A Helpful Discussion with the Muslim Metaphysician, Jake Brancatella

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:42

Well, greetings and welcome to the VineLine. My name's James White, and we are back in the AO Max studios today.

00:50

And that's because we have a special guest, and we are joined today. He was first introduced to me as the

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Muslim metaphysician, which made me sort of go, hmm, OK, that's not a term

01:05

I've heard before. But then, let me give the background so you understand why all this is going on.

01:15

Cenk Brankitela was introduced to me by Yusuf Ismail. Now, some of you may remember the name

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Yusuf Ismail. Yusuf and I have debated, well, I've lost track of how many times, but we debated.

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The most memorable debate was in the Juma Masjid in Durban, South Africa. And that, of course, is available online.

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And we've done a number of other debates. I think the last debate we did was in that Anglican church.

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I think it is down the Durban area. And it was on, is the Quran uncreated, or something along those lines.

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I'm trying to remember specifically what it was about, but it was a little while ago. And so Yusuf got in touch with me and said, have you heard about this young fellow?

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I think it would be worthwhile if you all had a conversation. And I was like, well, OK. Could you link me to some stuff so I could listen?

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I sort of like to hear what someone has to say. And so he did. And I loaded up a bunch of stuff to listen to on the trip that I took to Pryor, Oklahoma.

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And so I started listening and very quickly realized, yeah, this is something we want to do.

02:31

We want to have Jake on. We want to have this conversation. So let me say hello to Jake, the

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Muslim metaphysician, coming to us from the East Coast. A little bit, probably, I bet you it's much more humid where you are than where I am right now.

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I can pretty much assure that. But I bet it's hotter here than it is where you are. Is that a good guess? Yeah, it's pretty humid here now.

02:54

But yeah, how's it going, guys? Appreciate you having me on, Dr. White. Well, yeah, you know, we haven't really chatted except a little bit beforehand.

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We were having a little back and forth. But I mentioned in my emails to you that I got a chance to listen to, really, hours and hours of stuff that you've done, the whole

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Testing the Trinity series, and then some of the reviews that you did.

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I found it really interesting. I'm sorry? How'd you make it through? Wasn't it painful? No, not at all.

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Because I'm thinking about how unusual it is to hear a

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Muslim who is quoting the sources and materials that you're quoting, first of all, and then speaking to other

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Muslims about subjects that I've just never heard anyone mention in this context before.

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I mean, in my experience, even in talking to some of the most accomplished

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Muslim practicers of Dawa, it's very hard to get them to even read my book on the subject, let alone be diving into the

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Oxford material. Yeah, there you go, the Oxford Dictionary of Christology.

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And I do run into people who read a lot of William Lane Craig. That's a whole different issue. But you just got to admit, you're not your run -of -the -mill

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Muslim. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah, with respect to the

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Dawa scene, as you mentioned, I'm not sure.

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I have some theories as to why exactly that is. I'm not exactly sure.

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You might have some theories about why that is. Why do you think that I seem to be unique in this kind of thing?

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Well, you are unique. I appreciated your attitude in addressing so many of the issues.

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You were always trying to be restrained in the rhetoric that was being used.

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I only pointed out to you two things that I found humorous. One was the video.

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Is your favorite apologist a heretic that had a picture of me as the screenshot, but then you never talked about me?

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Yeah, no. And then there was a Super Chat thing where someone said something.

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It was very poetic, almost. And I realize I've never done that Super Chat stuff, but I realize you're seeing it for the first time as you're reading it.

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So it's not like you can really monitor that stuff. So I knew you were aware of who

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I was. But no, it's just very, very unusual to have these kinds of conversations on the topics that you're addressing.

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And so one of the things I did after listening to some of the series you did and some of the dialogues you did, and then at least a portion of the program where you had some comments about what happened.

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And I don't know, what was this, about two months ago where Anthony Rogers and David Wood and Sam Shamoon had the conversation with, was it

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Sheikh Uthman? Am I correct? Okay. You were with some other guys commenting on certain aspects of that particular conversation.

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As I started looking and going, I bet he has a video somewhere about his conversion.

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And you do. So that to me was really important to listen to because I want to know where people are coming from.

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I hope you don't mind if I give the background here, but when I started doing debates with Muslims, I started with Shabir Ali at Biola University in 2006.

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And especially when I would go overseas, like when I would debate Adnan Rashid, Adnan was used to going to speaker's corner and just sort of like being in a

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Muhammad Ali fight. You know what I mean? Just trading blows and speaking loudly and stuff like that.

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And finally we were in Dublin. I just thought, you know what? I want to have lunch with this guy and I want to explain to him why

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I do what I do. Because if he could at least understand why

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I approach this subject, why I care about him as an individual, it might change everything.

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And it did. And I've tried to, when it's possible, do that kind of thing now, get together with folks and get them to know me as an individual, me to get to know them.

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And it just makes the debate so much more useful. And it lowers the temperature level.

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And as you know, in discussing some of these topics, the more emotions are involved, the less rationality is going to be involved at the same time.

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So I listened to your conversion video. And so what

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I found interesting is you're a former Roman Catholic, right? Yes, yeah.

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But it sounds like it was like in high school that, because you said you were not confirmed.

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So that would be fairly young, right? Yeah, I wasn't confirmed because I was a little bit of a rebel and they kicked me out of Sunday school and they didn't confirm me, so.

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Okay, so it was around the same time then that you started having conversations with a

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Muslim classmate or something? Was that what I understood? A few years after that.

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So that was probably when I was about, I don't know, 13, 14. Okay. Because I think that's around when you get confirmed as a

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Catholic. Right. And later when I was about a junior in high school, so I was about 16, 17, one of my best friends in high school at the time was a

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Muslim. And we never really talked about it much until probably senior year of high school.

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He started to talk to me about it a little bit more. I forget, I mean, it's over 10 years ago, so I forget exactly what it was about.

09:53

Oh, Jake, Jake, Jake, 10 years. Come on, bro. Yeah, my memory's gone already, man.

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I'm just about to hit 60, so you cannot use the, it was a long time ago excuse yet.

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I'm sorry that you're not allowed to do that until you're minimally 50 years old. So I just, you need to know the rules about that.

10:17

Oh boy, I'm in trouble. So senior year then. Yeah, so it was about senior year and he just brought certain things up to me.

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And I said, well, let me just check out what this religion's about because I didn't know anything about it.

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So I started reading the Quran from there. And then, I don't want to progress too much in the story, but that's kind of how it got started.

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Right, well, but you did, I'm not sure when you made the video I listened to, but you had said in the video that for, you had only been

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Sunni for about two years at the time you made that video. Was that fairly recently? Yeah, so about two, a little over two years now,

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I became a Sunni. So when I first became a Muslim, quote unquote,

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I was a Quranist. So I don't know how much your audience is familiar with it, but basically the idea is that the

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Quran is the sole authority in traditional Sunni Islam. We have a secondary source, which is the

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Sunnah, which is basically the sayings, deeds and sort of practices of the prophet Muhammad.

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And I rejected that outright. So I just strictly just stuck to the

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Quran alone. I was very kind of militant in that for about, I want to say almost eight years.

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Okay. Until about two years ago, I transitioned to a more traditional Sunni Islam.

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So that's about two years ago now. So we have discussed that on the program because it's fascinating to look at the various strands of Islam and the difference between Sunnis.

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And well, there's all sorts of difference between different schools amongst the Sunnis, but then the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

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And then we both know a fellow who is

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Quran only, who was the first Muslim that I debated, but not my first Muslim debate.

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I think I explained that, but Hamza Abdul Malik was a fellow that I encountered.

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He first started coming to debates I was doing with Roman Catholics, ironically on Long Island.

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And he would always ask these, he'd always get in line to ask questions during the audience

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Q and A that generally had absolutely positively nothing to do with the topic of the debate at all.

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But he was dressed in, at that time he was still Sunni. So he was dressed in the

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Muslim garb and everyone was very interested in what he had to say. And he seemed like a really nice guy.

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So eventually I think it was 19, yeah, it was 1999. We had a very interesting debate.

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And then years later, I heard that he had left Sunni Islam for a

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Quran or Quran only perspective. So yours was the opposite movement.

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And so you've been Sunni for about two years, which would mean that the authoritative interpretation of the

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Hadith, the various schools of interpretation of how to understand the

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Hadith, to rate the Hadith, whether they're Sahih or Hassan or whatever, these would be issues that would be now something that you're dealing with that you really wouldn't have been dealing with before.

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So that puts you pretty much in the mainstream of certainly about 85 % of the world's

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Muslims are Sunni. And so that helps us to understand where you're coming from.

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But the question then becomes, your focus is the doctrine of the

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Trinity, the doctrine of the incarnation, and you have a bachelor's degree in philosophy.

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So hence Muslim metaphysician, you're coming at this.

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Well, I've spoken to hundreds and hundreds of Muslims around the world. Very few of them are coming at it from the perspective that you're coming at it from.

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And that is from a very heavily philosophical perspective. In fact, in my experience, the

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Wahhabi Salafi range of thought really has a deep distrust of philosophical categories.

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Have you encountered that? Is that something that you have to deal with as you present your materials?

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It depends. I mean, even the Salafis are not a monolith.

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So I don't wanna paint them with a broad stroke. But yeah, I mean, you definitely get that sometimes.

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It depends on the group. But then you have some Salafis that are more philosophically minded.

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So you do come across people on both sides of that issue. I myself, obviously,

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I have a background in philosophy and much of my reading is in that area because I'm just really interested in it.

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So yeah, I mean, I get that based on certain comments that I receive in YouTube comments because I haven't smartened up and got rid of them like you guys yet.

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Well, let me tell you something right now. What I've been told, I haven't verified this, but what

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I've been told is if you turn comments off, it's deleterious to YouTube's promoting your videos.

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So we just started that very long, long time ago, mainly because we had so many atheists coming in and just filling the boxes with profanity and stuff.

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I wasn't gonna invest the time in monitoring that kind of stuff. But just be aware that it might impact your distribution if you turn the comments off.

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So that's what I've been told. Yeah, that's primarily why I've left it on because I know it's good for the algorithms and stuff like that.

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But yeah, I mean, turning back to the Salafi thing, yeah, of course, I think there are certain strands of thought within Christianity and Islam where you can see certain parallels that one group tends to be more philosophically minded than the other.

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And of course, there's not a one for one comparison, but I think it can be said on both sides in that way.

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Yeah, okay. Well, it's just, I've listened to a lot of lectures and yes,

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I do know there's all sorts of different perspectives there, but some of the strongest arguments have come from people who had a real deep distrust of some of the developments in Islamic history where they feel the pure message of the prophet and his companions ended up getting overlaid with a philosophical and hence non -representational tradition that came about centuries and centuries later.

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And I mean, that's part of the Wahhabi Salafi drive is to go back to the original sources and to shed some of that kind of stuff.

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And so I've heard that. And so when I heard where you were going, again, the most important thing to me was

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I hear someone who is addressing topics that I would say 99 .9

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% of the Muslims with whom I've dialogued could not give me an accurate definition of the hypostatic union.

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That's not a criticism, that's just fact. I would sadly say that probably 85 % of most

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Christians could not give you an accurate definition of the hypostatic union either. So that doesn't mean anything other than you're just doing something that I have expected someone to do, but you're the first person

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I've encountered that's been doing it in this way. And you asked why I might think that might be. I mentioned,

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I'm not sure if you have my book on whatever Christian needs to know about the Quran, but I mentioned in a footnote in there that I think one of the reasons that many

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Muslims hesitate to do the reading that you've been doing, and maybe most of your readings have been in philosophical stuff, so maybe not so much that, but especially

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I've met a lot of Muslims who were really hesitant to dive very deeply into biblical topics, biblical history, transmission of the text, things like that, was represented in a

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Hadith where, if I recall, it was Uthman was reading from the

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Tanakh, the Hebrew Old Testament, and the prophet came in and his face turned red.

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In other words, he was angry. And he basically said to Uthman, is not what I have given you sufficient for you?

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And it just seems like many times I've encountered folks and I've asked them, well,

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I've read the Quran multiple times. I've read all of Muslim and Bukhari.

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Why wouldn't you maybe read a few of the Gospels or something along those lines?

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And there was just this hesitancy. And I wonder if that's where it comes from, is that kind of mindset that if I read that stuff, then

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I'm in some way sliding the final nature of the revelation of the

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Quran or something along those lines. That's just one theory I've thought of. What do you think of that?

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Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. It's really difficult to say. I think it's more to do with the method of dawah that's been prominent for the past 30 or so years.

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I know you're familiar with Ahmed Deedat, Zakir Naik and these kinds of people.

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And I'm not saying anything bad about them, but I think that their methodology and work has been very influential on Muslims for either good or bad reasons.

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And I think that's just the fact of the matter. I don't think that's really can be disputed.

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And so I think much of the Islamic apologists, so to speak, have just been following in that way of arguing things and haven't really looked as much into the philosophical issues or maybe some of more of the deeper theological concerns that I myself would have.

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I think at least in recent history, because that's all I know,

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I'm only 30 years old. So that's what I see personally is

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I think what the strongest reason would be, but I can't say for sure. Yeah, no,

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Deedat had a lot to do with it. And I don't know if you've seen the debates that I've done in South Africa with a gentleman who really purposefully attempts to speak like Deedat, dress like Deedat, stand as Deedat stood.

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But yeah, he's still, as far as I know, probably the most listened to Muslim speaker in the world, even though he's been dead for, what, 16 years, something like that.

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So yeah, he has a huge, huge influence. And I have said, I've been saying since I started, to Muslims on the other side, guys, you've got to step up your game.

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We're well past the Deedat age. And so I congratulate you for being a part of that.

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I don't want to get you in any trouble with anybody for saying that. But, so let's talk a little bit about some of your key issues.

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I have up on the screen, actually, a screenshot from one of your videos, the first video on the logical problem of the

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Trinity. And so I don't know if you've come up with something fancier than this that you wanted to screen share or not, but it's straight from your own video anyways.

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Because you said you specifically wanted to make some comments. I had commented briefly on this and had basically said to people, this is where the conversation normally has to go in speaking with Muslims, or to be honest with you, in speaking with Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, in any context where a

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Christian is seeking to define and defend the doctrine of the Trinity, this is really what the issue is.

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In fact, I think it's probably in the first chapter, first one or two chapters of the Forgotten Trinity.

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Do you wanna run through it or what? Yeah, yeah,

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I'll run through it. I just wanna say something briefly about my approach in a little bit more detail to these discussions and why

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I would even be looking at something like the quote unquote logical problem of the

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Trinity. Part of the reason is, because when

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I was a Roman Catholic myself, some of the core doctrines like the Trinity and incarnation, it didn't really make sense to me on a sort of just basic intuitive level.

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But I didn't have a way of really expressing that. And so when

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I looked into it more and more, I realized, okay, what seems to be the problem is an example of this is what you have here on the board with the logical problem of the

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Trinity. But why I feel that this approach, at least from my perspective is necessary is because the sort of strictly scriptural and maybe even a little bit historical debates that you as well, in tandem with the

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Muslim apologist that you've been speaking to for 30 years or whatever it is, I feel like the conversation's gotten a little stale and the same sort of arguments and talking points have been repeated over and over again.

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And I think that what is undergirding a lot of it, at least from my perspective,

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I don't know if many of the other Muslims feel the same way, but from my perspective is the logical coherence of the doctrine.

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So I wanna differentiate between my sort of approach so people understand where I'm coming from as opposed to this purely scriptural thing.

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The way that I look at it, and obviously this is gonna be the fundamental difference between you and myself,

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Dr. White, is that in order for a doctrine or a belief set, whatever it is, to be considered true, it has to be at minimal logically coherent.

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And if it's not, then I'm gonna have an immediate issue with it. So I think it's a necessary component.

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It's not necessarily sufficient, but it is necessary. So that's where I start off with.

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And then if I take a belief or a belief system, and I think that it entails a contradiction or some sort of incoherence, then that's gonna give me reason to cast doubt on the belief itself.

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And so what I've mainly been doing in my videos is saying, well, all right, we've been arguing about whether or not the

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Trinity's in the Bible for how long now? People who are far better than me can probably do a better job of it from the

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Muslim side and obviously from the Christian side. So all of those debates are there.

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People are free to watch them. I'm saying, okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that the

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Trinity is in the Bible and explicitly in the New Testament at least. Well, what does that leave us with?

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What are the implications? Is it a sound doctrine or is it incoherent?

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And so I obviously think that it's not sound. And I try to, obviously, and this is where we would differ,

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I don't engage as much in the scriptural part because I feel that it's much of a kind of tit for tat, like you quoted a verse and then

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I quote John 17, three, and then you say it's out of context and it's like this kind of back and forth thing.

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So I'm just explaining to the audience that my approach is different in that sense. So I kind of grant it for the sake of argument that the

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Trinity is in the Bible. And then I say, well, if it is in the Bible, does it make sense? So that's kind of my basic foundation.

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Now, before I go into the LPT, I don't know if you have any comments on that. Yeah, I would like to comment because as I mentioned to you,

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I do think that is one of the key issues. And that is, I think the philosophical explication of the categories that are inherent in a discussion of the doctrine of the

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Trinity, which include being person, nature, of the relationship with the divine persons, all of these things from a truly

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Christian, a believing Christian perspective are determined and defined by the biblical categories first and foremost.

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And I think one of the reasons that I was yelling alone in my

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RV, somewhere in Oklahoma, as you were properly and contextually quoting

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William Lane Craig, was because of that very issue of my saying, look, this is the foundation where we're coming from.

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And here would be the question I would have for you. And by the way, if I ask a question, if we get into an area and you're like,

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I'd like to do some reading on that, I'd like to put that off to another time, please feel free to do that.

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We're not trying to do a debate today. We can do a debate on a specific topic at another time, and it seems to be working fairly well.

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But do you apply the same standards to your own faith that you are asking me to apply to mine?

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Because if you're familiar with my debates, I have said for many years that we need to have equal scales, that we need to be consistent in the criticisms that we're making of others.

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If I present an argument that refutes your position, but it refutes mine at the same time, I can't bury that fact.

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I need to be open about that fact. And so in light of that, would it be as part of your regular studies, not just on the doctrines of Trinity, but also on the logical coherence of Tawhid and how, for example, you can understand the relationship.

30:27

I know you do deal with the issue of the attributes of Allah in regards to Tawhid, but in regards to how love can exist in absolute monotheism, and how some of the things that are asserted in historic

30:47

Sunni Islam in regards to the Quran, the nature of the Quran, certain actions of Allah, these all seem to be relevant issues as well, that as a

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Christian, I need to respond to what you're saying, but we also need to make sure, I mean, do you share that emphasis that yes, you need to use the same standards in the positive presentation of your faith that you would then require us to use in providing our response?

31:21

Yes, definitely. I think, of course, my view, whatever it is, whether I'm, obviously,

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I'm a Sunni Muslim, it should be coherent. So if I think that God is, in Christian terminology, one being and one person, well, how does that work in eternity past?

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I do engage things like, it's known in the philosophical literature as the

31:49

Richard argument, which is this sort of argument from love, because it was kind of popularized by Richard of St.

31:56

Victor and then Richard Swinburne as of recent. So I am engaged in that stuff.

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Of course, the idea of the Quran, well, if it's eternal, then what is it? It's relationship to God, God and his attributes.

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Now, on my channel, I haven't gone in depth with a lot of those things. I recently did do a video on Allah and his attributes in the relationship between the two, which was prompted by that discussion between Shaykh Uthman and Anthony Rogers.

32:29

But yeah, I mean, long story short, yes, it should be equal scales, and that should be, if you had difficult questions on that side of the coin,

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I should be able to answer them. So if we ever did do a debate, that would be probably a good topic of Trinity versus Tawhid, something like that, to where you can ask difficult questions and we could kind of go back and forth.

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I'm all for that. I think to deny that would be kind of a cop -out from my perspective.

33:05

So yeah, I mean, I'm not prepared right now to go through every single one of those points, but I definitely do think that that needs to be equal scales in that respect, yes.

33:15

Yeah, good. Well, that's good. So LPT, go ahead, and I want to give you sufficient time to make any comments you wanted to make on that.

33:27

Okay, yeah, so the way I set up the LPT in that particular video, and I want to make it clear, it's not a creation of my own.

33:37

Much of the material I'm presenting is available in the literature. I'm not some guy that's kind of just a mastermind making all this stuff up.

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The logical problem of the Trinity, the name also is not something that I've come up with.

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It's literally in the introduction to the text on, I think it's called Theological and Philosophical Essays on the

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Trinity, published by Oxford Press. Yes, it is very expensive, so I'm not telling you to go out and buy it, but if you really -

34:06

A number of the books that you made reference to were ridiculously expensive.

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You realize that like 12 people have read them. You do know that, right? It's probably why

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I'm the only one talking about it, because nobody's reading it. They don't have the money to pay for it. Don't any of your friends sort of take you aside once a while and go, yo,

34:29

Jake, you need a life, dude. Yeah, yeah, so I mean, yeah, it is difficult, especially in academia.

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They put a lot of these sort of deeper things behind a big paywall, and it's unfortunate, but it is the way it is, and I can't break that barrier.

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But so anyway, I'm the LPT. It's not a creation of my own. I was kind of introduced to the terminology from Dr.

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Bo Branson. He's an Eastern Orthodox scholar, mainly in philosophy.

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He did his PhD on, it was literally called The Logical Problem of the Trinity. And I came across this literature specific on this, preparing for a debate slash discussion that I was supposed to have with him.

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And I went into a lot of detail on it. I started reading a lot more material.

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Point is that this is kind of known terminology in the literature.

35:31

Now, the way that Dr. Bo presents it, he presented it as seven premises, but I'm going to make it even simpler, because I think we can make it down to even three premises.

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And that would just basically be that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are

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God. So the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God. The Father, Son, and the

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Spirit are not each other. So they're not identical to each other. And yet there's one

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God. So that's the basic idea. And the concern is, because in the seven premises, it just lists that out in a bit more detail.

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Well, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the

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Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, the Son is not the

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Holy Spirit. There's exactly one God. So that's basically saying the same thing, but in seven premises instead of three.

36:27

Well, seven's a nice number. Yeah, and three is two, because that's the truth. Well, that's true. Yeah, they're both good numbers.

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They're both good. So the basic claim of the problem anyway is that these three or seven premises seem to be at odds with one another.

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And one of the ways that you could see this is that sort of affirming the first six premises before you get to the last premise, that there's exactly one

36:58

God, it doesn't seem right. It seems that you would wanna conclude that there's exactly three gods instead of one, because, well, if the

37:07

Father's God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit's God, and they're not each other, then you have three is

37:14

God statements. And it seems like you would have three gods instead of one. And so on the surface level, that is the problem that's presented in the literature.

37:25

And then, because that's in the introduction to the text I brought up. It's literally, I think, on the first page where the author presents it.

37:32

And then subsequent articles in that book are trying to respond to that specific issue.

37:38

How should we understand the terminology in the seven premises? And what are the different models associated with it?

37:46

Because I think something that's important for the viewers to understand, not just Christians, but Muslims as well, which

37:54

I was kind of surprised at when I started researching this, is that from my perspective, there doesn't just seem to be one thing that is the

38:04

Trinity. There are all these different conceptions and models of the Trinity, and many times they're mutually exclusive.

38:12

So if one is correct, then the other one can't be correct. And so the question is, well, which one is correct?

38:21

And most of my research is trying to figure out, well, which one makes the most sense, if any? And I think, and my claim is anyway, kind of fast forward, is that all of the models to me seem to either not really solve the problem, so they remain incoherent, or they take a heretical position, like I would argue

38:44

Dr. William Lane Craig does, in order to maintain some type of coherence. But yeah, so with that being said,

38:52

I don't know if you wanna respond to maybe how you understand what the LPT is supposed to be, even if you don't agree that it's a logical problem, what it's supposed to be.

39:02

Well, if you've seen my presentation where I'm teaching

39:07

Christians, and of course, Muslims, I hope that they listen in as well, what the doctrine of the

39:13

Trinity is, the seven, if we were to do that one,

39:19

I would take the seventh, start with the seventh, and say that everything else in the other six has to be interpreted in light of the epistemological foundation demanded by absolute monotheism.

39:42

So that, and this again, if you've looked at Forgotten Trinity, I'm gonna be coming from a very different perspective, but you've also done some reading in church history.

39:57

I've taught church history. I started teaching church history in 1990, so that was just before you were born, right?

40:08

Enjoy your youth. I was born in 91, so. Okay, so I was teaching church history, and I love it.

40:18

I'm not one of those people that teaches church history and causes people to fall asleep. I always thought that teaching, even when

40:28

I've taught Greek, I want the students to end up loving Greek, not hating

40:33

Greek. So that's actually a challenge sometimes, given the timeframes you're allowed to have to teach.

40:40

But in church history, you've done reading in church history, and I would argue more like an

40:47

Athanasius or an Ignatius of Antioch, who's very, very early, as you know,

40:53

I mean, died 107, 108, because of the fact that they are being forced into defining things in light of the scriptures.

41:05

And that's what I was saying to you, what is definitional here? What is the overarching presuppositional framework to define our epistemology?

41:17

And for much of philosophy, it is external philosophical concepts that are currently popular in that day.

41:25

As you know, I mean, the Greeks had very different contexts than the

41:31

Enlightenment, which has very different contexts than today. And you know, in philosophy, a philosophy textbook that was written 40 years ago is hopelessly outdated and not up to date and blah, blah, blah, blah.

41:44

So if you're going to have, and this is something that with a Muslim, I think we should be able to communicate with one another, because my assumption is in historic classical

41:57

Islam, there is a divine revelation that does not change and is not dependent upon current philosophical popularity, shall we say.

42:12

And so we share that, which means if that's true, then any philosophical expression has to be judged by the consistency of the divine revelation over time and not the other way around.

42:28

So that's why I say, if you start with monotheism, there is exactly one being of God.

42:37

Every other of the assertions requires definition from scripture, because it says the father is

42:47

God. Well, who's the father? How is the father revealed in scripture? How is there a difference between the utilization of the terminology of father in the

42:58

Tanakh and the old covenant scriptures and the Hebrew scriptures and what's found in the New Testament?

43:04

When Jesus says to the father in his high priestly prayer in John chapter 17, glorify me together with yourself, father, with the glory that I shared with you before the world was, that has to be involved in our definition of the other six assertions, because it's assuming something about father that if you only have the

43:31

Old Testament, it's going to be different than you have the new. And it's asserting something about the son and how the son is differentiated from the father.

43:38

It's asserting something about the spirit and how Jesus says he will make his presence with his people by being in dwelling them by the spirit.

43:46

So the father and the son dwell in his people by the spirit, and yet the spirit is differentiated from the father and the son.

43:55

So there's all this background stuff behind the simplicity of the assertions.

44:04

And so the danger of this laying out of the LPT as I see it, is putting monotheism at the end rather than being the definitional first and primary statement.

44:18

And you understand the importance of primary statements in making an argument or in defining a position.

44:24

And then secondly, because of the brevity, and we can't avoid it, but because of the brevity of the assertions, it leaves the door open for improper definitions of father, son, and spirit, and even the verb is in the other six statements.

44:45

And you did a whole video on predication and what predication means and the difference between saying someone is something or being identified with something or participating in something.

45:03

There's all sorts of issues that, again, you're the first Muslim I've ever heard discussing issues of social

45:12

Trinitarianism or fundamental subordinationism and all these things.

45:19

But one thing I would invite you to do, because we're not doing a debate today, but one thing

45:25

I would invite you to do as you continue your studies is since you're investing in these or maybe you've got a library nearby,

45:34

I don't know, or you're robbing banks to be able to buy those books. I won't say anything about it if you won't, but if any libraries get hit up in your home state, then we'll know who to look for.

45:51

We were talking about it earlier. It's a little bit easier now because you can walk into the bank with a mask on.

45:59

And nobody would blink twice so you could catch them off guard. Everybody looks like a bank robber today.

46:06

It's a sad thing. But one thing I would encourage you to do is as you're reading sources, find out where the author is coming from in their commitment to the reality of divine revelation.

46:26

I do that when I look at Muslims. I mean, I think it's important. If I'm reading someone who calls himself a

46:32

Muslim, but they're not certain that Muhammad existed, I need to know that.

46:39

I need to take that into consideration, right? Right? That's a big problem. Oh yeah, of course it is.

46:45

But there are people who call themselves Muslims teaching in universities that are not fully certain whether Muhammad existed as a historical person.

46:57

And there are people teaching in universities all over the place that look at the doctrine of the

47:03

Trinity as primarily being the reflection of the church over time guided by tradition and not a divine revelation based upon God speaking.

47:18

And so there's, I think you would find a little more consistency amongst those of us who have that stricture in our thinking that says, whatever

47:29

I say about the Trinity needs to reflect what I believe has been revealed in scripture.

47:36

So I would just encourage you to sort of keep a map of where the people you're citing are, because I would listen to you and you would talk about Unitarian Christians.

47:50

And you've got to hear what that sounds like to me. I mean, I know that in academia, sure, you're not allowed to draw any of those distinctions, but Sunnis draw those distinctions within Islam.

48:04

And we do the same thing as well. And I find much more consistency in understanding where Muslim scholars

48:14

I'm reading are coming from if I can find that background information. I think you'd find it useful in your, because I'm getting the feeling you're continuing your studies, that you're not done yet, right?

48:25

Yeah, no, no, no, no. It's not like a closed case. I mean, pursuit of knowledge is lifelong.

48:32

So I don't think there's really any stopping to it. And I, of course, understand and I appreciate that.

48:39

So when I say Unitarian Christian in my videos, I guess what maybe you're wanting me to say is

48:46

Unitarian and just leave out the Christian part. Well, you wouldn't have any problem with my drawing the line at that point.

48:56

No, no, not at all. I mean, there are many a Muslim that would say there are certain definitional doctrines that you can't compromise on.

49:04

And that's why, I don't know if you saw it. I just heard about this. Where was it?

49:10

I think it is in London. Was it in London? Anyways, they're building a church that is gonna be inhabited by a

49:21

Jewish congregation, a Christian congregation, and a Muslim congregation. And they're calling it the

49:26

Church of One. Now, I can guarantee you that the

49:33

Christian congregation will not have any particularly definable beliefs about God revealing himself definitively in history.

49:45

And the same thing be true about the Muslims as well. And I stand back and I go, excuse me, that's not

49:54

Islam. I mean, I'm not claiming to be able to define Islam, but I've talked to enough

50:00

Muslims, I've read enough Muslim literature and Muslim history that I can see what a

50:05

Muslim is. And I'm gonna allow you all to have your variations, but good grief, let's not get to the point where you can't even define anything anymore.

50:13

That doesn't accomplish anything. And that's really what we're facing today. And so I think you'd agree with me.

50:20

When I hear Unitarian Christian, that would be like the

50:25

Muslims who claim to be Muslims, but don't believe that God actually revealed anything specifically to Muhammad.

50:33

And I go, you can't have Islam without descending down of the

50:38

Quran. There's no Islam there. So yeah, that's really what

50:44

I'm just thinking about there. Yeah, so I mean, like I said, I understand that.

50:50

So I hope people understand that there's not that much behind that statement other than just using it as common speech in the video.

51:01

That's all really - Oh yeah, I wasn't, I'm not criticizing. I'm just simply saying that given the sources that you use are so wide,

51:10

I could cite really wide sources about Islamic topics and the

51:18

Muslims might understand who those people were, but the Christians I was talking to wouldn't have a clue. And so I sort of think that it's important there.

51:27

Hey, believe it or not, we've gone almost 50 minutes already, but there was something

51:32

I had to talk to you about. And again, if it's a situation where you go, let me have some time to look it up.

51:40

No problem, let's do it. But I was driving through construction in Tulsa in a rickety little old

51:50

RV that didn't like to stay in the center of the lane. So I was a little bit otherwise engaged in the rain.

51:59

But you, in your conversion video, and this

52:05

I found, this is the most fascinating thing in the video because you talked about confirmation and you're a bit of a rebel and stuff like that.

52:14

And you talked about your friend and stuff like that. But then remember what you did? Toward the end of the video, you gave what you understand to be, how did you phrase it?

52:27

I think you actually said linguistic miracles in the Quran. Is that the proper terminology?

52:33

Am I remembering correctly? Yeah, I probably used that term. Yeah, that sounds like what it was.

52:38

But, and of course I've read entire books on the miracles of the Quran and I'm not sure how well you know

52:46

Shabir Ali, but I remember back in, oh, 2006 to 2008, somewhere around there,

52:55

I listened to this lengthy presentation he made on the numerological miracles of the

53:02

Quran and how many surahs and ayats and how the number 19 repeats over and over.

53:11

And - Yeah, I used to be a 19 -er. Were you? Okay. I used to be heavy into that. I used to put my microwave on 19 seconds.

53:20

Oh, did it make the food taste any better or what? No, unfortunately not, no, no.

53:26

But I'm not down with that anymore. Okay, so that's, see, when

53:32

I heard Shabir doing that, back when you were just a kid amongst

53:37

Christians, the Bible code thing exploded and there were all the people running around finding all these numerological codes and stuff like that in the text of the

53:47

Bible. And back then I was going, people, what are you thinking? This does not make any sense.

53:54

For example, I don't know if you've seen this, but this is my 1550

53:59

Stephanos Greek text. It was printed in 1550. Now, we had a different cover put on because the pages were falling apart, but this is a real 1550.

54:10

This is the last Greek New Testament that was printed before Stephanos inserted the verse numbers into the text.

54:20

So before that, there was no John 3 .16. There was no John 17 .5 or three or whatever else.

54:27

He's the one that inserted all the verse numbers. And so I was like, look, if you're using this stuff, what was

54:35

Stephanos inspired? Sometimes he put the verse division in a really weird place, like he was riding a horse going to the print shop while he was doing it.

54:45

It just doesn't logically follow. But I criticize the stuff amongst Christians.

54:51

And then I was like, well, I guess I shouldn't be shocked that there were Muslims that did the same thing.

54:57

And so it's interesting that you understood the 19 or reference and stuff like that. But what you did, if you remember, and what was frustrating is because I said,

55:08

I listened while I was driving. And so I just made a note, you need to go back and listen to this again, is the one that stuck with me primarily was the use of the term middle in Sura 2 .143.

55:27

And for people who don't know, the Muslims watching know this, but Sura 2, the

55:35

Sura of the cow, is the longest Sura in the Quran. And so it's a book unto itself.

55:42

I mean, it's very, very large. It has 286 ayat.

55:48

An ayah is what we would call a verse. And so you're basically saying the term middle appears in verse 143, which is in the middle of Surah Al -Baqarah, and that this was one of the linguistic miracles of the

56:08

Quran. Now, I had already listened to you doing all sorts of philosophy and quoting all these things.

56:17

And so I was like, okay, this is really interesting because I find that kind of argumentation really difficult to follow because does the term appear anywhere where it's not in the middle?

56:36

In other words, how could you falsify this? How could it carry evidentiary weight?

56:43

I'm not sure if you believe it carries evidentiary weight, but you presented it as a miracle, so I assume you do. But what would be the categories that would allow you to make that argument?

56:55

Because when I got back, I used, and I don't know you have this, but do you have what's called my

57:04

Quran as far as software goes? I don't know if I have that one,

57:12

I'm not sure. This thing, I'm gonna tell you, I used to have

57:17

Alim 6 .0 on Windows and stuff like that, and then they stopped supporting it and things like that.

57:23

This is the best Islamic software for Quran studies I've found because it can give you a full concordance based on Arabic roots.

57:33

And I studied enough Arabic to be able to use the Arabic roots. Ah, there you go, thank you, Rich. And so I looked at the term that is found there, and it's found, as you pointed out, in 2 .143,

57:48

but it's also found in 2 .238 in the exact same form, which is nowhere near the middle. It's found in 5 .89

57:55

and 6 .828, so it's used four times. And this is the only place where it's anywhere near the middle.

58:00

And then I looked up, I'm sure you have, the study Quran, right?

58:05

Came out, what, about four years ago, about 2017, 18, somewhere in there.

58:11

And I looked at the commentary in the study Quran, and then

58:16

I verified this online. And according to the Hadith commentary, the commentary from Muhammad in regards to that verse, he interprets that term to mean best, not middle, the best people.

58:35

And there's actually a parallel in, as I recall, it was Surah 3.

58:41

And so if it means, according to Muhammad, in a Sahih narration,

58:46

I would assume it's Sahih narration, it could be a Hasan, I suppose, they didn't say in the study Quran, that it means the best people, then his own interpretation is that it has nothing to do with where it is.

59:00

And then the thought I had in the RV while I was driving was, who divided

59:05

Surah Al -Baqarah up into the ayat in the first place? I think most

59:11

Muslim scholarship would say, that came much later in time. I have two,

59:17

I have the London Quran and the Paris Quran. I have full museum quality facsimiles of those very early

59:23

Hijazi texts. And there's no, there are some later diacritical marks, but they're not there yet.

59:32

So if the ayat are divine and divinely inspired, then that took place after the prophet died, which opens up all sorts of other questions as to how could that be?

59:48

If he's the final prophet, who has these prophetic abilities to provide the exact proper ayat?

59:54

So that's the Greek and Hebrew professor in me, hearing what you said, and at the very least,

01:00:03

I wanted you to hear how a Christian heard that assertion and the first things that crossed my mind.

01:00:11

Now I'm a weirdo, I realize that. So I'm going to be coming at it from a little bit of a different perspective.

01:00:17

And I've read the Quran many times, but can you hear why

01:00:22

I would go, I found it unusual that you found that to be a persuasive argument?

01:00:32

Yeah, I mean, I don't, don't get me wrong. I don't think it's some kind of knockdown argument for Islam or the truthfulness of the

01:00:40

Quran. I think it was just a little thing that I was adding into the video as something interesting for people to look at.

01:00:49

Obviously, you're not impressed with that at all. Well, yeah, but I gave good reasons, didn't

01:00:57

I? Yeah, I mean, from my point of view, that alone is kind of meaningless, right?

01:01:06

You'd have to try to come up with a cumulative case in which you showed that these kinds of things happened beyond probability, which

01:01:20

I'm not in a place to do right now, so yeah. Well, and there was one thing

01:01:26

I forgot, I apologize. Just, you can go back and look at these if you want to talk about some more.

01:01:33

Look, the whole reason it caught my attention is that it just seemed out of place in light of the arguments you were making elsewhere.

01:01:44

And one of the things that caught me, and I don't know how much Arabic you've studied, and my

01:01:51

Arabic has become horrifically rusty, unfortunately, but I did have a tutor for a number of years because I felt it was necessary.

01:01:59

You and I both know how many Arabic terms are used in Islamic theology. If you don't have at least a basic vocabulary, you're going to be lost.

01:02:07

But if, just in counting words, for example, I was actually thinking about trying to count, and I have, in fact, you might find this interesting.

01:02:20

Let me switch over to this. My Accordance Bible software actually has the, oh,

01:02:28

I don't have it up, and this is, oh, drat, this is the Windows version. Anyways, I have a really, a pretty fairly decent

01:02:35

Quran module in Accordance Bible software. I was going to ask it to count words to find out if that was anywhere near the middle word of Surah Al -Baqarah.

01:02:48

But we both know what the problem is. How do you count words in Arabic? Is a prefix preposition a word?

01:02:58

It all depends on, it's completely subjective as to how you do that, just as the division into the ayat seems to have been completely subjective.

01:03:11

So unless there is some type of real strong reason from the Quran to believe that its later form, which it couldn't have had during Muhammad's lifetime, obviously, is divine, then that was what made me go, okay,

01:03:30

I'm missing something here. I'm missing as to why that's an argument.

01:03:36

So again, not asking you to respond to any of those things right now, but do you at least see how

01:03:42

I'm hearing it and what you would have to, what I would see you would have to do to present that cumulative case in light of the other uses of the very same term that are nowhere near the middle and don't mean middle, they mean best?

01:03:58

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that video, if I remember correctly, the one that you're talking about was like a half hour video.

01:04:06

I put together a couple things. One of them was this middle issue and then a couple more things that I thought were interesting.

01:04:16

King and Pharaoh. Yeah, but it wasn't like, I was not trying to present down some kind of knockdown argument.

01:04:25

It was just something I thought was kind of interesting. I named a couple of those things, but of course

01:04:32

I agree. If I wanted to take that argument very seriously and expected other people to do so,

01:04:40

I'd have to do a lot more work to try to make that point. Well, it just, again,

01:04:46

I wanted to ask you about it because I just felt that I had been listening enough to you that then when

01:04:54

I listened to that, I was like, I feel like I missed something. I feel like I'm not sure.

01:04:59

You're like, this guy's making better arguments. He came with some weak stuff here. What's going on? Okay, if you want to put it that way, that's sort of what

01:05:07

I was thinking. And so I wanted to give you the opportunity. And if you find some other stuff out on that, or if I'm wrong about something, great.

01:05:15

I'd like to hear about it. Yeah, I mean, I'd have to look into the tafseer and all that stuff as well. Yeah, but my point was,

01:05:22

Jake, that what I did is I didn't just dismiss what you said.

01:05:29

I went to your sources and I went to them, hopefully, honestly.

01:05:36

And I think what we're saying is you and I both agree that's what we need to be doing if we're going to move the conversation forward between Christians and Muslims, not in trying to find some synthesis.

01:05:49

Would you agree with me that the, quote -unquote, ecumenical desire to come up with Chrislam or something like this is fundamentally doomed to failure?

01:06:03

It's just not possible, right? Yeah, it's just nonsense. Yeah, but it's the nonsense of the academy, let's be honest.

01:06:12

It's the nonsense of our society today. We have to have honest, respectful dialogue and debate, but we cannot abandon, and that's what made me almost get physically ill when you were talking about people saying that there are true contradictions.

01:06:33

We cannot abandon the fundamental assertions of what makes

01:06:39

Christianity Christianity and what makes Islam Islam. And so, by the way, real quickly, because we're out of time, but did you ever see the two dialogues

01:06:52

I did with Dr. Yasir Qadhi? Yes, I did, but it's a while ago, so.

01:06:59

It really wasn't that long ago, Jake. You're having memory problems way too young. I am, man.

01:07:05

I hit 30 and I can't remember what I ate for breakfast. Oh, Rich and I are sitting here going, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.

01:07:12

We could recommend some brain supplements to you that we take, but no, seriously, if it's been a while,

01:07:20

I hope that you heard that what we said in those dialogues both times, even though I took a huge amount of heat for having done them, because I showed respect for someone else.

01:07:34

I, for example, admitted that I had learned so much from Yasir Qadhi that I found his

01:07:41

Arabic pronunciation wonderful and helpful and things like that. Oh man, there were people on my side that just wanted to kick me out of the kingdom for daring to do that.

01:07:51

And I can guarantee you that I'm going to take some serious heat for the fact that you and I have simply had a discussion and I haven't come down on you like a ton of bricks and told you to repent and leave

01:08:03

Islam and so on and so forth, but I've laid a foundation for future conversation and I've shown respect for you.

01:08:10

And so some Christians just don't think that you should do that type of thing. And I suppose there might be some Muslims on the other side that'll have the same type of feeling, but we laid out the first night what we wanted for the other person.

01:08:25

And so that has to be honestly admitted. Everybody in this audience knows,

01:08:31

I want you to know what I know and who I know, and you want me to say the

01:08:38

Shahada, which I've said many, many times before in Arabic, but as you know, it has to be said with a belief that it's true.

01:08:47

And so we understand where we want this to go, but we recognize that just jumping to that without dealing with all the stuff that needs to be dealt with first doesn't really accomplish anything.

01:09:02

Is that a fair statement of where we'd both be coming from? Yeah, I mean,

01:09:07

I agree 100%. I couldn't have said it much better. And I'm glad that you think the idea of true contradictions is kind of nonsensical because I feel the same way.

01:09:19

So I'm glad we're on the same page with that. Well, what's the smell of blue?

01:09:27

I mean, that's where we are. Once you embrace that perspective, we can't have communication, we can't agree on rules of grammar, we can't talk, we can't formulate ideas, it's done.

01:09:38

And from a Christian perspective, if we believe Jesus is the incarnate truth, like I said,

01:09:45

I was having trouble keeping the RV on the road during that one. Yeah, and like I said, we have to be honest, it's a complete minority view, even amongst the liberals, right?

01:10:00

So this guy just came out with a book a couple months ago. Yes, I had to get it, thanks to you.

01:10:06

Thank you very much. Yeah, it's tough. It's more on the incarnation, but he's still kind of trying to make the same point.

01:10:16

But I mean, before we go, I'm glad we could end on that note that true contradictions are kind of nonsensical.

01:10:22

But when we were talking about the LPT, and you mentioned that I kind of went into this whole thing about the is of predication and the is of identity.

01:10:36

And when you said that the father is God and the son is God, how is that is functioning?

01:10:42

Are you saying that the father's identical to God, or it's sort of a thing that's being predicated of him in a certain way?

01:10:51

I appreciate that I think you understand the difference between the two. What I would just like to know from you, and maybe kind of putting this forward for future conversation, do you think that those things are relevant and that a

01:11:08

Christian should, obviously not a lay Christian, because probably they're not really that concerned with this stuff, but somebody like yourself should be concerned with those distinctions and be able to make the proper distinction between the two.

01:11:25

Same thing with things like being in person, as Muslims were told all the time. Well, guys, there's a difference between being in person.

01:11:33

And I'm like, yeah, okay, I agree with that. But then should we have at least working definitions of what a person is and what a being is, and then how they interact and are applied to the

01:11:45

Trinity? Do you think that engaging in that sort of stuff is important?

01:11:50

Well, not only would I say is it important for someone like myself, who is a minister, but if you were to go back and look at the sermons that we deliver at Apologia Church, if you were to just go through the dividing line, the 2000 some odd episodes we have uploaded, you would see that we think this is vital for all

01:12:15

Christians, including lay people. So like you were just saying, well, it may not impact them. No, the very worship that we offer to God is determined by our

01:12:27

Trinitarian belief. And so what being in person means, what it means for the

01:12:33

Father, Son, and the Spirit to be fully God and not one third of God, the indivisibility of the being of God, all these things are vitally important.

01:12:43

But here's the one thing that I would emphasize with you, Jake, and that is, we would start with the biblical revelations that demanded that we even answer these questions in the first place as being definitionally determinative to the philosophical categories that we then use to answer philosophical questions.

01:13:11

So when you look at Paul's description of Jesus as the

01:13:17

Lord of glory, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Well, that's a striking phrase.

01:13:26

How are you supposed to crucify the Lord of glory unless the Lord of glory took on human flesh?

01:13:32

And I think one of the things that you've argued that would be worthwhile for future dialogue or even debate is, and this is again, you're the first person that I've seen do this, is you will take categories from the doctrine of the

01:13:46

Trinity of being in person, and then you'll go over to the incarnation and the hypostatic union and say, it sounds like you're saying the opposite now.

01:13:58

I think that was one of the things you brought up when you were criticizing Anthony Rogers. I think at one point though, and I've forgotten what the detail was.

01:14:06

Oh, I am certain. I didn't contact Anthony to ask him this, but I am certain that Anthony believes that Jesus has his resurrected body in heaven.

01:14:16

I think if that was communicated differently in that discussion,

01:14:22

I would be stunned to find out that Anthony would not believe that Jesus has his resurrected body because that's why he's the

01:14:32

God man. That's vital to our union with Christ. So that came up, that was something you really focused on in your discussion of what defines a person and then put him at odds with William Lane Craig.

01:14:47

And I just don't think that's what he was saying, but I could be wrong, but I would be stunned. He's a Presbyterian, I'm Reformed, there's a confessional standard that we have.

01:14:57

But the point is that yes, this is vitally important.

01:15:03

And when we look at the incarnation, we are looking at a divine person taking on a limited human nature.

01:15:15

And I see a difference there between that and the doctrine of the Trinity where we're talking about the nature of God that is unlimited and eternal.

01:15:23

And so I've felt a couple of times like I wish I could have interrupted and said, well, wait a minute, it sounds like you're transferring the argument over and saying you're contradicting yourselves when in fact, it's a very different context.

01:15:38

So I'm not sure if that is part of your argument, but that is something that I would say. And hence, in answer to your overall question,

01:15:45

I think this is something that every Christian should be prepared to talk about and think about.

01:15:52

In fact, I would say to a Muslim, if you don't understand

01:15:59

Tawheed and the various forms of shirk, aren't you taking your faith seriously?

01:16:06

I mean, that's what I would say. So I think Christians need to take it seriously, need to listen to what you're saying and be prepared to give a response.

01:16:17

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, because I mean, with the issue of the distinction between being in person, as you know,

01:16:25

William Lane Craig would make that same distinction, but then the way that he explains it and how it functions in his, quote unquote, model of the

01:16:34

Trinity, I'd imagine would be radically different than you. So that's why, like when

01:16:42

I hear from Christians, well, we make a distinction between being in person. Well, that's true, but my claim anyway is we need to go further than that because that distinction alone in and of itself is not sufficient because within that category of making the distinction between being in person, there are all different permutations that can arise from that.

01:17:06

I mean, are the three persons identical to the one being? Are the three persons parts of the one being in the same way that a skeleton is part of a cat, as William Lane Craig says, which

01:17:19

I know that would make you and much of the audience cringe, but the point is, my point of bringing this up is, we need to, because Christians, and at least

01:17:32

William Lane Craig claims to be a Trinitarian Christian, right? So at least he's not claiming to be

01:17:38

Unitarian, are using this terminology, and yet in the literature that I'm reading, it's being defined radically different from author to author.

01:17:49

Like somebody could define being one way and then person another way, and you have to see how it's functioning internally in their model.

01:17:58

So I think what I would like to do in future conversation or perhaps debate, whatever, because I know you didn't really get a chance to fully lay out your perspective, but I'd like to get to the root of some of these things and ask some of those questions.

01:18:14

Well, how do you understand being? What's the definition of this? How does you define person?

01:18:21

And then what you were mentioning about the relationship between the

01:18:27

Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity and the incarnation on the other hand, what I have in mind and what

01:18:32

I do find a bit problematic is that in the

01:18:38

Trinity, there are three persons in one being, right? And in the incarnation, it's kind of like a mirror image of that.

01:18:47

So in the incarnation, it's one person with multiple natures.

01:18:53

So it's kind of the opposite. And of course, if the claim is that there's three persons in the

01:19:00

Trinity and it starts there, I'm saying, okay, well, how are we understanding person in that context?

01:19:06

So I get a definition of what person means in that context. And then when I have this other doctrine, which is central to Christianity, which is the incarnation, and I'm being told there's one person with two natures, well, then the question is, is the term person in that context the same definitionally as it's being used in reference to the persons of the

01:19:30

Trinity? And if it is, then I would have further questions about how that's consistent.

01:19:36

Otherwise there's some sort of equivocation on terms. But of course

01:19:41

I can't really, cause I know we're almost out of time. So I don't want to go too much into depth with the argument. But yeah,

01:19:46

I do think that there is an issue and I'd have to have more time in order to really spell it out.

01:19:53

Right. Let me just, cause I was going to mention this and we could just keep going and going if we don't. But part of the answer from my perspective to the question, so part of the comments that you just made, goes to one thing that I said to myself alone in the

01:20:11

RV a number of times over the hours I was listening to you. And that was,

01:20:16

I never once, now, maybe you have, I haven't listened to everything, but I've probably listened to more of your stuff than most

01:20:25

Christians have. Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah. I never once heard you make reference to the divine name,

01:20:36

Yahweh. Yeah. And that to me is key because if you want to understand the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit, then you have to understand that the

01:20:48

New Testament writers take the one divine name and they apply it to each of the divine persons in the

01:20:57

New Testament and yet distinguish between them. And so what we're doing is simply using philosophical language to express the reality of the revelation.

01:21:11

So the New Testament writers identify the Father as Yahweh. It's the

01:21:17

Father that lays our sins upon the Messiah in Isaiah 53. In fact, if I were to give a linguistic miracle of the

01:21:29

Bible, I'd probably go to Isaiah 9, 6, Isaiah 53, places like that. We could have a discussion about that.

01:21:35

But they identify the Father as Yahweh. Jesus is identified as Yahweh a number of fascinating ways in the

01:21:42

New Testament, John 12, 41, Philippians 2, Hebrews 1, 10 through 12. And the

01:21:48

Spirit of the Lord, L -O -R -D, of course, is Yahweh. And then you have those same passages being applied to the

01:21:57

Holy Spirit. So you have one divine name being applied to three divine persons who are distinguished from one another.

01:22:05

That to me is the reality of the revelation of the Trinity. And then the language we use is meant to protect the categories of divine revelation.

01:22:21

It can't be defined by those philosophical categories.

01:22:26

The philosophical categories are secondary to the service of the divine revelation.

01:22:32

And that I think is an issue that we do have to discuss. Yeah, yeah, no, I have no problem with that.

01:22:37

I mean, any philosophical explanation of the Trinity or any Christian doctrine should be faithful to the texts that are in question, right?

01:22:46

So of course, if they're not, then you've already got an issue. And I think we would agree that William A.

01:22:54

Craig has an issue in these instances. And he's not the only one, so I'm not trying to pick on him.

01:22:59

Oh, no, no. But yeah, the fact of the matter is, yeah, when you mentioned

01:23:05

Yahweh in defense of myself, the reason why is because I'm not really,

01:23:11

I'm engaging it from a philosophical lens. So I'm assuming, obviously,

01:23:16

I know the claim that all three of these persons are called Yahweh and how it functions in the

01:23:22

Bible. I'm just, maybe that's an issue on my part that I was just assuming that people would be familiar with that.

01:23:32

And I was granting that. I should have maybe explained that in more detail. I'm actually questioning whether or not

01:23:39

I ever said that. I find that very interesting, but I would have to go back and comb all my videos and say if I -

01:23:46

Yeah, I haven't listened to all of your videos. So maybe you have, but in none of the hours that I listened did that come up and there were a number of places where it'd be like, yeah, but if you mentioned that, then that would give the biblical background, see?

01:23:59

And that was just something I kept saying to myself. But hey, you know what? We've gone through this whole period of time and we haven't declared war on each other or insulted.

01:24:12

Now, the hat, I have to admit, looks a little bit like a MAGA hat.

01:24:18

And I'm a little concerned you might get in trouble for that in certain places in New Jersey.

01:24:24

Yeah, everybody says it, but then I just zoom in and I'm like, no, guys, this is just muscle metaphysician.

01:24:30

I just don't want you to get a drive -by because you're going down the street where before we can have a good conversation on certain things.

01:24:39

So, but hey, we've demonstrated we can have these conversations. We can do so with respect and not compromise.

01:24:45

And that's exactly what we wanna do. So I appreciate your willingness to come on and I look forward to future opportunities of doing more.

01:24:54

And like I said, please just don't wear that hat outside the house, okay? Yeah, I usually try not to, but yeah,

01:25:02

I share the same sentiments. I appreciate you having me on and I look forward to future conversations.

01:25:08

Okay, great. All right, thanks. You have a good day. All righty.

01:25:15

Well, thank you for listening to the program today. I am thankful for everyone who tuned in.

01:25:20

What? Oh, okay, fine. Rich wants to make sure that there is, this is what

01:25:31

I did not know was coming and this is what Rich put together and it's beautiful. And I just want you to understand that these kinds of, oh, that does move.

01:25:41

Look at that. That these kinds of lights are exactly what you would find in Prescott, Arizona.

01:25:47

And that's where Rich comes from. So these are the beautiful Alpha and Omega lights back here.

01:25:54

And so there's going to be some more of this eventually, but, and the logo, of course, yes. And what's that?

01:26:03

Oh, it's made out of metal. Wow. How'd you do that? We'll find out later on. Laser cut steel.

01:26:10

Very impressive. All right. Well, we're back in the OMAX studios and so much is going on in the world.

01:26:17

We are surely going to be back here next week when we continue with The Dividing Line.