Christ’s Seer Office in the South Sudanese Context Exploring the Place of Prophet Ngundeng as a Receptor Lens of Understanding Christology Among the Nuer

Abstract

Christ's Seer Office (CSO) has a hotchpotch of controversies encompassing it. Among these polemical trajectories that obtains in these controversies is the African’s prophetic office. This is certainly due to the close parallelism that CSO matches the prophetic office of Christ. In the South Sudanese context, some African communities view Christ as a magician, medicine practitioner, or a traditional healer. This misconception should not be taken lightly. It needs a deeper introspection from the African Christian theologians, as the concerned communities may abandon the church and revert to their ancestral shrines for worship. The Nuer in South Sudan has embraced prophet Ngundeng as their Christ just because of some similarities that exist between Christ’s Seer Office and Ngundeng. This article fully reconnoitered the two prophetic offices by comparing them by using the principle of Nexus mysteriorum and Analogia entis to enhance the Nuer understanding of Christ. In its findings, this article reveals Christ as a prophet; the whom all the Old Testament prophets prefigured in their speeches and actions. Moreover, the study concluded that Jesus is Nuer’s Ngundeng par excellence.