ABSTRACT
The history of the development of the Christian doctrine of God demonstrates that the language or grammar that came to determine how Christians are to understand God as three in one and one in three (Trinity) was largely developed by African Christian leaders such as Tertullian, Origen, Arius, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Augustine of Hippo. However, when the Christian doctrine of God came to sub-Saharan Africa, it came through Western missionaries and the question that was raised was not so much how God was to be understood as Trinity but rather whether Africans were capable of conceptualizing the very idea of God. This question was generally raised in a racist context that devalued much of African cultural ideas in order to justify colonialism and the conversion of Africans to the Christian faith. The first Western adventurers, missionaries, and traders who came to Africa therefore described Africans as a people who lived in darkness, without civilization and without God. The missionaries therefore came to shine a great light of belief in God and to bring civilization to that great darkness.1
