Thoughts on Liberalism

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll-free across the United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five Three three three four one and now with today's topic.

Here is James white. And why welcome to the dividing line a post debate to dividing line just last Thursday evening I had the opportunity of engaging Imam Shabir Ali in a debate on did Jesus claim deity at a Mosque in Toronto.

Post-Debate Reflections on the Shabir Ali Debate and the History of the Biblical Text

I was very thankful for the North American Muslim Foundation opening their facility for us we had a very good crowd had to put out extra chairs and very respectful crowd and a very good debate and I was busy after that debate doing a conference and spent all day yesterday traveling and As a result have not been able to sort of keep up with some of the things that have been going on I've I have noticed that in fact Imam Shabir has put up a discussion of the entirety of the debate and so yesterday as I was Coming home I had a very long trip because of the way that the flight was routed and Connections and all I flew from Toronto to Charlotte and Charlotte home.

So it was a six-hour trip instead of what would normally be about a three and a half hour direct flight. I get lots of miles that way but spend lots of time in the air. Well my my dear MacBook Pro battery lasted the whole trip for me and So I sat there and I thought I'd eventually fall asleep.

I didn't I just kept typing and typing and The result was a fairly long blog article that I posted last evening part two has already been started as well and What it has given me the opportunity of doing is addressing the topic of Well Why I am not in In the mainstream of what much of Christian theology or Christian scholarship not Christian theology or Christian scholarship would say today concerning the history of the biblical text and why I am in the mainstream of the historic views of Christians, but Stand outside of that mainstream today as as we must I think to be faithful in many ways I started addressing some of these things in the blog article that I posted last evening.

But I wanted to Say a few things in the first half hour of the program today, and then we will Take your calls if you were maybe at the debate or have some relevant questions in regards to certain things Relating to the Bible its history and why we can trust it.

So on so forth 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number on that, but we won't be getting to that till the bottom of the hour. Now During the course of our debate over and over again Shabir Ali and I discussed issues relating to Shabir's constant reliance upon modern form critical Methodologies and Let's face it most folks sitting in the pew don't know what form criticism is a redaction criticism is or what textual criticism is.

Or what the difference between them are? And there are major differences I engage in textual criticism and yet you'll find a lot of fundamentalists. Well, for example We saw in the video that Sam get posted He talked about someone being a textual critic and that should tell you something that's wrong right away.

Well, no it shouldn't if you know the difference between a textual critic and a form critic or a redaction critic and what all those things are and A lot of folks just throw their hands up in the air and say I you know I just I'm just not interested or I can't learn all this stuff, which of course you actually can it's not that difficult to do but The reality is that what you hear in? classrooms across America and across the Western world today and what you hear from Pulpits in liberal churches is very different than what you hear From the pulpits and most conservative churches and the argument of the world is conservatives are just holding on to something that's been thoroughly disproven you just need to get with the you just need to get with the program and Recognize the Bible isn't what you Christians always thought that it was that's the message that is being pronounced with with strength and clarity in on NPR and by Bart Ehrman and by all of Bart Ehrman's followers in Philosophy of religion classes all across the the Western world and I Am pretty I don't I don't sit around just reading this stuff all the time.

I don't really have an interest in that, but I am pretty well aware of the stream and the the spectrum of argumentation that is utilized from those way to my left in regards to where the Bible came from and.

And from their perspective why it cannot be trusted in the way I trust it now. They may come up with they may be religious people. They may come up with ways of saying well, you know what? Despite the fact that I think Paul contradicted Paul and Paul contradicted James and and Peter is out and doing his own thing and Luke's over there there is no singular message and the Old Testament is actually a Compilation of all sorts of disparate documents and it doesn't have there there are no Themes that flow through all of it or it's all just up to me to determine what those are.

I don't buy into any in all of that stuff. But I am familiar very very familiar with the scholars who promote these things. Why. Because I'm a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and graduate with honors, by the way, and That was well coming up on on 30 years ago now, wow, that's a frightening thing to think about.

But yeah, you know, well actually I graduated in college 1985 so we'll be coming up on 30 years before long. It'll be here before we know it and things have changed and Fuller has changed a lot in the 25 or so years since I was there, but The reality is that the large majority of the reading that I had to do at Fuller Theological Seminary Introduced me to a wide range of theological perspectives at the time I didn't know why that was and at the time it was somewhat frustrating I'll be I'll be honest, but now in hindsight.

It's one of those situations where you wonder about God's providence at the time and then you give it 20 years 25 years you start figuring out what God's providence was up to and. So I had to read for example, I've used the illustration many times, but it's it's applicable here.

I took a class in the Pentateuch and and my professor a professor I liked a lot by the way and learned much from you say I learned how to appreciate the solid information and get rid of the fluff and the rest of stuff that that was inconsistent with what I see as a consistent Christian worldview and a consistent supernatural worldview.

And I I learned to learn from people who do not Walk my line, that's one of the difference between me and a King James only fundamentalist Baptist. Is that a King James only fundamentalist Baptist does not believe you can learn anything from anybody who holds a view other than your own?

And that you shouldn't have anything to do with them and you should run away walk run, however get away from that person and So on and so forth. I don't hold that perspective and my professors at Fuller will tell you that I was respectful even when I had to express my disagreement.

And so I had a class in the Pentateuch and I had an excellent professor. And I actually had this professor for I think six classes as I recall, which is a fair number. That's a lot and He held up a commentary on Deuteronomy by Gerhard von Roth now.

One of the things that obviously I had to learn a lot about and since I was already involved in apologetics. I really focused upon was the Especially in the Old Testament even more so than new the rather radical Theories that had become predominant.

I mean I've said many times conservatives gave up the Old Testament to the to the liberals a long time ago, you can hardly buy today a Commentary on the Old Testament that goes into any depth at all. In other words, it would discuss Textual relationships between Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and and would provide you information concerning a Eucharistic parallels and and And brings in information from the ancient Near Eastern texts from Pritchard and things like that you can hardly buy a commentary like that anymore that is actually written from a Perspective of belief that this is in fact a divine text that this is well how Jesus described it as being God speaking.

You can't hardly buy it a you can't hardly find scholars like that. There's there's still some left. But they will admit I mean if you go to SPL and you attend any of the Old Testament stuff. You're just gonna be hearing just the wildest and craziest stuff out there from from the way way out to the left and that's where most everybody is and I He held up that commentary from von Roth.

So this is the best commentary on Deuteronomy in In English language and we had to write a review of it and If you read von Roth, it's thoroughly based upon. Well, you have this source over here and this source over there and you've got you've got the the Deuteronomist source.

You got the priestly source got the Yahweh source you got stuff coming in here from the Eucharistic and you got this coming and it's it's all just cobbled together and and Not really edited. Well, and and it's it's just this this Evolutionary process that puts us together and and even once you get the final form of Deuteronomy, which you don't even have till well after the days of David and Solomon and so on and so forth almost into the end of the intertestamental period before you even have the final form of Deuteronomy and it's gonna be different than what you have in Leviticus.

It's gonna be different than what you have in Exodus. You got all this, you know. There's there's no way to even begin to come to the conclusion that any of this stuff Actually is is overly relevant because it's just this cobbled together stuff and I guess really for a lot of people The only real relevance from their perspective is that Since people have have used this stuff in religious context for many many centuries.

That's what its relevance is. That's that's all there is to it. And I had to write a review of it and and when I wrote the review of it You had to you had to mention your positives and negatives and the only positive thing I could say about Gerhard von Roth's commentary on Deuteronomy was that it had a very nice binding and Then I started into the negatives.

And I still have that in my library. I haven't gotten rid of it. I haven't they didn't burn it. But and I read it you can go in there today there'll be under things underlined and marked. I read it I entered into the mindset of That perspective so that I can understand it and so I'm not unfamiliar with these things.

Like I said, I don't sit around all day long Reading that stuff, but I am familiar with where it's coming from in the debate with Shabir Ali I once again had to raise the issue of the fact that he relies upon scholarship that in its Fundamental presuppositions if it were applied to his own faith would refute his own faith.

But he won't do that. He will not make the same Application and he seems to be very confused by this because he mentioned some some names to me specifically mentioned two names dr. Richard Balcom and FF Bruce and he gave me FF Bruce's book on New Testament history, which I used as a textbook in Seminary and have used when teaching relevant subjects to that myself so I certainly had read that that work many many years ago and But I appreciate him giving me a copy.

I also gave him a copy of some some books as well, but we normally do that when we debate anyway. He raised these two scholars now FF Bruce and Richard Balcom Would come out at very different points. Would come out differently on different points.

I would say Bruce would be more conservative in general than Balcom. However Richard Balcom has shown a willingness to Buck the trends. He's obviously a a tremendous scholar and I really appreciated Jesus and the eyewitnesses.

I've really appreciated other works. He's written He goes against the the grain in many ways. The problem was when when Shabir turns around says, what do you think of Richard Balcom while he's doing his opening statement?

How can you even give a meaningful response to a question like that? There are just so many issues that that would have to be addressed as to where we would have presupposition Lee different starting points and concluding points and so, I mean I'm like, ah Because I have some areas where we would have disagreement other areas where I've learned a lot from him other areas or where well, for example He presents in Jesus and the eyewitnesses the idea that the John of the Gospel of John is the disciple John not the Apostle John.

Okay, you know that's a theory from the early church. He makes that argument. Okay, I would consider that adiaphora something that's not you know. You know, you can debate it. The Bible doesn't say one way or the other so you can debate those things and I was I was concerned That in light of how short the debate was.

That my some of my comments might be misconstrued in Leading someone astray as to well, you just you know, unless somebody agrees with you. You just disagree with everybody. No, that's this is not true.

I mean I brought up Balcom later and and pointed out that His work in Jesus and the eyewitnesses is goes directly against the rather simplistic redaction Perspective that Shabir Ali utilizes when he quotes from Raymond Brown and people like that.

And he doesn't always just go to the assumption that as soon as you see a text that it's Secondary it's the result of editing. It's a result of redaction and Really that's the whole issue here. Is that is that Shabir and many of his compatriots on the Islamic side of things who actually start studying these things are far too quick to embrace Writers and authors who begin with one Simple assumption and that is whatever this text is about.

It can't be. It cannot be What the Christian Church has always thought it was about it must be we we must look for well, you know James DG Dunn wrote unity and diversity in New Testament and the problem is the unity got lost in all the diversity and Of course, that was a big term back when I was in seminary diversity.

That's a nice way of saying contradiction. Teaching and saying different things. There is no unity. There is no commonality and In there's there's lots of scholars out there who will not even give consideration to.

Anyone who would say well, let's start by asking is What would Paul and James actually be saying the same thing? No, no, you're not you're not even allowed to go there that doesn't even come up in the class discussion.

That's what Christians used to believe we've gotten past that and if you want to get it If you want to get anywhere in the theological realm, you've just got to stop thinking about that. You just don't even go there.

That's artificial. That's that's where the Christians were a long time ago. We're past that. You you just simply have to accept as a given fact that this diversity is Well completely human in origin. That we are not examining Divine documents here and therefore we should not be looking for any divine consistency.

We should look at these as solely Human productions and hence there's going to be human foibles and human errors and there's going to be Contradiction and we need to plumb the contradictions this has become so much of a part of the thinking of the vast majority of critical scholarship in New Testament circles and I in the speaking of the broad range of things.

I mean Raymond Brown. You're really getting getting way out of a conservative zone when you get to someone like Raymond Brown but you you read these folks and the the discussions that took place in Calvin or someone like that don't even appear here.

It's just it's just not even relevant anymore other than to maybe quote it just to sort of laugh at and say can you believe that people actually took time to try to Harmonize these things and and and to try to see how possibly, you know You might want to give the benefit of the doubt to the author that maybe we don't know everything About what was going on in that context that kind of stuff.

Just it's just not even allowed. It is not allowed in the vast majority of school rooms and so many what's what's happened is I I You you get certain perspectives that become popular and they just start to propagate themselves one person quotes it another person quotes him quoting that and Eventually, it has the look as if well, everybody recognizes this I mean all the big names believe this and It creates a Foundation that really isn't there because when you start probing and you say so well Why do you come to that conclusion?

You discover that it really goes back to certain presuppositions that you bring to the text itself and of course, we live in a very secular age and that secular age has deeply influenced the practice of scholarship even in what is called Christianity and as a result you have a large number of Individuals who hold advanced degrees and yet they are approaching a text that was written by men with a supernatural worldview, but they approach it as philosophical and theological naturalists and the result is What you see in the wide variety of teachings available out there on both the Old and the New Testament and so for example Richard Balcombe I I loved you know, I've listened to.

He's not a scintillating teacher. I will give you that as far as his as his speaking style goes but I listened to a lecture to sound like he was reading it a lecture that he gave and and Someone brought up the text in Mark 2 and what I really appreciated was was he just sort of like I don't.

It just seems so obvious What is going on in in Mark chapter 2? In that What's what's what's happening here does display the deity of Christ and then he was talking about the the rich young ruler. And and the saying that saying to Jesus, you know Jesus saying why do you call me good and and even he took the interpretation of that that I have and That is the young man needed to know who he was dealing with the Jesus wasn't denying his own goodness.

That that he was attempting to get the young man to recognize What the nature of real goodness is and and so there are a lot of places where we would Be in perfect agreement on things but when it comes to the consistency of the text as a whole and How it came to have the form that it had I Simply see no reason to assume the things that many scholars today do assume.

Obviously FF Bruce, I would think would be likewise very very conservative. I have utilized FF Bruce's commentary in Hebrews in my preaching through Hebrews a number of times have found it very very useful.

Do I always agree with everything FF Bruce says? No, I don't. I don't there's no one that I can say always agree with everything and it bothers me that that Shabir keeps saying what you've you've put these people on on a on a a list of recommended reading and You know, why would you put them on a list of recommended reading if if you don't well Conservatives actually read the other side.

We read people. We don't necessarily agree with So put him up putting him on a list and he's brought this up twice now and I've corrected it every single time put him on a list has absolutely nothing to do with that being an endorsement of Everything that that person says or the perspectives that they take on everything it just that's just simply not the case and I think that needs to be needs to be kept in mind now all of this comes back to the the real issue of how we approach the text of Scripture itself and Why I take a fundamentally different perspective than than many other people do a Part of it is because when I was in seminary when I would start to challenge What was being said?

It became very clear to me and again, I was already involved in apologetics. This was something that I was already thinking about this something. I was I already having to deal with. I discovered that many of my professors had imbibed their perspectives in a rather shall we say non-critical way and So just because a perspective becomes popular just because well so-and-so says it and so-and-so over there says it so well.

You just have to follow along. Well, you know, I know enough about church history to know there have been times in the not-too-distant past when the assured results of scholarship have have collapsed in the the dating of of mark and things like that and so I don't just follow along in that way and In the same way you have to learn How to appreciate what a scholar says in one area and recognize where you might have differences another one that one of the confusions That should beer seem to have.

Was well, look at all these people who believe mark was written first. Well look and as NT Wright said we don't know when the Gospels were written. We don't know what order they were written in. Yes mark and priority is The popular theory today.

It hasn't always been and in fact, if you look at the history of the church It would be a very small minority of the time period where mark has been considered to be the first primary gospel and that it was just simply being used in a in an editorial fashion.

By mark and Luke. I buy it Matthew and Luke. The early church thought Matthew was written first. That's why why it's first in the canon. Do we know do we have any way of finding out? I don't think we do there are many people are absolutely convinced today.

Well, but you see if you start with mark and then you theorize something called Q and then you then you know We can put this together and and of course John's out in the woods someplace. We don't even have to worry about him.

And and so we can we can come up with this theory and it seems to work pretty well. But you have to assume so many things. You know one of the assumptions That is assumed that that doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me is That Matthew let's let's say Matthew's sitting there and somehow he's gotten a hold of mark.

Now, how do you get a hold of him? How do you even know about mark? There seems to be this assumption in the back of people's minds that That well, you know because they were all involved in Christian leadership, you know.

Had each other's cell phone numbers or something like that but but people don't realize how slowly information moved in those ages and and and you know you had to get on ships and cross seas and get into storms and wreck on islands and hear that or walk for months on end and things didn't just happen overnight and so if if Matthew Actually got hold of a written copy of mark in those early decades.

And I do believe that these were written prior to 8070. It just makes no sense unless you're a Theological naturalist and then you can't have prophecy. But it just makes no sense that even if they were written after 8070.

Did you'd you'd you'd talk about 8070 and in the way that the Gospels do it makes no sense. And I'm not the only person even liberals have recognized that that's not something I made up but Let's say he gets hold of a copy of of mark somehow.

Where do you get it from? He got it from? The community he got it from the Christian community and That Christian community would already be aware of What was in the Gospel of Mark. Wouldn't they they certainly would they certainly would.

They certainly would be aware of that and So if Matthew is sitting there and he's already got mark he already knows mark is well known in the community and He's sitting there. Is He gonna be changing mark and in fact contradicting mark and Then if he's doing that Who is he gonna send his book out to?

Is it gonna be the same community that's already reading mark so do you really think Matthew is sitting there and He already knows that the community he got this book from already has it and he's actually gonna write something that's contradictory to it.

I Mean, isn't it? Wouldn't it just be a given? That at least you'd have to start just on a logical basis everything else inside on a Logical basis if you're assuming literary dependence of Matthew upon mark wouldn't Matthew Be trying to be consistent with mark, I mean, maybe shouldn't you possibly give consideration to maybe the idea that Matthew isn't trying to contradict mark.

But but he's just he's just using mark and he wants to communicate to a different group. And so he's not trying to contradict mark. So he's actually saying the same things but just in different words to different people I mean just on a naturalistic basis.

Doesn't that make sense? And Yet if it if it could in any way shape or form tend toward Christian Orthodoxy No, can't go there. You're not gonna get published if you write something like that. No, no, no, no, no, you got to go a different direction so there's just so many there's just so many issues that come up and It became very clear to me that Basically those types of types of questions were not really the questions that we were looking for in the in the seminary classes it's that that wasn't really what they were what they were looking for and So there's this is this is a complicated area.

This is an area that we need to do a lot of thought in. I I recognize that I know. My one of the only concerns I had after the debate was that someone think that I had in a simplistic fashion Dismissed things but what concerned me was that Shabir seemingly had the idea that well if somebody Had the idea of mark and priority then You disagree with them and I agree with them.

No, I don't know of almost anybody. Well, I don't know of anybody who takes the conclusions that That Shabir comes to. I Don't know of anybody even in the redaction criticism community where that is just the be-all and end-all of all things that have come the Same conclusions he has not so much just in the general.

Well, there's this development over time stuff. This snowball thing, but you know in regards to Muhammad and in in John 14 and 16 even even Raymond Brown who he relies upon there doesn't come to that conclusion and Just because someone believes in mark and priority doesn't mean they necessarily believe in literary dependence.

Even if they believe in literary dependence, it doesn't necessarily mean that they then have a theory that John developed over a period of time. But let me say and I'm I'm running out of time here. We want to get to our phone calls and stuff like that once they come back.

Because someone's having problem with their their magic Jack. I see it. I Know I know he's got problems with magic Jack right now. But anyways, we'll get to our calls in a moment. Look, I was I was thinking of this this morning and it's it's I think it is something we need to address.

There are a number of texts in The Old Testament for example in the Pentateuch in the writings of Moses. One of them that just off top my head Makes the Statement that this was before any Kings Had ruled over the people of Israel now think about that.

I mean that's even that's even more obvious than Someone putting up a monument that is there to this day or Writing about Moses's death. Okay There isn't any there isn't any problem in recognizing that the writings of Moses Were compiled by someone after Moses died that's not an issue.

I Know it had to be all prophetic and Moses saw his death and he had to. Where does where does that come from? Because clearly Jesus believed that Moses wrote these things that doesn't mean that Moses wrote the introduction or the Conclusion or a transitional statement or anything like that, but that these writings give to us what was given to Moses now.

What happens is Shabir Ali will say well You know you there were these stages in the writing of Mark and there were these stages in the writing of John. And now you can't tell us anything about these stages, but I don't care if there were stages because you know what?

What I have done on the Muslim book right now is Not in any order. I'm not done with the introduction but I'm done with the chapter later and As I think about my books I can sort of I think There are a couple of my books That I wrote the introduction and then I wrote chapter 1 and I wrote chapter 2 and then I wrote all the way through to The end.

I think there are a couple That I wrote like that. But I know there are a bunch of them that that is not how it worked that they were written in stages the fatal flaw. The fatal flaw initially had an appendix on it the size of a house.

Which is why we knocked it off and turned it into answers to Catholic claims. Okay, but originally answers Catholic claims was a part of the fatal flaw and So you know people look at John chapter 21 and go well this is clearly this is not John and the the point is That the claim of inspiration the claim of supernatural authority is Invested in what is written?

It's not invested in the person and it's not invested in the process. Whether Paul wrote Romans in one long night of dictation or over a week or over a month does not change its inspired status and You can theorize all you want about well, you know, I Think in this particular letter that Paul wrote these chapters first and then he thought, you know I need to insert this and so he inserts something later on.

Okay interesting interesting theory. But what does it actually mean? Does it actually end up impacting what it was that the Apostle Paul sent to the church at Corinth because that's the issue and so many people will assume that because there are these Issues that can be raised that that means that you approach this solely from a naturalistic perspective and all the only answers you can come up with are Answers that are based upon a naturalistic Assumption that well, you know this author Because of his ignorance of this or because of his ignorance of that.

This is a this this resultant text comes from natural Sources, that's the difference between approaching these texts from a supernatural perspective and from a naturalistic perspective is a super naturalist doesn't have to do what the King James only fundamentalist does and Say I won't even I won't even think about the possibility that That there were stages in the writing of a gospel folks.

Think about how long it would take to handwrite something. There had to be stages, I don't think Mark sat down and just kept writing till his hand cramped up. That's why it was only 16 chapters. There had to be something like that.

But what they're theorizing is is it because there are these chapters? Then what you actually have is The opportunity for major changing to be done and that introduces contradiction and it's not one author.

It's many authors and so you're introducing Contradiction between the authors and and all the rest of this stuff and that's where I go. No, I don't think so you don't have to have that and. So just the illustration from my own experience my own writing of books I think helps to illustrate that we need to be careful.

We need to be careful. We don't have a knee-jerk reaction to everything that we hear that's somewhat different than the way we've ever thought about it before. Because you know what we I see that all the time when I explain to folks how the New Testament came into existence you mean it didn't always look like it looks right now and and and in fact that there was a time when books in the New Testament were just letters that that were carried in a leather pouch by somebody that didn't have deodorant and wrote on a on a Donkey or maybe just walk through the dusty streets of these cities.

Yeah, that's right. That's how the letters got there. You mean they weren't in a leather binding with with gold edges and thumb indexing. Yeah, and since they've never thought about that. They're all freaked out like I'm challenging the reality of the Bible and I'm not and.

So we need to be careful. I think sometimes we conservatives can have a knee-jerk reaction to something that's different and. So we know we're not willing to listen. But that's a completely different world than well we all know there can't be prophecy and so that means the Gospels had to be written after 80 70 and and You just have to assume that that Paul contradicts Paul and Paul contradicts James and and you can't even allow people who actually see a deep harmony between these these writings to even have a place at the table and that unfortunately is is.

What's going on? And so in the rest of the article that I've yet to to finish writing and put up what I'm going to point out is that Once again, that's not how Shabir Ali approaches the Quran now to be honest with you he did say something in the in the in the Debate that I did find very interesting and I hope there's gonna be some follow-up on and you know.

Where I hope the follow-up comes from I hope it comes from Muslims. Not from us. But Tony Costa asked a very good question because he had made a statement in his I Think it was the rebuttal period. I'd have to go back and look at the at the video to be exactly Certain about that, but I had raised the issue of The Quran's utilization of pre-existing written materials and it does there's stuff from the Mishnah.

There is there Abraham being thrown in the fire and and the stuff about the Queen of Sheba coming and certainly Jesus speaking from the cradle comes in the Arabic infancy gospel and the little birds comes comes from the infancy gospel of Thomas and and all of these in the period between the completion of the New Testament and the writing of the Quran that 500 year period.

It's borrowing from other stuff, but the Quran says no. There's nothing that we've borrowed. It's all been sent down by a law. Well, you know Shabir said some interesting things. He seemed to admit that there was a utilization on the part of the author of the Quran of pre-existing material.

But he explained it as being all under the sovereignty of God. Well. Okay, then how come we can't look at the synoptic Gospels in that way? How come we can't look at the differences that exist between Matthew Mark and Luke as means of Enriching our understanding of these situations rather than just blatant Deceptive editing because that in essence is what Shabir is saying is that these writers were editing The view of Jesus to make Jesus something he wasn't.

Well, that's deceptive. That's wrong and Muslims have often said we're defending the real Jesus and we're defending his honor and all the rest that stuff. Really? If you can do that with the Quran, why can't you?

See that possibility with the synoptic Gospels or and how you're dealing with the New Testament. I Think that's important. Anyway, eight seven seven seven five three three three four one dividing dot line via Skype is the number and let's Finally get to the man who'd completely wiped my brain clean because he was having so many connection problems, but let's talk to Rology in in Oklahoma hirology.

Public Dialogue with an Imam: How to Present Muhammad and Keep the Gospel Central

Well better now. Good, we took a nice long break and I sat there thinking and thinking and thinking and then it finally came back to me. Sometimes you think about something so long You'll never remember it's like like I try to remember a dream ever try to remember dream the harder you try to remember it the Worst the farther get you look something like Winnie the Pooh going think think think think think I haven't seen Winnie for a long time.

So I don't remember that but that probably was what I was doing. Anyways, what can we do for you, sir?