The Christology of John, the Christology of the Quran

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The following presentation is a production of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc. and is protected by copyright laws of the
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United States and its international treaties. Copying or distribution of this production without the expressed written permission of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Inc.
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is prohibited. A .V. Muhammad, the
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Chief Trustee of the Jumu 'ah Masjid, who made this debate possible this evening.
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The debate tonight brings about nostalgic memories of late
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Sheikh Ahmed Didat, the founder of the Islamic Propagation Center International.
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The debate this evening will be of two parts.
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The first part will be on Christology in John's Gospel, and we'll have our brother
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Yusuf Ismail to begin for half an hour, and then we'll have
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Dr. White to respond or to give the Christian perspective on Christology in St.
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John's Gospel. Thereafter we'll have a rebuttal of ten minutes from each of the speakers, and we will allow two questions only from the floor, one to Yusuf Ismail and the other one to Dr.
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White. And then we have a second part of the debate, and that will be
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Christology in the Quran, and we reverse the sequence of the speakers.
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Dr. White will begin by speaking on Christology in the
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Quran, and Yusuf Ismail will then speak on Christology in the
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Quran from a Muslim perspective. And then we'll have ten minutes rebuttal from each of the speakers.
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So let me now introduce to you our speakers. We have this evening in our presence
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Dr. James White. He is from America.
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He is the Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona.
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He has written over 20 books and participated in over 100 moderated debates.
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He's an accomplished Christian scholar. He holds B .A.,
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M .A., T .H .M., T .H .D.,
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and D .Min. degrees from reputed Christian theological seminaries in the
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USA. And he has, to his credit, served as a professor of Greek and Hebrew, and also systematic theology in Golden Gate Baptist Seminary and the
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Columbia Evangelical Seminary. And he is also a critical consultant for the
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Lockman Foundation's New American Standard Bible. As for Yusuf Ismail, he is an attorney, he's a practicing attorney, he's a keen debater on religion and comparative religion.
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He has taken part in numerous debates with prominent personalities such as William Lane Craig, Dr.
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Mike Lycona, John Gilchrist, and many others. So without further ado,
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I will call upon Yusuf Ismail to present or to discuss with you his understanding of Christology in St.
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John's Gospel. My dear respected elders, brothers, sisters, in both
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Islam and Christianity, I want to greet you with the greetings of peace. As -salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
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I want to thank Dr. James White for being willing to participate in this engagement.
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This is the second time I believe he's speaking in a mosque. I hope you're not too intimidated. I'm used to this.
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But it's good to have you here and we welcome you to South Africa and we hope we can have a good, entertaining, and engaging encounter.
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Without basically perambulating, I want to get straight into the topic itself. We're focusing on Christology in John's Gospel.
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Now if you look at the definition of Christology, effectively it's a field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature and person of Jesus as recorded in the
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New Testament, in the canonical Gospels, and of course in the epistles in the New Testament. Basically the focus is on the nature of Jesus, who he was, what his role in society, what was his nature in relation to the
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Father. And so as such, Christology is concerned with the details of his ministry, his acts and teachings to arrive at a clear understanding of who he is and his role in respect of salvation.
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Now the source for that particular material is the New Testament. When you look at the New Testament, generally speaking, the modern day consensus amongst the vast majority of scholars is this.
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That the New Testament contains books which are written pseudonymously. Anonymous writings are basically books which are effectively based on the fact that you write a book, nobody knows the author.
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Pseudonymity is the idea where someone writes a book and ascribes it to someone else. In fact,
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Bart Ehrman, who is an atheist obviously, well known, Dr. James White has had a few engagements with him, says that in virtually every major institution throughout the world, throughout the western world, except the evangelical schools, this is the view.
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This is basically the view. That the New Testament contains books written under false names and that's taught basically at every major institution.
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That's the view taught in seminaries and divinity schools. But now why is this view not necessarily widely known?
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We can well guess the reason. Before we go into the actual context of dealing with John's gospel and Christology in John, we need to focus on one thing.
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Basically when we're dealing with the gospels in general, the modern consensus is that Mark comes first,
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Matthew comes second, then Luke and John is later. This is basically a practical relationship between the synoptic gospels which goes to indicate that Matthew and Luke, there are sayings in Matthew and sayings in Luke which are similar to Mark and most scholars hypothecate and suggest that these writers have been drawing directly from Mark.
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Then of course there's material that is solely exclusive to Matthew and Luke and these particular scholars go on to suggest that these are drawn from secondary sources such as Q, the queller, and so on.
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The other problem we basically find is this, is that in its essence effectively, the language spoken by Jesus in the first century was
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Aramaic. So even on the assumption that we can go back and trace his works to his time, that will be a secondary source material because the material that you focus on is basically in Aramaic.
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When you compare the gospels in general, you generally see that the stories of Jesus are found throughout the gospels.
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In other words, similar accounts are found in Mark, in Matthew, in Luke, and in John. But as you go from one gospel to the other gospel, the particular versions become far more pronounced.
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John's gospel, which is the last gospel, has more significant pronouncements in terms of what is contained in relation to Jesus.
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This is one particular example and then we're going to move on. On the occasion when Jesus was transfigured, in Mark, Peter calls him
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Rabbi. But in Matthew chapter 17 verse 4, when Jesus was transfigured, Peter calls him Lord.
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So Matthew changes the wording to reflect the higher Christology of Christ. In Mark 13 verse 35,
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Jesus describes himself as a master of the house. But in Matthew 24 verse 42, he calls himself your Lord.
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So can you see, Matthew is a later gospel and the version in respect of how Jesus is presented is being improved.
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In fact, in Greek, you'd read something like this, ὁ κεριὸς τῆς οἰκίας, in Mark, but in Matthew, ὁ κεριὸς ἡμῶν.
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Can you see there's an improvement, a more pronounced improvement? Matthew made people call
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Jesus a son of God. In Caesarea Philippi, in Mark, Peter calls him the Messiah. In Matthew, same incident,
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Peter says you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. So can you see there's an improvement? And lastly, in the incident where the disciples of Jesus were basically drowning, in Mark's gospel they say, teacher, do you not care we are drowning?
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Save us! But in Matthew, they say, Lord, save us, we are perishing.
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Same narration, but there's an improvement. So basically, what many scholars would basically go on to suggest that these writings were not basically biographical accounts, but more particularly, apologetic motifs to prove certain and specific theological points.
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And so, when you look at John's gospel, which is the last gospel, you find massive improvements.
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With the exception of the passion narratives, most of the four stories found in John are not found in any of the synoptic gospels.
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The first major event mentioned in the gospels is a baptism, but that's not explicitly mentioned in John.
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He's not explicitly said to be baptized. No reference to the virgin birth in John. No preaching of the kingdom of God in John.
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Why? If these versions and views were contained in other writings, then why is it not in John's gospel?
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According to most scholars, John was written near Ephesus between 110 and 115.
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However, some scholars would say that John of Zebedee was beheaded by a grouper in the year 44.
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So how is it possible that someone inspires John to write the gospel 60 years after he allegedly died?
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William Barclay, in his guide to the New Testament, in referring to the gospel of John, says that we shall see beyond doubt that the authority of John lies behind the gospel, although it may well be that the actual form and style did not come from his hand.
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Now why would he say that? What about the pronouns? If you look at the last gospel of John, the last chapter in the gospel of John, in referring to a book allegedly written by John, this is how it reads.
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This is a disciple that wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true. Who is we?
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Royal plural? Of course not. And there are many other things that Jesus did if they were written, I suppose, that even the whole world could not contain the books that should be written.
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Now look at the change in pronouns from we to his, referring to John, to I, in a book allegedly said to be written by John.
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So can you see the foundational source within which we are focusing on tonight's debate becomes highly problematic.
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We are discussing a book which could effectively be written by anyone. Number one, why is there in John no parable?
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Why are there no stories of casting out of demons? Why is there no transfiguration? Why is there no cleansing of temple?
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Why is there no institution of the Lord's Supper? Why is there in principle no official trial before any Jewish council?
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And in fact, in John's gospel, miracles are not even called miracles. You find unique to John's gospel the
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I am saying. He says, I am the bread of life. Before Abraham was, I am. In the beginning was the
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Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God. If this was not what Jesus said, then why is it not in the other gospels?
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The speech to Nicodemus, why is it only in John? The speech to Samaritan woman, why is it only in John?
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The speech about himself and not about the kingdom of God, why is it only in John? Why are
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John's accounts of the passion narrative slightly different? I'll give you one classic example, just to give you the point and to drive your point.
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When did Jesus die? Anyone knows when Jesus died? You see, if you look at Mark's gospel, we are told that Jesus was crucified at nine o 'clock in the morning.
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In other words, he dies on the day of the Passover. You know what the Passover is? It's a celebration. The Jews are supposed to sacrifice a lamb.
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When they smeared the blood in the door, the angel of death passed over those doors and took the lives of other people. So Jews celebrate that day.
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Now in John's gospel, Jesus dies on that very day, the day after the lambs were prepared, meaning the day before you sacrifice the lambs, the next day is the day of the
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Passover. In John's gospel, Jesus dies on the day of the preparation for Passover, and it was about noon.
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Noon, on the day of the preparation for the Passover? In Mark's gospel, he was supposed to have lived on that day.
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So why is it in John's gospel he dies the day before? What's the reason? Well, some scholars would say that if you look at John's gospel, which is the last of our gospels, effectively, some 25 years after Mark, John is the only gospel that basically refers to Jesus as the lamb who comes and takes away the sins of the world.
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And so effectively, this is declared by John the Baptist on numerous occasions. But the question is, why did
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John, our latest gospel, change the day and time when Jesus died? It may be because in John's gospel,
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Jesus is the Passover lamb. Therefore, he dies on the day that the lambs are being sacrificed.
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Accordingly, in other words, John has changed the historical datum in order to prove a theological point.
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Jesus is a sacrificial lamb. And in order to convey that theological point, John has to create a discrepancy between his account and the account that is contained in Mark.
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In Mark, he lives on that day. In John, he dies on the day that the lambs are being slaughtered.
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It's like someone saying you're dying after Eid al -Adha. Another version says you die on the day of Eid al -Adha.
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Maybe you are the sacrificial lamb. Can you see the problem? That is the significance that you find here in John's gospel.
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And that's a problem which many scholars have not been able to resolve. So the question is, why does Jesus die there earlier in John?
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It's because there is a proof of a particular theological point that John wanted to indicate. Now, I make the point that scholars argue that the nature of Christ in John's gospel is more pronounced.
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But some would argue that even on the very basis of looking at some of these passages, the humanity of Jesus, in fact, comes across.
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Let's look at the first John chapter one, verses one to two. If you look at in Greek, it's something like this.
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Enarke enologos kaihologos enprostontion kaitheos enologos. Now, if you look at, effectively,
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John 1 .1, you see that effectively, before I go into the word, it speaks about the logos.
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According to John Lightfoot, in his commentary on the gospel of John, he says that the word logos, denoting both reason and speech, was a philosophical term adopted by Alexandrian Judaism before Saint Paul wrote.
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So in other words, it's logos means word, but it was an expression of the manifestation of the unseen
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God, the absolute being. It includes all modes by which God unknown. Most Trinitarians believe that the logos directly refers to Jesus Christ.
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So in many versions, the logos is capitalized with the word, word, in capital letters. However, this word logos occurs more than 300 times in the
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New Testament, and in both the NIV and the King James Version, it's capitalized only seven times.
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Why? So how can it be determined what the logos is in John chapter one, verse one?
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Any occurrence of logos, you have to look at the particular context. I would assert that, as many scholars have pointed out, that logos is not a lexical definition of Jesus Christ.
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You see, if you were to say, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, replace it with Jesus. In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was
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God. It doesn't make sense. Logos is not a lexical definition of Jesus.
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The word is not synonymous with Jesus, nor is it even synonymous with Messiah. When you look at a word that occurs more than 300 times, and it's capitalized fewer than 10 times, it is obvious that when to capitalize it and when not to capitalize it is based upon the actual translator's bias.
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Any Greek lexicon will also show that there's a wide range of meanings in respect of logos.
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Words you say in Romans, a statement you make, logos. I will ask you one question, logos.
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Galatians 5 .4, the entire law is summed up in a single logos. Proverbs, John 4 .37,
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thus the logos, one solves and another reaps, and so on and so forth. So the point is that Jesus is not a lexical definition of logos according to Greek grammar.
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And so on that basis, how do you determine whether logos should be capitalized or whether it should be with a small letter?
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Then we go to the next phrase. Can you see the distinction between the two? En arkein ho logos, kai logos en pros ton theon.
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Kai, theos. Is ton theon and theos the same? Ton theon, referring to God with a definite article.
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Theos, referring to God, no article, indefinite article. So effectively, the last phrase in the verse, which most verses translate as the word was
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God, should not be translated in that way. The Greek language uses the word God, theos to refer to the
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Father as well as to other authorities. Now, James and I are in agreement on this particular point, that at the time the
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New Testament was written, Greek manuscripts were written in capital letters. The upper and lower case were blended, were not blended as we see today.
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So the distinction that we could make between God and God could not be made. And so the context between the judge in terms of what theos should refer to.
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Although the context is final, is the final arbiter, it is always the case that when God refers to God Almighty, the definite article appears.
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So the lack of an article in Greek grammar denotes that God in the final verse is a wrong translation.
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Tontheon and theos are not the same. Tontheon, God Almighty, theos, godly,
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God, divine, divine light. The New English Bible, translated by James Moffat, correctly translates it in saying, what
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James, what God was, the word was. Done by James Moffat from the
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Moffat Bible. William Barclay in Jesus as I knew him says when in Greek two nouns are joined by the verb to be, and when both have the definite article, then one is fully identified with the other.
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But when one of them is without the article, it becomes a noun, an adjective than a noun and describes rather the class or the sphere towards which other things in fact belong to.
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This is a book which is recommended by James White. It's a book called Greek Grammar Beyond the
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Basics. In an email encounter with him, I asked James, is this book recommended? Would you recommend this book?
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He says he even used this book. He taught at one of the colleges in the United States and he sees this as a book of authority.
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It's written by a friend of his, someone called Daniel Wallace. And Daniel Wallace, in referring to John 1 .1,
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says the following. He says the most likely candidate for theos is qualitative, meaning equality.
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If I say this food is divine, does it mean the food is God? If I say you are godly, does it mean you're almighty
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God? And so he says this is true for the largest pre -verbal anaphorous predicate nominatives that fall into this category.
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Wow. And basically what he's saying, it's like when you defer a noun, a barn, red barn, blue lorry, yellow lorry, and so on and so forth.
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And so he says that possible translations in respect of that John 1 .1 is what God was, the word was.
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It doesn't mean that the word was almighty God. And he concludes by saying such an option, meaning adopting the idea that the word
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God should be qualitative, does not impugn necessarily on the divinity of Christ.
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Does it not? Of course it does. So why does
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Daniel Wallace go out of his way after explaining a basic rule in Greek grammar to go and emphasize that this option doesn't impugn on the divinity of Christ?
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Why? What's his motive? We know why, because he's a Trinitarian. So he has to justify his position at the end of the day, that even though this is not with the definite article, it doesn't mean
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God almighty. It's qualitative. However, it doesn't impact on the divinity of Christ. Can you see?
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Can you see the agenda that's at play? And of course, that's the Amazon's testimony on Greek grammar.
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That's a book which is recommended by James White. I'm not making up anything. Check it up. See what
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Daniel Wallace says. He says that John 1, 1, the God in the last instance should be viewed as qualitative as opposed to being viewed as almighty
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God. And I'll leave you with the Sahidic Coptic. If you look at Sahidic Coptic translation in the New Testament, this is it here.
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Those of you who can read it in October 2011 in the Journal of Theological Studies, both Brian Wright and Tim Rischutte reasoned that the indefinite article in the
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Coptic translation of John 1, 1 has a qualitative meaning. Basically means if I were to say you are divinely, you are godlike.
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If I were to, for example, say this is a comment. If I say James White is the man, I use a definite article before both
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James and man. And I therefore identify James with someone, an apologist, renowned apologist from the United States.
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But if I say James White is man, then I'm basically omitting the definite article.
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I mean that James must be classified as a man. He's not an alien or something. He's a human being. Can you see the distinction between the two?
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So John 1, 1 is qualitative in nature. And what becomes problematic is when people through their bias, prejudice have to basically change the entire foundations of Greek grammar in order to prove certain theological points that becomes unnecessary and that becomes problematic.
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I can give you more than 30 different Bible translations where they recognize this principle, which
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I've explained and where they translate as and the word was a God, a God, literal translation of the
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New Testament, concise commentary on the Holy Bible by Richard Young, Das Evangelium Nach Johannes, the
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Coptic version of the NT, the New Testament of our Lord, the Montessorian of the gospel history, according to four evangelists and so on and so forth.
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All of these recognize that particular point. So can you see that something which is viewed as a basis in proving the divinity of Christ, in fact, tells us something else?
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Let's look at the next passage. John 8, 58. Now, if you can forgive my horrible explanation of Greek in verse 57, it says that you said to him, you are not yet 50 years old.
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And have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was,
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I am. So that seems to be an indication that Jesus is divine.
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But if you look at the Greek, it says here on your day, Look at the context of the
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Greek. I am, I exist is the first person singular present tense of the verb to be in ancient
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Greek. And the use of this phrase in some of the users found in the gospel of John is given theological significance by some
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Christians. Some argue that this should basically refer to the fact that Jesus was proclaiming that he was
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God. But if you look at it further down in John's gospel, there was a man born blind that Jesus healed was not claiming to be
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God. And he used the same expression. I am the man, or I am FY me. But in brackets, you have the expression, the man.
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The fact that the exact same phrase is translated in two different ways. One, as I am in reference to Jesus.
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And in another instance, I am the man is one reason it's so hard for the average Christian to catch the joke that effectively this verse is used in different contexts and in different scenarios.
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Most Bible translators are Trinitarian, and so their bias appears in various places in the translations.
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Paul also used the same phrase of himself when he said that he wished all men were as I am.
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He uses the word if I me. Now, would we conclude that when Paul uses the word if I me,
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I am, that did not make Paul God when the blind man used it, that did not make blind man
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God. Only when Jesus uses it, it makes him God. If I me does not identify
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Jesus with God, but effectively what it does is that it draws attention to him in the strongest possible terms.
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I am the one, the one you must look at. Listen to it. You would know God. It occurs many times in the
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New Testament. I've given you Mark 13, 6, Luke 21, 8, John 13, 19, Matthew 14, 27, when the disciples use the expression.
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But in all those instances, nowhere are they understood to have being viewed as divine beings or divine creatures.
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Then the other argument is made that because Jesus was before Abraham, so Jesus must have been
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God. Now, there's no question that Jesus figuratively existed before in Abraham's time, but he did not actually physically exist as a person.
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He existed in the mind of God. I'll give you an example. In Hebrews 11, 10, it says, in reference to Abraham, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is
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God. Now, Abraham looked for a city that is still in the future. Yet the
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Bible says that Abraham saw it. Now, in what sense could Abraham have seen something in the future?
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Abraham saw the day of Christ before God told him it was coming.
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And Abraham saw it by faith. Although Abraham saw the day of Christ by faith, that day existed in the mind of God long before Abraham.
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So in the context of God's plan existing from the beginning, Christ certainly was before Abraham.
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But you and I were also before Abraham because all of us were in the mind of God.
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Christ was the plan, according to Christian theology, for God's plan for so -called redemption long before Abraham lived.
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So we're not the only ones that believe that Jesus' statement does not in fact make him God or divine in any particular respect.
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What about the... Anyone knows who this is? Anybody? Thomas! Now, in John 20, verse 28,
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Thomas answered him and said unto him, My Lord and my
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God. That means Jesus is God. Am I correct? That's the explanation.
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My Lord, my God means Jesus is God. But again, go back to the Greek. If you look to the
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Greek, basically we are told that Thomas never believed that the other disciples had seen Jesus alive.
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And so eight days later, his disciples were inside. Thomas was with them and then Jesus appeared.
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Then Thomas... Then Jesus said to Thomas, Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands and put out your hand and place it in my side.
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Do not disbelieve, but believe. Then Thomas answered him. He said, Is he referring to Jesus as God?
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He says, in reference to what Jesus tells him.
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The context of the verse shows that the subject Jesus was alive. Three verses earlier,
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Thomas had ignored the eyewitnesses testimony of the other gospels when they told him they had seen Jesus. In Luke 24, 36, when he says,
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Behold my hands and my feet, that is I myself. Handle me and see for a spirit has no flesh and bones as you see me have.
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When someone says a spirit has no flesh and bones, does it mean it has flesh and bones? Maybe Dr.
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White could perhaps exegete that for us. And so Thomas wasn't there. Now he sees him. And so Jesus appears before him.
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Thomas's exclamation was one of surprise and joy. Someone gives you bad news.
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What do you say? My God, am I referring to you as my God? Of course not.
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When someone gives you great news, Jesus and even on the assumption that he was referring to him as God, this is a problem.
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Jesus never referred to himself as Kyrios or Theos. Never, not once.
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Or Tontheon in the absolute sense. So what precedent then did Thomas have for calling
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Jesus my God? The Greek language uses the word Theos with a broad meaning that is customary.
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For example, in the Greek language in Acts 12, 22, a Roman governor is called Theos. In 2
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Corinthians chapter 4, verse 4, it says the devil is the Hothios of this world.
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Hothios means with a definite article, the God, meaning it should be translated as the devil is almighty
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God of this world. But yet when it's translated in 2 Corinthians, they translate it with a small
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G, not with a capital G, because they say, well, look, the context indicates otherwise.
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So why is it something which is pronounced in someone else's name, made by Thomas? And so you come to certain particular conclusions.
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In Concessions of the Trinitarians, Michaelis, a Trinitarian, writes,
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I do not affirm that Thomas passed all at once from the extreme of doubt to the highest degree of faith and acknowledged
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Christ to be God. This appears to me too much for the then existing knowledge of the disciples, and we have no intimation that they recognize the divine nature of Christ before the outpouring of the
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Holy Spirit. He's a Trinitarian. I am therefore inclined to understand this expression, which broke out in the height of his astonishment in a figurative sense, denoting only who
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I shall ever reverence in the highest degree, for the word God is not always used in the strict doctrinal sense.
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Meaning, there are many passages in the New Testament where the word God is used. Like, for example, in reference to a
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Roman governor. Like, for example, in reference to the devil. But you don't take the devil as being almighty
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God. So why is it that when Thomas mentions Hokirios, Kaimu, Hothios, in response to something where Jesus shows him that he is alive.
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You see, the disciples thought that he was dead. Am I correct? They heard. They were not eyewitnesses.
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They forsook him and fled. Then Jesus goes to the upper room. And then he says, why are you troubled?
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Why do thoughts arise in your mind? Behold my hands and my feet that it is I myself. Handle me and see for a spirit has no flesh and bones that you see me have.
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Now, what's the implications when someone says and emphasizes a spirit has no flesh and bones? What's the implication when someone says give me food to eat?
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What's the implication of all of this? It's to show that, look, he's alive. Why would the disciples terrified?
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They were not eyewitnesses. Why was one woman, Mary Magdalene, when she went to the tomb, not terrified because she was an eyewitness?
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We're not debating the crucifixion tonight. But the point is, Thomas was not available at the incident. And so the response that he gave was the fact that his disbelief had been disproven by Jesus in appearing to him and show him, look, look at my, look at my prince here, feel the side and be not faithless, but believe.
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Blessed are those who have not seen me and believe. And in response to that, Thomas says, oh, my
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God and my Lord. It doesn't necessarily mean he was referring to Jesus as my God and my Lord. And even if he was referring to Jesus, what precedent was there in terms of the
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New Testament, in terms of indicating that Jesus was, in fact, God? I see I've got one minute. Friends, the point
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I'm trying to emphasize is this. When you look at the context of the New Testament, as I showed you from the indication from the beginning, it's important that you have to look at from the perspective of the idea that these writings were written for third parties.
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They were written primarily as apologetic motifs. I showed you practical examples here demonstrating to you that same similar incidents are found parallel throughout all
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Gospels. And effectively, there is a more pronounced version of Jesus. But even in John's Gospel, where there is an absolute pronouncement, where you have passages which are totally unique in reference to Jesus, even on that level, it can be shown that a basic interpretative relationship with the text and a basic understanding of Greek grammar should be able to disprove the idea that Jesus was claiming divinity or that he was in any way divine in the absolute sense.
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And so I will leave you with that. I know time has come to an end in such a short period.
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I'm looking forward to Dr. James' response to this particular presentation. And we hope that the discussion continues in a more fruitful and an extremely engaging fashion.
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Thank you very much. God bless you. And good luck, James. Thank you,
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Attorney Yusuf Ismail. And I would like to invite Dr. White to enlighten us on Christology in John's Gospel.
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It is indeed an honor to be with you here this evening in this this beautiful place. Tremendous turnout this evening.
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I want to say right from the start, I am very thankful to Yusuf Ismail for being here this evening.
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It is my tradition, as he well knows, a tradition I began at Biola University in 2006 in a debate with Sheikh Shabir Ali.
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To give something to my opponent, I have brought from America a book that has nothing to do with a dialogue between Christianity and Islam.
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It is a book by a man that I know. He is a much better writer than I am. And it is on the holiness of God.
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I think it was one that I think many of you would enjoy as well. And I would like to give it to Yusuf.
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I am not here this evening for any gotcha moments. I am not here this evening to try to score debate points.
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I have come literally halfway across the world for each and every one of you. I am thrilled to see you here this evening.
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First of all, I compliment you on being able to sit on a floor a lot longer than a Christian ever could. It is amazing how you can do that.
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But it is such a pleasure for me and an honor for me for you to be here and to hear what
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I have to say. I want to show you respect, especially in the next half of the debate when
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I speak about what the Quran teaches. I hope you will hear that I have done everything in my power to accurately handle your text and to handle it with respect, even when
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I am in disagreement. And that is what I ask of you. When you handle my text, my divine scriptures, that you would apply the same standards to my scriptures that you would apply to your own.
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In fact, the Quran speaks of having equal scales, does it not? Of being fair in the analysis that we are to make.
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I am simply asking you, you are the judges this evening. There's no debate judges. There's no score this evening.
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You are the debate judges. What I'm going to ask you to do is hold us both to the same standard.
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See if we will apply the same standard to our own scriptures that we apply to the other person's scriptures.
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Will you do that for me? Because I think that's very, very important. I hope you understand that I'm here this evening because I think that we need to move the debate forward from simply repeating the same debate topics over and over again.
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We already know what the issues are. We've had a billion debates on was
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Muhammad a prophet, was Jesus just a prophet, deity of Christ, the Quran versus the Bible, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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We have to move forward, my friends, in understanding each other and hearing each other.
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And I want you to hear me this evening and to hear my heart. Yusuf has just talked to you about the
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Gospel of John. And he talked at the beginning about what certain types of scholars believe.
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Well, if I cited the same kind of scholarship about the Quran that Yusuf cites about the
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Gospel of John, I could find all sorts of scholars that believe that the Quran was edited and redacted and it wasn't in the form that it's in today and all sorts of...
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All of us can find unbelieving scholarship. But it's interesting, just a few moments ago, Yusuf was saying, well, most
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Bible translators are Trinitarians, so they're biased. When you look at translations of the
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Quran, don't you look for translations done by believing Muslims? Do you look for liberal translations done by unbelievers as the type of translation you're going to use in the
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Quran? So why should we be looking to liberal translations of the Bible done by people who don't believe that it's even what the
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Quran says it is? What does the Quran say about the Torah and the Injil? It's Natsal. It's sent down. It contains what?
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Light and guidance, right? And so if we're going to be consistent, then I need to cite the same kind of scholarship about your book and you need to cite believing scholarship about the
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Bible. And when we do that, we discover that there really is no reason to question the
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Gospel of John as to its originality, as to its coming from the first century. And in fact, if you'll take the time to look at the debate that Yusuf and I did at Potsdam University last year, you can listen to us engaging some of the issues about the text.
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Listen to the debates I've done with Shabir Ali at University of Pretoria, University of Biola. We've engaged all those things.
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I'm here this evening to compare and contrast the Christology of the Gospel of John with that of the
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Quran. And so let's do that and I'll cover some of the other stuff and rebuttal if I have time to do so.
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You have had a lot of Greek thrown at you, a lot of slides thrown at you this evening. I didn't make a presentation.
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I didn't think we'd be able to do that in the mosque. And so I'm going to have to explain it to you, but I have had the opportunity, the joy of teaching many people the
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Greek language. I deal with the Greek language all the time and with all due respect to Yusuf.
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If Yusuf took my first year Greek class, I'd have to fail him this evening because he made a lot of errors because he's following really bad scholarship that just isn't up to date.
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He quoted my friend Dan Wallace. Dan Wallace would fail him as well, I'm afraid, because he just hasn't understood, especially the
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Greek article. It's one of the most difficult parts, the Greek language. So I don't put him down for that. John chapter one.
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How many of you have read the gospel of John? Any of you? Okay, I've got a few people.
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Majority have not. You have in the gospel of John beginning in the first 18 verses what's called the prologue.
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It's the window that John opens to what he's trying to say. And when you look at the prologue, not just look at little bits and pieces, but look at the prologue as a whole, you can see it is a crafted work.
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In John 1 .1, we have in the beginning was the word. The verb that he uses there is eternal.
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As far back as you want to push the beginning, the word has always existed. Then he says, after in the beginning was the word and the word was with God.
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Prostanteon, face to face with God. There is personal relationship between the logos and God who we'll see is identified as the father.
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And it's for eternity, eternal relationship. It's personal, not just an idea in the mind of God, but personal relationship.
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And then finally, the third clause, and the word was God. Now I was really disappointed because I think
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I have sent Yusuf my book, The Forgotten Trinity. And if he had read my book,
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I have an entire chapter on this. And I discussed everything about the article. And I discussed everything about the fact that yes, the placement of the word
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God and the fact there isn't an article there is describing for us the very nature of the logos.
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Eternally as to his nature, he is deity. That's why it presents the deity of Christ.
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But you see, the very next verse, which he didn't show you, says all things are made by him.
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And without him, anything made that was made. This logos is eternal, personal, and in personal relationship with the father for all of eternity.
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Who is that? And then when you look at the end of the prologue, verse 18,
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John repeats the concepts he had in verse one. So what do you have in verse 18? No one has seen God in a time.
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You go, well, wait a minute. There are a number of places in the Old Testament. Moses saw the back of God. The elders of Israel saw
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God. What does he mean? No one has seen God at any time. The unique God monogamous, they asked.
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He has exegeted. He has explained him there. Jesus is called
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God. He's called the unique God and has said that he is the perfect revelation of the father.
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We know the father perfectly because Jesus has explained him to us. That's what the prologue is about.
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And so when you start your book with that, you're intending everyone to read the rest of your book through that lens.
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And that lens is that the logos is eternal. The logos is personal. It was said, well, logos can mean many things.
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Yes, the semantic domain of the term logos is very, very wide, but it is determined contextually.
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And in John chapter one, there is no question. Look at John 1 14. The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.
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Who's that? That's clearly Jesus. So there isn't any question about what the prologue is about.
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But then it goes on from there. You see, we need to follow the flow. When I try to read the Quran, I try to leave,
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I try to let it speak for itself. I try to listen to it in its ancient context as best I can. It's not always easy to do.
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Sometimes the Hadith sources will disagree as to what the background of a particular ayah or surah is, but I try to do that.
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And when you do that with the gospel of John, you see that John builds a case all the way through presenting us a
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Jesus who my friends is not a mere rasool. He's not a mere rasool.
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You cannot limit what he says. Jesus knows not only the inner hearts of man, but he makes eternal life dependent upon our relationship to him.
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This becomes very clear in John chapter five, for example, when Jesus clearly differentiates himself from the father, he is the son, he does nothing of himself.
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In other words, he's not some deity off doing his own thing. He and the father have a perfect unity.
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The Jews wanted to kill him because he was calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
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And Jesus' response is not to say, oh no, no, you're misunderstanding me. His response is to say,
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I and the father, I speak the words of the father. I do the words of the father.
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We have a perfect unity. It's not like you've got the father over there doing his thing and the son's doing something over here and the spirit's over there doing something.
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Perfect unity. Because remember, Christians are monotheists. We believe there's only one true
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God and that that being of God is shared by three divine persons, father, son, and spirit. That means they have to be unified.
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They have to be doing the same thing or the very Godhead splits apart. It's an absurdity. It could never happen. So in John chapter five, we are to honor the son even as we honor the father.
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That he has life within himself to give to others. And then in John chapter six, he's the living bread.
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To have eternal life, you have to feed upon him spiritually. By faith, by coming to him.
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And then we have John chapter eight and that was touched on just a little while ago. And again, entire chapter in my book that would have disabused
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Yusuf of many of the things that he said because he didn't understand what John does. That phrase, ego,
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I, me, sure it can be used as a mere emphatic. No one disputes that. The question is, is John using it as a mere emphatic?
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And the answer is obviously no. Because when Jesus says, ego, I, me, before Abraham was,
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I am, what do the Jews do? They pick up stones to stone him. Why?
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You don't stone angels. You don't stone prophets. But you do stone blasphemers. And you see, the
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Jews knew something that I explain in my book and I hope to explain it to you. That phrase, ego,
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I, me, goes back to the Old Testament. It was used as the name of God. It was used the name of God.
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In Hebrew, it's Anahu. And there are numerous places in Isaiah the prophet, in the other minor prophets, where it's used as a replacement for the name
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Yahweh. And so, for example, at one point I was amazed. Yusuf cited
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John 13, 19 and said, see, here's a use that has nothing to do with the deity of Christ. And yet, it's one of the key passages on the deity of Christ.
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Because in John 13, 19, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 43, 10 and applies the words to himself.
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Isaiah 43, 10, Jehovah says, I'm gonna reveal these things to you before they come to happen so that they do come to happen and you may know and believe and understand that I am and before me there is no
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God formed and there will be none after me. Jesus took those words from Isaiah and applied them to himself in John chapter 13 in the exact same context of prophecy of future events.
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Why would Jesus do that? Let me ask you, my friends. Could the Jesus that you have been taught about do what the
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Jesus of John 13, 19 did? But that's not the only place where I am is used.
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I forgot to tell you about John 18, five through six. The soldiers come to arrest Jesus in the garden and he asks them, who are you seeking?
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And Jesus says, they say, Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus says, ego I me. And what happens to the soldiers?
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Anybody remember? They fall back upon the ground. When he says, I am, they fall back upon the ground.
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That doesn't happen with the blind man in John chapter nine. And so just finding other places where ego
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I me can be used in a different way proves nothing. What was John doing? Explain to me why soldiers fall back upon the ground when you say, that's me.
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When Jesus says it, soldiers fall back upon the ground. I wonder why. But you see, we continue on in John chapter 10,
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Jesus identifies himself as a good shepherd. And he says that your eternal life is dependent upon your relationship to me and to the father.
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And if you're one of my sheep, you're in my hand, I'll never lose you.
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And we're in the father's hand and he'll never lose you. And then he says, I am the father, we are one.
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He doesn't say I am the father. Never does Jesus claim to be the father. But he says, I and the father are one in bringing about the salvation of God's people.
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My friends, what prophet could ever say that? Every prophet is subject to God, sent by God.
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But here Jesus says, your very eternal life is dependent upon faith in him and his ability to save you.
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All the sheep of God will be saved by this one who makes these claims for himself.
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That's an amazing thing. Then in John chapter 11, he raises Lazarus from the dead.
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Father, so that men may believe. And then the son of God calls forth from the dead,
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Lazarus. And he comes forth at his command, having been in the tomb all those days.
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In John chapter 12, the writer there quotes from the Old Testament and basically teaches us that when
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Isaiah saw Yahweh sitting upon his throne in Isaiah chapter six, that great vision he had of God, John tells us that was
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Jesus. Look at John 12, 41. John tells us that the one that was worshiped by the angels and seen by Isaiah was in fact
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Jesus. And then beginning in John chapter 13, Jesus begins ministering to his disciples.
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And here you have the most texts referring to Jesus in this way. And it's interesting, this is where you got
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John chapter 14. Now maybe we can get a chance to come back here sometime and I would love to have a discussion about who
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John chapter 14 and 16 is about, who that helper is. But here you all have a little bit of a problem because if you're gonna dismiss
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John chapter 14 as having been changed or altered or so on and so forth, your
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Quran says that Muhammad's name is found in the Torah in the angel and that's
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John 14 and 16. That's a real popular one. Now the Quran doesn't tell you where it is, doesn't say it's in John 14, it's in John 16.
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But if you're going to accept the idea that the paraclete, the helper in the gospel of John is
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Muhammad, then you're gonna have to accept that John is actually the angel that was sent down by God, right?
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You need to be consistent, need to be consistent. And it's those same chapter of John where Jesus speaks again in a way that no mere
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Rasul ever could. He speaks of being the one who indwells his followers by the spirit of God, that he and the father will dwell in his followers by the coming of the spirit of God, that he is going to prepare a place for us and that heaven is being with him.
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He likens himself to the vine, we're the branches. To be right with God is first and foremost to be right with Jesus.
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What mere prophet ever says that? And then in John chapter 17, oh, his high priestly prayer. He says that before time began, he in the presence of the father shared his very glory.
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My friends, there's one thing you and I, we have to insist upon in this world as Muslims and Christians, only
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God should be glorified. Nothing else can be glorified. I'm writing a book right now with Shabir Ali.
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You know what our subject is? The Trinity and Tawhid. I know what Tawhid means. I've taken the time to understand it.
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And I absolutely believe that only God should be glorified. So you need to explain to me what
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Jesus was doing, saying before time itself that he shared the very glory of God in his presence,
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John chapter 17. Got to understand that. Got to listen to these things.
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Then of course, we have the crucifixion of Jesus. Another issue that we definitely, well, tomorrow night, we're going to be debating that subject.
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And then we have the resurrection. And in John chapter 20 verse 28, we have inarguably, inarguably the presentation of the deity of Jesus Christ.
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I say inarguably because this is one of the places where Yusuf would fail the first year Greek class.
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Because in John chapter 20 verse 28, when Thomas sees
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Jesus, when he recognizes from Jesus's words that Jesus even knew what
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Thomas had said when Jesus had not been present, he had supernatural knowledge of Thomas saying, well, unless I see the wound prints and so on and so forth,
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I'll never believe. He says, stretch forth your hand, go ahead and look, see, do not be unbelieving.
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In Thomas's response, he says, he answered and said to him.
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Alto, singular. The next words must by all usage and the
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Greek language be addressed to Jesus. The idea that Thomas going, my God, my
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Lord, is utterly impossible, completely impossible. You will never pass first year
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Greek if you slaughter it that badly. Dan Wallace will support that. Anybody who knows the language will support that.
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Hakuri asmu kai hathe asmu. My Lord, hakuri asmu, my
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Lord, kai hathe asmu, my God. Now, earlier
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Yusuf said that when the true God is being referred to, that you use the article.
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Let me point out that that is utterly untrue. The vast majority of times the true God is referred to in the New Testament there is no article used at all.
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And that's the case. For example, in John chapter one, verse six, there came a man sent paratheu from God.
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Was Yahya sent from Allah? Yes or no? Come on. I'm expecting an answer.
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Was Yahya, was John the Baptist sent from God? Thank you. He was. And that's exactly what
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John one six says. The problem is there is no article before God in John one six. So much for the non -rule that Yusuf tried to explain to you because it doesn't exist.
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No one who translates the language would ever say that. It's just not possible. So, but let's keep that in mind.
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And let's look at John chapter 20, verse 28 and ask the question, well, if the article means the one true
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God, then why does it say kai ha thayas mu?
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It has the article. So you see, if that rule were true, and it's not, but if it were true, then he'd have to admit that, well, what
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Thomas was referring to here was the true God, my true God. And since it uses that singular auto, these words are addressed to Jesus.
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Thomas identified Jesus as his God. There is no question here. None. None whatsoever.
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Even the most liberal scholarship, Bart Ehrman would tell you, of course, that's basic understanding.
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That's what John's saying. No question about it. So we've looked at the
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Christology of John. I've got some questions for you to think about. You didn't think you were going to be participating in the debate this evening, did you?
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But I want every one of you. I'm not here for the Christians here tonight. I'm thankful that you're here, brothers and sisters, but I'm not here for you tonight.
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I'm looking at you gentlemen and ladies. I'm looking at you and I want you walking out of this mosque this evening, thinking about what you've heard from both me and Yusuf.
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I want you thinking. We don't get to do this very often, do we? When two communities cannot talk like this and disagree in respect and love, the division will only grow deeper and deeper in ignorance.
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If we want to be harbingers of peace and truth in this world, then we must think.
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And so I want to ask you some questions. When I look at the Old and New Testaments in my
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Bible, I see an intimate relationship between the two of them.
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I just got done preaching 80 sermons on the book of Hebrews in the New Testament over the course of six years.
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And in that book, the author, and we don't know who the author was and don't need to, Jesus himself quoted from books of the
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Old Testament where you don't know the author. So don't tell me you've got to know because it didn't bother Jesus. And I follow his standards.
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The author of that book intimately knows the Old Testament. He quotes from beginning and end of the
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Old Testament. He knows it's in its original languages. He knows it in translation. He knows its arguments.
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He knows what's going on in the tabernacle and in the temple. He knows the Old Testament and he bases his arguments upon a deep understanding of it.
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And that's really how the whole New Testament is. The authors of the New Testament know and they say, we are fulfilling this and this is the final word.
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Jesus is the final word from God. That's what Hebrews 1 says. But then
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I look at the Quran and the Quran makes a clear claim. You all know. Insert Al -Maidah, right?
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You know the chain that's laid out in Ayats 44 and following where you have this direct statement.
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Allah sent down the Torah to Moses. That's the language of revelation. Sent it down.
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It contains light and guidance. And in fact, they're held accountable for what's in the
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Torah. Yes. And then he sends down the Injil to Jesus.
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And what does it do? It confirms what? The Torah that came before him. So there's a chain here.
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You have Torah, Moses. Now Jesus and the Injil confirming what comes before and what's in the
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Injil. Light and guidance. It's Natsal. It's sent down, right? And then the
01:00:02
Quran given to Muhammad. And it's a muhaiman. It's a controller, a corrector over what comes before is how you understand that.
01:00:11
And so there's a chain going between each one of these. But here's my question for you, my friends. If what
01:00:18
John teaches about Jesus is wrong based on Surah 4, 171,
01:00:25
Surah 5, 116, Surah 5, 17, et cetera, et cetera. We'll be talking about that in a few minutes. If what
01:00:30
John says about Jesus is wrong, why is there no meaningful interaction on the part of the
01:00:38
Quran with the revelations that came before it? There is in the New Testament direct citations.
01:00:46
I mean, when you look at the book of Hebrews, their entire chapters, sections of chapters quoted verbatim from the
01:00:52
Old Testament. Where is there anything from the New Testament quoted in the Quran? There isn't anything.
01:00:59
There's nothing there. You've got the lex talionis from the Old Testament. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. There might be one little phrase from the
01:01:06
Psalms, but there are Islamic scholars that disagree with that and say, no, that definitely did not come from the Psalter. So where is the connection?
01:01:14
If this is to be the final revelation, then where is the deep convincing interaction with what we believe that would help us to understand?
01:01:25
I mean, what does the Quran say we allegedly have done? We've gone into excess.
01:01:32
We've gone beyond. We don't tell the truth in our fideenikum, in our deen.
01:01:39
Well, if that's the case, if that's what you believe, then there should be a lot in the Quran to convince us of that.
01:01:44
There should be interaction and saying, oh, that Paul guy was bad and John missed it here. And there's nothing there.
01:01:52
Now you say your understanding is that the Quran was sent down on Laylatul Qadr. It's given by Jabril to Muhammad.
01:02:00
There's, he has nothing to do with it. You can't even ask questions about what did Muhammad understand? Right? It's the direct word of God.
01:02:08
We can't even ask questions about, well, when Muhammad met with the Christians from Najran, did he increase in his understanding?
01:02:14
And is that the background of some sections of Surah 3 or Surah 4? Some of the early Muslim scholars thought that it was.
01:02:23
But if that's the case and Muhammad has nothing to do with it, okay, let's put him aside. Take the orthodox
01:02:28
Sunni understanding of this particular subject. Didn't God know what was in the
01:02:34
New Testament? When he gave the revelation? Of course he did. So he could have interacted.
01:02:41
He could have given real light and guidance to Christians just to understand why John was wrong. Why isn't it there?
01:02:48
Where's the evidence that the author of the Quran knew what John had ever said? I see none.
01:02:55
I see none. And if that's the case, why is it the case?
01:03:00
Why? The reason I invited Yusuf to engage this subject with me is because I think we are all benefited by seeing a believing
01:03:13
Muslim and a believing Christian seeking to honestly, and that's what
01:03:19
I'm looking for, honestly engage with each other's texts. Not out of ignorance, but to study, to examine, to appreciate, but then to ask the questions we must ask because I as a
01:03:36
Christian believe things you as a Muslim do not. One of the 99 beautiful names, is it not
01:03:41
Al -Haq? The truth. Christians love that name. Jesus said,
01:03:48
I am the way, the truth, and the life. Seeking for, possessing, and loving the truth is one of the highest callings
01:03:58
God has placed upon any one of us. There is nothing in this world nothing in this world's possessions that should ever dissuade us from wanting as our ultimate desire to possess the truth.
01:04:13
That's how he's made us. He's put that in our hearts. He's put that in our hearts, you know that. We're not like the people of the world.
01:04:20
We're not like the secularists of this world that don't think there's a truth that think that this world is just spinning out of control and there's no purpose.
01:04:27
You and I know better, don't we? And so if that's the case, then you and I, you and I need to be talking to one another and we need to be honest in our differences.
01:04:39
And we need to ask really difficult questions. And here's what I'll close with. What if John was right?
01:04:48
What if John was right? He's, the gospel of John is the earliest and most widely documented of the books of the
01:04:55
New Testament. You know that? The earliest fragment we have in the New Testament comes from John chapter 18 where Jesus is with Pilate.
01:05:01
And Pilate says, what is truth? And Jesus says, he who is of the truth, hears my voice. That's the earliest fragment we have.
01:05:08
What if it's right? What if all the liberal scholars are wrong about both
01:05:16
John and what you believe? Because liberal scholars don't, I mean, the Quran quotes
01:05:22
Jesus. You will not find a single scholar that Yusuf quoted that would believe that any of the words of Jesus in the
01:05:28
Quran were actually traceable back to Jesus. So it's that even scale thing. It's, you know, having the right scales.
01:05:36
And so what if John was right? What if Jesus was in the very presence of the father for eternity past and he was glorious?
01:05:44
What if he is the one who created all things? That means he created you. And that means every breath of your mouth and every beat of your heart comes from his hand.
01:05:53
And if that's the case, he cannot be dismissed as a mere Rasul. That's why
01:05:58
I've traveled halfway around the planet. I wanna talk with you about that. I wanna make sure you understand what
01:06:04
John actually said. And want to think about it as you leave this place this evening.
01:06:10
Let me again thank you for your attention. Thank you for being so kind in bringing us here this evening, allowing us to be here for this discussion.
01:06:19
Thank you so much. Keep listening. God bless. We will now have the rebuttal from attorney
01:06:32
Yusuf Ismail. I wanna thank James for that impassioned presentation and that plea that he basically gave us.
01:06:42
One thing that always troubles me, I read his book, The Forgotten Trinity after he gave it to me at the debate or prior to the debate last year.
01:06:51
And I tried to seriously understand what Christian belief is, what
01:06:57
Christian belief on the triune Godhead is. And I waded through this entire book of 200 pages and I never got an answer.
01:07:07
And that begs a question, how can you expect Muslims, James, a deeper question, how can you expect Muslims to believe in something that you yourself cannot explain?
01:07:20
I'll just give you a quotation as a heads up to the next part of the debate. In explaining the Trinity, this is what
01:07:26
James says. He says, we need to realize in quoting Hank Hanegraaff, we need to realize that we are talking about one what and three who's.
01:07:36
The one what is a being or essence of God. The three who's are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We dare not mix up the what's and the who's regarding the
01:07:45
Trinity. The Father is not one third God, the Son, one third
01:07:50
God or the Spirit, one third God. Each is fully God, co -equal with others and that eternally.
01:07:59
And yet there's only one God. Can any of you understand that? You see, according to Christian belief,
01:08:07
Jesus is God, the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but they are not three persons, but one being.
01:08:16
Now, quite simplistically, if X is equal to Y and Z is equal to Y, then
01:08:22
X is equal to Z. Am I correct? But that's not what the Christian says. He says
01:08:28
X is not equal to Z. Jesus is not equal to the Father. The Father is not equal to the
01:08:33
Holy Spirit. And yet they're all co -equal and co -eternal. And that creates a problem.
01:08:41
That creates a problem because even though at a conscious level, you want to be a monotheist, you want to claim that you believe in one
01:08:48
God, you actually do believe in three Gods. At a subconscious level, James, I don't feel it good to say, but at a subconscious level, you are a polytheist.
01:08:58
And the Quran describes it as shirk. And so from that perspective, when the
01:09:03
Quran identifies wala takulu thalatha, you say it doesn't identify the trinity.
01:09:09
It in fact focuses on the fact that the idea of a triune Godhead, even though you believe it's one, is polytheism at the fundamental level.
01:09:19
And so if you cannot believe or you cannot understand what you believe, how can you expect Muslims to believe in something that you cannot adequately explain?
01:09:27
And that for me is the ultimate human tragedy. I got a note from someone saying this is all, well,
01:09:34
I'd leave that aside. I'll probably share it with you later. I want to focus on a few points that I raised.
01:09:40
James, one of the points he normally raises is this, that inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.
01:09:46
You're correct. That's what he says. And he says he will even fail Daniel Wallace. I quoted Daniel Wallace. But Daniel Wallace is someone whose textbook he uses to teach at a university.
01:09:56
Why would he fail the writer of a textbook that he uses to teach other students? He'd fail him in his understanding of Greek grammar.
01:10:02
Daniel Wallace says that the word theos, kai theos, enologos kai theos is basically qualitative.
01:10:13
He's not a liberal. William Barclay, in his introduction to the New Testament, he's not a liberal.
01:10:19
I never quoted two liberal scholars. I quoted two authorities and I made sure prior to this debate, these are the scholars.
01:10:25
Would you view them as liberal? Wallace and William Barclay are not liberal. Both of them are authoritative.
01:10:31
Both of them believe in the Trinity. Both of them subscribe to the fact that Jesus is God. And even though he understands the implications of John 1 1,
01:10:40
Daniel Wallace at the end has to suggest he doesn't impugn on the divinity of Christ. We know the reason why he says that.
01:10:47
So I'm quite disappointed that in the final analysis, I was expecting James to deal with my misappropriation or abuse of the
01:10:56
Greek language in John 1 1, but that never came. All came was an ad hominem attack. Why am
01:11:02
I referring, relying on liberal scholars? I think we need a more reasoned and balanced approach.
01:11:08
I raised the issue of the fact that when we compare the gospels, we can see how the stories of Jesus were evolved to reflect a higher view.
01:11:14
James never focused on this particular issue. I understand it's not the debate per se, but that's a context in understanding why there are pronouncements of Jesus at a far more superior level in the gospel of John.
01:11:27
I raised the issue of the difference in the fact that the authorship of John was in quote.
01:11:33
Of course, we're not dealing with that issue, but that's fundamental that if you don't know the author of a book, if a book is pseudonymous or anonymous, how can you use that as a basis for your authority in proving a particular theological point?
01:11:47
I will deal with the second aspect in the rebuttal session. I mean, I'm sorry, in the next debate, when we focus on the
01:11:54
Quran, when the Quran refers to Injil, it refers to gospel singular. It doesn't refer to gospels.
01:12:02
James never quoted the context. It speaks about an angel revealed to Jesus. You don't believe that about the gospels.
01:12:08
You believe Jesus is a revelation. Your understanding of revelation is different. Your understanding of inspiration is different.
01:12:15
And so from that perspective to even confused what sort of five is 60 says and then juxtapose it with your understanding of the
01:12:22
New Testament is a total abuse of particular interpretation of scripture.
01:12:28
Thank you. I expected James to raise an issue about the fact the date of Jesus' death, which was very intrinsic.
01:12:38
I said that in Mark's gospel, he was sacrificed on the day of the Passover. In John's gospel, he was sacrificed on the day that the lambs were sacrificed.
01:12:47
James never responded to it. I can't recall the fact, but last year I raised a similar point. And I don't remember that that was dealt with in detail.
01:12:56
A year later, I see that particular point is not also dealt with. I'll be waiting interestingly in the rebuttal for reply.
01:13:02
Is it because of the fact that the fact that John wants to prove that Jesus dies on the day of the preparation, the day before the
01:13:10
Passover is that it's so pronounced the fact that John wanted to actually convey a theological point that is
01:13:16
Jesus is a sacrificial lamb. So he makes a day that Jesus dies earlier. If someone were to say you die on such a day, another person says this person dies on such a day in a court of law, your testimony will be totally rejected.
01:13:29
You raise a number of points on John 1 18. He says no man has seen
01:13:34
God at any time. The only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the father. Now, according to the
01:13:40
New International Version and New American Standard Bible, it says the only begotten
01:13:46
God who is in the bosom of the father. What's the meaning of that? The only begotten
01:13:52
God who is in the bosom of the father. If you look at the Greek, it's homo monogamous or monogamous
01:13:59
Theos, the unique only begotten God. But in the King James Version, which is representative of a later text, the original text, the word is homo monogamous
01:14:10
Theos, the only begotten son. Although it is true that the earliest Greek manuscripts contain the reading
01:14:16
Theos, every one of those texts is of the Alexandrian text type. And so two particular
01:14:23
Greek translators or Greek editors of the New Testament, Westcourt and Hort, they basically say they're two textual scholars engaging textual criticism.
01:14:34
They basically say that the more accurate reading of John 118 is homo monogamous
01:14:41
Theos, the only begotten son. If I pronounce Greek, maybe you might fail me from a pronunciation of the
01:14:47
Greek language, but you cannot fail me for my interpretation of what's contained here. And so the point
01:14:54
I'm trying to emphasize is that a large number of the church fathers, such as Arrhenius, Clement, Tertullian quoted the verse with the son and not
01:15:02
God. But at the same time, even if we want to assume that it's referring to only begotten God, what do you mean by beget?
01:15:08
In another debate that James had with Bassem Zawadi, he says he takes exception to the idea that the
01:15:13
Quran's understanding of sonship is one of generation. What do you mean by beget?
01:15:20
In your debate, you also said Ahmad did that was wrong. You did say that on the understanding where he speaks about the sexual nature.
01:15:28
But what do you mean by beget? What does begetting mean? Does it mean unique?
01:15:35
Begetting was a term Unijitus used in the Latin in Jerome's Latin Vulgate. That was the understanding.
01:15:41
If it's not begetting, if it's not generation, that doesn't make Jesus separate or different from any of the other sons of God that are basically ascribed.
01:15:49
But that's going to be another debate. Entirely. You go to John chapter 10, verse 30, where the
01:15:55
Jews go up to pick up stones. John chapter 10, verse 30, Jesus says, I am the father of one.
01:16:01
But the oneness he's referring to is not the oneness in divinity. It's a oneness in purpose.
01:16:06
And I think James and I agreement on that particular point that once the believer has accepted faith,
01:16:13
God sees to it that he remains in faith and the messenger of God sees to it that he remains in faith.
01:16:19
So when the Jews pick up stones to stone Jesus, what does he say? He says, I've shown you many works for which of these do show.
01:16:26
Do we do stone me? They say we stone you not but for blasphemy, because being a man you make yourself God. What does
01:16:32
Jesus say? They say, yes, I am God. He says it is not written in your law. I said, ye are gods.
01:16:39
He was quoting from the 82nd chapter of the book of Psalms. Yeah, gods and the children of the most high. So if he
01:16:44
God Almighty call them gods in others, prophet of gods will call gods unto whom the word of God came.
01:16:51
How can you take exception to me when the only claim I'm making is I'm the son of God? God has got literally sons by the tons as Ahmed did at once said.
01:17:01
So there's no particular point. The emphasis that you're effectively pointing out is lost in the idea that the verse, in fact, does not, in fact, indicate divinity whatsoever.
01:17:10
I see there's one minute left. I'm just going to I'm just going to end with this particular point. I've raised a number of issues on a number of particular points.
01:17:22
I was expecting some degree of engagement, particularly in respect of some of the issues that are raised, particularly
01:17:29
John one, one, a bit of discussion on John 20, verse 28. He said he would fail me for that. I have my doubts because many scholars have some other interpretations in respect of John 20, 28.
01:17:41
But at the end of the day, the problem, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters is this. How can you come?
01:17:46
You say you travel half the world. Of course he did from Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona. And you want to explain to a
01:17:55
Muslim congregation the nature of God when you yourself do not understand the nature of God.
01:18:02
In all 200 pages, I tried to see some degree of explanation, which could reasonably explain to me what you, in fact, believe in.
01:18:10
And yet I couldn't understand that. And that for me is not a question of winning the debate.
01:18:16
Losing the debate. That is the ultimate human tragedy. And so Islam basically says, call who
01:18:25
Allah had say he's got the one and only Allah's summit. God, they tell the absolute. He does not beget and he's not begotten.
01:18:34
And there is none like unto him. That is a touchstone of theology. And that is, in fact, what we would invite all our
01:18:42
Christian brothers to come to. Thank you. So let us now have the rebuttal from Dr.
01:18:53
White. I think I may have taken slightly more time. I think we'll give James a little more time to refute that.
01:19:01
I'll take anything I can be given. I must admit it's disappointing.
01:19:07
This is the second time and I'm just going to have to call Yusuf on this. Both Apaches Thrum and now he has faulted me for not rebutting him before I have my rebuttal period.
01:19:17
That's not fair. You're supposed to rebut the other guy when you're doing your rebuttal period. That's what
01:19:22
I'm supposed to be doing now. How I was supposed to respond to him before that is anyone's guess. So I think that's a little bit unfair.
01:19:28
Why is John different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke? John does not have to be a photocopy of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
01:19:34
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not identical to one another. And all through Yusuf's presentation, he's saying, well, this isn't there and that isn't there.
01:19:41
John's writing later on. Why does he have to repeat Matthew, Mark, and Luke? That's already out there. The tradition of the church has already have that in print.
01:19:49
He wants to give us the inside information of the relationship of Jesus to the disciples and ministry that the
01:19:55
Synoptic Gospels didn't tell about. That's why it's different. Let's use even scales. Why is it that the stories of the fall of Iblis and the story of Lot told numerous times in the
01:20:06
Quran isn't identical each time it's told? By his standard, it should be, right? But it's not.
01:20:11
Look at the Quran. Even scales. Okay. Number two. This was the second point
01:20:17
I was going to get to. This is what he faulted me for not getting to. Yusuf doesn't understand John's chronology. John has the exact chronology of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as to the day
01:20:25
Jesus was born. This is a common error. It's been refuted for centuries, but people just don't bother to look this stuff up.
01:20:33
Very simply, John says the day of Jesus' death was the Paraskeway. Paraskeway, to this day, in the
01:20:41
Greek language, means preparation day. That's true. But guess what? It's also the word for Friday.
01:20:48
You ask a modern Greek speaker, what's Friday? Paraskeway. John does not contradict
01:20:54
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Only those who won't listen to John and assume that Passover is only one day and not a feast come to that error.
01:21:00
They actually say the same thing. Look at the entire chronology that A .T. Robertson puts together in the back of his harmony. Blows it out of the water.
01:21:07
It's a common error. Just it's people who only look at some information and not look at all of it. That's, again, not having equal scales.
01:21:16
Then we had in John 20, 28. He said, I did not correct him on John 1, 18. Folks, I did. Just go back and listen.
01:21:23
There was no ad hominem attack. I simply said he was wrong. He was wrong about the article appearing before Theos, always when it's
01:21:30
God the Father. Showed you John 1, 6, where that's the case. Showed you in John 20, 28 that the word
01:21:35
God has the article. That must mean that it's the one true God. I gave you a lot of information. Whether Yusuf will respond to it and interact with it is up to him.
01:21:43
But I gave you that information. And by the way, there was another error in his presentation. He said, Jesus never referred to himself as Kurios.
01:21:50
In John 13, 13, he says, you call me Lord and Hakurios, the Lord. He actually did use that term of himself, both there as elsewhere.
01:21:59
Then just now, we were asked, rather than interacting with those things, we were just asked, how can you expect
01:22:06
Muslims to understand what you cannot explain? My friends, I have explained that doctrine to 12 year olds and they understood it.
01:22:14
You can understand it. It's not a question of it not being understandable. It's a question of whether you will actually honestly listen to it enough to figure out what it is.
01:22:22
You know what bothers me about this? I take heat in my community for trying to point out that you folks have different beliefs among yourselves and you should not be held accountable for the actions of everybody else.
01:22:33
I take heat for that because there are a lot of evangelicals just want to paint with a broad brush and say all
01:22:38
Muslims are like this. I say, no, they're not. They have arguments amongst themselves as to certain beliefs. They have different jurisprudences and different practices amongst different peoples and you have to allow them to be who they are.
01:22:49
Why do you turn around and whitewash us and say, well, no one understands what you're talking about. That's not true. That's just simply not true.
01:22:57
I do understand. It's real simple. We are human beings, right? Are we all the same human being?
01:23:02
No, we share humanity, but you are an individual person. Now, are you different than Iraq? You better believe you're different than Iraq.
01:23:09
You can insult Iraq all day long and it will not care. Trust me, you can try it if you'd like, but you're going to look pretty weird when you do it.
01:23:15
Rocks are impersonal. They have being, but they're impersonal. We have human being, but we are personal.
01:23:22
Now, because your being is limited, it can only be shared by one person. If there's two persons sharing your being, well, we need to talk to you after the debate's over.
01:23:30
We have a padded room for you in another place, but that's rather unnatural. Is that supposed to happen? But you are one limited, time -bound human being and you have one person, one personality.
01:23:42
God's being is not limited by time and space and therefore we have to go to scripture and ask scripture the question, what do you reveal about God?
01:23:51
And in the holy scriptures, which were sent down to us, we have the name of God, Yahweh, used of the father, of the son, and it's the spirit of Yahweh.
01:24:02
Three persons distinguished from one another and yet they're all described with one being. You and I differentiate between being in person for ourselves, why can't we do it with God?
01:24:12
I can explain that to the junior high schoolers at my church. It's not a question of understanding it and I explained it clearly in my book.
01:24:18
The question is, will you allow your prejudice to be so deep that you won't even listen to the explanation? Because see,
01:24:25
I listen to you folks and I listen to all the different forms of Tawhid and I try to understand how different groups understand it and how you make application.
01:24:36
Will you just take the time to listen and to think and not to allow prejudice to keep you from hearing what it is that we're saying?
01:24:44
He asked, can any of you understand that? Well, if the junior high schoolers at my church can, I think everybody in here can understand that.
01:24:51
I'm not asking you to accept it, I am asking you to hear it and to understand it so that you can then interact with it in a meaningful and respectful faction.
01:25:01
He said, William Barclay is not a liberal. Oh, yes, he is. We're talking if he was a plane, he'd have two left wings.
01:25:09
You better believe he's a liberal. He said, all I responded to him was an ad hominem attack. I never did. Saying you're wrong about Greek grammar when you don't read it and I've taught it at the graduate level for years is not ad hominem, that's just simply an observation of fact, especially when
01:25:23
I then give you examples where what he said is untrue. John 118, very confused presentation you were just given.
01:25:32
Very confused. Westcott and Hort died 135 years ago.
01:25:37
Well, at least their New Testament came out 135 years ago, that's before the discovery of the papyri. All the earliest manuscripts of John, including the papyri
01:25:45
P75 of the Gospel of John, read monogamous theos, the word is
01:25:53
God, it means unique. Monogamous does not mean begotten. If Yusuf read the language, he would know that monogamous is made up of monos and genos, which means kind or type, not genao, which means to beget.
01:26:06
He goes to the Latin, that comes later, it's an error. It's false. And again, there's at least an entire page of small print text on that subject in the book he held up that would have answered every objection he brought up and he didn't even touch on it.
01:26:21
So he's holding the book saying, this never explains it and he's not dealing with the vast majority of what's in it. That is a bit of a problem.
01:26:28
And then we just had John chapter 10, verse 30, where Jesus said, I and the Father are one.
01:26:34
And he said, I think you agree. Yes. But then I made application. When Jesus says, I and the Father, we are one in the salvation of God's people, he's not saying that makes me
01:26:43
God. What he is saying is, he is in charge of the salvation of God's people and no mere prophet can ever be described in that way.
01:26:51
And so when the Jews do say, you're blaspheming, making yourself equal to God because they picked up stones to stone him,
01:26:57
Yusuf has misunderstood the use of Psalm 82, 6 as well. Because in Psalm 82, when it says, you are gods, he didn't keep reading.
01:27:07
It says, but you shall fall like men and die like one of the princes. Psalm 82 is about the unrighteous judges of Israel.
01:27:15
Jesus is identifying his accusers as unrighteous judges and he does affirm he is the son of God.
01:27:24
And no, God does not have unique monogamous sons by the tons.
01:27:30
That is not what the New Testament teaches in any way, shape or form. And so the fact of the matter is, when we look at the text and we handle it accurately and even scales, we discover very clearly, even the most liberal, critical scholar recognizes the gospel of John presents the deity of Christ.
01:27:54
There isn't any question about it. In John 20, 28, Thomas said to Jesus, my
01:27:59
Lord and my God, both addressed, didn't touch it, can't touch it because it's the singular alto.
01:28:06
They're both addressed to Jesus. There is not any question about that whatsoever. But the question again, for each one of you and I, how much time do
01:28:14
I have brother? Just one minute now. Okay. The question once again is, look these things up.
01:28:20
If you want to know what he's saying is true, go ask Dan Wallace. I guarantee you, you contact him.
01:28:25
He will affirm every word I said because what I said in my book is exactly what Dan Wallace said. Yusuf has just misunderstood.
01:28:32
I'm sorry that's the case, but it's true. That's not an ad hominem attack. Check out the facts, but also don't forget the questions that I have asked you.
01:28:40
And let's keep the thinking going. Let's not let emotions get in the way to where we will not hear what the other side is saying.
01:28:50
Thank you very much. Now, let us have two questions.
01:28:57
One each for attorney Yusuf Ismail and one for Dr. White.
01:29:03
Assalamu alaikum. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a very simple person.
01:29:10
I come from a background of a Christian mother and a Muslim father. It's very important of everything.
01:29:17
You do not listen. You get knowledge and you basically get led by the Holy Spirit, the Rasul. And you listen to God.
01:29:25
God created us. We did not create, okay? So when you are listening and you are wanting to go on the right path, choose right every time you pray and not going to the wrong way.
01:29:37
I'm not an angel. I have to do the wrong things and you get attracted by the weaknesses. But most of all, the
01:29:44
Holy Bible has its purposes and its reasons. And we'll show you a lot of things that God used people and the
01:29:52
Holy Quran was the only holy book that was recited and passed on. So from many generations, it cannot be altered.
01:30:02
But whatever books have been made and altered to lead Islam astray, that is left in God's hands to be dealt with.
01:30:09
But that's what I found. And then when I come back now to John, because when we're just looking at John 17, there's a
01:30:16
Bible that I've kept and I've got. If you can look at 17, it says here, a little bit down the way, chapter 17, verse 3.
01:30:30
This is why just a little bit. I had always marked in the Bibles when I was at the church and I taught and I was going through things with the children.
01:30:38
My concerns that when Shaitan comes to a thing, is the children. OK, he'll attack you there because his life, his work is done.
01:30:45
So you've got to look after the children. So for you is now, this is eternal life that they may now, they know the only true
01:30:54
God and Jesus Christ, who you have sent. I brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.
01:31:06
So Jesus Christ, if you read with the Holy Spirit and guides you, it's explaining there that Jesus's work, he completed his work, what he had to do.
01:31:17
So how can he be the end? Is that your question?
01:31:24
That's the question I'd like to ask you. OK, I'm going to do my best to.
01:31:30
To answer what I think is an objection, and if I'm wrong about that, then then I then forgive me.
01:31:36
But generally, John 17, 3 is raised as an objection to the Christian understanding because it identifies the father as the only true
01:31:44
God and therefore Jesus couldn't be a true God. That's normally what's being said is that, well, this is a Unitarian text.
01:31:50
There's a couple of problems with that. A, that would assume, make us assume that if Jesus were the incarnate son of God, that he'd have to be an atheist.
01:32:00
How else would he refer to the father? One of many gods? We don't believe in many gods. Secondly, it goes on to say that to have eternal life is to know both the father and the son.
01:32:12
No Mirazul could ever be associated with God in that way. And the very next sentence says, now, father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory, which
01:32:22
I had with you before the world was. Now, if the next sentence that you give is that before the world came into existence,
01:32:30
I shared the very glory of Yahweh in your presence. And already this author has said that the one that was seen upon the throne was
01:32:40
Jesus in John 12, 41. Obviously, John 17, 3 isn't denying all of that.
01:32:45
Instead, what it's telling us is, well, despite the fact that Yusuf says, well, you are a polytheist.
01:32:52
No, I am not. I believe there is one God, Yahweh. I believe that he is the creator of all things.
01:32:59
Before him, there was no God formed. There shall be none after him. I simply have to take all that scripture says and allow it to speak.
01:33:07
I don't get to kick that part out or kick that part out. I have to allow all of it to speak.
01:33:13
And when you allow all of John 17 to speak, what's going on in verse 3 is fairly clear. I think that's what the objection was.
01:33:21
At least that was the best understanding I could have. I think what the lady was pointing out, and I'm just going to read it from the
01:33:27
Bible. It says here, and this is a life eternal, that they might know thee, the only, the only true
01:33:36
God. This is English. And Jesus Christ from thy scent. How many Muslims believe in that?
01:33:42
I do. Basically, that defines this. James says that basically, he's a monotheist.
01:33:51
But then he believes that Jesus is 100 % God. God Father is 100 %
01:33:58
God. The Holy Spirit is 100 % God. And there's one God. One plus one plus one is equal to one.
01:34:07
It doesn't make sense. And the point is, when you look at the particular text, it defines two particular. I'll just end with this last passage, also from John 5 30.
01:34:15
I cannot my own self do nothing. As I hear I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will, but the will of the
01:34:22
Father that sent me. You juxtapose that with John 17 3. You see that there's two different personalities.
01:34:30
One a prophet, one involuntary subordination, the other God Almighty. It's so clear, crystal clear.
01:34:39
Okay, we have a question now. And the question should be addressed to the attorney,
01:34:45
Yusuf Ismail. Good evening, Yusuf. Yusuf, I would like to ask you to please address
01:34:54
John chapter 20 verse 28 again. And you can see in terms of the discussion that we've been presented with from your version and from Dr.
01:35:04
James White, that Thomas is indeed speaking directly to Jesus.
01:35:11
And I'll read it to you in English. Thomas said to him, my
01:35:16
Lord and my God, could you please conceive that you must repent?
01:35:26
Look, the passage in the interpretation that I gave in respect of John 20 verse 28 was a passage that is adopted by many
01:35:35
Unitarians in the world today. And they claim that the exclamation made by Thomas was in fact an exclamation of surprise and was in fact an exclamation of joy.
01:35:46
The context behind that is that the other disciples had seen Jesus to be alive. Thomas was not present.
01:35:52
Eight days later, Jesus comes, appears before the disciples, yet he does not believe unless he feels
01:35:58
Jesus directly. When Jesus presents himself before Thomas, then Thomas makes the exclamation, my
01:36:05
Lord and my God. I will still concede to the point that from my understanding, many
01:36:10
Unitarians still adopt the position that that is one of exclamation, that is one of surprise. But even on the assumption, even on the assumption that John is addressing
01:36:21
Jesus as divine, the point is, where is the historic precedent for this?
01:36:27
Because Jesus never referred to himself prior to this passage as God in the absolute sense.
01:36:32
So what precedent then did Thomas have for referring to Jesus in that particular aspect?
01:36:38
The other point is this, even if one concedes that it is referring to Jesus, the Greek language uses the word theos in many instances.
01:36:46
Why is it that the same principle now is not applied in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 4? In 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 4, in reference to the devil, there you have a definite article and the devil is the whole theos of this world.
01:37:01
In that particular instance, you don't understand it as the devil being almighty God of this world. He's translated as the
01:37:07
God of this world. In Acts chapter 12 verse 22, the Roman governor is described as God in the
01:37:13
Greek, the theos. You don't refer to the Roman governor as God. Why is it particularly that there seems to be a duplicitous double standard here that only when it comes to Jesus, where the context seems to fit a particular passage, you disagree that that doesn't mean that the person is
01:37:30
God. Where the context, in fact, refers to Jesus or where some particular passage refers to Jesus, you even twist the context to make it seem to appear that that in fact indicates that Jesus is in fact
01:37:40
God. Be consistent. As James says, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.
01:37:47
If you don't maintain consistency in one particular verse, then you can't maintain the same consistency in another verse where you want to particularly prove your theological point.
01:37:55
Thank you. We'll allow Dr. White to respond. Yusuf has not given us a single response to the grammatical fact that these words are addressed to Jesus and here's what else he's forgotten.
01:38:11
You want consistency? What's the next verse say? What's the next verse say? Does anybody know? Think about it.
01:38:19
Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God, Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, have you believed?
01:38:29
Bless are those who while not seeing have believed. Jesus identified the confession of Thomas not as an exclamation like Unitarians.
01:38:38
The Unitarians are wrong. He didn't identify it as an exclamation.
01:38:44
He identified it as a statement of faith and blessed it. That's what Jesus did.
01:38:49
Now we proceed to the second part of the debate and to be Christology in the Quran and we will start with Dr.
01:38:57
White. All right. Thank you very much for sticking through to the second half.
01:39:06
I think this is very, very important, my friends, because once again, despite the directions that we've gone and some of the things we've ended up discussing, what
01:39:15
I want this evening to demonstrate is that we must be able to, with respect and love for one another, look into each other's scriptures.
01:39:25
I will admit the vast majority of my fellow believers in Christ do not know the Quran and I've told people the
01:39:31
Quran directly addresses you. The Al -Kitab are addressed in the scripture. The Al -Anjil, the people of the gospel are addressed in the
01:39:39
Quran. Don't you think it's important for us to know what this book of a major world religion says to us directly?
01:39:47
I think that is important. And so I want us to have the opportunity this evening to demonstrate that we can look at each other's scriptures in a meaningful fashion and in a respectful way without fighting.
01:40:00
We'll have to argue, but arguing and fighting are not the same thing. All right. So with that in mind, in Surah 4, verses 171 and following, and I am using the majestic Quran translation.
01:40:13
It's the translation I used for my book, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. And by the way, I would like to give an invitation to those of you who are listening, if you ever get an opportunity to read my book,
01:40:24
I would love Muslims to read that book because when you do,
01:40:29
I think you will have to be convinced that I tried as best I can to accurately represent what you believe.
01:40:36
You may disagree with what I say, but I seek to accurately represent it. And I just simply ask that you do the same in return.
01:40:44
In Surah 4, verses 171 to 172, we read, O people of the book, commit no excess in your religion nor say anything but the truth about Allah.
01:40:52
The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah and his word, which he conveyed to Mary and a spirit from him.
01:40:59
So believe in Allah and his messengers and say not three. Cease, it is better for you.
01:41:05
Allah is only one God. Far is it removed from his transcendence that he should have a son when he is all that the heavens and all the earth, when his is all the heavens and all that the earth contain.
01:41:16
And Allah is sufficient as their custodian. The Messiah will never be too proud to be a slave to Allah, nor will the nearest angels.
01:41:23
Those who are too proud to worship him are arrogant. All such will he assemble to them.
01:41:28
Here we have, I think, one of the key texts in the Quran addressed to the people of the book.
01:41:34
And specifically this would be, obviously, as you know, sometimes people, the book refers to Jews as well.
01:41:40
But this specifically is in regards to the Christians. And we are told, the description is given more than once in the
01:41:47
Quran, that we have engaged in excess, that we have gone beyond the bounds.
01:41:53
The assumption is that, well, Jesus taught what the Quran says he taught and he didn't teach all those other things.
01:42:00
That's the modern interpretation. And that you are to commit no excess and you're to say nothing but what is truthful about Allah.
01:42:09
Now we'd all agree that that is something that is incumbent upon every single human being. We should all only seek to say what is true about God.
01:42:17
As I said, al -Haq is a vital concept and I'm glad that you stayed here this evening to talk about that very thing, the truth.
01:42:26
But then we have the assertion that the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah.
01:42:31
And my understanding is that the language there indicates a real limitation. Only, that's reflected in this translation here, only a messenger of Allah.
01:42:41
And his word, which he conveyed to Mary, which is interpreted today as being that command, be and he was.
01:42:50
So believe in Allah as messengers and say not three. Now, we're gonna look at each place in the
01:42:56
Quran where the word three appears. Unfortunately, Yusuf Ali even Assad's translation renders this term as Trinity.
01:43:05
Well, I have no doubt that that is what is being addressed. But the question is this, is it being addressed accurately?
01:43:15
Now, immediately, we run into the problem with your view of the Quran. Because when we look at the
01:43:22
New Testament, we will ask questions such as what was Paul's understanding of certain things when he's writing the book of Romans or writing to the
01:43:30
Corinthians or what did Mark understand when he wrote this section? We look at that type of thing.
01:43:35
We look at the background of the text of our scripture because our understanding of inspiration is not something like an angel bringing down a heavenly book and dictating it to someone.
01:43:46
We believe that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, that he used their personalities, their words to express his truth, that God is big enough to do that without turning us into a dictation machine or an
01:43:59
MP3 recorder. That's a different viewpoint where then saying that all the Quran comes down on Laylat al -Qadr and we can't ask questions like, well, did
01:44:08
Muhammad grow in his understanding of what Christians believe or anything else? And so the problem is what does three mean in the
01:44:17
Quran? I would like to suggest something to you. Look up, we're going to look at them, but look up every single time that the word three appears in the
01:44:27
Quran. What is the very next phrase every time it appears?
01:44:32
I'm sorry, three when it's being referred to the people of the book and it's talking about Jesus or something like that, not when it's talking about three days or something like that.
01:44:40
But every single time when three, when we're told, say not three, what does it mean?
01:44:47
What's the very next phrase? The very next phrase always is Allah is only one.
01:44:55
There is only one Allah. Now, if I say to you, do not say three, there is only one.
01:45:01
If I say, do not say that there are three rugby teams in the world, there is only one and we proved it on Sunday.
01:45:09
Right now, you know what I'm talking about. I don't have to repeat rugby teams each time.
01:45:16
You know that if I say there's not three, there's only one rugby team and we proved it on Sunday with a last minute conversion there.
01:45:26
You know what I'm talking about. And the same way when the Quran says, say not three, well,
01:45:32
Yusuf Zazari stood up here. He's accused me of being a polytheist. Despite how many times I've defended monotheism down through the years, he's forced to do so because it's what the
01:45:40
Quran teaches. And it teaches it by saying, do not say three, there's only one. Three what? Gods.
01:45:47
Three gods. Now, in 632, could anyone know what the doctrine of the
01:45:55
Trinity was? Oh yeah. All, even if you look at church history and the
01:46:00
Trinitarian controversies and the Council of Nicaea and Nestorianism and all the rest of that stuff. By 632, there was no question about what the doctrine of the
01:46:09
Trinity was. In fact, I would argue there wasn't any question about it long before that, but we won't get into that this evening. And so, even if Muhammad did not know what the
01:46:19
Trinity was, Allah did. And so there would be absolutely no basis whatsoever for a misrepresentation of what the people of the book believe.
01:46:30
In fact, if you want the people of the book to hear, believe and follow, what's the best way to do that? I mean, let's, let me, let me put the shoe on the other foot again.
01:46:39
How many times do you hear people using arguments that demonstrate they've never read the
01:46:45
Quran? They will attack Muhammad for Aisha and all the rest of this kind of stuff and they'll bring, it's the stuff you hear all the time.
01:46:54
And when you hear someone using arguments like that, what happens immediate in your mind? You don't give them any credit.
01:47:01
They don't have any, they don't have any weight in your eyes. And so if, if the intention of these texts is actually to call the people of the book to truly follow after the truth, then you're going to use, well, even the
01:47:15
Quran says, it says to you, you're to use, well, one translation is beautiful arguments, are you not?
01:47:21
You're to use beautiful arguments and talking with the people of the book. Well, Allah can do that, can't he?
01:47:28
I mean, if you can, then he can do it a whole lot better than you can, right? So where are these beautiful arguments that reflect what we actually believe?
01:47:35
Because I can show you the earliest Christian responses to the Quran, such as that of al -Kindi.
01:47:41
And the first thing he says is, your Quran says, we believe in three gods and we'll get to a second, who those three are.
01:47:49
That's not what we believe. Why should we follow when you're not actually describing what we believe?
01:47:56
Now think about it. We are told to cease. I mean, there's some strong words we're going to see here.
01:48:03
The reality is, when we ask, what is the three? There is pretty much unanimous opinion amongst the early
01:48:12
Tafsir and the early Hadith of the Quran. And they all go back to Surah 5, verse 116.
01:48:19
And you know what Surah 5, verse 116 says. Let me just jump up there and read it. And when
01:48:24
Allah said, O Jesus, son of Mary, most interpret this as being the final day of judgment. Did you say to mankind, take me and my mother for two gods other than Allah?
01:48:35
He said, transcendent are you. It was not mine to say of which I had no right in saying it. Then you knew it.
01:48:41
You know what is in myself, but I know not what is in yourself. It is you, only you, who know well all hidden things.
01:48:47
Surah 5, verse 116. Many of the early commentators, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Abbas, all the way into later commentaries like Zamakshari.
01:48:57
They all say the same thing. The three of the Quran is Allah, Jesus, and Mary.
01:49:04
Allah, Jesus, and Mary. That's not the doctrine of the Trinity. Well, I'll give you one thing.
01:49:13
There is a group that calls itself Christian where that's pretty close. They're called the Mormons. The problem is the
01:49:20
Mormons didn't develop until 1830. In fact, they didn't even develop polytheism until 1838. So I really don't think that's what
01:49:26
Muhammad had in mind in the Quran was something that was going to come 1200 some odd years later. No Christians believe when they say three that we're talking about Allah and his wife or his consort and then the offspring,
01:49:43
Jesus. I could see how someone looking at some Christian art that doesn't have a background might come to that conclusion.
01:49:49
But Allah knew what the Trinity was in 632, right? So when it says three,
01:49:56
I have to ask you so, I have to ask you a question. Three what? Well, three gods.
01:50:01
Who are the three gods? Allah, Jesus, and Mary. We know that elsewhere in the Quran, for example, in Surah 394, if Allah had willed to take a son, he could have chosen anyone he pleased out of his creation.
01:50:13
Transcendent is he, he is Allah, the one, the irresistible. Or in Surah 6101, the originator of the heavens and the earth.
01:50:18
How can he have a child when there is for him no consort? When he created all things and has knowledge of all things, no consort.
01:50:28
This is the concept of sonship, but I can show you early church father after early church father, let alone the
01:50:34
New Testament. That's never what we had in mind. That's never what the relationship of father and son is.
01:50:41
As I showed you from the Gospel of John, the relationship of father and son is eternal. It's not in time.
01:50:47
There is no wife. There is no heavenly mother. So why is the Quran referring to these things?
01:50:52
Now, I know there are all sorts of gods, you know, the idols in the Kaaba before the cleansing that Muhammad brings and they had gods who had daughters and sons and all the rest of that stuff.
01:51:04
Yeah, you might want to say some of these texts are about that, but the reality is, again, even the early
01:51:11
Tafsir literature tends to see all of these being related to one another. I can see if you pick and choose how you can get around it, but it seems very, very, very clear that that is what's going on here.
01:51:25
I've got some quotations from Ibn Abbas, but I'm going to have to skip past that and just give you some of the other texts that we need to look at.
01:51:35
Now, let me just mention at least the Tafsir of Al -Jalayim.
01:51:41
So believe in Allah and his messengers. Do not say three gods, Allah, Isa and his mother.
01:51:48
There it is, Allah, Isa and his mother. It is better that you stop saying these things.
01:51:53
Affirming the divine unity is better. Well, that's not what we believe and that's not what was believed at that particular point in time.
01:52:01
There is one other that I do need to read for you, even if time pushes me. This is very important. Here is
01:52:06
Ibn Ishaq. Without Ibn Ishaq, you know almost nothing about the life of Muhammad. This is a very important source.
01:52:12
Listen to this. There were Christians, according to the Byzantine rite, this is about the people who met with Muhammad from Nedron.
01:52:18
Though they did it among themselves at some point saying he is God and he is the son of God and he is the third person in the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity.
01:52:25
They argue that he is God because he used to raise the dead, heal the sick, declare the unseen and make clay birds and then breathe into them so that they flew away.
01:52:32
By the way, even though that's in the Quran, that's from the Gnostic gospels. That's not from the gospel. That's not
01:52:37
Christian. That's Gnostic. That's from a completely different worldview. And you have to ask yourself the question, why does the
01:52:43
Quran say it actually happened when it's ahistorical? It didn't happen. And folks, you don't want the
01:52:49
Gnostics. The Gnostics believe that the creator of all material things is an evil
01:52:55
God. They would say that your Allah is an evil God. They would say that Jehovah was an evil
01:53:00
God. You don't want to touch the Gnostics with a 10 -foot pole. And yet that's where that story came from.
01:53:07
And all this was by the command of God Almighty. We will make him a sign to men. They argue that he is the son of God and that they say he had no known father and he spoke in the cradle.
01:53:16
Again, that's in the Quran, but that comes from the Arabic infancy gospel from the fifth century. He spoke in the cradle, and this is something that no child of Adam has ever done.
01:53:25
They argue that he is the third of three in that God says, we have done, we have commanded, we have created, we have decreed.
01:53:31
And they say if he were one, he would have said, I have done, I have created and so on. That he is he and Jesus and Mary.
01:53:38
There's Mary again. Now listen to this. Concerning all these assertions, the Quran came down.
01:53:45
Did you hear that? Concerning all these assertions, the Quran came down.
01:53:51
The earliest source you have for the majority of Muhammad's life says that the Quran is directly interacting with this stuff, with these claims.
01:54:00
That's amazing. Because the reality is it doesn't interact accurately with these things. That's important because Ibn Ishaq said it.
01:54:08
And like I said, that's a rather important source. Let's look at surah five. I need to at least read these in your hearing.
01:54:14
O people of the book, surah 5, 15. Now has our messenger come to you, expounding to you much of what you used to hide in the book.
01:54:21
Notice it's still in the book in the days of Muhammad. And forgiving much, now there has come to you light from Allah and a clear book whereby
01:54:28
Allah guides all who seek his good pleasures to ways of peace and safety and leads them out of darkness by his permission to light and guides them to a straight path.
01:54:35
They indeed have disbelieved who say Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. By the way, that's not our language.
01:54:42
That's not what we say. That's not what we say. That's not how we would say it. That would make
01:54:47
Jesus all of God, excluding the father and the son. That's not an accurate representation of what we believe. So maybe this is referring to somebody else.
01:54:55
But it says they have indeed disbelieved who say Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say who has the least power against Allah if he had will to destroy the
01:55:02
Messiah, son of Mary and his mother. Why bring that up? Why mention the ability to destroy
01:55:08
Mary? Unless surah 5, 116 is exactly right and the three of the Quran is
01:55:14
God, Mary, and Jesus. If he had will to destroy the Messiah, son of Mary and his mother and everyone on earth,
01:55:20
Allah is the sovereignty of the heavens and earth. And surah 5 continues on in ayahs 68 and 72 through 77.
01:55:26
Say, O people of the book, you have nothing of true guidance till you observe the Torah and the gospel and that which was sent down to you from your
01:55:34
Lord. That's exactly what I'm trying to do tonight, gentlemen and ladies, sorry.
01:55:40
That's exactly what I'm trying to do tonight. I'm trying to find those things. I'm trying to follow those things.
01:55:45
But you know what this means? These words would be meaningless if the Torah and the gospel did not exist in Muhammad's day.
01:55:53
Could someone explain to me? Yusuf, please, in your time, even if you've got lots of slides or something, try to find the time to explain.
01:56:02
If you don't believe that the law and the gospel exist in the day of Muhammad and had already been corrupted, what do these words mean?
01:56:10
I'll read them again. You have nothing of true guidance till you observe the Torah and the gospel and that which was sent down to you from your
01:56:17
Lord. That which was sent down to you, and then in parentheses it says, O Muhammad, from your
01:56:22
Lord is certain to increase the transgression and disbelief of many of them. So grieve not for those who disbelieve.
01:56:28
They have disbelieved who say, Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary. Again, that's not our language.
01:56:33
The Messiah himself said, O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord, whoever ascribes partners to Allah, for him
01:56:40
Allah has forbidden paradise, his abode is the fire, for the unjust there will be no helpers. Point, real quick point.
01:56:47
No critical scholar, that Muslim apologist, quote, to attack the text of the
01:56:53
New Testament will ever believe Jesus said those words. Not a one of them. Not a one of them. None of those liberal scholars would ever believe
01:57:00
Jesus said those words. Even scales, my friends, even scales. But you have the warning against shirt.
01:57:10
They have disbelieved, verse 73. They have disbelieved who say, Allah is the third of three.
01:57:15
Guess what the next phrase is? Exactly what I told you it would be. When there is no God, save one
01:57:21
God. If they cease not what they say, a painful torment will fall upon those who disbelieve. By the way, this is really strong language.
01:57:29
It's really strong language. And I'm not objecting to it. Because if you're right, then we need to be warned.
01:57:35
I'm not like one of these politically correct people in our society that goes, oh, it's just terrible what it says. If it's true, you better say it clearly.
01:57:45
And that's why I'm speaking clearly to you. And I hope you hear me. I hope you hear me.
01:57:51
They have disbelieved who say, Allah is the third of three. When there is no God, save one God. If they cease not what they say, a painful torment will fall upon those who disbelieve.
01:57:59
Will they not instead turn to Allah in repentance and seek His forgiveness? For Allah is forgiving and compassionate. The Messiah son of Mary was none other than same limiting language than a messenger before whom messengers had passed away.
01:58:11
And his mother was a saintly woman. Listen closely. They both used to eat earthly food.
01:58:20
What's the argument? You know what the argument is. If Jesus and Mary eat food, they can't be what?
01:58:27
Gods. Is that a fair reading? Is that not reflective of exactly what's in the early
01:58:32
Tafsir? And that's not what any Christian ever believed. That's not what we believe.
01:58:40
So they both eat. They both used to eat earthly food. See how we make the signs clear for them.
01:58:46
Then see how they follow falsehood. Another translation says, see how they are deluded. Say, do you worship in place of Allah that which possesses for you neither harm nor benefit?
01:58:54
Allah it is who is the hearing and the knowing. O people of the book, exceed not in your religion. Just as we saw in Surah 4, exceed not in your religion the bounds and do not follow the vain desires of people who erred in times gone by and led many astray and strayed from the even road.
01:59:08
I know who you're talking about in your prayers when you say, walad alim.
01:59:15
I know what the early Hadith says about that. And I know that Muhammad was asked who it is that earns
01:59:20
God's wrath. It was the Jews. Who's been led astray? The Christians. I know.
01:59:26
And I know what that's referring to. And what I'm asking you is, why as a believing
01:59:32
Christian who is trying to understand what the Quran says and yet knows my own history and my own scriptures,
01:59:40
I know that Christians of that day did not believe what the Quran says they believed. What am
01:59:46
I supposed to do with that? What am I supposed to do with that? That's the question.
01:59:54
In Surah 345, when the angel said, O Mary, Allah gives the glad tidings of a word from him whose name is the
02:00:01
Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious is this world in the hereafter. And one of those who shall be brought near to Allah, he will speak to mankind in his cradle and in his manhood.
02:00:10
And he is of the righteous. Here's why I raised this issue. I mentioned it earlier before. What sources does the
02:00:17
Quran use? According to the Quran, none, right? He's not quoting from other sources.
02:00:23
He's not using ancient texts. There's nothing of man in the Quran whatsoever.
02:00:29
And yet, the story of Jesus speaking from the cradle is found in the
02:00:36
Arabic infancy gospel written about 150 years before Muhammad. The story of the birds comes from the infancy gospel of Thomas.
02:00:46
We can, critical scholars have identified literally hundreds of places in the
02:00:55
Quran where sources are drawn from. So here's the question.
02:01:00
When it comes to this issue, the Christology of the Quran, you can simply take the position and Yusuf could get up here and say, look,
02:01:12
Quran's the word of God, therefore it's right in whatever it says. And somebody down here is gonna go, talk beer, and y 'all could go to Lahu Akbar.
02:01:17
And that's all we, you know, we could have skipped the whole evening if you're gonna do that, right? I mean,
02:01:24
I almost asked for a talk beer a little while ago, you know? I was like, hey, come on, this is fair, right? If that's all we're gonna do, folks, we are never ever going to advance in our understanding of each other.
02:01:37
We're never gonna get there. You have to ask some questions. You know, when my gospel, when my gospel went out into the world, it encountered
02:01:46
Greek philosophy, it encountered Roman religion, and we had to start answering questions about the gospel in the language of the people that we were trying to reach.
02:01:57
My question for you is, when are you going to start seriously wrestling with the questions about the
02:02:03
Quran? Because you know what? When I have to seriously wrestle, I've debated atheists, I've debated all sorts of folks.
02:02:10
When I have to seriously wrestle with their attacks upon my scriptures, guess what happens to me? My faith in my scriptures gets deepened, not because I just close my eyes, but because in studying it,
02:02:21
I find out what the real truth is, I dig deeper into the text, and I see its beautiful harmony over time.
02:02:27
So my invitation to you is, we need to ask, I need to ask each one of you the question, why is it that the
02:02:35
Quran represents the Trinity in a way that Christians did not believe? Are you going to tell me, well, there was this one little group, maybe over here, it didn't exist in Muhammad's day, but you know, it's no longer relevant.
02:02:46
You mean there's something written in Arabic on a heavenly tablet about a group that would no longer exist by the time it got revealed?
02:02:52
Really? That doesn't make any sense, does it? Why is it that the
02:02:58
Christology of the Quran is primarily informed by sources other than the
02:03:05
Injil? Now, you're just going to say, well, the Injil is just a single book given to Jesus. Here's the next question, where does the author of the
02:03:12
Quran show any knowledge of what the Injil actually is? It's never quoted, it's never quoted, and yet I'm held accountable for it.
02:03:21
This same surah is going to say to me, the people of the book, judge by what is contained therein.
02:03:27
What did the Christian people have in the days of Muhammad by which to judge?
02:03:33
What was the Injil? Even the Christians called the entirety of the New Testament by the one word, gospel, because it contained the entire message of Jesus Christ.
02:03:43
And so here's the question, when Muhammad preached, when Muhammad preached, did
02:03:50
Allah expect the people who heard his words to understand what he said and respond to him?
02:04:00
Did he? Yes, of course. I would think so. I mean, I suppose you can take the view that, no, actually, there's stuff in the
02:04:08
Quran that Allah said it and everybody sat there and went, huh, what? But that doesn't make any sense.
02:04:14
You and I both know that when Muhammad preached, he expected people to respond, yes?
02:04:20
And so if that's the case, then when Muhammad spoke to the Alal Injil in surah four, and he says, you are to judge by what is contained in the gospel, what does it mean?
02:04:33
The gospel existed in the days of Muhammad. And my friends, we know exactly what gospel the
02:04:40
Christians had. We know exactly what the New Testament looked like in the days of Muhammad. We have entire copies of the
02:04:45
New Testament that predate Muhammad by centuries. And so all the stuff about corruption all of a sudden disappears because now your own
02:04:55
Quran, you either have to say, well, it didn't have any meaning. The people couldn't understand it.
02:05:02
They couldn't apply it. They couldn't obey it. Are you really gonna say that the Quran contains commandments that the people to whom those commandments were addressed couldn't obey them?
02:05:13
Or you're gonna have to admit that even though it says to obey the Injil, the
02:05:19
Quran doesn't understand what's in the Injil. That is a major issue that every one of us has to think about.
02:05:27
I don't want Yusuf to come up here and just repeat Islamic orthodoxy.
02:05:33
I know Islamic orthodoxy. I've read all of Bukhari and Muslim. I know Islamic orthodoxy.
02:05:39
I've read a lot of Ibn Kathir. I know what the interpretation is.
02:05:44
We've got to get past just repeating the basics and begin to interact and say, well, okay,
02:05:52
I'll take that challenge. Here is where the Quran meaningfully interacts in such a way that the people of the gospel could be expected to really respond and to go, yeah, now there's something
02:06:03
I can understand. That accurately represents what I believe. That's where we've got to go, folks.
02:06:09
That's what we've got to do. And so there are just a few texts that I've raised in your hearing and I can see some of you.
02:06:18
You understand what I'm saying. You know what the issues are. And so let's think about them together and not just tonight.
02:06:26
If you don't reconsider these things over the course of the coming week, you've wasted your time and Yusuf and I have wasted ours.
02:06:34
We don't have to come to absolute conclusions tonight, but if we begin the dialogue in respect for one another, that may be one of the most important things that happens in this land or maybe even this world this day.
02:06:48
It's got to start somewhere, folks. Maybe it can start with us. What do you think?
02:06:53
Thanks for listening. Okay, now
02:07:02
Yusuf, come forward. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.
02:07:12
Thank you, James, for that enlightened presentation. Where are my students?
02:07:19
Are they here? The students from... Did we discuss what James is going to say for the session?
02:07:26
Was I right? Everything he said? In general, we discussed the same.
02:07:31
In fact, we had a discussion about your entire talk. I never read your mind, but I knew the argument beforehand.
02:07:38
And so nothing that James said this evening, particularly pertaining to the Quran, in fact, surprised me.
02:07:44
I want to start on a positive note. We Muslims and Christians do believe that Jesus, in fact, was one of the mightiest messengers of God.
02:07:52
We believe he performed many miraculous deeds, although he was human. We believe he was a messiah.
02:07:59
We believe God exalted Jesus. In fact, as Ahmad Didat said, no Muslim is a Muslim if he does not believe in Jesus.
02:08:06
There are slight differences on the end of his life, but even there, there are agreements. So in a general sense, we basically agree.
02:08:13
The one major point where there is a disagreement, which Muslims have basically compromised in terms of believing, believing, believing.
02:08:22
Now we're saying Christians need to come and start believing what Jesus really was. And that is pertaining to his personality.
02:08:30
If you look in Surah 3, verse 59, it says, The similitude of Jesus before God is like that of Adam.
02:08:39
He created him from dust and then said to him, and he was.
02:08:45
Does that confront Christian belief? Of course, because you don't believe that.
02:08:52
You believe, in fact, he was divine. The Quran is going directly as a critique and pointing out to you that he's something what you should not, in fact, believe in.
02:09:00
Now, it's important that when we look at scripture and I spoke about this earlier on, and I have to emphasize again,
02:09:08
James came up with this. Inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. And I agree. When we look at both scriptures, why is it that when you look at the
02:09:16
New Testament, you want to apply context? But when you want to look at the Quran, you don't apply context. And so I point the same thing out, that when we interpret scripture, generally the
02:09:26
Bible and the Quran, you have to look at the text and the context. In other words, our interpretation has to be intertextual.
02:09:34
It's only in the intertextual and contextual interpretations of passages of the Quran that you basically be able to come to its particular meaning.
02:09:42
I remember doing a debate with Jay Smith two years ago in Cape Town. And I pointed out to him certain passages like Surah 9, verse 5,
02:09:50
Surah 8, verse 60, all these passages on violence. And when he came back in the rebuttal session, he never dealt with it.
02:09:56
He never touched it. Because he could see that his argument was weak, it failed. But then just two weeks ago, in a debate he had with Shabir Ali in Toronto, he brings the same points up again.
02:10:09
Now, that for me is deviousness. That is what I would call a duplicitous double agenda. You have to look at the text and you have to look at the context.
02:10:19
And when you look at the contextual interpretations of the passages, you will even, for example, see who the Quran identifies when it speaks of Nasara and Al -Kitab.
02:10:27
Let's look at something here. Why do this? Why do this?
02:10:33
That's my question. Let the people of the Gospel, Injil, judge by what God hath revealed therein.
02:10:41
Now, James, my understanding from what I gather from you, I'm not, I don't want to interact, but my understanding is that that would basically mean the
02:10:48
Gospel that existed in the time of Muhammad. In the time of, am I correct? Would that be your interpretation? That that's an interpretation.
02:10:56
But again, look at the principle I said. Text, context. Now it says, let the people of the
02:11:02
Gospel judge by what God has revealed. Gospel, maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These Gospels existed.
02:11:07
That is a Gospel the Quran is referring to. What does the context refer to? Context is what's in red.
02:11:14
Now, why do you leave out what's in red? We reveal to him, Jesus, the Gospel. You don't believe
02:11:20
Matthew was revealed to Jesus. Mark was revealed to Jesus. Luke was revealed to Jesus.
02:11:26
John was revealed to Jesus. You believe, we believe, the Islamic belief, whether we believe in the existence or not of an
02:11:32
Injil, the belief is that there is a singular Gospel revealed to Jesus. You believe he is the revelation.
02:11:39
You believe men were inspired to write. But what we have here are biographical accounts about Jesus.
02:11:46
You see, Matthew says that Jesus went to a place and he preached the Gospel. Mark said that he went to another place and he preached the
02:11:52
Gospel. Luke said he went to another place and he preached the Gospel. John said he went to another place and he preached the
02:11:57
Gospel. Now, what did Jesus have? Did he have Matthew? Did he have Mark? Did he have Luke? Did he have John?
02:12:02
Did he carry it under his arm like a missionary would do today? Did he have the epistles of Paul? Would he have
02:12:07
Colossians, Galatians? What did he preach? What was the goal? That is a Gospel that the Quran refers to. So then in that context, it says, look at black, let the people of the
02:12:16
Gospel judge by what God has revealed therein. Therein, the Gospel revealed to Jesus.
02:12:22
And then it goes on universally. Verse 50, if any to fail by what Allah has revealed, God has revealed, they are no better than transgressors.
02:12:30
So universal, singular, revelation to Jesus, then Gospel, referring to the
02:12:35
Gospel to Jesus, then universal, whatever God has revealed, no better than transgressors.
02:12:40
If you don't judge by that. But it doesn't even stop there. If you look at verse 51, it says, then to thee,
02:12:46
Muhammad, we reveal scripture, confirming what came before it, meaning confirming that and acting as a quality control, a muhaiminan, a muhaiminan alayhi, muhaiminan alayhi, a quality control, a guardian, a check.
02:13:02
What's a quality control? If you are at a store or you had a factory and you're acting as a quality control, what do you do?
02:13:09
You do away with the rejects. You get away with the rejects. So similarly, what is in the
02:13:15
Gospels today as they exist, which we can confirm in the Quran, the Quran accepts it. What is not correct, what is incorrect, the
02:13:22
Quran would reject it. So in that context, it basically does not refer to the
02:13:27
Gospels, but the Gospel revealed to Jesus. Does that make sense?
02:13:34
So can you see, if you look at one particular verse, you can have an idea.
02:13:39
If you look at the next verse, reading it in its entire context, it gives you an idea. So again, goes back to the point, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument.
02:13:50
If you demand that we be consistent in understanding and engaging in your scripture, which we should, then why are you so inconsistent when you deal with the
02:14:00
Quran? You know why? Because at the back of your mind, you believe you have a presupposition, a presumption engaging in presupposition apologetics that the
02:14:11
Quran is not the word of God. So now you have to develop arguments or bring up arguments to confirm that particular position.
02:14:17
I would rather say, leave aside your prejudice, leave aside your bias, and look at the particular passage.
02:14:25
I pointed the same thing out to Jay, I think in a previous discussion. And then later on in Hyde Park, he does the same thing.
02:14:34
My question is why? Why do that? Can't we be honest in terms of engaging in scripture?
02:14:40
I don't profess to be an expert in Greek. I try and present what are the works of Greek scholars, who you probably have objection to, but at least maintain the same consistency when it comes to the
02:14:51
Quran. Now we're looking at Arabia, the context in which, you see, I assumed
02:14:56
I knew what the argument was tonight. I already knew what James is going to say. And James is saying, the basic thrust is, how is the
02:15:04
Quran addressing people who didn't believe in what they have? Well, thanks to a mutual friend of ours,
02:15:11
Dr. Shabir Ali, he recommended this book to me, the Bible in Arabic, the scripture of the people of the book in the language of Islam by Sidney Griffiths.
02:15:19
Have you read? Have you come across? You haven't come across his book yet. This book, this particular individual, he's a scholar.
02:15:24
He's a specialist in Arab Christianity, in the history of Arab Christianity. He's a specialist.
02:15:31
We'll focus on a bit of his writings. Basically, he goes on to suggest, thank you very much.
02:15:37
Thank you. Thank you, James. You're very honorable. You're honorable man. No, don't do that. We don't want to intimidate
02:15:43
James. We don't intimidate myself. Isn't that for me? Oh yeah, he did that for James.
02:15:48
Certainly. Okay, what basically, what
02:15:53
Sidney Griffiths says, Sidney Griffiths is an Arabic scholar. And what he says is that in the context of the sixth century, recognizing the
02:16:01
Quran's Christians, a wealth of information that exists. He says that scholars have basically gathered evidence, providing that the major Christian communities in Arabia were the
02:16:12
Malkites, the Jacobites, and the Nestorians. That's in the historical context in which the
02:16:20
Quran was in fact addressing. And he quotes on a book by a world -renowned scholar called
02:16:26
Irfan Shaheed. Rome and the Arabs, a prolegomen to the study of Byzantium and the
02:16:31
Arabs Byzantium and the Arabs in the fourth century, in the fifth century, in the sixth century, in volumes one and two.
02:16:37
It basically deals with the identity of the Arab Christians in the immediate pre -Islamic context.
02:16:43
And what Sidney Griffiths points out is that these Christians, in fact, did have the beliefs that you claim those
02:16:52
Christians never in fact possessed. On a universal level today, we would argue that the Quran in fact addresses you as Christians.
02:16:58
I don't take the view of Bassam Zawadi. I saw that debate where he tried to give a particular presentation that it could be referring to heretics and so on.
02:17:07
It does refer to you, but historically, it referred to these particular Christians. The historical record, according to Sidney Griffiths on page 13 says, preserves no memory of any significant
02:17:20
Christian presence among the Arabs or in their environments from the crucial period from the fifth to the first third of the seventh century.
02:17:28
You see, James, if you have to challenge this position, what Sidney Griffiths pointed out, what
02:17:33
Irfan Shaheed pointed out, that the Malkites, Jacobites and the Nestorians were part and parcel in the first half of the seventh century in Arabia, living within that context.
02:17:43
If you want to challenge that, then you have to give me source material or a scholarly authority, which I can then examine to rebut this particular presumption here, which is based on archaeological study and so on and so forth.
02:17:57
So what is your agenda for tonight? I need to ask. I need to ask James. I need to ask some of us sitting here.
02:18:02
I need to ask myself, what is the agenda? The aim of the inquiry is to determine which
02:18:08
Christian doctrines, in particular, the Quran's texts and visions, because we're dealing with Christology, and ask whether or not its biblical echoes and allusions reflect the presence of the
02:18:17
Bible in Arabic in its pre -immediate foreground. Now, at the outset, and James agrees with me, the first Arabic Bible dates to about the ninth, tenth century.
02:18:27
So there was no Arabic Bible that was there present in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. He had no access to an
02:18:33
Arabic Bible. Griffiths on page 28 goes on to say, the Christian doctrines and practices criticized in the
02:18:40
Quran were those espoused by mainly Christian communities whose presence in pre -Islamic times seems likely.
02:18:48
Ebionites and the Nazarenes who flourished in the fourth centuries, the present writer is skeptical of their claims.
02:18:54
Of course, this is one scholarly view against other scholarly views that makes this. But the vast majority of scholars on historic
02:19:00
Arab Christianity or Christians in pre -Islamic Arabia, and of course, Islamic Arabia, agrees on this particular issue.
02:19:08
And I've yet to see someone meaningful come and challenge this particular hypothesis. It is in the
02:19:14
Medina Surahs that the Quran addresses Christians polemically, criticizing their distinctive particular practices.
02:19:21
From a historic point of view, Sidney Griffiths says, the Quran would have been addressing the
02:19:27
Malkites, the Jacobites or the Nestorians, either collectively or individually, depending on the context of the critique.
02:19:34
Does that make sense? You see, James says it doesn't identify who these Christians were.
02:19:40
No Christians believe in it. Well, Griffiths points out that these Christians, in fact, existed.
02:19:46
And so the critique, historically, at least, in the Quran dealt with specifically those communities like the
02:19:53
Malkites, and I'll deal with it in detail, that espoused to certain particular views. At the outset, one needs to understand that the
02:20:01
Quran never addresses Jews and Christians as believers. It addresses the Ahlul Kitab scripture people some 54 times.
02:20:08
One has to determine from the context which community in particular the text is addressing at a specific and particular interest.
02:20:18
Now, the theological mistrust has two components, one of which revolves around the fact that Christianity has been transformed into a cult of Jesus.
02:20:27
The Islamic view is quite unequivocal. In Surah 19, verse 32, verse 4, it says, Behold, I am a servant of God.
02:20:33
He has vouched me revelation, made me a prophet, made me blessed where I may be, and he has enjoined on me prayer, charity, so peace is on me.
02:20:40
Such was the words of Jesus, the son of Mary, whose nature they so deeply disagree.
02:20:47
Now, is the Quran not engaging you, James? Is the Quran not engaging the fact that they disagreed with the nature of Christ in the fourth century, in the third century, in the second century, even in the time of pre -Islamic
02:21:02
Arabia and during the time when the Prophet Muhammad came on the scene? If we look at the article of faith in the articles of the apostolic creed, page 33,
02:21:12
Theodore Zahn, the article of faith was up until 150. I believe in God, the
02:21:18
Almighty. Between 180 to 210, the word father was added before almighty, which was obviously bitterly contested by a number of leaders,
02:21:27
Bishop Victor, Bishop Savitius, condemned it and opposed the tendency to disregard Jesus as divine and stressed on the unity of God as expressed in the original teachings of Jesus.
02:21:36
So there was a dispute. Now, when the Quran addresses a particular community, when the
02:21:43
Quran says in Surah 19, the nature that they disagree about, is it not correct?
02:21:49
Is there no disagreement? Is there? Of course. The Quranic critique of Christian belief was revealed in a time when historically speaking, believing that Jesus was not
02:22:01
God was becoming increasingly dangerous. And I'll explain why. Let's look at Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in Southern France.
02:22:11
He criticized Paul for rejecting, injecting pagan doctrines and Greek philosophy.
02:22:17
What happened to him? He was murdered. Lucian, great knowledge of Hebrew and Greek.
02:22:23
He believed that Jesus was not equal to God, was subordinate to him. He was tortured several times, put to death in 312.
02:22:31
Arius, born in Libya, became Bishop of Alexandria, student of Lucian. The Arian controversy, he believed in absolutely one
02:22:38
God, said that the act of generation. Note, he speaks about generation. The Quran condemns the sonship from the perspective of generation.
02:22:47
That was a belief that was there, is attributed to God. Then he destroys the singularity of God and describes corporeality, having a body, which is the attribute of man.
02:22:56
He believed that Jesus was a man born miraculously without a father and that he was a messenger of God.
02:23:02
What was he? Muslim, in a broad speaking. I'm not going to focus on the
02:23:07
Council of Nicaea, but effectively you had two camps, Athanasius, Arius, and at these camps, basically, some sort of consensus was reached.
02:23:15
What the nature of Christ is, what the nature of God is, and of course, the Athanasian creed that came along with it.
02:23:21
However, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, James has issues with Catholics, but I would give them the benefit of the doubt.
02:23:28
We had noted Catholic scholars, Raymond Brown and so on. The New Catholic Encyclopedia says that there's a growing recognition on the part of exegetes and biblical theologians that one should not speak of Trinitarianism without serious qualification.
02:23:43
Trinitarianism only evolved in the fourth century. You see, James said, and he made the point that the Quran doesn't identify the
02:23:49
Trinity. It speaks about, Wala taqulu thalatha, don't say three. The correct, it doesn't identify who the three are in that verse.
02:23:56
Does the New Testament identify who the three are? Does the
02:24:01
New Testament identify who the Trinity is? You see, the only verse which said and identified explicitly what the
02:24:08
Trinity was, was the first epistle of John chapter five, verse seven, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the son, and the
02:24:15
Holy Spirit. And these three are one. That is the closest approximation.
02:24:21
I challenge you, James, show me anything better than that. That would be the found, that would be the best argument for the
02:24:27
Trinity. The Koma Yohanim, the first epistle of John chapter five. Show me something better than that in the
02:24:32
New Testament. Go baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. It doesn't say the three are one. Yeah, it says three are one.
02:24:40
And we now obviously know that that verse is a fabrication. So the foundation of your faith, which identifies what the
02:24:47
Trinity is, is a fabrication. Why do you take issue then with the fact when the Quran doesn't, in fact, identify what the
02:24:53
Trinity is explicitly? We are told to disbelieve Trinity three, triune Godhead in a general sense.
02:25:00
It's not our business to go and define what the Trinity is. That's your business. That's your belief. But when your book doesn't define it accurately, how do you take issue with the fact that the
02:25:10
Quran is now silent in this particular point? In a previous discussion that James had in a slide, this is
02:25:17
James slide. James never had his slide. He never, but this is James slide. So I'm just assisting him on that.
02:25:25
James says the Trinity is most basic assertion is that there is one God. There is no association in Trinitarian theology as this requires a polytheistic belief.
02:25:34
So he questions why does the Quran respond to Trinity with assertions of monotheism?
02:25:41
Why? He takes issue with the fact that this is a he's a monotheist.
02:25:46
This is polytheism. Why does the Quran even make that dare to make that assumption? Well, then, and quoting
02:25:53
Hank Hanegraaff, this is what James says. And I mentioned this earlier. He says, we have to realize that we are talking about the one what and the three who's.
02:26:02
The father is not one third God. Son, one third spirit, one third God. Each is fully
02:26:07
God. Father is God fully. Son is God fully. Holy Spirit is
02:26:12
God fully. How many gods are there? How many are there? One.
02:26:18
That's what he says. Now, the point is, let's not laugh. This is not a mockery.
02:26:24
It's not a laughing matter. The point, it's a serious matter. The point is, if the problem is with your understanding, why do you accuse the
02:26:31
Quran of now when it basically suggests that this is, in fact, polytheism? And I ask the question, is it because at a subconscious level?
02:26:39
I don't mean this disrespectfully, but I mean, at a conscious level, you're a monotheist. But at a subconscious level, is it passed because you are, in fact, a polytheist?
02:26:48
You see, this is a belief. James Nebek, I'm going to explain this grammatically. Well, the Father is
02:26:53
God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. But the Father is not the Son. The Son is not the
02:26:58
Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Holy Spirit. Now, what is this?
02:27:05
But they are one. Co -equal, co -eternal. They're one. X is not equal to Y.
02:27:11
X is equal to Y. Z is equal to Y. But X is not equal to Z. And when you say that, it creates problems.
02:27:20
You can't then claim to be a monotheist. So when the Quran deals with that polemically, it deals with this particular, the implications of this belief.
02:27:28
That's what the Quran is, in fact, focusing on. You see, at a subconscious level, you have three mental pictures. When you say, in the name of the
02:27:34
Father, you have a certain mental picture, right? When you say, in the name of the Son, you have a certain mental picture.
02:27:41
When you say, in the name of the Holy Spirit, you have a certain mental picture. There are three distinct mental pictures.
02:27:48
And so hard as you may try, you cannot superimpose them and say that there is one. But when
02:27:53
I ask you, how many do you see? You say you see one. So even though you correct the normal terminology used when
02:28:00
Christians say, the Father is a person, the Son is a person, the Holy Spirit is a person, but they're not three persons, but one person.
02:28:06
You say, the Father is a person, the Son is a person, and the Holy Spirit is a person, but they're not three persons, but one being.
02:28:12
You're actually saying the same thing, James. And that becomes a problem. And so at a fundamental level, the
02:28:18
Qur 'an deals, there's nothing different from this to what is contained here. Tammuz, Nimrod, and in fact
02:28:25
Semiramis. Semiramis were initially included in the pagan Babylonian trinity as the Holy Spirit, the dove.
02:28:31
Can you see that? Nimrod, the Father, Tammuz, the Son. This is from paganism.
02:28:39
Now, looking at Surah 4, verse 71, O people of the book, do not go beyond the bounds of your religion and do not say of God anything about the truth.
02:28:47
Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is no more than an apostle of God. The Messiah, the son of Mary, and he would cast him to Mary and do not say trinity, do not say three.
02:28:58
Desist it. It'll be better for you, for your God is one. Now, James says that the reference, that this reference, the son, the trinity, the three, is a direct reference to Mary.
02:29:12
That Allah, Jesus, and Mary, because he doesn't identify.
02:29:18
So he juxtaposes what's contained in Surah 5, verse 119. Now, the problem with that is, firstly,
02:29:25
Sidney Griffiths points out that the reference of Jesus as Mary's son is most evidently taken rhetorically as a polemical corrective to the usual Malkite, Jacobite, and Nestorian habit of speaking of Jesus as the son of God.
02:29:38
So they say he's the son of God. The Quran says he's a son of Mary. Does the Quran confuse the trinity as referring to Jesus Mary and Allah?
02:29:48
Now, I must ask you and warn you, James. Well, I'm not saying it personally, but I'm saying warn
02:29:55
Christian polemicists. Stay away. Stay away from low -level internet arguments.
02:30:01
Internet arguments, particularly if you wish to be taken seriously. I do understand he quoted Ibn Kathir. He quoted
02:30:07
Tafsir Jalalain. But in the general sense, the vast majority of Muslim scholars do not ascribe to the fact that the trinity consists of Allah, Jesus and Mary, the vast majority.
02:30:18
There is a religious fanatic, a nutcase from the United States. I had some dealing with him some years back.
02:30:25
His name is Shamoon. He writes from the Answering Islam website. I don't know if you know him, James, but he came with the same kind of argument.
02:30:33
He's not the originator of the argument. But the point is that when you bring up such arguments about the
02:30:39
Quran confusing the trinity as referring to Allah, Jesus and Mary, no Muslim is going to take you seriously.
02:30:46
No one's going to take you seriously. You see, if you look at Surah 5 verse 116,
02:30:53
Oh, Jesus, the son of Mary, have you said to people, take me and my mother as two gods in derogation of God?
02:30:59
Firstly, if I take it, James, that that you have a fairly rudimentary understanding of Arabic, am
02:31:06
I correct? And you've studied Arabic. The word is waithu Allah Ya Isa Ibn Marima antaqulta linnasi taqiduni wa ummiya ilahayni min dooni
02:31:15
Allah Do not take me and my mother as two gods in place of God. So at the very outset, this verse doesn't even speak about the trinity.
02:31:23
It speaks about the divinization of Jesus and Mary in place of God. It's not saying
02:31:29
Allah is God. Jesus is God. Mary is God. It's not saying that. Sidney Griffiths in the book on page 35 in dealing with this particular passage says, rhetorically speaking, the verse cannot be taken as evidence that the
02:31:44
Quran supposes that Mary, the mother of Jesus, a member of the Christian trinity. Rather, God's question to Jesus puts in high relief what the
02:31:51
Quran thereby highlights as being from its point of view, the absurd corollary of the
02:31:56
Christian belief that since Jesus is the son of God, then his mother must also somehow be
02:32:02
God. That's what it deals with. And he goes on to explain the passage, in fact, recalls the then current theological controversy dividing the
02:32:11
Syriac and Aramaic speaking Jacobite and Nestorian Christians in the Quran's own milieu over the proprietary and the veracity of the
02:32:19
Marian title. You see, they refer to Mary as Theotokos, the mother of God.
02:32:25
You see, if Jesus is God, the mother of God must somehow be divine. And so that was in the.
02:32:32
So now this is what Griffiths points out. You said earlier on, James, in your discussion that why does the
02:32:37
Quran deal with a belief that these people never believed in? But I'm pointing out to you that this is what was, in fact, believed the the
02:32:44
Aramaic speaking the Jacobite and the Nestorian Christians. They, in fact, believed the
02:32:49
Malkites never believed that the Jacobites and, in fact, believe. And that was present in the in the time of the
02:32:55
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The other problem we have is this is that if on the assumption, right?
02:33:02
I see times running out that the Quran refers to that let's give James the benefit of the doubt, right?
02:33:07
Let's give James the benefit of the doubt that in Surah 5 verse 116, the
02:33:13
Quran refers to Allah, Jesus and Mary, and that somehow the other must be read with Surah 4 verse 171.
02:33:20
Now, here's where I say that inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. If James is consistent in that, they need to be also consistent with Surah 9 verse 31, because in Surah 9 verse 31, this is what it reads.
02:33:33
اتخذوا اهبارهم وارهبانهم اربابا من لون الله They take their priests and the anchorites to be their lords in derogation of God together with Jesus.
02:33:45
Now in Surah 9 verse 31, it speaks about the priests and Jesus being taken as divine in derogation of Allah.
02:33:53
So why don't you say then you could easily say, well, then the Trinity consists of Jesus. It comprises of the priests and it comprises of Allah.
02:34:01
Why don't you apply the same argument? And there was a Hadith, I think, which mentioned that when someone accepted
02:34:10
Islam, a Christian, he said, we don't take our priests basically as God. And effectively, the
02:34:16
Prophet Muhammad said that this was the idea of where you give them authority. It doesn't mean that you literally take them as gods in the absolute sense.
02:34:24
So what prevents that particular reading in Surah 9 verse 31, James, from what you contain in Surah 5 verse 116?
02:34:31
You see, when we talk about context, when James had to apply the context in Surah 5, Ayah 47 about the gospel, he doesn't apply the context.
02:34:39
When he refers to Surah 4 verse 171, then he wants to appeal to the context. But he appeals to the context badly because he looks at one particular
02:34:48
Surah and then he juxtaposes it with some other particular chapter, which deals with a totally different issue.
02:34:55
Why do you do that? I take the same point that you take. I would not want to abuse your scripture.
02:35:01
Why would you take the same issue of abusing my particular scripture? Because you want to make a certain theological point.
02:35:09
So this is what Sidney Griffiths basically points out.
02:35:16
Again, the Quran consistently teaches in varying phrases that God has no sons. How could he have an offspring not having a female consort?
02:35:22
It is not for God to take a son. It could also mean take a son as in the priests and anchorites take.
02:35:29
Some translators have translated it as begotten a son. Now, this is also in direct reference to the idea of what it meant when someone said that a son was begotten.
02:35:40
The innovative concept of Jesus being the only begotten son of the father was developed in the fourth century.
02:35:46
It was injected by Jerome into the Latin Bible to refute the claims made by Bishop Arius that and his associates that father alone was really begotten,
02:35:54
Jesus was made and not begotten. Raymond Brown in the Anchor Bible, volume 29, talked to Paul B. Duff. So that was a belief that Jesus was begotten.
02:36:02
The belief of generation was there. If you look at the letter from Paul B. Duff to Assistant Professor George Washington University dated 1992,
02:36:13
John 3, 16 and John 1, 18 each have the word monogamous in Greek. That means of a single kind, unique.
02:36:19
Well, would that be correct? Of a single kind? That is correct. As a result, unique is a good translation. The reason you sometimes find a translation that renders the word is only begotten has to do with an ancient heresy within the church.
02:36:30
In response to the Aryan claims that Jesus was made, not begotten, Jerome translated the
02:36:36
Greek term monogamous into Latin, unigenitus, unigenitus, only begotten.
02:36:42
So that was a heresy existent in the church where they believe that Jesus was birthed through an act of generation, only begotten.
02:36:51
And begetting does have a sexual nature. Begetting does mean sexual. So the Quran was, in fact, dealing with that ancient heresy.
02:36:59
So for you to now take an objection to the fact, why is it that the Quran approaches the sonship of Jesus on the basis of generation?
02:37:08
How can you have a son when you have no consort? You may not have that belief, but up to recently in the
02:37:15
King James version, that belief was, in fact, there. Many Christians believe they say
02:37:20
Jesus is the only begotten son, begotten, not made. What are you trying to emphasize when you say begotten, not made?
02:37:29
Didat in certain respects was vindicated in respect of that, even though you claim he was wrong. I'd leave you with one little passage here.
02:37:36
You see, detailing the birth of Jesus, and I want to point out a particular point. I believe time's almost at a premium, but I would like to, if I don't want to take any further time on this particular score, if it's possible, if we could give
02:37:49
James just an additional two or three minutes, would that be fine with you, James? You don't want me? I'll just wrap up on this particular point.
02:37:56
The birth of Jesus is mentioned in the Qur 'an and in the New Testament. In the Qur 'an, the question is, how shall
02:38:02
I have a son when no man has touched me? The Qur 'an replies, even so Allah creates what he wills. When he has decreed a plan, he but says to it, be and it is.
02:38:10
When you contrast that with the Gospel of Luke, chapter one, verse 35, the answer that we're given in direct reference to this is the
02:38:19
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. The word in Greek is it gives the idea, it gives an earthly description.
02:38:41
Now, my question to you is this, you compare this particular passage and you compare what's contained in the
02:38:47
New Testament. If the Qur 'an is a forgery, James believes it is not true, then how is it possible that a forgery in terms of description on the birth and the annunciation of Christ can be better than the original?
02:38:59
And I'll leave you on that point. Thank you very much. I think in all fairness,
02:39:09
I've taken a minute or two, I've counted my clock. All fairness, James also needs to be given in the rebuttal time an additional time.
02:39:18
Unfortunately, I'm not as punctual as he is or Shabir Ali for that matter. Thank you.
02:39:24
We have 10, 12 minutes rebuttal. Well, we almost got there.
02:39:33
I confess I'm disappointed. I was hoping for a contextual
02:39:40
Islamic reading of those particular texts. Instead, I got attacks on Jay Smith, Sam Shamoon.
02:39:50
We had conspiracy theories about Irenaeus being murdered. Well, that's a new one.
02:39:55
I teach church history and if he was killed, it was by the Romans. As a part of persecution of Christians, but it was because he said something about Paul.
02:40:04
Absolutely no scholar I know of has any meaningful scholar has any.
02:40:09
We got stuff about Arius. We got it. We got low level internet arguments. One plus one plus one equals one.
02:40:16
The standard and then and then First John 5, 7. With all due respect, since he brought up low level internet arguments, excuse me of it.
02:40:26
First John 5, 7, one plus one plus one equals one. Those are low level internet arguments. And my friends, until Muslims get past that level, we will never have meaningful dialogue.
02:40:37
We will never have meaningful dialogue. Why do I take the time to understand the forms of Tawhid?
02:40:47
And hence the levels of shirk. When the best Islam has to offer won't get past the fact that First John 5, 7 was irrelevant to the development of the doctrine of the
02:40:58
Trinity. It's not a part of the New Testament. We've known that for a long time. We've explained this for hundreds of years.
02:41:04
How are we ever going to get beyond? That's low level internet argumentation. And soon you're going, well, you believe the father's fully
02:41:11
God, the son's fully God. That makes three gods. No, there's one being of God shared by three persons. You've got to at least try to address the difference between being in person.
02:41:19
I've already explained it. No attempt to do so. It's just so much easier to just play on prejudice. It's so much easier to play on prejudice.
02:41:26
And I'm disappointed because, well, you know, I mean, the number of things that were brought up here were amazing.
02:41:35
Evidently, what's being suggested is that even though Muhammad in his day would have known about the argumentations concerning concerning Theotokos and the
02:41:48
Nestorians. And that's the background of the usage there. He knows all that stuff.
02:41:56
But wait a minute, then why isn't there any clear statement of what the doctor is? Well, because you people didn't know.
02:42:01
Yes, we did. All these people would have agreed that Mary, for example, was not a deity.
02:42:08
That wasn't at issue. Exaltation of Mary and stuff like that to the level of deity, that has nothing to do with Theotokos.
02:42:14
Theotokos is a Christological title. It's a title of it's saying that the one who was born of Mary was truly
02:42:19
God. There's just so many of these things here that in even 12 minutes,
02:42:24
I could not even begin to respond to them. And if I did, here's the problem. We wouldn't actually get to the subject of what we're supposed to be talking about.
02:42:34
And so I'm going to focus on one thing in the few minutes that I have. I was accused of a lot of things.
02:42:40
And I'm glad we're recording this because then you can watch the video when it goes on YouTube.
02:42:47
You can listen to the audio. You can start and stop it. You can look up stuff. And I challenge you to do that.
02:42:53
Please do that. Don't believe what I have to say. I mean, when
02:42:58
Yusuf is putting images up of Semiramis and trying to say it has something to do with the Trinity, that is so disappointing.
02:43:06
I might as well sit here and say Allah is the moon God. It's just as bad an argument. It's just as fallacious.
02:43:11
It's just as ridiculous to any serious minded person. It's so disappointing to me.
02:43:16
I hope for such better. But let me try at least to respond to the accusation that you've been inconsistent and you're dealing with the
02:43:24
Quran. I read through the Quran. I read more of the Quran than I needed to give. So it would be context.
02:43:30
He says, you went someplace else that had nothing to do with that. Where? He didn't give us. He didn't give me an example. In fact, he ended up going to the same text
02:43:36
I did as if they were relevant. Accusations with no foundation. But I want to look primarily at Surah 547.
02:43:45
Let the people of the gospel judge by the law has revealed. And he says, you didn't do this intertextually and all the rest of this stuff.
02:43:50
OK, let's try in the seven minutes that I have left to speak to you to listen to this text and see what it says to us.
02:44:00
Did I mishandle it? Did I did I quote it out of context? I submit to you. I did not. What does it mean?
02:44:07
I'm not really sure what we were being told it meant. It seems that Yusuf is assuming a meaning of the term
02:44:16
Allah. I'm a term in jail in this text. Without demonstrating and proving from us that the
02:44:24
Quranic definition is correct. What I'm saying is it would be very easy to misunderstand what the people of the book said about their scriptures, because they would refer and we even to this day refer to the gospel as a general summary of all of the
02:44:40
New Testament teachings. And we also refer to individual books. Where's the evidence the author of Quran knew what
02:44:46
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were? Where's the evidence? I've not seen an iota offered.
02:44:52
The author of the Quran didn't know. And so there's no interaction with that. There's no interaction in what's in those gospels.
02:44:58
And there's no interaction with what the people of the book actually believed the gospel was. The assumption is made that this was something given to Jesus.
02:45:06
Well, we would agree in the sense that Jesus said that his apostles would be indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God and the
02:45:12
Holy Spirit of God would lead them into all truth. So that does come from Jesus. But that's sort of irrelevant because the Quran doesn't understand that either.
02:45:20
Let's listen to the text one more time and see if I'm being inconsistent and acontextual.
02:45:26
And let the people of the gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein. What does therein refer to grammatically?
02:45:34
Fihi, what's the antecedent? The gospel. That's the only thing in the Arabic that is the antecedent.
02:45:40
So how can we, the people of the gospel, judge by something we no longer possess?
02:45:49
How can we do it? Is not the assumption of this text, and if you can show me something in the context that changes this, please do.
02:46:00
I wasn't shown anything that changes this. All that was just thrown out there, you're reading it acontextually. I'm trying to read it contextually.
02:46:06
And I want to ask, what does it mean? You can ask me, what does 2
02:46:12
Corinthians 13, 14 mean? Which is a Trinitarian passage, by the way. What does Matthew 28, 19, baptizing them in the name of the
02:46:19
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? You can ask me what that means, and I'll tell you. So I'm asking you, I am one of the people of the gospel.
02:46:27
This is addressed to me. What am I supposed to do with it? Who am I supposed to judge? What am
02:46:32
I supposed to judge? How am I supposed to judge if I no longer have the gospel? If the gospel is a book given to Jesus that had disappeared by the days of Muhammad, how could anyone to whom this was addressed and anyone down through the centuries thereafter obey this text?
02:46:46
How am I supposed to obey the Quran in light of your beliefs? If I can't, then doesn't it make it meaningless?
02:46:55
How is that a low -level internet argument? I'm looking at it, and I think that's a very fair question.
02:47:02
Because it says, whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, that just referred to the gospel.
02:47:11
Then it is those who are defiantly disobedient. I don't want to be defiantly disobedient. And yet this text is saying to me, judge by the
02:47:20
Injil. Just as the Jews were told in the preceding section to judge by the Torah. Now we know the
02:47:25
Torah still exists. We know that because even the Quran says that it's like the
02:47:32
Quran itself. No one could ever write a book like it. So we know the Torah still exists in this day. So if the
02:47:38
Injil didn't exist, how do these words make any sense? You can make accusations and try to get people's emotions going, but it doesn't actually answer the question.
02:47:49
Now there's all sorts of interesting questions about the Melkites, Jacobites, and the historians. I know what those people believed.
02:47:55
I know what their differences were. And if you're actually telling me that now the Quran actually understands those differences, that makes things a lot worse.
02:48:04
It makes things a lot worse for you because now you don't just have ignorance of the Trinity in general and no meaningful interaction with that.
02:48:11
Now you don't have any meaningful interaction with the differences between these various Christological controversies.
02:48:18
I mean, if the best you can come up with is, well, you know, they did use the term Theotokos and it does refer to Mary. And so maybe that's the background.
02:48:26
That only makes things worse because if this is supposed to be Mubinun, if it's supposed to be clear, if it's supposed to be the final revelation, then now we should have even more intertextuality.
02:48:38
He used that term, but I don't think Yusuf wanted to use intertextuality because you see intertextuality is what you have in the relationship between the
02:48:46
Old and New Testaments. It's what you don't have between the Quran and the preceding revelations. So what
02:48:52
I had hoped for, what I had really hoped for in the response was a Muslim reading, not stuff about Irenaeus or conspiracy theories or Semiramis or any of this other stuff that is just completely irrelevant to what we're actually talking about, especially because it's just so far removed from any historically meaningful theory in regards to the development of the doctrine of the
02:49:17
Trinity or quotes from Raymond Brown and people that again are so far off on the left that they would never believe,
02:49:24
Raymond Brown would never believe that a single word of the Quran quoted Jesus, a tribe of Jesus was true.
02:49:29
Not a one, why'd he quote him? Why'd he quote him? He would never believe that there's anything historical in the
02:49:35
Quran about Jesus at all. Well, he wouldn't have, he's dead, but he wouldn't have. Even scales.
02:49:42
Okay, last minute. This is the last chance I'm gonna have to say anything to you. First of all, to every one of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here.
02:49:52
Thank you, you've been listening. Even when I take my glasses off, I can see. You guys stuck through the end.
02:50:00
You may disagree with me, you may think, man, you've talked about stuff that I'm not sure about, but I hope you understand there's one thing that's true tonight.
02:50:07
There's a man that flew from Phoenix, Arizona to stand in his stocking feet in your masjid and to try to talk to you because I love you.
02:50:16
I care about you. I care first about my God and his truth. We don't agree. We need to argue, but we can argue with respect for one another.
02:50:27
And I hope if you've heard anything, you've at least heard that. Check us out.
02:50:33
Check out his writings. Listen to him carefully. Check out my writings. Listen carefully to me.
02:50:38
Even if I'm different. It's amazing what I've learned about you guys by honestly listening to people like Sheikh Yasir Qadhi and listening to what they have to say.
02:50:48
It's enriched my understanding of where you're coming from. And it's helped me to be more clear in my, even in my objections.
02:50:54
Please do that. Thank you. And God bless all of you this evening. Thank you,
02:51:03
James. And I really appreciate your time. I mean, I love James. I like him because he's probably one of the most decent apologists that you find in the world today.
02:51:14
And lots of people engage in polemics and lots of people engage in just scoring of points.
02:51:20
I do recognize James' sincerity. And I think we need to acknowledge that. Now, James pointed out one thing that effectively,
02:51:34
I was engaging in a low -level internet debate when I brought up the picture of Samarmas.
02:51:39
No, the point I was showing there was I wasn't trying to find any sort of relationship what was contained in ancient
02:51:46
Babylonian belief systems with what's contained in the Christian trinity. James normally asks this question about who does the trinity identify?
02:51:55
What is the triune Godhead that it speaks about? And so I basically presented a slide there which effectively showed that that was also belief common in Babylonian times.
02:52:04
They believe in three gods. James obviously believes that there are three persons manifest in one being.
02:52:11
When I say that, I'm not misrepresenting his faith. That is a Christian belief that you believe that there are three persons manifest in one being.
02:52:21
For a Muslim, as difficult as it may be to say to you, that is polytheism.
02:52:29
That is shirk. I don't misrepresent your belief. I understand your point. I understand your point when you say that the father is 100 %
02:52:37
God, the son is 100 % God, the Holy Spirit is 100 % God, but they are not three separate gods.
02:52:43
They're one. That is your perspective. But at the end of the day, the Quran deals with it and it identifies it as shirk.
02:52:50
And unfortunately, that would be deemed as one of the gravest sins. James brought up the issue of Surah 5, verse 75.
02:53:00
Let the people judge according to the gospel. Let the people judge therein.
02:53:06
But in the passage just before that, the verse, it identifies what the gospel was.
02:53:12
And the point I wanted to make was not so much of the fact that where is the injeel that the
02:53:18
Quran speaks about? We have Matthew, Mark. The point is the principle, which at a fundamental level, you also accept.
02:53:25
Because you accept that when Jesus preached in his three years prior to his demise, he never spoke the
02:53:34
Greek language. He preached probably in Aramaic. You don't even have his original words. And at a fundamental level, you also believe that there was a gospel which he in fact preached.
02:53:45
But the gospels that you have, even on the assumption that they're accurate and they can be traced back and reconstructed back to the originals, even on that assumption, that would not be sufficient because there would be biographical accounts about Jesus as opposed to what
02:54:01
Jesus preached. If you take a red letter Bible, you would see that all the words of Jesus are in red.
02:54:08
It won't be able to fill even two columns of a newspaper. 90 % of the words are in black.
02:54:17
And that is a problem. When the Quran speaks about corruption of scripture in Surah 2, verse 79, it says, فَوَيْلُوا لِلَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونُ الْكِتَابَ بِعَيْدِهِمْ ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَذَا مِنْ عِنْدِ اللَّهِ
02:54:31
Woe to those who write the books with their own hands and then say, this is from God. If this doesn't deal with the
02:54:37
Ahlul Kitab, the people of the book, then who is it speaking about? The Quraysh had no written scripture.
02:54:44
The pagans had no written scripture in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. It can only be referring to you.
02:54:50
Then woe to those who write the books with their own hands and then say, this is from God to traffic from it from a miserable price.
02:54:56
Woe to them for what their hands do right and woe to them for what they gain thereby. That is a direct reference to your belief, to your book, to your scripture.
02:55:12
James never addressed, and of course this is my rebuttal, he never addressed the fundamental point that you don't accept the
02:55:19
Quran and we respect your belief. You don't believe in the Quran. If you look at a simple passage like the
02:55:25
Annunciation, both of us believe in the same thing that Jesus was born by a special miracle.
02:55:33
When you compare the Quranic reference to the birth of Christ and you compare the biblical reference to the birth of Christ, there are significant differences.
02:55:42
Even though we believe the same thing, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, the power of the
02:55:48
Most High shall overshadow thee. That does create certain linguistic implications.
02:55:54
For an atheist, he may well ask, how did the Holy Spirit come upon Mary? How did the Almighty overshadow her?
02:56:00
We know it's an immaculate conception, but the question at the end of the day is, how is it possible that a forgery, which for centuries the
02:56:10
Christian world was alleging that the Quran is, how is it possible that a forgery in respect of a passage detailing the
02:56:17
Annunciation of Christ can be far better than the original? And that's a deeper question we need to look at.
02:56:23
I do believe I was consistent in my argument on Surah 5, verse 116.
02:56:31
James tried to address the whole idea of theotokos, but you see, he never came back to the idea which originally mooted and presented that the
02:56:40
Quran confuses the Trinity with Allah, Mary, and Jesus. He had his rebuttal session.
02:56:46
It's not the opening statement. He had his rebuttal, he never came back to it. Which means, I'm hopeful that he accepts my particular interpretation, that you cannot juxtapose the two passages together.
02:56:58
Because if you were to juxtapose them together, what was contained in Surah 5, verse 116, then you would have had to accept what's contained in Surah 9, verse 31, when it refers to priests and anchorites being taken as gods in derogation of God.
02:57:10
Why not apply the same standard there? I want to end on a positive note, basically, in the seven minutes that I basically have.
02:57:21
In anthropomorphic depictions of God, in the book by Zulfiqar Ali Shah, he says, throughout history,
02:57:28
Christians have been trying to make sense of God, accepting anthropomorphic images of him, yet disagreeing as to what these mean, whilst at the same time, trying to save the transcendent
02:57:39
God from corporeality and anthropomorphism. Regardless, how much is this notion of a corporeal triune
02:57:47
God, the Bibles and or Jesus' teachings, and how much the result of supplemental additions by the church fathers of later centuries?
02:57:57
When Jesus said, my father is greater than I, he was demonstrating his voluntary subordination to the father.
02:58:07
When he says, I can of my own self do nothing, as I hear, I judge and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me.
02:58:17
When he went to the garden of Gethsemane, we are told that he went a little further and fell on his face and prayed to God and said, oh my father, if it'd be possible, let this burden pass away from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou will.
02:58:36
Do these verses have no meaning? Do these verses have absolutely no meaning?
02:58:43
Now, how is it that at a fundamental level, you read these passages and still have a preconceived notion that this particular individual is triune, is part of the triune
02:58:54
Godhead and is unique? And so, according to the formula, we would basically say that the modality and language essentially structured in such a way in the
02:59:12
Quran as to allow many possibilities of communication without making God resemble or disappear in the world he has created.
02:59:21
This type of transcendental concept is pervasive throughout the Quran, the authentic Hadith literature and through the history of Islamic civilization.
02:59:28
I want to end with this point and this passage to James, whom I love. I love all of you.
02:59:34
I love my Christian friends here. This is what the passage of the Quran says. It says, Ya ahl al -kitab, O people of the book, ta 'alaw, come.
02:59:41
ila kalimatin suwa 'in bainana wa bainakum Come to common terms as between us and you.
02:59:47
Number one, alla na 'budu illallah that we worship none but one God. You say that, that we associate no partners with him and that we worship not or create not from amongst ourselves lords and churches other than Allah.
03:00:01
If then they turn back, then say we submit our will to the will of God. And that would be my claim and request to James.
03:00:09
That's what the Quran in fact says. I would argue with a person like him as knowledgeable and as articulate as many people, more than many
03:00:18
Imams, he should be on our side. And so I would invite him basically to what the
03:00:24
Quran proclaims. We can have our disagreements, but I love him.
03:00:30
I respect him. And I hope we have such meaningful engagements in the near future where Muslims and Christians can come together in love in the human brotherhood, share each other's different points of views, and at the end of the day, go home and still respect each other.
03:00:46
And I'll leave you with the Quranic verse which says, waqul ja 'al haqqa wa zaqal batil inna al -batila kana zauqa When truth hurls itself against that which is incorrect and false, that which is incorrect and false is bound to perish.
03:00:57
waqil da 'wanan alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen Thank you very much. Just one thing, one thing.
03:01:04
I don't want to score any points here. I am disappointed with James on one thing tonight. He's been disappointed in some way.
03:01:09
I'm disappointed with his dress. He normally has a traditional bow tie. And so what
03:01:15
I did... Okay, let me explain. I brought bow ties, but the one purple bow tie...
03:01:22
Guys, I've been traveling for 10 days. You stick your shirts in a garment bag and fly across the ocean.
03:01:31
This was the only shirt I could come up with that wasn't going to make me look like I just walked off the street. And the bow tie just didn't match.
03:01:37
I'm very sorry. I did not wear a bow tie. Well, that's fine. We've got a bow tie to match it. It's a bow tie with South African colors.
03:01:44
Thank you very much. And we have some material to give
03:01:49
James. James is generous with his particular stuff. Please do wear that tomorrow. This is the book by Zulfiqar al -Hisham.
03:01:57
Maybe we could discuss it in the next debate. And then we've got two books, complements of the IPCI by Tariq Ramadan and the biography of Ahmed Didat.
03:02:06
You probably have that. I gave it to you the last time. Did I give it to you the last time? I can't remember. Thank you very much. You've been generous.
03:02:12
Thank you. We love you. God bless you, James. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, we've come to the conclusion of the debate.
03:02:26
And I wish to thank Dr. White for the dignified manner in which he presented his arguments and to Yusuf for the passionate way in which he argued.
03:02:37
And to all of you, thank you very much for being a great audience. May God Almighty take us all safely back home.