Shabir Ally Debate

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.

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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 good afternoon. Welcome to the dividing line.

I guess it's barely afternoon. It's afternoon here. I am back in the

United States of America Just had good old American food had pretty decent

Chips and salsa, in fact and That was something I really needed I'm gonna tell you something there

If you're going to London, just just give up on finding good chips and salsa because there just isn't any such critter

As that to be found anywhere That's just just all there is to it. So be that as it may we are now in Durham, North Carolina And We are preparing for our

Dialogue as the official term on Thursday evening tomorrow evening with dr

Zulfikar Ali Shah at Duke University and Then Friday and Saturday speaking a total of three times at the back of the truth conference

That has been advertised for quite some time On the website on the banner ad and any of you who are in the

Durham? Raleigh -durham area, please. Feel free to come and visit you can see the registration

Requirements on the website and we'd be happy to have you speaking on Islam and the cross on the results of the disastrous results of modern

Preaching that it's not biblical in nature and then also some lessons from history on surviving in an age of apostasy so those would be the topics that I'm addressing other than the debate

Thursday evening, of course, which will be a Comparison contrast between the Quran and the

Bible and that'll be with dr. Zulfikar Ali Shah at Duke University So then after I get done speaking in the morning on Saturday I head for the

Raleigh -Durham Airport and fly back to Phoenix, Arizona Having been gone for 16 days and I am very much looking forward to get home

We would like to once again. Thank very sincerely as I put on my blog the folks who made my visit to London so successful and such a blessing especially

Roger Brazier and his family and Doug McMaster's and his family.

I know Doug is not listening right now because Doug is currently on an airplane flying to Jordan So here he was doing all this stuff for me and the very next day.

He was flying out Visit to one of the church's missionaries in in Jordan.

So I very much appreciate that if you hear some background No, that's because I have my window open.

It's only in the 40s here in Raleigh -Durham but for some reason even when it's that cold outside the room still get warm and If I had this particular air conditioner, oh, it's that loud

So you'll hear the emergency vehicle go by in the background right now, or maybe you don't

I don't know but It's getting closer There's the

Doppler effect as it goes by anyway, I did want to see if we Take some phone calls today if there's anyone who would like to comment on what you've been seeing on the blog

I've been As best I can to post clips. I actually have one other clip posted on my youtube page that I have not blogged yet Which includes the

I think it's the it's a 15 -minute clip With the cross -examination between myself and Shabir Ali as I recall

From the second of the two debates. I think that's which one it is. I'm gonna be playing a section

I actually What is that? It might be? Hmm, it might be what

I'm gonna play here or not. I don't know. I have it Cued up and go ahead and play that one way or the other

Even if it's something I have up there. I'm not sure whether it is or isn't but When you're trying to do all the things

I'm doing all sometimes you Exactly where you were the last time you put your foot down.

So I Would do have a clip to play from the debate and I was extremely pleased with With how the debate went it was

We had a completely full audience completely full room and in fact,

I would say I'm not sure how many people ended up in the overflow area, but we had a decent a really decent group there and It was

It was a long debate. We got done. I would say just a few minutes before midnight and we started at 730

So that really was two debates that we were doing and they were of course related But I'm glad we did it that way

It was I think it's better to do it the way we did it then to have like 40 minute opening statements and all the rest of that stuff.

I think it was a little bit better To have it move along a little bit faster not

The you know, super long opening statements and long rebuttals and long cross X and so on so forth

I think we got more accomplished that way and I I was a little surprised at At Shabir's presentation,

I was not certain I just did not know why From the first time that I had raised to Shabir the issue of doing this subject that he insisted that We before we would debate whether Muhammad is found in the

Old Testament that we had to debate whether Jesus was found in the New Testament I had assumed

That the reasoning for that would be that He wanted to establish that well

Christians use this kind of interpretation of these texts and So now

I'm going to use the same kind of interpretation of these texts to see Muhammad That's not what he did

And I was surprised at that. I had spent a fair amount of time Putting together what

I think was a pretty decent presentation on What I thought would be the key

Texts the key Prophecies the Old Testament that would be most relevant especially

Deuteronomy 18 15 through 19 and Psalm 2

Psalm 22 Isaiah 9 Isaiah 53 These the ones that I primarily focused on as well as the

Malachi 3 text preparing the way of the Lord And by the way, and I apologize to Rick I haven't gotten to it yet.

I'll try to do it as soon as I can. Hopefully someone channel can remind me I need to blog today a

New book that we are offering. I'll behold your King by William Webster was very helpful to me

It's an excellent book on the prophetic passages in the New Testament that prophesied the coming of Jesus and I will admit that Even though I I really felt that should beer is responsive

Tentation were very weak Basically, all he did was take the opportunity to start trying to attack the inerrancy of the

Bible by presenting standard alleged allegations of synoptic errors standard stuff like well

Jesus is coming back immediately didn't so therefore I can't believe what the Bible says about Jesus or stuff from the genealogies of Jesus or Things like that And I was a little surprised by that.

He actually in fact, I can imagine the We're a little bit confused as to where he was going because in essence what he said was well

Is Jesus prophesied in the Old Testament? Yes, and no Yes, and no And I'm I'm like yes and no and then he would start getting hold of the

You know liberal redaction Informed critical sources and quota quote a sentence from this one and quote something from this one

And and what should be is he strings together? factoids That he calls from his reading of liberal theologians and he strings them together in a way that no liberal theologian are strong them together

That's that's something thumbs. I think he needs to think about is If he's putting stuff together that no one else has ever put together

Why does he think we should find that in any way compelling even even granting that we would even start?

To to give much weight to the sources that he's citing. Anyways, I'm sorry, but quoting Rudolf Bultmann to me

Wasn't impressive when I was a student for the theological seminary and it's even less impressive today

So anyway when he responded to the idea that Jesus is the

Messiah Prophesied in the Old Testament. Well, yes, and no I can see how you can see Jesus in this and you know he makes a compelling case, but what about these other things and For Shabir and I noticed this in his 2005 debate with Anish Rosh, and he did it again on Monday evening

First Shabir if you just assert Something often enough at the end of the debate.

You can say we have proven we have shown we have demonstrated And so you can quote one particular source and that somehow will very quickly grow into an absolutely assured result of Christian scholarship

Even if no one even in what he calls Christian scholarship Which he must use the widest possible definition of that and I kept challenging him that over and over again

What which even in Christian scholarship no one has taken it to mean what

The Shabir Ali has taken it to me and It's just it's frustrating to debate along those lines but I'm glad to have the opportunity of doing so because I think that for a long time

Shabir's Prowess in this area was that he was debating people Who didn't go to fuller theological?

You know Sometimes I think back over my career at fuller

At least I was in the extension of Phoenix extension so we had a little bit more conservative professors But still it was still fuller and so I was exposed to a wide variety of material and there was times

I just did not enjoy that there were times when You know, I was really wishing

I could have been in a class with with people of a similar viewpoint and stuff like that It would have been very helpful

Now I see in hindsight many years later 12 years after graduating from seminary

That that was part of God's preparation because when Shabir Ali starts quoting these people man been there done that got the t -shirt, you know

I've told the story before but we have newly new listeners. I Remember a class

I took from professor. I had six different classes with him. So I liked the professor he was a good professor, but he was a good bit to my left and and He was in the introduction of the class it was a penitent

He held up the commentaries that we had had to purchase for the class And what we had to do was we had to read these commentaries and write a positive negative thing

We had to review the commentary and then it give our positive points our negative points interact with the text, which is pretty common

Well, he held up von Roth's Gerhard von Roth's commentary on Deuteronomy from Westminster Press as I recall sort of yellowish hardback

And I remember him very clearly saying in that first class that in this opinion in his opinion

This was the best commentary on Deuteronomy in English So his his viewpoint is that stuff's good well, of course

I read it and It is, you know a thoroughgoing Form of reaction criticism and all the rest of that stuff.

And so when I wrote my review of it In the positive section. I had one statement

This book has an excellent binding and then I started the negative section

And at least back then Since I had clearly read the book I had read it in depth and I had interacted with it on a meaningful level.

I Was not punished. I in fact got a I believe a 98 on that review and got one of the highest grades in the class

But I don't know if that would be the case any longer But it was at that time you weren't punished for being a conservative as long as you interacted with what was being said you just didn't have a knee -jerk reaction to to these things and so That that was that was my experience at the time in in attending fuller theological seminary

So I'm used to these things and I'm accustomed to the people that that Shabir is quoting I kept asking

Shabir questions concerning have you read some of the

Scholars who write on these these texts but they do some of from a conservative perspective that they they don't feel the need to chop the text up into pieces and to assume multiple authors and all the rest of the stuff and He basically had not see clearly did not have much of a of a use for those people

And so Shabir does remind me a lot of the standard liberals in in Christianity That do not even think that conservatives have anything meaningful to say and they do not interact their writings conservatives interact with the writings of liberals liberals do not interact with the writings of conservatives and You know, that's that's how that how that works.

So what I'd like to do is Yeah, I I Have a p .m.

Window up and I don't don't see anything for some reason. Oh Okay, I got it now for some reason oh you moved

If you pinged out or something, but that's why I lost you. So, all right Thank you for letting me know that we have a call.

I'll try to create this window again, and hopefully this time Your your Nick won't change and I can keep up with you here.

So Let's Hold on on the on the Good. All right.

Let's hold on on the call. I'll go to Joshua in just a moment, but let's listen to a portion of Shabir Ali cross -examining me and then me cross -examining

Shabir The little battery in my Camera died right toward the end lost about two minutes at the end

So we don't have the whole thing, but let's listen to that and then we'll take the phone call and hopefully this will come through fairly clear for you

Then we see Islam coming after us and denying those who are going back to a position of ignorance of the revelation that God has made of the maker himself

Of course, I would not I would not

I would not

I would not I would not I would not that would be used by anyone who mentions Jesus, not just as there is a scholarly use of Muslim that would refer to anyone who has any kind of connection to the

Prophet Muhammad. I'm speaking as a theologian. As a theologian, the Bible defines what is and what is not a

Christian. And a person who does not embrace Jesus Christ as he himself has done it before, unless he believes that he will die in his sins.

Now, you do recognize that just as you've used the term in your notes of the revelation about the advent of Jesus Christ, that if I were to listen to you, then

I would, of course, in the sense that the alleged revelation comes after the time of Jesus Christ.

And itself claims to be consistent with the singular message of the prophets of old and Jesus Christ.

And I think that's the argument that these big names are applied, 43rd, 4th, and 49th.

Then we are given a means of testimony of the claims of Muhammad and the teachings of Muhammad.

We're not coming six centuries later and saying that the

Tabari of children, that's all that was sent down, provided they stand by which we can test the claim of Muhammad.

Otherwise, how could I claim? How could I test Muhammad? How could I know? What is the need?

Did he not give us a test? Is it just a theophany? I don't think that's what he was arguing about.

Now, you are aware that there are arguments for the existence of God, such as the

Barthitis doctrine. Those arguments hold in a way a very important detachment from today.

If I were to listen to your call, and this is a big one, about the revelation that came to the prophets of old, what would then, before I become a

Christian, convince me? Or what presuppositions do you think

I would have coming to examine the Christian faith in the first time? Now, let me just stop it just there for a moment.

I posted this morning and I put it on the blog. The argument, especially as he will develop it a little bit later, pretty much in his closing statement, he sort of develops it fully.

And in essence, what Shabir is doing is he's attempting to defend himself against my charge that he's using double standards.

Because it's very clear that he is. He applies one set of standards to the Bible and one set of standards to the

Quran. So he has explained this evidently in his own thinking. Let's see if you can follow this.

Basically what he's saying is is that if I believe the Christians that I am to question or reject

Muhammad and the Quran and I believe in God because of Muhammad and the

Quran, then what I need to do is if I reject that, then

I automatically become an agnostic or an atheist. And that's why

I can use the world view and the reasoning of an agnostic or an atheist in examining

Christianity and rejecting Christianity. That's why I can quote the Jesus Seminar and that's why

I can quote these ultra -liberals who likewise do not believe in the Quran is because if I abandon

Muhammad and the Quran then I become an agnostic or an atheist and so I then have to examine

Christianity as an agnostic or an atheist. I've never heard such reasoning before in my life,

I will confess. And I don't find it to be reasoning at all.

And it's fairly obvious why. As I point out in the blog, first of all it could be used against his own position.

From his perspective, if I as a Christian would become a Muslim then that would mean that I would have to reject what we believe about Jesus Christ.

That means I would have to have a reason for doing so which means I'd have to use the same kind of world view on my own scriptures to come to the conclusion these scriptures are unreliable.

And if I already have adopted that world view then I would also have to apply it to the Quran and of course those same scholars find the

Quran to be a work of redaction and editing and question the existence of Muhammad, etc.

So it wouldn't lead me to becoming a Muslim. This kind of thinking just says we all would be better off and pretty much stuck in the position of agnosticism or atheism.

So on that level it doesn't work. But it clearly does not follow that if what

I'm asking him to do in abandoning the Quran and Muhammad is to become an agnostic. What I'm saying is if he's a consistent supernaturalist if he's a consistent individual who believes that God has spoken and that in his speaking

God has revealed himself. That would be like saying to a Mormon you need to abandon belief in the

Book of Mormon it is not a revelation of Jesus Christ it is not from God, etc, etc.

And that somehow what that means is that you have to become an atheist after being a

Mormon before you can then become a Christian. No, I don't think so. Doesn't follow.

This whole idea of well the only reason I believe in God is because Muhammad in the Quran tells me so.

It's a troubling statement I would think for a Muslim to make. Is that really the only reason you believe in God?

Did no one have a reason to believe in God before Muhammad in the Quran? Why did people believe in God before Muhammad in the

Quran? I don't happen to find Muhammad's arguments for the existence of God if we can even call them that to be overly compelling.

I don't even get this idea that well if I question

Muhammad in the Quran my world view will have to become that of an agnostic. That's not a given at all.

That's not the case and none of this in any way substantiates the obvious double standard that Shabir Ali and all

Muslims I've met so far utilize in using one kind of scholarship one set of standards for the

Bible and a completely different set of standards for their own text. This is a very interesting insight into a way of thought but I don't find it to be overly compelling in any way shape or form.

We'll continue with that clip Actually let me just play about another five minutes we'll take our break and then we'll come out of the break and we'll take

Joshua on the phone and I want to give him enough time and I've already got 2 .25

on my clock so we'll just go a few more minutes on this and then we'll take our phone call.

Well a couple of things He is a

Mullahist evangelist and I am a reformer for some positions so we could really use him

William William Craig says that the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater possibility of the existence of a

God There is no implication or thought effect that the existence of a

Christian God is an absolute result of the greater preponderance of evidence so we approach that very very clearly and so I would speak to a

Muslim I say to a Muslim you already believe that God is spoken but you believe in a revelation that comes after He has spoken and it does not show any first hand knowledge of the content of that revelation you know there are only twice books in the

Bible and both of them are very easily oral I see no evidence that there is a

God as first hand knowledge and so my point to a

Muslim would be I am not asking you to question the existence of God I just simply believe that since we are made in the image of God we know that God is consistent with Himself and if you find something if you trace that revelation through and He has revealed

Himself to be like this and 600 years later some of the ignorance comes along it is not that, why should

I accept that why should I believe that there is a beautiful consistency between the Old and the New Testament if a person would just examine it but most

Muslims I know don't examine that consistency now you might be aware that all over the

Muslim world Muslims are believers in the

Quran and I would add that most non -Christians would have the same perspective but I don't believe a person is born as a

Christian I hope you understand that but then you see my question still remains if you are asking

Muslims to abandon their belief in Muhammad and the Quran certainly you are doing that then what would remain for the

Muslim as something to really set the Muslim apart let's say an agnostic or a secular humanist well since I am not asking a person to abandon theism

I am simply pointing to the fact that the revelation that preceded the Quran teaches something very different in the understanding of the author of the

Quran and since the Quran for the Muslim is that which confirms for him the existence of God who revealed the

Quran that may be for the Muslim but see I do not believe that that is that is how the

Bible exists the Bible says that men know that God exists now there is the point right there he is trying to establish this idea that the reason that we do this the reason that we believe in the existence of God is because of X, Y and Z because of Muhammad the

Quran and therefore if you ask us to abandon that he is trying to build his case here through the cross examination which

I found interesting because clearly he is not responding to the rebuttal that I presented of his attempts on the paraclete and so on and so forth he sees that what he has to try to do is rehabilitate himself in light of the citation

I have made of himself complaining that Robert Morey was using double standards, that Robert Morey needs to figure out which hat he is going to wear, whether the

Christian hat or the western scholar hat, and of course what Shabir has done over the past 12 years since then has been to the exact same thing that he accused

Robert Morey of, I just don't see any way around that, and that's the clip that is currently on the blog that I put up last evening so we are going to go ahead and take our break and then talk with Joshua and come back with Burckholtz here on The Dividing Line we will talk to you later the pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from his word what has happened to this sacred duty in our day the charges are as follows prostitution, using the gospel for financial gain pandering to pluralism, cowardice under fire felonious eisegesis, entertainment without a license and cross -dressing, ignoring

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Pulpit Crimes in the bookstore at aomin .org Hello everyone, this is

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Wednesday afternoon unusual time but that's because I'm on the road and I am speaking in Raleigh Durham starting tomorrow evening debate with Dr.

Zulfikar Ali Shah and then speaking at the Battle for the Truth conference we have some new items for you that you probably want to be taking note of on the blog and one of those is

Bill Webster's book I mentioned earlier and I also blogged the New Testament contextual commentary with Comfort a few days ago and I'm sort of thinking that it's about that time of year that you might be looking at getting some stuff for your fellow

Christian geeks now James I'm back here in the studio and I hope we've got a good connection here but I also wanted to point out that something we haven't had a chance to put up there we put in the shopping cart we're currently taking pre -orders for a projected

December 1st re -release of Is the Mormon My Brother and we've got an awesome price on that book right now too and so we want to take as many orders before the book actually ships it out to us as we possibly can and one of the things

I really loved about that book is that not only does it in its day lay out a case that is actually mushroomed in our day and that is the major push for accepting

Mormonism as just another Christian religion is just another denomination we need to all focus on the things we have in common rather than the things we have in different but when you read

Is the Mormon My Brother as I recall over a hundred pages are dedicated to the person of God and who

God is and for the the believer today that is an issue that for a lot of folks is really lacking just in the fact that we could read this book in contrast to a religion that has 180 degrees diametrically opposed position on the subject with us you can learn a lot about defending your faith and being able to establish and present the one true

God of the Bible I'm glad that that's going to be available I certainly it's going to be great to see that and should mention that we

I haven't heard back from Calvary Press yet but I did get all the work on the second edition of the

Potter's and we're going to be looking at the second edition of the

King James only controversy coming up too so a lot of good stuff there and people

I know have been asking about the videos of these debates that's out of our control what we're seeing on the blog is from my little

Casio camera that's the thickness of about five credit cards about the same size so there's not much we can do about that we're not able to control that the professional recorded videos will be sent to us and we'll make those available in time as well but lots of good stuff coming up on the blog and materials available and so I hope that you do realize that sometimes folks will come in the channel and go hey

I just got your book at Amazon and I'm like great fine wonderful any reason you didn't get it from us yeah it was 25 cents more like well

I hope you like the dividing line hope we can keep it going without your support because people need to realize that when you get those materials from us you're helping us to be able to continue to do this it doesn't happen for free we don't have big people with big pockets that make this happen we've got to meet our needs so if you can get what you want to get from us that's going to help us to continue to do what we do through the ministry so we very much appreciate the support that you provide to us let's go ahead and see if we can take our first phone call and talk with Joshua about the debate with Shabir Ali Joshua are you there yes sir you sound good all right sorry about that might sound kind of snuffly

I've had a cold for a week or so here that's a very long cold a week or so basically from what it sounded to me what

Shabir was coming back with was almost like an attempt at a presuppositional apologetics himself but you know the

Muslim can't really substantiate it like a Christian can because the

Quran is really what it claims not to be novel so it doesn't have the historical background to do it so it doesn't surprise me that he has to revert back to the agnostic position because it sounds like he's trying to respond to you on your own ground but he can't well actually

I don't know where Shabir is on those things I know that he was criticized for in essence adopting a view similar to modernism the idea of middle knowledge which he clearly just sort of borrowed from William Lane Craig and there were a number of Muslims who criticized him saying look that's that's just not even within the pale of possibility he wrote some articles on it and things like that Shabir is up there in Toronto Canada he's not exactly in the midst of the most conservative ways of thought even amongst the

Muslims and I did talk with some Muslims I won't mention any names but I did talk with some

Muslims up there who quite honestly just dismissed him as a liberal even though they were in the audience that night they just sort of said well

Shabir is just a liberal and I'm not sure exactly what makes him a liberal but we have to keep in mind there's some major differences between these various groups how they see things so he's trying to respond to the criticism of his epistemology but I don't know that he has really come to final conclusions on that himself the fact that he is willing to even listen to William Lane Craig's defense of middle knowledge and try to bring that into Islam I don't know that it's even possible to do it of course but the fact that he's done so certainly is rather interesting to me and I did get the feeling from talking with Shabir this time in fact

I even quipped once that I'm going to start bringing conservative commentaries because I gave him two very nice books during the course of each debate well one in each debate and I said

I'm going to start bringing some good commentaries for you to read because he's always reading the bad stuff so anyway so yeah

I did not find it to be a consistent understanding even from an

Islamic perspective for that matter but that's what he decided to do with the entirety of his cross examination was to try to rehabilitate his consistency because I think he's really been challenged on that I think

I'm not the only one who has challenged him on that and I think it's a real problem for him yeah like I said

I don't think it was consistent at all but it almost sounded like he was trying to respond to you he just didn't have the epistemological foundation to challenge you yeah

I mean I can see how a Muslim might try to develop some form of a transcendental argument at least in regards to the existence of God but given the methodology especially that Greg Bonson would have promoted in regards to providing an internal critique of the other system

Islam does not provide a coherent enough position and a coherent enough revelation to allow for that kind of critique because again he has to violate his own standards he has to use a set of standards for me that he won't allow to be used for himself and that's the real problem most definitely alright

I appreciate it thank you much thank you very much for calling 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number someone asked what commentaries would you recommend what would you give to Shabir Ali for example it does not seem to me as if he has been exposed to almost any kind of in -depth exegesis especially of the

New Testament now again you give

Shabir anything and you're running the risk of him utilizing that information out of context and things like that I understand that but for example

Dr. Knight's commentary on the pastoral epistles is just a classic and it is just so wonderfully in -depth and yet it's orthodox and all sorts of things like that and so now

I'm getting phone calls while doing the radio program I'll just hope that whoever that is will call me back when we're done but anyway materials like that would be extremely useful commentary on Hebrews by Hughes would be very useful some of the older commentaries as well if you'd be willing to look at them that are based upon a consistent worldview such as that even

Calvin's commentaries would be excellent along those lines obviously there are commentaries obviously there are commentaries that you don't want to necessarily give to somebody and you don't want to utilize liberal commentaries, he's already got plenty of those as it is but those would be some of the commentaries that I would suggest those that model how to do in -depth exegesis and do it consistently and do it in a way that does not shred the text but actually honors the text would be a good direction to go there let me go ahead and continue with the clip

I just have a few more minutes to play here yeah, but two more points they can find themselves in that similar position where they may persist the effects of i .e.

Christian, that's the spirit of God's operation and so if you're saying is it possible that you could demonstrate errors in the

Quran, therefore a person ceases to be a Muslim just because of that apostate yes, that is a possibility, but my purpose is not to possibly cease to be a

Muslim I think the Muslims here will testify that when I debate I always attempt to give a very clear testimony then you realize that a

Muslim might be guarded against Muslim -Greece oppositions or, as you reflect such signs he may imagine himself to be an agnostic which he might be after listening to your call and then argue again with agnostic -Greece oppositions for the answer to that I'm not sure what you're referring to now but what you're referring to is what you said at the beginning you stated about the change in the past again,

I'm about to try to be as clear and compelling as I possibly can be in explaining that I am simply asking for consistency in the standards, if you're going to embrace the scholarly conclusions that I hope will begin with a world view and Greece oppositions that are completely contrary to both

Islam and Christianity if you're going to accept their conclusions about Christianity then you should be accepting their conclusions about Quran as you yourself said, you cannot use argumentation you can't use argumentation that will cause you to disbelieve in both the

Quran and the Bible against one or the other I think Shugir Ali in 1996 was right that's why

I quoted him excuse me, 2002 I think it was 96 thank you okay,

Shugir, I get 10 minutes now you have mentioned, you have used words like clearly and obviously about the conclusions of people like Raymond Brown that's old do you agree with me that there is no manuscript evidence known to the scholarship of a empirically literature pre -existing

Gospel of John? I agree would you agree that the Gospel of John is the earliest

New Testament book testified to in the papyri manuscript edition of the

New Testament? would you agree that at least from the scholarship we have that all the early manuscripts of the

Gospel of John contain the prologue of John, John 21 all the chapters of where they are today that's at the earliest stage of history the

Gospel of John reads as we know yes, first I must correct my previous answer I didn't know

I had to say that I agree that the

John Ryland manuscript is the earliest of course you know that better than I do for knowledge of that nature but my point is that while all of the manuscript evidence for the

Gospel of John existing show the same consistent boldness the internal contradictions the contradictions within the

Gospel of John has convinced many very sincere biblical scholars that this has offered many statements of evidence and he gives us evidence that one needs to refute that in order to refute it but I don't think it's so easy to refute have you read the first chapter of John I have not read much of Leon Morris although I have skimmed through many of his books

I find him to be very traditional and conservative I find that he does not face up to the evidence that modern critical scholars are pointing to that one can either ignore the evidence or deal with it now did you catch that?

it might be to the point where you might be tuning it out a little bit but ignoring the evidence what evidence?

see for Shabir the theories that redaction critical scholars use are evidence and so if you don't just dwell upon these hypotheticals based upon the idea that whatever the text is it can't be what it claims to be it has to be something else and so now we get to speculate as to the way that it came into the form that it's in we get to speculate about later redactors and we don't have to have any kind of evidence to back ourselves up here we just need to be able to argue a case and the case will always be dependent upon the idea that the text cannot be harmonized because it's not supernatural in nature it can't be supernatural in nature you start with that and then reason forward that's evidence

Shabir now here again we have to go okay but Shabir you don't accept that with the

Quran you don't allow us to just without evidence say that is a collation of disconnected incoherent materials that have been brought together into one form specifically to substantiate a particular group's claim to power or things like that there are people who say that but Shabir doesn't accept that and he doesn't do so presuppositionally so see the inconsistency there's the point he says well they ignore this evidence so if they don't function on this kind of liberal basis then they're quote on quote ignoring evidence well no they're not ignoring evidence they're just not functioning on an unbelieving foundation in regards to the examination of scripture it's certainly not the world view of the authors and therefore to bring a world view that is different than that of the authors to bear upon the text requires a presuppositional problem to begin with and yet Shabir views these things as evidence we need to define our term ...

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... Now Shabir has said this so many times he doesn't seem to realize that I'm challenging the very foundation of what he's saying.

Scholars have noted, some scholars have theorized based upon a theoretical idea of a construction of the

Gospel of John for which they have no evidence. But they theorize that if it was written in a certain way, then one theory for the way it could have been written would be this.

Well there's as many different theories as there are form reduction critics to write these theories.

But he says, well Christian scholars do this and Christian scholars do that. And basically by end of this, well you're not a

Christian scholar. Sadly he's representing very well and using very well what

I would call the fifth column. The fact that there is so much unbelieving

Christian academia out there where you have people who are just simply ashamed of the

Bible as it stands because it is a scandal to the human mind, to the modern human mind, the humanistic mind.

You know, I was struck in my study of the prophecies of the coming of Jesus, how many people there are in quote -unquote

Christian academia who are embarrassed at what the Bible actually teaches. There are a lot of naturalistic materialists with PhDs, and they're embarrassed.

They're embarrassed to believe that God would have revealed these things that long ago.

They're embarrassed that you have to believe in the supernatural. They're much more influenced by the worldview around us than they are by the

Christian worldview. And he lives and breathes within that milieu,

I guess is what we are seeing here. There have been many hands that have worked upon the text of the

Quran and said, well obviously conservative, believing

Islamic scholars are just ignoring the evidence that Saddam's followership clearly excess in regards to the nature of the

Quran. Obviously you would believe John Mott on these points because when you read

John Mott's world, I guess we shouldn't seem to fit many of your presuppositions. of the consistency that brought them about.

And Shabir does not hear that. He does not hear when someone says that.

And he doesn't grasp it. So obviously this debate will be available as soon as we can get hold of it.

And doing as many debates as we're doing, as quickly as we're doing them obviously, is going to be a bit of a challenge for the folks who process all of this material and make it available even to us to get it out to you.

So we will clearly do it as quickly as we possibly can and make that stuff available.

And let me just very quickly as we wrap up the program today, when we make this stuff available online, when we for example post stuff to YouTube as I want to do with our

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Please partner with us in doing that because that's exactly what we want to be doing in providing this information in the best way we possibly can.

And so thank you very much for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, should be back on Tuesday of next week in studio at the regular time there in Phoenix, Arizona.

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