Jesus, the Son of God: Biblical meaning, Muslim Understanding ...

St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 3 | August 2011!standing of the term "the Son of God" is correct, they have madeintense efforts 32 to divert attention away from that through an exaggeratedfocus on a wrong understanding of God's relationshipwith Mary, an understanding that the Qur'an does not teach andwhich many Muslims do not share. This is related to the MITmovement's repeated explicit assertions that this issue has nothingto do with theology, 33 when it has everything to do with theology,including the teaching of shirk in Islam.As Khalil's second answer above reflects, many Muslims do notthink that Christians believe that God had marital relations withMary, 34 so the prospect of teaching Muslims Bible literacy on this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!32 Why are such intense efforts being made? Most Bible translators follow specificrules of translation. For example, they know that it is not acceptable to change anyfacts in a translation (such as the fact that Jesus is the Son of God and that God isHis Father). But if they could be convinced that a certain fact was instead merely ametaphor, one that communicates a serious wrong meaning to the receptor audience,then they might be open to using a substitute term. Some might even feelcompelled to remove it from the Bible text, especially if they could be persuadedthat there are substitute terms that communicate the correct meaning better thanthe original terms, without causing offense. This is the strategy that the MITmovement has used. Contrast that strategy with what God teaches us in2 Corinthians 4:2 about not using deception and not distorting the Word of God.33 It is actually a matter of false and heretical theology that some of the MIT leaders:1) portray Father-Son terms as just idioms or metaphors, rather than actualrealities as the New Testament authors teach and as the Church has always understoodthem to be; 2) claim that various substitute translations for "the Son of God"highlight the relational and divine aspects of the term's meaning when, to mostMuslims, none of the suggested substitute terms includes any idea of Jesus' deity aspart of its meaning, and most of the substitutes do not include in their meaning theidea of a mutual relationship, much less the unique type of relationship shared by afather and son, or even more importantly, the unique Father-Son relationship thatJesus and His Father share; 3) have misquoted many conservative Bible scholars inorder to promote an erroneous, minority view of Jesus' Sonship as if it were acommon, accepted view. David Abernathy carefully documents this serious deceptiontactic in "Translating 'Son of God' in Missionary Bible Translation: A Critiqueof Muslim-Idiom Bible Translations: Claims and Facts", February 2010 and in "JesusIs the Eternal Son of God, Part Two – Supplemental section" (Unpublished manuscript,August 2010).34 It has been claimed by the MIT movement that the Arabic word for "son" (ibn)primarily has biological connotations [Brown, Explaining the Biblical Term, 91].However this is simply not true. For example one scholar writes, "An examinationSt Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision!*$!