Abstract

Decades after the fall of apartheid, South Africa continues to face problems such as racism, heterosexism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, and gender-based violence leading to feminicide, which undermines all efforts being made to achieve social justice. Every Christian mission begins or flows out from missio Dei and has a common endeavour to achieve its goal. This article examines missio hominum as the new fundamental paradigm from the perspective of Nico Smith. It believes that when Smith saw the need for missio hominum, social justice was thought of as a prerequisite for the accomplishment of missio Dei’s goal. It examines how he developed the missio hominum paradigm with the aim of advocating for social justice in South Africa. It perceives a potential and a fundamental element for social justice in this new paradigm. Significantly, missio hominum represents a fundamental theological paradigm by which human action is integrated or linked with divine action in order to achieve the goal of the missio Dei. It provides an overview of the literature relating to the featured works on Christian mission and social justice. To the best of the author’s knowledge, little or no work has been published on missio hominum as a missiological paradigm on the way to social justice.Contribution: Missio hominum from the perspective of Nico Smith is described here as a new fundamental missiological paradigm aimed at bringing social justice to South Africa. This paradigm integrates the active participation of all people in the broader discourse of the missio Dei and its fulfilment. Adoption of this paradigm will enrich the field of theology in general and missiology in particular as it expands human participation in missio Dei.

Highlights

  • The paradigm of the missio Dei has been seen from the point of view of the Willingen Conference of the International Mission Council (IMC) in 1952, in which this form of mission was understood as a result of the nature of God or as an inherent mission of God in which God the Father sent God the Son and together sent God the Holy Spirit into the world

  • This article focused on the Missio Hominum paradigm from Nico Smith’s perspective on social justice in South Africa. This was performed by discussing the concept of justice in relation to the justice of God within the broader discussion of social justice. It incorporated the need for social justice into missio Dei, as narrowed down by Nico Smith on his way towards understanding the missio Dei to the missio hominum

  • The main conclusion from this work is that missio hominum, as the new missiological paradigm that calls for active human participation in missio Dei, can be used to advocate for social justice in the world, in Africa and in South Africa in particular

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Summary

Introduction

The paradigm of the missio Dei has been seen from the point of view of the Willingen Conference of the International Mission Council (IMC) in 1952, in which this form of mission was understood as a result of the nature of God or as an inherent mission of God in which God the Father sent God the Son and together sent God the Holy Spirit into the world.

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