Today on the Evangelist Podcast, what type of God do we believe in?
SPEAKER_00The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_02This is the Evangelist Podcast, and we hope to encourage you and in sharing your faith with others. And uh we're returning to uh Glenn's debate with Moussaraf Hussein and uh we're looking at some issues that perhaps need clarification or we're re-going over.
SPEAKER_06Yes, I've realized having gone onto blog comments and uh reading some of the feedback on the debate. Yeah, I shouldn't have done that, so but yes, re I're realizing that what I said and what has been heard is not always the same thing, and that's that's something that all communicators need to learn. So yes, hopefully you uh can clarify a couple of things and and hopefully get into the goodness of our God uh um as opposed to the Islamic conception of God, which I think is bad news. So, yeah, as we go deeper, I hope it it it feeds our own faith uh as as well as helps us to to dialogue with others.
SPEAKER_02Good. And uh what what you perhaps don't know yet is that Paul Feesey is joining us again. Hello. So, Paul, you were on uh last week, Glenn was grilling you about your mother. My dad, not Julie. Love Julie. Roger. Good. So how has your first week uh settled uh so far? Speak life.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's been been good. So I call it a first week, but it's only only really two days, uh two and a half days. But um yeah, just getting a feel for it. Turn up day one, get um some things to do. Glenn disappears off for the week after.
SPEAKER_06So Yeah, welcome to Speak Life. Beginners you mean to go on, that's what I say.
SPEAKER_02And you're doing some uh uh some guitar lessons sort of uh alongside.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you've been starting that since January, is it?
SPEAKER_08Uh yeah, well, a kind of ad hoc since January just with people I knew, but now um come in.
SPEAKER_02Uh your microwave's finished.
SPEAKER_08Dear idea. It's on silent as well. Never mind.
SPEAKER_02My bad. Sorry.
SPEAKER_08That's fine. Um yeah, but now since the beginning of September, really just actually trying to make a bit of a living out of it. Or half a living.
SPEAKER_02Good. Well, we're looking today at uh the this d debate, and Glenn, you've got five areas that you want to look at.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah, so I mean uh if people want to check out the uh the podcast, just go to uh we'll have some uh links in the show notes, but you can go to uh PremierChristianRadio.com slash unbelievable and uh you can check out the the whole debate there. But I I thought it'd be really helpful to have a look at five particular areas uh that we got into. And the first one really is um kind of the broad brushstroke of scripture. Um I guess one of one of my big arguments um about whether the God of the Old Testament fits with Trinity or whether it fits with the Islamic doctrine of Tawheed. One of the big issues is just to think about the big brushstroke, uh the big broad brushstroke picture of scripture. If you go up to 30,000 feet and you ask, you know, what is the Old Testament all about, actually you you get a picture of God that you could never get in the Quran. And so here's here's one of the things that I said uh to give that sort of broad brushstroke idea.
SPEAKER_05My uh argument really with Tawheed is that it makes it makes Allah a prisoner of his own transcendence. He is so majestic he cannot stoop, he cannot be himself within his own creation. What we see in the Old Testament is a a God who stoops down to plant a garden in the east in Eden, who forms Adam out of the dust and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, who comes for a walk in the garden in the cool of the day with his creatures, who is seen face to face by Abraham, who who wrestles with Jacob, who is in the burning bush in Exodus chapter three, and this one who enters into the fiery affliction of his people, he then draws Israel to an experience of himself where they are face to face with the Lord. They see the God of Israel and they eat and drink. Now, if you put any of those verses into the Quran, instantly an imam is going to say something's up here, this does not belong in the Quran, and what's happening is Talheed is making them reject what Moses is just plain about from the very beginning. So I I guess, yeah, to kick things off, my my contention is that whatever is going on in the Old Testament, it fits with this Trinitarian doctrine of God. In which God already has a wisdom, already has a word, already has a son, already has a revelation, who can be himself as he goes forth from himself. Uh the Trinity makes sense of what's going on in uh the Old Testament, but how he does not and cannot.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_06So that was yeah, that's that's my opening gamma on the trajectory of Scripture, I think. And what was interesting, as as I sort of went on to um blog comments, and I got um engaged with one guy, for instance, who seems to be basically a a sort of a Unitarian, and uh and he he was kind of saying, I just don't understand why God would show up and and you know, what what is the need for all this? And I kept on saying, well, actually the biblical notion of what salvation is, is to be face to face with the Lord. You know, feasting family joy forever is the biblical doctrine of salvation. And what was interesting is that his doctrine of salvation was just God zaps you with blessings forever. Whereas I I think if we if we just take, you know, not even just the New Testament, if we take the whole of Scripture seriously, then really what we want is to be face to face with the Lord, feasting with him. Um and there f therefore, actually the the Quranic doctrine of God just can't be right, really.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean I think you know, think about that whole sweep of scripture, the the idea of dwelling with God and being with God is there from the beginning. I mean, you you start in Eden and then you have the fall, but yet in the in the the tabernacle and the temple you have all this kind of imagery which is almost a kind of back to Eden imagery of the you know, the angels and the the trees, the plants, you know, it's supposed to be reminiscent, isn't it, of being back there and and then of course you know Jesus comes and dwells amongst the people. You know, literally tabernacles amongst them. Right.
SPEAKER_06You're talking about the pre incarnate Christ there, or you're talking about when the word becomes flesh, yeah.
SPEAKER_08I mean you know John in John 1, doesn't he talk about he comes and tabernacles amongst them. Yeah. And then of course the final destination, you know, is you know, God with his people. Yeah. You know, in the new heavens and new earth or the new creation. You know, it's always kind of going that way, isn't it?
SPEAKER_06Which is such a different view that like in the Quran, paradise is not on earth, right? So when they get kicked out of paradise, they have to we have to go down to earth. And earth is uh a place of testing, and then if you're a good Muslim, then you get to go back to paradise. But paradise is not this earthly thing. So just yeah, even even from that really broad brushstroke picture, you you see we're dealing with two very, very different things.
SPEAKER_08And the verse, you know, is that verse is it it's John 17 24, Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory. That kind of sums up a lot of it as well, doesn't it? It's that so again, it's that trajectory, that direction. I want them to be with me. Right. As I dwell with them. Right. Yeah, without the separation of the the the tabernacle and the the curtain and all those bits and bobs, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm reminded of your Santa versus Jesus uh the a line in that about you know, we we get things from Santa. Right. Yes. And then we expect Santa to go away again. Yeah. It would be creepy for Santa to hang around and share the crap. Right.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, exactly. He gives us himself. Allah does not give you himself. He might give you blessings if you work hard enough. But he doesn't give you himself. And you know, one of the things I say in the the debate is it's fascinating that not only does Allah not stoop down to the cross, not only does he not stoop down to earth, he doesn't even stoop down to heaven, right? Even within paradise, you know, there are certain scriptures about being able to see Allah from a great distance, maybe the way that you see the full moon. You'll be you'll have some there'll be some apparition of Allah, kind of like the way that we see the full moon. People will see Allah from paradise, but Allah's not in paradise. He doesn't want to be with you, right? You can't be with him. And really it's the doctrine of God that means you can't be with him. He's so great that he can't stoop. And therefore, you've got to always be at a great distance from him. He can never give you himself, he can only give you stuff.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so that's that's your first point, the broad brushstroats of scripture. Um so now we're gonna look at some specific scriptures.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and so when I you know, when we got down to brass tax, uh, then it was about really pressing into this figure called the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. And I guess what I'm trying to do with these old Old Testament passages is just show that you cannot have a Unitarian doctrine of God and take the details of the Old Testament seriously. You can do one or the other. You can have a Unitarian doctrine of God and just hold the Bible at arm's length. Or if you really dive down into scripture, you've got to have this concept that that God has a word, has a wisdom, has a son, has a sent one, and always operates in in terms of this compound unity. So uh here's one of the things I say about the angel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, unpack a few of those for us and we'll hear what Masharf has to say.
SPEAKER_05So, once again, within the understanding that God is one being, absolutely one being, uh, how is he father? Uh, and Christians have always thought of that in a spiritual sense, as have Jews. How is he eternally loving? How can he transcend his own transcendence and actually appear to us as himself even in all our creaturely reality? The Trinity is not the problem. The Trinity is the solution to that problem. And one way of looking at it is to uh investigate figures from the Old Testament, such as the Angel of the Lord. Uh so he first makes an appearance in Genesis chapter 16 and verse 7. Uh, the angel of the Lord found Hagar, uh, the mother of Ishmael, near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai, she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, Go back to your mistress and submit to her. The angel added, I will so increase your descendants, I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count a divine promise coming from the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord also said to her, and he makes a promise about Ishmael. And then in verse 13 it says, She gave, Hagar gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. That is why she says, I have now seen the one who sees me. That is why the well was called Biala Hairoi, which means the the the well of the living one who sees. Uh, it is still there between Kadesh and Bared. So we are introduced to this figure. Uh Angel does not speak of his ontology, it speaks of his office, speaks of his role. He is a sent one. Literally, the word angel means the sent one. And here is the sent one of the Lord, who is also identified as Lord, who is called God, who makes divine promises, and who is said to be the God of seeing, who is seen. So, right back in the time of Abraham, we have this distinct divine figure who is of the Lord and yet is the Lord. He is God from God, light from light, very God from very God, to use the language of the creeds.
SPEAKER_03Give us one more example before Masherif comes back that you would point to where we see this kind of thing happening in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_05If I have to go to just one more, I mean people please can uh search on this figure, the angel of the Lord. But here's a famous one, Exodus chapter three, verse two. Uh Moses, uh, he's attending the flock of Jethro, and he comes across this burning bush in verse two of Exodus three. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Um and then in verse four, uh the one who was in the bush is called Lord and God. And then in verse six, he names himself, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and in verse 14 he proclaims his name, I am who I am.
SPEAKER_03And just before Musherif comes in to give his explanation of these verses, tying this back into the Trinity, you know, what why for you are these precursors or whatever they may be of how Christians have then come to understand God as three persons in one?
SPEAKER_05But within the one being of God, there are these distinct persons. There is uh this sent one who in himself brings the very words and promises and and and divine activity of the one who sends him. So you've you've got this kind of father-son activity, you've got this You've got divine distinction.
SPEAKER_03So when it talks about the angel of the Lord in this very direct way in which it appears the angel of the Lord is the Lord, right. Um are you saying that this is actually Jesus in another form?
SPEAKER_05The pre incarnate Christ. The preincarnate second person of the Trinity. Which is the just the the bog standard Christian uh understanding of who the angel of the Lord is down through church history. That here is one who's of God, it is God.
SPEAKER_03It's definitely there as far as you're concerned in the Old Testament, even if not fully understood and realized until we have the the the incarnation.
SPEAKER_05So let's call let's call it proto-trinitarian or paleo-trinitarian or something like that, but it cannot fit Talheed, and that's the crucial point for you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So yes, I I I had a whole armful of Angel of the Lord passages, but we only had time for two. But um, yeah, I I think I mean, just personally for me, having a look at the Angel of the Lord um was just goosebump inducing exciting, you know, when I first sort of figured out, oh, you know what, here is the one who is of the Lord, who is the Lord. It's Jesus, you know. Um that's always been thrilling for me, uh, just for my personal life, to see that Christ is in all scripture.
SPEAKER_02So much so that you have a whole entire section of your website dedicated to Christ in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's right, Christ in the Old Testament. So check that out on Christthetruth.net and you can you can go to that page. But um just to see because I think we all just have a a small view of Jesus in our minds. We basically think he, you know, if it in a footballing terms, he comes on in the second half to score the winner, rather than being the the player manager, coach, you know, and everything else. Um so just seeing Christ in all the scripture is just thrilling, but it also really helps when you're engaging with Muslims.
SPEAKER_08Just looking back at I mean, I I w when I was listening to it, I thought you once you said, oh, let's look at some of these verses, you know, this is gonna be where the real fruit comes out as we begin to burrow down into them, and I said earlier, it was it it felt frustrating in some ways that you know you didn't have time obviously to go into more detail, but it felt like the response you were getting all the time was, Oh, just you know, I don't see why Glenn doesn't just take the plain sense of what's written. Um but actually, I mean, even just the examples you gave you you can't just leave it as an angel because there's so many bits in there that that seem to challenge that. I mean the the example you started with Genesis sixteen um you know, if you if you just look at verse eleven, it's the angel of the Lord speaking. But then we hit verse thirteen, and she says she gave this name to the Lord, or the the Yahweh who spoke to her, You are the God who sees me, I have now seen the one who sees me. Now, if you were just looking at verse eleven, yeah, the plain sense is where it's the angel of the Lord, it's even if it's just a high up angel, the angel.
SPEAKER_06He's named four times between verse seven and eleven. Like, so it's really been drilled home. This is the angel, the angel, the angel, the angel.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, just an angel. That is the plain sense there. But uh it's only the plain sense if you don't carry on. And once you start carrying on, you go, well, hang on a second. Who does he think he is? Why is she saying, you know, this is the name she gave to the Lord Who Spoke to her? You think, well that no, it wasn't the Lord. Yeah. I mean, how how do you think the Muslim would respond? Would they just want to say, Oh, when she says she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her, who the Lord spoke through the angel, and she's naming the Lord. But uh to me that that's the assumption I'd make of uh the response I might hear. But that doesn't seem to be the plain sense at all.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. There are three people who call the angel of the Lord Lord. You know, the first person who calls himself the Lord is the angel of the Lord, who I will so increase your descendants. So he thinks of himself as God, and then the narrator of the passage in verse 13 thinks of him as God, you know, he he's named as the Lord. And then obviously Hagar thinks of him as God. I've seen the one who sees me. So, you know, so everyone thinks the angel of the Lord is God. I th I think some more thought thoughtful responses from Muslims that I've seen online have been um to say, okay, here is a very special angel, maybe maybe Gabriel may but but um yes, there is uh a very special angel uh in the scriptures who who has the job of being the mouthpiece of God. The word. The word of God, almost you could say. You could, well, exactly. And it's like, yeah, yeah, well, keep keep keep pulling on that thread, keep pulling on that thread that there is a specific sent one from the Lords, who's never said to be created. We we might think creature when we hear angel, but I just mean sent one, but there is a very special sent one who makes divine claims for himself, who makes divine oaths, who receives divine worship, and we know that regular angels don't do that. Revelation twenty-two, you know, John falls down on his face to worship an angel. Don't do it! Don't do it yeah, like you should never worship an angel, and yet the angel receives worship a number of times. So I just think it's really fruitful to keep keep pressing into this figure.
SPEAKER_08And I think, you know, obviously you you then mentioned in the Exodus three passage and again, I mean, uh really the same kind of things I was feeling listening to it again, but the the argument coming back. The plain sense is it says angel, therefore it's an angel. But you know, again it's it's fine in Exodus three, verse two, if you say the angel of the Lord appeared to him. If you just look at verse two by itself in isolation, that is the plain sense. But when you look at verses like four and six and I think fourteen, I am all those things, yeah, it forces you to to say, well, hang on, there's something more going on here because how does this angel come across? Well, actually verse four says God called to him from within the bush. Right.
SPEAKER_06So how many people are in the bush? Exactly. It's getting crowded in this bush, isn't it?
SPEAKER_08And then he's called Lord. Well, yeah, he calls him Lord, and then in verse six, yeah, this figure in the in the bush says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and God of Jacob. Right. Which seems pretty pretty concrete there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and it was a shame that there wasn't that opportunity in the discussion to kind of push down those roads and say, you know, maybe in verse two it's plain. But once you read that in the context of what else is said, how do you deal with the fact that this figure says, I am the God of your father?
SPEAKER_06Right. Exactly, exactly. And that that was one of my regrets from the debate is that I didn't kind of press into the details of the Christ scriptures more, because I think that w that is one of the big arguments that needs to be made, that we need to press into the details. You can be Unitarian if you just read the Bible from 30,000 feet, but if you actually get down and look at the details, that it doesn't allow you to do that. So I think I I should have pressed him on the details. And you know, one of the other passages I wanted to look at was Genesis forty-eight, um, where uh uh uh Jacob is blessing Joseph's boys. And uh in Genesis 48 from verse 15, uh Jacob blesses the boys and he says, May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has delivered me from all harm, may he bless these boys. And like, what's he doing? If this is just a created angel, like this is blasphemy. You know, it's it's like a false religion. The old testament is proclaiming a false religion if this angel is not Yahweh, but he is Yahweh, you know, he he is God from God, light from light, very God from very God. So, yeah. And and I find this with Christians as well. You know, Christians can always say that the Trinity is not in the Old Testament and that sort of thing, as long as they don't deal with the angel of the Lord, and as long as they don't sort of press into some of these details. You know, Zechariah 2 has the Lord saying, The Lord has sent me, says the Lord, and all these sorts of things. Um Genesis 19, 24, the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens. Um all these sorts of things. You can go on my website and uh on the Christ in the Old Testament page, you can see um I've just listed twenty-four really quick uh passages like that where people can just face up to the the unmistakable compound unity of God in the old in the old testament and and and figure that out. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02We'll have a link to that on the uh webpage post. I think um if we've got time.
SPEAKER_08So the verses that I always think of when I think about the angel of the Lord is is the appearance to Gideon in Judges 6. And you know, you have this, you know, in verse 11, the angel of the Lord sitting under the the oak, but yet a few verses later in verse 14, when Gideon is talking to this figure, it says the Lord turned to him. So we have this figure again as the angel uh identified but then referred to as the Lord. But what's interesting later on is that when Gideon finally realizes well, I think it's verse twenty two, when he realised it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, Ah, sovereign Lord, I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. Face. But the Lord said to him, Peace, do not be afraid, you're not going to die. And it's clear that he thinks he's having seen the angel of the Lord is going to cause him to die. Right. Which for me is a he must be thinking back to Exodus 33, where God says, You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. Right. My question would be to someone in Mushar's position is if if he if he's only seeing an angel or even a top of the range. Right, yeah. Top of the line angel. Why why on earth is he afraid that he's gonna die from simply seeing an angel? Right. Um it seems clear just from all the languages the plain reading, I would say here is very much well he's he's face to face here with Yahweh.
SPEAKER_06And the angel of the Lord kicks off judges by saying, I brought you up out of Egypt, and you know, it's my covenants that I've made with you, and like, what? Who does he think he is? Like, and and I think that is where all the the mad, bad, or god arguments come in. I I think the angel of the Lord is even more clear about his distinct deity than Jesus in the New Testament, right? I think I think you can point to more individual verses in the Old Testament where this figure says, I am God from God, than you can in the New Testament. And I think in in one sense, Jesus in his incarnate ministry is depending on this category of the angel of the Lord, because throughout John's Gospel, for instance, he's always, I'm the one sent from the Father. I'm the one sent from the Father, you know. And at this they pick up stones to stone, because they know they've got this category, they know what he's talking about when he says, I'm that one, the God from God.
SPEAKER_08You know, as we as we read the Old Testament, we we're kind of looking out for Jesus, this this sense, you know, every story whispers his name and points us to him. What does the what does the Muslim do with something like Luke 24 with Jesus on the Emmaus road saying, you know, uh expounding the kind of scriptures where he's you know he talked about how Moses and the prophets and the s all the scriptures that are about him. For the Muslim, I guess they would want to say that these scriptures in the Old Testament aren't about Jesus, because he's not there. But maybe they wouldn't, I don't know. What would they say?
SPEAKER_06Well what's interesting is that within the Quran, um, Jesus is said to have come to confirm the Torah. So Jesus came, so e even within the Quran, Jesus, or Issa, the the Islamic Jesus, Issa, is Messiah. And he has come to confirm the revelation given to the Jews. So the the they even have that a sense of the yeah, of Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament. No, uh you know, but they would also say that Muhammad is prophesied in the Old Testament. So they they would go to like Deuteronomy 18 and say that the prophet who is going to rise up, who is a brother of, you know, to the people of Moses, that's Muhammad. And obviously it can't be Muhammad because uh Muhammad is not a Jew, he's not an Israelite, uh, which is what Deuteronomy 18 requires this prophet to be. Um so so within Islam, there is there is a sense that Jesus in some sense uh confirms the teaching of the Old Testament. Um but again, both within uh the Quran itself and with Muslims today, it tends to be a very broad brushstroke kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The God of the Old Testament, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's just this Unitarian God. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Um but when you drill down to details, um, then they they really want to hold it at arm's length. And and that's why I want to do debates like this. I w I want to open up the the Old Testament and say, no, no, no, this can only point to Jesus. This can only make sense with a a Jesus-shaped view of God.
SPEAKER_08And Jesus seems to speak more rather than just confirming. I mean in in Luke twenty-four, it he says these about the it talks about the scriptures concerning himself. Right. So it seems like Jesus is making a stronger claim there. Right. Which I suppose is slightly different to what the Muslim wants to say then, if they're just saying Jesus confirms it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because essentially essentially the Old Testament is what the New Testament is, what the Quran is all about for the Muslim, which is telling you the way to live. Right? So so yeah, in that sense, Jesus comes to confirm the Old Testament teaching because, you know, he kind of says, I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. So really what they've got is a is a quite moral sense to what the Old Testament is about. Jesus confirms that moral sense to the New Testament, and the Quran comes and puts the icing on the cake as as this moral document. But once again, that's nothing to do with what Christianity has ever said that the Bible's about, either Old Testament or New Testament. It's all a biography, and it's a biography of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. So we've looked at the uh broad brushroot of Scripture, number one, and we looked at the angel of the Lord in specific scriptures. And thirdly, philosophical arguments.
SPEAKER_06There were yeah, there were a few philosophical arguments flying around on both sides. Um, in some sense, that's that's inescapable. Um so Masharov had uh a problem with God being father, um, and he seems to think that Christians meant that in a quite physical sense, that that somehow the father physically generates a son. Um and so it was it was good to be able to clear that up with him. No Christian has ever said that, no Jew has ever said that um in terms of Christ's eternal nature, he's not physically generated in that sense. Um but if God is going to be father, and if he is going to be love, um, then a father requires a son, and a lover requires a beloved. And really the Christian doctrine of the Trinity answers the question: how can God be complete in himself and be loving? If he has no one to love, then he can't be complete in himself until he makes a creation to love. And so the Muslim doctrine that the Allah creates a world and then is able to love it, makes Allah dependent on creation. Um, which you don't w really want to say, do you? Because you you don't want a needy God. A needy god's kind of a definition of a of an idol. Um at a couple of points I I address those sorts of philosophical arguments, uh, such as in this little clip.
SPEAKER_05Why would God have a son? Well, if he is going to be father, then he is going to have a son. And if he's going to be eternally father, and if it is his eternal nature to be father, then he must have an eternal son. If it is his eternal nature, as Masharap has said, uh, for him to be loving, then again he has to have an object of his love.
SPEAKER_06Um so that's that's one aspect of it. And then uh I return to this issue uh again a little later on.
SPEAKER_05We do not believe in three gods at all. We believe in one God, who is a father, always shining the light of his son into this world, so that to see the radiance of God in the face of Christ is to see the light who is shining. To hear the word of God is to hear the speaker who is behind. There is an absolute and utter unity in the one being with uh of God, but it is Trinity that actually enables this God to speak and to shine. And without Trinity, you've got a mute God and you've got a dark God.
SPEAKER_06So, yeah, so I mean that's that's kind of the more I've thought about this, the more I've kind of seen that a Unitarian God's just a Unitarian God cannot shine, a Unitarian God cannot love, a Unitarian God cannot speak, a Unitarian God cannot give life. Because within this doctrine of God you've got a solitary being with nothing beside itself. Um and in order to go forth from itself it needs a creation to do that. So you you either you either have to posit uh a God who is needy, which is one way that the Bible describes idols, or you have to posit a God who doesn't shine, who is dark, who is lifeless, who is mute. And that's another way that the Bible describes idols. So it seems to me you've got a choice. Uh you you can have one kind of idol that's Unitarian, or you can have another kind of idol that's unitarian, but you can't have a living God who is also Unitarian.
SPEAKER_07I agree.
SPEAKER_06But yeah, I mean I yeah, I don't know how far you get with with those philosophical arguments, but I th but but it what it does do for me is it it doesn't make me become more philosophical. It makes me kind of more grateful that actually within God there is this eternal shining, there's this eternal speaking, there's this eternal giving of life. And when you compare and contrast it to the Unitarian God, you really do see that God is a fountain rather than someone, something inert.
SPEAKER_02I mean, some of the things that strike me in listening to this is that some Christians believe pretty close to a distant God, you know, high on power and you know He does what He likes and we as Christians sometimes are in danger of slipping into that kind of uh understanding of God.
SPEAKER_06A thousand percent.
SPEAKER_08I think maybe uh some of it is to do with that we we don't talk about the Trinity hugely you know we don't teach the doctrine of the Trinity that much in church, or at least in the kind of churches I've been part of, because because you tend to you uh uh preach uh passages sequentially in a book. Yeah. Well yeah, yeah, you kind of assume people have got that, but you know, if you're working through a book of the Bible, you're you're you do a passage and you think, well we're gonna preach on whatever this it's about and actually uh pulling together the the doctrine of the Trinity involves taking passages from all over the Bible, really, to to bring that together. And so unless you specifically do that, the everyday person in the pew who's not like spending their time studying these issues day by day like you know, perhaps a a minister might be or a systematic theologian or whatever, maybe will never even see these things. And you know, they will not think through the issues of you know, could God actually be loving love in his very nature if if he'd been by himself beforehand. Right.
SPEAKER_06Um Yeah. Yeah, because we we just assume who God is and we just move on to the next topic us, right? Like in the scriptures, everyone who knows everyone knows who God is. God's the big guy. Now now let's talk about sin and salvation and which are important to talk about.
SPEAKER_08Well, I th I I was preaching on I can't remember what the passage was, um, but I remember saying at one point, what are some words that if we were talking to a non-Christian we'd want to define because we think people m don't necessarily understand them. And gave people a few minutes to think about it and what came back was, you know, like sin, salvation, those kind of things. Right. And I said, well, you know, I'd written down a couple, I said, and sin was one of them. I said, but my big one is God. Right. Because when you say the word God to the average person on the street, what do they think of? And it is the the guy, you know, the old man on the throne with his beard, right, that you say high on power, low on personality, and those kind of things. It's it's Father Christmas in the sky. Right.
SPEAKER_06Um with a thunderbolt.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. So actually wanting to kind of, you know, if we just start talking about God, automatically we're we can be on a different page to the people we're talking to already.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Because it's the it's the most important term to define. And it's the most misunderstood term, and yet we never we never take the time.
SPEAKER_08So God, he's that he's the one with the hammer, isn't he?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, that guy. That guy. Yeah, yeah. Well, Jesus, he is God. Okay, he's the guy with a hammer, alright. That's how we do our evangelism. It's it's a little bit crazy, but you know. So go out and get 321, everybody.
SPEAKER_02Here's the moral of the story. Okay, so we're we're uh over halfway now of our five points.
SPEAKER_06Not long now, kids. Hang on. Get an ice cream at the end.
SPEAKER_01Okay, number four, the trajectory of the development. And I've got no idea what you mean by that.
SPEAKER_06I think within the debate there was this assumption that not only was there an assumption about the doctrine of God, as though it's just obvious that God is just the Unitarian God, and I think that assumption needs to be kind of um pushed back on. The lost on assumption that, yeah, yeah, obviously God was Unitarian back in the day. Um and even Christians will agree to that. But then they say, a Christian will say, ah yes, but then there was this sort of development, and and we sort of came up with Trinity maybe in the first century AD, maybe in the fourth century AD, who knows? But at some point we kind of wrapped our heads around Trinity and we upgraded from just the bog standard Unitarian, you know, definition of God. And then we've got the deluxe edition, now we've got Trinitarian. And that's the trajectory. And even Christians say that. And Muslims come along, and and Mush Araf was sort of looking at Christianity and then he was sort of saying, well, yeah, you you basically have done that. You had Moses' doctrine of God, well done when you had that. And then, somewhere around the fourth century, you invent this thing called Trinity. Let's just get back to basics. That's what that's what a Muslim will say. And I think if they're right that Moses was a Unitarian, then we should become Muslims. I really do. You know, if if if Abraham was was basically believing in Tawheed, if he was basically believing in the Muslim God, then we should believe in the Muslim God. But but that's not the way it goes. So my my understanding of the trajectory is not that we've gone from Unitarianism and ascended up to Trinitarianism, it's that we started with this multipersonal doctrine of God, the compound unity of God in the Old Testament, something that's proto-Trinitarian, paleo-trinitarian, whatever. We've got this Trinitarian doctrine of God that we beg we've begun with, and then there has been this decay, this sliding downhill from the Trinitarian doctrine of God. And the first place that we slid down, um, or the first place that people slid down, I think, was in the second century AD, when unbelieving Jews, Jews who rejected Jesus as Messiah, um, they hardened themselves against this teaching of a multipersonal Old Testament. And so that was one kind of hardening towards Unitarianism. And then in the seventh century, you've got, you know, Muhammad cropping up and and uh being very anti-Trinitarian, and that was a hardening against uh Trinitarianism. So actually the trajectory does not go from Unitarianism to Trinitarianism, it goes from Trinitarianism, and then some people have defected from that, and that's where Unitarianism has come from. So I've got one clip where I kind of make a ham-fisted attempt at saying that.
SPEAKER_05It's an absolute commonplace of biblical studies these days to look at the inter-testamental period, for instance, Second Temple Judaism, the sort of Judaism that was going on in the centuries just before and just after uh the advent of Christ in the flesh, that these Jews were not teaching a uniform Unitarianism at all. You you you listen to um Philo of Alexandria, you you you read the books of Enoch, and you see uh a very um a very non-Talhedic uh doctrine of God, which they have gotten from the Old Testament scriptures. And actually, what where the development happens, and and Alan Siegel, a Jewish scholar, um, has made this case and it's persuaded uh the academy that really it was only in the second century that Judaism was starting to outlaw this view that there were two powers in heaven. That was the name of Alan Siegel's book, that the ancient of days has always reigned through his son of man, that the uh the most high God has always reigned through his divine word. Um that was absolutely standard um and it was not rejected at all until in the first century these Christians started to talk about Jesus. He's he's the Messiah, he's come, he really is. He is the high priest of all creation, he is the divine word. And only in reaction to the Christian apologists did Judaism harden against that doctrine and hardened into Unitarianism. And then the trajectory develops so that in the seventh century up pops this teacher who comes up with this new book called the Quran, who has hardened himself even further against Jesus and against that revelation, and and starts to say, say not three in God is not a father.
SPEAKER_06That's what I mean by the trajectory. Yeah. But again, I I I just think yeah, Christians kind of believe the Muslim version of that trajectory. Christians kind of think, ah yeah, Old Testament, basically unitarian, isn't it? And then Trinity is this this nuance that's being added. Um and I th I think, in one sense, you know, Muslims have been given to us to keep us honest, to to to to keep Christians honest and to and to and to think uh more carefully about what the Bible is actually saying. And I I think you know, even etymologically, right? Etymologically is is the the study of the the the sort of the roots of the word. Um Unitarianism, the word, comes from a reaction against Trinitarianism. And I think that that hasn't just happened etymologically, that's happened historically. That Unitarianism, what we think of as Unitarianism, has always been a reaction against Trinitarianism. That's the original and the best. Let's not divert from it.
SPEAKER_08I was just reminded of something Mike Reeves had put in his book, The Good God to do with the oneness of God, where he says uh so the the the the verse created is Deuteronomy 6.4 about you know the Lord God is one. And he says, in fact, the word for one in Deuteronomy 6.4 really doesn't convey mathematical singularity at all well. The word is also used, for example, in Genesis 2.24 where Adam and Eve, two persons, are said to be one. And so I think like you say, people Christians can often follow that same trajectory that the Muslims want to, because they'll look back and they'll see a verse like that and they'll go, Well of course the Old Testament just says God is one. Right. And therefore one, not three. And then the Trinity you even hear people saying things like, and then of course the Trinity was invented um like it like someone just made it up off the top of their heads. Um But it's when you start to like you said, burrow down into the detail a bit. You can see that actually something on the surface, a word like that, one, doesn't necessarily mean one in the sense we might initially go for.
SPEAKER_06Um Deuteronomy 6 4 says the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. And even Kabalists today, Jews, who are not Christians in any sense, they say, Look, there's there's three titles here who are said to be one. There is someone called the Lord, and there's our God, and then a third title, the Lord, is one. Which is just interesting to me that that actually they they would see that, you know. It's not it's not even obvious within Deuteronomy 6.4.
SPEAKER_02Um I think it it's often we sometimes say, oh, that was in the old testament. They didn't understand about Trinity back then. Yeah. Yeah. But I think like David understood about Trinity, he says, The Lord said to my Lord. The Lord said to my Lord, sit you know, sit at my right. So even they had an understanding of Trin Trinity.
SPEAKER_06Sure. They didn't use the word Trinity, but then no one in the New Testament used the word Trinity. Trinity is just shorthand for a reflection back on the scriptures where you say, Oh, you know what, there's a Lord from the Lord. Which is precisely what David says in Psalm 110.
SPEAKER_08And this idea of the two powers in heaven, um is it Alan Siegel?
SPEAKER_06Alan Siegel, um was the the Jewish scholar.
SPEAKER_08So I mean that's something that I find really interesting. Um I guess I mean there might be people who who want to know more about that. I mean where where can people find out more about that kind of thing? Because I'd not until last year when it came up in discussion I'd never even heard this idea that Jews would have accepted this idea of two powers in heaven. It was really off a discussion I think we had about how do Jews deal with the ancient of days and the Son of Man in Daniel. Yeah. Um, you know, what do they make of that? And the discussion went to this two powers in heaven.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_08But I've never heard anyone else talking about this.
SPEAKER_06So I wonder where do we go to Well, in I mean, in the Academy it's it's pretty commonplace now. So um you've got um Francesca Francesca, what is it, Stavrokopp Stavrokoppolis? I think it's Francesca Stav Stavrokopolis who's um from quite an atheistic kind of um well, she happens to be an atheist, but but so s certainly not not a Christian um scholar as she looks at these things. I mean she she did a thing on the BBC, BBC two a few years ago. She basically said, Ah, it's obvious there's a Hebrew pantheon going on. There's there's all these different gods, and why do we think that the Most High has anything to do with the Lord, who has anything to do with um, you know, any other title that you might want to name mention? She she says, Oh, all these different titles, they're different different gods, and it isn't obvious. And so she's sort of coming up from from that angle as a uh liberal Christian scholar, Margaret Barker, who um just talks about, yeah, in the intertestamental period, everyone is yeah, everyone kind of knows that the angel of the Lord is this second God, you know, Israel's second God. Um and you've got Michael Heiser, is is a great evangelical scholar, um, who's done a lot of work on the on the two powers in heaven. He'd he'd be quite a good good guy to go to. But also, you know, in in church history, someone like John Owen, he wrote all these introductory essays to the book of Hebrews, in which he went back to the beliefs of the Jews from before the advent of Christ, and uh they were all making all these sort of proto-trinitarian statements. So John Owen was saying stuff like that, Jonathan Edwards was saying stuff like that, and then today, yeah, the Academy is is fairly united on saying that whatever Second Temple Judaism was saying, it was not Unitarian. There were people like Philo of Alexandria who were talking about the second god, who was the Logos, who was the high priest of all creation.
SPEAKER_08And and how do Muslims respond to the fact that that is what the consensus?
SPEAKER_06I don't know. I wasn't able to press Masharf on that and and yeah, it would it would be interesting.
SPEAKER_08Because he spoke as someone who kind of he felt like history and common sense and everything was on his side. Right. But actually it seems that what we're saying is actually even kind of just academic scholars, regardless of faith, are looking at it going, well, no, it's not obvious that it's certainly not obvious that it's Talhedic. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah. And that that that argument needs to be made, but I think first that argument needs to be won among Christians. And then kind of those points again need to be pressed home with Christians and and and then we'll take it to the other side.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Last one then.
SPEAKER_06Last one, Andy, and then you can have an ice cream. Thanks.
SPEAKER_02Allah cannot stoop.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and I and I think we began with this issue and we ended with this issue that because of the Muslim doctrine of God, Allah cannot show up. Um and so here's one place where I make that kind of point.
SPEAKER_05We've just heard Musharaf say that the infinite cannot. That's an interesting sentence. The infinite cannot. And uh in a lot of my dialogues with Muslims, I hear a lot about what Allah cannot do. You know, Allah cannot, you know, die upon the cross, cannot enter into our death in hell, cannot enter into our humanity, cannot enter into earth. In fact, he cannot really enter into paradise even. Allah will not even stoop down to that level, because he can't even stoop down to paradise. Why? Because of this doctrine of Tawheed. Whereas if you have a a father who is always giving life to his son, a speaker who is always proclaiming his word, a light who is always shining his radiance, that is the doctrine of the Trinity. And it it means that within God's own being, there is the principle by which God can transcend his own transcendence. It is the principle by which God can bridge the gulf between the creator and the created, so that the Father can be made known in his sent one, who is without diminution or dilution, bringing to us the very revelation of God. I think this is what the Angels of the Lord passages are all about, that we have the one who is sent, who is the great I am, who gives us this experience of God without diminution or dilution. And I think what we see from Moses and the the Old Testament is this assumption that this is the character of God, to show up and and not to be um forever distant from his creature creation, but to show up very face-to-face, feasting and family, and and and these are the sorts of language that the Old Testament uses. And because it's it does not begin from a Talhedic doctrine of God, it begins with a far more proto-trinitarian or trinitarian view.
SPEAKER_06That was very wordy, wasn't it? Yeah, I th and I'm always reminded of that um time I went to Speaker's Corner and Jay Smith was uh standing up on a soapbox, and uh he he quite often gets up with uh sort of a Christian partner um next to him and and they sort of do a double act. And uh I just remember this one time he got up in Speaker's Corner and says, We're gonna talk to you about Muslim paradise. Muslim paradise and and instantly there are two hundred Muslims kind of coming there, ready to heckle. And uh he he had his friend there with his Quran open and he says, Tell me about Muslim paradise. And his friend's got the Quran open, and the and the friend says, Um, uh yes, it says here that uh in Muslim paradise there'll be lots of wine.
SPEAKER_04He says, Lots of wine, rivers of wine, fantastic! What else is there in Muslim paradise?
SPEAKER_06And the guy says, uh seems like there'll be lots of virgins to, you know, to to satisfy the the needs of uh all the male, you know, Muslims are get there.
SPEAKER_04And then Jason says, Lots of women, plenty of women, fantastic! What else is there?
SPEAKER_06And you know, the guy says it says there's gonna be lots of good times.
SPEAKER_04Fantastic! Wine, women, good times!
SPEAKER_06That's not paradise, that's Las Vegas, and all the Muslims are going, ah but then his br absolutely brilliant. This is how to preach, right? This is how to preach. Because having made that cracking gag, he then said, Let me tell you one thing that's not in paradise.
SPEAKER_04Your God's not there.
SPEAKER_06Your God is not there. And it's absolutely right. You know, there's lots of fun to be had in paradise. There's Allah's just not there. You know, it's like and again, it's that Santa Claus idea, isn't it? He gives you He gives you good stuff. He doesn't give you himself. And why why does he not give us himself? Well, he can't. It's this doctrine of God issue. So that that's why we sort of landed where we landed at the end of the podcast. Um where I didn't know that this was going to be the last word in the podcast. And if I was Masharif, I would have been fuming because I would have wanted to come back on it. But literally, these are the last words I got to say to Masharif.
SPEAKER_05Well, I think if Masharif was on the way to the mosque, uh on the way towards Friday prayers, and he saw a seven-year-old girl in a muddy canal drowning, we all know what Masharif would do. Masharif would jump in, and I think his religion would command him to jump in. I think we would call him a good Muslim and a good human being for jumping in and saving that girl. Why would Allah do any less? Why would he not enter into our mess in order to save us and redeem us? The big problem with with Islam is that its doctrine of God forbids God to actually show even human decency, let alone something that is proper to the nature of God. We're gonna have to leave it there, Mashar.
SPEAKER_08So it's a pretty strong way to end. You can imagine him with his mouth open, ready to speak.
SPEAKER_06I did feel for him. I really did feel for him. But uh oh well. That's the it wasn't planned like that.
SPEAKER_08I mean that was one of the the frustrations for me near the end when you were talking about these limitations, you know. I think you said something to him along the lines of do our limitations limit God and he said, Well you can't limit the limitless but yeah, he doesn't address what he's he's already stated, where he said you know, God can't appear to us because of our limitations. Right. And uh I mean he seemed to kind of well, just contradict what he'd already said or just not deal with it. Yeah. Um which was you know a frustrating thing to listen to because you want to delve deeper and say, Well, hang on, you've you have just said, you know, the reason God can't stoop is because of us. And you're saying, Well but you said Allah's limitless. Right. So you're saying, is it has he got limits or hasn't he? Yeah. And it seemed to be yes. Yeah. You know, that was the answer.
SPEAKER_06But And where he fell back on, which was which was sad really, and and is is just well, why would God want to? Why would God want to? You know, come down and and be with us and that sort of thing. And again, it just it just goes to show we're talking about different gods and different gospels. Why would God want it? That's why I told the story about the the little girl who's drowning. Why would God want to? Because he loves us, because he wants to embrace us, because he wants to rescue us and draw us to himself.
SPEAKER_08And he didn't get to come back on that, but you'd mentioned, I think before that, this idea of the woman who'd been hurt by adultery.
SPEAKER_06Yes, he he brings that up as an example of how Allah shows love.
SPEAKER_08Was it that was just an example he was making up, was it?
SPEAKER_06I said, you know, where d where does Allah actually show us love? And he says, Well, there's there's this great example in the Quran of a woman who had been divorced unrighteously, and she brings her case to Muhammad, and and as it turns out, um the there's a change of legislation and she's able to have some blessings that she wasn't able to have previously. And that that was his example of how Allah shows love to her.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and I mean he said at one point, I think I think you challenged him over it, like when how does Allah comfort that person? Right. And he said the comfort is through the messenger. Yes. Um the thing that struck me is that I mean that's not impossible, is it? That there's comfort through the messenger. But you're always a step away, a step removed from God. I mean, it it's you know, if I if something terrible had happened to me and a friend of mine someone wrote me a letter to comfort me in my time of need, I may well find that letter comforting, but I would find it far more comforting if my friend turns up on my doorstep because physically there for me. Yeah. Um it struck me that that's a huge difference. That i it it very much struck me, you know, the in the old testament you have that sense of there's that separation still, you know, the curtain between people and God, and Jesus then pushes that out the way. But in Islam you still wanna they still want to keep that division there, um which was striking. I felt.
SPEAKER_06Well, think about it, like like in eternity, what is it that is beside Allah? In eternity. It's the Quran, it's a book, it's a message, you know. Think about the Christian doctrine. What is it that is eternally beside the Father? The Son, right? Who wants to come and actually embrace you? And it's yeah, so so very much these different doctrines of God lead to different gospels really, and then it leads to different expectations. What are you looking for with God? And if you're Unitarian, um what you look for from God is are blessings, abstract blessings. Um if you're Trinitarian, what are you looking for from God? A God. And actually, because you have a God from God, then God can actually come and embrace you and be face to face with you, and that that's the Christian hope. And it's just uh it is just uh a world away from the Muslim conception.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well if you want to hear the whole of the debate, then you can do that on the uh the the show notes for this episode, which is uh speaklife.org.uk slash tep one seven six. So uh if you like the evangelist podcast, like what you hear, then do subscribe. You can do that at speaklife.org.uk slash tep. All the episodes or the most recent episodes are there, as simple links just to click and uh subscribe via your phone or favourite podcatcher. If you'd like to give leave us a rating and review on iTunes, we'd be very happy if you could do that for us. Uh again, all the links are on the website, and uh I think that's it for this time. What are we doing next week?
SPEAKER_06That's a really good question. I I'm very much hoping. Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please, we're going to get to speak to Vishhal Mangalwadi, uh the author of the book that shaped your world. Um so yeah, he's a a very interesting guy, an Indian philosopher who kind of became a Christian when he wanted to figure out why the West was streets ahead of the rest of the world in all sorts of different ways, and he realized it's because of Jesus. So uh he's a fascinating guy, and uh no, I'm really looking forward to to having a conversation with him. Um I'm hoping we're gonna be able to record that interview in the next week. Uh, if not, we'll think of something else. But hold on there, and if you're not subscribed to the podcast, get subscribing uh because we're gonna we want to shoot this into your uh into your device, into your ears so that you can hear Vishal. Good.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, that's it for this time.
SPEAKER_06Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_02In the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_06Amen.