Treffpunkt

Chris works at the coffee shop. He's some kind of visual arts major - a movie snob - like the Pickle-O's. I want Cold Yellow Grace to meet him so they can talk. I wonder what they would say...

Dorothy Sayers said that all language is metaphorical. We are forever explaining things in terms of other things. Do you really know what it means that the Father begot the Son? To the Muslim (I am told, though I'm certain this is an overgeneralization) the concept of the Son of God is quite offensive.

Do you congratulate yourself? Have you spread the Gospel when you proclaim Jesus as the Son of God to the Muslim? Not so, says my contacts. You have offended the Muslim all right, but not with the Gospel.

I have been told - and I am no expert, so hold this lightly - that during the decline of the Byzentine Empire and subsequent rise of Islam, many Muslims came to believe that the Christian Trinity consisted of God the Father, Mary the Mother and Jesus the Son. Following this line of thinking, they also came to believe that the Christian God (the Father) had sex with Mary in order to produce Jesus.

It's not really all that illogical. In fact, it's perfectly logically. And if that's what I had been taught? Well, I'd be offended too.

A couple of questions come in to play here.

First, how would we say to a Muslim what we really mean to say about Jesus? What metaphor would we use? Would we be ok with ditching the phrase "Son of God" for a different metaphor in order to really sharing the Gospel?

Second, is it ok to "retranslate" written Scripture culturally as well as linquistically so that we take words that even Jesus said and rework them? Can we erase the phrase "Son of God" out of the Arabic Bible and replace it with a more "accurate" phrase? Should we?

Third, do we understand the phrase "Son of God" differently than Jesus meant it? How did he mean it? And, most curiously, why do we use "Son of God" but never "Son of Man" - which of course is Jesus' most oft' used self-title.

Fourth, what is the offense of the Gospel?

Fifth, what is the Gospel?

As a brief disclaimer (HA!), I ask these questions as ways to find simple hooks in a much larger subject. In no way, shape or form, should one assume that I believe sharing the Gospel in the culture of Islam can be reduced to a retranslated phrase, or any other such nonsense.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 10/22/2005 09:32:00 AM