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My name is Doug McMasters. I'm the pastor of Trinity Road Chapel, and it is my privilege, on behalf of our congregation that meets here regularly, to welcome you here this evening to what we have described as the, is it the big Trinity debate or the great Trinity debate?
One of the two. And it is a true pleasure to have you here this evening with us to a moderated, formal debate concerning the question of the person of God, and specifically the issue of the Trinity. And we are pleased to welcome Dr. James White and Abdullah Al-Andalusi to be here to represent their two prospective viewpoints.
Just by way of introduction, let me do a little bit of housekeeping notices before we give the formal introductions and begin our debate. To let you know that after the rebuttals, there will be a food break, so if you come here directly from work, and I know that some of you have done that, you'll be glad to hear that that will be happening straight through there.
And we'll talk about that just after the rebuttals occur, just so that you might anticipate that. For those of you that need to use the facilities, I ask you to go straight to the back and speak to one of the stewards, and they can take you, lead you over to where those are at.
So instead of coming up here and disrupting, perhaps, people's attention and the debates, if you could just go straight back, and the stewards will be happy to help you there. Also, at the very end of the debate, we will have an opportunity for people to ask questions.
These questions, we've asked to be written down, so I've got some blank sheets of paper here. I was wondering if I could get some volunteers to pass these out. Could I get four individuals to take a stack of these, and if you could distribute the paper around?
If you would submit those to me, I will be asking questions. So please feel free to write down on those. Speaking first this evening is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. You're welcome here this evening.
Dr. James White is the Director, as I said, of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization that's based in Phoenix, Arizona. He's the author of more than 20 books, and he's conducted over 75 moderated public debates.
He's also a professor, having taught Greek and systematic theology and various topics in the field of apologetics. He's also the elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. He's been married to Kelly for 27 years and has two children, Joshua and Summer.
And we also welcome this evening Abdullah Al-Andalusi. He's a former Anglican who embraced Islam at a young age and has studied Islam in depth since the age of 18. He's had a long experience in working in community activism and Islamic apologetics.
And his activities, including writing extensively on Islamic revivalist thought and speaking in various community centers and universities and colleges. He's also made appearances in various TV programs, speaking about theology and political philosophy and sociopolitical analysis.
He's a co-founder of the Public Discussion Forum, the Muslim Debate Initiative. And he's done a lot of written work in specialist subjects. And you can view some of that writing on the website, islamicrationalism .com, remember that.
Just to give you an idea of how the debate is going to go this evening, we will have 22 minutes each of opening statements, followed by three minutes of cross-examination. This cross-examination is to verify the statements that have been made in each person's opening remarks.
And that will be followed by 12 minutes each of rebuttals. And then we'll have our break. And when we all return from the break, I'll tell you about the breakdown and format of our debate from that point.
At this time, we want to welcome Dr. James White to begin our debate. Welcome, Dr. White.
Well, good evening. It is a pleasure to be with you here in London this evening. It is truly an honor that you all have come out this evening, braved the cold weather. I'm from a desert climate, and so this is very unusual for me, but I'm actually enjoying it.
And I thank you all for being here this evening, especially to Abdullah al-Mulusi. Thank you very much for being here. Last time I saw him, we were in the studio at the Unbelievable Radio program, and we had a discussion.
I have a feeling it was a little bit like what we're going to hear this evening, but not quite as full, I think. And so it is an honor to be with you here this evening. Does the Bible teach the trinity?
Does the Quran accurately describe the trinity? Is worship of the trinity an act of shirk? These are all things that I submit to you, we as Christians and Muslims, must discuss openly, honestly, and forcefully.
If I were a Muslim, and I had the Quran as my holy book, I would take seriously the things that it says about those who would say three. And what that means, what shirk means, what the term blasphemy means, a curse upon those people.
If I cared about other people, I would want them to know what my holy book said. And as a Christian, I in the very same way this evening am going to say to my Muslim friends, your book does not understand what I believe.
It should, but it does not. And therefore, what does that mean? How do we understand these things? If we love and respect one another, we will not compromise on these issues. We will not fall into the trap of the modern world that says, well, we dare not offend.
I would rather love you and offend you than not offend you again this evening. And I hope that we will be able to this entire evening act toward one another in that kind of an understanding. There is a major danger of talking past each other this evening, because we use similar terms, but we import very different meanings into those words.
Come, let us reason together is the biblical invitation. We wish to be reasonable this evening without lapsing into secular rationalism, which unfortunately is the mode of the day. Two of the major world religions locked in definitional combat.
Islam arises after Christianity, at least on the historical level. I understand what you believe about Jesus being a Muslim, etc., etc. But from the historical level, Islam arises after Christianity and therefore interacts with Christian beliefs in its holy scripture, that is, in the Quran.
It would seem logical to assert then that if the Quran is in fact the eternal message of Allah, that it would be accurate and in an accurate way incitefully critique the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
The point upon which the two faiths have their sharpest, and I would say foundational, disagreement that gives rise to so much else. It is my assertion that the Quran not only does not accurately define and critique the Trinity.
It does so errantly, demonstrating that in fact its author was quite human, not divine. So let's define the issues to see if my allegation is founded in reality. First, we must understand what it is Christians believe about the subject of the Trinity.
Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three co-equal and co-eternal persons, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, I was not just simply using color to make my slide prettier in outlining the words being and person.
We differentiate between these words in everyday life and we differentiate between these words in the definition of the Christian faith as well. What do I mean we differentiate between these words? Well, we all recognize things that have existence, things that have being.
We are human beings. There are other beings in this universe that we see around us. Some are personal, some are not. A rock has being, but it is not personal. A cat has being, and it might have personality, but it's not truly a person in the sense of recognizing its own existence among cat kind or anything like that.
The Bible tells us that God, angels, and men are personal in their existence. And yes, angels and men are limited in their being. Being is what makes something what it is. Person is what makes someone who they are.
And so a rock has being, but it does not have personhood. We as human beings, we have being. We are human beings, but our beings are limited in time and space. I am not back at home right now in Phoenix, Arizona, though sometimes my body thinks that it is.
We are limited as to where we can be and how long we exist. God's being is not limited. God's being is eternal and indeed outside the realm of time. And it is the Christian perspective that that being of God is shared by three divine persons.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that this has eternally been the case. There is never a time when that was not true. Now it's important to recognize that Trinity is not saying that there are three beings who are one being, nor three persons who are one person.
One being, eternal and unlimited, shared eternally by three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are not saying one equals three and three equals one. Since we differentiate between those terms, you may have heard people criticizing the Doctrine of Trinity on that level.
That is not a valid criticism. We are not saying three persons or one person. We are not saying three beings or one being or anything along those lines. We are differentiating and very specifically in the language that we use.
But why do you believe this? Many people think it's because, well, Constantine forced you to. Well, that's certainly not why I am a Trinitarian. I'm a Trinitarian because I believe the Bible is the Word of God.
And I believe all of the Bible and only the Bible. That is, I believe in Sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is the sole and valid rule of faith for the Church and for Christian faith. But I also believe in Tota Scriptura.
All of Scripture must be believed. And when I believe the Scriptures, when I apply a meaningful standard of interpretation that is consistent from Genesis to Revelation, recognizing all the different kinds of literature and Scripture, when I do that, I come up with three biblical truths.
The first foundation is absolute monotheism. There is only one true God, Creator of heavens and earth. I have defended that thesis against the Mormons, who believe that there are many gods, literally an unlimited number of gods in the various universes.
The Bible is explicit. And there are many parallels between the statements of the Koran and the Bible on the fact that there is one true God, and any god that did not create the heavens and the earth, Jeremiah tells us, is a god that will pass away from the heavens and the earth.
That is the first confession that we make. There is only one true God. But then, as I read the Scriptures, I find out that there are three divine persons. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit.
The Spirit is not the Father. They are distinguished from one another, and yet they are described as God. The very name of God in the Old Testament, Yahweh, is applied to the Father, to the Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh.
Why would the inspired writers do this consistently throughout the New Testament writings? Why would the one name of the God of Israel be applied to Jesus of Nazareth? Why would the Spirit be the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, interchangeably the Spirit of Yahweh?
Why is this the case? Three divine persons are revealed to us in the pages of the holy Scriptures. But then, we likewise have the third foundation, the equality of those persons. Most people, over time, have tried to find some way of putting these persons in an order, and frequently what that's led to is, in essence, an elevation of one above another.
Many people today, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses who might wake you up on a Saturday morning, knock you at the door at your flat, believe that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, the first and greatest of God's creations.
Others simply say he was a great man. But the reality is that the Scriptures do not allow for that kind of subjugation. They do allow for differentiation. The Son does different things than the Father.
The Spirit does different things than the Father and the Son. Each have taken different roles in the redemption of mankind and glorification of the triune God. But, they fully participate in true deity.
Jesus is described as the creator of all things, eternal in his existence. And so, these three biblical truths force me to the doctrine of the Trinity. They force me to recognize that if I'm going to allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, and I'm not going to put some higher authority over the Scriptures, that I must believe these particular things.
Now, the terms Father and Son are not physical terms for Christians. The Father is not married to anyone. The Son is not the result of marriage. He is not an offspring. The relationship of Father and Son is timeless.
It did not begin, but always has been. It is a description of a relationship that has eternally existed. Now, I understand why some who do not have the fullness of biblical revelation might hear phrases like Father and Son and go, oh, well, you must be thinking that God has a consort, a wife, and has offspring, children.
But that is not what the Old Testament has taught about Galilee. That's not what the New Testament has taught about the relationship of the Father and the Son in any way, shape, or form. And any representation of Christian belief that does not recognize this is based upon ignorance.
And we must understand that that is the case. The bedrock of monotheism defines the Trinity. It is the very foundation of our faith. But this must be understood. Monotheism and Unitarianism are not the same things.
I am a Trinitarian monotheist. You can be a Unitarian monotheist because you assert that the being of God can only be shared by one person. I am a Trinitarian monotheist because since the being of God is not limited by time and space, it's eternal and unlimited.
My scriptures teach me that there are three divine persons that fully share that one being that is God. Now, you may disagree with that, but you cannot simply assume Unitarianism along with monotheism.
You have to prove it. You have to prove that the being of God cannot be shared by three divine persons. And that cannot simply be assumed. The Trinity was well known by AD 600. The councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon had clearly proclaimed the belief.
Now, since there was some confusion when I made this claim the last time I was in London, let me emphasize what I'm saying here. I have just explained to you that I believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is a biblical revelation.
All I'm saying here is that all the controversies that one might point to with Arianism or Apollinarianism or any of the other isms of the first few hundred years were all settled by this time. What the doctrine of the Trinity was was well known by 600.
Why did I choose 600? Well, because it's pretty close to 610, and I'll let you figure out the rest from there. The doctrine of the Trinity was well known. The Athanasian Creed was well known. Augustine had written entire works on the subject long before Muhammad.
And so, given that my esteemed opponent this evening's emphasis is upon rationality, may I follow his own form of argumentation to point out that if the Bible is indeed the revelation of God, as confirmed and promised by Jesus, confirming the Old Testament, promising in the New Testament, that it is perfectly rational to allow God's revelation to define His nature and His being.
If we accept that there is a creator God who has revealed Himself and that we are but His creatures, it is eminently rational to accept what He reveals concerning Himself. I am reminded of the words of Blaise Pascal, who said, Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.
It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. I am being rational when I recognize my Creator is greater than I am, and that I must bow before His revelation. And the great Puritan John Flavel said, I know there is nothing in the Word or in the works of God that is repugnant to sound reason, but there are some things which are opposite to carnal reason as well as above right reason.
And therefore our reason never shows itself more unreasonable than in summoning those things to its bar which transcend its sphere and capacity. The doctrine of Trinity is not a revelation of reason, it is a revelation of God.
But it is very reasonable to accept God's own self-understanding. Let's look at the Qur 'anic understanding of what the doctrine of the Trinity is, because there is no question that the Qur 'an seeks to provide a response to the beliefs that existed in the days of Muhammad.
The Qur 'an is sent down to Muhammad 600 years after the end of Christ's earthly ministry. It interacts extensively with both Judaism and Christianity, but doesn't do so accurately. If it is the eternal word of Allah, it must, but that cannot simply be assumed.
We have to, this evening, examine that claim. Surah 4, verse 171 says, O people of the Book! Allah Al-Kitab! Commit no excesses in your religion, nor say of Allah but the truth. Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle of Allah, and his word which he bestowed on Mary and his spirit proceeding with him.
So believe in Allah and his apostles. And so here you have the first reference to excesses on the part of people about this Jesus. Excesses, going beyond what the truth allegedly actually is, because it goes on to say, Say not Trinity.
Now that, of course, is a translational issue. It's literally, say not three. Say not three. It will be better for you. Here's the first time we hear this drumbeat. He is exalted above having a son. What does that mean?
That Allah is exalted above having an eternal relationship with the second divine person, the one being that is God? Is that what the writer to the Quran understands? Well, we're going to have to find out as we look at other texts.
In Surah 5, 72, the following three, they do blaspheme. This is why this is so important, folks. I think if you're a Muslim, you should take that word very seriously. And as a Christian, I do. If this is the word of God, then what I believe is blasphemy.
I recognize that. That's why I take this very seriously. We cannot simply pass these things by. They do blaspheme. They say, Allah is Christ, the son of Mary. But said Christ, O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord, and your Lord.
Whoever joins other gods with Allah, Allah will forbid him to garden, and the fire will be his abode. There will, for the wrongdoers, be no one to help. Notice what is said here. There's a joining of other gods with Allah, as if the son is a separate god.
And yet, Christians don't believe that the son is a separate god. They don't believe he became a god at a point in time. Two divine persons sharing one being, father and son. It's not a separate god. So what's being referred to here?
It goes on to say, they do blaspheme who say Allah is one of three in a trinity. For there is no god except one Allah. It's literally third of three. Clearly, the Quran is thinking of polytheism here.
A multiplicity of gods. And yet, what is the absolute first affirmation? Monotheism. There is only one being of God. The very name of God, Yahweh, used of father, son, and spirit. What is this third of three?
If they desist not from their word of blasphemy, verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them. Why turn they not to Allah and seek his forgiveness? For Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful.
Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than an apostle. Many were the apostles that passed away before him. His mother was a woman of truth. They had both to eat their daily food. Note the mention of Mary.
See how Allah doth make his signs clear to them, yet see in what ways they are deluded away from the truth. Say, will ye worship besides the law, something which hath no power either to harm or benefit you?
But Allah, he it is, that heareth and knoweth all things. You're starting to hear the drumbeat of this kind of argumentation. But I'm hoping you're seeing it's not argumentation against the doctrine of the Trinity.
We have multiple gods here. We have, and it seems, why make reference to Mary? Why say that they had both to eat their daily food? Christians don't believe Mary's a god. Christians don't believe Mary's married to God and has children.
So why make this kind of argumentation? Say, O people of the book, exceed not in your religion the bounds of what is proper, trespassing beyond the truth, nor follow the vain desires of people who went wrong in times gone by, who misled many and strayed themselves from the even way.
Curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected faith, on the tongue of David and of Jesus, the son of Mary, because they disobeyed and persisted in excess. The chronic position at this point.
Do not say three. It is a blasphemy, an excess. It will bring a grievous penalty, a curse. Allah is exalted above having a son. Jesus and Mary both ate daily food. Now my timer is messed up here, brothers, so I need to know what...
Very quickly then, read to you Surah 5, verse 16, and make some application. Behold, Allah will say, O Jesus, the son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, Worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah?
He will say, Glory to thee. Never could I say what I had no right to say, had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, though I know not what is thine, for thou knowest in full all that is hidden.
Notice the statement. Jesus asked about teaching men to jointly worship himself and Mary as God. Allah plus Mary plus Jesus equals three. Now I have a number of comments that I will try to get to from Ibn Kathir and from others that demonstrate that the Quranic understanding is that...
Well, here's just one from Ibn Kathir. This is a threat and a warning to Christians, chastising them in public, as Khadadah and others said, and Khadadah mentioned this ayah as evidence. This ayah also shows the crime of the Christians who invented a lie against the law and its messenger, thus making a rival wife and son for Allah.
Allah is glorified in that he is far above what they attribute to him. Let me just make a summary statement at this point. It has never been the Christian belief that God the Father has a wife and that they have a son named Jesus.
I can understand how someone could have come to that conclusion if they are ignorant of the very essence of the Christian scriptures. But if you believe that the Quran is the eternal word of God, then, my friends, Allah knew what the trinity was when the Quran was revealed.
Whether it's right or wrong is another issue. If he knew what it was, there would be no reason to misrepresent it. And so this evening we have two things to discuss. Does the Bible teach it? Is it rational to believe this?
But for the Muslim, does your holy book accurately represent this belief? And if not, why not?
Given 22 minutes is Abdullah al-Andalusi, and he'll be representing the Muslim position. Let's welcome him as he comes to the podium.
In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. I'd like to send my greetings to everyone here. I'd like to thank the Trinity Church, the elders and the congregation for inviting me here today to debate this interesting and important topic.
Firstly, I wanted to apologize if anything I do say might offend some people. I think it is important, as Jane White mentioned, that we have to be open and frank about our difference of opinion. And that we also must be tolerant.
Gone are the days when people such as myself, Christians, ex-Christians, or whoever rejected the Trinity, would have been beheaded in Christian Europe. For example, John Calvin himself ordered the beheading of four servitors.
But in this day and age, we live in more enlightened times where we can actually come to each other's places of worship and discuss openly. And last year, the American evangelical debate of David Wood came to a mosque to discuss whether the Prophet Muhammad was a real prophet or a false prophet, him obviously arguing that the Prophet Muhammad was a false prophet in a mosque.
So I think this is a very good situation, and I'd like to jump straight into my presentation. The structure of my presentation is, firstly, we have to come to agreement on a common basis to make a judgment as to whether there is politics involved or not in the issue of the Trinity, and so on.
Also, I'll discuss Jewish monotheism. I'll discuss the sorts I'm going to use. Then I'm going to jump to the unreliability of apostolic tradition and its documentation, otherwise known as the New Testament.
I will show that there's no guarantee that the original texts are accurate, and that the original text probably has even the same contradictions as even the current ones that we have. I'll say that the Bible is not protected by the Holy Spirit from textual corruption, that the Christian theology developed under the pernicious influence of Hellenic Greek philosophy, and that the texts give contradictory accounts of Jesus as one human, not one as a humble but superhuman.
And then I'll discuss the Trinity hypothesis, and there's a reason why I call it the hypothesis. And I'll finish off with the chronic contentions to the Trinity, or should I say to Christian theology specifically, and how the Qur 'an perceives Christian theology, and the rational arguments raised by the Qur 'an.
Now, I know that sometimes I'm described as a rationalist, but this is far from the descriptor in terms of, in Islamic thought, we think this is the Metazolites, the Metazolite faction. No, I'm fully orthodox Ahlus Sunnah.
When I use the word rational, it's only because I believe that the Qur 'an, which tells us to go look at the universe and don't believe in things which are contradictory, I say that this is rational. Rational thinking is to believe in things which are non-contradictory and based on evidence.
Simple, as simple as this. I think that the basis, the rational basis is that, whatever and how ineffable God is, how unfathomable He is, He is non-contradictory. His nature is non-contradictory. He might be infinite and you can't count infinity, but there's a difference between saying He's infinite and finite at the same time.
Because infinite means not finite. So how can something be not finite and finite at the same time? It's a contradiction. As, to quote 1 Timothy 6 .20,. And again, Corinthians, God is not the author of confusion.
And of course, as God has allegedly invited people in Isaiah, come now, let us reason together. So God believes in reason and rationality, so I do too. Jewish monotheism. You know, the thing about the Old Testament Bible is, the Old Testament Bible is full of imagery and it's full of explicit text.
There's ambiguous text and explicit text. You go to any Jew and you ask them, how do you interpret these different texts? You know, some texts say that God rested, God relaxed, God repented. Is this literal?
Does this literally mean that God rested, He went to sleep, He went to relax or whatever? They say no. They would say it's imagery because the explicit text says God is infinite, God is powerful, He's not like a man.
So we interpret those texts which say that He is, He repents or He relaxes or He makes a mistake, we interpret them allegorically or metaphorically. We don't interpret them literally. And we use this kind of, you know, as a meter.
And it's the same with the Qur 'an. We have a verse in the Qur 'an which says that God has hand and feet and so on, and we don't interpret it literally that God has a human hand and feet and leg and different components.
No, it's allegory, metaphor. So, what are the explicit verses in Jewish monotheism? God is not a man, Numbers and Hosea. And I think I'll quote Numbers, God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should change His mind.
Interesting. God does not change in Malachi. God does not, He doesn't change His mind. Of course, as James White noted in his book, The Forgotten Trinity, that God is outside of time and space and He can't change.
He's outside of time and space. Remember that. God is the creator of all things. Obviously, we know that the Jews believe this. And 2 Chronicles 6 .18, nothing can contain God when referring to a temple.
How can God be confined by a limited temple? And of course, as James White himself remarked in his book, God's being is not limited and since God is omnipresent, another important truth can be seen, God's being cannot be divided.
What is half of omnipresence? How can the infinite be divided into parts? So on and so forth. And here at Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. Notice how it doesn't say you only have one God, or there is only one God.
No, it says the Lord your God, so you read up here, the Lord your God, that's singular, is one. Why say that? Why have the additional as one? You've already mentioned the singular, your Lord your God.
Why say He is one? What's that about? We'll come to that later. So the sources I'm going to use, and what I'm going to quote from the Old Testament, I'm going to quote from the classical church fathers, the Orthodox classical church fathers.
I know they all anathematized each other during that time, but I'm going to quote from the ones that stand for the majority. I'm going to quote scholars approved by James, which I have 10 from his books.
The ones that he cites, I'm going to cite, because I know that he trusts those scholars. And sometimes I will quote scholars which are not approved by James, but I will mention when they are what he would call liberal scholars.
So onto the reliability of apostolic tradition, what does that mean? Well, the New Testament is not an exact record of Jesus' life, but it's a compilation of early Christian theologians and uncorporated narratives about Jesus' life.
So what do we find is that there were theologians, early theologians, writing letters or their works and so on, and then later on these became incorporated into the New Testament. It's the same reason that the Christians don't believe in the town of Midrash.
If you ask a Christian, why don't you believe in the Jewish document of the town of Midrash? And they'll say, because these were written by rabbis who were writing commentary on the Torah. We don't follow what the rabbis say.
We don't follow the beliefs of their ideas or their opinions. We follow what the Torah says. But funnily enough, the New Testament is basically constructed by theologians. For example, the first prologue of John, in the beginning was the word of God.
Does it say Jesus said that? No. Whoever wrote John is saying that. It's his opinion. It's his idea. He's a theologian. If Augustine, very famous, or even I'll say if James, if James lived in the first century and he wrote his book, that would probably be part of the New Testament.
So it's all about chronology. It's not about anything special about the author, if you even know who the authors are. Anyway, so according to J. M. D. Kelly, in his book, Early Christian Doctrine, he says, The doctrine of one God, the Father and Creator, formed the background and indisputable premises of the Church's faith.
The problem for theology was to integrate it with the fresh data of the specifically Christian revelation. Even at the New Testament stage, ideas about Christ's pre-existence and creative role were beginning to take shape.
So already there was a development of thinking during the construction of the New Testament. And of course, these ideas found their way into the New Testament. J. M. D. Kelly also said, and this was a proof by James, that there was Greek thought, Hellenistic thought going on at that time.
And do you know what the Platonic and Stoic schools of philosophy, and do you know what they had a belief about God? Do you know what their belief about God was? The Stoic and Platonic schools of thought.
They believed that God is unfathomable, ineffable. He is so detached from his creation that to create creation, he has to create something called a wisdom, an intermediary called the Logos. This is Platonic philosophy here.
He had to create a Logos, and then the Logos, through the Logos, everything is created, everything that is discernible. And with Stoic philosophy, they believe that this Logos means rationality, and that everything is ordered because of the presence of this rationality in the universe.
Does that sound familiar to any Christians? I'll go into it further. So, just very quickly about the New Testament. When I said the originals may not be accurate, I'll give an example. I just made a statement.
Matthew 2 .23, what does it say? And he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, he will be called a Nazarene. Referring to Jesus. The prophets of the Old Testament prophesied Jesus and said that he is a Nazarene, the Messiah will be a Nazarene.
Guess what? This occurs nowhere in the Old Testament. Where did he get this from? Maybe he made a little mistake. Or maybe, as was happening, they retrofitted prophecies from the Old Testament and say, oh, this was written in the Old Testament, this was written in the Old Testament.
And generally they checked, but in this case, especially with Matthew, there's a lot of inaccuracies and a lot of missing prophecies which don't exist in the Old Testament. What was that? The documentation of the New Testament is not protected from divine tampering.
And James 1 will agree with this. Why? Because John 7 .53 to 8 .11, when women are taken for adultery, was proven to be a forgery, or it was taken out. 1 John 5 .8, the Trinity verse was taken out. It's so good.
We must take out all the Trinity verses in the Bible. I think it's a good start. And thirdly, Mark 16 .9 verses 9 to 20, resurrection of Jesus, again, was found out to be forgeries and taken out. Or basically, not in the earliest manuscripts, that's what they mean, not in the earliest manuscripts.
So, where was the Holy Spirit protecting the Bible when for hundreds of years, Christians were believing that was part of the Bible? Where was the Holy Spirit then? You might say, ah, but you see, the Holy Spirit will show you eventually the original manuscripts.
Firstly, we don't have the original manuscripts, so we don't know how many more mistakes, or how many more forgeries we have to go and get out of it. But anyway, now, to kind of actually, I think, get to the real crux of the matter, Christian theology, the thing about the New Testament, the New Testament is based on apostolic tradition.
What I mean by the apostolic tradition is that it was all the ideas, teachings, and opinions of Christian theologians combined with uncorporated narratives from Jesus' life, or what they all claim narratives from Jesus' life, and this was all basically, later on they compiled it into a book, or they went into Gospels, or rather many followed the Gospels into a book.
Not all the Gospels were put into that book, and there was a selection process, but I'm not going to go through that. The main point is, there's a hundred year gap between Jesus and presumed first Gospels coming into existence that we can have evidence for.
Now, we see in the New Testament a very interesting phenomenon. We see there are explicit texts, and there are ambiguous texts. The explicit texts say that Jesus is a human being, he was created, he ate, he slept, he's the son of man.
Like, in the Old Testament, son of man applies to all kinds of people, and so on, human beings. He's the son of God. Again, in the Old Testament, angels, David's called the son of God, Adam's called the son of God.
And all these things, which you, reading it, would understand. Son of God means chosen, a chosen of God. For example, he of his own self can do nothing, the Father is greater than himself, so on and so forth.
He grew in the knowledge of God, as well, and so on. As I already mentioned, he was ignorant of the hour. It's very funny, that first song in the Bible says that no one knows the hour, not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.
Now, it's very interesting, because anyone reading this, reading these verses, would say, oh, well, yeah, Jesus is a human being, he's a messenger, he's a prophet, and so he's the Messiah, a very high, the most highly esteemed prophet, I guess, with the Israelites, and the Messiah himself.
And this makes sense. But then, you get the ambiguous verses. The ambiguous verses, which, when you say, Jesus says, I am the way, truth, and life, and you think, well, what does this mean? Does this mean, you know, or, before Abraham was, I am.
What does that mean? Christians dispute these texts. These texts are a dispute because they're so ambiguous, they're not explicit. Now, what I would recommend to Christians, generally, is you take the explicit texts to form the baseline, and then you look at the ambiguous texts based on their conformance to the explicit text.
The ambiguous text, you judge it just like the Jews do to their Torah, just like the Muslims do to our Quran. You don't go to the ambiguous texts, come up with an interpretation you'd like, and then you change the explicit texts and do mental gymnastics to explain how, well, when Jesus said that the Father was great in life, what he meant was he was basically going to go to see the back of the Father, and he was saying that he should be happy because I'm going back to my Father who's great in me, and I'll be back in rank with him.
It doesn't say that in the text. It's mental gymnastics. But anyway, so these are the problems in the text. Now, you have these ambiguous texts, and you have these explicit texts, and throughout church history there have been constant battles between Christians who believed in using the explicit texts to be the judge, and others who believed using the interpretation of the ambiguous text to be the judge, and were the pro-divinity, divinitists of Christian history.
And in order to reconcile those who were the, those who believed were anti-adoptionists, and I'll explain these terms. The adoptionist is a Christian, an early Christian that believed that Jesus is the adopted son of God, i .e. he was a prophet and so on.
Generally speaking, in that frame of thinking. And the other viewpoint was that he was the literal son of God, and there were these two different sects. Those, obviously, who were anti-adoptionists, won the, obviously, they became the majority, they nepotized those they didn't like, and obviously they had church backing, and they started to impose on people anyone who rejected Trinity can even be persecuted and executed.
So they constructed this theory called the Trinity hypothesis. I call it a hypothesis, because a hypothesis is a proposition, a set of propositions set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, or as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation, or accepted as highly probable.
It's the Trinity hypothesis. Now, the Christian early church fathers, like Augustine, admitted that the Trinity, or the word persons, is not found in the Bible. They had to construct it. Augustine also said that we had to make a distinction between persons and being, because otherwise we have no other way to explain the existence of three, and we have to admit it's three gods.
So he said that we have to invent persons, hypostasis, and usia. What they don't tell you is, and this is a real funny thing, is that hypostasis and usia are synonyms. One is platonic philosophy, and the other one is stoic philosophy, and they both mean subsistence.
They both actually, they are synonyms of each other, meaning they are basically, they mean, they can stand in for each other, they mean the same thing. And we know this because the mystery of Jesus being two natures in one is called the hypostatic union, the union of two natures.
Hypostasis means natures in that context. So they try to, they use two different words from two different, almost, philosophies, fused together, so that you don't think of them as the same. It's like me saying, it's like me trying to avoid saying, there are three natures, and there are one nature.
And you say, oh, that sounds, I can't say that. Okay, I'll say it in a different language. Il y a une nature, and three natures. There we go, no problem. So, the equivalent, the interesting thing is, Augustine admits, Augustine admits, in his book on the Trinity, that God's nature and the personhood are actually one and the same.
There is no separation or distinction between God's nature and God's personhood. He admits this. And he realises, he comes to his text and there is a problem, a contradiction. Why? Because when you are saying there are three persons, you're saying there are three natures.
And when you're saying there is one nature, you're meant to be saying there's one person. And they can't accept this because how can they reconcile the contradictory interpretations of their Bible? Now, I'm gonna jump straight into the chronic contentions of this.
And I've got so many, so many verses in so little time. But I'm gonna show that the Qur 'an not only understands the Trinity, but the Qur 'an refutes the Trinity very eloquently. Firstly, the Qur 'an does not talk about the detailed concept, the hypothesis, the Trinity hypothesis.
It talks about Christian theology. It talks about the claims, the truth claims made by the Christian theology. It is like, you know, a politician saying we went to war in Iraq for freedom. And then you say, no, you went to war in Iraq for oil.
And they say, oh, we don't say that. Ah, yeah, that's the de facto reality of what you believe. When the Qur 'an says you believe in three gods, that is the de facto reality. Because there is no, God is a fundamental, there is nothing more, there's no components, there doesn't exist any components.
Even James White Book admits this, that God cannot be divided. So when you're saying there's three, you're saying God can be divided. It's three in one, much like what the Hindus say about Brahma, Vishnu and Krishna, about Vishnu and Shiva.
Three in one, they're part of the biggest transcendental god called Brahman. And see, Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. So, let's jump straight into it. Surah 2, 253, and I started to have a projector up to show you, so.
We're going to go through it very quickly. Surah 2, verse 253, and Surah 4, 171, actually distinguish out the three persons of the Trinity. So the Qur 'an distinguishes out the three persons of the Trinity.
God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Not Mary, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit are distinguished in these two verses. In the other verse, where it said, where it talks about, in Surah 4, verse 172, that the Messiah would never disdain for being a servant of God, nor would the closest angels.
Those who disdain for worshipping him are too arrogant to submit, et cetera, et cetera. Why does it say that Jesus would never disdain for being a servant of God, nor the closest angels? Why is it linked together?
Because the Holy Spirit, the belief in his Holy Spirit which would make the third person is actually the angel Gabriel. In Islamic sources, the angel Gabriel is called the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, angels are called holy ones and spirits as well.
The Holy Spirit is an angel. And the Qur 'an hid it back on the head where it says that it refutes both taking Jesus and angels to be gods. It refutes it by saying they would never disdain for being servants of God.
They are the servants of God. And of course, in the Trinity conception, the father is always the greatest one in the Trinity theology. And I will bring up church father quotations to show this. It's interesting that James White says that, let me just see if I can just find it.
It's interesting that James White says that we don't believe that God is a literal offspring like the Qur 'an says. We don't believe this, really. Did you read Athanasius? The author of the Athanasian Creed, no less.
He said, rather he is a friend of Jesus. He is God's offspring. And since God is eternal and he belongs to God as a son, he exists for all eternity. It is a characteristic of men to beget in time. But God's offspring is eternal.
His nature always being perfect. And Athanasius says that the son is God's offspring. Justin Martyr said the Logos is God's offspring and child. Before all creatures of God begat in the beginning a rational power out of himself.
And I could go on to Tashian, Tertullian, or Oregon and so on. They all say this. They say it's God's offspring. You have to represent your position, James White, from the orthodoxy and not make a claim about backups.
So, I think I'll leave it with this last verse as my time is running out. When the Qur 'an says in one verse, he said, you know, and they say that God takes a son, has a son. No, God, when he will start to exist, he said, be in his.
And I thought to myself, what's the connection between God saying that he can't have a son and if he wants to create something, he says, be in his. Why is that? Because the Qur 'an understands Johannine theology and it refutes the constant need to create a logos in order to create the universe.
God creates directly without needing to make a logos to do it for him. The Qur 'an has understood Johannine theology. It's understood Greek. Anyway, and I'll leave my time running out, but thanks. I'll come back in one of the rebuttals.
Thank you for listening. We thank Abdullah for expressing the position, for the Muslim position. Now we go on to three minutes of cross-examination. These cross-examinations, the purpose behind them is to verify the claims that have been made in these opening statements.
And first up will be Dr. James Law. Thank you very much. Abdullah, I did not hear what you mentioned, something about a 100-year gap. I thought you were saying between the ministry of Jesus and the earliest writings in the New Testament.
I did not understand what you said there. Do you know what I'm referring to? You talked about a 100-year gap. I'm not sure what you're referring to. Yes, a 100-year gap between the ministry of Jesus and the earliest provable manuscripts and evidence.
Okay, so your date had around 130? Approximately. Okay, all right. I wasn't sure what you were referring to at that point. You mentioned Surah 2, 253, which is and did I understand you to be saying that the Holy Spirit that is mentioned here is the angel Gabriel or this is actually what Christians believe because it says and strengthen him with the Holy Spirit.
So, are you saying that that's an actual reference to what Christians believe the Holy Spirit is or angel Gabriel? I didn't follow what you meant there. Sure. In the Sabbath theology, the Holy Spirit is a reference used for the angel Gabriel.
What the Quran is showing is trying to say is that angels have been taken as gods as well and that comes in the form of the Christians deifying the Holy Spirit which we interpret to mean angel Gabriel.
Okay, so I'm looking at the text here and it says those messengers we endowed with gifts some above others to one of them spoke others he raised degrees of honor to Jesus, the son of Mary we gave clear signs and strengthen him with the Holy Spirit.
If Allah had so willed succeeding generations would not have fought among each other et cetera, et cetera. So are you saying that that is a reference to the angel Gabriel? Oh yes. In the Islamic sources the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him makes supplications to God saying strengthen me with the Holy Spirit.
So it's not a reference to what Christians believe about the Holy Spirit. I'm totally confused as to the application that you made. Sure. It's kind of like this. The Christians don't believe that the Holy Spirit is angel Gabriel.
But the Quran is saying that the original kind of person that came was angel Gabriel and he was mistaken for being the spirit of God himself. You said this in the rubric of the Quran understands the Trinity.
So I'm trying to figure out if you're saying that when this was originally written that this was somehow meant to be a correction. It just sounds to me like it's used using the term Holy Spirit here as saying that Allah strengthened Jesus with the Holy Spirit.
Yes. There are many times in the Quran and in the Hadith where the Holy Spirit is just mentioned. But because the Hadith mentions that the Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam received revelation from the Holy Spirit and that we know that this revelation is from Gabriel.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. I think just to clarify you said that Christians don't believe that Mary was taken as a God or was treated as a God. But how do you explain your videos on YouTube and your articles and I think to your fellow Calvinist colleagues your criticism of Catholicism for what was quote unquote Mary-on-a-tree which is the idolatry to Mary and by seeking intercession through her and treating her for all intents and purposes as a God.
It's one of the best reasons to not believe that modern Catholicism is biblical Christianity. Sure. And it did not exist that kind of of Mary in devotion especially as it has been dogmatically defined by Rome just over the past 160 years with the bodily assumptions of Mary and the Immaculate Conception 1854 -1950 is a tremendous move away from any type of biblical revelation and if you are familiar with Rome's teachings they don't believe that they are limited to the devotion to the divine revelation of scripture they reject the concept of sola scriptura it's one of the fundamental differences between them.
Would you deny that in early church kind of teaching and discussion and ideas there was the concept of the Theotokos which is the God-bearer where Mary was his name was changed from being Mary the mother of God or God-bearer Theotokos?
Well I think there's a misunderstanding there as to the origination of Theotokos that originally was a Christological title in other words its original usage was an attempt to assure that people recognized that the one who was born of Mary was fully God that over time became an exalted title of Mary but it took a long period of time and even modern Catholicism I think it should be mentioned even modern Catholicism seeks to very clearly differentiate between Mary as a creature and any type of deification of Mary as a God.
I think that the methods they use are not necessarily the best but they certainly seek to make that kind of differentiation that should be fairly mentioned. Sure so then would you say that if you believe that taking someone into intercession makes them you're treating that person like God according to all the articles I've been reading of Calvinist polemic against Catholics that when you take Mary as an intercessor between you and God when she's described by Catholics as the spouse of the Holy Spirit that she has taken on she has the same will as the Holy Spirit you can speak or you can pray to her and she will basically through the Holy Spirit have your prayers heard that this is not a form of idolatry.
Yes but it's because that's the way that it's going to be in the future and not in the here and now because the been appointed to the part of our lives that we have of humility in so doing. But it's interesting to note that when the Apostle Paul talks about the incarnation, Jesus entering into human flesh, he says he emptied himself.
Now, that term is never used literally by Paul, kenosis. It is always used in a metaphorical sense. He made himself of no reputation, but how did he do so? By taking on a human nature, by truly becoming man.
This was his humiliation, his self-veiling of his glory. We see his glory revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration. But the vast majority of his life, that glory is hidden. He has taken on a human nature.
And so did he cease being eternal? Did he cease being infinite in his being in so doing? No, the whole doctrine of the incarnation is that Jesus is the God-man. That's not 50 God and 50 man, because that would be irrational.
That would make no sense. He remains, the Logos, that eternally existed, remains as God. But he takes on a human nature. If he created the human nature, why would that be impossible? Why, the only objection you can come up with is, well, he would never do that.
But if he had a purpose, and in fact it was his purpose from creation, to bring honor and glory to his triune majesty in so doing, to bring about perfect redemption for his people, why could not the one who made man enter into that human existence?
He does not cease to be eternal. He does not cease to be infinite. His human nature is a true human nature, so that's not infinite. That's not eternal. That particular individual had not existed for eternity past, but the scriptures say he is the God-man, the Lord of glory.
There's this wonderful text that Paul also uses. They crucified the Lord of glory. Think about that for a moment. How can you crucify the Lord of glory? The Lord of glory is the very creator of all things, and yet he humbled himself so that he could give his life a ransom for many.
And so the belief is not irrational, if we allow the texts to speak for themselves. But then what we have is basically an assertion that we can't trust the New Testament texts for various and sundry reasons.
We're told, well, there's a 100-year gap. Well, there's a 250 to 300-year gap between most of your knowledge of the Hadith and the statements of Muhammad, but that doesn't seem to bother too many people.
In fact, in the history of ancient documents, 100 years is the best there is. Any other ancient document from that time period, Suetonius, Pliny, Tacitus, doesn't matter who it was, the average time period between the time of the writing of their documents and the first extant copy is five to 900 years.
100 years is the best antiquity has to offer. So unless you're gonna suggest that God just simply couldn't get his word without giving us some type of golden plates or something, then you're gonna have a hard time making that kind of allegation stick.
He mentioned two of the longest text book variants in the New Testament. Wish I had time to go back over what I went over on Friday evening in this very room, the reliability of the texts of the New Testament.
He mentioned John 7 .53 through 8 .11, the other one is the long reading of Mark 16 .9 -20. It's a wonderful thing that we are able to recognize those later editions because we can do that because we have the richest manuscript tradition of any work of antiquity.
And the reason we can recognize that, for example, 1 John 5 .7, which isn't even really a relevant text, it was only added in from the Latin Vulgate in the 16th century, not by some powerful group either, but simply by usage.
But it's a wonderful thing that we can identify these things because you see, for the New Testament, we didn't have anybody burning the earlier manuscripts. We didn't have editing, we didn't have it with money.
And so we can go back to those papyri manuscripts, we can go back to P72, we can go back to P46 and P66 and Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, and we have this rich body of manuscripts to draw from to recognize these things.
And we publish entire texts. In fact, I'll go ahead and do this right now. Here is an entire text. This is the New English Translation and the Nesteolon 27th edition, full critical edition of the Greek New Testament.
Thousands of textual critical footnotes giving you all the information about all the manuscripts. We publish this and make it available to everybody and I give them to my debate opponents. We are open with the history of our text.
And I simply suggest to you that if you will, with an open mind, examine the means by which God has preserved the New Testament scriptures and pass them down to us today, you will be amazed at the progress of God.
I have been studying this field for many years and the more I study it, the more I am amazed at what God has done. Now, we then had a number of arguments raised, interestingly enough, quoting from the same New Testament text against the concept of the deity of Christ, saying that all the texts that present the deity of Christ are ambiguous.
Well, why are they ambiguous? Well, they're ambiguous because you accept an external authority to tell us we're not to believe these things. They're not ambiguous. Titus 2 .13 and 2 Peter 1 .1 are not ambiguous.
They describe Jesus Christ as our great God and Savior. There's nothing ambiguous about that. There's nothing ambiguous about Paul's description of Jesus in Colossians chapter one, where he says that he is the firstborn of all creation, that's the one that has preeminence over all things, for by him were all things created, whether in heaven and earth, visible or invisible, whether principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities, all things created by him and for him.
He is before all things. In him, all things hold together and consist. My friends, that's not ambiguous. That's the Creator. The Apostle Paul used every kind of language he could to express the fact that Jesus Christ is truly God.
It's not ambiguous from the writer to the Hebrews, quote Psalm 102, 25 through 27, which is about how Yahweh is the unchanging Creator of all things. He does not change. He does not age. It was not ambiguous for the writer of Hebrews to apply those very words to Jesus the Son.
And that takes me to something else that really needs to be emphasized. And that is, I heard Abdullah use the standard argumentation. You all have heard Achmed Didot do it. God has sons by the tons, right?
We've all heard that one. And yet, is it not so transparently clear in the text of the New Testament that the sonship of Jesus is absolutely unique? That's the very meaning of the term monogamous. Jesus is the unique Son of God, and the Jews recognize this in John chapter five, for which he quoted, before getting to the point where Jesus says he does nothing of himself, and of course, that was taken as a denial of the deity of Christ.
What, is Jesus some renegade deity? The whole point of John chapter five is that the Son is in perfect harmony with the Father. He acts in perfect harmony with the Father, but that very same text says, you must honor the Son just as you honor the Father if you want to have life.
And by saying Jesus is merely of Azul, and not the eternal Son of God, we are not honoring him as the Son, not from the New Testament perspective. But that very same text, Jesus made reference to the fact that my Father is working until now, and I am working.
That was a reference to the fact that the Jews recognized that God continues to work on the Sabbath day. He continues to have the sun rise, and the earth continues spinning, and rain falls from heaven, et cetera, et cetera.
And Jesus said, my Father is working, and I am working. And the Jews recognized that this was a claim to deity. He was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. And remember in John chapter 19, at the arrest and trial of Jesus, what is the assertion of the Jews?
We have a law, and by that law, he must die because he made himself out to be the Son of God. Uniquely, in a way that clearly demonstrated he was claiming to be deity. Now, Abella said, well, the Quran does understand from the Trinity, but then he went on to say, well, not in the Trinity hypothesis.
That is, not in the way the Christians believe the Trinity to have existed. Not those who take the entirety of the biblical revelation and allow it to stand. No, it's just simply addressing the de facto reality that you believe in three gods.
And he made reference to my book, The Forgotten Trinity. I think I was very, very clear in what I was stating in those texts when I said that God's being cannot be divided. The doctrine of the Trinity does not divide the being of God.
If you'll read the rest of those chapters, that's exactly what I said, and that is that the being of God, that which makes God God, is fully shared by three divine persons. Not one third of the being of God.
We're not dividing the being of God up. It cannot be divided, and I know anyone who looks at my book will see that I said that over and over and over again. And so, it is not a proper usage of my words to say that I'm in any type of support of this particular perspective.
So once again, let me refocus our attention. If we allow the Bible to speak for itself, and I would simply point out that the Quran does not tell us to pick and choose what passages in the Bible we are going to believe.
The Quran command says that these books are sent down. And I, as one of the Al-Alaji, or the people of the gospel, am told to judge based upon what's in my scriptures. We know exactly what the New Testament looked like in the days of Muhammad, without any question whatsoever.
And so in light of that, if we take simply what the New Testament teaches, we are forced to the doctrine of the Trinity, where does the Quran accurately represent the doctrine of the Trinity? What is this stuff about worshiping Mary?
Even from the Roman Catholic perspective, even if you go that far, it comes far after this time period. What's this idea about it being exalted above having a son? What does Surah 6, 101 say when it says that God cannot have a son because he does not have a sabiha, a consort?
Is that not saying that Christians believe God has a wife? We've never believed that. That's not what the doctrine of the Trinity is, and so we have to ask ourselves a question. I hope Abdullah will address this.
How can the Quran be taken for the word of God if it does not accurately represent what is speaking under this map? Thank you very much.
After a 12-minute rebuttal, we welcome Abdullah.
All right, I'm gonna go reverse about what he said, but I need to make a few points that I wanna actually say, and not just always respond to him. One of them is, the Quran used the argument that when you say God has a son, but he does not have a consort.
That is not saying that Christians believe that he has a consort. It is rebutting the fact that why have you given these persons masculine names? You have the father. Masculine, human, reproductive titles.
Father, son. These have meanings based on creation. You're giving the father, the consort of the father, and you're giving the son. You've got the son, which are human, reproductive names. For all eternity, God has had human, reproductive titles?
Does that make sense? That's why the Quran rebuts saying God does not have a consort to actually, so that he must now be a father, and a son situation. It's not just that Christians believe that. It's actually a refutation of your choice of titles for the godhead, and so on.
What I was trying to elicit from James is that we know that the Quran says that the Jews and Christians took their rabbis and anchorites as lords, besides God, or masters besides God. Reason why? Because they were used to intercessors.
They made what was forbidden allowed, and what was allowed forbidden, and so these became their lords, their gods. Even though, in that narration, when the Prophet Muhammad was saying this to the companions, one of the ex-Christians said, but we don't, we never worship them.
Ah, but didn't you follow them? Didn't you obey them? Didn't you, didn't you seek, well, he didn't say, didn't you seek intercession, but generally, they sought intercession, which the pagans also said, that we are not worshiping many gods.
We're just seeking intercession for different gods, and God's not. These are idols you've set up besides God. You seek intercession through other than God? Then you are praying idols. This is James Wise claiming against the Catholics.
Allow the Quran to define what it means by idolatry, as well. Idolatry doesn't only mean you worship a statue. Now, he said that the best documents we have are 100 years old, and that's the best you can get.
Well, if I brought, I guess the phrase, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and it's very much the same with mutism. Oh, well, it's the best that you can get for ancient manuscripts. Oh, so that must mean that we accept it, because just because it was better than, I don't know, what was written about Hercules or something like this, just because there's a better, or the closest possible, or closest out of many set of different manuscripts, we have to now accept it blindly just because there's nothing better than that.
I'm sorry, that doesn't wash. All right, I'm going to actually go in there and hit a few other points. When Jesus said that, you know, he said that him, the father, are one, and the God is his father, and the Jews were going to stone him for this, and they said that, you know, you a mere man are making yourself out to be like God.
And what was Jesus' response, allegedly, in the Bible? He said, it's not written in your law that be ye gods, be ye all gods. Isn't that very interesting? You are all sons of the Most High. It's Psalm 82 .6.
I said, be ye all gods, you are all sons of the Most High. Interesting, well, if Jesus was God, and he was trying to educate Jews as to believing that he's God, why give them an allegorical verse in the Old Testament which they never believed mean that human beings are God?
Unless you're Mormon, that is. That's a whole different story. So, you know, these are the problems which we encounter. I never said that the Old Testament, the New Testament, rather, is something that I believe in, or that Muslims believe in, or is the Indian Jew.
Nowhere did it say that the actual book that Christians possess is the Indian Jew. The Indian Jew is the teachings of Jesus. The New Testament is a documentation of the apostolic tradition, which is loosely based upon Jesus and his teachings and his life.
That's what I'm saying. That's what I have said consistently throughout this debate. But, you know what? In my research, I discovered something really fascinating. I never realized this before. It's really interesting.
You see, I guess what James White's trying to say here is that, well, you know, persons and being, it's a little word game that the Trinitarian theorists invented to allow three in one and one in three.
They said that, well, it's only one God, because it's one usia, one substance, one being, and three hypostases. I said, okay, interesting, that's very interesting. But then, the hypostatic union concept, which is where God, where Jesus has two natures, he has two usia, two usia, and he is one person.
So, God no longer has one usia and three persons. He has two usia and three persons. God has two natures, a human nature and a divine nature. And this has now effectively met the criteria of two gods.
You've now effectively met it. Unless you deny that the human nature, Jesus, is completely separate from divine nature, Jesus. And if you say that, then you say, oh, but the person, the will inside him was God.
That was God. If that's the case, then how do you explain Jesus saying that he's ignorant of the last hour, he's ignorant of it? If this is his divine person saying this, then he's lying, because he doesn't know it.
And I've read Augustine's attempt to explain it, where he said that, oh, well, you know, Jesus was, it was like being amongst babies. They couldn't understand you, so he just basically, how can you explain to babies and infant knowledge?
Well, that's fine, that's fine, but it says in the verse of the Bible that he does not know it. He does not know the last hour. That doesn't mean, if it said he knew the last hour, but can't explain it, I can understand that.
It says he did not know it, which has caused some Christians throughout the ages to believe that Jesus has two wills and two natures. One is a human will and a human nature, and one is a divine will and divine nature, because they were trying to reconcile these discrepancies within their own theology, discrepancies they caused because of their insistence to say that Jesus was God.
Also, other points. If God is fundamental and can't be broken down, then can there exist person, what we call person and substance as two components in God? Can there exist this? It can't. Person is one thing, and substance is not a thing.
So if we can't, if you can't divide this, if you can't divide God, then as Augustine admitted in his book on the Trinity, funnily enough, that person and nature is the same thing. They are, in essence, the same.
So when Christians say that we believe in free persons, we're saying we believe in free gods, and I'll further clarify this, I'll further qualify this. What makes a deity a god? What does a deity have to possess to be god?
It has to possess what? Infinite power. Okay, infinite power. And what else? Has to possess will, right? Will and infinite power. Here's a question. The father, does the father have infinite power? You say yes.
Does the father have a will? You say yes. Does the son have infinite power? Of course, that's what Augustine also says, according to the theology. And does the son also have a separate will? Yes, because he's a separate person.
That's what defines a person. A person is a will. So we see three wills, each have infinite power. What is that? What theology is this? Is that a monotheism? Does that sound like monotheism? Three wills, there are three infinite wills in heaven.
They don't depend on each other. They are self-contained, as Augustine said on the Trinity. This is free gods. It is de facto free gods. No matter, even though you add a little caveat, oh, but it's still one god, just adding that little appendage to your creed doesn't mean that you believe in one god.
If I said that, if I went to a shop and I stole something, and then the security guard got me, he goes, ah, okay, I stole it, but it's my property. I said, well, you didn't steal, did you? Either you stole it, or it's your property.
Make your mind up. You can't have a contradiction. But this is exactly what the Christian theology is. It's trying to have this cake and eat it. You want to make Jesus god, but you can't explain why he can be god at the same time as a father who is meant to be one god, but they are separate persons.
It's inconsistent. So that's what I'm saying. Make things easy for yourself. Jesus is a human being. He had human faults. He was limited. He depended on the father. Even the Christian theologians say, that the church fathers said that the father is the source and principle of all things.
And I will further clarify why the Quran is actually very sensitive. It's like an offspring. Why? Because the church fathers, and I have all the quotes here, say that in the eternal begotten, the reason why Jesus is one substance with the father is because it's kind of like, essentially, the father is a pregnant woman, and he gave birth to someone who has the same sons as him, but they're still connected.
So they're kind of an extension of the father. Jesus the Logos is the extension of the father. And if you say, oh, I think this Muslim is just making this up. Well, your early church fathers, Oregon, Tertullian, Tertullian, and so on, and Anthony, they're all saying this.
This is what they are saying, not myself. James White is not the authority of the Trinity. These guys are the authority of the Trinity. Do you know why? Because they invented the idea, not James White.
He's trying to explain it to you guys. Now, that is the problem that Muslims have with the issue of the Trinity. This is the problem we have with the conception of Christian theology. Now, just to answer a few other points, James White says God doesn't change.
Malachi says, more importantly, he says God doesn't change. But then he says God takes on flesh. God changes. You know, when I said before that God exists outside of time, and he cannot be changed by time.
And then in a chapter of James White's own book on the Trinity, where he says God, the divine or infinite, invades time. Infinity invades time. So God becomes in time. That which is timeless is in time.
And if you keep thinking this, keep thinking this through, God is what? The ever-living, right? God is the ever-living. Jesus died. Is that God? Jesus, God is the all-knowing. Jesus what? He was ignorant about facts.
He grew in his knowledge of God. Why does God need to grow in his own knowledge about himself? It doesn't make sense. It's for that reason that we say that except Jesus for what he is, he is a wondrous messiah, prophet.
He is a great prophet. He was a noble man. He was a man of truth. But he was no more than a man. Let's throw out the Greek philosophy. You know, the Greek philosophy is a lot of trouble, even to Muslim theology as well.
We have to kick it out. Much debate. So please, this is what I call you to. And other points, just quickly before it goes, why I go on. The Philippians says that God emptied himself and so on. Which again, they have to try to reinterpret.
Oh, what he meant is he humbled himself. You know, Jesus did not seek to be equal with the Father at all costs. But if God hasn't changed, Jesus is God, and God doesn't change, and Jesus doesn't change, then Jesus has always been equal to God with God.
He's always had to be. So how can he say that he will not hold equality with God to be a slight grasp at all costs? Does it make sense? The more you explain it, the more contradictions arise. So as James White brings counter-rebuttals to me, I have more admonition to point out more and more contradictions.
And I haven't even told you 50 of my rational contentions of it, mainly due to limited time. But if I ever do a talk, please, you're welcome to come and help me and so on. Anyway, thank you.
Well, this draws to the end of part one of our debate this evening.