“It is not our custom to fight for our gods”

Religious diversity in Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”

Agbogbho Mmuo, by Ben Enwonwu

I am ashamed to say that I read Achebe’s classic[1] for the first time last week. It’s one of the many casualties of my estranged relationship with written fiction, an estrangement reflective of my uncomfortable relationship with uncertainty in general. In case you are like me before last week, the story follows the life of Okonkwo, a man of Umuofia. Through Okonkwo’s life, Achebe explores his traditional culture, religion, and its relationship with Christianity and the colonial administration. You should read it, it is a fascinating book. Here though, I am not as much interested in rehashing the story as much as commenting on sayings and conversations in the book concerning religious diversity that caught my attention. Nevertheless, spoilers ahead in case you care about those.

"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?" (Chapter 15)

Uchendu said this in response to the news that some other villages had encountered the Europeans. Obviously the comment about albinos is biologically incorrect, but the point of proverbs and sayings like this is not biological accuracy, but political and metaphysical wisdom. Here, I see an interesting articulation of polycentricity, especially with the part that says “what is good among one people is an abomination with others”, a proverb that the colonial administrators obviously had no idea about, considering what they are doing. That part is a middle that illuminates the extremes that are the other statements. “There is no story that is not true” and “The World has no end” are not accidentally linked. They are comparable to the Butler’s claim that “for Platonism, everything exists, the question is simply how”[2]. He also notes Socrates’ sentiment when he says ‘And so, Glaucon, a myth was saved and not lost, and it will save us if we believe it’ (Republic 621b)[3]. This is not to project what is a peculiar platonic doctrine to this relatively distant (for Plato) culture, but to show how the principle is not uniquely Platonic, and appears in many places, including ancient Greece, where one can have many omnipotent Gods[4]. Plato (and his successors) were in fact drawing and articulating their theological context. That certain principles from that context are found in villages in Sub-Saharan Africa is not a testament to Platonism’s supremacy, but to the principle’s relative ubiquity and emergence whenever there is consideration of the problem of difference and multiplicity that doesn’t want to reduce or eliminate either. This is so even in the conversation between Akunna and Mr. Brown on Chukwu (the head of the Igbo pantheon):

"Your queen sends her messenger, the District Commissioner. He finds that he cannot do the work alone and so he appoints kotma to help him. It is the same with God, or Chukwu. He appoints the smaller gods to help Him because His work is too great for one person."

"You should not think of Him as a person," said Mr. Brown. "It is because you do so that you imagine He must need helpers. And the worst thing about it is that you give all the worship to the false gods you have created."

"That is not so. We make sacrifices to the little gods, but when they fail and there is no one else to turn to we go to Chukwu. It is right to do so. We approach a great man through his servants. But when his servants fail to help us, then we go to the last source of hope. We appear to pay greater attention to the little gods but that is not so. We worry them more because we are afraid to worry their Master. Our fathers knew that Chukwu was the Overlord and that is why many of them gave their children the name Chukwuka--

"Chukwu is Supreme."

"You said one interesting thing," said Mr. Brown. "You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His will."

"But we must fear Him when we are not doing His will," said Akunna. "And who is to tell His will? It is too great to be known."

In this way Mr. Brown learned a good deal about the religion of the clan and he came to the conclusion that a frontal attack on it would not succeed.” (Chapter 21)

What is interesting here is not really the fact that Akunna is here trying to argue for Chukwu’s supremacy and his use of intermediaries, but how he goes about doing this, and the context in which he is arguing this. “Who is to tell His will? It is too great to be known”. On Christian terms, this is a pretty decisive argument. The Christian would gesture to Jesus as the one who interprets YHWH’s will, but even Jesus, in the Christian religion, uses intermediaries himself: his priests, angels, etc. Despite saying that Jesus is their only intermediary, they use many other intermediaries. But the question remains, is the use of angelic intermediaries the same as Chukwu’s use of intermediaries. The answer seems to be both “Yes” and “No”, and this is because there is a basic contradiction embodied in the unique yet shared intermediation of Jesus, one only resolved in a pluralist, and frankly Polytheist Christianity.

To see how, we must first notice how this intermediation works for Chukwu. Before this conversation, Chukwu is barely mentioned. He is mentioned once by name when Ikemefuna is remembering his Mother just before his death. He is a part of a name later (Unachukwu), but is not cited again until this conversation. If all one had was the novel prior to Akunna’s conversation, one could be mistaken that he isn’t that important. But, as Magesa noted:

“God's presence and power are ubiquitous, so ubiquitous that there is no need to point it out, even to the young, as aptly summed up in the proverb: “No one points out the Great One to a child.” God's presence and power are palpable throughout the universe, by the fact of creation itself. So how can one deny or doubt the reality of creation? In other words, God is recognized by daily human consciousness, save in exceptional circumstances that may dictate special tribute through specific prayers and sacrifices. This is all that life, morality, or spirituality requires.”[5]

One could say that this common element in African spirituality sees their pantheon head in the manner of a classical theist:

he is “being itself,” in that he is the inexhaustible source of all reality, the absolute upon which the contingent is always utterly dependent, the unity and simplicity that underlies and sustains the diversity of finite and composite things.[6]

But unlike the usual classical theist, who is monotheist in the sense that the “gods” are themselves just contingent entities who should not be worshipped, we have here something approximating the “Being of beings” that is Phanes:

“The application of multiple names, however, can also indicate that the being in question is not a God in the same way that others are. Hence Phanes is said (frag. 82) to be “the key of the mind”, but Nyx alone can “see” Him (frag. 86); the other Gods simply perceive “a splendor in the Aithēr”, which shines from Phanes’ “skin”. Phanes is also said to “tend in His breast eyeless love,” (82). Phanes is neither seeing, nor seen, therefore, it appears, save by Nyx, though He is a ‘phenomenon’ perceived by the other Gods—only not as an individual, but as a splendor of the shining stars, the purest light. Indeed, Phanes is repeatedly referred to in the fragments as ‘famous’, even though He is not recognized or remarked as such, but universally as the very phenomenality of any event.”[7] (emphasis mine)

With this framework in mind, we can see that the other members of the Igbo pantheon acting as intermediaries is not a weakness of Chukwu, but an expression of his abundance, for what he gives Being for is not a mere mechanical entity called the universe, but a cosmos that is a family of relating persons, who are ends in themselves. Chukwu’s will is actively expressed in the worship of these entities, because "worship" is, in the end, fostering a beneficial relationship with persons for their sake, as an end and not just a means. This is why Achebe shows that there is always a shrine for one’s ancestors, even recently deceased ancestors, in one’s home. Chukwu’s will is too great because he is not giving particular instructions as to what to do, but giving persons to love, appreciate, and relate to by providing their common intelligibility. Based on what Chukwu gives, Brown’s proselytisation is unnecessary and destructive, and Akunna’s genius is pointing out how this critique hits from the Christian side outwards.

On Christian terms, the Kingdom of heaven is a family of persons, and yet such persons are appendages of a Christic body. If Christian salvation emphasizes inclusion in this body over the relationship to these persons as ends in themselves, then Christian salvation is not salvation, but empire for the sake of one man. But the logic of personalization requires a diversity and an affirmation of personal unity whose characteristic practices become indistinguishable from the polytheism the Christians rail against. It requires the polycentricity Uchendu articulates, and the infinity of the world and its religious expressions. This is the wisdom Chukwu gives through Akunna.

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[1] Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann ELT, 2005). Originally published 1958.

[2] Edward P. Butler, “‘The Indispensability of Polytheism to a Living Platonism,’ Harvard University | Henadology,” accessed August 2, 2024, https://henadology.wordpress.com/2024/05/17/the-indispensability-of-polytheism-to-a-living-platonism-harvard-university/.

[3] As translated in Edward P Butler, “Esoteric City: Theological Hermeneutics in Plato’s Republic,”

[4] “if the Greeks should be ‘desperately alien’ they are not so in that having so many gods they must do without the notion of theological omnipotence, but in that they have so many omnipotent gods.” H. S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, v. 173 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2011).

[5] Laurenti Magesa and Bénézet Bujo, What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013). p. 35

[6] David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, 2013, https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-3784. p. 30

[7] Edward P. Butler's lecture notes from "Polytheism in Greek Philosophy, Part One: Before the Philosophers". (Book incoming).