Does the New Testament Teach Jesus is God? Michael Lofton vs. Dr. Shabir Ally

hey everybody welcome to a debate night that we have here on sunday night i'm here joined by uh michael lofton of reason and theology and uh dr shabir ali michael lofton um i'm going to give a brief uh bio um even though uh i know a lot of you all uh you know you know we've been on the show we've done debates before um for people maybe tuning in for the first time michael lofton grew up in israel he's a graduate of christendom college graduate school of theology where he received his master of arts in theological studies he's appeared on ewtn serious radio radio maria and multiple times on virgin most powerful radio having contributed many times to many web pages and he is an author of many books you can find in amazon.com and of course he is um he is the founder and host of reason and theology dr shabir ali needs no introduction is the canadian muslim preacher and imam as of 2020 he is the president of the islamic information and dawah center international in toronto he is perhaps the best known uh and top islamic debater and scholar in the world he is known for his contextual interpretation of the quranic verses and justification and similar expressions within the christian bible and tonight we have got a debate titled does the new testament teach that jesus is god and i'm going to briefly uh read the format out loud for people uh they can be aware of what we've got for you we have an incredible incredible show for you all we have two 15-minute openings two seven-minute rebuttals two 20-minute cross-examination which is more of a kind of like a free-flowing discussion with a very fun and respectful back and forth between the two gentlemen two 10-minute summations two five-minute closing statements and then we go to the fun part for you all watching audience q a and since we are dealing with the topic does the new testament teach that jesus is god i believe that michael will be taking the afraid i know michael we take the affirmative um and that means he would be opening but before we begin gentlemen how are you doing this evening good how are you william i'm doing fine william thanks i i've got to say gentlemen in the crazy times that we're living in where uh you know nothing is really certain i'm very very happy to see you both uh healthy to be able to share this stage with you all again after many months you all are healthy god willing your loved ones are and i hope that i can repeat these words many more times as the months and years go by yes and i'm glad to see that you're healthy and well as well uh william and yes uh i feel humbled and grateful to god that uh he is uh keeping us in good health i'm thankful that we are able to meet in such good spirit and in good health definitely and gentlemen well if you all are are ready um i am ready if you're ready michael you can begin with your 15-minute opening sounds good okay well first i want to thank dr ali for coming on the show and doing this debate me it's an honor uh doing this debate with me it's an honor to have you um truly a pleasure now uh the thesis as william mentioned was does the new testament teach jesus as god and just for terminology's sake i want to just briefly define what we mean there by god you'll you'll often hear me using that term interchangeably with divine deity god those are synonyms in my estimation dr ali may disagree with that and that's fine we can talk about that but uh from my perspective when i say jesus is divine or jesus is god or this refers to his deity or divinity uh i see those as synonyms now um again what do we mean here by god what do we mean by divinity you know he who is omniscient omnipotent eternal you know without creation that's what we're talking about and of course i'm going to assert that this refers to the person of jesus that he is divine i'm not saying that his humanity is divine or anything like that uh or that his humanity is eternal i'm saying that he and his person is divine is god um now how that works with the trinity we can perhaps discuss later on all right so let's go ahead and dive in my first witness that i want to appeal to when it comes to the new testament and proving that the early christians and the new testament itself teaches that jesus is god or divine is mark two one through two now you know it really doesn't matter to me where you want to date this thing as long as you're recognizing it sometime in the first century but you know roughly scholars tend to agree that it's somewhere between 65 to 75 a.d for example you can see dr james g crossley takes that position uh ff bruce another notable uh scholar on the new testament takes the position 60 a.d i'm gonna go with that but again if you give it a little bit of a later date doesn't matter my thesis i think will still hold uh however you date this thing the author i'm going to assert is the disciple mark based on the preaching of peter and this is according to an early christian by the name of papias but again if you don't accept it he is the uh author that's fine as long as you recognize that it's some early christian so as long as you recognize this is first century and it's written by a christian i think my thesis is going to hold but i did want to just go ahead and be upfront with what i think is the case with date and authorship now let's go ahead and look at the text and what i want to do is not just speak about the text i want to go ahead and read it and then i'm going to explicate it mark 2 1-12 a few days later when jesus again entered capernaum the people heard that he had come home they gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left not even outside the door and he preached the word to them some men came bringing to him a paralyzed man carried by four of them since they could not get to him i'm sorry could not could not get him to jesus because of the crowd that made an opening in the roof above jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on when jesus saw their faith he said to the paralyzed paralyzed man son your sins are forgiven very important now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves why does this fellow talk like that he's blaspheming who can forgive sins but god alone that's the key there immediately jesus knew in his spirit that that this was what they were thinking in their hearts and he said to them why are you saying these things which is easier to say to say to this paralyzed man your sins are forgiven or say get up take your mat and walk but i want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins so he said to the man i tell you get up take your mat and go home. he got up took his mat and walked out in full view of them all disamazed everyone and they praised god saying we have never seen anything like this now again as we see here i mean what's going on is jesus is preaching in the synagogue there they bring a paralyzed man to him he heals the man but also forgives him of his sins he specifically says that knowing that they in their heart are saying this is blasphemy only god can do this but he deliberately says it and even tells them i know that this is in your heart and i'm deliberately saying your sins are forgiven he doesn't correct them and say no no you have a mis understanding there some humans are capable of forgiving sins no that that's not what's going on here he confirms what they're saying in their heart um and attest to his divinity here and again this is you know the gospel of mark which a lot of people want to say does not affirm his divinity i would assert that this does now my next witness is from the gospel of john john 1 1-3 of course the prologue uh there which uh is really john 1 1 through 18 but i'm only going to read uh the first three verses now as far as date and authorship um ff bruce you know again um scholar there on the new testament roughly dates at 90 to 100 a.d again if you have a slightly different dating on that doesn't matter to me um i think that it's first of all part of the new testament and this is something that is there um testified to by early christians so i think it's still my thesis will hold even if you date it a little bit uh differently than that um now it is interesting it could be a little bit earlier than that maybe even earlier than 70 a.d because it does talk about there in uh john 5 2 talks about the sheep gate in jerusalem it speaks about it in the present tense um and that would just be a very odd thing to talk about a location in the present tense that is you know basically turned over and doesn't exist anymore since 70 a.d since the romans tore the place down so um but again if you want to take the later date that's fine um arthur i'm going to assert that it's john the apostle uh irenaeus a second century christian would assert the same but again if you uh take a different view that's fine um now i do want to go ahead and quote the text to you it's john 1 1-3 it says this in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god he was in the beginning with god all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made and then of course if you're wondering who is this word well it tells us in uh verse 14 the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and it's clearly referring to jesus i don't know anybody who disputes the the person of the word here referring to jesus but i just do want to make that clear and again it says that he was god it explicitly says that so it's attributing divinity to the second person of the trinity to the person of jesus and i would say that i think that this is a big challenge for anybody who would deny that the new testament asserts the divinity of christ because i would just simply say that this is not something that you can say of a mere mortal of a mere man i don't know anybody who could say that uh that this person was god and that all things came through him and that nothing came about uh that wasn't made except through him it's clearly asserting that he's eternal he is not created and he is the creator so um i think this testifies to his divinity so much so that even the agnostic scholar dr bart airman who we've had on the show he has this to say about john 1. uh the word in john 1 is one who is with god in eternity past who has himself divine who created the universe is a divine being who became man and again here you have um an agnostic scholar of the new testament very reputable when it comes to textual criticism um with no extra grind when it comes to asserting his divinity clearly attesting to the fact that john 1 does assert the divinity of jesus he also elsewhere says john is the only gospel that explicitly identifies jesus as divine so the next thing that i want to talk about is philippians 2 6-7 this is an early christian hymn so it actually predates uh the um uh witness here that we see in philippians 2. we'll talk a little bit more about that later uh the date roughly 54 a.d ish according to uh dr ff bruce but again if you give it a slightly different date that's fine i'm gonna assert it's the apostle paul who's the author but if you affirm that it's some other christian that that's fine still not gonna affect my thesis now here's what the text says who being in the very nature god and it's speaking about jesus did not consider equality with god something to be used to his own advantage or something to be grasped as other translations put it rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness so what is it saying and saying that he is divine by very nature but he did not insist on maintaining his glorified state he veiled it in human flesh that doesn't mean that he lost his glory lost his divinity no that that's not what he's it's saying here he's still remain god it's just that he veiled that and his divine prerogatives if you will are being veiled and hidden in human flesh and it gives us a glimpse of it in the transfiguration but for the vast majority of cases when people saw jesus they didn't see divinity they just saw the human flesh and that that's what it's talking about here he took on the nature of a servant being made in human likeness and again this is an early christian hymn so we would predate its codification in the new testament in 54 a.d ish it would predate this because it was a liturgical hymn used by christians in other words christians were saying that jesus was god by nature even before paul wrote this and he is gleaning from that liturgical tradition and inserting it into the text and this is of course testified to by again none other than dr airman who says this many scholars believe that several of the earliest hymns to christ have been inserted by the authors of the new testament in appropriate places of their writings for example john 1 1-18 which we just talked about the prologue but the other one is of course the hymn here in philippians which is what he's talking about specifically in the context of that quote so he's saying this hymn here in philippians was something that christians were using liturgically and paul inserts that into the new testament to assert the divinity of christ same scholar he says elsewhere our earliest new testament author paul writing about 20 years before our first gospel seems to understand jesus as divine i mean he's just painfully making it very very clear that doesn't mean jesus is divine right i mean maybe paul is wrong but he is saying that paul thought he was divine and then of course elsewhere he's saying john thought he was divine early as christians thought jesus was divine you might not agree with them but did they teach that in the new testament uh dr bart aaron would say yes now i want to talk about uh one more since i think yeah we we have about three minutes so i have a little bit more time we'll talk about hebrews 1 8 briefly um let me go ahead and read the text it says but of the son he says your throne o god is forever and ever the scepter of her brightness is the scepter of your kingdom and here he's quoting from psalm 45 6. now some say that this was written roughly in the 60s there's debate on who the author is i'm gonna go with paul others say barnabas and they throw out under other names doesn't really matter to me as long as you affirm it's some kind of christian in the first century that's asserting this and notice what he says but of the son he says your throne o god is forever and ever is that something that we could say of a mere man it would be blasphemy to say that of a mere man now you might not agree with the writer of hebrews here in in his use of psalm 45 you might say wait you're ripping that out of context that's not what's going on there in psalm 45. here's what's going on there's a discussion between you know david and blah blah you you might do that and that's that's fine uh you might assert that the author of the new testament is ripping this out of context although i don't think that he is uh but even if you say that you still have to admit this is an author uh of a book in the new testament using this text to prove the divinity of christ because again he's saying but of the son he says your throne oh god is forever and ever so um there are well i have about another minute here so let me maybe give you one more there is john 20 28 and this is of course where jesus appears to the disciples in the other in the upper room post-resurrection he somehow makes his way through a locked door and uh you know thomas is is telling the other disciples you know you saw jesus rise from the dead i don't believe this um unless i see him and i touch his wounds i'm not going to believe it and then of course jesus appears to him and allows him to touch his wounds in his side and here's what thomas says my lord and my god my lord and my god and i want to note this by dr raymond brown also also father raven brown uh catholic theologian here's what he says about this here jesus is addressed as god hatheos mu with the auricular nominative serving as evocative so even somebody like dr raymond brown which i would say is kind of liberal even he is asserting that yes this does affirm that um you know john is saying that jesus is divine and putting that on the lips of thomas so those are the passages that i wanted to go over perhaps we could talk uh some more about some additional ones later on but i'm pretty much out of time so thank you very very good with your time there uh michael very very good and um dr shabir ali if you are ready for your 15-minute opening i will begin the timer now yes i'm ready wonderful go ahead so uh ladies and gentlemen uh friends uh brothers and sisters in faith peace and the mercy and blessings of god be with all of you i'm so glad that we're able to meet uh in in such a cordial uh engagement uh i really appreciate michael and and the way in which he has presented his thoughts uh uh with clarity and uh with kindness and i appreciate that we have william uh to moderate the dialogue for us muslims and christians uh have a lot in common and we all praise the one true god the creator of the heavens and the earth and i give praise to him and thanks and all glory uh to god when i went to primary school we recited the lord's prayer every morning and we concluded by saying for a thing is the glory and the power and the glory for ever and ever amen and you can see that that was a long time ago so i even forgot the words a little bit there so i give praise to god and ask him to send peace and blessings upon all of his prophets his messengers all of the righteous people of all time i ask him to bless our meeting tonight so that through this meeting we come to a better understanding of him and our responsibility towards him and towards our fellow human beings now the question before us is whether or not the new testament teaches that jesus is god so i want to start with some definitions as michael himself started with some definitions i think that's important so define god well um michael said well divinity and and deity and so on i would prefer to be a little bit more strict with the definition because often if the definition is loose or vague then we fall into either the fallacy of equification or the fallacy of vagueness and both of these are known to be fallacies and thinking that muddy up the the thinking of people so that they lack clarity in their conclusions and in fact they reach incorrect conclusions so there are different ways of defining someone if we ask who is the president of the united states of america well if mr trump happens to be in the room right now we can point to him that's ostensible uh definition uh or we can go into a kind of philosophizing or saying you know the president of the united states is the um is the top leader uh of government in the united states of america so that all sounds a little bit abstract so it's easier to have the person in the room and say this is the person well with god we don't you know we can't really point to him and say this is what we mean by god but there's another way in which we can actually identify the one we're talking about when we mean god and that is by his name in the old testament god identifies himself by a name he said my name is yahweh now i say yahuwah i can also say jehovah i won't get into the there's no need now for me to get into the details of which pronunciation is correct but the name jehovah occurs in the king james version of the bible four times and in the new american standard the new um uh the the american standard version the american standard version from 1901 used the name jehovah throughout the old testament some six thousand times and uh that name has been rendered as yahweh in the new jerusalem bible so whether we say yahweh or jehovah here we have a name for god so if we are going to say that jesus is god then we will have to say that he is jehovah so that that's that's simple enough um so we can define by name jehovah is the only god besides him there is no other god this is clear from the old testament if jesus is to be god he has to be jehovah so second uh jesus what do we mean by jesus we all think we know what you mean by jesus right so in the title does the new testament teach that jesus is god we have to also define jesus because there are many different understandings of who jesus was our trinitarian friends say that jesus was both god and man at the same time so when we say the word jesus do we mean the god aspect of him do we mean the man aspect of him or do we mean the two combined now for our present uh discussion because we cannot assume that which is uh to be proven we cannot start by assuming that he is god because that's the very thing that needs to be proven in this debate so we have to start with a neutral assumption and the neutral assumption well i mean we'll all agree christians and muslims all agree that uh regardless whatever else we might say about jesus he was a man even atheists will agree with that muslims will say that he is more than a man he was a man who was chosen by god to deliver a message to humankind atheists would disagree with that but they would still agree that he was a man so that's the common position from which we all stand jesus was a man now if he was a man then he had all of the human faculties he had a human mind he had a human spirit if we can speak such because these are mysterious things now if we speak about mind and spirit and so on but jesus has noted in in mark's gospel to have uh recited the shema israel and he said this is the greatest of all commandments that you should love the lord your god with all your heart and all your soul with all your strength and with all your spirit so it must mean that jesus has all of these human faculties which are mentioned here now if he had a human mind and he was a human then the difficulty for michael is not only to prove that he was god but to also explain how we could be god and and also man at the same time now of course uh the the uh the the problem here for michael is not a philosophical one i'm not asking him to prove that jesus was all of this but he has to show that the new testament teaches a cogent position regarding how to regard jesus as both man and god at the same time in other words we have to think of the new testament authors having a conception in mind that will bring all of this together into uh harmony so having uh defined these two terms uh let me proceed then by uh looking at uh some of the kinds of arguments which are normally presented and see what we might say about these arguments for jesus being god well let's say we look at john 1 1 which is a very famous argument and michael presented this as well in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god now the fallacy of equification occurs when a person changes that the the definition that he is using for key terms uh as he goes through our argument so in john 1 1 uh where it says in the beginning was the word those who want to say that in the beginning was the word and word was with god those who want to say that they we must conclude from this that jesus uh is the word who was god from the beginning they want to only render the first term god to mean the father but not the subsequent term so uh if it says in the beginning was the word and word was with god and the word was god and he is the one who was in the beginning with god but but only the first term they want to render the father but if we want to render god as father in this passage we must render god as father throughout and in that case we would have something like this in the beginning was the word and the word was with the father and the word was with the father he was in the beginning with the father so you can see right away that this does not uh claim that the word was god now how do we analyze this grammatically why does it lack the definite article in the word theos uh the best explanation for this is that uh despite what father raymond brown has said um is that the statement here about the word is not to claim that he is god supreme but to claim that he has a sort of god quality this is what daniel wallace has explained uh in his book on the grammar of the of the new testament but wallace himself uh as pointed out by anthony rogers in his debate with me uh has uh said that we must take the first term to be father but as i've pointed out in that very debate you cannot take the first term as father arbitrarily and then make the second use of the word god there uh to to mean god uh as in the godhead that that would be to commit the fallacy of equification so if we're fair to the text we must say that it is unlikely that john in this passage is trying to teach us uh that jesus is god um if john wanted to teach us that jesus is god he had a simpler way of telling us that he could have said a right from the very beginning there were three divine persons the father the son and the holy spirit and these three divine persons constitutes only one god but what john does instead is that john is distinguishing between a true god the true god and a lesser god which he's referring to here as the word so the word was god some the word what that should mean that he has a sort of defined quality as daniel wallace has pointed out that grammatically this is what it would mean that's why it's lacking the definite article here it's not saying that he's god by identity he's saying that he has a sort of divine quality and with that in mind we can understand why in john's gospel there is only one true god in john chapter 17 verse number three jesus is praying to that one true god and he's saying that they may know you as the only true god and jesus your messenger as christ so jesus is clearly differentiated from the one true god even in john's gospel that's why in john's gospel jesus said the father is greater than i john chapter 14 verse number 28 and that's why even in the prologue that michael cited jesus is shown to be the only begotten god so there is a one true god and then there is a begotten god who turns out to be jesus here on on earth and so there's a distinction between god and jesus now in the rest of the new testament we find that uh just as john's gospel has presented jesus uh as having a high position above human beings i note that michael says well you know this all of this shows that he wasn't mere mortal but between mayor martial and god there could be many great asians and indeed the new testament writers seem to have subscribed to the idea of many different principalities and powers to use terminology from paul and so they could place jesus at different levels in a wide continuum between humans here on earth and god up in heaven so the fact that you you have a proof that jesus is more than a mere mortal does not mean automatically that you have proven that he is god himself in paul's writings we have a high christology paul believes like john that jesus was that agent through which god created everything else he is the intermediate creator but he's not the ultimate creator because paul in his first corinthians chapter eight verse number six uh he declares uh in in 8 chapter 4 that there was no god but one and then he identifies who that one god is that is the father and he says that jesus is one lord so we have one god the father and one lord jesus christ elsewhere paul has shown there is a clear hierarchy of beings there is god on top there is christ below that men below christ and women below man that is in first corinthians chapter 11 starting with verse number three uh paul in first corinthians chapter 15 verse 28 shows that in the end everything will be handed back over to the father so that the father god will be all in all so in the even up to the very end christ will remain subordinate to the the father so there is nothing in the new testament that will prove that jesus is actually god uh the new testament writers did not have this in mind or even if they had it we could not know it because they didn't state it and even when if we give credence to uh father brown whom i respect very well that uh there are passages in which the new testament writers call jesus by the term god that must be interpreted within the the whole of the new testament and then the new testament has to be interpreted in the light of the old notice that the new testament writers who tend to call jesus by the term god are the latest writers and sometimes they're very obscure writers such as for example the author of hebrews uh who uh we could not be sure is he paul or or who wrote this so if we don't know who the writer is how do we know what ideas the writer had we have to say that for this writer to be legitimate his ideas have to agree with the rest of the new testament writers which we have seen place jesus below god and not at the level of the ultimate godhood what about psalm 45 well psalm 45 that is quoted in hebrews it was first addressed to king david and uh after speaking of him as the king which was king david at the time it says your throne all god will last forever and ever so that was already addressed to king david that shows that king david could be referred to as god in fact in first corinthians chapter 29 verse number 20 it says that the people fell down and worshiped jehovah and the king so the worship david at as well that this uh of course is not what muslims and christians agreed with today that you can worship any and all beings but it was known in the old testament that people may do this and the new testament writers seem to have accepted this to a certain extent as well so you see here a use of the term god for god's agent god's king and since jesus was designated as god's messiah god's king at the time well naturally people applied the same term to him as well so the author of hebrews is not saying that jesus is ultimately a god but he's saying that jesus is an agent of god and as an agent of god we can apply to him the same kind of text that was already applied to previously an agent of god and that was david now that could be applied to jesus as well so term god here should not be taken literally it should be taken as referring to an agent of god so that's my time i want to thank you all for your patient listening we'll be back for more dr ali that was very very good time you got it right there in the final second so now gentlemen um i've really enjoyed uh you both of y'all's openings everybody that is tuning in we now move on to each person will have a seven minute rebuttal with michael's rebuttal coming whenever you are ready michael all right i am ready you may begin yeah so i i appreciate that uh dr ellis so first uh dr ellie notes the fact that okay we talk about jesus as god we have to refer to him as yahweh um yeah yeah absolutely the father son and holy spirit hold the divine name yahweh um and this is apparent in the new testament the book of revelation chapter 1 verse 17 says when i saw him speaking of christ i fell at his feet as though dead but he laid his right hand upon me saying fear not i am the first and the last. interesting very interesting where do we hear that from that's from isaiah 44 6 where yahweh applies that title to himself he says this is what the lord yahweh says israel's king and redeemer the lord yahweh almighty i am the first and i am the last and by the way apart from me there is no other god there is no god right there's no other first and last i am the first and i am the last isaiah 44 6. that's clearly a title that jesus is applying to himself right there in the new testament according to the writer of the book of revelation uh the other thing is yeah um john even actually affirms that jesus identifies himself as yahweh you look there at john 8 58 jesus is having a dispute there with the pharisees and says very truly i tell you before abraham was a [ __ ] me i am um and he wasn't meaning it in some other kind of loose sense because they picked up stones according to verse 59 picked up stones to stone him but of course jesus hid away from them uh so they understood the implications of what jesus was saying there he was appealing to the divine name yahweh exodus 3 14 so i agree dr ali yes we would have to affirm that jesus says yahweh absolutely we affirm the father is yahweh the son is yahweh and the holy spirit is yahweh but then we would have to have a discussion on okay now how do we get three persons or yahweh how do we make distinctions and that three persons hold the one divine essence where are we getting this from uh is this part of the new testament that that those are fair questions and we would have to address those in you know a future debate um okay so and by the way again that that's how dr airman understood john a right so i'm not just pulling this out of the hat even dr ehrman an agnostic is saying here you have jesus um claiming to be god and this is how his hearers understood it so again an agnostic is even admitting it now dr shabir said okay jesus is a man with human faculties yes we believe that we believe that jesus uh divine person uh second person of the trinity took on human flesh and that includes human faculties and human limitations in in the human form right uh he still remains divine in his person um but there and and the divine nature still remains divine but he also takes on human nature so that does introduce some human faculties so any of those passages that you would appeal to in the new testament to talk about him sleeping or eating those apply to his humanity now dr ali also said that jesus recites the shema how can this be you know he he recites the shema as a good jew would do yes of course he recites the shema which which you know where you have jesus praying to god how is it that god praised god again jesus in his humanity he's obligated to follow the law his human flesh is obligated to follow the law as all other jews in his humanity praise the father and by the way the second person of the holy trinity has unceasing communion or you know with without in communion with the father so there's that constant communication between the father and the son uh in in his divinity but in his humanity yes that humanity is not supposed to be an atheist as one protestant scholar puts it he's supposed to pray to the father just as every other human and good jew is supposed to do so that's how we understand that uh dr ali says well there's a problem here for michael you know how can he be both god and man according to the new testament writers how do they resolve this issue and i would say that that's a fair question and i i think that they do resolve it sufficiently but we would still say that even the new testament itself i mean we we still need to properly interpret it right i mean we we don't believe that the new testament answers every single question that can be posed out there um about how does this work between his divinity and his humanity we would say substantially it answers those questions but yeah it's going to need some additional explication which we call tradition and we believe that tradition was handed down by the apostles just as scripture was and this is how early christians understood it now dr ali also talks about john 1 and there's a fallacy of equivocation here uh going on i would say no there's actually not a fallacy of equivocation going on i would say that the text itself distinguishes between two divine persons the text itself says that there's an individual who is with god and then was god with god so there's something with god there's one person and then there's one who was god there's another person so i would say the text itself is making a distinction there so it's fair for us to make a distinction between the with god who is the father right and was god who is the son um now is this the only place that we can go to make that distinction no but i think that distinction is is implicit enough there that um it doesn't we don't end up in equivocation um now it's interesting because again father raymond brown which dr elise says he respects says this about john 1 um what god was the word was is how the new english translation uh paraphrases it this certainly is better than divine but loses the terseness of the prologue style perhaps the best explanation of why the author of the prologue chose to use an an art through us uh theos to refer to the word is that he desired to keep the word distinct from the father hatheos so what he's saying is the reason why there's a distinction there in the greek is just because he's make a distinction between the father and the son so even this liberal scholar uh father raymond brown is uh testing to that and then again as i quoted earlier dr bart airman says of john 1 um the word in john 1 is the one who is with god in eternity past who as himself divine who created the universe he is a divine being who became man so it's not just that he has a god quality as dr uh uh ali said but it's more and by the way i don't know any orthodox jew that could ever say that somebody has a divine quality uh but all right let's move on i'm out of time oh it's very good very good you gentlemen have been very very good with your time and now if you are ready dr lee your seven minute rebuttal whenever you're ready i will begin to the timer i'm ready go ahead okay so michael thank you for that spirited engagement with some of the points that i made so let me in turn try to engage with your point so you say that uh the father son and holy spirit all have the divine name yahweh notice what what happened here would have to be that in the old testament when yahweh spoke and he said i am yahweh beside me there is no other god yahweh then would mean all father son and holy spirit and it would mean that yahweh couldn't simply say i'm sending my spirit that would be the trinity speaking and it would mean that the trinity has a spirit and the trinity has a son and and and the trinity has one component called the father and it would mean also that now you have four entities you have the trinity that is called jehovah or yahweh who says i am the only god besides me there is no other and you would have within that trinity that there are three persons called father son and holy spirit and each one of these three persons is god and hence he will have four entities that are actually called god and i i feel that this is a difficult problem to to overcome uh because then you wouldn't have a triunity you would have a quadri unity something like uh you know um tetra unity something like this now you say that uh the name actually is uh applied jesus supplies a name to himself where he says i am the first and the last in the book of revelation but notice there he doesn't say i am jehovah or i am yahweh in fact in that book when the name yah is is used in the term alleluia it is a praise to yahweh not to jesus and looking back at isaiah chapter 44 verse number six yeah it is clear that yahweh speaks there and says i am yahuweh before me no god was formed nor shall they be one after me jesus does not say these words he only picks up the words which say i am the first and the last but he doesn't say i am yahweh besides whom there is no other god so you see the difference there now in john chapter 8 verse 58 you point out that jesus says which means i am and these are the words which yahweh spoke in exodus chapter 3 verse number 14. but there yahweh said clearly i am yahweh i am your god but but jesus does not say these words in fact in the translation in greek of that passage in the septuagint we have that yahweh says in i am the being and here jesus simply says just simply says i am he doesn't say i am the being he doesn't say i am what but in the old testament yahweh said what he was i am the only god besides me there is no other you see a clear distinction here now um often michael you're saying even irman says this well armin is you know a good scholar and i respect him as well and yes he's an agnostic and so if he affirms something in favor of the christian position then that counts in your favor i give you that but it doesn't mean that airman is god and he's the last scholar there have been scholars now who are studying this and they look at the new testament background they look at the inter-testamental period and you say no orthodox jew would affirm these things well in fact uh now they're the scholars are pointing out such as for example daniel bar byron who is a jewish scholar and uh many others for example james mcgrath in his book the only true god they point out that in that period of time when the new testament was being written it was possible for people to believe in all of these various levels of deity so for them yes there could be one true god and then many subsidiary beings who are divine in some way and who might be called god as well so when herman is affirming that jesus here is being presented as god that is one view but i think there is so much more that is clear to indicate that these new testament writers did not believe god jesus to be the ultimate god yes they are calling him some kind of intermediary being who can be given the title god just as david was called god in psalm 45 but they're not intending by this that jesus is the ultimate god because even john as we have pointed out with so many references shows that jesus is subordinate to the father john chapter 14 verse 28 paul who presents jesus as being originally in the form of god having come down now on the earth so the form of god there it is not saying jesus was god this is the important thing he's saying form of god there's always some kind of cushion uh you know jesus is the image of god jesus is the word of god jesus is the son of god but never jesus is god in that clear simple clear declarative type of statement it's always a kind of round about or some mention by the way or something like this so the simple clear declarative statements is always about the father being the only god for example when paul if he wrote a vision says one god and father of all when he writes in first corinthians chapter eight verse number six that there is no god but one and then he identifies the father as that one god so this is all very clear now if jesus was praying to god then how can he be god and man at the same time how could we be the god that he is actually praying to because if if he bows down he falls in his face in matthew chapter 26 verse number 39 and he's worshiping god that's quite odd because if he is god himself he should be worshipping himself and there's no need to bow down and and and worship himself so this would be very strange and if he had all of the human faculties and he still uh is god then the human could not know that there is a divine being in him because a human who knows that there is a defined being in him is not really a human being he he is especially uh privileged if you call him a human being uh so it has to be a distinction between the human mind and the divine mind the divine mind know that he is not a human being he is not limited by human factors the human mind knows that he is not divine he does not have the powers he does not have omniscience and in mark chapter 13 verse 32 jesus declares of that hour no one knows not even the son but the father only which shows that he is not the omniscient god so he has to have a human mind that is not mingled with the divine mind and and in that case we cannot say that jesus that human who was born of mary with the human brain and the human mind is actually god the most you can say is that god was somehow in jesus but of course you say that god is in other christians as well and that does not make the other christians god so how does that make jesus god so the new testament writers are not teaching us that jesus was god they were teaching us that he was subordinate to god very good very good with the timing there gentlemen and now we have got what will be two 20-minute cross-examination portions so rather than having breaking them up into multiple ones we have what will be free-flowing discussion where michael will go first michael will be able to pose his questions to shabir they'll be able to go back and forth in this section shabir is not the one cross-examining michael therefore michael will be presenting his questions to shabir they'll go back and forth in a charitable discussion and then after 20 minutes it will be shabir's turn to go ahead and cross-examine michael and michael and dr shabir whenever you gentlemen are ready we can go ahead and begin this portion i'm ready yeah you ready michael yeah let's do it fantastic we will begin now all right thank you for that dr ellie um yeah so i mean one of the questions that i had is i think it was uh yeah i was in your rebuttal you said the new testament writer this is quote the new testament writers who tend to refer to jesus as god you said those words can you please explain that um and how that does not uh basically concede the thesis of the debate well the the the idea i mean the use of the term god for a person does not mean necessarily that the writer is considering this person to be the ultimate god uh this writer could mean that the term is used metaphorically uh as in uh for example when the judges are called gods uh or it could be used as agents for god so as the judges are being called gods in psalm 82 then they that could be either taken metaphorically or it could be taken that it really means god but not the ultimate god and nowadays for christians and muslims when we use the term god it must mean the ultimate god and no one else but at the time of the new testament writing the scholars have pointed out it was possible to think of many other agents for for god and and mediators between god and creation who might be called god but they're not called god in the ultimate sense so the new testament writers are using the term god for jesus they're doing it mostly in a roundabout way not in a simple clear declarative statement and and in those uh usages it is better interpreted to keep the new testament as a whole and to keep it in harmony with the old testament these statements are better interpreted as meaning that jesus is an intermediary between god and his creation now in one of your debates with dr james white you claim that paul affirmed the divinity of jesus and that when he did this he departed from old testament monotheism do you still maintain that um the term divinity as i pointed out is a vague term so if you say divinity if you then you know there could be many levels of beings who are called divine beings not in my terminology of course but in in the terminology of the new testament so um if i said that paul affirmed the divinity of jesus it must be in one of i don't remember what i said but it must be in one of these meanings that paul is saying that jesus is the agent through which god created everything else in that sense in paul's mind jesus is divine but in paul's mind jesus is below god as he explained so many times in in clear language now could you interact a little bit with philippians 2 6 that talks about him being in the very nature god but he didn't consider this equality with some something to be used to his own advantage you know that the whole passage can you maybe explain how that fits into this uh claim that you're making that this maybe refers to some kind of semi-divine being it kind of sounds like it's referring to the full kind of divinity what do you think well at first this passage occurs in in philippians so it has to be interpreted um as part of the book of philippians and the paul's letter to the philippians and then that too has to be interpreted in the light of paul's other writings to know what's in the mind of paul and that too has to be interpreted in the light of the new testament and the new testament and the light of the old so taking it that step at a time i don't want to go to all through all details about this but let's start with the book of philippians uh if you look at the doxology at the beginning you look at the closing remarks of paul in that letter as in all of his other letters he's always giving praise and thanks to the god and father of our lord jesus christ so he's clearly distinguishing between god the father and our lord jesus christ there these are two and one and the term god is being used for the father and deliberately turned away from from the lord jesus christ why would he do this if in his mind jesus is actually god why doesn't say you know there are two persons who are divine beings equal in authority and power and eternity and knowledge and and so on but that's not the language he's using now what is he saying about jesus being in the form of god now you know the translation of that is disputed and and you put it the nature of god but if you take the term form it must mean that jesus has uh some kind of divine form uh in before he assumed the human form and now he assumed the human form he is now in the form of a servant and uh when he was in that divine form he did not uh think that he should go higher rather instead of thinking of going higher and and think of robbery with like thinking of you robbing or usurping god's position instead of going higher to god's position he came down to the position of servants so he was in between uh just as first timothy chapter 2 verse 15 says there is one mediator between god and man the man jesus christ so he's a mediator now he becomes a human being it takes takes the form of a servant and then god exalts him even above the position that he had previously as a reward for his humility so he goes higher than he was before he couldn't go higher than he was before if in the very first instant he was god and if he wasn't god from the inception and god is raising him and exalting him he could not become god because there is only one god and and he as that one god says in isaiah there has been no god before me neither shall there be be one uh performed after me so paul could not mean that jesus is uh ultimate god he could only mean that uh jesus has a divine uh pre-existence before his uh human existence what in the text there in philippians would indicate that he couldn't be this full divine being because i guess i'm not seeing it how does your interpretation not read into the text even more than i am when i simply pause it that it means he's fully divine i i don't know how else to explain but to repeat everything i've said uh michael but let me expand a little bit more when paul has clearly shown that jesus is a subordinate being to god in first corinthians chapter 11 verse number three and forward in first corinthians chapter 15 verse 28 when he begins this very letter by by uh giving praise to god the father and of our lord jesus christ deliberately turning the god term uh away from jesus and towards someone else when he himself affirms in first corinthians chapter eight verse number four uh that there is no god but one and then he specifies in verse number six that that one is the father and he gives the the designation of lord to jesus which is an exalted title but not the word god so in all of these passages paul is making it very clear that there is only one god and and jesus is uh below that one god so when he's speaking here and the carmen christie we cannot take this passage out of the context of paul's letter to the philippians nor can we take this one letter out of the context of the other letters of paul and and that context clearly dictates that jesus is somewhere between god and man but the text itself michael shows that jesus is in a position where he has to make a decision am i gonna try to go up and and uh try to be equal with god or am i gonna go down and and become a servant and he chooses to go down he couldn't choose between up and down if he was already god in the first place notice that paul is not saying jesus was god and and god became a man that's not his terminology saying jesus was in the form of god he was in a divine form here the term god is used in a looser way than christians and muslims and jews today would use it but what paul is using terms like that and other new testament writers are using terms like divinity and deity and and god and theos and in in this kind of ambiguous way but we have to interpret that all of that within the context of the rest of their writings and of the rest of the new testament and we have to uh interpret the new testament in a way that agrees with the old so you're interpreting philippians in light of first corinthians four which you're saying that refers to jesus as subordinate so my question is um why can't that subordination refer to his humanity and therefore make your uh interpretation of philippians entirely and relevant there and uh then i could prove my uh interpretation of philippians um you know that it refers to him being fully divine and this subordination is just referring to his humanity well the the subordination that uh paul is talking about in uh philippians chapter two uh verse number nine and so on is um is really the subordination when jesus actually became a human being that that's granted but the rest of the passages are speaking uh ontologically this is who christ is he's subordinate to god especially first corinthians chapter 15 verse number 28 how would he in the end hand over over everything to to the father so that god will be all in all if indeed he was not eternally subordinate to the father a book has been written recently called the new evangelical subordinationism with a question mark at the end a collection of many essays some saying that jesus could not be subordinate to the father the trinity does not work that way but there are many evangelical scholars uh an equal number in that book uh all are almost equal number of that book in that book uh contributing their essays arguing that in fact uh the new testament uh gives evidence that jesus is eternally subordinates with with the father to the father right so how does that when you say jesus is ontologically subordinate to the father and then you're using that to read into philippians how does that account for our understanding of the trinity that recognizes that no jesus is not subordinate to the father but we can speak about jesus holding the divine essence from the father and so we we can speak about the father uh being the principal without a principle and jesus you know um receiving the divinity or holding the divinity is probably a better term from the father in that sense we talk about subordination but not subordinationism that that's uh that's actually a heresy how does that account for our understanding of the trinity because it sounds like it's not uh to me well in india the classical understanding of the trinity as i understand it is that there are three persons in the one god the father son and the holy spirit and these three persons are co-eternal and uh co-equal so if we can show that there are passages indicating that jesus is subordinate to the father and and eternally so then this cuts at the heart of the classical trinitarian doctrine and it uh i mean you're rightly saying that according to uh one view of the trinity at your view in particular then uh subordinationism would be a heresy um but evangelical scholars are now being driven to that because they can see the evidence is very clear the the passages in the new testament do show that there is this eternal subordination of the sun and this passage in philippians chapter 2 does not help to overturn that general picture in the new testament when you said that paul affirms that he has a divine form although something lower than the full divinity is that blasphemy is it blasphemy for somebody to say that this person can hold a lower uh form of divinity not the full amount but a lower amount is that blessing uh for for monotheistic uh christians today and for for muslims and jews um yes that would be blasphemy we cannot uh take an a human being as being or any other creature as being a god um there is a clear distinction in judaism christianity and monotheistic religions more generally between god on the one hand and uh his uh everyone else so but but that's not how the new testament writers were thinking as new research has uh pointed out paula frederickson for for example uh in her essay and this said that we have to rethink the the our conception of what monotheism was at the time of the old testament and at the time when the new testament was being written so these new testament writers could conceive of intermediary beings there is melchizedek there is metatron uh even enoch people thought that there are some intermediary beings uh between god and and man and uh paul is part of that social milieu and he has a similar idea there can be an intermediary in fact that is both paul's and john's idea but using different terms paul thinks that jesus is the sophia of god through which everything else was created uh john uh thought that jesus is the logos of god through which everything was created maybe so uh logless and sophia mean the same thing but for both of these writers there is an intermediary through whom god creates everything else so that intermediary being is our creator according to these writers but they're not the ultimate creator that that that creator is an intermediary being between god and his creation if that's the proper interpretation of paul that he sees this as some intermediary being that has some kind of semi divine uh nature to him how come none of the churches that were established by the apostles maintained that view in the second century in fact some people did maintain that view but it did not become the dominant view eventually christianity moved towards uh reconciling it this way they know that they have various persons who are called god god the father is called god uh god the son is called god but we can't have two gods we have to somehow reconcile this and what are we to say of the holy spirit eventually the great uh councils uh uh nicea and following uh sorted out these issues to declare that jesus is very god of very god and then in the council of constantinople 381 the holy spirit was declared to be worshiped along with the father and the son as well but the way in which christianity um reconcile this is to say that there is only one god and and this one god comprises these uh three persons but that's not how every uh theologian in church history can be shown to explicate the matter uh justin yeah well yeah and i agree with you sure there were people in the early uh church who held to other views but my question then would be um those that maintain this intermediary view uh how many of them were um you know bishops or belong to a church founded by the apostles um you know the the information about this period is uh is scant and and i don't profess to be a scholar of this uh period and and of the uh pre-nicene fathers uh but it has come to my attention that uh justin martyr who is a premier scholar of christianity from the middle of the second century he had a view which is quite unusual today he he had the view that jesus is a hero's theos so he could apply that term to jesus a is sort of different god or a secondary god uh philo of alexandria had referred to god as a deuteros and something similar is found now in justin martyr according to the interpreters of this great scholar so um according to justin martyr jesus is the one who was called jehovah in the old testament and jehovah has a father who never actually came down to earth so he has a very different view of the the godhead if we can use that term uh than than christians who are trinitarians today because most trinitarians would say that jehovah is the only god and jehovah as a son um but not that jehovah has a father unless of course you might explain something different did i understand you said most christians today would not affirm that there are three persons who hold the divine name yahweh christians would explain that but but if they think about the relationship between uh jesus and jehovah of the old testament uh christians would generally say uh trinitarians at least that jesus is the son of jehovah so that when jehovah sends the the one who is referred to as a servant in in isaiah chapter 42 and foward he is that's actually this not only the servant of jehovah but the son of jehovah yeah my another question that i have here is again going back to john 8 58 um how does your interpretation fit with the fact that the jews picked up stones to kill him are they picking up stones to kill somebody who is professing to be less than god or are they picking up stones to kill somebody who is claiming to be god i would say that the jews misunderstood jesus and jesus was trying to explain to them again and again in john chapter 8 verse 40 for example he says you are determined to kill me a man who has told you the truth that i heard from god again and again they're asking him questions to have him say something that they can twist so that they would have an excuse to kill him but he said i've already told you who i am but you're not uh agreeing so that was even before john chapter 8 verse 58. so when they are picking up stones to stone him they're saying we are still in you because being a mere man you are claiming to be equal with god but he kept saying no i'm not that's not what i'm saying in john chapter 10 verse number 30 and forward for example he explains that the term god can be used in a loose way it like the the judges were called gods in psalm 82 it doesn't mean that this is last for me to use the term in that way and he said why do you blame me when i only said that i'm the son of god which means that he he is saying in his plain words here i didn't claim to be god the most i claim is that i am the son of god and of course muslims would interpret that if these are the words of jesus that he must have meant it metaphorically but for our debate tonight it's not it's not clear from the new testament that the writers are trying to say that that jesus is god they're trying to say something less than god for jesus uh there will you when you refer to john 10 whenever he appeals to i even you know even the psalms says that you are called god so how much more can the son of man be called god is he not then actually affirming the fact that even if you can be called god how much more can i claim isn't that a um strengthening of his claim that he is divine and not a listening of it rather he he he did not own up to the term he didn't say i claimed to be god he said i i i only said i am the son of god he he didn't actually say that if even you are called god and then why do you blame me for saying i'm the son of god that that's how i recall it we can look at the passage and see i think we're out of time on my end gentlemen you all have been very very good with the time with the respectful back and forth dialogue it's been very appreciative i'm sure the audience have really really enjoyed it and now we come to dr shabir's portion of the cross examination dr shabir if you are ready if you don't need to take a drink of water or whatever it is you're drinking um we can begin whenever you're ready or we can take a short break you can grab a drink if you'd like sure i'll i'll i'll grab a drink yeah not a problem sure right okay sure all right i'll grab one too i'll be right back two minutes wonderful not a problem i will um let the audience know we are having a great discussion i mean what a fun discussion you're hearing sunday night with us um i'm used to being one of the debaters as you all know um but i love being a moderator i love being able to moderate debates i think this is probably the third or fourth one i've moderated i'm really enjoying it i'm enjoying the intellectual back and forth between these two um uh giants of their respective face i'm really enjoying it um i respect both of them greatly as you know i've known shabir for many years michael of course is a brother of mine um this has been a lot of fun let you all know in the meantime we have a lot of really good stuff coming up um in december two debates i'll be debating the perpetual virginity of mary multiple times i'll be debating the immaculate conception as well with my brother elijah that'll be a mega two verses two debate then in january i'll be debating shabir ali again on the holy ghost and we've got a ton of stuff for you all uh we have uh aaron raw in 2021 more dan barker um adnan rasheed we've got a lot of stuff for you tons of stuff so much that your head will be spinning from all of the incredible material we have for you all here at reason and theology just off the charts really put it this way if you guys if theology is your thing um we're going to stuff your bellies with it aren't we michael we've got a lot of really good stuff a lot of great stuff planned for the remainder of the year and into 2021 a lot of great stuff happening here especially now that we have organized thanks be to god a very incredibly uh incredible working board where we are looking and examining uh very erudite very very capable guests in the future to why are we doing that to put on quality material for all of you all there so but if you all if you all are so kind enough uh check out our patreon uh check it out um uh consider perhaps being a patron of the stuff that we do here uh we do it all in charity and love for the faith to bring this information out to you all and to hopefully um you know enlighten you and you know help you on a journey towards whatever it is you want to be going and if you gentlemen are uh ready whenever shabira lets me know we will begin the timer oh sorry i just got back in um are you ready for me oh yeah whenever you're ready not a problem you can take a few drinks whenever you gentlemen are writing i know that when we have cross examination such a long period like that when talking goes quite some time sometimes the throat can get a little bit dry there so whenever you both gentlemen are ready we may begin let's do it sure okay i'm ready fantastic we can begin now okay so michael you are very gracious in your cross-examination of me and i will try to reflect the same graciousness do forgive me if i overstep any bounce never my intention but i'll i'll do my best all right so michael um in your opening statement uh you said that mark chapter 2 would give evidence that jesus was being declared here to be god however are you aware of matthew chapter 9 verse number 8 where the crowd saw what jesus had done and then they glorified god for giving such authority to men um so so it would seem to me that uh this uh did not prove to the crowd that jesus was god it just proved that jesus was an agent of god who was given authority to declare the forgiveness of sins on earth so tell me your response to that well i would then ask and i know i can't ask questions but rhetorically i would just wonder um why is it that they perceived it as blasphemy it seems like they understood that he was referring to himself as divine he even insists um that he you know is stating the fact that he is forgiving their sins uh his sins um knowing what they're thinking in their minds knowing they think that this is blasphemy and he never repudiates it i think if he were a good jew uh who is not divine he should be refuting that repudiating it and saying absolutely not this is not the case um only god can forgive sins i i would just wonder why he doesn't do that could it be michael that he knows that they will reach the right conclusion on their own which they did reach according to matthew chapter nine verse number eight so there was no need for him to repudiate that initial hesitation any further i'm not sure about that i think what's going on is jesus is subtly introducing this because it would be very confusing if he just all of a sudden comes out and says hey i am god that's going to cause a whole lot of confusion and questions so i think what jesus is doing is slowly and gradually introducing this concept yes god only can forgive sins and in fact i am forgiving sins and he doesn't uh expand it any further but he still doesn't retract that either and and rebuke them and say that no they're they're wrong and this isn't uh the case i think what he's doing is just gradually and slowly introducing them so that they can understand this properly and it won't be misunderstood so um i want to pick up on that michael so uh why do you think it would be a problem for jesus to just simply declare i am god sure because in the old testament it does have passages that talk about uh god doesn't sleep or slumber and things like that and of course jesus as a human clearly does sleep in slumber and it would cause a lot of confusion all of a sudden if they see somebody who is there uh with human flesh just coming out and saying these kinds of things i think he has to gradually introduce it um so that they don't misunderstand things when do you think that it came to be the point where jesus uh so clearly um laid the matter to rest i am god i rest my case now do what you want but i i've told you yeah i think in john 8 58 that's where he's really getting explicit with them and they're they're picking up on it and they're picking up stones to kill him because they they perceive that he is blaspheming so i think it's becoming clear there as you get to john 8 and john 10 he is asserting his divinity but he has to do it in a way that they won't be confused and he also needs to do it in a way that they're not going to end up as unitarians and just thinking that there's only one person in the godhead so i think that's that's what's going on but again in john 8 i think he's starting to make it even more and more explicit and this is why i believe the early christians interpreted those passages in the sense that he's not some semi-divine being but he's actually yahweh um now michael you will notice that i didn't ask you when when he started to do this i asked you when when when it reached the the apex when he's he made it so clear that he is claiming to be god when did when was that time well that's what i was answering i think that he is making it very clear there in john 8 58 by applying the divine name to himself and they perceived that as blasphemy and went to pick up stones to kill him because rightly so i i don't know anybody who could claim even some kind and i'm not buying this idea of some kind of semi divine being but i don't even think some semi-divine being could apply the name of yahweh uh to himself i think that that would be blasphemy um yahweh is clearly in the old testament someone who is fully divine not semi-divine and he is applying the divine name to himself not only and that's not just my interpretation that's how the vast majority of christians understood it and that's also even how scholars like dr bart airman understands it and i would ask i would wonder why is that so uh when when jesus said this and his opponents picked up stones to stone him this is in the middle of john's gospel um then it am i to assume that the christians who were sincere followers of jesus at that time uh let's call okay let's not call them christians but they say followers of jesus at that time his disciples to to begin with they would have known from this time that jesus is god i think that they're confused because you even see that in john 14 where they're they're confused and jesus has to rebuke him and say saying you know do you not know that even if you know uh if you've seen the father you've seen me he has to clarify these things because even they aren't um really picking up on some of this even though he's i think very clear um so i i think that even the disciples and the apostles struggled with this for a little bit um but then began to understand what he was saying so i think it was a gradual process would it be fair to say michael that in this state of confusion some people might have begun to worship jesus because they recognize what he's saying that he is god and they believe in him so they take him as god they're worshiping him as god and at the same time some other people as you know are picking up stones to stone him because they think he's not god but he's claiming to be god uh might there have been other people who um like in this state of confusion some people who are not quite clear is he saying he's god or not and even though they want to believe in him they they can't find themselves worshipping him yet because they're not quite clear that he's god yeah i'm sure there are some people who are struggling with it because this is um this is new revelation and it is very uh tough revelation to deal with i mean the early christians took a while to unpack and unravel this so i'm sure some people were confused but i would just wonder why uh it's the case that peter in in the boat on one occasion actually worships jesus and he doesn't rebuke him so now i'm back to a previous question in a way because i thought you said that jesus did not reveal this information from the inception because that would have caused confusion but he chose a particular moment like john chapter 8 verse 58 to reveal that he is god but then you're saying that even then it causes confusion so uh wouldn't he in his omniscience uh pick the right time to declare that he is god so that there is no confusion no and i'm not saying that john 8 was the first time what i'm saying is i think that's when it becomes a very very um very explicit compared to the other passages and i think that some of them wrestled with that peter picked up on it and went to worship jesus but then um thomas you know in john 14 is still struggling with it but i think uh by the end of things they they are very clear that he is fully divine and that's why you have the churches that they established that the apostles established that's why you have them testifying to his divinity uh in the early 2nd century now from this point onwards um and then it becomes more clear to everyone that jesus is uh is claiming to be god and uh at this point uh like those who believe in him obviously would know that he is god but what about those who do not believe in him like the jews who are picking up stones to stone him do you think that they are culpable or are they just acting on what they know from the old testament if a man comes to us and claims to be god he must be stoned and this is what we're doing we're just following the old testament law do you think that before jesus said ego amy he had already demonstrated that he is actually god jesus indicated that some of them were culpable he actually mentions that if i had not come and said these things to you you wouldn't have been guilty but now that i have you're you're guilty uh so some of them were culpable i think other words others maybe weren't culpable yet because you see they're even in acts 2. um paul i mean sorry peter talks about this jesus whom you've crucified and uh you know he notes that okay you didn't know that you were crucifying the son of god but that's in fact what you did and you need to repent and be baptized and that's kind of what's going on there in acts two so he's indicating that some of these people weren't culpable they didn't know um but you need to repent of it so i would say some some were culpable some were not so let's say those who were culpable um and and it would have to be the ones that peter were speaking about you crucified him so the people who crucified him uh were oh i think you're saying they're not comparable okay i think that's what peter is is arguing that some of them i'm not saying all right but it seems that peter's thinking that some of them are not culpable because they didn't realize what they were doing and jesus himself says father forgive them for they know not what they do but then jesus elsewhere is indicating that certain leaders they are culpable because jesus has come and he has said these things and now they're responsible for them okay so now there's a difference between saying and proving as we all know right so jesus said i am god according to you uh not in those terms but he said which means according to you the same thing so he's claiming to be god uh but what about the proof that he's god like what did he do to prove that that he is god um his resurrection his resurrection would prove everything that he has said everything not just the fact that he's claiming to be divine but everything else if he had just laid there in the grave that would be uh clearly evidence that he wasn't who he claimed he was but he predicted his own resurrection and in fact he did uh rise on the third day that testifies to everything you said and that's actually what you see paul talking about jesus being vindicated uh by his resurrection because his is preaching what everything he said he's dedicated through the resurrection so since the resurrection comes after the crucifixion um wouldn't jesus then have given the jews every reason to crucify him even sincere jews who were just trying to follow the old testament law some of them were just thinking we're just following the old testament law we're doing what god dictated we have to kill this man and so whose fault then would it be ultimately that jesus was crucified no because it was i think sufficiently clear not to everyone but i think that god made it sufficiently clear that god would visit the temple that god himself in the old testament he says that he prophesies he will come and visit the temple the second temple and in fact that that is exactly what he did so they had enough to um to know that this person who is going to come who claims to be the christ is also divine yeah but you said that uh when we look at philippians 2 uh we should understand that this meaning that he veiled his divinity in human flesh he took on the nature of a servant so when he was in the nature of a servant and he appears to everyone as a human being even though one who is great and who is performing miracles uh which he said that even you know people can do with the aid of the devil um then um wouldn't it be justifiable for the jews to uh put this man to death because to them he appears to be a human being even if he's god he's veiled as a human being that's how he appears and he's claiming to be god and therefore even if god is supposed to come and into his temple this is not him and and therefore we must kill him because he's an imposter no because he's accompanying his his proclamation that he's divine as he does you know forgive the man of his sins with miracles he healed that paralyzed man so he didn't only just say your sins are forgiven testifying to his divinity he actually healed a paralyzed man so people knew that uh what he was saying was being confirmed through what they were saying in miracles so they didn't even have to wait to the resurrection for that ultimate vindication they were seeing vindication right then and there because he wasn't just saying these things he spoke to them and performed miracles but michael we've just established from matthew chapter 9 verse number 8 that in the end the crowd concluded that this was a man who was given authority by god to do these things so the crowd is still thinking that this is a human being some some would think that but i think that they also others in that crowd uh thought that this was blasphemy and rightly recognized that who can for forgive sins but god alone and he doesn't rebuke him he doesn't say nope i i'm i'm not divine he actually substantiates that by miracles do you have a text from the bible that says that the crowd actually concluded uh as matthew says that the crowd saw saw this and and they they thought that god has given authority to men do you have an alternate text which says that the crowd or some in the crowd concluded otherwise mark 2 7 why does this fellow talk like that he's blaspheming who can forgive sins but god alone they were rightly picking up on what he was saying there that was the initial question michael but what about the conclusion that matthew gave is there another alternative conclusion no i i think that it's possible to understand that their their praise they're praising the father now um you know whether or not um they you know some of these people are rightly distinguishing between two persons in the trinity perhaps perhaps that's what's going on there they're picking up on the fact that there are two persons here now you said that john 1 1 um does not involve the fallacy of equification as interpreted by trinitarians but uh when you when you assume that the first mention of god must be god the father why do you make that assumption why not for example assume that this is god uh the holy spirit or even god the son why does the why does the the the word have to be the son why couldn't it be that in the beginning was the son who is god and and in the beginning was the lord and the word was with the son and the word was the son of what why didn't you have it that way yeah the word has to be son because the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and that's clearly referring to jesus there in john 14 so the word has referred to jesus you asked me then why does this one the word who is with god what is that not referred to the holy spirit it could although that's just not generally how people understood the text and i'm going to go with the traditional position but that wouldn't harm that that wouldn't harm my position if you were to say okay no the one who is with god here is uh the holy spirit because that's true too yes i mean the the second person of the trinity was also with the third person of the trinity uh from the very beginning you could say that it's just that that's generally not how uh people understood john 1. so if if john has this idea that in the beginning was the trinity and the trinity comprises father son and holy spirit why doesn't he say it this way and end all of the confusion from the start even the old testament could have said that the old testament could have said from in genesis chapter one verse number one in the beginning there was the trinity father son and holy spirit they created the heavens and the earth and they said let us make man like one of us and and so on and john chapter 1 verse 1 could say the same thing in the beginning was the trinity the trinity comprised the father son and holy spirit but father son and holy spirit is the only true god because the trinity is just one god and then we go on from there then there's no confusion after that wouldn't that be nice michael i i think it would be nice but we we both know that we could ask that same question about pretty much every theological uh topic why didn't god just say this instead of the way that he did reveal things um yeah it would be nice if god just gave us a nice theological uh manual that just gives us nothing but theological propositions but we both know that that's not the case it would be nice but god has his reasons why might that be the case i mean i'm just speculating here i think that what he's doing is he's gradually revealing these things so that they don't end up misunderstanding what the trinity is now i want to take you back to what you said about father raymond brown is somewhat approving of the new english bible's translation what god was the word was now you realize michael that this does not prove that jesus was god by identity because it we can say for example god is loving jesus is loving because whatever god was jesus was but that doesn't prove that he is god because you're loving hopefully i'm loving william is loving but doesn't prove that we are god whatever god was we are uh to a certain extent of course uh at a very limited extent i even hesitate to say this but um to say that whatever god was jesus the word was is not a proof that that jesus or the word was god it's identifying the word as theos you know i don't see that being applied to anyone who is uncreated and i don't think it could logically be applied to anyone who is uncreated he's referring to chaos it's not just saying he shares divine qualities i mean that's true he does share the same qualities as the father but um it's going beyond that saying he's god okay let me um then uh for the minister so we have remaining uh think about uh jesus being god and man at the same time so i in my cross examination uh i mean your crosstalk examination of me i spoke about the difficulty of uh having the mind of god or maybe i said this in my earlier presentations uh so if he is god he has a human mind he has a divine mind but if he is human he has a human mind so how could there be one mind that conceives of this person and says i am both man and god at the same time which mind would would that be yeah when we talk about this we we we first of all are talking about the second of person of the trinity taking on uh everything that humanity has which you know is body and soul so a human intellect he takes on a human intellect and yet the second person of the trinity has a divine intellect right so we would distinguish between the divine and the human okay so in that case what about the human intellect what the human intellect know himself to be a human being or would he know himself to be god both okay so a human knows himself to be god but he's still a human being uh the human intellect knows that he is the second person of the trinity and also um human fully human yes okay thank you for your time michael gentlemen that was great you all are fantastic when it comes to time um and now what we have for the audience that are wondering i know this has been great gentlemen by the way uh the audience is very eager to pick at your brains let me let them know we still have four very fun segments left what we have coming up right now is two ten minute summations followed by two five minute closing statements and then we will open up the doors to the audience q a and for our very first ten minute summation we do have michael michael whenever you are ready you may begin i wasn't aware of it a summation before the closing i just thought that we had the two 20-minute cross exams and then two 10-minute closings although i mean i'm willing to do more but that's what i was prepared for was just uh the opening rebuttals cross exam closing and then audience q and a is is that right we we had but then uh i believe uh last evening uh dr shabir um suggested two ten minute summations and two five minutes because he thought it would be fairer to for him to not have a longer closing statement that'll work is that all right with you all yeah yeah fine with me wonderful gentlemen so whenever you are ready michael you can go ahead and begin okay well you know dr ali raises some really good questions he brings up john 8 58 where he he says well jesus doesn't say i'm yahweh and i you know i i beg to differ he uses and applies the divine name to himself and they rightly understood that they thought he was blaspheming they picked up stones to kill him um and i would just simply wonder why didn't jesus at this point tell them no no no no no wait you're trying to kill me for blasphemy here uh let me just clarify i am not applying the divine name uh you know i am that i am to myself that's not what's going on here that's in fact not what he did and that's why again we see even people like dr airman who is not a christian he's an agnostic he doesn't have a dog in the fight here he even rightly understands it that way um now dr ellie also talks about you know in the first century there were those who believed that there was a semi-divine intermediary being and okay that's fine and well uh there there may have been people who believe that there are people who believed all kinds of things but my question is um is that actually what paul himself believed or are we reading that into paul i think we're actually reading that into paul because it first of all i don't see what impal actually necessitates that position and secondly the churches that paul established and the other churches that john and all the others established is that how they understood jesus as this intermediary being no in fact they did not understand it that way so i would say that um you know i think what's going on here is we have some uh reading into the text um and so i would challenge that now dr ali notes that okay jesus is subordinate subordinate to the father so what do we as trinitarians do to that now i in no way affirm any kind of subordinationism i absolutely decry that as a heresy i will say that his humanity is subordinate uh to his own divinity uh to the father to the to the son and his divinity and to the holy spirit his humanity is subordinate and all the subordination language that we see there vast majority of it can be applied to his divinity now uh that being said even though we do not hold to any form of subordinationism right because the second person is trinity is fully god he's not partially or less god than the father we can still talk about how there is a monarchy in the trinity there is a primacy that the father holds over the sun it is not that he's more god than the sun no but he is um god without a principle is the way we say it and uh jesus receives or holds the divinity from the father so he has a principle and then we speak about the holy spirit uh who proceeds from the father and the son you know from a principle without a principle and a principle with a principle and then we can talk about the filioque way another time but that that's how we understand the trinity so not in a subordination sense but we can talk about one receiving divinity from the other and this is something that happens in eternity it's not in creation so we're not talking about creatures we're talking about something that is eternal and perhaps some of the passages that we would uh look to in the new testament that seem to indicate a subordinationism that's just all it's referring to um now dr ali also says how can jesus worship himself that's a fair question that's a legitimate question and that's something that we have to answer how can jesus worship himself if he's divine what's going on here i would say that the question however assumes a unitarian view of monotheism and that's exactly what we're debating right um we would assert a trinitarian understanding of monotheism so when jesus worships the father first of all we can speak about jesus and his humanity worshipping the father um so i think that simply accounts for that um now in fact i would say that in his humanity he must worship the father because i mean if all other humans are required to worship god uh how much more is his humanity obligated to worship the father now um dr ali mentions okay well jesus professes ignorance you know he says that he doesn't even know the hour not even the son of man knows the hour well i would challenge that because um yes that's what he says but what does he mean is he denying that he's divine no is this somehow limiting his omniscience no the way the early church fathers understood this and i can give you quote after quote after quote the way they understood this is um jesus in his humanity does his humanity does not innately know the day and the hour of the second coming they will say his humanity does know but not innately he knows it through uh the uh the his his divinity his divinity communicating that information to his humanity so in that sense jesus is talking about he doesn't know the day or the hour that's how they all understood it um so i would challenge dr ali to give me a different way to understand understand it that is consistent with the community to whom this revelation was given because you can't just interpret a text divorced from the community to whom it was given in the same way that i can't just you know read a letter between uh dr ali and one of his family members and and you know without knowing the context and think that i understand it fully i would need to know who he's writing it to the context behind it to properly understand it in the same way if we're going to properly understand these texts of the new testament you have to understand it um in light of the community to whom it was written and they did not understand it the way that dr ali would assert um now um let's see what else did dr ali say here that i wanted to mention i'm sorry i'm i'm looking here now let's well hold on um dr ali mentioned psalm 45 and he talks about this being you know king david who's speaking there in psalm 45 and so um you know one cannot actually apply this to the sun but i would just simply ask well why did the writer of hebrews do that why did the writer of hebrews take that what was applied to david yes why did he take that and apply it to the sun and assert his divinity i would say the writer of hebrews is doing that now you might not agree with his use of the old testament text that's fine but i think it's pretty clear uh that is what he meant and it seems to be the case uh because that is again how the early christian community interpreted it um let's see what else here um trying to see what else i haven't covered um i think that is pretty much it um so i'll go ahead and just concede whatever the rest of the time that i had i apologize i wasn't prepared for this part i must have uh misunderstood um but let let me just go ahead and just maybe summarize my position of the last two minutes i might not necessarily interact with anything else that dr ali said but let me summarize my position uh with the two minutes that i have remaining i think that um what i have demonstrated though is that jesus is more than just claiming to be this intermediary being he is actually applying the divine name to himself he is forgiving people of their sins and i would say that is not something that an intermediary being could do they could not apply the divine name to themselves without being guilty of blasphemy i don't think it's uh even proper to read the texts that we see in john and paul and others as referring to this intermediary semi-divine being because again the community uh that these texts were delivered to did not understand it that way a great deal of scholars who have no dog in the fight aren't understanding it that way i think that's a difficulty for dr ali um i also wanted to mention another passage here it comes from let's see john 10 and 34. now we mentioned it in passing but i wanted to read it again because i think it affirms the divinity of christ uh beginning at verse 31 it says again his jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him because they're hearing that he is blaspheming in their opinion but jesus said to him i've shown you many good works from the father for which of these do you stone me we are not stoning you for any good work they replied but for blasphemy because you a mere man claim to be god that is how they understood it he doesn't go to correct them he in fact doubles down by saying jesus answered to them is it not written your law i've said you are gods if you call them gods to whom the word of god came and scripture cannot be set aside what about the one whom the father set apart as his very own and sent into the world why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because i say i am god's son do not believe me unless i do the works of my father but if i do them even though you do not believe me believe the works that you may know and understand that the father is in me and i am in the father and they didn't think oh well that explains it it's okay now no they said again they tried to seize him but he escaped their grasp so they clearly understood he was doubling down and saying if you guys are called god mere mortals how much can i the son of god refer to myself as divine i have uh i'm out of time there very good very good there michael uh very very good now we have uh dr lee whenever you are ready you can begin your 10 minute summation sure um let me set my timer here very quickly and yes okay so uh thank you again michael and now that we're coming down to the end and wrapping up all of the our arguments together uh folks let me try to draw together the various threads of uh discussion that has taken place uh between michael and me so michael pointed out during the um cross-examination that uh if jesus had said from the beginning that he is god that would lead to some confusion and i tried to clarify what that confusion would have been because i thought that to end all confusion it will just be a simple matter to declare the whole thing right from the very start jesus claims i am god they dispute this he proves he does something uh that proves that he has for example knowledge of uh of everything and then everyone knows this is god and then there's no need to crucify him because you know nobody's gonna be in this confusion and everybody would start worshiping jesus on the other hand and we see that the way in which michael is interpreting that what happened is that jesus gradually revealed that he is god so there is some a prolonged period of confusion when people are not really sure is he god is he not god some are worshiping him some are not some try to crucify him because they think he's an impostor or a human being claiming to be god and and so on so i have to say that god is not the author of this confusion and in fact we should not interpret the new testament as trying to teach that jesus is god we should say that this is how other people interpreted it later on and um michael is asking well name the churches that had a different interpretation well i've already noted a very important church father who had a very different interpretation and so when christians are looking back over the centuries and they're naming their scholars and i'm paying attention to these names i find that justin martyr stands out as a very important scholar from the middle of the 2nd century and he had that curious interpretation which i mentioned and michael did not dispute this that that justin martyr had this view that jesus is jehovah and jehovah has a father which is a very strange interpretation to to hold to and when we look at what early christians believe before the council of nicaea we see that in the apostles creed there is a declaration that we i believe in god the father are almighty creator of heavens and the earth and i believe in jesus christ his only son our lord he was conceived by the power of the holy spirit and so on but notice that the term god is not used there for jesus there is a clear understanding that the one who they believe in as god is the father almighty and and jesus has lofty titles he's called the christ he's called god's only son he's called a lord but he's not called god and my point is not that muslims should believe in what the new testament writers say but my point is that neither muslims nor christians seem to believe in what the new testament writers say at least christians who are affirming that jesus is god because the new testament writers are not affirming that jesus is god by identity the closest we come to that is john chapter 1 verse 1 saying that jesus has a sort of divine quality about him and as i clarified uh to try to interpret it otherwise falls into the fallacy of equivocation now michael says no but the text itself shows that there is a distinction between two divine persons and here uh there is the fallacy of vagueness and equivocation because uh divine here is being used in a broader sense not in the sense of god god himself but some kind of divine being so there are two kind two persons here who are shown to be divine beings so so that's that fallacy of equification and vagueness not sticking to an original and clear definition uh like i pointed out when we say jehovah we know that we're talking about the only god the one who said in the old testament i am jehovah and beside me there is no other god and moreover by saying that the text itself shows that there are two divine beings is really now going into circular reasoning when we think about what needs to be proven in in the debate you have to prove uh that jesus is god and and michael's proof is to say well he was the word of god and who was the word of god well he was with god so just putting it this way shows that this is not god and to say well the text itself shows that there are two persons here who are god is really to assume the very thing which needs to be proven the text itself doesn't say it that way and we should not assume it otherwise we fall into circular uh reasoning in a similar way michael says well the earth writer of hebrews meant that this term god applied to jesus must be taken to mean that jesus is god but that again is assuming something in the mind of the writer of hebrews and we cannot assume the very thing which we need to prove what is very clear is that the author of hebrews is citing psalm 45 which already applied to david and called david god and and and says and speaks of of the god of david and the same passages cited in hebrews as well which indicates that in the mind of the author of hebrews jesus himself has a god and similar thing we can say for the book of revelation which was cited in this debate uh michael inciting the book of revelation uh didn't pay attention to the fact that revelation chapter 3 has a passage that continually refers to the god of jesus the god of jesus the god of jesus so jesus clearly has a god michael says well yes the human jesus had a god but here michael has to distinguish between the human and the divine somehow there is a distinction between the two the human is doing some things and the divine is doing some things but this follows into a fallacy where there are two christs uh according to nestorius one human one divine and this fallacy has been or rather a heretical belief that that has been declared to be a heresy in the council of ephesus 431 where it was affirmed that there is only one christ one person that is so totally united you cannot say that the human did this and the divine did this they all did the same things all altogether so when jesus was worshiping even if you want to say that he was a human person as i'm insisting that he was then if he knew as michael is saying that that you know this information is being communicated to him from the divine element that is in him he knows that he has this god in him then you know he's not really a genuine human being and he's not like us in every respect as even the author of hebrews says because most of us don't know that we have god to this extent uh in us uh and then it would have the further complication that it would mean that mary is the mother of god because uh god would be in the in her womb right from the very inception the man and god totally united from beginning to end and it would also mean that in the end um jesus died as both god and man inseparably so and then it would lead to the conclusion naturally that god died on the cross and most christians would uh reject that as patriotic passionism they would say no the father did not die it was this son died and then it's the human son that died it's not the divine second person of the holy trinity that died no god by definition is immortal and not expendable you cannot conceive that one of the three persons of the holy trinity died and just two were running the world because if two can run the world then we don't need the third and with occam's razor we can shave away the third there is no need to multiply uh divine persons beyond necessity so i don't think that in this uh debate if we pull all of the strings together we we can see that in any way michael has presented clear evidence that the new testament writers actually affirm that jesus is god actually we see quite the contrary and uh the the whole bible can be interpreted in a more harmonious way if we understand that the new testament writers are saying that jesus though being more than a man he was not god he is as first timothy chapter 2 verse 15 points out he was an intermediary between man and uh and god so there's one god the father and jesus is the intermediary between man and god one mediator uh once we understand this we realize that all of the lofty titles of uh that are applied to jesus in the new testament are applied with the idea of the new testament writers that jesus is between god and man so he is lofty above the creation but he is still under god and this is why paul can say that in the end jesus will hand everything back over to god so that god will be all in all and that uh proves an eternal uh subordination uh of the son to the father and uh first corinthians chapter 15 verse number 28 that's why paul could say that there there was one above christ who is god and and uh first corinthians chapter 11 verse number three and that is why john can have jesus say the father is greater than i john chapter 14 verse 28 that's why john can have jesus pray to the father and say you are the only true god and and jesus is your messenger john chapter 17 verse number three so when jesus in the same gospel is shown to be declared as my lord and my god we should reach john chapter 20 verse 17 where he says i'm ascending to my father and your father my god and your god so this god has a god but we're talking about the ultimate god does the new testament show that jesus is the ultimate god no some writers and some passages show that he's an intermediate intermediate god but not the ultimate god and i rest my case thank you very much for that uh dr ali you had about two seconds very very good and now we i've already arrived to our final two five minute closing statements where we have michael giving the very first one and dr ali will be closing with this michael if you are ready we can begin now yes thank you for that dr elise so dr ali says that my position would entail nestorianism the idea that there's two christ i would say that that is a misunderstanding of what historianism is and historianism is the uh assertion that there are two persons not that there are two natures i was saying that there are two natures uh the divine and the human and the one person of jesus has those two natures that is entirely orthodox that is the view of calcium in fact to deny that he doesn't have uh two natures is the heresy uh that calcidon was condemning and that's the heresy of monophysitism so i would say that dr ali um is not understanding what's going on there with nestorianism and he's confusing the idea of two persons versus two natures and i was affirming the latter not the former um now he also brought up justin martyr and he said justin martyr affirmed uh that jesus is yahweh and yahweh as a father and of course justin martyr is part of a church that was founded by the apostles what do we do with that um yes there is a sense in which we can talk about jesus being yahweh and yahweh as a father absolutely the second person of the trinity who holds the divine name yahweh has a father who also holds the divine name yahweh and then the holy spirit proceeds from the father and the son and holds the divine name yahweh so we can speak about it in that sense i think that's what's going on there with justin martyr he was not a heretic uh he was a saint and i don't think he was denying the uh trinity or the understanding of the trinity there so i would appeal to him as a witness for my case not for his um now he dr ali asked why didn't jesus claim uh to be god clearly from the beginning well i mean he he starts to gradually introduce that but hey if he just comes out at the very beginning and starts to say that um nobody would listen to anything he ever had to say and so clearly that that would just be a very bad move that's why he started to introduce this over time now dr ali also says that john 1 speaks about jesus having a divine quality um the text doesn't say that i think dr ali is reading into that and what the text does say though is this it says that everything was made through him he made everything a semi-divine being is a created being nonetheless and therefore he would be one of the things that one of the everything that was made he would be one of those he couldn't be the one who is the author of all creation which is what john 1 is asserting about the second person of the trinity so i would still maintain that uh that is a very very clear witness for my position and that's again why others look at that text and they just and people who have no dog in the fight they look at it and they say yeah it does teach that jesus is divine you might not believe that jesus is divine but you have to affirm that the new testament author there does assert it um now dr ali he also brought up revelation chapter three that talks about uh the god of jesus and he noted that i would say that you know this refers to the uh humanity the humanity as a god uh yeah absolutely because again i'm distinguishing between the two natures the the divine and the human and why am i doing that because the corpus of the new testament is what is doing that i mean we see this one who is claiming to be divine and not this semi-divine being because he made everything he's not part of creation he's the one outside of creation creating everything so he's a fully divine being but we see this one who is called a fully divine being he also seeing him sleep you know asleep in the back of the boat and we see him eating and we see him getting tired and things like that how do we account for that the early christians answered this he's fully god fully man it's referred to as the hypostatic union the one uh the second person of the trinity takes on he has a he has a divine nature he takes on a human nature the second person of the trinity and so there's a union between the divine and the human there in the person the hypostatic union so that's how we understand it um dr ali says god died on the cross you know how do we deal with that yeah his humanity died on the cross and again that's not nestorianism it's just distinguishing between the two natures so i believe that i have sufficiently uh demonstrated that the new testament writers believed that jesus was god i appealed to john chapter one i appealed to uh philippians where you have early christian hymn talking about him being in the form of god i appeal to the writer of hebrews he uses the old testament um and applies the term yah i'm sorry god to him i appeal to john that applies the term yahweh i am the divine name of exodus 3 14 to jesus himself and so but um i'm pretty much out of time so i'll go ahead and just in there thank you thank you very much for that michael that was great with the timing you're fantastic dr ali whenever you are ready for your final statement and a five minute one of that you can begin sure i'm ready go ahead so folks uh now that we come to the end i want this dialogue to end in a way that uh condu is conducive to greater good muslims and christians together make up more than half of the world population if we combine our efforts and teaching truth and doing good things we can make the world a better place so let us uh in the final moments here just um sum up and give a final um thought to all of the points that have been um narrowed down uh within this debate so michael uh says that uh in in in asserting that jesus did this as man and this is god he's not uh falling into an estorianism obviously i i will have to go back and study historianism a little bit more but what i understand is that uh michael uh nestorianism uh is not uh to um to deny that uh jesus has two natures which you rightly uh assert that he has two natures as a traditional christian um a trinitarian belief but nestorianism specifically says that uh jesus could not have been theotoko mary could not have been theotokos the mother of god because jesus did some things as human and some things as god so he was born as a human and and then mary was therefore mother of the human jesus but not mother of the divine jesus but now um i feel your fault you still fall into this if my understanding is correct and of course i've got to revise this when you say that it's his humanity that died because here you suff you're separating the human and divine nature you also i think fall into it when you um assert that jesus did some things as human and some things as as god and you say well you know this is how the early churches interpreted it well the early churches fell into that uh separation between the two persons as well and yet you say that there was this hypostatic union it's not so much of a union it is a togetherness there is a symbiosis there there together uh but but they're not so united the humans still separate from from the divine um now you say that uh justin martyr had an understanding uh which is similar to what uh us pals but i think this is different in that uh most christians will say that when jesus was speaking of his father jesus speaking of jehovah and the name jehovah applied to jesus in some way they share a divine name but it's not that jesus is called jehovah the father is called jehovah the spirit is called jehovah no the spirit is not called jehovah the spirit is called the spirit of jehovah no jesus is not called jehovah jesus is called the son of jehovah it's only when the trinitarian is in a tight corner then the trinitarian says well yeah they all have the same name and they're all jehovah but when jehovah was in the old testament saying that i am jehovah there is no god but me and then that jehovah would have to be the trinity and then the trinity would be a fourth identity if if jehovah is not the father and i don't think michael has actually quite explained that now in john 1 yes it is saying that jesus made the word made everything that was made but uh and then michael says well that has to include well if jesus was included in that which was made then he wouldn't be the word but that's that's pressing language to its absurdity paul had to explain this in first corinthians 15 verse 28 just because there might be people who might misinterpret things like this when he said when i say that everything will be put under the subjection of god that does not include god he's he's just making sure that people will not take his uh pass his passage and stretch it to an absurd type of uh interpretation yeah when john is speaking about the word and saying that he is the one who made everything and that was made that may or may that exclude jesus from the things that that jesus supposedly made when he was the word of god but it doesn't mean that jesus himself could not have been made by the father or nor does it exclude a different interpretation of uh the relationship between the word and the father we might get this interpretation from elsewhere where it says for example in revelations chapter 3 verse 14 that he is the beginning of creation that is the wisdom and where in colossians it says that he a similar statement that he's the firstborn of god's uh creation so it made me that jesus says somehow this word is somehow in god's creation or maybe not there's some vagueness there but we cannot build on vagueness i've already replied to revelation chapter 3 philippians hebrews and the supposed i am statement where jesus did not say i am yahweh he merely said i am he didn't say i am what and i conclude that there is nothing in the new testament that proves that jesus is god gentlemen you have both been fantastic you have both been great there and i want to get to the audience question and answer before we get to benjamin um who hopefully uh be a little bit patient for people to know i want to first thank uh michael for great great uh timing great debate very great interaction and dr ali as well thank you very much gentlemen for making this very uh very charitable and a lot of fun and i know that uh i think i speak for michael as well when i say that i know we want to do many many more of these this has been great this has been a ton of fun we also have a 1 800 if you want to call in 1-800-484-3801 but benjamin um benjamin wants to know michael by what basis do you say that the word is to be considered a person prior to john 1 14 given there is no personal prone pronoun and given the rather impersonal parallel that can be found in one john 1. yeah because i mean we we see two persons referred to as god there in john 1 1-3 so i would say we have to make a distinction there between the one who is with god and the one who was god the only way to distinguish between those is two persons one nature wonderful okay we have alan ellen um thank you very much for that ellen allen would like to know for shabir dr ali philippians 2 6 says talks about equality with the father pre-incarnation if it is equality does that not then imply that christ is not subordinate in at least one way um so as i understand this passage and has been explained by michael golder uh a christian scholar the the passage is saying that if jesus did not think to try and seize equality with god he didn't try to make himself equal with god he tried to make himself into like he chose to come downward to make himself into a servant so he had a choice from where he was he could go upward or he could go downward he didn't go upward he chose to go downward that proves that he was an intermediary in an intermediary position he wasn't uh god himself thank you very much for that dr lee and ellen for the great question i um we have a caller on the line and we are taking calls by the way everybody 1-800-484-301-3801 caller you are live who did you have your question for and what is your name sorry i had a question from michael yes sir and what is your name uh and this is my need i post it as well i don't know if you got the question so i called them too go ahead you can ask them whatever whatever's on your mind yeah so my question was that according to the traditional view as i understand um you're not supposed to split the natures of jesus when you think of jesus he's 100 man 100 human being um as you know james wright has pointed out as well so if you cannot do that then how do you worship just the divine nature in jesus when you're worshiping jesus isn't it given that when you worship the person of christ you have to worship both natures and how is that not blasphemy yeah we we don't split the two natures here's the calcidonian formula we recognize in two natures without confusion without change without division without separation in other words we're not dividing the two natures we are distinguishing between them there's a difference there we can distinguish between the two natures because he's still fully god and he's still fully man and the uh divine nature retains everything that belongs to it and the human nature retains everything that belongs to it and we have we can't confuse them and we can't mix them together according to the formula of calcium we can't do that but we also can't separate them either and that's not what we're doing we're distinguishing between them so you're worse than just the divine nature when you verse of jesus i i didn't understand can you say it again i think you're just worshiping the divine part of jesus or divine nature in jesus when you worship jesus no i mean christians can talk about worshiping the humanity in light of the divine divinity there through the one person so we can distinguish between the two natures but we can speak about worshiping worshiping the humanity only in the sense that that humanity is um united to the divinity through the one person so it's best that we talk about worshiping uh the person of jesus okay excellent follow-up if that's okay or yes sir thank you so much thank you very much for that um thank you for calling in and if you want to call in later if we have time or we have the lines open you are always more than welcome to thank you very much for that charitable interaction um i greatly appreciated that i will look again to see if we get a caller um i don't think we have one right now but in the meantime we have um actually we do have a caller i apologize for that don't worry uh uh peter we will get you in just a moment my my friend um caller we have got another caller in the line caller who do you want to direct your question to or maybe to both gentlemen and who uh and what is your name uh my name is berto i got a question for dr shavira lee my question is would he be able to make the statement whoever sees me he's the father and if he cannot make that statement about himself why not hello yeah i've heard the question william if you're ready i can answer go ahead dr lee i apologize uh yeah so um caller i'm sorry i didn't get your name but i do respect you and i wish i could address you by name it's a valid question now our topic of debate tonight was not whether jesus said everything that a muslim would say or did he say anything a muslim would not say and definitely a muslim would not say this but there is a context in which uh jesus's statement uh could mean that he is not god but but he is a representative of god so i've cited in the debate many scholars who have studied the old testament background and the inter-testamental period and the time in which the new testament writers were writing so at this time it was recognized that god could have agents and intermediaries who act on behalf of god and this person can actually carry the name of god that person could actually be called by the name of god and that person has all of the divine prerogatives that person could speak as though he is god now if if that is true and i've cited paula frederickson and uh james macbreath and daniel boyarin as notable scholars in this area then what it would mean is that jesus as the agent of god is saying look you don't need for god to come and speak to you i have come i have spoken to you as the agent of god and if you have seen me that's good enough it's as if you have seen the father so that that is a reasonable way of interpreting this statement of jesus and that harmonizes with the rest of what we know from john's gospel because nobody will say the trinitarians at least will not say that jesus is the father it's only the monophysits and uh and others who take jesus to be the father who can say that this means that jesus is the father for example oneness pentecostalists but trinitarians would say that jesus is not the father and the father is not jesus the son is not the father the father is not the son the father is not the spirit the spirit is not the son and the son is not the spirit each one is a distinct person within the godhead each is god but one should not be confused with the other otherwise that will be heresy so the trinitarians cannot take this statement literally to mean that jesus is the father and they it has to have a non-literal meaning and the best non-literal meaning is to say that jesus is an agent of the father and seeing him is good enough once you've seen him you know that that that's good enough you don't need to see the father himself elsewhere in the new testament even in john's gospel no one has seen god at any time it is this word who has revealed him who turns out to be now jesus uh in in the flesh so no one has actually seen the father according to even john's gospel and elsewhere in the new testament thank you very much for that call caller um i believe we have another caller uh that called in another call we have another call caller you are live um who do you want to direct your inquiry to and what is your name hi i want to direct my question to shabir ali sure and what is your name uh louis wonderful brother uh go ahead and whatever you have in your mind uh you can present to dr ali go ahead lewis hi am i live already yes go ahead with your question okay so my question is for shabir so in so i don't know how much um shabir knows about some of the literature regarding uh second temple judaism and two powers in heaven but there's a bunch of scholarship that points to the fact that even within second temple judaism the idea that god can be incarnate is not a foreign concept so there's a number of jewish scholars such as daniel boyaran and benjamin salmer who say this and i just wanted to quote something from the jewish scholar benjamin sommer he says and i quote no jew sensitive to judaism's own classical sources can fault the theological model christianity employs with about belief in a god who has an earthly body as well as this holy spirit and a heavenly manifestation for that model we have seen as a perfectly jewish one a religion whose scripture contains the fluidity traditions whose teachings emphasize the multiplicity of the shekinah and whose thinkers speak of the spirit does not differ in its theological essentials from a religion that adores the triune god unquote i was wondering if uh dr ali is familiar with this literature and if so whether he could comment on it or rebut some of the claims being made by these scholars so uh my friend i don't need to rebut what these scholars are saying and uh i haven't read the writings of this last scholar you mentioned but i've read danielle byron uh alan seagal and as i mentioned also in the debate uh paula frederickson uh and james mcbrath who all tell us basically the same thing that in the in the old testament period polytheism was a reality in israelite societies but they they also affirm that the the old testament uh try to move away from that uh the way in which daniel byron puts it is that uh this uh this this tendency uh to worship other than god was actually suppressed so that whereas in fact we have in daniel chapter 7 the presentation of an older god and the younger one uh the daniel 7 has been reinterpreted in the book of daniel itself to refer to the jewish people so that it's no longer referring to a younger god so that when uh people will say later on that there are two powers in heaven this is outside of the bible and now that we come to interpret the new testament my friend we have to interpret the new testament in the light of the old testament which insisted in its text that there is only one god despite whatever tendencies people had yes there are indications in the text itself that people were doing things like this there are even a remnants in the in the old testament text of uh what scholars would refer to as a polytheistic tendency and a two powers tendency but and of course that became developed in christianity in its particular way but that does not mean that the old testament approves of this and when the new testament is being interpreted it has to be interpreted in light of the old testament because the new testament approves of the old testament but the old testament itself does not ex explicitly sanction the new testament as a completed body of text so it is essential for the new testament to be interpreted in the light of the old and since the old testament insists that there is only one god whose name is yahweh and that he will send his servant and the new testament in matthew chapter 12 verse 18 identifies jesus as that servant it is clear then and that there is nothing to refute but only to affirm that jesus is the servant of yahweh and not yahweh himself thank you very much for that great great call thank you very much for that luis we have got another caller um caller you are live on the line caller you are live are you able to hear us yeah i can hear you wonderful what is your name and who do you want to ask your question to my friend um this is miles and i want to direct this question to dr ali wonderful brother great having you call in uh you may begin whenever you want you can go ahead and ask them whatever's on your mind okay um hello dr ali my question for you is being at the topic of this discussion where does the new testament teach that jesus is god um in psalm 102 verse 1 um it sets the context which is clear that god is in context and verse 25 through 27 it goes on to talk about how god is immutable and eternal um in hebrews chapter 1 verses 10 through 12 it applies the exact words from psalm 102 to jesus so my question is if jesus is not god how could the author of the letter to the hebrew apply those words directly to jesus okay so uh maz um let me um look it up here so you think psalm 102 and and which are the verses that you say we start off on verse one so we can give you the context so hear my prayer oh lord let me let my cry come to you so we see that the lord also known aka god is a context we read verses 25 through 27 it goes on to give description of of god that it's being talked about in a way that only god can be described mm-hmm okay and then this is not applied to david okay and you're saying hebrews chapter 1 hebrews chapter 1 hebrews chapter 1 verses 10 through 12 it applies those words of verbatim to jesus and we know that jesus is the context because in verse 8 it explicitly says that the son of the content so in which verse of hebrews is this applied to jesus second one verse 10 okay so he also says in the beginning lord you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands they will perish but you remain they will all wear out like a garment uh you will roll them up like a robe like a garment they will be changed but you remain the same and your years will never end so he is the author of hebrews is saying that this is applied to jesus well if this is interpreted in the light of what i've already said if jesus is perceived by some of the writers of the new testament as being the intermediary through whom god created everything else well for the creation jesus is the creator but he's not the ultimate creator because he himself has a god and this is why in hebrews itself in the verse just before this one in hebrews chapter 1 verse number 9 it says you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness therefore god your god has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy and so this this whole context here in hebrews chapter 1 is saying that this one who is now called god this jesus he has a god and and this is my point all along that he is not the ultimate god according to the new testament he is an intermediary he himself has a god who is the ultimate god and uh william i realize that a number of questions have been asked of me and uh you know we want to give michael a chance to speak as well so if we if michael wants to you know give her a response to any of these yeah very good dr lee thank you very much michael if you kind of want to give uh maybe your commentary on that and then we do have a question uh that will be from michael neptu thank you very much for that dr lee michael do you have any maybe comments on what uh miles has said there i mean just quick comment i i don't think that it um is what dr ali is saying there as far as that you have uh this semi-divine being who um is not fully god and he has a god i think that there's a sense in which we could talk about uh the sun and his humanity has a god and that's how we're to understand that but um i see him applying the term chaos to uh to the sun and i don't see the kind of qualifications that dr ali is trying to make there and i don't think that the early church saw it either so that's my comment we have benjamin benjamin michael what does it mean to say excuse me that the human nature died on the cross if the man died but god did not then isn't this like saying that the person died yet also didn't die yeah i mean this is why i think that we need to be careful with our language there's a sense in which we could talk about the sun died there's another sense in which we could talk about the sun didn't die in what sense are we talking in his humanity is in his divinity this is why we have to distinguish between terms we talk about the one person the uh of the um the second person of the trinity the one person of jesus um has a her holds the divine essence from the father so he's divine and yet he also takes on human flesh 100 humanity and the humanity died the divinity did not die that would be absurd uh so there's a sense in which we could talk about jesus uh the son died there's another sense of which we're going to talk about jesus's son didn't die it's just in what sense are we talking this is why it's so important to distinguish between terms gentlemen uh y'all have been great i want to take maybe about two two more um if anybody does want to call in before we finish and wrap up the calling number again 1-800-484-3801 now is your time to call in before we wrap up i'll take about two maybe tops three more we get a call in we have a vid gonzalez wants to know and this will go to michael stephen prayed to christ to receive him to himself as he was being murdered martyred just like the other old testament saints pray to god if stephen wasn't praying to christ as god what was stephen doing yeah i mean i think that it would be you know somebody could always say that well he's he's praying to jesus in the same way that we would pray to saints but i just think that that is not the case because again we've already established that this person jesus um is claiming that he's divine so when he's praying to him he's not praying to him just simply as um a saint to intercede for us he's praying to an individual that is claiming to be god so yeah i think it's a good point very good um for shabir and then we we have one for michael and then if we don't get a call we will wrap it up audience you've been fantastic for shabir we have jorge ramirez john 5 23 says so that all people may honor the son just as they honor the father does that doesn't that mean that we must also honor the son with the exact same honor as the father if you take just this passage in isolation that's obviously is what is going to mean but when you interpret it in the rest in the context of the rest of what john's gospel is saying even in john 5 itself look at john 5 verse number 44 where uh clearly jesus says that there is only one god and he's obviously identifying that one god as the father and then in john chapter 17 verse number three he prays and and he prays to the father so even if stephen prayed to him he is praying to someone else he's praying to the father and saying um that this is eternal life that they may know you as the only true god and jesus your messenger as christ so jesus is clearly distinguishing himself from the father so how could john 5 23 be understood it can be understood as jesus being the agent of god and when the agent of god comes this was old testament this is what a previous caller i think his name was louis uh pointed out that is being discussed by modern scholars like alan seagal and danielle boyarin and and many others where they show that this was possible as an agent of god the agent of god would receive the honor that was due to god because you know in in old testament times this this is how people operated they couldn't touch god directly but they could deal with the agent and so they they showered the adoration and and uh and honor on the agent as a representative of god of course muslims jews and monotheistic christians today uh would not have any of this but this was a reality at the time and this is how it was understood this is how the new testament writers were writing they were not presenting jesus as god but as god's agent thank you very much for that that was fantastic we have one caller we have a caller in the line and we will after this caller we will wrap it up uh if the caller does have perhaps a question for both dr lee and for michael we can take both of them in whatever order you would like caller and uh caller what is your name hello yeah we can hear you oh hi my name is jack jack i have a question for you yeah i have a question for dr ali um this is not a direct a question directly on the deity of christ but for me it does it does uh tie into it it's about new testament reliability because all my life i'm a protestant christian and i highly regarded men such as dr james white which a doctor which dr ali he debated a couple times and i i only recently found out uh for instance the ending of mark um christian apologists uh say they don't preach from mark chapter 16 9-20 and that the entire section from mark and the ending is now widely regarded as not part of the original gospel because it's missing from two of the most important textual unsealed witnesses namely sinaiticus and vaticanus additionally there are other versions of the ending of mark floating around there suggesting that the scribes were baffled that mark's gospel would end there after um and um so basically what i'm saying is dr james white i heard that in his debate with other catholic apologists he said that the holy spirit would have inspired the canon of the gospel and that's why we have the canon today but at the same time in his debate with dr shabir ali and with some other people which i have seen dr white also says that the ending of mark it's not actually supposed to be in the bible so for me as like a protestant that believes that this is the word of god this is every in second timothy verse 3 16 it says all scriptures god breathed scots right and how can james white say that this is uh this canon of scripture is inspired by the holy spirit but at the same time say that the ending of mark is briefly supposed to be in there let me just briefly step in and say dr ellie i know the topic is is very the question is very off topic um is totally up to you if you want to take it or maybe elaborate on some other issue but i know it is way way off topic people that call in please call in and stick to the questions of the debate because dr ali for instance maybe doesn't have anything of the sword open in front of him he only has the material that has been prepared for the for the debate but dr ali i will leave it totally up to you um yeah i mean i i would have hesitated to answer it because i i don't want to say you know i don't want to seize an opportunity to say something critical of the christian scriptures um but i i i do know something about this um topic by the grace of god i've researched it well um and one of the books i've researched on this is james dr james white's book called the king james only controversy he has argued at length in that book that mark chapter 16 verses 9 to 20 are not original to mark's gospel and one of the reasons we can reach that conclusion is that it is obvious that other christians tried to append various other endings to mark's gospel now so far i i hope that i'm not saying anything critical of the christian scriptures i am just following what good christian defenders of the christian scriptures are are saying and of course how this becomes a christian thing to to defend the scripture this way um caller is that uh as as a true christian you you want to make sure that when you affirm that this bible is the word of god uh you're not making that affirmation in favor of something which may have been added by someone else later so when the second timothy 3 16 says all scripture is inspired you want to know that all scripture and and not add something into it that someone else may have inserted without proper authority but i'm sure that mike will have a different uh view on this and i'd be glad to hear that for you as well um we've had people on the show we've taken both cases so y'all could check those out um you know we've had people defend the longer ending of mark others say that it's not original and really i think ultimately it doesn't doesn't matter just because um not don't get me wrong it does matter but i'm just saying ultimately it's not going to because nothing substantial is in there that you couldn't prove otherwise so in other words we're not losing anything substantial but it is an important question because hey we want to know is this something written by god or not um so i would i would just direct everybody to those two shows and you uh you judge for yourself yeah and we do have one cut one we'll take a final caller on on topic hopefully um caller if you have something for sure doctorally and for michael you're more than welcome to call her what is your name uh my name is pedro can you hear me clearly great my friend what is your what do you have your question for okay my question is uh for shabir in colossians two verse nine it's all clearly said that that jesus is the fullness of deity so i wanted to ask you since you believe that power doesn't believe that jesus is almighty god how can paul say that jesus is the fullness of deity even though that statement clearly presupposes that jesus must be almighty god yeah pedro i i don't know which translation of the bible you're referring to but the words as i recall them from colossians 2 verse 9 is that paul is saying or whoever wrote colossians is saying the fullness of deity dwelt in him bodily it's not like you said it that he is the fullness of deity see there's a vast difference between the two statements one one statement the way you said it is the statement of identity a is b jesus is the fullness of deity uh but the other statement which as i recall is the is the way that i find in the english translations of the bible the fullness of deity dwelt in him bodily that the one who is called deity is not the christ himself he is the receptacle uh in which the fullness of deity dwells and and this is in some way comparable although of course there is a there's a greater degree here but it is comparable to saying that god is in a christian uh so saying that god is in a christian doesn't mean that the christian is god and saying that somebody has received a double portion of the spirit or for example he said about the gospel of barnabas that he was full of the holy spirit so that doesn't make him god it only makes him a receptacle for god now of course this is being assorted for jesus in a much greater degree maybe even of a different kind but still it is not a statement that says a is b jesus is god it is saying that jesus is the receptacle for god and to use a term that was mentioned by marcus borg jesus could be described then as a spirit-filled human being a spirit-filled person thank you very much for that um dr lee and uh michael both of you have been incredible this has been i want to say i want to commend both you gentlemen you've been flawless when it comes to your time your presentation your uh your charitable interaction has been great let us do it again a million times until the lord calls us home this has been fantastic gentlemen everybody thank you very much for tuning in uh we greatly appreciate the incredible engagement in the chat a lot of very very fun calls as well we appreciate everybody calling in thank you very much michael thank you very much for your time this evening dr ali thank you very much we look forward to having you on many more times sure i'd love to thank you dr early it was an honor and thank you michael it was my honor uh chatting with you uh you're a very gracious scholar and i appreciate that thank you so much and thank you william for your kind hosting of this whole event and your graciousness and and your alertness in keeping us on track thank you very much everybody make sure to like and subscribe if you haven't already uh keep your eyes peeled for future shows thank you very much for tuning in everybody have a fantastic rest of your evening

Channel: Reason & Theology

Views: 9,940

Rating: 4.90625 out of 5

Keywords: Michael lofton, Shabir ally, Islam Christian debate, is Jesus god debate, Islam debate, Muslim Christian debate, shabir ally debate, Michael lofton debate, Debate: Michael Lofton vs. Dr. Shabir Ally - Does the New Testament Teach Jesus is God?

Id: F9kviOgX17k

Length: 156min 55sec (9415 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020