Is Jesus the Son of Allah?
Graham Kings
Kneeling alone on the soft carpet To the Ultimate Submitter, of a Mombasa mosque, Jesus the Messiah. Chandeliers above, galleries around, Stereo system stacked high in the corner, He does not change his God, The quiet question came to me-- for God is One,' Is Jesus the Son of Allah? But discovers in the Son That God is strangely, inconceivably great, The question is not about Jesus, but Allah: because He became so conceivably small; The Arabic for God is more than a name That God, in the end, is mercifully just but is He the same since He has absorbed the evil of all. as our God and Father? We may, perhaps, then whisper In Southern Sudan that Jesus is the Son of Allah: a Christian will answer, militantly, "No": But in this naked act of naming, In Pakistan the active Word transforms the Name. a Christian may answer, philosophically, "Yes": In Saudi Arabia Prostrate upon the carpet of a Mombasa mosque, a Muslim will answer, immediately, "No": Softly to Jesus, Son of Allah, I prayed; So does it depend where we stand-or kneel? Then rose again to slip outside and join my wife and daughters, El Shaddai of Abraham who were waiting in the shade. Is revealed as Yahweh to Moses, But not as Ba'al to Elijah: What of Almighty Allah? Graham Kings, Vice Principal of St. Andrew's Institute The crucial clue may lead us to for Mission and Evangelism, Kerugoya, Kenya, is a CMS A Muslim now submitting missionary.
Three Models for Christian Mission
James M. Phillips
issiology has often felt uncertain about the nature and italism," or Ernst Troeltsch employed to differentiate "churches" M definition of models for Christian mission. It is some and "sects.:" and H. Richard Niebuhr developed to discern times assumed that there is only one appropriate model, which, relationships between "Christ" and "culture.i" The "ideal despite defects, is the dominant model throughout the biblical types" to which these writers referred rarely existed in the real period and the history of the Christian church. At the same time, world in a pure state, but were almost always found in combi mission literature employs a number of conflicting models of mis nations with different types. Such a warning pertains here, as sion, without necessarily making clear how these models should well. The three models for mission are not the only models that operate, how they relate to one another, what kinds of leadership have been used, but they represent to some extent the combi they require, or how their results are to be evaluated. This article nation of numerous models found in the history of missions. presents three major models for Christian mission and traces their Those readers who conclude that the following analysis is over origins in the Old Testament period, their modification in New simplified have the writer's complete understanding. He only Testament times, and their development in church history. asks their indulgence of his use of broad brush strokes in order The methodology that will be used here is that of discerning to make these models of mission a bit clearer. "ideal types." This is not unlike the methodology Max Weber The three models are Sinai, with its recollection of the people used' to relate "the Protestant ethic" to "the spirit of cap- of God gathered at Mount Sinai with Moses the lawgiver as their leader; Zion, with its concept of Israel centered on Mount Zion in Jerusalem under its kings and priests; and Judgment, with its promise of the coming Lord who will intervene with finality in James M. Phillips has been Associate Director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center since 1983. After short-term missionary service in Korea (1949-1952), he human history, both for condemnation and salvation. These three taught church historyas a Presbyterian fraternal worker at Tokyo Union Theo models originate in the Old Testament, and it is with their ap logical Seminary inJapan (1959-1975), andasavisitingproiessor at SanFrancisco pearances there, in approximately chronological order, that we Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union (1975-1982). begin.
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