David Bosch (1929-1992)
A leader in transforming missions with and without Africa
David Jacobus Bosch was born into an Afrikaner home on 13 December 1929 near the town of Kuruman in the Cape Province of South Africa. His parents were poor but proud farmers, 'simple rural folk', and loyal members of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). From his earliest childhood, he received a 'Christian Nationalist' education. Bosch recoded that "at a very early stage already our minds were influenced by teachers and other cultural and political leaders to see the English as perpetrators of all kinds of evil and as oppressors of the Afrikaner". He grew up in a context where he was convinced that the English were arrogant, self-righteousness and brutal oppressors of others. He also witnessed the mistreatment of the blacks who were considered as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’, "a part of the scenery but hardly a part of the human community.... They belonged to the category of 'farm implements' rather than to the category of 'fellow-human beings.'
In 1948, Bosch joined the University of Pretoria's Teacher's College where he became involved with the Student Christian Association (SCA]. It was while participating in an SCA-sponsored evangelistic outreach at a lakeside camp that he became convinced that God was calling him into the Christian ministry. It was at this point that Bosch started to engage the issue of racism in a deeper way and at one point he organised a meeting where a large crowd of black workers gathered. About his first experience he would thirty years later write, "I guess I can say that that was the beginning of a turning point in my life. What happened there can only be described as a conversion of sorts. As I arrived, trembling, at the place of meeting, everybody came forward to shake hands with me. It was one of the most difficult moments in my life. When they saw my hesitation, they assured me that it was quite alright, that, in fact, it was normal for Christians to shake hands with one another. Only then did I discover that many of them were Christians: Methodists, Anglicans, members of the African Independent Churches, and so on. Previously I only thought of them as pagans and, at best, semi-savages."
Bosch continued with his education obtaining an M.A. in languages (Afrikaans, Dutch, German) and then a B.D. in theological studies. During that time Bosch sensed a further calling to be a missionary and began to have doubts about the adequacy of the apartheid system. "In the early fifties, there were already signs that upset some of us, particularly, the removal of the Coloureds from the common voters roll. It was one of the first shocks; the honeymoon was over with the new National Party government."
Bosch undertook doctoral studies at the University of Basel under Oscar Cullmann. His thesis, 'Die Heidenmission in der Zukunftsschau Jesu', probed the link between mission and eschatology in the ministry of Jesus. Bosch also came under the influence of Karl Barth, whose impact would emerge only later, in Bosch's systematic attempts at a theological foundation for mission. While at Basel, Bosch distanced himself further from apartheid, although as yet he had no alternative paradigm to substitute in its place. He began to feel isolated from the Afrikaner mainstream. After his return to South Africa in 1957 Bosch began work as a DRC missionary among the Xhosa people in the Transkei. For nine years Bosch labored as a missionary pastor in Madwaleni. The country was rugged and accessible only by horse. Although those years had their disappointments, Bosch recalled that "these were our best years, absolutely wonderful." Bosch's cross-cultural ministry experience was deeply significant in two ways. First, while acknowledging that he continued to hold deeply paternalistic attitudes toward black people, he believed that his missionary years taught him to trust people, particularly his African Christian co-workers.
An appraisal by Frans Verstraelen is helpful here. He comments that the missionary experience of David Bosch among and with the Xhosa in Transkei gave him precious insight into mission as service and partnership, as well as attitudes of empathy, humility, and modesty vis-a-vis people of cultural and religious backgrounds different from his own.... What is convincingly shown is his integrity as a human being and as a Christian, as a missionary, and as a missiologist. Second, Bosch's missionary service helped him integrate theory and practice. By day he would be out among the people, visiting with them. By night he studied, trying to integrate his experience in the Transkei with the scholarly insights of various anthropologists, theologians, and missiologists. Through that study, his early theological convictions began to change considerably. Bosch identified this period of missionary activity as the decisive decade in his theological development. "I started with a very conservative theological framework and only moved to a wider approach towards the end of the 1960s."
In 1972 Bosch accepted the invitation to become professor of missiology at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Pretoria where he served as professor of mission and chair of the Department of Missiology until his untimely death in an car accident in 1992. One dimension of Bosch's legacy is his contribution to the academic study of Christian mission. Bosch was a theologian trained in the classic, European tradition. His facility in languages (he was conversant in Afrikaans, English, German, Dutch, French, and Xhosa) enabled him to act as a bridge builder between various theological and cultural constituencies. Over the course of thirty-two years, Bosch wrote books, study guides, major pamphlets, and over 160 journal articles and contributions to books covering almost every aspect of mission theory and practice. His most significant contribution was his massive 1992 work Transforming Mission. Bosch adopted the use of "paradigm theory" (as developed in science by Thomas Kuhn and in theology by Hans Kung) in an attempt "to demonstrate the extent to which the understanding and practice of mission have changed during almost twenty centuries of Christian missionary history.
Bosch was also active as an administrator and editor. He helped found the Southern African Missiological Society (SAMS), a multiracial and ecumenical fraternity of mission scholars. He will be remembered for his contribution to the production of Missionalia, the society's journal where served as editor and contributed scores of editorials and book reviews.
In 1985, following the declaration of the state of emergency by the South African government, Bosch became involved in the National Initiative for Reconciliation, a movement begun by Michael Cassidy of Africa Enterprise to continue the spirit of reconciliation in the midst of rising tension and bloodshed. Bosch believed in an approach which adopted a distinctly Christian socio-ethical response to the struggle for social justice in South Africa.
In 1992 Bosch died after a road accident but his influence still lives on as one who greatly impacted the church and missions worldwide.