When Your Source Proves Faulty: Islamic Apologists Caught

The Source of the Patripassionism Accusation

What you were just watching was a portion of a video produced a number of months ago by one of the Muslims. I've already responded to the video, and one of the Muslims has, to my knowledge, never had any response to it.

And the reason I'm addressing this today is because I think I found out why. That is, this morning I was doing what I enjoy doing. I was riding my bicycle. I do that for many miles a week, and I listen to things.

I listen to lectures, I listen to debates, I listen to vocabulary lessons, and so on and so forth. And I happened to be listening to Dr. Gary Miller. Now, it had been suggested to me that I would find Dr. Miller to be amongst the most erudite and scholarly critics from an Islamic perspective of Christianity.

And so I was listening to him, and lo and behold, I found out exactly where one of the Muslims got his entire argument. He took it directly from Gary Miller, without mentioning that, without indicating that, but he took it directly from Gary Miller.

And the problem is, Dr. Miller is wrong, and so when I point out the error, since to my knowledge anyways, from what I've been seeing on the web, Dr. Miller is no longer involved in doing these kinds of things.

I don't know what he is doing, but he's not doing this. If you borrow somebody else's argument, and they're no longer around to ask about the refutation of their argument, you're sort of stuck. And I think that's what happened to one of the Muslims.

He used a bad argument, and I've only listened to about 20 minutes of Dr. Miller's stuff, and there were a lot of bad arguments presented there. They're presented in a very erudite fashion, but that doesn't change the fact that Dr. Miller is, sadly, greatly in error in his mishandling of the text of the New Testament.

And I think the fact that he speaks the very scholarly tone convinces people that he's rightly handling this material, but the fact is he's not. And so here we have the assertion from one of the Muslims that I am a patrapassionist.

Refuting the Patripassionism Charge from John 20 and 1 Corinthians 8

Now I've already refuted that, and I've already demonstrated that he was misunderstanding two different texts, completely different context, John 20, 28, and 1 Corinthians 8, 6, and engaging in rather obvious mixing of categories, and likewise not showing a whole lot of understanding of the fact that the term God is used in the New Testament of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and it's not always just used of the Father, that I'm not a patrapassionist, that I make very clear distinctions in my teaching and writings on this subject.

But the main reason I wanted to put this video up today was to contrast what one of the Muslims said with Gary Miller's own words. So I'm going to provide the clip here where Gary Miller presents the argument that clearly one of the Muslims just took it and says, ah, any time that anyone says that John 20, 28 is about Jesus, which it obviously is, there's no question about that, the language cannot be tortured so much as to avoid the fact that Thomas is directly responding to Jesus.

The grammar is unquestionable. There isn't any argument here that Thomas is saying to Jesus, my Lord and my God. He's not identifying the Son as the Father in any way, shape, or form, and only if you identify God as being only the Father, which you would have to torture 1 Corinthians 8, 6 to make it mean that, especially since the same apostle used the term God of Jesus.

Do you come up with a problem? It is a misunderstanding, a mishandling of the text description on the part of Muslims and on the part of Dr. Miller at this point. But I just wanted to demonstrate that this is indeed where one of the Muslims got his arguments.

And later on, when I have time, it's very clear that Osama Abdullah also got his argument about John 8 from Gary Miller. He made the exact same mistake that Gary Miller did, that, well, all you have in Exodus 3 .14 is ha 'on.

It's egoimiha 'on, actually. And so I'm starting to see now where a lot of the modern apologists seemingly just can't get beyond the D. Miller period. And they just keep repeating the same errors over and over again.

A Challenge to Islamic Apologists to Do Their Own Homework

Let me just say to Islamic apologists, if you want to get anywhere, you're going to have to start doing your own homework. You can't depend upon these people because they weren't very good at what they did.

And when the best people they're debating are Jimmy Swaggart, that tells you a little something about the level of apologetic you're producing. You're losing on the debate level, folks. You need to step up your game.

You need to step up your research. Now, of course, I say that because my firm conviction is that the more you research the truth, the more you're going to be drawn to Jesus Christ. And that's exactly what I want to see happen.

So, anyway, we'll be looking at those. But here is Gary Miller's presentation of this argument, the very same argument that one of the Muslims used without attribution, falsely against me. And I think this explains why he's never responded, because he can't.

He can't go back to his sources. He did not come up with this on his own. He borrowed it from somebody else. So, here's the clip from Gary Miller. As to impossible evidence, an episode is recorded in the 20th chapter of John, and a certain Thomas is quoted as saying, my Lord and my God.

In interpreting this, Christians maintain that Thomas was addressing Jesus by both of these titles. Now, Muslims would have no objection to the term Lord. As the Bible explains, the word means master.

And Sarah is said to have called her husband Abraham by this title. First Peter 3 and 6 tells us this. The suggestion that Thomas addressed Jesus as literally being God is a different matter. Jesus had already pointed out that the Hebrew scriptures themselves address men as gods.

This would allow for Thomas's use of the term. However, Christians prefer to use the explanation given by Paul in 1st Corinthians chapter 8. In this place, Paul said that there are many lords and many gods, and in his words, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.

But the difficulty with applying this verse to what Thomas said should be obvious. We are left with an unorthodox doctrine, namely that Jesus is the Father. Paul has said there is for us one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.

And yet the Christian wants to insist that when Thomas said, my Lord and my God, he spoke them both directly to Jesus. This is an ancient heresy. The church calls this Petropassionism, or Monarchianism, or Sabellianism.

The distinction between Father and Son is essential to the doctrine.