David Wilhite
The words the whole church uses to say who Jesus is were coined in North Africa, in Latin, by an African, a century before the council that made them official. He can show you the moment they arrived in the room.
Dr. David E. Wilhite. Professor of Theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 2007 and teaches the required course in early Christian studies. PhD, University of St Andrews. Author of Ancient African Christianity: An Introduction to a Unique Context and Tradition (Routledge, 2017) and of work on Tertullian and early Christology; six books and more than forty articles and essays.
Also anchors sessions 3.1, 3.2, 3.4 of the learning path
Who he is
David Wilhite teaches theology at Baylor's Truett Seminary, where he has run the required early-Christian-studies course since 2007. He took his doctorate at St Andrews. He wrote Ancient African Christianity, which is exactly what it sounds like: a full introduction to a tradition most seminary graduates have never been taught as African at all.
He is the specialist in this archive. Where others argue that Africa was there, Wilhite can tell you what its churches were like, who led them, what language they prayed in, and which of their sentences the rest of Christianity is still repeating.
What you are getting in this dossier
The single best story in this whole archive, which is what happened at the Council of Nicaea when the delegates from Rome walked in. The African writer who invented the word Trinity. Two women, a noblewoman and a slave, who died together. Why Martin Luther looked to Ethiopia. And his account of how North African Christianity got whitewashed in the twentieth century by scholars who were trying to be anti-racist.
The arrow points the other way
He starts by reversing the direction everyone assumes.
"Some of the most influential thinkers and writers in early Christianity come from North Africa. And most people don't even think of them as Africans, when in fact, it's not as if Christianity comes into North Africa already having all the answers or figuring out all these sort of doctrinal expressions and then imposing them or sending them to Africa. If anything, it's the other way around."
The rest of this dossier is part of Unspoken
1,531 more words and 4 more clips of him making the case, including the three objections he answers and the place he refuses to flatter his own argument.
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