Understanding David Bosch: Bosch and postmodernism
September 22, 2009
I pointed to some of the things I believe to be key in understanding Transforming Mission by David Bosch in a previous post a few days ago. Flowing from my conversation with Tom Smith last week, I want to point to my new favorite Bosch quotes, and how they help us in understanding Transforming Mission.
Although it is Hans Küng whose theory Bosch use in pointing to paradigm changes in the church, on the phenomenon of paradigm changes, Bosch uses especially the work of Thomas Kuhn. In describing the current paradigm change, which Bosch calls postmodernism. In describing postmodernism Bosch recognizes it as appearing first in the natural sciences:
The first fundamental assault on it (it refers to rationalism from the previous paragraph on this page) did not (as one might have expected) come from the side of the human sciences. It came, quite surprisingly, from the very disciplines where the Cartesian and Newtonian canons appeared totally inviolable: the field of physics. (:350)
Using especially the work of Fritjof Capra and Micheal Polanyi, both who were initially specializing in the natural sciences before writing works of importance to philosophy, he then describes the emerging “model or theoretical structure, or a new “paradigm”" (:184). Although this is a topic for another day, I believe his strong reliance on those in the natural sciences provided for a more robust understanding of postmodernism.
It is the following quotes that I’d like to point to:
Rationality has to be expanded. One way of expanding it is to recognize that language cannot be absolutely accurate, that it is impossible finally to “define” either scientific laws or theological truths. To speak with Gregory Bateson, neither science nor theology “proves”; rather, they “probe”. This recognition has led to a reevaluation of the role of metaphor, myth, analogy, and the like, and to the rediscovery of the sese of mystery and enchantment. (:353)
… the authentic Christian position in this respect is one of humility and self-criticism. After the Enlightenment it would be irresponsible not to subject our “fudiciary framework” to severe criticism, or not to continue pondering the possibility that Truth may indeed differ from what we have thought it to be” (:360)
And yet, even as we are “humbly acknowledging the uncertainty of our own conclusions”, for a “fudiciary philosophy does not eliminate doubt”, the Christian continues to hold on to unproven beliefs. It is precisely such a self-critical posture of faith which may protect us against the “blind and deceptive” nature of a “creed inverted into a science”. A post-Enlightenment self-critical Christian stance may, in the modern world, be the only means of neutralizing the ideologies; it is the only vehicle that can save us from self-deception and free us from dependence on utopian dreams. (:361)
Within Bosch’s argument, it would seem to me that the pages from which the above quotes come is key to understanding his hermeneutical presuppositions. Missing these thoughts might lead us into literilizing a theological concept such as the “Missio Dei”, which within the postmodern approach of Bosch must be understood as metaphor. Missing these thoughts can also cause us to misuse Bosch to create another triumphant Missiology that make claims of providing the final and only possible solution for humankind, whether in this world or outside of it.
From Bosch we must construct a Missiology which self-critically holds to unproven beliefs, and recognize them as such, always holding to the possibility that Truth may indeed differ from what we have thought it to be…
praise & worship & porn
September 21, 2009
I owe this idea to a very good friend who isn’t blogging at this stage. But as soon as she does, I’ll be sure to link to her thoughts on this.
I’ve been getting more and more disgusted with the Praise & Worship industry for years now. The dishonesty just got to me. The fact that I’m forced to sing about faith and God in a way that simply doesn’t match up with my own journey. The honesty of doubt and questions simply don’t exist in Praise & worship. In Praise & worship the faithful is faithful and life is good for the faithful. God is only good. Heaven is near. Real life looks somewhat different.
The first time I started thinking about porn was when one of my pastors made the comment that porn and nudity isn’t the same thing. Basic insight for anyone who’s been looking into this phenomenon, but new thought for me at that stage.
Porn seeks to simulate sex. Sex without the complexity of relationship. Porn seek to stimulate you sexually. Porn portrays an image the sexuality of another, it provides an image of how someone else is doing it. Porn portrays the image of supernatural sex, the image of bodies and sexuality that is unreachable by the mortal person in a healthy relationship. Porn makes the deepest most intimate aspects of human existance a public spectical. Porn lacks the depth that is reached when the complexity of relationship is added, when the whole person becomes part of the sexual experience, mistakes, moods, emotions and everything that comes with it.
Praise & worship seeks to simulate spiritual experience. Spirituality without the complexities inherent to a deep connection and journey with the spiritual being whom we call God. Praise & worship seek to stimulate you spiritually. Praise & worship portrays the image of the spirituality of another, it provides an image of how others are doing it. Praise & worship portrays the image of a supernatural faith, the idea of an undoubting and non-struggling faith unreachable by the mortal person in an honest relationship with a trancendent being. Praise & worship makes the deepest most intimate aspects of spirituality, whether communal or individual, a public spectical. Praise & worship lacks the depth that is reached when the complexity of faith is added, when my mind, my rational thought, my struggling ethics, my emotions, my honest questions, my doubts, fears and everything that comes with it is added.
Let me clarify. I know that their is exceptions. I know that others might also use the term Praise & worship and do something totally different from what I’m describing. Not all nudity is porn. Not all sex is porn. Not all music should be described with the porn metaphor. Not all Christian music, not even everything that use the label Praise & worship should be described with this metaphor. But when I look through this metaphor at a lot of what’s happening in the gospel and the Praise & worship scenes, then I’m deeply troubled.
Maybe Brian Mclaren says it better than I do in this videoclip:
tips for reading Transforming Mission
September 17, 2009
I’ve been reading Transforming Mission a lot over the past few years, studying it, writing about it, talking to David Bosch’s wife Annemie a lot, both as a personal friend and to understand the person who wrote Transforming Mission better. I’ve also been looking at how people read Transforming Mission somewhat, and I have a feeling that we might be making a few mistakes in how we use David Bosch. So, two tips for reading Transforming Mission:
- Piet Meiring always says that David Bosch had this amazing encyclopedic ability. He could bring together the voices of a wide range of people and integrate them. When reading Transforming Mission you’ll see this. Bosch tell how certain ideas has developed and changed in the church. In doing this, Transforming Mission is the voice of the church in many places. Rather than saying “Bosch says”, in many places it’s better to day: “According to Bosch the church says”. When reading Bosch try and distinguish between the voice of Bosch and the historic voice of the church. It will bring life and dynamic to the book.
- If I understand Bosch correctly, then I think we’ve been overemphasizing the big chapters and undervalueing the inbetween chapters. The large mass of info is found in the chapters on Biblical perspectives (2-4), historical perspectives (6-9) and the elements of an emerging ecumenical missionary paradigm (12). However, I believe that the inbetween chapters, 1, 5, 10, 11 and 13, provide the backdrop against which the larger chapters should be read. If you don’t understand Bosch’s understanding of postmodernity, his use of Capra, Kuhn, Polanyi etc, then you’ll totally misread the larger chapters.
So try these two tips. Listen to hear the voice of Bosch, and read the book against the backdrop of the inbetween chapters.
where may we find God?
September 15, 2009
Different answers could be given to this. And different answers have been given to this. We seem to have been moving God around a lot over the past few hundred years. We had God up in heaven for a long time. But when Galileo checked he didn’t find God there, at least not in a literal throneroom up above the sun and moon. Rather, he found stars and the sun and planetary orbits. For some this was the end of God, but for most, this was a time for reimagining God.
What resulted was a God much bigger than the medievel church could have imagined. And the more we discovered about the vastness of space, the bigger God became… since we moved God to the outside of his creation. It was to be expected I guess, I mean, by this time humans knew something about creating, and the creator had to be apart from the creation. I learned songs about this God. We sang about 
how he held the whole world in his hand, about how he created even he dinosours. We would talk about how he has all of creation, the universe, in his hand.
I don’t know whether it was the fact that we were able to look out far enough, looked out further and further, but somehow I’m getting the feeling that the God that’s on the outside of creation carrying the earth of universe in his hand is not always working that well. So we moved God again. And this time, seems like we are moving him to the inside. Perhaps it’s our fascination with that which is small, quarks, and stuff happening on a subatomical level. Perhaps it’s the fact that we are forced to talk in metaphors again when exploring the sub-atomic world. Perhaps the mystics is teaching us something. I really don’t know, but we seem 
to be moving God into a place so close to creation it cannot be imagined.
Which one was right? Is this the last time that we will be moving God? Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about the location of God at all. The poet of Psalm 139 said that God was everywhere:
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.
Wherever the reality of his world led him, there he found God. Maybe that could guide us. Wherever reality might lead us, may we find God there…
blogging in the academic world
September 14, 2009
Starting tomorrow morning I’ll be co-lecturing a module in Theology of Mission together with Nelus Niemandt from the University of Pretoria. This started with a conversation we had at Amahoro earlier this year, in which I made some suggestions on how blogs can be used as a teaching and assessment tool. Given my special interest in David Bosch, Nelus asked whether I’d help in developing this for the Masters in Divinity students who have to study Transforming Mission.
The class consist of aproximately 25 students, who will be divided into 5 groups. Every group will have a blog on which they will have to make at least 5 blogposts in the coming few weeks. In blogging as a group we hope to encourage discussion among the members since these posts will be in the name of the group. Each student will also have to comment at least 10 times in the coming weeks. Thus a minimum of 50 posts and 250 comments. In setting this ratio we hope to encourage a more conversational style of blogging, with hopefully more discussion taking place.
The blogs will be hosted on wordpress, and open to everybody. Since this is a module in missiology, theology should happen in the marketplace. As academic theologians Will Storrar and Andries van Aarde have mentioned, blogging might be seen as a form of public theology. I’d like to invite you to join the conversation that we hope to create, and in the process become a co-lecturer, a conversation partner in the journey of Missional discovery of this class of students.
Quote from a widget on the blogs:
The discussion on this blog is part of a Masters module in Missiology at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Pretoria. The module is on Theology of Mission and Transforming Mission by David Bosch is being used as textbook. The module is presented by Prof. Nelus Niemandt and Rev. Cobus van Wyngaard. Please read the about page for more information.
The blogs in the module are on:
Mission and the search for justice
Mission and the aposolate of the laity
Subscribe to all posts and comments on Theology of Mission @ UP blogs
Subscribe to all posts on Theology of Mission @ UP blogs
Subscribe for the posts that will hopefully start apprearing shortly. Comment on the blogs. Maybe take part by also blogging on the subjects they will be discussion in the comming weeks and linking to their work.
Caster Semenya: a public theological response
September 11, 2009
I cannot say that I’ve followed the Caster Semenya with the neccesary commitment to be able to give an informed opinion. As a Christian theologian, and as a human being, I can say that I experienced some discomfort when I read some of the newspaper articles, and the graphical way they were discussing the sexuality of a young teenage girl.
On an Academic level I focus on Public Theology, which I like to define as the attempt to give a unique contribution from the tradition of Christian theology to matters of public concern. Public theology need to recognize it’s own limits. We always contribute in conversation with many other voices, but as a Public Theologian I believe that theology has a needed contribution to make.
When friend Reggie Nel mentioned on twitter this morning the idea of publicly saying something on the Caster Semenya conversation raging at this stage (it’s one of the top trending topics on twitter today, and obviously it’s a topic of discussion in South Africa generally), I started wondering what a responsible public theological contribution would look like.
I think caution is needed to not speak to fast on things which other partners in the conversation still need to talk about. I would caution against making medical claims until final reports, also I’d caution against speculation on the legal implications until the bodies responsible for this has spoken. I’d recommend the advice CNN published in the last two hours.
Theology has spent much time thinking about humanity and sexuality, about how we treat other people, about dignity, about fairness. On these issues theology has some unique contributions to make, and I think it needs to be made.
As a guiding principle I’d say that a public theological response should talk about public opinion and perceptions, and not address possible outcomes of tests.
- Theology, especially feminist theology, has helped the church to think about the way we talk about sexuality, about how we can do violence to people in the way we talk about their sexuality. Let’s contribute from this resource.
- I think much has been done by theology on questions of power, and that a public theological response should say something on the privacy of Caster, and the power that the public is taking over her by talking prematurely about possible outcomes of the tests, as well as by discussion her sexuality in an unworthy manner.
- Theology has a lot to say about the sacredness of a person (created in the image of God), and about the sacredness of sex and sexuality, and when the sacredness of sexuality is taken away by the disrespect of public opinion, by the media taking the right to talk about that which is sacred in such a way that it is desacrilized, then theology need to speak out.
A public theological response should help the decades old process of adressing questions of sexuality in athletics to happen in such a way that the privacy and humanity of those involved is respected. Although this is a topic for another post, I think we are using Genisis 1 (created in the image of God) in an irresponsible manner in this conversation so far. But as a Christian theologian I’d like to stress that Caster is a spiritual being, meaning that she is linked to the sacred, that which we call God. Using the words of Jesus, I’d say we should remember that the transcendent, the sacred, God, is Caster’s father. Her value as “child of God” need to be upheld by the church.
This, I believe, a public theological response can say at this stage.
