The Africa Factor
How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of
Western Christianity
By Thomas C. Oden
IVP Books, 2008
(204 pages, $19.00, hardcover)
reviewed by L. P. Fairfield
The thesis of this book can be stated simply: Africa played a decisive role in the formation of Christian culture. For the past fifteen years, Thomas Oden has presided over the publication of The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, presenting the best of Christian exegesis from the Church’s first thousand years.
In the course of his labor, he began to notice the preponderance of North African sources in Christian theology, from the third through the sixth centuries . . .
