Bosch on Mission's false dichotomy...

Over the last few months I have collected several quotes that help identify or explain what I perceive as mission's false dichotomy. This blind spot that presents a dualistic approach to mission needs attention if we are truly to understand and engage in holistic mission.

Ok bear with me or rather with Bosch... he might help explain how justice got dropped from the agenda.
The South African missiologist David Bosch has pointed out how much damage has been done by the usual English translation of dikaiosune as "righteousness" and the consequent insulation of an idea of inward and spiritual righteousness from an outward and manifest justice in social relationships....

It is easy to see how the use of the two different English words righteous and just for the single biblical word dikaios, and the consistent translation of dikaiosune in the New Testament as "righteousness" while the Hebrew equivalent tsedeq is translated both as 'Justice" and as "righteousness," has seduced evangelical Christians into a mental separation between righteousness as an inward and spiritual state and justice as an outward and political program. But to accept this dichotomy is to abandon the gospel and surrender to the pressure of our pagan culture. pp132

as quoted in

Newbigin, L (1986) Foolishness to the Greeks : The gospel and western culture. spck
Ahh that explains a thing or two ;o)

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