David Jacobus Bosch (13 December 1929 – 15 April 1992) was an influential missiologist and

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

best known for his book ''Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission'' (1991) — a major work on post-colonial

Christian mission A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as ...

. He was a member of the

Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NGK) is a Reformed Christian denomination in South Africa. It also has a presence in neighbouring countries, such as Namibia, Eswatini, and parts of Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.

. On Freedom Day, 27 April 2013, he posthumously received the Order of the Baobab from the

President of South Africa The president of South Africa is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of South Africa. The president heads the executive branch of the Government of South Africa and is the commander-in-chief of the South African Nation ...

"for his selfless struggle for equality ... and his dedication to community upliftment. By doing so, he lived the values of non-racialism against the mainstream of his own culture."

Early life

Bosch was born in Kuruman,

Cape Province The Province of the Cape of Good Hope ( af, Provinsie Kaap die Goeie Hoop), commonly referred to as the Cape Province ( af, Kaapprovinsie) and colloquially as The Cape ( af, Die Kaap), was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequen ...

, in the

Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Tran ...

. He was raised in a nationalist

Afrikaner Afrikaners () are a South African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th and 18th centuries.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Cas ...

home with little regard for his nation's black citizens and in 1948 when the

National Party (South Africa) The National Party ( af, Nasionale Party, NP), also known as the Nationalist Party, was a political party in South Africa founded in 1914 and disbanded in 1997. The party was an Afrikaner nationalism, Afrikaner ethnic nationalist party that pr ...

came to power and began implementing its program of

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

Bosch welcomed it. That same year however Bosch began studying teaching at the

University of Pretoria The University of Pretoria ( af, Universiteit van Pretoria, nso, Yunibesithi ya Pretoria) is a multi-campus public university, public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was ...

, where he joined the Student Christian Association and was more exposed to black members of the community. This began a lifelong involvement in

and he was soon questioning the apartheid system. He was married to Annemie Bosch.

Missionary career

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 New Testament at the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universitie ...

, under

Oscar Cullmann Oscar Cullmann (25 February 1902, Strasbourg – 16 January 1999, Chamonix) was a French Lutheran theologian. He is best known for his work in the ecumenical movement and was partly responsible for the establishment of dialogue between the Luthe ...

, who influenced Bosch to accommodate more ecumenism. In 1957 Bosch began a decade working as a missionary with the

NGK is a public company established in 1936 and based in Nagoya, Japan. NGK SPARK PLUG manufactures and sells spark plugs and related products for internal combustion engines, as well as sensors and ceramics for a wide range of applications. NGK stan ...

planting churches in the

Transkei Transkei (, meaning ''the area beyond he riverKei''), officially the Republic of Transkei ( xh, iRiphabliki yeTranskei), was an unrecognised state in the southeastern region of South Africa from 1976 to 1994. It was, along with Ciskei, a Ba ...

Professor of missiology

In 1967 he took up a position as lecturer in church history and missiology at the

's Theological School training black church leaders in the Transkei, where he also built ties with the

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

and Anglican churches, and began to develop 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. Isolated from the majority in the

who supported

, Bosch left his college in 1971 to become Professor of Missiology at the

University of South Africa The University of South Africa (UNISA), known colloquially as Unisa, is the largest university system in South Africa by enrollment. It attracts a third of all higher education students in South Africa. Through various colleges and affiliates, U ...

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foot ...

, 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

Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly o ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York (state), New York; on the ea ...

, United States but chose to remain working against

from within

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

and the

. 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 The concept of the kingship of God appears in all Abrahamic religions, where in some cases the terms Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are also used. The notion of God's kingship goes back to the Hebrew Bible, which refers to "his kingdom" ...

. In 1982 he promoted an open letter to the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family a ...

, 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 The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is an interdenominational organization of evangelical Christian churches, serving more than 600 million evangelicals, founded in 1846 in London, England, United Kingdom to unite evangelicals worldwide. WEA ...

events, while also serving the

World Council of Churches The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most ju ...

. He was an active member of the

International Association for Mission Studies The International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) is an international, inter-confessional, and interdisciplinary professional society for the scholarly study of the Christian mission and its impact in the world and the related field of int ...

and the key leader, and inspiration of the South African Missiological Society and founding editor of its journal, Missionalia. He was fluent in Xhosa,

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans g ...

, Dutch,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

and English, and lectured widely in Europe, Britain, and North America. He died in an automobile accident on 15 April 1992 in South Africa at the age of 62. His contribution and influence in mission studies globally was immense. Missiologist Wilbert R. Shenk, senior Professor at

Fuller Theological Seminary Fuller Theological Seminary is an interdenominational Evangelical Christian seminary in Pasadena, California, with regional campuses in the western United States. It is egalitarian in nature. Fuller consistently has a student body that compr ...

, writes the following of Bosch in the foreword to ''Believing in the Future''

Transforming mission

Bosch wrote more than 150 journal articles and six books, including his magnum 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 Maryknoll is a name shared by a number of related Catholic organizations, including the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers (also known as the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America or the Maryknoll Society), the Maryknoll Sisters, and the Mary ...

's Orbis Books. The book was praised as groundbreaking by

Hans Küng Hans Küng (; 19 March 1928 – 6 April 2021) was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos). Küng was ordained a priest in 1954, joined the faculty of ...

who called it the first book on mission to implement paradigm theory.

Lesslie Newbigin James Edward Lesslie Newbigin (8 December 1909 – 30 January 1998) was a British theologian, missiologist, missionary and author. Though originally ordained within the Church of Scotland, Newbigin spent much of his career serving as a mis ...

nominated it a new standard calling it "a kind of Summa Missiologica" in reference to

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...

' foundational thirteenth-century work ''

Summa Theologiae The ''Summa Theologiae'' or ''Summa Theologica'' (), often referred to simply as the ''Summa'', is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all of the main ...

''. It was selected as one of the "Fifteen Outstanding Books of 1991" by the '' International Bulletin of Missionary Research''. The book surveys paradigms of mission both in the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

(reflecting Bosch's careful use of New Testament criticism to trace how mission dynamics shaped scriptural forms and transformations) and through Church history (highlighting that mission has always been shaped for good or ill by its context). He then explores in detail what he sees as an emerging

post-modern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

ecumenical Ecumenism (), also spelled oecumenism, is the concept and principle that Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The wo ...

missionary paradigm.

Death

Bosch died in a motor accident in 1992, aged 62.

Quotes

Works

* * * (published by his wife after his death) * *

References

Sources

* * *Livingston, John Kevin. A Missiology of the Road : The Theology of Mission and Evangelism in the Writings of David J. Bosch. 1992. *Saayman Willem, A. Mission in Bold Humility : David Bosch's Work Considered. Maryknoll N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996. *

External links

Special Issue: East Asia Theological Consultation: Asian and Alternative Responses to David Bosch’s Transforming Mission
''Mission FOCUS Annual Review'', 2003 Volume 11, Supplement.
Missionalia South African Journal of Missiology
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bosch, David 1929 births 1992 deaths People from Ga-Segonyana Local Municipality Afrikaner people Members of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) South African Calvinist and Reformed theologians Missiologists Missional Christianity Dutch Reformed Church missionaries Protestant missionaries in South Africa South African Protestant missionaries University of Pretoria alumni University of South Africa alumni University of Basel alumni Road incident deaths in South Africa 20th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians Order of the Baobab World Christianity scholars