Medieval Roman Catholic Missionary Paradigm Analysis

Paradigm 3 is “the medieval Roman Catholic missionary paradigm.” For Bosch the Middle Ages extend from approximately 600 to 1500. But he finds the roots of the Roman paradigm beginning earlier than that, with Augustine of Hippo (d 430) (215). Augustine led the Western church theologically as it shifted the focus from Christ’s incarnation to his cross and began to emphasize predestination and original sin (p.216).

Augustine became the first Christian theologian to take Paul’s teachings by faith seriously and explained one can never talk about human guilt and sin without referring simultaneously to forgiveness and renewal by Jesus Christ (p.216).

The alliance of the Church with the Roman state, begun under the emperor Constantine I early in the

This just discipline led to missionary wars against pagans and the mechanism of mission became the empire conquering under pope’s blessing. Those conquered by Rome were simultaneously conquered by heaven and were therefore baptized, often against their will.

The medieval missional paradigm, once fully ripened, provided the theological justification for the First Crusade to break forth in 1096. And when the Crusades had failed the spirit of this paradigm was reincarnated as Colonialism. “The roots of the later conquistadores and the entire phenomenon of the European colonization of the rest of the world lay in the medieval teachings on just war. On closer inspection one might even say that colonization was the ‘modern continuation of the Crusades’. In the words of M. W. Baldwin, ‘Although Crusade projects failed, the Crusade mentality persisted”(pp. 226-227).

Bosch argues that “mission” meant the activities by which the Western ecclesiastical system was extended into the rest of the world. For him, the propagation of the faith and colonial policies became so intertwined that it was often hard to distinguish one from the other