Passage
Romans 10
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Doctrine
Evangelism
CRITICAL: proclaiming the gospel to Muslim-background Pashtuns can carry severe legal and social consequences, up to and including capital punishment for apostasy under some interpretations enforced in Taliban-controlled areas; language of witness must be handled with full awareness of the danger to speaker and hearer alike.
ROM.10.14-15
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Doctrine
Faith
Measured against both Islamic creedal iman and Pashtunwali's own honor-code loyalty (nang); faith here is personal trust in Christ, not loyalty to either system.
ROM.10.9-10, ROM.10.17
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Glossary Term
Faith
Shares the shared Islamic six-pillars creedal structure, but Pashtun listeners also measure loyalty against Pashtunwali's own honor code (nang), a parallel authoritative system that predates and sometimes competes with formal Islamic practice.
ROM.10.9-10, ROM.10.17
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Doctrine
Fulfillment of Prophecy
Naskh (abrogation) doctrine treats later revelation as superseding earlier revelation; Romans' fulfillment argument needs deliberate framing against this default.
ROM.10.11
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Glossary Term
Gentiles
امتونه shares the loaded Ummah root; the descriptive غیر یهودیان ('non-Jews') avoids that association.
ROM.10.12
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Doctrine
Gospel
Must be taught as the NT record itself, not conceded as a corrupted successor to a lost original revelation, per the tahrif assumption shared across the Islamicate world.
ROM.10.15-16
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Glossary Term
Gospel
Shares the same tahrif (corruption) assumption found across the Islamicate world; must be taught as the NT record itself, not a lost predecessor text.
ROM.10.15-16
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Glossary Term
Intercession
A genuine positive resource: Pashtunwali's institutionalized mediation practice (nanawatai), where a respected mediator or the offending party's own ritual submission ends a blood feud and secures reconciliation, is a rich cultural bridge for Christ's unique mediating intercession (Romans 8:34; compare 1 Timothy 2:5).
ROM.10.1
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Glossary Term
Israel
Carries general pan-Islamic solidarity-based negative sentiment, though it is a less centrally charged first-order national issue in Afghanistan/Pakistan than in Iran or the Arab world given the absence of direct territorial proximity or conflict.
ROM.10.12
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Glossary Term
Jesus
CRITICAL: as in Persian, the small Pashto Christian community has settled on 'Isa' with no competing 'Yeshua'-style alternative, since the Pashto-speaking region never had a comparable pre-Islamic native Christian community the way the Fertile Crescent did.
ROM.10.9, ROM.10.12
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Glossary Term
Justification
CRITICAL: compound phrase required.
ROM.10.1, ROM.10.10
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Glossary Term
Law
CRITICAL: unlike Arabic and Persian, Pashtun society lives under two parallel, sometimes competing normative systems - formal Islamic shari'a and customary Pashtunwali tribal law.
ROM.10.11
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Glossary Term
Lord
CRITICAL: مالک (malik, owner/master) is too transactional and undershoots the claim.
ROM.10.9, ROM.10.12
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Doctrine
Lordship of Christ
CRITICAL: applying supreme Lordship to Jesus (Romans 10:9) is the deity claim itself and must never be softened to mere leadership or ownership.
ROM.10.9, ROM.10.12
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Doctrine
Prayer and Intercession
Pashtunwali's nanawatai mediation custom is a rich positive bridge for Christ's intercession, but the analogy (which still requires the guilty party's own submission act) needs careful theological calibration, not treatment as an exact equivalent.
ROM.10.1
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Glossary Term
Prophecy
Low independent risk beyond the prophet entry's own note.
ROM.10.11
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Glossary Term
Righteousness
CRITICAL: the deeper risk is not a wrong word but a framework mismatch - Pashtun culture is a strong honor-shame culture, not a guilt-innocence culture.
ROM.10.1, ROM.10.10
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Doctrine
Salvation
CRITICAL: beyond the shared deeds-weighing framework, Pashtunwali's badal (revenge) code suggests wrongs are repaid by punishing the wrongdoer; the customary institution of nanawatai (accepted ritual submission in place of retaliation) is a real, positive cultural bridge for substitutionary atonement and should be invoked explicitly.
ROM.10.1, ROM.10.10
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Glossary Term
Salvation
CRITICAL: beyond the shared Islamic deeds-weighing framework, Pashtunwali's badal (revenge) code operates on a cyclical debt-for-debt logic that could suggest a wrong must be repaid by punishing the wrongdoer directly.
ROM.10.1, ROM.10.10
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Doctrine
Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Requires pastoral framing given general pan-Islamic solidarity-based sentiment about Israel, though less centrally politically charged in Afghanistan/Pakistan than in Iran or the Arab world.
ROM.10.12
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Doctrine
Universal Scope of the Gospel
Must be framed so as not to be heard as religious pluralism, while retaining the full inclusive force of the text and challenging tribal/genealogical spiritual hierarchy.
ROM.10.12-13