10/4/2013 The Trinity & Tawid Debate - White vs Bux

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Debate Format and Prayer Introductions

The topic for tonight is a dialogue on the Trinity and Tawheed, a Muslim and a Christian dialogue. You know, in our world today, people think that Muslims and Christians cannot dialogue and talk together, and we as South Africans had to import people, well, from America, next week we've got Dr. Shabbir Ali, to show and to prove to the world that we can.

As a rainbow nation, we've got, and I just want you to give yourself an applause, because that is a wonderful achievement. I just also want to note that the IPCI will do the recording tonight and afterwards a master copy will be handed to all the sides after debate, so if you want a copy of the dialogue that we have tonight, you're welcome to purchase it from all the IPCI or Antwoordbedieningen, or Antwoord, if you type that in on the internet, not the band Da Antwoord, please, it's just Afrikaans for the answer, and you're welcome to get it from their website as well.

What I just quickly want to do is reflect with you on the structure of the debate for tonight, or the dialogue for tonight, due to the fact that we really need to lay down what we want to achieve. First of all, there will be four categories that we will look at and that we will go through.

Number one, we will have a conversation about the objective facts. What we will do is we will give a definition on our concept of God, as deduced for use of Bucks from the concept of the Koran, under Tawheed, the concept of Tawheed, and then from Dr. White's perspective, a biblical reaction or biblical definition on the Trinity.

Every speaker has got 15 minutes from the lecture and right over here, and they can speak from here. After that, we're going to have questions about the objective ideas, which simply means that Mr. Yusuf Bucks can give objections to the doctrine of the Trinity in 10 minutes, and likewise, Dr. White can give objections to the doctrine of Tawheed from a Christian perspective.

What we're going to do after that is we're going to enter into the third section of the dialogue, and we're going to have crossfire questions where each speaker is going to have approximately 15 minutes, which would equate to five questions, two minutes each with a response, a brief response from both sides to each other, which would be good.

Yusuf Bucks will go first with his five questions on the Trinity, and then Dr. White will follow with that with five questions on the concept of Tawheed and the Trinity for 15 minutes. And then after that, we will have our closing statements, and that will be the night.

I will now ask just from the Muslim side, and ask everybody just to respect that, we're going to have Iman Moulana Pandor and Sheikh Sultan from Egypt basically coming to do the prayer for the Muslim part of the debate.

So we can invite them to come and do that for us right now. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Peace be with you. Just a translation on what the esteemed brother from Egypt has recited. He has recited a passage of the Quran from Surah Maryam, the meaning of which is, and mentioned in the book, the story of Mary when she withdrew from her family to a place towards the east, and she took in seclusion from them a screen.

Then we sent to her our angel, and he presented himself to her as a well-proportioned man. She, Mary, said, Indeed, I seek refuge in the Most Merciful from you, so leave me, if you should be fearing of God.

He said, I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you news of a pure boy. She said, How can I have a boy while no man has touched me, and I have not been unchaste? He said, Thus it will be. Your Lord says, It is easy for me, and we will make him, that is Jesus, a sign to the people and a mercy from us, and it is a matter decreed.

So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place, and the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, Oh, I wish I had died before this, and I was on oblivion, forgotten.

But he called her from below, Do not grieve, your Lord has provided beneath you a stream. And shake towards you the trunk of the palm tree, it will drop upon you fresh date fruit. So eat and drink and be content.

And if you see among anybody saying, Indeed, I have vowed to the Most Merciful abstinence, so I will not speak to anybody today. Then she brought him to a people carrying him. They said, Oh, Mary, you have certainly done a thing unprecedented.

Oh, sister of Aaron, your father was not a man of evil, nor was your mother unchaste. So she, that is Mary, pointed to him, the baby, that is Jesus. They said, How can we speak to one who is in a cradle, a child?

Jesus said, This is the first words which Jesus ever spoke about in his life when he was born. The first thing he ever said, he said, Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the scripture, that is the gospel, and has made me a prophet.

And he has made me blessed wherever I am. And he has enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive. And made me dutiful to my mother, and he has not made me a wretched tyrant. And peace upon me the day I was born, the day I will die, and the day I will be resurrected.

That is Jesus, the son of Mary. The word of truth about which they are in dispute. It is not befitting for God to take a son. Exalted is he. When he decrees an affair, he says to it, Be, and it is. Jesus said, And indeed, Allah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship him.

That is the straight path. Another verse of the Quran which I'd like to share with all our friends here. Allah says in the Quran, The person who repents, and has faith in one God, and does good deeds, that will be the criterion for him to be successful.

I leave you with that, and I welcome our guest in our country, and I'd like to present him a present, and hopefully it will assist him in his studies, understanding Islam. Thank you so much.

And now for the Christian side, we've got Pastor Tim Cantrell from Antioch Bible Church for the prayer of the Christian side.

Let's pray. Our God and Father, we do thank you for this special occasion. We thank you for this opportunity to study your word, and to understand your great salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ for a sinful, lost humanity.

We who deserve nothing but your wrath are given your grace in the Lord Jesus, the one of whom the angels said, you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. We thank you, Father, that there is a savior for our sins.

We pray that you would be honored in this occasion tonight. We as Christian people thank you for the gift of your son, the Lord Jesus, the gift of your Holy Spirit. We thank you for the words of the Lord Jesus who said that we are to be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Lord, we thank you also for the freedoms here in South Africa that we enjoy. Thank you because of the blessing of Christian principle that there is religious freedom, that we are able to have this debate openly.

Thank you for our Muslim friends who are here and willing to openly discuss and dialogue about these important truths that are of eternal significance and great consequence. So we pray that you would be honored, that you would give wisdom, that you would be glorified through your son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And by your Holy Spirit, we commit to you this time, we thank you for Rudolf and for his church, and all those who have labored to bring this occasion about, that we could indeed know you and worship you more as the triune God, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray. Amen.

Speaker Introductions and Opening Claims About Tawheed

We're now going to have Ahmed Bax introduce his father as the first speaker. And then after that, I'll just quickly make an introduction for Dr. White. Ahmed. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. In the name of God, the most gracious, most merciful.

An introduction to my father, Yusuf Bax. Yusuf was born and raised in the United Kingdom, England. He came to South Africa at the age of 18. Father from South Africa, a political exile to the United Kingdom.

Mother from England. Brought up in an irreligious political household. His late father having Marxist ideologies and mother from a Church of England background. Yusuf started attending the Catholic Church with friends at about the age of 14.

After two years, he realized he could not understand the Christian faith and became an atheist. For two years, he had the view that there was no God. Until he met the late Ahmed Dirat on a visit to South Africa.

Where he accepted Islam in the hand of the late Sheikh. Since that meeting with the giant from the Muslim world, Yusuf has had a great passion and love for comparative religion and propagating Islam. He has been involved in open days at different mosques.

Giving church groups tours of the mosques. Interfaith dialogues with churches and debates. Public speaking on Islam and Christianity. And training programs on Dawa. Yusuf is a husband and father of four.

A businessman. His other hobbies include racing radio-controlled cars and cycling. Thank you. Thanks very much. Just a short introduction on Dr. James White. Dr. James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

A Christian apologetic organization that is based in Phoenix, Arizona in America. He is the author of more than 20 books. A professor, an accomplished debater. Participated in over 130 public moderated debates.

Covering topics such as Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism. The King James only movement or controversy. Jehovah's Witnesses. And atheism. His debate opponents have been including scholars such as Barty Edmond.

John Dominic Crossing. And Marcus Borg. And others such as Dan Barker. John Selby Spong. Your own Yusuf Ismail. And also Dr. Shabbir Ali. Also just want to advertise for next week. If you did not know about that.

Him and Dr. Ali will be debating in Pretoria and in Erasmia. Dr. White is an elder of Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. He's married to Kelly. And they have two children. A son called Joshua. And a daughter called Summer.

And he has one grandchild. Thank you very much. And with that, allow me to introduce the first stage of this debate. Where every speaker will have approximately 15 minutes to present the case as deduced from the Quran.

And the understanding of the concept of Tawheed and the trinity as reduced and deduced from the Quran and the Bible. And it's quite hot here in South Africa. In the name of Almighty God. Most gracious.

Most merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. All praise is due to the one God who reveals himself through his prophets, messengers, and divine revelation. I bear witness that there is but one God.

And I bear witness that Muhammad is the last and final messenger from God to man. I greet you with the greeting words of peace. As-salamu alaykum. Peace be with you. Respected chairman. Esteemed guest, Dr. James White.

Ladies and gentlemen of the audience. It is so nice to see you all here tonight. Friends and colleagues and some people I don't know. My wife, my children, even my small babies here too. Christian trinity or Islamic Tawheed.

I was meant to give a definition of Tawheed from the Quran and the Bible. That's what I'm going to do. Some of the things I say might be sensitive to some of you. But please listen to all of the facts without any prejudice.

The glorious Quran in chapter Nisa 4171 sends out a very clear warning. And don't say three. Desist. It will be better for you. For your God is one. We read in the Bible very clearly stated in Isaiah 43, 10 to 11.

You may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no God was formed nor shall there be any after me. I am the Lord and besides me there is no savior. Malachi 2 .15 has not the one God made and sustained for us the spirit of life?

The Bible in Deuteronomy 6 .4 says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And Jesus repeated these very same words in the Gospel of Mark chapter 12 verse 29. O hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Not God is three in one. God is one. Both the glorious Quran and the Bible claim that God Almighty is one and only one. Where did any Christian get this idea of God being three in one? In a trinity from?

And how can any Christian believe such a thing when no prophet in the entire Bible, including Jesus, peace be upon him, never ever taught such a thing? And the word trinity is not in any version of the Bible.

The only place in the whole of the Bible which unequivocally supports this doctrine is in the first epistle of John chapter 5 verse 7. Here in this Bible. It's there. But it's not in my Bible. In this Bible.

It's not there. The Good News Bible. Now you see it. Now you don't. As it's on the screen there. Did God Almighty come down and say, listen, that verse shouldn't be there. Take it out. No. Man took it out.

Scholars of Christianity, they took it out. They said it shouldn't be in the original manuscripts. It was just a footnote of the Apostle John. And it crept into the text. Nowhere is it found in the modern Bibles today.

The newer versions of the Bible, you don't find it. There is no leg to stand on. This doctrine of the trinity is just a made up thing. It is just an idea. A fallacy created by man and not God. And you Trinitarian Christians are believing an irrational idea.

Something made up. Something Jesus, peace be upon him, never taught. Dr. Y, in your 15 minutes, would you be able to give me just one verse. Where Jesus or any prophet in the Bible clearly taught the trinity.

Or just one verse where Jesus, peace be upon him, clearly defines God as being Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Or three in one. As the trinity doctrine should be well emphasized from the mouths of the prophets.

And from Jesus, peace be upon him. Coming to Jesus now. First off, I would like you to know that we Muslims believe that Jesus, peace be upon him, is a mighty messenger of God. We believe he is the Messiah, the Christ.

And he is mentioned 25 times by name in the glorious Quran. Nowhere in any three versions of my Bible does Jesus say he is God. Here is the 66 of the King James, the 88 of the Good News Bible, and the 73 of the Catholic Bible.

Nowhere in any of these versions of the Bible does Jesus say he is God. Or did he teach that he is the second person of the Godhead and he never, ever taught the trinity doctrine. Or that God is three in one.

In John 18, 28, Jesus says he taught nothing in secret. Jesus, peace be upon him, refused to be called good in Mark 10, 18. We read Jesus saying, why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone.

Jesus, in this verse, is clearly giving exclusivity to God Almighty when he said alone. If Jesus, peace be upon him, was part of God or part of the trinity, he would not have said this. We read in John 14, 28, Jesus saying, if you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for he is greater than I.

We read in Mark 13, 32, Jesus saying, but of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Only the Father knows. Jesus, peace be upon him, is clearly telling you that he is not God or is equal.

In Mark 12, 28, we read about the teacher of the law asking Jesus, peace be upon him, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus replied, the most important one is this. O hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, Mark 12, 29.

Then in Mark 12, 32, the teacher of the law said to Jesus, well done, teacher. It is true, as you say, that only the Lord is God and that there is no other God but he. If there was such a thing as the trinity, this would have been the right time and place to teach it.

But Jesus, peace be upon him, never, because there is no such thing in the religion of Jesus, peace be upon him. We read in Mark 4, 5 -7, then the devil took him, Jesus, up and showed him in a second all the kingdoms of the world.

I will give you all this power and all this wealth, the devil told him. It has all been handed over to me and I can give it to anyone I choose. All this will be yours then if you worship me. How can this be if Jesus, peace be upon him, is God or part of the trinity?

Jesus would have said, if he was God, that I own everything, so how can you give me something I already own? Or that God would give up his power and give it to the devil and then tempt himself? And if you were the devil, would you give it back?

I certainly wouldn't. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Jesus denies divinity. We read Jesus then saying to the devil in Mark 4, 8, the scripture says, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

I think that clears it up from your Bible, from the lips of Jesus, peace be upon him, that he is not God or equal to him, as all the texts I just quoted are explicit texts. The glorious Quran says in 575, Say he, Allah, is one.

The glorious Quran says, sorry, in 575, They do blaspheme who say God is Christ, the son of Mary. But said Christ, worship God, my Lord and your Lord. About the Holy Ghost. In Matthew 12, 32, Jesus says, Anyone who says something against the Son of Man can be forgiven.

But whoever says something against the Holy Ghost will not be forgiven now or ever. So how can Jesus, peace be upon him, be equal to the Holy Ghost? So this means the Holy Ghost is more important and greater than Jesus, peace be upon him.

Coming to Tawheed, monotheism is the belief in a single universal and all-knowing supreme being, namely Allah. This forms the first pillar of Islamic belief and is the single most important concept in Islam and is central to the Abrahamic faiths.

Tawheed is the central theme of the Quran, that there is only one God and he alone is to be worshipped. The Quran brings us back to basics, that God is one alone, without any partners. The Quran stresses on it.

The word Tawheed is not found in the Quran, but is well emphasized in the Quran. The word Tawheed is a derivative from the Arabic word Wahada, to single out, unify, to make single. The word Tawheed means to make something one.

So the glorious Quran says, say he, Allah, is one, the eternal, the absolute. He begets not, nor was he begotten, and there is nothing like him. There is no God but I, so worship me, Quran 21 .25. Can there be another God besides God?

Say, bring forth your proof, if you are telling the truth. So there is no doubt whatsoever that the concept of Tawheed and the emphasis that God is one is in the Quran. Allah is the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Allah simply means the God and is used mainly by Muslims and Arab Christians. Arab Christians today use the term such as Allah Al-Ab, meaning God the Father. Your God is surely one. Quran 37 .4. Tawheed is the realization and affirmation of oneness, the unity of God, the divine unity in its most profound sense.

Allah is the real, the absolute. Allah is one in his essence, his attributes and his acts. Before the existence of the universe, there was nothing but the creator. He is the first and there is no last but his oneness.

He is the first without anything before him. Allah is eternal. Quran 59 .22. God is he than whom there is no other God, the sovereign, the holy one, the source of peace and perfection, the guardian of faith, the preserver of safety, the exalted in might, the irresistible, the supreme, glory to God.

High is he above the partners they attribute to him. I thank you so much for being such an attentive audience. May God guide you to his truth. Thank you. Thanks, Yusuf. And now we've got 15 minutes for Dr. White.

The Biblical Case for the Trinity

Well, it is indeed a pleasure to be with you all this evening. Thank you for coming out for this dialogue. My task in my 15 minutes is to present to you why I am a Trinitarian, why I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, especially as one very familiar with all of the arguments that were just presented, and then to dialogue about the difference between that and an emphasis upon Tawhid, which we will get to in the second part of our debate.

First and foremost, the reason that any person is a Trinitarian is because they read all of Scripture and not just parts of Scripture. When you read all of what the Bible says, you are presented with three fundamental truths.

The first truth is found in the Shema. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Hero Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. The biblical testimony to monotheism is deep and broad. It is found in both the Torah and in the Injil, in the Old Covenant and in the New Covenant.

It is without compromise. Isaiah 43 .10 was already cited. Before me there was no God formed, and there shall be none after me. Could we clear the screen, please? My presentation now. Go back to something there that's...

There you go. That's good pictures of both of us, even though that's from a long time ago and I don't look like that anymore. But anyways, the testimony of Scripture is very clear. I have defended monotheism many times.

There is a group that calls itself Christian, but it's not a Christian group, called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. I have debated them many, many, many times in the United States.

They deny the fact there is one true God, and so I have defended the truth, that there is one true and eternal God, all things are created by him. And this is taught all through the Old Testament and the New Testament, not just in Isaiah.

If you start at Isaiah 40, go through 48, you will see it repeated over and over and over again. There is only one true and eternal God, and the prophet Jeremiah. He says that any God that did not create the heavens and the earth is a God that will perish from under the heavens and from under the earth.

This is the emphasis and the teaching of Scripture, and I believe it. And so every Christian believes there is only one true God. We do not believe in three gods. Anyone who says we believe in three gods does not understand what we believe, in any way, shape, or form.

This is the earliest creedal statements. This is the earliest statements of the early church fathers, writing after the time of the Old and New Testaments. We believe in only one God. But we also believe that God has revealed himself.

In fact, I would submit to you that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed between the Old and the New Testaments. That is, the New Testament is not where the revelation takes place. The doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

So the New Testament becomes the record of what God has done in history. We have to deal with the fact that when we look at the Bible as a whole, it reveals to us three divine persons. We have the Father, clearly distinguished from the Son, clearly distinguished from the Spirit.

We have the Son, and we clearly have a differentiation made between the Son and the Father. The Son addresses the Father. The Father speaks to the Son at his baptism. The Father and the Son speak of the Spirit.

There is no confusion of them. Unfortunately, there are groups, again, that call themselves Christian, that confuse the Father, Son, and Spirit. They're called Jesus only or Oneness Pentecostals, and they deny the Trinity, and they confuse the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and make them one person.

That is not what the Christian church believes. But then we have all of the evidence, found both prophetically in the Old Testament and then in its fulfillment in the New Testament, that tells us about the equality and co-eternality of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Now, there is confusion on the part of many people because Jesus is the God-man. We believe that he is not a mixture of God and man. We do not believe he's 50 God and 50 man. He was a true man. He was a prophet, priest, king.

He is our intercessor. All these things are true. He was a true man. If he was not a true man, he could not have given his life upon Calvary's cross as an atonement for our sins. But the fact of the matter is that when you allow the New Testament to speak for itself, when you don't cut it up into parts, when we use equal scales, that is, I, this evening, will not cut the Koran up into parts.

I will allow the Koran to speak for itself. I ask that everyone else do the same thing with the New Testament. When you do that with the New Testament, you not only find Jesus speaking of the Father, saying the Father is greater than I am, in the context of saying to the disciples, if you loved me, you would have rejoiced.

I said I'm going back into the presence of the Father because just a few lines later, he's going to be talking about the fact how in eternity past, he shared the very glory of the Father in his presence.

His disciples should have rejoiced. He was going back into that place. Not only do we have those texts, but then we have all the others that speak of Jesus Christ as Yahweh. Yes, the one name of God in the Old Testament.

The God who says in Isaiah 45, 23, to me every knee shall bow, and to me every tongue shall confess. Those very same words are applied to Jesus in Philippians chapter 2. The God who said in Isaiah chapter 48, that I will share my glory with no one.

That very God, that very text is applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And in fact, Jesus not only accepts the worship of his followers, but after his resurrection, when Thomas comes into his presence, and Thomas who had been doubting the resurrection, when Jesus appears, and he says to Thomas, look at my hands and my feet, touch me and see that as I, a spirit does not have a body, a flesh and bones to see that I have.

Thomas' response was to answer and say to Jesus. He answered and said to him, alto in the original language. Can't be to somebody else. It's the singular. It is addressed to Jesus. He says to Jesus, my Lord and my God.

Now, if Jesus was merely a prophet, he should have said, don't say that. That's exactly what happened in the book of Revelation. When John bowed down before an angel, the angel said, don't do that. Worship God alone.

But when Thomas said these words to Jesus, what was Jesus' response? Thomas, because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are those who do not see, and yet they have believed. Those words of Jesus that he uttered to the Jews in John chapter 8, verse 24, must echo in our minds this evening.

Jesus said to people who were closer to him than you are to me. He said, unless you believe that ego I am, you will die in your sins. Well, they believed he was a man. They would have accepted him as a prophet.

They would have accepted him as Messiah, especially after he fed 5 ,000 people with a few loaves of bread and the fishes. But that wasn't enough. What they would not accept him as was ego I me, the I am.

And at the end of that chapter, men who up to that point in time had found him to be an interesting speaker had even believed in him in a surface level way were picking up stones to stone him because he said before Abraham was, I am, and they understood exactly what those words meant.

The Lord Jesus said things that no mere prophet could ever say. And he did things that no mere prophet could ever do. And his followers then attributed to him the names and activities of God that again could never be attributed to a mere prophet.

And they were all monotheists. In fact, it's fascinating to me that one of the earliest confessions of faith we find in the New Testament is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 8. And there the apostle Paul writing to church at Corinth in the very earliest decades of the Christian experience takes the Shema.

Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. He takes that statement of monotheism. He takes it as it is found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Greek Septuagint because of course that's the language of the people in Corinth.

And he takes the very words that were found in the Septuagint. The word God, Theos. The word Lord, Kurios. And he reveals to us that already at this point in history all the followers of Jesus recognized that they continued to believe the Shema but the Shema had now been fulfilled in a great way.

You see, there have been prophecies in the Old Testament. And those prophecies were of one who would come. In Isaiah chapter 9 it is said the one who would come is called Wonderful, Counselor. And then what's he also called?

He's also called El Gabor, Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Aviat, which means Father of Eternity. The one who creates time. Prince of Peace. And those fulfillments had been found in the person of Jesus Christ.

He fulfilled those prophecies in a way that no one else possibly could. And so the early Christians now recognize this. And what we have in 1 Corinthians 8, 6 is Paul saying yet for us, for us followers of Jesus there is but one God, there's Theos, the Father from whom are all things and we exist for Him.

And one Kurios, Kurios being the translation of the name Yahweh, one Lord, Jesus the Messiah by whom are all things and we exist through Him. Now whatever else you do with this text you must realize that first of all Paul is purposefully utilizing the very statement of monotheism that every faithful Jew repeated every morning.

And we also must realize that he is saying that it is through Jesus that all things have come into existence and that we exist through Him. That was the same confession of faith that we find in Colossians chapter 1.

For by Him were all things created whether in heaven or in earth, visible and invisible, principalities, powers, dominions or authorities. All things are created by Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.

My friends, there is no question that those words are describing our Creator. And that is the testimony of the entirety of the New Testament taken as a whole, allowed to speak consistently for itself.

You cannot reduce the Jesus of the New Testament down to a mere prophet. And here's the question. If that was the consistent testimony 600 years before the Quran came into existence in our knowledge of it, however you view its origins.

If that was the consistent testimony of the Torah in the Injil which the Quran says are Netzal, sent down. They contain light and guidance. Then we cannot be neutral about this person, Jesus. Because if we are right then every person in this room every person in this room is the creation of Jesus.

Every breath you take, every beat of your heart comes from His hand and continues to do so. As Paul said in Colossians 2 .9 for in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. Theatetos, that which makes God, God dwells in Jesus in bodily form.

We cannot be neutral about Him. And that is why I am so passionate about this discussion. I understand what Tawhid means. I honor the proclamation of monotheism. But what we really should be discussing this evening is not the misunderstanding that many Muslims have of the Trinity and of the New Testament.

What we should be discussing is how can we as individuals, all individuals in this room we all say God is one and you say, no you are violating that and I say, no I am not. One being of God shared by three persons.

Why is it that all the monotheistic writers of the New Testament took that one name of God the one name by which God was known, Yahweh and they apply it to three distinct persons? Clearly in the New Testament the Father is Yahweh.

It's Yahweh who lays our sins upon the suffering servant, Isaiah 53. And yet they then over and over again John tells us in John chapter 12 for example that the person that Isaiah saw sitting upon the throne in his temple vision on Isaiah 6 you know who John says that was?

That was Jesus. And Hebrews chapter 1 the writer of the Hebrews quotes from Psalm 102, 25 -27 which is about Yahweh and how Yahweh never changes and how all of creation will grow old and he will discard it but he never changes and the writer to the Hebrews writing before the destruction of the temple in AD 70 very clearly applies that passage to Jesus.

Now in the same book he calls Jesus a man, a prophet, a priest but he also identifies him as Yahweh. Tawhid the oneness, Wahad to make one is it to be applied to the being of God? We agree that is the prophetic message there is only one God over against all the false gods of the peoples no question about it.