Tawhid or Trinity: Is God One or Three Divine Persons?

Debate Introduction and Ground Rules

There we go, sound, awesome. Hello everyone, really great to see you all today. My name is Luke Pasquarelli. I am the president of Why Should I Believe in Georgia Tech,.

Which is one of the organizations co-hosting this event.

Just a little bit about us. Really quick, and the slide's not up. Okay, that's fine.

That's not good.

That's not good.

You know, for Georgia Institute of Technology,.

There's some things we still don't do very well. But that's okay, we'll roll with it. So anyways, let me tell you a little bit about Why Should I Believe. We're a Christian apologetics organization here on campus.

We believe in applying the lens of reason and science to Christianity to discern its truth value, and that's what we do weekly. We meet over at the Instructional Center on campus on Mondays at 6 .30. If you're interested in learning more about us, we have a table outside where you can sign up for our mailing list, and you can absolutely talk to me afterwards.

We also have a Facebook page,.

So feel free to check us out there. We post weekly updates on what our events will be.

And so on.

So anyways, it's a little bit about Why Should I Believe, and now a little bit about the debate. First of all, I wanna talk about what this debate is, and then I wanna talk about what this debate is not.

This is a pursuit of truth and understanding.

What do I mean by this?

I mean, God is objectively real and has objective truth, and it is our job to align our beliefs with that objective truth, and that's what we're doing here, pursuing that truth. We're also pursuing understanding, understanding of people who think differently than us and how they think, so that we can better just converse with them and understand people.

So that's what this debate is. Let me tell you what this debate is not. This debate is not the intellectual analog of the USC. We aren't here to watch a couple of intellectual heavyweights throw arguments at each other and see who emerges victorious as the champion to the roar of the audience.

We're here to pursue truth and understanding. So what does that mean for you as an audience? It's really simple. It really boils down to just respect. Respect both of our speakers here.

Respect the people around you.

Because not everyone shares your beliefs. So the other thing it also means is ask great questions. Both of our speakers are very well-read individuals who have devoted most of their lives to studying this topic.

So they'll have a lot of evidence and a lot of points they've made that you may not have thought of before. Feel free to jot those thoughts you have now about those topics and ask them. We'll have a Q &A session at the end.

With that being said, I'd like to introduce our first speaker of the night, Dr. James White. Dr. White has a number of apologetics degrees from seminaries across the nation. He's director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, which is located in Phoenix, Arizona, and he's a Christian apologetics organization.

And he's very well-read on this topic. He's debated topics within this vein multiple times. I've seen a number of his debates and I'm a huge fan. So let me now welcome my friend Hassan up to introduce our other speaker and kick off the night.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Luke, for that warm introduction. My name is Hassan Asif, and I am the president of Georgia Tech's MSA, or Muslim Students Association.

MSA is a nonprofit student-run organization here on campus, and in fact, is the only one representing Muslims here at this university. Throughout the school year, we offer a wide variety of events. Our social events include football tailgates, sporting competitions, and monthly general body meetings.

And we offer Friday prayers, Quran study, and Islamic history on Thursday nights, as well as monthly group discussion meetings. We also offer an array of volunteering opportunities and interfaith outreach opportunities for our members.

If any of you would like to join our organization or join the mailing list, you can find us on Facebook. Just Google, or just put Georgia Tech MSA into Facebook. You can come talk to me. We also have a table outside.

Or you can send an email to contact at gtmsa .org. In essence, our organization strives to create a welcoming and collaborative environment for Muslims and non-Muslims alike on campus. And we also work to bridge the gap between Islam and other religions here.

And that's precisely why we're here at tonight's debate. You've already met Dr. White, and now I have the honor to introduce Dr. Shabir Ali. Dr. Ali is an internationally renowned Muslim scholar who travels the world to represent Islam in public lectures and interfaith dialogue.

He holds a Bachelor's of Arts in Religious Studies from Laurentian University, with a specialization in biblical literature. And he also has his Master's and PhD from the University of Toronto, with a specialization in Quranic exegesis, or interpretation.

He's the President of Islamic Information and Dawah Center International in Toronto. And he explains various topics from Islam in his television series called Let the Quran Speak. And you can find some of his episodes from that on QuranSpeaks .com.

It's also worthy to note, and Luke touched upon this, that our debaters actually know each other. They're friends, and they've debated multiple times in the past. And even though logic and proof are necessary components of a worthy debate, the one thing about that that we know is mutual respect.

And tonight, we happen to have mutual respect here on the stage. And instead of just a simple debate composed of clashing opinions, we'll have the opportunity to witness true and amazing interfaith dialogue.

With that being said, let me talk about some of the technicalities of the debate tonight. The debate will begin with a 20-minute opening statement from each debater, starting with Dr. White. And then we'll move on into a rebuttal period, where each debater will get 10 minutes to refute the comments of the other debater.

This is followed by 15 minutes of cross-examination, where one debater will get to ask questions to the other one, and they're gonna sit at their tables and discuss. So each debater will get 15 minutes to do that, starting with Dr. White, and then Dr. Ali.

And then after that, both debaters will get five minutes for their closing statements. And then, like Luke said, there's gonna be a question and answer series at the end. We'll have all of you guys, those of you who have questions, line up in the middle, and we'll ask, we'll alternate between the two lines.

And we'll have that go on until 9 .15 p .m. Finally, before we begin, a couple housekeeping notes. Let's take a moment right now to check our cell phones and make sure that they're either turned off or on silent.

I say this because this event is being recorded, and so we ask that you don't record from your phones, as that is both distracting to yourself and also the people sitting around you, and actually the people sitting behind you.

If you need to use the restroom, the restrooms are actually on this floor right outside, on the other side of the stairs. And if you need to exit for the restroom or for any other reason, you can use the doors in the back, not the ones up here.

And at this time, the debate will begin. Dr. White, I now ask you to come up to the podium and make your opening statement.

The Deity of Christ in the New Testament

Dr. White, everyone.

Thank you very much.

It is an honor to be with you this evening here in Georgia. We have a very interesting topic to address this evening. I would say that about 50 out of the about 174 debates I've done so far have been with my Muslim friends.

I think Shabir and I have debated probably six, between six and nine times. We've debated in South Africa, Canada, London, all over the place. And so we've addressed this topic before. And in my experience, when the topic is Trinity or Tawhid, the focus is completely upon the subject of the Trinity and almost never upon the subject of Tawhid.

So I really think that it's important that maybe this evening we try to even things out just a little bit as far as dealing with the subject from both perspectives. And so let's begin with a definition.

Because most of the time, objections to the doctrines of Trinity are based upon a misdefinition of what the doctrine of the Trinity is. This happens a lot in my experience in debates, so let's try to avoid that.

By making sure that you understand, we believe that there is one true God. One true God in the Old Testament to the divine name, use this one true God is Yahweh. Sometimes you hear it pronounced Jehovah.

And we believe that that one true God has revealed himself to exist in three divine persons that follow the Son, the Spirit. Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father.

They are distinguished from one another. They take different roles in the economy of salvation. They are distinguished from one another by the actions that they undergo in our salvation as well as the relationship that they bore to one another in eternity past.

Now I believe very clearly that the doctrine is revealed, especially in history, in the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which means that the New Testament is written by experiential Trinitarians.

They're not trying to say, hey, we have this new doctrine that we want you to understand and so here's our defense of it because the New Testament never bothers to do that. Those who wrote the words of the New Testament were individuals who had experienced this revelation.

So Peter, Peter had heard the Father speak from heaven. He had walked with the Son. He was now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He was an experiential Trinitarian. And so they speak. That's why it just naturally flows.

That's why the New Testament writers can speak of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus, and just flow between these things and the Trinitarian passages about the love of God and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

It just flows along and they never stop and say, oh, let me explain what I mean by that. They don't have to do that. This was already the experience that was theirs as the church. But what is important to understand is I think one of the greatest evidences of the deity of Christ is the fact that the New Testament writers take passages that were specifically about Yahweh from the scriptures and apply them to Jesus in unambiguous fashion.

They knew the Old Testament scriptures. They take these passages that are about Yahweh, not just vague things about Yahweh. Yahweh's king, Jesus is king, therefore Jesus is Yahweh. No, that's not what I'm talking about.

They take passages that are specifically about Yahweh as, for example, the eternal creator and apply them to Jesus. Now, Dr. Ali has rightly said about Jesus, if he is not Yahweh, then he cannot be God.

But Dr. Ali joins to this correct observation a fully erroneous one, that Yahweh is Unitarian in his existence. So, for example, he will undoubtedly argue that in Isaiah chapter 42, Yahweh speaks of a servant that he will send, and then, of course, Matthew identifies that servant as Jesus.

Therefore, if Yahweh is Unitarian, then Jesus can't be Yahweh, he can't be God. That's where the erroneous assumption comes in because, yes, Yahweh sends Jesus. The Father's identified as Yahweh. It's Yahweh that places our sins upon the Messiah.

Jesus is the Messiah. So, if Yahweh is Unitarian, Jesus can't be Yahweh. But the problem is the very same New Testament writers then turn around and they identify Jesus as Yahweh. So, if you have the writers taking one divine name and applying it to Father, Son, and Spirit, that might tell you that they were indeed Trinitarians or they do that.

For example, very quickly, I don't have time to develop all of these. It's a really fascinating study if you wanna dig into it. But, for example, in John 12, verse 41, after quoting from the famous vision from Isaiah 6, you have these words from John.

He says, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and he spoke about him. If you go back to Isaiah 6, whose glory had Isaiah seen? He saw the glory of Yahweh. He saw the Lord sitting upon his throne and it's Yahweh who speaks to him.

In fact, in the Greek Septuagint, it even uses the word glory as something that Isaiah saw. So, if you ask Isaiah, Isaiah, whose glory did you see? Isaiah's gonna say, I saw Yahweh's glory. If you ask John, whose glory did Isaiah see?

John's answer is Jesus, a very unique, not just some lesser creature representative. No, this is the very temple vision of Isaiah 6. Peter does the same thing. In 1 Peter 3 .15, a text that many of the, all the young guys involved with apologetics know the text, to be ready to give an answer, prosopologiam, to anyone who asks you a reason for the hope that's within you, with gentleness and reverence.

But, if you read the preceding verse, Peter is quoting from Isaiah chapter eight. And he's actually continuing that into 1 Peter 3. And when he does so, he's saying, set the Lord as Lord Christ apart in your hearts.

Treat him as holy. You go back to Isaiah chapter eight, who do you treat as holy?

Yahweh.

He identifies Jesus as Yahweh, that you're to set apart as Lord, kurios, as Yahweh, in your hearts. That's what changes you. That's why Unitarianism has always resulted in emptiness. Because without a divine savior, there's no change of the heart.

And so, true Christianity has always emphasized the fact that when you set Christ as Yahweh apart in your heart, that changes the entirety of your perspective, it changes how you respond to the world, and as such, that is why people will ask us about a reason for the hope that's within us.

And then the writer of the Hebrews, probably Paul, but I personally think it was a sermon by Paul written down by Luke. But in Hebrews chapter one, you have Psalm 102, 25 through 27 quoted, and Psalm 102 is about Yahweh in his unchanging nature.

He is the one who is immutable, and the author is clearly, when you follow the argument, beginning of verse three all the way through, look at verse six, look at verse eight, all the way through, the author is plainly demonstrating the supremacy of Jesus, and then closes out by applying words that can only be about Yahweh, only Yahweh is unchanging.

Anything else is a creature, anything else has been made, anything else is derivative, but of the Son, he says, and then the citation of Psalm 102 is applied to Jesus, to the Son, in Hebrews chapter one, verse 10.

And so, Paul does the same thing, if Paul didn't write Hebrews, in Philippians chapter two, verses 10 through 11, you have the great Carmen Christi, where there the balance is struck so beautifully, and boy, I wish that we could just spend the whole time in Philippians chapter two, it's so clear, so compelling in its teaching of what Christians have always believed, that Jesus had eternally existed in the very form of God, but he laid that equality he had with God the Father aside to do what?

To enter into human flesh, to enter into human existence, that's the great picture of humility there, no other interpretation gives you humility, that's the only interpretation that gives you the picture of humility that that section is to be, and then, to top it all off, what does Paul do?

But he quotes the words from Isaiah 45, 23, where Yahweh says, to me every knee will bow, to me every tongue will confess, and what do you have in Philippians chapter two? At the name of Jesus, every knee bows, and every tongue confesses, all to the glory of God the Father, it doesn't detract from the Father's glory, this isn't one God over here, and another God over there, that's what John 5 was all about, perfect unity between the Father and the Son, here you have, over and over again, throughout the authors of the New Testament, this theme being struck, and being found in the pages of the New Testament.

The Qur'an, Tawhid, and Shirk

And now, to something different. Something different that we have not had in previous debates, I'm sure Shabir is looking a little bit worried. Let's remember that the Quran comes to us, at least in its historical manifestation, I realize that there are Muslims who believe it's eternal, so and so, but just a debate on that, found that there's a lot of different opinions on that, but the Quran comes to us in its historical appearance in history, over 500 years after the completion of the New Testament, so half a millennium has passed between the last words of the New Testament being written, and the arrival of even the first portion of the Quran.

In the Quran, we have references made to the Torah, and the Injil, exactly what those are meant to refer to, it's difficult to know, because there is next to no meaningful intertextuality between the Quran and what we would call the Christian scriptures of the Old and New Testament.

In other words, there's almost no citation of scripture. You have the Lex Talionis, that could have been done orally, you really don't have any specific citation, there is no, you don't have the relationship that exists between the New Testament and the Old Testament, you have citation after citation after citation, you don't have that.

Instead, you have basically oral concepts. And so what exactly the Torah, the law, and the Injil, the gospel, means to the author of the Quran is somewhat difficult to understand. There does not seem to be, there is strong evidence that the author of the Quran did not know what the canon of the New Testament was, because he includes stories in the text of the Quran that Christians never accepted as scripture.

The story of the, they were derived from proto-Gnostic gospels and things like that, the clay birds that were made alive and float away and things like that. These come from after the period of the writing of the New Testament.

And so the Quran speaks to Christians as to a group. We are addressed as the Al-Anjil, the people of the gospel, as well as the people of the book. And so the Quran warns that saying three will bring you to hellfire.

Saying three in reference to God. Now every single time the Quran says do not say three, the next line is, there is only one God, Allah. So very plainly, it is the intention of the author of the Quran to understand the Christian saying of the word three.

Doesn't use the term trinity, but the word three to refer to polytheism, a belief in three gods. But here's the problem. You already had early church writers like Justin Martyr identifying Jesus as Yahweh, arguing with Trifle the Jew, putting into the words, putting onto Trifle his lips, arguments that allowed him to then demonstrate that Jesus is being identified with Jehovah God,.

With Yahweh.

So why doesn't the author of the Quran seem to understand that if in fact our argument is there is one God, Yahweh, who is identified with the Father, with the Son, and the Spirit, then why is there no interaction with that?

Why is there no response to that? Instead, the argument is, if you say three, it's hellfire for you. There'll be no one to save you, heaven is forbidden to you, and hellfire will be your abode. See Surah 572 for just one example of that rather strong language that is found in the pages of the Quran.

So here's the question that I really, really hope, that other than just, in all these debates, we sit here and we talk about the trinity, we never talk about the Islamic side of things. I mean, most people end up walking out, they have no earthly idea how any of these things end up fleshing out.

Shabir knows what the issue is. As I mentioned, I quoted him earlier. This was from a debate four years ago with Jonathan McClatchy. If Jesus is not Yahweh, then he cannot be God. So he knows what, Shabir knows what the issue is.

If Jesus is Yahweh, yet is distinguished from the Father and the Spirit, then clearly the trinity is the one conclusion one can come to on non-naturalistic grounds. In other words, if you're willing to start cutting the Bible apart, if you don't believe that there is a single message to be found in the page of the scripture, then you can come up with anything you want.

You can come up with Benetarianism, whatever you want. If you want to assert contradiction and all the rest of that kind of stuff. In other words, if you want to approach it in a way that Shabir does not approach the Quran.

When he does the television program, the Quran is allowed to speak as the Quran. If you let the New Testament speak as the New Testament, it teaches this doctrine. This is why Christians have believed this for so long.

So here is the real question. If Shabir Ali knows what the issue is, why didn't the author of the Quran know what the issue was? Why didn't the author of the Quran? Now, I can anticipate the answer. Well, I didn't want to necessarily address that or was talking about this little group over there.

Look, unless we're gonna get to the point of saying that God doesn't know the future, unless we're going to come up with, well, the Quran is just addressing this very small little group of here doesn't exist anymore, that kind of thing.

The reality is that we as the people of the gospel are told that we are to judge by what is contained in the gospel.

What are we to be judging?

Well, if I judge the message of the author of the Quran and the content of the Quran by the gospel, I have to find it to be lacking. That's why there's still Christians and there's still Muslims, and we're having debates.

If we had come to an agreement on this, we wouldn't be doing this any longer. It wouldn't just be for entertainment. And so if Shabir knows what the issue is, why didn't the author of the Quran? Why does the author of the Quran show no knowledge at all of the divine name?

I'll be interested to find out if Shabir believes that there is any evidence that you can point to in the Quran where there would be a knowledge of the name of Yahweh. Could it be because his knowledge was so limited that the tradition of the Jews not to use the divine name meant he had never heard it himself?

Certainly by that time, the Jews would not utter the divine name. So if he was only learning things orally,.

He wouldn't have heard it being given.

So is that a possibility? If saying three sends you to hell fire, why doesn't the Quran address the most definitional argument for the Trinity, which it is then condemning as something that will separate you from the true worship of God?

If the Quran argues the Trinity is polytheism, but when we identify the Father, the Son, the Spirit as all sharing the one nature of God.

Indicated by the divine name Yahweh,.

We are arguing just the opposite of the assumption of the author of the Quran itself. We are starting with monotheism. There is only one God, Yahweh, and then showing the revelation of that one God prophesied in the Old Testament.

You look at Isaiah chapter nine, you look at these texts, prophesied in the Old Testament, but still the revelation takes place in the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God.

So why doesn't the Quran address this while it still then condemns this as, and I'll ask Shabir if he will define for us please, shirk, which is the unforgivable sin in Islam. According to Quran, all our sins can be forgiven to men except for shirk, and most Muslims with whom I interact believe that our worship of Jesus is major shirk, which cannot be forgiven.

And so if that's the case, then I think it's perfectly proper on our part to say if a revelation comes along, half a millennium later it needs to accurately interact with what it is condemning if we are going to believe what it has to say.

We can't just let that aspect of things slide. We can't let those things, they just don't generally come up and they need to come up in our conversation this evening. Why is there not a shred of evidence to be found.

In the pages of the Quran.

That the author had any knowledge at all that John and Paul and Peter and the writer of the Hebrews had specifically identified Jesus as Yahweh in their writings? Why is that? And if there is such a huge chasm, which I say would go against the chain that is forged in Surah five as well, beginning verse,.

At ayah 44, 44 through 48,.

The revelation of the Torah of Moses, the revelation of the Injil of Jesus, and the revelation of the Torah of Muhammad. If there is that huge break, then how do we explain that? How do we understand that in regards to what Christians believe on this subject,.

The doctrine of the Trinity?

Now, I'm sorry if some of that was a little bit, I didn't get a chance to necessarily explain everything, but I wanna try to sort of move the ball forward. It's one thing to do the same topic over and over and over again, but I don't know how many debates Shabir's done on the subject of Trinity and Tawhid.

I know I've done a bunch of them, he's done a bunch of them. Let's try to move it forward into an area that will advance our knowledge, especially in comparison with the debates that we've done before.

I think that would be a great way of advancement for both of our communities. I think Shabir and I are in good shape to do that type of thing here this evening, and you get to listen in. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Dr. White.

Dr. Shabir Ali, you can now deliver your opening statement.

Tawhid, Shirk, and the Qur'an's Address to Christians

Let me begin by praising our creator and fashioner, the creator of the heavens and the earth. I ask you, God, to bless all of the righteous servants in all of history, bless us all here tonight, bless our meeting, bless our discussion, make it fruitful, open up our understanding, and help us to say the right thing in the right time and the right way.

And Dr. White, I want to thank you for sharing this platform with me and giving me another opportunity to engage with you.

And to learn from you.

Folks, I'm so thankful that you've all come out here tonight and I look forward to engaging with you, not only during my presentations, but also and especially to hear your questions later on. Now, let me start with the first half of my talk to address the Muslim belief in the Quran and its expression of tawheed, or monotheism.

I want to very quickly remind you all of what the topic was about. The topic is tawheed versus trinity, and then the subtopic says, is it one person or three persons? Is God one person or three persons?

And the subject is not really, does the Quran have the correct understanding of what Christians believe? But nonetheless, as Dr. White has raised that question,.

I will try to address it.

So very quickly, from the Quranic perspective, what is tawheed? The word tawheed itself does not occur in the Quran, but the concept of the oneness of God, or that God is one, is said explicitly in the Quran again and again.

The Muslim kalima, or declaration of faith, says la ilaha illallah, there is no God but God. And this statement is found exactly in that expression twice in the Quran. And elsewhere, some 30 or more times, the Quran says something like la ilaha illahu, there is no God but He.

Or, kullu allahu ahad, say, is Allah one? So the idea that God is one is something that is emphasized in the Quran. So Muslims will take great confidence, or have great confidence in the fact.

That when they say that God is one,.

They are following the scripture which they believe to be the word of God. What is shirk then? James has asked me to explain. Well, shirk is one of those terms that is not so easy to define, but I'll try my best.

It seems to be that shirk is the opposite of tawheed. So if belief in tawheed, in the oneness of God, is the pure belief showing the Muslim allegiance to God, shirk would be anything that takes us away from that tawheed, or from that oneness of God.

If one were to worship an idol, that would be shirk. If one were to consider that God has a son or a daughter, that is associating someone with divinity, that would be shirk in Muslim definition. Now, of course, there could be relations of shirk, and James did speak about this being like a major one.

Well, one might speak about lesser rates of shirk. For example, some Muslims will say that if you do a good deed while trying to please someone else other than God, that is, in a way, shirk, because you're supposed to do it only for the pleasure of God.

But of course, that is a lesser degree of shirk. Now, the major one, taking somebody else as an associate with God, that is what the Quran promises severe punishment for, and calls us away from. Now, why doesn't the Quran then show an understanding of what the Christians believed?

That's James's question to me. And the answer to that is that the Quran actually does show an understanding of what Christians that the Quran was interacting with at the time believed. And a scholar recently, Sidney Griffith, in his book, The Bible in Arabic, has actually drawn attention to this and explained, step-by-step, how the verses of the Quran actually relate to the belief of Syriac Christians, in particular, because those were the Christians in the environment with which the Quran interacted.

I have to say something, then, about the mode and manner of the Quran. The Quran is revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, in whom be peace, Muslims believe, as the word of God, into his mind, to interact with his immediate environment.

People ask him questions, he gives answers by way of divine revelation. All of that is collected into the book that we have today, as the Quran. So, the Quran does not have much interest in commenting upon beliefs of people who are outside of that immediate milieu.

However, the Quran does say some things which, in fact, will apply to all. For example, when the Quran says, laqad kathra lalina qaloo innallaha thalithu sadaqa, they disbelieve, who say that God is one of three.

And some translators put in a trinity, but it doesn't have to be in a trinity, just to say three. And that's why the Quran follows up by saying, innamallahu innahu wahid, that God is only one God. So, the Quran is telling you, don't say three, just say that there is only one God, and that's it.

And so, if our Christian friends were to only say one God, and they stopped at that, they would be saying something that conforms with the Old Testament. They would be saying, actually, what conforms even to some of the explicit statements of the New Testament writers, which we'll get to as time commits.

And, of course, they would satisfy the Quranic requirement that you do not commit this, sure. But, of course, Christians do not stop at saying that there is one God. Some Christians say that there is one God and three persons.

Some say that, yes, there are three persons, but this is not in the Trinity, but a modalistic belief where the Father comes down to earth as the Son, and then eventually manifests Himself as the Holy Spirit.

So, in either case, various Christians are saying three in one way, or three in the other way. And rather than the Quran utilizing a lot of words to explain and contradict and deconstruct all of these individual beliefs, what the Quran does is to displace the Bible as the sole reference.

And the Quran introduces itself as the book that will command respect, attention, and will become the book of guidance for the Muslims in particular, and for humanity at large. So, the Quran does this in a very excellent way.

Look at the way in which the Quran has actually gripped the Muslim world so that, to this day, there are people like myself who did not grow up in an Arabic environment, but we learned the Quran in its original Arabic,.

And we're able to recite large portions of it.

From memory in the original Arabic. Muslims have remained devoted to this book, and Muslims have remained on monotheism. There's no question about the Muslim monotheistic concept. When a Muslim says, I believe in God, you can be sure that the Muslim knows who he believes in.

But let's say a Muslim is talking to a Christian friend, and the Christian friend says, yes, I also believe in God, the Muslim will not be sure. Does the Christian friend mean God the Father? Does he mean God the Holy Spirit?

Does he mean God the Son? Or does he mean all three together? So, there is no question about how the Quran has actually emphasized, and successfully done so, the monotheism that it preaches. So, the Quran is apt in the way that it actually puts things.

Jin says, well, the Quran does not seem to know the canon of the New Testament. That's why the Quran is referring to things that is outside of the New Testament canon. Well, do you know, folks, that even the writers of the New Testament have quoted things which are outside of the New Testament canon, and outside of the Old Testament canon?