Debate Review on Incarnation

Review of the Incarnation Debate

Well, for the past three weeks we reviewed a debate, first time I've done that in a while, and so if you were not here for any of that, this will be a little bit challenging, but most of you were. Let's start off with asking, this is where actually, you know, you got to see me do a lot of talking, now you get to talk back, which I've noticed, especially my, the people that oppose me like to do a lot of talking and questions and answers, but the people who are on my side tend to be much more quiet, which is a really a bummer.

I end up asking, answering more of the questions that way, but anyway, we saw a debate on the subject of the Incarnation, and so let's start off, in essence, seeking to summarize what my argument was.

What were some of the texts that I presented in my opening as providing the foundation for what Christians believe on this particular subject? Yes, sir? The Shema? Well, okay, I mentioned the Shema, we believe that there is one God, we're not polytheists, all right, but specifically on the Incarnation, yes ma 'am?

One, specifically, John 1 .14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory. Glory is of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, and I mentioned how Lagos sarxageneta, the Lagos, according to John 1 .1, had eternally existed, was as to His nature deity, and the Word became flesh, and the term is skanao, to tabernacle or tent amongst us, and so there was a real dwelling.

Where else does John sort of make reference to the same concept? I don't know that I presented that in the debate, but there is another text where he says something very similar to that. Well, I was speaking of John, specifically, 1st John chapter 1, what our eyes have seen, our hands have handled concerning the Word of Life, and of course one of the key concerns for John in 1st John is the reality of the Incarnation, the reality of the physical body of Christ that is presented there.

In fact, one of his concerns is those people who deny the Incarnation, they deny that He has come in the flesh, a form of what we call proto-Gnosticism, an early form of Gnosticism, where you have a denial of the Incarnation, Jesus was more of a spirit.

Since fleshly contact is evil, flesh is evil, then Jesus could not have had a physical body, a main concern in 1st John, and that theme is struck as well in John 1 .14. So, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

I emphasize that the Word did not cease being the Word, because notice that we beheld His glory, the glories of the Unique One from the Father, full of grace and truth. And so you have that statement from John, and the many other texts in the Gospel of John concerning the Deity of Christ would be relevant as well, but not specifically in regards to Incarnation.

Then, what else did we present as far as the basis for the Incarnation? Using the we there, I mean, your representative in Sydney, anyone? These long silent pauses on the tape, you know? Why do we even say tape?

I mean, someone did make me a tape last week, because I had been mocking the idea of tapes at some point during Sunday school or something, I forget when it was, or during the sermon, I guess. We don't tape anything, and somebody gave me a tape of the sermon.

Like, great. ...of the debate, but first, what did I present? What was the biblical basis here? We've had one verse so far, John 1 .14. I gave more than one. What were the others? That was three weeks ago.

We don't remember what the presentation was. Well, what other verses are there on the Incarnation? Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11, the Carmen Christi, a key text on the Incarnation, that Christ, though he eternally existed in the very form of God, did not consider equality, the equality he had with God, a thing to be grasped or held on to, but instead of holding on to that, he made himself of no reputation, being made in the likeness of men by taking on human form.

And so, the Carmen Christi, truly one of the key texts, because it is a, probably anyway, is a fragment of an early hymn of the church, and so this theme of the condescension of Christ entering into human flesh, this is part and parcel of the presentation.

You know, it's funny, George, just yesterday I was listening to, on a 50-mile ride, I was listening to the Hadith, the Muslim Hadith, and there was an entire section on sneezing and yawning in the Hadith that I listened to just yesterday.

And whether I am to bless you or not depends on whether you praised Allah when you sneezed. I just thought you might want to know that, just to mark it down for, so were, so was I. And for those of you, by the way, during Sunday morning sermons, if you would like to know what Muhammad has to say about yawning, which is something that's amazing to watch from the pulpit at times, but you are to cover your mouth when you yawn during the sermon, because if you don't, then Satan won't be able to get into you.

So, just so you know, cover the mouth, or at the wide open, you don't want that happening. Everywhere, I guess. Yeah. Just as I mention it, you wonder what I'm listening to while riding, and there you go.

Hadith, oh yes, the Hadith are, have different collections that they give more emphasis to, but this was from, right in the middle of my ride, it switched from Bukhari to Muslim, so I'm not sure exactly which collection it was, but Bukhari and Muslim are the two most revered collections of Ahadith.

And the Ahadith are the sayings and actions of Muhammad, and so they are the basis of Sharia, so they're extremely important, yes. Now, there are some Muslims that only accept what are called Mutawatir, certain Hadith, and so they would reject some and accept others, but anyways, yes.

Here we were talking about the Incarnation and George sneezes, and now where in the world are we? I don't know. We have to talk, that wasn't a rabbit trail, that was being beamed up to the Enterprise, as far as topics go.

Back to where we were, Philippians chapter 2, you like the Enterprise reference there, I see, okay, good, okay. Where I could do any more Star Trek theology at that point, but Philippians chapter 2, the Carmen Christi, what else does it demonstrate?

It demonstrates that this concept of the Incarnation very, very, very, very early, it is not something that develops down the road, it is a part of the most primitive strata, if you want to use the historical terminology of the Christian faith, is the concept of Incarnation and Christ entering into human existence.

He truly was a man, and yet here is the assertion that he had existed in the very form of God, but made himself into a reputation by taking on a human nature. Okay, any others that we mentioned? If you are thinking, I am going to get a drink of water and we can keep talking, because I talk while walking around anyways, I like to be a peripatetic professor, and so I wander about all the time doing things like this.

That way I can also tell what people are actually doing when I walk around my class at Golden Gate, how many are actually surfing the web and doing that kind of stuff while I am actually trying to talk.

No, we are just looking at the Bible passages that teach the Incarnation, and then we will get to those. Any other texts? Colossians 1, well, Colossians 1 does present the fact that Jesus is creatorship, and that the Son is the creator of all things.

I am not sure that it is a text specifically on Incarnation, certainly the deity of Christ. I suppose Colossians 2, 9 would be relevant post-resurrection, because it says, for in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, somaticos, Colossians 2, 9, definitely affirms the reality of Jesus' humanity post-resurrection, because the verb is present tense, there is dwelling, katholikai.

Any others that cross your mind in regards to Incarnation? I mean, if someone were to ask you. Yes, sir. Hebrews chapter 1 definitely does make reference to, for example, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says that all the angels of God worship him in Hebrews 1, 6, and he is the expressed image of his apostasis earlier in that same chapter.

A lot on the deity of Christ there, yes. Anything else, though, on Incarnation specifically? Yes, ma 'am. We did that before you got in, unfortunately. A witness to the reality of Jesus' physical existence of course, in the context of the debate, that's not a disputed point, because from the Islamic perspective, Jesus did exist, but he was a man, and only a man.

He was a Rasul sent from God. He was virgin-born, they do accept that, though I've never heard a Muslim explain why Jesus was virgin-born. It's a reality, but why? It would be an affirmation of the deity of Christ.

I would not say that hakuriasmukai hatheasmu would be humanity and deity, because kurias is the term that is used of Yahweh in the Old Testament, and so it's not, it wouldn't be specifically a man-God, God-man type thing.

Both are titles of deity there in John 20, 28, my Lord and my God. But there's one that I'm surprised no one has thought of yet. Yes, ma 'am. Pre-existence, found in John 17, 5, the glory which I had with you before the world was, definitely.

It would certainly be something that a Muslim would struggle to explain would probably simply reject as a corruption of the text, but specifically when you're, there are only a certain number of texts that refer, that could be understood to be referring to a pre-existent personal experience of Christ, and then talk about that pre-existent one entering into human flesh.

Definitely John 1, 14, definitely Philippians 2, but there is another one that I presented. Isaiah, there we go. Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, the government should be upon his shoulders, an angel shall be called, wonderful counselor, El Gabor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And should it come up, should someone say to you, ah see, that can't be relevant because it's an everlasting Father. Remember, the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are New Testament terms. They are, I would call them post-incarnational terms as far as specific names are concerned.

In the Old Testament, the term Father, especially in relationship to God's relationship to man, Israel, anything that's created is in reference to creation itself, that is that God is the creator of all things, the origin of all things.

So when this one who is reborn is called Aviad, I translate as Father of Eternity, I would see its fulfillment in Colossians chapter 1, for by him were all things made, rather than heaven and earth, visible and invisible, principalities, powers, means, authorities, all things created by him, before him he is before all things, and all things hold together, I think is the New Testament fulfillment of Aviad, the creator.

Likewise, Hebrews chapter 1 and the citation of Psalm 102, 25, 27 in Hebrews chapter 1. So definitely the prophetic fulfillment of Isaiah 9 does directly refer to that. Micah 5, 2 might as well, I didn't specifically bring that up, but the prophecy of Jesus, the place of Jesus' birth, Bethlehem of Prophethood, and the reference to the Messiah that is to be found there.

So, when we are talking about the incarnation, what was the term that Abdullah Kunda, and I was talking to him this week, in fact I was listening to an Australian radio program he was on recently, where he reflected on the debate a little bit, and in the promotional material for the radio program, they had pulled his bio off of his Facebook page, and Abdullah of course is his Islamic name, when people convert to Islam they frequently take an Islamic name.

Do you know what his first given name was prior to his conversion to Islam? Christian, it's the first name is Christian. So, which I found sadly ironic in one sense, but who knows, let's hope it is prophetically ironic in another way.

Anyway, it was the question I was asking. Oh yeah, what term did he use, before I used it, to describe the relationship of the persons, he called them the hypostases, that is that the hypostasis in Greek literally refers to a face or a person, and so when we talk about, for example, the hypostatic union, we are talking about the relationship of the divine and the human in Christ, and you may recall, I don't know how many months ago it was now, probably back about September or so, we talked about the various kinds of errors that cropped up in church history in regards to that relationship, and I used my hands to talk about some of the errors, for example, those that would remove part of the humanity and replace it with deity.

We talked about those who would intermingle the two, so it would be like, if you remember back in high school chemistry, or if you went to college chemistry, where it could get even more dangerous, you would mix certain things together, and when they were in separate vials, they looked very, very different from one another, maybe one might be clear, one might be blue, you mix them together, and now you have something utterly unlike either of the two when they're separate from each other, completely different color, completely different maybe consistency, so on and so forth.

Yes, ma 'am? Well, if I do that, given that we've only got about 20 some odd minutes left, we're never going to get around to discussing the actual debate itself, but the one that I was referring to there is called Eutychianism, a mixture of the two to where you have a demigod.

You don't really have a man, because there's never been a man like that with those capacities and abilities, but you don't really have a god because he's not fully divine. There's become this mixture, the mixing of the two together.

Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Apollinarianism are the terms, and they all fundamentally blur the assertion that you have a close, intimate relationship, and the divine takes on a human nature. It's truly human nature.

If Jesus wasn't truly man, he could not be the sacrifice, but what they fundamentally do at some point or another is they either blur, separate, or undo a portion of the human nature, rather than affirming the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea in 451, utilizing a term such as the god man.

That is, refusing to abandon any of the biblical evidence on the basis of rationalism. Look, let's face it. If we want a rationalistic explanation of who Jesus was, it's not going to be the view that the Christian Church has maintained all along.

The reason we maintain the view we do is because we believe in Tota Scriptura, and when you have Paul saying things like, if they had known this, the rulers of this age would not have crucified the Lord of Glory, what does that mean?

How do you crucify the Lord of Glory? I mean, Lord of Glory, just that term itself, it's pretty obvious what that means, but you can't crucify him unless you have the god man, and so we recognize that one of the reasons that Trinitarian theology has become somewhat of a mystery and mainly a historical study in much of the Christian Church is because unless you have the highest view of Scripture, unless you feel the weight of the need to believe all of Scripture and to, not in an artificial way, harmonize all of Scripture, but because you see that there is a consistency to Scripture to bring all of its witness to bear on a question, if you don't believe that the Scriptures are capable of doing that, that there is no harmonious, united testimony, then the doctrine of the Trinity becomes something you study in church history class and go, people used to believe that.

Very interesting. I see it in the architecture of our church. I look at those stained glass windows from only a hundred years ago. People seem to actually believe this. Well, I'm glad we've moved beyond that, is really how many people view it today.

And even this past week, you may be aware of the great controversy amongst evangelicals. Then again, you may not be. Ours is not the kind of congregation that was sitting on pins and needles in excitement, waiting for the elephant room two to take place.

How many of you have no earthly idea what elephant room two? How many of you do know what elephant room two is? A very small number of folks. That's about what I would expect. And of course, you're stuck.

You're polluted by me. But this past week, a group of ostensibly evangelical leaders, actually it was week four last week, Wednesday, I think it was, had a get together where they invited Bishop T .D. Jakes as a brother in the Lord to discuss his views on the Trinity.

And some of you may recall 12 years ago, I remember Ed asking me a question about the tapes I was playing from 12 years ago. Do you remember asking me a question about the tapes I was playing from 12 years ago?

You don't remember what you ate this morning either. Okay. All right. Do you know where you are? Nevermind. You're sitting next to Brick. That's all that's comforting. Folks having that problem, that's good.

That's familiarity. It's Brick over there. And there's George over there. That's why we put him there. So we all feel like the world is right and not everything has changed. Anyways, I played some tapes.

I even brought in a big old, these were cassettes. Some of you are too young to understand what those are. These are actually cassette tapes. No, no, no. It didn't go click. No, it's the smaller, the little ones.

And here we go down memory lane again. But anyway, I played quotes from various sundry people and I played some stuff from Bishop T .D. Jakes. And let me just, how many of you have never heard of Bishop T .D. Jakes?

Really? There are actually some people in here who have never heard of T .D. Jakes. Fascinating. Yeah. He's on TV and all the time. Yeah. Very, very seemingly expensive suits. Tremendous profusion of sweating.

Yes. Okay. That's I'm sorry. Yes, I think so. Yeah. Oh, he's very, very large man. He is classically known as a modalist. His website, Statement of Faith, continues, we believe in God in three manifestations, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And to make a very long story short, he was given a pass into evangelicalism and into Trinitarian evangelicalism because when asked if he believed God exists in three persons, he says, well, that doesn't really do it for me.

And I'm not really crazy about the term persons. I prefer manifestations, but that's okay. And that's good enough now for people like Mark Driscoll and James McDonald and others to go, hey, he's with us now.

And it was great. And a small cadre of lonely voices out in the world said, you know, that's not quite enough. There's a problem here. And ironically, yours truly was one of the main voices that was raised on that particular subject.

And believe me, I wasn't looking for that. I don't go looking for this kind of stuff. It just sort of wanders in and sits down on top of me. And then that raised all sorts of other issues because then we were told that middle-aged white reformed guys shouldn't be picking on T .D. Jakes.

And also the race issue came up and I'm like, you're kidding me. You went, excuse me, but there weren't any middle-aged white reformed guys at the Council of Nicaea. So it's just not, you know, they didn't really look like me, but anyway.

So that's why I had the Pastor Vody Baucom on my program on Thursday and we talked about it. And if you haven't caught up with all that stuff, the archives are online. Anyhow, all that comes back to our need to, in the last 15 minutes, talk about the fundamental issue that Abdullah Kunda raised.

And how would you summarize his argument? How would you summarize his argument? No, the argument that Abdullah Kunda made in the debate. How would you, once we, it actually didn't come out real well until the Q &A.

I mean, there are all sorts of, well, if what you believe is true, then what about this or what about this and, you know, this type of thing, that type of thing. But the fundamental argument that was the answer to my question.

Remember what my question was? I asked him the question, upon what basis would you say that God is incapable, that's beyond the power of God, to be able to take on a perfect human nature? If God created the perfect human nature, why is it that God could not take on a perfect human nature and live as a man without ceasing to be God?

I asked, what's the limitation on God's power? What's the issue? One element of it? Yes, ma 'am. See if we can liken my question to, remember, I put up the one question. Here's the thesis of the debate.

Why can't God do this? What question had he likened it to? Exactly. And what had he identified that as in his opening statement? As absurd, nonsensical, and that what? It says more about the incapacities of the person asking the question than anything else.

Okay, and then we had a little bit of a laugh about that, because once he made that connection, and then so in the Q &A, I asked him, what's the parallel? How can that be? And fundamentally, what his argument was, has to do, it all devolved down to the meaning of not sitting on a table that is not fully where it should be.

Okay, well, I hope none of our desserts are overly heavy this evening. It all came down to this part of the debate. And I asked him, can God create perfect human nature? And he said, well, it depends on what you mean by perfect.

There is perfection in comparison to all the rest of human nature. And yes, Adam is perfect in that way. But in comparison to God, no, there is no such thing as a perfect human nature. So what he was saying, if something is truly perfect, it's divine, it's deity.

So Allah, God, is the only thing that is truly perfect. And therefore, if it's not Allah, it's imperfect. And therefore, any human nature that would be taken on is in comparison to Allah, imperfect. They were sinless human beings.

That does not make them perfect in this context, because this is where you need to understand that I have always said, and this debate proved it, even though I've never met anyone who actually developed a line of thought to try to defend this, but it's still the same thing.

I've always said that the Muslim rejection of the incarnation is presuppositional. It's just, it is not an argument that is subject to proof within the system, assumption that everything else. What to do was to say, well, here's the argument.

The argument is that human nature is by definition non-divine, therefore imperfect, therefore the incarnation would necessitate Allah taking on imperfection, and therefore he cannot be worshipped. What is that actually saying?

Is that actually an argument that can be examined? I would say no, because of what? Because it's basically saying that perfection equals divinity, rather than perfection being the absolute fulfillment of the intention for which God created something.

So God can't create a perfect rock from his perspective, even though it's exactly what God wants it to be. It's exactly where God wants it to be. It functions exactly the way God wants it to function, but he has made this equation that perfection equals deity, and therefore there can be nothing that is perfect outside of Allah, and therefore the real argument is incarnation is impossible because incarnation is impossible.

It's not actually an argument. It's just simply a more complicated way of saying Allah would just never do that, because you are fundamentally meeting the terms of the argument. Both gentlemen in the back, yes sir.

The Quran is eternal, it's not created. The Quran is eternal, it is not created. It is eternal, and it is not created. So it is not a created thing. No, no, no, no. Even the Arabic Quran is but a representation written on the heavenly tablets for eternity.

So it's not a created thing. So it's a variation, and therefore as far as it is an accurate representation, they would say that what came down to Muhammad was perfectly recorded, and then most of them would affirm a perfect transmissional history as well.

As soon as a Muslim admits their text of variance, then you might have an issue there. But there is a real problem in the current theological conclusion, I think, of Muslims, that the Quran is eternal as Allah.

I don't know how you some form of almost duotheism at that point, if you have something that's as eternal as Allah, but isn't Allah, what is it? I see the point you're making, but I don't think that they would, because you're not talking about a human nature, and the eternal Quran are not the same things.

It's probably basically what they would say. Mr. Callahan, you had a comment you wanted to make? No more? Okay. So as I heard what Abdullah was saying, I appreciated the attempt, but what I tried to bring out in the cross-examination was, well, when God created, was it perfect?

And he went into this long thing about temporality with God and all the rest of that stuff. Well, but you believe God created it, right? Yeah, okay. So leaving all that stuff aside, when this was created, was it exactly as God intended it to be?

And he said, well, yeah, of course, and then my time ran out, which is the problem with cross-examination debates, is you never get quite as far into it as you would like, and sometimes when you do, you end up on rabbit trails and never get anywhere.

So when you think about it, the standard Muslim that you talk to, on a presuppositional level, just simply rejects the possibility of incarnation, and that's one of the reasons why so few Muslims even understand what the Doctrine of the Trinity is.

A, because most Christians have never been talked with, or have given them contradictory teachings. That's one major reason. But B, even those who've never even bothered to talk to a Christian just don't show much of an interest in accurately understanding and representing the Doctrine, because it just is so fundamentally foreign to them, because they assume a law ascendance, that he would never enter into his own creation.

That's a presuppositional concept. And so what he was saying is, well, a law would not do what you say he did, because it would involve taking on something that is, he said, imperfect. But what does imperfect mean?

It means non-Allah. It's something that's not Allah. So if you boil down this argument, what is it? Allah would never do that, because Allah would never do that. I mean, that's really all there is to it.

It's not really an argument. It's just simply saying Allah would never do that, because Allah could never join himself to human nature. Why? Because it's not a law. Something, well, we're not saying that the physical body of Jesus was divinized, or changed, or anything else.

But if you're saying that this would somehow involve a degradation in Allah's character, then you have arguments similar to the one that Mike proposed. I was about to ask him, if the time hadn't run out, when he was talking about the temporality of creation, and Allah is not temporal and all the rest of it, doesn't it involve an essential change in Allah's nature to create?

I mean, before the creation itself, given their argumentation, if Allah does something that changes the way things were, then that somehow changes Allah. They want to make an argument against Christianity that if they were just consistent and turned it around and applied it to their own theology, would contradict their own theology as well.

And this is one thing. I just don't find almost any Muslim. I mean, that's what you're going to get. Honestly, it was. I mean, someone who's talked to as many Muslims as I have, that was refreshing. Some of you are sitting there going, that's really frustrating.

That's because you haven't talked to nearly as many Muslims as I have. Okay? You stand out in Leicester Square in London and talk with Muslims for a few hours in a row, and you will want to hug Abdullah Kunda.

You really will. Okay? I mean, you'll just, you know, put him on your prayer list, because trust me, that's an unusual, unusual... My experience is, again, unless the Spirit of God opens the heart and the mind to even try to consider what you're saying, there's such a huge amount of stuff in the way.

You know, we send missionaries off into Islam and they labor and they labor and they labor, and it's not a matter of intellectually conquering this stuff. You need to understand it. You need to understand why is it that my words aren't getting anywhere in the sense of...

They seem to be engendering confusion rather than clarity. That's important to understand all the stuff that we're talking about here. But normally what it is, is after years and years and years of faithful Christian living, when they, you know, the Spirit of God moves and they see that in the Islamic world you don't have this kind of patience and this kind of hope, then that's what allows the person to...

You have something I don't have. I want to understand this. And that, of course, we know is the work of God's Spirit. Don't expect unregenerate people to act like anything other than unregenerate people, or religiously unregenerate people.

You got to understand, there can be people that are, you know, they'll talk about God and they'll be very pious, but that's not the same thing as being regenerate in any way, shape, or form. Really quickly, because we only have...

Actually, we're out of time. And most Christians do. I gave a definition in the Forgotten Trinity that a lot of people have utilized. You carrying it there, Buzz? Oh, yeah, okay. Within the one being that is God, there exists co-eternally and co-equally three Persons, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And I don't think we have any of these in the back anymore. It would be nice if we probably probably should put it there. But within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three co-equal and co-eternal Persons, namely the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I did get it on page 26. And you're right. Modalism is a major, major problem. Very, very quickly. Angelophonies, but not in the proper sense of a true theophany. No. No. Not that I'm aware of. Okay. All right.

Next week, we actually get back to Matthew 24, unless something else comes up. Very, very quickly, sir. You're right. I'm in Minnesota. I'm freezing to death next week. Never mind. It's going to be a low of 10 degrees on there.

Never mind. Yes, I'm in Minneapolis next week. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for this opportunity. We still have a freedom to discuss these things openly. We know that many of our brothers and sisters cannot especially discuss this topic openly.

We thank you that we have that freedom. We do pray for Abdullah Kunda and for all those who've viewed that debate, Lord, that by your Spirit, you would glorify yourself, the salvation of your people. We pray in Christ's name.