Shadid Lewis and 1 Corinthians 8:6

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In March of 2008, Nabil Qureshi, a convert from Islam, debated

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Shadid Lewis, a convert to Islam. And the debate wasn't really a debate as much as it was a comparison and contrast of the reasons why each did what he did.

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Now, I felt it was one of the most useful debates I'd seen in a long time, mainly because it presented such a strong contrast between the theological, biblical, religious reasons that Nabil Qureshi had and the primarily social and cultural reasons that Shadid Lewis had.

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But after presenting a large amount of information about the black church in America and its manifest problems, and a sad but accurate recitation of the shallow evangelicalism that is in most of those black churches, no theology, no balanced understanding of the

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Bible or the Christian life or sanctification or justification of atonement, any of these things, the holiness of God especially, he finally got to his religious reasons.

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And there was, quite interestingly, a few verses shared.

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No meaningful exegesis offered, but just some verses thrown out that, well, these showed me that what

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I believed as a Christian was wrong. One of those passages, amazingly, it was 1

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Corinthians chapter 8, but Shadid only read a short portion. Let's listen to how he presented this in his opening from that debate in Norfolk, Virginia, in March of 2008.

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We even see this in some of the writings of Paul, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 6. For us, there is but one

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God, who is that? The Father, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians. I believe there's room to question just how deeply

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Shadid Lewis has examined 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and how deeply he examined it in his journey into Islam, given his own testimony that he left the quote -unquote

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Christian church he was in when the pastor brought out a saxophone and began jamming.

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And I would certainly agree with him, that's hardly appropriate for the worship time of the people of God.

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But be that as it may, I don't see a whole lot of reason for believing that Shadid Lewis during this period of time actually sought out meaningful

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Christian scholarship or meaningful advice on the meanings of these texts.

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So for example, he only quoted a single phrase from 1 Corinthians 8.

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Let's actually look at it in its proper context. Beginning with verse 4, therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no

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God but one. For even if there are so -called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one

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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one

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Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him.

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The fact that the Apostle Paul is here referring to Christian knowledge, special knowledge, is continued in the next verse, it says, not all men have this knowledge.

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There are people who think that there are multiple gods, so on and so forth. So when he says, yet for us, he's speaking for the entirety of the

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Christian people. We have but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one

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Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him.

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Now notice, of course, what is being referred to here. He is talking about the pagan idols of his day.

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Remember Paul's sermon on Mars Hill in Acts chapter 17. He's talking about those many gods that the people of those days worshipped, but he calls them so -called gods, those that are called gods, but they're not truly gods.

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There are many of them, there are many such gods and lords, yet for us, for Christians, there is but one

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God. So let's look carefully at the text that he cited, only in a small portion, but to us, there is heis theos, one

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God. I sort of wonder at the consistency of Shadid Lewis even going to this text, in light of the fact that so many

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Islamic apologists accuse the Apostle Paul of being the one who introduces a form of polytheism or shirk into Christianity.

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He is falsely accused of this, and yet here he is saying we believe in one

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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him.

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Notice the prepositions are used, ex and eis, and then kai heis kurios, one

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Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.

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Now it has been properly pointed out, Richard Baucom and N .T. Wright and others, it's not just a conservative view, but anyone who truly examines the text of the

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New Testament with some kind of semblance of fairness recognizes that the

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Apostle Paul is here drawing from the language of the Shema, one

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God, one Lord. And obviously, if this text were to be taken in the way that Shadid Lewis would have us to take it, that well, all you've got is this one phrase, there's one

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God, that means Jesus isn't God. Well, what is the logical conclusion of that? Well, there's one

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Lord, and it's Jesus Christ, so the Father isn't Lord. So you have a God and you have a

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Lord, and of course the term kurios that is used here is the very same terminology, the very same title that is used in the

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Greek Septuagint of the name of Yahweh or Jehovah himself.

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And so, the fact that you have both intimately connected, for us there is but one

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God, the Father, there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, and then the attendant statement, which again

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Shadid did not mention, which he would have to have mentioned if he had any understanding of this issue at all, is that all things are from the

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Father and for Him, but that all things are through the Lord Jesus, and we exist because of Him or through Him.

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Tell me, honestly, did Shadid Lewis give any evidence of having pondered what it means for a mere creature, a mere prophet, to be described in these words?

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Through a mere prophet are all things, through a mere, we exist through a mere prophet?

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Well, of course not. He didn't think through these things. He only grabbed a particular phrase, a particular word, and since it fits, once you take it out of context with his overarching argumentation, then he grabs hold of it and uses it.

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But the reality is, not only does this text teach monotheism over against the

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Mormons, who try to use this to teach polytheism, but it likewise utterly refutes the point that Shadid Lewis was trying to make from it, because it applies to the

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Lord Jesus language that could never, ever be used of a mere creature, of one who was not truly deity, because you would never say of a mere creature that we were created through Him and we exist through Him.

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Parallel this with the overarching assertion found in Colossians chapter 1, where it is said that all things are created by Jesus Christ, through Him and for Him, and all things hold together in Him.

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This is clearly the New Testament teaching concerning Jesus, and it is plain, sadly plain, that Shadid Lewis does not understand it.

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And so I took the time to ask an audience question. I was the first questioner in the question and answer period, and I believe that Nabil Qureshi did an excellent job in following up on my question, so I will just conclude with this and let that speak for itself.

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But it is painfully obvious that Shadid had no response to my question, could not respond to this information in any way, shape, or form.

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And so once again, the Islamic argument is shown to be severely lacking. In listening to his biblical argumentation, in preparing this video,

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I have decided to go through it. It is only about four minutes long, and look at each one of the texts he uses, because they are very common, but again, they are all isolated from a context, they are all mishandled from a meaningful perspective.

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And so we will take a look at them. But here is the audience question, and notice what Shadid does.

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He completely ignores 1 Corinthians 8, ignores the distinction between the

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Father and the Son, goes to Luke chapter 2, assumes an errant form of anti -Trinitarianism called modalism, and allows that to be his answer.

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That well, okay, over in Luke 2, he is presented to the Lord, so how can

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Jesus be Lord? Obviously confusing the fact that presentation to the

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Lord was an Old Testament category, since Jesus was the perfect man, he fulfilled the law, he did those things that the law required.

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Shadid is simply ignorant of the fact that the term Lord is used of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The one divine name is used of Father in the

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Old Testament, is used of the Son in the New Testament, the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh. This is one of the proofs of the doctrine of the

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Trinity, is that the writers of the Bible were willing to use that one divine name of the one true

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Creator God of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But he never even gets close to responding to the actual question that is asked of him.

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So here is the actual question, his response, and then Nabeel Qureshi's fine response to that.

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I was very thankful that Nabeel was doing that debate again. I would highly recommend you obtain it. It is an excellent debate, and it's certainly an encouragement to me to see men like David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi, who were the ones involved that weekend with me in those debates, standing firmly for the

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Gospel. May God bless them and protect them as we seek to proclaim the

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Gospel to the Muslim people to the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Greetings, sir.

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As a teacher of the New Testament, I would love to engage you on many of your comments about the text of the

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New Testament sometime in the future. But you gave specific verses that you said were important in your conversion and your decision that Jesus was not

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God. You quoted 1 Corinthians 8 .6, but you only quoted one of four lines, which is actually an early

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Christian creed. And so I would like to get your comments, if I could, on what it actually means.

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And since you have all those Bibles in front of you and feel that they're all contradictory to one another, if you'd like,

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I'll translate it for you from the original Greek. Would that work for you? Or could you look it up in 1 Corinthians 8 .6?

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Paul there is talking about those who are so -called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are gods many and lords many.

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Then, in talking about Christians, he says, but to us there is one God, the Father. And you stopped at that point.

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The rest of this early Christian creed says, from whom are all things, and we for him, and one

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Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. Now, it seemed that you were interpreting the phrase, there's one

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God, the Father, as a denial that Jesus could truly be divine. But if that's the case, then it also means one

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Lord Jesus Christ means that God could not be Lord. And the word Lord used there, kurios, is a term used for Jehovah or Yahweh throughout the

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Old Testament in the Greek translation. So I'm just asking you, could you please interpret how you can read this as a denial of the deity of Christ, when it's actually, the only way to understand it in context is in light of the

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Trinity. Well, I would say that, well, from taking the whole Bible in context, if Jesus, if this means that he's

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Lord God, then I turn myself to Luke chapter 2. I'm sorry, no, that's

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Luke chapter 2, verse 22. If that is understood, that that means

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Jesus is Lord God, then we see in Luke chapter 2, verse 22, it says, when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses was accomplished, they brought him, speaking about Jesus, to Jerusalem to present him to the

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Lord. So who are they presenting him to then? If that means in Corinthians that he is supposed to be Lord God, we know

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Lord, well, maybe the Greek says something different, but even if it does, if that means that it's referring to him as Lord God, then what is the explanation here?

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Because I'm looking at the totality, I'm not just taking that one verse by itself, I'm saying, okay, it's saying Lord, but we know throughout the Bible other people were called

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Lord, you see. But if that means that he's Lord God, then I turn to Luke chapter 2, verse 22, and I see that when he was a child, they brought

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Jesus to Jerusalem, and as a baby, they're presenting him to the Lord. If he's supposed to be Lord God, then who are they presenting him to?

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Like my teacher once told me, he made a joke, he said, were they holding him in front of a mirror and saying, look, look at yourself here?

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I mean, you see? So how could he be Lord if they're presenting him to the Lord? Dr. White, I believe your question referred to 1

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Corinthians 8 .6, which was not mentioned in your response. I did. No, no, you talked to Luke, this is my turn,

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I'm sorry. You talked about Luke 2, the question was on 1 Corinthians 8 .6, and what we find in 1

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Corinthians 8, by the way, there's an excellent discussion on this by Richard Baucom in his book God Crucified, but what's going on here is you have a verse which says, for us there is but one

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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him.

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And what's going on here is that Paul is taking the earliest creed of the

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Jews, which affirms one God, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad.

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Hear O Israel, our Lord is one. And so he's affirming the one

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God. But what's going on? He then takes that one God and he splits up the terminology to apply to both

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Jesus and the Father. So Paul's taking an affirmation of one God, and he says, yes, there's one

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God, but that is Jesus and the Father, which you quoted then is strong evidence for Trinity in early Christian doctrine.