Immortality of the Soul in Ecclesiastes and Akan traditional Thought: A Comparative Analysis from an African Christian Theological Perspective

John Kwasi Fosu

doi:10.38159/erats.2021741

Abstract

This article surveys the immortality of the soul in Ecclesiastes and Akan traditional thought from an African Christian theological perspective.Using comparative analysis, it argues that there is a remarkable similarity between the concept of immortality in Ecclesiastes and that of the Akan religio-cultural traditions. It is theologically significant to consider the immaterial nature of humankind, death and immortality that has been regarded as mystical and not experiential. This discovery of similarity with Ecclesiastes allows the Akan, and for that matter Africans, the possibility of relocating their religio-cultural and traditional worldviews within the wider context of the biblical cultures and thus Christian theology. Keywords: Immortality, Worldview, Ecclesiastes, Akans

Highlights

Diverse cultural worldviews and traditions have attempted to answer the question of the immortality of the soul.1 researchers are often confronted with the questions relating to life after death within scholarship: Do we survive death? Which components of man endures after death? Do beliefs about life after death reconcile with the modern worldview? These questions have been examined from different academic disciplines such as in theology, anthropology, psychology, sociology and fiction and arriving at diverse and often conflicting conclusions.2 There is, the need to examine the biblical literature on the subject especially as it engages the contemporary reader
This article surveys the immortality of the soul in Ecclesiastes and Akan traditional thought from an African Christian theological perspective
It argues that there is a remarkable similarity between the concept of immortality in Ecclesiastes and that of the Akan religio-cultural traditions

Summary

Introduction

Diverse cultural worldviews and traditions have attempted to answer the question of the immortality of the soul.1 researchers are often confronted with the questions relating to life after death within scholarship: Do we survive death? Which components of man endures after death? Do beliefs about life after death reconcile with the modern worldview? These questions have been examined from different academic disciplines such as in theology, anthropology, psychology, sociology and fiction and arriving at diverse and often conflicting conclusions.2 There is, the need to examine the biblical literature on the subject especially as it engages the contemporary reader. Immortality of the Soul in Ecclesiastes and Akan traditional Thought: A Comparative Analysis from an African Christian Theological Perspective

Results

Conclusion