DEBATE REVIEW: Is the Trinity Logically Coherent? #WLC #HIJAB #TRINITY

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today we're going to be doing a debate review.

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Recently on Capturing Christianity there was a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and a

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Muslim apologist, Mohamed Hijab, and they debated the topic, is the

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Trinity logically coherent? And so I thought it was very interesting.

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I suppose there's a lot that can be said with respect to the the things that were covered in that debate, but I thought that it would be a great idea to have

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Anthony Rogers to come on with me and do a debate review. Folks, if you follow this show at any length, you should be familiar with Anthony Rogers.

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He's been on multiple times and if you are not familiar with him, what is wrong with you? You should go over to his

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YouTube channel and subscribe. In my opinion, Anthony Rogers is one of the best defenders of the

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Trinity. He's got many debates on the topic and I think you'll find those to be an invaluable resource.

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Now I just want to give folks a heads up. Prior to going live, we were experiencing some technical difficulties and so if for whatever reason it looks like both of us just got raptured and the screen goes black, for those premillennial dispensationalists there, if we get raptured and the screen goes black, then the show is canceled because we've been having some difficulty.

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So I don't want to kind of troubleshoot and it takes forever. So we'll maybe reschedule or something like that until I get it figured out.

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Hopefully that doesn't happen. But that's what we're going to be doing today. Is the Trinity logically coherent?

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Now to set the context, as you guys know, we often cover presuppositional apologetics on this channel.

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The debate proposition is a proposition that is an attempt at an internal critique of the

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Christian worldview. And so as Christians, we affirm, obviously, that the Christian worldview is logically coherent, obviously.

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And so the proposition of this debate is attacking a central feature of the Christian worldview, and that is the logical coherency of the doctrine of the

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Trinity. So this is what we're going to be discussing and I'm looking forward to hearing Anthony's thoughts on that.

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Now just real quick, for those interested in some of the things that I'm involved in, apart from the show here,

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I'll be visiting the Southern, I think it's Southeastern Seminary, Southern, Eastern?

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I don't remember. There's a conference there. There's going to be speakers like Dr. Richard Howe, Frank Turek, and a bunch of other people who are not presuppositionalists, but I'm looking forward to going there and hopefully being able to meet and have some good conversations with people who disagree.

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So hopefully we'll get some interesting discussions there. But let's get all that aside.

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Hopefully things won't mess up, and so we want to make good use of our time here. So Anthony, welcome to the show.

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Why don't you say hi to folks real quick? Hey, thanks for having me. Well, so far it looks good. You were cutting in and out before much more frequently, so it seems like you might have fixed the problem.

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So that's good. But yeah, I'm doing well. It's good to be here. Great to be on with your guests. I see some familiar names, so I'm excited about this, looking forward to it.

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Excellent, very good. Now let's kind of do a spoiler alert. Even though the debate was, as we'll see, kind of two ships passing in the night,

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I think, how do you think from a, I mean we're Christians here, how do you think the Dr.

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William Lane Craig did overall? And how do you think Mohammed Hijab did overall before we kind of listen to it and pick apart certain parts of it?

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Okay, well yeah, it's kind of difficult in a sense because, as we'll probably see if we're listening to the debate straight through,

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Mohammed Hijab is going to charge Dr. Craig with holding idiosyncratic views, views that are not in fact in the mainstream of the

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Christian tradition. And the fact of the matter is he's right, and that's not me being critical of Craig.

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Craig actually admits this. Craig will come right out and say you're absolutely right.

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And so a lot of it is taken up with that sort of thing. And so in terms of evaluating how well

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Hijab did, as far as this issue goes, the extent to which he spends time saying

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Craig's position is something other than the historic Christian position means that he's not really doing much by way of attacking the coherence of the

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Orthodox, historic, biblical doctrine of the Trinity. And he's not even really doing a whole lot until maybe at some point he eventually gets around to it, even really going after Craig's view.

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And when it comes to going after Craig's view, he doesn't seem to be really familiar with the issues.

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I'm not critical of him for depending on other literature, what other scholars have said, were it not for the fact that he seems to be slavishly dependent upon them in such a wise that he's repeating what he's read in this literature, but doesn't seem to really understand it himself.

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And so when Dr. Craig pushes back against it, he seems to be caught short. He doesn't know what to do there. And so I just think that Hijab was a failure all around.

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He was more interested in attacking whether or not Craig's view was even within the context of Christian Orthodoxy, or when he was even attacking

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Craig's view, he wasn't really familiar with the issues. And so,

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I mean, as far as Dr. Craig, my criticism would just be to agree with his assessment that he's not really holding at certain points the standard view, and that is something that I take issue with.

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You know, I can't really say he did a great job defending the historic position on those points, because as he already admits, it's just not the historic view on those points.

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So for example, and we'll get into this, I know, but he rejects what he calls Latin Trinitarianism, which just is the standard view of the church,

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East and West, throughout its history, up until relatively modern times.

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You might begin to see something of a shift after the Enlightenment, and then more so in the present era, but that just is what

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Christians have meant by the Trinity, is what he's calling Latin Trinitarianism, which isn't his view. And, you know, so I don't want to say too much about some of those things that will come up later, but so overall,

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I just think it was kind of a wash. I mean, I think there's things we can learn from the debate, but, you know, we have to, you know, approach it recognizing these shortcomings.

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Yeah, absolutely. Muhammad Hijab is an interesting character. I actually was able to meet Muhammad a while back.

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We spoke a little bit in the parking lot of a university for about 10, maybe 15 minutes after his debate with David Wood.

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And so I was able to meet David Wood, who he probably won't remember me. I spoke with him literally for maybe like a minute, and I'm sure a bunch of people were talking with him.

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But I watched that debate he did in New York with Muhammad Hijab, and then had the opportunity to talk with Muhammad, who, by the way, contrary to what he looks like online, he was really respectful and had a really nice conversation, to be perfectly honest.

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Different person behind the scenes than he is when he's on stage. It's funny, because I've heard that from other people.

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And that sort of contributes to the conclusion of a number of people that much of what he does, in terms of his public face is, is a bit of an act.

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Or maybe it's just what he thinks he needs to do in order to convey his point.

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Maybe do it in a more theatrical way, which he's well known for. He's very theatrical.

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You know, I went all the way to London, hoping to be able to engage him, as well as a number of other figures that are known for being active on the

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Dawa scene, especially in Hyde Park or Speaker's Corner. And we went there and all those guys were in the hills somewhere.

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So that, you know, I guess I need to look around in America, and I got a I got a better chance of running into Muhammad Hijab.

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There you go. All right, well, let's let's jump right in. I'm decided to listen to we're going to listen to it 1 .5.

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So for folks just who are coming in, because I know there are more people watching now than before, I have been experiencing some technical difficulties.

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So if I black out, I'll wait a little bit. If I don't come back on, then unfortunately, I'll have to shut things down and kind of figure out what's going on with my tech.

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As you know, I do this by myself. So if so, there's a problem, I have to stop and evaluate it. So hopefully that's not something

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I have to do here. But we are going to be listening to it 1 .5. And we're gonna be listening from the beginning and just let it play.

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And then we'll stop in in the middle. And then we'll have Anthony comment or we'll see how the discussion goes from there.

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Okay, so let's get started. This is right here in Dr. Craig's opening statement. So we'll begin right now.

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And if there's a you want me to stop, Anthony, you can just say, hey, stop right there. And I'll click it real quick. And we'll jump right in.

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Okay. Sure. All right. Let's get this up here. Boom. All right.

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Miracles or seeking evidence for God's existence positions on the Trinity. They'll each have three minutes.

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I've had a deep interest in Islamic philosophy and theology. I was able to resuscitate the ancient

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Kalam cosmological argument, which is now once again at center stage. And as a result, countless

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Muslims all over the world are following reasonable faith and are appreciative of the work that we're doing.

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So when I went on to Germany to do my second doctorate in theology, it was only natural that I would choose

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Islam as my area of specialization. And it was during that time that I worked through the entirety of the

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Quran and studied Islamic theology and history. And as I read the

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Quran, I was surprised by the evident misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of the

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Trinity that I found there. For example, in Surah 5, 116,

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Allah is portrayed as saying to Jesus, Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to mankind, worship me and my mother as gods besides God?

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And Jesus replies, I could never have claimed such a thing. Indeed, such a caricature of the

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Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a blasphemous monstrosity. So I want to stop here real quick.

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So this often comes up and I often hear Muslims say, oh, the Quran is not even talking about the Trinity. What do you say about do you think that in like doing apologetics with Muslims, it's relevant to bring up this point as kind of a data point that shows that the

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Quran is not inspired by God? It misunderstands, you know, the doctrine of the

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Trinity. What's going on there? Do you think that's a good thing for Dr. Craig to bring up or any Christian to bring up in discussions with Muslims?

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Yeah, absolutely. Now, of course, Muslims are used to hearing this. It's not like this is a sophisticated idea to arrive at.

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You read the Quran, you're a Christian, you see it making these statements, you think, hey, wait a minute, that's not what I believe. And so Muslims have responded to it.

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They've said, no, it's not talking about the Trinity in these verses. And Muhammad Hijab is going to say that. Now, Dr.

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Craig only mentioned one of them, but there's actually many of these. You can find them in Surah 4, Surah 5. And so this is not a one -off.

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Every time it's attacking Christian beliefs about God or Christ and in terms of the divinity of Christ and so forth, it mentions the threeness or it mentions three persons and the three persons that are mentioned include

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Mary and exclude the spirit. And so, or it's trying to debunk the deity of the other two by saying they both ate food or they both slept or something along those lines, some things that are characteristic of human beings.

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And so that's the natural impression Christians have gotten from reading this. And that's what many

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Muslims have concluded throughout history, but it's now a point of embarrassment. And so they'll just say, well, it's not talking about the places.

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It's rather attacking those Christians who've included Mary in the worship that belongs to the one

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God. And of course that has been the case. At least the Protestant charge has been that certain traditions have gone beyond what scripture teaches in their reverence for Mary, their veneration of her.

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And so they can properly be branded with worshiping her. But the problem, there's many problems here, but one thing is when you look, for example, at the serial literature, and I was, if you saw me when that was being played,

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I was looking over there cause I was thinking, ah, I forgot to grab, there's a book on the shelf. It's the

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Sira of Muhammad. So it's called Sarat Razool Allah, which means the life of Muhammad or the life of the prophet.

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And that's the earliest biography of Muhammad. It's a recension of a work by a

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Muslim is providing a recension of a earlier work. And in that it talks about a delegation of Christians who were from Najran, which is in Southern Arabia.

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During the time of Muhammad, he was sending out his preachers and they were conveying his revelations.

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They're reciting what Muhammad gave forth as from Allah. And when the Christians of Najran heard this, they sent a delegation up to Muhammad to question him about the content of these revelations.

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When the Christians of Najran went up, they asked him why, for example, in the

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Quran, if Allah's only one and not also many, if he's not a Trinity, why does he say we created, we decreed, we sent down?

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He constantly speaks in the plural. Now this is interesting by itself. I won't spend an inordinate amount of time on that, but it is a problem today.

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Muslims will say it's just the plural of majesty, but that's not what Muhammad says in the serial literature that says that. I do apologize, but do you think that's a good escape hatch when they say, okay, the

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Quran is not speaking about the Trinity. They're speaking about these other groups. Is that a legitimate escape hatch?

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That's where I'm going with this is. So this is the serial literature.

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This is their literature. Okay. When the Christians of Najran come up, they're questioning Muhammad about all of this, and they question him about Jesus doing certain actions that are appropriate only to God, like causing clay birds to come to life.

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And when the Sira describes what the Najrani Christians believed about the

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Trinity, they say that God is God, Jesus, and Mary.

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So this is their view, it says. So this is not something you can escape.

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You can't now say, well, when the Quran is denouncing this, it's not really talking about the Trinity, but just certain errors with respect to Mary, because this is being put forth as the definition.

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And again, this isn't the only verse of the Quran that says this. So, and then besides that, it would be problematic.

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There's two other issues here. It'd be problematic to say the Quran is only addressing the idiosyncrasies of some small group of Christians.

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Right. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. So the Quran becomes irrelevant in its critique of Christianity, at least with respect to its fundamental doctrine, its doctrine of the

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Trinity. But then secondly, if it were the case that the Quran doesn't really teach this, then why is it that all

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Muslims have this inability to accept our definition of the

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Trinity and insist that we believe in three separate gods? They constantly accept the results of this interpretation while pretending that's not what the verses say.

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So that's excellent. That's an excellent point. Yeah. And if they are not addressing the Trinity, it would be like equivalent to like, you know, the

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Quran is making mention of some obscure like Pentecostal sect instead of addressing what

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Christians actually believe as kind of a central feature of their doctrine. So, all right, let's continue on.

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Wander Muhammad rejected it if that's what he thought the Trinity taught. But I think that the basic doctrine of the

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Trinity is actually taught in the pages of the New Testament itself. And it consists of just two fundamental tenets.

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First, that there is exactly one God, and second, that there are three persons who are properly called

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God. Whereby properly, I mean literally, truly, as opposed to metaphorically or hyperbolically.

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So that's it. No metaphysical mumbo -jumbo, no theological hair -splitting.

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This is a simple and straightforward doctrine. God is an immaterial, tripersonal being.

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Now, standing opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity is the Islamic concept of God and the doctrine of Tawhid, or the oneness or unicity of God.

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And this is a doctrine which is very confusing and very controversial among Islamic theologians.

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There are a number of different versions of Tawhid on which there is no consensus. For example, the most basic doctrine would state that there is exactly one

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God, and that is a point of view. That's time. Dr. Craig, would you like to continue your comments here? Just a real quick, and you don't have to comment here,

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I thought this was interesting that it is not characteristic of Dr. Craig to go over his time.

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I wonder if he was confused over the format. It's like watching a James White debate and James White is just getting to his point as his time is running out.

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You don't normally see that. He's usually good with the clock. Was that something you noticed when you were watching this? Well, you know,

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I hate listening to the opening breakdown. I might listen a little bit to the 20 minutes for this, five minutes for that, but there's usually all this stuff in the beginning, and I kind of skip over some of that.

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I didn't skip over it, but I don't think I was paying attention. And so when Dr. Craig was told time is up, I was surprised too.

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I was thinking, wait a minute, that's it? I thought of this as more of a formal debate than just a three minutes, three minutes.

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That's the sort of thing you get to further down after people lay out their positions. So I was kind of surprised.

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Maybe he was under an impression that he was going to get 10 minutes or 15. I don't know. I just thought that was interesting, but well, let's continue.

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Can you shout your thought and then we'll give extra time to... Oh, you say I've used up my time? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry.

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Yes, I'll just finish with the thought that this is a very controversial doctrine.

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It has a number of different versions. And so I'm interested in hearing what is the version of Tawhid that Mr.

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Hijab espouses and how would he justify that? All right. So Mohammed, whenever you're ready, feel free to begin your opening statement and you will get another 15 seconds on top.

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I want to start off by saying thank you very much to the organizers and to Dr. William Lane Craig for this discussion. To dive straight into it, the last comment that Dr.

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William Lane Craig made is absolutely problematic. It's erroneous, in fact. The Muslims have never had a problem discussing the wholeness of God.

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They have had controversies surrounding the whateness of God. But that's aside the point today we're talking about the Trinity. And it's quite astounding that on a topic to do with the

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Trinity that Dr. Craig decided to talk about Tawhid, which is not on the topic today. Dr. Craig himself, sorry to say, does not even represent mainstream...

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All right, before he gets into how Dr. Craig does not represent mainstream Christianity on the doctrine of the Trinity, do you think it is an irrelevant move or an illegitimate move for Dr.

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Craig to bring up Tawhid? No, for three reasons.

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Number one, strategically, there's a good reason to do this. Typically, Muslims are always on the attack and Christians are on the defensive.

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And so even if a Christian does a good job of responding to the challenges, but never gets around to issuing challenges to the position that the

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Muslim advocates, it always makes it look like there's the default view.

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Ours is the view that holds a weaker position. It's always got to struggle to maintain itself, to keep its head above water.

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And that's just not a good look, right? But that's the look Muslims want us to constantly have before a world they're appealing to.

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So strategically, I think there's a good reason for that. Also, rhetorically, the

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Muslim always wants to claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is complicated, difficult to understand, and for that reason can be rejected, but they don't accept that themselves because their own history shows that the concept of Tawhid has been difficult.

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And so it does say something about an argument's invalidity, if the person makes, or at least it raises the issue of its invalidity, because if a person doesn't believe what he's saying himself, if he doesn't own up to it, then it suggests that there's a problem, at least this person would have with this idea.

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And so if he doesn't have the confidence in this kind of an argument, then why should we accept it against our position? And then thirdly,

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I think it's good because, I mean, at least it's good in this sense, whether it's a legitimate thing to do or not, it takes away time that Hijab has to attack the doctrine of the

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Trinity, because now he has to spend some time defending Tawhid, or at least defending why he's not going to defend

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Tawhid. And so I just, I mean, maybe that goes back to strategy or something like that, but I think for these...

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And another thing would be that nobody's attacking a position from no perspective.

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Everybody has some kind of perspective when we're arguing against an atheist, he's not simply attacking our notion without one of his own, and he's attacking it from some position.

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No, he's not, Anthony, because atheists don't have a world, it's not a world view. I mean, their criticisms, if their criticisms are valid, they have to be consistent with their worldview, right?

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I mean, you can't have a worldview that critiques others and thinks those criticisms are valid if those criticisms are not consistent with your own view, right?

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So I think it's relevant for that reason to bring it up. If Hijab's making arguments that aren't compatible ultimately with his position, then that's a problem, but that means then that if they are compatible with his position, it's relevant for us to bring up what his position is, his underlying position.

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Sure, excellent. All right, let's continue on here. Pre -Christianity, when it comes to the Trinity, he attacks

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Thomas Aquinas, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, for example, he corrects Thomas Aquinas on the fact that he believes in one -self theories, and he says that, for example, if you take the is of identification for God, and you believe that the

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Father is God and the Son is God, therefore it follows that the Father is the Son. This is his view of Thomas Aquinas.

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He also says that the Trinity is against divine simplicity, which Thomas Aquinas in other places actually does espouse.

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That's his view, and he can correct me if I'm wrong. So that's, I mean, Thomas Aquinas is one of the saints of Catholicism, and we're talking about a great deal of people who follow that, almost 50 % of Christians are

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Catholics. He doesn't just take aim at Aquinas, he takes aim at the Church Fathers. He takes aim at the

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Church Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nysanzias, Basil. He clearly states, for example, that they believe in a kind of polytheism, because if you take the fact that the

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Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, in a full sense, that this is a kind of polytheism. So it's what version of Christianity, of the

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Trinity, is Dr. William Lane Craig representing? He's representing his own version, ladies and gentlemen. He's not representing the version of the majority of Catholics, the majority of Protestants.

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Now, for the listeners here, is there a level of, I mean, Mohamed seems to be correct in the sense that Dr.

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Craig does hold to an unconventional view of the Trinity. Would I be correct there?

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Yeah, and he's going to acknowledge that. Okay. Do you think, because I know the tactic that Mohamed is using is he's trying to set

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Dr. Craig against Church history and things like that. Do you think that is at all relevant, though, to the debate, given the fact that if Dr.

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Craig is committed to what he thinks the Bible teaches, then all that matters is the Bible teaches the specific view of the

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Trinity that he's putting forth? Because in the debate

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Mohamed Hijab had with David Wood all those years back, I remember listening to that debate, and he quoted a lot of the

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Church Fathers, but the question was, does the Bible teach the doctrine? Not whether this

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Church Father taught this, that, or the other thing. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, so there was a lot of convoluted stuff there, but yeah, if,

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I mean, he's in a debate with William Lane Craig, which means it might be relevant to make a point about the fact that Craig diverges, but to spend all his time on this, or most of his time, which is going to be what happens, that's problematic because you're in a debate with a particular individual.

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You need to debate his position, and I suspect that what he's trying to do here is discredit

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Dr. Craig in the eyes of others, but at the end of the day, how far is that going to go as far as the proposition of the debate?

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You're not either, you're not proving by this that the historic doctrine is incoherent, nor are you even proving that Dr.

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Craig's position is incoherent, just by proving that it's not that. So, I think a lot of time was wasted with that, and then, yeah, like you say, he has to actually deal with Dr.

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Craig's claim that this is what the Bible teaches. Now, I will say that as far as what Dr. Craig stated, that is what the

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Bible teaches, that there is one God, and that each person is properly God. That's not a difference between how, say,

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Latin Trinitarianism or Social Trinitarianism would say it, you know, the biblical record, what it says, but they're going to give different explanations for that, how that's the case.

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So, Muhammad Hijab hasn't done anything to attack that. Correct. He does this a lot.

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I think the main goal is to discredit Dr. Craig in front of the audience, because he'll say this, say this one thing for me, that William Lane Craig, you know, he has to say,

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William Lane Craig holds this position as though, because he holds that position that somehow discredits him, the real issue is, is it what the

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Bible teaches, and is it logically coherent? And they don't really get into the biblical text that much in this debate, which

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I think is, misses the whole point, but there you go. Let's continue. The majority of Eastern Orthodox, and what he said about the

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Quran, as we just mentioned, is erroneous. He said that in chapter 5 verse 116, that the

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Quran depicts the Trinity in the wrong way. The Quran doesn't even mention the Trinity in that verse, and you don't need to know Arabic language to understand that, because the

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Trinity is not mentioned in chapter 5 verse 116. It says that, did you say that you take me and my mom as lords, but God's beside God?

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That means God's people, subjects of worship. We do believe, like Protestants, as he claims he is, that Mary is venerated to a point of worship.

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That doesn't mean that she's part of the Trinity, so he's got a misreading of that. And in my next segment, I'm going to talk about how he opposes practically all of Christianity with the eternal begotten son doctrine.

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I would like him to correct me if I'm wrong, in so much as I've represented his views on one set of theories, and the is of identification, and his views also on the

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Church Fathers, and how he openly aims, takes aim at them. Again, points that are irrelevant to the debate, so I don't know why he wants

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Dr. Craig to respond to those. That's not really dealing with the proposition. So I think that's my time.

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All right, let's turn it over to Dr. Craig. You've got two minutes for your first response. Among Christian Trinitarians, Mr.

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Hegink corrects and rejects the doctrine of Latin Trinitarianism, because it does justice to the

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Bible. There are exactly three who are social

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Trinitarians. There are three sets of self -interest in God.

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God is an immaterial doctrine that is taught in the New Testament, and as a

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Christian who believes that Holy Scripture is the only inspired source and authoritative source for Christian faith and practice,

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I believe what the New Testament teaches about the doctrine of the Trinity, and I am less concerned with conformity to later ecclesiastical developments of that doctrine.

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So I'm taking my stand on what I call the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, which I've already stated. Now, I do think that the

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Islamic doctrine of Tawhid is very relevant here, because this is the doctrine that is opposed to the Trinity, namely that God is absolutely one, and yet this doctrine comes in so many different versions.

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Does God have physical parts? Does God have metaphysical parts? Are all of God's properties identical to one another?

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Is God distinct from his properties? Is God's essence the same as his existence? Muslim theologians cannot come to consensus on this doctrine of the unity or oneness of God.

30:26

And again, just in terms of the strategy here, Dr. Craig, I think, did good there when he said it's not his job to interact with the

30:33

Church Fathers, because that's not the topic of the debate. Just from a purely debate perspective, you want to be careful.

30:39

We'd call that, Anthony, if you could maybe agree or disagree, bringing up the Church Fathers is kind of like a red herring, if you think about it.

30:47

Would that be correct? It's trying to get you to discuss something that gets you off the main topic.

30:58

Yeah, I mean, for any number of reasons. One is because he's dealing with a particular individual.

31:05

You're debating Dr. Craig, and so it's his position that you have to prove is incoherent.

31:11

And if you're trying to ultimately take aim at the biblical teaching, it'd be relevant to critique

31:21

Craig by going to the Bible and saying the Bible doesn't teach this or something like that, but he's going off the reservation when he starts talking about the

31:28

Church Fathers. But also because that sort of thing, I think, it's very unwieldy.

31:35

The idea that somebody could just easily turn to this or that statement from the Church Fathers in a debate like this,

31:42

I think it's kind of a trick because how easy could somebody do that, even if they're familiar with the Fathers? There's too much information, and then you got to look into it.

31:52

When you get outside the context of the Bible, then it's a free -for -all because obviously there are a wide variety of people who claim the

31:59

Church Fathers for themselves, and they think it says one thing. No, he means this. It takes the focus off, and if he would have taken the bait, then it would have made

32:08

Dr. Craig a little bit more disorganized in terms of how he would respond. So, yeah. Okay, let's continue on.

32:18

So, Mohamed, you've got another 10 seconds. 10 seconds, did you say? Oh, sorry.

32:23

I meant like two minutes, 10 seconds. Okay, so Dr.

32:28

Craig has said that he represents social Trinitarianism, but he doesn't actually represent all of social Trinitarianism.

32:34

For example, he takes aim, as I've mentioned, at the Church Fathers who represent a type of social Trinitarianism. He states the following, given that there are three hypostases of God, distinguished according to Gregory in the intra -Trinitarian relations, then there should be three gods.

32:47

The most potent task of contemporary social Trinitarians is to find some more convincing answer to why, on their view, there are not three gods.

32:55

So, in his understanding, William Lane Craig believes that Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote this book called

33:01

Not Three Gods, he believes that this Church Father is a polytheist. This is a social

33:07

Trinitarian doctrine. We'll come to Dr. Craig. Just a side comment. I think Dr. Craig's facial expressions are...

33:14

What are you saying, Mohamed? That's not my position. So, those are an important part of your rebuttal, are the facial expressions.

33:23

You can sneak a little bit of a rebuttal in, even while the other person's talking. Now, some of these are just antics and it looks silly, but I think he's genuinely surprised and he's showing it appropriately because, number one, he's gone right back to the

33:42

Church Fathers, which was already criticized. He's not obligated to defend what they said.

33:50

But then, secondly, I think Craig is responding that way because Hijab is horribly misrepresenting Gregory.

33:56

Number three, I don't know what Craig says about Gregory's view, but I would reject outright that Gregory was teaching a form of social

34:04

Trinitarianism. So, for what all that's worth. Okay. All right. Thank you for that.

34:10

Craig's understanding of the Trinity as parts of God in his neurological understanding. However, the fact remains that he doesn't represent social

34:17

Trinitarianism. He represents his own version of social Trinitarianism, which, quite frankly, is demographically of 100 %

34:23

Christian population. I would even wager 1 % for what he believes in. So, that's the first thing.

34:29

The second thing is, he's talking about the Qur 'an. He agrees with the Qur 'an because he believes,

34:34

William Lane Craig believes, he does not believe in the eternal generation. Right. So, I thought this part was silly.

34:41

Again, William Lane Craig believed that something that's supposed to be ridiculous to believe.

34:51

And then he says he actually agrees with the Qur 'an. And it's such a silly point because I think as Christians, there's plenty that we could quote unquote agree with that's irrelevant to the debate again.

35:02

Yeah. Dr. Craig's going to make that point. I mean, and it just strikes me as an obvious rejoinder.

35:10

So, for Hijab to make the point and not see the rejoinder coming, just strikes me as not very thoughtful.

35:17

Right. Something in the Nicene Creed, he does not believe in the generation of the sun because that would make the sun generated and caused, and that is staple

35:24

Islamic reasoning. The Qur 'an says, قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ Say, He's Allah one and only. اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ The eternally besought of all.

35:30

The self -sufficient. لم يَلَدْ He begets not. نُورَزْ هِي بِغَتْنُ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ William Lane Craig believes the

35:36

Islamic standard over and above 1 ,500 years of Christian belief because no one took his belief.

35:42

For 1 ,500 years of Christianity, no one took his belief that the sun was not eternally forgotten.

35:47

And the Qur 'an does say that because the Qur 'an indicates that being forgotten is an inhibition.

35:53

Did you have something you wanted to say? I saw your mouth move. I didn't know if you wanted to say something. I didn't know that I was moving my mouth.

36:01

You're non -verbal, I can see that. But I do have something to say. So, number one, the idea that the

36:10

Qur 'an, when it rejects divine begetting, is rejecting the Christian doctrine of the eternal generation of the sun, just assumes a profound ignorance of the occasion for the revelation, the alleged revelation of that surah, and many other statements of the

36:28

Qur 'an. Remember, Muhammad was a pagan -born individual. He was born and reared in pagan

36:35

Mecca. He was part of the Quraysh tribe, which had custodianship of the Kaaba, which housed 360 idols, performed all sorts of pagan rituals.

36:45

Muhammad was steeped in paganism. According to the pagan religion that he grew up in, Allah, who was viewed as the chief deity of the pantheon, had daughters.

36:57

He had offspring. But this was all viewed anthropomorphically. The gods are conceived of as just basically men writ large, right?

37:08

Kind of like the Greco -Roman deities. They were just a short step from human beings themselves, which is why

37:14

Zeus is having children with human women, right? And far too many to keep track of.

37:21

So when Muhammad is rejecting this in the name of Allah, it's not the

37:28

Christian doctrine that he's rejecting. It's not even close to that. Muhammad didn't even have a Christian conception of deity in general.

37:35

He had a pagan... When he ditched the other idols, he didn't now suddenly believe Allah was a different order of being than he had previously believed.

37:46

It's the same conception, just without these other deities. And so he rejected this whole idea of Allah having daughters.

37:53

And part of what bothered him was that he had daughters and not sons. Here's Muhammad growing up without a father, thrown around because his mother died.

38:01

I mean, there's all this stuff going on in Muhammad's life that made him really hate the idea of God as father.

38:08

And so anything to do with that, he was jettisoning. But all within a pagan context, these were all understood in terms of pagan categories.

38:15

And just really quickly, one thing that sort of nails this is if you look at what's called the occasion of revelation, which is the

38:22

Islamic science of accounting for when these surahs are given, these chapters of the

38:28

Quran, they're occasioned by something. So in Muhammad's case, pagans came to Muhammad and they were asking

38:35

Muhammad about his God, what he's made of, and what his nature is and so forth.

38:41

And in the surah, most people don't see this because the translations obscure it. It's a very short surah, the surah he's quoting.

38:49

It says, say he is Allah, the one. And then they usually translate it as saying, he is eternal, he begets not, nor is he begotten.

38:58

There's nothing comparable to him. But the statement he is eternal is the word it's samad.

39:04

And it literally means solid. It's saying he's solid. And the idea is if you look at, this is gonna sound silly, but they're in Arabic Muslim sources.

39:15

You had a debate among early Muslims about the solidity of Allah. And some

39:21

Muslims would say that Allah was solid from the waist down. Others said he was solid from the stomach down.

39:28

Again, I know this sounds silly, but notice the connection here though. The reason they were saying he was solid from, they couldn't say he was solid all the way through because Allah speaks.

39:38

So he has to have a chest cavity. He has to have some ability to speak. But they would say he couldn't beget because of his solidity.

39:48

There's no begetting because there's no cavity. There's no means for begetting in that sense.

39:56

And so, I mean, again, this is all just crudely pagan and it has nothing to do with Christianity.

40:03

I'm sure Dr. Craig's not agreeing with that. And there's more that could be said there, but I don't wanna bore people.

40:09

But to say that he's agreeing with the Quran when he doesn't believe in the eternal generation is just a far cry from the truth.

40:16

Correct. Yeah, great points. Folks are just joining in. Once again, I am speaking with Anthony Rogers and he's sharing his thoughts on the debate.

40:26

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40:34

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40:40

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41:05

Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, well, without further ado, we're gonna continue on this discussion. And here we go.

41:12

Bishop on the necessity and independence of God. We agree with the Quran and he rejects Christianity as a whole,

41:17

Orthodox Christianity. All right, Dr. Craig, turning back over to you, another two minutes. I wanna reiterate that what

41:23

I am defending is the biblical doctrine of the Trinity that is found in the pages of the New Testament itself.

41:30

So of course, it's a version of social Trinitarianism. There are many varieties and no one takes the writings of Gregory of Nyssa to be authoritative for Christian doctrine.

41:40

It's just one opinion among many. And my critique of Gregory was simply that he didn't do a very good job in answering the questions about the three persons in one being or essence.

41:52

So I, again, am going to be defending a very simple version of the doctrine of the

41:58

Trinity that then can be elaborated in a number of different directions. For example, you can add to my model the eternal generation of the

42:06

Son and the procession of the Spirit. In the forthcoming book on the Trinity you referred to, Cameron, William Hasker does exactly that.

42:12

Hasker and I see eye to eye on our model of the Trinity, except Hasker adds this additional element of the inter -Trinitarian processions, and that's fine.

42:22

The reason I don't espouse it is because it's not found in the pages of the New Testament itself.

42:27

I am basing my doctrine of the Trinity on what the New Testament teaches, which is that there's exactly one

42:33

God and there are exactly three persons who are properly called God. You can stop there for a second.

42:42

What I'll do at this point is I'll just go back and forth. Yeah. I just want to say quickly, I haven't heard

42:48

Craig's case against the eternal generation of the Son, though I'm well familiar with attempts to critique the doctrine.

42:58

Number one, the doctrine is solidly biblical. The fact that you have these terms, first of all, means something.

43:08

You can't just reject the way that God speaks about himself in the

43:13

Bible as Father, Son, and Spirit, paternity, affiliation, inspiration. Those are the terms by which he sets himself forth as the triune

43:22

God. And moreover, you have to have some distinguishing personal properties in order to even be

43:29

Trinitarian. We believe that they're one in essence, but unless there's a distinguishing personal property like begetting, the

43:39

Father begat the Son, the Son is begotten of the Father, the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son, then you're just affirming modalism.

43:46

And moreover, Scripture explicitly says the Son is begotten of the Father, and that begetting is not simply something that's economic, that's tied to the incarnation, because it is precisely as the

43:59

Son is the begotten one that Jesus is identified as God, right? So for example, in John 5, when

44:07

Jesus defends himself against the charge that he's violating the Sabbath, Jesus said, my Father has been working to this very day.

44:15

He uses the present of past actions still in progress, meaning the way it reads literally is my

44:21

Father is working until now. And so it's this idea that it's this thing that's been going on throughout the past and is currently happening.

44:30

And nobody would say the Father's violating the Sabbath. He's not breaking some law.

44:36

And so when Jesus then says, me too, which is where this is all going, right? My Father's been working until now, and I too am working.

44:45

He's again using the present of past actions still in progress. So just like the Father's been working throughout the past, so has he.

44:51

When the Jews hear this, they want to kill him all the more because now in their eyes, he's not only breaking the

44:57

Sabbath, but he's even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

45:03

And so it's in terms of this paternal filial relationship that Jesus sets forth his divinity, his co -activity with the

45:10

Father, his co -equality with the Father and all that. And this, remember John's gospel is the gospel par excellence that sets forth the beginning of the

45:18

Son. It's John's gospel that uses this language in John 1, 14, John 1, 18,

45:23

John 3, 16, right? So yeah, the Bible teaches this sort of thing and ditto for the

45:28

Spirit's procession. So I don't know what his arguments would precisely be, but I do reject that.

45:37

Hmm. Oh, thank you for that. Fourth, and I'll say something if I need to, but otherwise feel free to just go ahead and take up your time on.

45:57

So Dr. William Lane Craig has not admitted openly to the audience that his view of the denial of the eternal begotten

46:05

Son, which is the second person of the Trinity, is a view that was not held by all of Christianity for, sorry, can you hear me?

46:15

Yep. Yeah, sorry. It's a view that has not been held at all of Christianity for 17, until the 17th century.

46:20

The first recorded to my knowledge, to my knowledge, the first person who denied the eternal begotten nature of the Son was royal in the 17th century.

46:28

So we're talking here about a fringe opinion of a fringe opinion of a fringe opinion. But what seems to be interesting is

46:33

William Lane Craig was attacking the Quran in the beginning, in his first introductory statement. However, he agrees with the

46:39

Quran because the Quran states that being begotten is an inhibition, is a diminution, is something which inhibits and detracts from the fact that God is necessary.

46:49

God is necessary. God is independent. God is self -sufficient. And William Lane Craig admits this.

46:55

So he disagrees with Protestant Christianity. He disagrees with Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox Christianity. He disagrees with the

47:00

Catholic, and he agrees with who he called Muhammad. He agrees with the Quran on this specific issue. So this is the first time he has admitted this yet.

47:07

Notice here, remember I said earlier that Dr. Craig was not wrong to bring up the Islamic view of God when defending the

47:14

Trinity because Muhammad Hijab is not neutral. He's not attacking the Trinity from a position of non, you know, he's not non -committal.

47:23

Notice here, he keeps going to the Quran himself. He keeps going to the doctrine of Allah set forth there.

47:28

It's very clear that he has a position and it's from that position that he's attacking the Trinity. So this shows that Dr. Craig was well within reasonable limits to bring that up.

47:39

Yeah, good. Andrew Kaufman, thank you so much for your super chat. He's got a quick question here. I appreciate that,

47:45

Andrew. Should Christians avoid analogies to describe the Trinity if it is appropriate? What are good analogies to use?

47:51

Kerberos seems weak to me. Thank you. Oh, that's for me, huh? So I have my thoughts, but I mean, you could share.

48:00

Yeah, so I'll briefly say I don't use analogies. I don't know any analogy that is really good.

48:09

Now, admittedly, all analogies are imperfect. You know, in the nature of the case, an analogy doesn't correspond in every way.

48:19

Otherwise it would be the thing itself instead of being an analogy of it. But my problem is that it's even worse than just not corresponding in every point, but it often miscommunicates.

48:29

So you have people talking about the Trinity being like an egg. You've got the shell.

48:35

You've got the white. You've got the yolk. And that seems to teach that there's, you know, the father is part of the egg, maybe corresponding to the shell and then so on, which suggests something different in the essential substance of each person, or it suggests that they're partitioned, like you could layer them out or something.

49:00

It miscommunicates. Same thing with using H2O, water, or it can be a liquid form, a solid or a gas.

49:09

But these are successive states. And that sounds more like ancient successive modalism where you have

49:16

God at one time as father, then another time as son, then another time as spirit. And then you've got other people that they might say, well, the triple point of water under certain conditions, you can cause all three states to exist at once.

49:28

But then that's just the contemporary version of simultaneous modalism, right?

49:33

The vast majority of contemporary modalists teach that these modes are assumed by God simultaneously.

49:40

And so, I mean, I just think these are all problematic. The Bible doesn't use them. I don't think we're obligated to use them. And since they miscommunicate, why use them?

49:48

You shouldn't use them. And so I'll leave it with that. All right. Thank you for that.

49:53

Thank you, Andrew, for the super chat. Really appreciate it. Let's continue on. I thought you were going to chime in too. Oh, oh, yes.

50:00

I agree with everything Anthony said. No, I'm just kidding. I do agree with what you said. I do think that there are it can be appropriate to use an analogy and a kind of like how

50:11

Dr. Craig explains, and he'll explain when he responds to the claim of Kerberos is that he didn't use

50:16

Kerberos as an example of the Trinity, like an analogy. He says he used it as a springboard for at least beginning to understand how something can be both one and three.

50:28

And in that sense, I think it can be appropriate. It can be. It just depends.

50:34

I know that Wayne Grudem in systematic theology often uses the example of time. Time is this one thing that you have past, present and future.

50:43

The past is not the same as the present and the future. The present is not the same as the past and the future. And the future is not the same as the present and the past.

50:50

Yet they're all time. Is that a perfect analogy? Of course not. But can it help in at least thinking how something can be one in one sense, three in another sense?

50:59

Sure. So I think in that very weak, loose sense of giving someone somewhat of a conceptual scheme to at least begin to try to make sense and have the further discussion with respect to what the

51:10

Bible says, I think it can be appropriate. But again, I would be very, very careful and I most definitely wouldn't use the analogies that Anthony suggested that we ought not use the traditional, you know, the liquid gas and solid and the egg.

51:23

And I always thought, too, that if the Father and the Son and the Spirit are equal in attributes, the egg, the plasma, the clear liquid there and the yolk don't work because there is a quality of the shell that is lacked in the other aspects of the egg.

51:38

And so here you have the property of hardness with the shell, but the other elements of the egg don't share those properties.

51:44

You have an inequality within the Trinity of taken, you know, to to that extent in terms of the analogy of the of the egg.

51:50

So I think these analogies can be dangerous. You can flirt with heresy when you use them.

51:57

But I do think that analogies can be useful just to help someone begin thinking about just in a very general sense, not as a this is the analogy of the

52:05

Trinity, which is an example how one might start thinking about how something can be one in one sense, three in another sense.

52:12

Those are just my thoughts there. So let's continue on there. William Lane Craig, not admit to the audience that his view about the eternal forgotten fun is commensurate with a

52:22

Quranic discourse and is incommensurate with Christianity as a whole. He, in fact, attacks my

52:28

C and three who talks about, well, very good. This is not an authority. But then I see intrigued as an authority, according to Catholics and according to Islam.

52:34

In fact, they consider it to be dogma when I see intrigued itself is that so he has to now admit to the audience freely and openly.

52:41

Yes, you say, I believe what the Quran states is more coherent than what Christianity said for 17th century.

52:46

Please say that. All right. So before I ask you, Dr. Say it.

52:53

Say it's Bloodsport. Ever see Bloodsport? Yes, eight ages ago.

52:59

There's a scene at the end. He goes that is about to twist the guy's neck. Hear me.

53:15

Can you hear me? You're cutting out a bit. OK, now you look like you're. OK, all right.

53:22

I think I'm back on. OK, yeah. Again, irrelevant to the actual discussion.

53:28

I mean, at least the argument that Dr. Craig is making is that his position of the Trinity is what the Bible teaches. And it's interesting that his job has not brought up.

53:36

Well, your Bible says this. And here's why your view is incoherent, given your understanding or interpretation of the relevant biblical passages.

53:47

Mohammed's baiting. And even though we would position and a little bit more friendly

53:57

Catholicism than we would be Roman Catholic, he's not appealing to the church fathers as kind of, you know, some kind of authority in the sense that's equal to scripture or anything along those lines.

54:07

And I think right here is where Mohammed is kind of missing the boat. He's not really dealing with Dr. Craig's position.

54:15

Yeah, I think after having made that point already, he should just move on and then start critiquing what

54:21

Dr. Craig is set for. Right, right. One quick announcement about capturing Christianity. So our mission here, if you don't know, is to explore.

54:27

Feel free to respond. I'm claiming to be defending the New Testament doctrine of the Trinity. So I'm not denying,

54:34

Mr. Hijab, the procession of the Son and Spirit. As I said, you can add that to my model if you want to, but it's not affirmed in the

54:43

New Testament. And the earliest church fathers didn't affirm that doctrine. People like Ignatius, Clement, and others in the post -apostolic age.

54:55

This doctrine originates in the so -called Lagos Christology of the

55:00

Greek apologists like Athenagoras and Justin Martyr and so forth. And I would follow them if that doctrine were to be found in the

55:08

New Testament. But I think the majority of scholars would say this doctrine is not a New Testament doctrine, and therefore no

55:14

Christian is obligated to believe it unless he recognizes the conciliar authority of these later creedal statements that you mentioned.

55:22

But as a Protestant, I bring even the creeds before the bar of Scripture and weigh them by their conformity with Scripture.

55:29

Now, in terms of agreeing with what the Qur 'an says, of course I agree with lots that the Qur 'an says. I don't maintain that the

55:35

Qur 'an is 100 % false. It has all sorts of truths in it. For example, that first tenet of the

55:41

Doctrine of the Trinity, there is exactly one God. Islam is a monotheism, as is

55:46

Judaism and Christianity. So I agree with lots of things in Islam, but I do not agree with Tawhid, that God is this undifferentiated unity as opposed to three persons in one being, a spirit.

56:01

Again, I think this is a good point. I mean, don't Muslims believe that Moses was a prophet? Moses was a genuine prophet, right?

56:07

In Islam? Yes. So William Lane Craig, William Lane Craig agrees with the

56:13

Qur 'an that Moses was a prophet. It's like, who cares? It's irrelevant to the point. And I think

56:19

Dr. Craig is good on this point with bringing that out. It's completely irrelevant. Yeah, and by the way,

56:25

I mean, I've heard other Christians make the same mistake

56:32

Hijab makes. I know a number of people that try to critique reformed theology by saying, hey, look,

56:38

Muslims believe that Allah decreed everything or something like that that's distinctive to reformed theology.

56:45

And my thought is immediately the same thing that Dr. Craig is bringing up here. That doesn't refute.

56:51

In fact, one might just as well turn the tables and say, because Muhammad was known as a borrower.

56:56

In fact, he was called the ear for a reason. He would hear things spoken by Jews and Christians, and then he would repeat them.

57:03

And, you know, so you need to prove that this isn't something that is taught in the Bible, not simply, you know, say it's, you know, that he's agreeing with the

57:14

Qur 'an because it's in the Qur 'an. Obviously, Dr. Craig doesn't have this view because he saw it in the

57:21

Qur 'an. He thinks it's found in the Bible, right? Right. This is a kind of a rhetorical flourish that is not really a good flourish.

57:27

It's I mean, it's clear to anyone that can think logically. I'm sure the Muslims were having a field day when you were saying.

57:34

Oh, you know, William McCrae agrees with the Qur 'an because, you know, God doesn't love in a book.

57:40

So, you know, there you go. All right. Spiritual, immaterial, tripersonal substance.

57:49

All right. And Mohammed, when you're ready. OK, so this is what Dr. Craig says. He says, although creedally affirmed the doctrine of the generation of the sun and the procession of the spirit is a relic of logos

57:59

Christology, which finds virtually no warrant in the biblical text and introduces a subordination ism into the

58:05

Godhead, which anyone who affirms the full deity of Christ ought to find very troubling. So it's very clear here that Dr.

58:11

Craig has understood what I see in Christology is. And he's essentially saying you've got these Greek philosophers who have corrupted

58:16

Christianity and introduced the subordination into it. And now this is something the

58:21

New Testament for the eternal begotten nature of the sun. I'm saying I agree with you, Dr. Craig. This is what I agree with you on.

58:27

But the problem is this. The problem is no one in Christianity did agree with you until Hernandez role in the 17th century.

58:34

So the point we're making is if the biblical text was so clear for everyone to see, how could it be that for almost 2000?

58:42

Yeah, so I disagree with Craig when he says that it's not found prior to the Greek apologists like Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and so forth.

58:51

However, Dr. Craig did make that claim. He did say that people like Clements of Alexandria, Ignatius don't teach the eternal generation of the sun.

59:01

So when Hijab comes along and says you're just disagreeing with everybody in church history, even there he's not dealing with Dr.

59:07

Craig, right? Because that's not what Craig believes, right? He's just asserting that it's only found later.

59:14

Well, Dr. Craig has made a contrary assertion. So now you've got to do something better. And of course, he's just repeating what

59:19

Dr. Craig has already told him is irrelevant. He's repeating that Dr.

59:25

Craig doesn't hold the creedal doctrine. And Dr. Craig has already conceded that. He says, yeah,

59:30

I believe that this is the teaching of the Bible what I'm defending. So Hijab does this.

59:35

And it's it's it's, you know, frustrating in a sense, because it's not advancing the discussion.

59:42

It's he's he's not. I believe my position is taught in the Bible. Oh, Dr. Craig disagrees with a bunch of church fathers.

59:48

I believe what my view is taught in the Bible. Oh, he disagrees with the Nicene Creed. I believe that this is taught.

59:54

It's like it's completely not addressing the issue. Yeah. All right.

01:00:00

In years, nobody could detect what you're talking about. And all these church fathers from the ordinary language of the text of the

01:00:05

Bible understood the eternal begotten doctrine in a different way than the Bible. Then, fortunately, so now look at the shift in his argumentation.

01:00:13

The point of what he's trying to get at now, I think rhetorically, is to show that Dr. Craig disagrees with all these other people.

01:00:20

And so, look, the Bible is unclear, which is, you know, again, which caters to the Muslim argument that it's been corrupted.

01:00:27

And of course, do you want to clarify your Bible, then read it in light of the Quran, which is probably what he would would argue.

01:00:33

Yeah, I got that right, I think. Yeah. And, you know, so I think he's trying to at this point, because he hasn't really attacked the doctrine of the

01:00:41

Trinity as incoherent. He's trying to get some mileage out of the disagreement between Craig and the church fathers and all that.

01:00:48

But that doesn't really amount to proving the doctrine of the Trinity is incoherent. Just to show that the

01:00:54

Bible, let's say, is ambiguous or vague or whatever adjective you want to use.

01:01:00

The Bible could be unclear, it could be vague, and the doctrine still be coherent. Correct.

01:01:06

Right. Now, I don't think the Bible is unclear. I'm just saying hijab is not doing what he thinks he's doing here.

01:01:13

Yeah. And by raising your voice, it doesn't help either. Doesn't mean you're more right. I said the other day, yeah, on another show,

01:01:21

I was talking about hijab's method and I was saying it reminded me,

01:01:26

I read a long time ago, the story of a minister. He wrote out a manuscript of what he intended to preach and he wanted his wife to look at it and just tell him if it's clear so that he can deliver a very compelling sermon.

01:01:42

And she read over it. She left some marks, you know, good point. Amen and so forth. And then at one point she says, your point here is weak.

01:01:53

So shout louder. And so the idea is in order to compensate for the weakness of the argument, you need to do something in order to drive the point, at least home to weaker minds.

01:02:08

Right. And I think that hijab has this philosophy, but it's running rampant.

01:02:14

It's not just here and there. You know, it's like all the time. This guy's just always ramping it up.

01:02:20

Which to me is just him, him, him compensating for what he knows is a weak argument. Good point.

01:02:27

Encrypted text. It's a text that nobody can access for 17 years. And so William Lane Gray comes or a royal comes or somebody else comes and tells us what it's meant to be.

01:02:34

This is a preposterous. This is another problem. You're adding layers of problems to Christianity. You're adding layers of issues and complications for Christianity.

01:02:41

Now you are talking about what we're talking about. This is part of the coherence of the Trinity, because most

01:02:46

Trinitarian models, as you know, have inside of it or embedded into it, this idea that the sun is eternally begotten.

01:02:52

You consider that to be a subordinationist position. What I'm saying to you is if it's a subordinationist position, then the Trinity is incoherent on many different grounds.

01:03:00

For example, when we talked about Aquinas, I agree with your assessment of Aquinas. That is, if you take the is of identification, that the father is

01:03:06

God and the son is God, therefore the father is the son. The logical law of identification, the law of identification would be contravened.

01:03:14

So I agree with you. This is at the heart of the coherence of the Trinity. You'd have to say, well, maybe half of the Christians of the world are believing in an incoherent

01:03:21

Trinitarian doctrine. No problem. Mimi and you both agree. We have to acknowledge that not all Christians believe in the model of William Lane Craig.

01:03:26

In fact, I think seldomly anyone does. So this is the reason why I mentioned the point, but we will go to the heart of Dr.

01:03:32

William Lane Craig's model of the Trinity and what will follow, because I do have my arguments against that, and I will present them to Dr.

01:03:39

Craig. And I'm pretty sure he will not be able to answer them in any coherent fashion. And he has not done any service to Christianity.

01:03:45

This is not Christian apologetics. This is Christian capitulation. He's capitulated to the Muslim argument. Now he's grandstanding towards the end, right?

01:03:53

Is it really easy to poke, adding the poking at Dr. Craig with not actually addressing the main points that he was bringing up.

01:04:01

And notice he's admitting he hasn't yet levied an argument against the coherence of the Trinity. Now I'll get into it.

01:04:07

Now, I don't think he gets into it just yet either. But he's at least saying he hasn't done so thus far.

01:04:15

Right, right. Almost 50 seconds over. So we'll go two minutes, 50 seconds for Dr. Craig and his response.

01:04:20

Okay. Well, I'm not capitulating to anyone, Mr. Hijab. I am defending the doctrine of the

01:04:26

Trinity that is taught in the New Testament. And I am under no obligation to defend later doctrines taught in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas or others.

01:04:36

I did mention the names of certain church fathers that held to the New Testament doctrine. Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, for example.

01:04:46

So it's simply not true that from the beginning, Christian theologians have affirmed these inter -Trinitarian processions.

01:04:54

This arises somewhat later in the Logos Christology of the Greek apologists, to repeat myself. Now you have exactly the same sort of doctrinal evolution within Islam.

01:05:04

You yourself know that as a Sunni, you disagree with Muslims belonging to other schools with respect to doctrines like Tawhid or the uncreatedness of the

01:05:16

Qur 'an, is the Qur 'an a creator? Would you say, Anthony, that Muhammad is guilty of the very thing that he's accusing

01:05:22

Dr. Craig on with respect to the evolution of the theology and so forth?

01:05:29

Yeah, I mean, well, so first of all, there has been debate among Muslims. That's undeniable.

01:05:37

In fact, the current position, well, the position of Muhammad Hijab isn't what was the dominant position in the 8th to 10th centuries, for example, nor is

01:05:48

Hijab's position the dominant view among Muslims today. So his position is officially known as the

01:05:55

Athari Creed or Akhita. Athari is another way of referring to the

01:06:02

Salafi Creed, which affirms for Allah not only attributes that are distinguishable from his essence and from each other, but also anthropomorphic qualities like eyes, ears, hands, feet, and so forth.

01:06:19

That's his position. It's not the position, I would say, of the majority of Sunni Muslims, though it's not a underrepresented position.

01:06:28

It's well represented. There's a lot of people who hold that. It's the dominant view in, I would say,

01:06:33

Saudi Arabia, for example. But there have been other views, and some

01:06:40

Muslims have rejected lock, stock, and barrel that Allah has attributes, and they've done this in any number of ways.

01:06:46

There's different schools of thought even within that. And then there are the traditional Ashari, so not

01:06:52

Athari, but Ashari theologians who would say that Allah has attributes, but not anthropomorphic qualities.

01:06:58

So he has qualities like seeing, hearing, living, and so forth. And so there are these differences.

01:07:06

And what's interesting, though, is that when you look at the debates that have taken place between these different schools of thought, they've all charged each other with being heretics, and even have violently persecuted one another.

01:07:21

But interestingly enough, the people on the other side from hijab, the

01:07:26

Asharis and the Mu'tazili, they have charged his position with being a form of polytheism, because it affirms for Allah really real separable attributes.

01:07:41

He's made up of parts. So Allah's not ultimately or absolutely one, according to Muhammad hijab.

01:07:48

He's a composite being. Remember, this is actually very interesting, because remember earlier,

01:07:53

Dr. Craig is talking about getting the calm cosmological argument from Islamic theologians and developing this.

01:08:01

And for that reason, a lot of Muslims have followed his stuff. Well, at the heart of the cosmological argument is the observation that composite things are, you know, have a prior cause.

01:08:15

A composite being is what it is by virtue of it being in composition, right?

01:08:21

So there has to be something prior to the parts that caused their arrangement.

01:08:29

And so for Muhammad hijab to believe that Allah is a composite being means that he's not the one who's responsible for causing everything.

01:08:39

So remember when he was criticizing Craig, you're affirming the doctrine of the Quran that Allah is not contingent.

01:08:45

He's an independent being and so forth. No, if your God is composite, he's not any of those things. So anyway, so whatever that's worth.

01:08:53

But, you know, so there are all these issues in Islam. And what was the original main point that you were asking about?

01:09:02

Not just are these differences, but you said something else. It was well,

01:09:07

I was saying, is that is that a legitimate point to bring up? I don't remember the main point.

01:09:13

Yeah, because if you're going to if you're going to claim that Dr. Craig is a polytheist or something like that, well, you have to be sure that your position doesn't fall prey to that criticism.

01:09:25

And it certainly does. OK. All right. Thank you for that. ...product or is it something that is co -eternal, uncreated and necessary alongside

01:09:34

God? These are doctrines that develop later in Islam and you are free to affirm or reject them.

01:09:42

And there's great controversy among Islamic theologians on these doctrines. So the fact that Christians take a wide variety of views on the

01:09:50

Trinity is unremarkable. It's insignificant, so long as the doctrine of the

01:09:56

Trinity that is found in the pages of the New Testament is coherent and is taught there.

01:10:02

And I now await your demonstration that this is an incoherent doctrine. All right,

01:10:08

Mohammed, when you're ready. Yeah, so the difference between Muslims and Christians in this regard is that creedally and theologically,

01:10:14

Muslims have disagreed on the whatness of God, meaning how is God the way he is? Muslims have never disagreed on the wholeness of God.

01:10:21

Who is God in the first place? How do we understand who God is? Is God one, three? Is it tritheism?

01:10:26

Is it is it Sebalianism? Is it modalism? These kinds of issues have never arisen in Islam. All Muslims, the martazila, the asha 'ira, the hanabila, the athariya, this one, that one, all of the shia, all of them agree that there's one

01:10:39

God. So this is a failure. If you want to compare the idea that, you know, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit and the

01:10:45

Holy Spirit was only granted co -eternal status in that full sense somewhere in the fourth century. There's no equivalent in Islam.

01:10:50

I don't even think there's much equivalent in many other religions. This is the first point. Now, you said you're awaited.

01:10:56

I just want to say something really quickly. I notice Random Theology has said it doesn't follow logically that a composite being has to have an external cause.

01:11:04

I should underscore here whatever my perspective is on that, whether I agree or disagree, that the people he mentions here have refuted that.

01:11:15

My observation was that this is how Islamic philosophy proceeded on that assumption.

01:11:21

And that's at the heart of the Kalam cosmological argument, at least as it was classically formulated by the

01:11:26

Islamic philosophers. I just heard Hijab the other day. I just happened to randomly be going through something on YouTube, and I saw that he debated

01:11:34

Edward Tabash. And it caught my attention, of course, because Dr. Bonson debated Tabash decades ago, almost 30 years ago,

01:11:41

I think it was now. Almost 30 years ago. And I thought, oh, what's old Eddie up to these days?

01:11:47

And so I looked at it and I watched like five minutes of Hijab's presentation, and he was making the claim that composite beings are contingent beings.

01:11:57

That was the heart of his argument. Okay, thank you for that. You're awaiting my demonstration.

01:12:05

You don't need to await my demonstration. You have people like Scott Williams, who have already demonstrated this, that you believe that there are three wills of the

01:12:11

Trinity. You believe that the Father has a will, which is distinct from the Son, and you believe that the Son has a will, which is distinct from the Holy Spirit, and they all have wills that are distinct from each other.

01:12:18

My question to you is just one for now. How do you establish, and this is the question of Scott Williams in the peer -reviewed academic paper, how do you establish necessary agreement such that those three persons of the

01:12:30

Trinity can never disagree? This is my first question for you to get the ball rolling. How many wills does the

01:12:36

Triune God have? One. One will. So he's incorrect to say that the

01:12:44

Father has a will, the Son has a will, the Holy Spirit has a will. Those are three separate wills? Who? I think

01:12:50

Muhammad brought that up. Yeah, and Dr. Craig is going to agree with that as a social primitarian.

01:12:57

But you would disagree with him? Right. Okay, all right. So you'd say that the Triune God has one will?

01:13:04

Right. And there are no three distinct wills amongst the persons? Yeah, quickly, let me just, so let me give you an example or some rationale for this.

01:13:11

So will is a property of nature. So we think that Christ, as an incarnate person, has two natures and two wills.

01:13:23

But he's not two persons, right? That shows of necessity that will is a property of nature.

01:13:29

If we're going to affirm an orthodox Christology, otherwise Christ would be two persons. If he has two wills, then he would be two persons, which would be

01:13:37

Nestorianism, which is contrascriptural, contrapredal, historical, and so forth.

01:13:44

So will is a property of nature. Well, the nature of the persons is one.

01:13:50

The three persons share one divine nature. So there's one will that is the will of Father, Son, and Spirit.

01:13:57

Now, each person is personally distinct. And so in the outworking of the operations of the members of the

01:14:08

Trinity, each person acts from his own person in a way that, how do

01:14:16

I put it? So each person exercises the divine will in accordance with his own personal character, but it's still one will.

01:14:26

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. You say that Muslim theologians don't disagree about the wholeness of God.

01:14:39

Well, of course, it's true that Islam is a monotheistic religion. And in the same way, Christians agree on Trinitarianism.

01:14:47

But the amount of disagreement about the nature of God and his attributes and so forth is just as diverse in Islam as in Christianity.

01:14:54

As for the Holy Spirit, you don't need to wait until the fourth century for him to be granted full divine status.

01:15:00

That occurs in the New Testament itself, as I've already stated. Now, with respect to the three wills,

01:15:06

I think that this follows from divine perfection. You have three perfect persons who are equal in goodness, omnipotence, and omniscience.

01:15:17

And therefore, it's perfectly plausible that they would always agree and would not come into disharmony with each other.

01:15:23

So this is a Christian postulate that I think is perfectly reasonable. Muhammad, when you're ready.

01:15:31

Okay, you've just said it's perfectly reasonable, but you've offered absolutely zero justification. So here's my question.

01:15:37

If it's necessary agreement, that is to say, and you know this, you've written books on the kalam, cosmological arguments, you know the modal distinctions.

01:15:43

So he says he hasn't offered a justification, but his justification is really in grappling with the biblical data that Muhammad has failed to bring up.

01:15:52

So I think the way, if he understands his view as being biblical, then that's the view that Dr.

01:15:59

Craig would say is logically coherent, and Muhammad Hijab has not, we haven't gotten there at all.

01:16:05

And Dr. Craig did give a rationale for this, whether he's right or wrong, he did give a rationale.

01:16:12

He said, if you've got three perfect persons who are all omniscient, omnibenevolent, and so forth, then it's entirely reasonable to say that every decision of the one would be the same as that of the others.

01:16:29

And so he's got to actually refute Dr. Craig instead of just pretending that he didn't say more than he's asking for.

01:16:39

Okay. If it's necessary agreement, that means it's impossible for them not to disagree. And for you to say it's impossible, well, as you know, there's logical impossibility and there's metaphysical impossibility.

01:16:48

My question to you is, how do you establish the impossibility of disagreement? This is the question of Scott Williams, it's not just my question, it's the question posed in academic papers.

01:16:57

Richard Swinburne tried to answer this question, Swinburne tried to answer this question, and he said that it's got to do with the relationships between the father and the son, yes, and that the father has a love relationship with the son and obedience relationship.

01:17:09

These are the lengths that theologians of the highest eminence and of the top caliber in Christianity have to reach to try and explain through the three -wheel model, which is a heresy, once again, because you've adopted many heretical positions, it's a heresy, let's be honest and say, this three -wheel model, that you now have to explain why there is necessary agreement.

01:17:28

So you have yet to demonstrate to the public. Well, how is it impossible for them to disagree? This is my question.

01:17:35

Now, it's important, I think, to understand in doing theology, the systematic theologian doesn't have to prove everything.

01:17:43

Some things are just theological postulates, and the question would be, is there any good reason to disagree with it?

01:17:49

And I see no reason to think that the idea of three persons in one being who always act in harmony with one another is a difficult or incoherent idea.

01:18:00

Now, again, to repeat myself, I did give an argument for this from the divine perfection.

01:18:05

You have three perfect persons in goodness, in omnipotence, in omniscience.

01:18:11

And from that, I think it's very reasonable to think that these three persons would always act in harmony rather than disagree.

01:18:18

This is relevant as well to the Christian doctrine of perichoresis, which says that among the three persons of the

01:18:24

Trinity, there is a complete interpenetration of mutual love, knowledge, and will.

01:18:30

So that what the father loves, the son and the spirit love. What the son knows, the father and the spirit know.

01:18:35

What the spirit wills, the father and the son will. And this doctrine of perichoresis, I find to be a very attractive concept of the inter -Trinitarian life of God.

01:18:47

And that would, again, provide good grounds for thinking that these three persons always act harmoniously.

01:18:55

Mahmoud, when you're ready. Okay, so you said divine perfection. This is the key term that you've used. But in other contexts, you've accepted that there has to be a level of arbitrariness in God's decision -making.

01:19:05

Otherwise, it would lead to necessitarianism and moral collapse. But if it was one divine perfection that existed within each of the wills, that would mean to say that all of them really don't have a choice in the matter, in which case

01:19:16

God doesn't have will. That's the first argument. The second argument is the following. You've made this comparison with God, with Cerebus, the three -headed dog.

01:19:25

And the fact that he has a... You know he got that prop for the occasion.

01:19:32

He ordered that on Amazon. Listen, Amazon, I'm debating willingly, Craig. I need a three -headed dog.

01:19:40

I don't even know you could buy those things. That is awesome. He didn't know either until he was going to debate

01:19:47

Craig. And then he found out. He was sent the debate

01:19:52

William Lane Craig care package, which I'm going to continue.

01:20:05

Ah, you're cutting out on me. I mean, if you can see the camera, this is even...

01:20:12

Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you now. I think you look like you froze again.

01:20:20

Okay, one body and three heads. You know, the same thing. It's one body and three different heads. My question to you is as follows.

01:20:28

If you have Siamese twins, and you've been asked this once again before by Snyder and period journals.

01:20:33

If you have a joint twin, person A, person B, would you consider that to be one person? Or would you consider that to be two people?

01:20:39

This is my question. All right. I certainly think that God has contingent properties, and that what

01:20:47

God wills, he wills contingently in many cases. For example, the will to create the world is a free decision by God, which is freely willed.

01:20:56

So I'm not maintaining at all that everything about God is necessary, and that he does nothing contingently.

01:21:04

My claim is simply that given this perichoretic interpenetration of the persons of the Trinity, they always act in harmony with one another.

01:21:13

Now, the example I used of Kerberos, Mr. Hijab, I think has been greatly misunderstood.

01:21:18

That is not intended to be an analogy to the Trinity. That was meant to be a springboard for thinking about what it means to be three persons in one being.

01:21:28

And so I thought of this mythical dog in the labors of Hercules guarding the gates of Hades, which has three heads, so presumably three brains, so three states of consciousness of what it's like to be a dog.

01:21:40

And then based on that, I endowed them with self -consciousness and personhood. And my position would be that you have, in that case, three persons in one being.

01:21:50

And it would be similar with the Siamese twins or triplets. You have three brains, three centers of self -consciousness, and so three persons.

01:21:59

Now, in the case of God, he doesn't have a physical body. So what I argue there is that God is an immaterial, spiritual substance, or soul, who is so richly endowed with cognitive faculties that he has three sets of cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personhood.

01:22:19

And therefore, there are in God three centers of self -consciousness. Would you agree with that definition from your perspective,

01:22:26

Anthony? No. But Hijab is obligated to deal with what

01:22:33

Craig is saying, and I don't think he's doing so. And Dr. Craig keeps coming back to his explanation, and Hijab just keeps repeating his argument.

01:22:46

So in terms of debate, he's not doing what he should be doing. But I think this is where Dr.

01:22:52

Craig's experience comes in. I mean, he's bringing it back continuously to the main point. Whether you disagree with or agree with Dr.

01:23:00

Craig, but from a point of strategy, he knows how to bring things back to the main focus point of the discussion.

01:23:07

But Muhammad Hijab just doesn't seem to get there. I do wish this was a more formal debate, at least with extended, at least partially extended.

01:23:19

Like you could have the three minute, three minute, or two minute, two minute at some point. But after, it seems to me, each person has been able to get enough out there and are able to sustain a point.

01:23:34

The way that it's proceeding, I think it's kind of rough as far as that goes.

01:23:41

But there's no question in terms of just scoring a debate. Dr. Craig is prevailing here, and it's not going to change the rest of the debate.

01:23:54

I don't know, what do we got left? Like 30 more minutes. Yeah, that's not going to change. So I don't know if we'll be able to do the whole thing.

01:24:03

I would love to. However, reality check, it's 1027 where I am, and I got to wake up early to go to work.

01:24:11

And we might be getting a hurricane in the morning. So there's one. You too? Are you talking about me? Well, you are more than I am.

01:24:19

I'm all the way out in like the Raleigh area. And I was going to tell you when the show started, don't be surprised if my internet goes out, because sometimes when the water,

01:24:29

I'm in my garage, when the water comes in here, it knocks the power out. And I've taken some steps to try and keep water from coming in here.

01:24:37

And I'm hoping to find out that I was successful. But I heard the rain pouring a little bit ago.

01:24:43

Okay. Well, I know for a fact that we won't be able to finish the whole thing. But I think what we've addressed so far,

01:24:49

I think kind of summarizes most of what's happening. And it's the idea that while we can disagree with Dr.

01:24:57

Craig on the finer points of the theology, in terms of debate, I think, William, like you said, Dr. Craig is prevailing and Muhammad is just not dealing with the main issue.

01:25:08

So, but we can still continue for a little bit. And then how about this? How about we're at one hour and 25 minutes?

01:25:14

How about we go to 1 .30 and then we start wrapping things up? Is that okay? Okay. Sounds good to me. Alrighty.

01:25:20

And I just want to thank you. I know I won't forget when we close off, but thank you so much for coming on. I very much,

01:25:25

I always appreciate your comments and your observations. And I know folks are finding it helpful.

01:25:31

So thank you. And that would be a model of what it is to talk of God as an immaterial, tripersonal being.

01:25:41

Muhammad, you've got 10 seconds. Yeah. Were you trying to hop in there? I was just laughing because while Dr.

01:25:47

Craig was speaking, hijab was putting the dog up again. It's like, I missed it.

01:25:53

I don't know if he was doing it on purpose or just admiring his prop. Three centers of self -consciousness.

01:25:59

And that would be a model of what it is to talk of God as an immaterial, tripersonal being.

01:26:06

He's like playing with it. What about the dog? What about the dog, Dr. Craig? You said this was the

01:26:11

Trinity. The little dog's popping its head up. That's awesome. Muhammad, you've got 10 seconds.

01:26:19

Yeah. You say that this is not an analogy, but that's exactly what you write in your article. You say perhaps we can get a start at this question by means of an analogy.

01:26:28

That's what hijab is. That's a springboard to thinking about it. Dr. Craig, let's let Muhammad finish his thought here. I understand.

01:26:33

But you denied in your response there that this was an analogy. And you've written in your written work that this is perhaps we can get a start at this question by means of an analogy.

01:26:43

And then you mentioned, Sebaris, the analogy. So the point is this. I know it's difficult. I know it's very embarrassing. I'm sorry to say.

01:26:49

Comparing God to a dog anyway, we wouldn't compare a prophet to a God. But let's say for the sake of argument, we're analogizing

01:26:54

God with a dog. Now, I asked you a question, which is that if you have a conjoined twin, Islamist twins, one of them commits murder, we're going to put both of them in prison.

01:27:01

Imagine Dr. Craig had a toy that he would use to illustrate something against Islam. And they're warring toys.

01:27:09

It's like these two action figures. That would be... I don't know if you've seen some of these things on these

01:27:17

TikTok shorts or whatever, where they've got these little dolls that you can move the pieces.

01:27:26

And you'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about. But it's almost like those little robot. I don't know if you've seen these where they create these remote controls.

01:27:34

Yeah, they fight. They're like robot wars. Yeah, yeah. So something like that. We could see if we could set something up,

01:27:40

I'm sure. Hijab's already got a little bit of advanced experience, it looks like, with his prop.

01:27:46

But it's interesting as an aside, he talked about two conjoined twins.

01:27:53

As far as being an argument against the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, this is irrelevant. But it is an interesting thought.

01:28:00

I don't know if you thought about it when he says if you have two conjoined twins and one commits murder, do you send both of them to jail?

01:28:08

Just interesting thought. How would you answer that? I don't know. That's what I'm saying. That's what

01:28:14

I'm saying. How do you handle a situation like that? You just put one's behind bars and the other one's on the other side.

01:28:24

I don't know. Yeah, okay. This dog here can slick this dog.

01:28:31

This here can bite this dog. These are three different centers of consciousness. Why are we considering this to be one dog? Only because it has overlapping bodies.

01:28:37

This is a question that was posed to you in the academic literature. We've heard your response. I have to say it's a very insufficient and unsatisfactory response.

01:28:44

Absolutely unsatisfactory. This is your model of the Trinity. I think this could be debunked by children with all due respect. This is your model of the

01:28:49

Trinity. Now going to the part of you have to now maintain that God is made out of parts. And you've said this, clearly you have the view that there are parts of God.

01:28:59

No problem. My question to you is this, who created the universe? Did the father create the universe? Did the son create the universe? Or did the

01:29:04

Holy Spirit create the universe? Who is responsible for the creation of the universe? Now in your model, you cannot actually say that the father created the universe in a full sense.

01:29:13

If you do say that, then you can't say that the son created the universe in a full sense. And if you say that, you can't say the Holy Spirit because you can't have two subjects operating on one object and creating it and being responsible in a full sense.

01:29:24

I can't go to the gym and pump 100 kilograms by myself as well as my friend over here or William Lane Craig doing the same thing.

01:29:32

It could be shared. But then if it's shared, then you've got one third God. So can you clarify? Do you believe that the father is one third responsible for the creation of the universe?

01:29:39

Or do you believe in the logical contradiction that you have two subjects that are fully responsible for the creation of the universe?

01:29:45

Which one do you believe? I gave you an extra 20 seconds for the interruption, but Dr. Craig - We'll let Dr. Craig respond.

01:29:51

And then I want to hear your thoughts and you answering that question from your perspective. And then we'll wrap things up there because I'm sure folks would be interested in that.

01:29:58

Turn two minutes. Causal overdetermination is not incoherent, Mr. Hijab. Imagine a candle being lit by two simultaneous matches, each of which is sufficient to illuminate the candle.

01:30:12

In the case of the Trinity, the classical Christian doctrine is in Latin, opera ad extra sunt in divisa, that the operations of the

01:30:21

Trinity toward the external world are undivided and therefore undertaken by all three persons at once.

01:30:29

Now, I don't agree with that doctrine in every case. I think that leads to real problems. But I think that is very plausible with respect to the doctrine of creation, that the three persons act in concert with each other to create the world.

01:30:44

So they're all responsible for the creation. And in the New Testament, creation is ascribed both to the father and to the son.

01:30:54

Okay. We're going to stop there. Okay. And let's get us back on the screen, a full screen.

01:31:01

So from your perspective, and I know Dr. Craig answered, and I think we would agree that creation is an act of the all three persons, but can you explain what does that look like?

01:31:13

How would we explain that to someone who demands an answer to this question as though this is a problem for Trinitarian theology?

01:31:19

Yeah. So number one, I would say this. So Dr. Craig, so the argument was levied to Dr.

01:31:25

Craig in light of his model, which isn't that. So I thought it was interesting that now

01:31:31

Dr. Craig sort of falls back on the standard doctrine to answer this, but then says,

01:31:36

I think there are other problems with it. He doesn't give those. I'm not saying he doesn't have what he thinks are arguments against it, but it's still interesting that he's falling back on the

01:31:45

Orthodox doctrine. So the Orthodox doctrine just is that the work of the

01:31:51

Trinity ad extra is a work of, it's, well, the doctrine isn't merely that the three persons act in harmony, but that they act as one agent.

01:32:02

All acts ad extra are acts of the three persons acting indivisibly.

01:32:10

Everything terminating on the creature is an act of the undivided

01:32:16

Trinity. So that the creation of the world is an act of the father, son, and spirit. Even the incarnation of Christ is an act of all three persons.

01:32:26

Now, the way this is explained, in fact, let me give a book recommendation really quick here. Adonis Vidu wrote a book.

01:32:33

I can't remember the exact title, but it's something like the same God works all things or something like that.

01:32:39

And he's defending the classical doctrine of what Dr. Craig referred to as, and I can't remember the exact Latin phrase, opera ad extra indivisa sunt, or something like that.

01:32:53

But in the case of the incarnation, for example, we would say that there's a, because what happens is people will say something like, if you say that all the acts of God ad extra are the acts of all three persons, well, did all three persons become incarnate?

01:33:12

And of course not. So how do we answer that? Well, there's a difference between action and state.

01:33:21

The act of Christ being clothed is an act of all three persons.

01:33:26

The being clothed is what happens to the son, right? So if you look at scripture, normally people think of the incarnation as a work of the spirit.

01:33:39

The spirit came upon Mary, causing her to conceive. And we get that from Matthew one, we get it, especially from Luke one, right?

01:33:46

The spirit is the one who came upon Mary, causing her to conceive Jesus. But you can look at other passages and see that Jesus himself was just as active in this.

01:33:56

In Philippians two, it says, although existing in the form of God, he did not consider that equality something to be used to his own advantage, but humbled himself taking the form of a servant and being found in the likeness of men.

01:34:10

He humbled himself, even the point of death, death on a cross. So here the son is said to be the one who's taking on this human nature.

01:34:18

It's active in Greek. Moreover, if you look at Hebrews 10, it quotes Psalm 40, where Jesus says, sacrifice an offering you didn't desire, a body you prepared for me.

01:34:30

So here he says, the father is the one who prepared the body for him. So this is the classical

01:34:36

Christian doctrine that the actions or operations of the persons add extra.

01:34:43

It's not as if one is an action of the father, another of the son, another of the spirit, an act of all three persons.

01:34:49

And so that being the case, there's, it makes no sense on the classical doctrine for hijab to say the father's doing a third of the action, the son is doing a third of the action, the spirit, a third of the action.

01:35:03

No, the action is, it's a single action. It's a single willing.

01:35:09

It's the willing of three persons, but it's a single will and operation. So that just doesn't work as a criticism against the

01:35:17

Orthodox doctrine. But now Dr. Craig said, well, no, these are three wills, but you can have more than one will bringing about the same effect without -

01:35:25

Is there a candle analogy, right? Do you think that would be a good analogy to make his point? Yeah, I mean, it's true as far as this goes.

01:35:32

So he says that you could take, you could light another, you could light a candle with one match or you can light it with two matches.

01:35:42

And, you know, you don't say was 50 % of it one match and 50 % of it the other match.

01:35:48

It's just one flame that lit the other match. And I think Hijab replies to this by saying, no, then you'll have a bigger flame.

01:35:56

Now, even if that's true, so what? Maybe we have a bigger universe than we would have had.

01:36:02

I don't know, but I'm not, that's facetious, but it isn't true.

01:36:07

If you take two matches and light a candle, you get the same size flame as if you just used one match, right?

01:36:14

That's not what determines whether the flame is higher or not. You know, there might be another reason you could have a flame that's burning.

01:36:24

Maybe the match was dipped in kerosene or something. And so it lets off a brighter, you know,

01:36:30

I don't know. Maybe it's made of some different substance. And it's just, but it's not true that this would be due to the fact that two matches are conjoined as the cause.

01:36:41

Sure. Okay. Well, thank you for that. And thank you so much for commenting. I hope folks found this helpful.

01:36:47

Once again, if you appreciate Anthony's thoughts and you want to have more of his content, you should totally check out his

01:36:56

YouTube channel, Anthony Rogers, and check out his debates. He's got countless debates with a wide range of people from different perspectives.

01:37:05

And he's got a lot of Trinity debates. I remember the first time I ever saw you debate was when you had that discussion with that guy, that political commentator guy, what's his name?

01:37:16

Yeah, I always forget his name, but it's Brandon Tatum. Brandon Tatum.

01:37:21

And that was the first time I remember watching that. I was like, damn, it's like you had your little wool hat on and you have drinking a cup of coffee, just destroying this like high profile dude.

01:37:33

It was awesome. You know, it's funny because when you started mentioning debate, I was just, I was thinking personally, you know,

01:37:40

I feel a whole lot different when I'm in a debate. It's like, I feel almost like, you know, over the top.

01:37:46

Oh yeah. He turns his hat around when he's gonna wrestle.

01:37:54

And that's kind of how it feels in debate. So I was in debate mode with Brandon Tatum. And yeah, for what it's worth.

01:38:02

I highly recommend folks, it is a masterclass on, I mean, you didn't have any notes with you.

01:38:07

You just called in and you were interacting with this guy. And it was, it was gold. And it's only like 40 something minutes long.

01:38:14

It's not something terribly long. It's funny to me because, so the short version of this is my friend,

01:38:21

John McRae, who has the channel, what do you mean? He had made some criticisms of Brandon because he made some theological statements.

01:38:27

He's well -known as a political activist and he started making theological statements at one point because of various factors.

01:38:36

And so what do you mean was critiquing him? And then he was challenging him to interact with me, not in a bad way, just saying, hey, will you talk to somebody if I can arrange it?

01:38:43

And Brandon kept saying, no. Well, then one day, what do you mean? John contacted me and said, hey, he's on Instagram live, challenging people to come up on his show.

01:38:52

And I said, well, I don't have Instagram and I'm working right now. I was in my basement, like you say, it was really cold.

01:39:00

I was working on my computer, doing remote work for Ligonier. I was a theological answer person.

01:39:06

So people would write in live and I had to answer questions. And I was like, I don't have Instagram and I'm working right now.

01:39:12

But I did turn it on, I was listening to him and I was so annoyed at what he was saying and how he was just sort of riding roughshod over other

01:39:21

Christians. They were saying true things, but he was able to sort of scuttle everything they said and make it sound good.

01:39:28

And so I was like, I can't take this. And so I just sort of hit the sign up button and I kept pressing accept, accept, accept.

01:39:35

And it gave me some strange nickname on there. Actually has Anthony Rogers with a bunch of numbers after my name.

01:39:41

Anyways, and then I thought he's not gonna let me on even if I get in because there's probably 100 people trying to get on.

01:39:48

So I was surprised that I got on. And then I was surprised that he kept talking to me for like 40 minutes.

01:39:53

I would have gotten rid of me after five if I were him. And so in the debate,

01:39:59

I was talking fast and I was also saying things to keep him happy. So like I was saying,

01:40:05

I appreciate that you're willing to, I would throw in things like that because that makes it, they feel uncomfortable if they then turn around and cancel you, right?

01:40:16

Well, I just put the link in the comments there. Highly recommend. I guarantee that if you listen to that, you're gonna really enjoy it and be edified by it.

01:40:25

And you, if you haven't subscribed to his channel, it will make you wanna go and listen to more of his stuff. He's got some great stuff.

01:40:32

And what I appreciate about your channel, Anthony, is that you don't do a lot of short form stuff.

01:40:39

You look at the videos like three hours, three and a half hours. So if you're really looking for some meat, like something to listen to while you're driving or you're doing housework, you could consume hours and hours worth of material on your channel.

01:40:53

And so I think folks will be blessed by that content. All right, well, thank you so much everyone for listening in.

01:41:01

Once again, I am Eli Ayala. My guest here is Anthony Rogers. And we just offered a review on most of the debate between William Lane Craig and Mohammed Hijab.

01:41:14

And I'm excited to have you on again in the future. I'm sure we will get together and do something.

01:41:21

And yeah, so thank you so much guys for listening in. Until next time, take care and God bless.

01:41:27

Bye -bye. Oh, by the way, before I sign off, someone put something

01:41:33

I wanted to share on the screen that I thought was funny. Hopefully I could find it. We're still alive, so that's okay.

01:41:40

That's okay. Someone said, oh, come on, I got to find it. It was good. It was good.

01:41:48

There we go. I found it there. Can you hide your Geisler's book, Chosen But Free? Not good advertising.

01:41:54

I think it's right behind you, Anthony. Oh, me? Yeah, you got the Chosen But Free somewhere there.

01:42:01

If you notice, it's after Gordon Clark's Doctrine of Predestination, Lorraine Bettner, two copies of it,

01:42:12

R .C. Sproul's After Darkness, his Chosen By God. And it's also right on the other side of John Gill's The Cause of God and Truth, which is an extensive defense of Calvinism.

01:42:25

Geisler's outnumbered. He's stuck in the middle there. In fact, I've got two copies of Gill's Cause of God and Truth.

01:42:32

Then I've got Hunt v. White on Calvinism, and then I've got

01:42:37

Spurgeon, Custance, Huckama. It goes on and on.

01:42:43

I mean, he's not in company that he would appreciate. I thought that was awesome.

01:42:52

All right. Well, that's an awkward way to end the show, but I thought that was funny. All right, guys.