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I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome everybody to the debate this evening. I'm going to be your chairperson. My name is Brian Marion, and it's really a joy to have you all here. I know some have traveled from far.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to formally welcome you to the debate this evening. Our two debaters, Dr. James White, is from the U .S., and he's a Christian scholar, a debater, and an author of many books, particularly The Forgotten Trinity and What Every Christian Should Know About the Quran.
That's his recent publication. He's going to be debating a well-known personality in Indonesia, Bashir Vania. I had the privilege of debating him many times. He's the director of the Islamic Information Center here in Indonesia.
He's also the author of literature and has debated many national and international Christian apologists. They're going to be debating a very important topic, and it revolves around the question, Can God Become Man? A Christian and Muslim Perspective.
Now, at all of these events that is arranged by PACT, that's Proclaiming Actively Christ Together, and the Islamic Information Center here in Indonesia, we have jointly committed ourselves to the following purpose for these engagements, which I'd like to take you through.
The purpose of our debate and symposium events are, one, that God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, that he be glorified. Secondly, that truth will prevail in the hearts and minds of all involved and you who attend.
And thirdly, and lastly, that all attendees and others will be greatly encouraged to go and study the holy scriptures for themselves. Now, not only do we articulate these three purposes, we've also made it very clear that we engage in these debates around certain rules.
We call them the rules of engagement, and while it's been advertised on the poster, we also want to make it abundantly clear to all attending what those rules are. Firstly, the chairperson must be respected at all times.
Secondly, speakers will adhere strictly to the time allocations. And our timekeeper this evening is Mr. Farad Vali, and he will be monitoring the time. Thirdly, questions by the audience members must not be longer than one minute and must be strictly relevant to the topic.
This pertains to those asking questions. Now, I want to ask you to please think of a question. We don't want people to come up and engage in a debate. We've got two men that have prepared themselves for the debate.
You are afforded an opportunity to ask questions, and so ask a question. It will be one question per person. If you want to ask another question, you'll have to go to the back of the queue. I'll make this more clear as we go about.
And it's only during this time of 30 minutes that you can ask questions. We're not going to allow questions afterwards. And there will be no written questions. You will have an opportunity to ask your question verbally.
Fourthly, the meeting will be conducted in an orderly, respectful, and dignified manner. And then, very important for you, applause for the speakers should only take place after the speaker has concluded his address.
If you applaud or jeer or shout while he's speaking, you disturb others from hearing what he's saying. So we ask you to please keep it till the end of the talk. The audience and all attendees must comply to these arrangements.
And for security reasons, no weapons, and I trust there's no weapons here. And then after the debate, the journalists reporting of the event must be objective, and the views of both Christians and Muslims must be taken into consideration.
And the video and audio recordings of the event must not be tampered with or edited. And a full copy of the recording will be made available to both the Christian and the Muslim panel. I trust with all of that, that will be acceptable to you.
Thank you. I think the time has come for us to commence with proceedings. And to start us off, I'm going to invite Dr. James White to the podium. He's going to address us for 20 minutes. And thereafter, Bashir Vania will address us for 20 minutes.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Well, thank you very much. It is indeed an honor to be with you here in South Africa this evening. I am very honored to be here with Bashir Vania and with all of you. I hope that this evening will be a time of great insight for everyone.
I hope that you will be able to understand both sides very clearly, because the subject is extremely important. I believe that the incarnation of Jesus Christ is the central issue of separation between our two communities.
Discussions on the presuppositional nature of this issue are very, very, very rare. In other words, most of the time, Christians simply assume the incarnation, and Muslims simply assume there can be no such thing as the incarnation.
Tonight, we want to focus on that particular issue that is vitally important to defining the differences between our two communities. Now, I need to define what it is Christians believe on this subject, because there is great misunderstanding amongst many people, even amongst people who call themselves Christians, as to what it is we mean when we speak of the incarnation and what we mean when we say, We are not saying that God ceases to be God.
We are not saying that Jesus was half God and half man. We are talking about the one true God of eternity taking on a human nature so as to provide a perfect sacrifice for his people to bring about their perfect salvation.
He does not cease to be God. He does not become a mixture of things. Jesus has two complete natures, a divine nature and a human nature. And so, I need to, first of all, provide a foundation for this.
This is not just something that came from church councils hundreds of years afterwards. This was the primitive belief of the Christian people. The earliest disciples of Jesus all believed this. Let me give you some examples of this.
At the beginning of the Gospel of John, we read these words. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then in verse 14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glories of the unique one from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Now, in the original language of that book, and no manuscript has ever been found in the Gospel of John that does not contain these words. These are not something that was written long later and added in at some point in time.
Specifically, it says, the Word sarks again atop, became flesh, and tabernacled amongst us. That is the claim that is made by the Gospel of John itself. Now, likewise, the Apostle Paul gives us insight into the earliest beliefs of Christians at this point because when he writes the church at Philippi, he quotes what most scholars think was an early fragment of a Christian hymn.
That means this was something the Christians were singing in their worship in the first decades of the Christian church itself. And what was that hymn? What were they singing? Well, here's what it says.
You must have the same mindset among yourselves that was in Christ Jesus, who, although he eternally existed in the very form of God, did not consider that equality he had with God the Father something to be held on to at all costs.
But instead, he made himself nothing, by taking on the very form of a slave, by being made in human likeness. That's the incarnation. And having entered into human existence, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death one dies on a cross.
Let me just briefly notice, all of the earliest sources referred to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. So here we have the assertion of the New Testament in two very early places of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, entered into human flesh.
Now, to believe and honor all the riches of the New Testament revelation of the utterly unique and glorious Lord, Jesus the Messiah, one must harmonize all of the revelation made about him. When I read the Koran, I do not just simply cut up verses and say, well, I'm going to put this verse against that verse.
I try to read it as a harmonious whole. We need to do the same thing with the New Testament as well. It's easy to cut it up into pieces and say it contradicts itself. It's much harder to hear what the consistent message is.
And so when we look at the consistent message of the New Testament concerning Jesus, we see a presentation of one person with two complete natures, divine and human, nothing intermingled, nothing changed, nothing altered.
Now, belief in the incarnation, the full deity of Christ, is not, as I said, some later development, but it is the primitive testimony of the early believers. And let me give you some evidence of that.
Ignatius of Antioch, writing no later than A .D. 108, so in other words, 108 years after the birth of Christ, in other words, in the first generation after the apostles themselves had passed away, he said these words of Christ, quote, There is one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true life and death, both from Mary and from God, first passable and then impassable, Jesus Christ our Lord.
That he said in his letter to the Ephesians, verse 7, around A .D. 107, right before his death. Melito of Sardis, preaching about 70 years after Ignatius' death, spoke of Jesus' incarnation in graphic and clear terms.
Listen to this sermon that he gave, well, this portion of the sermon. He who hung the earth in place is hanged. He who fixed the heavens in place is fixed in place. He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree.
I again point out all the early sources speak of the crucifixion. The sovereign is insulted. God is murdered. The king of Israel is destroyed by an Israelite hand. This is the one who made the heavens and the earth and formed mankind in the beginning.
The one proclaimed by the law and the prophets, the one enfleshed in a virgin, the one hanged on a tree, the one buried in the earth. This is the earliest Christian proclamation. This is what the earliest Christians believed.
The disciples of Jesus Christ taught this truth. Melito also uses such phrases as the God-man. God by being God by nature and man by nature. Again, why do I emphasize this? Because so often my Muslim friends say, oh, that was something that was decided long afterward.
It was the Council of Nicaea or the Council of Chalcedon or whatever else it might be. The fact of the matter is when you teach church history, when you look into the earliest sources, you discover that this is not only the earliest testimony of the Gospels, the earliest testimony of the New Testament, it is also the earliest testimony of the followers of Jesus Christ as well.
May I point out that everything I have read to you so far comes from a time period much closer to the time of the cross than the time period of the collection of the Ahadith. Much closer. And so if you're going to trust the Ahadith, then you must likewise recognize that these sources are extremely primitive and much closer to the time of the original events of Jesus' life.
Now the incarnation, my friends, is not a repudiation of the truths of the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim, what many Christians call the Old Testament. It is a fulfillment of direct prophetic passages as well as a continued trajectory found in the Tanakh's teaching on such terms as the word and wisdom reflected in other sources like the Targums.
Now why should that be important to you? Well, Muslims believe that the Old Testament and New Testament contain prophetic words. At least two places in the Koran say that the scriptures, the Torah and the Injil, contain prophecies concerning Muhammad, does it not?
And so if you believe that these can contain prophecies like that, then I say to you they contain prophecies of this one called Jesus Christ. And I'd like to point you to some of the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ.
What other than the incarnation itself could fulfill the incredible words of Isaiah chapter 9, verse 5, in the Hebrew Masoretic text, which says,. Now for those of you who speak Arabic, let me just point something out.
In the Hebrew, that is a yeled, and to be born is yelad. You all know what that means. It's the same Arabic root that you have in, we'll look at it in a moment, in the third ayah of Surat al-Ikhlas. Here the same root is used prophetically 700 years before Jesus' birth, and it says,.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. Child is born. Jesus had a true birth. He was a true man. Then why does it say a son is given? Who is this son? And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, El Gebor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Now let me explain that phrase, Everlasting Father. That doesn't mean that there's a confusion between the Father and the Son. The phrase there, avi 'ad in the Hebrew, refers to the one who creates time, the creator of eternity, which is exactly what is said of Jesus in Colossians chapter 1, For by him were all things made, where then the heavens and the earth, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That's the description of Jesus. That's the prophetic word. 700 years before Christ, there in Isaiah chapter 9. The concept of incarnation is inextricably interwoven in Islamic thought with the concept of Allah not having a son.
Whether this is a valid interpretation of the Quranic text strikes at the very heart of the accuracy of orthodox Islamic scholarship and orthodox Islamic interpretation. For example, we read in Surah 19, verses, ayahs 88 through 92, And they say, The Most Merciful has taken for himself a son.
You have done an atrocious thing. The heavens almost rupture therefrom, and the earth splits open. The mountains collapse in devastation that they attribute to the Most Merciful a son. And it is not appropriate for the Most Merciful that he should take a son.
And in ayah 93 we read, There is no one in the heavens and earth but that he comes to the Most Merciful as a servant. And I already mentioned to you, Surah Al-Iklas, Surah 112, which according to the Hadith, to quote this is to quote a third of the Quran.
Say, He is Allah, the One and Only, Allah, the Eternal Absolute. He begetteth not, nor is He begotten, and there is none like unto Him. And in many of my dialogues with Muslim people, I have asked, do you understand that third ayah to be in reference to what Christians believe concerning Jesus, concerning the Sonship of Christ?
And many of them have said, yes, that's exactly what it is referring to. And I recognize that if in one of the most important surahs of the Quran, there is a denial of what I believe, that impacts how you and I must relate to one another.
But the question is, did the writer of the Quran understand what I have explained to you about the relationship of the Father and the Son? The Christian doctrine of the incarnation does not involve a fundamental change in the divine essence, but it does involve a fundamental change in the divine experience.
If God decrees to interact in time to His own glory, this does not necessitate changeability or mutability on God's part. My friends, God does not have a wife, and He did not beget a child. Christians have never believed that.
Have never believed that. The relationship of Father and Son is eternal. It is a relationship term, not an origination term. God has no wife. He has not begotten a son at some point in time in the past.
The relationship of Father and Son is one of intimacy. It is one of relationship, but it has always been that way. It did not start in time. And the incarnation then of the Son does not mean He ceases to be God.
It does not mean that God changes. But as I said, it does not involve a fundamental change in the divine nature, but in the divine experience. And of course, Muslims believe that God, for example, created at a point in time.
And so God can act in time. Now here is the central question that I'm going to have to ask Bashir this evening and ask all of you here this evening. Here it is, and I'm going to repeat it more than once.
Does God, as Creator, have the power, the ability, the capacity to join a human nature to Himself if He pleases to do so? Upon what basis could anyone say this is beyond God's power? Let me repeat that because I think it's vitally important to us this evening.
Does God, as Creator, who is the one who created the human nature, does God, as Creator, have the power, the ability, the capacity to join that human nature which He has created? He created it perfect.
It is exactly what He intended it to be. Does He have the power, ability, and capacity to join a human nature to Himself if He pleases to do so for His own purposes? And upon what basis could anyone say this is beyond God's power?
If God can create the created order, why can He not enter into it, not ceasing to be God, but to take on a human nature so as to provide the perfect salvation, the perfect atonement for sin? That is the question.
Now, we are talking about the very central truth of Christianity because, my friends, the reason we want to engage in these dialogues with our Muslim friends, our Muslim neighbors, first of all, we do so because we love God, we love Jesus Christ, we love the Gospel, and because we love those things, we love you.
And we have a message for you. We are not better than you in any way, shape, or form. I stand here solely by grace. I stand here as a man who is not worthy of standing here. I know my own heart. And it is a privilege for me to be here and to address you.
The great message I have is that in Christianity, we have a true mediator who fulfills all the needs which we have. As divine, his self-sacrifice is perfect and complete on behalf of his people. As true man, he represents us in the presence of the Father so that as we are united to Christ, we have eternal life.
You see, my friends, as a Christian, I do not stand before God in any of my own righteousness because my own righteousness is as filthy rags before God. I must have a perfect righteousness. And if you know your heart, you know you do not have a perfect righteousness.
God's standard is perfection. He says nothing unclean will dwell in my presence. So how can I have peace with God this evening? How can I claim to have peace with God this evening? Because I know one stands at his right hand and as I am united to him and he has been accepted in the presence of the Father because of his perfection, he stands in my place and I am accepted in him.
That's why I have peace with God this evening. But you see, he had to be the God-man to accomplish that. He had to be divine so his self-sacrifice is perfect and complete on behalf of his people. But he had to be truly man so he can represent us in the presence of the Father.
There is only one place that could take place. That was on the cross of Christ in the unique person of Jesus Christ. Let me read to you some of the words of the book of Hebrews and make application and my time is up.
For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is his flesh.
We all believe that God is our maker and our creator. We all believe that he is holy. We all believe that he has wrath against sin. But where we differ is the means by which we can come into his presence.
And what is that means? The Christian message from the very beginning has been that God has opened that way. He prophesied of it in the Old Testament. He spoke of one who was to come who would be mighty God, wonderful counselor.
And yet he would be a child who is born and yet a son who is given. And you see, what happens at the cross of Christ, it is the one place in all of time where the attributes of God, all the attributes of God are seen clearly.
What do I mean? The cross of Christ, we see the wrath of God against sin. If you don't see the wrath of God against sin at Calvary, then you really haven't seen it. God is holy. When Isaiah saw him upon his throne, Isaiah, one of the most holy men in Israel, what was his response?
Woe to me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips and live amongst a people of unclean lips. When you see God as he truly is, you realize who you truly are. And so we see God's justice, we see God's wrath, we see God's holiness at the very same time and the very same place where we see the depth of his love, his condescension, his mercy, and his grace.
Because the one who is hanging upon that cross is the God man. God is the one who provides the perfect sacrifice. And in that one place, all of that wrath and all of that justice and all of that holiness meets perfectly with the mercy, love, and grace of God in the one unique person that could be there at that time and that place.
And that was the God man, Jesus Christ. This is the difference between us. I have no reason to believe, and maybe Bashir can give me reason to believe, but I've read the Quran many times. I've read all of Sahih Bukhari and all of Sahih Muslim.
I want to understand what you believe. But I've been given no reason in all of my encounters, in all of my reading, to believe that the author of the Quran understood the message I just explained to you.
Did not understand it. Tonight, we need to understand it so that we can discuss it properly. This is my passion. That's what brings me here this evening. I hope you can hear it, and I hope as we explain these things, you will understand what the real issues truly are.
Thank you for being here this evening. Thank you very much.
With that, I'd like to invite Bashir Vania to the podium for his 20-minute presentation. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.
I begin in the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. Mr. Chairman, our distinguished guest, Dr. James White, ladies and gentlemen, the topic under the discussion, Can God Become Man? appears to be a philosophical question.
You know, philosophy meaning the love of wisdom, philo-love, Sophia-wisdom. Nevertheless, let us be very clear. This topic must be placed strictly within a theological context, meaning within the context of Islam and Christianity.
In other words, it is not enough to say that man can become God philosophically, right? You must be able to demonstrate that this belief and this process is in conformity with pure monotheism, meaning the belief in one God.
With that in mind, folks, let me attempt to establish the boundaries of monotheism. As I said, mono means one, theos, God. This concept of one God is expressed most concisely in chapter 112 of the Quran as alluded to here by my brother James.
And I think it is worth analyzing in detail. Perhaps it will answer his main question. It begins with the words, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, meaning, in the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. And incidentally, the Quran is the only book which begins almost every chapter with this formula.
I want you to also note that the Quran does not talk about God as merely merciful, but as Most Merciful. In other words, it uses the definite article Al. These are the attributes of God and it is His soul attributes.
In fact, talking about superlative attributes, I just want to quote for you a verse from the Book of Kings. Chapter 8, verse 27, Prophet Solomon, peace be upon him, he asks a rhetorical question and he marvels.
He says, But will God ever dwell on this earth? Behold the heavens, and even the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, O God. So clearly, the Prophet Solomon felt that it is impossible for God to inhabit the body of a human being.
He would have been astonished had we told him that the Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, is actually a man-god, known in Christian theology as the hypostatic union. But more will be said upon that aspect later.
For now, let us continue with chapter 112, verse 1. The Quran says, قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌۢ Say, He is Allah, the One and Only. The word Hua means one, singular personal pronoun, one being. Secondly, the word Allah means the one and only true God.
Al means the, ila means God. You remove the disjunctive alif, and you get the word Allah. And Allah is so unique in Arabic grammar that you cannot change the word Allah into a plural. It always has to remain in the singular.
Further, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the 1973 edition, they tell us that the laam sound, the lah in Allah, is the most unique sound in the Arabic language. So, a unique being with a unique sound.
The word Ahad means one. So Hua, one. Allah, one. Ahad means one. Eternity of ones, so to speak. Why is this important? Well, it is important because Jesus, peace be upon him, in the book of Mark, 12 verse 29, he quotes the Old Testament, and he doesn't bother to redefine monotheism.
He says, basically, Yahweh Elohim Ahad. That God Almighty alone is one and indivisible. That you cannot divide God. This is his belief. And he's the belief of all the Prophets, including the Prophet Muhammad.
Peace be upon them all. So Jesus doesn't redefine monotheism. He accepts it, and he understands it, the way all the other Prophets did. With that said, let us go to the essence of monotheism. Verse 2 says, Allahu Samad.
God, the Eternal Absolute. And it is interesting, the word Samad means a being who is one and indivisible. In other words, you cannot divide God into two or three. God alone is unique. And the Quran is uncompromising on this issue.
Now, is the Quran being unreasonable? I don't think so. Let me demonstrate. We all believe that God is omnipresent. Correct? God is everywhere. But if God is everywhere, then shouldn't I be able to worship this microphone?