Speaker 1: Well, hello everyone, this is Al Fadi and you are
joining us in another live stream. This is a very
special one, especially the Friday ones. This is of course
where we reserve it for our special guests, and with
us here today, we're so thankful, of course that he
made the time for us, our brother Jay Dyer. And
of course I have to admit, folks that I did
not know a whole lot about Jay until Sam Shamond
brought him to my attention, and then of course when
he debated with Shabier Ali and I got excited. Of course,
anyone who debates Shabir or gets involved in this field
is indeed someone that worthy of our time to discuss
the various things. Then I began to learn more and
more about his background than it was really intriguing to me.
So I want to thank everyone for being here with us.
Please pay attention to our moderators. Thank you to the
moderators for doing the great job that you typically do. Everybody,
please stick to the topic. Anyone, and I have to
tell you right now that wages any verbal attack, use
bad language, I will personally remove you from here, because
we're not here to attack and natch at each other.
We're here to respect one another and learn from each other. Brother,
thank you so much for taking the time to be
here with us, and I know your time is precious,
so we appreciate at least the next hour or so
that you'll be given to us.
Speaker 2: Thank you, glad to be here. I have seen your
stuff and I'm glad to know that there's people like
you out there that have made the interesting journey that
you have, and so I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you. And you know, Jay, I want you to,
in your own words, take a few minutes just let
people know who you are, you know, and what is
it that you do right now. Of course I also
came across your blog, if you want to call it
the Jay's Analysis. I appreciate it really the information in there,
although you have a variety of information actually on topics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I cover a lot of things. I cover philosophy, geopolitics, movies, culture.
The two books that I did focus on film analysis,
some of the big movies that you may have heard
ever seen, the symbolism in those films, the religious connotations
of those films. And then I did a TV show
a couple of years ago kind of based on the
book called Hollywood Decoded that's worth checking out if you're
into movies. So I try to tie in the philosophy
of movies and pop culture with you know, the gospel,
with theology, with those kinds of topics. But at the
same time I kind of got gradually roped into doing
more and more debates. It wasn't something I really set
out to do, but I'd always done debates. I studied
philosophy in undergrad and grad school. I did a year
of theological seminary a long time ago, and so it's
always been an interest. Debated for a long time on
campus in different philosophy club meetings, this kind of stuff,
but I never really took it into any kind of
public sphere until people were really goading me on to
kind of do public theological debates a few years ago,
and we did a few debates with atheists and that
went pretty well. So then we just kind of branched
out and got debates with other people in the Roman
Catholic sphere, got debates with other groups Protestant or two
here and there, and then finally somebody said, well, when
are you going to debate some Muslims? And I said, well,
I don't really know a lot about Islam. So within
the last eight months we've kind of done a pretty
fairly intensive study into Islam. I'm still very much a Nube,
so I wouldn't at all consider myself fluent in Islamic
tradition or theology in the different schools and so forth.
But I do have, you know, my different lectures and
notes and Quran study study. I always call it a
study Bibles. I have my Kuran's study coron now. So yeah,
it was kind of of a surprise that Shabiro was
willing to do it. I didn't think he would be willing,
but he was, and so it was a good debate.
And then we've had you know, Matt Dill Hunty, the
well known atheist, Stefan Malinu, another kind of agnostic type
of guy. So so yeah, so that's what I do
is cover all those topics, cover a lot of Orthodox theology,
which we believe is unique from Roman Catholic and Protestant theology.
So that's what I do.
Speaker 1: Yep, thank you. And of course, like I said, I
thought you did a very good job with Shabir. I
mean I didn't even know that you only spent a
few months digging deeper into it. You've done a great job.
And you know, I have to be fair and say,
Shabir strikes me as still a respectful person, even though
he has his own unique style of how he delivers
his things.
Speaker 2: But it's okay.
Speaker 1: At least he is professional more so than others. And
you know, for that, we're thankful that he's willing at
least to dive or delve into a number of important
issue With that in mind, brother, you know, when I
accepted Christ, you know, about twenty years ago, obviously, I
began to get more and more familiar with the early
Church fathers, and you know, you know creeds and you
know doctrines and things like that. And then at the
seminary I studied under the likes of doctor Wayne Rudham.
And you know, one of the classes that I've taken,
of course, has to do with the church history or
historicalry theology. So I'm always intrigued by that because there
is some benefit for that. If you want to give
at least an overview of why is it important for
any believer really to learn about church history and especially
early Church fathers, Well, I'll give.
Speaker 2: You the orthodox position on that. And that's because, of course,
as Orthodox, we believe that the Church is and has
always been Orthodox. So that's not to detegrate people in
other traditions. I myself came from a Protestant tradition, so
I'm not trying to be rude to anyone, but I
kind of studied my way into Orthodoxy, and so I
think that if we want to understand that from our perspective,
you know, the Church as a body, as an institution,
is just as miraculous and just as divine in origin
as the other doctrines of Christianity, right, just like the
virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the deity of Christ, those doctrines
are definitely at the core. But the Church is also
a corollary in one of those doctrines. So how we
view Christ his incarnation the triad is going to condition
how we view the doctrine of the Church. And that's
kind of what I eventually came to in studying the
early Church Fathers for I don't know about fourteen or
fifteen years. I got really serious into that back in
my early twenties. And what we want to know is
do we have the same faith that the apostles laid down.
I mean, I think that's the key question here for
everybody is everybody at least we all desire hopefully to
be in unison with the Apostolic deposit as scripture says, right,
keep the faith that was once for all delivered to
the saints, as scripture says, So we want to be
in continuity with that. We want to have the same
confession of faith that has always been true. Paul says,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Right, there's one vine,
one body, one kingdom, one sheep fold, one covenant. So
we want to be part of that covenant. And so
the history of the church, I believe displays God's continuing
activity via the promise of Pentecosts right within the centuries
that follow after the church right after excuse me, after
the Apostles. So when we look at the post Apostolic period,
when we look at the pre Nicene church fathers, when
we look at the post Nicene church fathers, rather than
what a lot of evangelicals tend to think, we actually
see a lot of continuity. So, and even Islamic apologists
will bring this up a lot. They'll say, oh, the Trinity,
you know, this was a later doctrine that was made up,
you know, after an Icea, or it was made up
by Athanasius or whatever. But we actually find all of
these same core doctrines taught in the post Apostolic church fathers.
When we read Clement, when we read Ignacious of Antiot,
when we read Cyprin, when we read Irenaeus, right, we
find the key doctrines of Christianity still consistently taught by
these by these important church for others. And in the liturgy,
the ancient liturgies are very crucial as well to this,
and that ultimately is what gives us the Bible itself, right,
the tradition of the Church coming together in councils, different
ones over many centuries, looking at the electionaries, looking at
the tradition of what the different Apostolic sees had done,
and that's eventually what gives the church a consensus on
the canon of Scripture itself. So there are many reasons
why church history is important. I'm certainly not trying to
elevate it above or put it in contrast to Revelation
or Scripture itself, but it's a necessary fabric that all
goes together. It kind of works in tandem is our review.
So that's what I eventually came to believe from reading
a lot of the Church Fathers and from a lot
of years of studying Scripture as well, is that it
all kind of hangs or falls together. That's what I'm
trying to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I appreciate that. I appreciate you mentioning also
about the Islamic view. In fact, I grew up as
a Muslim believe in that the Trinity is to believe
in tree gods, and later on I began to buy
into this argument that it was the Council of Nicia
that invented something like this, and you know, so many
other accusations and claims, and of course when I accepted Christ,
I began to realize, you know, none of this is true.
Now speaking of the Council of Nicia and specifically maybe Arianism,
you know, because I want to talk about trinity and
the monarchy of the Father. You know, if you want
to give people I believe it or not, not everybody
knows about arianism and this heresy or even some coordinationism.
You know, if you want to give a brief overview
so you can dive into the doctrin of a trendy,
specifically the monarchy of the Father.
Speaker 2: Right. So arianism is of course the doctrine that the
Son of God or Christ Jesus, is of a similar
or like essence as the Father, but not the same
essence as a father. Perhaps he's a little lower on
the scale, Perhaps he's a creature, perhaps he's the first
of God's creatures. A lot of different types of Aryan positions.
There was arianism, semi arianism, and even a radical position
known as eunomianism. And the reason that these views got
popular was very similar to the reasons why even today
or with Islam, those kinds of views can catch on
and be popular is that there's an appearance of kind
of simplicity. There's an appearance of well, that's just logical, right,
that if there's one God, then that one God has
identical to the essence of God, and that essence of
God is identical to the Father. So person, nature, essence
will all these things kind of get fused into what
sometimes referred to as absolute divine simplicity. The Eastern Church
Fathers especially, I'm not negating the Latin Church Fathers, but
the Eastern Church Fathers especially had at their disposal some
of the nuances in Greek philosophical terminology. I'm not talking
about Greek philosophical pagan corruptions, but the nuances in the
Greek philosophical tradition allowed for there to be rational types
of explanations for the Trinity and for the duty of
Christ that didn't violate the unity of God. So that's
the chief usage of philosophy in the period of Athanasius
and the Cappadocian Church fathers. Basil Gregory. The reason for this,
the two Gregor's. The reason for this is that it
helped us to see that it's not a contradiction, it's
fully rational, fully coherent to believe in the Trinity. Also
on the basis of revelation. I'm not saying that always
just you know, we just come up with these philosophical speculations,
but that is actually in tandem with what's revealed, and
what's revealed everybody knows is that there's one God, right
that that proposition everybody agrees with. Whether that one God
has a son and a spirit is of course where
it gets controversial. We believe that even in the Mosaic
period of the Mosaic revelation the law and the prophets and
the writings. That continuous tradition is there even in the
Old Testament. So there's no contradiction in saying that the
one God is God the Father, because there is one
God who is primarily spoken of as God the Father.
But does revelation stop there? Because our approach and the
approach of the Church fathers in our view that are correct,
is that revelation as a whole. It's a holistic body,
so we don't approach it in a piecemeal fashion. Of
This verse says this, Therefore, I'm only going to go
with that. This verse says this. This verse seems to
say something a little nuance that may appear to contradict
with this, right, But we don't believe scripture contradicts right,
Jesus says, the scripture cannot contradict. So it's a matter
of understanding in what senses both of these things are
true at the same time. And so that's where philosophical
nuance can help us to understand how we all do this.
We all do it with language. We understand that in
linguistic predication, words have different senses. They can mean different things,
even though it's the same word in different senses. It
can mean different things. Right, a kid as a goat,
a kid as a child. Right, And we could equivocate,
We could do word concept fallacy if we only took
one senses of a word in all cases right, univical predication. Right.
These kinds of things can cause us to have super
wide ranging mistakes and a lot of the heresies in
the early Church. I'm not saying it's only grammatical or linguistic,
but a lot of the heretics messed up precisely because
they weren't able to understand nuance or allow there to
be multiple senses of terms. So they would say, oh, eloheme.
Since that's sometimes used of multiple types of angelic beings,
then God must be one of the many angelic beings.
The word angel since at times that means a created
angelic messenger, it must always mean a created angelic messenger. Therefore,
the logos of the Old Testament that Theophanes as they created.
You see what I'm saying. It's this sort of all
or nothing view where everything is smushed into one definition.
The very same thing happens with simplicity. The doctrine of
divine simplicity in the history of the Church, and where
you get these assumptions in philosophy that if God is one,
he can only be one in all senses. But to
boil this down back to the original question, just simply put,
arianism is an assumption about what divine simplicity is and
must be, and who God is and must be in
a pretty strict philosophic sense. A lot of people don't
know that arianism wasn't a strictly biblically based argumentation. Arianism
was actually based on a lot of philosophical assumptions about
the identity, the isomorphic identity of the term God, the
term Father, and the term divine essence. And when all
this those are combined, any real distinctions that are made
must therefore be separate lesser ontological status or a creature.
So if there's a son, the son can't be identical
because everything a god predicated of God is identical. Right,
So you'll notice the Islamic doctrine of Tahed, the Islamic
doctrine of Tanzi, these corollaries that go together are all
premised on kind of the same idea as what the
Arians argue. The Arians argued very similar things. Nestorius famous
early Church Hereta. He argued very similar things as well.
And the assumption again is that distinction must entail composition, separation,
or division, and that's just simply not true, all right.
Even Thomas Aquinas hinges a lot of his argumentation later
on in the Medieval tradition on this assumption that real
distinctions have to entail division or composition. But when we
read the Eastern Church fathers, who we would argue really
do correctly develop in the sense of explicating, not develop
in the sense of changing, but develop the doctrine of
the triad and the monarchy of the Father. As you said,
they have no problem speaking of real distinctions that do
not entail division or composition. So we can have different
realities that are truly distinct and yet at the same
time also one and even number themselves. The Church Fathers
are very frequent, especially the Cappadocians and later on Saint Maximus,
for using analogies for the Trinity even within the created order.
I mean say, Maximus even thinks in questions and doubts
that the entire world is structured in a triadic way
because it was created from the Father through the Son,
and in the Spirit. So that triadic mode of existence
that we see in this world, Maximus argues, is a
reflection of the ultimate reality, which is the triad itself, Father,
son and Spirit. So ultimately, when you look at the
niceing Creed, it retains this doctrine of the monarchia of
the Father by pointing out that the Father alone is
the sole cause archae autotheos right principle in the godhead.
This becomes the normative Cappadocian doctrine.
Speaker 1: Cause or is it safe to say, a source.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, a lot of those terms are kind of
synonymous for what the Cavedoceans and Athenasians are getting at,
which is that Jesus Athanasius argues, is the direct offspring
of the Father's nature. He's not a work of will. Right,
so Arians and well primarily the Eunomians. Eventually the Arians
argue this too, but the Eunomians really hammer this home
where they say that the divine simplicity is so strong
and such that any action, any distinction, has to be
a work of will. So the Son has to be
a work, something that God created, maybe God's first work
even but he's still a work and therefore of some
lesser said, he doesn't share all of the predicates of
divine nature as the Father does. But we believe, and
the Cappadocians are very explicit in many many places throughout
their theology that, strictly speaking, yes, the term God in
the nice in Creed. In Paul's epistles, for us, there's
one God, the Father, I think, James says, the Father
of lights. Paul says, there's one God for us, the
Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Strictly speaking, yes, the
nice in Creed. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty.
So the beginning of the godhead is the Father. But
we don't strict that are stopped there because we also
believe that the Father has the ability and has revealed
that he eternally generates a son that is the direct
offspring of his own nature, and so therefore he possesses
even though he is second in ordal order. So Basil
calls this the ordinal numbering of the Trinity, which does
not entail any kind of lesser ontological or metaphysical status.
So just because the Son is second in the triad
and he's from the Father and has his eternal existence,
eternally from the Father. It doesn't follow. It's a non
sequitur to argue that, well, then he must also therefore
be some sort of secondary, lesser God, right, And that's
the only reason that the Arians and the semi arians
and the Unuimians argued that was because of philosophical assumptions.
They argue that, well, the first principle has to be
primary in a metaphysical sense, and if there's a second
personage or whatever, he's got to be lesser. And that
is a big part of Basil's argumentation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He says, Look, when I say the Father is cause,
I'm not saying cause in a strict identical se sense
in the way that creatures are caused. Right. He says,
that's it would be Afthenatian says this to He says,
it would be a mistake to read a one to
one correspondence between creaturely relations and the divine personal relations. Right,
So we don't do that. But he says, there is
an analogy, right, So we can't speak of analogies. The
Father is the cause and the way in the way
that a father in this time space created world creates
a son in the sense of his offspring. That's an
analogy to the way that the Father has an eternal offspring,
that is the Son. And the reason we say that
is because there are many texts that speak of Christ
having the same properties as the Father in terms of divinities,
not his hypostatic property. That's why we reserve the role
of cause to the Father alone, and that makes sure
that protects the Trinity from any kind of impersonalism or essentialism.
Any kind of Hellenism is ruled out by the monarchy
of the Father. That's what's so unique about this doctrine.
That's why ultimate we don't believe in a double procession
hypostatic origin of the spirit, and since of the Philioquay,
we believe the Father alone is the origin of the
hypostasis of the Spirit. Now that's a different topic. I
know we're not going to get into Philly oquay, but
I'm just saying that it relates to pretty much. It
relates to all of our theology and also to Islami
theology because what I noticed in going really deep into
Arianism and Eunomianism, if you read, for example, Saint Gregor
and Nissa's gigantic work against Eunomius. You'll find that Eunomius
is really saying a lot of the same things that
I would hear Islamic debaters and apologists say that unity
must be mean this, simplicity must mean this, all of
the predicates must be reducible to the divine essence in
this very strict reduction of sense, and therefore any you know,
it's just very similar kind of argumentation. And so all
I did was just kind of apply that argument against
divine simplicity to the debate with Shabir or any other
debates I've had with Muslims, as well as the incarnational
kind of argument regarding the eternal Qur'an and this kind
of stuff. Even though it might seem on the surface
that you're avoiding the problems, you're actually you've got all
the same quote problems in the Islamic system as we do.
As the Arians said, the Arians had all these same problems.
So that was long wind that I apologize, But that's
kind of the that's why the philosophy. No, no, that's why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you to take your time. This is important,
by the way. In fact, you know, Jay, I have
to tell you what you just described I think makes
people easy. It makes it easier for people to explain
when Jesus say the Father is greater than.
Speaker 2: I exactly, you have a way to explain it, you know. Yeah,
And that's why for us, for example, this we would
believe that there's an equal ultimacy. People like Saint Maximus
say between one and many in God. So there's not
God's not more one than he is three. He's not
more three than he is one. So there's this kind
of flexibility in terms of God being both and and
not either or. And what that does is that frees
up the theology to be able to better explain. Then
something like Roman Catholicism or typically Protestantism can things like
how does one hypostasis of the Trinity enter into a
mode of being in time and space that the other
two don't. How does the Son undergo death on the
cross but the Father and the Spirit don't. You see,
So there's a means and a mode in orthodox theology
by which one hypostasis can enter into a mode of existence,
a mode of being while still being fully united to
the other two that the other two don't enter into, right,
so that we retain that unity, not just in the
sense of one and many, but also in the ability
for one hypostasis to enter into that mode of being
in time and space that the other two to not.
And by extension, that's how Jesus can be incarnate walking
around and saying that I honor the Father. I honor him.
I'm here to direct you to him. You see, right,
because he and when he says the Father is greater,
we believe that it's in this sense that we're talking about.
It doesn't mean that the Father is greater metaphysically right.
He doesn't have more being, he doesn't have more unity,
more power. He's greater in the sense that he is
the origin, source, arka fount, cause, principle, auto, theos of
the Godhead. That's the predicate of the person of the Father.
For us, the Trinity God is always known first and
foremost as personal God. When God reveals himself to Moses,
he doesn't say I'm an essence. He doesn't say I'm
the supreme it I'm supreme principal monad. He says I
am he presupposing personal covenantal relationship with God. I'm not
saying philosophy itself is bad, but we don't believe in
the Hellenic conceptions that the Greeks were so obsessed with
and so known for is the impersonal forces idea. Right,
God is like this great number in the sky, like
Platonism or Pathegrenas. He's like the great number seven. He's
just this force, this impersonal abstract essence. Right. We avoid
that by stressing the direct interaction and knowledge of God
through the person of the Father. Now, the Father has
the divine essence fully, and he communicates by his eternal
generation that same full divine essence to the Son that
he eternally generates. But the son's existence, the son's hypostasis,
is not of its own, it's of another. He is
of another, and so that's the sense in which he
is caused, in which he is speaking of the Father
as greater, because the Father is the source, right, And
so for us, once once we grasp this, this is
why for us reality the trinity itself is Father generating
the Son and then manifesting the Spirit. So there's this movement,
Basil says, from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.
That's the same for how the world is created, right
from all eternity. There's the movement of the energies. In
that way, creation happens from the Father through the Son
in the spirit. Paul says, redemption happens from the Father
through the Son in the spirit. So that same triadic
model is consistent. It explains both creation and redemption. And
for us, creation itself presupposes and is the archetypal pattern
for redemption. We believe that Jesus was always going to
become incarnate. You see, it's not a plan B, like
Thomas Quinna says. Anyway, long story short, that's the sense
in which Christ is second right, and in the ordinal sense.
Besil says, not in a metaphysical or ontological sense of
premissy and lesser status. The Holy Spirit is third right.
That doesn't mean that he's like one God, lesser God
and then small God right. They're fully equal. But for us,
the principle of unity in the Godhead first and foremost
is not the essence. First and foremost is not the essence.
It's the person of the Father. The principle of unity
first and foremost is personal the person of the Father.
And yes, you can say in a secondary sense for
us in the theology, it's true that each hypostasis possess
possesses the same nature, and therefore there is a unity there.
But primarily when we speak of the unity of God,
it's the person of the Father that Saint greg and
Los Angeles has recapitulates the unity of the triad and
so also Saint John Damascus says that we can also
speak of unity in terms of perrychoresis, which is the
divine end dwelling. Each hypostasis fully dwells the other hypostasis,
and yet at the same time there's a real distinction.
So there's different models and ways to speak of unity
in God while retaining the triadic reality. But that's the
way that we believe it is properly spoken of.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I want to thank everyone, of course for
joining us. I'm looking at some of the comments that
I'm just laughing. Some people come in with presuppositions all
the time. We are here discussing course the Eastern Orthodox
position and explaining the Trinity, explaining some called the monarchy
of the Father. And of course Jay Dyer is a
brother that I felt is more than capable of handling
topic like this. We're here to learn what the Bible
teaches didn't hear anything. Jay says that the Bible did
not talk about that's the original if you wish position
that I asked him about the church, the early Church,
how did they understand things? Now, I get it to
understand that there are different views today which I will
be discussing right now, and that we have our own
presuppositions sometimes, Jay, and we come with our own ideas
that are based on, in my view, things that developed
versus what is original, you know, And that's what is
so important for me for my faith. So what are
some of the pushbacks a view like you just described
right now?
Speaker 2: Could be Oh, you mean anticipated or commonly voiced objections
you're saying exactly, Yeah, that's a great question. Let's see. Well,
most common would be the idea that this is a
philosophical position that's not in the Bible. Well, again, I
would say that the way that we're going to determine
the Biblical presentation is not going to be in a
piecemeal this text versus this text thing. We're going to
have to look at the holistic context. And I mean
we can't obviously do that right now, but I mean,
just in the Book of Genesis, for example, if we
were to start our view of understanding the Trinity, We're
going to look at all the different theophanic manifestations. Now
there's multiple without throughout Genesis where we see what appears
to be a second personage. I mean, it's not in
Genesis said to be second quote person that's just a
term that's used to describe what's going on there for
our view. Right, So when we see, for example, the
Lord walking in the garden with Adam and even Adam
and Eve, you could say that that's a kind of
a theophany. When we I see the Angel of the
Lord appearing to Abraham, when we see the Angel of
the Lord appearing to Hagar, and the Angel the Lord
is said to be God, she says, I saw God.
He is the God who sees right, when we see
the wrestling with the Angel, right, this is not just
a mental construct or some sort of mental thing. There's
an actual manifestation of a theophany. Now it is mysterious.
I'm not trying to downplay the mystery, but there is
a reality that's even in Genesis made clear that there's
some kind of distinction going on between the Father origin
of the god Head. You could say and the second
personage that's present here, and perhaps even in Genesis a
third with the presence of the Spirit being mentioned. But
what's really clear, just in Genesis is the many instances
of this Angel of the Lord, who is spoken of
in chapter forty eight, for example, as a redeemer. And
we know that we can't tip we speak of angels
or creatures as redeemers typically speaking, it doesn't make sense, right,
A that's a divine power. It's something that we speak
of God alone as our redeemer, right, And yet we
see in Genesis forty eight this Angel of the Lord
as the one who redeemed them from their sins. Now,
there's many, many more. But as we pass over into
Exodus we see that same pattern. We see the I
Am that manifests in Exodus three in the in the
bush is later said to be the same angel the
Lord that guides them into the Promised Land, who has
the name of God. Right, the name of God is
in the Angel, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's twenty three.
Speaker 2: And then you know, there's there's many more. Theophanic manifestation
Moses goes up and eats with God. Now you can say, well,
that's all just symbolic language. It's all just imagery and symbolism,
which I mean, that's a whole other route that I
don't necessarily want to go down. But I don't think
that really holds up given the fact that many of
these passages are not strictly totally symbolic, right, I mean Isaiah, Right,
I've been going through a study on Isaiah right now.
There's multiple places where we see this kind of stuff.
In Isaiah. To Isaiah six, he says, I saw with
my own eyes the Lord on the throne, right, and
we know from John twelve that he's talking about Jesus. Right.
We have other passes in Isaiah where it says that
the Son who is born unto us that everybody, most people,
unless you're Jewish, I guess most people believe as a
Messianic prophecy. Right, identifying that son that's born unto us
with the Angel of Wonderful Council from Judges thirteen, right,
who appeared to Samson's parents to Manoah, and they identify
that Angel as God. We find worship right, prostration in
a worshipful sense, not just reverence, but worship being given
to the Angel of the Lord. And we know from
the Apocalypse that when John worships angels, he's forbidden to
do that. You can't worship creatures in that way, worship.
The worship and the name given to this angel clearly
signified that it's not the Father, and also that it
is a manifestation of a full divine person. And we
also have to keep in mind that as Jesus is
pretty clear, and even the Old Testament is pretty clear,
you can't see God face to face and live. But
we're told Moses all God face to face. Jesus says,
no man has seen the Father at any time. Well,
who did they see in the Old Testament, Jesus. It's
really a no brainer here, right, But what I'm getting
at is that that consistent biblical approach, and there's many,
many more theophanies, but that consistent biblical approach is what
led to the reasoning behind the Trinity ultimately coming from scripture. Right,
All the Eastern Fathers are really consistent on explaining who
the Angel of the Lord is. It's Jesus. Later, Latin
Church fathers after a gust and they do begin to
doubt this and they say, well, maybe it's actually just
an angel, right, Augustina has a problem with this on
the Trinity. He kind of he speculates, he's unsure for
us in the Orthodox tradition, it's it's very clear, there's
no doubt, no dispute. All the liturgy constantly identifies this
personage as Jesus, and that's really the consistent idea here. Again.
I mean, I think this is this argument is actually
kind of downplayed. That you don't see the Father. There's
no even though it's you're not typically supposed to make
images of God the Father, we don't really believe you
should do that technically speaking, even though people still kind
of do that. Really, the only lawful image of the
Father is the son. Jesus is the direct icon of
the Father, as scripture says. So we see again our
Trinitarian theology not being just a bunch of philosophical speculation,
but very much grounded in that's just the Old Testament.
I mean, you could go to Zechariah one, two, and three.
All the persons of the Trinity are clearly present there.
You can find the Trinity all through Isaiah. Isaiah literally
is like a fifth Gospel, right, actually absolutely, I mean
I mean there's there's I mean it's not explicitly stated
as all the you know, New Testament doctrines, but the
New Testament doctrines are present in Isaiah, and that shows,
of course, that continuity between the Old Testament and the
New Testament period. So when we come into the New Testament,
when we look through the Synoptic Gospels, when we look
through the especially the Gospel of John, we see a
very very clear, very consistent, well flourishing doctrine of the trinity,
even though it's not explicitly stated. What will become the
doctrine of the trinity is if you get really deep
into it, very clearly and very obviously reasoned from the scripture.
I mean, when the church fathers are debating this, it's
not a munch of Plato and Plotinus, it's scripture. They're
constantly arguing the biblical texts, all right, And so I
mean you could you could really find most I'm not
I wouldn't do this, but I'm just saying, I mean,
the full fledged Trinitarian doctrine that we hold is pretty
much in the Gospel of John. I mean, you can
look at John one. You have the only Begotten God,
right right, who is in the Bosom of the Father.
Even when he's incarnate, it said, he's still in the
bosom of the Father. Right, So there's par of careesis,
there's eternal generation, there's a second personage. Right. Jesus very
quickly quickly begins to in his ministry speak of the
Holy Spirit. He speaks of this to the woman at
the well. He's already talking about the personally, and he says,
She says, we know when the Messiah comes, he will
tell us all things. Jesus says, I who speak to you,
am he I am? They say, yeah, identify, people say
Jesus never says he was in the Messiah, all these
dumb arguments. Right now, he says it right away to
the one in the well, what are you talking about?
And so we progressing, just through the book of John,
we begin to see this very mind blowing, you know,
deep relationship between the relations of the persons. Right, we
do believe in relations of persons. By the way, great
saying greater Na Sianzos speaks of this, Maximus speaks of this.
We see this relationship constantly. Mention of the son direct
coming to direct us to the Father. The son is
sent by the Father to direct us to the Father,
and this directing will be done by the person of
the Holy Spirit. He's spoken of as he right, he
will come at pentecrit Jesus anticipates pentecons right, So consistently
from John you know, sixteen seventeen, the High priestly Prayer,
you get this just amazing. From John one to John four,
John eight, John nine, sixteen seventeen. Right, you're getting a
lot of Trinitarian theology just packed in there. And so
the second most typical bad argument that I hear is
the Bible never really covers this, if you mean, and
then a lot of people do, kind of in ignorance
mean this. They mean, well, there's no specific text that
lays out there's three hypostases, one shared nature usia. Right. No,
it's not like that because because you know, scripture is
like a mining a mining operation. Right, It's like a
cave and the jewels are.
Speaker 1: In the walls.
Speaker 2: Right, you have to you mine it out, and you
find the jewel right in the cave, and you see here,
you see, so the jewel kind of is like the
explanation of what's in the cave, the doctrine. Right, I'm
not saying cave because it's like unexplainable or unknown. It's not.
That's not what I mean. I just mean that it's
kind of raw or that that is there to give
you the explanation that you kind of display. That's what
I'm trying. So the Church sort of displays the doctrines
that are fully present in scripture. That's how we see it.
Speaker 1: Yes, so you mentioned something about Jews. You know, obviously
some of the pushback, especially Muslims use is that, well,
wait a minute, looks like the Jews don't believe in
a trinity and they have the Old Testament. What would
be a response to that, Jay, there's multiple responses.
Speaker 2: I mean, on the one, just on the logical level,
that's really irrelevant, right, I Mean, that doesn't really matter
because that just assumes that because the Jews were in
the Covenant during that older time period that therefore whatever
they do is the determining factor. But of course that
just assumes that the way that the Old Testament prophecies
speak of the divorce of Israel and the Covenant curses
for disobedience, as if that doesn't apply, right, as if
the prophecies and predictions in Isaiah, like I will call
those who you know, were not my people. My people,
I will take priests from amongst the gentiles. How can
you have priests that are gentiles? It doesn't make any sense, right,
So there's a lot of problems with just this sort
of simplistic appeal to well the Jews. But I mean,
the Jews don't believe the Quran. So that's like, that's
a terrible argument if you're a Muslim, right, so what like,
the Jews don't believe all kinds of things. That doesn't
really tell us anything right about whether the present positions
are true or false. Secondly, it's not actually that clear
what pre first century Judaism believed. I mean, there's multiple
scholars and writers, doctor Michael Heiser Siegel who've written on
the fact that there were Intertestamental period Jews who did
believe in more than one heavenly power, right, the two
heavenly powers, this kind of stuff, or perhaps three. You
can look at the markov Aw tradition where you have
this notion of what is this angel of the Lord? Right,
they had rabbinical debates themselves as to whether this was
the essence of God, whether it was a creaturely appearance,
whether it was Metatron, right, some sort of super angel
or something like volt runners of it, or like Transformers.
I mean, so it's not exactly clear in what sense.
Even older Judaic theology was quote monotheistic. And by the way,
just because you're quote Judaic, doesn't mean you escape any
of the questions and problems of absolute simplicity either, right,
So I think that's a pretty bad argument just to say, well,
but the Jews didn't believe in the.
Speaker 1: Trinity, So I just brought it up because it's commonly
fascinated by that.
Speaker 2: And another thing.
Speaker 1: Let me let me just play for a second the
Devil's advocate. You know, some of the Protestants or Evangelicals
will say, well, wait a minute, the Eastern Orthodox doctrine
of the monarchy of the Father was discovered because of
the so called Patristic Renaissance, and they went back and
they began to look at teachings of the Father. But
you know that's not the case. I mean, it seemed
like this is from early on. These are the positions
that were taken by the early Church fathers. Am I correct?
Is there anything wrong with a state in it this way?
And why are they trying to push back by making
claims like this.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that comes from the tendency within the
Protestant world to default to academia. I mean, that's kind
of one of the big problems in Protestantism.
Speaker 1: That's where I want you to go.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the big problems in Protestantism is too
that that who's going to determine and solve a lot
of questions and issues. Well, the only people to look
to are the academics. But this has been a big
problem in the world of Protestanism for many centuries, especially
since Julius Bellhausen and higher criticism. I mean that the
academics are not typically the friends of Christians. I'm not
saying there aren't good evangelical scholars. There are. You know
that there's Protestant scholars who I refer to and read
all the time. I'm not I'm not denying that, but
I'm just saying, in general, I know Christ didn't leave
us a lineage of PhDs in academics. He left us
a lineage. We believe of church authority, so we literally
believe in a succession. I'm not saying that the church
is just based on the succession into bishops. I'm saying
this one component of the existence and history of the Church.
That's who we're going to look to. So if we
have a question about uh, do we have we always
confessed the monarchy of the Father absolutely has nothing to
do with what some guy in some German university thinks
somewhere who cares, like, we believe what is confessed by
our bishops that we're in communion with in the in
the liturgy. We have a big focus on looking to
the liturgy. We have always confessed the premissy of the
Father in terms of his role as cause an arcade.
It's never been in question in orthodoxiology.
Speaker 1: And Jay, you know, we're approaching almost the end of
the hour, but I want you to give us an
idea about where do you see the state of the church.
The Church in general hit it these days with you know,
so many humanistic you know, basically teachings, postmodernism, all kind
of liberal theologies that are infiltrating into our academic arenas.
Do you think if this trajectory continues in a way
it's going that the church will stand a chance and
conditions and you know, standing against persecution and so on
and so forth.
Speaker 2: Well, we know the promise that the Church will never
completely fail for us. You know, we trust in Matthew sixteen.
We know that Christ says that that the Spirit will
guide us, he would never leave us, and that he
would always be present in the life of the church.
But the present state is mass apostasy. I don't think there's
any question about that. There be many centuries now of
mass apostasy in Christianity, generally speaking Christianity, and that's true
of any of the different gatherings. Right whether you're Roman Catholic,
whether you're Protestant or even Evangelical, or whether you're Orthodox,
there has been the same types of infiltration. It's the
same types of academic assumptions and presb positions of liberalism, modernism,
higher criticism. And this has really affected all of the
groups and even outside the bounds of Christianity. So that
is definitely probably the biggest factor. I mean, I'm not
necessarily saying we live in the Great Apostasy. I don't know.
I think maybe in the next twenty or thirty years
we'll be able to tell. But if we are in
the Great Apostasy, I think it'll be evident whether it's
the Great Apostasy or just a large apostasy. That's definitely
what's happening.
Speaker 1: Well, that's great, brother, your debate with the Shabbi Ali.
Would you like to reflect a little bit on that,
What prompted you to think about it and the topic
that was chosen, and what is your assessment of what
took place? In fact, one time during the Queu and
A I enjoyed when Shabir was asking you about the
seven spirits from Isaiah and your answer was, those are
the energies of God. I thought that was brilliant. So
you might want to touch on that as well before
we close.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, I I had been working through all the
works of Saint Maximus the last year. That's in English.
I can't read Greek, but you know, Maximus actually comments
pretty extensively, or well a few times on that passage,
I think in at the Lassium at the end of
at the Lasseum. And then Saint Gregory Palamos comments on
Maximus's comment on that passage. And when Saint Gregor Palomos
is debating with Barleum the kind of the Roman Catholic
theologian of his day, they have a lengthy dispute in
the debate over the barleym I can diagnose they have
a lengthy dispute over that that that passage and what
it means. And really I think that that the Orthodox
position has makes the most sense of it, because we
know that God's knowledge, God's wisdom, the spirit of God's
God's you know, these spirits of God. They're not persons,
and God's knowledge isn't created, so really they have to
be uncreated energies, right, And really, only Orthodox theology I believe,
has a consistent teaching on the essence energy distinction, which
is not from Palomas. It's actually it's in Athenacious, it's
in Cyril of Alexandria, it's in the Cappadocians. It's a
big part of the Cappadocian argument for the full deity
of the Spirit Basil Gregory. They argue that if the
Holy Spirit has all the same powers and energies as
a father and the Son, then he's just as divine
as the Father and the Son. Even if he's third
in order, he's the third in the ordinal numbering, doesn't
mean that he's at third lesser status, Basil argues, and
against eunomias, so Basils against Eunomius would be a really
good thing to read on that if you want. Catholic
University of America actually has published that. So I would
say that in the debate with Shabir, I didn't expect
that that was kind of an odd question. And later
on when we had a debate review with some of
the former Muslims in my discord, they kind of enlightened
me on kind of where he was going with that
in terms of is on my theology having different notions
of spirit. So I didn't understand at the time of
the debate where he was going or what he was saying.
I'm not trying to be rude, I just didn't understand
what he was getting at. Now I kind of get
where he was going with the way that they understand
spirit and ghost kind of you know, the spirit of
a man or whatever. But overall, the debate I think
went very well. It was it was a lot, I
don't want to be rude. It was a lot easier
than I expected because I expected doctor Shabir to focus
mainly on textual critic problems, uh, and he stayed within
kind of the domain of philosophical theology, which which I
didn't expect so pretty quickly. I think when we got
into the philosophical areas of the trinity, I think that
was pretty That was a defining moment because you know,
he agreed beforehand to a interrogation. So some of the
people who were mad about the debate said, why are
you being so aggressive and why are you interrupting? Well,
he actually had it stated beforehand that the interrogator has
the right to interrupt, and he does have the right
to change the subject, and he can ask whatever questions
that he wants. So that was agreed to at the beginning.
So I don't at all feel bad for that. I
don't think I was unfair to him in any way.
He didn't say that I can't talk about philosophy or
something like that, or I can't ask him about, you know,
Islamic doctrine of the attributes. So I think that was
a defining moment. You know, a lot of the people
in the discord set that debate up. I didn't really.
I had heard of Shabir and I'd seen some of
the debates. I'd seen his Sam Shimun debate, I saw
him debate some of the other evangelicals. I think really
the defining issue was that he had not interacted with
a person who knew orthoxy Al. He was used to
kind of the Protestant arguments and the emphasis on divine simplicity,
which Protestants kind of inadvertently adopted from Roman Catholicism since
they come out of you know, Catholicism historically, so they
didn't have we have a different triadology than Roman Catholics do.
So I don't think he was prepared to really deal
with a really nuanced view of the Trinity. He was
kind of relying on just these pat questions that a
lot of times Protestants aren't philosophically equipped to answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought, really the debate definitely was a win,
you know, for everybody. But I thought you took a
really good step. That's why I was surprised when you
told me you just only spent a few months trying
to learn about Islam, so you did a great job.
Is there any other debates in the works for you
in general or with Muslims in particular.
Speaker 2: We've reached out to multiple different Islamic debater's philosophers, We've
not had any. We can't really find anybody who's ready
to come back and do it. No, we've had a
hard time for funny people to come back into Bay.
I'm not trying to be arrogant. I've just said we haven't. Really.
We've reached out to some Roman Catholics. Peter Williams, he
expressed some interest and then kind of backed off. We
reached out to Trent Horn Catholic answers. I think we
we reached out to Uh, is it Mohammed hy Job?
Is he one of the big debaters.
Speaker 1: Oh, that would be great if you can take on
Mohammed Job.
Speaker 2: You think it's been discussed. I don't know if he
has any interest in it, but we've we've discussed reaching
out to him. We may try that, but no, I
mean beyond that, we don't. We had some other atheist
academics that we reached out to and then they kind
of backed off. So so no, it's not really, it's not.
It's it's harder and harder to find the people who
even want the debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you. Shamone is here and he's asking
a great question. Maybe you touched on it already, but
let's revisit a gain with energies. He's saying, would energies
refer to God's activities.
Speaker 2: Right. Typically the term in the New test I mean
we would say it kind of goes. It's present in
the Old Testament. It isn't the septuogen If you read
doctor Bradshaw's book if you want, like a really philosophic
analysis of the step two usage. But it's used in Polls,
Epistles and first First Corinthians when he's talking about the
gifts of the Spirit. The spirit tell us about the
innergaya of the Spirit. The term is used also for
operations of other beings as well. Humans can operate, and yes,
it refers to actions activities, and it corresponds loosely to
what would later become the Western theological term of attributes.
When they talk about the quote bits of God, they
really mean the energies of God. Even if early Latin
fathers use the term attribute, they're mainly talking about the energies.
So Basil uses it for operations. Saint John Damascus use
it for operations of God. So the love of God,
the mercy of God, right, the wisdom of God, knowledge
of God, justice of God. Those are for us energies
or operations which are not identical to the essence of God.
They proceed from the essence and the sense that the
essence is what we call in hypostatize, it exists in
the mode of person. That's kind of a loaded deep
philosophical term, but originally, ultimately the Church Fathers will apply
this to Christology. They will speak of nature never existing
in some raw abstract state, but always in some particular person.
In this case, so in the triad, the divine nature
exists in hypostatize, in the Father, in the Son, and
in each person fully in each person. In humanity, human
nature exists in high postitis, is in the mode of
created hypostass or created persons. So that's always the mode
in which nature exists. It's typical an ancient medial philosophy
to distinguish between the thing itself, thing qua thing, and
the mode of thing, the essence of the thing, versus
the mode in which the essence exists. This is common
philosophic terminology. So that's applied ultimately to resolve some of
the crystological disputes between monophysites and historians and so forth.
So for us, the Fifth Council, Sixth Council, the theology
Saint Justinian is very important for that. But Sam is
correct to basically just point out that energy signifies the
action or operation of the agent. Right. So if you
read John Damascus, he has a great book defense the
Orthodox Faith, and in book three he looks at Christology.
In chapter fifteen he says, there's the agent, there's the
nature that the agent possesses, the agent being the person,
the action of the that agent, and he's saying these
are all distinct, and that action is the operation of
that agent. In the case of God, it's a real
power that goes forth from him. Remember when the woman
touches Jesus and she's healed, but I noticed power went
from him. Energy went out from him to heal the
divine power. Now, that power is never impersonal. It's not
a new age force, it's not magical forces. It's always
in hypostatic as well. The energies are in hyposthetic, meaning
they're personal. So the love of God is the personal
love of God from the Father through the Son and
the Spirit. The knowledge of God is personal from the
Father through the Son in the Spirit. It's always that
same triadic mode we believe. So that's what the energies
are wonderful. Do you have a time for a couple
of more questions?
Speaker 1: Here? I'm going to put it right here in front
of you, brother, so you can look at it and
asking about what do you think about the Ethiopian and
rit Orthodox th It's called Tuadu, which holds slightly a
different view in worship, theology, ceremonial traditions from the Eastern
Coptic Church for instance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have one of the guys in our apologetic
circle who just did a two hour talk on that topic.
So I mean, in brief, I would say that, you know,
we have some problems with the theology that develops in
what's called the Oriental churches due to it's not just linguistic,
because even though they have a different notion of what nature,
usia and hypostasis come to mean, what energy comes to mean,
ultimately we do have some some theological differences with them.
And so if you go and watch David the Real medwhy,
he just did a two hour stream just on that question.
So really the issue, I mean, there are liturgical differences.
It's not so much like oh, well to tell why
he don't sway in the liturgy, so we disagree with him.
It's not like that they do some weird kind of
quasi judaized practices like a circumcision and these kinds of
things that we don't accept. They do have influences that
are kind of judaized, but the main problem is the
christological issues where they're kind of confusing nature in person.
They're not basing nature and person in Christology on nature
and person in the triad. That's our main critique with them.
Speaker 1: Very good, brother, Well, I've been looking to see if
there's any questions. Looks like everyone was really sulking it in.
Some says they're gonna have to watch it again to
listen to some of terminologies you're using. I thought you
did a great job and expand that. I just want
people to know the hope is that you have heard
our brother and what he says. Everything he says makes
it much easier for you right now to explain phrases
and sentences and warding that came out of the mouth
of our Lord. For instance, the Father is greater than I.
I came to do the well of him who sent me.
Many of these things that are raised against us, usually
in arguments to try to point you out. Do you
see Jesus is lower than the Father, and so on
and so forth. And also the fact that in old
testaments sometimes people make that well I don't see the
sun in there, I don't see the Holy spit. Well,
you know what, if you put it all together like this,
it's a full package. It's a one complete package. You'll
be able to explain it in ways that are much
simpler if you wish. That's why we like to have
great guests like our brother here and Jay. I hope
you would accept our invitation to come back again. And
there's so many things, of course, we can talk about
and it will be great any time.
Speaker 2: I'd be glad to.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. I appreciate you,
and thank you for those who gave through the super chat.
We appreciate your sacrifice as well, and thank you for
our moderators. And tomorrow we're going to have Matt Slick
and on Sunday we're going to have a special guest.
She will be sharing her testimony on leaving Islam and
becoming a follower of Christ. Hopefully you would tune in
to both