ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the effect of key term choices on local theology, using the Adioukrou as a case study. After a brief history of the arrival of Christianity among the Adioukrou, the chapter explore the traditional perceptions of God, divinities, powers of the air, and ancestor spirits, and compare them to current perceptions after eighty-five years of Christianity. It also examines the way perceptions of agn are being transformed as it is used in Adioukrou Scripture. This is in stark contrast to the term elmis, which was neither used in Scripture nor transformed by it, even though it is much more similar to the biblical concept of spirits than the traditional sense of agn is to devil. Indigenous terms led Adioukrou to believe that agn and Nyam were part of the cognitive environment that they shared with the biblical author, even though there were significant areas of unshared space.
