Beyond Bosch: The Early Church and the Christendom Shift

D Bosch’s Transforming Mission is a great book.1 Its scope is comprehensive; it is, as Lesslie Newbigin put it, a summa missiologica. It is in three parts. Part 1, which reflects Bosch’s deeply committed study of the New Testament, develops his first paradigm: “the apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity.” Part 3, which deals with the contemporary world, explores his sixth paradigm: “an emerging ecumenical missionary paradigm.”2 Between Bosch’s parts 1 and 3, between the New Testament and the contemporary world, lies part 2, “Historical Paradigms of Mission,” which I consider in this article. In his part 2 Bosch proposes four epochs in the history of mission, each of which has its own characteristic “paradigm”: the missionary paradigm of the Eastern church, which he calls “the Greek patristic period” (p. 190); the medieval Roman Catholic missionary paradigm; the Protestant (Reformation) paradigm; and the modern Enlightenment paradigm. Bosch acknowledges Hans Küng as originator of this sequence of paradigms. He also recognizes that there are other ways of subdividing the history of the church (p. 188). He refers appreciatively to James P. Martin, who in 1987 proposed a threeepoch periodization: “precritical” (“vitalist,” including Küng’s Eastern, Roman, and Reformation paradigms), “critical” or “mechanical” (the Enlightenment), and “postcritical” (holistic and ecumenical).3 Here I evaluate Bosch’s treatment of the early church, which he deals with in his second and third historical paradigms. Having assessed Bosch’s chapters on the early church, I propose to join James Martin in suggesting a different, three-paradigm approach to the history of mission.