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

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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!*$!
St Francis Magazine Vol 7, No 3 | August 2011!topic is not as bleak and difficult an issue as some 35 have portrayedit to be. For one thing, Muslims believe that God can do anything(a frequent theme in the Qur'an; cf 8:41), which could include causinga virgin to miraculously conceive a child. In addition, they alreadyhave their own Qur'anic version of how God caused Mary, avirgin, to conceive Jesus by divine decree (see Qur'an 4:171 above).Further, there are Muslim authors weighing in on this topic whocan be cited to show people what the Qur'an actually teaches. Onesuch author, Tiger Chan says, "The bottom line is, the Qur'an doesnot teach that Christians believe that Jesus is the literal biologicalSon of God”. 36 All of this is important information that can be employedfor the development of content for Bible literacy materials.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!of Arabic literature shows that 'ibn' is used nearly identically to the Hebrew 'ben'which also speaks of both biological, non-biological, and figurative father-son relationships."He also asserts that the word "ibn" can refer to an adopted son, whichhas nothing to do with a biological relationship. [Benelchi, October 28, 2010 (3:52pm) and October 29, 2010 (11:45 am), Faith Community Network forum, http://faithcommunitynetwork.com/m_5071975/mpage_1/key_ 0/tm.htm]. This is confirmedby Pierre Houssney: "As a native Arabic speaker, I want to join...in dispellingthe myth that in classical Arabic there is no way to express 'sonship' withoutimplying a biological (i.e. sexual) relationship. Not only is that completely untrue,but the word "ibn" (son) in Arabic is much more commonly used figuratively inArabic than in English.... The Hebrew "ben" and Arabic "ibn" are the same rootword, and are used in incredibly similar ways, culturally speaking." [Pierre Houssney,February 13, 2011 (3:20 am) comment on Stetzer, "The Son of God and Ministryto Muslims", The LifeWay Research Blog, http://www.edstetzer.com/2011/02/the-son-of-god-and-ministry-to.html].35 Brown, Why Muslims Are Repelled by the Term Son of God, 2007.36 Tiger Chan, "Son of God: Muslims' Misconception", Answering Christianity (October29, 2003). In this article, Chan also points out that "beget" is a wrong translationof the Arabic verb used in Qur'an 19:88–92 (a passage sometimes cited toclaim that the Qur'an says that "Son of God" means a biological begetting; for anexample of this, see Brown, "Understanding the Messianic Titles", 48). As Chanexplains, the true meaning of this verb is "to take (unto Himself)" as shown inQur'an 72:6 where the same verb is used to say that God "has not taken either awife or a son" ("beget" would not work here). The main point of passages like thisin the Qur'an is not biological or sexual, but rather to teach that God does not haveany equals or partners of any kind; He is "utterly remote" from any such relationship.This is true even for the two passages in the Qur'an that do use the actualArabic word for "beget" in reference to God, passages that do not refer to Jesus orChristians.St Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision!*%!
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