**CRS 001: OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES**
**Question 1**
Mention seven and discuss four immediate and remote factors that led to the division of the kingdom of Israel.
**Question 2**
Discuss the period of exile and its benefits to the Israelites.
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**CRS 002: NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES**
**Question 3**
Assess the socio-political background of Israel during the birth of Jesus Christ.
**Question 4**
(a) Trace the internal and traditional evidences of authorship of the Gospel of Matthew.
(b) Examine seven characteristics of Matthew's Gospel.
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**CRS 003: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN WEST AFRICA**
**Question 5**
Appraise the attempt of the Portuguese at planting Christianity in West Africa and list eight reasons why the attempt failed.
**Question 6**
Explain five ways early missionaries influenced the people of Calabar.
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**CRS 004: RELIGION AND SOCIETY**
**Question 7**
Discuss five causes of religious conflict and mention five effects on social security in Nigeria.
**Question 8**
(a) Name the seven dimensions of Christian religion.
(b) Explain four out of the seven dimensions listed with copious examples.
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## ANSWERS
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### CRS 001: OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES
**Answer 1 — Seven Factors Leading to the Division of the Kingdom of Israel; Discussion of Four**
**Seven Factors (Remote and Immediate)**
Remote (Long-Term) Causes:
1. Deep-seated tribal rivalries between the northern tribes and Judah
2. Unequal development and regional neglect of the northern tribes
3. Solomon's policy of heavy taxation and forced labour (*corvée*)
4. Solomon's religious apostasy and promotion of idol worship
5. Solomon's increasingly autocratic and centralised rule
Immediate (Short-Term/Triggering) Causes:
6. Rehoboam's contemptuous rejection of the northern tribes' petition
7. Rehoboam's adoption of the harsh counsel of his young peers over the wisdom of the elders
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**Discussion of Four**
**i. Tribal Rivalries (Remote)**
The tension between the tribe of Judah in the south and the northern tribes — particularly the powerful tribe of Ephraim — predated the monarchy. During the period of the Judges, conflicts over precedence, resource allocation, and political leadership had repeatedly surfaced. Judah's royal dynasty under David (himself a Judahite) was always viewed with some suspicion by the north, which felt that tribal interests were being subordinated to Judah's. This underlying fracture line made the kingdom inherently fragile: it was never as unified as it appeared under David and Solomon.
**ii. Heavy Taxation and Forced Labour (Remote)**
Solomon's enormous building programme — the Temple, the royal palace complex, the fortification of Jerusalem and other strategic cities, and his chariot cities — was financed partly by heavy taxation and partly by compulsory labour drafts (*mas*) imposed disproportionately on the northern tribes. 1 Kings 5:13–14 records that Solomon raised a levy of thirty thousand men for Lebanon alone. This economic exploitation bred deep resentment that simmered throughout Solomon's forty-year reign, making the northern tribes ready to revolt at the first opportunity.
**iii. Solomon's Religious Apostasy (Remote)**
As Solomon aged, his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines — many of them foreign princesses taken in diplomatic marriages — drew him into the worship of foreign deities: Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, Milcom of the Ammonites, Chemosh of Moab (1 Kings 11:1–8). He built high places for these gods on the Mount of Olives. This apostasy was not merely a personal moral failure; it was a covenant violation that endangered the entire nation spiritually and alienated the segments of the population — particularly in the north — who remained loyal to the exclusive worship of Yahweh. The prophet Ahijah of Shiloh explicitly told Jeroboam that God was tearing ten tribes from Solomon's house as a consequence (1 Kings 11:29–39).
**iv. Rehoboam's Rejection of the Elders' Counsel (Immediate)**
When Solomon died and Rehoboam went to Shechem to be installed as king, the northern tribes — through their spokesman Jeroboam, recalled from Egypt — presented a formal and reasonable petition: reduce the burdens Solomon had placed on them, and they would loyally serve Rehoboam. The elders who had served Solomon advised Rehoboam to grant the request, recognising that wise, servant-hearted leadership secures lasting loyalty. Rehoboam instead listened to his young companions, who advised him to tell the people that his little finger was thicker than his father's loins and that he would increase, not reduce, their burdens. This response was not merely politically unwise; it was a direct insult that made the rupture inevitable. The northern tribes' cry — *"What portion have we in David? To your tents, O Israel!"* (1 Kings 12:16) — echoed an earlier rebel call (2 Samuel 20:1), and they formally seceded, crowning Jeroboam over the ten northern tribes as the Kingdom of Israel, while Rehoboam retained only Judah and Benjamin as the Kingdom of Judah.
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**Answer 2 — The Period of Exile and Its Benefits to the Israelites**
**Background**
The Babylonian Exile began in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon sacked Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon's Temple, and deported the Judean elite — priests, scribes, craftsmen, and royalty — to Babylon. It ended in 538 BC when the Persian King Cyrus the Great, having conquered Babylon, issued his famous edict permitting the Jews to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple (Ezra 1:1–4). Though an experience of profound suffering and national humiliation, the exile proved to be one of the most formative and ultimately beneficial periods in Israelite religious and cultural history.
**Benefits of the Exile**
1. **Spiritual Renewal and Triumph of Monotheism:** The exile served as a prolonged national crucible that purged Israel of the idolatry that had plagued it throughout the monarchic period. Confronted with the collapse of their state and temple, the exiles were forced to ask the fundamental theological question: had Yahweh been defeated by Babylon's gods? The answer developed by prophets such as Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55) was a resounding no — Yahweh was the sole universal God, and Babylon was merely his instrument of discipline. By the time the exiles returned, biblical monotheism was firmly established in Jewish consciousness and has never since been seriously threatened from within.
2. **Compilation and Preservation of Scripture:** The crisis of exile generated an urgent effort to gather, edit, and preserve the sacred traditions of Israel lest they be lost. Much of the Pentateuch reached its final form during this period. The Deuteronomistic History (Joshua through 2 Kings) was compiled and edited to explain the exile theologically. The Psalter was expanded. The writings of the pre-exilic prophets were collected and arranged. The exile thus produced, paradoxically, the greatest literary flowering in Israelite history and gave us the bulk of the Hebrew Bible in its current form.
3. **Birth of the Synagogue System:** With the Temple destroyed and sacrificial worship impossible, a radically new form of worship emerged — the synagogue (*beit knesset*, house of assembly). Jews gathered in homes and meeting places to read and interpret Scripture, pray, and sing psalms. This democratisation of worship shifted religious life from the exclusive domain of the Temple priesthood to a community-centred, text-centred model that would prove extraordinarily resilient and adaptable. The synagogue became the template not only for post-exilic Judaism but also for Christian church worship and later Islamic mosque worship.
4. **Strengthened Jewish Identity and Cultural Cohesion:** Paradoxically, living as a minority in a foreign empire strengthened rather than dissolved Jewish distinctiveness. Practices such as Sabbath observance, dietary laws (kashrut), and circumcision — which had been less strictly kept in Judah — became critical identity markers that distinguished Jews from their Babylonian neighbours. The exile forged a portable, non-territorial Jewish identity that would sustain the Jewish people through millennia of diaspora existence.
5. **Covenant Renewal and Deepened Theological Understanding:** Exile forced Israel to take seriously the covenant warnings of Deuteronomy and the pre-exilic prophets. The community engaged in profound self-examination, acknowledging their ancestors' unfaithfulness as the cause of their suffering. This penitential theology deepened their understanding of God's justice, mercy, and the unconditional nature of his ultimate covenant promises. Prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah articulated the vision of a new covenant written not on stone but on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34).
6. **Development of the Diaspora and Global Judaism:** Not all exiles returned when Cyrus permitted it. Many had established homes, businesses, and families in Babylon and across the Persian Empire. These diaspora communities became the seedbed for Judaism's global spread. Later, diaspora Jewish communities in Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and beyond translated Scripture into Greek (the Septuagint), interpreted Jewish law for Hellenistic contexts, and ultimately provided the social networks through which early Christianity spread.
7. **Intensified Messianic Hope:** The exile deepened Israel's longing for a Davidic deliverer who would restore the kingdom, rebuild the Temple, gather the scattered tribes, and inaugurate an era of justice and peace. This messianic expectation, intensified by the experience of exile and imperfect restoration, formed the theological soil in which the New Testament proclamation of Jesus as Messiah took root.
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### CRS 002: NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES
**Answer 3 — Socio-Political Background of Israel at the Birth of Jesus Christ**
**Roman Imperial Rule**
By the time of Jesus' birth (c. 6–4 BC), the land of Israel had been under Roman domination since Pompey's conquest in 63 BC. Judea was technically governed as a client kingdom — Rome preferred to rule through local proxies where possible. Herod the Great (37–4 BC), an Idumean appointed by Rome, served as client king of Judea. Herod was a brilliant but brutal ruler: he undertook massive building projects including the expansion of the Second Temple into one of the most magnificent structures in the ancient world, but he maintained his power through ruthless suppression of rivals and was willing to execute members of his own family. His massacre of infants in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16) is consistent with the character depicted in other historical sources.
**Economic Oppression through Taxation**
Roman imperial administration imposed a multi-layered taxation system: tribute to Rome, customs and tolls on goods, and local taxes. Tax collection was often farmed out to local collectors (*publicani*) who extracted more than the required amounts for personal profit, making tax collectors figures of moral contempt in Jewish society. The economic burden on ordinary Galilean and Judean peasants was severe, driving many into debt bondage or landlessness. This economic misery was a significant driver of social unrest and messianic expectation.
**Religious and Sectarian Divisions**
Jewish society at the time of Jesus was far from monolithic, divided among several competing religious movements:
- **Pharisees:** A lay movement emphasising strict observance of both written Torah and oral tradition, active primarily in synagogues, and enjoying wide popular respect. They believed in resurrection, angels, and providence.
- **Sadducees:** The priestly aristocratic establishment, controlling the Temple and the Sanhedrin. They accepted only the written Pentateuch, denied resurrection and angels, and collaborated with Roman authority to maintain the Temple system and their own privileged position.
- **Zealots:** A militant revolutionary movement committed to violent resistance against Roman occupation, motivated by the theological conviction that God alone was Israel's king and that Roman rule was an abomination. Their activities contributed to the eventual Roman-Jewish War of AD 66–70.
- **Essenes:** An ascetic sect, most famously associated with the Qumran community and the Dead Sea Scrolls, who had withdrawn from mainstream Jewish society, which they regarded as irredeemably corrupt. They practised communal living, ritual purity, and apocalyptic expectation.
**Messianic Expectation**
The combination of Roman oppression, economic exploitation, and intense religious consciousness generated a fervent popular expectation of divine intervention through a Messiah — a divinely appointed deliverer from the line of David who would expel the Romans, purify the Temple, restore Israel's sovereignty, and inaugurate the age of God's kingdom. This expectation was the charged atmosphere into which Jesus was born and within which his ministry would be interpreted by his contemporaries.
**Hellenistic Cultural Influence**
The conquest of Alexander the Great (332 BC) had spread Greek (*Hellenic*) language, philosophy, urban culture, and social institutions throughout the eastern Mediterranean. By the 1st century BC, Greek (*koine*) was the dominant language of commerce, administration, and intellectual life across the Roman east. Most Jews outside Palestine — and many within it — were more comfortable in Greek than in Hebrew or Aramaic. This Hellenistic environment shaped the cultural context of Jesus' world and later provided the linguistic medium (koine Greek) through which the New Testament was written and Christianity spread.
**The Pax Romana**
The *Pax Romana* — the enforced peace of the Roman Empire — had created relatively stable conditions for travel, communication, and trade across a vast network of Roman roads and sea routes. While this peace was maintained by military force and served Roman imperial interests, it inadvertently created conditions highly favourable to the later spread of Christianity: safe roads, common language, and accessible urban centres connected by trade.
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**Answer 4 — Gospel of Matthew: Authorship and Characteristics**
**(a) Evidence of Authorship**
**Internal Evidence**
The Gospel does not name its author, but several internal features point to Matthew (Levi), a Jewish tax collector turned apostle of Jesus. The Gospel displays an unusually sophisticated knowledge of Jewish customs, Old Testament Scripture, and rabbinic methods of interpretation. It quotes or alludes to the Old Testament approximately sixty-five times — more than any other Gospel — and its characteristic formula *"that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet"* (appearing ten times) reflects a Jewish-Christian concern to demonstrate that Jesus is the continuation and fulfilment of Israel's covenant story. The Gospel also shows familiarity with financial and administrative terminology (the talent, the denarius, the treasury) consistent with a former tax collector's background. Significantly, while Mark and Luke refer to this disciple as "Levi," Matthew's Gospel names him "Matthew" (Matthew 9:9) — possibly an authorial self-reference.
**Traditional (External) Evidence**
The earliest and most important external testimony is that of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis (c. AD 130), preserved by Eusebius: *"Matthew compiled the oracles [*logia*] in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted them as he could."* Irenaeus (c. AD 180) also affirmed that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew for Jewish Christians. Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome consistently attributed the first Gospel to Matthew the apostle. While modern scholars debate whether the canonical Greek Matthew is a translation of an Aramaic/Hebrew original or an independent Greek composition, the patristic consensus is unanimous in assigning authorship to the apostle Matthew.
**(b) Seven Characteristics of Matthew's Gospel**
1. **Fulfilment of Old Testament Prophecy:** Matthew's most distinctive feature is his use of the fulfilment formula to demonstrate that the major events of Jesus' life — his birth in Bethlehem, the flight to Egypt, his ministry in Galilee, his entry into Jerusalem, his betrayal for thirty pieces of silver — were foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus is presented not as a departure from Israel's history but as its climax and fulfilment (Matthew 1:22–23, 2:15, 2:17–18, 4:14–16, etc.).
2. **Jesus as the Jewish Messiah (King):** Matthew presents Jesus consistently as the Davidic Messiah promised to Israel. The Gospel opens with the genealogy tracing Jesus' lineage from Abraham through David (Matthew 1:1–17). The title "Son of David" appears more frequently in Matthew than in any other Gospel (nine times). Jesus is repeatedly depicted as the fulfilment of Israel's royal and prophetic hopes, and the Magi come to worship "the King of the Jews" (Matthew 2:2).
3. **Five Structured Teaching Blocks:** Matthew organises Jesus' teaching into five major discourses, each concluding with the formula "when Jesus had finished these sayings." These are: the Sermon on the Mount (ch. 5–7), the Mission Discourse (ch. 10), the Parable Discourse (ch. 13), the Community/Church Discourse (ch. 18), and the Eschatological Discourse (ch. 24–25). This five-fold structure has been interpreted as a deliberate echo of the five books of Moses, presenting Jesus as the new Moses delivering a new Torah.
4. **Use of "Kingdom of Heaven":** Matthew consistently uses the phrase "Kingdom of Heaven" (*basileia tōn ouranōn*) where Luke and Mark use "Kingdom of God" — appearing approximately thirty-two times. This is widely understood as a Jewish reverential circumlocution, avoiding the direct use of the name of God in line with Jewish practice, further confirming the Jewish-Christian audience of the Gospel.
5. **Genealogy from Abraham:** Unlike Luke's genealogy which traces Jesus' lineage back to Adam (and thus presents Jesus as the Saviour of all humanity), Matthew's genealogy begins with Abraham — the father of the Jewish nation — and proceeds through David (Matthew 1:1–17). This anchors Jesus firmly within the story of Israel and presents his coming as the fulfilment of the covenant promises made to Abraham and David.
6. **Emphasis on the Church and Community Life:** Matthew is the only Gospel to use the word *ekklesia* ("church" — Matthew 16:18, 18:17). Chapter 18 contains extensive teaching on community relations, conflict resolution, forgiveness, and church discipline, giving the Gospel a distinctly ecclesial and pastoral orientation. Matthew's concern is not merely with the individual disciple but with the ordered life of the Christian community.
7. **The Great Commission as Conclusion:** Matthew closes with the risen Jesus issuing the programmatic mandate to his disciples: *"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you"* (Matthew 28:19–20). This universal mission commission — extending the originally Jewish ministry of Jesus to all nations — serves as the theological climax of the entire Gospel and the charter for the global Christian mission.
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### CRS 003: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN WEST AFRICA
**Answer 5 — Portuguese Missionary Effort in West Africa and Reasons for Failure**
**The Portuguese Missionary Enterprise**
The Portuguese were the first European power to make sustained contact with West Africa and the first to attempt the systematic planting of Christianity on the continent. Their exploration of the West African coastline was driven by a combination of motives — commercial (especially trade in gold, ivory, and later slaves), geopolitical (finding a sea route to Asia and outflanking Islamic powers), and religious (spreading Christianity and fulfilling the crusading vision of missionary expansion associated with Prince Henry the Navigator, 1394–1460).
Portuguese contact with West Africa began in earnest in the mid-15th century. By 1472 they had reached Benin and Warri in present-day Nigeria. In 1482, approximately 600 missionaries and soldiers under Don Diogo de Azambuja established a trading and missionary post at Elmina on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), conducting their first worship service under a mango tree — a scene that symbolises both the ambition and the precariousness of the venture. In the Congo (modern Democratic Republic of Congo), the Portuguese achieved their most significant initial success: King Nzinga a Ntinu was baptised as João I in 1491, and his son Afonso I (reigned 1509–1543) became a devout Christian ruler who corresponded regularly with the Portuguese crown and attempted to build a genuinely Christian kingdom. In Benin and Warri, the Portuguese established contact with the Obas, hoping that royal conversion would produce mass Christian adoption, following the Constantinian model.
However, the entire enterprise collapsed within roughly a century, leaving little lasting Christian presence until the 19th-century missionary revival.
**Eight Reasons for Failure**
1. **The Slave Trade Undermined the Christian Message:** The same ships that carried missionaries also carried slave traders. The Portuguese commercial interest in enslaving Africans directly contradicted the Christian gospel of human dignity and equality. African rulers and peoples found it impossible to reconcile the missionaries' preaching with the practice of those who sent them. The slave trade fatally discredited the messenger and corrupted the mission.
2. **Unfavourable Climate and Tropical Disease:** West Africa's equatorial climate — extreme heat and humidity — and the prevalence of tropical diseases, particularly malaria (against which Europeans had no immunity or prophylaxis), devastated missionary personnel. Mortality rates among European missionaries were catastrophically high; West Africa earned the grim epithet "the white man's grave." The Portuguese could not sustain personnel replacement at the pace required by the death toll.
3. **Language Barrier and Failure of Inculturation:** The Portuguese missionaries made little sustained effort to learn African languages or to translate Christian teaching into local linguistic and cultural categories. Without communication in the vernacular, Christianity remained a foreign religion of the colonial elite — something performed in Latin before an audience that could not understand it. The contrast with later 19th-century missionaries who mastered local languages and produced vernacular Scriptures and liturgies is instructive.
4. **Inadequate Missionary Formation and Racial Condescension:** Many of those sent as missionaries were poorly trained for cross-cultural evangelism. More damaging, they operated with assumptions of African racial and cultural inferiority that made genuine relationship and respect impossible. They demanded cultural surrender — abandonment of African customs, dress, names, and social structures — as a precondition for Christian acceptance, which was both culturally offensive and practically impossible.
5. **Intertribal and Regional Warfare:** Several areas targeted by Portuguese missionaries were embroiled in local conflicts at the time of contact. In Benin, for instance, the Oba was engaged in disputes with the Igala that disrupted the social stability necessary for sustained missionary activity. War conditions made peaceful evangelism impractical and disrupted whatever Christian communities had begun to form.
6. **Cultural and Religious Incompatibility:** African religious and social systems — including ancestral veneration, polygamy, traditional rites of passage, and communal land tenure — were integral to social life and identity. Portuguese Christianity demanded the abandonment of all these practices as conditions of baptism. This created an unbridgeable social rupture: to become Christian was, in effect, to be expelled from one's community. The missionaries made no attempt at cultural accommodation or contextualisation.
7. **Syncretism and Superficial Conversion:** Where conversion did occur — particularly among rulers and elites — it was often shallow and instrumentally motivated. African rulers adopted Christianity to gain access to European firearms, trade goods, and political alliances, reverting to traditional religious practice once those instrumental goals were met. The famous example is the Oba of Benin, whose court received missionaries and accepted baptism but without any genuine religious transformation. Without deep catechesis and sustained pastoral care, baptism produced nominal Christians rather than convinced disciples.
8. **Priority of Commerce over Mission:** Despite the stated religious motivation, Portuguese engagement with West Africa was ultimately driven by commercial and colonial interests. When commercial priorities conflicted with missionary activity — as they consistently did — commerce won. Resources were directed toward trading posts, fortifications, and the slave trade rather than toward schools, churches, or the training of African clergy. The mission was structurally subordinated to empire from the beginning.
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**Answer 6 — Five Ways Early Missionaries Influenced the People of Calabar**
Calabar, in present-day Cross River State, was a major point of missionary entry into Nigeria, particularly through the work of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland mission from 1846 onward. Mary Slessor, Hope Masterton Waddell, and their colleagues had a transformative impact on Calabar society.
1. **Introduction of Western Education:** The missionaries established formal schools, of which Hope Waddell Training Institute (founded 1895) became the most influential. The Institute provided not only basic literacy but also vocational training — carpentry, masonry, printing, tailoring — that gave Calabar people practical skills for engagement with the modern economy. Mission schools produced the educated elite who would later lead Nigerian professional and political life. Literacy, once almost exclusively the preserve of a tiny minority, spread through the mission educational network to broader communities.
2. **Establishment of Medical Care:** Missionaries introduced Western medicine to Calabar, founding dispensaries and hospitals, training nurses and medical assistants, and combating endemic diseases. This was both an act of humanitarian service and an effective evangelistic strategy: demonstrating care for the whole person — body as well as soul — gave the Christian message credibility and won community trust. The medical mission challenged traditional reliance on fetish priests and herbalists for healing.
3. **Abolition of Harmful Traditional Practices:** Perhaps the most celebrated missionary achievement in Calabar was Mary Slessor's campaign against the killing of twins. In the Efik culture of Calabar, twins were considered a supernatural evil — the product of intercourse with a forest spirit — and were routinely killed at birth along with their mother. Slessor personally rescued hundreds of twins and challenged the cultural framework that justified the practice. Missionaries also worked to end human sacrifice (particularly the killing of slaves to accompany a dead chief to the afterlife), the brutal treatment of widows in mourning rites, and other practices they regarded as incompatible with human dignity.
4. **Abolition of the Slave Trade and Domestic Slavery:** The missionaries in Calabar were outspoken opponents of both the Atlantic slave trade and the institution of domestic slavery within Efik society. They advocated before both local rulers and the British colonial administration for the liberation of enslaved persons, sheltered escaped slaves, and worked to build an economic alternative to the slave trade through legitimate commerce. Their moral authority on this issue significantly advanced the abolitionist cause in the Niger Delta region.
5. **Introduction of the Printing Press, Literature, and Vernacular Scripture:** The missionaries brought the printing press to Calabar and used it to produce literacy materials, Christian literature, and eventually portions of Scripture in the Efik language. Hope Waddell translated parts of the Bible into Efik. The creation of a written Efik literature — Bible, hymns, primers — both elevated the status of the local language and gave Efik-speaking Christians direct access to Scripture in their mother tongue. This was foundational to the development of indigenous Christianity in the region.
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### CRS 004: RELIGION AND SOCIETY
**Answer 7 — Religious Conflict in Nigeria: Causes and Effects on Social Security**
**Five Causes of Religious Conflict in Nigeria**
1. **Ethnic-Religious Overlap and Boundary Disputes:** In Nigeria, religious identity frequently coincides with ethnic and regional identity — the largely Muslim north and largely Christian south division reflects deeper historical, cultural, and geographic fault lines. Conflicts over land, resources, or political representation easily assume a religious dimension, making them more emotionally charged, harder to resolve, and more prone to escalation.
2. **Political Manipulation of Religion:** Nigerian politicians have consistently exploited religious sentiment to mobilise voters, justify exclusion of political opponents, and deflect attention from failures of governance. When religion is weaponised as a political tool, it poisons public discourse, raises the stakes of political competition to existential levels, and creates conditions in which ordinary political disagreements can ignite inter-religious violence.
3. **Religious Extremism and Doctrinal Intolerance:** Fanatical movements that regard their interpretation of their faith as the only legitimate one and that dehumanise adherents of other religions as enemies of God represent a direct threat to social order. The rise of Boko Haram — premised on the belief that Western education and democracy are forbidden and that Nigeria should be an Islamic state — is the most extreme Nigerian example of how religious extremism generates sustained, catastrophic violence.
4. **Poverty, Unemployment, and Social Marginalisation:** Economic desperation makes large populations — particularly unemployed young men — susceptible to radicalisation by extremist religious movements that offer both a theological framework for grievance and a community of belonging. The relationship between economic marginalisation and religious violence in Nigeria's Middle Belt and northeast is well documented. Poverty does not cause extremism, but it creates the vulnerability that extremist recruiters exploit.
5. **Weak Governance and Security Response Failures:** The Nigerian state's chronic failure to maintain equal security for all citizens regardless of religion, to prosecute perpetrators of religious violence, and to address the structural conditions that generate conflict allows cycles of violence to persist and deepen. When victims observe that perpetrators of religious attacks face no legal consequence, the incentive for revenge attacks and self-help security escalates, perpetuating conflict.
**Five Effects of Religious Conflict on Social Security in Nigeria**
1. Mass loss of life, physical injury, and large-scale displacement of communities from their homes and livelihoods, producing refugee crises within the country.
2. Systematic destruction of property — homes, businesses, places of worship, schools, and hospitals — impoverishing affected communities and reversing decades of local economic development.
3. Collapse of investor confidence and disruption of economic activity in conflict-affected regions, deepening unemployment and poverty in communities that are already among Nigeria's most deprived.
4. Entrenched inter-communal distrust that outlasts the immediate violence, poisoning social relations, preventing economic cooperation, and making future conflict more likely.
5. Proliferation of crime, arms, and a culture of violence in communities where the state has failed to provide security, as residents arm themselves for self-defence and criminal networks exploit the breakdown of order.
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**Answer 8 — The Seven Dimensions of Christian Religion**
**(a) The Seven Dimensions (after Ninian Smart)**
1. Doctrinal (Philosophical) Dimension
2. Ritual (Practical) Dimension
3. Mythological (Narrative) Dimension
4. Experiential (Emotional) Dimension
5. Ethical (Legal) Dimension
6. Institutional (Social) Dimension
7. Material (Artistic/Architectural) Dimension
**(b) Explanation of Four Dimensions**
**i. Doctrinal Dimension**
The doctrinal dimension encompasses the formal beliefs and theological propositions that a religion affirms as true. In Christianity, core doctrines include the Trinity (the one God existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — articulated at the Councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381), the Incarnation (the eternal Son of God becoming fully human in Jesus Christ), the Atonement (Christ's death as reconciliation between God and humanity), the bodily Resurrection of Jesus, and the Second Coming. These doctrines were developed through centuries of biblical reflection and conciliar debate and are enshrined in the ecumenical creeds — the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed — which bind most Christian traditions together. Doctrinal disagreements have historically generated denominations: the filioque controversy divided Eastern and Western Christianity; justification by faith alone distinguished Protestants from Catholics.
**ii. Ritual Dimension**
The ritual dimension covers the formal practices, ceremonies, and acts of worship through which believers relate to the sacred. In Christianity, the two primary rituals instituted by Jesus himself are Baptism (Matthew 28:19 — immersion in or sprinkling with water as the rite of initiation into the Christian community and identification with Christ's death and resurrection) and the Eucharist/Holy Communion/Lord's Supper (Luke 22:19–20 — the sharing of bread and wine in remembrance of Christ's body and blood). Beyond these sacraments, Christian ritual includes congregational Sunday worship, intercessory prayer, the liturgical calendar (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost), rites of passage (confirmation, Christian marriage, anointing of the sick, Christian burial), and daily personal devotional practices such as Scripture reading and prayer.
**iii. Ethical Dimension**
The ethical dimension addresses the moral code that flows from religious belief — the standards of behaviour that adherents are expected to observe in their personal conduct and social relationships. In Christianity, the ethical framework is rooted in the character of God and the example of Jesus Christ. The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) provides the foundational moral law. Jesus distilled all moral obligation into the double commandment of love: love of God with the whole person and love of neighbour as oneself (Matthew 22:37–40). The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) extends and radicalises this ethical demand — forgiveness rather than retaliation, generosity rather than greed, truthfulness, peacemaking, and the love even of enemies. Christian ethics therefore demands not merely external compliance with rules but an interior transformation of character — what Paul calls the "fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 5:22–23): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
**iv. Institutional Dimension**
The institutional dimension refers to the social structures, organisations, and leadership roles through which a religion organises and perpetuates itself. In Christianity, the primary institutional form is the Church — the *ekklesia* — the gathered community of believers that is simultaneously local (a specific congregation) and universal (the body of Christ across all times and places). The institutional Church takes diverse forms across traditions: the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church headed by the Pope, through a College of Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests; the episcopal governance of Anglican and Orthodox traditions; the presbyterian governance by elected elders; and the congregational independence of Baptist and Pentecostal churches. The institution provides continuity across generations, trains and ordains clergy, administers sacraments, manages resources, engages in social service, and represents the religion in public life. The institution is the vehicle through which the religious community sustains and transmits its faith.