And part of Bosch’s problem was that he got just about all his knowledge on that from books, in Western style. But the Orthodox Church has no systematic theology in the Western sense. And if one wants to get an inkling of Orthodoxy, with its enacted theology, one needs to actually experience Orthodox worship — something I suggested to Bosch on a few occasions, but he saw no need to do so — he thought he could get all the information he needed from books, and for the most part books written by non-Orthodox, and the Orthodox authors he did cite were non-missiologists. Where he had practical experience (in the Dutch Reformed mission field) he was far more accurate, because his book learning was complementary to his hand-on experience.

He was a tremendously well-read and erudite man, and accomplished things that few of us can even dream of, but that, sadly, was one of the holes in his knowledge. In that respect he seemed to subsctribe to what the late Ralph Winter called the BO-BO theory of church history – that everything “blinked off” at the end of the apostolic age, and “blinked on” again at the Reformation. That theory (for which the Mormons are famous) is that there are early saints and latter-day saints, but no saints in the middle.

I hoped I might see you at Amahoro, but didn’t.