Response to Dave Barron and Patrick Navas: Part 1

And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, a special two -hour mega -edition of The Dividing Line, dedicated today, yes, we are dedicating the program today to someone, someone who has a birthday tomorrow.

I'm not really sure how ancient or old that's going to make this particular person, but we thought it would be nice, given all he does for us, to dedicate the program today to Big Ralph, Big Ralph out there, one of our channel rats and a good friend and someone who keeps a close eye on the ministry resource list, which is always very encouraging to me.

And so we're dedicating the program today to the man who has great taste in hairstyles, so just like mine, which basically means, get rid of that stuff, it's a pain anyways, to he and his lovely wife

Nikki. Happy birthday, Ralph. And Ralph's the one who's always, oh, it's just a jumbo today?

It's just a regular? You'll probably say, what, it's just a mega one today? That's all I get? My birthday is a two -hour

Dividing Line? Yeah, that's how, that's just how, that's how Ralph is. But anyway, he's listening in, and it's going to be, it's going to be his kind of Dividing Line, because he doesn't like the light and fluffy ones, no.

He likes the ones where you have blog articles, like I posted about an hour ago. If you're listening live, or if you're not listening live, you're listening to the podcast and you aren't driving or something, you're where there's a computer,

I would highly suggest that you go to the blog at aomin .org

for November 29th, even if you're listening to this three years later, which you might, go to the blog for November 29th of 2011, because there is an article there.

I just decided there was no way I could engage in this response without providing materials to look at.

If I, it's sort of like trying to do the King James Only presentation without using a digital projector.

It's just, it's next to impossible to do, just describing these things. And so, please go to the blog, and you will see that I have placed a great amount of original language material, and I've divided it up into A, B, C, all the way down through,

I believe, E or is there an F? No, it's just E. And that will correspond to the first portion of the program today.

My initial intention was to start a series today where I would, oh, and by the way,

I'm sorry, let me just mention, I just blogged within five minutes of the beginning of the program.

I just posted to the blog the video, since we now have it uploaded, of a six -year -old debate.

A six -year -old debate. The debate between John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg on one side, and Dr.

Jim Renahan of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, and myself on the subject of the resurrection that took place at sea.

We had video problems and recording problems, but we've got it together.

And it has just been, yes, it took place during Katrina, so that's how old this debate is.

And it is now on YouTube. Many thanks to Matt for getting all that work done.

And it is available, and you'll notice my opening presentation looks and sounds weird because basically the video didn't quite work, the audio didn't work at all.

I had to rerecord my opening statement, literally from my Tungsten T5. This is how old this is.

My Tungsten T5, my palm, Tungsten T5, I still have the notes on it, actually.

And I came into this studio, and I rerecorded them, because I pretty much read them straight.

So it fits in the time parameters, it's the same material that I presented. And so we rerecorded that, and then the rest of it goes on from there.

So there it is, available to you, if you want to see that debate.

I thought it was a very interesting debate, and I am so much bigger then, than I am now.

I was up near 250 at that point, and I'm around 180 now, so, yeah, major, major difference.

Much more of me in there than needed to be. But anyways, that is on the blog.

Now, that's right above reference materials for the dividing line of November 29th, 2011. My intention today was to begin a series where I would be responding to the debate that took place a week after I had my debate with Abdullah Kunda in Sydney.

A debate took place between Dia Muhammad and Samuel Green. And Dia Muhammad made all sorts of really interesting statements.

And in fact, I haven't written to him yet, but I can tell Abdullah Kunda was in the audience because I heard him ask a question.

And I know that Abdullah Kunda knows that Dia Muhammad's arguments were really bad.

I mean, just on a factual level, that the things he said about the history of the Bible are just not true.

They're just common misconceptions amongst Muslims. And I want to write to Abdullah and say, have you talked with Dia Muhammad?

Because you know better than this. So, how do you handle that? I mean, on my end,

I've gotten a black eye and a bloody nose more than once for daring to point out that people on my side aren't being overly accurate in the statements they make about others.

So, does that happen on the Muslim side too? Are there Muslim apologists who'll say, hey guys, you know, we need to step up the study here a little bit.

So, anyways, we're going to listen to Dia Muhammad's comments. And because they are, it's not because they're high -end comments, because they're really not.

I mean, his knowledge of the Bible is very much second, third, fourth hand, but because they're so common.

This is what you will hear from Muslims all the time. And so, sometimes there, you know, we have to, you know, deal with that kind of stuff too.

And then, I also want to review the recent

Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace debate. I especially want to respond to Bart Ehrman's presentation.

And I've got a chance to listen, I think on Thanksgiving Day actually, to that debate.

And so, two very important subjects. It's going to take a lot of time. We're going to do a lot of depth on a lot of things.

But that's what I was going to do. Then Friday night, I did a debate. And I'm going to list it as one of the, that's debate number 112, because it was moderated.

And it was sufficiently long and of sufficient quality to be called a debate, I believe.

And it was a debate with Patrick Navas. That's N -A -V -A -S. You know that over the past couple of weeks,

I have responded to various of Mr. Navas' comments in his book, a 600 -plus page book,

Against the Trinity. And we did our debate. I linked the material that night.

Chris Date, who was the moderator, it was on his podcast, got the material put together at blinding speed, very, very fast.

And I posted the material, and I leave that to the audience to decide how those debates went.

We move on from there. I thought it went great. But I had no intentions of doing anything more about it.

Move on, so on and so forth. But I had the sneaking hunch.

Folks, I've been doing this for almost three decades now. And while that's not as long as some people have been, there are too many folks that have been doing what

I've been doing for as long as I've been doing it these days. And after a while, you sort of get a hint as to what kind of people you're dealing with.

And I just had the feeling all along that once that debate was over, that wasn't going to be the end of the discussion.

And there are a cadre of young, very young, anti -Trinitarian,

Aryan, subordinationists, Unitarians out there. And they really, really, really want attention.

But they really can't gather an overly large audience. And from what

Rich tells me, we get emails pretty regularly from some of these guys looking for attention.

Did you know that you've been mentioned by so -and -so on such -and -such a blog site? Well, if I even took the time every day to read everything it said about me on blogs,

I would get almost nothing else done. And it would be a rather depressing life. So I don't even, to be perfectly honest with you, bother.

But I've had a feeling that if I did this debate on Chris Tate's program, that it might open up the floodgates to all these guys all of a sudden going,

Hey, now it's my shot. Okay, Patrick got his two and a half hours, almost three hours of fame.

Now it's my shot. I want to, you know, because it's a big feather in some people's cap.

I debated James White. That's why you see so many people. I debated James White and go, I remember that guy. And then they say, well,

I sent you an email. I may have never even seen it, but I debated you. Or if I do respond, you know,

I might respond, well, I debated James White. So I feel sad for those folks.

But anyway, I just had a feeling that something was going to, and of course it did. And Mr. Novice keeps sending me notes and he wants to argue about this minute point and that minute point.

And within 24 hours, it was like 24 hours later.

In fact, I think it was the next morning. So it might have been within like 12 hours. A guy named

Dave Barron, who I guess also has a self -published book against the Trinity. At least

I think it's self -published. I could be wrong. It's an e -book. Let me take that back. It's an e -book. Are e -books published?

Bart Ehrman is putting out an e -book pretty soon on whether Jesus existed. And his conclusion is he did, which should be interesting.

Remember the Infidel Guy program? Yeah, that was interesting. Anyways, he put out a

YouTube video. And I didn't know about it.

I don't have a Google thing set up where I look for stuff on my name. You know how I found out about it?

Mr. Novice told me about it. And very clearly wanted me to know about it.

And sent it to both me and Chris Date and said, here's this thing here. And so I'm like, oh man.

Okay. When do you stop? Because these guys won't.

Because they're one -topic people. This is their thing. They're not going to be taking on the

Bart Ehrmans of the world. Or the Diya Muhammad's of the world. They don't have any debate with Diya Muhammad anyways, given their

Unitarianism. But when does it end?

And so I listened to the presentation. It's a fairly short one. And I thought, alright, look.

I will take the time to correct Mr. Barron's misapprehensions. And I will roll it into the

Mega DL. Well, as soon as I said, I might. Well, you should have him on to talk to.

Oh, now I have to have a debate with him. Now remember, if he's written a book, if I'm going to have somebody on the program, if I'm going to take somebody on, you know what

I think I need to do? I actually think I need to read their book. And I don't have any interest in doing that. I really don't. I mean, there's nothing new here.

But I just think that's the responsible thing to do. And I already invested many hours in the 600 -page tome in preparation for Mr.

Novice. Evidently, these guys do not want me writing any more books, because they think they can tell me when I need to do these things.

And so I'm like, I'm not interested. Well, these guys really do think.

Hey, if you're going to respond to me, you need to have me on. You need to give me an opportunity. And it's like, really? No one asked me.

You know, I remember Mr. Novice writing to me. Maybe he did. Maybe I didn't get the emails. But writing to me while he was writing his book and asking me to give responses or something to what he was saying in his book at that particular point in time.

And I think my name appears about 152 times, minimally, in Mr. Novice's book.

So, anyway. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through Mr. Barron's presentation.

And I'm going to respond to it. And then we're going to move on. And I think, hopefully, by putting the material on the blog, we will be able to make this useful to folks.

It's going to be at a little bit deeper level than some folks might be comfortable with, but that's okay.

And in fact, if you haven't listened to the debate yet, that's going to be...

it might be even more difficult to follow. But if you have, then hopefully this will be a good follow -up for you and will be useful to you.

So I hope that this will be of assistance and so on and so forth.

So, again, go to the blog and open up the article,

Reference Materials for the Dividing Line, November 29, 2011.

And that is what we will be using during the program here. I'm actually trying to get this on this one screen to...

Oh, there it is. Get a little wider here. Will it fit? Barely, barely.

There we go. And hopefully this will be of assistance to you as we listen to what

Mr. Barron had to say. All right, we've got the volume up and ready to go.

Let's listen to Mr. Barron's comments. I will, of course, be starting and stopping as we go along.

I just had the opportunity to finish the debate between James White and Patrick Nobis on the subject of the

Trinity. I'm really glad the debate took place because there's unfortunately too little interaction that takes place on a real level between Trinitarians and those of the

Unitarian perspective who acknowledge the sun's preexistence. It seems most Trinitarian debates take place usually between somebody else.

Now, just stop right there because one of the questions that I have had is exactly where Mr.

Nobis comes down on the sun's preexistence. He is very careful in his book to allow for people who don't believe that the sun existed as a person prior to his birth in Bethlehem, etc.,

etc. So evidently Mr. Barron does believe in some sort of preexistence as to exactly the nature of that,

I can only guess. Well, oneness persuasion or somebody who's a Sassanian. So that Patrick was able to represent the biblical position was really refreshing.

Ah, the biblical position. The biblical Unitarian position, just so you caught that.

White really is an experienced debater. He's by far more experienced than Patrick Nobis simply because he has participated literally in dozens of debates.

That's where you get experience, yes. That is where it comes from. Dozens? Yeah. What, six, seven, eight, eight, nine?

Just under ten. Just under ten dozen, whatever that is. Almost a dozen dozen. That'll be a big one.

We'll have to make a dozen dozen a big one. Because of that, his presentation was definitely more polished, but that's not to say anything against Patrick.

His presentation was just fine and very good, in fact. But White does have more experience, and Patrick would acknowledge this, but with that there was also,

I would say, more rhetoric. For example, White had a lot to say about Unitarians taking a human rationalistic perspective.

What I said was that the Unitarianism represented by Mr. Nobis is rationalistic.

That is, it approaches the text from a non -supernatural perspective.

It's rationalistic in that it establishes a view of Christ that banishes anything that challenges a rationalistic conception of his nature.

So he has to be something lesser than God. The idea of, well, for example, there's a number of times confusion in Mr.

Nobis' book in regards to the two natures of Christ and their relationship to one another. Well, that's very common from the

Muslim perspective, who take, interestingly enough, a pretty rationalistic perspective of the New Testament, etc.,

etc. It doesn't seem that either Mr. Nobis or Mr. Barron understand what I meant by the use of the term rationalistic at that point, especially in light of the example he's about to give.

Yet that seemed to be the very thing White did when he would rationalize how monotheistic

Jews could never see the Son being created and certain things being true of him.

No, that's not an example of rationalism at all. That is an example of recognizing what the beliefs of the

Jews were at that time and comparing that with the assertions being made.

He doesn't understand what rationalism is in the context that I was using it, and I'm sorry he did not understand that.

How things could never be said of a mere creature, according to White. Of course, we would never say that Jesus was a mere creature.

He is certainly created, but that is not to denigrate him at all.

Now, a very common canard here, one that I addressed in the debate, and that is you can exalt

Jesus as much as you want, as long as you say he's created, he is a mere creature, because the chasm that exists between the uncreated and eternal and that which is created and non -eternal is, well, infinite.

And so when we talk about this perspective, it is perfectly appropriate to say that he is a mere creature.

Exalted, fine, but the most exalted creature is still infinitesimal in comparison to the uncreated eternal creator.

And so you can exalt him as high as you want. Make him Michael the

Archangel, whatever else you want to do. However high you want to make him, he still came into existence at a point in time.

He is not eternal. He is a creature. And you can create all sorts of categories of creaturely deities and everything else, but there remains an impassable chasm between the uncreated creator and all that which he has created.

And these men put Jesus in the category of the creation, just like Arius did.

They stand against the Christian faith. They want to be considered in the Christian faith, but they are not.

Without a divine Jesus, you don't have the Christian faith. I will stand by that.

I am not the first one to stand there, and I will not be the last one to stand there. But that is what we are referring to.

But I really wanted to make some comments on the debate itself, some of the topics that were discussed.

It started with the discussion of John 12, 38 -41. This was in relation to Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 53, both of which had passages quoted from them.

Both sides had a couple of key arguments, but I was admittedly a bit disappointed that the most significant portion of the text was not actually discussed, and that's

John's use of the word because. Now, notice, Mr.

Barron gets to decide what the most significant portion of the text is, and that is the word hati.

Now, hati can be very, very important, but if you want to look at the reference materials, we are now on section

A. What I've provided for you in section A is

Isaiah 6 -1 in the Greek Septuagint. And I'm sure most everybody in the audience, but I want to make sure everyone is up to speed, the

Greek Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It wasn't done by any one man or group of men, despite the stories that circulate there.

There are various streams of transmission of the text, even of the Greek Septuagint itself. We might look at an example of that a little bit later on.

And what I've done with Bold, and if I could have had more time, I could have used color, and color probably would have helped even more, but I'm glad I've got this much up.

In Isaiah 6 -1, you see in Bold, Aidan tan kurion,

I saw the Lord, seat upon a throne, lofty and lifted up, and the house was full, play race, teis dakses autu, full of his glory.

And so you have Aidan, first person of Harao, I saw the

Lord, and then you have in the same sentence, teis dakses autu, as part of that which is seen, by Isaiah, as he then goes on to describe what he sees, and then quotes from what he sees, in Isaiah 6 -10, which comes into John chapter 12, verse 40.

Then I gave you the Greek of John 12 -41, tauta aipen isaias, hati aidan tein dakson autu, and he spoke concerning him, peri autu.

And I have bolded Isaiah, these things Isaiah said, because he saw his glory, and he spoke concerning him.

Now, to understand this issue, you need to understand what the argument is about, and again, if you haven't, didn't listen to the debate, it's going to be difficult to understand why there is the argument here.

As I have said for a couple of weeks now, in reviewing Mr. Novice's material, what Unitarians do is they read out of the text, anything that would contradict their position.

Since theirs is a reductionistic position, reducing Jesus down to something less than what he is, then that evidence of the greater elements of Jesus' existence that their theology would allow for, have to be ignored, explained away, said not to be significant, read out of the text.

And we saw examples of this already, and I provided a number of examples during the course of the debate.

Now, when Christians look at John 12 -41, the argument is not that Isaiah never said anything about the

Messiah, because basically what the Unitarian is saying is, well, Isaiah, he saw the glorious ministry of the

Messiah, and that the Messiah would be rejected, and he talked about the Messiah, and that's all

John 12 -41 is about, is that Isaiah saw the glory of the

Messiah and that the Messiah would be rejected, and he spoke about it.

That's all it can mean. Now, Christians, down through the ages of God, well, that's quite true.

I mean, Isaiah, who would ever dare question that Isaiah has a tremendous amount of information concerning the

Messiahship of Jesus and the ministry of the Messiah. I mean, just read the

Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 52 and 53. I mean, wow. Just incredible stuff.

700 years for the Messiah. Use it all the time. But is that all?

Because you see, what's not stated openly but needs to be seen is that for their position to survive,

John 12 -41 cannot be a reference to Isaiah 6 -1.

Can't be. What they're saying is these things Isaiah said because he saw his glory elsewhere and he spoke about the

Messiah, but it can't mean that Isaiah saw the glory of Yahweh and spoke about Him.

No, no, no, no. Because if that's the case, then John is making an amazing statement here because he goes on in verse 42, yet many, even the rulers, believed in Him and only

Him in the context of Jesus. And so, if John 12 -41 is in fact a verbal parallel to and drawing from Isaiah 6 -1, then not only is it talking about and fulfilling everything

Isaiah prophetically said about the Messiah, but it's also telling us something about the nature of the Messiah that, well, we as Unitarians, we don't believe that, so it can't be there.

It can't have a reference to that. No, no, no, no, no. See? And so I bolded it so you can see for yourself.

Now, I asked Mr. Novice during the cross -examination, Do you know of anywhere else in the book of Isaiah where Isaiah is said to have seen the glory of anyone?

Seen the glory of anyone. And he wasn't aware of any place.

Now, skip past Isaiah 53 -2 for a moment. You'll see in Isaiah 66 -18 and 19, there are some references there.

You've got, They will see my glory.

And then in 66 -19, you've got Harao there. But that's

Udah. That's after an u, it's talking about not. I wondered if he might go there, but they are not

Isaiah talking about seeing the glory of Yahweh. So, my argument was, and remains, that when you ask the question, you just quoted from Isaiah 6, a famous passage, well known amongst the

Jews. And the Jews know how this section begins. They know that Isaiah saw the

Lord lofty and lifted up. And, if you're looking at your translation, please note something.

This is something that's even more significant. This is found in my book. It's in a footnote, but if you don't read the footnotes in my book, you don't get it.

You might be confused by something if you're looking at an English translation that translates only the Masoretic Hebrew text.

Because the English translation says, And the train of his robe filled the temple. But there is a textual variant.

The Septuagint disagrees with the Masoretic text. And the last line, as you see in the blog article, is,

I'm sorry, And the house was full of his glory.

The very same terminology that John chooses to use.

And so, when you ask the question, Where in all of Isaiah did he see his glory and speak concerning him, the

Unitarian, assuming his Unitarianism, has to disassociate

Isaiah's seeing of the glory of Yahweh and speaking about Yahweh, that has to be gotten rid of.

It has to only be about the Messiah. It can't be about both, because, you see, they don't have the

Jesus we have. Because we can affirm everything it says about the Messiah and his ministry and his glory and everything else, but, you see, we recognize that Yahweh became flesh.

We don't assume Unitarianism. We recognize that the name Yahweh is used as a father and it is used of the son as well.

Not merely as a representative, not merely in some extended fashion, but in ways that can only communicate that it was

Yahweh who became flesh. Now, if you're Unitarian, you assume, Oh, that's not possible, because that would be the father.

Well, that's why we're not Unitarians, because we actually allow the Bible to define these things rather than taking an external presupposition and cramming it into the