Yusuf Estes on the Deen Show: Part 3

The Comma Johanneum and the Trinity Debate

How about for, when one says, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son...

But we said the word, Trinity, is not there. Okay. Okay, the word Trinity is not in the Bible, not in any scripture, that word Trinity is not there. It's not until you get to the Koran that you find this word.

So what is this verse that I just quoted you that people use to support to Trinity?

The verse that you're talking about now, this is in John, but it's not John the Gospel. This is John 1, or the first epistle of John. And it's not necessarily even the same John anyway. It's in chapter 5, verse 7, and it says, there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and these three are one.

This verse is a matter of, as a matter of fact, is an addition. And all of the scholars of the Bible agree that this was added many, many, many centuries later by someone who wanted to resolve this issue once and for all and prove that somehow there could be three.

Why the Trinity Is Not Proved by the Added Text

Now, two quick corrections. First of all, he says not necessarily the same John anyway. If you've ever translated 1 John and the Gospel of John, trying to come up with two different Johns there would be a little bit challenging, I think.

There's a great consistency, at least as I have read them, in the uses and usages, language, so on and so forth. Very few of our Muslim friends translate Greek, so I'm not really sure they can comment on that.

And then, what was just said is partially true. Scholars, the vast majority of scholars, there are very, very few who would say otherwise. The vast majority of scholars, from the most conservative to the most liberal, all agree that the Kama Yohani in 1 John 5 -7 does not belong in the Greek text.

It is a later edition coming over from the Latin. I have addressed this many times. However, Yusuf Estes added something to his statement that is simply untrue. And that is, he was stating, well, all scholars know this, but then he added this, as this is something that all scholars know.

He said that they added it to prove that somehow there could be three. And that's not the case. In reality, the majority of scholars who have examined the Kama Yohani see it as an interpretation, and he's going to mention this, I just don't think he fully understands this, see it as an interpretation of the preceding verse.

And it is in no way, shape, or form the conclusion of all the scholarship that somehow some writer long, he says hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years down the road, was still trying to prove the Trinity.

That wasn't an issue anymore. Why would you insert something to try to prove a doctrine that was no longer in dispute? That doesn't make any sense. Instead, this looks like a simple interpretation, probably written in the margin of a Latin manuscript, interpreting the previous verse in a Trinitarian fashion, showing that the doctrine of the Trinity precedes this, and gave rise to this variant, not the other way around.

The Biblical Case for the Trinity

But honestly, to even be talking about this subject, to even be looking at this, instead of going to the biblical evidence, the doctrine of the Trinity, which is all the passages that teach there's only one true God, all the passages that teach the deity of Christ, all the passages that teach the personality of the Holy Spirit, all the passages that distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, there are so many of these to be addressed, and none of them are even being touched, while talking about a very famous textual variant that has no possibility of being original in the first place, which Christians have pointed out for hundreds of years.

Why this kind of approach? It's very difficult for a Christian to understand.

Let me get this straight, so this is not in the original manuscript?

Well, nobody can say it's not, because they don't have the original manuscript.

So it's not in the copy of the copy of the copy?

It's not in anything, no, it's not in anything within, I think, the first thousand years. Okay, anything in the first thousand years wouldn't have had that. It was added much later, in the Kone Greek.

Gotcha. Okay, now there were things that were in Trinity, mentioned Trinity, that were injected in some of these Latin copies and so on, but those were rejected anyway. But in the Kone Greek, there was never anything in any of the early manuscripts or anything came after that, that was, you know, anything serious that used this word Trinity.

And once again, Christians have never claimed that the word Trinity is found in the Bible. Never been a claim, so why waste time arguing about it? We believe that the word describes what the Bible teaches.

The Bible teaches that there is only one true God. The Bible reveals to us three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who differentiate themselves from each other, and yet that same Bible describes each as Yahweh, describes each as deity, ascribes to each things that could not be described to any mere creature, and that is why the Bible forced Christian believers into the doctrine of the Trinity, by the fullness of its revelation, by refusing to cut any part of it off, saying, well, I just can't understand that, so I'm going to get rid of it.

The Bible forces us that doctrine. So why are we sitting here talking about the word Trinity, when Christians have never claimed it's there in the first place? The word itself, it's a Latin word. There are no Latin words, well, there's a few Latin words in the Gospels, but the New Testament is not written in Latin.

So why are we arguing about this? Why not deal with the actual biblical evidence that Christians have been presenting for a very, very long time?

The Comma Johanneum as a Later Interpretation

And more, was there anything with this verse in it? Okay, what it is, it's a takeoff of the verse before it, and a rewording of that verse to try to add what they wanted to. It says in the verse before it, that there are three that bear witness, the Father, the Blood, and the Spirit, and these three agree.

The Father, the Blood, and the Spirit, and these three agree. And it doesn't say they're all in heaven, and it doesn't say that they are one. It says they agree, but it was a chance for somebody to say, oh, wait, look, here's three things, now we'll try to wrap it up and turn it into something.

There were some very serious fights, and we're not talking about just fights with words, we're talking about the kind of fights where people were being poisoned, people being killed over this subject.

That's how really horrible it got by the third century.

Arianism, Nicaea, and the Nature of Christ

This is where Dr. Estes' history starts getting really fanciful. The third century is the 200s, and the Council of Nicaea is 325, it's fourth century. And in the third century, Christians are under persecution from the Romans, and this kind of thing isn't happening.

Actually, it's more fifth century where you get certain groups of monks that are fighting with one another about actually different issues than this, but this is where the history really starts to spin off into some really odd stuff that simply could never be substantiated by any meaningful scholarly documentation, which he doesn't pretend to offer anyway.

But third century, I think he's confusing his dates again, and we'll become much more confused with his dates as we press on.

There was something called Arianism versus the Council of Nicaea. I'm referring to something I have on a website about this. And Arius is the one who was insisting that the nature of Jesus was such that he's not divine, and he's not a part of God.

But they were always arguing over how you explain the nature of Jesus. Is he created, or is he born? Is he begotten, or is he not begotten? And the wording on how you would say that would determine whether or not you were considered to be a kafir, a disbeliever.

Now, once again, there are a number of problems in Dr. Estes' understanding. Arianism and the Council of Nicaea is fourth century, not third century. The Council of Nicaea is in AD 325. The Arian resurgence after the Council of Nicaea in the decades after that.

And that is not a settled issue as far as the nature of Arianism and its final defeat until the end of that century. He says he's quoting from his website. Well, I'm sorry, but his website is not a scholarly source.

Never do we hear any of the recognized scholarly sources for church history or anything related to that cited by Yusuf Estes. He says Arius said he was not divine, not a part of God. That's not true. Arius did say that Jesus was divine, and, in fact, he would call him a god.

But he said there was a time when the sun was not. So he did say that he was created, but he also said he was born. You see, Estes doesn't seem to understand the issue of the natures of Christ, the human nature versus divine nature, what the real argument of the Council of Nicaea was between those who said that Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, he's truly God, or Arius who was saying that he is a creature, he is created, a divine being, really led to a form of henotheism, but still not truly God in the fullest sense.

It's not a matter of whether he's begotten or not begotten. The question is, what does that mean? So we will continue looking at Yusuf Estes' errors in the next video.