March 15, 2012

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation if you'd like to talk with Dr. White. Call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, half an hour early.

We're going to probably have people coming in later going, hey, you're not supposed to start then. Well, you don't start at the half hour. Well, as I explained last time, the reason that we are doing that is that at eight o 'clock

Eastern Daylight Time, five o 'clock Pacific Daylight Time, which is, of course, irrelevant time because we don't need it anymore and it needs to be done away with.

But anyway, I'll be doing a live debate on abnsat .com.

You've seen some of those debates before. For example, Abdullah Kunda and I, the last time

I was on ABN via Skype was Abdullah and I debating and I will be debating

Sheikh Jawad Al Ansari this evening from the Detroit area on Sura 4157, which is, of course, rather appropriate in light of our release last evening.

Forty Arabic words, indeed. I hope if you have not seen 40 Arabic words, you will jump on the blog, take a look at it.

You'll share the link with friends, with your Muslim friends, et cetera, et cetera. It is the second cooperation between myself and Ivy Connerly and Marcus Pittman at Crown Rights Media and so on and so forth.

And yes, there is a third in the works. I'm not going to tell you anything more than that.

You just get to sort of guess about that for a while. It's it's available on Facebook, too.

Yes, yes, it is available on Facebook anyway. Anyway, and so it's ironic that we would be having a debate this evening on Sura 4157 and the very same 40

Arabic words. But that was not a 70s funky shirt, Carla.

It was a Hawaiian shirt. Actually, that's not even the proper terminology either. It's Aloha shirt.

It's called what? Speaking of shirts, do you know that we're getting requests?

We're getting a lot of requests. A lot of requests for Ivy's shirt. Yeah, we need we need Carla to come up with Ivy's shirt.

Yeah, we need it. Well, we need to do is we need to come up with Ivy's shirt, but we need to put the 33

Greek words above it and the 40 Arabic words below it. That'd be a crowded shirt. No, no, not if you made the right size.

OK, I'll make sure the shirt with the graphics, silly. Anyway, yeah,

I've seen I want that shirt 33 is greater than 40. Anyway, it's not an Aloha shirt. It is

Aloha shirt, not a Hawaiian shirt or a what you call it 70s funky shirt. I was in I you know how

I did that. I'll tell you how I did that. I was on my way out to I was the day before I left.

They contacted me and said, we want to have an introduction to this this video.

And I'm like, I'm packing to leave. OK, I'll try to find some way of doing it in Hawaii, which was odd.

And so I borrowed a video camera from someone in the church in Hilo. And I literally took the cross in front of the church and took it off of its stand and took it out back and stuck it on some volcanic rocks.

And I set up a tripod and I did all that myself. And you're supposed to wear

Aloha shirts when you when you do stuff like that. And so I was doing I did all myself and then provided that to Marcus and he put it in there.

And, oh, man, someone just said it's a Rick Warren shirt. Now I really feel badly. I should have worn anything other than that.

So anyway, that's how that all got put together. But anyways, this evening, right after the program, that's why we're starting early, because I need some time to sort of get set up and and ready for that debate.

So that's why we're getting started early. All right. What I want to do on the program today is I want to continue with some of the questions that were asked.

William Lane Craig, we get a lot of feedback, mainly positive feedback, actually, when we deal with apologetic issues in the sense of dealing with what the foundational issues are, methodologies and things like that.

And so I want to continue. It seems to help folks to hear how Craig would answer a question, how

I would answer a question. And then you can go, oh, OK, I see how your foundational starting point will impact how you give an answer.

And I want to be consistent in the answers I give to those who would ask me a reason for the hope that's within me. So that's useful to me.

So we'll look at a few more of those. And then I want to jump into normally I'd cue up the radio free

Damascus music, but we'll skip that today because we're only doing an hour. And I do want to start jumping into the

Adnan Rashid, Jay Smith debate. In fact, someone told me just a while ago that man, someone said,

I almost look like a Methodist in that shirt. Wow, man, people are cruel. That is cruel. That hurts.

I may I may have to stop the program right now. I really might. Yeah, I'm reaching. I'm it's so far down the back and so deep.

I'm not sure I can get that one out. It's it's rough. I shouldn't be looking at the channel.

I mean, Presbyterian, maybe, but Methodist. No, Presbyterians would never know. Presbyterian would be caught dead in that shirt.

No way. Not even not even not even in Hilo. No, that's not happening. What was

I saying? I don't know what I was saying. I would normally start the radio free Damascus music, but we're not going to get today.

I do, however, want to get started in responding to Adnan Rashid's comments. I mentioned this a few weeks ago.

I'm starting to get a backlog of stuff that I want to deal with, and that's not good. That means I'm not getting we're not doing enough jumbos and megas to get through everything.

And I'm sure Ralph is going, that's right. You need to be doing two jumbos a day, one morning, one evening, every day.

And that's that's that would not be enough for for Ralph, actually. But anyways, we're going to jump into the

Jay Smith versus Adnan Rashid. Oh, I was saying someone was telling me that Jason is actually going to also be doing an

A .B .N. Skype debate sometime this week or maybe next week, something like that. So it looks like A .B .N.'s

getting really busy again doing stuff like this. So this evening, don't forget A .B

.N. Satcom for the hopefully this time. Last time my video lasted like three minutes and then dropped and they never told me about it.

And so I was never able to reestablish it or anything. So just put some goofy picture of me up from. Well, they've got enough goofy pictures of me because I've been on it long enough time.

So that's probably will end up. I'll probably go through all the trouble I'm going through today to get set up. Yeah. To do this thing live and it'll it'll disappear.

And that's that's that's a that's terrible. Anyway, let's jump back into the William Lane Craig presentation here.

And hopefully we've got it all queued up and ready to go. And and I'll probably end up playing a few questions or at least the starts questions that we already listened to.

But that's life. This is this is live webcasting.

That's not radio, but it could be. All right. Let's dive back into this is from the

University of Florida, as I recall. And well, we introduced the last time or a simple question.

And I'm kind of loaded. Why is Christianity more right than any other religion that has ever existed or will exist?

Christianity shares many doctrines with other religions, particularly with regard to the existence of God.

The great monotheistic faiths like Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share belief in the idea of a personal creator and designer of the universe who is the source of moral value and who holds us responsible.

But the reason I believe that Christian theism in particular is true is because of Jesus of Nazareth.

I think that we have very good historical grounds for thinking that this man claimed to be the absolute revelation of God and son of God.

And that remarkably, God raised him from the dead in attestation of these radical, blasphemous, allegedly blasphemous claims for which he was crucified.

Now, I know at first blush that sounds crazy. I mean, what historical evidence could there be for an event like Jesus' resurrection?

But this was the subject of my doctoral research, my doctoral dissertation in Germany at the

University of Munich. And what I found is that the central facts undergirding an inference to the resurrection of Jesus are accepted by the wide majority of New Testament historians today.

And these would include things like Jesus' crucifixion at the hands of the

Roman authorities in Jerusalem, his burial in a tomb by a member of the

Jewish Sanhedrin, we even know his name, Joseph of Arimathea, the discovery of that tomb being empty on the first day of the following week by a group of Jesus' women followers, then various individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and then finally the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised

Jesus from the dead, despite every predisposition to the contrary. Now, let me just stop right there for a moment.

Anyone who has listened to William Lane Craig speak could have given all those arguments.

Then you just throw in at the end, and you too can experience God directly outside of arguments, and you've got the standard

WLC presentation. There's no question that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is absolutely central to the demonstration of the uniqueness of Christian claims to truth.

I would not have started out answering a question as was asked, why is

Christianity the only true religion over against all other religions?

I would not have started out by, well, you know, actually we share a lot of things with other religions, and we have the great monotheistic religions.

I would not have started out, in essence, muting the uniqueness of Christianity that was part and parcel of the question itself.

I would have taken that, and I would have used that as part of my answer. I would have said, you know, you're exactly right, that Christianity does make a rather startling claim that many other religions, especially the ancient world, did not make.

In fact, it was one of the things that was offensive to the Romans, was both in Judaism and Christianity you had this exclusivistic element.

That it wasn't, well, I've got my God, and I prefer my God over your God. Or I just, you know, this

God makes me feel better than your God does, and so I'm going to stick with this. That's not what you had.

You had an exclusive claim that said my God is true, and your God actually isn't true.

And we're right back to that same way of pagan thinking, honestly, in our society, where the offense is to say this is actually true for me and for you.

Back then, that was the offense, that's the offense now again. If you want to say something's true for you, but it's not necessarily true for somebody else, then you can get away with that.

As long as you will blaspheme the very meaning of the word truth, all will be well. But anyways,

I diverge from my intention here. But I would have used the uniqueness to immediately jump to the fact that, well,

Christianity is making an amazing claim. But I would not have divorced, it seems to me, in a sense, that to go immediately to the resurrection, well,

I guess you could say crucifixion and resurrection, because he did mention that as part of the issue, is,

I think, to miss part of the very force of what we're saying, because we're not just talking about any old person who is crucified and then is resurrected.

Let's go whole hog, let's admit what we're really saying.

We're saying that the Creator of all things invaded his own creation, so that the one who was hung upon the cross engaged in that activity voluntarily.

See, now you can tie everything together. I am concerned, and there have been people who have emphasized this,

I am concerned that sometimes in the Western, what would be called

Western Christendom, I hate those terms, but non -Eastern

Orthodox, let's put it that way, that not only can it be somewhat rightly said that many people in the

West are primarily monotheistic and only secondarily Trinitarian, if they're

Trinitarian at all, and that Eastern Orthodoxy has one claim, and that is that it's thoroughly

Trinitarian, or at least claims to be, and certainly in its liturgy emphasizes such things.

But there's also a commensurate emphasis, sometimes an out -of -balance emphasis, because it's pulling the opposite direction as the

West, on the Incarnation. And in fact, some have argued that there's so much emphasis upon the

Incarnation in Orthodoxy that the Atonement becomes de -emphasized. I think you have to have both, and I think sometimes we, speaking in just a real general term of the

West, we look at the cross outside of the necessary light of the

Incarnation. We consider it separately from the real nature of the person who is giving his life on the cross.

I think all Biblical truth has to be balanced Biblical truth. And when we do not balance things, we end up, and it's a natural thing, unfortunately, to overemphasize one thing at the cost of another thing.

Therefore, to really see the cross, and to see how it is the center point of history and everything else, requires a recognition of the tremendous reality of the

Incarnation. But if you don't have, at the same time, the focus of the purpose of the

Incarnation is the cross, then you end up with some of the imbalances you have in Eastern Orthodoxy, and especially in its soteriology.

So, I would have gone just whole hog with the whole thing, and said, why is

Christianity true and all of the religions aren't true? It's because God has chosen to reveal himself in one particular fashion to the exclusion of all others.

Jesus wasn't just one revelation amongst many revelations of Muhammad or Buddha or whoever else.

But if Jesus is who the Bible says he is, if the

Incarnation is true, how could there be any other way to God? If the Incarnation is true, can you imagine

God going through the Incarnation and saying, well, that's just one way.

If you don't happen to like what I did there, I'll provide you some other ways. The world seems to demand that.

The world wants that. But you put the Incarnation in its context, and then, in light of that, what's going on at the cross, and you really see, obviously, if God himself has entered into his own creation, and then given his life upon Calvary's tree, there can be no other way.

I mean, if God has given himself, then there can be no other way to have peace with him, and therefore

Christianity must be true in of its essence. So that's certainly where I would have gone in responding to the question.

Or a simple question. Oh, drat. I forgot that when I use this function, it doesn't allow me to continue on.

Well, object. It's not as though the number two just... Yeah, let's see if I can find it in here somewhere and continue on with it.

I was wondering if you could talk about how the so -called A and B theories of time... Oh, no. We are not doing the

A -B theory of time, because Craig has... Don't ask.

Don't ask. Turn it off. Do not ask. You will not ask that question. Not in the

A theory of time or the B theory of time will you have to ask that question. Actually, I was thinking, is that something akin to Back to the

Future? No. No, it is not. The space -time continuum and rupturing it and 1 .21

gigawatts? No. Stop that. What do you have in that cup? Is that caffeinated coffee?

Oh, Dr. Pepper. Well, that explains that. Okay. All right. Never mind. We're just going to skip that.

Dr. Craig waxed long, shall we say, on the A and B theory of time, because he's written on the subject.

And it's really, really exciting, which is why we could go on to the next question right here.

I had a question in regards to evolution. And there seems to be a disparity between church and the theory of evolution.

And I wanted to know whether the same disparity exists between faith and evolution, and if so, whether or not it can be reconciled.

Yeah, I think that the majority of Christians have come to terms with the

Darwinian theory of evolution, and that it's only among certain conservatives that they still see a conflict between the

Bible and evolution. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, their main position is that God used evolution to evolve the human body to the point that it was ready to receive a soul from God, and that humans didn't become fully human until the soul was breathed into this hominid body.

So the Catholic Church, at least, has come fully to terms with evolution. So I think once you get past the view that Genesis teaches the creation of the world in six consecutive 24 -hour days, then it's wide open for interpretation.

There are all kinds of interpretations of Genesis 1 that are available to the Bible -believing

Christian, in addition to six -day literal creationism. And so I guess

I think that this is not really much of an issue anymore, except in certain limited circles.

So there you go, folks. Utter and total capitulation. You don't need to worry about that intelligent design stuff, and we've just all accepted that that's how it works, and biologos, come on in, all is well, everything's cool.

So, you know, I was not overly surprised at that particular point when

I heard that, but that's where he's coming from. And what can

I say? I'm sorry, what? Oh, yes.

Yeah, Rich was suggesting that we have Angel do a caraburus,

I'm sorry, the three -headed dog thing with the three heads of William Lane Craig on it, and that would be interesting.

But anyway, though somewhat modalistic, but we won't even get into that right now. All the intelligent design stuff and the tons of stuff coming out,

I mean, we've never, ever, ever had more information about the complexity of life and the failure of neo -Darwinianism, but hey, the

Catholics believe in it, allegedly, so why can't we?

So it's just a few fringe people out there that still have issues with that stuff.

We all know that it's all great. So there you go. I just thought you might find that interesting.

To accommodate. Yeah, I hear you, Jason, and I think that is a risk.

One of the things that I feel badly about, frankly, is that in the debates that I participate in, all the students hear is an intellectual defense of the propositional content of Christian truth, but they don't really hear anything about how to become a

Christian or what it means to know God as a reality in your life today.

It's all up here, it's all cerebral. And I do think that there's a danger of just reducing

Christian faith to a sort of set of propositions, which it's more, so much more than that.

But I rationalize it in my own mind by saying that the pendulum has been on the other side so long, the purely experiential and the emotional, that if I swing the pendulum a little too far to the other side, well, maybe that will help to redress the balance.

But at least in a forum like this tonight, I want to go absolutely on record in saying that there's much, much more to Christian faith than just the intellectual content of it.

I'm curious, which apologist? Well, I guess I'll stop that one there. I guess the reason

I put a marker there is most people have recognized that in most of my debates, when the debate is long enough, and I'll probably try to do it this evening as well at some point,

I attempt to make a presentation of the gospel. And I don't want my debates to be merely an intellectual exercise.

And so I guess I was in a level of agreement with that particular section of the presentation because it did emphasize the fact that what you see in debates needs to be balanced with, quote, unquote, real life.

I mean, allegedly in a debate, you should have a very narrow range of information being presented.

It doesn't always work that way, unfortunately, but it should be. And it's just one question.

And as valuable as that can be, there does need to be balance. And that's why

I'm glad I don't just do debates. I not only do presentations, I preach in the church and so on and so forth.

So I guess in essence, I was agreeing with a part of what

Craig was saying there in his presentation. Found training in apologetics is one of the keys to fearless evangelism.

Philippians 2 .12 speaks of working out one's faith in fear and trembling. How can one simultaneously work out one's salvation in fear and trembling while evangelizing about that salvation fearlessly?

Well, all right. It's the existence. Yeah, right, right.

I hear you. And when Paul talks about work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, don't you think,

I'm sure Paul meant not in fear and trembling that this may be false, that you might be on the wrong track.

But he's probably talking there about human frailty and fallibility. And he says,

I don't even assume that I have attained it, right? He talks about how he presses on to the goal, but he says,

I don't consider that even I've attained it. Paul knew that even he could. He could fall away and betray

Christ. And so working out your salvation with fear and trembling is, I think, to say,

I know I could be like a Peter who said, I will die for you.

But that night he denied Christ three times. It's understanding your own weakness and fallibility and relying upon the fullness of the

Holy Spirit to help you to live a life that is pleasing to God and faithful to him. But when we talk about fearless evangelism,

I mean, this is what the same man, Paul, exhibited. This man stood in the face. Now, I think the reason

I chose that one is because the danger with Dr.

Craig is when you get him into the Bible. When you get him out of A and B theories of time and out of philosophy and out of a narrow range of topics, get him in the

Bible, it can get a little scary. And Philippians 2 isn't about any of that stuff.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. What is the reason that there is fear and trembling?

It's in light of the recognition of the fact that it's the Holy God who is at work within you in bringing about your salvation.

It's not about, well, I'm fearful and trembling that I might be wrong about what I'm saying.

It has nothing to do with that. It is a recognition that salvation is a divine action and that it is the sovereign

God. It is the Holy God who is at work within you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

So, I mean, Philippians 2 .12 is often misused by people. They think work out your salvation means work for your salvation.

It does not. But you work it out in light of the one who is working in you, and you do so with fear and trembling, not because you're afraid that you're not going to make it, not because you have no confidence in God or anything else, but because you recognize that it is the

Holy God who is at work within you. That's where the fear and trembling comes from, is you recognize that it is the work of God.

And I may, once again, just be completely out of the mainstream here and out in the boonies somewhere.

But I personally think that if you're going to be involved in apologetics, first and foremost, you need to know your

Bible. And you need to know how to handle it. And you need to know how to rightly address texts, even on the fly, without actually sitting down and necessarily—

And there are difficult passages in the Bible. I'm not saying you have to be an expert on everything, but it should be your foremost focus to handle the

Word of God aright. I think that is a fair statement. Here's the poem.

in the way that John Donne describes in this poem. How does one whose reason is captive weak practice a reasonable faith?

This is an interesting question. Donne in this poem, notice how he characterizes reason, not as something that's antithetical to God or against God.

He says, Reason is God's viceroy in me. It is a God -given gift to work in me that ought to lead me to defend

God. But he said instead, it's fallen and captive and corrupted. So I think what that implies is, as John Wesley saw, that we need the regenerating work of the

Holy Spirit so that reason can then become a proper tool of God's Spirit in defending and articulating the

Christian faith as God intended. So the problem— Now I don't know about you, but if Dr.

Craig were consistent with what he just said, he'd be a monergist. But that's not what he's saying.

It sounds like what he's saying is we need regeneration for reason to be soundly used in the defense of God's truth.

That's true. But what he's not saying is that regeneration is required for a person to exercise true saving faith in Jesus Christ or to use his reason to properly evaluate the arguments for the existence of God or anything else along those lines.

I just found that very, very interesting that he will confess the necessity of regeneration and the work of the

Spirit for us to use reason properly in the defense of the faith. But the unregenerate person, the unregenerate person, without a renewed mind, without a new nature, without the removal of the noetic effects of sin, is capable of analyzing the five primary arguments that William Lane Craig will present.

And without any of that other stuff happening, without regeneration, without any of that, is able to evaluate those arguments and come to the proper conclusion that I should put my faith in Jesus Christ.

And I just simply say, ain't gonna happen. That's—no, ain't gonna happen. If you really think that that heart of stone is going to fairly evaluate the evidences that point to the necessity of that heart of stone being replaced by heart of flesh, sorry, not gonna happen.

But I found that fascinating that he would say, well, yeah, you know, you need to be born again to accurately present

God's truth. He's right. But what he doesn't see, if you just follow that through, is that if he were to be consistent, that he'd have to be a monergist rather than the synergist that he is.

Just another example of how we need to go there. It is about two minutes after four o 'clock.

And so we're about halfway through the program, a little bit over halfway through the program. So I'm going to shift gears once again.

This will also help me a little bit to shift gears, get my mind into the Islamic area, before the debate this evening with Sheikh Jawad Al -Ansari from Detroit on the subject of Surah 4, verse 157, and whether Jesus Christ was substituted or, in fact, was crucified will be the subject we'll be addressing.

This debate took place on February 23rd of this year.

I was briefly in the loop as possibly traveling to Dublin to engage in this debate, but that didn't happen.

Unfortunately, I would have very much enjoyed it. I certainly hope to arrange something in the later part of this year for the same venue.

That would be wonderful. But anyways, it was a debate between Jay Smith and Adnan Rashid. Now, I have debated

Adnan a couple times. We debated in London. We've been on the Unbelievable Radio broadcast together.

Adnan is an interesting fellow. And in this particular debate on who is

Jesus, Adnan decided to take the, well, we have to default back to what the

Quran says about Jesus because we can't trust anything in the New Testament because of textual variation argumentation.

And so upon hearing that, I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, I want to discuss this.

I would very much like to engage Adnan Rashid on issues of textual criticism because the gentleman just does not understand even what he's reading.

For example, we will hear during the course of this program, we will hear him quote the title of Metzger's work, the

New Testament, and the use by Metzger, it's corruption, it's transmission, corruption, and restoration.

And he takes that term corruption and he assigns a particular meaning to it that Dr. Metzger would never assign to it.

He needs to understand that in a scholarly textual critical context, corruption refers to any variation in the transmission of the text whatsoever, even if that has nothing to do with causing a problem about what the original was.

So if a 15th century scribe were to have a problem one day in the transmission of the text and create a reading that no one has ever seen before, that would be corruption.

But it would not have any possibility of being the original reading because it has no support in the earlier manuscripts, in the versions, etc.

So corruption does not mean destroyed so that we cannot know what it originally said.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what Adnan assumes that it means. What Adnan needs to understand, and I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here, but I'm just sort of summarizing why we're going to spend some time looking at this.

What Adnan needs to understand is that if he applies the same standard to the

Quran, then he has to talk about the corruption of the Quran. And even if he doesn't accept any of the readings, he has to accept the reality of the fact that the early

Tafsir literature of the Muslim people themselves indicates that there were variations in reading, and it wasn't just pronunciation.

It had to do with the consonantal text. And even if he says, yeah, but Uthman is the ultimate authority, and even if he makes that assertion, it doesn't matter.

Using the term as Metzger was using it would require him to refer to the corruption of the text of the

Quran because it simply refers, it's a technical term, it's a term in textual critical scholarship that has to do with the existence of any variation, even if the variation does not in any way impact our knowledge of the original.

Even if the variation has no possibility of being the original, that still would introduce the concept of corruption.

And so this comes up over and over again in the debate. It's a little bit frustrating to me, but that's one of the reasons we'll be taking a look at.

So I skipped the first few moments of Adnan's opening, mainly because it was just the introduction stuff, and go immediately to the first argument.

And I had a good friend of mine, I sort of gave him a heads up about this debate, and so he was able to attend the debate.

And this was one of the very first things he mentioned to me, even before I heard the debate, that Adnan had brought up, which would be a place where Jay and I would respond differently to the argumentation.

Jay is a wonderful debater, he's a great speaker, he knows Islam very, very well. But he also comes from sort of a

Mennonite, Nazarene, Anabaptist, pacifist, synergistic background stuff.

And it impacts discussions of soteriology, as it will impact here, how he responds to Adnan's argument about the death of Christ.

And it also impacts how he views the Old Testament, and the Old Testament theocratic laws, and nationalistic laws, and issues like that, the battles that the people of Israel did, and things like that.

So we answer certain areas in the same way, and certain other areas in different ways.

And that will come up as we listen to this. So let's pick up with the first part of the argumentation from Adnan Rashid.

My sins, and the sins of humanity altogether. One of the interesting questions which can be raised from this very notion of Jesus dying for our sins, is that if he died for my sins, and I'm a

Muslim, and according to Christians being a Muslim is blasphemy and a sin, then if he has already paid for my sin for being a

Muslim, then I have the salvation. I don't have to be a Christian. Being a

Muslim is a sin, according to the Christian view. And if that's the case, then he has already died for my sin on the cross.

He knew I am going to be a Muslim, and he knew I am going to be debating against his divinity and his crucifixion today.

So these sins I'm committing right now, he has already paid for them. So I don't even have to be a Christian, because he has paid for my sins already.

Coming back to the point. Now, there's the argument, and it's not the first time

I've heard this one. And how you respond to it will depend on how you view the atonement.

Now, taking even a non -Reformed perspective, because one of the audience questioners attempts to do this later on, one of the audience questions specifically focused upon this, and attempted to give a non -Reformed response.

Obviously, I think everybody in the audience knows I would challenge and would argue against the assumption of universal substitutionary atonement, as was the foundation of Adnan's entire presentation.

Well, if Jesus died for me, died for all of mankind's sins, then my sins are already atoned for. The non -Reformed person basically argues, well, but that's only, his death is only in potentiality for your sins.

And the receipt of the effect of that atonement is based upon your repentance and faith.

But what that then leaves Adnan capable of saying is, so what you're saying is,

Jesus didn't really die for my sins, in the sense of actually bringing about redemption for sins.

He didn't die to actually save anyone, he died to make men savable. Which, of course, is what

Armenians are actually arguing. And so, to be consistent at this point,

I would have to respond very differently to Adnan Rashid than a synergist would.

A person who basically has to agree that the death of Christ, in and of itself, does not accomplish the redemption of anyone.

Now, clearly, I am not presenting the idea that I was saved from eternity, or eternally justified, or these views that some people have gotten into in the past.

Because, as Ephesians chapter 2 says, all of us were at one point in time enemies of God.

We were by nature children of wrath. And so, even though I am united with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, my experience of that, since I am a time -bound creature, since I am a time -bound creature,

God ordains the point in time where I experience that, and part and parcel of what he brings about in my life is the repentance and faith that I experience as the result of his electing grace being active in my life.

And he brings about my regeneration, he gives me the gifts of repentance and faith, etc., etc.

But, obviously, for me, my initial response to Adnan at this point would have been, well,

I'm sure you have encountered many Christians who have viewed things that way. However, if you have considered the actual teaching of the book of Hebrews on the result of the atoning work of Christ, and the perfection of those for whom

Christ's sacrifice is made, and if you have considered what hilasmos means, or what hilasterion means, and if you've looked at the terms and you understand what's really going on, then you would not accept the idea, as many

Christians do by tradition, you would not accept the idea that Jesus' death is sufficient to save, but does not actually save anyone.

It only makes us savable. And I would take the Reformed position on that, and would argue against what it is that the

Arminian is saying. It didn't come up as much as I would like it to have come up later in the conversation.

It really didn't come up until the context of an audience question, but that's sort of how things work in these types of debates.

So that is one place where there would have been a substantial difference in the way that we responded to the presentation.

Of trusting the gospel records. Jay talked about many different things, and some of the issues he raised are quite interesting.

He mentioned Dan Brown. I have never, in my entire career as a debater, mentioned

Dan Brown as my authority. And I agree with him. The things he said about Dan Brown are right.

He's right. Dan Brown is a conspiracy theorist, and the people I will be using as my reference point are not conspiracy theorists.

Well, I'm going to remind him of that, because let me tell you something. I've been to debates where other people were debating, and I've been in debates where I was debating.

And there are a lot of Muslims who really like conspiracy theorists. I mean, if it's a

Gnostic gospel, they love it. I'm hoping that that's not where we get tonight, to be perfectly honest with you, in my debate on ABN.

But I'll be ready for it, one way or the other. By the way, this debate was set up, not the Adnan Rashid debate, but the debate

I'm going to be doing here in 44 minutes, was set up very, very quickly.

It's not the way I normally like to do things. I normally like to listen to all sorts of lectures by people beforehand.

But I've been traveling, and something came up in our church this week, a death in the family of my fellow elder, in fact.

And so now I have Sunday morning, and Sunday night, and the Lord's Supper, and I had last night, and I've got next week with Shabir Ali, and I'm feeling all stressed.

So I didn't really have the freedom to – all I know is the one thing

I asked, and the folks at ABN said yes. My one request for the debate was that I wanted to debate somebody on Surah 4, verse 157, and I wanted them to actually hold the majority

Muslim view. Because as you know, I've debated Shabir Ali, but Shabir doesn't hold the majority

Muslim view. I don't want to debate someone who goes, you know, did you all understand that?

I really am feeling very bad about my pronunciation of Arabic these days.

But anyways, allahu ala means Allah knows, you know.

I don't know, that's what the Muslim says when they don't really know, and they don't really have an answer to the question. And they just sort of say, well,

God knows, but I don't. So hopefully tonight we will actually get to debate someone who says yes.

Shabir ala means that someone was made to appear like Jesus, and there was a substitution.

And maybe he'll even tell us who he thinks it is. I don't know. But I hope so, because that's what I want to address, because that's what the majority of Muslims in the world believe.

Maybe here in the West, a minority of Muslims don't go there, but the majority around the world do.

And that's the reason I want to address that tonight. And hopefully that's how it'll work out. But going back to Adnan.

Father, they are scholars of highest repute in the Christian as well as the

Western world. The Gospel of Thomas was addressed by J. Smith. Little does he know that the

Gospel of Thomas is considered to be one of the earliest records in the

Christian history. Now, when I first heard this from Shabir in 2006,

I was absolutely taken aback. And I'm disappointed.

I'm very thankful to a certain individual who's in channel right now. I very frequently put resources on the ministry resource list, and the guy must have like a thing that goes off on his phone.

Ding! Something new on the ministry resource list. And he emails it, and Rich knows who I'm talking about.

But there's a new book by Simon Gathercolt coming out. And I'm not going to get it before next week, because I have a feeling this is going to come up with Shabir.

But Shabir made the same argument that Adnan is making here. And I've been tempted in the past to start putting together the material that is required to debunk this ridiculous claim.

But I'm very thankful that someone with a big name like Simon Gathercolt has done this work, and I'm looking forward to it.

There have been some other books. But the reality is that we are living in a time period where, especially the

Gospel of Thomas. Let me give you a historical illustration of this.

When Codex Sinaiticus was found, for the next number of years, Sinaiticus exerted an imbalanced weight in scholarship, in New Testament biblical scholarship.

And it's understandable. It was the oldest manuscript that had ever been found, and Tischendorf was behind it.

It's understandable why it did. Scholarship, if it is true scholarship, is eventually the processes are there that are supposed to bring about balance over time.

Unfortunately, right now, because of the secularization of even religious education, especially institutions, especially in Europe, but it's happening in the

United States as well. Because of that secularization, the balance does not happen.

It might not even happen at times, but it takes longer to happen. What has happened is that with the discovery of Nag Hammadi and Oxyrhynchus, and things like that, and especially the

Gnostic writings, there has been a grossly imbalanced production of scholarly articles and books highlighting certain aspects of these things.

We saw what happened with the Talpiet Tomb story, and the ridiculous reliance upon fragments of Gnostic Gospels as if these things were the be -all and end -all of all things.

And we are still in a time period where you look at the

Jesus Seminar, and you look at their translation of the New Testament, and how they've canonized Thomas, and all the rest of this stuff.

We are still in the pendulum swing, the wrong direction. And so, you'll find all sorts of people who have, in essence, dedicated their entire careers to promoting the

Gospel of Thomas, which you can read in a matter of moments. And the assertion that Thomas is earlier than the canonical

Gospels is just absolutely bunk. It is so absurd that it's difficult to even express how bad that type of theory is.

Because if you even dig into the imbalanced scholars, and I would say they are imbalanced scholars, who make such claims, if you'll actually listen to even what they're saying.

They're not saying the Gospel of Thomas as it exists today is earlier than the canonical

Gospels. I mean, the tendency amongst these types of folks, these critics of Christianity, is to place the canonical

Gospels as late as possible. Which may become even more difficult in light of these manuscripts finds, which we were talking about, that Dan Wallace announced, once they're vetted and we find that out.

The earlier the manuscripts we have of a work, the harder it is to say that, yeah, well, let's say this is for a century of Mark.

They're loathe to say that we actually have copies now within a few decades of the original.

But they sort of have to do that, or push the original of Mark even further forward, which they don't want to do, because they want them to be as late as possible.

But the tendency is to push the canonical Gospels as late as possible. And no one ever challenges why that is.

You know the primary reason why the canonical Gospels are pushed back as far as they are as to their date?

Because they talk about the destruction of Jerusalem. And everybody knows there's no such thing as prophecy.

Jesus couldn't have known about the coming of the destruction of Jerusalem. So they had to have been after that, or at least right before that, you know, in the sense of when everybody knew it was coming.

So it's a naturalistic bent, it's a naturalistic presupposition, which by the way, a Muslim should not be sharing.

Because they believe there's prophecy in their own experience of their prophet.

So anyways, when you go to what the Gospel of Thomas guys, who are promoting the

Gospel, when they say it's very early, what they're saying is that the traditions from which

Thomas is drawing and from which the Gospels are drawing are very early.

Now, even, well I won't say even, almost all of the people who are pushing the

Gospel of Thomas will admit that the majority of the Gospel of Thomas is dependent upon the canonical

Gospels. So it has to come after the writing of the canonical Gospels. Okay, so what they're saying is that they can discern a tradition.

They don't have a very, they're actually theorizing that there were earlier editions of Thomas.

Now remember, even when we're talking about Thomas, Thomas only exists in a small number, some

Greek fragments and then a Coptic translation. And there's many differences between them and,

I mean, if you think the New Testament's unreliable, you shouldn't even be touching the Gospel of Thomas 10 -foot pole because you have no idea what on earth it originally said.

No idea at all. But that issue aside, what you have is a theorizing that it went through these stages of editing and transmission.

And a theorizing that the canonical Gospels likewise went through these major periods of editing and redaction.

And no, they can't show you a single piece of solid evidence. And of course, what

Adnan should realize is the most radical Orientalists, of course, theorize the same things about the

Quran, which he would never accept. But he'll accept this when it talks about the New Testament.

He won't accept it when it's talking about the Quran, which is one of the great inconsistencies of all

Islamic apologists I've encountered on this subject. But be it as it may, they're talking about some theoretical proto -Thomas going back to a tradition that might go earlier than the

Q source. They cannot give you any documentation.

They can't say, here's a manuscript. It's a theory based upon a theory based upon a theory based upon a hunch. That's what they're talking about.

But as long as the theory based upon a theory based upon a theory based upon a hunch has something to do with the New Testament, that's perfectly fine.

That's what scholars tell us. But if it's a theory based upon a theory based upon a theory based upon a hunch about the

Quran, what are you people... You need to give us solid information. You can't just... That's the type of...

The inconsistency that you encounter and the approaching of your sources in a completely different way than you approach others.

And people will tell you. They will tell you. I tell my own fellow Christian apologists we need to apply the same standards going either direction.

So that's what I wish Adnan would do. And if we get a chance to debate these things. I would love to debate

Adnan Rashid back at Trinity. I'd like to go back to the very same place where they did this. Trinity College in Dublin.

And let's debate our two texts and their textual transmission. I would love to do that.

We'll continue with this next time on The Dividing Line. But please be praying for the debate starting in half an hour on abnsat .com

on the subject of Surah 4, verse 157. And hopefully get a chance to watch that live. We'll talk to you later.

God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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