A Reply to Anthony Buzzard

Anthony Buzzard’s Critique of the Trinity Debate

To start off today responding to a brief video that I was directed to, I hesitate to call him a student, but he was in the class that I was teaching in Berlin a few months ago, a gentleman who basically, I ended up calling him the Internet, because every time I would make reference to something, a few minutes later he would say, it's right here, if anybody would like to see it, it's right here.

He made Google look a little anemic and then when he wrote his paper it turned out to be a small book on the variant of John 1414. I'm trying to talk him into, I haven't heard back from him, trying to talk him into allowing me to post that, because I think those of you who deal especially with Jehovah's Witnesses and those who deny the deity of Christ would find John 1414 to be an important text and this is on the textual data regarding whether the word me is to be included in the Greek text.

But anyway, that's a gentleman who directed me to a video that Sir Anthony Buzzard posted. Now, most of you remember a few years ago, I think it was what, about 2010 I think, in the summer, right around this time, I think might have been September, I know it was very warm that day, Dr. Michael Brown and I did a debate, a live debate on the Jewish Voice Broadcast with Sir Anthony Buzzard, another gentleman, and I haven't said a lot about it, I mean it's out there, it's on YouTube, I hear comments about it all the time, but what's getting strange to me is that Sir Anthony Buzzard can't seem to stop talking about it.

And I've seen this before, remember we did, I don't know how many weeks, we did an entire response to Patrick Madrid because they just kept drumbeat, you know, Patrick Madrid on the veneration of saints and angels, you know, destroys James White, la la la la la.

And, you know, and Catholic Answers also with the Jimmy Akin Bible Answer Man debate, which wasn't a debate. But we've gone through all of those only because my former opponents just have absolutely demanded that we do so because of the comments they've made about it.

Generally, when one of my opponents spends a great deal of time talking about a former debate, it's because they don't feel like it went overly well. And to be honest with you, one of the comments I got from my daughter after the debate was, actually I sort of felt sorry for them, it was so lopsided.

So, you know, most of the comments that I've gotten have been very strongly positive and that there really wasn't any issues as far as, why they brought up stuff I had never even thought of before. None of that really took place.

I felt that it was a pretty straightforward demonstration of the bankruptcy of the Unitarian position from the New Testament perspective. But anyway, Sir Anthony Buzzard has posted a number of videos over the past couple of years.

And so finally I took the time, I really don't have the time, I'm behind on another project and I'm really not gonna be able to follow up on it, but I took the time to listen to this, well watch obviously, but this particular video.

And so what I'd like to do is I would like to, I'm just gonna play the whole thing, it's not very long, it's only five minutes long. I'm gonna play the whole thing and then I'm gonna go back through it and respond to portions of it.

And hopefully that will be useful to you in the listening audience. And then I've got a bunch of other stuff to get to today, as well as the whole reason why we're doing these jumbo length dividing lines to continue on our reviews in preparation for the debates in South Africa, etc, etc.

So, get a deep seat in the saddle, as they say here in the Western states, and let's take a listen to what he has to say.

The Shema and Unitarian Claims

I want to make a few remarks about our debate some years ago with Dr. James White and Dr. Michael Brown on the issue of the Trinity. That's an ongoing debate. I want to make a few simple points about the unitary monotheism of Jesus, and therefore I think it follows that since Jesus was a unitary monotheist, in Mark 12, verse 29, it must follow that we, as Christians, would want to follow that unitary, non-Trinitarian creed of Jesus.

That's just logical. Now, Michael Brown, in a subsequent blog, says this very clearly. He addresses me, he says, Anthony, he, Michael Brown, affirms the Shema of Israel. Would you think about that very carefully?

If that is so, Jesus is citing and quoting and affirming, according to Michael Brown, a Trinitarian creed. I find that absolutely astonishing. One of the debating techniques is to treat your partner as some lone soul who's come up with a brand new idea that nobody thought of.

That's absolutely untrue. There are thousands, countless scholars who know full well that Judaism was not a Trinitarian religion and is not. I want to make that absolutely clear. The Shema of Deuteronomy 6 .5, the Lord our God is one Lord.

I'm giving us the Greek version, which is appearing also in the New Testament as Scripture. The Lord our God is one Lord. That is not a Trinitarian creed. But Michael Brown has to say that he, Michael Brown, is a Trinitarian and what's more, that he affirms the Shema.

That must be a contradiction. If you're affirming the Shema, you're affirming a Unitarian creed. Guess what? Jesus, our Rabbi and Lord, is the one who affirms the Unitarian creed found in Mark 12 .29 and he's doing it agreeing with a Jew.

Surely everybody knows that Jews then and now and in the time of Moses were not Trinitarian. So there's a complete contradiction involved in Michael Brown's statement that he, Michael, affirms the Shema as a Trinitarian.

Creed. That's just got to be wrong. Let's go ahead and respond to that portion first. I was just going to play the whole thing through, but I don't want us to lose track of what we're listening to. Obviously when, and I haven't talked to Michael about this, but I think I'm on pretty safe ground in responding for him at this point.

Every Trinitarian, every Trinitarian who has read anything, who is self-aware of his theology, who's more than a Trinitarian of tradition, but a Trinitarian of conviction. And I will confess that that's a smaller group than one might expect.

But every Trinitarian affirms the Shema. We affirmed the Shema in the debate. And the debate was about whether you can assume, as Sir Anthony does over and over and over again, without proving, just assuming that these words are, they demand a Unitarian interpretation.

They do demand a monotheistic interpretation. They do not demand a Unitarian interpretation. And that's what the whole debate was about. I do not understand why Sir Anthony can't get that. Sir Anthony cannot even properly understand the position that he's critiquing.

He has to continuously assume Unitarianism and then as a result say, oh, so you're just contradicting yourself. Rather than hearing what we're saying and then interacting with it to demonstrate that it's not possible to consistently interpret the Scriptures in the way that we're doing.

And we all saw in the debate, they cannot deal with the biblical evidence for the deity of Christ. They cannot deal with the biblical evidence for the fact that Jesus Christ is described by the writers of the New Testament as Yahweh, that the Old Testament text about Yahweh or sight of Jesus, they have to go scurrying off for representative interpretations and stuff that just is far removed from what's actually there in the text itself.

They can't deal with that. Their big thing is singular pronouns and just assuming that if you have one being of God, God's being must be limited to one person. It's just the way that is. And that's why this is relevant to our apologetic to Islam because that's exactly, of course, what the Muslim does as well.

With, unfortunately, in the vast majority of instances, just as little reflection on the part of the person making the argument as we see in Sir Anthony's repetition of the same statements over and over again.

He mentions the allegedly Unitarian Confession of Faith, which is just the Shema, Mark 12, 29. So he's saying, see, Jesus said the Shema. Well, we all know Jesus said the Shema. He's gonna accuse, he's gonna say, there is no discussion of this in James White's books.

Actually, obviously, I very clearly confess in the book that Christians are not denying the Shema. We are not saying the Shema was wrong. We're not saying anything like that at all. What he wants to force us to try to say is that the Shema meant, and for those of you who don't know what Shema is, Shema Yisrael Yahweh Elohim Yahweh HaKad, it's found in Deuteronomy 6, 4.

It's quoted in Mark 12, 29. He's trying to put us in the untenable position of saying that when a Jewish person, 50 years before Christ, said the Shema, that made him a Trinitarian. And again, they just won't listen.

They won't, they, well, they can't. I mean, they can't, if they listened and actually interacted with our position as we stated, their, their arguments would evaporate. So maybe that's why they can't do it.

But the, the attempt is to say, oh, well, if you understand it in a Trinitarian fashion, then it must always been understood in a Trinitarian fashion. And that ignores the central thesis, which again was explained in the debate, but in one ear out the other, unfortunately, that the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity takes place how?

I've, I've mentioned this over and over and over again, but I always have to remember we have new, new visitors to the, to the program all the time. If you've not read the Forgotten Trinity, it's, it's certainly one of my books that you have to put at the top of the list because it's so central to our faith.

But as I pointed out in, in, in the book itself, the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity takes place in the incarnation, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his exaltation, the right hand of the Father, and then in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

This is where the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity is made. Are there indicators, pointers to this in the Old Testament? Of course there are, just as there were indicators, pointers, prophecies of the ministry of the Messiah and the, the grandeur of the person, the Messiah, and everything else, Isaiah 9 and so on and so forth in the Old Testament.

But the actual revelation takes place in the incarnation and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament then becomes the record of that revelation and the record of that faith that grows out of that great redemptive act and the revelation of the God that we worship.

Now, what this means then is what we should find in the New Testament are Old Testament texts that spoke of the one God of Israel being interpreted in this way. And that's exactly what we have in one of the key texts in the New Testament.

And that key text is 1 Corinthians 8, 1 Corinthians 8, verse 6. 1 Corinthians 8, 6. It is a tremendous text. I, I can only direct you back, I think, maybe, I think it was December of 2011, December of 2011, when I did a debate with a Unitarian on another webcast and then we did, I don't know how many webcasts here, where we went in depth into many of the key Christological passages, many of the key Christological passages.

We went very in-depth on them. And one of those texts was 1 Corinthians chapter 8. So, I, I don't have time today to go as in-depth as I would like, but you'll notice that in 1 Corinthians 8, 6, we have, it's, it's even placed in poetic form in the Nestle-Aland Greek text, probably in UBS, I didn't take a look, but I'm assuming that it is.

And we have here what many scholars believe to be a fragment of an very early, very, very early, creedal statement. And notice what it says. But to us, there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.

Now, you say, what, what does that have to do with this? Well, to anyone who would know the Shema in the Greek text, the Greek Septuagint, which is how the Jewish heritage of the Christian people would be known to people outside of Palestine, the, the, the Bible of the New Testament Church was the Greek Septuagint.

There's no question about that. Just, just look at, even in preaching to Jewish Christians, the book of Hebrews, what's the text that's being cited? It's the Greek Septuagint, even when it differs in some substantial ways at times from the Hebrew Masoretic text.

So, when you look at the Shema in the Greek Septuagint, and you look at the words, and you look at kurios being used for the name Yahweh, you look at theos being used for the word Elohim, Hebrew for God, then you look at 1st Corinthians 8, 6, certainly I am not the only person who has seen, many before me have seen and have commented upon, and, and people, by the way, from a wide variety of backgrounds, I know that Dr. N. T. Wright has spoken about this very issue.

We would be in, in a large measure of agreement on this particular subject, that what you have in this early Christian creed, and if this, if this is something that was delivered to Paul, then it's as primitive as anything can be.

It goes to the first years, and I'm talking first, second, third year of the existence of the Christian community, right after the death, birth, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, then you have here a fragment of a creed that takes the very words of the Shema.

See, we don't, we don't repudiate the Shema. We see the Shema as fulfilled in this way, the very words of the Shema, and in light of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you now have an understanding that they're looking back, and they're seeing kurios, and they're seeing theos, and they're seeing these words Lord and God, and what does it come out as, but for us, heis theos hapater.

One God, the Father, from whom tapanta are all things, and we eis auton, for Him, and one Lord, heis kurios Jesus Christas, one Lord Jesus Christ, dihu tapanta, through whom are all things, and we di autu, through Him.

You could not use those words in that way about a mere creature, no matter how exalted you might make that creature. It would be blasphemy. It would be utterly and completely contrary, well, to a non believing Jewish interpretation of the Shema, which is exactly what Anthony Buzzard gives to us.

He demands that we agree with the unbelieving Jews, even to this day. That's what he's doing. So, when Michael Brown says, I affirm the Shema, this is what he's affirming. We affirm the Shema. We just recognize that that's not all there is to it.

The Bible didn't stop at Deuteronomy 6 -5, and in fact, that Old Testament is filled with prophecies of this coming one, and once we live in the light of that coming, then we have this type of scripture, and we have to deal with it for what it says.

But, Anthony Buzzard can't deal with it for what it says, because he doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe it. So, but then he turned his attention to yours truly. Yes, a few comments toward Michael, and then a.

Pronouns, Being and Person, and the Limits of Unitarianism

Few comments toward me. The other point that Dr. James White makes is that we are assuming Unitarianism. I'm not assuming anything. I'm assuming only that the personal singular pronoun, I, me, thou, thee, he, him, and so on, thousands upon thousands of times in the Hebrew Bible, also in the New, those singular personal pronouns assume a single person.

If that's not clear, nothing is clear in language. So, I want to say that Dr. White, if anybody could do this, this extraordinary exercise of turning the Bible into a Trinitarian book, he could do it.

He struggles hard and long with this, but finally contradicts himself. He makes it clear at the beginning of his treatise on the Trinity, the Forgotten Trinity, in which, may I say, in his text index, which I had to procure, he makes no reference, please note, no reference to Mark 12, 29, no reference to the Creed of Jesus in trying to explain the Trinity.

That's amazing in itself, but at the same time, it's very clear that you cannot say that one X is three X's. You must not and cannot say, without contradicting yourself, James White says this clearly, you cannot say God is the name for each individual of the three, and God is also the name of all three together.

That's very, very true, but unfortunately, Dr. James White falls into his own trap. So, on page 71 of his treatise on the Trinity, he says this, as long as one recognises that the word God can refer to the Father, to the Son, to the Spirit, or, please note, to all three persons at once.

I want to repeat that. James White says, as long as we realise that the word God refers individually to Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and also the word God refers to all three at once, then we're okay, we'll get it right.

But, with great respect, James White, you've already told us that three X's cannot be one X. You've therefore given us a nonsense proposition, and you go on to say that in the Bible, this can happen, that the word God refers to all three together, but no text is offered in support.

There is none. I would invite you to show us, out of about 11 ,000 references to God, the various words for God, Elohim, Adonai, Theos in the Greek, where does that word God ever refer to all three persons as a triune God?

Nowhere. That could strongly suggest, not an assumption, I think an obvious fact, that in the Bible, when they.

Say God, they never mean a triune God. And that is the end of the presentation. Now, so many things to respond to there. I wish he had actually given a page number for the first thing. I can't find that.

Certainly, page 71, I was talking about John 2028. And I would invite anyone to look at the amazingly poor efforts that Sir Anthony has put forward to try to explain John 2028. It is amazing to listen to people trying to get around the clarity of that text.

They just can't do it. It's just, it's not possible. They can't do it. And that's what I was talking about there. A couple things to respond to here. The primary assertion that he makes is, well, if you've got singular pronouns, then that proves that there, that proves Unitarianism.

And he says, show us one place where God refers to the triune God. That's simple. Every single time that the context does not demand that we see a particular individual operating differently than the others would be a reference to the triune God.

So, anytime where God's general activities, God's general attributes are in reference, can be referred to the entire Godhead acting in unity. But what do you do, Anthony, when you have clear texts that identify Jesus as God acting in such a way where he's differentiated from the Father?

Well, you have to engage in the mind games that you engage in to try to avoid his identifying, being identified as Yahweh, and to try to get around the texts where he's the, you know, with all this representative stuff.

Well, he's just like this representative creature and so on and so forth. You have to get around. You can't accept what those texts say. And so, by assuming, well, if there's a singular pronoun, that must mean Unitarianism.

So, in other words, since that would always be true of human beings, it must be true of God. So, we're just projecting our limited understanding of man back onto God. That's what Unitarianism always is.

You somehow get around the full revelation of who Jesus is, what Jesus, well, for example, just a few weeks ago, I mentioned in John chapter 14, when Jesus says that the Spirit will be sent by the Father in his name.

Remember, we talked about that. How does a Unitarian understand that? So, the Almighty God is going to send this lesser creature, but that is his Spirit, but in the name of another creature. That's what you've got going on there.

Now, would we say that God sent his Spirit? Yes. And yet, God there sometimes is going to, did we say the Father did that? Yeah, that's what Jesus is, but he did it in the name of Jesus. So, Jesus is involved in wealth.

And, of course, the Spirit is the one who's coming, and he's personal, he's a comforter. See, this kind of simplistic, oh, we just need to, if it's a singular pronoun, we can't let anything else. Just simply cannot handle the fullness of Scripture.

That's why this position has always been a teeny tiny little minority, and always will be, as long as the Bible's available to God's people. Because when God's people read what the Bible actually states, they cannot help but to see the exalted status of Jesus Christ.

He's not simply a creature. He's not just some exalted angelic creature. He truly is described in Scripture as God. Now, then he says, you contradicted yourself. Well, as long as you do not allow my categories, which I've laid out in my book, to be followed.

Now, I would like to respond to the original, you know, when he's talking about three X's. I was talking there against modalism. I was saying that we are not talking about three persons that are one person, or three beings that are one being.

We differentiate between the words being and person, and Sir Anthony will not allow that. He can't live in light of that. Allowing for his denial of the distinction between being and person destroys human language.

He can't talk of, I mean, literally, if you follow that way of thinking, he shouldn't be able to tell difference between himself and me. We're both human beings, and if being and person is the same thing, well, then I guess we're the same person, right?

I mean, it doesn't make a lick of sense. He can't live consistently with that. We make a distinction between being and person, and what I've said is, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not Spirit. These are distinct individuals.

Both, we see this by what they do, and we see this by their relationships to one another. And yet, they fully share the one being that is God. And that's what I was saying in John chapter 20, that we cannot just take, we cannot do what Sir Anthony demands.

There's only one use of the word God in the Bible. God does not have the freedom to reveal anything more than Unitarianism, and if there's anything more, we'll just dismiss it. That will make mincemeat of the Bible, it'll be indefensible, and will leave you in the position that Sir Anthony was when he debated Shabir Ali, and it wasn't even a debate, because actually, they pretty much are on the same page.

Very similar to one another. And so, simply by denying the categories that we ourselves have laid out, that's basically all that Sir Anthony Buzzard and his followers can do in this situation. And that was demonstrated in the debate, and I think that's very, very clear.

And hopefully, that will be helpful for us again.