The Great Trinity Debate, London, 2010 Part 1

The Debate Format and Introductions

My name is Doug McMasters. I'm the pastor of Trinity Road Chapel, and it is my privilege, on behalf of our congregation that meets here regularly, to welcome you here this evening to what we have described as the, is it the big Trinity debate or the great Trinity debate?

One of the two. And it is a true pleasure to have you here this evening with us to a moderated, formal debate concerning the question of the person of God, and specifically the issue of the Trinity. And we are pleased to welcome Dr. James White and Abdullah Al-Andalusi to be here to represent their two prospective viewpoints.

Just by way of introduction, let me do a little bit of housekeeping notices before we give the formal introductions and begin our debate. To let you know that after the rebuttals, there will be a food break, so if you come here directly from work, and I know that some of you have done that, you'll be glad to hear that that will be happening straight through there.

And we'll talk about that just after the rebuttals occur, just so that you might anticipate that. For those of you that need to use the facilities, I ask you to go straight to the back and speak to one of the stewards, and they can take you, lead you over to where those are at.

So instead of coming up here and disrupting, perhaps, people's attention and the debates, if you could just go straight back, and the stewards will be happy to help you there. Also, at the very end of the debate, we will have an opportunity for people to ask questions.

These questions, we've asked to be written down, so I've got some blank sheets of paper here. I was wondering if I could get some volunteers to pass these out. Can I get four individuals to take a stack of these, and if you could distribute the paper around?

If you would submit those to me, I will be asking questions. So please feel free to write down on those. Speaking first this evening is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. You're welcome here this evening.

Dr. James White is the Director, as I said, of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization that's based in Phoenix, Arizona. He's the author of more than 20 books, and he's conducted over 75 moderated public debates.

He's also a professor, having taught Greek and systematic theology and various topics in the field of apologetics. He's also the elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. He's been married to Kelly for 27 years and has two children, Joshua and Summer.

And we also welcome this evening Abula Al-Andalusi. He's a former Anglican who embraced Islam at a young age and has studied Islam in depth since the age of 18. He's had a long experience in working in community activism and Islamic apologetics.

And his activities, including writing extensively on Islamic revivalist thought and speaking in various community centers and universities and colleges. He's also made appearances in various TV programs, speaking about theology and political philosophy and sociopolitical analysis.

He's a co-founder of the public discussion forum, the Muslim Debate Initiative. And he's done a lot of written work in specialist subjects. And you can view some of that writing on the website, islamicrationalism .com.

Remember that. Just to give you an idea of how the debate is going to go this evening, we will have 22 minutes each of opening statements, followed by three minutes of cross-examination. This cross-examination is to verify the statements that have been made in each person's opening remarks.

And that will be followed by 12 minutes each of rebuttals. And then we'll have our break. And when we all return from the break, I'll tell you about the breakdown and format of our debate from that point.

At this time, we want to welcome Dr. James White to begin our debate. Welcome, Dr. White.

The Trinity, Monotheism, and the Christian Doctrine of God

Well, good evening. It is a pleasure to be with you here in London this evening. It is truly an honor that you all have come out this evening, braved the cold weather. I'm from a desert climate, and so this is very unusual for me, but I'm actually enjoying it.

And I thank you all for being here this evening, especially to Abdullah al-Mulusi. Thank you very much for being here. Last time I saw him, we were in the studio at the Unbelievable Radio program, and we had a discussion.

I have a feeling it was a little bit like what we're going to hear this evening, but not quite as full, I think. And so it is an honor to be with you here this evening. Does the Bible teach the trinity?

Does the Quran accurately describe the trinity? Is worship of the trinity an act of shirk? These are all things that I submit to you, we as Christians and Muslims, must discuss openly, honestly, and forcefully.

If I were a Muslim, and I had the Quran as my holy book, I would take seriously the things that it says about those who would say three, and what that means, what shirk means, what the term blasphemy means, a curse upon those people.

If I cared about other people, I would want them to know what my holy book said. And as a Christian, I in the very same way this evening am going to say to my Muslim friends, your book does not understand what I believe.

It should, but it does not. And therefore, what does that mean? How do we understand these things? If we love and respect one another, we will not compromise on these issues. We will not fall into the trap of the modern world that says, well, we dare not offend.

I would rather love you and offend you than not offend you. That is where I begin this evening, and I hope that we will be able to, this entire evening, act toward one another in that kind of an understanding.

There is a major danger of talking past each other this evening, because we use similar terms, but we import very different meanings into those words. Come, let us reason together is the biblical invitation.

We wish to be reasonable this evening without lapsing into secular rationalism, which unfortunately is the mode of the day. Two of the major world religions locked in definitional combat. Now Islam arises after Christianity, at least on the historical level.

I understand what you believe about Jesus being a Muslim, et cetera, et cetera. But from the historical level, Islam arises after Christianity, and therefore interacts with Christian beliefs in its holy scripture, that is, in the Qur 'an.

It would seem logical to assert then that if the Qur 'an is in fact the eternal message of Allah, that it would be accurate, in an accurate way, and sightfully critique the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the point upon which the two faiths have their sharpest, and I would say foundational, disagreement that gives rise to so much else.

It is my assertion that the Qur 'an not only does not accurately define and critique the Trinity, it does so errantly, demonstrating that in fact its author was quite human, not demonic. So let's define the issues to see if my allegation is founded in reality.

First, we must understand what it is Christians believe about the subject of the Trinity. Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three co-equal and co-eternal persons, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Now I was not just simply using color to make my slide prettier, and outlining the words being and person. We differentiate between these words in everyday life, and we differentiate between these words in the definition of the Christian faith as well.

What do I mean we differentiate between these words? Well, we all recognize things that have existence, things that have being. We are human beings. There are other beings in this universe that we see around us.

Some are personal, some are not. A rock has being, but it is not personal. A cat has being, and it might have personality, but it's not truly a person in the sense of recognizing its own existence among cat kind or anything like that.

The Bible tells us that God, angels, and men are personal in their existence, and yet angels and men are limited in their being. Being is what makes something what it is. Person is what makes someone who they are.

And so a rock has being, but it does not have personhood. We as human beings, we have being, we are human beings, but our beings are limited in time and space. I am not back at home right now in Phoenix, Arizona, though sometimes my body thinks that it is.

We are limited as to where we can be and how long we exist. God's being is not limited. God's being is eternal and indeed outside the realm of time. And it is the Christian perspective that that being of God is shared by three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that this has eternally been the case.

There is never a time when that was not true. Now it's important to recognize the Trinity is not saying that there are three beings who are one being, nor three persons who are one person. One being, eternal and unlimited, shared eternally by three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We are not saying one equals three and three equals one. Since we differentiate between those terms, you may have heard people criticizing the Doctrine of the Trinity on that level. That is not a valid criticism.

We are not saying three persons or one person. We are not saying three beings or one being or anything along those lines. We are differentiating and very specifically in the language that we use. But why do you believe this?

Many people think it's because, well, Constantine forced you to. Well, that's certainly not why I am a Trinitarian. I'm a Trinitarian because I believe the Bible is the Word of God. And I believe all of the Bible and only the Bible.

That is, I believe in sola scriptura. Scripture alone is the sole and final rule of faith for the Church and for Christian faith. But I also believe in tota scriptura. All of Scripture must be believed.

And when I believe the Scriptures, when I apply a meaningful standard of interpretation that is consistent from Genesis to Revelation, recognizing all the different kinds of literature and Scripture, when I do that, I come up with three biblical truths.

The first foundation is absolute monotheism. There is only one true God, creator of heavens and earth. I have defended that thesis against the Mormons, who believe that there are many gods, literally an unlimited number of gods in the various universes.

The Bible is explicit. And there are many parallels between the statements of the Koran and the Bible on the fact that there is one true God. And any god that did not create the heavens and the earth, Jeremiah tells us, is a god that will pass away from the heavens and the earth.

That is the first confession that we make. There is only one true God. But then, as I read the Scriptures, I find out that there are three divine persons. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit.

The Spirit is not the Father. They are distinguished from one another, and yet they are described as God. The very name of God in the Old Testament, Yahweh, is applied to the Father, to the Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh.

Why would the inspired writers do this consistently throughout the New Testament writings? Why would the one name of the God of Israel be applied to Jesus of Nazareth? Why would the Spirit be the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and, interchangeably, the Spirit of Yahweh?

Why is this the case? Three divine persons are revealed to us in the pages of the Holy Scriptures. But then, we likewise have the third foundation, the equality of those persons. Most people, over time, have tried to find some way of putting these persons in an order, and, frequently, what that's led to is, in essence, an elevation of one above another.

Many people today, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses, who might wake you up on a Saturday morning, knocking at the door at your flat, believe that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, the first and greatest of God's creations.

Others simply say he was a great man. But the reality is that the Scriptures do not allow for that kind of subjugation. They do allow for differentiation. The Son does different things than the Father.

The Spirit does different things than the Father and the Son. Each have taken different roles in the redemption of mankind and the glorification of the triune God. But, they fully participate in true deity.

Jesus is described as the creator of all things, eternal in his existence. And so, these three biblical truths force me to the doctrine of the Trinity. They force me to recognize that if I'm going to allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, and I'm not going to put some higher authority over the Scriptures, that I must believe these particular things.

Now, the terms Father and Son are not physical terms for Christians. The Father is not married to anyone. The Son is not the result of marriage. He is not an offspring. The relationship of Father and Son is timeless.

It did not begin, but always has been. It is a description of a relationship that has eternally existed. Now, I understand why some who do not have the fullness of biblical revelation might hear phrases like Father and Son and go, Oh, well, you must be thinking that God has a consort, a wife, and has offspring, children.

But that is not what the Old Testament has taught about Galilee. That's not what the New Testament has taught about the relationship of the Father and the Son in any way, shape, or form. And any representation of Christian belief that does not recognize this is based upon ignorance.

And we must understand that that is the case. The bedrock of monotheism defines the Trinity. It is the very foundation of our faith. But this must be understood. Monotheism and Unitarianism are not the same things.

I am a Trinitarian monotheist. You can be a Unitarian monotheist because you assert that the being of God can only be shared by one person. I am a Trinitarian monotheist because since the being of God is not limited by time and space, it is eternal and unlimited.

My scriptures teach me that there are three divine persons that fully share that one being that is God. Now, you may disagree with that, but you cannot simply assume Unitarianism along with monotheism.

You have to prove it. You have to prove that the being of God cannot be shared by three divine persons. And that cannot simply be assumed. The Trinity was well known by AD 600. The councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon had clearly proclaimed the belief.

Now, since there was some confusion when I made this claim the last time I was in London, let me emphasize what I'm saying here. I have just explained to you that I believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is a biblical revelation.

All I'm saying here is that all the controversies that one might point to with Arianism or Apollinarianism or any of the other isms of the first few hundred years were all settled by this time. What the doctrine of the Trinity was was well known by AD 600.

Why did I choose AD 600? Well, because it's pretty close to AD 610, and I'll let you figure out the rest from there. The doctrine of the Trinity was well known. The Athanasian Creed was well known. Augustine had written entire works on the subject long before Muhammad.

And so, given that my esteemed opponent this evening's emphasis is upon rationality, may I follow his own form of argumentation to point out that if the Bible is indeed the revelation of God, as confirmed and promised by Jesus, confirming the Old Testament, promising in the New Testament, that it is perfectly rational to allow God's revelation to define His nature and His being.

If we accept that there is a creator God who has revealed Himself and that we are but His creatures, it is eminently rational to accept what He reveals concerning Himself. I am reminded of the words of Blaise Pascal, who said, Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.

It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. I am being rational when I recognize my Creator is greater than I am, and that I must bow before His revelation. And the great Puritan John Flavel said, I know there is nothing in the Word or in the works of God that is repugnant to sound reason, but there are some things which are opposite to carnal reason as well as above right reason.

And therefore our reason never shows itself more unreasonable than in summoning those things to its bar which transcend its sphere and capacity. The doctrine of Trinity is not a revelation of reason, it is a revelation of God.

But it is very reasonable to accept God's own self-understanding. Let's look at the Qur 'anic understanding of what the doctrine of the Trinity is, because there is no question that the Qur 'an seeks to provide a response to the beliefs that existed in the days of Muhammad.

The Qur 'an is sent down to Muhammad 600 years after the end of Christ's earthly ministry. It interacts extensively with both Judaism and Christianity, but does it do so accurately? If it is the eternal word of Allah, it must, but that cannot simply be assumed.

We have to this evening examine that claim. Surah 4, verse 171 says, O people of the Book! Allah Al-Kitab! Commit no excesses in your religion, nor say of Allah aught but truth. Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle of Allah, and his word which he bestowed on Mary and his spirit proceeding from him, so believe in Allah and his apostles.

And so here you have the first reference to excesses on the part of people about this Jesus. Excesses going beyond what the truth allegedly actually is, because it goes on to say, Say not Trinity. Now that, of course, is a translational issue.

It's literally, say not three. Say not three. Desist, it will be better for you. For Allah is one, Allah, glory be to him, for exalted is he above having a son. To him belong all things, in the heavens and on earth, and enough is Allah's disposal of affairs.

Here's the first time we hear this drumbeat. He is exalted above having a son. What does that mean? That Allah is exalted above having an eternal relationship with the second divine person, the one being that is God?

Is that what the writer to the Qur 'an understands? Well, we're going to have to find out as we look at other texts. In Surah 572, following for you, they do blaspheme. This is why this is so important, folks.

I think if you're a Muslim, you should take that word very seriously. And as a Christian, I do. If this is the word of God, then what I believe is blasphemy. I recognize that. That's why I take this very seriously.

We cannot simply pass these things by. They do blaspheme to say, Allah is Christ, the son of Mary. But said Christ, O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord, and your Lord. Whoever joins other gods with Allah, Allah will forbid him to garden, and the fire will be his abode.

There will, for the wrongdoers, be no one to help. Notice what is said here. There's a joining of other gods with Allah, as if the son is a separate god. And yet Christians don't believe that the son is a separate god.

They don't believe he became a god at a point in time. Two divine persons sharing one being, fathers, it's not a separate god. So what's being referred to here? It goes on to say, they do blaspheme who say Allah is one of three in a trinity.

For there is no god except one Allah. It's literally third of three. Clearly, the Quran is thinking of polytheism here. A multiplicity of gods. And yet what is the absolute first affirmation? Monotheism.

There is only one being of God. The very name of God, Yahweh, used of father, son, and spirit. What is this third of three? If they desist not from their word of blasphemy, verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.

Why turn they not to Allah and seek his forgiveness? For Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful. Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle. Many were the apostles that passed away before him.

His mother was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their daily food. Note the mention of Mary. See how Allah does make his signs clear to them, yet see in what ways they are deluded away from the truth.

Say, will ye worship besides Allah, something which hath no power either to harm or benefit you? But Allah, he it is, aheareth and knoweth all things. You're starting to hear the drumbeat of this kind of argumentation.

But I'm hoping you're seeing it's not argumentation against the doctrine of the Trinity. We have multiple gods here. And it seems, why make reference to Mary? Why say that they had both to eat their daily food?

Christians don't believe Mary's a god. Christians don't believe Mary's married to God and has children. So why make this kind of argumentation? Say, O people, the book exceed not in your religion the bounds of what is proper, trespassing beyond the truth, nor follow the vain desires of people who went wrong in times gone by, who misled many and strayed themselves from the even way.

Curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected faith, on the tongue of David and of Jesus, the son of Mary, because they disobeyed and persisted in excess. The chronic position of this point, do not say three, it is a blasphemy, an excess.

It will bring a grievous penalty, a curse. Allah is exalted above having a son. Jesus and Mary both ate daily food. Now, my timer is messed up here, brothers, so I need to know what time it is. Very quickly then, read to you Surah 5, verse 116 and make some application.

Behold, Allah will say, O Jesus, the son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, Worship me and my mother as gods, in derogation of Allah? He will say, Glory to thee, never could I say what I had no right to say, had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it.

Thou knowest what is in my heart, though I know not what is thine, for thou knowest in full all that is hidden. Notice the statement. Jesus asks about teaching men to jointly worship himself and Mary as God.

Allah plus Mary plus Jesus equals three. Now, I have a number of comments that I will try to get to from Ibn Kathir and from others that demonstrate that the Quranic understanding is that, well, here's one from Ibn Kathir.

This is a threat and a warning to Christians, chastising them in public. As Kathir and others said, and Kathir mentioned this ayah as evidence, this ayah also shows the crime of the Christians who invented a lie against the law and its messenger, thus making a rival wife and son for Allah.

Allah is glorified in that he is far above what they attribute to him. Let me just make a summary statement at this point. It has never been the Christian belief that God the Father has a wife and that they have a son named Jesus.

I can understand how someone could have come to that conclusion if they are ignorant of the very essence of the Christian scriptures. But if you believe that the Quran is the eternal word of God, then, my friends, Allah knew what the trinity was when the Quran was revealed.

Whether it's right or wrong is another issue. If he knew what it was, there would be no reason to misrepresent it. And so this evening we have two things to discuss. Does the Bible teach it? Is it rational to believe this?

But for the Muslim, does your holy book accurately represent this belief? And if not, why not? And what does that mean?

Given 22 minutes is Abdullah al-Adulusi, and he'll be representing the Muslim position. Let's welcome him as he comes through.

Islamic Rationalism, Monotheism, and Critiques of the Trinity

In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. I'd like to send my greetings to everyone here, and I'd like to thank the Trinity Church, the elders and the congregation for inviting me here today to debate this interesting and important topic.

Firstly, I wanted to apologize if anything I do say might offend some people. I think it is important, as Jane White mentioned, that we have to be open and frank about our difference of opinion. And that we also must be tolerant.

Gone are the days when people such as myself, Christians, ex-Christians, or whoever, who rejected the Trinity, would have been beheaded in Christian Europe. For example, John Calvin himself ordered the beheading of poor servants.

But in this day and age, we live in more enlightening times, where we can actually come to each other's places of worship and discuss openly. And last year, the American evangelical debate, David Wood, came to a mosque to discuss whether the Prophet Muhammad was a real prophet or a false prophet, him obviously arguing that the Prophet Muhammad was a false prophet in a mosque.

So I think this is a very good situation, and I'd like to jump straight into my presentation. The structure of my presentation is, firstly, we have to come to agreement on a common basis to make a judgment as to whether there is politics involved or not in the issue of the Trinity, and so on.

Also, I'll discuss Jewish monotheism, I'll discuss the sources I'm going to use, then I'm going to jump to the unreliability of apostolic tradition and its documentation, otherwise known as the New Testament.

I will show that there's no guarantee that the original texts are accurate, and that the original text probably has even the same contradictions as even the current ones that we have. I'll say the Bible is not protected by the Holy Spirit from textual corruption, that the Christian theology developed under the pernicious influence of Hellenic Greek philosophy, and that the texts give contradictory accounts of Jesus as one human, not one as a humble but superhuman.

And then I'll discuss the Trinity hypothesis, and there's a reason why I call it the hypothesis. And I'll finish off with the chronic contentions to the Trinity, or should I say, to Christian theology specifically, and how the Qur 'an perceives Christian theology and the rational arguments raised by the Qur 'an.

Now, I know that sometimes I'm described as a rationalist, but this is far from the descriptor in terms of, in Islamic thought, we think this is the Metazolites, the Metazolite faction. No, I'm fully orthodox Ahlus Sunnah.

When I use the word rational, it's only because I believe that the Qur 'an, which tells us to go look at the universe and don't believe in things which are contradictory, I say that this is rational. Rational thinking is to believe in things which are non-contradictory and based on evidence.

Simple, as simple as it is. I think that the basis, the rational basis, is that whatever and how ineffable God is, how unfathomable He is, He is non-contradictory. His nature is non-contradictory. He might be infinite and you can't count infinity, but there's a difference between saying He's infinite and finite at the same time, because infinite means not finite.

So how can something be not finite and finite at the same time? It's a contradiction. To quote 1 Timothy 6 .20, O Timothy God, the deposit entrusted to you, avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

And again, Corinthians calls God the author of confusion. And of course, as God is allegedly invited people in Isaiah, come now, let us reason together. So God believes in reason and rationality, so I do too.

Jewish monotheism. You know, the thing about the Old Testament Bible is, the Old Testament Bible is full of imagery and it's full of explicit text. There's ambiguous text and explicit text. You go to any Jew and you ask them, how do you interpret these different texts?

You know, some texts say that God rested, God relaxed, God repented. Is this literal? Does this literally mean that God rested? He had to sleep, he had to relax or whatever. They say no, they would say it's imagery because the explicit text has got infinite or powerful, he's not like a man.

So we interpret those texts, which say that he repents or he relaxes or he makes a mistake, we interpret them allegorically or metaphorically. We don't interpret them literally. And we use this kind of, you know, as a meter.

And it's the same with the Quran. We have a verse in the Quran which says that God has hand and feet and so on, and we don't interpret it literally that God has a human hand and feet and leg and different components.

No, it's allegory, metaphor. So what are the explicit verses in Jewish monotheism? God is not a man, Numbers and Hosea. And I think I'll quote Numbers, God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind.

Interesting. God does not change in Malachi. God does not, he doesn't change his mind. Of course, as James White noted in his book, The Forgotten Trinity, that God is outside of time and space so he can't change.

He's outside of time and space. Remember that. God is the creator of all things. Obviously, we know that the Jews believe this. And 2 Chronicles 6 .18, nothing can contain God. When referring to a temple, how can God be confined by a limited temple?

And of course, as James White himself remarked in his book, God's being is not limited, and since God is omnipresent, another important truth can be seen, God's being cannot be divided. What is half of omnipresence?

How can the infinite be divided into parts? So on and so forth. And here in Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. Notice how it doesn't say, you only have one God, or there is only one God. No, it says the Lord your God, the Lord your God, that's singular, is one.

Why say that? Why have the additional as one? You've already mentioned the singular, your Lord your God. Why say he is one? What's that about? We'll come to that later. So, the sources I'm going to use, and what I'm going to quote from the Old Testament, I'm going to quote from the Classical Church Fathers, the Orthodox Classical Church Fathers, I know they all anathematized each other during that time, but I'm going to quote from the ones that stand for the majority.

I'm going to quote scholars approved by James, which I have ten from his books. The ones that he cites, I'm going to cite, because I know that he trusts those scholars. And I will quote scholars which are not approved by James, but I will mention when they are what he would call liberal scholars.

So, on to the reliability of apostolic tradition, what does that mean? Well, the New Testament is not an exact record of Jesus' life, but it's a compilation of early Christian theologians and unincorporated narratives about Jesus' life.

So, what do we find is that there were theologians, early theologians, writing letters or their works and so on, and then later on, these became incorporated into the New Testament. It's the same reason that the Christians don't believe in the Talmud or the Midrash.

If you ask a Christian, why don't you believe in the Jewish document of the Talmud and Midrash? And they'll say, because these were written by rabbis who were writing commentary on the Torah. We don't follow what the rabbis say.

We don't follow the beliefs, their ideas or their opinions. We follow what the Torah says. But, funnily enough, the New Testament is basically constructed by theologians. For example, the first, the Prologue of John, in the beginning was the Word and the Word of God.

Does it say Jesus said that? No. Whoever wrote John is saying that. It's his opinion. It's his idea. He's a theologian. If Augustine, very famous, or even, I'll say, if James, if James lived in the first century and he wrote his book, that would probably be part of the New Testament.

So it's all about chronology. It's not about anything special about the author, if you even know who the authors are. Anyway, so, according to James D. Kelly in his book Early Christian Doctrine, he says, the doctrine of one God, the Father and Creator, form the background and indisputable premises of the Christian, of the church's faith.

The problem for theology was to integrate it with the fresh data of the specifically Christian revelation. Even at the New Testament stage, ideas about Christ's pre-existence and creative role were beginning to take shape.

So already there was a development of thinking during the construction of the New Testament. And of course, these ideas found their way into the New Testament. James D. Kelly also said, and this is, as far as it's approved by James, that there was Greek thought, Hellenistic thought going on at that time.

And do you know what the Platonic and Stoic schools of philosophy, do you know what they had a belief about God? Do you know what their belief about God was? The Stoic and Platonic schools of thought.

They believed that God is unfathomable, ineffable. He is so detached from his creation that to create, to create creation, he has to create something called a wisdom, an intermediary called the Logos.

This is Platonic philosophy here. He had to create a Logos and then the Logos through the Logos everything is created, everything that is discernible. And with Stoic philosophy, they believed that this Logos means rationality and that everything is ordered because of the presence of this rationality in the universe.

Does that sound familiar to any Christians? I'll go into it, I'll go into it further. So, just very quickly about the New Testament. When I said the originals may not be accurate, I'll give an example.

I just made a statement. Matthew 2 .23, what does it say? And he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, he will be called a Nazarene. Referring to Jesus, saying that the prophets of the Old Testament prophesied Jesus and said that he is a Nazarene, the Messiah will be a Nazarene.

Guess what? This occurs nowhere in the Old Testament. Where did he get this from? Maybe he made a little mistake. Maybe, as was happening, they retrofitted prophecies from the Old Testament and say, oh, this was written in the Old Testament, this was written in the Old Testament.