The Focus of Mission is a “Kingdom” Focus

1. The Focus of Mission is a“Kingdom” Focus You cannot enter the Kingdom of God unless you are born again. Isa al Masih (Jesus), Injil

2. Mission as Transformation God’s Story Community’s new story Our shared story Community’s Story Our new story Our Story

3. Kingdom of God Christian KINGDOM + Humility, teachablness + Love + Grace + Faith relationship with God + Born again (new heart) + Forgiveness + Service SDA 2 1 Muslim

4. Who is Allah? More specifically can “Allah” be considered a correct term to be used to translate elohim or theos of scripture? This is an initial question that is frequently raised in discussions of Islam. • Christians have used the word Allah from pre-Islamic times until today. It is the translation of elohim and theos used in all Arabic translations of scripture and in religious speaking in the Christian Arabic world. • From the beginnings of contacts between Jews, Christians, and Muslims there was use of Allah that enabled them to enter into common discussion about biblical content and to dialogue with one another. • YHWH in the Arabic Bible is transliterated as yahwah or translated as rabb (Lord), corresponding to the Jewish custom of using adonai in place of saying the divine name.

5. Allah, cont. • Allah has been used in Biblical translations in nearly all languages used by Muslim communities in the Middle East, Africa and most of Asia. The most obvious exception would be the use of khoda in Persian. Swahili retains the traditional name for the Supreme Being, Mungu. In the Bangali translation, Ishwar, the Hindu common word for the Supreme Being is used in the traditional William Carey translation (1809). However, the recent Muslim Bengali Common Language Bible (2000) uses Allah. • When Malaysia attempted to pass legislation forbidding the use of Allah in non-Muslim publications or Bible translations, Christian and other faith communities objected since they have no other word to use in its place. • Allah is the linguistic cognate of Elloh, Ellohim.

6. Three Abrahamic faith traditions • All three Abrahamic monotheistic religions claim to worship one supreme being, the Creator of the universe, Lord, Sustainer and attribute similar characteristics of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. However, each of the monotheistic faiths will describe characteristics of the supreme being or certain roles and relationships differently. However, this would be insufficient argument to justify using different words for the supreme being. As Kenneth Cragg notes:

7. “We reduce everything to chaos if we suggest that disparate predicates do not relate to the identical ‘subject’ to whom they are ascribed, as if there could be, in truth, ‘gods many and lords many’ corresponding to all the confused concepts, however, numerous and contradictory. Thus, the answer to the vexed question, ‘Is the God of Islam and the God of the Gospel the same?’ can only rightly be ‘Yes!’ And ‘No!’ Yes, as the common ground of all we say in partial unison: No, insofar as our convictions diverge.” Kenneth Cragg, Muhammad and the Christian, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984, p. 124, quoted in Thomas, Ibid.

8. “All of these people use the same word ‘God’ to refer to the same entity, yet they have different concepts of who God is. The significance is this: One cannot change a person’s concept of God merely by changing the name he uses for God. Any name that denotes God for someone will evoke that person’s concept of God. What is required for reconceptualization is new information about God that will change the concept itself, and that is the task of the Bible” Rick Brown, “Who is ‘Allah’?” International Journal of Frontier Missions, 23:2 Summer 2006, p. 81

9. Allah, the moon god? The accusation that Allah is the Arab Moon-god as proposed by Robert Morey in his book The Moon-God: Allah In The Archeology Of The Middle East, has been dealt with at some length by M S M Saifullah, Mohd Elfie NieshaemJuferi and Abdullah David and will not be covered here. In brief, Morey simply plays fast and loose with the “archeological evidence”. The noted article systematically reviews the archeological examples and notes that there is simply no evidence to support Morey’s position. “Reply to Robert Morey’s Moon-God Allah Myth: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence,” www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/Allah/moongod.html. “There is no inscription that identifies Allah as a moon god or as a pagan deity. This contrasts with the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English words for God, all of which descend from words that were commonly used by pagans in reference to pagan deities. So the name Allah is freer of pagan roots than are these other names!” Rick Brown, Ibid

10. The missional bottom line “As far as Islamic texts such as the Qur’an are concerned, Allah is the same God as the God of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. However this claim is viewed, contextualization has to engage with the understanding of God that already exists in the culture, no matter how dim, distorted or incomplete individual Christians may believe that understanding to be. Whilst this engagement will certainly not be uncritical, wholesale rejection of all notions of ‘God’ found in the Islamic context will leave very little basis on which to develop a contextualization. It is therefore necessary to reserve expressing judgment on the ontology behind the linguistic form, in order to avoid a complete disjunction with the culture, and allow the possibility of some bridge to communication of Biblical Christology existing. This accords with Paul’s use of ό θεός to refer to the God who made the world and everything in it, without implying any identification with pagan gods such as Zeus.” Martin Parsons, Unveiling God: Contextualizing Christology for Islamic Culture, (William Carey Library: 2005), p. xxx.

11. 1. Who Are We? 2. Who Are They? Five Important Questions for Mission, Part I Jerald Whitehouse, April 14, 2012

12. “Christian” Heritage • Early Christianity • Spiritual power – changed lives • Christendom shift – 313 – 380 • Christianity becomes socially acceptable and advantageous to join (313) • Church buildings replace house churches (323) • Church and state partner in coercing faith (380) • Monasticism – Platonic dualism invades the church • Church councils • Theology raised to the esoteric, no relation to life • Theological controversy to the excess – beyond the scriptural narrative • Excommunication, persecution, execution of heretics

13. “Christendom Shift” “I have been describing a paradigm shift in Christian mission as it came to be coupled with violence. We have moved from Christianity (defined by faith in Jesus Christ) to Christendom (defined by the effort to promote the lordship of Christ over all of society by coercive means). We move from a Christianity that spreads because it is attractive to a Christianity that spreads because it is advantageous and, finally, because it is compulsory. And this movement changes mission fundamentally. It represents a paradigm shift – a ‘Christendom shift’ – that, I have argued, represents a tragic distortion of the missio Dei.” Allan Kreider “Violence and Mission in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries: Lessons for Today”, IBMR, Vol. 31, No. 3, July 2007

14. Christian Heritage, cont. • Eastern church (Nestorian) excommunicated at Council of Chalcedon 451 • Inquisition – 12th – 19th cent. • Crusades 1095 (Urban began preaching about) – 1400 • First Crusade (1099) slaughtered noncombatants, women, children without discrimmination.

15. “The memory of the Crusades lingers in the Middle East and colours Muslim perceptions of Europe. It is the memory of an aggressive, backward and relligiously fanatic Europe. This historical memory would be reinforced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as imperial Europeans once again arrived to subjugate and colonize territories in the Middle East. Unfortunately this legacy of bitterness is overlooked by most Europeans when thinking of the Crusades.” Akbar Ahmed, quoted in Carole Hillenbrand “The Crusades, Islamic Perspectives”

16. “They [the crusades] caused Muslims great offence and inflicted on them profound and lasting psychological scars. . . Those who support the present ‘demonisation’ of Islam in the Western media would thus do well to bear in mind this history of psychological damage and religious affront. Many Muslims today still remember with pain – centuries later though it may be – what was done in the name of the Cross.” Hillenbrand, “The Crusades, Islamic Perspectives”