The Cross (White vs Ally)

But let me go ahead and introduce our debaters this evening. This gentleman holds a

B .A. in Religious Studies from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, with a specialization in Biblical Literature, and an

M .A. in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto with a specialization in Quranic exegesis. He is now in his third year of Ph .D.

studies in Quranic exegesis at the University of Toronto. He is the President of the Islamic Information and Dawah Center in International Toronto, in Toronto, where he functions as an imam.

He travels internationally to represent Islam in public lectures and interfaith dialogues. He explains

Islam on a weekly television program called Let the Quran Speak. Past episodes of this show can be seen online at www .shabirali

.com. Would you please welcome with me, Shabir Ali. Our next debater this evening is the

Director of Alpha Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a professor, having taught

Greek, systematic theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics. He has authored or contributed more to more than 20 books, including the

King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies. He is an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 60 moderated public debates, with leading proponents of Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormonism.

He is an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and has been married to Kelly, his wife, for more than 24 years, and has two children,

Joshua and Sutter. He is heard frequently as a guest on such national Christian radio broadcast hosts as such as The Bible Answer Man, and hosted weekly internet broadcasts called

The Dividing Line. Would you please welcome with me, Dr. James White. Well, we have another special guest.

We have a third special guest this evening. This gentleman is one of the top 10 favorite Seattle radio personalities, according to NorthwestSource .com.

He stores Holo every weekday afternoon on live from Seattle from four to seven. Fascinating guests and treating topics and treating topics in your calls will be featured in Seattle's only live dry time, dry time, call -in

Christian talk show. Would you please welcome with me and our moderator for this evening, with an explanation of our debate tonight,

Thor Tullow. Good evening.

You fought the wind and the rain to be here on time. That's wonderful. And Mr.

Ali, after each has a 25 -minute opening statement, there will be time for a 12 -minute rebuttal by each.

We will then break for five minutes, which means 35 or 40. But all kidding aside, we're going to try to stick pretty close to the clock on that.

So we have a reasonable departure time this evening. Following the break, there will be a 12 -minute cross -examination, but from Dr.

White, 12 more minutes for Mr. Ali. 12 and 12 more of open question and answer time.

And we like to call that Q &A because we have questions and then we have answers. Now, we don't want any sermons or, you know, if anybody's going to be windbag, it's going to be me, the talk show host, right?

Please keep the questions with no follow -ups to 30 seconds or less. But in the meantime, let's get underway.

And the first opening statement of 25 minutes. Thank you and good evening.

As -salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Peace to all who bow the knee to Jesus, our creator and our

Lord. Just over two years ago, I stood in this very room and debated a man identified by many as the leading historical

Jesus scholar in the world, John Dominic Crossan. We debated the historical reliability of the

Gospels. It is ironic that tonight, in essence, I defend the Gospels again, but in a completely different context.

You see, Dr. Crossan does not believe in an afterlife, in judgment or in miracles. Shabir Ali does.

Crossan does not believe God has given special revelation, but Shabir Ali, along with all faithful Muslims, does.

While not an atheist, neither is Dr. Crossan a classical theist. He dismisses the vast majority of the biblical accounts as nothing but parables, and all prophecy is nothing but wish fulfillment.

And yet, ironically, if Dr. Crossan were here this evening, he would be on my side of this debate, at least in reference to the historical reality of Christ's death.

Despite his great skepticism about all things supernatural, he accepts the historical fact that Jesus of Galilee was crucified at the beginning of the fourth decade of the first century in Jerusalem.

He would not view his death as a purposeful one, and would surely not view it as a sacrifice for sin. But even the highly skeptical

Dr. Crossan accepts as a historical fact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And yet, this evening, we debate the question, was

Jesus Christ crucified as a willing sacrifice to the sins of God's people? The question has two parts, one historical, one theological.

On both, there is dispute between Christians and Muslims. The historical question is that of the crucifixion of Jesus the

Messiah. The theological question turns upon the Christian insistence that God forgives sin only in and through faith in Jesus Christ, due to his giving himself as a sacrifice for sins, or, in the words of scripture, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

This is a debate involving two men committed to two of the world's major religions. I am an elder in the

Reformed Baptist Church, representing the Christian faith's historic proclamation that Jesus Christ was the

Lamb of God whose death on Calvary's cross propitiated the wrath of God against all who trust in Christ.

Shabir Ali is a believing Muslim, the head of the Islamic Dao and Information Center in Toronto, and as a believing

Muslim, he rejects the idea that Jesus was crucified and died on Calvary's cross as an atonement for sin.

Both of us accept that God is our creator and that God has spoken. Even the Qur 'an says that Allah revealed the

Torah and the Gospel for a guidance to mankind, so we both believe that at the time of Jesus, God was engaged in supernatural revelation.

Neither of us can consistently join Dr. Crossan in viewing all divine revelation with skepticism, so what brings us here tonight to debate?

We are not here this evening due to any lack of clarity on the New Testament's part regarding our thesis. If we leave aside 2nd century

Gnostic sources that have no meaningful historical pedigree in the 1st century and that suffer from incurable theological pre -commitments to dualism, resulting in their rejection of Jesus as a true human being, we are left with the unanimous testimony of the

Christian scriptures, the apostles, disciples, and even the few secular sources that have come down through history that Jesus died at the hands of Pontius Pilate at the instigation of the

Jews around the beginning of the 4th decade of the 1st century. The Gospels, Paul's epistles, and Luke's history of the early church, the

Acts of the Apostles, all have solid credentials as originating within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses themselves.

In fact, if, as I believe, Luke is providing documentation to be presented in the trial of Paul in Rome, then this puts its date within three decades of the crucifixion.

Likewise, if one were to postulate that Mark came before Luke, as surely my opponent this evening does quite often in his talks, that would put

Mark no later than 20 or 25 years after the events of the ministry of Jesus, and perhaps even less. In any case, the

New Testament is plain in its affirmation of the historical event of the crucifixion. We will look at its consistent theological teaching in a moment.

While we would hardly expect a great deal of information about an itinerant Jewish rabbi and teacher to find its way into secular historical records of the day, there are two sources outside the

New Testament that should be mentioned this evening. The first is found in Josephus, the Jewish historian writing less than half a century after the events of Christ's ministry.

There is much dispute about the text, and many feel portions of it are a later Christian interpolation.

But this does not need to detain us, for what is important is that Josephus not only mentions Jesus, but likewise makes reference to Pilate and to crucifixion.

It is highly probable that this portion of the reference is original with Josephus himself. Likewise, 85 years after Jesus's ministry, the

Roman historian Tacitus made derogatory reference to the Christian movement, and in doing so, likewise notes that the founder had been executed during the reign of Tiberius, and he even mentions the specific name of Pontius Pilate.

While some might suggest Tacitus is just reporting what he had heard from Christians, it is significant that if there was any controversy over the fact that Jesus had been executed under Pontius Pilate, there simply is no evidence of it from the first century documents.

What we find from every source that has any legitimate claim to coming from the first hundred years after Jesus echoes the words that most scholars, conservative and liberal alike, believe to be some of the earliest of the

New Testament. Quote, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

After that, he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

End quote. This is the core teaching of the Christian faith, and anyone who wishes to suggest otherwise has a very, very tall challenge ahead of them.

But I doubt Shabir Ali will argue that the New Testament as we possess it today teaches anything other than this very truth, so why are we here this evening?

I submit to you that the only reason we are here this evening is because of 40 Arabic words written in a book that can be dated no earlier than 625 years after the ministry of Jesus.

These 40 words were written in a different culture, 765 miles away from Jerusalem, over half a millennium removed, and without any direct or first -hand connection historically to the events in Jerusalem.

Indeed, these 40 words find no literary connection to the first century at all, for they were written by a man who had no first -hand knowledge of the

New Testament, for it had not yet been translated into the Arabic language. I refer, of course, to Surah 4, 157 of the

Quran, which reads, And because of their saying, we slew the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, Allah's messenger or Rasul, they slew him not nor crucified him, but it was made to appear to them, and those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof, they have no knowledge thereof, save pursuit of a conjecture, they slew him not for certain.

Shabir Ali has admitted in a debate in 2004 that this text is, in fact, key to his understanding of the issue of the crucifixion of Jesus.

I shall, of course, leave it to Shabir to explicate his own views on this text, but for the moment,

I wish to make sure my assertion is fully understood. I realize the Muslims in the audience do not believe these to be the words of Muhammad, but that they are the words of Allah.

The Muslims in the audience this evening may even be tempted to be offended when I disagree with these words and, in fact, assert that these words are false, erroneous, and that they are based upon ignorance of the scriptural teaching.

It cannot be any secret that a Christian who understands Islamic teaching and yet remains a Christian does not believe

Muhammad was a prophet. There is nothing to be accomplished in glossing over our differences. May I point out that if Shabir Ali is right, then those

I honor as apostles and prophets are actually false teachers and promoters of idolatry. Shabir has made it plain that he blames the

Apostle Paul for, in essence, hijacking Jesus, who, according to Muslims, was himself a Muslim, supplanting the original followers of Jesus and replacing the simple message of Jesus found today only in the

Quran with the false and blasphemous teaching that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for the sins of the world.

We should not minimize the fact that we are asked by our Muslim friends to believe that the New Testament is hopelessly corrupt, the gospel is false, and the worship of Jesus amounts to the unforgivable sin of shirk.

If the Muslim is tempted to be offended at the assertion that Muhammad was ignorant of the biblical record written in a language he could not understand and that, hence, he made errors in his teachings, the

Christian has significantly more reason to experience temptation to offense at the necessary results of Islamic teachings.

But I, for one, did not come here this evening to feign offense at the Islamic denials of my own faith.

I am here to lay these truths out on the table and to shine the bright light of truth upon them, a light available only when both sides come to the table and honestly lay out their differences.

I am asserting that the reason Shabir Ali sits here this evening and denial the thesis is due to these 40

Arabic words traceable at their earliest to the revision done of the Quranic text or by Uthman and undertaken by a committee chosen by him sometime after the middle of the 7th century according to the tradition recorded in Al -Bukhari.

There truly is no other reason. And what is more, though the Quran claims to be a clear book written in the perspicuous

Arabic tongue, the fact is this text is nowhere near clear, let alone perspicuous.

Many have pointed out that if it were not for Surah 4, 157, the Quran's teachings in such texts as Surah 355 and 1933, where the death of Jesus is mentioned, would be easily understood without prompting very obtuse explanations that require us to believe the text is referring to a future death of Jesus that has not even taken place as yet.

What is more, the text as it is written is very unclear, prompting, as Shabir himself has noted, any number of contradictory interpretations by Islamic scholars over the centuries.

And what is truly amazing to me is this. When the Quran contradicts the Christian teaching of the deity of Christ, it does so repeatedly and forcefully.

We likewise find references to this in the Hadith. But when it comes to this one single ayah, these 40 lonely

Arabic words that pop into the Quran out of nowhere, we likewise cannot find any meaningful commentary on these words in the

Hadith literature. Think of it. Muslims for 200 years could not think of any commentary by Muhammad on this ayah.

And yet, I, as a Christian, am to believe these 40 Arabic words written over half a millennium after the

Christ event in a different language from far away are to be taken to be sufficient to overthrow the entirety of the

New Testament and the testimony of eyewitnesses and martyrs. But as it is my job to defend the thesis this evening, allow me to read into the record the ancient testimony of the

Gospels regarding Jesus' own words about his death. If these words are to be contradicted, I assert the one doing so needs to do more than point out that liberal secular scholars tend to disagree with words that claim to be inspired.

That is a given. If we are to believe these words are falsely attributed to Jesus, then I suggest that proof of the dishonesty of the writers needs to be provided, documentary evidence of later tampering with the text must be submitted.

Without such evidence, the words of Jesus must stand. And so we start with these words recorded by Mark during the time when the eyewitnesses to these events were alive and well and very active in preaching

Jesus' message. In Mark 8 we read, And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.

And he was stating the matter plainly and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, but turning around and seeing his disciples, he rebuked

Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests but man's. And he summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,

If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Likewise, in Mark 10 45 we read, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

This New Testament witness to the centrality of the purpose of Christ and the cross is given prophetic authority in the words of the angel recorded in Matthew 1 21.

She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

The Apostle John often refers to the self -giving of Christ as a means of salvation, but one summary statement that is particularly striking is found in Revelation 5 9 through 10.

And they sang a new song saying, Worthy are you to take the book and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth. Paul's testimony is ubiquitous on this subject, of course, so I simply read into the testimony these words from Titus chapter 2,

Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

Many other texts from Peter and the writer to the Hebrews could be included, but we do not need to belabor the point the evidence of the

New Testament on the issue is overwhelming, consistent and clear. I would like to remind our

Muslim friends this evening of just how strong the evidence is that this was the faith of Esau, Messiah and his disciples.

Keeping in mind that the first 100 years of history after the death of Muhammad yields almost nothing that bears witness to his life, work or teachings and that to quote

Humphreys quote, Our evidence for documentation prior to 750 AD consists almost entirely of rather dubious citations and later compilations end quote.

The Christian evidence, the central teaching of the cross is much more primitive, much closer to the original sources than almost anything that can be cited for the life and teachings of Muhammad.

For example, a scant 65 years after the crucifixion, the elders of the church at Rome wrote to the church

Corinth. This letter is traditionally called First Clement dating around AD 96. Here we read quote,

Because the love he had for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord, in accordance with God's will gave his blood for us and his flesh for our flesh and his life for our lives end quote.

And in section seven, the same letter, let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ and understand how precious it is to his father.

Please note that the earliest Christian writings outside of the New Testament take the message of the crucified

Messiah and salvation through his blood as a given. There simply is no evidence that it was a point of contention between the allegedly true followers of Jesus and some

Pauline group that has taken over the faith. The only people who were attacking the concept of the crucifixion were doing so because of their connection to Gnosticism, a religion that denied that Jesus had truly been a man and that he had a physical body.

Now it is pretty obvious why people who did not believe Jesus was truly a man, but merely a phantom, would deny the crucifixion as it is very difficult to crucify spirits.

But it is likewise painfully obvious that Jesus was not a Gnostic sage wandering the streets of Jerusalem and surely the fantasies that developed into the writings of the

Gnostics over a century after Christ have nothing to do with the historical reality of the preaching of the cross being at the heart of the

Christian faith from long before the first Gnostic tried to make room for Jesus in his pantheon of emanations from his

God. About 77 years after the crucifixion, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, was traveling to Rome to die as a martyr.

In the letters he wrote as he traveled are repetitive references to the cross and the death of Christ. Remember, this documentation is still about 70 years closer to the events of Jesus's life than the best documentation that exists for any of the events in Muhammad's life.

Remember, Hadith collections like al -Bukhari date from over two centuries after the death of Muhammad, so Ignatius was three times closer to the sources than al -Bukhari was.

In his epistle to the Smyrnians, he wrote, I glorified Jesus Christ, the God who made you so wise, for I observed that you are established in an unshakable faith, having been nailed, as it were, to the cross of the

Lord Jesus Christ in both body and spirit and firmly established in love by the blood of Christ, totally convinced with regard to our

Lord that he is truly of the family of David with respect to human descent, son of God with respect to the divine will and power, truly born of a virgin, baptized by John in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, truly nailed in the flesh for us under Pontius Pilate and Herod the

Tetrarch. From its fruit we derive our existence, that is, from his divinely blessed suffering, in order that he might raise a banner for the ages through his resurrection, for his saints and faithful people, whether among Jews or among Gentiles in the one body of his church."

Around the same time, Polycarp wrote of the testimony of the cross and said we must pray for the enemies of the cross when he wrote of the

Philippians. Interestingly, these enemies were not denying that Jesus died on a cross. No, indeed, they were arguing that Jesus was a false messiah,

Christianity a hoax, but they were not in any way denying the historical reality of the crucifixion. And so we see that in the first hundred years after the death of Christ in the

Christian scriptures, Christian writings, even in secular writings, the cross is always connected with Jesus.

The next element of our thesis, that Jesus the messiah gave himself willingly as the sacrifice for God's people, is again the plain and consistent teaching of the entirety of the

New Testament, as well as all those followers of Jesus in those early years. Though some misread the inspired text, isolating particular verses from the rest of scripture in an attempt to make it sound otherwise, there can be no question that all the

New Testament, including the Synoptic Gospels, make it plain that Jesus willingly gave himself upon the cross of Calvary.

We have already heard Jesus' words from Mark and Matthew, that it was necessary that the Son of Man suffer and die and rise again the third day.

Luke likewise records these truths. It is not an argument to isolate Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane from the rest of the testimony of the

Synoptic Gospels and claim that Jesus was an unwilling participant in the scheme of the cross.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Indeed, such a theory makes Jesus downright cowardly, for in the

Muslim view, Jesus is merely facing his own death, and many have been the men who have faced death with bravery and courage.

The reason Jesus praised the Father in the Garden has nothing to do with the fear of death. It has everything to do with the sinless

Son of God becoming sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. It has everything to do with the wrath of God falling in its full fury upon the willing substitute.

This is the only way to understand the prayer of Jesus without accusing him of cowardice. It also happens to be the only way to read the

Gospels in a fair and even -handed manner by allowing them to speak for themselves. It is a horrible misreading of his words to miss the real reason for the prayer, but the

Muslim is forced to misread the text, since the real reason for the prayer has everything to do with Jesus becoming the substitute for God's people and taking their sins upon himself, and this

Islam, coming six centuries later, denies. If Islamic readers of the Gospels would apply the same rule of interpretation to the

New Testament that they do to the Quran, they would not mistakenly accuse the writers of errors and come to false conclusions about the intentions of Jesus.

But many, following after those who do not believe God can speak or reveal his truth, pit one part of the New Testament against another.

Hence, the synoptics are said to present one view, while John presents a contradictory one. But it is far more consistent to allow for harmonization of an ancient text than to assume contradiction.

This is true in reading the Quran, and it is true in reading the Bible. So we read Jesus saying in John 10, 18, no one has taken it away from me, that is his life, but I lay it down on my own initiative.

I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my father.

Surely, no believing Muslim can question that if Esau the Messiah was in fact the son of God, then he would have this kind of authority, this kind of power.

And this is indeed the testimony of the New Testament. But truly, there isn't any reason to belabor the point. Indeed, if Surah 4, 157 in the

Quran is as understood by most Muslims today, that God made it appear that Jesus had died upon the cross, then should not all available historical records reflect this?

Shouldn't it be the verdict of history that this happened since Allah made it appear so? Indeed, if one accepts the idea that Allah, in essence, deceived the

Jews and everyone else at Calvary, then is it not Allah who invented the Christian faith by so doing?

Should it really be surprising that all the credible first century sources say Jesus died if Allah made it appear so?

But it is just here we encounter the real question of the debate today. To believe the Islamic denial of the crucifixion, we must accept the following.

First, that the original followers of Jesus were significantly less brave and noble than the followers of Muhammad, for they failed to communicate the truth about who

Jesus was. They allowed a usurper like Paul to take over and spread lies about Jesus, resulting in literally hundreds of millions of people committing shirk for 2 ,000 years.

This, even though the Quran promises, the true followers of Jesus would be victorious over the unbelievers. Secondly, we must believe

Paul, Mark, Matthew, John, Peter, Luke, and all the other New Testament writers were likewise either deceivers or themselves deceived, for they all taught us to believe

Jesus is the son of God and that he died upon the cross. Next, Muslims must believe that even though Allah gave the

Torah and the Injil, that he did not safeguard them or protect them, but instead allowed them to be corrupted so quickly that we cannot even find them in history any longer.

One must ask the Muslim if Allah could not protect those revelations. Well, I believe he has protected the

Quran. And so in closing, I come back to the only real issue Christians and Muslims must debate this evening.

If you're a Muslim tonight, let me ask you, let's say someone came along in the middle of the 13th century claiming to be a prophet who never once read the

Quran, though he claimed his teachings were consistent with it. And let's say this person wrote a single short verse, say of 40 words or so, and said the

Hijrah never took place. Never happened. What's more, for some reason, this alleged prophet never says another word about it.

He never explains it. None of his followers for another 200 years seem to know anything about this amazing assertion.

Now, honestly, how much weight are you going to give such a claim? Obviously, I'm drawing a parallel to help you see the situation as a

Christian sees it. The reason we are here this evening is because of Surah 4, 157. The evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus is really not in question of many historical sense, not even from a biblical sense, clearly.

What we must question this evening is why anyone would believe that 40 Arabic words traceable only to the middle of the 7th century written by someone without firsthand knowledge of the

Christian scriptures, without any meaningful historical connection to the events that took place that day in Jerusalem, and themselves liable to all sorts of different meanings and understandings are a sufficient basis upon which to ground a denial of the testimony sealed in blood by the original followers of Jesus.

As for me, I see no reason whatsoever to accept these 40 words while rejecting the thousands of historically sound, consistent words of the apostles of my

Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you very much. Thank you,

Dr. White. Now a 25 -minute opening statement by Shabir Ali. This will be followed by 12 -minute rebuttals.

Thank you very much, Dr. White, for that delightful presentation. I want to begin by thanking all of the people who have made it possible for me to be here and to speak before you tonight, including

Richard Pierce, Michael O 'Fallon, Dr. White himself, and all of you folks whose reason we have actually come together here tonight because we could have spoken to each other on the telephone.

We could have met some other location, but you are the reason that we're here in Seattle. I also begin by praising our creator and fashioner and ask him to send peace and blessings upon all of his prophets and to bless our meeting here tonight so that we all come out winners.

Often in a debate, some people think that one side should win and the other side should lose, but I believe that if we play it right, then we all come out winners.

What I mean by that is that I'm not here tonight to try and prove one case against another case.

I came out here tonight to try and understand the two positions better, and I feel that if we understand the two positions better, then we will be better contributors towards our modern future world of dialogue and interfaith understanding and living in harmony with people with whom we do not necessarily share the same beliefs.

It is also important that we do not gloss over the differences, and we do try to understand what they are.

And so my contribution as a student of the Islamic faith and doing a minor part -time as a hobby on other faiths as well, then my contribution will be to try and bring before you some of the recent research that I've been privy to.

In fact, much of my study in preparation for this debate has been guided by some of the books that Dr.

White himself has recommended, or some of the required texts that he has prescribed for those who are going to have the course with him over the last week.

And I must confess I learned a lot from these books, and I feel that we have sufficient here with which to advance our dialogue and our mutual understanding of the two faiths.

First, I come to this as a Muslim. And naturally as a Muslim, I have my Muslim priest oppositions.

I'd be a fool to try and deny that. And I'd be all the wiser to try and understand what it is in order to know how

I react with the material that I'm studying. Naturally, because of my belief in the Quran, I tend to defend that.

And if I see something that is questionable about it, then I will try to find a way around that and to understand the answer for it and to show that there is no problem.

And I believe that others do the same. If someone believes in the Bible and someone comes and says, well, wait a minute, it looks like you have a problem in the

Bible, then you would say, well, it doesn't look like there is a problem here. The two things might look different, but there is an understanding, there's an explanation, and so on.

So I come at this with a Muslim priest opposition, just as some of you may come towards it with a

Christian priest opposition. My Muslim priest opposition also guides me to think that no one dies for the sins of another person.

Each one basically pays for his own sins. But on the other hand, we have an all -forgiving, merciful

God who can forgive us. And all he really needs is for us to be repentant and for us to do whatever we have done wrong.

So in the Islamic conception of things, if someone commits wrong, then he should feel repentant, he should ask

God to forgive him or her, and to repair whatever wrong has been done between persons or between oneself and God's creatures as much as this is reasonably possible.

And we believe that once one does all of this, then God forgives our sins. And in that case, there does not seem to be any need for someone to die for our sins.

So our topic tonight is was Jesus Christ crucified as a willing sacrifice for the sins of God's people?

And my answer will be no. From the Islamic perspective, there seems to be no need for that. More than this, in the

Muslim conception of things, it would seem unjust for God to come at it from this angle, to want to forgive the sins of people.

And in order to do that, use an innocent individual and have him crucified instead for the sins of the guilty.

It seems to Muslims that if God wants, he can just simply let all of the guilty go free. And this would not be contrary to his justice because God is not only just, but he's also merciful and wise.

He does wise things and he acts through his mercy. Surely, if people commit wrong, they deserve the wrath of God, but God may respond with his mercy instead because he's also merciful and kind.

Now, coming at it from this angle, one asks as well as a Muslim, what do I expect to find of the teachings of Jesus in the

Holy Bible? And the answer to that is that from the Quranic perspective,

God has revealed the Torah, but that does not necessarily correspond exactly with what today is being called the

Torah. Usually when we say Torah today, we refer to the first five books in the Christian Bible, which also is the part of the

Jewish Bible, of Jewish Tanakh, the Holy Scriptures, the first five books. But we know that these five books obviously have gone through some evolution over time.

And when the Muslim looks for the original revelation that was given by God, a

Muslim is not going to equate the first five books, the Torah, with the Torah that is mentioned in the

Quran. But again, it depends on context. If the Quran is speaking about the Torah that exists at the time when the

Quran is speaking, then obviously it means what people refer to as Torah. But if it is referring to the original revelation that was given to the prophet

Moses, then obviously it is referring to a book that existed in his lifetime. And we know from the book of Deuteronomy that the death of Moses is described in the last chapter, chapter 34.

So it seems that at least this part was written after Moses. And then who is to say what other part may have been written as well after his lifetime.

In a similar way, when the Quran refers to the Injil or the Gospel, the Quran says that God taught Jesus the

Injil. So then one wants to know what exactly is the Injil. At the same time, the

Quran says, let the people of the Gospel judge by what God has revealed therein. So we have two different references here to Injil in two different historical contexts.

On the one hand, the Injil is something that God taught Jesus. On the other hand, the

Injil is something that the people of the Gospel can judge by, at least by those parts of it which

God has revealed. So on the one hand, we're talking about an original

Injil taught to Jesus. And on the other hand, we're speaking of an Injil or a Gospel which

Christians do possess and which they can use as a guide for faith and for life, for doctrine and for teaching.

But not all of it, the Quran is saying, let the people of the Gospel judge by what God has revealed therein.

And so whoever has the Injil or the Gospel might now be stimulated to think about what the Quran means here.

It's almost like Jesus saying to people, go and learn what this means. So the Quran says to you, judge by what

God has revealed in the Gospels. Well then, it's up to you to try and now think what really has

God revealed in this book? What parts are from God? What might have been from later people? What does the

Quran say about the crucifixion of Jesus? Dr. White is correct, and this is not my rebuttal period, so I won't be responding directly to what he said now.

But he is correct, at least in saying that the Quranic text regarding the crucifixion and what precisely happened is a little bit ambiguous.

And this is not very surprising given the way that the Quran speaks about itself.

The Quran says that it contains two sorts of verses. There are clear verses and there are ambiguous verses.

And that those with diseased hearts will go seeking after the meaning of the ambiguous verses in order to create dissension and discord.

But the believer responds by saying all of it is from God. We believe in all of it. In what sense then is the statement in the

Quran about the crucifixion of Jesus somewhat ambiguous? Well, we know about the ambiguity because the

Muslim scholars trying to interpret it over time have in fact come up with a variety of interpretations.

And when we have this variety of interpretations, that itself begins to be a clue that the interpreters do not have any definite information.

And as Dr. White has said, there's nothing reported from the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace, that he said that the interpretation of this verse is such and such.

What we do have is, or are, our interpretations that go back as far back as Ibn Abbas, one of the companions and followers of the

Prophet Muhammad. And though he's a very important commentator on the Quran, it seems that what he reported and others besides him have reported are information that they gathered from people that they spoke to, from Jews and Christians.

They started with the Quranic text and they took some parts of it, but only some parts. Extremely literally.

And they tried to find out, what does it mean to say, ma qataluhu wa ma salabuhu. They killed him not, nor did they crucify him.

It seemed to them that the Quran is denying two things. Denying that they killed him, and denying that they even hung him on a cross.

However, an Indian scholar, Abdul Majid Daryabadi, in his Tafsir al -Quran, an

English work in four volumes, actually in his footnotes, defined crucifixion as the act of killing a person by nailing him to a cross.

If we took that definition and said they kill him not, nor did they kill him by nailing him to a cross, you would see that there is some overlap between the two terms.

And it seems to me that this is what the Quran actually intended. Even though Abdul Majid Daryabadi himself did not reach that conclusion, he reached a conclusion which is quite widespread in all of the classical commentaries on the

Quran, to say that someone else was miraculously made to look like Jesus, and that someone else was put on the cross and crucified instead.

In the meantime, Jesus was taken up alive into heaven. That is a widespread interpretation of the

Quran, but I do not believe that that is a required interpretation on the part of Muslims.

The Quran says they kill him not, nor did they crucify him, and it is enough for Muslims to say, let us find out what that means by looking at all of the historical records that are available, by looking at the

New Testament, which was written very soon after the event, and to find out what information is there that the

Quran could possibly be referring to. The earliest commentators of the Quran did not in fact have this sort of information ready before them.

As I said, they spoke to other people, and they reported what the commentators themselves came to be wary of, and they referred to as Israeliyat, or information which comes from the

Israelite peoples, and which are not necessarily dependable to be used as Quranic interpretation.

So in short, I have no difficulty in thinking that the

Quran is denying not that Jesus was actually hung on a cross, but the

Quran is denying that Jesus was actually killed by the enemies of God by the act of crucifixion.

The details of that we can study. Does that gel with anything that we know from the

New Testament? Indeed it does, and we'll have a chance to elaborate on that a little bit further.

But let me look at some other issues that are very pertinent to this debate here tonight.

The willingness of Jesus to die for the sins of humankind. Now it is one thing to say that Jesus was crucified, or that he even died on the cross.

Suppose we accept for the sake of argument that Jesus was crucified, he died on the cross, and that he was even resurrected from the dead.

By the miraculous power of God. How does that prove that he died for the sins of anyone?

Now this is a real question. And in fact, this has become a question for many conservative Christian scholars as well.

Dr. White is suspicious that I get my information from people who are atheists or very skeptical about the

Bible and so on. But it so happens that over the last 150 years, many

Christian scholars, very devout people, have been wondering what sense does it make to say that God crucified an innocent person so that the guilty could go free?

Now I have a book here, which is actually on Dr. White's recommended reading list. It's a book edited by Bealby and Eddy, The Nature of the

Atonement, Four Views, and basically represents four views, that of Gregory Boyd, Joel Green, Bruce Reichenbach, and Thomas Schreiner.

Thomas Schreiner argues for the view that would be similar to what Dr. White is representing here tonight, that Jesus died a sacrificial death.

However, the other scholars think that there are other ways of conceiving of the death of Jesus that does not require the sacrificial imagery.

And while some of them are still allowing for the sacrificial imagery, they're thinking that that should not be the primary way of thinking about the death of Jesus.

But Joel Green, for example, in his previous book, Recovering the

Scandal of the Cross, has actually spoken at length about the difficulties involved in thinking about Jesus as a sacrificial death.

And Thomas Schreiner actually takes issue with him and thinks that Joel Green actually denies the sacrificial death.

And I would have expected Joel Green to come back and defend himself and say, no,

I really do believe that Jesus died as a penal substitute for the sins of humankind, but he doesn't actually do that.

Instead, these writers, Green and others, point out several difficulties with this idea of the sacrificial death.

A scholar in the United Kingdom, Steve Chalk, actually is said to have referred to the penal substitution with the terms cosmic child abuse.

He's wondering, does this actually make sense to say that God has done it this way? And several scholars have given here a number of problems that they feel need to be addressed.

And I hope that Dr. White will address these problems. First, only has the appearance of being,

Joel Green, Joel Green is saying that the theory that Jesus died for as a substitutionary death for others only has the appearance of being biblical and is in fact foreign to the

Bible. And two, it divides the father from the son. And three, it supports an abstract view of justice that doesn't speak to people today and depart from the relational and covenantal views found in the scriptures.

Four, it wrongly understands God's wrath as retributive punishment. Five, it restricts

God's love by this abstract concept of justice. Six, it omits the necessity of the resurrection.

Seven, it distorts what the Bible says. And eight, it removes the need for ethics. Other scholars too have joined in.

Gregory Boyd for his part has some objections. First, how are we to understand sin and guilt literally being transferred from a guilty person to an innocent person?

Two, what sort of justice is it that punishes an innocent person for what another person did?

Three, how are we to reconcile the idea that the father needs to exact payment from or on behalf of his enemies with Jesus teaching an example that we are to love unconditionally and forgive without demanding payment?

Four, along these same lines, how are we to reconcile the idea that God cannot be reconciled with sinners without his wrath being satisfied with blood, with the pervasive scriptural depiction of God forgiving people without needing his wrath appeased?

And he refers to Luke chapter 15, for example. If God must always get what is coming to him in order to forgive, namely a kill, does

God ever really forgive? And five, how is the view that God requires a kill to have his rage placated essentially different from the pagan or magical understanding of divine appeasement found in primordial religions throughout history?

So these are Boyd's objections. Reichenbach for his part did not offer so much of an objection to the sacrificial view that would add in much to what we have already discussed.

But it is interesting that he, for his part, argued that even if we accept the sacrificial death of Jesus, we must not conclude that this is the only way open to God.

If God wanted, he could have achieved the same result through some other means.

And I would have expected that Thomas Schreiner would have denied that this is possible. But in fact, he admitted, he wrote on page 149 of this book, it seems quite conceivable that God, in his sovereignty and love, could cure us without his son suffering the pain of death.

So then, that brings us back to the question, why should it be necessary for Jesus to die for the sins of humankind or for anyone or even for God's people as a more limited group?

And how did this become a teaching in Christianity? How did it become such an important teaching?

I would argue that there are three things to be aware of in this regard. One, is that the earliest

New Testament writings we have now are the writings of Paul. And Paul's writings actually show that early

Christianity was not one unified group. And this is quite borne out by the writing of a great scholar of Christianity, James Dunn.

In his book, The Evidence for Jesus, he addresses that in a separate chapter. Was Christianity just simply one unified group or, in fact, a collection of many different groups in disharmony with each other?

In particular, what is noted is that Paul was opposed by many who considered themselves to be

Jewish Christians. They considered James to be the head of the church, and obviously in Acts of the Apostles, he is the head of the

Jerusalem church at one point. And they considered Paul to be a heretic. In Paul's own writings, it is clear that he is in disharmony with many important persons of early

Christianity, such as Peter. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, actually speaks about a confrontation with Peter.

But that, of course, is his view on the confrontation. We do not have Peter's reply to what Paul is saying there.

Okay, we have second letter of Peter, but the second letter of Peter is notoriously regarded by Christian scholars, both ancient and modern, to be a pseudonymous writing.

It claims to be from Peter, but it's not actually from Peter. And since that is the case, we must conclude that apparently somebody wrote second

Peter in order to show that there was, after all, some harmony between Peter and Paul. This letter recognizes

Paul and his writings and treats them as though they are scripture. So the first thing to be aware of is that Paul, in fact, goes to great lengths in his own writings to insist that Jesus died for the sins of humankind.

But this could hardly be credited to Jesus. There are two sayings of Jesus that could be noted in this regard.

One is the ransom saying that Dr. White just quoted from Mark 10, verse 45.

But notice that the ransom saying is not the same as a sacrificial saying.

Jesus did not say there, I came to die for the sins of humankind. He came to die, if that saying is correct.

The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

As Stephen Finland has pointed out in his book Problems with Atonement, there is a great difference between ransom and sacrifice.

Sacrifice means you get an animal, you sacrifice that animal, and God somehow is pleased with what you have done and he forgives your sins.

Ransom means somebody has got you captive and you pay him to get released.

They're two different things. And that, of course, is one way of conceiving of the death of Jesus, and that is one way that people have in the past conceived of the death of Jesus almost until Anselm of Canterbury when the idea of satisfaction,

Jesus dies and that satisfies the anger over the wrath of God, appeases his wrath, and that, therefore, we are fine.

But the idea among many early Christian fathers was, in fact, that somehow the devil had us entrapped and God gave his

Son, and they tried to explain it in a variety of ways, in order to get us back. And hence you have the saying in John's Gospel that God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten

Son, so we should be asking gave to whom? And that, too, does not seem to fit very well, but in any case, that saying does not prove that Jesus ever said that he came to die a sacrificial death, because sacrifice and ransom are two different things.

The other saying is Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, having a meal with his disciples and saying, take this as my body and take this as my blood and do this always in remembrance of me.

But that saying in Luke's Gospel where it says do this always in remembrance of me is thought by many scholars to be a later addition into the

Gospel according to Luke. And if it is a later addition into the Gospel according to Luke, then we must ask where did this come from?

It actually comes from one of the letters of Paul. Paul was the first person to have said this. And so you see where the influence is going.

Paul says something and now we're trying to put it into the Gospels to make sure that Jesus, in fact, said it.

In any case, finally, we should say that to say that Jesus died as a sacrificial death for the sins of humankind seems to be a later development that could not really and should not really be credited to Jesus.

It is loaded with logical problems. It does not represent God well and properly.

It does not do justice to the mercy of God. And this is one of the points that Bruce Reichenbach himself has made that God is not only just, but he's also merciful.

And even though people may deserve his wrath, he may decide to be merciful to them. In essence, then, and in some, we should say that Jesus did not die as a willing sacrifice for the sins of God's people or of any people.

And if anyone wants to be forgiven of their sins, they should turn back to God. And God is ever willing to forgive them.

God does not lose anything by our disobeying him. It does not take away anything from his honor or glory.

He would be glorious and honored even without us. And if we disobey him, this is to our own loss.

But if we turn back and be a repentant, then God is willing to forgive us. And this, in fact, is the message of Luke's gospel.

And this seems to be the message of the earliest Christians as well as represented in Acts of the

Apostles. Luke's gospel, for example, in chapter 15 has the story of the prodigal son.

And what does that story show? That God is willing to forgive us. When the son comes back, the father sees him and the father says,

Quick, let's have a banquet because my son who was lost has now suddenly come back.

And the son who was with him said, Father, I served you all these years, but you never threw a banquet for me.

He said, Son, you do not understand. This other son of mine was lost. And today he is found.

Let's have a banquet. And therefore, we say that God forgives without requiring a penalty or a substitute or the sacrifice of Jesus.

Thank you. Thank you,

Mr. Ali. A 12 minute rebuttal now by Dr. White. Thank you very much.

Statement was made that no one dies for the sins of another person. The biblical statement would be no sinner can die for the sins of another sinner.

However, one who is innocent and gives himself can indeed, and according to the biblical record, did indeed give himself for the sins of others.

And that person was Jesus Christ. We heard a number of people cited to us this evening, and it once again illustrates the difference between those who believe that revelation takes place that has been preserved and that it is infallible and errant and those who do not.

For example, we had people cited who are open theists who do not believe that God even knows what's going to happen tomorrow.

They were cited as Christian scholars. We have people who deny the inerrancy of the Bible cited as Christian scholars who do not believe that you should be concerned about the consistency between what one part of the

Bible says and another part of the Bible says because they themselves begin with the assumption that the

Bible is contradictory to itself. I would have to ask my Muslim friends, would you accept as a Muslim scholar a person who begins with the presupposition that Muhammad never existed, the

Quran is full of errors, and that it should just be looked at as a religious textbook?

Would that person be rightly called a Muslim scholar? And in fact, would that person be allowed to exercise

Muslim scholarship in a Muslim land? That would be the question that I would ask. Some of the statements that were made had to do with the subject of the atonement from various biblical scholars.

Let me, if I might, and I forgot my Bible, read you a few texts and just see if these do not speak to you concerning what the biblical testimony is.

In the book of Isaiah, we have the vision of the holiness of God in Isaiah chapter six.

And I believe that one of the issues that separates us is we have a very different view of sin. We have a very different view of sin.

There is the story in the Hadith literature concerning the man who killed 99 people.

He asked a priest if he could get forgiveness, and when he was told no, he killed the priest, and now he killed 100. And so someone else told him to go to a certain city, and there he would be told what he should do.

And as he's going there, he dies. The angels come to take his soul and they fight over where he should go.

And to make the story very quick, what Allah does is he makes the earth to shrink between where the man is and the city he was going to, and his soul goes to paradise because he was just this much closer to the city he was going to than the city he was coming from, as if the murder of 100 people could somehow be taken care of by simply going toward a city to find out what it means to have repentance.

This is not the view of sin that is found from Genesis through Revelation in the text of Scripture.

There is something called the holiness of God. There is something called his law. There is something called the demonstration of his glory and his righteousness that is very important throughout the text of the inspired

Scriptures. In Hebrews chapter 7, if we are told that the Bible does not teach these truths about what

Jesus has done, Hebrews chapter 7 tells us, Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood permanently.

Therefore, he is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

To make intercession is something that the high priest did. And the high priest is a picture that is used of Jesus not only in Hebrews, but also in the

Gospel of John to present Jesus as the one who, because he has a means of intercession, that is, he has the blood to take into the holy place, he is able to intercede and therefore to save perfectly those who draw nigh unto

God by him. Likewise, in chapter 9 of the book of Hebrews, for Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us, kuper is a

Greek word of substitution. And while there are liberal scholars who try to say, oh, there's no substitution in the New Testament, they likewise have to simply dismiss the inspiration of any text that contradicts their particular position.

And so when it says that he appears for us in our behalf, these texts are simply dismissed.

Continues to say, nor was it that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.

Otherwise, he would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

This is something Jesus does voluntarily. Frequently, the reflexive pronoun is used in Philippians 2, for example.

He made himself of no reputation. He sacrifices himself. He gives himself. These are all the testimonies of the scriptures.

And what must we do to come up with a New Testament that has no self -sacrificing

Jesus? We simply have to dismiss it as an inspired document. We have to believe that there is no way to know what it originally stated.

We have to assert that there is some type of conflict between Paul and James, even though we have in their inspired texts the same messages about who

Jesus Christ is. We have to somehow try to discern thoughts and intentions of people who've been dead for a very long time and come up with conflict and dismiss passages.

Let me assure you that if someday we have the opportunity of debating the issue of the

Koran and what the Koran says about X, Y, or Z, I will take the Koran as the Koran. I will allow the

Koran to, as someone's television program says, speak for itself. Well, I think we need to start a television program.

Let the New Testament speak for itself, because when the New Testament speaks for itself, there is tremendous harmony and consistency.

Where is the documented evidence? Why doesn't James write a book that demonstrates that Paul's doctrine that Jesus is the son of God and he died for the sins of the world is wrong?

Why is it that Peter doesn't write anything at all? And instead, someone fakes Peter's name, as we were told earlier, and somehow inserts this into the canon of the

New Testament. Where is the documented evidence of these assertions? I know there are liberal scholars. I went to Fuller Seminary for crying out loud.

I know there are liberal scholars. And I know what they say. But when I ask, excuse me, what is your evidence for that?

Well, you know, I have this theory. Well, you know, I have this idea. Well, you know, we can talk about the

Koran and there's all sorts of Orientalists that have all sorts of theories about all the different compilations and different sources and this person was involved and that person was involved.

And we can talk about that, I suppose, if we want to. But where is the documented evidence? Where is the manuscript evidence?

How is it that Paul and his followers were somehow so much more mighty and powerful than the original followers of Jesus?

How do they wipe out all of their books? How do they wipe out all of their writings? How is it that we can't find any evidence of this non -sacrificing

Christianity that comes to us down through history? We had a Chalk's statement in England where he identified the concept of substitutionary atonement as cosmic child abuse.

Yes, that's why the man is a heretic. And that is why we take him to the Bible and say, show me your position in the

Bible and he can't do it. Each one of these people has to, at some point in time, when brought to the inspired text, say, well, you know what?

That's one text I'm just not comfortable with. Now, what do you do with a Muslim who's not comfortable with an ayah in the

Quran? Do you change Islamic theology to fit their comfort level? Or do you say, you have a problem with what

God has revealed in the Quran? Well, in the same way, when someone's not comfortable with what the Bible says,

I say, well, then you have a problem with the Christian faith. You have a problem with the Holy Spirit and you have a problem with the

Lord Jesus Christ, who had no problems whatsoever in citing from the Old Testament and seeing that it had been accurately preserved down to his day and citing it as the final authority in all things.

We heard it said, for example, by one of the writers that the substitutionary atonement divides the father and the son.

No, it doesn't. It does just the opposite. It is the son doing the will of the father. It is the father himself who is the origin and source of all this.

Read Ephesians chapter one and you will see that this entire plan originates in the father. It is effectuated by the son and made and applied by the

Holy Spirit of God. It doesn't divide the father and the son in any way, shape or form. We even heard the argument, it doesn't appeal to people today.

Well, congratulations, it never has. The cross has always been a stumbling block, a scandal onto the

Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles, and it will always be offensive to the natural man because what it says is, you cannot save yourself.

God's wrath abides upon you until you bow the knee to this one who gave his life on Calvary's cross.

It will always be offensive to the natural man. So to say it's an argument, well, it's not attractive to people.

Until God by his spirit changes a person's heart, it will always be unattractive to someone.

We all confess that. In fact, Paul says it's the stench of death. In the nostrils of people, to be reminded of the great price by which we have been saved.

As I mentioned, Gregory Boyd was cited, who is an open theist. And one of the points that he made was he said, well, this whole concept has a problem with how the

Bible keeps saying that God can forgive sin without sacrifice. It doesn't say that. Paul made it very clear in Romans chapter three that the reason that God was able to pass over the sins previously committed was because of the certainty of the sacrifice of Christ.

That's how Abraham could be called the friend of God was not because he just simply passed over Abraham's sins, but that because in the certitude of what

God was going to do, as the early church says in Acts, they saw that the cross was God's purpose. He had predestined it to take place.

This was how he was going to glorify himself because of the certitude of that. Abraham, even those before the cross can receive the benefits of that by faith in God.

And so Boyd is just simply doing what Boyd does. So often he ignores entire sections of scripture because his view of inspiration is grossly deficient.

We also had statements given to us from Reichenbach as well. I'm trying to get to as many of them as I possibly can in a brief period of time.

But we had the assertions made to us, for example, that Paul is in battle with other people.

Well, he is in battle with certain people he calls false brethren who had snuck in unaware, as that's said to us in Galatians, that's recorded for us in Acts.

Who were these people? Are these allegedly the original followers of Jesus? Where are their writings?

Why is it that they disagree with the Gospels? Well, because Paul messed with those too. Paul was a very busy man.

He somehow is able to be all over the place and to, in fact, I guess, impact writings that even come after his time and everything like this.

Where is the evidence that when Paul meets with Peter, there is some sort of an argument between them where they're disagreeing with him?

Where is the documented evidence? Where is this found? Yes, we agree.

There are people who do not believe that God has spoken with clarity, who look at religious texts and they take them apart and they come up with some pretty weird ideas about what was going on.

But this is a Muslim -Christian debate. We both believe God has spoken. And so if God has spoken and if, as we read in the

Quran, that the people of the Gospel are to judge by what's contained therein, if we cannot even identify what was inspired in the text of the

New Testament, how can we judge anything? How are we supposed to judge what Muhammad said if, in point of fact, what was possessed at that point in time was completely corrupted?

These are the things we need to think of and I honestly believe we need to allow the New Testament to speak for itself when it presents the cross.

Thank you very much. Thank you,

Dr. White. And now a 12 -minute rebuttal from Mr. Ali. Ladies and gentlemen,

I'd just like to respond very quickly to some of the things that Dr. White has mentioned in his opening statement.

First, he spoke about the historical reality of the death of Jesus and he cited many passages of the

New Testament and even some extra New Testament writings to prove this to be the case.

But did you realize that, in fact, even in the New Testament, there appears to be some reason for doubting that in depicting the death of Jesus as the physiological cause, usually a person has to use

Mark as a source. And we can see where Mark said once that looking at the paraclete in which this is depicted shows that, in fact, both

Matthew and Jesus because one reason is, is he really dead?

Or was he really dead at that time? And Matthew, according to Matthew, shows that the

Jewish scholars who had actually departed left the scene. They came back into the court of Pilate on the

Sabbath. What do you think was the first deception?

They're feeling deceived. They went away thinking that the legs of the crucified victims would be broken. Now, people's sins could be forgiven.

I have argued at length that this is not necessary and I've shown from the Gospel of 1 Luke and even in the early preachings of the original disciples that found in the

Acts of the Apostles of Jesus.

Atheist scholars. If some of the Christian scholars James provided, atheists dedicated their lives to Christ on the faith.

And is it possible that if we rethink some of the issues and if Christians were to say that, you know, some of the things that people...

Is it necessary that God, in order to forgive people, has to make...

We have to discount what the person said by proving it wrong. Not prove that the person is the wrong person.

Even the devil may say the truth some of the time. Now, James is saying that the

Qur 'an was written by the Prophet Muhammad who did not have direct knowledge of the New Testament.

And so he wrote whatever he wrote not. The Qur 'an is repudiating some of the things that are clearly there in the

New Testament and these could not have been hidden. For example, it is not hidden that the New Testament claims that Jesus is the son is believed of old.

Who went into a synagogue and preached. Yes, the

Qur 'an is a clear book. But the Qur 'an has a latitude on to let people think, research, go to the details about what happened on the occasion of the...

He is going into Jerusalem. But it is very unlikely that he actually said that he was going to be crucified.

It looks like the idea that we... Is the later detail that we take a parallel and we look at...

We can see that Matthew has reviewed the story and improved it in order to make the predictions more specific.

But Jesus predicted that he's going into Jerusalem Did the angel speak to Joseph earlier in Matthew's gospel that came to be inserted into the gospel?

You can see what happened to Matthew's gospel. If you're looking at... Let's say you're viewing a movie from start to finish.

Something happens in the first half. You get the feeling that people have spliced and put together two sets.

Angels are appearing and a baby here.

Well, then that should feature in the rest of the story, right? People... There should be more magi coming.

I can say, well, wait a minute. We want to see how this boy... Isn't Jesus willing?

Jesus seems, at least initially, unwilling to do this. He is finally willing.

He says, let your will be done. But initially he prays to be saved from the cross. But in John's gospel, we get a different picture where Jesus deliberately came into the world to die for the sins of the world.

And so he doesn't pray like that. And he even says, I'm not going to pray like that. Thank you,

Mr. Elie. There will now be a break of five, no more than 10 minutes, we hope. We'll all be seated again for the 12 -minute cross -examination of Dr.

White for the affirmative. OK, the cross -examination portion of the evening will begin.

The person asking the question needs to keep the question under one minute in length, please. No rhetorical questions are allowed.

And the person designated is answering the questions in each of the next four exchanges of cross, not allowed to ask questions back to the questioner.

Those are the very basic Lincoln -Douglas ground rules. And we will begin with the affirmative cross -examination of Dr.

James White. So I'm going to be asking first, right? Yes. OK, all right, thank you.

Thank you, first of all, for being here again, Shabir. If I could sort of cut directly to the chase, would it be fair for me to say that any text that I might cite from the

New Testament on the subject of Christ's self -sacrifice for sin can be dismissed as a later interpolation based upon the adoption of particular presuppositions that you bring to the text?

I think if you cite Hebrews, Hebrews is by an unknown author. If you cite 2

Peter, obviously I've already said that this is by someone later writing the name of Peter.

If you cite Paul, well, this obviously is a matter of contention between Muslims and Christians, as is evident in this debate.

If you cite the Gospels, then I would be asking whether this is originally something Jesus said or this is something someone is saying about him.

Is this in the early strata of information? Is it multiply attested? Is there some variation and evolution in the narrative and so on?

So it would be fair to say that you approach the text of the New Testament as a compilation of uninspired statements that are contradictory to one another, and it's our job to sort of try to filter through them, and your filter would be your

Islamic presuppositions? I would consider the New Testament to be a collection of inspired writings that have gone through some evolution over the early decades and centuries of its transmission, especially the early decades and especially during the period of its oral circulation before they became written documents.

And my filter would be a simple one from an Islamic point of view if I'm thinking as a

Muslim, how do I approach the New Testament? As a simple

Muslim, I would say the simple measure is whether it agrees with the Quran or not. But if I step out of that box and I try to learn from history and the multiple disciplines that are available to a

Muslim, then I would be asking historical questions of the writings as Christian scholars themselves ask.

But you will not use the same criteria for the Quran. For example, you just mentioned multiple attestation, but there could not be any such thing with your own inspired writings, right?

As I've said, I believe in the Quran to be the word of God, and naturally, I will tend to approach that differently.

But if I'm to think as a critical student, of world religions, then obviously,

I would have to read a wide variety of writings, including those that are very critical of the Quran, and I have read some.

And then I would have to ask whether what is being claimed about the Quran here is true, given what

I already know. And I would always be making contact between what

I know and what is being presented to me, and I would evaluate that information. If it is correct, then I would have to accept it.

If someone gives me information proving that the Quran is not the word of God, at least in one little iota, then

I would have to accept that. But so far, in my review of all of the critical information that I've become privy to,

I have not found any such thing, and I remain confident that the Quran is 100 % the word of God. And so I approach it with that reverence.

So you have found inconsistencies in the positions adopted by the critics of the

Quran that would, in essence, vitiate their arguments that it's not what it claims to be.

I don't know if inconsistency vitiates their claims, because even though you might have a variety of scholars claiming different things, in which case they are inconsistent one with another, you might even have a scholar inconsistent with himself.

He may claim different things at different times. That by itself does not vitiate what they're claiming, though, of course, it will mitigate against the pomposity of the claims.

But what is more important is the specificity of any one claim. And what are the reasons and evidence that go in support of that particular claim?

I would have to evaluate that before I reach a final judgment. But if someone criticizes the second surah, which, as you know, as a doctoral student in this area, there's some evidence it circulated as a separate book unto itself early on.

There are Christians who, for example, name it and then name the Quran as separate things. If someone were to look at the second surah, which is so very long and contains so many different things, and as a presupposition would start with the idea, this cannot be the word of God, therefore,

I am going to postulate that this came from this perspective, and it looks like this person's trying to militate for this.

When you read that kind of criticism of the Quran, isn't the starting point something that you look at and allow to impact your final analysis of what's being said?

The second surah of the Quran is the longest surah. It has 286 verses, as opposed to some surahs which have only three verses.

And if some of the early Muslims had writings which contained only the second surah of the

Quran by itself, that by itself wouldn't prove that Muslims considered that surah by itself to be a book on its own, in contradistinction to the now prevailing belief that the

Quran contains the second surah within a larger book. And this, of course, goes for the

New Testament as well. In early times when writing materials were scarce and the technique of writing was not quite developed, letters were written in large tiles, naturally, you could not fit the entire

New Testament into a single scroll, and you would have multiple scrolls. If one reads the book by Muhammad Mustafa Azmi, the history of the

Quranic text, one would find that the early writing materials that were used for preserving the Quran were such that the

Quran, if you were to put the Quran all together into a single document, it would be a very large piece to carry around.

So naturally, people had parts of it. The presuppositions with which scholars address the various questions towards the

Quran are not as important as their findings, because as Harald Motzke has pointed out, one may have negative presuppositions, but through his scholarly work, arrive at positive findings.

What are more important are not the person's presuppositions, but his final claim, and again, the evidence that goes to support that claim.

This is what is more important, and that is what I try to focus on. So when we look at the evidence as it exists today, would you agree that without engaging in redaction criticism, which requires creating theories about texts we've never seen, the texts that have come down to us from the first century proclaim that Jesus died upon a cross for the sins of the world.

As they exist today, without assuming that we can take these apart and go, well,

I think this is a later accretion, or this comes from something over here. The texts as they exist today, the documentable evidence, all says from the

New Testament that Jesus died for the sins of the world. Wouldn't that be a true statement? Yes. Okay.

And if someone were to theorize that your sacred text is actually a compilation of disparate viewpoints and they just simply refused to allow it to speak for itself and just insisted without providing any documentary evidence to support their position that you cannot allow the

Quran to speak with one voice. You have to hear all sorts of conflicting voices within it. How would you...

Do you see the parallel that I as a Christian see to the approach you take to my New Testament?

Yes and no. Yes, I see that from your point of view, it looks to you that I'm doing something with the

New Testament that I wouldn't dare do with the Quran. And you have claimed that many times. But no, the parallel doesn't work because in my case, what

I have done is I have surveyed many of the critical writings about the Quran, many of the theories that tried to say that the

Quran was written much later. It wasn't available from the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Even theories that the

Prophet Muhammad didn't really make a hijrah from Mecca to Medina, as Muslims believe. Islam is really concocted in the second century of the

Muslim era, what is now considered to be the Muslim era. I have tried to study these theories and try to see on what evidence they have been built.

And I'm not convinced by that evidence. So after surveying all of that, I'm convinced that the Quran really is the word of God and the basic outline of Muslim history is correct.

But on the other hand, what I find when I survey the writings of Christian scholars, even scholars that are on your reading list,

I find like Scott McKnight and others, Raymond Brown, they all subscribe to the idea that Mark was the first gospel,

John the last, Matthew and Luke, depending on Mark, have changed and evolved the stories as they went.

And John has evolved the stories even greater still, not being dependent upon Mark, but even more free flowing.

These are such widely held conclusions that it seems difficult to deny them.

You do realize that just simply because it's on the reading list doesn't mean that I agree with it. True, but I, knowing you and hearing you on the back, if you had a book on the subject,

I would have put yours on the reading list too. So and in fact, in fairness, you did put my speech on the reading list, which means that you don't agree with everything that is on there.

But I think it is very unlikely that you would have tried to incorporate in your reading list a wide variety of Christian writings or writings from Christians that you don't really regard to be

Christians. Oh no, that's not true. But I can't argue with it at that point. I'm asking questions. But you, at this point, we're coming down to this particular issue.

You would, would you agree with me that the very same scholars who approach the New Testament text and start with the presupposition that there can, we cannot allow these texts to be harmonious.

We cannot allow them to be inspired. And therefore, we need to try to come up with these theories. Two part question.

A, would you not agree that they all come up with very different theories as to who Jesus was and what his intentions were.

And almost none of them end up coming up with the Jesus of the Quran. And B, would you not agree that all of those scholars would approach your text on the exact same basis and reject it on the exact same basis?

First, I don't believe that your characterization of these scholars is really correct. The scholars that I've been reading and referring to are writers of Bible commentaries.

They are graduates from Bible seminaries. And they're even teaching in Bible seminaries and in academic institutions.

These are people who have given their lives to study the New Testament. I don't believe they actually wake up one day and say, well, you know what?

I've got to really prove the New Testament wrong. So let me go and study Christianity to prove it wrong. There may be some people like that.

But most of those whom we are referring to are people who actually started out trying to defend and prove

Christianity right. And later on in their lives, as they've studied to a certain extent, they realize that certain conclusions cannot be avoided.

Christian scholars over the centuries try to ask, what is the literary relationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

And they try to reconstruct what that source must have been, that is common to all of these.

And eventually, they came up with the idea that Mark is really unavoidably the source of Matthew and Luke.

Thank you. I'll note that neither of you have any of my exhaustive writings on your reading list.

We'll have to see about that. Just an oversight, I'm sure. Throw me a bone. Now we'll have the 12 -minute cross -examination by Mr.

Shabir Ali of Dr. James White. Dr. White, I don't really have a list of prepared questions to ask you, but based on what we have been looking at today, the

Gospel according to Luke, in chapter 13, verse number 33, speaks of Jesus saying,

I must go on to Jerusalem for it is impossible for a prophet to perish, or to die, outside of Jerusalem.

Okay. What do you understand that text to be saying? Well, you'll notice it then continues on with the oracle against Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her. How often I want to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

You would not have it. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. And so it's an introduction to the fact that Jerusalem, as the capital city of the people of God, had for a very long time, just as Matthew puts it, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, who perished between the altar, been stiff -necked people.

The same theme that is repeated a number of times in the Book of Acts. But surely there have been prophets who have died outside of Jerusalem.

Okay, well, when it says, for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem, his point is, he as the prophet who is going to perish goes to Jerusalem so that the oracle that follows afterward will have its fulfillment that her house is left desolate to her.

The point being, he's the prophet and he has made it very clear he must necessarily go.

He had taught the disciples it was necessary that he go, be betrayed in the hands of the rulers and that the fact is, this must take place in Jerusalem because it is the sealing testimony of God's judgment upon these people.

Now, if Jesus is referring to himself as the prophet here that must die in Jerusalem and about whom it is impossible to die outside of Jerusalem, where would you say that Jesus died?

Inside of Jerusalem or outside of Jerusalem? Well, that would depend on whether you are trying to limit the city to just simply the four walls or you recognize that many times the

Bible uses geographical designators in such a way that it can be either very, very narrow or very, very wide.

For example, in the Old Testament when armies come up against Jerusalem, they are said to be at Jerusalem even though they're still outside the walls.

And so the point of Jesus' words in Luke chapter 13 is not to draw a distinction between inside the walls or outside the walls.

The point is that the prophet must die there because his death will be the final testimony of God against that city.

And then you have, if you're familiar with this, the parallel in Matthew chapters 23 and 24, this is part of that parallel material, where you have an extended discussion of the destruction of Jerusalem and the sign that that will be upon the people of Israel of their having rejected the

Messiah. Mm -hmm. Now, in the gospel, according to John, actually says that the crucifixion took place outside of Jerusalem.

So obviously within a convicted criminal who's carrying his cross or at least the cross beam or however that worked out with Simon of Cyrene, that criminal is obviously not going to get very far outside the city gates.

So the point of what I just said was, when you say outside of Jerusalem, if you mean outside the city gates, that's the point the writer

Hebrews makes. But that would be like saying that as soon as you cross the border between Seattle and Sea -Tac, that you're no longer in Seattle.

We said we flew up here, but we actually flew up to Sea -Tac. Well, obviously we recognize that literature uses geographical designators in different ways.

Yes, but still, if you take the literal saying of Jesus with that emphasis, it is impossible for a prophet to die outside of Jerusalem.

We have now the anomaly that if we claim that he died on the cross, then he would actually have died outside of Jerusalem, contrary to his own saying, which you said referred to himself.

Not if we allow for a rather reasonable utilization of language. Okay, we'll leave it at that.

Now, I have pointed out in some of our previous debate and also in what we have said here tonight, that there is an evolution in the story from one gospel to another.

In the Biola debate, I used a specific example of the raising back to life of Jairus' daughter.

And Jairus, according to Mark's gospel, comes up and says, my daughter is at the point of dying.

But in Matthew's gospel, he actually says, my daughter has just died.

And you had a way of reconciling these two statements. Can you explain that to us? Again?

Well, I mean, everybody can buy the DVD. I thought we did pretty well with that. But first of all,

I would have to start by just pointing out that it is a theory without documentation, without substantiation, outside of just simply saying, well, scholars theorize these things.

Scholars have theorized every possible synoptic gospel relationship.

In fact, there was a recent computer simulation that was run based upon grammatical and syntactical relationships that came up with Luke as the source of Matthew and Mark.

There have been times when scholarship preferred Matthian priority. And what I quoted from N .T.

Wright was not an open endorsement of everything N .T. Wright has ever said. What I quote from N .T. Wright is, we don't know, nor do we necessarily need to know.

It is only when you make a positive assertion that says, well, it must be this way, and therefore, because Mark says this, therefore,

I'm going to try to climb into Matthew's mind or I'm going to try to climb into Luke's mind that we get into all sorts of problems.

I just don't believe that that is a proper way of handling the text. In regards to the specific incident that you mentioned, the response that I provided was to point out that in one of the accounts, you do not have a number of the materials, a number of the incidents that take place even as Jesus is going to raise the daughter included.

In fact, it's called telescoping. It's called just focusing upon the event as a whole.

And since you're leaving out little details along the way, you just simply put the whole thing together as one.

And as I recall, it was Matthew, don't have the text in front of me right now, but who gave the shorter version and therefore, the alleged contradiction between the statements, which

I'm not sure has anything to do with the death of Christ, but the alleged contradiction between the statements is really understandable given what anyone would do in recording historical events when one person chooses to give a shorter version and the other person chooses to give a much longer version and to include other events that takes place that changes the timeline by giving the fuller account.

It's called telescoping. That's not the only example of it. There are numerous other examples of it. Sometimes even John gets in on the act and you can illustrate the same thing the few times that John enters into the synoptic parallel issue as well, as you've probably seen in studying the parallels yourself.

Yes. Now, my concern when I raised this in the Biola debate and even now would be, doesn't this mean that Matthew has actually made the man say something that he didn't actually say?

Because if in Mark, he says, my daughter is at the point of dying and in Matthew, he says, my daughter has just died.

Aren't they two very different things that is not really, and this is not really excusable in the way that you are saying?

I'm not looking to excuse it because in both instances, what took place is communicated by the writer.

And when I say, when I telescope something together, yes, I will change the tenses of words so that it makes sense in what

I'm saying. If you're asking the Gospels to be an MP3 recording, then you are using a very unrealistic example of what should be there.

And I would like to point out that to apply that kind of standard, some sort of Western journalistic standard, focusing upon the tense of a verb when we have a parallel account given to us, not only,

I think, utilizes improper exegesis of a historical text, but I'd like to point out that I think it's a little bit unfair because while we as Christians have the synoptic

Gospels and hence have multiple attestation and multiple witnesses to certain events, you don't have to worry about any of this because you only have one voice speaking in your scriptures.

And so I wonder if there were multiple voices, would you not see the propriety of reading these ancient texts in the way that I am as a result of any differences that exist between those multiple voices yourself?

I think if that was the case, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem does occur, however, and I want to ask you about this.

Suppose you had only one Gospel. Suppose you had only Matthew's Gospel relating this incident.

Wouldn't you be convinced that when this man came up initially to Jesus, he actually said, my daughter has just died?

Well, again, you're assuming something that just there's no reason to assume, and that is that somehow there is some vitally important thing that in Matthew's account, this has just happened and nothing else is happening in this context.

And this somehow impacts the fact that Jesus comes and raises her from the dead because by the time

Jesus gets to the house, everyone has been informed that the child has died. You've just simply conflated the elders coming and informing

Jesus of that with the man himself coming and doing so. But the fact of the matter is we don't have just one

Gospel. And as a fact that we have three, at least two, that record this particular incident, which gives us that deeper insight into it.

And so what is better? To have two witnesses at trial and to have to work through where one gives more detail than another or only have one witness to an event.

It's easier to have the one witness, but does that actually increase your confidence in the testimony given?

Isn't it the case we always want to have more than one? I think it is. I want to switch gears and ask you about the logic of the sacrificial death of Jesus.

By what reasoning does it work to say that God, in order to forgive the sins of people, sacrificed his son?

Did God sacrifice his son or do we sacrifice the son? There are a number of things.

It really does seem to me in having listened very carefully to your presentations that there is some level of confusion as to what the

Christian doctrine actually is. And I would like to assert, and I think you would accept this, that just as there are

Islamic viewpoints that you would identify as being more consistent with the Quran than others, there are views of the atonement that are far more biblical than others.

And I think you would be familiar, you mentioned Thomas Schreiner as being much more consistent,

I guess, with what your understanding of my viewpoint would be. And so I can only defend my own perspective and would join you actually in critiquing others that are sub -biblical or less biblical.

But as to the issue of why would God do this, again, from my perspective, the Father, the

Son, and the Spirit in eternity past chose this means by which God would glorify himself through the redemption of a particular people in Christ Jesus.

And this is voluntarily entered into by the Father, by the Son, and by the

Spirit. Each takes a different role. The Gospel is Trinitarian. You can't understand what the New Testament teaches about the

Gospel until you see that it is Trinitarian in its nature. Maybe we can continue with the logic of that as we go on.

Thank you. All right. The affirmative cross -examination now by Dr. White of Mr. Ali.

I'd like to go back to the fact that in essence you indicated in one of your statements earlier on in my cross -examination that in essence that which is in the

New Testament which agrees with the Quran is inspired. And that which does not is not inspired.

Would that be a fair statement? It needs to be more nuanced than this. I've spoken on two levels.

I said for the average Muslim, if I think of myself as the average Muslim who doesn't know much about New Testament history, just simply knows a little bit about the

Quran and we're asking, okay, a certain detail about the New Testament. Should a Muslim accept that or not?

If it agrees with the Quran, the simple solution is to say, well, it must be in the inspired

Word of God. If it disagrees, then it cannot be. And if it neither agrees nor disagrees, then one can be neutral about that.

That's on the simple level. On a more scholarly level, Muslim scholars have tried to address the

New Testament documents directly. Ibn Hazm had made a detailed study of the New Testament. He wrote a book in which he had actually tried to show that there are contradictions in the

New Testament. Ibn Taymiyyah has written a book entitled, if we translate that into English, The Right Answer to Those Who Have Changed the

Religion of the Messiah. So, scholars have approached the

New Testament writings with some degree of faith, but also skepticism.

Is it true from your study that the earliest generations of Muslims said nothing negative about the

Apostle Paul? In fact, is it not true that there is an interpretation, as I recall, of the 36th surah that identifies the city that is mentioned there as Antioch, and that the men who are sent, the first two,

I believe, were Peter and John, and then the third that was sent was actually

Bullis, who is Paul. It would be very difficult for that kind of interpretation to develop if there was any kind of negative, anti -Pauline perspective amongst those first, early generations of Muslims, I think you'd agree.

So, isn't it true that the position you take is not the position of the earliest generations of Muslims concerning the

Apostle Paul? We distinguish between that which is given by revelation and held by the earliest communities, and that which is due to human experience and held by the early community.

In other words, the early community of Muslims may have held a certain position either due to a revelation given by God or due to their own experience or knowledge of the world.

If it is due to the knowledge of the world, this is in no way binding on later Muslims. In fact, quite the contrary, later

Muslims would be expected to know much more about the world. In fact, even the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, أَنْتُمْ أَعْلَمُوا بِأُمُورِ دُنْيَاكُمْ

You know more about your world. So, he came to teach us spiritual realities and the physical things we have to find out on our own.

As to whether Paul taught the same things as Jesus taught, this depends on studying

Paul's writings. And I believe that the earliest Muslims who spoke about this did not actually study

Paul's writings. Was I understanding you in your statement to assert that the

Quran quotes from the New Testament or shows familiarity with it or only that the

Quran shows familiarity with what Christians in Muhammad's day were teaching? The Quran does not quote the

New Testament. There is a statement in the Quran about the camel going through the eye of the needle and that shows some parallel with Matthew's Gospel.

But there is no direct quotation of the New Testament. But the Quran speaks about issues that are common to both the

Bible and the Quran. And on some issues, the Quran seems to take the opposite trend than the

New Testament takes. And in some cases, like for example, whether or not Jesus can be referred to as the son of God, the

Quran seems to take issue with the New Testament, which shows that the Quran cannot be said to be unfamiliar with the

New Testament. And at the same time, the Quran is not endorsing the New Testament as it is.

Do you believe that Muhammad had any direct access to the

New Testament? This is an open question. There is no telling whether or not he did.

My own survey of the literature on this leads to the conclusion that he did not read the

New Testament directly. But that does not mean that he would not have been familiar with the fact that Christians are claiming that Jesus is the son of God and by virtue of their

New Testament documents. I read into the record not only numerous citations from all of the current

New Testament sources, but I also read from Clement, for example, and Ignatius.

How do you think it would be at all possible for the

Apostle Paul to, in a very short period of time, completely take over the

Christian movement and marginalize the original followers of Jesus and create a

Jesus completely unlike the Jesus of the Quran, which I believe I've heard you say in the past that the way to solve these problems is just to go to the

Jesus of the Quran, because this is the true Jesus. But we don't find the Jesus of the Quran in the first century documents.

So how could Paul so completely banish these followers of Jesus?

Where did they go? What did they do? Why didn't they write? It's a long history, but if I'm to telescope that history, then

I would say that Paul's writings did appeal to the Gentiles because it broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile.

It did away with circumcision, which was a barrier. It did away with the food laws and Sabbath regulations. These, according to E .P.

Sanders, were the three things that Paul was concerned about that were barriers between Jews and Gentiles.

And so his writings had a very much wider appeal than the writings of the original disciples of Jesus, who were all

Jews and who themselves maintained Jewish regulations, as is evidenced in the

New Testament Acts of the Apostles itself. This was a very important reason why the religion of Paul spread more widely and more rapidly than that of the original disciples of Jesus.

Did you say the writings of Jesus' original disciples? What writings are these? If I said that,

I'm mistaken. That's why I got lost there. It sounded to me like you said that Paul's writings were more popular than the writings of Jesus' original disciples who were all

Jewish, and therefore that's why he was more popular. Maybe I said religion. The religion of Paul was...

OK, OK, all right. I must have misunderstood you. But why didn't why didn't they write?

Why can we not go back to the first century and find these people? I mean, if they were the disciples of Jesus and Jesus was just a

Razul to quote the Koran, and Jesus was not the son of God, and Jesus did not die upon a cross for our sins, and he never taught all these things, wouldn't it be the absolute first necessity, the first duty of every disciple who knew who

Jesus was to be constantly contradicting this teaching and giving their lives to vindicate this horrible blasphemy upon the character of Jesus?

As to why they did not write, we cannot really argue from silence and say,

OK, we don't have their writings and we don't know why they didn't write. And so therefore, you know, we can't really make a conclusion from that.

But what we can say is that Paul was literate and the original disciples of Jesus probably were not. Peter himself was a

Galilean fisherman, which probably means that he wasn't quite literate. And that's one of the reasons why many modern scholars think that secondly, the second letter of Peter and even the first letter of Peter was not actually written by him.

Scholars are more unanimous on the second letter of Peter that this was not written by him. Even Bruce Metzger, whom

I think you have great respect for, concludes that this is not the letter of Peter.

So why didn't write? We just don't know. But these could be some of the reasons. Another reason could be that they reached early martyrdom and if they had lived longer, they might have enlisted some secretaries to write for them.

James himself was martyred very early and Peter not too long after that. So we don't have any evidence, but when we do encounter these original writings, you, for example, say

Peter didn't write Peter. But I have to point out that and this is what I've discovered in studying the very same sources that you have, the inconsistencies in liberal redaction criticism.

You just said that Peter didn't write. Either first or second Peter, right? We are more certain about second

Peter. Why? Scholars are unanimous almost. And this is not only modern scholars, but as way back as Oregon, they have disputed whether Peter has actually written one letters or two.

And most have thought that Peter did not write two letters and therefore the second letter goes out. Modern scholars are quite settled on this issue.

That's if you read any one of the major modern Bible commentaries and dictionaries, this is what you will find under second

Peter, that this is not originally Peter's letter. Yes, I'm well aware that there are many people who question it, but my question is, why?

Do you know why they say this? They're given a number of reasons. You want me to read you the reasons? Well, no, but you had just indicated that there was a difference between first and second

Peter. Yes. And are you aware that first Peter chapter 5 verse 12 says, through Silvanus, that is

Silvanus is the scribe who has written this letter. And so when you say,

Peter was illiterate, he was a Galilean fisherman, anyone who's translated first Peter knows that it actually has a very polished style that second

Peter does not. Second Peter sounds like a Galilean fisherman. First Peter sounds like Silvanus had made it all the way through high school, shall we say.

And so when you utilize, it's a double -edged sword because when you make the assumption, well, this is how we explain how these are not inspired texts and they're not written by the original writers, sometimes it comes back to bite you.

If you don't know who Silvanus was, I don't know who Silvanus was, and yet he's the one who wrote this.

And so it would be his style that comes to us, especially if it was dictated to him in something like Aramaic and he's writing it in Greek, which would explain all the differences between the two.

Have you ever seen any of those commentaries you just cited address that kind of thing? Oh, yes. I mean, we're referring here to scholars.

We're not referring to lay persons who just say whatever comes to mind. We're referring to scholars who have evaluated all of the pros and cons, looked at all of the arguments back and forth, and the scholars are divided over first Peter.

Some say it is really from Peter through Silvanus, perhaps. Some say that it is not from Peter.

But the second Peter, they're more certain. When you say, since scholars do this, this means that they have looked at all the arguments.

Are you not aware of the fact that there are, and fortunately, especially in the academy today when it comes to any kind of a belief in a supernatural revelation, certainly you've seen this in writings on the

Qur 'an, that in the large portion of those writings, the believing position is not even mentioned or dealt with in what is called scholarly writing today.

I mean, have you not seen that in regards to the Qur 'an? I can't necessarily say you'd see that in regards to New Testament writings for you, but I certainly see it all the time.

Ten seconds. Actually, I see the opposite. I see what they do is this. They start with the traditional position which says that Peter wrote it, no questions asked, and then they start to ask the questions and they reach a different conclusion.

Okay. Our final cross -examination by Mr. Ali. We were speaking about the logic of the sacrifice, and you were explaining that.

Explain that to us. Is it that we offer the sacrifice to God, or does

God offer the sacrifice on our behalf? No, this is the biblical teaching is that this is an inter -Trinitarian activity.

That is, Jesus is described as both the sacrifice and the sacrificer.

He is both the Lamb of God as well as the high priest who offers this. And the relationship between the

Father and the Son and the distinction between those divine persons explains what is actually taking place in regards to God the

Father taking the role as judge, the Son taking the role as mediator and intercessor, and therefore the sacrifice that is offered is not— and I think, again, correct me if I misunderstood you because I just misunderstood you once before.

I think you said at one point, and I had it in my notes here, I wrote this down, that our view is that God was making a deal with the devil.

You're quoting somebody or you made some statement about making a deal with the devil. Satan is not a part of this quote -unquote transaction.

You mentioned early church fathers who held a ransom to Satan theory, for example, many of whom did not possess the entirety of the

New Testament, most of whom could not read the Old Testament, hence did not have the sacrificial backgrounds to even begin to make head or tails of things.

And so when reading early church fathers, you have to ask yourself the question, how much of the biblical text are they really dealing with?

I mean, certainly when you read early Muslim writers who may not have had access to all of the Quran, you don't exactly fault them for going along with what they had.

But the idea of making a deal with the devil as if this somehow is a payment that is given to him in some way, is not the biblical presentation whatsoever.

Instead, what you do have here is the holiness and justice of God expressed in his law that requires the death of the sinner.

And when you say that no one can die for the sins of another, as I said, no sinner can die for the sins of another because a sinner is already under the wrath of God and has his own sins to pay for.

That's what makes Jesus so unique. That's why he's called the Lamb of God. And really,

I think, the entire book of Hebrews is the Christian response to not only the Jewish rejection of the necessity of Jesus Messiah, but of the

Islamic objections, which are very similar to those that are used by Jewish apologists today.

Everything that the book of Hebrews develops in regard to the Old Testament typologies, in regards to the arguments from the

Tabernacle and everything else, I find to be tremendously consistent not only with the understanding of the Synoptic Gospels in John, but with Paul as well.

The New Testament as a whole teaches this concept that Jesus gives himself so that the wrath of God is propitiated and the barrier of fellowship is removed so we can have shalom, peace.

Romans 5 .1, having been justified by faith, we have eireni, shalom, peace with God. You refer a lot to the book of Hebrews to explain this scheme.

The longest book in the New Testament that addresses the subject. Do we know who wrote the book of Hebrews? No, we do not. How do we know that he was one of the inspired writers?

The same way that we know any of the New Testament writers were. I mean, you can say, well, is just knowing...

In fact, for you, it's just the opposite. Knowing Paul wrote something means it's uninspired, in essence, for you. But just simply knowing that Paul wrote

Galatians is not what makes Galatians an inspired text.

I believe, and I think you believe, that when God gives revelation, that he does so for a purpose.

In fact, I think that's what the Quran says even about the Torah and the Injil, that it was given for a guidance.

Well, he's going to express the same amount of effort and interest in making sure his people know what he's revealed as he has in doing the revelation itself.

And so the reason I believe that the canon of the New Testament is proper and accurate is because I believe

God has a purpose in forming the church of Jesus Christ. And since he gives the New Testament to the church for guidance to that church, then he's going to exercise the same amount of power that comes in revelation in making sure that his church knows what is and what is not guidance for it, and what is and what is not scripture.

And so I approach the issue of the canon from a theological perspective, and I think Muslims do too.

They just only do it for the Quran, but they don't allow it for the New Testament. In the case of the

Quran, Muslims believe that Muhammad is an inspired teacher from God, and that whatever he preaches is an inspired teaching from God.

That is the inspired teaching. So we try to collect that. If we were to translate that...

Is that a question? No, I'm trying to frame the question here so you understand what the question is. By analogy, if we think of Jesus being an inspired teaching from God, we think whatever he taught must be inspired.

And so if Christians tried to collect that, Muslims would have no question. But now, if you collect something from some unknown writer,

Hebrews, what guarantee do we have that that writing itself is inspired?

And your answer shouldn't be circular. It shouldn't say, because God gave it to us, because that's the question. How do you know that God gave you that book of Hebrews?

Well, except that in setting up your question, you provide the same circularity in saying that we believe Muhammad was an inspired teacher, and therefore anything he taught becomes itself inspired.

I don't think that you believe that everything that he taught as an individual is in fact inspired. In fact, you don't believe that at all.

In fact, you don't believe, I believe, that the Quran in any way is a revelation of Muhammad. It is God's words given to him.

So in reality, your Hadith literature records all sorts of things that Muhammad said and did that you do not believe are in fact inspired revelation.

You make a distinction between the two. But we do not view inspiration in the same way that the Muslim does. Paul's own doctrine, which

I believe is consistent with what Matthew records of Jesus' words, and it's consistent with the Old Testament revelation found in Psalm 119 in Isaiah and places like that, is that what is written is that which is theanustash, is that which is

God breathed. It is not just simply that every time Paul opened his mouth or anyone that we know was an inspired teacher of God opened his mouth.

Therefore, when he said, bring me my shoes, this somehow becomes an inspired utterance from God. It is in fact that which

God intends for his people to possess and to use as guidance and direction to be his voice in his church, to use

New Testament language, that is theanustash, not every single word that that individual uttered. And so the process of the writing that results in the grafe, that which is written, the katav, that which is written down, it is that which is written down that is theanustash, not the individual himself who is in fact speaking or writing that results in that.

So we don't view inspiration in the same way. And I think we did mention that in Biola.

There is a fundamental distinction between the two of us at that point. Yeah, I'm still trying to understand.

I mean, you find a piece of writing and you say, okay, this looks like an inspired piece of writing. But who makes that decision?

How do you know that this is an inspired piece of writing? That still is the question. How do you know God gave us this one? Two things.

And I address this in Scripture alone. I address the issue of the canon. It has to be addressed in two ways.

It sounds like you're asking for a historical answer that produces a theological answer.

And I say to you, it is the theology that produces the historical. The theological purpose of God in giving

Scripture has to be the lens through which we look at the history. Because obviously the history is very fragmentary and not complete and can lead us astray if we use it as the primary source at this particular point in time.

Because now we're talking about what is and what is not inspired revelation. Historically, the church was very skeptical about a number of the books of the

New Testament, as well they should have. I'm very glad that when somebody read the book of Revelation and seven -headed beasts and all the rest of that stuff, they didn't just go, hey, that's

Scripture, I'll take it. Immediately, they went, whoa, what is that? And they examined it and they examined its credentials and the consistency of its theology and teaching.

And I'm glad it had to struggle and fight for inclusion. Because the opposite of that would be we'd have a 120 -book

New Testament that was completely incoherent and inconsistent with itself. So historically, there were questions.

There were areas where the book of Hebrews was questioned, and I'm glad they were. But the point is, when God's people, as God's people, spoke to these issues, when individual writers in all parts of the

Roman Empire addressed, and of course, the Roman Empire was pretty much the whole world at that point, but addressed these particular issues, the consistency that they came to over time is demonstrative of that theological background that I started with, which again,

I think Muslims would have to agree with me on, that if God was revealing something in the ministry of Jesus, which the

Quran says He did, and that in fact, I would argue, it even says that there's been some safeguarding of that over time, that He's going to exercise some kind of power to make sure that His people know what is and what is not.

Not in the sense of a golden index type of a situation.

Just as with the Old Testament, it took a period of time, about two centuries, before we see the Old Testament canon laid up in the temple, for example, and the specific books of the

Old Testament, which we have today, recognized by the Jewish people as scripture, there is about the same time period in the

New Testament. And I would think, I've never actually heard you address this particular issue, but I would think that this would be consistent, at least the theological application of it to your own position, because certainly, there was a period of time when somebody had to make a decision concerning what was and what was not in the

Quran. And were they inspired? Do we know who did it? Do we know who remembered each and every surah and ayah?

As al -Bukhari records, some of those ayahs were only remembered by one person. Does that person have to be inspired for that one remembered ayah to be part of the

Quran? These are questions that I think we need to find consistent answers on.

If we're going to consistently, as Muslims and Christians, compare our beliefs and examine them together, we need to examine them in the same light.

I need to be consistent in the applications that I use for the New Testament in what I apply to the Quran. And my assertion to you, since Biola has been, you need to do the same thing in applying the same standards to the

New Testament that you do to the Quran. I want to ask you again about the use of the term ransom, since you're explaining that that's not the way you would put it.

But how would you put it? No, I didn't say I would not use the term ransom. You wouldn't say that God made a deal with the devil.

But that's completely different than saying I wouldn't use the term ransom. OK, tell us about the term ransom. How would you use that term?

You made the assertion in your talk that there is a difference between ransom and sacrifice.

And I would argue that you would have to find something far more than the materials that you've presented so far to back up that assertion.

Because when it says that he would give his life a ransom for many, there is a background to that term.

And as you know, the New Testament writers are soaked in the Greek Septuagint. They are soaked in the Old Testament.

And anyone who would know the Old Testament would know that that terminology comes directly out of the suffering servant passages.

And that the Old Testament prophecies concerning the nature of that suffering Messiah who would give his life and that he would justify the many because he would bear their transgressions is the background to that use of the term ransom and sacrifice.

And they're both used in the same context. Thank you, gentlemen. I believe

Dr. White has the first closing statement of 12 minutes. Once again,

I would very much like to thank Shabir Ali for traveling so far to be with us here this evening.

You cannot have meaningful Christian -Muslim dialogues without Muslims who are willing to have dialogues.

It's pretty difficult to do. And we know we live in a day today where that type of dialogue is not happening the way it needs to happen.

And when people cannot disagree and disagree respectfully, they will end up suspecting one another and they'll end up fighting with one another.

And that's not what we want to have happen. We disagree. Hopefully you all figured that part out tonight. But we need to be able to disagree and do so respectfully.

I would like to thank Shabir. He gave me a book. He picked up at the airport. And I'll have to now read it and give him a report on it.

And I would like to likewise give you something, Shabir. Since we were together last,

I wrote a book on the Talbiyah tomb theory that you might be familiar with. And I also have here, as you know,

I'm now studying Arabic. I have an Arabic tutor and everything else. And so this is an Arabic Bible. And I wanted to give that to you as well.

So thank you. Thank you very much for being here. And I once again hope very much so that in God's providence we will have the opportunity of debating again in the future.

I think logically we probably should have debated the deity of Christ before this subject.

But I still want to be able to do so. And I want to reiterate my interest in doing so. Shabir is in a doctoral program which takes much of his time.

I understand that. But maybe we can go for once a year, you know, sort of an annual type thing that might be good.

Consider, if you will please, what we are being asked to believe this evening.

It is believed by some that the original followers of Jesus were overcome by a

Jewish rabbi by the name of Saul, who evidently made up a story about seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Having fooled the original disciples, he somehow managed to build a world religion out of preaching about a

Jewish messiah who underwent the most humiliating form of execution at the hands of the

Romans. This message, he admitted, was scandalous to Jews and foolish to Gentiles, but this was his plan.

He suffered imprisonment and stoning and rejection by his own countrymen, all to promote this false view of Jesus and this new, greatly popular religion that seemed to primarily attract slaves and the lowest echelons of Roman society.

In fact, to make this new religion even more attractive, Saul managed to get on the wrong side of the Roman Empire and get his new religion outlawed.

Imagine as well that this Saul is so crafty and so brilliant that either finds a way to silence the true followers of the real

Jesus, who is nothing but a prophet and who did not die on a cross, or he even deceives them.

But somehow, even while the original eyewitnesses are still alive to contradict him, this man,

Saul of Tarsus, managed to make sure that every meaningful piece of literary documentation that would come out of the first hundred years after the life of Jesus, even after he was dead, would parrot his own story, his own version of events, and all of this despite the fact that the

Quran says that Allah would set those who follow Esau above those who disbelieve until the day of resurrection.

This is the first thing that we are being asked to believe this evening. Next, we are to believe that 40

Arabic words that cannot be traced any earlier than the middle of the seventh century, written by a man who did not know

Hebrew or Greek and never read a word of the Bible in his own language, are sufficient ground upon which to overthrow all of the documentary evidence that preceded those 40 words by over half a millennium.

But those 40 words cannot be subjected to the same kind of skeptical analysis as any text in the

New Testament can be subjected to. Those words have spawned innumerable interpretations because they are simply not clear in what they are saying.

They could, in fact, be interpreted to simply mean that Jesus was not crucified by the Jews, but by the Romans, so that the

Jews had no ground of boasting. The traditional way in which they have been interpreted forces Muslims to read other texts, like Sura 355 and 1933, in the most unusual and forced ways.

And yet those 40 Arabic words comprise the only reason, I believe, that Muslims reject the crucifixion of Jesus.

This is the second thing we are being asked to believe tonight. Now, in reference to the first claim, it is painfully obvious that while attacking the

Apostle Paul as a deceiver is a popular sport today among unbelieving critical scholarship, these attacks all share one thing in common, a settled bias against the historic

Christian faith. It is not a fair or impartial examination of the texts that leads to the anti -Pauline prejudice, but instead a desire to sow discord in the very text of the

New Testament self. It comes from naturalism, a belief that there is no divine revelation, and that is not a worldview that I or Shabir Ali can consistently hold to.

But since there is nothing but speculation upon which to stand, requiring mind reading on the part of modern readers and the imputation of all sorts of nefarious intentions to men long dead and hence unable to defend themselves, and since there is a perfectly sound and fair reading of the

New Testament that does not require such radical prejudice and anti -Pauline conclusions, we can conclude that the real reason

Paul suffered for the gospel is because he truly believed it and gave his life for it. The reason he did not present a more friendly or comfy view of Jesus, which might have made

Mr. Chalk over in England more happy, one without such difficulties as the crucifixion, is because he had no right to change the reality of history itself.

He had to preach that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose again simply because that's what happened.

And that is what was being preached by all the other apostles as well. This was the apostolic message.

This was the eyewitnesses, what they were attesting to. And Paul preached the very same message. And I referenced the second idea.

I've already asked our Muslim friends tonight to consider well why Christian finds Surah 4, 157 simply unbelievable.

It is unclear in its original language. It is ambiguous as to its meaning. It contains an assertion that is not explained by the

Quran. We have a rule of interpretation that says you do not build any doctrine upon a single verse. And Surah 4, 157 is a glowing example of why we have this rule, since no one can truly claim to understand it fully.

Its author never seemingly said a word about it, or if he did, nobody for two centuries thought it worthy of remembering.

It has not the slightest connection with history. And given that it seems very clear, its author did not understand what was found in the

New Testament. How can we be expected to accept these confusing words from over six centuries at the earliest after Christ as the final word?

Remember my Muslim friends that in the tradition found in al -Bukhari, that certain ayahs of the Quran were found with only a single qura in the memory of a single person, such as Surah 33, 23.

Was Surah 4, 157 likewise found in the memory of a single, frail, fallible human being?

We have no way of knowing. And since even when you accept the tradition concerning the Uthmanic revision, we cannot go earlier than Uthman due to his destroying the materials from which the revision was derived, we are truly left with nothing but these 40 unverifiable

Arabic words as the sole foundation upon which to accept the Islamic claim, which by the way is a supernatural claim, because it goes on to say in the next verse that Allah raised

Jesus up. Now even what that means is subject to argument and interpretation, but the point is all those naturalistic scholars that would attack the consistency of the

New Testament would likewise look at this and say that cannot be true on the very same naturalistic grounds.

This evening I stand before you by the grace of God as one who chooses not to reject the testimony of apostles, saints, and martyrs.

I do not believe Paul was a deceiver who hijacked the Christian faith. I do not believe Peter and James and John were overcome by him.

The eyewitnesses to the events did not fail to deliver the message of Jesus plain and clear, and this is why the first century documents are united in presenting as a historical reality the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as the willing sacrifice for the sins of God's people.

It is not because God deceived anyone by making it appear that Jesus was crucified. God did not start

Christianity by mistake. It is far more reasonable to conclude quite simply that the author of those 40

Arabic words was ignorant of the truth, period. Allow me to close by joining one of the earliest confessions recorded in the

Christian faith. Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia came certainly no more than 25 years or maybe less after the crucifixion.

He writes to churches where there is a great conflict about what a person must do to be saved, but Paul can argue that amongst those churches

Jesus had been publicly portrayed as crucified, which means that at the very time of the preaching of the gospel to them, the crucifixion had been central to the message they received.

All sides agreed on the fact that Jesus had died upon that cross and had risen again the third day. And it is in this context that the apostle can make a statement that is surely jarring in the ears of any

Muslims here this evening, but by the grace of God, it is the heartfelt confession of every believer of Esau the

Messiah tonight. He saw that the cross was the very central means by which the triune God had glorified himself.

Before the first star shown in the heavens, the father, son, and Holy Spirit had covenanted together to bring about the redemption of a particular people through the voluntary self -giving of the son in their place.

The union of those people to Christ means that his death becomes their death, his resurrection, their resurrection.

He takes their sin. They receive his righteousness, his life. So close, then, is the union of Christ with his people that Paul can utter words that are the very essence of life to all who sit here this evening in his service.

All who name him as Lord, as Savior, and as King. He wrote, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the

Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Christo sunestauro mai, ma 'a amessia selabtu.

I have been crucified with Christ. So personal, so real, is my union with my

Savior that this is my confession tonight. He died in history, in reality, in fact, so that I and all who bow the knee to him may have eternal life.

This is the gospel. This is the Christian message. And to it I say with my fellow heirs of grace, amen and amen.

Thank you. Thank you,

Dr. White. Thank you, Dr. White. Mr. Shabir Ali, 12 minutes with his closing statement.

Thank you, Dr. White, for that excellent conclusion. My only disappointment is that I would have expected that what you would present would be a kind of a summary of what we discussed here today, not a pre -planned written speech.

For my part, I will try to summarize and draw together the threads of what we discussed here tonight.

We spoke about the crucifixion and what the Quran actually meant by this. And we said that Muslim scholars have given different interpretations.

And so long as these different interpretations are there, it shows that nobody really knew what exactly happened.

And none of this is reported from the Prophet Muhammad himself. So none of this is binding on Muslims. It is possible for Muslims now to use whatever historical sources are at hand to interpret the

Quranic text. Tarif Khalidi, in his introduction to his book on the Muslim Jesus, has suggested that, in fact, what the

Quran simply meant was that Jesus was not killed on the cross. We have seen that there is good historical information to support that Quranic assertion.

While Christian scholars generally affirm that there is one fact known about Jesus, the fact that he was crucified, that he died under Pontius Pilate, they are affirming that only with the presupposition that he did not also resurrect from the dead.

But as E .P. Sanders has pointed out in his book, Paul, A Short Introduction, we, nowadays, should first ask, how do you know he was dead?

If somebody claims that he was resurrected from the dead, then our first question is, are you sure he was really dead to begin with?

And we have explored the Gospels tonight, and we have seen that in the Gospels themselves, there are indications that initially there was some doubt as to whether Jesus had really died.

And that seems to be the Quranic point. Those who differ about the matter do not have any certain knowledge about it, the

Quran says, they only pursue a conjecture. Surah 4, verse 157.

وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًۭا They did not kill him for certain. بَلْ رَفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ But God raised him to himself.

وَكَانَ اللَّهُ عَزِيزًۭا حَكِيمًۭا And God is mighty and wise. The Quran, then, does not seem to be denying that Jesus was put on the cross.

The Quran seems to be denying that the enemies of Jesus had the upper hand on him to the extent that they could have carried out their plot to crucify and kill him by that very method.

So the Quran is saying, مَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا سَلَبُوهُ means, they did not kill him by any means in general, neither did they kill him by this particular means of crucifixion.

We have seen tonight that some of the New Testament materials are not dependable because, to begin with, they are pseudonymous works.

For example, 2 Peter. Modern scholarship is almost unanimous in saying that 2 Peter, though claiming to be from Peter, is not actually from him, which means that somebody else, later on, wrote this and falsely attributed that to Peter.

We have seen that, in fact, there are books in the New Testament which are anonymous books.

We do not know who write them, such as Hebrews. And I believe that Dr. White was hard -pressed to explain, logically and historically, how the book of Hebrews came to be accepted.

Though we don't know who the author is, we should know who accepted this book. How did it come to be known that this is an inspired piece of writing?

By comparison, with the case of the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace, he uttered certain things and his followers are trying desperately to copy down and write down and memorize what he said.

So, even if we have it from one collector, we still have a case where somebody is trying to recollect what the inspired teacher said.

So that's the logic that brings this to make it part of the Quran. By what logic do we find a piece of writing, we don't know who write it, but we bring it into the book of God and we say, this is the inspired word of God.

I do not believe that Dr. White has actually given us the answer to that. Now, what about the use of the term ransom?

Mark 10 .45 has it that Jesus said, I came to give my life as a ransom for many.

And early commentators on this knew exactly what a ransom meant. A ransom meant then, as it means today, that somebody is kidnapped, for example, and you pay the kidnapper to release that person.

So early commentators said that what this meant was that the devil held us under his sway and God gave his son in order to rescue us from the devil.

Perhaps this is why in 1 Peter, we have it that Jesus descended into hell. In fact, if one wants to relate it to early theology, one will look at the

Old Testament where the sacrificial goat was actually not killed, but was sent into the wilderness to Azazel.

And Azazel actually, as it's explained in the Interpreter's Bible commentary, was the name of a demon.

So that's the equivalent of Satan, they say. So this goat had all of the sins put on it. And then this goat was sent off to Azazel.

This is what is meant by ransom. The devil gets his goat with all the sins that belong to him and he releases the people.

If we do not accept that, then we do not have a proof here that Jesus claimed to be a sacrificial victim.

He only claimed to be a ransom, not as a sacrifice. And ransom and sacrifice are two different things.

But what about sacrifice? If God is a tripartite being, three persons and one

God, and these three persons have a deal with themselves, look, we're going to create the world, there are going to be human beings in there, they're going to sin, one of us is going to have to go and die for the sins.

This seems to be a very complicated and illogical process. What seems more likely is that God creates human beings, human beings sin because God has given them the potential to sin, and God is willing to accept their repentance and grant them forgiveness freely because God is merciful and kind.

That seems to be more logical and does not require this kind of complicated deal between the persons in the

Godhead. And if this is a deal between the persons in the Godhead, how does it really apply to us?

And I asked Dr. White, who's making the sacrifice? Because in the Old Testament, human beings were bringing animals and sacrificing them to God.

So human beings are expressing through this sacrifice that they want to be devoted to God. They want to bring themselves back to God.

They want to turn away from their sins. And to show that they really mean it, they're grabbing something that's valuable to them because that was the wealth and currency of the day.

They brought the animals and sacrificed it to show how much they love God. So now, does that mean that we have to, in some way, conceive of ourselves sacrificing

Jesus? We are giving up Jesus because we love Jesus so much. But if we are not doing that, then how does the sacrifice really work?

If God does it on his own, to whom is God sacrificing the Son? It doesn't really make any sense.

And I do not believe that Dr. White has actually explained that very well. I've shown that the gospel stories have evolved over time.

And we have seen specific instances. Like, for example, the one instance where Dr. White says that Matthew telescoped the narrative.

But what Dr. White means here is that Matthew has taken the speech of the man's servant, which the man's servant said later, and now put it into the mouth of this man earlier.

So the speech that is recorded that this man said, my daughter has just died, this wasn't what the man said, according to Mark's gospel.

Mark's gospel had it that the man said, my daughter is at the point of dying. It is later on that the servant came and said, don't bother the teacher anymore, your daughter has just died.

Now, Matthew, if we are to understand what Dr. White is saying, Matthew took the speech of that servant, put it into the mouth of this man at an earlier time.

So the speech that we are reading in Matthew's gospel is put into the mouth of the wrong person at the wrong time.

That's what telescoping allows Matthew to do. If this is how the gospel writers went about their business, how can we have confidence in what the gospel writers actually wrote?

Well, we can to a certain extent by looking at multiple attestation, we can look at the evolution of the stories, we can try to retrace the earlier steps.

But that precisely is what the Quran is inviting Christians to do when the Quran says, وَالْيَحْكُمْ أَهُوْ الْإِنْجِلِ بِمَا أَنزَلَ اللَّهُ فِيهِ

Let the people of the gospel judge by what God has revealed therein. Not take every word as it is, but go back and study and look at the earlier layers and then you will understand what the true message of Jesus was.

I have shown that Paul, in fact, was our guy that deals with sin and justification and Jesus dying for the sins.

You know a guy by looking at his writings and knowing what he's about. We study Dr. White, we know what his particular specialization is.

What does he always talk about? Okay. What does Paul always talk about? Justification, Jesus dying for your sins.

Read Romans chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. He doesn't finish. He keeps explaining what this is.

What is Jesus about? Jesus is about the kingdom of God, about the love of God, about the mercy of God.

We have seen that there are only two sayings in the gospels credited to Jesus which could indicate in some way that he dies for people and both of them are questionable sayings.

So in the end, what we have is that this teaching that Jesus died for the sins of humankind is really

Paul's teaching. How did Paul's teaching now become the dominant teaching?

We have explained that. Perhaps the early disciples of Jesus died off early.

Many of them were martyrs. Perhaps they were not literate. Peter himself was a Galilean fisherman. He probably didn't write very much.

James was, in fact, martyred very early on as well. Paul, on the other hand, was literate.

He was a very active missionary. Yes, he believed in what he was preaching and he went about and he was living for it and suffering for it and bearing all kinds of persecutions for it.

He worked very hard and according to the Quran, people get what they work for. He worked for it and he got it.

His religion was also easy on people. It broke down the barrier between Jews and Gentiles. It didn't require people to circumcise.

It didn't require keeping the Sabbath laws. It didn't require staying away from non -kosher meats.

That religion was easy and, of course, it spread among Gentiles because it targeted Gentiles and it was designed to make it easy for them.

Isaiah 53 was cited by Dr. White as a prediction that Jesus was going to die for the sins of the world.

But actually, what scholars are now finding is that the New Testament writings were written in order to show that Jesus fulfilled the prediction of Isaiah.

It's not that Isaiah was written. Nobody knows what it says. Jesus lived and died. Everybody recorded what

Jesus said and did and now we say, oh, that actually matches Isaiah. No, the way it happened is that scholars are showing that Christian writers of the

New Testament in order to tell us what Jesus said and did got the information not from the history of Jesus but from the prophecies of Isaiah.

So you cannot now use it to prove that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies because it is now the history corresponding to the prophecy by the writing of the

New Testament itself. And finally, we have seen that scholars who are being dubbed by Dr.

White as naturalistic scholars have become naturalistic partly because they see all of these problems that we have discussed and they have, to a certain extent, they have lost the faith.

And I would say finally that rather than become naturalistic scholars, why not look at the forgiveness that Jesus spoke about, turn back to God and ask for his forgiveness and embrace the

Quran which actually tells us about that forgiving nature of God. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Ali. What we'll do now is for about 30 minutes or so, we'll have an open question and answer session with members of the audience.

Questions specifically for Shabir Ali, she'll be here to my left and to Dr. White to my right.

How do I say this? Keep it short. 30 seconds or less, please, for each question.

Only one question, no two -part questions, no follow -ups, please. We'll have microphones on either side and two minutes will be the allotted time for each person addressed specifically with a question to respond.

And there can be up to a one -minute rebuttal if the other panelist so chooses. So we'll begin at our leisure.

Okay, if you'd like to line up for a question for Mr. Ali, please do so from where this green line starts here back and we'll go one at a time.

And the same for Dr. White on this time. So if you could stand just in back of that green line and Mr.

Tolo and I will be the ones controlling the microphone at all times. Please don't try to take it out of our hands. And we'll start first with a question for Dr.

White. Okay, Paul from Illinois. Dr. White, can you explain to us again why it was necessary to have substitutionary atonement?

I was asked why the necessity of substitutionary atonement and I want people to understand this clearly.

So I really pray that the Lord allow me to do so. The fact of the matter is that God is holy and to say that God can simply wink at sin or that he can just simply say, oh, well, it's just forgiven means that his holiness can be compromised.

His law can be broken. The law includes within it penalty, but God can unjustly simply remove that penalty and say, well, the law said that the law reflects my character, but I'm going to ignore the fact that that is the case.

And you see what Christians believe is that what God is doing in this world is he is demonstrating all of his attributes.

He's demonstrating his holiness. He's demonstrating that he's the creator. He's demonstrating his power. And he's also demonstrating his justice and his love and his mercy.

The only way for all of those attributes to be demonstrated is for his law to reflect his person.

His law says a penalty is attached and therefore there must be a payment for that penalty. Yet he himself then provides the payment for that penalty in the incarnation, in himself entering into his own creation in the person of the son and taking the place of his people so that the penalty, that wrath of his law, falls upon himself.

He is the one who is paying that penalty, but his justice is being demonstrated in the process.

If you don't have that, the justice of God is no longer seen. And that's why the substitutionary atonement is so vital and so central to everything that we have that comes from the first century and that can possibly in any way reflect the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Thank you. Mr. Ali? I do not believe that this proves the justice of God.

How is it justice, as some of these writers have asked as I presented in my opening presentation, how would it be justice for God to crucify an innocent person in order to let the guilty ones go free?

It seems that even if God has written a law that says, look, if you do that, you will be punished, then

God must be conceived as we do even with a human being.

Human beings can forgive sins. If a father says to his son, look, if you do that,

I'll beat you. It doesn't mean he has to beat his son. If he doesn't beat his son, we'll say that's a merciful and kind father.

If a judge wants to let somebody go, he can do that. He has the leverage to forgive sins and to forgive if he sees that a person wants to repent and reform.

And they do that all of the time. We do not say that this is injustice, but we say this is kindness and justice together. Thank you,

Michael. Okay, a question for Mr. Ali. Would Muslim clerics and scholars allow the same kind of public scrutiny and higher criticism of the

Quran that has been openly expressed upon the Bible? Well, it's not a matter of allowing this kind of scrutiny.

This kind of scrutiny goes on anyhow. Whether Biblicalists love it or whether Quranists love it, it doesn't make a difference.

It will continue to go on. People will have questions. They will ask questions. Questions are being asked both about the

Quran and about the Bible. And those who believe in the Bible to be the word of God are not very happy with the fact that questions about it are being raised.

Those who believe the Quran to be the word of God are not so very happy that it is being raised. But on the other hand, there are many others who are students of faith and of the history of religion, such as myself.

We do not mind these questions being raised. And in fact, we read writings that are very critical of both the

Bible and the Quran. We evaluate what they say. We look at the evidence and the proof and we ask, is what they're saying really reasonable?

I'm familiar with a wide variety of theories that try to undermine the integrity of the Quran. But on the whole, when

I come away from all of these writings, given what I already know and evaluating what they're saying, looking at their evidence and proof, tracing from one book to another, following all of the links and looking at all of the historical evidence,

I'm still convinced that the Quran is the word of God. It is 100 % so. And I do not find that there is any criticism of the

Quran that would shake my faith in that particular way. But on the other hand, what

I do find is that the Christian scholars themselves who have examined the

New Testament, they are coming up with all of these things which I have introduced here tonight. They have said that the

New Testament Gospels are written in order to reflect what Isaiah prophesied and not to reflect what happened in history, but to try to convince us that Jesus fulfilled those teachings or those prophecies.

It is these scholars that are showing us that in fact, Paul taught something that was not palatable to the earliest disciples of Jesus.

There were conflicts between them and Paul eventually won over, not by forcing himself on them, but by the fact that people accepted his faith rather than the faith of the original disciples.

Before I start my time, I did not hear the beginning of your question. Did you say that this, could you repeat it?

Yeah. Would Muslim clerics and scholars allow the same kind of public scrutiny and higher criticism of the

Quran that has been openly exercised upon the Bible? Thank you. I thought you would ask if a

Muslim government or something like that would do that, and obviously, I think it's clear that this kind of debate could not take place in most

Muslim countries today, unfortunately. But I would just respond to what

Shabir Ali has said now twice about the New Testament writers, in essence, faking history.

What he's saying is, well, they're writing so it fulfills prophecy. What that means is there can be no prophecy. In this very room two years ago,

John Dominic Crossan said the exact same thing. There could be no prophecy if that's the case.

Interestingly enough, I listen to Jamal Badawi. I believe Shabir Ali likewise makes presentations about the

Prophet Muhammad in the Bible. How is that any different? If there can be no prophecy, if you look at anything that comes afterwards as naturalistic scholars do and go, oh, they're just trying to fulfill old prophecy, then there can be no reference to Muhammad either.

And yet, Islamic apologists are constantly referring to alleged prophecies of Muhammad found the Bible. You can't have it both ways.

You've got to be consistent in the standards you're using. Mark has traveled here from Edmonton, Alberta for Dr.

White. Hello. Yes. This question comes out of the cross -examination, and I just wanted to know how telescoping affects the doctrine of inerrancy.

Thank you. It doesn't at all unless you think that the doctrine of inerrancy requires a particular view of scripture that in essence is very

Western in concept. That is, if you believe that inerrancy requires a certain journalistic standard where no one has the right to summarize, no one has the right to in any way do anything more than just give you what you'd hopefully find in the

Wall Street Journal reporting the events of a mugging on the street. Each author has to be given the right to choose what elements he is going to place into his story and how much space he's going to allot to it.

They did not have an unlimited amount of space. This guy wasn't carrying around a flash drive in his pocket with four gigs on it.

These are handwritten documents, and each of the authors determines how much of the information he's going to include.

Now, because we have the Synoptic Gospels, because we have more than one account, we can recognize those times when one particular author, and I don't believe it's just simply

Matthew looking at Mark going, eh, he spent too much time on that, I'll shorten things, which is what most naturalistic scholars believe.

I believe that they're both drawing from the same preached message, and everyone in this room knows, whether Muslim or Christian, listening to a preacher or to an imam, certain ones have certain sermons that they're really good at delivering, and yet they will not always deliver it in the exact same way.

Do you accuse them of dishonesty when they shorten the story? Do you accuse them of dishonesty when they don't include a lot of detail, or in one particular instance, because they have more time, give more detail?

You do not. You recognize that each has its purpose, and what you recognize in that story, and this is what we need to understand, is if you get lost in, well, was she dead or not she dead, the point is

Jesus came in and conquered death and raised her to life again, and that is the story that is revealed to us in those words, and since we can see the relationship between the synoptic gospels, there is no confusion or concern about dishonesty in what has been reported to us.

...gospels, because here you have a situation, a man comes up to Jesus and says to him, teacher, come and heal my daughter, because my daughter is at the point of dying, and when

Jesus is on his way, after much ado, healing somebody else and so on, in the meantime, a servant comes up and says, don't bother the teacher anymore, because your daughter has just died.

Now, if Matthew wants to telescope that and give us a summary, then he could just simply tell us that a man came to request

Jesus to go and heal his daughter, but before Jesus could get there, the daughter died, but Jesus brought her back to life anyhow.

Now, that's nice and short and sweet, and it's factual, given what Mark already said, but that's not what Matthew did.

Matthew said that the man said, my daughter has just died, and the man never actually had said that, so it's factually incorrect.

It does affect the doctrine of inerrancy and the accuracy of the gospels. A question for Shabir Ali.

Mr. Ali, if it's your assertion that one man cannot die for the sin of another, what would be your understanding of Isaiah 53, specifically in verse 11, where it says, out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

By his knowledge, shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Well, this passage in Isaiah, Isaiah 53, has been variously interpreted by scholars prior to the

New Testament even coming into existence. They did not see in this the necessity that it must refer to a person who has been crucified.

They saw that this is one of the servant songs, and there are four of them. Isaiah 42,

Isaiah 49, 50, and 52 -53. They're four servant songs.

And who is the servant? The servant has already been identified in the servant songs, such as Isaiah 49, as being

Israel. Israel as a community on the whole, apparently is being personalized and referred to as the servant of God.

In fact, that Israel was the servant of God is so well known that even in the New Testament gospel of Luke, Israel is referred to as the servant of God.

So it does not mean that Israel has to be crucified, but we must understand that the Old Testament contains some poetic writings which sometimes exaggerate for emphasis certain issues.

So if the Israelite people who are feeling that they're suffering and they're trying to make sense of this, and the song is now expressing that sentiment and emotion and saying it looks like the

Israelite people are suffering for the sins of the others because the Israelite people have the covenant, they're trying to keep it.

Why they're still suffering? It looks like they're suffering for the sins of the others. This was the interpretation or one interpretation which was very prevalent.

Hardly did anyone say, oh, this must refer to some future person. In fact, those who thought it might refer to a person named some past person, such as Zerubbabel, for example.

And this can be quite learned from the New Interpreter's Bible commentary.

It does not refer to a person who's going to be crucified in the future, but the New Testament Gospels, trying to make sense of the death of Jesus, tried to paint the death of Jesus in the light of what is already described in Isaiah.

They described it such that when we read it now, we'll say, oh, this looks like Jesus, but it's the other way around.

Once again, that is not the consistent way that any supernaturalist would address this text.

It is assuming there can be no such thing as the inspiration of this text, so it could be prophetic. Furthermore, there is no reason to see this as the people of Israel.

That is the common Jewish response. I would invite anyone, including Muslims, to read beginning at Isaiah chapter 52, about verse 13, and see if Israel can fit in this.

It is not Israel at all. It is the people of God confessing that it is their sins, they're the ones who have gone astray, and Israel is one always going astray, and it is their sins that have been caused to fall upon this one, this one who is unjustly, from a legal perspective, put to death.

Why does he do so? Because he renders himself as a guilt offering. There can never be any context in which

Israel could possibly fulfill these words. Israel never rendered itself as a guilt offering. Israel never did this in a voluntary fashion in any way, shape, or form.

The pronouns are singular. The fulfillment is found in the New Testament. A colleague of Vancouver, Washington, for Dr.

White. Hey, Dr. White. I'm originally from Saudi Arabia, but my question is that you made a claim or a statement that Uthman destroyed some earlier

Korans. Yes. Which is true. But here's my question. Now, are there any 1st century or 2nd century writings that were destroyed by the church?

And in the light of tonight's debate, or tonight's the title of the debate, why were they destroyed, if there were any destroyed?

And why also, in the same way, in the same breath, I would say, why did Uthman destroy these

Korans? First of all, the only thing I could think of about any books being destroyed was when occultic books were destroyed by people who were coming to know

Christ, recorded in the Book of Acts. You need to remember something. When you say the church, the church was a persecuted minority who were having their members put on stakes and burned by Nero in the 1st century.

So they had no authority or power to be destroying anything. If there were any books being destroyed, they were being destroyed by the

Roman Empire and they were the Christian scriptures, which took place for about another 200 years until the peace of the church in 313.

And so there is no parallel and could never have been any parallel in the history of the

New Testament that you have to the Uthmanic revision found in al -Bukhari. And in, which

I've got right here, al -Bukhari, when you say, why were they destroyed? Good question. As I read the narrative of this hadith, there can be only one possible reason.

And that is that there were people who were very, very concerned that the Muslims would become like the

Jews and the Christians and dispute over their scriptures. The only reason, therefore, to destroy those other materials is that they contain variant readings.

And that would indicate that at a very early period, because this is within 20 years, 23 years, maybe, depending on exactly where you put this, of the death of the

Prophet Muhammad, these issues were already coming up. And so I do not believe, in fact, this is an area that I'm doing intensive study in.

I do not believe that there is any parallel between the early transmission of the text of the

Quran and that of the New Testament for many, many reasons. But one of the key issues is the difference between having a religious state that uses the power of the sword.

As you know, Uthman then copies these and has them sent to these centers and they become the standard. The early

Christian church could never do that. When you're hiding from Roman soldiers, it's really, really hard to be trying to track down variant copies of your alleged scriptures.

The early church did not have the power and authority to make that kind of change. That's vitally important in seeing the differences between the two books.

The act of Uthman to have variant copies of the Quran burnt, in fact, was an act of preserving the original.

If you can imagine that Peter wrote down a gospel depicting the life of Jesus and other people make copies of that gospel of Peter.

And then the copies have variations. He would say, we know the original one from Peter. Let's keep that.

Let's destroy the others because the others contain incorrect information, discrepancies and changes.

So we destroy those in order to preserve the original. This is what Uthman did. In order to preserve the original

Quran, which the companions of the prophet who were still alive and well at that time knew and worked together to collect into a single binding.

In order to preserve that, they said, let's destroy the others, which are varied because they could be copying mistakes and so on.

By comparison, we should note that we do not have an early gospel prepared by a disciple of Jesus in this way.

We would have been very happy to have that. And of course, to destroy other copies. Question for Mr.

Ali. I apologize. My voice is down, which is very sad because I was going to sing somewhere over the rainbow for you.

Would you like some water? I'm not very familiar with Quran.

I'm not too familiar with it. But I encountered some verses where it says that the Quran was revealed in confirmation of the previous scriptures and something that was sent before.

Several verses to that extent. And I was wondering if there are other verses in Quran, which would affirm that the

Bible is corrupt or the scriptures of Jews and Christians would be corrupt, at least at the time of writing of the

Quran. Yes. There is one particular verse, for example, Surah 2, verse 79, which says, فَوَيْلُ الَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ الْكِتَابَ بِعَيْدِهِمْ

So woe to those who write the scripture with their own hands. ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَذَا مِنْ إِنْدِ اللَّهِ

And then they say, this is from God. لِيَشْتَرُوهِهِ ثَمَنًا قَلِيلًا So that they would profit thereby a little.

So the idea is that some people are writing some scriptures and they're saying this is from God, but in fact it is not from God.

It's not a direct reference to the New Testament itself specifically, but more generally, it's just to the fact that people are doing this.

And that alerts Muslims to scrutinize writings which are being claimed to be from God.

Another verse in Surah 4 says, يَلْوُونَ أَلْسِنَةُهُمْ They move their tongues in such a way as they recite the scripture.

لِتَحْسَبُوهُ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ So that you may think it is part of the book. وَمَا هُوَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ But it's not part of the book.

So here we have the fact that people are claiming things to be from God, but it is not really from God's divine book which from the

Quranic perspective seems to be that original source in heaven from which all of the divine scriptures come. But more clearly, what the

Quran does is that the Quran takes biblical stories and actually revises them.

We spoke about revision among the Gospels, but this is a different sort of revision where the Quran as the authority from God is saying indirectly that that original story is not really the right way.

Think for example of Jesus referring to his mother in a harsh way saying what have

I to do with you. But in the Quran, Jesus is made to declare I am very kind to my mother and nothing about him being harsh and so on.

So we find many instances like this where the Bible story is well known one way and the

Quran is looking at the same story but reporting it with some very important variations.

Think for example of Adam eating the apple because Luke gave it to her. Sorry, because Eve gave it to him.

But no apple. But anyway, there's no mention of that in the Quran. From the Quranic perspective, they both failed, they both ate from the fruit, they were both deceived by the devil.

I think there's another way to understand Surah 279 that does not indicate corruption of the Bible but Surah 547 and 48 says that the people of the

Gospel judge by that which Allah hath revealed therein. Whoso judges not by that which Allah hath revealed, such are evil livers.

And unto thee have we revealed the scripture with the truth, confirming whatever scripture was before it and a watcher over it.

I believe that there is no way that we could judge Muhammad's message by the scriptures if the scriptures that existed in the 7th century had become so hopelessly corrupt that they were no longer worthwhile.

And yet that's what we're being asked to believe because we know exactly what the New Testament looked like at that point in time and it is what we have today in our

New Testament. So I think I heard Shabir say earlier that what he understands 547 is saying is that Christians should engage in redaction criticism and should take the text apart like naturalistic scholars today do who don't believe in inspiration.

That cannot possibly be what Muhammad was actually suggesting because he never would have heard of such a process.

About 10 or 12 more minutes remain. Scott is from Kirkland. Dr. White.

There's been a fair amount of discussion back and forth about the justice of substitutionary atonement.

Given that God would be his own standard of justice, I'm just curious, can you expound upon how substitutionary atonement is seen throughout the

Bible in particular in the Old Testament which I believe we all here agree is at least in parts inspired of God.

How is that prefigured and ultimately found in Christ? It's interesting that there is a recitation of Muhammad when the

Torah is brought into his presence that he gets off the cushion that he's on. He places the Torah on the cushion.

He says, I believe this book. And there is also a section in the Quran that challenges people to produce anything like the

Quran and the Torah. The Torah would have to have been something that he believed and when we go to the

Torah, we find this concept of substitutionary atonement. We find this idea of people not just bringing the scapegoat.

It's not just the scapegoat that is the picture of Jesus. I've actually heard it said that, well, you know, if you're gonna believe

Jesus is the Lamb of God, that's not actually the right thing. The scapegoat is the one who takes the sins out into the wilderness. All the

Old Testament pictures and types are only giving us a small portion of the fulfillment in Christ. I'm not a naturalist and so I don't just dismiss all prophetic presentations.

And there's no way a Christian could ever be a naturalist in that way and assume that these pictures that are found in the

Old Testament do not have their fulfillment in Christ. The other picture is that of the Passover Lamb and that Passover Lamb, when he is slain, the blood is placed upon the doorposts and the lintels.

Think about putting blood upon the doorposts and the lintels. Think of the shape this produces. And when the death angel comes, he passes over that house.

There has been a life given, an innocent, pure, spotless life given for the sinners who are in that house so the death angel does not take them away.

That's substitutionary, but it is so clear because you have to keep doing that sacrifice that it's pointing to something that's going to come down the road.

There has to be a greater fulfillment for, as the writer of the Hebrews says, the blood of cows and bulls cannot take away sin.

And it's the repetitive nature of those types and shadows that caused the faithful Jewish person to look forward and to see the coming of the

Messiah, who is pictured for us in Isaiah 53, who is pictured for us in Psalm 22, and see in him the fulfillment of that need of substitutionary atonement.

Well, the dispute is not really about the Torah, so I'll leave that part of his comments out.

But I think Dr. White is not correct here in thinking that the two doorposts and the lintel will form the shape of a cross, as he has said elsewhere.

That seems to be more like an upturned view if you think about it. Moreover, the pass over a lamb was not the kind of substitutionary sacrifice that Christians think

Jesus is. It was only because it's explained in the book of Exodus 12.

You can read it for yourself. God says, I'll pass over and where I see the blood on the doorpost, I'll leave that alone.

And then I'll go and attack the Egyptians and kill off their firstborns. It looks like if they had neon signs or something like that, that would have worked as well.

God doesn't need blood in order to avert the danger from that particular household. It doesn't say you must do this every year to avert the death.

It says do it as a memorial. It was only on that one occasion that it averted death and it averted the death of the

Israelite firstborns while God was going through the land. He would pass over the Israelite homes and attack the

Egyptians. Mr. Atkins for Mr. Ali. Shabir, both in the

Biola debate and tonight, you have said that the Gospel of John was a very late date.

But from a plain reading of the Gospel of John, we see, especially in John 5, verse 1, someone that was very familiar with the temple.

In John 4, we see someone that was familiar with the culture of the times. And of course, in John chapter 21, we see that John claims to be an eyewitness to the actual events.

How can you say then that John was as late as you placed in both the

Biola debate and what you've said tonight? I believe that the premier scholar in the

Gospel according to John is Father Raymond Brown, who passed away recently. His two -volume work on the death of the

Messiah is one of the recommended readings for our debate tonight. And his two -volume commentary on the

Gospel according to John is part of the Anchor Bible series. What he has, and of course, he has written other volumes dealing with the other

Johannine writings as well, the letters and the Book of Revelation. So he is quite recognized as the premier scholar in that field.

And what he posits after very careful scrutiny is that the Gospel according to John was actually written over five stages that involved three different persons.

So you would have John, son of Zebedee, the disciple of Jesus. Then you would have an evangelist after that preaching the teachings.

And then later on, a redactor who finally put together the final pieces to give us John in his final shape.

And John's Gospel was then completed towards the close of the first century. So no wonder we find a mixture of both early elements and late, because the

Gospel went through the five stages of editing. So you can have very important historical reminiscences in the

Gospel according to John. And at the same time, you have theological elaborations in the

Gospel according to John. So much of the teachings that people refer to the Gospel according to John for are later developed teachings, such as the

I Am sayings of Jesus, where Jesus says, I am this or I am that. I am the door. I am the way.

I'm the sheep. I'm the shepherd and so on. According to Dr. James Dunn in his book,

The Evidence for Jesus, which I have here and I referred to before, he said, call it scholarly skepticism if you like, but I find it incredible that Jesus would have said these things and everyone else would have missed them and only

John picked them up. What these scholars are finding is that, in fact, these are not original sayings of Jesus, but these are sayings that developed over time and came to be recorded in the final stages of John's Gospel.

There is, of course, not a single shred of historical evidence to back up any of the theory that was just presented. There is no such thing as a single document that has come down through history that demonstrates five stages, three different verses in the

Gospel of John, and the Gospel of John is the earliest gospel that is testified to in manuscript form.

You'll note that what was just said, I think, really proves the point. We have the I am sayings of Jesus and since we know

Jesus didn't believe these sayings about himself, since we know what Christians have always believed down through the ages has to be wrong, then, therefore, it had to evolve over time and, therefore, we are going to be skeptical about the

I am sayings of Jesus because, well, Matthew, Mark, and Luke didn't record them. Though we will not allow John to have a specific purpose in writing his

Gospel, they would be different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which would account for that, but we have to apply these naturalistic evolutionary concepts to them which, by the way, again, the very same scholars would apply to the

Quran and reject it as the Word of God. Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument. From Everett, Washington, here's

Brant. Dr. White, the accusation has consistently been made throughout this debate that the idea of one person representing another and suffering on behalf of another militates against the concept of justice.

Can you just discuss how our Trinitarian theology, as opposed to Mr. Ali's Unitarian theology, implies a covenantal view of mankind whereby not only can we represent others and suffer on behalf of others, we, in fact, often must.

Well, it is interesting that our view of God does vastly impact this particular understanding.

There is no question that having an understanding of the Trinity and recognizing some of the misapprehensions of the doctrine of the

Trinity that frequently Muslims possess because I think the Quran misrepresents the doctrine of the Trinity, greatly hinders our meaningful communication with one another.

But the question specifically asked about covenantalism, and especially, I would use the term federalism, look at the

Old Testament. Let's not even look at the New Testament. What happens when Achan is found to be the one who sins and brings about the defeat of the

Israelite army? What is the punishment that is meted out? Does only Achan die? Or does he represent his entire family and hence his entire family is punished and is, in fact, stoned?

The idea of federalism, a federal head, a representative, Adam representing the entirety of the human race is not just something that Paul invented.

It's clearly the New Testament teaching, but it comes clearly out of the Jewish milieu of the Old Testament and this idea of one person who can represent another, especially in covenantal relationships.

One person representing a clan, and this was something that was very much a part of the

Arabic -speaking people. The leader of a clan represented his clan.

There was a binding authority that was found there. So the idea that there's somehow some injustice is really a

Western idea, that somehow a person voluntarily giving himself who possesses the proper attributes to do so.

That's the important thing that keeps missing, because all the illustrations that Shabir has used are within families and things like that, where everybody is sinners.

There is something unique about Jesus because he's the incarnate one. He is sinless, and he is voluntarily giving himself, and that is why

Father, Son, and Spirit, the Trinitarian gospel, that is why it is just only within that context, not within any other.

If I was a Unitarian, I wouldn't have any reason for believing this, but I'm not. I believe all the New Testament teaches, including the

Trinity. I don't believe it helps our case to say, well, this is not unjust, because look, that other case was accepted.

I mean, if we look at that other case and we see that that was somehow unjust as well, we have a problem. If the

Old Testament case of Eichen, or I don't know about this story, but I hear it from you for the first time.

If one person sins, and then God demolishes the whole family because of the sin of the one person, we would ask, is that really just?

So we're asking now about both. Where is the justice in this? Where is the justice in saying that God, in order to let the people go free, crucifies his innocent son?

It doesn't make any sense, really. It makes better sense to say that Jesus taught forgiveness. He was a good man.

He died, and his disciples and later followers were puzzled by this. They wanted to make sense of it.

They looked at Isaiah 53. It looks like an innocent person may die for the others. They rewrote the story about Jesus in the light of Isaiah 53, and we have an evolving

Christian theology. I apologize to say this, but this is the last question from this side tonight.

So Mike Gutowski. Mr. Ali, if God does not require the shedding of blood, but is content with the neon sign, why does

God accept Abel's sacrifice of flesh and reject

Cain's offering of fruit before the giving of any law and use sacrificial blood to consecrate

Aaron and his sons as priests to himself when they were already dressed in a perfectly distinctive manner?

Well, the idea that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, that actually comes from Hebrews.

That is the document which we saw is of an unknown writer. We don't know who wrote Hebrews, and yet so much about the sacrificial death of Jesus is understood through Hebrews, through this unknown writer, who is the only one who told us that Jesus is the high priest, who offers the sacrifice himself, a very important part of what

Dr. White has explained. So that comes from an unknown source. But more to the story about Cain and Abel, the

Quranic version has it that Cain was not sincere. So his brother Abel says to him, you should try again and be sincere because God only accepts the sacrifice from one who is sincere.

It's not because Abel offered blood and he offered vegetables. God is not a drinker of blood and he doesn't demand blood.

God is the creator of everything and he is beyond, you know, the pagan concept that some of the writers here spoke about when they criticized the doctrine of the sacrificial atonement of Jesus.

If Cain was sincere, God would accept it from him, regardless whether it's the vegetables or whatnot.

The book of Leviticus, chapter 5, verse number 12 and forward, gives the details about what a person should do if he does not afford to buy an animal to sacrifice.

He can offer an ephor of fine flour and so on. So that means that God, and it says, God will forgive him even though he's not offering any blood.

So even though the Old Testament is very big on the blood issue, that doesn't mean that we should somehow put blinkers on and forget about the bigger concept that God is great.

He's omnipotent. He's omniscient. And God creates human beings knowing that human beings will have the potential to sin and that he will be willing to forgive them when they turn back to him to ask for forgiveness and he would be willing to forgive them and that would not contradict anything of his holiness or greatness.

It will just simply be an application of his mercy. In fact, according to the Muslim thinking, that's why

God created us to have mercy on us, to have creatures that he can extend this mercy to. Well, I think the point of the question was missed in that it's not just, well, that's in Hebrews, therefore we can dismiss it because we don't know who wrote it.

We actually, I could make the very same argument against almost anything because of the ethmonic revision. We don't know who remembered any particular ayah and so would that really be a meaningful argument for me to dismiss everything at that point.

But beyond that, all Hebrews is doing is representing and reflecting the Old Testament context, which made it very clear that God considered that sacrifice, that giving of life, which was represented by the blood as the result of our sin and the need for the cleansing of that sin.

Those priests, when they were sanctified, were sanctified by the shedding of blood and even what was just mentioned, that the poor could avoid shedding the blood by doing these things.

Still, they had to do these things and what did that do? That pointed them to the picture of the shedding of the blood.

It was a constant reminder of the payment that had to be given for their eventual forgiveness and it was the giving of life in that blood.

Finally, all the way from Calgary, Alberta, for both the debate and the Cruz, Michael Jones. Dr.

White, given that we have heard tonight the assertion that, strictly speaking, because ransoming is not sacrificing, that Mark 10 .45

cannot possibly be understood in a sacrificial context, could you explain perhaps the concepts of ransom and ransom price as they relate to the… in the

Torah, the prophets, and the sacrificial system in the Old Testament and perhaps even the relationship to Hebrew words such as koffer and so forth?

Well, not in two minutes. You did a pretty good job on the question note, but clearly my assertion is one that I think can be backed up very, very, very easily and that is the context in which you read

Mark and his statement of the ransom and Jesus's words that he gives his life a ransom for many.

What is the context this could be found? All even liberal New Testament scholarship will admit that you look for the context within that of the

Old Testament, within that of the passages that bear directly on that. And when we do so, we've already heard it before, but we hear the statements of Isaiah chapter 53, the

Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief if he would render himself as a guilt offering. Notice, render himself as a guilt offering.

He will see his offspring, he will prolong his days in the good pleasure the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied and by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify, declare righteous the many.

To be justified means that you have been set free from the penalty of the law. That's what a ransom sacrifice does.

It sets you free. All of these, this entire complex of terms like kefar, to cover over, or to ransom, or to redeem.

That's the term that's used in Titus chapter two of Jesus himself redeeming us.

That was a price that was paid within the slave market to remove a person from the slave market.

All of these terms are like the different facets of a stone that reflect a certain portion of the light.

They don't reflect all of it, but they reflect a portion of it. And that is the same that is found here.

Jesus did say these words. There is no first century evidence that he didn't say these words.

All you can get are naturalistic scholars that don't like that he said these words. Cite them, get them all together and find that as your foundation for saying, well,

I just don't accept this revelation. I'm going to accept a revelation that comes along later that actually claims to be consistent with that previous revelation, but later centuries are going to say actually corrects it and that the original revelation was corrupted.

I just don't believe that. What I noticed there is that I have a chance to respond, do

I? Yes. What I do notice there is that James, in order to show that there is a connection here with Isaiah 53, couldn't find the word ransom in Isaiah 53.

He found something similar, but in Titus, that's again the New Testament, redeem. And he explained what redeem means.

Somebody is owned as a slave. You want to buy him over. Now you pay the price. So now think about that.

So whom was God paying the price of a ransom for to redeem us from whom? That goes back to the what

I explained previously. Early Christian scholars explained that that means that the devil had us under his control and God paid his son to get us back.

And that is why Christian scholars are rejecting this today. That's why many are becoming naturalistic scholars because they're fed up with the whole system.

They're realizing that this doesn't really make sense. This is not Jesus. But I say come to the

Quran and understand Jesus all over again. He preached the forgiveness of sins as all prophets did, including the last of all of them, the

Prophet Muhammad. Would you think with me, please?