Ahmed Deedat on the Deity of Christ: Rebuttal #2

In our last video, we looked at what Ahmed Didat had to say about the death of Jesus Christ. And he only gave two options to his audience, either Jesus died as a God or Jesus died as a man. And we pointed out that the Christian perspective is Jesus wasn't just a God or a man.

And that to miss the fact of the union that exists in Jesus Christ, that he is the God-man, is to not really address the issue of Christianity at all. Let's look again at what he had to say. Sadly, a number of the Muslims who wrote to me after this particular video aired didn't seem to be really concerned about the accuracy of their knowledge of what Christians believe.

When I pointed out that Didat was wrong, that he did not seem to understand what it was we believed, they seemed to believe that they have the right to tell Christians what we're supposed to believe. We don't have the right, evidently, to define our own faith.

I find that an amazing attitude. In fact, to be honest with you, it's an amazingly arrogant attitude, in fact, to tell someone, well, you know what? You say you believe that, but we know better. That's a pretty amazing thing if you can't back up what you're saying and show no interest in actually looking to what a religion that existed before yours actually says about itself.

That kind of reasoning is not very compelling and certainly not very attractive to Islam, I can assure you of that. What Muslims need to understand, and obviously what a lot of Christians need to understand as well, is something called the hypostatic union.

This particular term, the hypostatic union, might sound a little bit confusing, but it really isn't. It is simply the statement that the eternal second person of the Trinity, the one who is called son, who has eternally been the son, who never came into existence at a point in time as the son, but has always borne the relationship of son to the father, even in eternity past, even outside of time itself, the eternal second person of the Trinity took on humanity, and he was therefore the God-man.

He was not half God, half man. He was not 50 God and 50 man. He is the God-man because this is the second person of the Trinity taking on a human nature. We explained this before when we looked at Philippians chapter 2, or John chapter 1, verse 14.

He takes on that human nature, and that's what makes him the God-man. When we talk of Jesus the Christ, we are talking about one person with two natures. One person with two natures, divine and human.

The natures are not intermingled, so the divine ceases to be divine, or the human ceases to be human. They are not mixed together like you would take, for example, two kinds of liquid and place them into a beaker, and they mix together and their colors change, and now there's a new third type of substance that's never existed before.

No, that is not what we're talking about. There is no intermingling so that either of the natures is changed. So when you keep this in mind, then you recognize Didot's question was based upon ignorance of this vital Christian affirmation.

Jesus died as the God-man, not merely as a God, or merely as a man, and you see the importance of this is that union is vital to the doctrine of the atonement. What happened on the cross was the death of the God-man, and that, of course, is what Achmed Didot has completely missed in his studies of Christianity.

Didat and Naik on Whether Jesus Explicitly Said “I Am God”

Now, at this point, Didot moved on to the next portion of his normal series of objections, and that is he asked the question, did Jesus claim to be God? In typical Didot fashion, it takes him about 10 minutes to get around to actually saying this, but I found it fascinating to compare Didot's argument, and then right afterwards, I'm going to provide Zakir Naik's utilization of the exact same phraseology right down to the very same words in his re-presentation of what Didot says.

Look how similar these really are.

So, to the question, is Jesus God, we pose a counter-question, did he claim to be God? And on the first night of my series of talks, there was one of our Christian brethren. He came forward, and it had no connection with the lecture.

He had to make a statement that Jesus Christ is God. He had to come and make that statement. In other words, in his mind, heart and mind, he delivered the message to the Muslims. Now you all will go to hell if you don't accept him.

He's done his duty. So I responded, I said, look, man, there is not a single unequivocal statement anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says, I'm God, or where he says, worship me, meaning a single statement, straightforward, saying that, look, I'm God, no doubt about that.

If a man says, I'm God, or he says, worship me, I say, show me in your book. There is not a single unequivocal statement in the complete Bible where Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, himself says that I am God, or where he says, worship me.

Jesus’ Self-Designation, Worship, and Thomas’s Confession

I get the feeling Dr. Naik has been watching just a few too many Ahmad Didot videos there. But be that as it may, we already addressed the challenge here that, well, we want to have these specific words, I am God, or worship me.

The fact, of course, that Jesus describes himself as the I am, and the fact that he is worshiped and accepts worship, and Thomas says, my Lord and my God, and Jesus accepts this and identifies it as a statement of faith, and what his followers said, and so on and so forth, doesn't seem to really come into play here.

But normally what happens in these conversations with Muslims is, as soon as I start citing anything, for example, John, well, that's just John, or any of the Gospels, well, that's been changed, really, shouldn't the Muslim first start out by asking the question, what did the scriptures teach about these claims of Jesus and about Jesus long before Muhammad ever came along?

Wouldn't that be relevant? Do you know what the scriptures read in the earliest manuscripts that we possess? See, one of the major differences between Muslims and Christians is Christians are always wanting the earliest manuscripts of our scriptures.

Muslims really aren't looking for that kind of information at all. It's people in the West that are looking for the earliest manuscripts of the Quran. Have you ever wondered why that is? And you see, even that attitude ends up impacting how we answer the most basic questions about our faith.

The Canonical Gospels and the Deity of Christ

Christians believe that the Bible is very, very clear in its teaching on the deity of Christ. Oh, we have our little cult groups that deny those things, but Muslims definitely recognize that the language Jesus uses of himself in the canonical scriptures, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is something they cannot accept.

The descriptions of Jesus, the words of Jesus, and that's why they've had to say they're corrupted, but the real question is, is that really the truth about what historically is found in the Bible before Muhammad ever came along?

And why would somebody have to change these things before Muhammad came along? Ever thought about that? You see, we'd like to be able to just dive right into what DDOT says, we're going to continue with that, but I want to just mention in passing that when I make these kinds of arguments to people, the first response I get is, well, that's been corrupted, that's been corrupted.

They never back up their allegations, but that's been corrupted, that's been corrupted. Why would that have to be? That's something to think about. And so as we look at DDOT, at least DDOT's going to put the Gospel of John on the screen.

He's going to misunderstand it and he's going to take it out of context, but at least he'll put it up there, that way we can deal with it. But many have sort of gone away from DDOT's approach at that point and just go immediately to the it's corrupted, it's corrupted type of argument.

You might want to go to my blog at www .aomin .org because about two years ago now I did a fairly lengthy response to some of the standard type of the New Testament's been corrupted allegations made by Islamic apologists.

You might find that to be a useful read as well. Hey, thanks for watching.