Speaker 1: So anyway, Bob has his channel and he has Soco films.
I've got the Soco films link below. Bob, tell us
about you first, tell us what your the context of
our chat today, your background, what you're comfortable talking about,
and how you got into speakers, corners.
Speaker 2: Debates and anything else you want to tell us about you.
Speaker 3: Okay, I became a Christian because of Muslim who he
tried to convert me to Islam when I was at school.
He was a big fan of Acmedi Dat and he
just assumed that everyone who was white and English was
a Christian, and so he tried to, you know, use
all of these kinds of arguments on me. And I
came from a working class background and my family, much
like lots of English working class, had this kind of
notion that they were Church of England. You know, they
were Christian because at baptisms they would baptize their children,
At weddings they would go to church, and at funerals
they would get a priest to come and say some
nice words before sticking people in the ground. Without any
real faith or without any real understanding of what it
means to be a disciple of all Jesus christ And
so when my Muslim friend tried to attack the Christian faith,
I thought he was attacking something English. So I led
to its defense in ignorance. Just to give you a
level of my starting point. In one of these discussions
that I remember because of how embarrassing it was, he said,
he said, let's test how much you know. And he
asked me, you know, what's the first book of the Bible?
I didn't know, and someone said Genesis. And then he said, well,
what's the second book of the Bible? I didn't know,
and someone said Genesis too, and I just said, yes,
Genesis two. So that just tells you how little I
actually knew that correct. Yeah, So I started looking into it.
I started learning about all of these apologetics and polemics,
and then I remember through a Christian Church of Summer
mission that I did in London, I came into contact
with a guy called Jay Smith, who is a wonderful
polemicist and apologist from America, and he really inspired me.
He was the first time that I'd met someone who
was doing evangelism to Muslims in the same way that
I was. So I went to Speaker's Corner a couple
of times and then when I lived in London years
and years ago, I used to irregularly visit Speaker's Corner
and then you know, life took me on a certain
course which led me back to the question of considering
my vocation and how to do that, and that led
me to London and I wanted to get involved in
supporting Jay Smith at Speaker's Corner. And the week that
I went to finding because I knew where he hanged
out before he went to Speakers Corner, he told me
he was leaving. So he was leaving and going back
to America, and he doesn't speak as Corner for decades
and been one of the sole voices making a commendable
defense of the faith down there, and he was leaving.
And his first week that he wasn't at the Corner
that you could tell the Dower team was in glee
at the thought of not having Jay theirs and his
booming voice. It was my first week there and I'd
been going solidly to speak as Corner for about two years.
It is a strategical platform that solved great importance to
the church because it's broadcast across the entire world. Some
of the Muslim speakers have followers that go into the millions.
You're never going to have an opportunity to evangelize that
many Muslims in one go, all that many people in
one go. It's a fantastic opportunity. It does speak to
a certain kind of person, the person who weighs truth
by which which person seems to win the argument, which
is not necessarily the best way of weighing what is true,
But it does speak to that kind of person. And
it's a platform I recognize the strategic importance of and
you know, it's one that the church needs to So
that's why I go there. And you know, I go
there to to basically to evangelize the Christian faith and
to stand against those that are opponents to the Christian Faith.
And it just so happens because of the demographics of
speakers corner and the demographics around speakers corner that that
tends to be Muslims. Because I have a love and
a passion for anyway, because I became a Christian because
of a Muslim, and I have done lots of evangelism
amongst Muslims my whole life, and it's something that I
care very greatly for them as a people. I want
them to know the truth of our Lord, to be
as disciples like a everyone else to be. And I
feel that God has placed that that calling, that desire
on my heart. Yeah, as a basic.
Speaker 2: Intrum, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Just two questions before on that, before we get into
the other stuff, just out of curiosity. Did you have
any training in philosophy or is your training mainly under
Jsmith as an apologist?
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to put you on the spot,
I'm just.
Speaker 1: Curious if you did you did you study rhetoric and
debate or did you just focus on apologetics.
Speaker 3: I think everything that I everything that I do in
terms of debate, is something that I've just done through experience.
Like I you'll often hear me talk about the DOWA
team using a script, and the reason why I describe
it as a script is because invariably Muslims say the
same arguments the same way over and over and over
and over and over and over again. And when you've
been around that circuit a number of times, you kind
of know what's going to be said before it's said,
and you develop responses to that, and you also pick up,
like you know, little tactics of rhetoric and stuff like that.
But no, I've not had any formal training. I did
study in my first year at university philosophy, but I
went on to specialize in religious studies as I felt
that was more important. I also studied physics in my
first year as well, and philosophy obviously, the study of
philosophy obviously introduces you to argumentation and the idea of
constructing an argument, but I'm not a particularly formal training now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, actually, just being in the sphere of debating
and doing that a lot is really how you get
good at debating. I mean, that's the way I mean
we started when I was in college. We would go
out on campus and we.
Speaker 2: Would debate the atheists, we would debate the Buddhists, we.
Speaker 1: Would debate all the different groups that we found on
campus that were willing to do debates.
Speaker 2: And so just doing that.
Speaker 1: Constantly, going to coffee shops, going to atheist defense and
having the debates is really the best way to learn
to debate and to get good at it, because, like
you said, it's kind of the same with atheism. You'll
notice that you hear the same kind of rehash things
over and over and over. So a lot of times
people ask me, do you get nervous before you debate
an atheists? No, and it's not because oh I've got
such a high IQ and it's not anything like that.
The reason I'm not nervous about it is because I
already know all of the limited number of iterations of
the atheist argument that I'm going to hear. And by
the way, it's funny you said that about an Islamic
apologist or guy getting you into Christianity. There was a
Job's Witness girl that I knew when I was about
eighteen and I was new to Christianity. I was new
to reading the Bible. I just read the Beatitudes at
the time, and I met this Joe's Witness girl and
I think she was really intent on bringing me into
the Joe's Witnesses and so.
Speaker 2: She sent me all these texts.
Speaker 1: She's like, how do you respond to this verse that
shows that Jesus is a creature? And so that actually
kicked me off into apologetics. Was another you know, sort
of anti trinitarian group. So that's in counter entering challenges
are actually good ways to you know.
Speaker 3: Iron absolutely, and I think I think I think Christians,
you know, if there's any Christian out there who's thinking about,
you know, how do I get good at this? The
answer is start doing it, you know, and and but
have the humility to learn from your mistakes and to
to learn like I'll often sit there and I'll listen
to presentations by others and noting down good arguments as
I hear them, and imagining how I might then use
them in argument myself. In what circumstance might I use
a particular line of argument?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And it's just a case of study practice failure, study
practice success, study practice failure, study practice success. And this
process refinds you in terms of your ability to do it.
But evangelism is one of the callings of our Lord,
and and it's something that we have to do, you know.
And there are different styles of evangelism. Me and you
go for the more direct, academic, debate confrontational style of evangelism.
It won't speak to everybody, but it speaks to some.
But most importantly, the kind of style of debate that
you and I do is the kind of thing that
influences cultures. It's the kind of the kind of debate
that can influence decision makers, the kind of debate that
can influence people in authority. It might not win over
masses of people, maybe apart from some people who are
rigulous and intellectual and follow the evidence where it leads,
but it can influence people, and it can influence cultures.
So it's really important that the Church is present in
the intellectual debate and not absconding from it for the
sake of doing more socially based evangelism.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean, all the church fathers, all the great apologists
who really hammered out the Doctor of the Trinity, for example,
in the early centuries, they were apologists. They were doing
apologetics against various groups that already you know, in the third, fourth, fifth,
sixth centuries were denying Christology, denying the Trinity, denying the
full Deity of Christ, denying the deity.
Speaker 2: The Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: Saint Basil comes to mind as somebody who's very important
in that role. But yeah, I mean, if we're not
doing apologetics, then we're not doing what we're actually called
to do, because that's part of evangelisman. Absolutely right, And
as Paul says, all things to all men. So we
want to speak to the academic, We want to speak
to the average Joe. We want to speak to everybody
as best we can, and God gifts us all with.
Speaker 2: Different gifts to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: So you want to move on now to the topics
of like your experiences of what are some of I
know that Lewis sent me, for example, about fifteen I've
encountered some of these, but you have had way more
experience debating people in the realm of Islam, and I've
only had a limited experience with us. I've had one
debate with Paul, and then I've had four or five
debates with people in my discord who had various views
on Islam. I never could get the exact view of Islam.
So my first question to you before we launch into
those texts is that, so in my limited experience of
debating Muslims, when I bring up the topic of the
trinity or divine simplicity, I actually have gotten five different
views just from five different random Islamic debaters.
Speaker 2: Is that the norm with you?
Speaker 1: Do you find that they they when you get to
a really I know you talk about them sort of
running on a script, but when you get really precise
on certain things, I've not been able to nail down
exactly what the Islamic view of divine simplicity is or
this doctrine is. It seems to sort of morph and
transform based on who you're talking to.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, my experience of debating with Muslims
at the corner is that depending on who they're talking to,
the same person will will wax on what they understand
about the Trinity. And a perfect example of that would
be Hashian, who knows very who actually is quite erudite
and educated about what Christian doctrine is, but sometimes he
will he will feign a level of ignorance that he
doesn't actually have about the Trinity because it will help
him to make a point. So you'll often hear Muslims
the same Muslims say to a Christian like myself when
they're you know, surrounded by a more eradi audience, that
they know that Christians believe in one God, but then
say that there are issues with that concept of their
belief in one God. But if they're speaking to someone
who's a bit more of a pushover and a bit
more ignorant, and they can feel that they'll they'll they'll
just say, well, you Christians believe in three gods. And
it's kind of like, depending on who they're talking to,
they actually change what they say in terms of their critique.
And I've seen that very clearly with people like Chansi
and Hashim, and there's there's no consistency in their intellectual
critique of the Christian faith. You know, they'll they'll on
the one hand, they'll say that Christians believe in three odds,
but then on the next hand, depending on who they're
talking to, we know that you Christians believe in one God.
So it's kind of like they can't seem to make
their mind at what we believe. And I think the
reason for that is because the Koran, they're trying to
hold to the fact that you've got a modern education
where information is readily available, so anyone can learn that
Christians believe in one God. But then you've got what
the Kuran says, which is in total era, where it
says that Christians believe in three gods. And they're trying
to balance these two forces together for political gain, as
it were, within the arguments.
Speaker 2: What about when you're when you're getting them to be
precise about their doctrines, though, because that's kind of the
approach of.
Speaker 1: Apologetics that I often do is critiquing not just the
arguments that is that are being presented, but the actual
worldview of the other of the person. Have you found
them to lay out a consistent doctrine, for example, of
the unity and subplicity of God, Because again, I've heard
multiple different doctrines of the of what God's unity and
plasity actually is. And the reason I bring it up
is that that's ironic because when they're refuting, are attempting
to refute the Doctor in the Trinity that it's polytheism
and all this. When I turn the argument around and
get them to try to explain to me how they
conceive of unity and multiplicity and relationship to God, I
don't actually hear a coherent response. I hear five ten
different doctrines of what God's unity and simplicity is amongst Islam.
And I'm just wondering if your experience is that they
do they actually present a consistent Islamic theology. I don't
hear that in their system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's fair, But you've got to understand, Jay,
there's very few people that would tentatively and try to
engage with Christian sorry with Muslims on their own theology.
You know, we Christians, particularly in the West, are a
disadvantage in the sense that Islam is relatively new to
our shores, and so engaging with it intellectually is something
that we're not particularly coherent with or or or well
at first. You know, we are in a position to
do that with Jehovah's witnesses, or with Mormons, or but
not so much with Islam, partly because all their texts
are primarily in Arabic or foreign languages that we can't read,
and so it's only as these these texts are starting
to be translated that we're able to start wrestling with
their vision of God. And the inconsistencies are now becoming
more and more apparent, and the perfectly most obvious one
which will definitely come into shortly, is this idea that
God can't enter into his creation. You know, Muslims have
been having a field day challenging Christians about how can
the infinite become finite and how can the all powerful
become limited and become God? But yet when and as
and then they present to the ignorant this idea that
that God doesn't enter into his creation. But yet when
you read Islamic texts, it's so clearly apparent that Allah
enters into creation, and so all of their arguments against
our incarnational beliefs collapse when you start pinning them down.
But I think also within Islamic circles themselves, Islam doesn't
have the same emphasis on theology as the Church does.
We Christians define our identity by our doctrine, whereas Islam
is very much more focused on the idea of obedience
to laws and the obedience of five pillars. So it's
much more about praxis than it is about theology. And
that means that you know, Muslims don't engage with that
kind of discussion deeply. But I think the kind of
debates that we need to be having are pressing in
on their theology, are pressing in on their doctrines. Yeah,
because actually it's loaded with inconsistencies given the rhetoric that
they use against the Christian faith.
Speaker 1: Let's get to some of those inconsistencies before. Let's start
with some of their polemical critiques of us and their arguments,
and then we'll move to some of the key inconsistencies
that you are familiar with and that you've encountered. So
I like that main point though, because God entering into
time and space and that being a problem in their theology.
That's kind of where many of the debates in my
discord with Muslims led to, because we when we come
to the issue of how does the Quran actually convey
truths about God within time and space? That's kind of
really where the rubber hits the road for difficulty for them.
Speaker 3: But they've not thought through, They've not thought through the
implications of what the Kuran actually says visit verse that.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Okay, so.
Speaker 1: Let's see what are Let's say one of the first
things that you usually hear is something like, well, of
Jesus is God, then he died and God can't die,
so Christianity is a false religion. Is this one of
the most common that you're here? I mean, I've heard
it not I don't even do many of these debates
with it with Muslims.
Speaker 2: I've heard it like five times already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's a common argument
that's used and it's based upon You've got to you've
got to understand that all of their arguments. All the
arguments that are used by Muslims are aimed at the
idea of proving that Christ was not God. That is
the driving point behind virtually all of these kinds of arguments.
So so they're denying the incarnation. So fundamentally, it's because
they are not engaging with the idea of the incarnation
that this this kind of argument is being made and
they are unwilling to engage with that. So, for example,
and I want this not to be sort of me
doing a seminar, but to us to have a discussion,
because I know that you have a lot of very
interesting philosophical angles that you can bring to these kinds
of conversations. So I want this to be a bit
of a ping pong really to to look at how,
you know, silly some of these arguments are. And thus
while you're talking, it allows me to find some of
the passages that I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, yeah, I would say my response to this
would be, this is a misunderstanding of what our doctrine
of Christ is.
Speaker 2: So we believe that Christ.
Speaker 1: Possesses two natures, so he's always possessed that divine nature
from all eternity, because he's a divine person or divine hypostasis.
So these kind of confusing terms that we use are
therefore reason So terms like hypostasis times, terms like ussia
or nature in the Greek and the News that are
actually used in the New Testament, they for us are
the models of how we understand these doctrines. So Christ,
when he became incarnate, he was the second person of
the Godhead from all eternity well, a fully divine nature.
And when he assumed human nature, he never destroyed or
lost his divinity. He didn't destroy or lose the full humanity.
He possesses both of those natures in perfect union, and
they're not destroyed. They're not they're not absolved, they're not molded.
They're always in union and yet always still retaining, as
we say, there created natural properties.
Speaker 2: And so when we speak of the death of.
Speaker 1: Christ, there's a one of our great theologians, Saint John Damascus,
has a great section in book three The Exposition of
the Orthodox Faith, where he talks about the death of Christ.
Speaker 2: Pertaining to his human nature.
Speaker 1: So Christ absolutely did undergo death in his humanity, and
so his body was his soul was severed from his
body in that death, but his divine nature remains and
always remained impassable, and that means unchangeable, unalterable. So the
divinity underwent no change. God can himself cannot change, He
cannot be altered, he can't.
Speaker 2: Be destroyed, he can't die.
Speaker 1: But so when you see in the Church fathers, or
even in scripture at times, there's phraseology that we use
that's called appropriation. One of our other great theologians, Saint
Cyril of Alexandria, called this the communication of properties.
Speaker 2: And what this means is that anything that's true of
one of.
Speaker 1: Christ's nature's such as eating, drinking, dying, that's true of
his humanity, can also be spoken of the whole Christ. Right,
so walking on water, changing water into wine, that is,
somebody came to my door, So that's true of his divinity.
But because Christ is one divine hypostasis from all eternity
who assumed human nature, whatever we say we can attribute
to the whole Christ, and we mean it in a
linguistic way without destroying it's a real It's true. It's
not saying that it's just linguistic. But we can say
God died without meaning that the divine nature died, right,
So Christ as the single sole subject, they're present at
his crucifixion. Christ's divine hypostasis underwent the experience of death
in his human nature. But that does not mean that
he as a divine person, died. And I would just
recommend that if anybody what it's a really clear exposition
of that from classical Trinitarian theology. Just read the last
five or six chapters of John Damascus's book three of
the Expedition Orthodox Faith, where he lays this out perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think this is the thing is that Muslims
who are making this kind of argument, if Jesus is
God and God is immortal, how can God die? If
they're making that kind of argument, they're not engaging with
what Christians are saying. It says in one Peter chapter four,
exactly what you've just said. Therefore, since Christ has suffered
in the flesh, not suffered in the divinity, suffered in
the flesh, he's saying that he suffered in his humanity.
It's it's right there in the Apostolic writings from the
beginning that the suffering that Christ underwent he underwent in
his humanity. And so to use this kind of argument
as if somehow this dismisses what the Christian faith teaches,
means that they're not actually dismissing what we believe as Christians.
What they're dismissing is is something a straw man of
their own invents. And this has been the consistent teaching
of the Church in the what is it the Second
Letter to Nestorius written by Let's Cyril, in the same
manner we conceive respecting his dying, for the Word of
God is by nature immortal and incorruptible and life giving. Since, however,
his own body did, as Paul says, by the grace
of God, tastes death for every man. He himself he said,
to have suffered death for us, not as if he
had any experience of death in his own nature, for
it would be madness to think this. But because as
I have just said, his flesh taste a death. It's
kind of like you take a stick and an iron rod,
and you chuck them into water. One of them sinks
below and one of them floats above. The two properties
the two natures experience the same event in very different
ways and respond very differently. The divine nature passes over
death even though it passes through death, it doesn't is
not affected by it, whereas the human nature falls into it.
And so you know, I would say to hash him
who makes this argument all the time down and Speaker's
corner in twenty one, who who's listening to this, that
if you want to dismiss Christianity, this is a stupid
reason to do it. It's not a good reason because
you're not actually arguing based upon what Christians say, but
you're arguing on something different.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So a lot of people, a lot of people
in the Chat are asking the source. I guess they
didn't hear what I said. So I'm gonna put in
the chat first of all, the text that I mentioned,
what you just mentioned was Cyril response, Saint Cyril of
Alexandria responding to Astorias.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, second letters, second letter.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to put into the Chat the
book three of the Exposition in Orthodox Faith that I
mentioned if you scroll down to the last five chapters,
that the whole of book three is about Christology. It's
a it's an excellent, excellent, one of the most profound,
nuanced treatises of the Fathers. And so Saint John Damascus
is writing in the seventh eighth century, so he's reflecting
back on eight basically eight centuries of Christology, seven centuries
of Christology, and able to sort of synthesize this into
a one of the first what you could call perhaps
systematic theologies.
Speaker 2: In the exposition of Orthodox faith.
Speaker 1: But if you scroll down to chapters I think it's
twenty for those that I just put the link in
the chat, you'll notice it about chapter twenty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty five.
Speaker 1: Twenty six is where he starts, and then it's all
the way down to the end, which is not very long.
But chapter twenty five is about the appropriation. And this
is important because it's going to come into play.
Speaker 2: With a lot of the texts that.
Speaker 1: People of these persuasions Joe's Witnesses or Muslims use, and
that's called the appropriation. And what that means is that
there's a lot of times in texts work. For example,
in Galatians three fifteen, we read that Christ became a curse.
So what that means is that Christ willingly under went
death for us. Okay, it doesn't mean that the Father God,
the Father cursed another divine person and therefore split the Trinity.
It doesn't mean that Jesus is a human hypostasis that
underwent damnation from the Trinity or something like that. So
these are classic mistaken understanding, mistakenly understood texts by groups
outside of the orthodoxy of Christianity that have used like, oh, well,
if Christ is a cursed then he must have been
a separate deity that was cursed or a separate human
being that was cursed, or something like that. You'll notice
in chapter twenty six he expounds the very thing again,
summarizing seven centuries of Christian theology on this, the very
thing that Bob and I just mentioned, which is the
impassability of Christ's divinity and the passibility.
Speaker 2: Of his humanity.
Speaker 1: And then you'll notice in chapter twenty seven he goes
into discussing what went on when Christ died, how the
second person that God had the logos, remained divine and impassable,
and the human soul was severed from the human body.
That's what happened in Christ's death, and then he will
discuss the dissent of Christ's soul into Hades. I would
also mention too, for people that want another testimony to
something to this, that's earlier. There's a famous letter of
Saint Basil, which is he's got two that are really
important for the Trinity and for Christology. One of those
is Letter eight, and Letter eight is a like a
I don't know, fifteen to twenty page summation of the
doctrine of the Trinity. And Basil wrote that in about
three sixty eighty, so this is pretty early, not too
long after.
Speaker 2: The Council of Nicia. Letter thirty eight is way more extensive.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty long, and it gets into the nature
person distinction. How we believe that there's one nature in
the Godhead and three divine hypostases. So if you want
an introduction to how the church fathers have consistently taught this,
you can read out the Natius.
Speaker 2: Of course as well. Everybody knows about at the Natius.
Speaker 3: I think it's an important point to mention Jay that
Christian apologetics can only be strengthened by familiarity with the fatherest.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, I'm not citing these as if that
means that it's true because I cited a church father.
We're citing this as testimonies to the consistency of our teaching.
Speaker 3: Is the point exactly exactly, So I'll throw the next
one at you because and then we'll discuss it there.
The next on The kind of argument that Muslims make
is the if Jesus is God, why how does he eat?
How does he drink? How does he You know this
this is not befitting of God, This is not you know,
God can't do these things because God doesn't need food,
God doesn't need water, you know, you know, to put
it in philosophical terms, how can God be contingent?
Speaker 2: We would agree God is not contingent.
Speaker 1: God does not need food and God does not need water,
but man does. And because God took on human nature
in the incarnation name only the second person that God
had that the entire trinity that not become incarnate, only
the Son, the Logos became incarnate.
Speaker 2: And when he became incarnate.
Speaker 1: We believe that he willed to be in that state,
so he didn't need those things. And this is a
very important thing. For example, when Jesus is talking to
Pontius Pilot, he said, you would have no power over
me unless it was given to you. And because Christ
is a divine person, because he is the one who
created the world, he actually willed to be in this
uh what the phrase Paul uses as kenosis, the canotic state,
which is the you could say, humbling. Jesus chose and
willed to humble himself to come into our lowly state.
It's not that his life was forced from him, that
it was taken from him.
Speaker 2: He couldn't needn't know what to do. Oh, I'm doubting,
I'm scared.
Speaker 1: This is exemplified, for example, in the movie The Last
Temptation of Christ, that blasphemous movie, which presents Jesus as
just this dude who's like, man, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know if I'm going to do I want to do this.
Speaker 1: Man, you know, he's on the cross and he's doubting,
and he's like, man, I could have like a you know,
hippie Jesus.
Speaker 2: Basically, that's not what we believe. But all the heretics
and all the cults, they.
Speaker 1: Believe that we believe in hippie Jesus, just the sort
of doubting prophet. But no, we believe that he's a
divine person. So you're correct that Muslim that we would
agree that God in terms of his divinity is impossible.
He's unchanging, he's eternal. But he has the ability to
enter into time and space and to undergo our weakness
for the sake of deification, for the sake of saving
us and moving us out of that state and into
eternal life.
Speaker 3: And he undergoes, and he bears this suffering, He spares
this contingency in a contingent state of the humanity, correct
the human nature that needs the food.
Speaker 2: It right. We don't say that his divinity needed that food.
We say rightly.
Speaker 3: And so again the problem, the problem that where Muslims
are picking up on this, the reason why they find
this idea offensive is because they don't believe that it
befits the dignity of God to do these things. They
think that somehow that it is an insult to God's
dignity is God, that he should become these things. And
I think that what that drives at is a very
different vision of God, because the division of the vision
of God within Islam is a God of power, a
god of authority, a god of might, have got a
royal ruler, as it were, who you know, it's not
fitting that he should dwell with his underlings, that he
should dwell tabernacle with his creation, his creation is below him,
is beneath him. It's about his royal dignity being insulted.
Whereas I would say to all the Muslims who are
maybe listening to this, that we're not inviting you to
believe in your God. We're inviting you to believe in
a different God. And the fundamental attribute of the God
that we believe in him is a God of love.
And love is that thing that drives God, as it were,
to become man, to take on the fullness of human nature.
It is a an overpowering, not an overpowering as if
God is a slave to love. But it's the very
essence of his nature that that it forms his actions
in the way that it guides the way that he
wishes to be. That by becoming man, he takes on
something that is beneath his royal dignity, but it's because
he's He's there's a greater, something more important to him
than simply royal dignity or preserving royal dignity. It is
this idea of love. And you've got to ask yourself
which kind of ruler? And my sort of question to
Muslims is which kind of ruler is a better kind
of ruler, a ruler who is so distant and far
from you that he only ever sends his delegates and
his messengers and you never see him face to face,
or a ruler who's who despite the fact that he
is the ruler, despite the fact that he has all
of his royal dignity, which incidentally cannot be affected or
stripped away from him or taken from him by anything.
You know, if a king gets covid in mud, he
is He's still a king. If a king dresses as
a peasant, is he still a king? You know? Does
the clothes that the ruler have decide whether he is
a ruler? If the queen doesn't wear the crown on
her head, is she still the queen? Of course, none
of the royal dignity of God is not defined by
the fact or compromised by the fact that he becomes
a lowly human being. But it does demonstrate something about
who he is as a person that he does become
a human being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't want Yeah, I was going to ask
you about I was going to ask you about the
notion of sort of being the slave of Allah. Now,
Paul will use that analogy at times where he says,
I'm a bond slave of Christ and so forth. But
Christ is pretty consistently using another analogy as well, that
we are not just made servants and slaves of God,
but actually sons of God. And this I say this
because there's the idea of becoming sons. And the whole
point of Christ doing what he's doing is for our
good and to actually share in the glory that he
possesses with the Father. So, for example, Jesus and John
seventeen says, the hour has come. Now glorify your son,
that the Son might glorify you, for you have given
him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal
life to as many as you have given him. This
is eternal life, that they might know, that they might
know you, the One True God. And Jesus, whom you
have sent, I've glorified you on earth. I finished the
word that you've given me to do. And now glorify
me together with yourself, with the glory that I had
with you before the world was. And then he goes
on to say that he intends to share that glory
with us as sons with him. So Christ actually makes
us sons, not just slaves.
Speaker 2: Not just this.
Speaker 1: If you think of Paul's allegory Galatians, for of Hagar
and Sarah the slave girl, and he compares flesh Israel
to those who are like slaves to the law, and
he's saying that no, Christ actually came to make us
heirs of the promise to make us sons of God.
So the whole point of this, this humbling state that
Christ undergoes is not just to die and to pay
a debt, but to die and to satisfy eternal justice,
you could say, and then to actually raise us to
a higher status what was intended of man in the beginning,
so that we might participate in eternal life.
Speaker 2: And so that's all we mean by a lot of.
Speaker 1: People are confused by Orthodox theology when you talk about theosis.
They say, oh, you think that you're pagan and you
become gods like Aster Croley apotheosis. No, no, we become that's no, no,
we become participants in eternal life and immortality on the
basis of the uncreated grace of God.
Speaker 2: And then that's what.
Speaker 3: And this is something this is because Muslims go to
the passage that you've just quoted in John seventeen isn't
it where it says Christ say, is the only true God,
And any Christian who knows the scripture just goes, well,
keep reading some and then what you get to is
you get to the bit where Christ says, and now
glorify me Father with the glory that I had with
you before the beginning, before the beginning, before the creation
of the world, thus demonstrating Christ's divinity. Now, any Muslim's progressed,
any Muslim apologist or polemasist who's progressed past very basics
of I've got you on this verse will then counter
to the fact that the Christian points out Christ's pre
exist and sharing of eternal glory with a father by
going on and then saying, ah, well hold on. Later
in that same passage, it says that Jesus will share
that glory with his followers, and thus therefore it shows
that he isn't God. But actually, what you're saying is
is is correct. It's the idea that by taking on
human form, Christ is elevating the humanity or that we
have that when we are in him, when we embrace him,
that we are able to share in the divine energy,
in the divine attributes like eternality. And here's the thing.
Muslims might be scandalized by that, but don't they also
believe in eternal life. Don't they also believe that they
are going to enter into eternal existence? And if that
eternal existence is something that is a predica only of
God alone, how can they possibly share in it? How
can they have a hope of eternal existence except by
sharing in something that is the divine attribute of God alone?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, you know they've.
Speaker 3: Got the same They've got this scandal within their theology
that they're not even aware of because they've never sat
down and thought about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to add too real quick. If you want us,
we will be reading superchat later on. So if you
want to support this chat, this discussion, this channel, you
can do that with Superchat questions. A bit of a
scuffle that has immerged in the chat the answer to
this question about I just want to address this real
quick because everybody's sort of obsessed with this. When we
say that Christ suffered death in his humanity, that's absolutely orthodox,
that's in the creed. You have to believe that this
human nature underwent death. So we're not saying that his
humanity died and ceased to exist. He underwent the experience
of death in his humanity read Book three of Saint
John Damascus. And then in the resurrection he raised and
restored that nature to a higher state. That is the
Orthodox doctrine.
Speaker 2: He did die in his human nature.
Speaker 1: And so whoever this guy is that's saying that Christ
can't die in his humanity is incorrect. Email you are
incorrect anyway, So.
Speaker 3: Yes, he is incorrect. He is incorrect. It says it
in scripture, the Apostolic Fathers teach it. And you know,
the other thing to bear in mind is that lots
of people confuse death with non existence. At that point,
Christ died and ceased to exist in any state. Christ
continued to exist, the logos continued to exist, but he
no longer continued to exist in the state that existed
before death. Right, And that's the point that lots of
people confuse. Now I'm just thinking, Jay, we're running out
of time to get through all of these fifteen. So
what I suggest is one I picked, and we hammer
two more, and then we move on to our next topic.
Is there a particular one that you want to have
a go at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's say we got several here, yeah, here's the
good one that comes up. And actually several of these
are kind of derivative of the same issue. Why does
Jesus say in John seventeen three, I'll let you answer,
and I'll give you my answer. Why does Jesus say
the Father is greater than I? And why does Jesus
say I'm ascending to my Father, to my.
Speaker 2: God and to your God. How does Jesus have a
god if he's God?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, well so, I mean, if you go to
Philippians chapter two, you've already alluded to it. You know
the passage that I'm going to quote reading from verse
three Christ. And this is an important thing because it
demonstrates that our moral conduct is actually rooted in theological truths,
Because Paul is about to make a statement about how
we should behave based upon a theological narrative. Do nothing
from selfie or empty conceit, but with humility of mind,
regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not
merely look out for your own personal interests, but also
for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves,
which was also in Christ. Jesus, who, although he existed
in the form of God, did not regard equality with
God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking
the form of a bond servant and being made in
the likeness of men. So when when the divine Logos,
when the divine Logos, who shared the glory with the
Father before the world was, became a man, He's not
going to become an atheist man. He's not going to
suddenly deny God's existence, is he And so when he
becomes a man, he takes on the status of a servant,
it says, which is the way to interpret all of
these statements about I am going to my God and
you God, because in his humanity, his humanity as also
being the person of the Son, because that's a continuous
state all the way through both post and preincarnation. There
is that status in which he is the son of
the Father. But now he is the son of the
Father in human form, and humanity must glorify God. That
is what it's all about. That's what the whole purpose
of life is that our humanity glorifies God, and Christ,
being the perfect man, glorifies God the Father. And so
he can speak rightfully in his humanity of having my
God and your God. He's speaking to human beings. He's
speaking as a human being. And what was the other
passage that you mentioned about the Father being the only
true God?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Father.
Speaker 3: I mean, the Father is greater than I in the
sense that he is he is, he has taken on
a human nature. This is not a statement about This
is not a statement about that his ontology in his
divinity is somehow less than the father's. It is that
he has taken on a lower status than the Father.
The scripture is clear that he's taken on the form
of a servant, and thus he can rightfully speak as
the Father being greater than I. You know, But when
you look at these passages, Christ also says things like
honor me as you honor the Father. Now, you're a
logical thinking person, Jay, and I'm sure many of your
audience must be as well, because that's the kind of
person you'll attract. Who is who is the Father? The
Father is God? How do you honor God? You honor
God with divine worship. You honor God as God. So
if Jesus Christ is saying honor me as you honor
the Father, what is he saying? He's saying, honor me
as God, and that the worst thing that a Muslim
can do is to try to use John to argue
against the idea of Christ's divinity, when the whole point
of John's Gospel is to demonstrate christ divinity. You know,
there's another passage where where Christ says, I of myself
can do nothing. In that same passage, which is John five,
Christ also says on me, as you want to the Father,
and he says, I do exactly what I see the
Father doing. Everything that the Father. What the Father does
I do? If we just go to it, I want
to get the exact wording because it is important. In
John five, Christ says, truly, truly, I say to you,
the son of the Son can do nothing of himself
unless it is something he sees the Father doing. And
Muslims use this as an argument to show that Christ
is not God. For whatever the Father does these things,
the son also does in like manner. And I just
think about that, whatever the Father does, the son also
does in like manner. So when the Father creates, what
does the son do? When the Father gives life, what
does the son do when the Father, you know, exists
before the world or creates the angels or commands the angels?
What does the Son do you know? And and and
Muslims miss all of this. They're just picking and choosing
individual versus out of context, and it demonstrates a lack
of sincerity on their part that they are not engaging
with the text. And invariably, when you read just a
bit further on, a bit further down, it always compromises
their argument. When Christ says that the Father is the
only true God, he's speaking to Jews in a context
in which they are being dominated by Romans and had
just been previously dominated by Greeks, both of which were pagans.
So to say that the Father was the only true
God is to say that the Caesar is not a god,
or that Pluto is not a god, or that you know,
Jupiter is not a god, that none of these other
gods are God, that the Father alone is God in
that context, but that none of the statements that Muslims
use ever ever create the impression that Jesus is just
a man. There's always room within the interpretation that Jesus,
even when he says that the Father is the only
true God, doesn't exclude Christ from divinity. It doesn't exclude
Christ from divinity. It doesn't say that I am just
a human being.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And when when Muslims say, you show me where Jesus
says I am God in these words, We'll show me
where Jesus says I am just a human being, he
doesn't say that. You know, it's a silly form of argument.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, of course, and he actually does say
many times over I am So he actually does, yes, exactly,
I mean.
Speaker 2: And when you.
Speaker 1: Understand that the Old Testament, Theophanes are actually manifestations of
the logos than many many times over all throughout the
Old Testament, every time God is speaking and saying I
am the Lord, there is no other that's actually Jesus talking.
So but they don't actually understand that because they don't
understand that. They think Jesus is like this this new
creation like that, you know, like arians thought.
Speaker 2: That that he well, actually don't, don't.
Speaker 1: Don't Muslims think that there was there's some kind of
logos that's related to Jesus or something like this.
Speaker 2: You would know more about this than they say that that.
Speaker 3: Muslims say that Jesus is the creation of Allah, that
he created Allah by that that the Allah created Jesus
by a word, that Jesus is just a word spoken
by Allah. And in their theology they just think it's
the word command be and he became. It's kind of
like that. But but I don't think they they they
thought through the implication that that that it's the Kuranic
text and in fact might be able to just find it.
Let's the I mean, there are some Christians that argue
that this actually demonstrates that even in the Koran, there
is this idea of Christ's divinity, because how can God
ever be separated from his words. So if if Jesus
is but a word from Allah, well that word must
have eternally been with Allah. You know. Muslims have the
complication within the idea that the divine attributes, like the
words that we find in the Iran. Our eternal is
an eternal book. But this eternal book, these eternal words
that have apparently always existed in the Mother of the book,
have become now written texts, and so you have a
compromising of the what is said to be a divine attribute,
a divine reality, crossing over the barrier and entering into
the contingent world. As it were, but they don't have
They don't have the same view of Jesus that we do.
They think he is just a creation, akin to Adam
being it became, is their logic. Some Christians argue that
because the Koran says that that Jesus is just a
word from Allah, that therefore that word is also eternal.
And you can make that kind of argument certainly that
the Koran is not without his problems on that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm sorry I need to address this again
because the chat is being ridiculous. So Emil I explained
earlier on the Communicatio Idiomatum. This is Saint Cyril's explanation
that whatever's true of either nature's can be spoken of
the whole Christ. That does not mean that when we
speak of the death of Christ that we don't therefore
mean that he died in his humanity. The divine nature
is impassable. When we say the nature of humans, Christ
humans nature does it's the person of the Logos that
underwent death in his human nature. It is the human
nature that died. You're committing the Monophysite Theopaschite heresy by
saying that the Logos died. That's why Saint Cyril explains
it as communicastio idiomatum. The Logos died in his humanity.
The whole section of Book three of John Damascus refused
the basic mistake that you're making, and I'm going to
ban you because you keep monopolizing the chat over something
that is not the topic that we're discussing. It's a
basic Christological mistake that you're making, and you won't listen.
That's why I'm going to ban you. Anyway, I'm sorry,
So let's move on.
Speaker 2: Maybe to the issue of Christian politics.
Speaker 1: Do you want to move on to that, because I
do actually have a debate with the Kurgan that's coming
up here a little bit. No, you don't agree with
what I just said, because what I just said is
addressing the mistake that you're making. We have to distinguish
nature in person. Even after Christ is incarnate, he has
two natures. He does not die in his divinity. That's
why you don't get communicatio idio mantum. Anything that we
say of either of the nature is is true of
the whole Christ. So did God die, Yes, in the
sense of his human nature undergoing death. This is a
basic mistake that you're making you're starting to make me mad.
So again, you take, let's talk about let's talk about
let's talk about politics.
Speaker 2: So you take, you take the next part.
Speaker 3: So so moving on, So moving on in terms of
in terms of Christian politics, Let's just do a bit
of an introduction because I've often been perturbed by this
thought that we've had prime minister after prime minister and
president after president who are professing Christians, and yet the
position of the Church and the position of the Christian
communities continue to get worse. Laws are being passed that
are contradictory to a Christian world view, and these laws
are often being passed by Christians or people that profess
to be Christians. Now possibly, I mean, I try to
be charitable, so if someone says that they are a Christian,
I don't presume to judge other wise unless they give
me lots of good reasons to presume otherwise. And I'm
often willing to accept that people can think erroneously about
politics despite the fact that they are Christian. So I
wondered as to why that is, and I've kind of
come to the conclusion that the reason why you can
have a prime minister that is willing to pass a
law that change is the definition of marriage, or a
Christian Prime minister that's willing to pass laws in favor
of divorce or abortion, or even presidents I mean in
America who do similar such things like you know, I
think in America, President Obama passed a law that compelled
Catholic adoption agencies to hand children over to gay couples,
despite the fact that it contradicts our faith. I don't know,
you can correct me if that particular factoid is wrong.
But why is that? And I've come to the conclusion
it's because Christians don't have a political consciousness that is
rooted in their faith as a people, and that what
Christians need to become conscious of is that because we
are a collective, because we are a people known as
the Church, we are the body of Christ, that that
means that we have legitimate political interests in society that
we have to defend. That we have to defend our
own values which give rise to our own culture, and
that the way that we need to do that is
is by having a Christian political narrative that that is
socially conservative, that seeks to defend things like married life,
the family, that that is concerned with justice, so opposes
things like you know, slavery, leaving people in poverty, you know,
has a care for the poor, but also have a
third element which is particularly unique, which is based upon
solidarity with other Christians, the idea of political solidarity with
other Christians in whatever they're going through, you know, particularly
when the thing that they're going through is because they
are a Christian. And that's sort of like what what
a Christian political narrative looks like. And I think as
as society continues to change and continues to change in
a way that's Unchristian and even aggressive towards Christianity, the
need for a political awakening amongst the church, a political
consciousness amongst the church is increasing. We've just seen a
coordinated attempt to wipe out Christians in Iraq and Syria.
Catholics and Orthodox have suffered the brunt of that by
Isis who have deliberately attempt to wipe out the church. There.
There are attempts to persecute Christians in Central African Republic.
There are attempts to persecute Christians in North Africa. There
are there's persecution of Christians in Egypt, there's persecution of
Christians in Pakistan, this persecution of Christians in Burma, and
you know, and we as Christians, we've we've we we
are just so mind bogglingly silent about this topic. I am.
I am confounded as to why. And my only conclusion
is that it's because Christians lack any kind of political
narrative that is coherent. I'm going to ask, I'm going
to ask Lewis very cheekly, if you could film like
with water cuss I'm talking to you and I'm thirsty,
and yeah, you're just your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: Jay, Yeah, I mean, I think that my take.
Speaker 1: And we have a lot of talks and videos where
we discussed this about the political aspects of Christian theology
that's been lost as a result of a lot of
developments in the West, particularly the Enlightenment. We absolutely an orthodoxy,
believe that there has to be there is a doctrine
of the civil state. You can see this in the
development of Christian theology.
Speaker 2: I don't believe in the evolution of.
Speaker 1: Dogma, but there is a development of the theology of
the Church Fathers that's legitimate, and that development, in our view,
is getting greater and greater precision and clarifying. It's not
the Roman Catholic notion of sort of evolving doctrine of
Colonel Newman or something like that. So there is a
doctrine of the civil state, and I think a lot
of modern even orthanox in the West, are sort of
unaware of this doctrine. In Russia, it's called sober noost,
where you have the idea of community in our civil state. Theology,
it's called simple nea where you have a balance of
powers between the civil state under God and the Church
under God. So both are under God. That's why you
have the Byzantine double headed eagle, and so they're both accountable,
but in different ways. Right, So the Church is spiritual,
it does have a priority and a premacy of place
over the state.
Speaker 2: But the state is not anti God.
Speaker 1: The state is not a thing that I mean, we
believe that if you believe the biblical account, God actually
established the state. It's God that gave no other right
to exact the death penalty. And if you follow from
Genesis nine where the death penalty is given, all the
way up to Run thirteen, where Paul says that the
state still has the authority from God as a diaconos.
Paul uses the word and the term diaconos, which is
a liturgical term for a deacon of the civil state.
And that's why in the Byzantine symphonia notion you have
the emperor actually could go behind the iconostasis. He was
actually seen as a lesser minister of God. You could say,
we would say that that is the norma, even all
the way up into Father serfrom Rose, one of the
more prominent defenders of the Book of Genesism in Orthodoxy
in the modern period. In his book Nihilism, he says
that the Orthodox imperium is the providential mode of government
that God has ordained for Christianity, and that's why for
hundreds and hundreds of years from millennia, the Church has
done coronation ceremonies where you have Orthodox emperors and Orthodox kings.
Chris made it to be ministers under God. So in
our review this is not up for grabs. It's not
something that nobody knows about. There is a political perspective
that we're supposed to have, and although we don't know,
necessarily apply everything from the mosaic legislation into the civil sphere.
It's not judaizing, and it's not a heresy to have
the same view of the way that the Church operated
from after the Christianization of the Empire with Theodosius, all
the way up until the Byzantine Fall. You have this
simple notion of Symponia, that there's a balance of powers,
that the state has a duty to keep the moral
law of God. That is the orthodox view, and to
deny that is actually just to adhere to the liberal
and Enlightenment principles that come out of the Enlightenment. And
that's why we don't really care for the Enlightenment too much.
I mean, yeah, there was a lot of legitimate criticisms
of corruption in the state and in the church in
the West at that time, but that doesn't mean that
all the principles of Voltaire and all these characters are
necessarily the ideals that we want. So we do have
to re evaluate and reinstitate, reinstitute, excuse me, the notion
of a Christian civil order. Now, that's not in our view.
Like our primary thing, we want to convert people first.
We believe that there has to be a conversion on
the inner side of man first, and that's.
Speaker 2: What if you look at the history of the Church.
Speaker 1: The martyrs of the first three centuries is what led
eventually to the conversion of the Empire. We see that
as a good thing, and so the same idea would apply.
Now we're not trying to like we're let's go convert
a bunch of kings and then they'll force everybody to
be Orthodox and Christians.
Speaker 2: No, no, it's not like that.
Speaker 1: We convert hearts first, and then it spills out into
the civil sphere. Right, So if we put things in
the right order, eventually it will spill out into the
political civil sphere when it's appropriate in our views. So
and last one, last point, I'll Megan, I'll let you
have the floor, which is that I will give Islam
credit for understanding that God is not divorced from the
rest of society, right. I mean, Christianity, because of its
acceptance in the West, at least of Pietism and of
the influence of the Enlightenment, has been severely weakened because
it doesn't believe that, oh, God doesn't haveyhing to do
with the civil sphere. That's just me and my church
laugh on Sunday, and then the rest of the week
is just whatever you want. Why is that well, because
Jesus is just a hippie prophet, So there's a Nestorian
and Aryan Enlightenment conception of Jesus and not understanding that
he's actually a Ponto crad or he is actually king
of kings, right, that means that he's actually over the
civil state as well.
Speaker 3: I think, and I think the problem that the issue
is that Christians have divorced the idea that we can
hold politics as Christians. You know that a member of
the laity can hold the highest office in the land.
And I think part of that comes from an abuse
of or as or an erroneous reading of Matthew twenty
two fifteen, the idea of paying tribute to Caesar. Then
the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap
him in what he said, and they sent their disciples
to him along with the Herodians, saying, teacher, we know
that you are truthful and teach the way of God
in truth, and defer to no one, for you are
not partial to any tell us. Then what do you
think it is lawful to give a pull tax to
Caesar or not? Now? Why was that controversial question? It
was because the Jewish believers, the Jewish community didn't like
the idea of having Caesar as their king. They saw
God as their king, and the idea of having a
pagan image on their coinage broke the Jewish commandment. So
it was kind of like, you know, where do you
stand on this? And the Herodians were people who were
supporters of the Party of Herod, who was the son
of Herod the Great, and the idea of him being
the puppet king of the Roman occupiers. And Jesus answer
was this. But Jesus perceived their malice and said, why
are you testing me, you hipoc show me the coin
use for the poll tax. And they brought him a denarius,
and he said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this?
They said to him, Caesars. Then he said to them,
then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and
to God's the things that are God's. And hearing this,
they were amazed, and leaving him they went away. Now
why were they amazed? People were paying the poll tax.
So it sounds at a very surface level Jesus is
just saying, go along with whatever you know is going
along with the current thing. But it's in his answer
that it is the amazingness of his answer, because he says,
render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to
God the things that are God's. Well, according to the
Old Testament, what belongs to God. He says in the
Psalms that the earth is the Lord's and everything upon it.
So when Jesus says, render to Caesar, what belongs to Caesar,
and to God what belongs to God, he's saying everything
belongs to God. That means politics belongs to God. It
means political authority belongs to God. It means political office
belongs to God. It means the nation state belongs to God.
And we as Christians must render our political office to God.
We must render the state to God. We must render
our political activism to God. But in the Enlightenment, what
happened was this verse was used as a way of
separating politics from religion, and so lots of people have
this erroneous view that the church, and I use this
in the broadest sense, that the body of believers me
and you as part of the Church, the laity, that
the Church should stay out of politics, and that religion
is just this private thing that we keep to ourselves
and we don't infuse it with politics. Well, we've seen
where that leads and it's not led to anywhere good.
So I think it's time that the Church has a
rethink on this topic and that actually we see that
we should use any influence or authority that we have
in society to nudge and to be a light that
shines out on a hill, to be the salt the
yeast that levens a hole, to be salt in the earth,
and to deconate to move society in a Christian direction,
you know, and that is about rendering to God what
belongs to God, because Jesus is saying that Caesar belongs
to God. And that's why this answer was amazing. That's why,
because he managed to get out of the trap that
they've laid for him without ever compromising the truth of scripture.
And I think that Christians need to recapture this vision
of seeking a Christian politic, a Christian society, and what
I mean by that is the idea that we are
a Christian politic, we are a Christian society in this
world that we exist. You were talking about the theology
that the political narrative that developed after the conversion of Caesar.
But we don't live in that world now. We live
in a world where many Caesars are against Christ. Back
as actually that at the time when the New Testament
was written, there are many Caesars that are against Christ.
Obama was against Christ, Cameron was against Christ. Mercle is
against Christ. There are many caesars now. The caliphates were
all against Christ. You know, all of these Caesars are
against Christ. Stalin Hitler, they were all against Christ. We
as Christians now are in a world where where we
have to re We're in a pre Constantine time and
we have to re envision what it means to reconvert
the empire, as it were, to reconvert the states that
we live in. And an example of someone who's done
that to some degree is the President of Hungary, you know,
who's very much about incorporating the idea of Christian identity
into his political narrative, even to the point that he
has established a political office, the Department of State, that
is dedicated to helping persecute a Christians.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a great point. Your thoughts, No, I
fully agree with that. I think that we're going to
let me ask you.
Speaker 3: A question then, because I mean one of one of
the arguments that's often used about, often used against this idea.
It is this idea that you know it was never
intended that the Church should be in power. How do
you respond to that? What's your thought on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a misunderstanding of the predictions and prophecies of
the Old Testaments. In fact, many times in Isaiah and
the latter chapters of Isaiah, Isaiah predicts that the Church
will actually have tremendous power and influence in the world.
In fact, kings and emperors and queens will submit to
the law as it goes for from Zion. And we
know that those are all predictions of the Messianic period
and therefore of the Church. So when Jesus established the kingdom,
if you look at Daniel two, the kingdom that the
Messiah sits up is the one that will actually conquer
the empire under which the Messiah is born. So Daniel
actually predicts in Daniel two, Daniel seven, and Daniel nine
the conversion of the Roman Empire. And I've made many
videos and discussions about this as a powerful prophetic testament
to the inspiration and authority of the scriptures. So it's
just a basic misunderstanding of what the doctrine of the
New Testament actually is. And it's assuming that it's out
of accord with all of those Old Testament prophecies of
the victory and power of the Church. In fact, all
of those prophecies and predictions, for example, about the covenant
curses and blessings in Deuteronomy twenty eight and the latter
chapters of Leviticus, those are actually applied in Revelation two
and three by Jesus himself to the church. The Covenant
curses and blessings model is applied to the Church, and
Jesus says that if.
Speaker 2: You are faithful to me, I will actually give you.
Speaker 1: A victory over your oppressors and over your persecutors. So
we aren't necessarily out first and foremost to seek political power.
We are out first and foremost to convert the nations.
And then political power itself again is from God. And
you have to deny ultimately the root of this in Genesis.
And this is of course why a lot of people
deny the text of Genesis. We're big defenders of Genesis here,
but God actually gave the right to exact the death
penalty to Noah. State rulers are not outside the authority
and providence of God.
Speaker 2: Even pagan emperors.
Speaker 1: If you read the Book of Daniel, you'll notice that
Nebucaneser was under the providence of God, and Daniel tells
Nebucaneser this that you need. Basically, the whole first several
chapters of Daniel is about Nebganese being humbled and realizing
that he has to submit to God. So the holistic
interpretation of the Bible from Genesis all the way up
through God consistently holds rulers, even pagan rulers, accountable to
He has moral law, accountable.
Speaker 2: To the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 1: So even though God providentially can use the pagan nations too,
for example, in the Old Testament chastise Israel many times over,
it doesn't mean that those.
Speaker 2: Rulers aren't accountable.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Isaiah, when God talks about using the
Babylonians against Israel as a chastisement, God says, I will
then turn around and chastise the Babylonians for their paganism
and their idolatry. So civil rulers are bound to Christ.
They have to submit to Christ. And that's always been
the doctrine of the Church. Now, there was some confusion
in the first second century of the Church because some
people like Tertullian and other people who didn't end up
being kind of are accepted theologians who were early writers.
They thought that, well, maybe the end of the world
is coming really soon, and maybe we're not supposed to
have anything to do with the civil state.
Speaker 2: But the Church, for the most part.
Speaker 1: In its saints and in it's recognized the Elogians. You
can actually read Saint Clement. The letters of Saint Clement
early early on, affirm the death penalty, and they affirm the.
Speaker 2: Duty of the ruler to God. Right, so this is
all just made up Enlightenment nonsense.
Speaker 3: There is a political narrative right there in the Church Fathers.
I think many Christians have this. Certain Christians have a
sort of false concept that it seems like only non
Christians are destined to be instituted into political office. And
it's you know, they read Romans thirteen, where it says
every person is to be subject in subjection to the
governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God,
and those which exist are established by God. Now they
use that, But then they have this really weird interpretation
that states that that only applies to non Christian political authority,
that actually it's all the Pagans, the Muslims, and the
Communists and the fascists that are destined to be in charge.
But if you take that worse seriously, then when Constantine converts,
so when a Christian president is in power, you know,
then that obviously applies to them as well, and they
are still a disciple of Christ even though they are
in political office. And then lots of Christians will will
have this idea, well, you know, it is a Christian
who's in political office, so they have to conduct themselves honestly,
and they have to be fair, and they sort of
treat it like, you know, like you would behave in
any everyday work that you might do that doesn't have
a greater wider social implication, and that you just have
to act with integrity. And they reduce the idea of
a Christian in political office to simply questions of integrity.
But that is that is not actually what natural law demands,
that is not what justice demands, it's not what Christian
discipleship demands. It means that a Christian has to pass
Christian policies based upon a Christian worldview, and that might
mean that they have to be pragmatic. Like Constant Team
was pragmatic. He didn't just become a Christian and then decide, right,
I'm going to destroy all the pagan temples. He just
did what was politically pragmatic for the good of the church.
And he passed the Edict of Milan, and he made
it legal to be a Christian, and he made Christianity
one of the official Roman religions, and then he allowed
restitution and he compensated Christians for their losses. But he
didn't suddenly start going around making, you know, the ancient
pagan Roman religions illegal. You know, so you've sometimes got
to be pragmatic because we still live in a sinful world.
But Christians should have a political vision and they should
seek to pass Christian laws. And so when a Christian
finds themselves in the political office, they should believe that
they are there because God put them there, which means
that they have a purpose for being there, you know.
And if you're truly to be governed by Christian discipleship,
then that means that the cause of the persecuted church
has to rank really, really high in your list of priorities.
It's got to be in the top three. You know.
It's kind of like, you cannot be a Christian and
when you have the opportunity to intervene against the persecution
of Christians, you do nothing. It cannot be that that,
when you have the actual ability and means an opportunity
to try and alleviate the persecuted church, that you do nothing.
When you have that power and authority. Me and you, Jay,
We're never going to get close to that kind of office.
But anyone whoever, ever ever hears this, whoever's listening to this,
you know, whatever position you're in in legitimate authority, you're
there because God put you there, and that means that
you have a purpose for being there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Our model is you look at something like the Code
of Justinian. I mean, he's a saint and an Orthodox
emperor because he I mean he was also a theologian, right,
I mean we believe he was Orthodox. We believe that
he defined and laid out some solid Christological writings and confirmed.
Speaker 2: The Orthodox faith.
Speaker 1: So he is a model monarch, as are you know,
great Kings of Serbia, as are many Russian kings and
so forth. So that's the norm, that's the classical view.
And I really appreciate that you are bringing attention to this,
because the political sphere has to be governed by the
moral law of God.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But then you've got the question of, you know, politically,
what do we do when we're faced by caliphates and
communists and Nazis. You know, the reality is that Christians,
if you're a Christian, then that means that you have
to pursue the heart of God. You have to pursue
the things of God, and that means the justice and
peace of God. And that therefore ideologies that are opposed
to the justice and the peace of God, we as
Christians must oppose. You know, the limits of political authority
over the Church were limited when Peter. Let me just
find the passage in the Book of Acts where the
apostles were arrested. Right here we go in Acts chapter four,
when Peter and John were arrested and the Sahandarin basically
said to them stop preaching in the name of Christ.
So we read from verse thirteen. Now, as they observed
the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they
were uneducated and untrained men. They were amazed and began
to recognize them as having been with Jesus, and seeing
the man who had been healed standing with them, they
had nothing to say in reply. But when they had
ordered them to leave the council, they began to confer
with one another, saying, what shall we do with these men?
For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place
through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem,
and we cannot deny it, so that it will not
spread any further amongst the people. Let us warn them
to speak no longer to any man in this name.
And when they had summoned them, they commanded them not
to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
Now it's really important to recognize that this was the
civil authority. This was the civil authority of the time.
These people were speaking in their office, They were speaking
as the legitimate civil authority, and they were giving a command.
So these Romans thirteen kind of fundamentalists who believe that
you should just surrender everything to the state and obey
the state in every regard, no matter what it says.
Listen to the next bit. But Peter and John Ansiden
said to them, whether it is right, morally right, whether
it is morally right, whether it is right in the
sight of God to give heed to you rather than
to God, you be the judge. In other words, they're
saying that there is an authority higher than the civil authority.
There is an authority higher than the parliament. There's an
authority higher than the president. There's an authority higher than
the secular authority. And wherever that secular authority is opposed
to God, Christians must be rebels.
Speaker 1: Right, That's why there's martyrs. I mean, if if we
just submitted to anything that the emperor said or that
the pagan ruler said, then there wouldn't be martyrs. You
would just sacrifice to the to the gods, and you
would dig.
Speaker 3: The martyrs were deemed as criminals.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But you look at the church today and you hear
these wimpy Christians quoting Romans thirteen to try and avoid
any conflict with the secular states.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's total nonsense. Yeah, And we.
Speaker 3: As Christians, we need to rediscover this theology of martyrdom,
this spirituality of martyrdom, because right now the liberal Western
states are moving away from Christ. And it's reaching a
point now where Christians have to choose, who are we
going to follow? Are we going to follow the secular
a liberal state? You know, when when the secular liberal
state is telling you that you have to speak a
lie and you have to call a man a woman
and a woman and a man, and you have to,
you know, go along with abortion, and you know, you
have to go along with the whole liberal progressive agenda
about definitions of the family and you know, the ideas
of sexuality. And if you dare to speak out about
these things, you're guilty of thought crimes. If you speak
out against you know, multiculturalism, you're guilty of thought crimes.
And we're beginning to see people being politically persecuted in
the West for these things. Like we've got a choice
to make. Are we just going to go along with
a state? You know, the company mattresses are god kind
of spirituality that permeates so much of the Church of
England is not going to cut the kind of intolerance
that we're seeing and it certainly wouldn't survive in a caliphate.
You we've got to rediscover this idea of martyrdom. We've
got to rediscover this idea that actually, you know, where
the state is opposed to God, then then then that
means that we're in conflict with the state, you know,
and that means that Christians must actively work to bring
down those political offices, those powers that be, those powers
and authorities right are in opposed to the Gospel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I'm a constant critic of classical liberalism.
Classical liberalism will never be able to stand up against Islam.
Islam will crush the degeneracy that classical liberalism promotes and
allows because it is based on an atheistic presupposition. All right,
we're gonna have to take the superchats because I've got
a debate debate coming up here in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's do those superchats if we can.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: Let me pull this up here, so Slavk for ten pounds.
He says Islam came around six hundred years after Christ.
Martyrs died for nothing until some pagan guy saw an angel.
The only thing that they say in response to Acts
for twelve in Galatians one, Ace one eight is that
the New Testament is fake. So I think you're hinting
at the sort of regurgitated arguments that you hear from
Islamic apologists.
Speaker 2: Would you agree that the only thing.
Speaker 1: That they that they say is the New Testament is fake?
Is that kind of like a fallback that you usually
hear from from Islamic apology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Muslims. Muslims will make this fake attempt at engaging
with the scripture by misquoting textual versus. But then when
you slam all their arguments by using the whole of
the scripture, their, their, their, their fallback position is always, well,
the scriptures were all corrupt and they're not trustworthy. But
yet that I am not yet able to meet a
Muslim that's provided any evidence of an original, Because if
you're going to say that something is corrupted, you've got
to be able to evidence that there was an original
that it was corrupted from. And the fact of the
matter is that Muslims have presented no evidence at all
for their idea of an ingeal that was first given
that as an incorrupted text that was suddenhow lost. There's
no evidence of such a text existing arguments that reference
Q and P. In terms of textual criticism. Well, these
are the sayings of Jesus that we have in the Gospels.
You know that that's why this correlation between the synoptics.
They're not proof of some they're not proof of some
Islamic in ingel their text that the if the theory
is true, that they're evidence of a Christian text, a
sort of manual of the sayings of Jesus that was
permeating the Christian community. And if you read the beginning
of Luke, you know that that's more than fits within
a Christian world view, because Luke actually references the fact
that other people had written down accounts even before he'd
written down his. So where's this, Jael, guys, where's the
evidence of.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Emil who monopolized the chat and wouldn't shut
up about this. It did end up getting banned, but
he left a super chat and he said Jay is
married the Mother of God only, the mother of his
humanity and his human nature.
Speaker 2: And do natures die?
Speaker 1: Now again, I answered this question multiple times when I
said that there was one divine person present, Cyril uses
the formula of a sole subject present for all of
Christ's in carnate actions. Who is the divine person of
the logos? There's no created human hypostasis in Christ. I've
done countless lectures on this. I lectured through the entirety
of the Exposition of Orthodox Faith. So I'm really depressed
that you monopolize the chat with this basic mistake. So
I'm going to read to you the section of John
Damascus's Exposition Orthodox Faith, Chapter twenty six, book three, where
he says, concerning the passion of our Lord and the
impassibility of his divinity. Did you hear me the Word
of God endured all of this in the flesh?
Speaker 2: What did I say?
Speaker 1: I said, he died in his flesh. He is a
divine person who underwent death in his flesh. That's his
human nature, while the divine nature alone was passionless and
remained devoid of passion. Can you read that his divine
nature was passionless and remained devoid of passion, So his
human nature died.
Speaker 2: Does that mean that Mary is Christodicos?
Speaker 1: No, we're not an historian. So there's two ways that
you could understand this. You can understand this in the
way that Saint Cyril does, who invented the term communicatio idiomodem,
which is the communication of properties, which is that whatever's
true of either nature can be spoken of the whole Christ.
It doesn't mean that the divine hypostasis died. As a
divine hypostasis, he underwent death. He yes, that subject in
his human nature, his divine hypostasis did not die. And
as John goes on to talk about the death and
descent of Christ, he makes that very clear. The word
of God, the logos, remained inseparable from the soul and
the body even at his death, and his subsistence continued
to be one that refutes everything that you said.
Speaker 2: Let's move on.
Speaker 3: To the title. Theotokos is obviously a defense of Christ's divinity, right.
Speaker 1: It's a defense of the fact that the divine person
that she get, the only person that she gave birth to,
is a divine person.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So did he get his human nature from her? Yes,
But the person that she gave birth to is the logos.
I have lectured on Saint Cyril against an Astorreus for years.
I don't know why you would even come in here
and make this silly argument. Alfonso Corral ten dollars, here's
some mammon. Very a very interesting conversation so far.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you all. Fonzo appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Not a verse five bucks, She says, Jay good, amazing guest.
Love to see Bob the Builder as a regular Hello,
Bob brother, you're a legend at Speaker's Corner, so thank.
Speaker 2: You for that.
Speaker 1: And I don't see any more super chats, but that's okay. So, Bob,
do you want to promote your own channel or Soco films?
Speaker 2: Are both? Which one? Do you prefer to both?
Speaker 3: So? Yeah, I mean if you could share the link
to both the channels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I put the Soco film's link in the description first,
so I'll add your live channel as well. But everybody,
if you want to subscribe to Bob's apologetics, go to
the link in the description show, which is two Soco films.
Speaker 2: And then again, yes, so I will be debating the
said a privationist, not a set of a contest.
Speaker 1: But by the way, they're going to fall into the
same problems in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Here, let's see what is it.
Speaker 1: It's twelve forty in one hour on Ralph's channel on
d Live, so.
Speaker 2: Come here that debate.
Speaker 1: This guy made a big stink in the last couple
of weeks and almost all of his videos are insults
and at Hominem's and cussing at me. So I don't
know that this is going to be much of a debate.
I think he was trying to debate me, debate me
into this to get attention. Turns out the guy channels aliens,
he believes UFO's bombed Mars, he does past life regression therapy,
he believes in reincarnation. So I don't think this is
going to be much of a debate.
Speaker 2: But because a lot of people really wanted to see this,
I agreed to it. So that will be.
Speaker 1: At one fifty Central time. And thank you Bob the Builder.
Everybody go subscribe to Bob check out his debates.
Speaker 2: He's got tons and.
Speaker 1: Tons of debates at Speaker's Corner that are video on YouTube.
Speaker 2: You can watch all those, Bob, Will you come back
again for another chat?
Speaker 3: Yes? Absolutely, it's been a pleasure. Jay. What's this channel?
Call this particular? So this one is called Bob the
Build of Soco Films. If you want to if you
want to subscribe to that, the link will appear with Jay.
It's been a pleasure talking with you. Jay. I'm sure
that there's lots of people again to benefit and that
the church will hopefully be edified by this, and hopefully
some Muslims we'll actually engage with. You know, what Christians
really believe as opposed to what their Dowur team tells
them that we believe. And you know, it's been a
pleasure speaking with you. Let's let's do it again sometime.
And uh, you know, I'm appreciative of all the work
that you do. You know, it's a it's a great thing.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: And again, if you want to check out my stuff,
go to Jasoniscels dot com.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the channel below. You can get my books Esotery.
Speaker 1: Hollywood one and two where I cover symbolism and film.
So again look for the debate hearing about an hour
and signing off just before.
Speaker 3: You go to anybody who wants to I'm going to
do another Q and A after this back on our channel,
so if you want to knit back over in about
ten minutes, we'll do another Q.
Speaker 2: And A and that will be on Soco or on
you or.
Speaker 3: The build of Soco Films.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'll put the link to that.
Speaker 1: Everybody go to Bob the Builder Soco Films if you
want to do Bob's Q and A, so hopefully you
guys enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: God bless, have a good night.
Speaker 3: God bless. Peace Ready take care,