Was Paul an Apostle of Jesus or an Innovator?

I think I'll just turn then to a general welcome to everyone, it's very encouraging to see people brave the

Sydney traffic on a Thursday evening to hear a debate, to hear a debate between Dr White and Dr Kunde on whether the

Apostle Paul is an apostle of Jesus or an innovator. My name's

Michael Prada -Gallaudet, I'm one of the pastors here at Stanmore Baptist Church and it's a real privilege and honour to host these events and to see so many familiar faces and also some new faces amongst us.

On behalf of the church I do want to welcome again Dr White who's been ministering amongst us over this past week and returns again and also

I especially want to welcome Dr Abdullah Kunde who I have now seen in the flesh, shaken his hand and for those who were here three years ago you know what a special moment that was today.

Now for those who haven't been to a debate you may be expecting theatrics, explosives, fireworks, even something to do with motor lubricants and coolants but unfortunately this evening you may be disappointed, you may be disappointed because Dr White and Dr Kunde have had dialogues and conversations and debates before and if you've seen those debates they are marked with gentleness, civility, intellect, probing one another, trying to understand the other side so if you're here to watch a debate where two men express their views forcefully and convincingly but respectfully then that's what

I trust you will see this evening. And I think today in our day and age where our society is so fractured and people cannot hold differing views

I think it will be a wonderful model and example for us to hear the other side, to try to understand that and also to express our position as well.

In a moment I'm going to hand over to the Reverend David Auld, I thank him for agreeing to moderate this debate for us but before I do that I thought

I'd just ask God to bless our time together so please join me in a moment of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, you are the God of all truth and we pray that you would be with us this day to guide and lead us into that truth.

We pray for both of our speakers that they would express themselves with clarity and for the audience and congregation gathered here that we would hear attentively and measure their words and we pray and ask for this in Jesus' name,

Amen. I hand over to David Auld. Thank you

Michael, good evening everybody. It is a real privilege to be here not just because it's a fascinating thing to do but because these two gentlemen are such a delight to moderate a debate for, they don't jump up and down and scream, they don't,

I'm hoping not, they actually do genuinely engage, you are in for a treat.

Let me just run you through the format of the evening. The thesis that Dr. James White will be defending is that Paul was an apostle of Jesus and not an innovator and Dr.

Abdullah Kunde on your right will be opposing that and telling you why he thinks that's wrong.

The format will be as follows, both will have an opening statement of 20 minutes each.

After that we will hear two rebuttals of 10 minutes each, then we will take a break, that break will be about 10 minutes, time for you to go to the restrooms.

It is not helpful I think at that moment for you to approach either of the two debaters, they will be working very, very hard, they will be in the zone, preparing their cross -examination, thinking through their close, as helpful as you think you may be to their cause,

I'm telling you, you won't be. We'll do cross -examination of up to 20 minutes each so they'll be able to ask each other questions and engage with that in that form and then we will have closing statements of seven minutes each.

After which we will take questions on that number that was up on the screen, is it still there? I already see some questions coming in.

If you all send me a question, I won't get to every question, my job as moderator is to pick a great selection of those questions to both of our debaters in order that we can explore the issues that come out, explore further the issues that come out of this debate.

If you send me a generic question about apologetics, we're less likely to get to it than the question that is targeted onto what we've discussed tonight, that will be most helpful

I think for what we're doing here. Now, those of you who were here last time round, whether you were in the room or not.

Hello. Jokes are mine David, jokes are mine. Sorry? The jokes are mine. The jokes are yours, alright, okay. You'll remember my little toy, this is my bell.

I will ring my bell if any of these guys go over time, I'm assured that they will not.

Dr White has also assured me that he hates nothing more in the world tonight than that bell, and he and I have a discussion and I've told him there's one way to make sure he never has to encounter it, and he assures me that he will do that.

I say that in jest, these are two great debaters, if there is a bell it will be a gentle one and we'll know that they will wrap up and we'll move on with the evening.

I'm about to sit down and in a moment I will introduce Dr James White to open this debate, but as I take my seat will you please give them both a thorough round of applause.

Well it is indeed an honor to be with you this evening and it is an honor to actually have a person in person to debate this evening.

Those of you who were here three years ago know that we did our best, we truly did, and but it is good to be with Abdullah this evening and our subject is one that I have been attempting to get some of my

Muslim friends around the world to engage. I've tried to get a number of the Muslims in London, for example, to engage this specific subject.

Why? Because I've never heard anyone discuss it before. It comes up all the time. I have seen debates where there have been specific attacks upon the position of the

Apostle Paul and saying that he is the one who invented Christianity and certainly over the years

I have debated Shabir Ali a number of times and it is certainly a central aspect of his particular approach to assert that in reality even

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were deeply influenced by Paul and that Paul is the origin and source of all the errors of Christianity from the

Islamic perspective, especially the exaltation of Jesus to the position of a God, which

I don't believe is what Paul believed, but you understand what I'm expressing there. And so I have wanted to have this type of discussion.

This is a great context in which to have it. So I would invite you as the audience, we are going to be dealing with some fairly historical issues, but also a lot of issues where,

I hope anyways, it is Abdullah and Mai's desire to utilize equal scales, to utilize the same standard of argumentation.

This is not the type of debate you would have down at the uni with an unbeliever or a radical skeptic in regards to the idea that there could even be revelation or anything like that.

When you have a believing Christian or believing Muslim debating, you're dealing with two theists and two supernaturalists who hold to the concept of scripture and revelation from God.

And that introduces an entirely new dynamic to that kind of a conversation.

And so over the years, I have complained repeatedly that my Muslim friends will utilize the skeptical attacks upon the

New Testament, but at the same time would never accept the foundations of those attacks in an analysis of the

Quran. And so I think we need to be very fair and consistent at that particular point in time.

We need to recognize you can find lots of books against Paul. You can find a lot of books that say that the writers of the

New Testament contradicted one another. You can find a lot of books that say and a lot of scholars that say Paul contradicted

Paul or John contradicted John or whatever else it might be. There is a great deal of that kind of material out there.

And certainly in today's world, the idea of the acceptance of the concept of revelation at all is extremely unusual.

The result is you can find in scholarship, naturalistic scholarship, the assumption of conflict, disharmony, and disunity, not only in the

Christian scriptures, but when applied to the Quran, the same type of thing then is the result.

This is even taken to asserting that individual authors, you can put them at odds with one another, for example,

Paul and James. We may even get to that if I speak quickly enough, or even in contradiction to themselves.

But this is a Christian -Muslim dialogue. And the New Testament is unlike the

Quran. We need to understand this. I recognize most Christians have not read the Quran. Most Muslims have not read the

New Testament. This is one of the reasons we end up talking past each other. We don't know each other's books. We don't know each other's history of those books.

The New Testament is unlike the Quran in that it is a collection of writings by different authors, whereas the

Islamic understanding of the Quran is that it is a singular collection that is not a collection of different writings, but that it is a singular body, and we'll need to discuss exactly how this is understood, but many

Muslims believe that it is uncreated and that it was sent down as a body to the angel

Gabriel at one particular time, on Laylat al -Qadr, during the month of Ramadan, and then over a period of years was given to Muhammad and collected through his recitation to his followers.

So it is a single book, but it does not have literally a human author.

Muhammad's understanding of things in classical Islamic theology is not really relevant.

It is not his understanding that's being expressed. This is very unlike the Christian understanding of scripture.

So the question of the consistency and coherence of the surahs of the Quran can be seen in the fact that the

Meccan and Medinan periods produce very different emphases in the text. So what does that mean?

Well, if the Muslim can accept that the historical context of certain of the surahs of the Quran can produce differing emphases, the

Meccan on monotheism, worship, the afterlife, the Medinan upon the prophet, the ummah, the jihad, there is no reason in principle to question that the gospel materials can differ in context and hence emphasis from the

Pauline due to the historical differences between them. This is the first point I want you to understand.

There is a fundamental historical and contextual difference between the ministry of Jesus, primarily there in Israel, and then the worldwide distribution of the gospel and the resultant founding of churches, dealing with the

Jewish -Gentile issue, all of the attendant circumstances that come with that. There are different contexts that lead to differing emphases between the gospels and their context and what you have in the

Apostle Paul. And I'm just simply saying if a Muslim can understand that the Meccan surahs and the

Medinan surahs can have different emphases because of the change in the reality of Muhammad's life, then you can see that there might be indeed a parallel to be followed there.

Now Jesus taught in the context of what is called Second Temple Judaism, the second temple that had been built after the destruction of the first, and now you have

Herod's expansion of that into one of the…almost one of the great wonders of the ancient world.

Jesus is teaching in the context of Second Temple Judaism. He is drawing from a canon that had been functional for around 200 years.

Those books have been laid up in the temple, we have learned. He interacted with Jewish traditions present in the first century, all of which was in the context of the

Roman occupation of Judea. Paul taught in the context of Second Temple Judaism, drawing from a canon that had been functional for around 200 years.

He interacted with Jewish traditions present in the first century, all of which was in the context of the

Roman occupation of Judea. And in the larger context due to his missionary journeys, which

Jesus did not take, of Greek and Roman culture in the Mediterranean basin.

But they're speaking in the same context, they're speaking from many of the exact same sources.

Jesus taught He was the Son of God who was sent by the Father as Savior of the world, and that one could obtain forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Him.

Paul taught Jesus was the Son of God who was sent by Father as Savior of the world, and that one could obtain forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Jesus.

Jesus taught that the Gospels go into all the world, and He sent His disciples out commanding them to make disciples, teaching them to obey

His commands, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus took that gospel, Paul, I'm sorry, took that gospel into all the world, specifically the

Gentile world, making disciples, teaching, and baptizing.

But, let's be honest, the argument isn't about the similarities. The argument is about the differences, for example,

Jesus' emphasis upon the kingdom, the coming destruction of Jerusalem, the gospel of the kingdom going out to all the world.

Paul's emphasis upon who Jesus was and is, the cross, the resurrection, justification, the

Jew -Gentile issue, and vitally, the church, which is not a central aspect of Jesus' teaching.

It appears, but it's not a central aspect. Why is there a difference between the two?

I suggest to you it is simply a matter of different contexts and different purposes.

Why do we assume that the epistles of a specially chosen apostle to the

Gentiles are going to look or sound the same as the gospels, which narrate the central redemptive work of Messiah in the narrow confines of Israel and end with the proclamation that there is more to come, the building of the church, the very people who follow the

Messiah the gospels have introduced us to? Why would Paul have to be recreating the gospels?

He is writing to churches where that message has already been delivered. The fundamental truths of the gospel have already been narrated.

There have been living witnesses, eyewitnesses of the resurrection that are a part of that missionary effort.

When Paul is writing to a church, he doesn't have to rewrite John. He doesn't have to rewrite

Mark. Instead, he needs to write to deal with the issues that those churches are facing at that particular point in time.

And obviously, as the gospel goes out into the world, it now begins to encounter Greek philosophy and other religions.

And therefore, that raises questions that the apostles have to deal with that were not in the context of the gospels and the ministry of Jesus.

So, if Jesus' ministry included in His teaching the future church, and if He did specifically, as He did indicate that the

Old Testament was talking about this gospel going out into all the world, then we would expect that the record of those first years going out into the world is going to have a different emphasis and a different focus than simply restating the gospels,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, over and over again. The real reason that Muslim apologists and scholars reject

Paul's apostleship, or at least his teachings, is this. In my opinion, the author of the

Quran taught a Jesus very different than the one taught by Paul. But then again,

I would say the author of the Quran taught a Jesus very different than the one in the gospels as well. So, the author of the

Quran had never read Paul. I have never seen anyone even make a meaningful argument that the author of the

Quran had any firsthand access to Philippians chapter 2, or to Colossians chapter 1, or to any

Pauline material whatsoever. And so, from our perspective, and I realize from the

Islamic perspective, well, the author of the Quran is God, and God knew all about Paul. Well, fine, but there is no evidence within the pages of the

Quran of any familiarity upon the author, on the author's part, in his thinking, interaction with anything that is really in the entirety of the

New Testament, let alone specifically in Paul himself. So, he did not have any exposure to Paul's teachings from any solid sources, maybe heard something from a

Christian someplace, but certainly nothing that was first -level exposure. Therefore, since the

Quran does quote Jesus without historical pedigree to his sayings,

I need to point that out, the quotes of Jesus speaking found in the text of the

Quran. If you have any problems with the accuracy of what is found in the

New Testament as to what Jesus said, if you're a Muslim, you should have many more problems of something that was quoted of Jesus that we have no historical evidence of for over 600 years.

The New Testament, all the New Testament documents are first -century documents and very close to Jesus. So, since the

Quran quotes Jesus, and yet its presentation of Jesus is thoroughly contradictory to both the gospel accounts and Paul's epistles, then

Islamic interpretation in later centuries, when finally faced with the actual text of the

Gospels and the actual text of Paul, had to make a choice. So, what happens is you have this century of massive expansion between 632 and 732, and then once the borders begin to solidify and you get the establishment of an

Islamic culture and you begin establishment of Islamic higher education, you begin to have interaction not only with the

Christians now under Islamic rule, but outside of the borders of Islam, and there has to be some kind of response to the questions that they are raising.

Your book says that God sent down the Torah and the Injil. Your book says light and guidance in the

Torah and the Injil. Your book says that it's the next thing that was sent down.

It was given to Muhammad as a guide and protector of the previous ones and so on and so forth.

So there has to be… there's lots of questions that we have to ask about why it is that the

Old Testament is so deeply referred to and understood and cited in the

New, but then that's broken when you get to the Quran. Oh, there are references to stories, but it's very, very plain that these are oral stories.

The documentary relationship is broken when you get to the

Quran. Why is that? Why is it that New Testament writers have so much knowledge of the

Old Testament, but the author of the Quran has no knowledge of the New Testament, and only a small amount of knowledge and I think primarily oral knowledge of what is found in the

Old Testament text as well? Why is that? These are the issues that provide the background for how we can address this issue of Paul.

Paul's never addressed in the Quran, though Ibn Kathir did theorize, he did record a tradition that Bulus was mentioned in Surah… that one of the three individuals mentioned in Surah 36, that one of them was

Bulus, and there was nothing negative said, there was no rejection. Actually, it was a positive statement about Paul, but that's a long time after the writing of the

Quran, and so you don't have, you know, I could sit here and just simply say, well, the Quran doesn't deny that Paul was an apostle, therefore, you know, the debate's over.

No, there is no direct interaction with Paul, and that's really the issue, because if… you need to recognize, if you're a

Christian here, you've never read the Quran. The Quran addresses you. We are addressed in the text of the

Quran. The Al -Kitab, the Al -Anjil, the people of the gospel, the people of the book, we are addressed directly, and we are told to read our

Scriptures. We are told to obey what is found in our Scriptures, and we are told that they were

Natsal, they were sent down from God. Well, if that is true, then how do you deal with the fact that what

Paul teaches in Colossians 1 or Philippians 2 or Titus chapter 2 or all over these places is in direct contradiction to what we have in the pages of the

Quran concerning who Jesus is? How do you explain that? Fundamentally, the assertion has been, well, those texts have been corrupted.

There has been tarif that has taken place, and some people believe it's just an interpretation, but most today believe it is a change of the very words themselves.

But why would that have to be developed? Why would that concept have to be developed? Because we have such a major contradiction between the

Pauline presentation of Jesus and the Quranic presentation of Jesus. I would argue there is no contradiction between Paul's presentation of Jesus and John's or Mark's or Matthew's or Luke's.

He addresses issues that are not addressed in the Gospels because he's now writing to churches that are dealing with things like proto -Gnosticism and all the rest of these things.

I understand that. That's where the differing emphasis comes in. But as to who Jesus is, there is no difference between what the

Gospel writers say and what Paul says. The differing emphasis has a context that needs to be understood.

And so was Paul an apostle or an innovator? Did he invent all of this stuff?

One last thing, if you really do believe that Paul invented all this stuff, what happened to Jesus' actual disciples?

What has to be said about them that they could be either taken over by, deceived by, or were afraid to actually stand up to a mere innovator who had no knowledge of the true

Jesus? Remember, Paul's ministry is going on contemporaneously with the lives of the original disciples themselves.

So they would have to have withstood Paul to the face if, in point of fact, he was making this up on the fly.

The reality is that the churches that Paul's ministering to and writing to are the same churches that honored all of the apostles.

There was harmony amongst them, and if we need to get into some of the places where people have suggested some level of disharmony, we can dive into them as the evening progresses.

But the evidence is very clear. I think that there is strong evidence in the

New Testament, not only of the harmony of the Gospels and Paul, but the fact that Paul recognizes his unusual position.

And he ministers in that position very, very consistently with what we know of what

Jesus himself taught in the Gospels. That's where Christians are coming from. I look forward to hearing what

Abdullah has to say from his perspective. Thank you very much for your time. If we could get up and introduce me again,

David. Very comfortable down there? That's all right. That's all right. You've been deemed.

I have. Thank you, everyone, for having us here tonight.

Very much appreciate the opportunity to be speaking in a Christian church about things that are remarkably unchristian.

Don't worry about there won't be any naked dancing or any fires and hopefully no statues of Jupiter just yet.

But you never know. But no, no, seriously, thank you to the Stanwell Baptist community and to everyone that's made their way here tonight.

I had sincere doubts that anyone would be fighting the traffic. I wouldn't come and watch me if I had to fight

Sydney traffic. So thank you very much, especially given the past experience we've had jokes about multiple times.

But that's all right. I'd also like to acknowledge James again for humbling me, giving me the opportunity to share a stage with him.

Yes, I am a doctor, but no, unlike James, my DR pre -nominals do not pertain to religion.

They, at the moment, pertain to very small children. So it's honestly very humbling to share a stage with James on a topic that he's an expert in and I am not.

James' grandchildren are the same age as my son, who's here tonight. So that's a little running joke for those of you that have been following us.

So the run of the play for me tonight is to first of all focus on what the

Islamic position is pertaining to prophets, because I think it's one that internally, for us, we find really obvious and logical, but externally, for the

Christians and then the indeterminants or the others in the room, would actually, I expect, be quite surprised by what our fundamentals are.

No, no, leave the kids in. It doesn't matter. I'm happy to speak over them. I get lots of practice, believe me.

That's why I wear bow ties, you know, because babies can't choke me with bow ties. Not just because James taught me.

But yeah, so that's the first point, I guess, that I want to hammer home, exactly what it is that we believe about prophets, because I think for the bulk of the people in the room, you won't be aware of it.

And likewise, for the bulk of the Muslims in the room, probably won't be aware of what the

Judeo -Christian tradition is about prophets either. And in fact, you know, when I was talking with my mother -in -law just a little bit earlier today about part of what

I was going to say tonight, because she can't make it tonight, she was surprised. And I thought, gee, I haven't really accomplished much in the last 15 years in terms of bridging interfaith gaps, but that's okay.

The next thing that I'll talk about is what I see as the historical Paul. And I do think that by and large, the

Christian scriptures are the best avenue for knowing Paul, but I will refer to some external contemporary or semi -contemporary sources as well.

And then ultimately answer the question, do I think that Paul invented Christianity? Here's a spoiler, no, but that's all right, we'll get there.

So the Islamic definition of prophethood is, as I said, quite different to the Judeo -Christian tradition.

So the critical thing that I want everyone to understand going forward is that prophets and messengers, and they're two ranks, for most

Muslims we see it as two separate ranks. Messengers are better than prophets, by and large, because they actually have a special revelation or law of their own.

And prophets are then kind of the filler people who, I guess, convey the message in between major prophets.

Major and minor prophets would be a way to think of it for the Christians in the room. Paul's claim is certainly, for us, in definition, at the very least, a claim to minor prophethood.

I'd argue that perhaps there's even elements of major prophethood in there. And therefore, from our perspective, as we believe that all prophets do, he should hold four key characteristics.

And they are truthfulness, correct action, intelligence, and to preach the message exactly in the manner in which they're instructed.

Now, we believe that these attributes exist in prophets, through the grace of God, prior to and during prophethood.

Okay, so they exist well before any revelation or mission is necessarily prescribed.

So, just to go through the four of them in a little bit more detail, the

Qur 'an says, in chapter 39, verse 32, and by the way,

I use, by and large, a modern English version of the Muhammad Asad translation of the

Qur 'an. And for the Bible, and I encourage you all to read along if you've got a Bible with you as well, when I refer to passages of the

Christian scriptures, I typically use the New English Standard version. That's one of my favorites. But because I was without my books for the past few days,

I've only been able to get English Standard version from Bible Gateway, so forgive me. So the transmitted proof from the

Qur 'an, with regards to why we believe that prophets are all truthful, completely and utterly truthful, before being given a mission or a revelation and after and during, is that it says, and who could be more wicked than the one who invents lies about God, as I said, if you want to read along, chapter 39, verse 32.

The rational proof, and for all of our things in critical Orthodox theology, we have a transmitted proof, or a proof from a verse in the

Qur 'an, and a rational proof, that's something that when we think we're really clever, we've sat down and thought up. If prophets could be misleading, then how can we be commanded to follow them?

What's the point of it? Now honestly, what's the point of a prophet if they're going to say, listen, I've got a really good lot of writings for you, called the

Psalms, not yet but they will be soon, you go and read them and have a think about, God, I'm just going to look behind this curtain at Bathsheba, but just ignore me doing that bit.

You know, that doesn't really make sense to us. And again, when I talk to Muslims about this, that this is inherent in the

Judeo -Christian belief, and there's part of it, you know, there's a very good rationale for it, obviously not one that I subscribe to, they're shocked, shocked that that's the thought.

Second thing is correct action, and again, the transmitted proof, and for those reading along, chapter 76, verse 24, and pay no heed to any of them that willfully sin or are ungrateful.

And again, the rational proof is, if prophets are to be an example for us, and we're commanded to follow them, well, if they can go off and sin on their own time, doesn't really make sense that we would be commanded to follow them, because how do we know when the command begins and ends?

How do we know that the command, therefore, has any validity? I mean, if I, again, if I say to you, hey, soft drinks are not really great for you, and then you find a big slab of Coke in the back of my car on my way home,

I would not be a particularly trustworthy person on what's reliable and not reliable.

Now, having said that, that's a very basic common sense issue. Here we're talking about salvation, belief in the divine, belief in the afterlife.

They're far more significant issues than dietary habits, although some may argue.

Third characteristic, intelligence. Critical that prophets are sufficiently intelligent to be able to engage with the other side of the coin.

Now, we have multiple stories of the patriarchs in the Qur 'an that demonstrate this, but for me, my favorite one, and it's the oft -repeated one, is the conversation that Abraham, may he rest in peace, had with Nimrod, as is reported in the

Qur 'an. And Nimrod, who's reported as being the king, said, tell me about this god of yours.

I'm paraphrasing, obviously, by the way. And Abraham said, yep, he's in charge of everything.

And this king said, well, I'm in charge of everything. Abraham said, he's in charge of life and death. So Nimrod brings two convicted criminals, orders one to be executed immediately, and then sets one free.

He said, I'm in charge of life and death. What can your god do that I can't? And so immediately,

Abraham says, he makes the sun rise in the east and set in the west. How about you do the opposite?

And then that was it. So this intelligence, this wit, this ability to convey the message in a manner in which is relevant to the context, is critical.

You can't just be any average person off the street, sadly, because I'm sure that we would all like to be.

And again, I think the commitment of coming here through Sydney traffic on a Thursday night is a proof that you've at least got some skin in the religious game.

The final characteristic is that they preach exactly the message, regardless of whether it benefits them or not.

And this is absolutely critical again, because if we weren't sure about what was coming from the prophets, whether this is something that's definitely from God, or just something that's benefiting them, or we don't know if they're withholding things from God, what would be the point in following them?

What would be the point in trusting them? So that's a very brief summary of orthodox

Islamic theology when it comes to the necessary attributes of prophets. But I hope that you get where I'm going with the next point, which is this is essentially our litmus test for who is a prophet and who isn't.

I appreciate the convenience of my argument that I'm using a text that comes about 500 years after Paul, but that's not what we're discussing tonight, so I will take that convenience.

So Paul, as a figure of history, I'll say from the outset that I think that by and large our side has actually treated him quite poorly, been quite inconsistent with our considerations of both what he wrote, what he did, and what he thought.

I think we've got a concept in Islam called istiraj, which

I'll talk about in a little bit more detail later on, but for some reason it seems to have been absent from almost any commentary about Paul.

As I said, I don't think that he invented Christianity, and I think that any argument along those lines has been either remarkably convenient, to the extent that if the same basic principles of argument were applied to us, we would fail, or it's based on ignorance.

And to be fair, that's probably the bulk from our side. And I find absolutely no reason, again here's a spoiler, to believe that Paul was not sincere in his belief.

But that doesn't make it right, and we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. So the commonly held view about Paul, and I'm happy to take, as I said,

Acts and the Epistles as reasonably reliable history, is that he was born in Tarsus, was a

Pharisee plus or minus a student of Gumbly or Gamaliel, if you're following along in the English Christian scriptures, worked for the high priest, went after early

Christians and tortured them slash executed them. He had the road to Damascus, Christophany, became an apostle, was jailed for his beliefs and then preached until he died slash was martyred.

And I think that by and large, this is probably reasonably true, but there are two key issues that I'll say

I disagree with. First of all, being a Pharisee, and certainly being a student of Gamaliel, I find remarkably unlikely.

I'll talk about the reasons why. I think that the road to Damascus moment is possible with a caveat, and the caveat is

I don't believe, obviously, that it was a genuine moment, that the way that he perceived it was the way that it actually was.

But everything else I'm happy to take on face value. So, Paul the

Pharisee, why do I think that this is untrue? Well, Acts chapter 5,

I think, gives a pretty good account of by and large what Pharisees thought of early Christians.

Gamaliel or Gumlyel is quoted in Acts 5 as encouraging the

Sanhedrin and the Sadducees that were in charge of it at the time to let the

Christians be Christians and not worry about them. He actually then refers to two other

Messianic claimants that led revolts against the Romans slash Greeks and says, look, if it's from God, they'll succeed and we shouldn't be stopping them and it's not from God, well then they'll fail anyway, so let's not worry about it.

That was the view of the Pharisees, not hunt them down, kill them where you find them, which seems to be the view that Paul ascribes himself to prior to the

Christophany. Further than that, we know that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were not averse to ensuring that Jesus had an appropriate burial.

So the idea that Pharisees were so concerned about Christians that they wanted to do something bad to them completely contradicts what the

Christian scriptures themselves say but also what independent history of the time would say.

We need to understand the context, multiple Messianic claimants, multiple revolts against the

Romans and the Greeks, we're talking about three if we count the early Christian movement, there were literally dozens, the bulk of them not even recorded in history, so it's nothing remarkable.

Who would be more invested in controlling groups that were revolting against the

Romans and the Greeks? Certainly the Sadducees who were in charge of the place at the time and colluding with the occupiers.

Was Paul an agent of the high priest? Well possibly, but then that would completely remove the possibility of him being a

Pharisee because they didn't work together cooperatively and again, we know this not only from the

Gospel accounts and the Christian scriptures, the remainder of the Christian scriptures but also from independent

Jewish history at the time. I think that if we're going to marry the idea that Paul was going after Christians early on, we can certainly accept that he was an agent of the high priest but not a

Pharisee and certainly not a student of Gamaliel. So the important thing to understand is that any examples that we bring up from the

Gospel accounts about reasons why the Pharisees wanted to go after the early Christians, like for example, breaking the

Sabbath, had previously in Jewish history been discussed by the Pharisees, in fact by the teachers of Gamaliel and their teachers.

Best example is the founder of the school that Gamaliel was the leader of, the school of Hillel, who was a very poor

Jew, in Judea at the time, and at a time when in order to learn

Jewish religion, one had to be quite well patronised, he would listen to lectures and teaching, this is a legend but there's a good reason why

I'm using it, he would listen to lectures and teachings on top of a roof in Jerusalem, top of a synagogue roof, and one particularly cold winter morning, he froze, solid, the legend says, and when he was brought down from the roof, found by the

Pharisees of the time, who would never break the Sabbath, I agree, not for any good reason, the discussion was had about lighting a fire to warm him up.

Now again, most of us in the room, we think that's not really a big deal, go and ask an Orthodox Jew to flick on a lightbulb on Friday night, see what they say.

But the point is, breaking the Sabbath for these life or death things is not anything new, it's not something new brought by Jesus and his disciples.

It's critical to understand that point going forward, the idea that the Pharisees were after them is inconsistent with history and I believe it's inconsistent also with the

Christian scriptures. As I said, I don't think that he invented Christianity all, in fact,

I'll give a controversial Muslim view and say that I think that the bulk of the ideas that Paul espoused were in fact clearly contained within groups that considered themselves

Christian at the time and certainly within, I'll even go out on a limb, even the synoptic

Gospels. I don't think that that's particularly remarkable but indulge me one moment and let me raise another old chestnut and that is the idea of Jewish Christianity versus Gentile Christianity.

I'll come back to that again in a little bit and ask why is there this distinction? Why were there Judaizers? Why was there even a distinction between the mission to the

Jews and the mission to the Gentiles? I'll give one key example in terms of law that Paul was quite differing in to at least some of the other apostles, some of the other disciples and that is circumcision.

Now for most of us again in the room, circumcision is going to seem quite inconsequential, either you choose to chop or not, you know, to chop or not chop.

In the ancient world it's not, you know, it's not a minor issue, okay. First of all, if anyone's seen a newborn baby or a baby that's less than a month old get a cut without having an injection of vitamin

K in the neonatal period, you would know that newborn babies bleed quite a lot.

Last 50 years we've dealt with that but the bulk of human history it was not. The second thing is that infections are pretty difficult to recover from when you don't have amoxicillin down at the corner pharmacist or drugstore for those watching at home.

Thanks, I thought you'd like that. And obviously infections when you're having completely non -necessary surgery are going to be pretty common, okay.

Even in the modern day, like in the last 20 years, children have died during circumcision or as a direct consequence of being circumcised.

That's with all the bells and whistles that we've got and believe me we've got plenty. That, for the

Jews, this is not an insignificant issue and in fact Genesis 13 makes it quite clear that the covenant is meant to be everlasting, that it is a bris that is eternal, ongoing.

There's no time that this word is used in the Hebrew Scriptures to define anything other than permanent but Paul certainly had a different view.

So if we consider Galatians 5 -6, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.

We'll go on and this is obviously a big issue for Paul because it comes up in multiple epistles.

For before certain men came from James he was eating with the Gentiles but when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party and the rest of the

Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Galatians chapter 2, 12 -13.

What about 1 Corinthians 9, 20 -23? To the Jews I became a Jew in order to win the

Jews, to those under the law I became as one under the law though not being myself under the law that I might win those under the law and so on.

I became that to those that they were so that I could minister to them.

Going on again with circumcision, Philippians 3, 2 -3. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh for we are the circumcision who worship

God in spirit and are glorified in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have

Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery, Galatians 2, 4. I'll skip over a few because it does get a bit repetitive.

So what are we left with? Ultimately we're left with a claim to prophethood, an authority to relay law changes and I'm only focusing on one but we have self -reported sinful past in extremis, unlikely personal history vis -a -vis

Judaism, self -reported disputes with the early church and self -reported questionable evangelism practices.

Based on the Islamic standard, such a person would not meet the criteria of being an apostle.

I'll stop there but thank you very much. Sorry I went over. Thank you gentlemen.

We'll have 10 minutes of rebuttal each. All right, let's dive into what

I think is the key issue there and that was the assertion that Paul is in some sense claiming a status of prophethood that then would be subject to the analysis that was just provided in regards to truthfulness, correct actions, and things along these lines.

That of course is an Islamic formulation that I would simply ask, is there any evidence that that was the understanding of what a prophet was in the

Old Testament? People such as Balaam or someone along those lines.

David isn't identified as a prophet. We have all sorts of issues there and that's why, by the way, the

Old Testament narrative concerning David and his sins is not found in the Quran and you have in essence an unwillingness to accept the

Old Testament narrative regarding Solomon, David, and the things that they did. But more than that, is apostleship the same thing as prophethood?

And I would argue that there is no evidence from the New Testament that those categories should be applied to apostleship.

Jesus did not choose His apostles based upon a standard that would not be enunciated or created for another half millennium.

Instead, He chose them and they were weak men and they had differing backgrounds, some backgrounds that would have made them repulsive to others that would have been sinful in the, for example, a tax collector or something along these lines.

But in the Christian idea, there is such a thing as regeneration. There is such a thing as the change of one's heart.

And so especially that idea of having a prophet has to have acted in a certain way his entire life is not something that you would find in the biblical context of these particular things.

So, the idea that an apostle has to fit into these categories is immediately something that has to be explained.

Apostleship is not prophethood. Apostleship is not focused upon the individual.

This is one of the key differences between Christians and Muslims. Remember what the apostle

Peter specifically said. He said, in talking about the origin of Scripture, he said, men spoke from God as they're carried along by the

Holy Spirit. Now, the message that they bring is the focus in the

New Testament, not the individual who brings it. And so, Abdullah says, well, if I tell you not to drink pop and I've got a whole thing of Coke in the back of my car, you might not believe what

I have to say. That's making the message dependent upon the person that's delivering it.

The message of Jesus Christ transcends any individual, and it's not about any individual.

It's not about don't drink Coke. It's about this happened in reality in history.

Now, obviously, anytime someone lives in a way that is inconsistent with their own profession, that impacts their testimony.

But you see, an apostle is pointing outside of himself. He's saying God has spoken.

This revelation is not something that finds its origin and source within me. And so, we do have a fundamental difference at that point in our understanding of what

Scripture is and where Scripture comes from. I think that's very, very, very important to understand.

And so, when we raise some of the issues, and unfortunately, Abdullah got to the sort of the some of the meat right at the end, so fast

I couldn't even write down some of the things that were said right at the end, and so it's hard to interact with them. But some of the issues that were raised,

I think we need to recognize that the Sadducees and the

Pharisees did work together under Roman rule. They were forced to do so. So, for example, in John chapter 11, therefore, the chief priests and the

Pharisees convened a council and were saying, what are we doing? For this man is performing many signs.

If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

Now, they generally, certainly, were at loggerheads with one another, but they had to deal with the reality that they were under the heel of Rome.

And so, here you have them convening a council and they are speaking with one another, and so that Sanhedrin that was persecuting the early

Christians was not limited just to Sadducees. They had the ultimate authority, but even then, they didn't any longer.

Rome had the ability to remove high priests and put in high priests. That was not something the law ever provided for, but again, this was a period of Roman dominance.

And so, the role of the apostle in that context, remember that back in John 11, but one of them,

Caiaphas, who was high priest that year because Rome had placed him in that position, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people and that the whole nation not perish.

Now, he did not say this in his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

So, from that day on, they planned together to kill him. And so, you have the high priest who is a

Sadducee prophesying, and yet he is an evil man. And so, this whole idea that prophecy has to be dependent upon the character of the individual, so on and so forth, is just simply not a biblical narrative in any way.

And here you clearly have Pharisees and Sadducees working together. You have the same thing happening in the early church.

There is a great fear of what the Romans are going to do. And the issue of Gamaliel, I've preached on that particular subject before in the past, and the advice that he gives is not even really consistent not only with what the council ends up feeling that it must do, but it's not really consistent advice as far as the

Old Testament narrative is concerned at all. It certainly was not how Elijah saw things. There is definitely a contrast in his perspective in regards to the false prophets and what

Gamaliel had to say. But there was great diversity in the expression of Judaism at that particular point in time in light of the fact that it had to deal with force being brought to bear against them by the

Roman authorities. And remember, we're only talking, this is a time period, less than 40 years in that early period of time after Jesus' death and crucifixion, less than 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem.

The forces that were going to bring about that cataclysm and what Josephus says involved over a million deaths were already in place.

And so, you already had, shall we say, strange bedfellows within that context.

Now, I'll be honest with you, I didn't follow exactly what the application in regards to circumcision was in regards to what the

Apostle Paul had said. Paul has been accused of inconsistency on that point.

But I think if you recognize that in some instances he is talking about areas of freedom, and then in others he's specifically talking about those

Judaizers who were saying that to become a Christian, to enter into the new covenant, you have to first join the old covenant through circumcision.

He had very strong words for them in Galatians 5. He places them under the anathema.

But he's not saying that circumcision itself was somehow never a valid sign of the old covenant.

What he's simply saying is the new covenant is an eternal covenant.

It was prophesied in the Old Testament, and you have fulfillment of the promises in the

Old Covenant in the New. That's how that terminology of eternal can continue to be used when you come into the

New Testament context. So, I didn't get the quick list at the end, which

I think sort of summarized some of the rest of Abdullah's concerns. But I do want to emphasize the fact that Abdullah has not said

Paul invented all this stuff. One of the things I think we do need to get into then in light of that is, all right, if Paul didn't invent it, then how can he say the things he says about Jesus as the

Son of God, crucified, risen, coming again? He identifies Jesus as Yahweh.

Where did he get that? If he didn't come up with it, did that not come from those who came before him?

That is an important question and hopefully we'll be able to get into during the cross -examination period. Thank you.

I will not let you ding that bell. It's just not going to happen. You've already been dinged twice.

That's right. You can ding it again if you like, David. That's all right. Ding, ding. I feel like I'm in a

Rocky film. Who's Apollo? Thanks, James.

I really appreciate that. And again, apologies that I rushed a tad at the end and it was a few seconds over.

I agree with you that we have to consider the context of the text and the teachings.

And the context is, I'm sure we agree, Second Temple Judaism in the start of the

Common Era and for an individual to claim that circumcision is no longer a requirement of worshipping the

Hebrew God, I'll use Hebrew Scripture terminology, it is a remarkable claim and there's no way that I could understate, sorry, overstate, pardon me.

There's no way that I could overstate just how remarkable that claim is. And in fact, it was a massive conversation that took place in this period of history and in the end, yes, there was a bit of a relaxation, shall we say, around the rule.

But the idea that a group could call themselves followers of the Messiah and not follow these key laws, laws that people literally died following, is remarkable in the context and I think that therefore, a remarkable claim requires remarkable evidence.

Just to be clear, I certainly don't reject Paul because he refutes slash rejects, doesn't agree with what's said in the

Qur 'an. I mean, I certainly accept that they're completely different time periods but at the same token, you know,

I don't expect the Qur 'an to engage with Paul any more than I expect the writers of the

Gospels or the writers of the Christian epistles to engage with the Book of Enoch or any other apocalyptic texts from the inter -Testament period.

To expect a revelation to directly engage with any other theological viewpoint,

I think, is a bit of a straw man and I accept that the

Qur 'an doesn't but I don't believe that it has to and as I said,

I'd use the Book of Enoch just as a key example. There's another presupposition inherent in all of this and that is that the early

Muslims slash the author of the Qur 'an didn't have access to the

Christian Scriptures as we understand them today. I think that that is a very, very difficult presupposition to carry when it necessarily means that one must carry that the author of the

Qur 'an, if we accept a non -supernatural authorship, which I'm happy to entertain for the sake of this little exercise, is an individual or a group that had access to all of these

Gnostic Gospels, Gnostic Gospels that we know that we thought barely existed up until they were rediscovered less than a century ago in the middle of Egypt in a clay pot, but they didn't have access to the actual things, the things that multiple multitudes of people all around them would have been talking about all the time.

I think that it would be impossible to carry that. So therefore, if we accept that that presupposition is false and that early

Muslims slash the author of the Qur 'an would indeed have had access to what we consider the

Christian Scriptures as we know them today, why did they argue against them? If the purpose was just to be an extension of Christianity, try and take a bit of extra religious power or whatever the intent was, why would they argue so harshly against them?

And they're strong rhetorical arguments. Why not just agree with it? Fit in with the majority, much easier, believe me,

I know there's someone that occasionally wears a funny looking hat, much, much easier to do. Another assertion that you made,

James, is that the Old Testament flows nicely and is referred to nicely in the Christian Scriptures or in the

New Testament and that this is broken in the Qur 'an. Well again, I'd say that this relies, in terms of being a put -down for the

Muslim view, relies on the presupposition that we did not have access to these texts at that time.

Again, I find that remarkably unlikely and it is a very, very difficult presupposition to carry if we're going to argue that the author of the

Qur 'an did have access to the Talmud, to a proto -Midrash, to, as I said,

Gnostic Christian Gospels and other apocryphal material but didn't have access to the stuff that the majority of people would have had.

And finally, James said, and I agree to an extent, that Paul's Jesus does not differ to the

Jesus of the Gospels but I think there's one key area where Paul's Jesus does differ from the

Jesus of the Gospels and that is that, and by the way, I think this is the most powerful part of the

Christian message, if there is one, that I would comment on in all my authority as a non -Christian, and that is that the

Jesus of the Gospels, if we take the Christian account as accurate, fully man, fully

God, experienced a life that we can relate to. Paul completely obliterates that, completely obliterates the flesh.

Now, whether he did this because he believed that the world to come was coming soon, as is argued by some, that I would not necessarily adhere to their argument,

I'm not sure, but he says in 2 Corinthians 5 .16,

we knew Jesus in flesh but no more, and it's not something that we consider anymore and we don't consider people in flesh anymore, only in spirit.

This is radically different. For me, it takes away half of the message of the Gospels, God becoming man.

In fact, some would argue that that's the entire point of the Gospels, that God became man. Yes, there's a bit of add -on there,

I'm being convenient, that flows onto salvation, but if you take away the part of the story about God becoming man, it's kind of like having

Darth Vader with no Anakin Skywalker. That would be my view. So, I do think that there is a difference and I think that that's a critical difference, again, that needs to be explained.

It's all well and good to have a group that believes certain things, it's all well and good to have letters authored between them, but there has to be evidence for the claims, has to be evidence, unless you're just fitting in with the common wisdom of everyone else, you don't need that, otherwise you do.

I'll leave it at that because I know that James is desperate for a restroom break. There's a chance for you to rush to the restroom.

Just a reminder, please don't approach these two debaters now, let them just prepare what they need to prepare.

Also, we're going to put the number for your questions back up on the screen. I've seen some great questions come in that are clearly arisen out of what people have heard tonight from both sides.

They're great. I've seen some not great questions, some of which haven't even pretended to be questions or have been on totally other topics, even in this general area of Muslim and Christianity.

The former I'll be reading out, the latter I hope you're just not paying by SMS because you're wasting them.

So that's how we'll do it, and we will see you back here in about 10 minutes, by which

I mean 10 minutes, not 15 or 20 because we all want to get home tonight. Okay, thank you very much, and thank you everybody for coming back.

That looked like we lost too many people there. So, Abdullah, let's focus in on hopefully what the key issues are first with what you have said.

The term that you used, the statement of Paul's circumcision circumcision means nothing.

You described it as absolutely remarkable. Do you understand that in Paul's theology, the truly remarkable thing is that God has become flesh in the person of his son, and because of the cross, everything is new.

Wouldn't circumcision be a sort of just a side issue in comparison to what he's actually proclaiming?

I honestly don't think so in the context in which we're dealing with, and I think that,

I assume that everyone can still hear me over the fly path, I think that the evidence for that is that it is still not a particularly remarkable thing for orthodox

Jews today, so to speak. So some with us tonight will know that the

Chabad sect is perhaps the largest sort of individual orthodox Jewish group today.

They've got some beliefs that are particular to them.

Some amongst them believe that their most recent leader, who died a couple decades ago now,

Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is the Messiah, and that he's going to come back to life.

They even thought that at his burial. Sorry, what part? They even thought that at his burial. Well, exactly right, exactly right, yeah.

And this is not something that excommunicates an individual from Judaism, as far as the majority of orthodox individuals are concerned.

And in fact, the statement that I've heard most often is, when someone talks about this, you know, a

Schneerson messianist, just politely nod, be silent, let the conversation move on to the next topic.

Not, don't eat with them, not, don't marry into their family. In fact, these things are permitted and encouraged.

So the point that I'm getting at is, and I don't want people to get lost too much in the specific example, but the point that I'm getting at is that I don't believe that some of the claims pertaining to Jesus himself, at least if we sit with Messiah, and that's not an insignificant claim, are remarkable in comparison to overruling part of the covenant.

I mean, that is remarkable. And as I said, I think that we can use examples from the time where there were multiple messianic claimants, and I think it's pretty fair to assume that given that the bulk of them were executed, and most of them were executed in the same way, that execution on the cross was not particularly remarkable.

Yes, perhaps resurrection was a remarkable belief, perhaps.

I'm not quite sure about that because I think that that was something, again, that was debated at the time, but I do think that negating the covenant is more remarkable a claim than the other claims, and even if we say that the claim about Jesus being

God incarnate, dying for our sins, is the most remarkable claim, well then, in my opinion, all of the authors of the

Christian Scriptures thought that or thought at least something quite close to that. So, at least within the corpus of that group, it would not be remarkable, but we know that the circumcision thing was remarkable within the group themselves.

But when you use the term remarkable, you're using it, and that's just not, that's really not a possibility.

That is so definitional of Judaism, but if what

God had done in Christ, even if it was foreshadowed in Isaiah 9 -6 and some texts like that, we could talk about that, but if that actually happened, then you're using the term, the covenant has been negated, something along those lines, and yet what

Paul is viewing that as is a greater fulfillment to where circumcision becomes a sign of a particular expression of the old covenant, but it is now, has a greater fulfillment in the new.

So, it's not an undoing of the covenant. It wasn't one of the objections that the

Jews at that time had, the idea that this was going to the Gentiles. This is one of the biggest problems in the early church, was how do you deal with the

Gentile issue, and you're not even supposed to be eating with these people, etc., etc.

Isn't Paul's statement about circumcision really one more understandable in light of the fact that the gospel is to go to all the nations, and isn't that part of what isn't in the

Islamic understanding of the mission of Jesus? Because he's primarily just a Jewish Messiah. He's not Messiah for the world.

Again, that's certainly something that we would, I think to be fair, we would use the term

Messiah as a universal term, but in terms of who do we believe Jesus was tasked with his mission, we do believe that it was the children of Israel only.

Yes, I'd accept that. In terms of the controversy with spreading the message to the

Gentiles and not, well again, I think that the circumcision issue is at least part of this process and part of this discussion.

Again, I'd only use the Christian scriptures as the example of history.

I wouldn't want to be convenient, I'm happy to be corrected, but there were obviously key figures among the early church, disciples no less, figures like James who clearly had significant issues with the idea that individuals could come to the church or come to the faith group, males obviously, and be uncircumcised and indeed my reading of it is that that is directly what leads to Paul being sent out to the

Gentiles and not being, as he says himself, a special apostle to the

Gentiles, not being an apostle to the Jews. Isn't that Peter's role though?

I beg your pardon? Isn't Peter described as the apostle to the Jews? Well, he is, yes, but Paul's who we're talking about.

The point is that he's certainly not made as an apostle to the Jews and this comes out of the context of the discussion of, and correct me if I'm wrong, whether Gentiles need to be circumcised in order to enter the faith, and so I think that the text itself illustrates that it was a remarkable issue.

Well, if I could ask, where does James, I mean, are you taking this from the

Antioch situation that James actually holds that position?

Because when James is quoted by Luke and Acts or the Epistle of James, if that's connected directly to him, there's no evidence that he is taking that position on circumcision.

So, are you just taking that reading that the statement that they came from James means that they were accurately interpreting that and that the

Jerusalem Council? Yeah, I certainly am and that's Paul's view and I would assume that Paul, who was there and is writing about his own experience, in something that would eventually, if we take the presuppositions, be recognised as inspired scripture, is going to be able to accurately represent what happened.

If I had to choose Paul's version of events over Acts, not that I think that there is necessarily a discrepancy and I think that the people that try and illustrate this discrepancy are really out on a bit of a limb, but even if I were to take the point that Luke gives a different view in Acts, I could always retreat to the view that that was

Luke's interpretation of the events. But ultimately,

Paul's interpretation is either saying the same thing that happened but in a wording that conveys a very different meaning or his interpretation was different and I think obviously that it has to be the latter of those two.

I'm just about out of my time here, but would you agree or disagree with me that the references that we do have in the

Quran to, for example, the clay birds, Jesus speaking from his cradle,

I understand them to be oral and not requiring a literary dependence.

Would you say that I am out on a limb or that's an understandable interpretation? I think that it's an interpretation that one could take.

I'm not sure, however, that it fulfills the requirement of carrying the presupposition that I was talking about earlier because we know that the

Gospel accounts were also transmitted orally. Literacy in the Ancient Near East was less than five percent.

Indeed, literacy in most of Europe up until the time of Gutenberg was less than five percent, so the bulk of people were relying on oral transmission.

So, whilst I accept that perhaps it's easier to convey oral than it is written text,

I don't think that it negates the point which, for me, which is it's going to be far harder to hear these rare stories from very obscure groups than it would be to hear very common stories from what at the time were very large groups.

Thank you very much. Sorry, if everyone can just indulge me for one moment. I realise, and this is very remiss of me, that whilst

I did mention that I'm very grateful to be in a church talking about very unchristian things from my perspective, it's important,

I think, that I apologise in advance. Yes, in society we're apologising a lot at the moment and that's probably not necessarily a good thing, but I just want everyone to know that I certainly have no intent to offend and I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to be your guest here.

James, you referenced... That offends me. I'm sorry.

I might as well take the victim card, it seems to work today. Doesn't it?

Yeah, I think you did just win. I mean, look, I have no hair on my head, he has a hat. I mean,

I feel oppressed. Well... I agree with that.

Yeah, I agree with that too. Those of us with hair, we're the dominant culture, so watch out. You get one as well.

I'm going to reset the clock, let's go, guys. No, no, no, you don't have to do that, David, but I very much appreciate it.

So, I guess, James, the first question that I would ask, and we've sort of already spoken about this a little bit, but is why did

Paul have to distinguish himself as the apostle to the

Gentiles? Why could he not just be the apostle to everyone?

And indeed, from my reading, he certainly had Jews that he ministered to,

Jews that followed him along the journey. I don't understand the need for this distinction unless there was some degree of conflict of opinion between him and others in the early period.

Well, I think there was very clearly... The forces that brought about the

Jerusalem council recorded in Acts chapter 15 are real forces that I think make perfect sense if, in fact, what happens with Peter and Cornelius going to Cornelius' home, the vision that Peter receives, what happens with Philip, you know, don't call what

I've made clean, unclean. These would have created tremendous pressures for a primarily

Jewish movement to try to move out into the

Gentile world, and then combine that with the persecution that is taking place, which may be something we need to discuss.

I'm not sure if you really believe that that was happening or not, but the narratives are very clear and universal that it was.

You put all that together, and it very much rings true that there would be a need for a tremendous amount of discussion of how to bring the gospel to non -Jews and to take it to places where you'd have a very small

Jewish populace. So, for example, when Paul goes to Philippi, he starts with the

Jews. So, when he says he's apostle to the Gentiles, he's not saying to the

Jews I become as a Jew. So, he'll witness to anybody. So, you do have the universalistic aspect of that, but he recognizes that his mission field is in the

Gentile world, not in Babylon or Jerusalem or wherever else it might be.

He wants to preach where Christ has not been preached by someone else. He doesn't want to build upon someone else's foundation.

And so, was there conflict? Acts chapter 15 says there was, but Acts chapter 15 also says that James and Peter and Paul all agreed on a specific understanding of how that conflict was to be dealt with, and not everybody agreed with that.

So, as far as I can tell, the description is in light of the fact that Paul was uniquely, because of his background, in Tarsus, uniquely capable of dealing with so many of the issues that arose as the church went out into the

Gentile world. And I guess that sort of goes into my next question, which is, do you think it's credible that Paul was a

Pharisee, as he says, learned above the average Jew, and a student of Rabbi Gamliel, for whatever that's worth?

Well, the issue of his past life, he brings up primarily within the context of his opponents who were attempting, who he calls super apostles, who are basically attempting to say, well, if you're listening to that guy, we've got better credentials than he does, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't think that he says, hey, because I was a student of this person or that person, that gives me a special authority.

The special authority he gets specifically because the gospel that has been given to him has been given to him by the risen

Christ. He does, for the sake of the unity of the church, go, and you may be familiar with the term that, in fact,

I'm almost thinking this came up in our very first debate back when you were just a kid. What was that?

It was Ledeen. He was. Would you not say? Oh, yeah, of course. I'm just joking. Yes. And I think this might have come up.

For some reason, I'm having this recollection that in Acts, it says that Paul went and historeside.

He specifically laid out the gospel that he was presenting in front of the apostles, and he inquired of the apostles, and he learned the

Jesus tradition, which he seemed to know quite well, by the way, at that particular point in time.

And so, I really see an intimate connection between Paul and the other apostles in that particular context.

I guess for me, and then we'll get to the question. I don't want you to think I'm taking up extra time with preambling, but if one is giving themselves this story, which, as I said,

I find historically unlikely, then it seems to me that they are making some degree of an appeal to authority.

And I agree, they're trying to differentiate themselves from the super apostles, but surely someone who's received this direct revelation, someone who has

Jewish learning above the average person, certainly one would assume above Galilean fishermen, would be the most ideal to minister to Jews, as well as Gentiles, to minister to everyone.

And coming back again, and I don't want to seem as I'm labouring the point, it just seems to me that this distinction between the two is almost a, okay, you just go and talk to those people over there and leave us alone.

Yeah, you see, you know what I struggle with that is because I see evidence both from James and from Paul about the deep concern of their, and certainly for Paul, this is one of Paul's greatest concerns, and this is found throughout his writings.

He was deeply concerned that there would be a Gentile Christian church and a Jewish Christian church that would be split from one another.

His theology is there is one body because there is only one Messiah, there is only one justification, there's only one righteousness by which you can stand before God, there is only one spirit of God, there is only one table, the

Lord's table is for Jew and Gentile, is not to be divided. That unity is vitally important in his theology, and I believe it was for James as well, and so if that's the case, then the idea of division is what they're attempting to avoid, and when you say, well, wouldn't it make more sense for him to, with all that learning, to minister to the

Jews, except for the fact that you already have, the majority of apostles have that background, they are, they live there.

Paul is the one who has the exposure, I mean, he can quote Greek philosophers, so he has a special skill set, and I think that's why he was called at another time, is that the gospel is to go out to all the world.

It's Paul that writes the Church of Colossae, he's dealing with the Proto -Gnostic heresy, which interestingly enough included

Jewish elements in it, so that did help along with those lines. It just seems that he was very uniquely gifted to do and to handle the opposition and the issues that the early

Church had to face in those very, very critical first decades, where they didn't have anybody, they didn't have any shoulders to stand on, and that, from their perspective, it looked like that movement could have been snuffed out at any moment in time, and Rome is about to turn on them as well, which was going to be something that's going to be going on until 313

AD. Do you think it's reasonable that the disciples were very concerned about having this individual that they knew had persecuted, executed

Christians, that then also came in and was arguing key points of difference with them?

Key points of difference with them? See, I don't think we've established that there were key points of difference with them, especially, you know, you say

James was saying you had to be circumcised, and that goes against Acts chapter 15.

Certainly, Barnabas had to give testimony to Paul's conversion, there's no question about that, but in Acts chapter 15, it's

Peter and Paul together that are presenting their side against the

Judaizers. There are no apostles listed on the other side, so you'd have to say, well, you know,

Luke's just skipping over things, and that's where, and I wish

I actually had included this, but that's where I would get into James chapter 2 and demonstrate that James's teaching there is perfectly consistent with Paul's on the issue of justification, to demonstrate that it wasn't those key issues that was causing division at all.

Thank you. Okay, so we have two more tens, right? Two more tens.

All right, okay, good. All right, y 'all still with us? Okay, good, all right.

I just don't want to hear any snoring out there. All right, that's all right, that's all right, I've got CPAP in the car for anyone that needs it.

You compared, when you said, why doesn't, you know, I frequently ask the question, why doesn't the

Quran interact with the actual essence of the New Testament, and you compared that to saying, well, why doesn't the

New Testament interact with Enoch or something like that, that it's a straw man understanding, and yet the, are you saying, let me just clarify this first, are you making a very sharp distinction in regards to the people of the

Gospel, and limiting that only to the Gospels, or would you recognize, as I think it is, that when the

Quran refers to the Al -Anjil, the people of the Gospel, it's talking about Christians as a whole, and it's talking about their revelation as a whole?

I think that it's talking about anyone that considers themselves to be a Christian. Okay. Even people that I wouldn't, from a theological definition standpoint, consider to be

Christians. Okay. So, I lost where the connection is then, because, as we've discussed briefly before, the

Quran in itself contains the chain of Surah 5,

Moses, Torah, Jesus, Gospel, Muhammad, Quran, and there is the, and Jesus confirms what came before, you, it's a chain, it's really hard to break, and so I don't see how

Enoch fits in there, but I think it is a fair question that if you're, on the one hand, going to say that if you say three, it's shirk, or kufr, or hellfire, there's no one to help the evildoers,

I mean, there's some pretty strong words that are used in Surahs 3, 4, and 5 along those lines.

Am I wrong to expect some kind of interaction with a text that is said to be sent down, but, and then, but if you believe what those

Christians believe, there's no one to help you? Do you see why that seems concerning to me? I understand your frustration.

I think I do. I guess the problem with it is for the

Quran to engage with, and we'll talk about 6th, 7th century, with the

Christian scriptures at the time, which for the vast majority, don't let anyone mistake what I'm saying here at the moment as some quick get -out clause, but for the vast majority of what we know them to be today, well, then, a

Mormon could argue against me and say, well, hang on, God would have known that Joseph Smith was coming along in the

United States and that he was going to write the Book of Mormon, why doesn't it engage with it?

Why doesn't the Quran engage with it? Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, because I think that...

I can guarantee you no more missionary has ever thought of that at all, not once. I've met a lot, they're very nice people, one offered to mow my lawn once, but I'm sure that, you know, without sounding crass, there's a lot of things

I haven't thought about, but... But historically, the

Quran is not published until, I'm sorry, the Book of Mormon is not published until 1829, 1830, as far as appearing in human history, so it's obvious that the

Torah and the Injil, whatever it is referred to by that, is in existence and is important to the author of the

Quran, but yet there is no interaction in, on the one hand, saying, don't say three, wouldn't it make sense to then say, and don't believe what

Paul said in Philippians chapter 2, when he describes Jesus as equal with the Father, and that he and the

Father together share the name of Yahweh? Look, again, I think

I understand the frustration, but I think ultimately the issue is we're imposing on the

Quran an expectation of being almost like some of the early church responses between early

Christians and early Jews and early Christians and pagans, and that's not what its job is meant to be.

You know, I mean, most of us in the room will know that the Quran is smaller than the

Christian scriptures. Its job is to convey Islamic theology.

Yes, there are points of refutation with what became the commonly accepted

Christian, Jewish, etc. views, and I'll give you the counter -argument to what I'm saying at the moment as well, because it's something that I struggle with and need to review further, but it challenges the issues that it's concerned with, and it doesn't deal with the issues that it's not concerned with.

So, for example, yes, as a Muslim, one does have to believe that the stories that are ascribed to Jesus in the

Quran are absolutely true. I'm not going to pretend that we can get out of that, but in terms of whether the stories that weren't mentioned, so whether John the

Baptist baptized Jesus in Galilee or not is, or in the

River Jordan, pardon me, is not something that the Quran is interested in or wants to engage with.

You know, it's engaging with critical issues of theology, and indeed I think that the question tonight, much like our debate nearly 10 years ago when

I was still a kid, is on a critical issue of difference with theology, and that is what is the definition of a prophet?

What's the definition of an apostle, a messenger from God, you know, whatever we want to call them and categorize them as? So no,

I don't think that the Quran needs to engage with the text in a responsa manner.

The challenge to me is, well, then why does the Quran mention Jews that believe that Israel is the

Son of God? And I'd say, I don't know, and that is a challenge, but that's my interpretation of it, that that's not the job of the

Quran, and to expect the Quran to do that would be to require the Quran to be about 10 times as long as it currently is, at least, and as I said,

I think that ultimately the argument could go on ad infinitum for every individual difference.

So, the Quran is just barely half the length of the

New Testament, words -wise, and it's meant to be the final revelation, and yet what you're saying is, even though the earlier revelations, the

Torah and the Injil, the Injil shows deep intertextuality, numerous citations, interaction with, fulfillment themes, everything else.

Once the final revelation comes, none of that at all, no intertextuality, no citation other than the

Lex Talionis, which I think was done orally. Total break in the methodology that had been used earlier.

Well, the Christian scriptures, I am not of the position, I don't know many

Muslims that are, that would argue that the Christian scriptures are synonymous with the

Injil. I think that there's contents that are the same, but I'm not of the opinion that they're synonymous, but sure, your question is, why is there a link between the

Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures, and that seems to be broken with the Quran? Well, I'd give two responses to that.

The first I'd give is that I think that many of the links between the Christian and Hebrew scriptures are quite clumsy at times.

Perhaps they represent the contextual view of the time. I'd need to examine that further.

The second argument that I would give to that is that sometimes things are so sufficiently broken that we need a direct correction.

You know, I'm sure there's a few people that can share this experience with me in the room. You know, you have a car that you can fix it as much as you want, but sooner or later you just have to accept that it's a lemon, it's a bomb, and you're moving on to greener pastures, and I think that the best support of this statement from me is that the

Quran clearly articulates Islamic theology, clearly articulates it.

I mean, I don't think that anybody would argue that the core principles of Islam and the fundamental requirements of being a

Muslim are not clearly articulated in the Quran. Well, they wouldn't argue it well, and that's the job of the

Quran. So if you wanted a final revelation, I'd say, yeah, I want something that can directly and simply tell me what the story is, and I think that that's what it does.

Real quickly, because we're out of time for my section here, but why do you believe that Paul's Jesus...

You said Paul obliterates the flesh of Jesus, and you base that on 2

Corinthians chapter 5. Do you not see in Paul's teaching the centrality of Jesus having truly been man, that he took on human flesh, for example, in the

Carmen Christi in Philippians chapter 2? I just... That really surprised me, and I'd like to briefly...

We're out of time, but briefly, why do you say that? I don't see it in 2

Corinthians 5. I don't see it in Philippians 2. I don't see it in Colossians 1. The incarnation is central to Paul's theology, so I don't get it.

Well, David, just so you know, I'm happy to go into my time on this one. It's a courtesy to James.

Well, I think it's Paul's words, not mine, and I mean, I must confess, and I've never pretended to know

New Testament Greek. So I'd be happy to hear from someone like yourself that does know.

I'm, as I said, relying on the English Standard Version, or the New English Standard Version, as is my personal favourite of the

Christian scriptures. But in that, Paul himself says that we knew

Christ in flesh, but we have discarded that, and now only know him in spirit.

Now, yes, there's other references, but I think that by and large,

Paul's epistles rarely mention the life and works of Jesus up until his revelation to Paul.

There's little snippets, but I think not much, and I guess I would throw you back to that and ask, you know, what was then the point of it?

You know, I mean, the three -year mission, give or take, living with the people, ministering to the people, the vast bulk of which in Judea at the time would not have had exposure to Jesus.

What was the point of all that? What's the point of the Gospel accounts if we can just skip over that and then say these are the things that are important?

Wouldn't it be nice to just sort of fast forward and get to the CliffsNotes? Now, obviously,

I'm not the first person that's concluded this. You know, there's been inverted commas, Christian heretics from the earliest period that have essentially argued this point.

I'm being a little bit convenient. I know you're laughing at me now. No, I like when you describe that position as Christian heretics.

I think that's great. Helps me out all the more, yeah. It's your time.

I'm sorry. Yeah, no, no, that's okay. I think that the point remains that I think it's quite impressive for one to be able to, you know,

Paul doesn't contribute an inconsequential amount of the Christian Scriptures.

You know, well, in terms of volume, what is it? His letters are a third, half if we count

Hebrews, which I don't, but perhaps you do.

And so for him to contribute that amount of volume and to barely speak about Jesus' life and works and also then to have that line in 2

Corinthians, to me, says that it's inconsequential. Can I?

You may. Is that a good question for a comeback and start the time? Let's make that a question and carry on. Yeah, okay, so here's the question.

He doesn't say it's inconsequential. From now, therefore, okay, let me give the context. The love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, so they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

So notice, he rose again on their behalf. That's a Gnosticist. That's a true resurrection. Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh, even though we have known

Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him in this way no longer.

Why? He's risen from the dead. He's ascended into heaven. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.

The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. The point is, in the body, we don't know one another based upon what our backgrounds have been, what our political orientations were, anything else.

We are one in him because we've been united to him, and so we don't know anyone according to their fleshly background, but in the fact that they have died with Christ, that's what makes the very foundation of the unity of the body, but in no way, shape, or form does that mean that Paul is diminishing the enfleshment of Jesus or the fact that, you know, you say, well, why doesn't he reference these things?

Because he's writing to people he's already evangelized, so he assumes a certain body that has already been communicated to them, and he's not repeating.

His epistles aren't meant to be summaries of everything he preached to them. I mean, he was in Ephesus for three years.

Ephesians is not long enough to summarize that, so he is dealing with particular issues.

The letter to the Galatians, one particular issue. It's not going to mention all the things about Jesus he had taught them.

It's not meant to be a recapitulation, so I don't think there are instances.

I didn't have time to get into this, but there are instances when Paul makes very subtle references to the

Jesus tradition. So, for example, and this has cost a lot of Muslims to raise this as an objection.

I don't think that you'd be one of them, but when Paul talks about marriage, he says, the

Lord says, and then he says things, and then he says, and now I, not the

Lord, says, and when you look at what he's saying, everything that the Lord says, we have in the Gospels that Jesus taught on marriage, and then when we don't have what

Jesus taught, that's when Paul says, I, not the Lord, say this. Clearly, he knew exactly what

Jesus taught in the Gospel narratives, as far as the doctrine of marriage is concerned, but there had come up questions that hadn't been asked, and so now he is an apostle, addresses it.

Seems to me that he had a real good handle on that, and hence could assume that that had already been communicated to the churches, and so I think that's an important distinction to be made in response to that, and 2

Corinthians chapter 5 is not saying that Christ's enfleshment no longer matters.

What it's saying is we don't know him as a human being walking around with us now.

We died with him, and now we are his body, and he has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, and I do think that Hebrews is Paul's teaching written by Luke.

That's interesting. It's his style. It's Luke's style, so that's why I say it. Well, and perhaps a question can flow on from this.

I mean, I assume you would agree there's a distinction between Paul being familiar with the

Gospel accounts, which I don't dispute. I don't mean in the sense of written. I mean the

Gospel tradition. Because, I mean, obviously in a couple of his epistles, he refers to false Gospels that are being presented, false

Gospels, not necessarily texts that are written, but that's the, again, that's the phraseology that I'm relying on in English, but would you agree that there's a distinction between being aware of the narrations and presenting them to the other churches surrounding or not?

I mean, I accept that. He assumes that they know. Well, yeah, so he makes that assumption.

He can assume when he writes to the Corinthians about the fact that they had a horrific situation of incest in the congregation, he says that they should have known.

It's right there in the law. So there is a body of truth that was being communicated to each church.

That was the apostolic duty to deliver, and that would be, I would say, what we have in the

Gospels. This is who Jesus was. This is what he taught, and now here's the application. This is how this works out, you living in Caesarea Philippi or in Philippi itself or Colossae or wherever else it might be.

So if he has to write to address certain issues, like at Colossae, the incoming of pro -Gnosticism, then he focuses upon that.

He's not going to retell the whole story of Jesus in a letter. He's going to address the corrective. He's already delivered the rest of that to them.

And I guess it's a far more articulate way of talking about what

I was talking about previously in terms of putting an expectation on the text to fulfill a particular response or requirement is probably unfair.

I think that someone who's outside the camp like me would suggest to you, well,

Paul does focus on a lot of points that to me seem to be minutiae at times, you know, whether men are covering their heads or not and whether that's appropriate or not and whether women are covering their heads or not and the alternatives to that.

That's a point of minutiae, I think, relative to the amount of writing that he's...

Quick comment. In Corinth, it was dividing the church. So you're talking historically, and this happens to be one of the, you know, one of the evidences,

I think, of the accuracy of the New Testament. There's three temples and a meat market on every corner in Corinth.

I mean, it is a center of pagan worship. And many of the temple prostitutes shaved their heads.

So if you've got temple prostitutes coming into the Christian church service and shaved heads, what are people outside going to be thinking?

Well, we know what they're doing in there. It was a very, very practical issue that has to be addressed.

And so that sort of makes my point, is that you don't have that in other letters because that wasn't the context they had to be dealing with.

Corinth had a lot of problems. They really, really had a lot of problems. And interestingly enough, if you've seen the letter of Rome to the

Corinthians from somewhere between 70 and 95 A .D. in the first century, they still had problems even after they got letters from the apostles.

So it didn't make them all go away. Thank you. Oh, it's the end of time.

You weren't being dinged specifically. Okay. Gentlemen, closing statements. Maximum of seven minutes each.

Dr. White. Oh, goodness. I thought we did that after Q &A, David. That's all right. Slave driver, isn't he?

He wants to be home at 10 o 'clock for the flash. History has shown us what happens when you give

British people power. Because you guys are doing so much better at the moment.

Yeah, that's right. No taxation for no representation. That worked out real well, didn't it? Okay. First of all,

I would like to give something to Abdullah. This is a pretty hefty volume here.

And the main reason it attracted my attention is that it's edited by Michael Kruger, who is... I recommend anything

Michael Kruger writes, especially if you have questions on canon. I mean, he's just one of the most brilliant guys going. But this is a biblical theological introduction in the

New Testament edited by Kruger. There's some good guys writing in here. I hope you find it to be useful in your...

Secondly, thanks to all of you for being here this evening.

It is good that we still live in a day when we can do this. I think we all should be praying, no matter what your beliefs are, that we will still be able to do this in the not too distant future.

Because in a lot of places, these freedoms are being restricted. Thirdly, thanks very much to Abdullah for being here once again.

We can demonstrate by having this kind of encounter that you can have strong disagreement without adding in the soul -destroying aspect of hatred.

And I stood in this pulpit last week, and those of you who are here know this. And when

I talked about reaching out in love to our Muslim neighbors, my focus was upon the fact that if we fear, then we will never truly reach out to others.

And we will never show love to others. And so I am very thankful for every opportunity that comes up to be able to have this kind of a conversation, to have interaction, and to demonstrate that when we say we love

Muslim people, we need to put legs to the statement. And that means not fearing, showing respect, understanding, and then the fact of the matter is we don't believe the same things.

We're not talking about Chris Long here. We're not talking about compromise here. Abdullah knows what

I believe. I know what Abdullah believes. This isn't some love fest where just all is, you know, we're not going to, we don't care.

No. We have major differences that fundamentally change how we worship

God and how we're going to have eternal life. And so if we truly honor the truth, then we must continue to disagree.

That doesn't mean we have to hate one another. That doesn't mean that we cannot hope for the best for another person in their life and be concerned about their families and even recognize that we as Christians and Muslims live in a

Western culture that is seeking to restrict all of our freedoms in all of our congregations and everything else.

We recognize that these are the things. Now, why do we want to discuss this? Well, Abdullah does not take the same position that many

Muslims do. He said, I'm not saying that Paul invented Christianity. So why do we have this discussion?

Well, because if Paul's teaching concerning who Jesus was is true, then what the author of the

Quran said about Jesus is not. And one of the concerns that I expressed there in the cross -examination is it does seem to me if we are going to get to the point of recognizing, and I'm not sure exactly what

Abdullah's position on this is, but most Muslims around the world believe that the

Christian worship of Jesus—now, obviously, we believe Jesus has eternally existed as the second person in the

Trinity. He's our creator. He's our maker. And therefore, to worship Him is not worshiping something other than God.

But in Islamic theology, most Muslims that I have encountered view that as something called shirk.

And shirk is unforgivable. And if you die as a mushrik, hellfire is your abode and will be for eternity.

That makes it a very, very, very serious issue. I don't know if you believe Christian worship is shirk.

You can address that in your closing if you'd like to. I know some Western Muslims that do not. But if it is, then that is, in my opinion, the primary dividing issue between us.

Because in essence, we can't be saved if it is, and you can't be saved if Jesus truly is who

He says He was because you are refusing to worship the one who God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. So, everything else that goes into our discussions, all the debates about the

Qur 'an, the New Testament canonization, Muhammad, prophecies, Zaynab bin Jash, whatever, anything that we are going to be discussing, fundamentally is coming back to that central issue.

Because that's why we can't grasp hands and say brother, say sister.

Because that is a dividing line that cannot simply be ignored. And so, from my perspective, if Paul was actually an apostle of Jesus, and Jesus was the

Jesus of the Qur 'an, then Paul badly misrepresented him.

But if what Paul taught was true, then the true Jesus of history wasn't the Jesus of the Qur 'an. And the

Jesus of the Qur 'an comes 600 years later without any historical connection between the statements of that Jesus and the historical

Jesus. And everything we know of what Jesus said from the Gospels is consistent with what

Paul said of that Jesus from the Gospels. So, you put all that together, and that's why we need to have this conversation.

Now, some of the issues, Abdullah comes from a different perspective in how he'd look at these things, especially in regards to Phariseeism and Judaism, because that's more of his background and more of his area of expertise.

It's not normally the essence of what is being said by most Muslims. But this is a good foundation and I would hope it would actually lead to further discussion in the future as to the ramifications of these beliefs, and especially with other

Muslims as well. Thank you very, very much for being here this evening. Thank you for being a very attentive audience.

I hope that you have heard what some of the key issues are, and I hope that this will just be the beginning, not the end, of your study of these particular issues.

They are truly vital. Thank you for your time this evening. As is customary at these closing statements,

James, you've outdone me again and given me a gift, and I've brought you nothing. But thank you very much.

But as you know, I like a little message from you in them, so I'll have to steal one of those before the crowds assemble.

I remember very well that the debate that we did at UNSW in 2011, and obviously, like most of these things, as would be appropriate in Sydney, the bulk of the attendees are

Christian. And at the end, I just wanted a little autograph from James, and there was this mass that came toward him, you know, like it was the exodus coming out of Egypt, and I was standing there alone, just watching.

But that's okay, it means I get out earlier. Thank you again, all, for the opportunity to be here tonight and to discuss these issues.

I do agree that they're fundamental, they're critical, in terms of what we believe is going to happen going forward, what is actually going to happen to us.

I agree that if what Paul wrote is true, the Qur 'an is false. I agree with that.

There's no way to reconcile the two. And that's why we end up with this dilemma, this difference of opinion, in terms of who

Paul is and what that means for us theologically. The Qur 'anic position, the

Islamic position, is very, very simple. In order for someone to fulfill the role that Paul fulfilled, from a

Christian perspective, they fulfill the definition of being a prophet, but then they must meet particular characteristics, the ones that I spoke about.

For us, it's quite simple. God would not give us a source of information that we cannot rely on 100%, because otherwise, what's the point?

If it's someone not as clever as me, what's the point? Is it just a test of my humility? Well, that's not particularly universal.

If it's someone that's not as faithful, religious, honest, truthful as me, then what's the point?

Now, I accept that if you read the Hebrew Christian scriptures, you will find some examples of figures like this.

I would argue that's why the Qur 'an has stated the position that it has, clearly and simply, in a much shorter volume than the

Christian scriptures. And I agree with James, that we've got to break from particular traditions that are laid down, but we also convey the key patriarchal tradition and add to it these concepts about how individuals must behave, how they must be protected by God to behave, in order to be examples for us.

That's ultimately the question that I think I would like people to leave here with tonight. I don't expect to convince anyone of my position and I certainly hope that no one here expects me to be convinced by theirs, although try your luck, see what happens.

Honestly, the objective is for everyone to be able to go away and say, well, I heard something that I hadn't heard before and I heard it said between two individuals that weren't at each other's throats.

Now, I'm happy to say, honestly and openly, that I genuinely like James. I have expressed concern and interest in his family before, as he has in mine.

He's invited me to be present virtually at multiple courses that he's run and I very much appreciate every time that we've been able to interact and consider it to be a genuine gift from God.

Do I believe that his worship of Jesus is polytheism? Undoubtedly. And I don't know why

God makes the choices that he does to give grace to some and not to others.

I don't. I'm not God and in fact the Qur 'an states this clearly, saying, grace is his to give, not mine to choose.

I don't know why. I wish I did but sadly that's the way that things are.

But I would certainly hope that at the very least, from here, everyone who's here, be you Muslim, Christian or indeterminate, now that we have third categories in things, it's always good when you're appealing to a crowd,

David, that you know is on side. I would hope that you can walk away from here and say, we can have a cup of tea, we can have a chat, we can talk about serious issues and we can have disagreements but then we can get on with the job either with the things that we do agree with and there are critical things about how day -to -day life should work that we do agree with, can actually help each other with,

I think. And just accept that ultimately, grace is not yours, not mine to give or take and move on from there.

Thank you all very much. So, friends, time is short so I've narrowed down the questions.

I've just got three rounds of questions for you. The first round is for both in turn and it's around this topic that was raised very early on of the criteria, the requirements for a messenger from God.

So, first, Dr. White, why should we trust people whose lives don't reflect the message that they bring?

Say, for example, David who committed adultery. Again, the issue is

David is an individual who is not the origin and source of the message.

This is very, very important. When the Old Testament Scriptures say, thus saith the

Lord, there's once where a donkey gets to say that. So, clearly, the content of that communication is not to be connected to that particular individual.

And so, I really think it's important that from the Christian perspective, it is when Paul says all

Scripture is theanoustos, he does not say all writers are theanoustos, which means we call it inspired, it's much better God -agreed.

It is the actual content of the Scripture that is theanoustos.

We're confusing that with the fact that if I'm a Christian witness, then I need to live consistently with what

I profess to others. That's true, but I'm not giving revelation. The revelation comes from God, and He gives it as He chooses to give it.

Dr. Kunde, the same sort of question to you. Again, you've asserted that messengers from God need to meet certain criteria.

Did the Prophet Muhammad meet those criteria? He's alleged to have taken his stepson's wife to have married a six -year -old girl, as well as countless other women.

The Surah 48, 2 and 47, 19 instruct him to ask for forgiveness of his own sins, and he wasn't even sure initially who he had experienced in the cave when he first received the message.

Does he also fail on those criteria? Hey, a very good question, and I say it's a good question because it's the first one that I would ask if I was sitting in the room and on the opposite side, and that's not meant to be patronising, that's sincere.

One of the poorly known things about Islamic theology in the non -Muslim world is that orthodoxy is rarely what's presented in English, and what

I would call heresies are far more commonly presented to the English -speaking world.

So these particular heresies are the Mujassimeen, the anthropomorphists, and the

Atharis, the literalists. These people hold particular views, you know, that I would say are far more abhorrent, or at least on the same level as the polytheism associated with worshipping

Jesus as God. So, you know, they'll say things like God has a literal foot that doesn't look like our foot, that will literally reside in hell to call it, that he's got two right hands that don't look like our hands, and you know, all this other stuff.

Likewise, they zealously hold to particular ahadith, particular sayings, actions, reports about the life of the

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that critical theology and the

Qur 'an would argue against. So, and this is the key reason why

I use particular texts from the Qur 'an to justify these points, because with some interpretations, literalist interpretations of particular hadith, you will come up with a very different view, a view that would contradict what

I'm saying. But sadly, that's just the fact that we're not winning in the English -speaking world at the moment, but thanks to things that have happened in the last 10 years,

I think we will start to win, which is great. But yes, it's a very good question.

In terms of going through the things specifically, I'll just be quick. Did he marry a six -year -old?

I don't believe so. I think you've got three options with this. Either you take the literalist position and your answer is yes, and you say that no one kicked up a fuss about it until relatively recent in human history, which

I wouldn't take that position. You take the position that there are other contradictory historical narratives that suggest a much older age, and by that I mean closer to 18 years, and that's my personal view.

In terms of multiple wives, well, I think there's a precedent for that in the lives of the patriarchs. There weren't too many that only had one.

I'm not sure that that, in and of itself, is an amoral or immoral act, but we could debate that.

It'd probably be a pretty boring debate. And in terms of being asked to seek forgiveness, there's theological arguments around the

Prophet, peace be upon him, being made to forget things for what I guess we'd call in the modern -day teaching moments.

This is different to committing a sin, being untrustworthy, and those sorts of things, but it's a bit of a technical, boring point.

I guess everyone will just have to take me on face value that I'm honestly representing the orthodox Muslim view.

Thank you. One question for each of you on Paul's place in Christian theology.

Dr. White, was Paul necessary for the explication of Christian doctrine? If he had never preached and written, would

Christian beliefs have been adequately expounded? Why do we need Paul if Jesus is the

Savior of the world? Well, those kinds of questions are, well, couldn't have

God done it some other way, or something along those lines. The fact is Paul was a servant specifically ordained by God, set apart from his mother's womb, given certain gifts and capacities and abilities to fulfill a particular mission that was vitally important in the writing of the

New Testament and the founding of the early church and providing it with the foundation that would need to survive all of the attacks that would come against it.

And so saying, well, couldn't Christianity have been explained some other way? Well, God can do what

God wants to do. The point is, this is how he chose to do that, and that in the giving of the

New Testament, that if you believe the Old Testament and you believe the stories of Jesus, God is in charge of what ends up in Scripture.

The form of that New Testament he desired for his church was one that included a number of epistles from the

Apostle Paul that have been—think of how many times Romans has brought revival into the church and corrected errors in the church and so on and so forth.

And so on the one hand, you can say God can do what he wants, and he could have used Balaam's donkey to do all of that if he wanted to.

But on the other hand, in reality, I think in a more mature fashion, no,

God chose that particular perspective, that way of doing things, and it couldn't have been any other.

It's not like God's going, oh, I was going to use him. Oh, he just got run over by a Roman chariot. Okay, I'll get plan

B. No, that's not how God's sovereignty works. He has a certain purpose that he's intending to fulfill in a particular way.

Dr. Kunde, without the writings of Paul, we would still have the writings in the Gospel about Jesus' death, his resurrection, words that he spoke about having glory with the

Father before the world began, and so on. Even if Paul were not an apostle, would not the evidence of the

Gospel still be enough to present Jesus as a very different character to that presented in the

Quran? Yeah, I think so. I'd accept that point, but the discussion about whether the

Gospels are reliable or not is a separate discussion, and I think it wouldn't be one that I'd want to bore everyone with at 10 o 'clock at night, unless they'd signed up for that one.

I mean, look, I think that the overarching sort of theme in the question and, you know, in the previous ones is, does the vessel matter for what it's carrying?

And obviously the Islamic position is that it does, you know, we don't just see the prophets as people that convey a message and then that's this isolated part of their lives and everything else is separate.

We consider them to be the physical embodiment of the message, you know, so we call in the

Quran, Jesus is called the Word of God, you know, in the context in which we use it.

The analogy that I'd give is, you know, I've got a very nice bottle here that says Australian Natural Spring Water, refreshingly good, as if I need to be convinced to drink water.

If the vessel said, toxic waste, drink at your peril, but I knew that in it there was refreshingly good natural spring water,

I'm still going to be a bit reluctant to take a swig, and I think that not having a vessel that adequately represents the message is a problem, but as I said, that's our view, that's a difference that we have.

One last question for you both. Dr. Kunde in his presentation has mentioned grace a number of times, including in his closing.

Grace is also one of the key themes that Paul wrote about. What, first of all,

Dr. White, was Paul's understanding of grace, and then after that I'll ask Dr. Kunde, what is the Islamic understanding of grace,

Dr. White? Well, grace, in its most beautiful expression in Paul, it is by grace that we are saved through faith.

It is God's grace that has provided atonement in Christ, and it is God's grace that sustains us even in the

Christian life. So it is, in one sense, especially as we talk about its relationship to sin, it is not just unmerited favor, saying that there's nothing in us that detracts it from God.

It is demerited favor. In other words, and this is a major difference, we are in and of ourselves, in our fallen state, repulsive to the holy

God. We are astentioned as nostrils. That's how serious sin is, and that's why the cross is what the cross is.

And so grace is the loving kindness, the Old Testament term is chesed, the covenant faithfulness, the loving kindness of God in condescending to provide salvation to worthy of punishment rebels and to change us and change us from being

God -haters into God -lovers, and that involves taking out a heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh, and that is a radical action that is undertaken by the

Spirit of God. And so grace is what we are always dependent upon for everything that we have, and it is

God's love in action and bringing us to himself. And for the

Christians in the room, our view is almost exactly the same. The definition is very similar.

So in English we say grace, in Arabic we say tawfiq. Nothing is possible without tawfiq, without the assistance of God.

The orthodox Islamic position in terms of our fate, so to speak, is commonly known as occasionalism.

If I could give an analogy, it's that we are puppets in a show, we just get to pick which play we're in, but everything else is entirely delivered by God, and not because He's responsible to us in any way.

In fact, you know, our theologians have illustrated this with almost absurd analogies.

So it's completely acceptable from our perspective for God to have created us with the need for oxygen and to create an existence in which oxygen does not exist, to create us with a need but not to fill it.

That's His prerogative. Literally everything I have, not just my existence, not just the privilege that I have of being a medical practitioner, not just the opportunity that I have of speaking with all of you today, literally everything is entirely due to Him.

And it's our job as Muslims to be constantly reflecting upon that.

I think it's part of the we forget often, you know, the Arabic word for humanity has also got the same root as forgetfulness.

We forget often and, you know, so praying five times a day is a pretty helpful reminder, not eating for 30 days or drinking, you know, for 30 days a year is also a pretty painful but helpful reminder.

And yeah, that is our definition of grace, simply nothing that we have comes from ourselves, it's entirely from God, He owes us nothing and everything that He gives us is a gift that we should be grateful for, especially religious guidance.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it leaves me to just close the evening by thanking

Dr James White and Dr Abdullah Khodaday for just giving us much food for thought and also a wonderful example of how to have a dialogue between two belief systems, two worldviews in a respectful way, in an engaging way.

And also I want to thank our moderator, David Orr, for making this a wonderful and memorable evening.

So please, ladies and gentlemen, join me in thanking these gentlemen. Again, the debate will be posted online shortly, so if you want to keep tabs on what's going on, please follow our social media to see upcoming conferences, events and debates.

Please be mindful of our neighbours as you depart, also form orderly queues in front of Abdullah and Dr White, I'm sure they'll be competing with one another.

But let me just join, let me just lead us in prayer just to close the evening out.

Let's pray. Our great God, you are indeed a

God of grace and of truth. You give life, you sustain life, we owe you our lives.

And Heavenly Father, we do pray that you would lead us all in truth, that you would help us to digest, to understand, to process the things that we've heard, help us to love our neighbours as ourselves.

And Lord, as we part, we pray that you would go with us, keep us safe until we see each other again. We commend ourselves to you in Christ's name.