David Bosch - Professor of Missiology

Professor of Missiology

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 1971 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 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 was fluent in Xhosa, Afrikaans, Dutch, German and English, and lectured widely in Europe, Britain, and North America.

He died in an automobile accident on April 15, 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, writes the following of Bosch in the Foreword to Believing in the Future (pp. ix-x):

David Bosch's tragic death in an automobile accident April 15, 1992, has left all of us who have known him as a friend, colleague, outstanding mission theologian, and church statesman with a sense of inseparable loss. He combined in his life and ministry first-rate scholarship and devoted Christian discipleship. His loyalty to his native land, South Africa, seemed to be intensified precisely by a personal integrity that required that he live out what he understood the gospel to entail. David Bosch knew existentially, and to a degree most of us never reach, what it means to live and work against the stream of culture--to be countercultural. He was the prophet among us. Along with his vast knowledge of the field of biblical studies, theology, church history, and missiology, David Bosch had the rare ability to distill the insight and wisdom to meet the demands of the day. His broad sympathies with all parts of the Christian family and his gifts of communication made him a trusted and respected friend wherever he went.