Yusuf Estes on the Deen Show: Part 8 (Conclusion)

The Trinity Revealed in Scripture, Not in Abraham

That's very simply put, so we know that this wasn't a teaching of Jesus, it wasn't a teaching of Abraham, it wasn't a teaching of any of the prophets, and not even the teaching of the last and final messenger of mankind, the Prophet Muhammad.

From the scripture that we do have, we don't find any of it in there.

Well, if you don't include as scripture that which was sent down called the Injil, the Gospel, what Muhammad would have known as the New Testament, then you would say it's in none of those scriptures.

Of course, there are some prophetic passages one might want to think of in Isaiah and in the Psalms, but leaving that aside for the moment, you have to determine who you're going to call a prophet here, and as we said before, you would not expect Abraham to be preaching on a revelation that is yet future to himself.

The primary mechanism by which the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in scripture is through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God, which was a millennium in the future at the time of Abraham.

And so, for those Muslims who keep saying, well, Abraham didn't teach this, well, Abraham didn't teach many of the things that Muhammad taught, because Muhammad came long after Abraham. Do you dismiss everything based on that?

Surely not. He was a very early prophet. That which was given to him is certainly not the whole of what needs to be known to know God's truth. So, this kind of questioning, even, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding.

Now, I don't know who the questioner is, but if his knowledge of Christianity has come from the likes of Eustathesis, that might explain a little something about why he is confused.

Criticism of Paul and Liberal Readings of the Gospels

You have a lot of criticism of Paul. A lot of people criticize Paul. And when you go to seminary school, you find that there are three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Then you have the Johann Gospel.

Then you have a teaching and dogma that's coming, and you don't have it all. It's not the same. It's not the same message. It's not the same teaching. And one of the key things they talk about is Pauline Doctrine, because Pauline Doctrine isn't the same.

It doesn't follow the same way at all.

Well, of course, while it is very common for liberal theologians to just throw out this kind of accusation against Paul, it is also just as common for those same kinds of theologians and historians to throw out the same kind of thing in regards to Muhammad and identifying different streams of tradition within the Quran.

And I am certain that Eustathesis doesn't accept any of those things. And given what's come before, I'm likewise certain that Eustathesis has never read a meaningful conservative defense of the consistency of Paul's teaching to that of Jesus Christ and the other apostles.

If you start with the assumption that these men are contradicting one another, if you start with the assumption that you cannot allow for any kind of harmonization, if you start with the absolute worst assumptions concerning the Apostle Paul, then you can create any number of alleged contradictions.

But I personally am sick and tired of people who have never even tried to give the Apostle Paul a fair shake, attacking him and attacking his writings. Christians down through the centuries have honored this man as one who was called by Christ, who gave his life in the service of Christ.

And he did. He endured tremendous persecution. And to, in essence, impugn his character and to make the gross and unfair accusation that what he taught in his epistles is a complete overthrow of Jesus' own message, which the Muslim today has to do.

Muhammad didn't know these things. He never read this stuff. He was ignorant. He didn't know this stuff. And so it creates this amazing situation where the Muslim has to grab hold of the worst of liberalism, and the two come together to attack the Apostle Paul, just as what happened in the early church.

It is fascinating. But I have no reason to believe that Eusebius has, in any fair fashion whatsoever, ever examined what Paul has taught to any depth whatsoever, given what we have already examined in the preceding, I believe, seven videos, listening to his comments in this program.

And it has a different message even, even to the extent of breaking all the commandments and just, you know, being dead to the law. And if, another statement, if the falsehoods I tell bring the people closer to God, then why are they persecuting me?

This is coming from Paul.

Further evidence that if this man ever was a minister, he's forgotten all of his sermons, all of his training, everything else. Paul never said anything like that. There are certain texts where Paul talks about how he has given up freedoms so as to be able to reach a wide variety of people that Muslims love to just rip out of their context and grossly misuse.

Talk about a credibility killer and a demonstration of one's unwillingness to handle text in a meaningful fashion. That's definitely one of them. But again, a person who's actually studied all of Paul, read all of Paul, studied his journeys, and wrestled with all of his writings, you listen to this and you go, that's a person who never has.

Whether as a Muslim or a Christian, that is a person who has never taken the time to seriously interact with the materials that he now so confidently pontificates upon.

Paul's Theology, the Trinity, and Misreadings of His Writings

And his ideas of, and they were strange ideas. Some claim that his ideas were based on the mystical religion of Tarsus where he was raised up. But regardless of that, and no matter how far you stretch it out, you cannot find Paul using this word Trinity.

Yeah, the mystical religion of Tarsus. Yeah, that's where Paul got his theology. All those Old Testament citations that he uses constantly that fill his writings and the consistency of Pauline thought with that expressed in what's called Second Temple Judaism and his clear understanding of that.

And all that scholarly stuff that's been written on that stuff, we don't need to worry anything about that because he didn't use the word Trinity. Of course, he describes Jesus as God. He says Jesus is the creator of all things, that nothing exists outside of him, that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in him.

The eternally existent is God. He identifies Father, Son, and Spirit together in numerous Trinitarian passages where each is described as having divine attributes and grace and love coming from them and the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ is the same thing for Paul.

But we won't worry about any of that because that would take time to study and we don't want to do that in regards to our former faith. I'm sorry, but I find this offensive. And I find it offensive especially because I try to make sure never to be like this.

I try not to address Islam, even though I am not a former Muslim. I try not to address Islam from this position of abject disrespectfulness in not even beginning to try to do your homework to make sure what you're saying is true.

A Call for Open-Minded Dialogue and a Final Appeal to the Facts

At this point, Yusuf Estes closed his discussion with somewhat of an invitation to be open-minded, talk with some Muslims, so on and so forth. I would like to challenge Yusuf Estes himself to be open-minded, to do what he tells other people to do, and to look into the serious documentation that clearly he has never examined that refutes so much of what he has said.

I would be open. I think it would be a great benefit to Christians and Muslims to engage in public dialogue with him on these very issues because I think it's very important. If he really believes what he's saying is true, then he should be willing to do so.

If not, then he should be willing to accept correction, withdraw these things, but then the question comes, so why did you leave Christianity again? If your understanding of Christianity was this badly flawed, why did you leave it?

That then becomes the question. And so I hope this examination of Yusuf Estes' many errors concerning the doctrine of the Trinity has been helpful to you, and I would say, I would encourage you, go ahead and have an open mind, look at these issues, check out the facts for yourself.

I think you'll discover that what Christians have believed down through the ages is fully substantiated in the holy word of God. Thank you for watching.