Islam Vs Orthodox Christianity Debate - Jay Dyer / Paul Williams

eight minutes. I'll go eight minutes, et cetera, et cetera, back and forth, and then we'll have a kind of a conversational style exchange and then we'll take the questions. So we don't have any set time limit, So feel free to ask super Qui supertach questions if you want to to both of us. Again, keep them civil, let's

not get crazy here. And then if you want to, Paul, you can go ahead and introduce yourself to my audience and let them know what you do and whatever you're comfortable saying about your background and where they can find your materials and I'll have all those links below. Hello, right, can you hear me now?

I haven an ordinary day job, but I was based in London, and I'm very grateful to Jay from inviting me on today to have this dialogue, this discussion about the Trinity and tao Heed. I guess or Trinity in the Bible we believe as Muslims in in the tow he the on this of God. But then that is applicit critique. I guess of other beliefs, but with doubtless come into that joined me to begin an eight minutes that's much just my intro. Ja.

show Hollywood Be Coded. My master's is in English and lit and philosophy, and I would say that my expertise is in the realm of worldviews. So I do worldview paradigm analysis, and most of my critiques, whether it's Darwinism, whether it's other religious perspectives, or whether it's rom Catholicism or whatever. I might be debating Protestants whoever atheists. My critique is usually from the philosophic perspective. But I also have many years in terms of biblical studies, so I

come from an Orthodox perspective. So I'll be defending orthodox Christianity what I believe to be the true expression of Christianity. And then I will apparently, I'll go ahead and give myself the first eight minutes to start. And before I started saying I don't profess to be any expert on Islam, I did take college courses that dealt with the history

of Islam and the Kuran and so forth. It's been many years since I've interacted with Islamic thinkers or apologists, maybe ten years, so I'm happy to have this kind of thing set up. It'll be interesting exchange for me. In most of the time, I've not been able to find find a Muslim apologist, so I'm glad that that Paul was willing to do it. So I'll start my

timer now. And what I would say is that my first point, and I did have a chance to listen to some of your debates, Paul, I thought you had some interesting critiques, some of which I haven't heard, a lot of which I have heard. So the first starting point I would say is that I think we have a different conception of number one authority, how we know what we know, and how to approach the Biblical texts.

I think from your vantage point, what I got in a lot of your debates was that you see the text as a disjunction, a disjointed series of books that Paul kind of is set against Jesus. Paul is set against the Law and the Old Testament, almost kind of a Lutheran style of reading. I'm not seeing a Lutheran but and it's the kind of analysis that we would

see in a lot of higher critics. So I'm very familiar with the origins of higher criticism, with Julius Bellhausen, how it developed over time, and how it came to be the Jesus quest, a lot of the liberal scholarship, the Jesuits and so forth, it kind of got that going at the turn of the century. And I would say that this is curious because this is really a new approach to the texts. This is not a historic

Islamic approach to the text. Again, not an Islamic expert, but it seems to be a kind of adopted approach that many anti Christian apologists have sort of jumped on board with. And the reason I think it's a bit dubious and maybe ad hoc and in many ways contradictory, is because there's no real way for the textual critic. And I do have some familiarity with this field there's no real way for the textual critic to know that a lot of the theories that are proposed are true

or not. So it functions on the basis of a lot of presuppositions. I heard you in one of your debates. You spoke of Thomas kun and paradigms. I'm glad you mentioned that, because when I listened to your talks, I heard a lot of shifting notions of how we conceive of authority within our own paradigms. So for you, there was an attempt many times to appeal to the Bible, and you would appeal to texts that you believed or at least as I understood you to do in your

approach to believe to be authentic. Like this section of what Jesus is saying in this Gospel, he's saying keep the law. Another section. Oh well, scholar XYZ has shown us that this section was made up. Now, I don't fault you for trying to do that, because as an apologist for your religion, that would be what you want to do. You want to show a contradiction in our perspective, in our paradigm. But what I do is I come

at this from the perspective, a holistic view. I believe that from Genesis to the final revelation of the Apocalypse, it's a holistic text. The text shows an amazing amount of continuity. And in fact, in some of your arguments where you talked about the dietary laws or things like this, actually Orthodoxy has a unique, a unique take on this that is not like Roman Catholicism or aspects of Evensism. So I would actually agree that when Jesus says in Matthew five that we are bound to all of the

jocks and tittle of the Torah. In fact, I use this argument quite often. Now, how that plays out and what that means, we don't think is arbitrarily set up by independent higher critics. But in fact, as many of your opponents in your debate said, the historic Church itself. So it's a question again back to authority. When we look at authority and we say, well, that religion teaches X, y Z, and when I take their holy books out

of the context of where they reside. So for example, for us, the Bible is not a text that operates abstractly like some kind of rule book per se. That's one aspect of the text but for us, the Bible is primarily a liturgical document, so it actually arises out of what would be read in the services of the church. So you're very focused on the early Church and how it relates to Judaism. This is also a big focus

of mine as well. And what's interesting is that the early Church worship, which was in the synagogue, initially birthed the Gentile Church from the synagogue, and then as the Church spread throughout the Empire, there is all the marks of what we would expect from a church that adopts a temple and synagogal liturgical service that then goes into

the gentile world. And the reason I say that is that this is a big part of what I missed in a lot of your debates was the misunderstanding of the relationship between the period of the first to third centuries. So you seem to have the perspective that maybe some Baptists and Seven day Adventists have, which is that there was this massive corruption of Christianity from the time of the Apostolic era, and Paul just you know, contrasted with Jesus and up to the third century in Nicea and

maybe after Nicea. You know, it turned into some other kind of thing, but in actuality myself being somebody who went down this road, reading extensively for fourteen years the church fathers in Toto, not every church father, but I have read all of the post Apostolic fathers and most of the writings of the fathers for the first three centuries, and what I find is a complete continuity, just off

the top of my head. For example, if we read justin Martyr, we find him looking at the Old Testament Theophanes as examples of predictions of the logos to come the Angel of the Lord. This is a big apologetic move that he uses against Tripho the Jew. If we look at Erineus in Against Heresies, Iraneus has a whole section after he deals with the Gnostics for the first

three books, and again this is one eight. He has an extensive section where he talks about the continuity between the Old and New Testament, and he refutes Marcion somebody that although I'm not saying that you're Marcianite, I did hear you were referencing Ebionites and other heretical groups that were intended to show that that was somehow authentic Christianity. I don't think that's true, because most of our luminaries of the first three centuries were consistently opposed to those figures.

So you're also correct that there were there was a development of the canon. But how that the fact that there's a development of the canon would be a problem for Christianity, I'm not sure. Because any religion that has millennia of time going into it, there's going to be

some kind of notion of development. Right So, for example, perhaps it's true that we do not immediately see the totality of the Trinity within the Torah, but that doesn't mean that in the notion of progressive revelation that there won't be more and more and more revealed. For example, even within Judaism, there's the conception that obviously Jeremiah understood

more than Abraham did. Right, So, just because there is a section of revelation at one period in time that's built on later as profits come, it doesn't mean that necessarily that the newer revelations are necessary should be pitted against the older or the original. So our presupposition is continuity. And although I'm sure we won't have time to get into the totality of that today, I do have a three hour talk where I went through the totality of

where I see continuity between the only New Testaments. And I think that when we look at Paul and Jesus, we will consistently see not discontinuity, but in fact continuity. We will see the fact that Jesus in many cases appeals to the law and he says that it is binding, but he also makes statements later that qualify how that law will be kept. It is not what goes into the mouth of a man, and not what a man eats that defiles him in Mark, but what comes out

of his heart. So the fact is Jesus denying the dietary laws. No, So how do we understand this? Well? For example, in our Orthodox study Bible, the notes in Leviticus are excellent because they explain in detail that the way that the ceremonial laws are kept now are in a spiritual sense. So that's my first eight minutes, and Paul, I will let you begin your eight minutes when you're ready.

It's not there in Genesis. I would argue, it's not preached by any of the prophets of God, Isaiah, jer Am, I and my card holder, or none of them actually gives any hint. In fact, the opposite is the case. They constantly emphasize the oneness of God, that he is unique, that he is one, that he is the Lord, that he is the God, the Creator, as only he that should be worshiped. We don't get any sense of a three and one at all in the Jewish scriptures. We

don't even get that sense in the New Testament. Although I know Christians, of which I used to be one of. I used to be a Christian apologist, believe it or not, used to do believe that there are seeds of the Trinity in the New but actually there are some anti seeds as well. There are the many passages of the New Testament which suggests very much the opposite. I'll give you a random one here. Here's Paul talking in one Corinthians, chapter eleven. He's talking about the status of Jesus visa

the God, and I remember Jesus in this past. Sorry, Paul, in this passage is talking about the ascended Jesus, Jesus who is back in glory with God. So Philippians too doesn't really apply here. It's a very brief throwaway comment almost that Paul makes. I want you to understand. This is chapter eleven, verse three. I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is

the head of Christ. This is very important because even in his glorified state, when he's returned to God, he's being exalted, that he is still not God. That Jesus has a God, and there's no hint here of a trinity, of course, and there are numerous verses in the Synoptic Gospels, and even in John amazingly that one could bring up to give a more Islamic feel. See, the more you judaize Jesus, is my argument. The more you judaize Jesus, you put him in his first century context, the more

Islamic he sounds. This is the great irony here that Islam is Jesus by Judaism. But what I mean by that, the concept of God in Islam, the concept of God and Judaism is the same. We have the same concept with God. God is the one God, He is the provide of the Creator, the sustainer of all things. He alone has the right to be worshiped and invoked, and so on. There's no three and one business there are at all in the Koran or in the Jewish script

as I have said. And then many pastors in the Synoptic Gospels the earliest Jesus material we have which seemed to affirm that unitarian monotheistic understanding. For example, John, chapter ten, verse seventeen, A man comes to Jesus says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus says to him, why do you call me good? There is no one good but God alone, very turning away from seldom towards God. Only God has this attribute of goodness.

And here is a humble Jew if you like, deflecting this flattery of goodness and say no, no goodness belongs even just to God alone. And Jesus, someone who has betrayed as a prophet. In Luke's Gospel, for example, he is portray as a prophet of God, which of course is exactly what Islam teaches. He is not portrayed as God incarnate. And in fact, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, if you look at Matthew and Luke's nativity narratives, Jesus sorry, the

Son is created in the womb of Mary. And if you look at the Greek and top scholars like Raymond Brown and Jimmy Dunn and others Joseph Fitzmyer, two of those people, by the way, Catholic priests, one of whom I heard lecture at Oxford, you'll see that there is no hint at all of the pre existence of the Sun or pre existence of Jesus at all. In the nativity narratives and the Synoptic Gospels. Obviously there's no nativity

narrative in Mark. We know that only with John. The last of the gospels to be written, which has the

most exalted Christology, is Jesus, the pre existent son. And scholars have almost university throughout the world, you know Oxford, Cambridge, the Ivy League universities where you are, you know, Harvard, Yale, etc. That they have almost all of them have said that if we're looking to the historical Jesus, the Jesus who walked the streets of Judeo two thousand years ago, we're looking really at the synoptic portrait of Jesus as a prophet,

as a messiah, as the son of Man. And John's Gospel or They'll last be written represents are heavily theologized, a heavily colored account of Jesus, where the author believes that he is the light of the world, so he puts those words in his mouth. The author believe Jesus the resurrection of the life, so he puts those words in Jesus' mouth. We're not really dealing with the historical Jesus at all, so much with the Fourth cost well. Yet that is where the meaty Christology lies with Jesus

pre existence. But even in John interestingly, in chapter seventeen, verse three, Jesus says, this is eternal life. So this is eternal life, folks, that you believe that they believe in you, the only true God, and in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. So this is clear Jesus distinguishes himself from God here. To believe in to get eternal life is to believe that you are the only true

God and to believe in Jesus. Now that is an excellent summary of the Islamic creed when it comes to Jesus to believe in one God and to believe in his Messiah. We were Jews at time, that would be the Islamic creed. Now, of course, subsequent to that, Mohammed has come, who, unlike Jesus, was sent to all the world, and now we believe in Jesus and Muhammad. So I think scholarship is very much on the understanding that the

historical Jesus did not think that he was Yahweh. That this is as a later development is evolved over years and centuries, and we see that instantiated in the Council, and I see of the Council of Caws and so on. But these are not the statements of Jesus. There are reflections of men that came many, many, many generations later, who interpreted what they thought was the truth about Jesus,

but they got him wrong. I think the judgment of history is that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, and that is pretty much the consensus now of New Testament scholars, most of him are Christians, is that historical Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, and that sits very comfortably with the chronic understanding of Jesus as a man, as a messiah, as a prophet of God.

lot of appeals to authority about standard everyday scholarship. But that assumes that the scholars like Raymond Brown, who by the way, is a liberal scholar, that because he is a liberal scholar, because he's a permanent scholar, that he's going to have some somehow more of an objective basis. But as you yourself pointed out when you harkened to in one of your bits, Thomas Kuhne, you know that there's not really objectivity when it comes to these big, paradigmatic,

presubpositional questions of world views. There's no possibility of being completely neutral or unbiased. So everybody, even the prevalent, the predominant liberal scholars of our day, are in fact basing their assumptions, basing the research on their presubositions. And so when you come to the text, as you and these other scholars do, with the presupposition of unbelief, then of course you're going to see discontinuity. You're going to pit

one text against the other. There's going to be an arbitrary selection of which texts are authentic versions of what Jesus or Paul taught, and then arbitrarily ad hoc over here Oh, within the next few chapters, scholar XYZ has told us that that section is invalid. And so, given the fact that none of us have access to the immediate presence of those texts being written, neither do you to the origin of the Quran itself. You don't have

a direct access to that. We are both in the same position of accepting texts or rejecting texts on the basis of authority and on the basis of our presuppositions. So I'm sure more of that will come later. But what I wanted to say was just notice that I did point out what he would do. I think, and I tend to to see the same type of thing. I saw, an arbitrary selection of what texts do not allow for the dimnity of Christ and other text that maybe would be added later where where this is a

later and accretion. But I've not yet heard what the basis is to know when and where and how these differences are present. How do you delineate between the authentic texts and the texts that are later appropriations. Now, the first thing he mentioned was taal Heed, which I do want to talk about if he's willing to talk about that, because we have a different conception of what simplicity or unity means in God. And in fact, we didn't just invent this. We believe that we got it from the

Law and the prophets themselves. For example, when Moses talks about seeing the goodness of God, the question arises the attributes. Are the actions of God identical to the unity of God? And if they are, do they then meld into the unity of God? And do we lose a sense of a real distinction in God. This has been a in religion all the way back to the ancient Vedic text. You can look at the ancient Vedas and you'll see debates about the one and the many in the relationship

to God. Our view is very unique in terms of how we view God. You could look at something like the number three as an analogy. I'm not equating the trinity to the number three, but I'm using it as analogy. If I were to draw the numeral three, it is a singular aspect, it is a unit of aspect, but

there's also a triplicity to that. That's very true. So our definition, our understanding of what oneness and unity means is not derived from philosophic assumptions of Hellenism or Aristotle or any other philosophic speculation as to what number numerical unity or oneness in God must mean. And in fact, in our view, we don't set up a dialectic between

the one and the many. So while we do see a distinction between the creator and the creature within God, if God reveals it to be so that He is in fact both one and three, we accept it on the basis of revealed authority. And when we asked the question of well, how could it be that God is simultaneously one and also multiple at the same time without destroying his unity, it goes into the trinitarian theology that has worked out. Now you said, but that's not in

the Bible. Actually, it does derive from the text of scripture, because, for example, even in the history of Judaism, we can look at the debates between no Ahmanides and Rambound himself where he talks about my monodies, where he talks about is the theophanic manifestation of God in the Old Testament? Are those Theophanes, these angels of the Lord that appear And I have just a few that came to mind before this debate there's the examples in Genesis where the

Angel Law appears and he's worshiped. There's the examples of Exodus three with the burning bush, which in Exodus twenty two and three is described of being the name of God put into this angel, and he is in fact worshiped, and Moses sees the burning bush, this theophany, as we call it, in these divine manifestations, within time and space, it's worshiped. Okay, Now there are many of these. The Angel of the Lord appears to Joshua early in the

Book of Joshua. The Angel of the Lord appears to Samson, to his parents, to Manoah, and Manoah and his wife worshiped the Angel of the Lord, the logos that appears. This happens many many times in the Old Testament. It happens in Daniel right, when Daniel sees into the lions den, when Daniel sees in Daniel seven the ascension of Christ,

and he comes before the Ancient of days. You said that there was no notion in the Old Testament of these distinctions between these what we call persons or hypostases, which we believe share one singular divine nature, but in fact many times over, especially in Daniel seven. When the sun ascends right, he's called the Son of Man, he ascends to the Ancient of days, and he's given his throne, dominion, and power, which was the ascension. It's not the end

of the world, Daniel seven very clearly shows. It's it mirrors exactly what the early the first chapter of Acts shows when Jesus ascends with a cloud of witnesses. Daniel seven says, Jesus, the Son of Man, ascended with a cloud of witnesses to the Ancient of days, the Father, and was handed dominion, power, prone, et cetera. Because he came to unite to human nature and restore it. That

was the whole purpose of the resurrection. Because we fell, our very nature was damaged, the whole universe was damaged. So in our view, the purpose of the incarnation was not a death to pay off God, paying off God, God paying off himself. That's not how it works. In fact, Orthodox theology is unique in that regard, and that we do not believe that there was some divine infinite satisfaction, like Anselm says, or like Luther and Calvin thought that you that the son had to pay off the Father,

the Son is eternally divine. That's why he is worshiped. Whether it's Judaism or Christianity. You can't and I'm sure you would agree, you can't worship creatures. Right. So, when as I'm glad you mentioned the what you saw as a lack of evidence of Jesus being a pre existent eternal son, Actually, if you read the Magnificat, and if you read Luke one and two, what does Elizabeth say. Elizabeth says, who am I? That the Mother of God should come to me? And that term is not a

lower l it is a lord. It is a divine term. When Mary gives her magnificat, she says that the God of the universe is to be praised because the fulfillment of all the promises to David, to Abraham, he has fulfilled the promises to those fathers, those Covenant promises in me in this birth. So this promised Messiah all throughout all these Old Testament texts which you seem to believe do not have anything to do with a pre existing eternal son. It's interesting because Jesus says before Abraham was

I am. Now I'd like to hear your response to that, that was my eight minutes.

bit overwhelmed. There's so much matter there. I do want to stress that I mentioned to quote one from Mark chapter ten, verse seventeen, where Jesus denies that he's God, which you didn't address, and also the quote from Paul in One Corinthians where he clearly presents Jesus as having a God and this is the exalted Jesus, not the human Jesus in his Philippians two state, and you didn't address that either.

rose them are dead. They both believe in the history. You can label them as liberals, which of course is what sectarian Christians do. They just dismissed them as if this has a magic wand and you know it brushes them aside. But these are seen as incredibly serious scholars and the greatest scholars of the twentieth century, and they have if you actually read their stuff, it has some immensely interesting things to say. So I'm quoting Trinitarian Christians

and not unbelievers. You said there were unbelievers, and they're certainly not by my book, But that's another subject to If you want to tack fear them, as we say

in Islam, that's up to you. But coming back to these passengers, the early, the earliest Jesus material we have according to responsible biblical scholarship, which is not unbelieving, it's not arbitrary, if you When I studied this at university as part of my degree, and I read the New Testament in Greek, that there were some very reasonable and sophisticated methodologies trying to understand the exegesis of the texts. And I'm interally grateful for having learned a great deal

about the Bible. And that applies in the Old Testament. If you look at the earliest Gospels, which is commonly spoke thought to be Mark, actually we see a quite different portraits of Jesus, different teaching, different style, different Christology than we do, say at the very last gospel written that of John. And the consensus. And you can disagree with the consensus. I'm not saying it's infallible. The consensus is that Matthew and Luke used Mark in the writing

of their own gospels. And I've looked at the evidence for this argument. I find it persuasive. At the level of Greek. You have great chunks of gospels which are identically worded in Greek, which suggests that someone is coppying from someone else, unless you believe in this kind of miraculous you know, great chunks of even incidental narratives are identically worded. So the idea is there is a literary

dependency between the gospels. It's called the synoptic problem. And the solution that's most popular, although it's you know, could be wrong, is that Matthew used Mark. And what we notice then on That assumption is that statements that the way Matthew has changed Mark because Matthew makes slight alterations and editorial changes, statements that might imply a lack of ability or authority on Jesus' part are modified. For example, Matthew thirteen fifty eight with Mark six ' five references

to Jesus exhibiting human emotions are simply dropped. They're simply omitted. For example, pity in Marked one forty one. Anger is omitted Mark five to three, sadness Mark three five has emitted, Indignation ten fourteen is omitted. Stories that might seem to portray Jesus as a magician are emitted. In Mark seven thirty one is omitted. Also, the disciples, who are given quite hard time in Mark they are shown to be people of little faith or no faith, actually become almost

model disciples in Matthew's possible he spruces them up. It's what we call in England the dodgy dossier about the Iraq War. These documents have been sexed up quite a bit. They've been used to elevate the status of the disciples. Jesus becomes more of a grand figure. His christology is exalted. And you see that part excellence in the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus says things and does things which no other gospel has ever recorded him saying these I am statements.

If Jesus went around Galilee and Judea whatever saying I am the Light of the world, I am the resurrection of the life, and so on. How Come Dluke, for example, who went, who carefully examined all these things in the beginning he claims, never recalls a single example. How Come Matthew ignores it. How Come Mark never knows anything about it? How Come nowhere else in the Acts, for example, no one ever recalled Paul whenever it calls Jesus speaking like this.

So this is seen by virtue all scholars, even conservative ones like Richard Balcombe. I know how familiar you are a biblical scholarship, But in terms of new settlement scholarship, Richard Borkam's of a conservative evangelical figure professor here in Britain, says that these terms, the im statements, are put on the lips of Jesus. That's their manner of speaking. It's not my invention. Quickly moving on to the Old Testament, Daniel seven if you look at it in context, the

Son of Man actually refers to Israel. It actually explicitly says that. Later on the same chapter. This is a figure of speech, how Israel goes to the Ancient of days? Ancient of days? Is God not the son of the Son of Man. It actually says in that passage the son of Man refers to the saints of the most High, quote unquote, which is Israel. So is nothing to do with Jesus at all. Lastly, at this point, nowhere in the Jewish Bible is it ever prophesied that the Messiah

would die for people's sins. Now Paul in one in one Corinthians fifteen, verse three says about the gospel he has received that according to the scriptures, the son of the Messiah would die and be buried for three days, and on a third day he'd rise again. In accordance with the scriptures, I would argue that, actually, nowhere in the Jewish scriptures has ever say that the Messiah was not supposed to die for people sins. He was supposed

to be triumphant over people's sins. Nowhere in the juw scriptures does it ever predict that God would become a man. Never says that that he would become God, would become the Messiah, that God would die for people's sins, that God would raise just doesn't say it anywhere. Now I'm aware of Christian attempts to twist the scriptures and read into them. Do ester Jesus rather I see Jesus as we say, see Jesus everywhere, rather than exe Jesus. Ex

Jesus is. Everyone accepts the ex Jesus is a responsible way to read the Bible. Were looking for what the author is intender to mean, rather than what we like them to say. And we don't read our own theology or our own religion into the Bible. But Christians read it into the Bible all over the place, and they see Jesus where the Jews have never seen Jesus. It's important that nowhere in the Bible does that say the Messiah would die for anyone's sins and atonement for sins.

This is a Christian idea. Jesus didn't preach it. Jesus said people's sins are freely forgiven. Look at Luke's Gospel, look at the Sermon on the Mount. Freely forgiveness of sins is available are simply repenting to God in Heaven and Jesus cause people to a renewal spirituary, renewed following of God in the Kingdom of God, obeying the Torah which Christians have abandoned. All the Christians I know, most Christian eat pork. Jesus said you mustn't eat pork in me.

That very clear on several occasions. So what we're dealing with here, we're dealing of the religion about Jesus. Christianity is a religion about Jesus. Islam actually caused people back to the religion of Jesus, and that's a crucial distinction. Islam is a call back to people not to worship Jesus, but to follow the religion of Jesus. And there's a

wonderful hadith of the prophet Mohammed. Mohammad piece upon him said once said to people, do not exaggerate in praising me, as the Christians have exaggerated in praising Jesus, son of Mary. For I am only a servant, So say he is the servant of Allah and his messenger. That's a how do you think Albakhari, So Mohammad taught us that to be very aware not to do to him what Christians have done to g Jesus. They made him into a deity. And the Colney has some very fun things to fare about one.

a God. It may be a surprise to you, maybe I think you came from a Roman Catholic background, but in Orthodox theology, we are very insistent on the fact that the Father is the source and fountain of the Godhead, and that will always be the case, and in fact, that's consistent in the text where Jesus says that he came to do the will of the Father, and then later on when Paul writes and says that Christ is that the Father is the head of Christ, just as the man is the head of the wife. It's the

same application the same principle. When Jesus says that none is good but God, and namely the Father, he also in other places refers to himself as good. He tells the woman and the well that he is the one who was to come. She says, sir, who is this Messiah that's to come? Who is this one who's going to bring this water of living waters flowing out of him?

And he says, I am he. You are speaking to him. Now, you did the exact same thing that I said you would do, which was that your ultimate source of authority and appealed to. What you ultimately appealed to was the arbitrary scholars that you chose. So your rationale is not based on the internal consistency of the text, but on the presupposition of unbelief appealing to authority. So, in other words,

both of us are appealing to authority. Right, you said that I was reading I was doing Ia Jesus by reading into the text what I wanted to see there. But in fact, every human being, as I just said, is going to in some way read their worldview and their presubpositions oft of the text. You confirmed that by the fact that you relied on Raymond Brown and the fact that you went to whatever school and you studied

biblical scholarship. Yeah, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the majority of biblical scholarship in our day is unbelieving,

that's not going to be an argument. That's not going to be a source by which you can prove any kind of argument you can bring that forth to to as a way to kind of have an attestation, you know, I might cite Josephus or something like this as a as a confirmation of something that I would argue, but to appeal to Raymond Brown, or to appeal to any of the numerous higher critical schools, again going all the way back to Julius Vallhausen, the founder of modern higher criticism.

Isn't it interesting that the documentary hypothesis was born out of and admitted desire to destroy the texts. So you're appealing to the textual tradition of higher criticism, which was intented. Its whole intention was to destroy not the New Testament, but Moses, the Torah, the very thing that you at times think is true. So it's completely arbitrary when you say that you want to go back to reconstruct the original religion of Jesus. You don't know what that is

because it's completely arbitrary. It's ad hoc. And you can appeal to any manner of unbelieving scholars all day, but all that does is show the inadequacy of your position. Because if I were to come out here and just start appealing to the top Islamic scholars and this liberal scholar, and that is Karen Armstrong or any scholar who has a liberal perspective, you would immediately say that that's probably not an authentic reading of Islam. Or if we were

to appeal to the different divisions. So there's multiple fallacies at work in the arguments that you're making. Again, only Orthodoxy has the strict view that the Father is the source and fount of Godhead, who communicates that deity through the Son to the Spirit. So the triune God is not something that we invented. Again, I give you a list of Theophanes. I gave you a list of things in the Old Testament where the Angel of the Lord,

which angel just means a messenger, is literally worshiped. Now again, Judaism, Christianity, we all agree that we cannot worship creatures. Theophanes are worshiped, and they're not identical to the Father. As Exodus three and twenty two twenty three makes clear with the Angel of the Lord God says I will put my name Yahweh into that angel. Right, he has that full divine authority, and he goes before in the fire and the cloud

in the Exodus to cleanse the Promised Land. So guess what it was, Jesus the logos that cleansed the Promised Land. Because all throughout the New Testament it's made consistently and abundantly clear. Now you can pick out certain texts where you think that, well, it's not Jesus there, because Jesus says that he submits to the Father. That's just assuming

that the Trinity isn't true. So I could appeal to all kinds of texts and find all kinds of things that, if I don't have a holistic perspective of the Bible, I think might grant me or give me a justification. But this has already been subtled and dealt with. I mean, all you're giving is kind of classical Aryan arguments that Saint Athanasius, Saint Basil others dealt with extensively. Obviously, I can't go into all that in eight minutes. But when

we say that there's one good, He is God. That doesn't mean that doesn't exclude the possibility they're also being a multiplicity in God. Because guess what, Although you may think that you have a perfectly unitive view of God, you actually don't because the same problems that occur in what you perceive us to have in terms of multiplicity,

you have those same problems. I know you think you don't, But in fact, if you believe that the actions of God in creating the world are identical to the unity or the essence of God, or God's nature, whatever you want to call it, whatever terms you guys use, then you have to also affirm that that action is just as eternal as the essence. It's synonymous as the divine essence.

And this is what Saint Athanasius refuted the Arians on the basis of He says that when you guys identify God's will with the divine essence, which is exactly what you do in your theology, because you don't have any distinctions in God, because you have the priests position, that distinction must be in composition or division, and it must therefore mean a denial of the true unity of God. Okay, well,

let's go down that road. If there is no allowance for any sense of multiplicity in the divine, then not only does the act of creation become an eternal action, and creation that becomes just as eternal as God. You have pantheism. You could also flip it on the other side and say, well, then God will to create out of his essence, and he has no relationship to the

created order because he's nothing like the created order. But you see the very thing that we say about the incarnation when it comes to Jesus and how he can become incarnate and speak to us and move and operate in this world in the sense of being the second

person that God had taken on impersonal human nature. You have that same problem with relating this perfectly unified deity to the created here and now you see, how does the Quran perfectly exemplify this eternal, abstract beyond deity that does not in any way have created forms, likenesses, or analogies.

How does he do that? How does how can there be a Quran that really tells us truths about God if you do not allow for any distinctions or any conceptual analogies, Because guess what conceptual analogies or written analogies

are no different than iconographic depictions. So it doesn't matter whether it's an icon on a wall that says the name Allah, or whether it's a book that says the name Allah and the supposed words of Allah, or whether in our view, it's an iconographic representation of Christ, an icon of Christ, or whether it's Christ and his human

nature walking around and talking. All of these are the exact same issue, and you haven't actually escaped escaped this issue by simply saying that, well, God is perfectly unitive in a radical way, and you guys are heretics because you have the notion of multiplicitis in the godhead. I would just again emphasize if God is absolutely identical to all, to his essence in every way, in every sense, then creation is an eternal action, and you actually be believe creation is eternal.

this is talk addressing Mohammad. Say, he is the one God, God, the eternal, the uncaused cause of all that exists. He begets not and neither is he begotten, and there is nothing that could be compared with him. Now this is extraordinarily condensed, concise express of a theology. Here he's eternal, he's the uncaused cause of all that exists. In other words, to use our language as in philosophers, he possesses a saiety. He doesn't forget, nor that is, he begotness like an

animal that gives birth to offspring. And there's nothing that can be compared with him. He is unique, he's unlike his creation. This is the Islamic conception of God. And I don't need to stress how different that is to some aspects of Christian theology. This cannot describe Jesus. The Jesus we see in the Gospels is not eternal. He dies on the cross, so he's not immortal. Even though Paul says in one Timothy six, that God is immortal, he dies, Jesus, there's nothing could be compared with him,

or obviously there is. He's a human being, but he doesn't exhibit divine attributes. For example, he doesn't know things. In Matthew thirteen thirty two about the date of the end, it says that neither the Sun nor the angels, but only the Father knows the date of the end. So the son doesn't know. Even the Holy Spirit doesn't get a look in on that. Only God the Father knows, So he doesn't know things. He dies, he's not almighty, he gets tired, and so on. So you get this

kind of incoherent understanding of incarnation. On the one hand, he is all powerful, he's got On the other hand, he's weak. On the one hand, he is all knowing, omniscient. On the other hand, he doesn't know stuff. On the one hand is immortal and the other you get You get these all in the one person. It's not two persons, only one person of Jesus. And that this is incoherent. Does he die or doesn't he? Well, yes and no. Does he know stuff or not? Well, yes and no.

It doesn't make any coherence. The coherence of Jesus as a being is there inherent incoherences. It's contradictory, it makes no sense, both philosophically and logically. But also the earl, the earliest Church, the Paths of Jesus, didn't believe Jesus was God at all. And in fact, if you look at the Book of Acts and you look at Peter's very first sermon, remember this is after the coming of

the Holy Spirit, after the ascension of Jesus. So here now we have Paul understanding who Jesus is, and he says in verse twenty two to the Israelites, you, that Israelites, listen to what I have to say to you. Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God, with deeds of power, wonders and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know. So he wasn't God. He was a man attested by God. Peter's not preaching in the incarnation. He's not preaching the trinities,

not preaching the divinity of Jesus. And at the very end of this sermon, according to Acts in verse thirty six, therefore Peter sammarizes, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah. So Jesus wasn't Lord, he wasn't the Messiah. God, who is a separate being from Jesus, made him so. And this is the this is the beginning of acts. And I mentioned and Paul saying that Jesus has a God them a number of other passages in Paul that say

the same thing. They clearly beginning of most of pause letters. By the way, he talks about the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. So Jesus has a God. That that's this standard interaction. He's always telling you, don't believe in the trinity, don't believe in Of course he's not anachronistically, he doesn't believe you haven't heard of it

a trinity. But I come back to this point. It's important to me that if you look at the earliest Jewish tradition in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and what Jesus actually says and done, he's not preaching himself. He's not going around saying, hey, believe in me, I'm God. He's actually preaching about the Kingdom of God. He's preaching about God and his kingdom, which is a special way connected to his own ministry. But he's not proclaiming himself as divine.

He's portrayed as someone who prays to God, who says on the cross according to Mark and Matthew, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? So he feels abandoned by God according to the Early Gospels, which is a bit peculiar if your God. He's portrayed as someone who dies, which is a bit peculiar, impossible if this person is God. But look what happens in the religions

that will call themselves Christians today. They proclaim Jesus the proclaimer has become the proclaimed, the one who preached God is become the one himself who is identified as God. And this fundamental inversion is what Islam has come in part to rectify and to reform and calling Christians back to the worship of the One True God. And even in John's Gospel, which has this fictionalized account according to virtually all scholars. And don't throw the liberal thing at me.

Conservative scholars say the same thing, and I can reference their work. So I'm afraid you have no way to escape unless you go to fundamentalist seminaries in the Deep South or something in the major institutions of learning. This is pretty much the standard view that John as a theologized, fictionalized account. But even there, Jesus says to Mary Magdalen, do not touch me, for I am returning to your

father and my father, to your God and my God. Jesus, even in his resurrected state, freely confesses that he has a God which he shares with his disciples, my God and your God, your Father and my Father. He does not say, ah, now you understand the Trinity, and I am God as well, and I am divine. No, no, no, He says that he has a God. In Islam, there is only one God, and he doesn't consist of three

of three persons. Coming back to the Old Testament, I do challenge you, Jay, to show me a single passage anywhere in the Jewish scriptures that clearly states the trinity. You see, if God was trinity all along, and he was communicating the truth about God as he was in great detail through the prophets. Say in Isaiah, the whole chapter four chapters forty three sixty six, huge monotheistic discourse about the nature of God. Not once, not once, does Isah give any hint of this three and one deity.

There's no three and one deity in Isaiah would if God wanted to communicate with his beloved treasured people, he would surely tell them the truth about who he was. He could have done so he did in Christian theology apparently, but he didn't. No way in the Jewish scriptures is there are three and one God ever mentioned. All you can do is points are very obscure. Passengers, passages and Genesis, and you talk about the Angel of the Lord, we

talk about God. This is true. This is a feature of these texts where the Angel of the Lord oscillates between on the one hand, being known as the Angel Lord, then he oscillates to being identified with God. And this is a peculiar feature. But Jesus is not an angel. Nowhere does Christians jaw as I think believe Jehovah's witnesses believe Jesus was archangel Megan. But talking about Orthodotes, Christians and Catholics and Evangelicals, no where do they believe Jesus

was an angel. And this feature of oscillation between Angel of God and identified with God is peculiar, but it doesn't tell us about a trinity. It doesn't say Father, son, and Holy Spirit. That's what I'm looking for. Rather than these very ambiguous passages. If you look at the very clear passages about who God is, his nature, who he is relation to humankind. Look to Isaiah chapter forty onwards,

look to the other Great monarchy. Nowhere is there any hint of a trinity, And in fact it's not there. In the New Testament. Peter says that Jesus was just a man accredited by God, and Paul says, at the beginning of nearly all of his letters, in the name of you know God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the God and Father God of Jesus. So he is not saying he is God either. This is a later doctrine Christian. The earliest Jews were not Christians. The earliest

follows of Jesus, I should say, were not Christians. This is an important historical point to make. They were Jews. They were Jews who were following the Jewish clan, who believed from the bed anyway, end of Okay, would you mind it if I've just got some more water, because I've run out.

Moses if we followed Abraham. I'm saying, let's say we were existing back then the time of Abraham, right, or or theoretically we could do this assumed thing like if it's true that there's progressive revelation, then I already addressed this in the open statement already said that Jeremiah understood more than what was understood in the early text of scripture. It's not obscure passages. It's your assumption that a texts obscure because it's maybe something you had not thought of

I already. I mean, these are multiple texts in Exodus, the burning bush and this being worshiped right, and then later it's identified in Exodus twenty two the burning bush. Excuse me, extra twenty three, Extra three and extra twenty three. It identifies the angel of the Lord as what's in the burning bush. That's not a flippant obscure thing. That's a very powerful attestation to the fact that those theophanes

are not created angelic forms. They are a separate hypostasis, right, a difference from the Father, my Lord said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. As Jesus said, who was David talking about? Who was David talking to? Jesus said this to the people that like you who don't believe that Jesus was saying that he was divine and he was the Messiah. In fact, Jesus says this countless times to the Pharisees. You're making the exact same arguments

that the Pharisees made. And it's funny because Jesus says the exact same things that he would say to you. He says, who is David talking about? Now, guess what Jews believe. That's a Messianic passage. They've always said it was a Messianic passage. You say that, where do we see this prediction of Jesus and this suffering dying savior in all of the psalms where David says he's suffering and he's dying and he knows that God's going to

redeem him. All of those psalms are predictions of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. In Hoseiah sixth there is the statement that on the third day he will revive us, he will save us from our sins. Now, I know you're going to say, that's just talking about Israel, the son of Man who as sins before the ancient of days. That's just talking about Israel. And what was your source for that? Your source was the arbitrary ad hoc scholars

that don't believe what we believe. By the way, Raymond does not believe in the Trinity like we believe. Orthodox trinitarianism is not like evangelicalism. It's distinct. There's no religion in the world that has the Orthodox conception of who God is and what his the distinction between his actions and his essence are. I gave you a whole, simple explanation and question about the distinction between God's energies and his actions and creation. You completely ignored it. You completely

ignored the question. If God's actions are the same as his essence, then his action of creating the world is eternal just like his essence. That means creation is eternal. That means creation takes on a divine attribute. You didn't answer this. You just moved on and all you did was state what the Surahs say the divine essence was. I already said that's what the divine essence was. I agree, I stated that in your view, you're going to say this. You did exactly what I said you would do. Now again,

just appealing to Raymond Brown. Appealing to those people, Well, that's appeals to authority. That's a fallacy. Your whole position is based on dialectics. That's what stands out to me. For example, you look at a lot of texts that show the humanity of Christ. Are you not aware that we believe that Jesus had a fully human nature. This is what the incarnation is in order for us to be restored and save from the power of death and corruption.

We believe that the Son of God intentionally took on our nature in order that our nature might be restored to immorality, to the immortality that God always intended us to have before the fall. So, for example, in John seventeen, when John talks about the glory that he shared with the Father before the foundation of the world. Oh wait,

I thought Jesus doesn't have a pre existence. One John seventeen, he says that the glory that he shared before the foundation of the world with the Father is what he intends to communicate to his followers to church. And as you read through the High Priestly Prayer of John seventeen, you'll notice that he also consistently refers to the premiscy of the monarchia or the archae, the god Head of the Father, and the Spirit whose he's whom he's going to sin. Right as it moves into the later chapters

through that I priestly prayer. So all through John seventeen eighteen and so forth you see the trinity everywhere present. Now you say, where is this clear explication of the Trinity. I just told you that there's an idea of a multiplicity in relationship to God in the Old Testament from the beginning, from Genesis. Rabbis were debating this before the coming of Christ. They were debating the fact that there's a multiplicity in the God at how do we explain

and understand this? So you're actually wrong to say that there is a strict unitive view even in Judaism. Philo is an example of this. Philoh didn't understand. He couldn't conceive of this right. And again there's a progressive revelation. You cited the supposed disjunction between what the early Church and followers of Jesus believed about Jesus, even though there are countless examples. For example, again throughout the Gospel of John, and the Gospel of John is not the only one.

There are multiple situations where Jesus says that He's fulfillment of all of these things. He says, Moses, what about me? You search the scriptures because you think that is in that you have eternal life when it is Moses that wrote about me. Everything that Moses is writing is about me.

And one thing I've noticed in your debate that you have not seemed to grasp is that there's a progression not just through revelation, and not just to what Jesus came to teach, but to the whole New Testament period, this transition period that it's sometimes called in theology, from the birth of Christ all the way up to the destruction of the Temple in seventy eight. You seem to be completely unaware of this. The destruction of the temple is the end of the Mosaic administration in terms of

its ceremonial application. Jesus himself, Jeremiah, the prophets Amous, they make the distinction between the moral and the ceremonial commands. Okay, and if the gentiles are going to be included into the church, which is what the predictions of countless Old

Testament prophecies are. Jeremiah three, Hoseaiah one, ten and eleven, Malachi one, eleven and twelve, he back A two, fourteen and fifteen, Jeremiah three, fourteen to eighteen, Ezekiel forty seven twenty one to twenty three, Joel three and Acts two fulfilled in Acts two Isaiah eleven one through ten, Jeremiah twenty five, eighteen sixteen, nineteen through twenty, Jeremiah thirty eight, thirty one to thirty four, Micah four one through four,

Zechariah two fifteen, Zechariah eight twenty one to twenty three, the latter sections in chapters of Isaiah. As you mentioned, they're all believed in Judaism to be Messianic prophecies. And what do they describe when the Messiah comes? They'd say that the distinctive mark that the world will know when the Messiah comes is that the gentile nations will begin

to worship and honor the God of Israel. Now, when Jesus came, he says in the gospels, even in the Gospels that you don't accept, but even in the synoptic Gospels Matth in Luke twenty one. In Matthew twenty four, he says that when you see Jerusalem destroyed, then you will know that the kingdom is going to the Gentiles. He says in Luke twenty that's exactly what happened in seventy a d In seventy eight, just as Josephus described

as an eyewitness, the temple was destroyed, Christians fled. Christianity spread to the Roman Empire. It spread throughout the Empire, and the in gathering of all of these Messianic prophecies from the minor and major profits all the way back to Genesis to Abraham Justis twelve fifteen seventeen, that all the nations of the earth will be drawn into this kingdom that completely destroys your entire position and proves that he was the Messiah.

you know, when we agreed to do this. Eight minutes is man, I'll tell you what that flies by, So I like, I write all these notes down and you know, the eight minutes just like it's over. So if if you are listening to this and you want to go back, I would I would say listen to this again, because we're both kind of having to fly quickly through addressing a whole lot of topics, and I'm trying to go as fast as i can into to reach his points.

So you know, I would I would suggest for people listening, you know, you might want to re listen to our debate here because we are covering a lot of topics. It almost feels like a rapid fire. So are you would you like to go yes? Thank you for that. Jay.

corrupted and changed. The only uncorrupted, only unchanged revelation we have that still exists is the Koran. So that's my authority. And if I contract anything in the Koran, then i'm what I'm. What I say is to be disregarded. Just to try, I have made some notes, which I should have done earlier, but just to remind me of some thing.

As you said, I reject this idea progressive revelation. I don't think there's anything in the Jewish scriptures suggesting that God's gone to disclose that he's no longer one God, but he now can become three in one God. Or I don't buy this progressive I think that's a device that's been invented by Christians to account for the discontinuity, the radical discontinuity between their beliefs as we see in

the New Testament and elsewhere and the Jewish scriptures. So I think that's a device to, oh, well, you weren't told really about the truth about God until that the accounts of Nicea came along, and then we realized that Jesus was God. I don't buy that. In terms of worship, I'm just a scattergan approach here, because you mentioned these things in a fairly kind of arbitrary way. It seemed worship is a tricky term. In the Bible, it had a much broader application than it does today, where worship

is normally understood to be exclusively reserved for God. Then even in the Greek of the New Testament Pross and Nusikos, it meant obedience. You do abeyance to someone, and you could do it to rulers. People did it to Jesus, Sarah did it to Abraham. In the separagains of the Old Testament, this is not something that's reserved for God alone. And indeed the word God itself is reserved for human beings in the Old Testament, like Psalm forty five and

Isaiah nine and so on. And in Jewish literature you mentioned Philo, Actually he calls Moses God. You're probably nervous already. So this language of divinity is quite promiscuously used, both in the Bible and in other literature. And we have that in common with the great co Roman world, where they believed in divinities and intermediaries between the One High God and human beings. So I'm not surprised that Jesus

came to be called divine. Ultimately is very much the thing you did in the ancient world to hero figures of religious figures. You proclaim them to be divine that haven't all over the place coming back. And you also made about Psalm one hundred and ten, which is as you say, are very frequently cited Psalm and frequently misunderstood sum by Christians. I'm looking at the new revised standard version, which is the version the academics prefer to use. That's

probably a black mark against them. But anyway, it says he the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make a footstool of your enemies. The word the first instance of the word lawd though, is in capital letters, suggesting what it means the petrogrammaton as you know, the Yahweh. The second lord in that center is in lower case letters, meaning a lord in a broader sense. So that could be Master, it could be teacher, it could be Messiah, it could be any

human being. So to reinterpret this passage in its Hebrew context, these are Hebrew words. It says God says to his Messiah. It's not saying God is not talking about plurality within god Head. And I know Christians interpret it that way, but the original it is an assurance of victory for God's priest king. That's the original context. The Psalm of David has nothing to do with the prophecy of the fire. Is God talking to David? Actually you made the claim. Well,

come back to that claim you made. I just want to read you something here. But Paul said, which comes to another the problem for me. I've read this before. Psalm fifteen, verse three and four. It says I had it on to you as a first importance what I received that Christ died for our sins and accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. And then it goes on it's that bit there which

constantly refacing the scriptures. And you made the astonishing claim to me that all of this palems contain the prediction of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Actually, none of the psalms at all claim any of that. But that is called ester Jesus or icee Jesus where you read stuff in if you read all the psalms in the historical or literary context, the psalms that you think refer to Jesus refer to David, refer to people at the

live at the time, none of them. And there's no way in the Old Testament anywhere that says that Christ would die for our sins. Know ways does it say that he'd be buried? No ways does it say he was raised on the third day anywhere. And this is acknowledged by scholars, by Christian scholars. I know you don't like them, but anyway, this is acknowledged by your own scholars,

so that this is a bizarre claim to make. I come back to my awesome other state where I said that the Nativity narratives, which talk about the actual birth of Jesus and the pregnancy of Mary and so on, I, Matthew, and Luke do not have any intimation at all of an incarnation. These are precisely the passages where you would expect a Christian theologian or Christian writer if they believed that,

to actually refer to the incarnation. There's no reference to the incarnation in the Gospel of Luke in the Nativity narratives or anywhere else. No reference of Matthew. And of course it's not mentioned in Mark because he doesn't heaven Nativity in narrative. So why do we say this Because it shows that the idea of the incarnation, it doesn't exist out of three in the four Gospels, even though they would have mentioned it in the context of his birth.

John mentioned it is the very last one to be written, and it has this kind of cosmic Christ who comes to earth like a visitive amount of space. It spends a brief time amongst us, and then that goes back to Heaven again, very different from Mark, very different from Luke. It's a very different kind of feel, which is why you have to choose Historically, scholars have to choose which is more likely to be the historical Jesus, and they're all chosen the earlier gospels, not John for the basis

of their theology. So and what was the other incarnation? So the incarnation is not taught in Matthew, Mark and Luke. I do come back to this passage in Acts because it's not just that you told me in response to Peter's sermon in Acts, but we believe Jesus is God, man and God. Yeah, but Peter doesn't. Peter doesn't say that. And if he was God, surely that would be something he would mention you that it Israelites, listen to what

I have to say about Jesus. He was a man tested to you by God with these are power, ones and signs that God did through him among you as you yourself. Now, if Jesus being God was that important, which is absolutely central, he would have mentioned it. He had no belief that Jesus was God. He never mentions that. He he says he was a man that tested by God. And then the end he talks about God doing much Jesus, that God made him a clier. But Jesus was God.

He wouldn't talk like that. He would say, oh, well, you know the second person of Trinity. And and also you slightly misrepresent Orthodox theology if I may be so bold as to say, Orthodox theology does teach that Jesus is God if you accept the counsel of Nicea. And I'm aware of the philiquay course, but that's not relevant here. The counsel of Nicia clearly says that Jesus God from God light from Light the Counts of Chelsenden is very clear that Jesus is God, and yet Peter doesn't attest

to this belief. Neither does Paul, who says that Jesus has a God, and Jesus himself says that I have a God. I am returned to your Father and my father, your God and my God. Now, there are a few marginal and late statements in the New Testament which do say Jesus God. I don't doubt that Jesus is called God. I'm not like some of those Muslims or probably all the Muslims I know actually who say, oh, I doesn't

say Jesus God anywhere in the Bible. Of course it does, but they are obscure and marginal and late, like Titus and so on. That they're not in the earliest Jesus material. They're not the dominant theme of the New Testament, which is Jesus is the Messiah. Right anyway, Can we change the form now, because conversational thing.

that Christ is God. You have a completely arbitrary picking and choosing of which text you're going to accept and to pit them against the other texts, when you know full well, having been previously Christian, that that's not what we teach. We don't teach that because one tax talks about the the manhood, that Jesus assumed that therefore or it proves that he's only man. This is a really simplistic and dodgy way to do exegesis, which you know better.

You know that Christianity doesn't operate that way. And I guarantee you that we could take the Quran and we could find one passage that says something about a law that he did X, Y Z, and then we could absoluteize that and say that therefore he does nothing else. But you operate dialectically because you've bought into dialectics. Higher

criticism is based on Marcianism, gnosticism dialectics. Ultimately, it's based on the assumption that Welhausen had that the Old Testament God could not be the same God in the New Testament. That was a presupposition that he had that he never questioned. You have similar presubositions. In fact, you contradicted yourself outright. You said that you have no problem with all of those prophecies being prophecies of the Messiah. And then you turn around and said, but wait a minute, when David

is writing in the Psalms, it's only about David. Did you believe that those prophecies and those texts are about the Messiah? They don't deny they were talking about Dad. Of course they're talking about David. We know David wrote those songs. That doesn't exclude that they're not Messianic prophecies or types. And in every debate where people have talked about typology to you, you ignore it. You said, you act like there's no such thing as typology, that that

typology doesn't show or predict anything. In fact, have many many essays on typology. Where we see in the Book of Numbers, we see Moses lifting up the serpent on a pole. What does Jesus say to Nicodemus, Jesus says that I will be lifted up and raised up just like the serpent on the pole. But you say that

Jesus never said he was going to do this. Over and over and over and over throughout this discussion, I give you example after example after example, and you go to your notes and cite liberal scholars and say that that doesn't exist. And you say that, well, you can go to some fundamentalist seminary. Look, those are dumb arguments. I can make all of those same arguments about you and your text. I don't do that, right, did I

say that? I say, let me find a liberal scholar who doubts the original authenticity of what Mohammad said or the Koran or these hadiths. And you know full well that they do. And there are people who doubt this and do higher critical approaches to Islam. So just citing higher critics about Christianity, this is a really and this

is extremely weak argument, and it presupposes unbelief. Now, in our worldview, in our paradigm, you can't just come to the text and presuppose unbelief because you have to repent and you have to experience the text within the context of the Church and the liturgy. They don't operate as texts on their own. They can only be understood within the existential experience of the Church herself historically. And you

can call that fundamentalism if you want to. But guess what, that's a term that was invented to demonize people who actually just believe in our creed. I already pointed out earlier.

You can look at the epistles of Ignatius, you can look at Justin Martyr, you can look at Irenaeus, you can look at Cyprian, you can look at polycarp you can look at all these Apostolic fathers, and they teach the deity of Christ, the very thing that you say is later kind of absoluteized at Nicea, they absolutely teach this. I mean, I've read them all, and anybody who reads them.

our God. Okay, this is pretty consistent. I think in Ignacious epistles is something like sixteen times Jesus is explicitly referred to as God. If you read the writings of just Saint Justin Martyr you'll notice that he describes the oblation of the liturgy. It's a liturgical service. This is one fifty a D. So the things that you think are these later accretions invented later, No, are. They're proofs of the continuity of Orthodox Christianity. Back to Saint Justin Martyr,

back to Ignatius, back to Ireineus. Now I want to move on to some of the things that you mentioned that I didn't get to. You said that the Son of God is created. We believe that the Son of God is created in its humanity. So again, don't set up a dialectic between texts that we believe are talking about the full humanity that Christ possessed, but we don't exclude the other texts to talk about the full divinity of Christ. We doub believe Christ is a human person.

The text where he talks about his limitations are willful limitations that he underwent. So all of those texts are arguing against against a strong man. They're only they only work on the presubposition that you're correct that Jesus was just an apocalyptic preacher the apocalypse that you think he mispredicted or didn't get right or whatever. The text misinterpolated.

They're about seventy a D. Luke twenty one is a prediction of what would happen in seventy eight that the temple would be destroyed, and it was in seventy eight D. That's why from the time of Christ to the time of the destruction of the Temple, it's the transition period. So, yes, there's going to be decisions about what gentile converts need to do when they come into the church. Do they need to be circucized? You know you've heard this argument.

It's settled in Acts fifteen A. Right, So there's a process. And even after this period when there's so a lot of Jewish converts in the first ten chapters of Acts, and even past the first ten chapters of Acts, when the message begins to go out to the gentiles from Paul and Peter. So what happens is that you have

this transition period and it becomes abundantly clear. Again, Jesus made this abundantly clear and Matthew twenty four in Luke twenty one, when you read those two texts together side by side, you'll see that he's talking about the destruction of the temple that was the doing away, the providential

doing away. Jesus says, in the parable of wicked mine dressers, that that will happen, that the kingdom will be taken from the Jews and given to a nation producing the fruits thereof, namely all these predictions of the Gentile kingdom and the Old Testament, which again you admitted that there's all these prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, and then you turn around and said, no, they're about David,

They're not about the Mesiah, they're not Messianic prophecies. You completely contradicted yourself soles talking about the actions of God and God as the Father. Okay, again, I already told you that Jesus has a father. That does not mean that there's no trinity. Only on the basis of dialectics, which is the basis of your whole philosophical approach. Would you think that because there's a distinction, there's a division when justin Martin, are you going to try felt what

does he go to? He goes to the Angel, the Lord theophanies. Now you said angels are never ever conceived of in that way. The word angel just means messenger. Okay, So Jesus is the messenger of Yahweh. He is that messenger. So because the term could apply to a human messenger, it could apply to an angel in the sense of a created angelic being Michael Gabriel, And it could also apply to the messenger of God's Covenant as he's called the Old Testament. Right, So there's a consistent pattern of

those Theophanies being worshiped. You can't worship angels anytime in scripture, in the Torah, in the Old Testament, somebody worships or bowels before an angel, they're rebuked. Can't worship old deities. You can't worship your ancestors, that's rebuked, but they're not rebuked when they bow down and worship before the Theophanes.

Now you're gonna say, well, but you know, textual scholarship tells us other things, and you know the modern textual critics, but you will not allow those same textual critics to attack Islam. You will not allow that same approach to your religion. It's only that you selectively use these things about all religion. Now, guess what I heard. You're referring to Mark and you referred to elements I think of

the documentary hypothesis. You referred to Q or Mark, which it used to be the idea that Q is the basis of mark. This hypothetical, Uh, you know, earliest text or whatever. Are you aware of the shifting sands of higher criticism that the theories that were popular fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, they're dead. They're not even popular anymore. If you go to Yale right now, into their biblical section on YouTube, you'll find biblical scholars from Yale, the

prestige that you worship. You'll find them saying all the same things that I'm saying, that that the documentary hypothesis has been discarded. So your presupposition is gone, It's not even it's not even held anymore. All right, So I need to take a we wei break. I'll be right back if you would just hold on, hold on the fort just for a second.

perfectly well. They have their own tradition, just they don't acknowledge it, by which I mean their own way of reading scripture, you know, focusing on maybe Paul or particular Luther and understanding whatever. Yeah, so that's what you're doing. And I understand that, and I'm not saying it's wrong per se. It's not where I'm coming from. And I think we're cross purposes here because how I see things is different. As a Muslim, I view say, the Gospels

as products of of human beings. I view them as like the Hedith literature share we say. I don't regard them as revelation.

it is something given to Jesus by God. He preaches the in Ingel. These gospels that you revere are written not by Jesus. You obviously don't claim they're written by Jesus. They're written by other people. So for us is revelation itself direct from God, whether be given to Jesus, Mohammad, or Moses or whatever. That is the thing that we revere. That these are human we as human biographies that are

not inspired by God. That does not mean they're without value, but they have to be critically understood.

it's a very sophisticated science. And this is over going back from the eighth century onward. So we do practice sophisticated critical thinking about the Herdeth and that's been going on since virtually since the beginning. But when it comes to the Koran, and this is where we're going to have to agree to disagree. The Kuran is different because we view it. We believe it to be the actual speech of God himself. It's not inspired work, it's not written by Mohammad at all, although he has a role

to play in its transmission. But we view the actual speech of God, so we view it as something you can't practice human criticism of because that would be blasphemous, is not appropriate. And now I know you have a you don't agree with that, which is fine. So that's why I have a different approach to the Koran than I would say to the four canonical Gospels, because I view them as very different ontologies, very different genres. So you may see that as inconsistency for me, it makes

perfect sense. The Koran is the word of God. It's the speech of God. So is the Injured, so is the Torahs, so is the the the Psalm, so is the book given to Abraham, and so on. And I'm not saying that the Bible itself doesn't contain the word words of God. But it doesn't.

It says, by what Alah has revealed, meaning the Quran, and following up their vain desires, diverging away from the truth that has come to you. So the texts have been corrupted. This is the only reliable guide.

If New Testament says Jesus is God, then we know islamically that that is false because it contradicts the clear teachings of God's revelation.

God's messages and prophets is false. Historically, it doesn't go a verse by verse exegesis, but it gives these broad indications that certain certain views are part of a corrupted, falsified narrative and it caused people.

Brown does not believe in the inherancy of scriptures. You know he doesn't.

in the Psalms and so on. But there's no evidence at all that I'm aware that the Psalmists predict the death and resurrection of the Messiah, or anyone talks about the incarnation of God as something that is to come. It's that aspect that I am rejecting. Not that's not inconsistency. Yes to the Messiah. No to the alleged predictions of death and resurrection incarnation, which do not exist as predictions

anywhere in the Jewish Bible. In my view, That's what I'm getting at, So there's no inconsistency.

of the destruction of the Temple in seventy eighty. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear Jesus is saying that in these text and by the way, in Liu twenty four, Jesus says that all of these Old Testament predictions are about Him, the very thing that you can't seem to grasp about how to read the Old Testament. In Liu twenty four, it says Jesus opened the minds of the disciples to understand all things that were written about Him and the Law, the prophets, and Moses.

that it's only the historical exegesis. But the Jewish writings themselves say that the historical setting is a prediction of becoming Messiah. You already admitted this when you talked about the fact that you don't have a problem with the Old Testament prophets predicting the coming of the Messiah. So look how arbitrary this is. You're all over the place there's higher critics over here, higher criticism over here, and

it's faith. But over here, I will arbitrarily take all of the profits and what they say.

Seventy AD is a fulfillment of the destruction that happened in five eighty six weeks.

invented by Christians. Okay, So the way that we're going to read the text is through our presuppositions, in our paradigms. You know this because you cite Thomas Kuhn. You're trying to do scientific exo Jesus. So it's not different to appeal to Thomas Kewne because it's still paradematic the way that we interpret these texts. I know that you don't believe it's about Jesus. I'm saying that in the Christian worldview,

in the Christian paradigm, it is about Jesus. It is a prediction of the depth on resurrection, because I explained it consistently by showing that it is a mirroring of the destruction of Jerusalem. So when the minor prophets, for example, many of them talk about the destruction of the First

Temple in five eighty six. Okay, Now when you read Daniel, for example, Daniel says in Daniel nine that when the Messiah comes, there's going to be an end to the temple and grain offerings and sacrifices, because the Messiah will come and he will put an end to that. That whole first century is the transition period from the Mosaic Law into the fulfilling of the prophecies of the Gentiles coming into the Kingdom of God, as all those prophets said.

So that whole transition period from the birth of Christ to seventy eighty, it doesn't just end in the resurrection or Pentecost or acts. It ends at seventy eighty. That's what the apocalypse is about. That's what Luke twenty one and Matthew twenty four about that's why Jesus says in Matthew twenty three at the end of that chapter that all the predictions and the prophets will come upon this generation.

So that means this prophecy here in Amos will come upon this generation when he talks about the covenant curses of Israel Deuteronomy twenty eight, which lists all these covenant curses and Amos and Hoseiah talking about the divorce of literal flesh Israel in that covenantal transaction. That's what happened when they rejected the Messiah and Jesus. As he says in the Peri Wicked bind Dressers, the kingdom will go to the Gentiles because the Jews have rejected it. That's

why it was destroyed in seventy eighty. It was the fulfillment not just of what Luke twenty one and Matthew twenty four said. It was a fulfillment of all of these predictions back to the Mosaic Deuteronomy twenty eight Covenant curses. And you say, well, that's crazy, that's not what we do now. No. In fact, if you read the Apocalypse in chapters two and three, when Jesus speaks to the churches, he it promises them curses and blessings, just like it's

no different. We don't deny covenant blessings and curses, but we see a unity of fulfillment from the time of Genesis even into Moses up to the coming of the Messiah. And all I've seen from you throughout this discussion is all over the place. You want higher criticism and complete

doubt of the scriptures when it suits you. But if we were to turn that higher critical approach upon your book, or if we were to point out that it's inconsistent when you arbitrarily pick which verses in the Torah or in the prophets you do accept right, it's totally arbitrary. So what do we go back to? It goes back to your presubositions of the Koran. So I want to ask you on the presubositions of the Koran. And it's

you said, the literal actual speech of God himself. Are the words in the Koran a reflection of God himself? Or are they the words of God? In other words, the Koran that I hold in my hand, is that literally the incarnate words of God.

the Torah and the prophets. How can that be denied? I agree with that. That was one of the arguments, Paul. You can respond to that I deny it.

everything that the Pharisees taught was erroneous. In fact, because Matthew twenty three Jesus says describes in the Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses. There's no direct Torah or prophet explanation of what the seed of Moses is, but is a succession of authority that traditional that you just appealed to. So I would reply to you that that text that you're talking about is a tradition.

and I'll let paulicy. I would say that if you look at the history of Orthodox kingdoms, the businessing Empire, you would see at least attempts. And obviously this wasn't always done correctly or ideally, but there's there's typically the

attempts to have Biblical principles apply even to warfare. So there's a book by McGuckin The Christian Scent of Christian Law where he kind of traces the history of canon law and how it influenced Byzantium and and so in my view, I would say that we try to apply He could look at something like the Catholic view of just war. I mean that's you know, the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox perspective historically have been kind of similar

on just war theory. Paul can feel free to answer his view of theocracy.

unfortunately is very different. Unfortunately, it advocates genocide. In one Samuel fifteen, God is portrayed as someone who commands the killing of women, children, babies, donkeys, camels. There is no just war in the Bible. It's unrestricted genocide and slaughter on an industrial scale. And I'm afraid if you want just war, you're not going to find it in the Bible, but you will find it in Islam.

I'm not sure what that means. N. C red Dollar ninety nine. Modern crusade when no time for crusades or that's not the way things work now, Mark Brown two dollars. Well well done defending divinity of Jesus. Thank you, we lad two dollars. He has not responded to the divine

simplicity criticism. No, I don't think that he did. Do you have any response to the criticism I made of the fact that if God's unicity is an absolutely viewed in an absolute sense, that his act of creating the world is also synonymous with his essence, which is eternal, that would mean the creation is eternal.

question do you haven't Jay? Do you have a favorite book dealing with the spiritual or ascetic life outside of the Bible. Well, of course, the feel of Colia is good, but I would say I usually go to my prayer book. So if you don't have an Orthodox prayer book, I would recommend having one of those. Lieutenant C. HF. Two dollars Your your shirt is haram Paul Robino two pounds Chad Jay versus Virgin Muslim. I'm not going to read the other comments there so they might get us in

trouble Silver nas Gul five dollars Starting with Jay. Can you go into the presubpositions of nature in person, especially with regard to the hour? Why have you forsaken me? Yes, we don't believe that Jesus is expressing from in an aryan or human sense that he was forgotten of God. He's quoting the Psalms. He's quoting David's experience of feeling death, which shows that in the Gospel and Jesus perspective, every time the time the Old Testament and the Psalms are cited,

they're cited christologically. So this is something that Paul and I would disagree with. I don't think he understands that. If you do a study of all of the texts in the New Testament where they cite the Old Testament, you will see that almost all the time it's interpreted christologically. I know Paul reck rejects that, but what I'm saying.

it doesn't exist because you know about Thomas Kune. You said that Thomas Kune doesn't apply because he's talking about science. And then you said that your approaches scientific exto Jesus. So you don't understand paradigms and you don't understand philosophy in that regard.

him as God or his mother as God. Yet they're both be given divine titles by Christians, by Orthodox christ particularly who are very load Mary with with these divine titles. And the Crown corrects this is that either she nor Jesus ever claimed these divine titles for themselves.

Therefore it must be true that computers can materialize unicorns. That's why this is a fallacy.

low level of program. You know, about the bad things in Mohammed's life, which I'm not going to say public because of the YouTube, you know, strictures. I'm not going to say certain things, or about the way the Kuran talks about the logos? What would you say about those things? Paul?

can say things you disagree about Islam. I'm not sensitive about that at all.

Iran and the Middle East and North Africa. It was an oral it was mainly an oral recitation, and non Muslims obviously becoming Muslims as well, and the purity of the original tech the original recitation was changing and there was and people were noticing that different kinds of you know,

there's a danger of the Kran becoming corrupted. And what Othman decided to do he created this odor, this codex basically with all the agreement of the companions, and they created together all the written records of what the Hammad had given them about the Kran says, and he created this text, which was then copied, and copies of it were sent out to the various parts of the Islamic Empire. And all the other copies were ordered to be destroyed

because they might contain errors. They might have been written down when someone misunderstood something, you know, thousands of miles away from Medina or Mecca. So that was the purpose. It was to protect the purity of the original revelation. And so it was all Muslims now, except that the Othmanic Codex is the original codex and Western scholars, I know you hate this, but Western scholars accept this and they see it as historically reliable.

has a pat response to that. I mean, you know, obviously we think that the suffering servant and these texts do refer to the Messiah, they do talk about his suffering, but again we disagree at a paradigmatic level. What do you think about those texts.

I'm gonna have to get out here in a minute. I can't keep going forever, even though this was a lot of fun. Okay, So so thank you guys, Paul, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Forgive me if I was too passionate, but I do get very passionate about this.

And again I stress you can upload this, this discussion, but please, that doesn't that's not giving you permission to upload all of my other videos and talk to those are online. Ask me for permission. This one you can upload as long as you put links to the talk and anyway, have a good night. Thank you very much.