Speaker 1: To the people, to the top and.
Speaker 2: To the to the welcome everyone. I bet you were
never expecting this. I have fellow Christian great debater with me,
Jay Dyer. Jay, How you doing.
Speaker 1: What's up? Michael? I'm doing good. Glad to be here
with you. We had some pounds of common ground because
we both have had some recent Islamic interactions and so
when you reached out, I was happy to come back on,
to come on and have a conversation about this contentious period.
So really glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm super happy to have you here. I really
appreciate it. One of the things I do focus on
is trying to find common ground among Christians and show
the world that we are not as divided as people
think we are. I think you and I probably agree
on more than we disagree. And since there's something came
up that I thought we could stream on, I was like, yeah,
let's do it. Let's let's have a stream to break
all streams. And this is what I was happy to
happy to do.
Speaker 1: So for those about you know, when you said you
you know you agreed with the monarchy of view of
the triad and all that, I was like, yeah, we
can definitely. You know, we can work from there for sure.
And you know, especially when it comes to opposing Islamic
claims of the fact that there's not the Trinity and
deity of Christ in the first, second, and third centuries.
I mean, I think I think it's going to be
really clear after today's discussion that absolutely isn't the case.
The Trinity is absolutely there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let me give everyone a backstory why we're
here today. So, both Jay and I have been dealing
with Muslims in the past few months. We both had
debates with the infamous Danielikikichu, which I want to talk
about briefly here. By the way, for any of you
who have not seen Jay's debate with Danielikikachu, when this
stream is over, you need to watch that because Jay
wiped the floor with him. It was phenomenal. I was
in the back cheering. I was like, Wow, I didn't
expect this to be this good. So I was super
pleased with that, and I was really impressed by your
knowledge on the topic and your argumentation and how you
got you basically demonstrated he was arguing, as you said
it in a circle. That was a perfect line. You
kept using on him, but what brought us here today?
So recently, two Muslims were on the PVD podcast, very
very big popular podcast. They were debating two Christians, brother
Rashid and Robert Spencer. The two Muslims were Daniel Okikachu,
who both Jay and I have debated, and Jake the
Muslim metaphysician, and a lot of claims were made by
the Muslim side. One claim really stood out, which is it?
Jake said, prior to Nicia, there was no trinity. He
was an evolved tradition. It came about later and when
I heard that, I was like, You've got to be
kidding me that that's just that's just not true. I'm
thinking of like church fathers that are just popping into
my head. I'm like, what about this one? What of
this one? What about this one? Like, Jay, what were
your thoughts.
Speaker 1: When you heard that? Yeah, exactly, you know this is
a common Muslim or frain. I got into Muslim apologetics.
Maybe it's kind of it's all still kind of new
to me. It's only about four years that I've really
started debating Muslims, and I remember that maybe the first
time we had that debate. That was one of the
first things they said. And I'm just like, it would
take you. I mean, if you were really serious about that,
it would take you. Nowadays, with the ease of information,
I mean, you could go to a new advent, you
could go to you know, websites pretty easily and check
and see within five to ten minutes if there were
trinitarian citations prior to and I see it. And one
thing I'd like to do today is hopefully go beyond
just the kind of a quote mind not that it's
necessarily wrong to have a quote mind showing it, but
we can go a lot more into depth because it
turns out in the first, second, and third century, there's
a wide swath of references to these things throughout not
just this or that specific church father, but many church
fathers throughout the Roman Empire in a life lot of
different importan sees and even obscure fragments that are all
relevant to see that there's a there's a sort of
a wide picture scope that we can get that they
absolutely confess both the deity of Christ and the deity
of three persons, even if they don't use the phrase trinity,
which I'd like to talk to about that a little
bit more because that relates to the Muslim debates because
they always say, well, where's the word trinity in the Bible?
You know where where is where is trinity? And you
know ignacious or whatever, as if the word itself has
to be there when you can have the concepts there exactly.
Speaker 2: I couldn't have said it better myself, And yeah, we will,
we will definitely get into that. I'm going to just
let you go all out because when I saw the
stream they made, the Muslims made the case that Christians
are all super divided, and I remember thinking, who could
I do a stream with to show one that Christians
are more unified than people think, but also knows the
Patristic fathers well. And the first person that off in
my head with Jay Dyer because I've not seen all
your stuff, but when I've seen you do trinitarian stuff
or church history stuff, you're you were knowledgeable on that stuff.
And I was like, we're both streamers, we both do YouTube.
I've been studying church fathers a lot. As I said,
I recently read this book by Michael left Bird which
I'll bring up Jesus among the Gods, which he does
a lot of great stuff on there about early Church
belief in the Trinity, and I was like, this will
be a perfect way to just eat the easily debund
Just as you said, quote after quote, there is so
much we can go through. I mean, it's just so
much to say that there was no trinitarian theology prior
to Nicee It. It's just it was mind blowing to me.
Speaker 1: There's also too this, since that's such a common objection,
maybe this stream can become like the de facto go
to stream when people say, hey, uh, you know, I
got this Muslim, I got this, Joe's witness whatever. You know,
they're saying there's no such thing as a trinity before,
and I see a boom. You've got this stream. We're
going to have all the evidence out for you.
Speaker 2: We most certainly will, and if everyone who was interested.
Jay's jade Aris channel is a link below. He talks
about Patristic fathers at times, and again, Jaye and I
don't agree on everything. That's fine. We are both Christians,
we both profess christ, we both believe in the Trying God,
and we're there's more we agree on and work today
is about agreement, unity in the body of Christ and
working together to combat just errors and thank you for
the super chet. Another great channel, Daniel Apologetics. Uh, this
live stream is my pleasure machine. Did did you see
the recent debate between Matt Dillahunty and Hakiki Chu We're
big pleasure? That's a past a prophet and I went
into a whole big analysis of that and it just.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I put that clip up when it got
really heated on Twitter and I got a lot of
views from that, so that was amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, So what I figured we'll do is I
will put up the PVD podcast here. Let me put
this up here. So yeah, well, and then we're gonna
talk about Justin Martyr a little bit because that's one
guy who's specifically brought up. We're going to cover that extensively.
And then I'm gonna let Jay go wild here and
he's just gonna go through a patristic father here, patristic
father there, and he'll share his screen if he wants to.
But there's a lot to cover here, and just everyone's aware,
we're not going to cover every trinitarian quote from Church Father,
because if we were thinking of for three out exactly exactly,
there's so many but we're gonna give you a really
good survey you can use to combat, as Jay said,
Muslim Joe Ah witnesses anti trinitarians who make this bogus
claim that the Trinity didn't exist before Anicel. So if
anything else you want to add Ja or else, we
can get right into it.
Speaker 1: No, I'm good, I'm ready, ready when you are all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I put it a little bit further back so
people don't accuse us of taking this out of context.
They're finishing up the last thoughts they had before they
jump into the trinitarian aspect.
Speaker 1: And people are sart rejecting it after the finding these
little details insidey. I want to give them an opportunity
to respond and then we can go to the next issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to respond because Robert brought up Apostolic
succession and claims that these doctrines have been held you
know since the beginning of Jesus. Jesus proclaimed his message
to the apostles, and they passed it on to early
church fathers and then all the way down the line,
and it's been this consistent message throughout but on very
core doctrines which Daniel and I would actually like to
spend more time on what he called the ninety five percent,
which is actually monotheism. Unfortunately, we believe that Christians, Trinitarian Christians,
are representing a veiled form of polytheism. And you claim
that this was the consistent message over time. Well, let's
see what Justin Martyr, your own saint, says. He's in
the beginning of the second century. He was born in
the year one hundred. In his famous dialogue with Tripho,
chapter fifty six, he says this, let's see if his
theology is the same as yours, Robert, I shall attempt
to persuade you, since you have understood the scriptures of
the truth of what I say that there is, and
that there is said to be another God and Lord,
subject to the Maker of all things, who is also
called an angel, because he announces to men whatsoever the
Maker of all things, above whom there is no other God,
wishes to announce them. So Justin Martyr says that Jesus
is a second God, is another God, separate and distinct,
and he is a lesser divinity. Now John Behar, who
I'm sure you would know, is a famous Eastern Orthodox authority.
Today he comments on this passage. And he says this,
as it is not God himself who thus appeared and
spoke with man the word of God, who did all
of these things. For Justin quote another God and Lord,
besides the Maker of all, who is also called his Angel,
as he brings messages from the Maker of all, above
whom there is is no other God. Then he says
about this passage, the divinity of Jesus Christ, another God,
is no longer that of the Father himself, but subordinate
to it, a lesser divinity. Now that's just one example.
Justin Martyr, who you would consider a saint, you may
even pray to, as the Eastern Orthodox pray to dead saints.
But the reality is that your theology, according to you,
on the Trinity is actually more correct than the person
that you're praying to. And I can go through a
whole more list of on key doctrines like the doctrine
of the incarnation, the atonement, and the Trinity itself that
the early Church authorities like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and
on and on up until the fourth century, never preached
the doctrine of the Trinity, Sir, So when you make
the claim that your message has been consistent without what
we see in the very beginnings on the fundamental point
of who God is, you did not have the same
doctrine to get to the fourth century. And that's why Christianity,
because at its very beginning, was very comfortable with development.
Oh who is God is a man? God? There is
a God and man at the same time. So if
you can have those sorts of developments, of course you
can have developments about how laws are applied and whether
or not we should be celebrating LGBTQ and all of that.
Speaker 2: That's your history, sir, not at all all right. So
that is the full clip. I played it all the
way through just to give you guys kind of an
idea of what we're dealing with here. There was a
lot of topics discussed in this podcast, that wasn't it.
They didn't spend that much time on the Trinity at
this point. They kind of went back and forth on
plenty of topics. But what Jay and I want to
do is we want to address this claim that Jake made,
which is that there was no doctrine of the trinity
in Justin Martyr Trutolli and Aaronaeus, any of the Church
Fathers prior to Nicea. Guys, that's just a monsterly false.
I don't know anywhere to say that, Like, what are
your thoughts on that, Jay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just opening thoughts. A couple things that I think were
word concept fallacies when the Church Fathers the time of Nicea,
for example, when they use the phrase in the Creed
God from God, light from Light, that's very similar to
the phraseology of justin that Jesus the logos is God
from God, the Father. And the reason that it's not
multiple gods is that the word God is not a
specific noun that only picks out the divine nature. This
is actually an argument that Muslims use where they collapse
any term or predicate of the divinity to only refer
to the essence of God or the unitarian nature of God.
So we all agree that God's essence or nature is one,
but the word God, even in scripture for example, is generic.
It can pick out a divine person, it can pick
out the divine nature, it can pick out a divine energy,
and it can even pick out non divine created things
like angels, demons, or humans. So the word God is
a generic term that its meaning or referent is determined
partially in terms of the context and the intention of
the writer, much like the phrase angel. So when Justin
is calling Jesus the Angel of the Lord, this is
an apologetic argument. He makes a lot of use of
against Tripho, where he's trying to say, Hey, your texts
in the Old Testament demonstrate this distinct person, this distinct
second hypostasis. That's not God the Father or Yahweh, but
sent by God the Father Yahweh, and has the name
and the nature of God the Father, and is also
called by derivation Yahweh. That Angel of the Lord is
the logos the second person of God had So I
think Jake misunderstood that the phrase God from God must
therefore signify by theism or tritheism in terms of the Trinity.
It doesn't. And then say secondly the phrase subordination. Things
can be subordinated in different ways, so the word subordinate
does not necessitate onto logical or metaphysical diminished status. So
the assumption was that if the Father, for example, Jesus says,
is greater than I greater, how right, if we look
at the other passages, Jesus says that he has all
the same works and powers that the Father has. All
the Father has he's given to the son. So we
wouldn't want to say that it's an ontological or metaphysical subordination,
but there could be what we call an ordinal or
a causal subordination there where the Father is the first
in the triad, he's the source, he's the cause, and
then the son, in the terms of the doction of
the eternal generation, derives his existence from all eternity from
the Father. So that derivation, though, does not necessitate a
lesser status in terms of his deity, powers, operations, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love the way you were that you've
done that in pastumes. You're very good at wording and
explaining these terms here, so I do appreciate you going
into that because you're very good at explaining, like you know,
with modes or subordination, that these don't have one meaning.
That you're used in different ways. And if you look
in the Old Testament, the word elohem is used of God,
it's used of demons, it's used of Samuel when he's
dead and angels. It's used of multiple ways, not just
one way. But let's pull up the quote here from
Justin Martyr. I want to talk a little bit about
this because that was one guy he specifically brought up.
So you can see here this is on New Advent
when you pull this quote right up here, and this
is the party's talking about here where Justin is replying
to Tripho and he says, I shall attempt to persuade
you since you've understood scriptures of the truth of what
I say, that there is and that there is said
to be another God and the Lord's subject to the
maker of all things, who is called an angel. Now
here's the thing I say about church fathers. Most of
them don't really have the gift of brevity. Sometimes it
makes a while for them to get their thoughts out
and elaborate on certain things, and sometimes they've been misunderstood
by even scholars in the past because of this. Often
you gotta keep reading. It's you just can't see a
quote and go aha, see this explains this whole theology. No,
because if you go down further, he continues to elaborate
on these things. Chapter fifty six is quite long. But
when we get down to chapter sixty one, what is
Justin say here says, I shall give you another testimony,
my friends, from the scripture, is that God begot before
all creation of beginning, who was a certain rational power
proceeding from himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit,
now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son again, Wisdom,
again an angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos.
And on another occasion he calls himself Captain when he
appeared in human form to Joshua, the son of Nunne.
For he can be called by all those names, since
he ministered to the Father's will, and since he was
begot of the Father by an act of will, just
as we see happening among ourselves. For when we give
out some word, we beget the word, yet not by
a decision so as to lessen the word, which remains
in us when we give it out. And just as
we see also happening in the case of fire, which
is not lessen when it is kindled another, but remains
the same. And that which has been kindled by it,
likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from
which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom, who is himself,
this God begotten of the Father of all things, Ward
and wisdom and power and glory of the beginner. We
bear evidence to me, or will bear evidence to me.
And you can see right in this section Justin is
continuing his thoughts when he says talking about Jesus being
God being an angel, he then goes back to the
whole ontological discussion. He notes, this is fire from fire,
this is God from very God. Where are we getting
ideas that we see in the Nicene Creed. Well, it's
coming from church fathers like justin, God of God, of God,
very light, of very light, being of one substance with
the Father. You know, if you go to a traditional church,
you're gonna say the nice and Crene every week like
I do, you're gonna see something like this. And the
Nicing Creed didn't come dan Nova out of nothing. It
came from church fathers like Justin. In this very section
you can see very similar language. He's using fire as
a metaphor. The sun is fire from fire, Father from
some kind of thing. They're the same substance. It's not
something that is entirely different. And again, as I said,
sometimes it takes a while for a church father to
really get to explain his whole theology. Here you just
can't take one quote and go, oh, you see he
says it's another God. Well, that's not what he meant
by God. He does not have this polytheistic outlook, or
he's not like an arian. He then goes on to
explain this is fire from fire, and you can also
see this in Justin's first apology. Justin's first apology Again,
I've read this so many times because I've had to
deal with Jesus mythesists basically saying things like, oh, this
is just proof that Jesus was just like pagan deities.
And I'm like, all right, let's go back through this again.
That's not what Justin is saying. But in this he's
very clearly pointing out that Christians are basically believing in
one God who is three persons. So he deals with
the charge of atheism. In chapter six he says, hence
we are called atheists, and we confess that we are
atheists so far as the gods of disord are concerned.
He's talking of the Roman gods, but not with respect
to the most true God, the Father of righteous and
temperance and other virtues, who is free from all purity,
but both him and the Son who came forth from
him and taught us these things, and the host of
the other good angels who follow are made like to him,
and the Prophetic Spirit. We worship in a door, knowing them
in reason and truth, declaring without grudging to everyone who
wishes to learn and have been taught. If we go
to chapter thirteen, Justin goes further into this, so he's
talking more about Christ. He says, for example, let me
pull it up here on my thing. He says, our
teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who is the
son of the True God himself, and holding him in
second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the third, we
will prove, for they proclaim our madness to consist in
this that we give to a crucified man a place
second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the creator of all.
For they do not discern the mystery that is herein
to which, as we make it plain to you, we pray,
pray you to give heed. So basically he's sorry every
wrong chapter that was on fourteen, But basically he's pointing
out in here that we have basically placed Jesus Christ
on the same level with the Father, the Creator. It's
not this idea that he is subordinate or less or
somehow of a different substance. Justin is very clear. This
is fire, a fire God of God, very substance. Now,
Jay brightly pointed out that the son is subordinate to
the father in like a causal aspect or like an
economical aspect is often used Trinitarian language, but he's not
subordinate in ontological aspect. I know they doctor Josh with Sigiwati,
who's another monarchal Trinitarian, says they share all in the
same divine essence, all ontological intrinsic properties, and so there's
nothing there that would be distinct or different. Jay, is
there anything you want to say about Justin or any
of these passages? Anything you want me to go to.
Speaker 1: No. I think you stated exactly the way I would
describe it. It was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I want to put up some quotes here
as well, and then I'm going to let Jago all
out on here.
Speaker 1: But I wrote, let's do One thing I would say,
is that a lot of what you saw there in
Justin that Michael was just going through, you're going to
find a lot of similar passages in a lot of
these other church fathers that we look at. So it's
not like, well, this is just Justin's speculation, and maybe
he helped develop the Trinity. He played a role as
a prominent martyr, and he's called in our tradition Justin
the philosopher, So he was a priminent apologist. But he's
just one of you know, dozens as we'll see. So
this is not what you know, just an outliers. What
I'm trying to.
Speaker 2: Say exactly, that's definitely well said. We're going to get
to that, but before we do, I want to get
to some quotes because Jake brought up a quote from
John Behar. Okay, and I will say, when I go
through this scholarship, I have seen some scholars accused Justin
of this. I don't think it's a consensus you because
there's a lot of pushback, which we'll cover here. So
for example, Thomas White says it's helpful in this respect
considered briefly some key ideas of early Trinitarian thought. Not
and Justin Martyr aaronais respectively. Justin Martyr clearly affirms that
Jesus Christ is the pre existing steff of God, and
he attributes personal agency to the son as one really
distinct from the eternal Father in person, in in not
in name only. Justin is not therefore a Unitarian theologian,
and his thought, when judged by later standards, is unambiguously Prototrinitarian.
And he notes in his work by that he basically
means the word He's just not using the word trinity.
But he's clearly teaching the theology that we see after
the church fathers come up with the work.
Speaker 1: One thing I'd add too, is he didn't say which
John Bart book he's pulling for. He's probably pulling from
Wade and Nicea, which I have. And it's also disingenuous
to give the impression that Bear was saying that, you know,
Justin is some kind of Unitarian or tritheist. In that book,
you know, I think he goes on to argue, I'm
not at my normal home, so I don't have my library.
But in that book he goes on to argue because
it's all about the path to Nicia, and so actually
the book is the defense of the very things that
we're talking about today. So he's not the book is
not Father Barr admitting that, oh, they're all anti Trinitarians,
and then now by Nicia becomes the trendy. That's not
what the book's about.
Speaker 2: Ja, Are you saying that in a Muslim quote? Mind something?
I don't think it's ever happened. Are you sure.
Speaker 1: I know it's hard to believe because we know that
they always strive to have the most scholarly, accurate, honest sourcing.
But yes, in this case, well, here.
Speaker 2: Here's another great quote. So this scholar here Bukar, he's
basically responding to earlier scholars that accused Justin of being
more a Subordinationists or a Unitarian. And in this section
of his book he states Justin himself clearly states that
God alone is the object of worship and honor. Father, son,
and Spirit are certainly included in Justin's scholar expedition of
Christian doctrine. Justin is well acquainted with the Christian Trinitarian
profession of faith to give an account of the sunny
deployees of Christological reading of Biblical theophemies, which enables him
to proclaim Christ as the Lord who appeared to the
patriarchs and prophets before being incarnate from the Virgin to
speak about the spirit he adopts a variety of approaches,
one of which is the adaptation of early Jewish and
Christian I forget how pronounce this, we're angeological speculations, I
believe now. In this book, as I said, he's responding
to people who've accused Justin of not being trinitarian, and
he notes the problem is that sometimes Justin diffuses words
like aim, angel or spirit differently depending on context. And
that's happened where scholars will say, well, if he's saying,
you know, like an angel's a spirit, he's saying Jesus
is a spirit, then he's saying that Jesus is not God.
But that's just not true. And again this has been
addressed by a lot more recent modern scholarship. Here another
great scholar I'm not gonna quote, but he has a
great chart in his book, Tarmo Tomb And as you
can see on this chart he differentiates between one miss doctrines,
Polytheus and Triune. At the top of his list in
the first three centuries of Christianity, who do we see there?
Lo and behold Justin Martyr he labels as trinitarian, along
with Tertullian Arenaeus, another other Church Fathers that Jake said
did not profess to Trinity, and actually he puts Novationan
in there, which I actually maybe might be wrong about this.
I thought he was not fully Trinitarian, but tomb seems
to think he is. So I'm gonna go back and
read Novationan after looking at this and going, well, maybe
I was wrong about it. I thought maybe I misunderstood
something in it.
Speaker 1: But it's my understanding that the Novationists did profess the
Trinity because when one of the arguments for that is
that when Novationists were received back into the church, if
they came back to the church, they didn't have to
be necessarily rebaptized or undergo even reordination, because the idea
was that the Trinitarian profession was at least still there
because there were a schism. But I could be wrong
about that.
Speaker 2: Well, I was recently reading in this book about this
whole topic, and he labeled novation In like the opening prelude,
as someone who was considered heretical for some things. But
I have seen scholars say no, he did a firm
Trinitarian theology. So that's something I want to go back
and check.
Speaker 1: One thing I would add is that to a lot
of the quotes when you see people like Jake or
Daniel when they come to these texts and the church fathers,
they'll take quotes about the eternal generation of the sun
and assume that that means that there's a temporal causation.
So they actually make a lot of the same moves
that the Aryans made at this time, or Paul of Samasada,
who many of these church fathers that were going to
look at. That's who they're responding against. And so the
irony is that they're making the very arguments of the
Unitarians and the Arians and Paul Samasada that the Church
fathers are arguing against, and they're arguing that the church
fathers are arguing their position of Unitarianism, which is ironic.
Speaker 2: All right, So if you want to share your screen now,
we can start going through some of these church fathers.
Because Jake Dinages bring up Justin Martyr, which, as we've shown,
he's clearly Trinitarian. And that's just again, ladies and gentlemen,
the tip of the iceberg. Go through his second apology,
go through more of the first apology. You see very
clearly him basically laying down Trinitarian theology for example. And
one more quote in First Apology, chapter sixty one, he says,
for in this name of God, the Father and Lord
of the Universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and
of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing of water,
talking about baptism Trinitarian baptism formula in the First Apology.
But if you want to get your screen up here, Jay,
I'll let you go through some of these other church fathers.
Speaker 1: Sure now remember and if I forgot one of the
people who listed, remind me he said that Aaron as
Tertollian justin Marty don't teach trinity. Did he listen to
anybody else?
Speaker 2: I don't recall him listening any of the us. I'll
double check while you're going through this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one thing I would say too to audience is
keep in mind that the word trinity or trenitas, which
I think there's some debate as to whether Tertullian or
one of the other church fathers use the first maybe
Theophilis I can't remember, but most people think it was
Ertillian that used it first. But there's some debate about
the dating of like Tertullian's text. But most of these texts,
as we said that we're going to go through here,
they're all dated prior to Nicea. I'll have one reference
that's posting ICEA, and I'll explain why that's there. But
they're not in chronological order. They're just in the order
that I went through and found them. When I first
got my church Father set back in the day, I
remember thinking when the cheft said the first volume or two,
it has all these weird guys I'd never heard of,
because I'd heard of Jerome, and I'd heard of Augustine,
and I've heard of Ambrose and Basil, that you've got
this list of all these guys that some of them
are kind of wacky, some of them are good. We're
solid for their time. But I never really understood, well,
why are these characters in here? Now I understand years later,
you know a lot of apologetics and debate. It's because
so many of these people in this early period are
going to be attesting to the controversial doctrines that we're
talking about today. Controversial not for Christians but for the
you know, Muslims of people that take issue with it.
So we're going to have a lot of people that
you haven't heard of, but they're figures that are very
valuable for their historical witness, and sometimes a sort of
historical witness, by the way, does not mean that they're
all correct, that they're all infallible, or that they we
don't believe the Church fathers are infallible, or that they
didn't make theological mistakes at times. And some of these
people even ended up deviating and becoming heterodox, like Tatian
or even a Tertullian himself ended up going outside of
the Church of his time and becoming a Montanist. So
the first quote we'll look at here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is I thank you actually put your screen back
in a shark. While you do that, I do want
to put up this super chat. I think you'll appreciate this. Jay,
thank you for the very generous super chest spaghetti. Sam, Hey,
j and Michael, thank you everything you guys do. You
were both instrumental in my journey to Christ from Islam.
So it's exciting to see you brothers working on a
project together being God bless you, bless you both, enstrengthen
you and your work. Really appreciate that, Sam, and Yeah,
I'm really glad to be working with Jay again, I
think we have more in agreement, and I want to
celebrate that.
Speaker 1: Okay, can we see that quote there?
Speaker 2: Yep, they got right there.
Speaker 1: So our first quote here is from Athenagoras, and this
is late second century, and this is from the doctor
a document called the Plea, and this is kind of
an early apologetic defense work. And you'll notice that he
states again this is this is very early late second century,
so one eighties, one nineties. We are not atheists. In fact,
we acknowledge one God, but we also acknowledge, as he
says here, the logos from the God, and that logos
is also united to that third person, the Holy Ghost.
And so this is just a great I'm not going
to read this whole passage, but you know you'll see
here that we have the trinitarian formula of worshiping Father,
Son and Holy Ghost. So athenagoras is a is an
excellent attestation here.
Speaker 2: You know what's you know, it's funny, Jay Is. I
literally have that quote pulled up just in case you
didn't have it. I'm like, that was like the first.
Speaker 1: One I was going to go to this perfect Yeah,
I mean, and I want to remind you right too,
Remember this is not exhausted. So uh, there's like like Michael.
So there's so many of these that you really have
to kind of, you know, sus them out. So let's
go to the next one here, Number two. This is
from the Apology of Saint Aristites, and he's another second
century church father. And what you'll notice about this text
is that we don't just find the reference to the
deed to Christ, but you'll notice also virgin birth and
the incarnation of the son of God. So the Christians
and trace the beginning of the religion from Jesus the Messiah.
He is named Son of God most hot and it
has said that God came down from heaven. So notice
he is referred to as fully divine, and from a
Hebrew virgin he clothes himself with flesh. So notice this
is a fully orthodox confession of the incarnation, virgin birth,
human nature, and that he's fully divine. And again that
is from the Apology of Saint Aristites. So the next
quote I'll pull up here is number three, and this
is from the late two hundreds. The writer called our Nobius,
and our Nobius writes that it is agreed that Christ
performed all those miracles, which he wrought without any aid
from external things, without the observance of any ceremonies, without
any definite motive procedure, but solely by the inherent might
of his authority, as was the proper duty of the
True God. And so the miracles of Christ in this
early apologetic treatise late two hundreds, as you can see here,
the miracles, according to him, attest to the divine status
of the Son of God. Now, not every quote, by
the way, is necessarily going to be trinitarian. In fact
that sometimes we'll see a writer in a couple of
paragraphs he might mention Father and Son, and then a
little bit down in the work he'll mention, for example,
the Holy Spirit. And it's just like Michael said, we
do that because we want to see the full context.
You know, if we just quote mind and we found
for example, the church father saying, you know, as to say,
many of the post Apostolic writers in their letters, like
Ignacious or Clement, you know, they might I think Ignacious,
for example, starts many letters like you know, from God,
our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And you might say, oh, well, he didn't mention Holy Spirit,
So he doesn't believe in the Holy Spirit. Well, no,
if you go down later in the letter, he does.
So it's not like there's some law that you have
to mention, you know, father and son together in spirit altogether,
or else you don't believe in the trinity. These are
just kind of, you know, kind of silly arguments that
people pull up. So the next one, number four, this
is Saint Afrea the Persian, and this is late two hundreds,
and you'll notice that he talks about the unbelief of
Jews and Gentiles, and then he says that Exodustry, I
am God, there is none beside me. You shall worship
no other God. And then he says, if you are,
you are opposing God, and that you call a man God.
Concerning these things, as far as I can tell, I
will instruct you about them, that while we grant that
he is a man, Christ is fully man, and while
we honor him and we call him God and Lord,
yet not in any novel fashion. In fact, Jesus our Lord,
is God, the Son of God, the King, the King's son,
the light of light. And of course, in I think
the Orthodox Church, Saint Aufaret has a pretty famous role.
He's very highly regarded. And so you'll notice here again
just a sampling from his Persian work, the Demonstrations, and
so we'll move on to the next one. Here number five.
This is the very famous church father that was the
tutor and the mentor to Athenasius. So you might have
heard of ath Natius and Anthonaians because he's sort of
the preeminent church father at the Council of Nicea. But
his mentor prior to Nicia in the two hundreds was
Saint Alexander of Alexandria. Now Alexander in the two hundreds
famously argued that if God is an eternal father, then
by necessity he must have an eternal son if the
word father is to mean anything. And this is an
argument that Saint Athanasius picks up in his Trinitarian apologetics.
But you'll notice he says that here the deity of
Christ brings us to what here the knowledge of the Trinity.
So again pre Nicea, pre Athenatious, this is mid two hundreds,
Saint Alexander of Alexandria that that the incarnation of Christ
brings us to the knowledge of the Trinity. So and
again remember that not every quote has to have Trinity present,
because when you read these writings, and in fact, Alexander
is kind of the you could argue he's the father
of the father of Nicia, and so the trinitarian apologetics
that Athanasius argues so forcefully in all of his writings
is really just from his mentor Alexander again from the
mid two hundreds. Next one is This one's a little odd,
but I thought it was worth putting in here. No
excuse me, not this one. I'm thinking of the Shepherd
of Farmis they epistol at barnabas here in chapter This
is I think chapter twelve, and it notes the deity
of Christ. And this is believed to have been written
anywhere from between seventy to one a d. But you'll
notice here all three persons are referenced. We have a
reference to Christ here as that Moses is a type
of Christ. And then we have the phrases in those
famous Messianic prophecies that we've made so much use of
over the years against Muslims and in the podcast that
we've done with people like Sam Schaman. We notice that
the personal spirit speaks here, and this is chapter twelve.
I think there's also a chapter six which says the
same thing. But you'll notice that the Lord sits at
my right hand. This is, of course, referring to the
ascension of Christ this society. Many times in the New
Testament about Christ's whenty of sins. Right sit around all
Maker's enemies your footstool. So behold how David calls him
Lord and Son of God. And then there was a
I thought the Holy Spirit was mentioned in here. Somewhere
does it not mention the spirit. Maybe holy Spirit is
mentioned in the other paragraph, but it does note that
it uses the reference, for example of Colossians that all
things are to him for him. So this is another
deity passage pointing out the deed of Christ. So let's
move on to the next one here, and I'm number seven.
This is a lesser known fragment of a writer around
the year two hundred named Caius. And Caius has cided
in Eusebius, And so this two hundred era fragment gives
attestation to the deity of Christ. The apostles themselves received
and taught the things which these men now maintain. So
here we have mid It is about two hundred and
the bishopric, the apostolic succession that goes from thirteenth in Rome,
from Peter to his successors up Rhinus in the day
of Caius writing this, And that's relevant too, because you'll
notice that Jake made the comment that there's not apostolic succession,
but here we have a reference in the Fragment of Caius.
But you'll also notice, I think in the next section
if you if you go to the Fragment of Caius
and you scroll down to chapter three. I thought I
had that one on here. Maybe I didn't clip that one,
but chapter three of Caius mentions the deity of the
Holy Spirit as well. I don't know if I should
pull that up or not. Let me see that, let
me go, Yeah, you can pull real quick.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, notice, like how many Like
we're just thinking, like Jays remembering, oh yeah, this one
in chapter three, Oh yeah, this other guy, because there's
just so much less gentlemen. Every week, I attend an
evening prayer service and we always sing the foss Hilaroon.
It's a very old hymn. I looked it up. Scholars
dated to basically they think the Diocletian persecution, so pre
Nicea around basically the end of the third century, turn
of the fourth century, what do we say in the
foss Hilaron We praise God Father's son and Holy Spirit
right then and there, pre nice and early him. Saint
Basil says it was a long standing tradition by the
time he came onto the scene. So there's a there's
another just another phrase I just thought off off the
top of my head, thinking of just another one. There's
so many here.
Speaker 1: So here we remember so chapter one here mentions the
deity of Christ, the word Christ, the Word of God.
And then when we scroll down to three, you have
the reference to the dictated by the Holy Spirit. Now
he's talking about certain groups that don't believe this, but
he's saying that they think themselves why than the Holy Spirit,
because they don't believe that the Holy Spirit spoke and
inspired the scriptures. So, in other words, we have a
reference to the personhood and agency of the Holy Spirit,
and so the Holy Spirit is not a force. Again,
when we read the whole context of these fathers, we
find them teaching exactly what we say. Let's move on
to number eight. This is probably well known to a
lot of people. This is the letter of Saint Clement
of Rome to the Corinthians. And you'll notice here in
chapter forty two, the apostles preach the Gospel to us
from the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, from God. Christ
was therefore sent forth by God by the Appointments, in
order the way accorded will of God, having never seved
these orders, fully assured by the Resurrection, and established in
the Word of God, with the full assurance of the
Holy Spirit. So we have Father, Son and Holy Spirit there.
But that's not the only quote. We also want to look.
Speaker 2: At exactly, First Clement or Second Clement.
Speaker 1: It's I'm sorry, it's the letter of Clement to the Corinthians.
So let me see. I can pull it up over
here if we need to. It's the first letter. And
because New Advent was kind of going with the line
of reasoning that the rest of them are potentially spurious,
I just I just stuck to the first epistle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing I will say about the Second Epistle,
though even a lot of scholars don't think Clemen actually
wrote that. However, they still date it to the second
century exactly. And it's again it calls Jesus God.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's that's a great point. Yet even the
even the a lot of the pseudopigrapha and sort of
the you know, doubted text from this period as well,
back up a lot of what we're saying. I just
I just tended to focus on the ones that were
less controversial, but you're you're right that they also make
that same point now here, and I think see forty
twenty six is the other great passage where we have
he says that you are the elect of God. Why
are there strives, tumult schisms? Have we not all one
God in Christ? Is there not one spirit of grace
poured out upon us all? And not one calling in Christ?
Do we do not remember divide the members of Christ?
But you'll notice so between forty two and forty six
you have the reference to the deed, to Christ and
to the Holy Spirit, and thus all three persons referred
to as divine and you could say triadic basically. Yeah,
there's the rest of that one. So we'll move on
now to number ten. This is an interesting one because
a lot of people aren't familiar with He was actually
the Bishop of Rome in the mid two hundreds is
the Satdynysius of Rome, and he actually wrote this is
really important because he wrote a treat us at that
time against the Sibelians, much like Tertullian had written against
the Sibelians. And so any of the treatises against the
Sibelians in this pre Nicene period are crucial because they're
some of the most forceful and consistent Trinitarian theological argumentation.
And so you'll notice in this passage against the Sibelians
from Sat Dinysius of Rome again two hundreds, it would
truly be unjust a dispute against those that divide and
rind the monarchy. He's talking about the monarchy of God
the Father and in the Church of God, as we're
into three powers and distinct substances. Now, he's saying that
if you split God into three distinct substances in the
sense of tritheism, he's calling that tritheism, and then that
three deities, you would destroy the Trinity. So he's not
saying that he's a modalist. He's speaking against tritheists. But
he goes on to say that those who pregiatis the
Word of God among you, so to speak, are opposed
to the opinion of Sibelius. Now this is important because
remember Sabellian is a modalist, and modalists essentially teach Unitarianism,
and so it's not absolutely identical to the Muslim view
of God, but it's a version of Unitarianism. Where As
probably everybody knows Sibelius and his followers, there was more
radical guys like Praxyis and the others. They taught that
the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were just masks
or names for an absolutely simple Unitarian God. So notice
that these bishops, in this case the Bishop of Rome,
and we'll see later there's also this also occurs with
the Bishop of Alexandria at this time, are explicitly rejecting,
rejecting the Unitarian argumentation. That was the very thing that
Jake said. Supposedly, these church fathers of this time period
were Unitarian developing a Trinitarian or tritheistic God. According to
Jake's argument, that's not what's going on here. In fact,
he says that as he defines the Cibelian position, he
says that the Son is the Father, and the Father
is at the Son. They the unity into three different substances.
Absolutely separated from one another, and he says that it
is essential that the divine words should be united to
the God of all, and that the Holy Spirit should
abide and dwell in God, and that the Divine Trinity
should be reduced and gathered into one. So he's talking
about the errors of the civilians, and he's saying that
the correct view that the Church of Rome at this
time holds is the Trinitarian confession, as for indeed rightly
know that the Trinity is declared in the Divine Scripture.
So here you have a second, a two hundreds arabishop
of Rome confessing that the Trinity is the doctrine of
the scriptures. He's not arguing this from Greek philosophy. He
believes that this is an exegetical argument. And many of
the church fathers that you'll notice this is another important point.
The church fathers are using the same ext of Jesus
we do when they cite the texts. They're citing the
text that we cite. They're citing the text that we
cite that they believe teaches the Trinity. And they are
fully aware that it doesn't use the word of trinity
because it doesn't have to. The fathers of this period.
Ectody of the scripture is the exact same way that
we do. This one, I think is written one of
the really strong ones, but it's not the only one.
So when we move on to another quote, I think
this is also Dionysia. This is Dionysius Hope to Rome
writing to bishops six Us in his epistle, and he
says that the he's talking about the heresy of certain
groups that would baptize and rebaptized in weird ways. Talks
about it again the Cibellian heretics. You notice here that's
the modalist Unitarians of that time. For since the doctrine
which lately says been foot set foot in May the
city of Metabolis, or full blashing against Almighty God and
the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, full unbelieved towards
the only begotten Son and the firstborn of every creature,
the word made man. So here we have John Wonn's
logos theology, which takes away the perception of the Holy Spirit.
So here you have again trinitarian confession from Pope Dionysius
of Rome. Next one, this one is a little weird,
but I'm including it because it could potent you could
possibly read it in a correct way. Is also possible
that it might be read in a heterodox way because
the language is a little ambiguous. But I'm including it
just because it is an early reference in the Shepherd
of Hermes to the deity of Christ and the incarnation.
So although his terminology is a little ambiguous here he
does you could read this as the Holy Spirit basically
deifying the flesh that the Son of God assumed. And
so Shepard Furmas again dated very early in this like
around believes to be around one hundred or ninety one hundred.
You know, I can't remember.
Speaker 2: To ninety one hundred. I think it's would be after
the Dedcate, but yeah, it would be ninety one hundred
sometime around there.
Speaker 1: So you'll notice that a lot of this, what it's
talking about is the Holy Spirit's relationship to the flesh
that Christ took on, right, And it's talking about that
flesh being in some way partaking of the Holy Spirit
and being a tabernacle within which the Holy Spirit can
dwell as you see here. But it does include this
notion of the deity of Christ in this triadic relationship
between Father Son and Spirit. So it is an early
attestation to the Triadic Confession. So next one up is,
let's see thirteen.
Speaker 2: I don't see at thirteen.
Speaker 1: I think this is supposed to be thirteen. Let's see
if this is this is ignacious and so this is fourteen.
So I think the last two we're just there's another
one that I forgot to. I know what it is.
Thirteen is a discussion of Hippolitists of Rome on the
Holy Theophany. And this is relevant because Holy Theophany, of course,
is you know, in the Orthodox Church, it's a feast,
a very early feast. It's a feast here in Rome
as well in the early two hundreds, and Hippologists also
was a controversial Bishop of Rome, but he ended up
being in our view as saint, so he ended up
on the good side of things. And his discourse on
the Theophany here, which is the feast of Christ baptism.
If you don't know, the church is always seen, I'm
talking about you in the audience. If you don't know,
the Theophany is really a manifestation of the Divine So
when we talked about the Old Testament Angel the Lord appearing,
you know, the cloud, the fire. We believe in the
Orthodox Church those are divine manifestations of God in time
and space, particularly the second person of the God had
So we don't think that it's, you know, the person
of the Father. It is explicitly the person of the Son.
As Jesus argues in John five to the Pharisees, no
man sees God at any time. But he says by
implication to the Pharisees there that the Son of Man
was basically I was the one basically talking to Moses
and talking to Abraham. And so you'll notice there that
the feast of theoteny. In this this brief homily, here
is an argumentation proving the not just the deity of
the Son and his is a divine the divinity of
the Son becoming a carnate, but also the triadic confession
that the Holy Spirit is necessary when we do the
baptismal confession, right, we baptize the name of the Father's
son in the Holy Spirit. This early early uh homily
on on the Theophany is really making the Trinitarian argumentation
that we would make again in two hundreds.
Speaker 2: So that was also in apologies a Roman reputation of
all heresies. Chapter ten, he says, the word alone of
this God is from God himself, wherefoth also the word
is God being the being of God. So there's another
early quote from the policy.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, there's there's a lot in Apologist has
quite a bit. He's also got a commentary on Daniel,
which is pretty fascinating. There's all kinds of references to
the Messantic prophecies and how they're fulfilled in the deed
of Christ and his writings. But yeah, I feel free
to bust in with anything that I've missed or that
you think should be mentioned. Next up, I think this,
so this is ignacious of anion. These are pretty well known.
These are dated anywhere from one hundred fifty in terms
of the manuscripts that are present. And let's see the
first one here fourteen. Will notice that he says, greetings
in you know the God, the Father, and our Lord
Jesus Christ. And then are much beloved God, Jesus Savior,
the followers of God, the Blood of God. So we're
talking about the incarnate Christ here. And then companion to
this quote is the next quote here, which I think, yeah,
this is the same letter, or this might be to
the Magnesians, but he says for it the habit of
carrying about the name of Jesus Christ in wicked guile,
somewhere in the habit of doing this while they practice
unworthy of God. And then he goes on to say
that there is one physician who is possessed of flesh
and spirit and not made God, existing in the flesh
both of Mary and of God, passable and then impassable,
our Lord Jesus Christ. Again clearly clear's day called God.
And I think also in this previous one to the Ephesians,
if you go down to chapters four and five, he
references the personhood and deity of the Holy Spirit as well.
Let me make sure if that's right.
Speaker 2: Trying to think if I wrote anything down on Ignacious,
I have stuff on the dedicate. We can get too later.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I think I did. I have one
one dedicate quote here, But so I think I have
this wrong, that I'm actually talking. It's actually not Ignacious
four and five. I think it's the discourse on Theophany
has a reference to the Holy Spirit. Anyway, I'll move
on past that to the next one in my list.
Speaker 2: So just so you guys can see there is so much,
and sometimes he's confusing because there's just so much to
juggle when it comes to cult from the Church fathers.
To say we don't have this trinitarian theology and the
Church is like ignoring an embarrassment of riches.
Speaker 1: That we have exactly sixteen and this is an ignacious
letter to the Magnesians. And you'll notice the triad present
here as well. Study therefore to be establishing the doctions
that were in the Apostles, and so that so all things,
whenever you do, may prospering flesh and spirit, and faith
and love in the Son and the Father, and in
the Spirit the beginning in the end uh. And again
he says, Jesus Christ to the Father, according to the
flash Apostles, to the Father and to the Spirit. So
again this is very early letter to the Magnesians, a
clear triadic reference. Now the ones in Irenaeus, there's so
many that I just kind of have it. Yeah, right,
So when we get to Arnaeus, which is like one
ad a d when he does against heresies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when Jake brought up Aaronaeus, I was like, are
you kidding? That?
Speaker 1: One was really absurd because first of all, you know,
against Heresies is like five or six hundred pages. The
first two or three hundred pages is him recounting all
the gnostic sects of that time and all the variations
of them. And then by about books four and five
and six he gets into you know, strict theology, and
so you'll notice God the Father in his word. So
here we have the deity of Christ. But again there's
so many of these. So this is the example I
have here is five eighteen. But I'll just list a
few for you if you want to go. Book two
point one refers to the monarchia of the Father. Book
three one and two refers to the triadic personal reality
of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Book five eight refers
to the deity and divinity of the Holy Spirit. Book
five eighteen refers to the deity of Christ. And so
there's just really too many in urinaeusis against heresies, But
you can find those pretty easily if you just start
looking through them. Next one is another really early witness.
This is a fragment from one eighty one eighty a d.
And this is the epistle to Aristides. Actually I think
it's a full brief epistle, but he says, the child
leaped and left at our caresses words. And when you
have bidden the mother farewell, he had shown us honor.
We testified as who he is a divine leader. And
then he goes on to say that we made speed
to depart in all earnestness. We reported to erusalm all
that we've seen. Behold then the great things that have
totally regarding Christ, Christ, our Savior, who is may known
to God and man. And so this is just an
early reference to the divine leader of the person of Christ.
In this Julius Africanus of one eight a d. Nineteen
is excuse me, this is this is the fragment. This
is Fragment nineteen. We don't know who this is. It's
just a fragment from this time period. It might be
Julius Africanist, I'm not sure. But the fragment says, for
we know that the measure of these words are not ignorant,
grace and faith giving, thanks to the Father who has
bestowed hon us his creatures, and the Savior of all,
to whom be glory majesty with the Holy Spirit. Again
very early. You can find this on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a this is a great website.
It goes through so many of the letters and the
works of the Church fathers, and it's all it's all
open access. You can just go check this stuff out,
and so yeah, we're using the site, so UK guys
can just go through some of this stuff if you
want and just see over and over again Church Father
for Church fault. You these Trinitarian formulas over and over again,
calling Jesus God, talking about the Holy Spirit or the
Prophetic Spirit, talking about the monarchy of the Trinity. It's
all there.
Speaker 1: One of the earliest most important treatises for the doctor,
the Trinity proper that in terms of its kind of
breadth and scope, is Tertullian's work written around one ninety,
which is actually a large defense of the Trinity. So
remember we're told by Jake and the Muslims that the
Trinity doesn't exist prior to I See You. But they'll
also turn out times to say that Tertillian invented the Trinity,
which is also not true. But you'll notice in the
book is called the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity and Unity.
This is against Praxius. And remember Praxius was an early
radical Sabellian or modalist. So the very position that Jake
and these people are saying is true, this unitarian modalist
type of position, is actually the very thing that Tertullian's
against Praxius is arguing against. And they themselves even admit
this when they turn around half the time and say
that Tertullian invented the Trinity, So it can't you can't
have it both ways. He's not an anti Trinitarian an atrinitarian,
and everybody knows that he's very important for the early development.
Speaker 2: With regards to Tertullians, sometimes Muslims will say, oh, this
just all came from Greek philosophy. Well, Tertullian was adamant
against using Greek philosophy. He's famous for saying, what has
Athens to.
Speaker 1: Do with Jerusalm? Yeah, he thought that, yeah, these two
were really incompatible. Great points, So that the earliest systematic
defender of the trinity, exactly as you're saying, really says
that it's nothing to do with philosophy, and he relies
heavily on argumentation from Scripture, as do all of these
church fathers at this time. Remember this is this is
church fathers at this time doing exegesis the way we do, right,
So they're not doing you notice, they don't do the
Muslim apologetic of picking and choosing. They'll look at, Okay,
if Jesus says, for example, that he's of the Father
or the Father's greater, they'll also balance that out, as
you saw with Michael using the later passages in justin
they balance out that those relationships between the persons. Okay,
this next one is an early epistle in the mid
two hundreds, but it's a product of an entire synod.
And this is the product of the Synod of Antioch
in two seventy two, and it's the Epistle of Malchion.
And the reason that it's relevant is because oh wait,
excuse me, this is I gotta go back to you know,
this is it. Let me just pull it up from
over here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no worries. I mean again, when we're going
through church father guys, I mean they again, they did
not have the gift to brevity. They go very long
and very hard, and sometimes you're like, wait, where was that? Oh, yeah,
here it is. It's that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Epistle of Malchion is a senator of Antioch.
I guess Malcion is presumably Bishop of Antioch, and he
this two seventy two, again about fifty ish years before Nicea.
It's condemning Paul of Samasada. And Paul of Samasada was
an early anti Trinitarian sort of radical you know, Arian,
you could say proto Rian maybe, and Paul Samasoda railed
against the deity of Christ. And this whole deposition from
the Sinnet of Antioch is predicated on the deity of
Christ to reject the Unitarian theory that Christ is just
a man. So again, this is an anti Aryan anti
Unitarian synod from two seventy two in Antioch. Okay, the
next quote was from the Epistle to Diagnetus. This is
dated one thirty a d. And we read here that
Jesus is God the Word made flesh. So again John
one theology. I think Malachi three isn't that the reference
to the peering of our great God of Yahweh. Doesn't
this say the day that Yahweh will appear? I might
be wrong what MALOCHI three two is, but I think
it's a it's a messy and prophecy that's being used here.
But it also refers to the deed of Christ, but
he says, they're not mere human mysteries. The trillion incomprehensible
Word has established himself in our hearts, in their hearts,
the hearts of the believers. So again, how would he
do that if he wasn't fully divine? He you know,
a human person can't establish himself. A mere human man
can establish himself in human hearts or some prophet. So
again that's something a Muslim could not say. This one's
really important because this one is let's see, this is
twenty three. Yeah, this is Saint Peter of Alexandra. So
remember a lot of the two hundreds era theologians that
would be very influential at the counts of Nicea. They're
coming out of the Bishopric of Antioch, and this is
what produces not just Alexander, but also Athanacious and one
of the other bishops of Alexandria in the late two
hundreds put down this really powerful argument here, and this
is again he says, notice this, this doesn't just prove
trinitarian incarnational relations. But notice this amazing passage here where
he says that they came to the Church of the
Most Blessed Mother of God ever virgin. That's the Theotokos
language that's going to be used two hundred years later
by Saint Cyril and Ephesus. Cyril's just repeating his predecessor,
Saint Peter of Alexandria in the two hundreds, saying the
exact same phraseology mother of God. That means that Jesus
is a divine person born of ever virgin Mary. Thus
Jesus is a divine He's the second person of the Godhead.
So that's a very very early two dred maybe one
hundred and fifty years before Cyril or so, but two
hundred years before Ephesus and Chalcedon. You have this amazing
confession in the acts of Peter of Alexandria. Let's see,
I've got this here twenty four. This is the Polycarp
the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians. This is dated
about one oh eight eight or eight somewhere in there.
And you'll notice that here we have this is a
pretty famous one. He says that may the God and Father,
our Lord, Jesus Christ and Christ himself, who is Son
of God and eternal high priest. Again, you couldn't be
eternal high priest. If you weren't divine, no human person
is an eternal high priest too, because this is a
reference to Christ as the fulfillment of the order of
Melchisa Dek. Right, I will be make you a priest forever,
recording the Order of Melchisedek. So again, this is a
famous reference to the divinity of Christ in the polycarp
to the Ephesians. And then the last one that I
had again, remember is just a sampling. This is a
little This is just a sampling.
Speaker 2: I got even more quotes we could use, but I mean,
like there's just so much, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: This one I included just because even though it's a
little bit after and I see it it's later on
into three hundreds. This is the earliest full liturgy that
we have. And this is relevant because this is the
liturgy again in Alexandria, which was so for Nicia and
the defense of the deity of Christ and eventure of
the Trinity. Now keep in mind that the original Nicie
creed does include a reference to the Holy Spirit, contrary
to what Bryce and Gray argued when we had our debate.
So you know, when we read Athanasius and these other
Church fathers. We've clearly seen many places where they do
refer to the person who the deity of the Holy Spirit,
because a lot of times people who are anti trinitarian
will say, okay, well, maybe the church fathers thought Jesus
and the Father were divine, but nobody thought that the
Holy Spirit was divine at Nicea, which is simply not true.
Athanasius in many many places in his writings refers to
do the Spirit. But this is the earliest liturgy, which
is even more forceful because this means that all the
churches that were in communion in the jurisdiction of Alexandria,
and remember that's a pretty big prominent church. If you
look at Canon six of Nicea, it lists Rome, Alexandria,
and Antioch and Canon six of Nicea as the three
most preeminent sees in the church at that time. So
that means that a giant portion of churches and communion
with Alexandria again confessing the deity of Christ, would be
using this divine liturgy of Saint Mark. So this would
be even more of a common profession where we have
again all kinds of references to the Deity of Christ,
calling upon Christ to forgive our sins. You have the Trisagion,
you have the Triadic. You know, we don't just call
upon the Father. We call upon our Father and Son
in Holy Spirit right here through you, Glory Power to
all holy and life giving Spirit, now and forever. And
then we have again this is very similar. If anybody
has been to an Orthodox church, you'll notice this is
very similar to the liturgy that we profess in the
Orthodox churches. And then here you have the trisagion. Right.
The trisagion is a Trinitarian prayer, Holy God, Holy Mighty,
Holy Immortal. That is a reference to the three persons
of the triad in our theology, and all the feel
legions of this time, by the way, say the same thing.
So it's not something that we're making up post hawk.
It's the theology of that time. Again, it's thoroughly trinitarian.
It's not that long. If anybody wants, you can go read.
You have the Cherubic hymn also, which has a trinitarian
reference of Christ Holy Spirit. So again the universal Confession
of the Church is in communion with one another at
this time. Right all what we call the Universal Catholic
Church in the Empire at that time. I don't mean
necessarily the Roman calolgy Church today, but the Catholic Church
in its confession of that time was clearly confessing trinitarian
relationships that we confess today. The Orthodox faith is confessed
the true right believing faith, and Christ is our high
priests in Christ is the one who heals us and
saves us. So that's my list. Again, there's many, many more,
but I thought that would be a good sampling of
just the three centuries.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, And if we go back even further, Mike,
I missed this in the dedicay until Michael hath Bird
put in his book. He knows that the didicates changes
the well known celebrated liturgical formula Hosanna to the Son
of David, to Hoseannah to the God of David, an
explicit relation to Jesus. The purported low Christology of Jewish
Christianity is an urban myth waiting to be bumped. So
the dedicate is very early, is probably earlier than the
Shepherd of Herma's. It's close to the New Testament. It's
definitely first century right then, and there they're saying, yes,
Jesus is God and also in the Dedicay, you have
a trinitarian baptism formula. You baptize in the name of
the Father Son in the Holy Spirit. If you go
even back, if we just go look at the New Testament.
Here's a quote from Michael Patrick Barber in his book
The Historical Jesus in the Temple. The vocative lord Lord
is applied to Jesus in the Sermon of the Mouth.
As Jason Staples has shown, this expression always represents an
allusion to the tetragramaton and the septuagen in places where
it has the Hebrew has atto Naishem the septuagen as
Lord Lord. And what is Jesus saying, Well, when people
call on me, Lord Lord, he's saying that he's the
tetragrammaton Right there. You can see the same thing in
Matthew fourteen. It's a scene that stands out where Jesus
is exercising something that only the God of the Bible
can do, namely walking on water. And what Barber does
is he goes through and he shows how Matthew fourteen
is directly quoting from Psalm sixty eight about the Psalmist
and how he's writing his relation to God and how
it's very similar to that. And you can just see
this when you go through the biblical text, like you
see Mark opening his Gospel saying that someone's gonna come
prepare a way for the Lord. You think that's going
to be Jesus. But who shows up? John the Baptist
comes and who's he preparing the way for Jesus? And
what is this passage here quoting from It's quoting from
Isaiah talking about a voice crying in the wilderness preparing
away for Hashell. Right then and there you see this
through and through. One of my favorite ones is actually
right here where you see Mark sixty eight forty nine
talk about when Jesus is walking on water again something
only Yahweh can do. It says he meant to pass
by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea,
they thought it was a ghost. And like scholars like
Mike Lacona, this is directly referring to Job nine to
eight talking about God trampling the waves on the sea.
And it says also that he passes by me. And
so the Mark when he's writing this, what is in
view is actually Job. So you can go through and
see this over and over again. And notice that they're
constantly connecting Jesus to God to Hashell constantly, over and over.
Speaker 1: I did a lecture through the Gospel of John. We
did every chapter, and we noticed when we did that
that pretty much every chapter in John has at least
a reference to the deity of Christ or the Trinity,
and sometimes both, you know, in an entire chapter. So
if people want to go deeper into that, that's never ending.
Well basically of you know, old Testament of distinent references
to the Trinity.
Speaker 2: And and notice we we have some. I got so
many more quotes. We didn't even get the Clement of
Alexandria or Gregory the Wonder Worker, so many quotes. There's
another great one, Odes of Solomon. I mean, there's just
so much here, ladies and gentlemen. So for for Jake
the Muslim metaphysician to stand up there and say, well,
there was no Trinity before and I see and actually
bring up fathers like Justin and Tertolian and Aaronaeus. Anyone
who's read these fathers is to go, what are you
talking about? These guys are like to say, Tertolian wasn't
preaching the Trinity? Is just mind boggling to me. I
don't know where he would get.
Speaker 1: Well, the early condemnations of Paul of sam Masauda and
the Sabellians, right, I mean, they're so for So on
the one hand, you've got the condemnation of the modalist
anti trinitarian excuse me, of the Unitarian modalists of the Sibelians,
and you've got simultaneously condination of the anti trinitarian Arians.
So that's really again a confession of the fact that
we're not Unitarian, we're not Aryan, we're Trinitarian exactly.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that needs to be pointed out. So as
you can see, it is very easy to bunk this
claim from Muslims. The Trinity is through the early Church,
It's through the scriptures. And if you want to go
even further back, watch Jay's debate as I mentioned with
Daniel Akikitchu, where he shows that you can even see
this multi personal nature of God in the Old Testament.
It's not this idea, this was a later development. This
is something that is consistently taught in scripture. Was it
fully revealed in the Old Testament? No, not entirely, but
you can still see the beginnings of them starting to
understand that God is more than one person. There, they
did a great job demonstrating that in his debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if you know, the way Jesus talks
about his relationship to Moses and his relationship to Abraham
gives us an indicator that according to Jesus and John
five through nine, they knew and had a relationship with him.
They didn't have to have a metaphysical treatise about how
the Trinity works to know that there's Yahweh, there's his
angel messenger that some of these Old Testament patriarchs interacted with,
and there's his spirit, and the Spirit is all throughout
the Old Testament as well as a personal agent.
Speaker 2: Here is a question in a super chat for you, Jay,
Jesus submitting to the Father is that like a wife
submitting to her husband? But both are equal and valued
as this argument hold up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Paul kind of makes that analogy. Right.
We submit to the church as the wife submits to
the husband, as Christ submits to the Father. But again,
submission and subordination doesn't necessitate onto logical difference. Right, So
I might have authority over my wife in a relationship
way but that doesn't mean that in terms of our
nature or our ontology that I'm more human than she is, right, Ye.
Speaker 2: A good way to put it. Yeah, thank you for
the super chat. Messianic apostate is actually an ex Muslim,
so I appreciate you showing up here wholesome to see
Mikey J. Clabrety. Yeah, and I hope we can do
more in the future on stuff like this because I
think it's great for Christians to work together and find unity,
and I think that's all. I am all for doing
more of that. Very good to see you two work
together defend the Trinity, one of, if not the most
important doctrines. I love to see some unity instead of division.
Totally agree. Would you say, Jada, the Trinity is the
most essential Christian doctrine or would you say it's equal
with other doctrines.
Speaker 1: I believe that, you know, the first Seven Council of
the Church, in my view, really hammer out all of
the trinitarian and crystological implication. So really the Trinity is
kind of the foundation, and then all the other doctrines
like Christology will flow from that. So I think Trinity
and Christology really set the tone for what Christianity is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you on that. Uh
looks like one of your fans, soy face. No better
guests have on this time.
Speaker 1: One thing I would add to I just remembered. So
tonight I'll be doing a live stream with doctor bo Branson,
who I think has you mentioned that you mentioned the
guy that uh, who's the black guy that that's.
Speaker 2: The monarchy doctor Joshua.
Speaker 1: They've done streams together and uh, doctor Branson and I
are going to be covering some of this tonight because
he had a debate with Jake in the past that
I recommend everybody watch does God Have a Son? And
they'd had a really good interaction on that, and then
doctor Khalil Adnani has a really good interaction with Jake too,
So people want to go deeper into the Jake debates,
I would suggest those. And then for those that are
interested in what monarchical trinitarianism is, we'll be doing a
live stream on that tonight.
Speaker 2: What time is that I think we're eight est ad
st Okay, So for those of you watching, be sure
to go to Ja's channel tonight to watch that. If
you're watching this later, you can go to Jay's channel
now and wants that because we're going to wrap up
this dream here soon. Question here, people who live in
glass houses should and throw stones? Does Jake not realize
he also prays to the dead five times a day
to a guy rotting in Mecca. I not sure that's
a reference to you. I'm not updated on all my
understanding this Lawmick theology. Jad know what this is in
reference to.
Speaker 1: Is do they think he's dying in Mecca? I guess
that means that he didn't ascend to heaven. So I
guess that's what that person means.
Speaker 2: I think that he's, for any of them praying to Mohammad,
whose body was buried in Mecca.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, Like, so he didn't ascend, so
he's still Jesus ascended and Mohammad did not, I guess,
is what he's saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely to be that case. All right, where's
the next one here, Jane? I applaud your courage. Is
amazing that you're showing your face after how you exposed.
And I don't know who that is, but I doubt
that he actually exposed and demolished, you.
Speaker 1: Know, So this is a Marxist communist who oh argued
that materialism is true because there's no such thing as metaphysics,
and so he didn't understand that that's a metaphysical claim
to say that all reality is material. And yeah, so
that that wasn't much of a debate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty sure. All right, anything else you want
to say on trinitarian theology. As I said, Jay's got
a stream tonight with doc doctor Bob Ranson, another great scholar.
They're going to be covering more of this. Anything else
you want to add before we wrap up here, Just.
Speaker 1: One comment that the notion of development is a little unclear.
In our view, the trinity is a doctrine that the
apostles are handing down, even if the word trinity is
not used. And so what we believe the councils are
doing is just defining and explicating and getting more precise
about what that depositive faith that was once we're all delivered.
Was so an argue contrary to like a Roman Catholic
idea of the doctrinal development. We don't think that there's
like an evolving, changing thing. And Jake seemed to have
that kind of an argument when he was saying Oh,
the Trinity is a doctrine that evolves, and I think
it's very important to point out that an argue. It's
not an evolution. It's an explication and getting more precise,
but it's not an evolving doctrine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I would also say that the way I
kind of word it is like you may not see
the word in the Bible omniscience, for example, but clearly
you see that taught. And it's the same with the Trinity.
I don't know you can come away from reading the
Gospel of John, especially the Farewell Discourse, and not come
away with a trinitarian theology. Like That's where I point
people too, when they say where does the Bible teach
the Trinity? Just read John and if you really want
something specific, starting John thirteen and go up to John seventeen.
You'll see it very monarchical trinitarianism right there. It's all
three persons are mentioned, all referred to as God. I
don't know how else you can get around this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I totally agree. Yah, John's so clear.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, so. I appreciate you coming on the channel, Jay.
I thought this was going to be very helpful. I
hope people can use this stream in the future for
Muslims make this ridiculous claim and all the quotes we
put up so you guys can just see it for
yourself and go and get the quotes. This isn't hard
to debunk, ladies and gentlemen. For a Muslim to make
the bold claim that the Church didn't teach the Trinity.
Until I see it, it's just pure and utter nonsense.
And I appreciate my guests being on with me today.
We don't agree on everything, that's okay because we both
affirm the essential doctrines. Appreciate it on.
Speaker 1: This point for sure, We.
Speaker 2: Most certainly do, and that needs to be celebrated and
explored because I think there's a lot more unity in
the Body of Christ than is actually known. And so
I was very honored to have you on today. Jay,
I appreciate and I hope we can do more of
this in the future.
Speaker 1: Appreciate me anyway. God bless you and have a good day.
Speaker 2: God bless you too. God bless you too.
Speaker 1: Man