Speaker 1: And then we'll get going. All right, welcome everybody. We're
going to have a real treat tonight. We have a
distinguished scholar with us tonight to debate. Before we get going.
I want to make sure that everybody can hear us. Okay,
and the sound is good. If you would let me
in the chat, know by just hitting one. Just type
me a one, and as soon as I see a one,
we'll start going and I'll hand it over to our moderator.
One little house cleaning point at the beginning, I would
just say that since the channel was demonetized two days
ago right before this, if you want to support my work,
you can support me directly at the site. The link
is in the description below, and I also have doctor
Shaber's link as well to his page. And then also
our host tonight will be our moderator will be from
the Calliopian Club, and he has agreed to be our adjudicator.
He's gonna set us straight. He's gonna watch make sure
nobody's trying anything. I'm just kidding. So if you want
to take over now for us, I will hand it
over to you, mister mad.
Speaker 2: Yep, no worries. So Kasan one of the mods on
callipink club, so twitch streamer. We'll go with that later.
So the setup for this debate as it currently stands
is fifteen minute opening statements from both participants, fifteen minute
butt rebuttal from both participants, a ten minute cross examination
from each participant, in which during each person's cross examination,
one person who's allowed to ask the questions one must
respond the question. Asker ken interrupt during this section. Right,
there's another section of this ten minute cross examination for
twenty minutes, and then you have seven minutes closing statements each,
which we'll make for a one hour fifty four total discussion,
after which we'll go through the chat try and pick
out some interesting questions and go over those. So we
have our two interlocutors today, let's go. We have doctor Ali,
doctor Shabir Ali, who's a doctorate in religious studies from
the University of Toronto, specializing in coronic exegesis. His host
of the television show Let the Quran Speak and president
of the Islamic Information and Doa Center International in Toronto.
Welcome Dr Ali.
Speaker 3: Thank you, my pleasures to be on.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. The other person we have here,
obviously is Jay Dyer Jadier is the writer for Esoteric
Hollywood Sex, Calts and Symbols in Film and the Analysis
for jays Analysis dot com. He's the co host for
Hollywood Decoded and an Orthodox philosopher, with two written releases
slated for twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Welcome Jay, Thank you, glad to be here.
Speaker 3: Sweet.
Speaker 2: Now, you guys want to have some gentlemen's agreement about
who go first, or we can flip a coin.
Speaker 3: It's up to you. I think I think you can
go for us. Normally, the positive statesment in school first,
the affirmative position, Sweet.
Speaker 2: So, to be very clear, the debate topic is, is
Jesus God incarnate answers from scripture, history and logic. We
have Jay on the affirmative and doctor Ali on the negative.
So we'll set the time of fifteen minutes and when
you're ready, Joe, all.
Speaker 1: Right, thank you. Yeah. I'll start out by saying that
my training course is as a philosopher. I'm not a
textual scholar. I do have some knowledge of textual issues,
but I do know scripture pretty well, and I know
the history of the Church, and I know philosophy recently.
So my argumentation will focus mainly on how as a
system we interpret and understand the scriptures, how they confirm Christ,
and then how history and logic do as well. So
I'll begin with a quote. Our governing presubposition is stated well,
I think in letter eighty two of Saint Augustine to Jerome,
where he says that there's anything in the biblical texts
as he possessed them that appeared to be corrupted or
appeared to have translator errors or copyist errors. He was
willing to admit that there were copyist errors or that
he failed to understand them. So we have a governing
presupposition of belief that's going to determine our interpretive matrix
or framework. So I'm going to start my analysis by
looking at the Old Testament itself. For us, the strongest argument,
we would say, beginning with Genesis is the relationship of
each one of the covenants as they're revealed in Genesis.
So in Genesis we have the notion of that the
covenant made with Adam, as the minor prophets say, we
have the covenant that has broken. This is then made
with Noah. We have a covenant made with Abraham. We
have a covenant made with Moses. And there's many places
actually in the Torrad that explicate that the covenant made
with Moses is in perfect continuity with the covenant made
with Abraham. And so from the Mosaic covenant, the next
one in that line is the Dividic covenant. And so
we see all of these as one covenant, and they
come to a consummation in the person of Christ, the
second person of the Godhead for our view, incarnate by
the Virgin Mary. Right, So in that regard, when we
look back at redemptive history, we see a logical process
and a logical flow through each one of these covenants
that in no way entails some kind of vast contradiction.
So granted, there are situations where aspects of the Mosaic
ceremonies that were given to the Jews for us, they
actually typified the Melchizedecian priesthood, the priesthood that is from
all eternity Hebrews, if you believe Paul wrote, Hebrews describes
the eternal priesthood that we have in Christ. And so
actually the levitical priesthood that's later given is based on
the priesthood of Melchizedic. And that is because Melchizedic typified
himself the person of Christ. So when we look at
the Old Testament, not only do we see this unfolding
revelation of God bringing humanity back to himself after the
fall in the garden, we see a logical process to
the theology and the revelation that occurs. It's not all
at once. God doesn't tell everything to Agrahm, he doesn't
tell everything to Joseph, he doesn't tell everything to Moses.
There's a progressive revelation, and we would say that based
on what Deuteronomy says, especially thirteen, you cannot have later
revelation that comes into conflict with what is given in
prior revelation. So everything that must come later must conform
to the prior. So when we look at the major
and minor prophets, when they make many times distinctions about
the one like the son of Man riding the chariot,
who is identified as Divinity, we can't or in Daniel seven,
for example, we can't say, well, those are corruptions, those
are out of accord with what was given in Torah,
because they are as the current itself says, those were
the prophets. I'm going to get into it later when
I'm sure when doctor Shabir replies, he will mention many
things that he thinks are corrupt or inconsistencies. But let's
focus still on the Old Testament while we're here, and
note that for us, the Messianic prophecies don't just start
with or lay out something that's related to covenants. That
actually goes a lot further than that, right, It actually
goes into these many Theophanies. So if we start with
the Theophanes. In Genesis one, we have God walking in
the garden, we have God coming to Abraham and Abraham,
and in Genesis twelve when he's called, it is identified
as God himself, who speaks to Abraham face to face.
When we look at fifteen one, four seven, and then
into sixteen with Hagar herself, Hagar says I saw God
face to face eighteen one and nineteen one, we get
the same language in Imagery twenty four, forty eight, twenty eight,
Genesis thirty one, eleven, and thirty two thirty right, the
wrestling with an angel are wrestled with God himself face
to face Genesis thirty five to one, Genesis forty eight,
fifteen sixteen, where we are told that the Angel of
the Lord, the same angel, this mysterious figure who was
sent by Yahweh, who wrestled with right Jacob, he redeemed me.
We angels don't redeem right. So when we come to Exodus,
we find similar language in imagery Exodus three four through six,
Exodus three fifteen, Exodus fifteen five through eight, Exodus twenty three,
twenty two, twenty to twenty three, Exodus thirty three one
through three. What we find there is the Angel of
the Lord has the name of Yahweh placed in him. Now,
God doesn't give his name to another, as we're told.
Oftentimes are the Muslims like to cite Isaiah, I do
not give my glory to another in my name. But
here God is putting his name in his angel. Now
angel just means messenger. It could be a human, it
could be an angelic being or which you're created, or
it can be a divine houpostasis for us, a divine person.
So we would say that if we look at the
revelation of the Old Tustam as a whole, just from
these theophanies, and by the way, this continues into numbers
one two, even to Balam Joshua five Judges thirteen. Right,
Manoah says, I have seen God face to face. Moses
walks up on the mountain sees God face to face.
How is this possible if no man can see God
and live?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Because there is a way for God to see, for
man to see God and to live. And that's because
all of these actions, as well as all these covenants,
anticipate the incarnation of the logos, the incarnation of Christ himself.
If we look at Messianic prophecies, we will see a
similar pattern. Genesis three fifteen, the seed of the woman
will crush the head of the serpent. This ironic because
we know, of course that this is fulfilled in our
view in Mary and the Son of Mary, who crushed
the head of the serpent. Satan at the cross or
the death of Christ was predicted all through the Old Testament.
Many of the psalms predict the struggling and death of
the Messiah. That he wilfully went under. This wasn't taken
from him, as if God didn't wilfully allow this right,
He did all that wilfully. We say. We look at
Genesis twelve, fifteen, seventeen twenty two with the calling of Abraham.
What do we see there? We see a prophecy that
when the Messiah comes, the gentile nations will convert. They
will be brought into this one covenant that I mentioned
early on, the Covenant from Adam all the way up,
they will begin to convert and worship the God of Israel.
That's happened for two thousand years. That happened for hundreds
and hundreds of years before the advent of Islam. So
all of these messianic prophecies, which by the way, the
Quran will admit, as we will see, I have within
the first tense, so us countless examples of the Qur'an
affirming these Old Testament texts in the stories in these events,
sometimes passing over and sometimes in very large chunks, which,
as we will say, I think is one of the
chief problems for islam view, because we will have so
many things that we mentioned in the Torrah that are
nowhere in Islam. And to my knowledge, maybe doctor Shibir
can enlighten us on this. To my knowledge, they don't
know where or how those are explained. We will see
when he replies to course. But some more of these
prophecies will note the life of certain figures like Joseph.
The prediction of Genesis forty nine, ten and eleven of
the Messiah will come, Shiloh will come, the nations will
turn to the God of Israel when Messiah comes. When
Shiloh comes, due to one of the signs that says
will be the removal of the royal House of David, right,
no more house of David, no more priests to no
more nation of Israel will interesting that of course in
Luke twenty one and Matthew twenty before Jesus predicts this
very thing. He predicts that the destruction of the temple,
the destruction and removal would come upon the nation of
Israel as a covenantal curse mentioned at the end of
Leviticus and at the end of Duronomy the covenant curses
coming upon Israel due to their rejection of the Messiah.
So all of that is predicted not just in Jesus,
but actually going back to Genesis forty nine, ten and eleven,
we see in the psalms Psalm two twenty two seventy
two one to ten, admittedly Messianic psalms that of course
refer to when the Messiah comes as Luke says in
Luke one and two, he will be given the throne
of his father David. Right, we believe that that occurred
in the ascension. The throne of his father David was
not something on earth. It's in heaven. He is the
right hand of God, as the Song of Moses says.
The Song of Moses says that the Angel of the
Lord the right hand of God. Right, same idea, as,
same imagery, same person present. We would say, Ezekiel one
and Ezekiel ten. I think I have that on here somewhere.
But anyway, Ezekiel one, Ezekiel Yeah. Here it is Ezekiel one,
Ezekiel ten. We have the reference to the one like
a son of Man who rides the chariot, right the chariot,
the glory cloud is seen there, the shki Na is
seen there. In Ezekiel's vision, the same one like a
son of Man president in Daniel seven, distinct from the
ancient of days. Right, who is that? It's the eternal
son of God. Now, there's many other texts. I could
give you many other the often Zechariah one, two, three, many,
many many texts that showed the same idea. Even in
the Old Covenant of not just a strict monotheism, but
also father, son, and Spirit. We would say, so, this
is not a doctrine that developed wholesale out of Paul.
It's not something that early church fathers invented, something that
grew out of the tradition of the Old Testament. So
what really is that debate? Here? In our debate is
which religion, which system has the best explanation in my
view of the continuity between the Old and the New Testament,
in my view of Orthodox Christianity, not Romethicism. Here to
defend Protestant. Orthodox Christianity is in full continuity, precisely because
all of these things that are mentioned in the Law
and the Covenant of the Old Testament, the Book of
the Covenant of the Koran says was given to Moses,
these are all in Orthodox Christianity. We have a priesthood,
we have an altar, we have Pentecost, we have the
celebration of these things in their fulfillment, and they are
nowhere right now. They're said to be eternal. Remember, when
Moses goes up on the mountain, he sees the tupos,
he sees the types of the things in heaven. He
institutes this liturgical worship on earth. Hence the Tabernacle, which
becomes the Temple, is filled with all of this imagery.
It's filled with It has the altar as all of
these things, the sacrifices right which as we said, are
typological of the milkauz Adecian priestood, according to Hebrews, which
Jesus brought into reality. Hence why at the end of Hebrews,
Paul says, we have an altar from which those who
serve at the Jewish Tabernacle no longer have a right
to eat at, because we have the real altar what
was in heaven. Christ brought that reality of the liturgical
worship of Heaven that John sees in the Apocalypse chapter
four five down to earth, and now it's a reality.
That's the whole point. That was the whole point of
Christ coming was to institute the worship of Heaven on earth,
which again includes all these ideas that are lost, are
apparently forgotten or arbitrarily ad hoc abrogated. Will have to
wait and see, or maybe they're all corruptions. I'm interested
to see if all of these aspects of the Temple
worship are somehow abrogated or corruptions, given the fact that
they play such a central role to the unity of
the Torah. So in that regard, I would say that
there are many, many New Testament texts, how much more.
Speaker 4: Time to have I can't really see that warning.
Speaker 1: Okay, three minutes. Yes, So I would say, when we
come to the New Testament text we will find a
strong continuity, not just with Jesus. Right in Matthew when
he says, not one job or tita will pass away
until until having on earth right passed away, not one
job or tita will pass away from the law. This
is consistent in Jesus as well as in Paul. So
when we talk about the passing away of the temple
or this kind of stuff, again, we believe that all
of those things entered into Orthodox Christianity. Now again you
can say, well, now you don't have animal sacrifices. Yes,
but the purpose of the animal sacrifices themselves was to
point to the sacrifice of Christ. Right, So we do
possess again a priesthood and a sacrifice and an offering
and an altar, as Paul says at the end of Hebrews,
which the rest of the world the rest of the
religions do not have Judaism, no longer has this alter.
They no longer have a priesthood. We still have the priesthood. Now,
remember in the law we're said that these promises are eternal.
They can't go away, they don't vanish, they can't just
you know, if the Koran is based on the eternal Koran,
then the promises that are made right can't just be abrogated.
It's it would be ad hoc. It would be a
double standard. So watch for that. But the New Testament text,
we can look at Matthew one twenty three three three,
where the John the Baptist prepares the way for Yahweh
sighting Melican. We can look at Jesus being worshiped in
Matthew eight three fourteen thirty three, Matthew twelve eight he
is the Lord of the Saviov, Lord, the Lord of
the Sabbath. Excuse me. In nine two three four he
forgives sins. In Matthew ten thirty three, he is equating
himself with God. Hence why the Pharisees, of course consistently
get mad at him. And we will find that actually,
if you look at Mark, most of those texts in
various ways are also repeated in Mark's account. So lastly,
in in my last minute, I would sum up one
last minute, So I will sum up by saying that
my logical argument is also in a quarter with all
this theology as well, that when we as Orthodox understand
the logos not as something in person or generic, but
rather as the second person of the Godhead, this actually
gives us a basis for how we understand the rational
principles behind all things that are made. So even in
Islam you have the doctrine of Tanzi. And again if
I mis mistate any of this, he can correct me
Ta and Zih. In this idea, you have the notion,
based on I think Sah forty two. If I'm going
from memory here, that the idea that there's nothing created
like Allah. If there's nothing created like Allah, then how
can the words of the Quran explain or match up
to or have any kind of analogia or truth propositions
all of which are created, Propositions are on mind, sentences
are created. How do these words actually tell us anything
about something radically transcendent that itself presupposes the incarnational principle,
which is our religion time.
Speaker 2: All right, doctor Earlie, you have fifteen minutes for your
opening statement. It's that when you're ready.
Speaker 3: Sure. Thank you Jay for that delightful presentation. Ladies and
gentlemen joining us from around the world, Thank you for
joining us, and our delightful host from the Kellyo Club.
Thank you as well.
Speaker 1: Jay.
Speaker 3: I've listened carefully to your presentation, and when I come
back for the response period, I will try to engage
with your specific points. For the moment, I want to
make a positive presentation of my own case, which will
be to say that both the Old and the New
Testaments do not teach that Jesus is God. That will
be one aspect of my presentation. I also want to
talk about the history and the logic. As for the logic,
I will be arguing that it does not seem reasonable
to attribute to godhead to Jesus, especially as that would
entail something like the doctrine of the Trinity, which has
its own inherent logical problems. And as for history, I
will show that the idea that Jesus is God took
time to develop. It developed slowly. We can see traces
of that within the New Testament, and we can see
later development's post New Testament, where in the Creeds the
declaration eventually is made, after some deliberation over hundreds of years,
that Jesus is very God of very God in the
Council of Nicea three hundred and twenty five eighty, and
that approximately three hundred years after Jesus and Humvpace had
been lifted up into heaven. So to proceed, let me
say something then, about the the chronic attitud you towards Jesus,
on whom be peace. As a Muslim, I must of
necessity believe in Jesus, because the Quran mentioned him by
name twenty five times, never in a negative way, detailing
for us many of the miracles that Jesus performed. That
he healed the blind, he cured the leper, he raised
the dead back to life. The Qoran speaks well of
Mary and about the annunciation that was made to Mary
about the special birth of her child, and to her amazement,
she became pregnant with Jesus, and the Quran celebrates all
of that. The chapter of the Quran, the nineteenth chapter,
is called the Chapter of Mary, after the mother of Jesus.
So as a Muslim, it is necessary for me to
believe in Jesus, and I wouldn't be a Muslim if
I didn't believing in Believing in Jesus also entails for
a Muslim that we do not confuse him with God,
whom he himself worshiped. Jesus in the Quran is shown
to proclaimed in Nalaharrabumabu. God is my God, and your
gods worship him. So how does the Kuran account for
the fact that some of the people have taken Jesus
for God. The Quran attributes this to the teaching of
other people who came after Jesus, and the Quran declares
that this matter will be settled on the day of Judgment,
where everyone will be made a prize of the errors
of their ways. As for looking back at what Jesus
himself taught, the Quran seems very clear that Jesus and
humb Peace did not teach that he and his mother
were divine persons other than the Almighty God. Now, going
to the logic of this, I've already hinted that the
idea that Jesus is God entails some logical difficulties. First
of all, we all agree, and the Gospels bring this
out very clearly that Jesus was a human being. And
now a Christian doctrine generally affirms that Jesus was fully
man and fully God at the same time. And now
if we ask why couldn't he be part man and
part God, the answer would be, well, you couldn't be
part God because either your God or you're not. You
put halfway there is not really God. Nor does it
seem right to say that somebody is half man in
the christ theology, because in Christian theology, for God to
have bridged a gap between humans and God, it was
necessary for God to become man, and not just simply
a half man, but fully a man, completely man, so
that the Bible could declare that Jesus was like us
in every way apart from sin. So he must have
been human like us in every way apart from sin.
So to say now that Jesus was very God and
at the same time fully man, as Christian theology seems
to require, would involve the logical contradiction in that he
would have to be finite and infinite at the same time.
He would have to be the all knowing and yet
limited in human knowledge, and so on. He would have
to be perfect and imperfect at the same time. Now,
saying that Jesus is God leads us to another problem
which Christians have debated over the centuries. If if Yahweh
is God, the God of the Old Testament, and the
Old Testament continues to affirm and Christians agree, and Muslims
and Jews all agree that Yahweh is the only God,
for Jesus to be God, then since you cannot have
two gods, because both the Old and New Testaments affirmed
that there is only one God, then Jesus must somehow
be so uniquely related to Yahweh that you cannot have
two gods. And yet Jesus would be God and also
his Father would be God. So how can you have
this without having two gods? Or if we include the
Holy Spirit three well. Christian theologians have worked this out
in the Doctrine of the Trinity to say that the
Father is a person, the Holy Spirit is a person,
the Son is a person. Each one is a distinct
person that should not be confused for the other. And
yet the three persons make up one God. So there
is one divine being but three divine persons. This is
a way of getting around that difficulty. However, the difficulty
is not entirely surmounted, because when we look at it carefully,
we realize that each one, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit in Christian theology, in fact, if not
in proclamation by himself, must be a complete God. And
how can you avoid them saying that these are three
deities by just simply calling them persons. Moreover, when you
put the three together, the outcome must be more powerful
than any of the three individuals considered separately. And so
do we not have there a fourth entity that is
made up of the three, or is the combination in
some way of the three, And wouldn't that fourth entity
be a more powerful God than either of the three
considered individually. Moreover, if we say that the Son was
not known as God in the Old Testament, he came
to be known through his activities in the New Testament,
then we must have seen that in the Old Testament
there was a benitarianism where Christians are saying, there's the Father,
there's the Holy Spirit. Each one is God a God person,
but together they are just simply one God. Christians should
have been affirming within the lifetime of Jesus that there
is this sanitarianism, and then eventually they would add Jesus
to the picture to complete this into the triangle of trinitarianism.
But we don't see any evidence of this beneitarianism having
existed prior to Christian's eventually developing first benetarianism after Jesus,
and then eventually trinitarian beliefs. So these are some logical
difficulties the history I've already alluded to here, but let
me trace it out a little bit more. We can
see that within the New Testament there is a tendency
towards promoting Jesus as being more than a human being.
We see it already in Marx Gospel, but it's more
so when we compare Marx Gospel with what comes after Mark,
for example, Matthew and Look. We can see that in
Matthew and Look, Jesus appears to be bigger, greater, more powerful,
more knowledgeable than he appeared in Mark. And then when
we go to John's Gospel, by far widely agreed to
be the last of the four Gospels to be written,
we see that the image of Jesus has actually been expanded,
even more so that in John's Gospel we almost see
a different Jesus. Here where Jesus seems to have come
down from heaven and he's going back up there. He
was the loggess of God, the Word of God that
has now become flesh. He is the one through which
everything has been made, and nothing has been made except
through him. He is declared to be the Lamb of God,
who takes away the sin of the world. He utters
all of the I am statements. I am the bread
of life, I am the Resurrection and the life. I
am the door of the sheep. No one commits onto
the Father but by me I am. Before Abraham was
I am, and so on. Now all of these I
am statements are found only in the Gospel, according to John,
and it would seem odd that if Jesus had said
these things, which Christians would now take to be clear
proof that he was claiming to be God, it seems
odd that the other three Gospel writers would omit these
very important statements. Brother, the case seems to be, as
James Dunn, the Christian warner, has pointed out, what did
you say, fute warning five minutes? Okay, so it seems odd.
As James Done, the Christian scholar pointed out, that these
other gospel writers would fail to include these statements had
it been that Jesus uttered them. What is more likely
is that these statements came to be circulated after Jesus
had left the scene, and it is the fourth gospel
writer that picked these up towards the close of the
first decade of Christianity. And now continuing with that development,
we can see that there is the apostles Creed which
speaks about Jesus as the Son of God, and then
later on it is the Council of Nicea that eventually
promotes the Son of God to be very God of
very God. And is second a council of Nicea had
to be called to deal with the Holy Spirit, and
then it was declared that the Holy Spirit is to
be worshiped along with the Father as well. So we
see in history and development of this theology it cannot
be credited back to Jesus. It cannot be said that
Jesus actually claimed this. Now, coming to the last prong
of my three part argument of scripture, history and logic,
I come now to the scripture. Time does not permit
me to quote many scriptures, but let me give a
broad overview. In the Old Testament, which is basically the
Bible of the Jews. There is no indication that anyone
other than Yahueh is God. Sometimes there is some ambiguity.
There is the Angel of the Lord that is spoken
about ambiguously. Is this God? Is this not God? But
let me remind you Jay and everyone here that we
cannot build an important doctrine on vagueness. We have to,
especially if that said doctrine is going to be running
contrary to clear texts. Now in the Bible, it is
very clear in the Old Testament especially there is only
one God. That Shama Israeli is there in Deuteronomy chapter six,
verson number four, and that will be quoted by Jesus
in the New Testament in Mark chapter twelve, verse twenty
seven forward, when he's asked what is the greatest of commandments?
So here we see the unity of the two Testaments
on the idea that there is only one God. Moreover,
in the Old Testament that God is not a man.
In Numbers chapter twenty three, verse nineteen, Yahweh declares, I
am God and not Man. So man is shown to
be in contrast with the one God, that which is
called one like a son of Man in Daniel actually
is a representation of the Israelite nation as a whole.
It's a poetic representation, and that is explained within the
same chapter of Daniel from which this passage is taken.
So it is remarkable that people will go to that
one verse and pull it out of its context fail
to read what comes after it within the same chapter,
declaring that what was meant by the son of Man
is actually the children of Israel, poetically represented as though
it were a singular person, one like a son of Man.
Even in the same passage, it is clear that the
one like a son of Man, just simply a human being,
actually approaches the Ancient of days, and it is the
Ancient of Days who is indisputably the one God now
in the New Testament. In Mark's Gospel in particular, it
is clear that Jesus is not God. For example, in Mark,
when a man asked him, good Teacher, what must I
do to have eternal life? Jesus said, why do you
call me good? No one is good but God alone.
He's clearly differentiating himself from the Almighty God. Even in
John's Gospel, which has the most developed of theology and
of pristology, we have Jesus clearing that the one he
was praying to is the only God. So, for example,
in chapter seventeen, verson of Warning three, this is eternal life,
that you should they should know you as the only
true God, and Jesus your messenger as Christ. So it
seems that John is presenting Jesus as a begotten God,
one lesser than the almighty and true God. A god maybe,
but not the God, not the almighty God. So I
rest my case on the scripture, the history, and the reason.
These all declare that Jesus was not God in carnage.
Thank you cool.
Speaker 2: Thirty sings of Despair. Just a quick note for the interlocatives.
Can you birth say the timer in my top right?
Speaker 3: It seems to me reversed. Does it show at the
moment its reverse?
Speaker 2: Okay? I thought I fixed that up.
Speaker 3: I apologize.
Speaker 2: Is that better?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It looks good?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 3: Okay, so did I no?
Speaker 2: No, no yet? Thirty seconds?
Speaker 3: Iach cool?
Speaker 2: All right, now it's time for the fifteen minute rebuttals,
starting with Jay set when you're ready.
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 1: So, yeah, thank you for that. The first thing I
would say, Let me take it. I guess the way
he chronologically went. So I gave, of course many many texts.
I still have a lot of those. I would add
that if you look at these texts, and again, I
know that people will have to later look through these.
We can't go through every one of these, but I've
specifically chosen theophanies with the ophonic manifestations that do explicate
and reference the Angel of the Lord, not as something vague,
but specifically as God, particularly to Hagar, to Abraham. And
there are many more, by the way, that I have
not mentioned here. I couldn't even fit them on the whiteboard.
But in many of these cases they are specifically identified
as God, right in the situation of Samson's parents and
Judges thirteen, in the situation of Hagar. In the situations
and exit that I gave, my name is put into
the Angel. Again, if you know about the Jews and
the notion of the tetragrammaton, I am that I am
the name. There's no way that that could be put
into or given or stated to be part of or
a review given to another. But in fact, when I
say given to or generated, so to speak, that's our view.
Our view is that there is only one God, the Father.
The Father is the monarchia in our theology of the Godhead.
But just because a text says, for example, when Jesus
says there's none good by but God, that isn't that's
not an either or dialectic that well, then therefore no
one else is good, or rather that Jesus is not
in fact directing us to worship the Father. Because from
all eternity, we believe that there is a triadic reality
where the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have had
a perfect intercommunion from all, from all all eternity. So
Jesus has always directed us to the Father. The Holy
Spirit in the New Totil, I would say, directs us
to the Sun. So there is that triadic relationship. As
Lasky says, that's always been the case, and for Paul
and for all of the early Church. That's why the
Creed that he mentioned actually says that the one God
is identified with the person of the Father. For us,
there is one God, the Father Almighty. For our theology,
it always begins with the person of the Father. But
let's move on to some of these other arguments, and
he says that logic says that the Trinity is not reasonable.
The trinity is a logical inconsistency. I would rather reverse
that and turn it around and say that actually, the
triune God is the only rational basis for logic at all,
because if we look at the world, we'll notice that
objects in the world actually have a unitive and a
multiplicity aspect to them. Philosophy, it's called the discipline of
mariology m E R e O l O g Y.
Mariology just looks at parts and wholes. It looks at
distinctions and unities at the same time in objects. And
so that's a feature of things that are in the world.
I'm not saying that because they're true of objects in
the world, that therefore's true of God. I'm saying that
we admit this about the created reality, and as we
see not just objects but numbers themselves, right, something even
higher than perhaps created objects in a metaphysical sense. If
you want to look at intellectual the noetic sphere, as
we would call it, abstracted objects, they also have this
feature of unity and multiplicity at the same time. Think
that of the number three, the number three is both
three and it's one at the same time. It's a
singular instantiation, but it also represents a reality that's multiple
at the same time. Each number, the number one, also
possesses within itself an infinity. So he said that nothing
could be singular and infinite at the same time. It's
actually not true. There's many things in mathematics that actually
demonstrate this. In the created realm. Now, in our view,
it would be idolatrous to identify in a one to
one correspondence everything in the created realm to the divine. Absolutely,
that would be idolatry and e fact. As I mentioned
with the doctrine of Tanzi in so forty two, any
created thing in Islam cannot be identified in a one
to one correspondent in a unifical sense, to God because
that would be ideolatrous. But of course, again that brings
the problem that brings us the problem of the words
of the Koran itself. But before we get to that,
so logic in fact created human logic, which is very real,
something that I utilize and argue for all the time.
I don't think can be grounded in any other God
beyond a God that is both one and many in
an ultimate sense. Hence why many of our theologians have
always stressed there's an equal ultimacy in God of both
unity and triadic or multiplicity. Now that the multiplicity is
not just grounded in the fact that there's three persons,
but then the fact that there are really distinct actions
of God. The energies of God are infinite, many of
our many of our. The Ellogians say, so God has
many powers, many abilities that he doesn't even actualize. The
church fathers say, but I bring that up because in fact,
if there are not multiple powers in God that are real,
there are not distinctions in God that are real. We
will be led to eight problem of the neoplatonists that
I think is present in Islam as well, which is
that if there are no distinctions in God that are real,
or God's actions that are not distinct from his essence,
perhaps he will be of that school that does make
a sort of distinction. We'll see. If that's the case,
then God becomes an eternal creator, right, because the creation
is just as synonymous with the essence of God being creator,
is synonymous with the essence of God having the potentia
or the dunamis. The power to create must be actualized.
As many of these Islamic theologians of the Middle Ages,
just like the Romancality theologians adopted the notion of act
as pure ast pure act. This leads to a necessary creation,
and no longer is God a free creator, free will creator.
God's creation is a determined emanation of his essence, because
the will to create is identical to the essence of
God in all the theologies that have an absolute divine
simplicity argument or presubsisition or basis. So that's my logical response.
So that we are the only religion in the world
that has a real distinction between the essence and energies,
and that itself is predicated on three hypostases. Only our
view has the revealed doctrine of the triad. Again not
just something that came about in the New Testament, but
in fact goes back to many of these Old Testament
texts themselves. So let's move on past the logical issues.
Now there's a couple of points that he brought up
that sort of brushed over the Church Father. She has
developed this the Church Father later got this idea wasn't
really there. This presupposes his position, right. The position is
just the assumption that well, everything that I see in
the Koran, of course trumps anything that came before, because
the Koran is sort of the final word on the matter. However,
I don't think it's disputed that we can go read
the Septuagint right. The Subtus predates Christ and the Apostles,
and the sbitution has many many places that were problematic
for the first second century Jews because so many Christians
were using it right. So eventually the Jews forbade the
usage of this text, particularly because of things like the
Duteruo Kenna and how the worth and of course biders
should mention by the way the Orthodox Church holds the
situation and the Byzantine text, the received tax as are
normative taxtual.
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Speaker 1: Go to text so to speak, these are different than
many of the things that he's going to level against
sort of Protestant opponents or Catholic approach to a lot
of these texts. The Orthodox Church is in unique in
this as well. Later I can link an essay that's
pretty well known by Metropolitan Isaiah who has a long
discussion of how in the in the Orthodox Church is
a unique conception of the texts as liturgical. They're worship texts, right,
just like in the Old Testament, there's a sort of
status given to the Torah that's pre eminent, and then
you have the Law and the profit, the writings and
the prophets, David psalms. It's not that they're intention because
of the pre eminence that's given to the Torah, but
rather in the same way, we have a pre eminence
that's given to the Gospel, and then we have the
writings of Paul. And in the Orthodox Church of these
have always been part of the liturgy, right, so that
necessitates an intimate connection to tradition, and tradition is what
will help us and guide us in the interpretation of
these texts. But tradition is not something that the New
that that Paul or their early Church fathers just sort
of start coming up with and all you have to
do is go to the church fathers themselves. I've got
I mean, we can open up the post Apostolic fathers here.
The post Apostolic fathers all contain the writings which again
I don't think many people dispute that are prior to Nicia.
There are many of these, right, And if you don't,
even if we don't like the Schaft translation, there's another
translation by Cyril Richards of the early church fathers, all
the same text. And guess what, Whether it's the epistles
of Ignatius, whether it's the writings of Turtullian, whether it's
air Nasans against Heresies, whether it's Cyprians moral writings right,
whether it's Ambrose, whether it is any of these fathers right, Gregory, Thomaturgos,
any of these fathers prior to Nicea. They all teach
the deity of Christ. It's very easy to go and
find these texts, right. Polycart mentions this ignacious right melitosartis,
Clement of Alexandria in his letters, excuse me, Clement of
Rome in his letters, Clement of Alexandri and his writings
politists of Rome, even Origin, who himself is one of
the early fathers, to begin to doubt the deity of Christ,
still at times is inconsistent and says that Christ is
also divine. So there's a vast amount of testimony amongst
the Batristic period, all of which are easily accessible. You
could just go read the epistleo Ignations to the Ephesians,
and many times over he mentions the virgin birth, he
mentions the deity of Christ. They are countless writings of
the church fathers from the period of the post Apostolic
time to Nicia that defend all these things. So the
idea that this was invented at Nicea is just absurd,
or that it was somehow really imposed. What happened that
Nicea was in fact an explication of what was in
these people when they when they met at Nicia. They
looked at the Texas Scripture. They looked at the previous
writings of the fathers. They looked at the liturgical texts,
They looked at the electionaries that existed daily readings. They
looked at the oral tradition that had gone into each
of these apostolics or bishoprics at that time. Right, the
actual divine liturgies that existed at that time as well.
Justin Marter himself mentions a basic pattern of liturgy that
still followed today. Right. And Justine Marder, of course defends
the deity of Christ. So the idea that and by
the way, he does this on the basis of going
to the Theophanes against rival the jew by the way,
in the Old Testament. But so the idea that that
that this is vague, right, the Theophanies and Old Testament,
they're not vague. There's countless ones that mentioned this person
being divine. The idea that the Trinity is illogical as
not actually a problem for us. And by the way,
the problem that I mentioned of Tanzi, the problem that
I mentioned of eternal creation or is does God have
any unrealized potential? Right? The doctrine of simplicity that is
present in Islam, it's all heed. It doesn't escape the
same accusations and problems that it that it puts upon us,
because all we have to do is turn around and
point out the same debates and problems have existed for
sale entries in Islam itself, which again I can be corrected.
I'm not a scholar of Islam. I'm only eight months
into studying Islam house It's all new to me. But
unless I have this wrong on my understanding is that
there have been centuries of recessions of the text, debates
about the unity. Right. I'm not saying that the religion
is false because of the debates about unity. What I'm
saying is, if unity is supposed to be a rallying
cry for the return to the Abrahamic religion, then how
is it that there's six allowed schools or so that
disagree on the notion of the unity of God. That
doesn't sound like a rallying cry of unity to me.
It sounds like confusion. And in fact, again he says
that the outcome must be more powerful than the individuals
only if you presuppose that God is composed. We do
not believe that the divine reality, the divine triadic reality,
is composed. We have a different We have a different
presupposition about where we get our doctrine of simplicity. Now,
in many of these traditions, whether it's Islam and they're
later influenced by philosophers under the Kalom period, or whether
it's Roman Catholicism and their influence in the Middle Ages
under Tomism and these kinds of things also influenced by Aristotol,
we get very strict definitions of simplicity that negate any
possibility of real distinctions, many many, In most cases, I
think that Islam falls prey to that same problematic where
they have such a radical notion of transcendence that they
want to protect that the same problems about real reality
of distinctions apply to them. For our view, And by
the way, the I'm not saying that he believes this,
but I have in the first chapter of my study Quran.
I always call it a Koran study battle. It's not
a Koran study, bubb. In my study Kuran, we have
a mention of disputes which is interesting in the first
sort of about the divine ideas. Now again, I know
he may or may not adhere to that the school
that different tradition of debate within the different schools of Islam.
But the divine ideas are the rational principles in the
mind of God, right which ground the distinctions that are
real in the real world. If there are no real
distinctions in God, then the distinctions in the real world.
It would stand the reason are also not real because
they're not based on real distinctions. They're based on distinctions
that we nominally predicated of God, or think that they
may or may not be there, or they're just symbolic.
But it's just interesting to me that Islam has had
this debate. I'm saying evidence is the point that I'm
making that they do not escape the problem with the
difficulties of the question of the trinity when they put
that upon us, given the fact that they've had to
debate the same topic. So it's a problem that I
think we resolve better precisely because we do allow for
the reality of distinctions in God. The grounding for that
is the monarchia of the person of the Father. Right,
So Jesus can say throughout the Gospel John, for example,
my father, right, there's none good but God, and he
can say, there's that the Father alone has life in himself.
Then he can turn around say, but he is granted
to the son to have life in himself, right, And
we don't assume that because he says the Father alone
is good, that therefore Jesus isn't good. Right. If God
alone is good, then therefore Muhammad's not good. Now, that's ridiculous.
So that's a that's a strained exegesis, and nobody would
it here to and certainly we don't want to believe
by the way he said that Jesus did not teach
that he and his mother were divine. We don't teach
the Marys divine, so that was not a position that
we have. So it's all a bunch of I would say.
His position is a lot of either or dialectics, and
he talks about the clear texts of scripture as opposed
to the unclear. That's ad hoc.
Speaker 2: Time. Okay, Doc Darlie savir Reus wants well ready when
you are.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm ready?
Speaker 1: Is this next part? What's the next part?
Speaker 2: Well, this is still I de beliate. This is a
total lazer bottle.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, go ahead, Yeah, so whenever you're ready.
Speaker 3: So thank you Jay for that response to my presentation.
And I will now return to your opening statements and
try to incorporate both your opening statements and this recent
response in my now replying. So, hey, hey, you pointed
out that there are many texts in the Old Testament
that speak of the Angel of the Lord. Now I
want to bring you back to the idea that we
do have to give precedents to clear statements over vague ones.
I don't consider this to be at hoc at all.
There are some statements which stand out clear to you
they don't need any further elaboration. And then there are
statements which are vague. They commentators have to say, well,
it says that, but it means this. The moment you
start saying it means this, and then somebody he all says, well,
it could also mean this, or it could mean this
other thing. We're dealing with something that is vague that
human beings might interpret differently. But clear statements, like, for example,
the simple declaration that Jesus is saying that the one
he's praying to is the only true God. This is
a clear and simple declaration, the declaration in the Old
Testament that there is only one God. This is clear
to arrive at three. Now you know that various people
have arrived at different solutions to the idea that Jesus
is God. Some said they use the term that you
use monarchanism, or at least scholars use that to denote
the belief that the Father came down onto the earth
and this was Jesus. So we cannot use unclear texts
over and above the clear ones. I think this is
a good principle. Even in my debate with Nabil Kroati,
Nobil Croreashi actually admitted that he agreed and he restated
it himself that you cannot use vague texts over the
clear ones. Now, the text that say that there is
this figure angel of the Lord, this is vague to
begin with. It is not so clear that it should
be the Angel of the Lord, because it could be
an Angel of the Lord. The text can go both ways.
They step told him. The Greek version sometimes gives it
the definite article and sometimes it doesn't, so we're not
clear if God has one angel, several angels, and who
are these angels. The Angel of the Lord appears in
the New Testament as well, and sometimes it is clear
there that it is also to be translated as an
Angel of the Lord. And in Luke's Gospel in chapter one,
verse number eleven, there the Angel of the Lord appears
to Zachariah, and then in verse number nineteen he says,
I am the Angel of the Lord. I am Gabriel.
So I don't believe that Christians take Gabriel to be
the third person of the Holy Trinity. So if you
say that the Angel of the Lord automatically equates with
the third person of the Holy Trinity, we have here
an anomalous text that needs to be explained. And there
are several others as well. But even if you said
that there is Yahue in the Old Testament and he
has his angel, so now everybody knows that there are
two divine persons. There is Yahweh and there is Yahue's angel,
the Angel of the Lord. But as I said, nobody
was saying that. Nobody was declaring that, you know, there
are two persons in the one God, the Father and
the Angel of the Father. Nobody was saying that even
in the presence of Jesus. Nobody is saying that, even
on the words of Jesus, we find nothing comparable. The
closest we find to any declaration of this unity and
diversity within the Godhead is first John chapter five, verse
number seven, where it says that there are three that
bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the
Holy Spirit, and these three are one. But this is
notoriously proven to be a later insertion into the New
Testament many centuries after the New Testament was completed, and
eventually it found its way into the medieval texts and
then was translated into the King James version of the Bible.
And now I noticed that the Orthodox Study Bible also
retains the same tradition from the King James version by
following the Byzantine text or the Majority texts, which others
like James White, for example, whom I've debated with several times,
they declared this to be a later insertion into the Bible.
So we do not have any original statement from either
the Old Testament or the New that would indicate that
at one time people thought that there were two persons
in the one godhead. Moreover, if something like the trinity
is true, it should have been known from all eternity,
and it should be known among humans right from the
very first one. But throughout the Old Testament we have
no declaration that there is anything like a trinity. Always
there is an insistence on one God. Yahueh speaks for
example in Isaiah chapter forty two, forty three, forty four,
forty five, forty six, and these chapters are riddle with
statements from Yahweh saying I am Yahweh. There is no
God but me. Besides me, there will be no other.
Now in the New Testament, it is clear that Jesus
is identified as the servant of Yahweh. Matthew chapter twelve,
verse eighteen, for example, says that when Yahweh said, I'm
sending my servant, this is the servant. This is Jesus.
So Jesus is therefore the servant of Yahweh. For him
to be the one God, he had to be Yahweh.
And while there are some New Testament texts that seemed
to indicate that the Yahweh texts are applied to Jesus, nonetheless,
when it comes to declaring who exactly is God, the
New Testament writers are usually saying that Yahweh is God
and it's not Jesus. For example, even though we find
that in Paul's writings and Jesus is shown to be
of a high statuary is the one Lord through which
all things were made, and still Paul is declaring that
there is only one God, the Father, and obviously that
is not a reference to Jesus. So always the one
God is someone else and not Jesus. So to say
that Jesus is God using these varied and ambigumous texts.
To me, it ignores the plain texts which indicate that
he is not God. Now, what about the New Testament
saying that Jesus is the one who was spoken about
when it says, Uh, prepare the way of the Lord.
So this is obviously the Lord. Well, that has to
be interpreted within Mark's Gospel and within the general scheme
in which the New Testament writers are referring to the
Old Testament. What can be seen, as many recent interpreters
have pointed out, is that the New Testament writers are not,
as we might have expected, faithfully copying what was mentioned
in the Old Testament. No, rather, they take the text
out of their contexts and they give the texts new meanings.
The simple way of defending this use in among the
New Testament writers is to say that they don't mean
that the texts mean what they're saying. It means they
only mean to say, look, these texts remind us of
what is happening here, or what is happening here reminds
us of those texts. It doesn't mean that those texts
mean the same thing that is happening here. They were
using what is referred to as Jewish pressure and mid
rush methods, which allow for this kind of linking. It's
almost like the link between a crossword clue and the answer.
It's not a dictionary type of meaning. It's not that
we're looking at the Old Testament and say, okay, what
does that mean historically drammatically, But it's not that we
have to go check the dictionaries to see what they mean. No,
the New Testament writers take these out of their context.
They ignore the grammar, they ignored the history, and then
they put it in a context in which Jesus is
being discussed. They only mean to defend them. We can
say that the only mean that what's happening in the
life of Jesus reminds us of those texts. It's not
that those texts actually mean Jesus. So with that in mind,
we cannot take these as instances of proof that the
New Testament writers are actually claiming that Jesus is Yahweh. No,
on the contrary, they're showing that he's not Yahweh. He
is praying to Yahweh, he is bowing down, getting on
his face with his face to the ground, and he
is worshiping Yahweh, So he himself is not Yahweh. What
about Jesus forgiving sins? Well, it is clear from Matthew's
gospel that the people, when they evaluated the whole episode,
they praised God who has given such authority to men,
which means that Jesus is not the only man who
has been given such authority. The opponents came to their
own understanding that Jesus is a man, and he, as
a man among other men, can be given such authority
to declare the forgiveness of people's sins. So, in the
final analysis, this does not prove that Jesus is God.
What about the logical proof that the lawgos being the
second person of the Holy Spirit. This frees God from
the problem of Tanzi or the purity of God. Well
for Muslims generally, for myself, I have not dealt deeply
into this philosophy, and I have to say, Jay, that
you have an edge in this dialogue in that you
have studied this philosophy, and I'll be glad to listen
to you more about this and to learn from you
about this. But at a simple level, I would say
that this is not a problem for my conception of God.
God is holy, God is pure, God is transcendent, and
his transcendence is not compromised by the fact that he
reveals the Qoran and that he creates the world. As
for the Quran, I will take the Quran to be
a representation of the thoughts of God put into human language,
so as a communication to us. When we communicate, we
have an idea in our minds, we put that idea
into text. That's one medium of communication, and we're hoping
that that idea will get into the mind of the readers.
But that doesn't mean that when I put my ideas
into text that somehow that text becomes me. No, it
is an expression of my thoughts. So the Quran is
an expression of the divine and the divine communication, but
not the Quran is not divinity itself, and so Muslims
do not have this difficulty. But I think you need
to notice, Jay that even before you talk about the Trinity,
you still have similar problems. If you say that, for example,
Jesus is God and he is infinite, well, then when
his words come out of his mouth, his words must
somehow be explained logically using the same principles by which
you try to prevent God from from from having this
kind of discourse, like you want a secondary person who
will deal directly with the world. Well, the Greeks had
said this before, and this really the concept of lagos
came up, where they said that God does not deal
directly with the world but through an agency, and that
agency must be his lagos or his sofia, his wisdom.
And then eventually John's Gospel picked this up and said, Okay,
Jesus is that lagos, Jesus is that sophia, and Jesus
is the wisdom. John doesn't use the term sophia, but
all does. So this does not free us of all
of the problems, because the Holy Spirit must be something
like that as well. If the Father has this log,
the Holy Spirit must have a lagus as well. The
lagus himself must have some kind of lagos to express
his own thought. And so we go on and on
ad infinitum. If you say that the number one includes
a sort of infinity within it, well, then Jesus himself
must include an infinity within himself. And if the Father
can have a son, why couldn't the son have a son?
In fact, why couldn't the Holy Spirit have a son,
And why isn't Jesus the son of both the Father
and the Holy Spirit? And so on. We can go
on and on about this. And if we discover these three,
why stop at three? Why couldn't there be a fourth
person within the Godhead? And again, ad infinitum. So I
don't think that this attempt to defend the trinity actually
closes the door, but it opens up the door to
more and difficult problems. So the number three, yes, you're
saying this is one number, but it's the number three,
so it implies a sort of three. But still nobody
would say that the one and the two and the
three together are just simply a one number. No, there
are three individual numbers. The number three is an individual number,
so is the number two, and so is number one.
So if you say the Father is God, the Son
is God, the Holy Spirit is God, each one of
them is a divine person, then it looks to me
like you have three gods, and now you have to
explain how could these actually be one God? And citing
the example of the number three does not really do it.
Didn't the church fathers progress with this idea, certainly they did,
for Justin Martyr for example, it was not so clear
who Jesus was justin Martyr and his writings as translated
by Richardson show that he thought that Jesus was an
angel who is worshiped along with other angels. So it
was not so entirely clear yourself, Jay, have cited Oregon,
who vaccillated on how exactly Jesus could be defined or
received really defined, finally saying that when Jesus said that
who is good but God alone, Jesus must be denying
that he's good, And then.
Speaker 1: What about Mohammad?
Speaker 3: He couldn't be good either, And no, that's not the point, Jay.
It's not that Jesus is denying being good, but he's
denying being God. He's seeing the essence of the whole
situation and proclaiming to this man, you're approaching me as
if I'm God, No i am not. And so it's
very clear from the Old from the New Testament, from history,
and from logic that Jesus was not and is not
God incarnage. Thank you all very much.
Speaker 2: Cool. So the next section of the discussion, we don't
enter into cross examination, so I believe Jay will be
examining doctor Ali first. So just a quick couple of
notesfore we get into it, right. Obviously Jay is able
to interrupt here and ask questions, but I will ask
that we make sure that we keep respectful, that we
allow interlockers to try and get some points out, but
to also not to fill a buster. Is that pretty
well understood?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Cool? All right, this is a ten minute section, so
I just have to adjust the timer.
Speaker 3: Give me a second, apologies.
Speaker 4: All right, okay, so when you're ready, Jael, You're ready,
When you're ready?
Speaker 1: Okay. You stated when you were talking about the Doctor
of Time's that God is not like creatures, that God's
transcendence is not compromised because the Quran is a representation
of God's thoughts, which is interesting because I had mentioned
the divine ideas. But isn't that kind of the whole
issue here? I mean, if the Qoran is a created text,
it's a representation that's an icon or an image of
divine thoughts. How is that reconcilable with God being not
like anything created?
Speaker 3: Well, Jay, I've used the analogy with my own thoughts
being represented in writing. What I put into writing is
not me, that's just an expression of my thoughts. So
if something is analogous like this with God, where God
it gives us his thoughts in writing. But that writing
itself is not God. It's only a representation of his thoughts.
I don't understand the philosophy.
Speaker 1: So an analogy and gia is based on some degree
of similarity. It may not be unifical or absolutely equated,
but it's related to the idea of some notion of similarity.
But Sir Rah forty two says that God is in
no way like creatures. That God is in no way
like creatures.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, that's exactly a point at which I would
pick up and say that the real point of that
it says that God is nothing like his creatures, is
to not equate anything on earth or that flies in
the sky, or anything that we know to be creatures
with God. God is unique, He's transcendent, and he can
communicate with us in the form of the Quran or mentally,
But that communication itself is not God. It's just a
representation of the thoughts of God.
Speaker 1: Image. So isn't an icon or image a symbol?
Speaker 3: Well no, But when you say icon, then I think
of images and physical representations, which.
Speaker 1: The words of the Koran and the Qoran is not
physical representation of these thoughts of allat.
Speaker 3: If you want to press it that way, then Muslims
would would say that the same you can say about
the Torah. The Torah then too would be a representation
of the thoughts of God and the words of Gee.
Speaker 1: But I'm arguing with your theology, not not judism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in my I have not, Jay, I have not,
and I've confessed this already. I have not studied the
philosophy behind this deeply. I know that Muslim scholars have
debated these issues, but to me, it is a dead issue.
It is a debate that belongs to the Middle Ages
and the thought patterns of the Muslim philosophers at that time.
I don't see any difficulty saying that the Quran is
a representation of the thoughts of God, or that, more
simply put, that it is a difine communication, similar to
what was given to previous prophets when they be meanbody,
we have revealed to you the prophet Muhammad, as we
have revealed to profits before you.
Speaker 1: Noah and others are the thoughts distinct? I'm sorry I
didn't hear you are the thoughts in the mind of
a law distinct or not.
Speaker 3: Really, I don't know if I need to make that
kind of distinction again, Are there any distinctions make that distinction?
Speaker 1: Are there any real distinctions.
Speaker 3: Between the names and between the divine essence? But I
don't feel the need to make that distinction, And I
don't think that trying to approbe that distinction is going
to help us to understand why Christians are proclaiming that there.
Speaker 1: Is right because the reason I'm going in a direction
is that because the reason that you don't believe in
the data of Christ and the Trinity, ultimately, I would argue,
is because of our philosophical assumptions about who God is,
what unity is, and to what degree there are distinctions
at that higher level or not. So I don't I
think it's absolutely a fair question to ask you whether
the attributes or the thoughts or whatever are real distinctions
or not. I mean, you can ask me all those questions,
and you're saying I can't ask you those things.
Speaker 3: Well, well, you can ask, but I don't necessarily have
to answer. And my refusal to answer, I'm sure to
defend the unity of God. Let me finish that thought,
So my refusal to answer would not be a capitulation
to accepting the Trinity. Let me point out that our
Jewish friends would would have presumably the same problem that
you are thinking that muslim should have, and yet our
Jewish friends have not seen the necessity to adopt the
Trinity doctrine into their religion. Monotheists. It shows that Jews,
who have been abiding by the Old Testament and who
would presumably have a similar or you believe the text,
were corrupted by the Jews.
Speaker 1: But that's a different point, Jay. You know it's not
because so it's arbitrary. It's at hoc you pick when
you want to take the Jewish stuff and then when
you want to reject it. Now the Jewish.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying here, Jay, is that if we say
that the Quran, flowing from the mind of God, must
somehow be an icon for God, and therefore we would
have in a way something like two divine persons here,
that then we would have to say the same thing
even for this theoretical Torah. That is, I didn't so,
but but Jews would never go that route, and Muslims
don't have to. And Jay, Christians did not go that
route until at first they started to accept Jesus as
a divine person, which in its day was a very
common thing for people to do to accept the human
being as God. And then they tried to try to
come up with a philosophical justification for having done this,
and as part of that justification they eventually arrived at
the doctrine of it.
Speaker 1: So the Jews corrupted the text when you need to
look at the text being corrupted by the Jews. But
then when you want to refer to the Old Testament
as authentic and a genuine revelation of monotheism, that you want,
that's fine, And then you ask me all these questions
about the trinity. But if I ask the same questions
about the Islamic doctrine of essence and attributes, you say,
I don't have to answer those questions. Well, to me,
I think that, I mean, you don't have to, You're right,
But I mean, how are you avoiding the question? By
the way, I didn't say that because there are real
distinctions that that proves that that that that if if
the Quran in the in the the eternal sense, the
eternal Kuran is somehow distinct from God, that that means
that I'm arguing that that proves the second person. I
believe that the personhood and the distinctions in God are
on the basis of revelation. They're not on the basis
of speculations. It's what's revealed. And so we take all
of these texts as a whole, right, and we look
at them, and we see what the whole body of
these texts revealed. And by the way, the next point
I wanted to make was that you're assuming that God
can't reveal more and more of himself over time. I mean,
your own theology argues that God reveals more and more
of himself over time, with the Quran being the final
capstone that corrects, you know, the previous mistakes and errors
of the of the religion. So there's no reason why
in our in our system, I can't say the same thing. Well,
God has chosen to gradually unveil more and more and
more of himself. Even the Jews. You want to refer
to the Jews, all right, Well, even in Jewish religion,
they had the notion that Yahweh gradually unveils more and
more of himself. Right, Isaiah knew way more than Abraham knew.
That doesn't mean that there's a contradiction, or because because
Isaiah doesn't say every excuse me, because Abraham doesn't say
everything that Isaiah says all. Therefore Abraham is Isaiah can
be canceled out because Abraham is who we start, who
we stick with.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So there's just there's all these ad hoc assumptions that
you have that are not consistent with the presentation of
the Karna self, which I argued that I put out
in my first statement. The question there is where is
the levitical ceremonies, Where is all the stuff in Exodus
relating to the priesthood, to the altar? Where is all
of that in Islam? How is their continuity? If you
want to argue that you have the continuity.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Jay, now you have shifted the subject to continuity.
The question is not whether it's long. I can ask
you whatever I want in this but let's let me
answer you a question I can shift in this question,
Islam is continuous, and if we ask about discontinuity, Christianity
is discontinuous, for example, even talk about the second.
Speaker 1: That wasn't my question. My question was where in Islam
is the continuity?
Speaker 3: Not where You're asking a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: But this is my interrogation of you. Where in Islam
is the continuity?
Speaker 3: But interrogation doesn't mean that that you answer your own
questions questions.
Speaker 1: I'll be glad. I mean I already answered you the
continuity of where the temple and all that liturgy and
all that is in our religion. I'm asking you where
is it in your theology? You can't then turn that
around instead of shifting the blame.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not asking you anything. I'm telling you there
is continuity, and that am I saying that God cannot
reveal more and more of himself? No, quite the contrary.
I'm asking you that since well, I'm not asking you now.
But but my point in my presentation was to say
that if God is a trinity, that should have been
known from the very start, this is not one of
the things that God would hide about.
Speaker 1: That's avoiding where I didn't.
Speaker 3: You're not let me answer, my friend, Okay, you're avoiding
the questions equal engagement.
Speaker 1: Going back to the question. Because I asked you now,
I can move on now, I'm.
Speaker 3: Trying to clarify what you what you just spoke about,
all right, So you're attributing to me that I'm saying
that God cannot reveal more and more of himself. And
what I'm clarifying that what I'm saying is that yes,
God can reveal more or of time, but not something
so essential as the number of persons contained within his being.
And if you do say that, as you say that
he revealed the third person of himself. My question that
was put to you before, and that will come back again,
is how do you know there is not a fourth,
or a fifth or an infinite number of them?
Speaker 2: Alrighty now the cross examination, it is reserved ten minutes
back in the time of Ali is able to ask
questions interrupt Gema's answer when you're ready early, Yeah, Before
I do that, I want to ask you.
Speaker 3: I mean about the protocol here. I know you said
that we can interrupt and so on, But are we
supposed to give the other person, if fair, a chance
to answer or or not? Because I would presume that
that is the case, we should give the other person
if you say yes.
Speaker 2: This is the case. But there was some contention on
the question being now, I can tighten this down if
you need to, but it seemed like a pretty fair
response to ask for for a for a uh an
actual response to the question. Jay is free to interrupt.
It didn't seem like it was too uncivil. I can't
tighten down. And if both of you agree to this,
but it's up to.
Speaker 1: I can move I can move on in my questioning
if I want to, because it's my interrogation.
Speaker 2: This is true, that's the that's the point of reversing
the interrogations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but but you know, if if, if the interrogation
is going to be like this, I mean, I have
the chance now to play by the same rules, but exactly,
but but I don't want to play by those rules.
I want to ask a question, give the other person
a fair chance to answer. If there's something to clarify,
I clarify by means of another question. If the other
person is taking too long, then yes, that would be
a good point to interrupt. But but if interruption is
just simply such that the other person does not have
to hands to answer, which is what I felt was
the case when I was trying to answer Jay recently,
then to.
Speaker 1: Me, there's a very specific question, and you want.
Speaker 3: To I want to do it that way. If that's
how it has to be done, then you know we
can end our discussion early because it's not turning out
to be a discussion. It's going to be a quarrel.
And the last thing I want to do is quarrel
with Christen's I feel that we have many things in
common and we need to understand each other. I know
j has studied philosophy, and I can learn something by
listening to his statements about philosophy. That is his area,
his specialty. So I want to learn from Jay, but
I also want the opportunity to express my ideas and
to give him a fair share to express of time
to express his ideas as well. So let's agree on
how we're going to proceed, because we have more sessions planned.
Speaker 2: Because we still have the Revst cross examination, that one
more round after this, we can come to an agreement.
What I could do is is ensure that there is
some level of response. But I think that given that
there's only.
Speaker 1: Ten minutes given, ant has to step in here if
there's a disagreement between us.
Speaker 2: So yep, that's what I'm calling now. So since we're
given about ten minutes, I think that any response that
is probably over thirty seconds to a minute that isn't
answering the question. It's where I'll start to step in
from here on out. The time is short, which is
why I allowed the interruption. But if if this is
how you feel and we can we can work from here.
So that's what we'll do. Is that is this agreeable terms?
Speaker 1: Yep?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: Cool? Well, when you went to start your examination, that's
one will do it.
Speaker 3: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: What's that the time when you are.
Speaker 3: Jay In the New Testament, clearly Jesus has a God.
So in John's Gospel he says, I'm ascending to my
Father and your Father, my God and your God. So
who is the God of Jesus, the person or the Father?
So does the Father have a God? So in what
sense then is Jesus and the Father equal if one
has a God and the other one doesn't.
Speaker 1: By sharing the same nature that the Father communicates to
the son.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now, Christians, I understand pray to the Father. Do
they also pray to the Son?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Do they also pray to the Holy Spirit? How many
holy spirits are there?
Speaker 1: One?
Speaker 3: Why does the Book of Revelations speak of seven spirits?
Speaker 1: Because they are energies of God. They are energies of God.
Speaker 3: Energies did you say, okay, I wasn't sure I heard.
You're right? Okay, So how many of these energies does
God have?
Speaker 1: They're infinite?
Speaker 3: Infinite, So there's an infinite number of spirits, no God.
Speaker 1: The spirit is a phrase. It's used to describe different
attributes or powers or actions of God.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So, but these various spirits are not
separate persons in the Godhead.
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 3: Okay, so there were only three persons in the Godhead.
Speaker 1: Correct?
Speaker 3: So when you ask me about the Quran, and you
asked me about the various aspects of God and whether
there is a unity or a simplicity or or how
God is at that level, how do you reconcile these
various spirits with the idea that there is only one God?
Speaker 1: Because, as I said, there are energies. So they are attributes.
Just like in Isaiah eleven, we have the different attributes
or powers that the Messiah possesses when he speaks of
the Spirit of knowledge, the spirit of wisdom, et cetera.
We just see those as different actions or attributes of God.
Speaker 3: Okay. Now we all understand that Christan are not claiming
that Jesus became God when he was born of Mary.
He was God from all eternity. If indeed he was
God from all eternity. Was he a spirit being?
Speaker 1: Not sure what you mean by spirit being, but he
was the second person of the Godhead. He was a
divine person from all eternity.
Speaker 3: Yes, so he wasn't flesh. Was he spirit?
Speaker 1: If by spirit you mean divine nature possessing the same
nature as the Father? Yes, okay.
Speaker 3: So if the Father and the Son are distinct, and
each one is a spirit, then we must have had
two spirits.
Speaker 1: No spirit there is representing for us nature or Ussia
or essence.
Speaker 3: So then there were two natures.
Speaker 1: No, because we'd make a distinction between nature and person.
Speaker 3: So there's distinction between nature and person, but no distinction
between nature and sp.
Speaker 1: Again, if in that analogy or that explication that you gave,
we would understand spirit to represent the Usia or the
essence there okay.
Speaker 3: So there were there were not two spirits, but there
was or were there two spirits?
Speaker 1: Again, this is equivocation on the sense of the word.
This is the word consp fallacy.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So like so when Jesus talks to the Woman of
the well, he says God is spirit, right, he's talking
about the Father. He's not saying the Father is the
Holy Spirit. He's saying that God in his essence or
nature is spirit in the sense of being a divine
nature that's beyond created reality.
Speaker 3: How do you know at that point that he was
referring to God the Father and he wasn't referring to
God the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: Well, it's possible that he could have been. And I
think most of the time, most accidents will make the
point that you made that most of the time Jesus
is saying and directing the worship to the person of
the Father.
Speaker 3: Okay, and by the same extension, perhaps the answer is
already given, but I'd like to hear it from you.
How do you know he didn't mean the Trinity is
a spirit.
Speaker 1: Well, again, if by spirit you mean representation of the
divine nature, then he does.
Speaker 3: So. When he was speaking to the woman at the well,
you're saying that when he said God is spirit and
you should worship God in spirit and truth, then he
was studied telling the woman you should worship the Trinity
because the Trinity is a spirit.
Speaker 1: It's implied there. But I don't think that just because
every time that the word trinity, or is not mentioned
that it's not. I mean, for example, in our view,
if Jesus says I came at the behest of the Father,
just because the Father and the Son are mentioned, it
doesn't we don't necessarily assume that, Oh well, then there's
the spirit's not there. In other words, sometimes words can
encompass a totality, or sometimes they can pick out a
particular just depends on the context. But even within that verse,
there's a distinction between in our review, two notions of spirit.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit.
So we don't worship in the essence of God, and
that's not possible. But God himself, in his nature is spiritual.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so now we're we're at the point where
the Father is obviously a spirit. According to what you've explained,
the Holy Spirit by definition must be a spirit, and
the Son is also a spirit. But you're saying in
one sense, and yet the three share the same nature.
But why call them three spirits if you don't mean
that there are three spirits? You said that different connotations
of words. I get that, but why is it that
they're always designated as a spirit like this? That the
Holy Spirit is always a spirit. It's never like, you know,
the nature of God is here with us today or
the nature of God is now within the Christians. It's
always like, I see what you're.
Speaker 1: Saying, right. So, in our theology, what happens is that
eventually the expert location of the person of the Spirit
right when we call him the Holy Spirit. That's not
identical to saying that God is spirit. Again, it's two
different uses of the term. That's why when this is
debated by Basil and the Cappadocians, they explicate that the
two different ways that we distinguish son and spirit are
not on the basis of the term spirit, but rather
on their origin. So the Son is an eternally generated
hypostasis of the Father. The Spirit is an eternally preceding
hypostasis from the Father alone. That's orthodox theology.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah. So now with this in mind, so
you should worship God in spirit. I understand from some
Christians that they say, we worship the Father, but we
worship the Father in the Holy Spirit. But that doesn't
seem to be your expression. Because I asked you do
you worship the Holy Spirit? And you say, I think
you said.
Speaker 1: Yes, correct. Okay, Now what I said was that we
don't worship in the essence of God. That's not possible.
That's why we believe in the essence energy distinction, which
in our view means that there are real distinctions in God,
not just between Father, Son, and Spirit, but also between
the diverse actions the manifold add extra operations or activities
of God. So in our review, the question that you'd
asked before is are there real distinctions? How do you
not have the same problems that you're putting on you.
We believe that we avoid those problems precisely because we
think there is a distinction between God's essence and his
operations or energies, and that that distinction is predicated on
a more fundamental distinction between the Father and the Son
and the Spirit. They don't do different actions. It's all
one action and energy by the triad, but it's manifested
in different means and modes and ways.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm okay, So no undied on the Cross when
the Gospels, when the Sun died on the cross, was
that the second person of the Holy Trinity dying or
only the human aspect of this person?
Speaker 1: Correct? So the second person that God had assumed human
nature and willed to undergo death in the human nature.
So the severing of the human soul from the human body,
in our view, is the thing that Christ willed to undergo,
so he did undergo it. In his singular divine hypostasis
is he's a divine person, but what he underwent was
the severing of his human soul from his human body.
And hence the pauline and patristic teaching of Christ descending
in his human soul. He's still the divine person, is
still the person to the human soul into the realm
of Hades to preach to the Old Testament saints.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, So I'm gonna be sure I understand you.
J Did the human Christ have within him two souls,
one human and one divine.
Speaker 1: We don't believe that God in his divinity has a soul.
Soul is a property only of human created nature. God
has a divine essence, and he possessed the divine essence.
But he underwent no change in terms of his divine essence.
He only underwent that death and change in terms of
alteration of nature in the humanity that he assumed.
Speaker 3: Are you I know you've studied the philosophy, so you
can educate me on this. Are you taking the view
of dualism that human beings have a soul that comes
into them, or or do you have the idea that
the soul is somehow the human mind that is connected
to the human brain.
Speaker 1: Our view is that body, mind, soul, and will are
all faculties of human nature, and they're all instantiated in
the particular human hypostaces or persons. So I'm the particular person, Jay,
You're the particular person, shah Beer. What we share is
a common human nature, but we particularize or instantiate that
nature in a unique way. We think that that, according
to the Eastern Fathers, is an analogy for the Trinity,
but obviously not a one to one correspondence, because the
mode of being that creatures have as distinct, separate, discrete
beings is obviously not the mode of being that the
Trinity has, because the Trinity is a unity, so they
always endwell one another. They were never apart. There's no
spatial relations in God or anything like that. There's no
composition that humans are composed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know how much more time we have
for that is time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, it's slang. Jennifinish's pointless. I get the same,
bea that. So this is the second round a cross examination.
Just to reminder one try to keep points succynct and
to try to give your opponent a random least thirty
seconds to at least maect their point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So I want to again ask the question about the
Old Testament. I would like to know from the Islamic perspective,
from the chronic perspective, what is the explanation of where
the temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices, the laws, the levitical priesthood,
all of those things, where are they? What happened to them?
And how is their continuity? With all of that being
given and said to be a unity of in terms
of our what I would understand or what did usually
understand of the Torah to be, how is the does
Islam explain that where's the continuity?
Speaker 3: The Quronic position is that there are some things which
were revealed previously which do not apply to our era.
And moreover, some things which were revealed previously came to
be corrupted in the line of transmission over time, and
so those particular commands which are found in the texts
as they are now are not applicable to Muslims.
Speaker 1: So are they corruptions in terms of these gigantic portions
of Exodus Leviticus numbers or are they no longer applicable?
That could be either what is the epistemic criteria for
you to know when is which and which are true?
Speaker 3: As a Muslim, thet epostemic criteria would be my faith
system is starting with the Quran. As an individual, I
would be studying the history and the transmission of these
documents and studying the documents themselves. For example, you must
be aware that Jeremiah chapter eight, first number eight says,
how can you say we are wise and we have
the law of the Lord, whereas the lye in pens
of describes have falsified it? So this is evidence of
widespread corruption in the text of the Torah.
Speaker 1: No, it's only evidence if you assume your position, because
that doesn't mean that Jeremiah himself wasn't going to and
looking at the Torah. Right, So, Jesus makes the same
accusation against the Pharisees in Matthew twenty three. Right when
Jesus says that, echoing what's in Jeremiah in chapter eight,
that the scribes and Pharisees have all these humanly devised
traditions that they have added on to the Word of God.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But again, the problem that I'm getting at here is
that let me now, let me give you a rundown
here at which I I know you're aware of. But
in the Koran we have the admission that God chose Adam,
that the creation account roughly speaking of Genesis is correct.
It admits the events of Exodus. It admits the parting
of the Red Sea the Golden Calf. It admits that
the scriptures of the Book of the Law were given
to Moses. Maybe the Surahs seemed to speak of these
texts as given to Moses as authentic. It admits the
rebellion of kra It admits the rock being smitten and
the water coming out. It admits that the Covenant was
given to Moses, the commandments were given to Moses. It
emits seemingly Sabbath of Laws. This is all within Surra two.
It admits the prophets were sent to Moses and the Israelites,
or excuse me, to the Israelites. It admits the story
of the testing of Abraham, the lineage of Abraham Isaac Jacob.
It admits the some of the dietary laws. Perhaps it
admits the ee for an eye lex talionis law Leviticus,
many Old Testament miracles. It affirms the story of David
Saw and those the conquests of David. Admits the psalms
of David. It admits the revealed truth of the Torah,
and sort of three. So all of these things are admitted,
and sometimes in some details and sometimes in sort of
passing this sort.
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Speaker 1: The whole stories. But what's ironic here is that again
there is just this arbitrary approach from my perspective to
knowing when and where you do with what now are
you going to say that gigantic portions of Exodus, Leviticus,
and Numbers are all corrupt. But at the same time,
these stories as they're relayed in the Quran confirm many
of those counts.
Speaker 3: So what I would say, Jay, is that the Quran
tells us that people have corrupted the scriptures before us.
So for example, in the second chapter of the Quran,
the seventy ninth verse. So if something is shown to
us from the older New Testament that is in conformity
with the faith system that is built on the Quran,
we have no difficulty in accepting that. But if something
is at odds with that faith system, we take that
faith system to be correct and true, and that which
is at oddus with it naturally goes out. But that's
from the point of view of looking at it from
within the faith system. But if we look at it
from outside and we take a neutral view, we will
see that in the Quran is actually correcting and and
and modifying the stories from the Old and New Testaments
in order to bring out new themes, new teachings, and
to remove all problems. Like for example, in Genesis, as
you mentioned there is they mentioned that the spirit of
God was blowing over the water of the deep, but
in the Quranic narrative, it was the throne of God
that was on the water, and the Quran thus is
avoiding the problems of discussing the spirit of God, because
spirit uh panuma could be breast, it could be life,
it could be something other than spirit, And so to
the Hebrew word of roach, which is mentioned there in
Genesis chapter one, that could mean a wind, and some
English translations of the Bible have it that the wind
was blowing over the water of the deep. So the
Quran has a different perspective. Whereas in the Book of
Genesis we have that Adam sinned after Eve gave him
the fruit, and after she herself was beguiled by the devil,
the Quran puts it that the two of them together
were deceived by the devil, and the Quran never blames Eve.
So the Quran is putting a new light on on
the ancient stories.
Speaker 1: Okay, But again, gigantic portions such as the levitical law,
such as the temple, the jubileese, the ceremonies are all
are all those corruptions and made up or given by God.
Speaker 3: Could be chalking out a new way for the Muslim
community in particular to worship God. Just as in the
New Testament, it is understood that there are certain laws
of the Old Testament which have been totally abrogated.
Speaker 1: Now we don't believe that. That's what I'm getting.
Speaker 3: Friends to have little of the Old Testament law in
their actual application.
Speaker 1: So you have no priesthood, no liturgy, no temple, none
of that, no sacrificial offering, no alter But the Quran
is based on the eternal commands of God. So God
gave those things and then abrogated them. So God can
change his eternal decree.
Speaker 3: God could give some decrees and later on give other
decrees that are more applicable.
Speaker 1: But based on.
Speaker 2: Interruptions, allow Ali to finish this point, least give another
ten seconds.
Speaker 3: Okay. So the Quran itself says man an samiha na
tibiri minha o miss liha. Whatever God abrogates of his
previous commandments and regulations, he brings something better than it
or similar to it. So that's the Quronic position.
Speaker 1: Okay. So is it part of the eternal, unchanging truth
of God that God can change?
Speaker 3: Well, God would not change any eternal and unchanging truth,
So that would be logically even impossible. But God can
give commandments for a certain time. They're temporary. And even
the New Testament that it says this that some part
of the Old Testament were given and then abrogate it,
and Jesus himself in the Gospels proclaims that something was
given because of the hardness of the hearts of the people.
Something like this is repeated in the Quran as well.
So it's not to be an eternal law. If it's
an eternal law, it's not changeable, okay, So it's a
temporary one. God can given you one.
Speaker 1: So the Qoran is based on an eternal coron or not.
Speaker 3: The Quran is an expression of the mind of God.
It is a communication from God to human beings for
our time and place.
Speaker 1: So it's an eternal changing So eternal, there's an eternal
reality to the possibility that the unchanging God can also change,
because you're grounding the argument for the unchanging God in
the Quran, which you're also now saying that God can change,
because what he's saying in the Quran is based on
an eternal Quran, but you're admitting that he can change
those laws.
Speaker 3: God can change the laws. That does not mean that
God himself changes whether.
Speaker 1: The laws are based on him.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're gonna let me answer, right. So whether God
changes or not is a philosophical problem, and that applies
to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. However, can God give
new laws to replace old ones? Yes, and that is
admitted by Muslims and also by Christians.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we don't make the argument that the texts
of Scripture are based on the eternal text of God.
Speaker 3: Well, in that case, you're what you're asking about shows
that there is a misunderstanding about the Muslim idea of scripture.
And to give a credit to you, Muslims misunderstand this themselves.
But I understand that the Quran is an expression from God,
a communication from Him that is suitable to our present
time and place. And God knows so what is suitable
to our present time and place, and he gives us that.
He knew what was suitable to a previous people, and
he gave them that. So the two are not in contradiction.
There are just different laws applicable to different peoples. There
are different dispensations, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So I would reply that I don't think that's
a sufficient answer to the question about the law itself
being based on the eternality that is unchanging, and then
it's admitting change.
Speaker 2: So all right, we have Alai's a cross examination now,
and then we'll be leading into closing statements. So Ali,
when you're ready, I'm ready. We'll start the top on you.
We'll start the time when you Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've started. Okay, So and Jay, I want to
pick up on what we were discussing previously. I want
to know more about the Christian idea that the second
Person of the Holy Trinity came to be born as
a human being. I want to see the unity between
that second Person of the Holy Trinity and the human person. Now,
if Mary had conceived normally, she would have a child
that is very similar to us, and that child would
have a human soul, a human mind, and naturally a
human body. Now, where does the second Person of the
Holy Trinity come in and fit within that composition of
the human being that was born from Mary?
Speaker 1: Right, that's a good question. Our answer is eventually debated
by Saint Cyril against Astorias the time of Ephesus. I'm
not saying it was invented by him. In the Gospel
of Luke, you have Jesus being or excuse me, the
statement is said to Mary, who am I to the
mother of my Lord? Should visit me? So that's where
Cyril will pick up the notion of the tokos. Not
just that, but that's one of his ideas. And Cyril's
explication is that the only person present in Christ throughout
all of his ministry is the second person of the Godhead.
He does not possess a human personhood or human hypostasis.
There's no created hypostasis in Christ whatsoever. So he has
a full body, mind, soul, and will in terms of
human nature. He's fully human in terms of human nature,
but not a human hypostasis or person in our view.
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure if I understand you, j So,
I'm thinking of this simplistically like the person that would
have been born in Mary. So I understand your answer
that Elizabeth is saying, the mother of my Lord and
the Lord must be the one that's going to be
born out of Mary. Now, if Mary had a normal conception,
then she would have a human child like the rest
of us, having body, mind, and spirit all human. So
what did the second Person of the Holy change in this?
Did the second person of the Holy Spirit replace the
human mind, the human soul, or any aspect of the
human No.
Speaker 1: That would be a pollinarianism. You mean the second person
of the Godhead, the logos. The logos is the person
in Christ, the only person that's doing or the agent,
the soul's subject according to serial of all those actions
is the second person of the Godhead. But he possesses
a fully human nature. That's why for Orthodox theology, again
based on our trinitary theology, the nature person distinction is
fundamental to everything that we that we argue about or
explicate when we talk about the trinity, or even when
we talk about Christology. It's based on our trinitarian distinctions
as well.
Speaker 3: Now you know how the Bible says that God blew
into Adam and he became a living soul, and Muslims
have the idea that the soul is breathed into the
womb of the mother. Sometimes it has explained when the
child is for about four months into the pregnancy. So
this continues that idea of the body mind dualism. So
are you thinking that the second person of the Holy trinity,
which is a spirit, that spirit was blown into the
womb of Mary, or you don't think in those terms.
Speaker 1: No, we don't think in those terms. If to use
the analogy of Adam and Adam's creation, we would say
that would be the signifying of the creation of a
human nature for Christ. Again, for us human nature being body, mind, soul, will.
So the Holy Spirit you could say, was absolutely involved
in that, because the whole triad is always involved in
every action, but always in a unique way or motor role.
So the Father sends the son, the Son becomes incarnate,
and in the Holy Spirit at times perfects and does
Christ does his miracles by the power of the Father
and the Spirit and so forth. So we always see
a triadic relationship and reality and all these things. You
see the the baptism of Christ, do you see Father,
Son and Spirit manifested. You see this in other instances
in the gospels. But in terms of his birth specifically,
we think Jesus created Mary. Mary is a creature. She's
not divine or semi divine. All the term theotokos is
intended to signify is that the person that she gave
birth to is the eternal son of God. So she
didn't cause him to be. All she did was contribute
to him his human nature. And because we believe that
the corruption of Adam is passed through Adam's descendants, that's
why he's born of a virgin Excuse me, is that
this avoids the corruption of Adam. And so he willingly
underwent death. He wasn't subject to death, he wasn't subject
to sin. He willingly underwent those things we say.
Speaker 3: And so how do you understand the biblical statement a
body you have prepared for me? You're familiar bit that statement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, David's a pretty of the creation. We would say,
that's the creation of Christ human nature.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the human nature is basically created in the
womb of Mary. Absolutely, And the second person of the
Holy Spirit comes to me in the second person of
the Godhead, not the Holy Spirit. Yeah, the second person
of the Trinity comes to be united with that divine nature,
with that human nature. Yes, But wouldn't that mean that
that Jesus has two spirits, like the human spirit and
the Divine Spirit, the second person of the Trinity.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you mean by spirit nature there we do
affirm two natures.
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, So now Jesus is on the cross according
to the Gospels, and it looks gospel. He says, Father,
into your hands, I commit my spirit. So who is
speaking there, obviously the second person of the Holy Trinity. Truth.
So when he says I'm committing my spirit into your hands,
it's not like it's almost like I'm speaking about my spirit.
This tho, this is another person apart from myself, but
I mean my own I'm come going into your hands.
So now that means that the second person of the
Holy Trinity. Then and there I exited the body from
the cross and went into the hands of God.
Speaker 1: True. No, we don't believe that he ever left the
right hand of God. He was always with the Father.
As I stated in the Gospel of John the Second.
The statement on the cross is signifying in our review,
their spirit signifies his human spirit as human soul. So
we think he has all the constituent properties of human nature. Again,
and so as the perfect exemplar many of the things
that Jesus is doing throughout his life, saying directing us
to the Father and so forth, we believe that that
is because he's not just doing things in a metaphysical way.
He's also an example for us. He is a moral example.
We don't believe that he's only a moral example, but
he's also is a moral example. So a lot of
times he's doing what we call a propriation. So if
Deuteronomy says that a person who hangs on a tree
is cursed, my God, by you forsaken me, we see
those as appropriation. He's willingly appropriating in his human nature
the corruption and the fall from Adam. And so in
that sense we take the text where he says, into
your hands, I commend my spirit. That's the perfect model
of how our death is. When we die, we should
pray that God take our soul. We don't think that
the word spirit there necessitates that he means the Holy
Spirit or the divine nature. He's not saying that. He's
praying on behalf of an acting on behalf of the
humanity that he assumed as our example. And also then
to commend the soul that he assumed to the Father.
And hence why in our conception of the descent into Hades,
he descends into Hades to preach the Gospel down there
in his human soul, which has been severed from the
human body.
Speaker 3: Now the second Person of the Holy Trinity is obviously
unchangeable as a divine person. So he came into this body,
and he's here on the cross, and and there is
a human soul that he has somehow assumed, and he's
going to command that into the hands of the Father,
not then and there at that moment, because obviously that
soul has to experience death on the cross.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I can. I can pray to God,
you know, God, I commend my soul to you, even
if I'm undergoing something that God wills to meet to undergo. Right,
If I mean, if I'm going to die, or if
I'm undergoing a sickness, I can say, Lord, you know,
I commend my soul to you, right.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay. So then they the one that experiences death
on the cross is not only the human, but also
they define a second person of the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 1: We say that the second Person of Trinity underwent death
in his human nature, but he himself underwent no change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is the point then that if he
underwent no change, then in what sense has he actually
suffered death? Because it would seem as if the second
Person of the Holy Trinity existed from all eternity as
an unchangeable being. He just assumed a sort of unity
with a physical object in this world, almost like a cloak.
He wore that for a while, and then he abandoned
it later on, and he's still the unchangeable, eternal second
person of the Holy Trinity. In what sense did the
second person experience death?
Speaker 1: By the way, in our view, we do not believe
he ever abandoned it ever at any point. The whole
purpose of all the actions that he's doing is the
restoration and salvation of human nature. And that's in our
view why we believe all men are resurrected is because
Christ assumed human nature and by thereby extends this this
power to the totality of human nature being read even
the wicked we believe or resurrected on the basis of
this incarnation. That doesn't mean that they're going to be saved.
But so no, he was never separated from God. He
was never He never underwent change in his divine nature,
but he did assume a human nature that was able
to undergo change. I mean, he walked around, he ate.
We believe he slept right, not because he in his
divinity needed those things, but he did it all for
our sakes. So, as Saint gregy Nazianzus says, everything that
Christ did, he did for our sakes. Whatever is not
assumed in the human nature is not healed. But because
he assumed the totality of our human nature, and he
lived through every stage of humanity. As Aeronaea says in
terms of the recapitulation, he recapitulated all the stages of
human life, from birth all the way to mature adulthood.
So he's thereby able to save anybody in any state,
and in fact that salvation will come to all human nature.
But how we as individuals lived according to God's law
or violated God's law will determine how we experienced the afterlife.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much into closing statements at this point,
I do believe Jay is at first, you have seven
minutes to summarize your arguments. Okay, I will start and
come when you're ready.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I find it. So this has been a
great discussion, very engaging. I've learned things that I wasn't
aware of, so I want to thank doctor Shabir for that.
My closing analysis would be that I think that the
majority of the texts that I've listed, again, many of
those are not vague. They actually deal with several cases
where the the Angel of the Lord is not merely
a created being but in fact identified as God himself. Again,
I gave many of those those examples, and so and
I think the first or second rebuttal of doctor Shabir
went into talking about Gabriel and angels when I had
already talked about the fact that I made the distinction
between sometimes angel can be a create an angelic being,
and sometimes it can be referred to as God himself,
to which he then said, well, there's clearer texts that
say X y Z. One of the problems with the
notion of the philosophy and language or the way that
we understand interpretation. He's an exegete, he's a herminuticist. He
should know that there's no primopostia way necessarily to know
when something is clear. That's all based on the assumptions
that we have about our position or this or that. Now,
in a relative sense, could you say that something is clearer? Sure,
But again that's going to be depending upon one's system
or one's paradigm to know which, in fact this or
that text is clearer. And so if I have a
presupposition about the transcendence and unity of God that's somehow say,
superior to distinctions in God, then I'm going to automatically
see that any of the texts that I go to
that that talk about God's unity, they're somehow clearer.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But in the the way that Deuteronomy phrases the the
the laws about coming prophets, right, we are told that
a prophet must speak in accord with previous revelation. He
can't speak out of a chord of it with it. Right,
that that becomes I think problematic when we get into
Ezekiel or these other texts Ezekiel one, Ezekiel ten, where
we have this again son of Man character, which he
said was a poetic device. Now that's interesting because I
don't think it's in any way plausible to say that
in Daniel seven it's a representation of Israel, that is
before the ancient of days. This is the angel, This
is the the one like a son of Man who
was present in the the fiery furnace. Right, the story
of Daniel of the the the Angel, we would say,
the Angel of the Lord won like a son of
man in the fiery furnace, So is that the same
is that the representation of Israel in the fiery furnace.
I don't find the poetic explanation very convincing. And on
top of that, there's many many cases in Isaiah where
especially Isaiah fifty three with the suffering Servant, where it
can be both and it doesn't have to be either.
Or is there an element to a historical fulfillment in
Isaiah with the suffering Servant of Israel and her history. Absolutely,
but that doesn't negate the possibility of but also having
a deeper fulfillment in the person of Christ when he
came as the consummation and fulfillment of who and what
Israel is and was and what was her historic mission.
I would add two Again, something I didn't get to
in my initial discussion was on top of messianic prophecies,
it's not just messianic prophecies about who the Messiah would be,
and many of the ones that I listed, there's also
predictions of again the gentile Church when the Messiah comes.
One of the key signs that everyone will know signifies
that the Messiah has come is specifically the conversion in
math of many of the gentile nations to the Messiah
and that would make up his kingdom. Jeremiah twenty five eighteen, sixteen,
nineteen through twenty one, thirty eight, thirty one to thirty four,
Jeremiah three, fourteen to nineteen, Hoseiah one, ten and eleven,
Malachi won eleven and twelve, I back At two, fourteen
and fifteen, Ezekiel forty seven, twenty one to twenty three,
Micah four one through four, Zechariah two fifteen eight, twenty
one to twenty three, Toba thirteen thirteen, Tobait fourteen five
through seven, Joel, and acts. If you look at Acts
two the way Acts two sites Joel, Isaiah twenty five
six through eight, Isaiah twenty four, fourteen through seventeen, Isaiah
forty two one through eight, Amos nine, eleven and twelve,
Isaiah forty two four, Isaiah forty nine one through six,
Verse eight twenty two to twenty three of that same chapter,
Isaiah nine one and two, Isaiah eleven ten through twelve,
saw Them eighty six, Psalm sixty seven, Psalm one ten,
Isaiah sixty seve, Isaiah fifty one through seven, Isaiah fifty
four two and three, Isaiah fifty five, Isaiah eighteen twenty
to twenty five, many many more. But now are we
going to think that these are all textual corruptions? Why
would Jews textually corrupt things that would aid Christians? Right now,
maybe they didn't know, you know, maybe the subtuasion had
all these texts that the Christians misappropriated. But when we
start getting into this corruption of the texts, it doesn't
really make any sense to see how the corruption of
all of these texts, or the corruption of all of
what's going in Leviticus and Numbers and Exodus, how in
any way that aids the Jewish case, Like, what purpose
does it serve for them to corrupt all those texts?
And in my estimation of the when I was doing
the interrogation, I didn't hear, to my satisfaction, a coherent
response as to where all of those texts are or
what happened to all this alter sacrifice, et cetera. Now
that argument might be turned on me, well, you don't
have an altar, you don't have the sacrifice as it's
laid out, But actually we do. Again, the whole Book
of Hebrews is dedicated to Paul interpreting the significance the
spiritual reality that all of those Levitical and Exodus Tabernacle
ceremonies that they have for us. So in fact, absolutely
it is correct that Jesus did not come to abrogate
the law, but rather to fulfill right. So in fact,
if you look at the way Paul consistently cites Leviticus,
or when he cites Deuteronomy, or when he cites ceremonial
laws as they are sometimes called, Paul applies those spiritual
principles to the church. And the law was always intended
to have a spiritual principle.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Leviticus says in Leviticus nineteen, you shall not hate your
brother from your heart right. So when Jesus is saying
you have to love your brother right, he's in harmony
with Leviticus. So we actually put a strong stress on
the continuity of the old into the new time. And
in fact, I would argue that one of the strongest
proofs of Christianity in the deity of Christ is precisely
all of what you see in the Exodus revelation of
the Tabernacle, all of what you see in Leviticus, even
down to the point of the eighth Days, circumcision, Jesus
and Luke. Right, we get into numbers the ceremonies. Yeah,
that all points to christ.
Speaker 2: Cool. Thank you very much, Doctor Elie. Your closing statement.
When you begin speaking, I'll start the time.
Speaker 3: Okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, viewers from around the globe,
and our generous moderator here and Jay, it's been a
pleasure speaking with all of you today, and obviously we
need to continue this very interesting conversation. Muslims and Christians
have a lot in common, more than the differences that
we experience, and we need to emphasize the commonalities and
minimize the difference. Is nowadays we're all faced with common problems,
for example COVID nineteen that call for a collective response
from Muslims, Christians and others working in hand together to
produce a safer, a better world for ourselves, for our
future generations and for all people. Having said that, at
the same time, we like to know the bottom line
of certain things that puzzle us. For example, was Jesus
really the divine son of God? Or was he God incarnate?
And in this dialogue we have looked at scripture, at history,
and that the logic to answer this question. As for
the logic, it came out in our conversation, at least
in my own mind, that there are some logical problems
involved with saying that Jesus was the second person of
the Holy Trinity now as a human being. We saw
in my discussion with Jay that is very difficult to
conceive of the second person of the Holy Trinity dining
with the human body and not replacing the human soul
and still resulting in there being only one soul in
the man Jesus. It seems that he should have had
a human soul plus a divine entity that is in
him a divine soul or a divine spirit as well.
We saw that when Jesus was on the cross dying,
then there is a question as to whether the divine
second person of the Holy Trinity would have died along
with the human person. If you say that the divine
person did not die, then in what sense did the
whole scheme come into play to say that God had
to become a human in order to die. If God,
in the final analysis, doesn't actually die, if God stays
with that body and experiences the death, because God by
himself could not experience death, and he needed a human
body that could die so that God could experience death. Still,
we would want to know more about that experience. What
does it mean to say that God has now experienced death?
These are all difficult problems. And if this was God
who actually died, if he really died in the sense
of the word that we know it, then we might
be asking, well, who was running the world in the
time that he stayed death? They stayed dead. So these
are difficult problems. If there were only two persons who
are known in the Old Testament, as Jay has been
at pains to show with many passages referring to the
Angel of the Lord, trying to prove that this means
that there was the Father plus the Angel of the Lord.
There are two of them. Then if that is the case,
and then a third one comes to be eventually revealed
in the New Testament, how do we know that there
isn't a fourth one out there who might be revealed
in the future or who might never be revealed, in
which case, to say that there is a trinity it
really falls short of declaring who God actually is, because
he could be like a quaternity or something different. We
just don't know, and these are very difficult alton logical
problems to deal with. Now, coming to the history behind this,
we see that in fact there was a progression of thought.
I don't believe that Jay replied to my mention that
Martin the Justin Martin had the idea that Jesus was
like an angel. In fact, it seems that there was
a progression of thought, and over time the scholars solidified
the idea that Jesus is deity, and that was pronounced
finally in the Council of Nicea in the Yearly three
hundred and twenty five eighty, and then in the subsequent
Nicean Council Nicien Council, it was finally declared that the
Holy Spirit is worshiped along with the Father and the Son.
So there's a clear development of ideas from the New
Testament writings to the Creeds, starting with the Apostles Creed
from the second century and then going all the way
to the atheen Asian Creed the sixth century. Coming now
to scripture, it is clear from scripture as well that
scripture is part of that development. In the Old Testament. Yes,
there are verses that are difficult to understand there is
this mention of the Angel of the Lord, who could
be an Angel of the Lord, which could means that
there could be many others, And that Angel of the
Lord is shown in Luke's Gospel to be the Angel Gabriel,
and Christians do not take the Angel Gabriel to be God.
So that means there is a picking and choosing of
some verses of the Bible that align with a certain
way of interpreting the whole Bible, and there are certain
verses which are left aside, and these verses show that
there was an ambiguity about the one who was referred
to as the Angel of the Lord. This is why
Michael Bird, in his book How Jesus Became How God
Became Jesus, though he subscribes to the idea that Jesus God,
nonetheless he says very clearly that the mention of the
Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is an enigma,
so you cannot build too much on that, Whereas, on
the other hand, there are clear texts which say that
there is only one God, that God is Yeahweh, He's
given by name, and Jesus obviously is not Yahweh. In
Matthew chapter twelve, verse eighteen. He's shown to be the
servant of Yahweh, who is sent by Yahweh. It is
clear in the gospels that he falls on his face
and worships Yahweh. For example, Matthew chapter twenty six, verse
number thirty nine, he declares.
Speaker 2: Even in John's.
Speaker 3: Gospel that has the most developed Christology, Jesus declares that
the one he's praying to is the only true God
John chapter seventeen, verse number three. Even in Paul, whose
letters that display a high Christology, showing Jesus to be
the agent of creation through which God made everything else. Still, Paul,
in one Corinthian chapter eight, verses number six to eight,
declares that there is only one God, the Father, and
one Lord, Jesus Christ. So Jesus is called the Lord
but not God, and the one who is called God
and said to be the only God, that is God
the Father. So we have seen, then, in putting it
all together, that the idea that Jesus is God is
not something that Jesus himself taught.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Rather, he said, why do you call me good? No
one is good but God alone, differentiating between himself and
God and demuring from attributing to himself the position of deity.
It's not in the scripture at all. First John, Chapter seven,
verse number five to seven is a later insertion, and
the history shows as the later development and logic is
the thing that Christian's continue to struggle with. Thank you all,
God bless you.
Speaker 2: Alright in time. Thank you both for a fantastic discussion.
It's really interesting to hear as someone who's not as
well versed in these discussions. It's a great conversation taking
you to you both. So we have time for a
Q and a session. Now I have a family engagement
in a short amount of time, so I can do
about probably fifteen to twenty minutes of Q and as
agreeable you.
Speaker 3: Both, Yeah, sure sure, I myself would like to run
early unless I take a break before that. I could
either take a break and let Jay field the first
few questions and come back in ten minutes, or if
we are aiming to finish at about like eight thirty
or so, that that's good for me.
Speaker 1: We do fifteen minutes and then finished, was I sorry,
just do fifteen minutes and then finished with that work?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, sure, So we're looking to uh we'll look
to Jay's YouTube chat. Is that where we'll quick questions from. Yeah,
Unfortunately with the subject makes it a little bit more difficult.
So I'm watching the chat. I'm pretty sure you can
look at me or something with our questions that you have,
or if you guys both, I'm guessing about looking at
the chat, you can pick questions out as well that
you find interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll kick one off here. There's a question
for doctor Shadier and I don't know who iPhone is.
This is just random questions here their question for doctor Shiver.
You claim Surah two seventy nine talks about the corruption
of scripture. Why does no early Islamic scholar hold to
that interpretation?
Speaker 3: So many many of the classical Islamic scholars prefer to
take the view that the scriptures are misinterpreted rather than
to be corrupted, and we find this in a wide
variety of commentary on this passage as well. However, when
the Muslim scholars come to Suo for verse number one
fifty seven that speaks about the question of the crucifixion
of Jesus, and they're clear that they do not actually
accept the New Testament narratives as they are the scar
of power. Excellence in this regard is Albi Kai from
the fifteenth century, who, largely in his commentary more than
other scholars, have incorporated whole sections from the Old and
New Tests as commentary on the Quran, taking them as
they are, as though this is also the word of God. Well,
when he comes to Suto four, verse one fifty seven,
he does not agree with the New Testament narratives, not
for lack of knowledge of them, but for knowing that
the Quran teaches something different and by by default what
the Gospels say must must be incorrect. And according to him, cool,
we've got.
Speaker 2: One from Ariel Gonzalez for Shabi Eli. Why does Paul
quote a text about worshiping God Joel two thirty two
and apply it to Jesus Romans ten thirteen. Paul also
said he agrees with the apostles one Corinthians fifteen eleven.
Speaker 3: What is the one about one Corintians fifteen eleven.
Speaker 2: Yes, so this is the ad That was an intelligent question.
So why did Paul quote a text about worshiping God
Joel two thirty two and apply it to Jesus Romans
ten thirteen? Paul said he agreed with the Apostles one
Corinthian fifteen eleven.
Speaker 3: Oh, I see, Okay, So this is a question like
why this or why that? We can say that there
are many vague vagaries in the Bible and we don't
have answers for all of them. Why Paul made this
quotation like this and applied it to Jesus. I've already
given one explanation for this. In the way that the
New Testament writers were quoting the Old they did not
necessarily mean that that Old Testament means passage means this.
They're saying that this reminds us of that Old Testament passages.
The only way of defending the New Testament writers, otherwise
they will be shown to be taking verses out of
their historical context, changing the meaning grammatically, and so on. Now,
if we're asking, does Paul, in the final analysis think
that Jesus is God? No, clearly not, because everywhere in
his writings he's declaring that there is only one God.
In fact, in a writing which is said to be
by one of his disciples, Timothy, this writing declares that
the only God is that invisible God, whom no one
has seen or can see, and Paul's preaching is summarized
in Acts of the Apostles when he preaches and says
that the only one God has appointed a man, Jesus Christ,
to be the ruler in the end time. So it's
very clear in his mind that there is one God
and Jesus is a man that God has appointed for
a certain task.
Speaker 1: Can I respond on that, they may there's many There's many,
we would say, there's many texts where Paul affirms both things.
So that's an either or. Paul affirms many times over
in Romans, he affirms the deity of Christ, he affirms
the deity of the Spirit and one Corinthians twelve. So yeah,
it's just a it might be that's a selective either or.
Speaker 2: Cool. So I've got a question here from the Orthodox defense,
why does he keep bringing John seven three seventeen three
when Orthodox exeget this in the sense that the Father
is the Autotheus and he's the sole calls in the
trinity in the sense to God, who's that for? That
was for doctor?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, of course, naturally the Orthodox theologians will have to
interpret this in line with the Trinity. But when it
is clear that Jesus is praying to someone else. He's
saying that someone else sent me. He's saying, I can
do nothing of my own authority whatever he commands me
to say. That's what I'm saying to you. And when
he declares that, and he's praying to that one person,
and he's saying, you are the only true God, and Jesus,
your messenger is Christ, then there is a clear distinction
between Jesus and the one that he's praying to. And
in Jesus's own words, he's declared that one to be
the only true God. And when in John chapter eight,
Jesus is speaking to the Jews, he says, in verse
number fifty four, my father, whom you say is God.
So for Jews, the only one who is God is Yeahweh.
And from what Jesus declares, Yahweh has to be the
father and only the and never the father, son and
Holy Spirit. So the idea of father, son and Holy
Spirit is a later development, as we have shown.
Speaker 1: I would say that in Zechariah one, two and three, father,
son and Spirit are present, a son there being the
Angel Lord. Once again, the spirit is spoken of there
as distinct. And so again just because there is distinction
there you have an assumption of composition or separation. We
don't believe that because the Father is that Jesus is
praying to the Father. That's perfectly in line with Orthodox
Furnitarian theology. In fact, we stress that all the time.
Speaker 2: Okay, got a question from Chappie here for doctor lay again,
I'm thinking a bit of a pattern here, asking why
he is Sunni and not Shia.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this does not pertain to the subject of
our debate, but I can say that historically this has
been my experience. I grew up in a Sunni household.
This is what I've known, and naturally I tended to
see things from that perspective. I have tried to study
the difference between the two, and so the choice is
open to me. But no one is entirely free from
his biases. But trying to approach it with as scholarly
a mood as I can, it seems to me that
the suddeny is what I want to remain.
Speaker 2: Okay, one from Ophus Christos, for Doctorligan is a law
unable to become incarnate.
Speaker 3: So there's some things that you know when we speak
about to God. About God, we don't say naturally as believers,
we cringe from saying something like God is unable. But theologians,
both Muslims and Christians have said that there are certain
things that that you shouldn't attribute to God, Like if
something is illogical, you shouldn't attribute to God. So you
shouldn't say, for example, God can create a square triangle,
because it's either are triangle, it's not going to be both.
So we do not attribute logically impossible things to God.
That does not mean that he cannot do everything, but
we should say that when we say that God can
do whatever he wants, as Muslims would say, and the
Koran says by aluli mayorid, he does whatever he wants,
we qualify that by saying that he does everything that
is logically possible to do. Now, for God to become
a human being, that involves all of the kinds of
complications that we mentioned previously, which the Muslims seemed to
be like logical complications impossibilities, and therefore we hesitate to
offer that from a logical perspective. But then also from
the scriptural and historical perspective, we can see that the
scripture does not necessitate that. And when the Scripture says
that God says, I am the only God. You should
have no other God but me, and I'm a jealous God.
You dare not turn to somebody else without proof. Now,
if God came down on the earth and he says,
now I am the God who always spoke to you,
and I have now become a man, well then we
would say, okay, we have reason for believing that this
is God, at least taking him on his word, and
we would want some prove. But if he never said
that in the first place, but in fact he was
actually saying the contrary, like why do you call me good?
No one is good with God alone, and then it
would seem odd for us to take him as God.
Speaker 2: Okay. A question for Jay, is the Trinity mystical or
can you make sense out of it?
Speaker 1: Well? I would say it is in one sense mystical,
in another sense also reasonable and rational, so as far
as human logic and reason is possible. We have many
theologians in our church who have done extensive triadological argumentation.
I mentioned in the past, the Cappadocians, but of course
Saint Maximus, and the ambiguity goes into a lot of
detail with these kinds of arguments in questions and doubts.
Saint Maximus goes into a lot of these rational types
of arguments. How the world itself is structured in triadic ways,
so we would say that there is an inkling of
this kind of a reality in the world. Some of
the Church Fathers also speak of man himself having a
kind of a triadic reality to him. Even Paul san
Gregory poalo Must uses this analogy and language. But we don't,
of course think that there's a one to one correspondence
between these created analogies and God himself. Right, there's always
a dissimilarity between the two, and hence why it's by analogy.
So in the sense of analogy and in the sense
of in our view, created logic, the universals, et cetera,
the patterns of the created order. They're based on the
eternal patterns that we call logie according to Saint Maximus
and ambiguous seven and those are uncreated, those are eternal.
They're the patterns for the created things, the created essences,
that created universal So to that degree, logic in the
created realm is based on God, in God's mind, God's
thoughts et cetera. But there's also a transcendence of God
that we will never know and never grasp. And hence
the Orthodox doctrine of applethaticism, or the via negative as
it's called in the West, that we can never explain
what God is. We can only know about God what
He has revealed to us.
Speaker 2: Question from right track to Shabiri, the only creator is God?
Why in Kuran three nine Jesus created birds if he
was only a man. God does not share his ability
to create with anyone else.
Speaker 3: So when we say that God is the only creator,
it means that he is the ultimate creator. At that level.
There's nobody else who shares his space or his power
at that level. Everyone else has derivative power. I can
say I create a piece of artistic work. We're using
the term create, but God has given me that ability
to create this piece of work or to build something
or invent or something like this. Now, Jesus has shown
in the Quran to create words from clay and then
breathe into them and they become life words. And the
Quran says this is done isnila by the permission of God.
So God, according to this theology, can give the power
to a creature to do something that's to bestowed power.
But the power that God has to create that is
not derived from anywhere. It's not bestowed on God. That
is inherent in God. And that's the great difference between
God and his creatures.
Speaker 2: All Right, we got a bad to our last two questions.
Question for Jay, how do you define personhood in a
trinitarian context?
Speaker 1: So personhood is what is in a sense, stands above nature.
You could say we give it a sort of metaphysical
or ontological priority because we think that that's where we
begin our theology. That's who we know is a personal God.
So we would say that in Exodus three, when Moses
is seeing God face to face, God says I am
that I am. We see that as a statement of
divine personhood. So there's a covenantal personal relationship that we
would say distinguishes our God from say Hellenism or Greek
philosophy and the abstract and personalism of the Greeks. We
think that that's unique to Hebraic revelation. Certainly there could
have been pagan revelations that in a sense we're quite personal.
But we think the notion of the Father as a
distinct monarchia that's revealed there, and then also implying of
course the son and the spirit as well. We think
that that is how we know God and what we
know God and what we know God first, right, we
don't peer into trying to understand and know God's essence.
So hypostasis is the particular. It's what picks out the
particular subject, the particular person, you could say. And then
person for us always in hypostatizes the nature. Right, so
each person for us, father, son and spirit fully in
hypostheitize the single divine nature. But they are also in
a very real sense distinct hypostasis, and by extension, human
persons are what make me distinct. They gave that analogy earlier.
But we all share the same nature. So we're not
just instance, we're not just stamps of Adam. We're also
unique hypostaces, and so that in that sense, personhood goes beyond,
or stands above, just instantiation of nature itself. Otherwise we'd
all just be clones about them all right.
Speaker 2: Last question for should be from daydream Believer. With your
writer analogy, you implicitly confirmed the eternal word, that is,
the Quran is separate and distinct from God to eternal persons.
I thought Allah alone is eternal.
Speaker 3: Well sinction here is that Muslims do not consider the
Quran to be a person. The Quran is a book,
and the words of Jesus are in a book. The
words of Yahweh are are said to be in the
Old Testament in a book, but the book is not
a person. The book is not God. Muslims do not
treat the Koran as God, and should not treat the
Koran as God. Muslims do treat the Qoran with respect,
and Muslims are also and joined to treat the other
scriptures with respect, but that does not mean that we
take the Quran or other scriptures to be God. We
do not. And whatnot. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Guys for having me. I do have to biology have
a family engagement. I'm able to do a quick pub
for a bi or a quick what quick plug if
that's all right before we go?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: So I'm obviously moderning from the Calipin Club. You can
join us at Discord dot gg for sash Calipin Club
the A double L I O P E A N
C l U B. I'm on twitch, twitch or TV,
slash Ky zero S or n same for Twitter. If
you want to catch up with me there. I'm happy
to go into this similar debates as well. It's also
I'm undersided on this, but it's up.
Speaker 3: To you guys.
Speaker 2: If you need me for any other moderation events, you
can also DM me there. I'm more than happy to
do those as well. Thank you so much to inter
Lucky to today, Ja, doctor J, Diet, Doc J Die
and doctor should be I Lee.
Speaker 3: You're very knowledgeable. Jay.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're not too far off. Really appreciated being
a part of the discussion. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you doctor very much. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Okay, and thank you Jay. I really respect you. And
let's let's continue our discussions and I'd be glad to
learn more from you, especially in the area of philosophy.
Speaker 1: Likewise, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, so that was the debate. Thank
you everybody. I will add to uh since we're on
my channel and since there was the demonetization a couple
of days ago, which is very unfortunate. If you want
to support my work, you can subscribe at my website below,
so I have the link in the description You can
also follow doctor Shabir on his channel. You can follow
the Kelliopian Club as well. Their links are below. But
again so you can rather than going through YouTube, join
directly at my website and thank everybody God bless have
a good night.