The postmodern theologians and Hermen Kroesbergen on the language of the spirit world in Africa
Arụmarụka Journal of Conversational Thinking September 23, 2024 Sunday Layi Oladipupo 1 citation
The author critically examines Hermen Kroesbergen's claim that southern Africans' references to the spirit world are responses to what remains mysterious and beyond expression. While Kroesbergen favors critical realist and postmodern theologians, the author sides with postmodern theologians in the context of Pentecostal West Africans' language about the spirit world. Building on Ludwig Wittgenstein's linguistic approach and William James's discourse on mysticism and consciousness, the author argues that Pentecostal West Africans' belief in the spirit world is neither metaphorical nor a response to the unexplainable. Using the Ifá divination system as a paradigm, the author shows that this belief undergirds an urgency to explain, control, and predict the spirit world.