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

Opening the Debate Review and Framing the Trinity Question

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. Recently on Capturing Christianity there was a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and a Muslim apologist, Mohamed Hijab, and they debated the topic, is the Trinity logically coherent?

And so I thought it was very interesting. 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 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. 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 YouTube channel and subscribe.

In my opinion, Anthony Rogers is one of the best defenders of the Trinity. He's got many debates on the topic, and I think you'll find those to be an invaluable resource. 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, you know, 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.

So I want to kind of troubleshoot, and it takes forever, so we'll maybe reschedule or something like that until I get it figured out. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but that's what we're going to be doing today.

Is the Trinity logically coherent? Now, to set the context, as you guys know, we often cover presuppositional apologetics on this channel. The debate proposition is a proposition that is an attempt at an internal critique of the Christian worldview, and so as Christians, we affirm, obviously, that the Christian worldview is logically coherent, obviously, 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 Trinity.

So this is what we're going to be discussing, and I'm looking forward to hearing Anthony's thoughts on that. Now, just real quick, for those interested in some of the things that I'm involved in apart from the show here, I'll be visiting the Southern, I think it's Southeastern Seminary, Southern Eastern South, I don't remember.

There's a conference there, 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.

So hopefully we'll get some interesting discussions there. But let's get all that aside. Hopefully things won't mess up, and so we want to make good use of our time here. So Anthony, welcome to the show.

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. 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.

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

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

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

And fact of the matter is, he's right, and that's not me being critical of Craig. Craig actually admits this. Craig will come right out and say, you're absolutely right. And so, a lot of it is taken up with that sort of thing.

And so, in terms of evaluating how well Hijab did, as far as this issue goes, the extent to which he spends time saying 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 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. And when it comes to going after Craig's view, he doesn't seem to be really familiar with the issues.

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.

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

And so, 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.

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

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 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, 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.

Yeah, absolutely.

Muhammad Hijab is an interesting character. I actually was able to meet Muhammad a while back. We spoke a little bit in the parking lot of a university for about 10, maybe 15 minutes, after his debate with David Wood.

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, 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.

Different person behind the scenes than.

He is when he's on stage. It's funny because I've heard that from other people, 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 a bit of an act, or maybe it's just what he thinks he needs to do in order to convey his point.

Right. Maybe do it in a more theatrical way, which he's well known for. He's very theatrical. 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 Dawa scene, especially in Hyde Park or Speaker's Corner, and we went there, and all those guys were in the hills somewhere.

So, that, you know, I guess I need to look around in America, and I got a better chance of running into Muhammad Hijab. There you go. All right, well, let's.

Jump right in. I've decided to listen to, we're gonna listen to it 1 .5, 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, 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. As you know, I do this by myself, so if there's a problem, I have to stop and evaluate it.

So hopefully that's not something I have to do here, but we are gonna be listening to it 1 .5, and we're gonna be listening from the beginning, and just let it play, and then we'll stop in the middle, and then we'll have Anthony comment, or we'll see how the discussion goes from there, okay?

So let's get started. This is right here in Dr. Craig's opening statement, so we'll begin right now, and if there's a spot 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, okay?

All right, let's get this up here. Boom, all right.

Miracles or seeking evidence for God's existence. Positions on the Trinity.

I've had a deep interest in Islamic philosophy and theology. I was able to resuscitate the ancient cosmological argument, which is now once again at center stage. And as a result, countless Muslims all over the world are following reasonable faith and are appreciative of the work that we're doing.

So when I went on to Germany to do my second doctorate in theology, it was only natural that I would choose Islam as my area of specialization, and it was during that time that I worked through the entirety of the Qur 'an and studied Islamic theology and history.

And as I read the Qur 'an, I was surprised by the evident misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity that I found there. For example, in Surah 5, 116, 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?

And Jesus replies, I could never have claimed such a thing. Indeed, such a caricature of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a blasphemous.

Monstrosity. So I want to stop here real quick. So this often comes up, and I often hear Muslims say, oh, the Qur 'an is not even talking about the Trinity. What do you say about it? 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 Qur 'an is not inspired by God?

It misunderstands, you know, the doctrine of the 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?

Yeah, absolutely. Now, of course, Muslims are used to hearing this. It's not like this is a sophisticated idea to arrive at. You read the Qur 'an, 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. They've said, no, it's not talking about the Trinity in these verses. And Muhammad Hijab is going to say that. Now, Dr. 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. 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 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. And so that's the natural impression Christians have gotten from reading this.

And that's what many 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 Trinity in those places. It's rather attacking those Christians who included Mary in the worship that belongs to the one 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. 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, I was looking over there because I was thinking, ah, I forgot to grab, there's a book on the shelf.

It's the Sira of Muhammad. So it's called Surat Rasool Allah, which means the life of Muhammad or the life of the prophet. And that's the earliest biography of Muhammad. It's a recension of a work by a Muslim is providing a recension of an earlier work.

And in that, it talks about a delegation of Christians who were from Najran, which is in Southern Arabia. During the time of Muhammad, he was sending out his preachers, and they were conveying his revelations.

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. When the Christians of Najran went up, they asked him why, for example, in the 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, 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, Muslims will say it's just the plural of majesty. But that's not what Muhammad says in the Sira literature that says that.

I do apologize. But do you think that's a good escape hatch when they say, okay, the Quran is not speaking about the Trinity, they're speaking about these other groups? Is that a legitimate escape hatch?

That's where I'm going. Yeah, that's where I'm going with this is, so this is the Sira literature, this is their literature. 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. And when the Sira describes what the Najrani Christians believed about the Trinity, they say that God is God, Jesus, and Mary.

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

And again, this isn't the only verse of the Quran that says this. So, and then besides that, it would be problematic. There's two other issues here. It'd be problematic to say the Quran is only addressing the idiosyncrasies of some small group of...

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 Trinity. But then secondly, if it were the case that the Quran doesn't really teach this, then why is it that all Muslims have this inability to accept our definition of the 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. So... That's excellent, that's an.

Excellent point, yeah. And if they are not addressing the Trinity, it seemed, it would be like equivalent to like, you know, the Quran is making mention of, you know, some obscure like Pentecostal sect instead of addressing what Christians actually believe as kind of a central feature of their doctrine, so.

Right. All right, let's continue on.

Wander Muhammad rejected it if that's what he thought the Trinity taught, but I think that the basic doctrine of the Trinity is actually taught in the pages of the New Testament itself, and it consists of just two fundamental tenets.

First, that there is exactly one God, and second, that there are three persons who are properly called God. Whereby properly, I mean literally, truly, as opposed to metaphorically or hyperbolically. So that's it.

No metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, no theological hair-splitting, this is a simple and straightforward doctrine. God is an immaterial, tri-personal being. 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.

And this is a doctrine which is very confusing and very controversial among Islamic theologians. 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 God, and that is a point of view that I'm going to make.

Dr. Craig, would you like to continue your comments here? Just a real.

Quick, and you don't have to comment here, I thought this was interesting that Dr. Craig, it is not characteristic of Dr. Craig to go over his time. I wonder if he was confused over the format, because this is, it's like watching a James White debate, and James White is just getting to his point as his time is running out.

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, I hate.

Listening to the opening breakdown. I might listen a little bit to the, you know, 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.

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. 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, you know, that's the sort of thing you get to further down after people lay out their positions, but so I was kind of surprised.

Maybe he was under an impression that he was going to get 10 minutes or 15, I don't know. Yeah, but.

Yeah. I just thought that was interesting, but well, let's continue.

Yeah, your thought, and then we'll give extra time to... Oh, you say I've used up my time? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I'll just finish with the thought that this is a very controversial doctrine. It has a number of different versions, and so I'm interested in hearing what is the version of Tawhid that Mr. Hijab espouses,.

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

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. William Lane Craig made is absolutely problematic.

It's erroneous in fact. The Muslims have never had a problem discussing the wholeness of God. 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 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... 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. Craig to bring up Tawhid?

No, for three reasons. Number one, strategically there's a good reason to do this. Typically Muslims are always on the attack and Christians are on the defensive, 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 Muslim advocates, it always makes it look like theirs is kind of the default view, ours is the view that holds a weaker position.

It's always got to struggle to maintain itself, to keep its head above water, 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.

So strategically I think there's a good reason for that. Also, you know, rhetorically there's, you know, the 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, and so it does say something about an argument's invalidity if the person make, or at least it raises the issue of its invalidity because, you know, if a person doesn't believe what he's saying himself, if he doesn't own up to it, then it suggests that, you know, there's a problem at least this person would have with this idea, 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, 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 Trinity because now he has to spend some time defending Tawhid, or at least defending why he's not going to defend Tawhid, and so I just, I mean, maybe that goes back to strategy or something like that, but I think for these, and, you know, another thing would be that nobody's attacking a position from no perspective.

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. 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? 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?

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.

Sure, excellent. All.

Right, let's continue on here. Shreem Christianity, when it comes to the Trinity, he attacks 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 Father is God and the Son is God, therefore it follows that the Father is the Son.

This is his view of Thomas Aquinas. He also says that the Trinity is against divine simplicity, which Thomas Aquinas in other places actually does espouse. 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, at least 50 of Christians are Catholics. He doesn't just take aim at Aquinas, he takes aim at the Church Fathers.

He takes aim at the 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 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 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, the majority of Christians.

Now, for the listeners here, is there a level of, I mean, Muhammad seems to be correct in the sense that Dr. Craig does hold to an unconventional view of the.

Trinity. Would I be correct there? Yeah, and he's going to acknowledge that.

Okay, do you think, because I know the tactic that Muhammad is using is he's trying to set 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. Craig is committed to what he thinks the Bible teaches, then all that matters is the Bible teaches the specific view of the Trinity that he's putting forth?

Because in the debate Muhammad Hijab had with David Wood all those years back, I remember listening to that debate, and he quoted a lot of the Church Fathers, but the question was, does the Bible teach the doctrine?

Not whether this 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, 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, you need to debate his position, and I suspect that what he's trying to do here is discredit 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?

You're not proving by this that the historic doctrine is incoherent, nor are you even proving that Dr. 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. 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 Bible teaches, that there is one God, and that each person is properly God. That's not a difference between how, say, 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, so Muhammad Hijab hasn't done anything to attack that.

Correct. He does.

This a lot. 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, 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 Bible teaches, and is it logically coherent?

And they don't really get into the biblical text that much in this debate, which I think is misses the whole point, but there you go. Let's continue.

...majority of Eastern Orthodox, and what he said about the Quran, as we just mentioned, is erroneous. He said that in chapter 5, verse 116, that the 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 Trinity is not mentioned in chapter 5, verse 116.

It says that, did you say that you take me and my mum as lords, as gods beside God? ...that means God's subjects of worship. We do believe, like Protestants, as he claims he is, that Mary is venerated to a point of worship.

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 Forgotten Son doctrine.

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

And how he openly takes aim at them, actually. Again, points that are irrelevant to the debate, so I don't know why he wants Dr. Craig to respond to those. That's not really dealing with the proposition.

So, I think.

That's my time. All right, let's turn it over to Dr. Craig. You've got two minutes.

For your first response. Among Christian Trinitarians, Mr. Heginkorak rejects the.

Doctrine of Latin Trinitarianism, because it doesn't do justice to the Bible. There are exactly three who are social Trinitarians. There are three sets of self-interest in God. God is an immaterial doctrine that is taught in the New Testament, and as a Christian who believes that Holy Scripture is the only inspired source and authoritative source for Christian faith and practice, 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.

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 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. Does God have physical parts? Does God have metaphysical parts? Are all of God's properties identical to one another? 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. 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 Church Fathers, because that's not the topic of the debate.

Just from a purely debate perspective, you want to be careful. 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.

Would that be correct? It's kind of trying to get you to discuss something.

That gets you off the main topic. Yeah, I mean, for any number of reasons. One is because he's dealing with a particular individual. You're debating Dr. Craig, and so it's his position that you have to prove is incoherent.

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

But also because that sort of thing, I think, is just very unwieldy. The idea that somebody could just easily turn to this or that statement from the Church Fathers in a debate like this, 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. 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 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 Dr. Craig a little bit more disorganized in terms of how he would respond. So, yeah. Okay, let's continue on.

So, Mohamed, you've got another ten seconds.

Ten seconds, did you say?

Oh, sorry. I meant like two minutes, ten seconds.

Okay. So, Dr. Craig has said that he represents social Trinitarianism, but he doesn't actually represent all of social Trinitarianism. 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 hypotheses of God, distinguished according to Gregory, in the intra-Trinitarian relations, then there should be three gods. The most pressing task of contemporary social Trinitarians is to find some more convincing answer to why, on their view, there are not three gods.

So, in his understanding, William Lane Craig believes that Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote this book called Not Three Gods, he believes that this Church Father is a polytheist. This is a social Trinitarian doctrine.

We'll come to Dr. Craig.

Just a side comment. I think Dr. Craig's facial expressions are hilarious. What are you saying, Mohamed? That's not my position.

So, those are an important part of your rebuttal, are the facial expressions.

Correct.

And you can sneak a little bit of a rebuttal in, even while the other person's talking.

That's right.

Now, some of these are just antics, and it looks silly, but I think he's just, he's genuinely surprised, and he's showing it appropriately, because, you know, number one, he's gone right back to the Church Fathers, which was already criticized.

He's not obligated to defend what they said. But then, secondly, I think Craig is responding that way, because the hijab is horribly misrepresenting Gregory. 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 trinitarianism.

So, for what all that's worth.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that.

Craig's understanding of the Trinity as parts of God in his neurological understanding. However, the fact remains that he doesn't represent social trinitarianism. He represents his own version of social trinitarianism, which, quite frankly, is demographically of 100 Christian population.

I would even wager 1 for what he believes in. So, that's the first thing. The second thing is, he's talking about the Quran. He agrees with the Quran. Because he believes, William Lane Craig believes, he does not believe in the eternal generation.

Right. So, I thought this part was silly.

Again, William Lane Craig believed that something that's supposed to be ridiculous to believe. And then he says he actually agrees with the Quran. And that'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.

Yeah, Dr. Craig is going to make that point. Right. And it just strikes me as an obvious rejoinder. So, for Hijab to make the point and not see the rejoinder coming just strikes me as not very thoughtful.

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 Islamic reasoning. The Quran says, Say he's Allah one and only.

The eternal resort of all. Self-sufficient. William Lane Craig believes the Islamic standard over and above 1 ,500 years of Christian belief, because no one took his belief for 1 ,500 years of Christianity.

No one took his belief that the sun was not eternally forgotten. And the Quran does say that, because the Quran indicates that being forgotten is an inhibition.