Twitter Discussion with Miroslav Volf and then Review of a Video from Simply Seerah Studios

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:30

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I want to start off by thanking someone,

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I won't name names on the program because then you might get hate mail, or worse. But I went to church last night and was handed a package that was sent to church.

00:48

That's not the best way of getting hold of me, by the way, but it got to me. And lo and behold, here it is.

00:57

Someone in The Dividing Line audience sent me a coogee. Now, the way to a man's heart is through his coogee.

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I had my eyes on Rich and I said that just to see what kind of reaction we'd get.

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And it was visceral, visceral. Very good term, visceral. Very neat term, visceral. But it was cool.

01:20

Thank you very much to the person who sent me the coogee.

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It fits great, even though it's a large or I might wear a medium, but they vary. And so it fits great.

01:32

And so we have a coogee on today. Somebody must have been in my studio while I was gone because there's some

01:40

Play -Doh in here. And, oh, wow.

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Yep, that's Play -Doh. Yep. Wow, does that bring back memories?

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And no, I don't mean from Dallas either. I mean, from like, what, 50 years?

02:01

Yeah, half a century ago. Yeah. And my straw man's still over there.

02:07

Welcome, anyways. We got to get warmed up going. I've got some tea over here today. My voice may need it.

02:14

Some Rivas tea is sitting on the warmer there, so that's good. And you are here and we have some stuff to do, some work to accomplish here on the program today.

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And I want to start off with a conversation that took place on Twitter.

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Now, Twitter, you know, as my block list grows ever longer,

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Twitter can be a real pain.

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You know, Twitter can be a place you just, you almost aren't even sure you want to turn on, you know.

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But sometimes I get some good, I get some good leads.

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What the video we're gonna be looking at was a tweet right before the program started yesterday.

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And I get some good resources, some good links, you know.

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And then once in a while, there's an interesting conversation. It's hard to have a meaningful conversation on Twitter.

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There's no, no two ways about it. I'm reminded of what Douglas Wilson said to that one young lady when he was at that one university.

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Um, I'm sorry, but I, I do frequently have thoughts that require more than one sentence to express, which is definitely not the way our modern culture works very much.

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But, um, had a conversation, um, with Miroslav Volf.

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Now I didn't bring the book in here. In fact, I haven't checked. I know I have it on my, on my

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Kindle. And so that may be the only format I have it in. But I, I thought I had gotten the hard copy.

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I'm not a hundred percent certain. It was what, four years ago that his book came out.

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And I'm, I'm pretty certain cause I know I, I read it. I listened to it actually while writing.

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Um, in fact, I specifically remember what route I was on. Isn't that weird? Four years ago. And what, four years, four times, nine ish, 36 ,000 miles ago of writing.

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And, uh, and I remember where I was. That's, that's very strange. Um, but I, I know

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I listened to the book and so I'm, I'm pretty certain that I did comment on it on the program.

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It didn't get a lot of interest, but it got some. And I just comment on the fact that, you know, Volf is coming from a fairly progressive

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Christian perspective in comparison to where I would be and, and comment on some of the things he said about Islam and didn't spend a whole lot of, a whole lot of time on it.

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Um, anyway, uh, the next time I hear his name is, I don't know, about three weeks, a month ago when

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Sheikh Yasser Qadhi mentions, he posted something about the

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Wheaton situation and talked about how he would go across the hall while at Yale to visit with Dr.

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Volf and talk about these issues. And, and he would want to hear from Yasser Qadhi what the

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Islamic view in regards to God was and stuff like that. And I found that interesting. And then somebody, um, tweeted me and Miroslav Volf, who shockingly, his

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Twitter ID is Miroslav Volf. Could have guessed that one,

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I guess. Um, and, uh, probably not too many people with that particular name.

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And so a conversation broke out in Twitter, shockingly. And it was an interesting conversation on whether Christians, the succinct.

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Yes. In your, uh, in your terminology that sometimes you don't say things you would like to say, but anyway,

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I had written, um, there was someone called pseudo -plotinus and between to worship the one

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God. Now, of course in Twitter, you invest so much more effort into trying to be exceptional.

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And I had written on January 24th.

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The fact is the Quran negates the central aspect of the revelation of God in Christianity.

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So say not three. Um, and that was January 24th, January 26th sort of picked up again.

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Um, and me is, you know, there'll be no helper, hellfire, so on and so forth.

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Miroslav Volf and you, you never tell on Twitter exactly who you're supposed to be talking to when you have multiple tags in it says

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Jews of Jesus time negated to yet. Jesus believed their

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God and his God were the same. So that, that seems to have taken from what

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I had said about negating the central aspect of the revelation of God in Christianity. Now I immediately see a massive category difference there.

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Um, the Jews of Jesus's day are living in the day of the revelation of Jesus Christ and before the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit. And they, Jesus did say, you claim

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God as your God, but if you knew the father, you would love me. So he didn't accept the idea, um, that their

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God and his God were the same. And here immediately is where the difference lies here immediately is where I believe we are going to a deeper level and much of the culture is staying on a very surface level.

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And I think Dr. Volf is staying on a surface level on the issue of whether we're talking about Yahweh of the old

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Testament. There wouldn't have been any question. The Jews and Jesus said, we're talking about the

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God that revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Okay. No question about that.

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That's what we're talking about. But Jesus is saying, you claim to know him, but don't know him. You, you claim to be his representatives, but you don't know him and you don't love him.

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And hence your worship is not the worship that he's looking for. And so some people would say, ah, you're, you're, you're, you're going into more esoteric stuff.

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Isn't the question as it's being asked, do Muslims and Christians, what, what's the next word?

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Worship the same God, not acknowledge the same God. If you want to change it and say, are

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Christians and Jews and Muslims making a historical reference to Abraham, to the

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God that revealed himself to Abraham and leave all issues of worship, salvation, truth, all that stuff out, then this would be a very easy question to answer.

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But just as the universal Catholic catechism messed everything up when it said that Christians and Muslims adore the same

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God. And I don't, that's gotta be adoramos in Latin, I would assume. And hence raises all sorts of red flags immediately.

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When you use the term worship, a Christian defines, well, a

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Christian should define worship in a biblical fashion. You know, worshipping in spirit and in truth and, you know, all those biblical parameters that, that, you know, keep getting in the way of our, just getting along with everybody.

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And so when Dr. Wolf says, yet Jesus believed their

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God and his God were the same. It's a, it's the same yes, no issue that I've raised before on the surface level, non deep level.

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Yes. We're talking about the God that revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, but on the personal level, on the worship level, on the truth level, on any level that is relevant to the defining of worship as a

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Christian, the answer is no. Jesus said, if you loved, you know, if you know

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God, me, love me, love God, you know, the, the relationship of father and son,

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John chapter five, all that kind of stuff. And they don't, they're not doing that. So do they really know

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God? The answer would be no. So we will see that that will continue through the conversation.

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Uh, because I then responded, does not the fact that Islam arises after the divine witness to the sun, place it in a different category than Judaism before.

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I want to expand on that, but again, 140 characters, I couldn't even put a period at the end of the sentence.

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And my point was of course, that he had compared the contemporary

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Jews of Jesus's day with a group that arises 600 years later in full light of the writing of the entirety of the new

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Testament. And then says, no, say not three, mere razzle, no crucifixion, no exaltation of the right hand of the father.

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There's no father for that matter. Um, what do you, doesn't that put it in a different context?

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His response was, you cannot have the father, but you can pray to him no important true things about him and seek to obey his commands.

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And the word have is in quotation marks. So I don't,

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I, I'll admit, I don't know what he means by that. You cannot have the father, but you can pray to him.

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So I don't get that, that there's a disjunction there that I can't wrap my mind around. I don't,

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I don't get it. No important true things about him and seek to obey his commands without having him, without having a proper relationship to him.

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Again, maybe my problem is I'm trying to interpret him as a Christian and he's not using

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Christian terminology. And so I'm missing something there. And then he said,

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Islam is in a different category than Judaism, but that doesn't negate strong affinities of the two on God, the relevant issue.

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Well, no one's going to argue that there are strong affinities, but that's not the same thing as answering the question. Do Christians, Jews worship the same

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God? So I wrote back, but the question being asked is, do we worship?

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And I put in the Greek term Latruo, the same God, knowing him as fact is not knowing him in worship, is it?

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And so I'm trying to address the distinction that has been introduced, this idea of, well, you can, you don't, you may not have him, but you might know him or something like that.

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And I'm asking, knowing him as fact, identifying this particular God of history is not knowing him in worship, is it?

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And then in response to the second tweet, and this is how, you know, this is what happens in Twitter. You do multiple tweets and that's why downloading these things and trying to put them in order takes forever because I responded twice to one tweet and then it starts branching off from there and you end up losing all sorts of stuff in the process.

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Second tweet was, of course, there are strong affinities, but biblical worship is not a matter of affinities, but of divine revelation.

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Yes. So I'm again, putting this in the Christian context.

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It's not enough to say that, well, you know, the God we worship has affinities to the true gods.

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That's good enough. You know, Baal could have said that, you know, the Baal worshipers could have, well, Baal has affinities to Yahweh and so it's good.

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No. And then I linked him to the video

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I did two weeks ago, three weeks ago on YouTube. He replied, wow, this is about half an hour later.

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Interesting enough. The question is not one of salvation, but of the object of worship.

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One can understand and worship the right God wrongly. I'm not sure why

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I raised the issue of salvation, but it is relevant, obviously, because I don't think a unsaved person would even want to worship

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God in the first place. But so the question is not one of salvation, but the object of worship.

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Well, that's what I'm saying. We don't have the same object of worship. We don't just simply worship a

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God who has only revealed himself to Abraham, but has not continued that process of revelation in the incarnation, the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit. So he says, but of the object of worship, one can understand and worship the right

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God wrongly. Well, if what you mean by that is that there is no perfect worship on earth today, okay.

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But that's what we're talking, not what we're talking about. We're talking about having the wrong object of worship and that the object of worship for a

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Christian is defined by the totality of God's revelation, not by almost the initial element of God's revelation back with Abraham.

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My response was, I truly doubt the apostles would have said one could worship the father while saying the son is, and it's interesting,

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I'm looking at the Arabic here. I know when I posted this that it was right, because I checked it.

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But now that I'm looking at in the PDF, man, you try to copy and paste Arabic, it is going to get messed up no matter what you do.

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And the preposition has been moved, but the

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Arabic is merely a rasool of Allah, merely a rasool of Allah, merely a prophet, a messenger of Allah.

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So I said, I truly doubt the apostles would have said one could worship the father, excuse me, while saying the son is merely a rasool of Allah.

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And so two minutes later I said, so fundamentally your position is that the astounding claim of the incarnation is separable from true

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Christian worship? You can just put that over the side and still have true worship of God without acknowledging the astounding reality of the incarnation?

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Because that's really problematic to me. I mean, either God entered into human flesh or he did not.

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And it's, we're going to look at a Muslim video here in a few minutes, that is going to address pretty much same mindset from the

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Muslim perspective, and that misses by definition how important incarnation is to the reality of the

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Christian faith. His response says, I think you are confusing the issue.

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It is the referent of Jewish and Muslim worship, not the truth of Christian worship.

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Well, again, he goes back to the surface level. What's the referent? The referent's only historical.

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But back to Abraham, not to the historical reality of incarnation. And I replied, there is no

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Christian worship outside the truth revealed in the incarnate one, Dr. Wolf. And he said, no, the reality of the revelation of Jesus Christ makes worship of the triune

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God a necessity. The issue, I'm sorry, this is me. I'm sorry. You'll say, wait a minute.

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That sounded familiar. I said, no, the reality of the revelation of Jesus Christ makes worship of the triune

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God a necessity. The issue is the verb. And I had put asterisks around worship.

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As I said in the video, it is a yes or no, yes and no answer. Yes. The historical referent is said to be the same.

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I think something's missing because I had a no answer as well at that point.

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Then I said to him at 9 .15,

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if Enho Eisenpontos hoi thesauroi teis saphias kai nosaos apakrupsoi is true.

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I normally have a pair of small print, dirty.

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Anyways, I quoted Colossians 2, 1 or 2. In him, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

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I said, if that is true, then the son must define worship as well.

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So my point being, the Christian claims regarding the incredible nature of who

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Jesus Christ is. If all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in him, then we can't define worship any other way than that which would take into consideration his lordship.

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Or we're not giving a Christian definition. Then he said, you can direct your worship to the right

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God, Jews and Muslims, but worship wrongly or inadequately as many

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Christians too. So again, this is real effort at nuance here.

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You can direct your worship to the right God. So Jews and Muslims are directing their worship to the right

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God, but they're just worshiping wrongly or inadequately. And I responded,

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Christian worship is done in light of the incarnation of the son and the outpouring of the

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Holy Spirit. The author of the Quran knew neither, and hence consigned to hellfire anyone who insists upon saying,

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Thalath, three. If we follow apostolic teaching, we simply have to say, and we know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding.

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So we may know, and then one got skipped here, the rest of 1 John 5 20. We may know him who is true, and this is the one true

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God, and his son whom he has sent, so on and so forth. So I'm from 1 John 5 20. And he says he's got to sign off.

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He says, to the love of truth and to the truth of love, the triune God we worship in Christ, God become flesh is both.

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Well, I appreciate his confession of the triune God. I said I would be happy to have

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Dr. Wolfe join me on the Divine Line to discuss this more thoroughly. And Dr.

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Wolfe suggested someone named Joseph Cumming. He is immensely informed both

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Islam and Christianity, and he's a greater expert than he is, and so on and so forth. So I would like to have seen some interaction from Dr.

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Wolfe on the biblical texts that I was citing, and especially when

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I said I don't think the apostles would have bought into this idea that you can wrongly worship the true

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God, but it's still right worship, but it doesn't have to include what

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God has done in the revelation of Jesus Christ. I, 1 John 2, which

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I think somewhere earlier on I quoted, we maybe didn't grab that part or it was different, I don't know, but I quoted the text.

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If you don't have the son, you don't have the father either. And I didn't get any of that.

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And my recollection is it's, it's been, I don't remember when his book came out, how many years it's been.

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Like I said, I figured it's about three. Let me, let me look here real quick at what the date on it was.

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Allah, A Christian Response. Okay, 2011. Wow. So it was five years ago.

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Allah, A Christian Response by Miroslav Wolfe. And so it would have been 2011 that I actually listened to it.

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So that's why it's not quite as clear as if I listened to it last week.

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But my recollection was that it was primarily a philosophical rather than scripturally oriented discussion.

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And that sort of came out, I think, in the conversation that we just had there on, on Twitter.

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But again, at least, at least we had the opportunity of having some type of exchange.

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And it would have been nice if we could have, you know, followed up with maybe doing something with the program, because I think it'd be good to do something like that.

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But he didn't really seem to want to do that.

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So anyway, now, as I said, Twitter then also provided me with the link to this video that I want to go through.

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I'm going to try to go through it as quickly as I can. Especially because it's nine minutes and 45 seconds long, given that it took us three hours to do a 16 minute video, that could be dangerous.

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But I'm not going to, I'm just not going to do as much response here because I don't know these folks.

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It's a group called Simply Syrah Studios. I only see two, two, four, six, seven, no, two, four, six, five, five videos.

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There's two playlists and five videos on their thing.

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So who knows, maybe the one who sent it to me was just actually trolling for advertising. But this is really well done.

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There's no question that the graphics and the, this is meant for young people.

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This is meant for the millennials. This is, this is millennial theology, sad to say.

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But this is really well done. And I want to interact with it because since it is really well done, these are the kind of people

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I want to interact with. And so if, if you all from Simply Syrah Studios hear about this and something tells me you might, uh, contact us.

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I'd like to know where you're located. I'd like to know what this possibility of, you know, interaction or anything like that.

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Um, because I, I appreciate serious Muslims and you're obviously serious and you've done a good job with this video.

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Obviously I disagree and I'm going to try to correct a few things, uh, because I think you've missed where we're, where the best of Christian theology is coming from.

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And in fact, the whole video is about a Christian argument. I guess I have heard some people make, but I've never made it.

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I don't think it's, and in fact, I've got to admit that the response is a good response on that level.

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The, the argument that it's, it's rebutting is not an argument that I would find to be a convincing argument at all from the

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Christian perspective, it misses things. But in the process, you make statements about, especially the graphic we'll see here in a moment where you compare

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God and Jesus and God's like this and Jesus isn't these things. Therefore Jesus is God. You've, you've missed the whole point of the hypostatic union and the incarnation.

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And it really does sort of tie in, um, to, well, debates we've done in the past, uh, debates we have done in regards to the incarnation.

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I just realized I was going to talk about the Pope right at the start. Didn't I even promise that yesterday? I'm sorry. Let's do this video and I'll, I'll try to get it done in time to do a little

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Pope stuff at the end. Sorry. I did just, just remembered. I just remembered. All right, let's get to it since now

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I'm under time pressure. Oh, I could have skipped this part.

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Yes. Well, anyway, allows me to sip some tea while we're at it. There's an argument that has become popular amongst many

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Christian apologists in which they try to compare the Quran being the word of God to that of Jesus being the word of God.

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Okay. Never made the argument. That's, that's blown up. That's too big.

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It's, um, don't need to get snippy with me.

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Snippy man in the other room. Um, this isn't what we believe.

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I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Um, Jesus is the word of God. He's described as the

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Lagos in John 1, 1. Um, but that's not, he, he is the rebel.

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He is the perfect revelation of the father. Um, okay. I, I get that, but he's eternally been deity.

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Uh, in fact, you even quote without, I think, seeing what it really meant. Colossians 2, 9 later on. So I'm not sure what this argument is supposed to be.

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I'll confess. I, I, I would not make it so, but we'll go with it anyways.

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As it States in John 1, 1 in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

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God. Okay. Um, but did you catch that in the beginning was the word, the word has eternally existed and the word was with God personal relationship between, as we know now, father and son, uh, and the word is as to his nature.

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Deity wants you. I'm glad you didn't mistranslate like Acmedida.

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I suppose that's probably something that's, that's good here. In fact, I didn't see any mistranslations.

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Um, so more power to you now at face value, this might seem like they've made a good point, but upon,

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I'll be honest with you. I'm not sure what the point is. What's the point? I don't get it.

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I've never gotten it. But anyway, investigation, one will quickly realize just how many holes are in this argument.

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The first problem is that Muslims believe the Quran is a reflection of God's eternal word, but they do not consider the

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Quran as God himself. For example, when Muslims pray, they don't picture

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God as a Quran standing before them, arms wide open, ready to forgive them for their sins. In Islam, Muslims believe that there is

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God and there is creation and the two are separate. We agree. We agree.

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I've talked about the greater creation distinction over and over and over. It's central to Christian theology, central to Christian theology,

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God being immortal, pure and all powerful while creation being mortal, impure and vulnerable.

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Now, how many of you have seen the debate with Abdullah Kunda? We've already gotten to the deepest level that that debate went to because creation was not made impure, was it?

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See, from this Islamic perspective, God cannot create something that's perfect.

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Only God is perfect. Everything else by nature is imperfect. So Allah cannot create anything perfect. There's no such thing as a perfect human nature.

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If it's created, then it's mortal, impure and vulnerable, and especially that term impure.

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Now, I reject this. It's not a biblical teaching. God said it was good.

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God said it was very good. He didn't say it was relatively more pure than something else.

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He said it was good. So, where do you get this? If it's made, it's impure.

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Why doesn't Allah have the capacity not to create another God, but to create something that's pure?

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I don't think we've gotten an answer to that, but it becomes vitally important because from their perspective, what makes the incarnation impossible is that God cannot take on a human nature because it is by nature impure.

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Even if it's exactly what God made it to be, exactly what fulfills exactly the intention that God intended, it's still impure because it's not

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God. Well, by definition, you are limiting the capacity of God to create that which is holy and good and just, and you have no basis for this in divine revelation anyway.

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And so, by definition, God cannot become creation, and creation cannot become God. Now, notice, by definition, and here again, you're dealing with individuals who have embraced

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Unitarian monotheism, and rare is the Muslim who can break out of that mindset and even think outside of that area and go, okay, you're a monotheist, but you're not

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Unitarian. And so, what you're saying is that the second person of the

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Godhead did not cease being God, did not cease being immortal, pure, all -powerful, but he veiled those divine attributes that were his for a season, took on a pure human nature, did not, the whole point of the hypostatic union is that there is nothing, there isn't this.

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He didn't become 50 % God and 50 % man. It's not a demigod. There is a close relationship.

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There is a hypostatic union, but it's not one to where this side, that is really hard to do.

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This side does not become this side.

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It's really difficult to do. Anyway, actually, I could do this just like this.

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There you go. This side and that side. There, there we go. There is no intermixture.

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The one does not cease to be what it is. And isn't it interesting, guys?

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And again, I'd like to know who's behind this because you guys did a good job. This took some work and you're obviously thinking through things.

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I appreciate that. This is exciting to me. But when you're looking at what you're doing here, you're assuming, and you're going to talk about what

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God could do and would do. I get that. I get that. But you need to understand something.

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The hypostatic union was a reality of Christian theology before Muhammad ever took a breath of life.

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So why was there so much concern on the part of Christian theologians to make sure that there was not this intermixture in what we're teaching?

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That when we understood when Paul, for example, says they would not have crucified the

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Lord of glory, that crucifixion, you can't crucify a spirit.

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So Jesus has the ability to be crucified because he has the human nature.

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But that is joined, not intermixed with, in the hypostatic union, the divine nature.

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So he is one person with two natures. Why do you think there was such a concern to protect that balance and to maintain that balance before the

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Islamic criticism? Long before it, hundreds of years before it. It'd be one thing if all y 'all thought up that hypostatic union stuff after we came around and pointed out the problems.

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No, no, we were concerned about that long before Muhammad came along. And that is because these points are already set in stone and cannot change.

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And of course, that might prompt someone to say, well, if God is all powerful, then why couldn't he become a man?

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Which is pretty much what the debate with Abdullah was about. And this is an interesting response.

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And our answer to this is there's a difference between couldn't and wouldn't. You see, in Islam, God is defined as the all powerful, the all wise, and the ruler of the universe.

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And these attributes are eternal and can never be removed from him. Agreed. We, we agree completely.

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And in the incarnation, none of these attributes, and this, one of my favorite clips to play from the

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Abdullah Kunda debate was right here, where I asked him, what, what eternal attributes do you see being compromised?

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Well, he said, all of them, because it's very difficult for the

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Muslim to get a handle on the idea that the second person of the trinity did not cease being all those things.

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Veiling something is not the thing, same thing as ceasing to possess something. To accomplish his ministry,

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Jesus veiled the glory that was his. He could not have walked amongst the people of Galilee and preached his sermons and done the things that he did if they had all had to wear

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Oakleys, so as to not be blinded by his brightness. Okay. That seems rather obvious, but it points to something important.

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And that is that veiling, whether it be glory, knowledge, other of the divine, you know, being worshiped by the heavenly angels, you know, these are things that for a season are veiled.

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That's not the same thing as those attributes ceasing to exist.

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And remember, those attributes remain absolutely unveiled in the

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Father and in the Spirit, even during the temporal period of the incarnation.

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So, these attributes do not cease to exist. So, we're not in disagreement. It is just your insistence upon Unitarianism that does not allow you to see the full testimony of what the scriptures were talking about.

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Because in theory, if we were to assume that God could or would remove these attributes from himself, then what's to stop someone from assuming that God could then remove his whole status of being

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God and then transfer his rulership over to someone else? Well, these are, you know, we believe that the attributes of God define who

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God is. God would cease being God if these attributes were destroyed or done away with, but that's not what we believe.

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We don't believe that that is what took place in the incarnation. And I don't have time to do it right now, but what

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I'd be interested in doing maybe in dialoguing with you or something like that is looking at Philippians chapter 2 verses 5 through 11 and pointing out that the incarnation was the means by which

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Jesus made himself of no reputation. It was by doing something positively, that is taking on that perfect human nature that Jesus made himself into a reputation, not by getting rid of something and destroying divine attributes or mixing divine attributes with human attributes or whatever other heresy there is out there.

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So this really isn't an argument against an orthodox understanding of the incarnation. ...making them

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God as well. And then who's to say that then that new God wouldn't transfer it to another third party?

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And of course, one sees how this could quickly spiral out of control and you could end up with God spawning from God spawning from gods.

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Yeah, the Quran is a reflection of God's eternal knowledge. Cease. Oh, great. What I was trying to show you there was with the, we skipped something there.

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I tried to hit the thing and good grief.

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How far back do we have to go here? There we go. This thing here with all the gods, that's called

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Mormonism. God spawning gods, that's

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Mormonism. And like I said, if you want to say the Quran was prophetically, you know, saying something about Mormonism, there you go.

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God spawning from God spawning from gods, which would create a never -ending cycle of power exchange, leaving the rest of creation confused on who to worship and thank at any particular time.

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No, in Islam, we believe that God is one and that his attributes are eternally with him. Therefore, when

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Muslims say the Quran is God's word, what they mean is God's eternal knowledge, meaning that when we say

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God is the all -knowing, one should understand that this means perfect knowledge, which in turn means that God never does anything spontaneously, i .e.

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God doesn't have spur -of -the -moment thoughts, which he didn't have before. And if this is the case, then that means

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God knew about all of existence before it existed. Well, I'd love to have a conversation as to how that works out, because I agree.

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God does not act spontaneously. He acts in accordance with his divine decree. And you probably haven't had too many conversations with Christians who actually believe that, though you may know historically that there's been lots of us.

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For instance, if you were to open up the Quran, you'd see that there's a number of righteous people mentioned therein, such as Noah, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, peace be upon them all.

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But also you have unrighteous people mentioned therein, such as Satan, Cain, Goliath, and of course the

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Pharaoh. Now even though these people are specifically named in God's eternal word, the Quran, no

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Muslim believes that these people actually eternally existed with God. This is because Muslims know there's a difference between the idea of a created being, which in relation to God's eternal knowledge doesn't have a beginning or end, and the result of that idea, which when created has a beginning point and an end point.

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And so when the Quran says, O Mary, indeed God gives you glad tidings of a word from him, and whose name shall be the

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Jesus son of Mary. Muslims know that what God meant here was that Jesus was given a unique honor, that instead of being born from a father or mother like all of the other righteous people throughout history,

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God was to honor Jesus by making him be born of a virgin mother and coming into existence directly through his command.

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But of course this doesn't mean that since Jesus was born without a father, that this would then in turn make

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God become his father by default. Because if that were the case, then one could argue that this should then apply to Adam, who didn't have a father or mother.

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And if we were to continue with this line of thinking… The polytheism in Mecca, where Allah is no longer father.

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There was a long, all the way through all the New Testaments, you have

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God as father. You have the unique son of God, Jesus, who has a unique relationship to the father.

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But there is still a sadness, I think, in the removal of the concept of God as father as a result of a, well,

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I would say imbalance in response to the polytheism of the

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Kaaba in Mecca. One might assume that since Eve was created from Adam's rib through God's command, that then

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God would be like the mother of Eve, since Adam plays a male role in this equation. But of course, in Islam, God is neither a male or female.

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God doesn't have DNA to pass off as 50 % to a co -equal or subordinate to then create little hybrid versions of himself on earth.

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I'm not sure if that was meant to say that that's what we believe. Sounded sort of like it, but that wouldn't be what we believe, hybrid versions on earth type thing.

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Brings us to our next point in relation to the Quran and Jesus. And that is that Muslims believe the

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Quran is a reflection of God's eternal knowledge. And while God's knowledge is considered an attribute, it is not considered a unique person separate from God.

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To put it simply, there are a number of descriptive attributes and abilities God By the way, we don't believe that the son is a unique person separate from God.

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We believe that the son is a separate person from the father and from the spirit.

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But it's only your assumption of Unitarianism that allows you to make that equation between what we would call father and God.

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And therefore Jesus has to be somebody else. One being that is God shared by three persons.

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So sometimes the language betrays a little bit of the bias or the misunderstanding on the part of the narrator.

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Such as knowledge, power and mercy, which if we were to move from him would essentially make him not

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God anymore. So these things cannot be considered separate from him, nor will we consider these attributes to have their own personality and life outside of God.

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Whereas according to the Christian doctrine, God is made of three persons, the father, the son and the holy ghost.

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Each unique God is made of three persons. No. And even this picture here.

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Look, I appreciate the attempt. And there are all sorts of Christians who don't get it any more accurately, but especially now in this context, accuracy is really important.

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Really, really important. The one divine being is shared fully and completely by three divine persons, the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

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Now you look at this and check it out.

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For some reason, Siri thinks I, oh, I said spirit. And the phone thought that was, that was, and Siri's response to my description of the

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Trinity is I'm really not equipped to answer such questions, James. Thank you,

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Siri. I appreciate your honesty in recognizing your limitations as a theological technical device.

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If only others would be as, as, as very humble as Siri. Oh, that was good.

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That was good. That was obviously completely unintended and unplanned, but leave your, leave your iPhone in your, in your studio sometime while doing a podcast and see how many things she thinks you're saying to her.

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It's, it's sort of funny. Anyway, where was I? Sorry. We ain't getting to the Pope today. Sorry. We'll, we'll, we'll get there eventually.

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Anyway, the graph, even the graphics sort of makes it look like, you know, thirds, you know, and you can chop up the divine being into thirds and things like that.

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Look, you're, you're doing a good job of the graphics and they've, obviously the intention of the graphics is to be very eye -catching, but simplistic.

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So I get it. But it leads to a little misunderstanding, I think.

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Own personhood, but united in one being. Now, according to the Bible, now, you know, united in one being, the circle, that's good.

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You know, that gives you, it gives you an idea. I appreciate that. When Jesus came to earth, he was of two natures, completely man and completely

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God, or a part of God. Okay. Well, hey, it's better than the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, give them, give them that. I, I, I don't think there's a, a, a purposeful,

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I mean, I can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when the Witnesses did the Life Everlasting book, that they were purposefully attempting to create confusion.

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Um, this is close. You gotta admit, it's better than what's in most

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Sunday school materials. Um, but even, you know, by using the color that way, you know, the arrows indicating the sun, so you got the right person who's incarnate.

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It's not the father who became incarnate. It's not the, not the spirit became incarnate. And I, I guess the, the, the line down the middle is supposed to sort of maybe be the hypostatic union in some way, but it still looks like 50 -50.

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Uh, it's still like, still looks like a 50 -50 division to me. Um, but did it say according to the

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Bible? I, I hope that's what it said. That, that would be good. But the problem with this concept is that man and God have distinct attributes that are contrary to one another.

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Now, this is what I wanted to get to, and we may not even finish this up, but yes, man and God have attributes that are contrary to one another.

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God is eternal, man is not. Um, all that's true, but unless you miss what we said and think that God ceased being

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God and became man and that that man ceased being man and became

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God or something along those lines, then why do you think this is an issue? We're talking about the condescension of the son.

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He took on a perfect human nature, not an impure human nature, but a perfect human nature.

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The son did not cease being the son. If the son had ceased being the son, then there'd be a problem.

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Then there would be a real, a real issue. But here's what the problem is.

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And it's considered to be weak, ignorant, and impure. Whereas God is considered to be all powerful, all knowing, and all pure.

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So take for instance, when Jesus said, I tell you the truth, the son can do nothing by himself.

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He does only what he sees the father doing. Whatever the father does, the son also does.

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Now I would invite Simply Syrah to search the

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Dr. Oakley 1689 channel on YouTube for John five, because I have posted there for quite some time, a exegesis and study of what this text is actually saying.

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Because I, I believe that the utilization of certain texts from John chapter five by those engaging in Dawa ignore the real meaning of John chapter five and the statements that are made by Jesus there.

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Notice that the term that is used here in John 519 is do nothing by himself.

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John 519. Let me blow this up.

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And then all I'm going to do, just go ahead and leave it there, Rich. I'm just going to roll this over it and it should work. Are you impressed?

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Thank you very much. You should be, uh, right here off. Hey, I'll too. Uh, the son is not able to do off.

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Hey, I'll too from him self. In other words, in separation from um, the father, well, none of the divine persons act off.

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Hey, I'll too. In the sense of in derogation of without the perfect harmonious unity with the other divine persons.

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And so the point is not the weakness of the son.

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What's your, what you're missing here because of your Unitarian assumptions is the whole tenor of John chapter five, which is

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Jesus explaining. He's, he's just healed on the

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Sabbath and just claimed the right of Yahweh to do so. He said, my father's working until now and I am working.

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They pick up stones, stone him. Why? Because the Jews knew that God worked in the

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Sabbath. And so Jesus was claiming the very right of God to work on the Sabbath. And so Jesus' emphasis is not,

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Oh no, no, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm not, you missed, you totally misunderstood me. This is where he should have said,

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I'm a mirror. He doesn't say that instead. He's saying the father and I, we do the exact same thing.

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And in this context, it's upholding creation. And he says,

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I tell you the truth. The son can do it by himself. He does only what he sees the father doing. Whatever the father does, the son also does, which includes upholding creation, raising the dead.

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What prophet speaks like this? The point that Jesus is going to make all, and it's beautifully done guys.

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It really is, is the absolute unity of the father and the son in the accomplishment of the divine purpose.

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You don't have one deity over here doing his thing and one deity over here doing his thing. And a third over here doesn't know what's going on.

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You don't have that perfect unity, but the son, whatever the father does, the son also does, whatever.

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Yeah. Like creation, sustaining the universe in him, all things soonest they can, they hold together.

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You're to honor the son, even as you honor the father, you're worshiped in Revelation chapter five, the lamb stands as slain and every created thing in heaven and earth and on under the earth and in the seas worships he who sits upon the throne and the lamb.

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You see it's, it's, the text is beautifully harmonious and you've missed it because what you're looking for is incapacity rather than the great capacity that is actually being presented.

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I'm not going to rush this, but we do have to finish up. And so I'm going to make a note as to where we are and continue on with the response and get to the

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Pope, Lord willing on Tuesday of next week. We'll see you then.