mgpcpastor's blog

Trevin Wax hosts an online conversation with Collin Hansen and J.D. Greear about ministry to Muslims and the boundaries of contextualization.
A sample:

Trevin Wax: Collin, your recent cover story in Christianity Today records the debate surrounding the translation of “Son of God” and why some missionaries advocate other renderings. Can you start us off by briefly summarizing the discussion about how to translate “Son of God” and why it matters?

Collin Hansen: According to missionaries and translators in the field, nothing is so offensive to Muslims as the idea that God has a Son. They mistakenly assert that Christians believe God the Father had sexual relations with Mary.
Missionaries often avoid discussing Jesus’ sonship when sharing the gospel with Muslims, at least in their early interactions, in order to prevent the conversation from halting at an early roadblock. But translators cannot avoid this concept, for the Gospels are full of references to Jesus as the Son of God.

Trevin Wax: What has been the result of downplaying the concept of Jesus as the Son of God?

Collin Hansen: I learned from informed sources that some translations adopting a non-literal rendering of “Son of God” have contributed to growing numbers of Christians in predominantly Muslims countries. Presumably Muslims are willing to learn more about the God of the Bible when not immediately confronted by a phrase that offends them.
The question, though, is whether you can accurately convey Jesus’ sonship with less literal phrases than “Son of God,” such as “spiritual Son of God” or “beloved Son who comes from God.”

Trevin Wax: There’s a similar debate surrounding the use of “Allah” as the name for God in Arabic-speaking contexts. Some missionaries don’t want to use the Arabic for Jesus (Isa) or God (Allah), because they believe these titles are so connected to Islamic notions that they cannot be properly unpacked in a Christian context.
J.D., you did mission work in a predominantly Islamic country. How did you decide how best to address this issue?

J.D. Greear: Personally, I do not have a problem using the Arabic words for Jesus (Isa) and Allah (God). By “Isa” Muslims mean the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth and by “Allah” they mean the one Creator God, the God of Adam and Abraham and the prophets.
Our role, I believe, is to show Muslims where they are in error in their understanding of God. When Jesus confronted the Samaritan woman at the well, he did not tell her that she worshipped a different God. He told her that she didn’t know the God she thought she worshipped, and that He could teach her what God was really like.
Likewise, when the Jews of the Apostles day rejected Jesus (and thus the Trinity) the Apostles did not say that those Jews were worshipping an entirely different God, nor did they insist on calling God by a new Greek name. They simply maintained to the Jews that in rejecting Jesus they had rejected the very God they thought they knew.

Read the whole post here.