IS ANCESTOR VENERATION COMPATIBLE WITH THE BIBLICAL FAITH?
Abstract
As part of a research project on ancestor veneration in the church this essay explores the stance of biblical witness on a few fundamental issues: (a) How important is past history for the biblical faith? (b) What is the role of the prime ancestors of Israel in the biblical faith? (c) Can the deceased mediate between humans and God? (d) Should the deceased exercise authority over the living? (e) Does respect, gratitude and love for one’s forebears imply dependency on them as superiors? (f) Does the exclusiveness of the biblical faith imply intolerance and religious imperialism? (g) Can African insights and metaphors be used to express the message of the gospel?Downloads
Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Journal.
This is an open access journal, and the authors and journal should be properly acknowledged, when works are cited.
Authors may use the publishers version for teaching purposes, in books, theses, dissertations, conferences and conference papers.
A copy of the authors’ publishers version may also be hosted on the following websites:
- Non-commercial personal webpage or blog.
- Institutional webpage.
- Authors Institutional Repository.
The following notice should accompany such a posting on the website: “This is an electronic version of an article published in Scriptura, Volume XXX, number XXX, pages XXX–XXX”, DOI. Authors should also supply a hyperlink to the original paper or indicate where the original paper (http://scriptura.journals.ac.za/pub) may be found.
Authors publishers version, affiliated with the Stellenbosch University will be automatically deposited in the University’s’ Institutional Repository SUNScholar.
Articles as a whole, may not be re-published with another journal.
The following license applies:
