Abstract:
Central to the question of evangelism in the Southern African context is to “begin
again at the beginning” of what exactly the gospel is and what it entails. This article
contends that any formulation of the gospel of “the living Lord Jesus Christ …” that
envisions even the possibility of the notion of hell as eternal separation from God,
annihilation, or punishment for anyone is not “good” news at all, but is in fact, as one
writer in the South African context puts it: “the bad news of the Gospel.” Moreover,
holistic, or missional conceptions of eschatology, such as that of the influential New
Testament Scholar N.T. Wright, inasmuch as they reject or do not explicitly accept
universal salvation, lack theological coherence, and cannot be inculcated and shared
as good news in the Southern African context. The Dutch Reformed Church and the
ecumenical church urgently need to (re)discover the doctrine of Ἀ ποκατάστασις
πάντων for its rediscovery of evangelism not to be in vain.
