Professor Falola:

"You are the greatest" in this context is not some sort of Hegelian Absolute, Geist, or Lord of the universe. It is only a superlative of the word great. If there were 100-meters runners who were great, people now say Usain Bolt is the greatest of them. It does not mean he is the greatest being on the cosmic scale. 

You imply that by calling you the greatest I might be claiming a divine or cosmic position for you.  Actually, we are not even supposed to describe God as the greatest; that puts God on some comparative scale with creation. We make the infinite finite when we reduce it to the same measurement or dimension. Technically, God is not even a being, but the ground of being, Ungrund. Every thing stands out and stands in the abysmal ground of being, the infinite, eternal ontological creative act. If God is a being then God is a being among other beings, an object among other objects. No one can even make God into an object in prayers. Naturally, when you pray, you are the subject praying to the God thrown in-front of you as an object, but God transcends the subject-object divide. While you are praying to God the same God is inside of you praying to God (Romans 8:26). 

God is the ground of being because in him all things consist. In him we move, live, and have our being. When we say God is the greatest or is a being we say so only metaphorically or symbolically. We are being cataphatic when we should be apophatic. Thus, when I use the adjective "greatest" I did not have the cosmos or Creator in mind. I had you and I firmly on the finite level of creation. 

You are right, human beings are flawed. The fact that human beings are flawed has never stopped the Bible or revered thinkers from recognizing the greatness of human beings and using superlative language to describe human beings created in the image of God. The Bible says there was no king like David or Hezekiah. Martin Luther once said we are both sinners and saints. God expects great things from us. Some people even believe we are called to repair creation. We are seated above principalities and powers. We are even called friends of God. Jesus called his disciples friends. 

Human beings are flawed because they are estranged from God, they finite beings pretending to be infinite, yet God is still mindful of them (Psalm 8). That divine love makes us great and the greatest among God's creation on earth. (Greatness here does not mean human beings are called to destroy or degrade creation for their selfish ends).

Human beings are flawed because to be is to fall from essence into existence, which necessarily creates estrangement from their source of essence. And the love of God calls them back to reunion with their essence. As Paul Tillich once said love is the movement of the estranged toward a reunion. And he also stated that love is stronger than death.  

Saying because we will die one day means we are already dead while alive is not a good argument. It focuses too much on mortality instead of natality, the new birth, the capacity to begin, the capacity to initiate something new amid ongoing social processes. Saint Augustine once said that a beginning be made man (human beings) was created. Hannah Arendt once said every child is a miracle, there is none like that child and the insertion of the child is to bring something new into the world. That child has the capacity to initiate something new in the world. Yes, we will all die, but we must actualize our potentialities, initiate something new, be creative, rise to our inherent greatness. We can call people to greatness and to be the greatest in their generation. For me the image of God in human beings is the power of creation, human creativity. That imposes some responsibility upon us. Not to be what we are meant to be is a mark of evil. Any system that prevents people from actualizing their potentialities for the benefit of their communities and their own individual betterment is evil or unjust.

Falola, you are a creator, a creator of ideas; called to the natality of ideas, not to the mortality of ideas. Especially for you, every end is a new beginning. Toyin Falola is nothing but a capacity to begin, an uncanny ability to initiate something new amid ongoing social processes. You are a miracle. By definition, every miracle exceeds the given as we know it, otherwise it is not a miracle and we would not have a basis to decide if it is a miracle. Thus, a miracle is greater than the given or givens. Do you still find fault in my use of the adjective, the greatest? 

Describing you as the greatest is not a sin. Jesus in Luke 7:28 described John the Baptist as the greatest human being ever born. But quickly added that the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than him. Here Jesus did not shy away from superlative language. John was flawed such that after publicly recognizing Jesus as the Messiah doubted if Jesus was indeed the Messiah. Yes, you are greatest today in your chosen field of African history, but the least in the kingdom of African history or scholarship will be greater than you. This is the sentiment in my calling you the greatest. My Kalabari (Niger Delta) people always pray that the children should be greater than the parents; otherwise, the family will deteriorate. 

To call you the greatest does not mean I elevated you to the league of the cosmos, the organized chaos. It is to give honor to whom honor is due. It is an appellation to interpellate you into future greatness. To call those things which are not as though they are, as Saint Paul taught us. 

You ended your response by comparing yourself to the butterfly, even saying you are below it. Let me complicate this your move to abject humility a bit. First, some Christians will object to calling what God said is the Imago Dei as an insect. Second, the human-being-as-an-insect language could be misused in certain political circumstances to deny the humanity of enemies or opponents. (This is not what you have in mind.) All this does not mean that you are not within your right to claim certain analogical language to describe your being and deed. 

Finally, I want to know if in your dreams you also see yourself as an insect or butterfly. A Chinese sage once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up he asked himself if he was now a butterfly dreaming as a man. Falola is awake and says he is a butterfly, does this mean that a butterfly is dreaming to be the man TF, the greatest. 

Sir, the bottom line is this: he who God has blessed there is nothing my use of adjective will add or remove from him. Thanks.

Nimi Wariboko 

Boston University 

On Jan 1, 2022, at 8:51 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Dear Nimi:

 

Apologies! Human beings cannot be the "greatest"! All humans are fundamentally flawed, victims of self-destruction who embark on a journey that leads not to success, as they assume, but to atrophy, both in a physical sense, but more so in the bigger realm of cosmic. Anything or anyone that will become history is already dead, even while alive! Years ago, I memorized a passage:

 

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

 

As I probed deeper, the author has been accused of boredom, and misread into saying that there would be no invention, science, technology. I took a retreat to study Ecclesiastes where the passage comes from, and I discovered that it was only here that the concept of "under the sun" was used. I have not been able to resolve this profound theological issue, but one thing that is clear to me is that we should not exaggerate and put ourselves in league with the cosmos.

 

Every day I wake up, I see myself unequal to the butterfly, below the insect, and an eventual meal for termites.

 

It is well.

 

TF

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Nimi Wariboko <nimiwari@msn.com>
Date: Saturday, January 1, 2022 at 7:35 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - TF the First

Happy Birthday to the Magnificent  Falola. You are the greatest. God bless you. 

 

Nimi Wariboko 

On Jan 1, 2022, at 7:49 AM, 'ayandiji Aina' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Happy New Year. BLESSEDNESS.

 

Get Outlook for Android

---

From: 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 1, 2022 2:07:56 AM
To: Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - TF the First

 

Happy birthday to TF 

primus inter pares

the first among the firsts 

on the first of the first.

 

 

 

Adeshina 

Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone

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--   Elias Kifon Bongmba PhD, DTheo (Lund)  Harry and Hazel Chair in Christian Theology  Professor of Religion  Chair, Department of Religion  Executive Editor, the Journal of Religion in Africa  Rice university  PO Box 1892 Houston TX 77251-1892  https://reli.rice.edu/faculty/elias-kifon-bongmba