Ex-VC Gets Dominican Order’s Highest Academic Title 

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

Former Vice-Chancellor of the Dominican University, Ibadan, Reverend Father Anthony Alaba Akinwale, has been conferred with the academic title of Master in Sacred Theology, the highest academic title in the Dominican Order. 

Akinwale, a professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, was honoured with the title at a ceremony held at the university and attended by Catholic leaders within and outside the Archdiocese of Ibadan.

In his magistral lecture, titled, ‘Subiectum Theologiae: On the tasks and allies of theology’, delivered to mark the conferment, he said it was an obligation to fulfil an order with an intellectual mission in the church and the world and to the academic community as a whole. 

According to him, he formulated two explanatory questions on the notion and method of theology, stating that the Dominican Institute, from which the Dominican University was born, provided him with a launch pad from which he was able to devote ample time to the questions.

Akinwale added that he also had the privilege of developing and teaching for 21 years an undergraduate course entitled, Explorations in Christian Theology and a graduate course on Foundations of Christian Theology, the two of which turned around the questions. 

He maintained that academic theology must not be confused with populist preaching in contemporary Nigerian religiosity, which, alongside crude oil, movies, music and footballers, the country is exporting in a phenomenally high proportion to the rest of Africa and beyond to non-Africans and Africans in the diaspora. 

He stated further that academic theology detoxifies by ensuring that religion is not reduced to uncritical emotional outbursts of fanaticism and fundamentalism, noting that the task of theology is also to put in a word for the faith.