David Bosch

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David Jacobus Bosch (born December 13, 1929 in Cape Province, South Africa and died 1992) was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, married to Annemie and author of "Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission" (1991) - a major work on post-colonial Christian mission.

[edit] Life and Ministry

Bosch was raised in an nationalist Afrikaner home with little regard for his nation's blacks citizens and in 1948 when the National Party (South Africa) came to power and began implementing its program of apartheid Bosch welcomed it.

That same year however Bosch began studying teaching at the University of Pretoria, where he joined the Student Christian Association and was more exposed to black members of the community. This began a lifelong involvement in Christian mission and he was soon questioning the apartheid system.

Sensing a call to be a missionary, Bosch changed to the Theological school and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Arts in languages (Afrikaans, Dutch, German). He then went to Switzerland to study for his doctorate in the field of missiology at the University of Basel, under Oscar Cullmann, who influenced Bosch to accommodate more ecumenism.

In 1957 Bosch began a decade working as a missionary with the Dutch Reformed Church planting churches in the Transkei.

In 1967 he took up a position as lecturer in church history and missiology at the Dutch Reformed Church's Theological School training black church leaders in the Transkei, where he also built ties with the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and began developed his ministry of writing on mission theory. Bosch wrote about his concerns that the Christian mission to bring good news to black Africans could be confused with colonial and nationalistic motives that entrenched racial divisions.

What is the end goal of mission with such a motivation? Is it to maintain the white people in South Africa--or is it the foundation of the church of Christ...? Is it to serve South Africa--or to serve God? Is it to hear together the sentimental voice of our own blood--or to hear together the last command of Christ? Have we, by this missionary motive, created a sheep in wolf's clothes--or is it perhaps a wolf in sheep's clothes?¹

Isolated from the majority in the Dutch Reformed Church who supported apartheid, Bosch left his college in 1972 to become Professor of Missiology at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, which at the time was South Africa's only interracial university. There he edited its journal "Theologia Evangelica" and continued to write.

He was offered the Chair of Mission and Ecumenics at the elite Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, USA but chose to remain working against apartheid from within South Africa and the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1979 he helped coordinate a gathering of more than 5000 African Christians from every background as a demonstration of the church as an alternative community embodying the Kingdom of God. In 1982 he promoted an open letter to the Dutch Reformed Church, signed by more than 100 pastors and theologians, publicly condemning apartheid and calling on the church to unite with black churches.

Bosch also bridged evangelical and ecumenical divisions in the global church, participating in both the Lausanne Congress and World Evangelical Alliance events, while also serving the World Council of Churches.

He died in a car crash in 1992.

[edit] Transforming Mission

Bosch wrote more than 150 journal articles and six books, including his magnas opus "Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission" (1991), which was jointly published by the American Society of Missiology and the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America's Orbis Books.

The book was praised as groundbreaking by Hans Kung who called it the first book on mission to implement paradigm theory. Lesslie Newbigin nominated it a new standard calling it "a kind of Summa Missiologica" in reference to Thomas Aquinas' foundational thirteenth centaury work "Summa Theologiae".

The book surveys paradigms of mission both in the New Testament (reflecting Bosch emphasis on biblical foundations for mission) and through Church history (highlighting that mission has always been shaped for good or ill by its context). He then explores in extensive detail what he sees as an emerging post-modern or post-colonial missionary practice, including one that is ecumenical, evangelical and a quest for justice and liberation.

"Mission is, quite simply, the participation of Christians in the liberating mission of Jesus, wagering on a future that verifiable experience seems to belie. It is good news of God's love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world."²