Timothy Yates, Bakewell, UK.
E-mail:
timothyates@hotmail.com
Abstract
South African context, universal missiology:
David Bosch's ecumenical paradigm in retrospect and prospect
David Bosch was perhaps the leading missiologist of the twentieth
century - his Transforming Mission has been
described by Lesslie Newbigin as a summa missiologica. This paper examines the
context from which he came as an Afrikaner and his relationship with the Dutch
Reformed Church as one necessary factor for an understanding of the
missiological importance he attached to ecclesiology and the place of the church
in mission.Bosch's work has been critically assessed by such writers as K
Livingston (1990), W.Saayman (1992), F Verstraelen (l996) K Kim(2000) and J
Corrie (200l). The paper seeks to respond to these assessments before offering
an evaluation of Transforming Mission and the ecumencial paradigm as
Bosch's missiological framework towards the future.
While espousing non-violent methods, as he held Jesus to have done,
Bosch saw the pursuit of justice in the political arena as an essential goal of
mission and of Christian transformation through the gospel. This is an important
constituent
of the new paradigm which succeeds Kung's five eposchs of primitive, Hellenistic,
Medieval, Reformation and Enlightenment. Following Thomas Kuhn's terminology, a
paradigm shift occurred after World War 2, leading to a
new understanding of reality in post-Enlightenment society. The world of the 'emancipated
autonomous individual', which had bequeathed voluntarist missionary societies,
will prove inadequate as a response to the world of the new millenium.
Interdependence will prove essential as an antidote to individualism: hence the
need to stress the corporate and ecclesiological in mission.
The issue for the future,examined in the paper,is what form of ecclesiology is adequate for a world in which highly diverse forms of localised expressions of Christianity,as in Latin American or African Initiated forms of ecclesial life, can preserve the missiologial strengths of Bosch's position of the 1990's, towards the salvation of humankind which was his overriding theological concern?