What is God Really Like: Tawhid or Trinity? Dr. Shabir Ally and Dr. Nabeel Qureshi Debate

All right then, we're just waiting for the signal back there. Good evening and welcome to Wayne State University. My name is Emily Angel, and I'm a student here at Wayne State University, as well as a student leader with CRU, which is also known as Campus Crusade for Christ. I will be serving as your co-MC tonight. Uh, we also have Brandon Cleaver, who serves as co-chapter director of Ratio Christi and who is also the co-MC for tonight's debate. As I'm sure you already know, we have an incredible event planned for you this evening with two of the leading, most respected scholars of their faith. We also have a prominent, well-accomplished Christian radio host serving as our moderator. As courtesy to our speakers, we want to remind you that this is a friendly debate. It is a safe place for us to share our thoughts and also hopefully challenge and help you explore your personal faith more deeply. We will have free time at the end to hear from you for any questions that you have for our guests tonight. Before we begin the debate, we wanted to take a moment to thank our sponsors: the Wayne State University Ratio Christi chapter, CRU, Muslim Student Association, and the Dean of Students Office.

Now, we also need some help from you guys tonight. If you look under your seat, you should have a response card as well as a blank card. Please fill out the information on the response card. We will be picking up those cards during the 20-minute intermission and prayer break. Before the question and answer, we also have several free giveaways, which include books and DVDs from both of our debaters, as well as a gift card. Also, please use the blank cards to write down any questions you have for our debaters, and we will submit those for the question and answer. Please make sure you write large and legibly, as we only have a short amount of time to sift through those questions, and also indicate who you are addressing your questions to.

Now, for those in the main Auditorium, you will also have a red card under your seat. This card serves as your ticket to get back into the main Auditorium during the Q&A intermission and prayer break. During the debate, you will hear the moderator speak as if there's a radio audience. In addition to being live-streamed here and around the world, this debate will also be recorded for radio and will be broadcast across the Moody Radio Network this Saturday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and Saturday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Our moderator for tonight's debate is Miss Julie Roy, who is the host of a national talk show on Moody Radio Network, "Caught Up For Debate." She also is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in World, Christian Post, Boundless, Good News Magazine, and Hermeneutics. Miss Roy originally earned an audience through her weekly commentaries and appearances on "The Morning Ride," and prior to that, she worked as a TV news reporter on a, um, for a CBS affiliate in Indiana and as a news writer for WGN TV and Fox News in Chicago. She holds a bachelor's degree in history from Wheaton College and a master's degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University. Please help us welcome one of the most trusted and winsome voices in Christian radio, Miss Julie Roy.

Well, Brandon, is this on? Hi, can you hear me? You can hear me okay. No. All right, I think we need to work on the mic. Yes. Can you hear me? No. Okay. He, you, excuse me. Okay, do we want to switch out the mic or, or excuse me, what's that? Just use a podium. Let me do that. Well, Brandon, thanks again so much for that introduction, and I just want to say it is an honor and a privilege to be here this evening on the campus of Wayne State University. Well, do Muslims and Christians worship the same God, or are their concepts of God completely incompatible? And if so, which religion has it right, Islam or Christianity? Again, welcome this evening. My name is Julie Roy, and I do want to just welcome all of you who are here in our live audience at Wayne State, as well as those who are watching on our live streaming video and those who are listening on the radio.

In tonight's debate, "What is God Like? Tawhid or Trinity?" we'll be exploring God's identity from what I think you will discover are two distinctly different perspectives. On one hand, you will hear that God is like the Muslim doctrine of Tawhid, that he is one and indivisible. He is Allah. On the other hand, you will hear that God is like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that he is three persons in one. He is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. You'll also be hearing, uh, them explore, "Who is Jesus?" Is he, as Muslims say, a prophet or messenger of God, or is he, as Christians say, God in human form?

Well, helping us explore these questions of ultimate reality are two, uh, very accomplished scholars. Defending the Muslim view is Dr. Shabir Ali. Dr. Ali is president of the Islamic Information and Da'wah Center International in Toronto, where he functions as Imam. Dr. Ali also travels internationally to represent Islam in public lectures and interfaith dialogues, and he explains Islam on a weekly television program called "Let the Quran Speak." He has a bachelor's degree in religious studies from Laurentian University with a specialization in biblical literature. He also has a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Toronto with a specialization in Quranic exegesis. Defending the Christian view is Dr. Nabeel T. Qureshi. Dr. Qureshi grew up in a devout Muslim home and then, as a young adult, converted to Christianity. He now travels the world as an itinerant speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and has participated in 17 public debates. Dr. Qureshi has a master's degree in Christian apologetics from Biola University and a master's degree in religion from Duke University. He also has a medical degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School and is pursuing a doctorate at Oxford University in New Testament studies.

Tonight's debate will be a formal debate, which means we will be adhering very strictly to time. We will begin with two 25-minute opening statements, then we'll go to 10-minute rebuttals from each of our debaters, and then there'll be a time when both of them will actually cross-examine one another. And lastly, there will be an opportunity for those of you in our audience to, uh, write your questions and give them to our debaters as well. Dr. Qureshi will begin our debate, and I do ask, just for the sake of time, if you would hold your applause till the very end of the debate. So, Dr. Qureshi, welcome. You have 25 minutes.

I think I'm a bit taller than she is. All right, good evening. Uh, to my Muslim friends, I can say, I can say that because my family is Muslim, um, and that's how I greet them. I'm not being hypocritical or just trying to reach out to you or anything like that. I truly wish the peace and mercy and blessings of God upon you. Uh, and to my Christian friends who might be upset that I just said "salaam," read 1 Corinthians 9. I am honored to be here. I'm so excited to be here and share with you what I have come to find as the truth about God, because the pursuit of God is the noblest endeavor man can ever undertake. Uh, and what I'm about to share with you, um, is something that comes deep from within my heart. It comes after long investigation, of course. Growing up, I constantly proclaimed, I believe that Allah of the Quran is the one true God. I believed that Trinity was polytheism. I believed that it was false. Say not three, as would tell us. First chapter I ever learned of the Quran, first chapter most of my Muslim friends ever learned. So that's where I started, and I'm here today to share with you the reasons why I now proclaim that God is one in being and three in person, the Holy Trinity.

Um, I can't explain to you how excited I am that I get to talk with Dr. Ali. Um, I've been watching him, actually. The last time I saw him live, I was a Muslim in the audience watching him debate, hoping he'd win. Um, that was in, uh, 2004. Um, so I can understand what, how some of you might be feeling, uh, right now. He had black hair back then. I think this is more becoming, it's more scholarly. Um, I'm getting there. I got some flecks of wisdom right now, um, but, uh, but yeah, so, um, I have been watching him for a long time, and a lot of what he said, even back then, shaped my thought. So you'll see that the way I, the way I come up with my beliefs on God, on the Trinity, has a lot to do with his argumentation. So hopefully, this will connect, and you'll be able to understand where we're coming from. Hopefully, it'll also be a, a, a personable debate. This is not about you coming out to watch one debater beat up the other guy. Um, if you want to know who the better debater is, he's sitting right over there. He's been debating for decades. I've been watching him for a long time, uh, but if you're here for the truth, which is what I hope you are here for, uh, then let's work towards that together, because it's the greatest thing we can ever look for.

I want to start by sharing with you what I believe from science recalibrated my view of what we can expect about God. You see, it was in a classroom, an organic chemistry classroom, that I realized that the Trinity was possible, and that was because we were beginning to study deeper things about the way the world worked, and I began to realize that there are certain truths about the world that seem apparently inconceivable on face value, but we know that they're true. It's just the way the world is. There are deep truths and almost mysterious in certain ways, but that's just the way the world is. Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest men in the world, agrees with me. He says this: "It is impossible to imagine a four-dimensional space. I personally find it hard enough to visualize three-dimensional space." That's Stephen Hawking. We take a look at Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. When he talks about energy, he says this: "It is important to realize that in physics today we have no knowledge of what energy is." Physicists don't know what energy is, and it's kind of okay. It's the reason why we can know that there is such a thing as energy is because of its explanatory power. We don't need to be able to answer all these questions to know that energy exists. And if we start imposing these deeper questions even upon science, we will come up to dead ends. We might not be able to find all the answers. And something that I find interesting is that early Muslims understood this about Tawhid as well.

What I want to do next is to cover a little bit of the history, uh, and the complexity found of Tawhid. When I was a Muslim, I used to challenge Christians by saying things like, "The word Trinity is not found anywhere in the Bible." I'd say things like, "The doctrine of the Trinity developed over hundreds of years," and that "the Trinity is complex and philosophically and theologically it's hard to grasp. Why would God do that about himself?" And because I'd say these things, I would feel I had a case against Christianity. But the reason why that felt strong to me was because I was not consistent in my criticism. If I applied the same critical thoughts to Tawhid, here's what I would have found: The word Tawhid is not found in the Quran. In fact, it's not found anywhere in the Hadith. The concept of Tawhid was continuing to be developed for hundreds of years after Muhammad. That's why it wasn't found in Hadith. And in fact, Tawhid is complex, both philosophically and theologically.

I want to fast forward a little bit to the first Islamic Inquisition, and you heard me right. It is the first Islamic Inquisition. It's called the Mihna. This Inquisition literally flogged and executed people who disagreed on the issue of Tawhid. In April of 833 AD, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun launched this Inquisition, and this is what he says: "He has no belief in Tawhid who does not confess that the Quran is created." What is Ma'mun saying? He's saying, "Look, I hear that there's some people out there who believe that the Quran is eternal, but if you have an eternal Quran next to an eternal Allah, that's two gods, or that's two persons within the Godhead, whatever you want to call it. That challenges the unity of Tawhid." If you believe the Quran's eternal, this Inquisition was launched throughout the Islamic world. If you've heard of the name of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, he's the founder of the Hanbali madhhab of Islam. He was one of the first people who came under the flogging of this Inquisition. Others were killed, others were flogged in mosques in their underwear. Uh, this kind of stuff happened throughout the Islamic world until 849 AD. What happened then? Al-Mutawakkil said, "We're going to stop arguing about this." He didn't say, "Let's resolve it in this way or that way." He said, "We're going to stop arguing about this." Now, why did this happen? It's because there were arguments at that time over Allah's attributes. Some people were beginning to argue, "Does Allah have hair? Does he have a beard?" Some people said, "Yes, he has curly hair." Some people said, "No, he's like a youth without a beard." They're beginning to start talking about Allah, and then they start thinking more about his attributes and saying, "Does Allah have attributes, or is he those attributes? Does he have knowledge, or is he knowledgeable?" And that makes a difference, because if he has something, then is that something separate from him that lasts eternally? These are the kinds of questions that start coming up when you start thinking deeply about God. No matter what monotheistic faith, the deeper you think about God, the more these questions are going to arise.

Well, that question specifically came with the attribute of God's speech, called Kalam in Islamic history. Is his speech a part of who he is, or if it's, is it separate? Now, if you argued that the Quran was separate from Allah, then you had to argue that there was some kind of eternal Quran next to him. Those who were the rationalists argued, "No, uh, Allah created the Quran. There's nothing eternal alongside the Quran." And that was the Mu'tazila argument. Some of you will have heard that, and that was the argument that Ma'mun espoused. And it wasn't until Mutawakkil that the Mu'tazila, uh, day stopped being had by some of the Muslims. These arguments continue till today, and that's the point I want to get across to you. People are beginning to revive some of these arguments. For example, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, a scholar, has argued that the Quran is situated in history. The "wadud laws," those harsh laws that we see being applied by certain Muslims, that is something that belongs in a historical context. It should not be applied today. So he says it's a part of history. And of course, we know that the Quran, kind of, was a result of history, because we see certain texts, certain apocryphal texts, being used by the Quran. For example, when the Quran says that Jesus was able to speak at his birth, it's referring to a Gnostic text written hundreds of years after Jesus. When it says that Jesus was able to create clay birds and give them life, that's found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a late Gnostic Gospel. So the Quran uses late sources on Jesus' life. We know that the Quran is situated within a historical context. Of course, Muslims are now beginning to argue that the text of the Quran also developed over time. These are two Muslim scholars from Turkey who compared the supposed Uthmanic Quran in Turkey and some other Uthmanic Qurans to today's Quran, and their conclusion is those Qurans are very different in some of their details from today's Quran, and they say that that's not from Uthman's time. These are Muslim scholars. So Muslims are continuing to talk about the development of the text of the Quran, and it's not just now, it was originally as well. We saw that even in Muhammad's, uh, the Salaf generation, among the companions, people like Abdullah ibn Mas'ud and Ubayy ibn Ka'b disagreed on the canon of the Quran. These are the people that Muhammad handpicked to teach the Quran to others. One of them would say that the Quran should have 116 chapters, the other would say that the Quran should have 111 chapters. These disputes were resolved in space and time, and that is why some people begin to argue, as Muslim scholars are still arguing today, that the Quran is created.

Why do I bring all this up? Because this was the first Islamic Inquisition, and it's still being discussed. Tawhid has not been resolved. The closest anyone came was Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, who said, "We don't know how to resolve this. I know the Quran is eternal. I know Allah has these attributes, and I know Tawhid is true. I don't know how to resolve it." The slogan from him became, "We don't know how." Here's the point I want to make with you tonight: The reason why Islam has taught that the Quran is eternal while not challenging the Tawhid is, "We don't know how." Tawhid has never been resolved. In fact, one Turkish scholar just put this out at the University of Ankara in October of this past year. He said the argument that the Quran is eternal was borrowed from Christians who believed in the hypostatic union of Jesus and the Father and the two natures of Jesus. In summary, regarding the Tawhid, the Tawhid is still hotly disputed today. It is philosophically and theologically quite complex. We can't just assume that it's simple. There are many complexities that are involved. There are many questions that remain about Tawhid that are unanswered even today, and the Islamic majority position remains "Bismillah," which leads me to the first question that I would like to ask Dr. Ali. In his criticisms of the Trinity, which we can expect to come shortly, is he also condemning the vast majority of Sunni Islam when they say "Bismillah"? Is he being consistent, or is he also condemning Islam? That's what I'll be, uh, hoping to see from you, uh, at your leisure.

Let's continue then. Now that we've understood by taking a look at science and recalibrating our expectations, we don't even know what energy is. We cannot expect to know all the details about the creator of energy. Early Muslims understood that, "Bismillah," if we don't know, we rely upon revelation. Now that we understand that this is how we should approach God, let's take a look at the evidence for the Trinity. The first thing I want to say is that the Quran says in Surah Al-Ma'idah, verse 116: "Oh, Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people, 'Take me and my mother as deities beside Allah'?" This seems to be the verse which talks about the Trinity, and it's saying that there's three gods in the Trinity. Now, Christians take a look at the Trinity of the Quran, and we say, "Yes, this is blasphemy. This is Shirk." What the Quran condemns as Shirk is indeed Shirk. That's three gods. That's blasphemy. Christians do not believe in three gods. We believe in one God. So I'm going to give you a quick definition of the Trinity. The Trinity is a belief that God is one, only one God, and three in persons. In other words, one being or one "what." There's one "what." He's God. What I am is a human being. What God is is a divine being. God. There's one "what," but there are three persons, three "who's." A being is that which makes you "what" you are. A person is that which makes you "who" you are. So what am I? I'm a human being. Who am I? I'm Nabeel. Those are two separate things: what I am and who I am. In the same way, God is one "what" and three "who's." It's not a contradiction. And so this is why when Muslims say, "1 + 1 + 1 equals 1," how does that work? It's like, "No, those are apples and oranges. 1 + 1 + 1 are the persons, one being." Uh, and when Christians respond with, "No, 1 * 1 * 1 equals 1," that doesn't even make any sense. So don't even, don't do that.

So the question that we now have to ask is, "Can God come into this world?" I want to discover God together. I want to understand who he can be together. The first question I want to ask is, "Can God, if he so chooses, come into this world?" Now, remember what we just talked about with Tawhid, there's a lot of disagreement throughout Islamic history and even today on Tawhid. Let's talk about the Old Testament version of this issue. Let's talk about what the Old Testament says, because that's what Christianity is built on, Judaism. So what does the Old Testament have to say? Can God come into the world? The answer is yes, many times over, yes. God comes in the garden with Adam. Jacob wrestles with God. God calls out from a bush. He shows up as a pillar of fire and cloud. God appears to the elders. Exodus says, and also God walks in front of Moses. There are many examples. These are just the first few books of the Old Testament, and what I found in those. So, can God come into this world? The answer is, God is able to do anything that he wants to do. Can that one God be complex?

Now, going back to the issue of who God is, even in Islam, he is very, very complex. We can't understand his nature. Now, within the Old Testament, is that so? The first time we see God introduced in the Old Testament is the very first verse of the Old Testament. The word "God" is Elohim. Okay? But notice the word Elohim is plural. Technically, we translate this word "Gods," however, the verse treated that word as if it were singular. So it's plural and singular at the same time. From the very first verse of the Old Testament, there are actually four examples of this plural form "God" in Genesis chapter 1. I can't go into all, but one more that I want to go to is Genesis 1:26. Same chapter, four examples. This is the second. It's said, "God said, 'Let us make man in our image.'" Now, you might say, "Well, that's just majestic talk. God is just being majestic." Gleason Archer has pointed out that never in the Hebrew Bible does that way of using the word "us" ever get used in a form of majesty. God is saying something about himself. He's plural and yet singular.

Now, the most common response to this, and the one I've heard Dr. Ali give the most in his talks, is, "What about the Shema?" This is like the Jewish Shahada. This is Shema Yisrael. Doesn't that say, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one"? Well, that's one translation of it. What it can also say is, "Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone." And in fact, that is one of the Hebrew translations used today, even among Jews. Now, note the word echad is an interesting word. Whenever the Bible wants to talk about something that is one and has multiple components in that one, it uses the word echad. Follow me. This is extremely important. If God wants to say, "I am one and plural," the word he would use is echad. How do we know that? Let's look at these examples. Genesis 15 is one example. Let's look at Genesis 22:24. It says, "Man and woman will become one flesh." The one word, the word "one" there is echad. Two people will become one. Numbers 13:23, "A single cluster of grapes." Many different grapes making one cluster is echad. That's what the word means. Now, there is a perfectly good word for "one and one alone" in Hebrew, and that's, for example, in Judges, "She was his one and only child," yechid. Jeremiah mourns as if for an only son, yechid. So if Yahweh wanted to say, "I am one and one alone," he would have used the word yechid. But if he wanted to say, "I am one and plural in my unity," he would use the word echad, and that's exactly what we see him as having used. So we're introduced to a God who can be potentially complex. He refers to himself in the plural, and then we start seeing this. This is fascinating. I want you to watch this very carefully.

In Genesis 18, it says that Yahweh appeared to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre near Sodom and Gomorrah. Yahweh appeared. So this is another one of those examples where God appears as a man. Then in verses 19-24, look at this. It says, "Now here's Yahweh about to rain fire on Sodom and Gomorrah." It says, "Yahweh rained on Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh out of heaven." Think about this. Yahweh, who's appeared as a man, is raining fire from Yahweh in heaven. And the Hebrew here actually says "Yahweh" twice. This isn't a bad translation of the Hebrew. What does this mean? Well, we know the Jews only believe in one God. How can Yahweh be there in here? Now, is this just Nabeel's interpretation of the Old Testament? Is this just a weird thing I'm doing with the text? Look at Amos 4:1: "I overthrew you as Elohim overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah," declares Yahweh. Even the Old Testament realizes that Yahweh declares that Yahweh overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. There are two, but we know there's only one God. Take a look at Psalm 110, verse 1: "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand.'" In that context, sitting at the right hand of God is like ruling the universe with God. And it says, "The Lord said to my Lord." Once again, we see that there are almost as if there are two Gods, but we know there's only one God. The Old Testament is very clear about that.

This is one that I definitely want you to grasp. Daniel 7:13: Daniel sees the Ancient of Days, who is the Father God. He sees God. And then he says in verse 13, "I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man was coming, and he came even to the Ancient of Days and was brought near before him." Okay, so here's the Ancient of Days, and there's one who looks like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. Deuteronomy 33 tells us only Yahweh comes on the clouds, but here's the son of man coming on the cloud. So already we should be thinking, "Wait a minute, these are two God figures." And then verse 14 says this: "And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him." Wait a minute. To the son of man is given glory over heaven. That's what it says. And it says the people of every nation and language will serve him. This word "serve" is used over 130 times in the Bible. Every time it's used, it's used to denote a service due to God alone. And here it's being given to one who looks like a son of man. So it looks like once again we have God the Father, and we have this other kind of divine being who's called one who looks like a son of man.

Here's the point I want to make to you: The earliest Christian records proclaim that that Yahweh came into this earth. It's something he has done before, and he's going to do it. We're promised he will do it in Isaiah 9:6. This is what Mark's Gospel has to say about Jesus. Mark 1:3: "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" Now, Isaiah is saying Jesus is coming, "Prepare the way of the Lord." Look in Isaiah 40:3: "Clear the way for Yahweh in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God." Mark takes the word Yahweh and puts Jesus in that very same context. He's equating Jesus to Yahweh. Mark 2:28 says, "The Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath." Well, the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments. When Jesus says he's Lord of the Sabbath, he's saying he's Lord of the Ten Commandments. Once again, Mark is giving Jesus a prerogative of Yahweh alone. In Mark 4:38, the disciples were on a boat caught in a storm, and they called out to Jesus in their trouble, and he delivered them and made the storm to be still. Look at Psalm 107. God's people are on a boat caught in a storm, and they called out to Yahweh in their trouble, and he delivered them and made the storm to be still. Mark is taking Yahweh out and putting Jesus in.

In Mark 14:62, when Jesus is asked who he is, he gives a trifold response. We're going to focus on the second part. He says, "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven." What does this remind you of? The two verses from the Old Testament where it looked like there are two divine figures: the one sitting at the right hand of the Power, co-ruler over the universe, and the one coming on the clouds of heaven, who comes only as God would come, is given only the divine prerogatives of God, and served, worshiped by all people for all time. Jesus says, "You remember those passages which had two Yahweh? One of them is me." And this is why they picked up or they said, "Crucify him," because he was claiming to be God. Look, this isn't just found in Mark's Gospel. Here's the other point that I want to make to Dr. Shabir Ali: Every single earliest record we have in the New Testament portrays Jesus as Yahweh. The Kerygma Christou of Philippians 2 is one of the earliest records we have of Christian history. It's an insight into the time before the New Testament was written, right after Jesus was resurrected. What does it do? In verses 10 and 11, it says to Jesus, "Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess." Where do they get that from? Isaiah 45, where it says, "To Yahweh, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess." Even before Mark's Gospel, people are taking Yahweh's name and putting it in with Jesus.

In 1 Corinthians 8:6, we see Paul, and then, sorry, this is actually pre-Pauline, as Bart Ehrman would argue. He does argue in his new book, "The Earliest," even before Paul, even before Mark, Christians took the Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh, took that and divided that up between two: the Father and the Son. And that's what 1 Corinthians 8:6 is. Why does this matter? I've got just over a minute to explain why all of this matters. The first thing I want to explain to you is that the Trinity is the best explanation for who God is. The best explanation of the biblical data. It's the best explanation of what God has been doing from the time of Adam and Moses and onwards through Jesus. But also, I want to say that intimacy with God is the most important, noble pursuit we could ever have, to know that God is a God of true love. Why does this matter? Love is the root of all things we consider good. Look at the names of Allah that we, that we were taught. He is, he is Al-Rahman. What are these things? They're all relational terms about love, self-sacrifice, graciousness, mercy. What do these things have in common? They all come from love. And the reason why that matters is because, according to the Islamic view, the monotheistic view of Allah, Allah cannot, in his essence, be love. And why not? Because in eternity past, there was nothing for Allah to love. He could only become loving once he created people, something to love. So his love is contingent upon his creation. He can't, in his essence, be love. Whereas the Christian God, from eternity past, is loving within the community of three persons in the Trinity. And it's out of that love that the Father had for the Son that he creates people in the Son's image to populate this world. And he sends us into this world to love this world as the Son loved this world, to be willing even to die for the sake of those who are hurting and suffering. That is what the Christian message is. Love is at the heart of mankind, and it's because we've been made in the image of a Triune God.

[Applause] Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Qureshi. Again, that's Dr. Nabeel Qureshi of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And if you're just joining us, uh, by radio or by our live video feed, you are listening to a debate between a Christian scholar and a Muslim scholar on what God is really like. I'm Julie Roy, and I'm moderating this debate on the campus of Wayne State University. And now, Dr. Shabir Ali, president of the Islamic Information and Da'wah Center International, will offer his 25-minute opening statement. Dr. Ali, welcome. You have 25 minutes.

[Applause] Okay, wire is a bit short, but we, we'll manage. We'll manage. I'll have to read going like this. Hello, everybody. Uh, I begin by praising God, and I ask him to send peace and blessings upon all of his prophets and messengers, all of the righteous people throughout time. I ask him to bless all of us, all of you here tonight, and I want to thank all of the people who made it possible for us to be here, uh, the people, Brandon, who invited me, Ravi Zacharias Ministries, uh, Wayne State University. Uh, I want to thank the people on the panel who made it, uh, feasible for me to be here with them by agreeing to share the platform with me, Julie Roy, uh, Nabeel Qureshi, and, uh, for all of those who I didn't mention, God knows who you are, and with God will be your reward.

Now, for the topic at hand tonight is God: Triune, as our Christian friends say, or is he absolutely one? Obviously, Muslims and Christians are divided over this question. But on the other hand, Muslims and Christians do agree on so much, and we must not let our disagreements overshadow the fact that we agree on so much. For example, Muslims and Christians both believe in Jesus. A Muslim could not be a Muslim without believing in Jesus. We believe that Jesus was a prophet and messenger of God. He was one of the great messengers, and, uh, that he performed many miraculous deeds, and, uh, finally, God raised him up into heaven, and, uh, many Muslims believe that Jesus will return a second time. And thus, uh, we have common beliefs with our Christian friends, and I'm hoping, uh, that when we walk out of here today, regardless of the fact that Nabeel will win this debate, uh, we will all walk out of this room as friends. Muslims and Christians together make up more than one half the world's population, and if we can combine our efforts in good, uh, then we can serve ourselves and humankind all the better. There's, there are so many challenges to religion nowadays. There is new atheism on the rise, and there is a rise of immorality and godlessness. There is terrorism and crime of various sorts, uh, we have to combine our efforts to battle all of these and, and poverty, and, and to help the needy and people suffering throughout the world. So at the same time, uh, people who organized this event, call it together because, because they felt that it is important that we also discuss our differences so that we get to a better understanding of each other. Hence, the topic is God: Triune or is he absolutely one?

I'd like to base my talk tonight on three points, and to make my points easy to remember, uh, I will link each one to the first three letters that spell the word "three" in English. So, help me here, how do you spell the word "three"? T-H-R-E-E. So let's knock off the, the last two E's, and then we have T-H-R. So I'll link my three ideas to these, uh, letters. The first, uh, idea I will link is the text of scripture. I'll say that's my T. Now, I will say that the, the text of the Bible, in particular, favors Tawhid over Trinity. Let me explain to you why. Now, I, I'll get to this book in a moment, but, uh, let me start by saying that, as you know, the Bible is made up of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And Nabeel said a lot about the Old Testament. I want to just pick up on some of those points, though. I'll have another opportunity later on to reply specifically to the things that Nabeel said. Now, in referring to the Old Testament, what Nabeel is saying is that God appeared, uh, and so that proves that it's possible for God to appear, as he has appeared many times in the Old Testament. But what should not be forgotten is that there are clear statements in the, in the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament, and in the core of the Old Testament, which, as we know, is the Torah. Everything else is built around the Torah, and without the Torah, nothing stands, not the rest of the Old Testament, not the New Testament. And the, the core of the Torah is the Ten Commandments, which God took the trouble to write on stones and give to the prophet Moses. Now, the first two commandments is, uh, first, that you should not have any other God but Yahweh as the only God, and second, that you should not worship anything that, that looks like anything that walks on the, on the earth or flies in the sky or swims in the ocean, because Yahweh does not resemble any of these things. So those are two of the first 10 commandments. Uh, it's given in Deuteronomy chapter 5 and also in Exodus chapter 20. And when Moses became angry and broke the stone tablets, God wrote them for him all over again, as mentioned in Exodus chapter 34. So these must be very important. Now, you cannot take unclear statements and interpret the clear statements in the light of the unclear statements. That's like putting the cart before the horse.

I have here a book written by Gregory Boyd, in which he defends the Trinity against the arguments of Oneness Pentecostals, and it's interesting that he makes the same point. He's saying that Oneness Pentecostals are wrong for saying that there is no Trinity. How are they wrong? Many reasons, including that they interpret the clear verses in the light of the unclear ones. In other words, one passage tells you something very clearly, in a point-blank manner, and you're going to leave that aside for the moment, take your belief from some other hint that you see, say, "It looks like Yahweh is like this," and then you come back to the clear statement and you make that clear statement agree with what you took from some unclear thing. So, Ten Commandments, very clear: Yahweh is the only God. Don't worship any but him. Don't make any idols. Nothing that you imagine can be Yahweh. And then you leave that aside and you take some statement that says, "Oh, Yahweh appeared," and then you think that Yahweh has a certain appearance or form. But, uh, I'd like to introduce you to another book. This, uh, book is by Michael Bird and others who wrote this to defend the Trinity. It is entitled "How God Became Jesus," and Michael Bird says that the Angel of the Lord is an enigma. Now, who is the Angel of the Lord? The Angel of the Lord appears many times in the Old Testament. On one such occasion, he appears to Moses and he speaks as though he is Yahweh, and then on another occasion, as if he's not Yahweh. So who is he? Is he Yahweh or is he not? This is an enigma, and the Christian scholars admit this. Now, you do not take an enigmatic passage like this and then go reinterpret the clear statements. And I, I feel this is what sometimes people do, and that, that is that is a mistake. If we take the clear statements of the Old Testament, there is only one God who is Yahweh, and, uh, he is not a Triune God. There is no reason for imagining that Yahweh in the Old Testament is a Triune God.

Nabeel mentioned the use of the term Elohim and also, is there a problem? Oh, my, my CT has been disconnected for somehow. Okay. Uh, it's fine. Somebody can resolve that for me, please, and then we'll get back to it. Uh, now, to continue, then, Gregory Boyd, in the same book, he mentioned some weak arguments that Trinitarians use while he's defending the Trinity. He's admitting that there are some weak arguments the Trinitarians use, and he's not recommending that we use those arguments to defend the Trinity. On page 66, he summarizes what he has said before by saying, "I previously referred to the arguments for the Trinity on the basis, uh, of the word for God, Elohim, and the word for one, echad, as examples of such weak arguments." So, according to what a known Trinitarian, those are weak arguments which, uh, my, uh, friend Nabeel has put forward. And I have to speak politely to Nabeel because, as I mentioned to him just before we started today, when I look at him, I, I see my children because Nabeel is of the same age as some of my, my children, as some of you know. Now, I, I have two grandchildren already. So I do appreciate Nabeel, and, and I appreciate the fact that he has come forward to enter this debate on a difficult subject such as the, uh, doctrine of the Trinity. Uh, but we're all learning as we go. I, I learn as well. As I said, I will have a chance to come back to deal more specifically with some of the arguments Nabeel raised, but I want to deal with something right away that he asked me to answer for. He's saying, when, when we criticize the Trinity as Muslims, are we failing to take into consideration the fact that, uh, Muslims have some idea of a mystery of God as well? And the answer to that is no, I don't fail to take that into consideration. But we, we should understand when something is a mystery about God and when something is so clear and clearly wrong. For example, C. Randolph Ross, in her book entitled "Common Sense Christianity," says that there is a difference between a paradox and the Trinity. She's saying that a paradox is something that you observe, and you know it shouldn't have been so, but, but you observe it. You know this to be a fact, and you can see it happening before your eyes. So some of the examples that Nabeel mentioned from Stephen Hawking, from Richard Feynman, when he talks about energy, and you can go further and talk about quantum physics and the strange world of quantum mechanics, those are paradoxes that we do observe, and we need some theory to explain those observances. When we're talking about the Trinity, however, we can see that there is a clear historical development. It's no longer a mystery. We can see how it all happened. We can see that, uh, there is, first of all, a, a Unitarian Christianity in, in the early stages, and then we have a binitarian Christianity where we have now two persons who are God, and eventually, there is a Trinitarian, uh, Christianity. Now, there are three persons. So we go from Unitarian to binitarianism of missteps among Christians.

So what about the Mihna then? The, the question that Muslims had to ask about, uh, is the Quran created? For example, and, and are the attributes of God part of him or are not him? And the statement, "Bismillah," we say, "Okay, we're going to say that, we don't know exactly about some of these things." Now, these are mysteries, but those mysteries are not particular to Muslims. Those mysteries exist in Christianity as well, and also in Judaism. When Jews spoke about the Torah, they spoke about the Torah in terms which are similar to Muslims speaking about the Quran, and the same question arises, as, for example, as is explained by F.E. Peters in his book "Children of Abraham." Similar questions arose among Jews: "What do you say about the Torah? Is that God or not God?" Now, the, the problem in Christianity is not this. The problem is something else. In Christianity, we have another person who is suddenly being worshiped. If Muslims took the Quran and said, "This Quran is God," and they start worshiping the Quran, then we have something similar to what has happened in Christianity. But this has not happened in Islam. If Muslims took the knowledge of God and said, "The knowledge of God is a separate person from God," and they start worshiping this knowledge of God, then we have something comparable with Christianity, but nothing like this has happened in Islam. So, in fact, there is nothing comparable. Now, what has happened in Islam is there in Christianity? So Christianity has a double problem if we consider this to be a problem. First, how do you explain the Trinity? And second, how do you explain this particular aspect when we speak about the knowledge of God, for example? Now, John's Gospel speaks about the Logos of God. Jesus is the Logos of God come down on earth. What is the Logos? The Word of God. Now, the Word of God became a human being.

Does he have words of his own? Yes. Now, if the Word of God, the Logos, is also God, what about the words of Jesus? Does that also become God? Okay, if the Holy Spirit is God and the Holy Spirit speaks, does that make His word also somehow God? So now you have a different problem to explain here. And that is what you're pointing to as a Muslim problem. That problem is shared by Muslims, by Jews, by Christians. And we have ways of getting over that. We're saying there are some things about God, God, which we are told in scripture, which we know about. We don't understand how it may be so. Okay, that much is a mystery. But when you start taking some aspect of God and making that a separate person, and you're considering that to be God, now suddenly you have the three-in-one problem. How do you explain that there are three and yet one?

The final point I want to make is about reason. So that's my R of "reason." Now, I've already started talking about that to a certain extent, but I want to go a little deeper. Nabil is saying, well, God is loving, and and and that explains why we need to have the Trinity. Well, that sounds nice. It's nice to hear that God is loving. And in fact, in Islamic terminology as well, we speak of God being loving and kind and merciful. The Quran says He is forgiving and full of loving-kindness. But if you say now that in order for Him to be loving, there must be three persons within the one God to love each other, this is an after-the-fact justification. It is an after-the-fact justification.

I said I'll talk about this book and, um, now you don't see it, but I'll show it to you, which is fine because we have some folks listening on radio and they won't be able to see it anyway. So here you go. Here's the book: "Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity," written by four scholars defending various ideas about the Trinity, various views about the Trinity. Two views actually, which spell out actually to four varied views, but can be categorized as two basic views. One of the writers, an Evangelical, Thomas Mall, said, "Step Holmes," rather, "Step Holmes on page 42 of this book says that you can invent all kinds of justifications once you already have the Trinity. You already believe in the Trinity and you say, 'Okay, why the Trinity?' Because God is love, and it's good that they love each other." That's an after-the-fact justification. And he says here, "I cannot help feeling that if scripture had spoken to us of four Divine persons, we would have found it just as easy to discover reasons why it must have been four." He's admitting very plainly that, first of all, that there is no proof that God should be a Trinity from a rational perspective. And the after-the-fact justifications that have been offered, such as that God is love and therefore God is a Trinity, this kind of after-the-fact justification can be offered even if you said that God is, that there are four persons.

But then I want to ask you, how do we know when you say that is a complex one? How do you know to stop at three? If it's a complex one, you can have 1 * 1 * 1 * 1 * 1, that is also equal to one. Why do you stop at three or four or five? If God is able to come down into this universe, which is great, I don't think that people are questioning the ability of God here. We're just saying that this seems to be a logical impossibility because if you talk about the perfect God becoming an imperfect man and still being God at the same time, then he's perfect and imperfect at the same time. That seems to be a logical impossibility. But the greater problem is, how do you know that you stop at three? There's no verse of the Bible which says that there are only three. There used to be a verse, 1 John chapter 5:7, but the wording of that verse no longer says that there are three who bear record in heaven, and these three are one. Now, in the end, in the Bibles that you're reading today, what gives anyone the firm conclusion that there are only three Divine persons? You can say, "Only three have revealed themselves to us so far," but how do you know a fourth one isn't lurking in the shadows, ready to reveal himself? Or that as we speak now, in another planet in our galaxy, or in another planet in another galaxy, a Divine person is now revealing himself? In fact, how do you know in human history that the Father did not reveal himself as Krishna or Vishnu or one of the avatars of Hinduism, or some other God or heroic person of old, or will reveal himself in the future, or another Divine person? So by by saying that it is complex and you can open it up, you can open it up, you're actually opening up a can of gods.

So my my three arguments then, and I don't, I don't mean to belittle the Christian faith. I mean, I know you guys like the little light moment as well, but it's fine for us to have a little bit of light moment, and it can work both ways. But we must be respectful when we speak about the faith of other people because faith is something internal. It's very dear to us, precious, and we don't want to see it maligned in any way. We're trying to understand these ideas. And my question to Nabil will be, how do you know that there are only three Divine persons?

Now, to go further, I want to return to my history question. I have here a book entitled "St. Peter: The Underestimated Apostle" by Martin Hengel. Martin Hengel, as you know, is widely recognized as a conservative scholar. And Martin Hengel now recognizes that there has been a split in the early church. There's been a division between Paul on the one hand and Peter on the other hand. This division is actually explained in more detail in a book entitled "The Evidence for Jesus" by James Dunn. What these scholars are showing is that two streams of teaching went out in the early church. My video is back up, but now I'll just go without it. Two streams of teaching. On the one hand, there is Paul, and hence we find in the New Testament statements about Paul saying, for example, that God came down, humbled himself, became Jesus, Philippians chapter 2, the Kenosis. That Nabil spoke about. 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse number 6. Paul takes the Shema Yisrael and he makes two persons out of that. One in the Shema Yisrael, there was only one Lord God. And now Paul makes it one Lord and one God, one Lord Jesus, one God the Father. He splits them. So, we know the Hadron Collider has split the atom recently. Now, Paul did a splitting way back when. But Paul is representing one particular view here. And the view of Peter and other early disciples of Jesus did not survive to be written for us in the New Testament. We do have two documents that are named First Peter and Second Peter, apparently letters of Peter written in Peter's name, actually. But according to Martin Hengel, these are pseudonymous works, which means that somebody else wrote them using Peter's name. Why would they want to do that? Well, one reason is that if you look at Second Peter, you'll see that Second Peter praises Paul and speaks of him as brother Paul and speaks about his letters as if these are scriptures on par with the scriptures of God. What these scholars are saying is that somebody who is a follower of Paul, wanting to show Paul in a good light and wanting to show that Peter accepted Paul, wrote this in order to promote Paul.

When we read Acts of the Apostles, which is a sort of history book in the Christian New Testament, we get the idea that there is a reproach between the various sides. Paul on the other hand, on the one hand, James on the other hand, Peter has now gone off somewhere else. Why is he gone off somewhere else? And we're not even told where. According to Martin Hengel, this is Luke's way of bringing people on stage, taking them off stage. That's why we have the pageants, you know, based on Luke's Gospel at Christmas time, right? Luke is good at that, bringing people, taking them off stage. So Peter just goes off elsewhere. We don't know where. In the Acts of the Apostles, we have to find that information elsewhere. And then James becomes the leader of the church. Who is James? It's mentioned as the Lord's brother. James now is shown to be the brother of Jesus. Paul comes to Jerusalem. When he comes to Jerusalem, James puts him to the test. Are you still following the Jewish laws? And to pass the test, Paul pays for the sacrifices of those who had entered into a vow, and he himself goes into that sacrificial routine. Now, these, this is a couple of decades after Jesus has already set to be died on the cross, and Christians think Jesus died on the cross. That means a new dispensation has been entered. Now we do no longer follow the law. And Paul himself, in his writings, seemed to be saying, we don't need to follow the law anymore. We have a new dispensation. But he comes to Jerusalem and what is he doing? Following the law right up to the extent of performing the sacrifices which we are told that the one sacrifice of Jesus did away with forever. Now, what's happening here? Luke is reconciling and showing us that they are in agreement. But according to Black's New Testament commentaries, it seems hypocritical for Paul to behave in this way. So either he didn't believe in this way, and Luke is just making it such, or perhaps he is all things to all men, as he said himself, in order to win them to Christ. But when we look at this, we see that there was a division. And the early Christian apostles who followed Jesus, their message did not survive. Their group survived. There's a group called Ebionites, named after Matthew's statement apparently, where Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor." So they were called the Ebionites, the poor ones. But their movement died out within the first few centuries of Christianity. What did they believe? They believed not in a Triune God, but they believed that Jesus was a prophet and a messenger of God. They believed in only one God, as Muslims today believe. This was the earliest belief.

Finally, we should say that Nabil's task is to prove that the three persons are each a person, and that they have personal characteristics, and that each one is completely God. And I don't think Nabil has done that for the Holy Spirit in particular. That's a very important point because as we trace the history, we go back to the history. For the moment of my point, history, we see that in the early church, it was not clear that the Holy Spirit is a separate Divine person. I have here an article written by Clint Tibbs entitled "The Spirit World and the Holy Spirit Among the Earliest Christians: Special Reference to 1 Corinthians 12:14 as a Test Case." And what Tibbs is showing is that in fact, the early Christians did not think of the Holy Spirit as necessarily a set, a person within the Divine Trinity. They thought of there being holy spirits, and sometimes they spoke of a holy spirit, which means that he could be one of others. We notice that the Apostles' Creed from the 2nd century said, "We believe in the Holy Spirit," but doesn't say that the Holy Spirit is God. When the Council of Nicaea produced their document, it didn't at first say that the Holy Spirit is God. They had to reconvene in the year 381 at Constantinople to finally declare that the Holy Spirit is worshipped along with God and the Father. And then it would take another addition to that Creed to say that He proceeds also from the Son. And then, as you know, eventually the Eastern Church split away in 1054 because they could not accept that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son, which would make him doubly subordinate to the Father. So I think these are very important points to think about: the text, the history, and reason. Thank you, Dr. Ali. Because of the technical difficulties we had, I want to compensate you for two extra minutes. So if you could put two minutes on the clock, that's all right. I'll give it to Nabil. Okay. Well, again, thank you so much, Dr. Shabir Ali, President of the Islamic Information and Dawah Center International. If you are just joining us by radio or by video feed, you are listening to a debate between a Muslim apologist and a Christian apologist on what God is really like on the campus here at Wayne State University. I'm Julie Roy, and this does conclude the first portion of our debate. We're now going to take a short break, but when we come back, there will be rebuttal by each of our debaters. They will get 10 minutes each, and then we'll go into sort of a rapid-fire cross-examination between our two debaters, and then finally, there will be an opportunity for the audience here to offer their questions. So again, a very short break. We ask you to stay in your seats for this portion because it will be show, so short. Thank you very much. Stay in your seats. You can stand up, but just stay in your seats. We're not going to be very long with this break. Um, if you would get out those cards that you were given, you should have a yellow card. If you could fill out that yellow card right now, that is for the prizes that we will be offering at the end of our debate. And then the white index card, that is your opportunity to ask a question. So if you have that white index card, if you could write your question there, and on the left right corner, put A for Dr. Ali if the question is to Dr. Ali, and a Q for Dr. Kashi if your question is to Dr. Kashi. We'll be back after we get this mic situation worked out and the computers as well.

Beyond all reason, you gave your life, your all, forever.

Okay, if you could get your seats, please, and quiet down. We're going to come back. Please find your seats, and we are going to be going live, live in just a few seconds. All right, we're going to start back. If you could get quiet, please. Thank you. Please get quiet. All right, thank you very much. Well, welcome back to our debate this evening on what God is really like. Is He one and indivisible as the Muslim doctrine of Tawhid teaches, or is He three in one as Christians believe? I'm Julie Roy, a host of a program on Moody Radio called "Up For Debate," and I am pleased to be serving as moderator tonight on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Well, defending the Muslim position is Dr. Shabir Ali, President of the Islamic Information and Dawah Center International, and defending the Christian view is Dr. Nabil Kashi of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Before our break, both Dr. Kashi and Dr. Shabir Ali gave their 25-minute opening statements. Now, things are going to move a little bit faster. Each will have 10 minutes to offer their rebuttal. Dr. Nabil Kashi will be going first. So, Dr. Kashi, welcome back to the microphone. You have 10 minutes.

Now, I'm having computer troubles. This is a divine retribution, I think. Got to make it equal. Maybe I'll stop two minutes early, too. We'll see. Okay, well, that was an enlightening opening statement. I thank you for sharing your thoughts. Um, I do want to try to go point by point by what you said. Something that's really hard about debates, it's the hardest thing on the heart of debaters is what to cover because you're always going to have to miss out on something. And so hopefully, I intend on at the end of this debate writing up a review. And my my initial opening statement was much, much longer, so you, I'll try probably put up like a two-hour video explaining the Trinity. And in the future, just go to www.nabilkashi.com. I hope to have that up in the near upcoming time. Okay, so the first, he gave three points talking about the text of scripture, history, and reason. It was easy to follow along. Thank you for that. Mine was T.H.R. I can't come up with anything for that, so sorry. T.H.R., very nice.

The first was text of scripture. Did God appear in the Old Testament? Please, if you wouldn't mind switching to my computer now. I want to show these verses here. Oh, you get to see my background screen. That's nice. All right, how about that? Is it, is it coming? All right, well, let's just read it for the people on radio, so you can switch that off. That was two minutes right there. See, we're equal again.

What Dr. Ali has said is that we have to interpret the clear verses in light of the not-clear verses. I completely agree with that. That's a very good hermeneutic position. So what he said was, the first of the Ten Commandments said, "You can't worship anything that looks like God or anything like that." Let's read it a little bit more carefully. The first commandment says, "I am the Lord your God." Exodus 20:2-4. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." And then it says, "You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth." It doesn't say anything about God not becoming a man.

Now, let's read what the verses said that I alluded to earlier. On Genesis 3:8, for example, "They heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day." So God comes and walks in the garden. Genesis 32:28-30. He says, "It says, 'You have striven with God and with man and have prevailed.'" And Jacob responds, verse 30, "I have seen God face to face, and my life has been preserved." So even he's shocked. "I saw God and I'm still alive." Check that out. So what Jacob says, he sees God. In Exodus 3:4, "When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, 'Moses, Moses,' and he said, 'Here I am.'" So God calls out from this burning bush. Interestingly, the rabbis said, I'm going to see if I can find this in my notes, but the rabbis have been noted to say that this was, uh, Nahmanides said this in the 12th century. Let's see if I can find it. No, I can't find it. But anyway, Nachmanides, who's a Jewish rabbi, has said that when God can commit gem, he can incarnate. And when God was speaking out of the burning bush, that was indeed God. I hope to find that quote for you soon. But, um, the Jews thought that way too, that this is indeed God. Let's keep going a little bit further. Exodus 13:21: "The Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them life." Exodus 24. How much clearer can we get? "They saw the God of Israel, and under his feet there appeared a pavement." So the clear verse is that God does show up. The unclear verse is what you were saying. So I want to make sure we get that very clearly. What the first commandment says is, "Do not worship an idol," and I completely agree. Do not do that.

You also said that the Christian Trinity was first Unitarian, then Binitarianism. I've provided the fact that the earliest Christian evidence is that Jesus was Yahweh. We see it in Mark's Gospel. We see it in two pre-Pauline hymns and creeds. The earliest stuff we have is that Jesus was Yahweh, at least Trinitarian. And I understand your point about the Trinity. I hope to get there soon. Your second point was on history. You said, briefly talked about the Mutazila. I want you to remember what Mutazila says. He says that he who believes the Quran is eternal is guilty of breaching Tawhid. So it's not Nabil saying this. It's what happened among Muslims. If someone thinks the Quran is eternal, then they're breaching Tawhid. I'm not saying that the early Muslims said that, and they killed each other over it, and philosophers were willing to talk about that and did talk about that. Ghazali had a position on it. Ghazali was against Ikhwan al-Safa, Al-Farabi, etc. These early Muslim scholars were talking about these very things, taking opposite positions because of it. So this isn't Nabil talking. This is what the early Muslim scholars were saying.

You said the Quran being a kind of being, knowledge of God, is not comparable because the Quran is not worshipped. I do find it interesting that it's considered blasphemy to burn the Quran. In a sense, that seems like worship to me. But I get what you're saying. No one actually says, "Worship the Quran." The problem is, I almost think people should. If, as you said, that the Quran is Allah's eternal knowledge, is that knowledge separate from Him, or is it a part of Him? And if that Quran is, as most Muslims and yourself, Sunnis, I believe, if it is a part of Him, as most people believe, then why not worship it? It's a part of Allah. It's God's knowledge. So the question isn't, "Well, it's not worship, therefore it's not the same." It should be, according to this logic.

He did say, and I completely agree with this, that Jews and Christians and Muslims all have this issue to deal with when we're talking about the Word of God. It's fascinating. Read what happened in the commentary of the Jews on the Old Testament in Aramaic. What they used to have were kind of Old Testament, kind of copies of the Old Testament. And in there, every single time the word of when God interacted with the world, instead of taking the word saying "God interacted with the world," they say "the Memra of the Lord," which means "the Word of God." So even the Jews took out these theophanies in those Aramaic commentaries and put in the Memra of the Lord, the Word of God. So Christians have a Word of God, Muslims have a Word of God, which is Allah, and Jews have a Word of God. And the reason they're doing this is because when you have this monotheistic faith with God interacting with the world, a God who does not change interacting with the changing world, you're going to have issues that just simply won't make sense. But that's my point. They exist in Islam and Christianity. And the question about the Logos, I think, applies equally to both faiths. He called the, the, um, love my point about love as an after-the-fact statement. I don't think so. Let me revisit this. Hopefully, this will make more sense. Again, in the Christian view, God is essentially love, which means He is love from eternity past. He doesn't become love when something is created. But in the Islamic view, since love is relational, it requires a being and an object, a subject and an object, then Allah could not be loving until He created something. So He's not, in His essence, love. And so there is a very significant difference there.

And you said, "Why stop at three Gods?" That's an interesting question. I think it's because the Bible says three Gods. This is a matter of revelation. I'm sorry, not three Gods, but three persons in the Godhead. This is a matter of revelation. We look at what the scripture says. We listen to God and say, "God, what do you tell us?" Which is, by the way, exactly what Ash'ari does when he says, "Bismillahi." Once again, Dr. Ali, I think we have to be consistent in our standards. If the vast majority of Muslims throughout history believe in the eternality of the Quran because of Bismillahi, are you condemning them as well as Christians when you ask for how these things can happen?

I do want to point out to you that Genesis 1 actually has in verses 1 through 3, the word because God speaks, you have the Word there. You have God the Father, and you have the Spirit hovering over the waters. So you have three there. In Matthew 28:19, it says, "Go and make disciples of all Nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Three again. In 2 Corinthians at the end, people are greeted in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I find this verse really amazing from Isaiah 40. Where is it? Oh, man, I lost it. Isaiah 48:12-16. There it is. Okay, Isaiah 48:12-16. "Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, my called. I am He. I am the first. I am also the last. I was there, and now the Lord God and His Spirit have sent me. I am the first and the last, Alpha and Omega." And the Lord God and His Spirit sent me. It's in the Old Testament. Three. That's why we say three. I got to keep going.

He says, "Martin Hengel now recognizes." Martin Hengel is dead. So I do think he recognizes the Trinity now. To be fair, sorry, I shouldn't have done that. But to be fair, he was a champion for the Lord, even as in his life. I want to say briefly, since I'm running out of time, there's so much more I want to talk about. Everything about the Ebionites, we know I think is a bit shaky because, for example, what we heard is that the Ebionites were founded after a guy named Ebion, which we know is not the case. So the early apologists who are giving us this history about the Ebionites was not actually something that we can hang our hat on. Even Bart Ehrman today says that all four Gospels proclaim the deity of Christ. We have Jewish scholars today who say that Jews at the time of Jesus were Trinitarian. And I'll provide those quotes in the future. It's for this reason we know that the doctrine of the Trinity brings everything together in the best way possible. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Kashi, for that. Again, Dr. Nabil Kashi with Ravi Zacharias Ministries. Now, Dr. Ali, you have 10 minutes for your rebuttal as well.

Okay, and this time we won't have any issues with the computer because I left that behind. That was an interesting response from Nabil. Thank you very much, Nabil, for that engaging conversation. To continue with Nabil, asked about the word Tawhid. It's not mentioned in the Quran, so isn't that a problem? And Muslims say, well, Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible. The comparable case is not made here because when we speak about Tawhid, that is a concept that Muslims are saying God is one. And to say God is one, the Arabic word for that is Tawhid. But we don't have to use this word. Muslims can repeat just the words of the Quran, which says again and again, times till you know, if you're not a Muslim, you might be tired of reading it, you might be asking, you know, why is it said so many times? God is one. Okay, I get it already. In so many different ways, the Shahada of Islam, the credal statement, is mentioned in the Quran twice. "No god but He." Mentioned so many times in the Quran. So the, we can stick with just what is mentioned in the Quran. But a convenient way for Muslims to say that is to say, "We believe," or "Our concept is Tawhid." Said that the word is not even mentioned in the Hadith. But as Bal Phillips has shown in his book, "Fundamentals of Tawhid," there is actually a Hadith which speaks about making God one or considering God to be one, which is in Arabic, and that is the same form or the same verbal form of that is the verbal noun is actually Tawhid.

Now, our complaint about the Trinity is that you needed a word to say that there are three in one because there is no verse in the Bible which actually says that. I just heard Nabil saying that the Bible says three persons in the Godhead. And I wrote it down as soon as he said it because first he made a mistake and said three gods, and then he corrected himself and said three persons in the Godhead. And he's saying that the Bible says this, but I will tell you, folks, there is no place in the Bible where it says that there are three persons in the Godhead. This wording just does not occur. So Christians had to invent that very wording to say that there are three persons in one God. And then, in addition to that, they invented the word Trinity. The problem is not so much with the word Trinity, it's the concept behind it that is the problem. That concept is not found actually in the Bible. That concept is a way of making sense of two things: one is that the Bible clearly says that there is only one God, many times in the Old Testament, many times in the New Testament. That's one fact. The other fact is that Christians began to worship Jesus. So now they found themselves with like two gods, and they know they can't have two Gods. So then they started to find a way to explain that this Jesus that they're worshipping is Yahweh Himself, or somehow Yahweh. And so the idea of the Trinity came to be developed over time. It is a patchwork joining two things which cannot really be joined. And the themes are always showing because, as James White said in his book "The Forgotten Trinity," it is easy to fall into heresy when you think about the Trinity. If you think, as some Christians may say, that God is like we might be a father and a son and a husband at the same time, he said this is modalism. That's a heresy. So either you err on the side of modalism, or you err on the side of tritheism, where you think of the God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as being so distinct from each other that really they become three gods in your mind. So either you are this way, or you err the other way. When it comes to thinking about Jesus, Christians are required to think that Jesus is fully God and fully man at the same time, in such a way that everything He does is done by God and man both doing it at the same time. So then we ask, okay, so He died on the cross. That means God died. Then Christians think about it and say, no, God doesn't die. Now you're separating the two, which you're not supposed to do. So this is another heresy. And according to E.P. Sanders in his book "Paul: Christians in Practice," almost have to decide which heresy they're going to commit because you have to walk such a sharp edge, you're going to fall on one side or the other. Why? Because this is an invented concept.

It is true that in Islamic history, people discuss some mysteries about God. Yes, there was the Mutazila, the Inquisition. Yes, people quarreled over whether the Quran was created or not. But that is a quarrel that is not unique to Islam, and that is not the same problem, or a problem at the level of the Trinity. That's a problem that exists for Jews as well, and also for Christians. So in addition to the Trinity, you still have this problem. You can ask, okay, is the Old Testament created or not created? Is it, is it not the uncreated Word of God? Nabil is suggesting, yeah, you Muslims should worship the Quran because that's the eternal Word of God. Okay, so the Torah is the eternal Word of God. Should Christians now worship the Torah? No. Should Muslims worship the Quran? No. I think that's a very weak argument, Nabil. You have to do better than that. Nabil is saying, I'm sorry, I don't mean that in a demeaning way, but it came out in the spirit of debate. I actually regret that I said it in that way. Nabil, forgive me for that. Nabil suggested that the Quran has a history following Nasar Abu and other scholars. I don't deny that the Quran has a history. I take a view in which God operates in the world through natural causes. And so if we find the natural causes through which God operates, that does not mean that God... This goes into the whole theory of evolution debate. Is it evolution or is it creation? And I take the view that it is both. It is creative evolution. What scientists describe through natural methods, we speak of it as God's doing. We may not know all of the details, but God does everything. God gave me two grandsons, but there is a method through which it happens. I had to get my children married first and so on. So we know the method, but we don't deny that God is behind all of the natural causes that we observe. So when Uthman and Ali differed about how many chapters there were in the Quran, that's because human beings are doing the best they can to collect what they understand to be the Word of God and to recollect the teachings that were left by the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. They were doing the best they can. These are the reports that came down to us. But the overwhelming majority of reports that came down to us from the early generation of Muslims convinces Muslims that the 114 chapters of the Quran that we have today is completely the Word of God, and only this is the Quranic text. So when scholars like Goldziher and الإسلامي are looking at the Quran and looking at early manuscripts, we're seeing all of this as part of the natural history that could occur with any book. But Muslims rest assured with the promise of the Quran, we certainly God has revealed the Quran, and God is preserving this Quran, the 15th chapter, the 9th verse.

Now, to continue, Nabil is saying that there is a Triadic formula in Matthew's Gospel at the end, and also in 2 Corinthians. But did you also consider in that First Timothy 15:211 has a different Triadic formula, and there it's not the Holy Spirit, but angels? So you have God and Christ and the Holy Angels. Then Revelation 1:4 actually speaks about God and Christ and the seven spirits. So now, how do you know how many gods are in that complex one that you talk about? You said one Holy Spirit. What if there are actually seven Holy Spirits, as might be hinted in Revelation 1, verse number 4? And if you look at Isaiah 48:12-16, where it says, "God and His Spirit." In the Old Testament, the Spirit of God, according to James Charlesworth in his book "Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls," was never used in the way that Christians use the term "Spirit of God" today. How was Spirit of God used in the Old Testament? As another way of speaking of God. When it says, and you might think that it means two different things, but in Hebrew, we have parallelism where the same thing is said twice, conjoined with "and." It looks like two things, but it's another way of emphasizing. It's saying God did this, God's Spirit did this. Still God, and it's still not two different persons. It's still the one God. That would explain also when God is said to have created the heavens and the earth at the beginning of Genesis, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Now, you can speculate who is the Spirit of God. Is He God, or is He someone else? The best way of interpreting that is to say that this is God's active force. Instead of speaking of the unchanging God doing something directly to the changing universe, people spoke of God doing it through an intermediary sometimes. So, is the Spirit of God an aspect of God, or is He an intermediary? Okay, let's say there's a mystery here, but you don't turn a mystery into a bigger problem. As Sandford said in her book "Common Sense Christianity," you don't solve a smaller mystery by creating a bigger one, just as you wouldn't dig a bigger hole to fill a smaller one. So, I think the Trinity really is a bigger problem that Christians have come up with to deal with these passages. And a lot is being dealt with in hindsight.

He asked me to prove what the early Christians believed. Well, as he said, we don't have the direct writings of the earliest Christians. We have secondhand reports. The history is written by the winners, and they were not the winners. The winners may have misrepresented them. But what we do know, and what scholars can conclude, is mentioned here by James Dunn in his book "The Evidence for Jesus," page 96. He says, "For the Jewish Christian of the second and third centuries, Jesus was simply a prophet." And so on. I don't have time to continue it, but that is my evidence by citing scholars. It's a way of proving a case. Thank you very much.

All right, thank you so much, Dr. Shabir Ali. If you are just joining us by radio or by our live video stream, you're listening to a debate between Muslim scholar Dr. Shabir Ali and Christian scholar Dr. Nabil Kashi on what is God really like. And now we are going to move into a very quick part of our debate. It's the cross-examination portion. And during this time, each debater will be able to ask five questions of their opponent. So, Dr. Nabil Kashi will start. He will ask a total of five questions. He will have 30 seconds to ask each question, and then Dr. Shabir Ali, you will have 90 seconds to give your answer. And then we'll switch, and Dr. Ali will cross-examine Dr. Kashi. So, Dr. Kashi, welcome back to the mic for your cross-examination. And Dr. Ali, once again, thank you so much for coming tonight. I've really appreciated your work and I appreciate what you're doing here as well, as a large part of my life has led me to where I am today. So I truly thank you. The first question I want to ask you is, do you agree with the Mu'tazila that the Quran is not eternal, or do you agree with the Ash'ari that the Quran is eternal?

I believe that this debate has been overblown, as many debates have been overblown in history. Sometimes people differ and they argue with each other, and if they really sat down and listened to it, what they were saying to each other, they would realize that the difference is not as great as they thought it was. And this is the kind of kitchen table debates that go on in many households. When we look back at what they were debating, we realize that both were right in some way. When some people spoke about the uncreated Word of God, they were thinking about the eternal knowledge of God, which cannot conceivably be absent from God. And when others spoke about the Quran being created, they're speaking about the text that we hold in our hands, that we recite with our tongues, that we write with pen and ink. So there were two different perspectives. They were arguing about two different things. Sometimes people have to stop and define their terms, and because people don't take the time to define their terms, they argue about two different things, and it looks like they have an argument, but essentially, perhaps there is no real disagreement. So I think they were both right in some way. There is an eternal Word of God, always with God, that is His knowledge. And at the same time, there is a revealed Word of God, which comes at a certain time in history, and it responds to questions that were being asked of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and occasions as they arose.

Please hold your applause till the end of the cross-examination. Now, you're saying that it took time for them to work it out, and I completely agree with that. It did take time for them to work. They did pause, and they did wait, and they did reflect, and then they kept killing each other about it. This was obviously something that was very important to them. Now, you might think that this is not a big deal at all, whether or not the Quran is eternal, but the vast majority of early Muslims, who we have records of, would disagree. So once again, I want to ask, now you said both are correct in some way, but what I want to ask from you then is, if the Quran, the recited words of scripture, are something that are eternal from from past eternity past, is that Allah, or is it something next to Allah, something apart from Allah that people are reciting?

Well, here we're talking about something mysterious. We can ask this about many things. We can ask not only about the knowledge of God, we can ask about His mercy, His forgiveness, His patience, His generosity. Are these things God or other than God? And we need to ask that not only of the Muslim, you need to ask the Jew and the Christian as well, because this is a problem for monotheism. We could ask further as a philosophical question, is God simple, as some philosophers said, or which would mean that He is eternal and outside of time, or is God somehow related to our time? And these are deep philosophical questions that are still being discussed inside and outside of religion by philosophers. I don't think this is a question that we need to be hung up on and that we need to give definitive answers about. We can say that there are certain mysteries about God that we all accept because the scriptures told us so, or they follow so inevitably from some basic presuppositions that we derive undeniably from scripture, and we accept them. And we differentiate between this kind of mystery and the Trinity, which is also claimed to be a mystery, because in the case of the Trinity, our Christian friends have taken what appears to be an aspect of God, His Logos, and they have made that into a separate entity to be worshipped, or a person to be worshipped along with the original God.

Thank you for your answer. I think you are really downplaying the importance of these questions. For example, the guy I quoted, Abu Hanifa, he says that the Quran is just like you said, has eternal nature and has a human nature. But because he said that, he was driven from his home, his post, and he's kicked out of Egypt. So this is really important to some people. You also said somewhat flippantly that the Quran, human beings are doing what they can. Is the Quran perfectly preserved? Has it always been, or has it been changed?

First of all, I'm not being flippant about the problem of the Divine, the Divine status and the Word of God in relation to the Divine being. I'm saying that this is a problem that is faced by people of all the monotheistic faiths, by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. And I'm just puzzled that you intend to pose this as a problem for Muslims. I'd like to hear your answers too about this, like what do Christians say? Do Christians say that the Torah is the eternal Word of God, a separate being along with God, a separate person? Maybe add that to the Trinity, make it a Quaternity. As for the question of the Quran's preservation, I do believe as a matter of faith that yes, the Quran has been preserved. God has promised that He will preserve His Word, and as a Muslim, I believe in that promise. When I look at the history of the...

Quranic text. I see every reason to believe that God has preserved the Quran so that Muslims can have confidence today that the Quran is the word of God. For example, there are numerical patterns which are found in the Quran, different from what Michael Dnan and others have tried to show about the Bible. And these patterns show that, in fact, the Quran has a hand behind it that's not the hand of any human being. It's the hand of God. And I, I did a similar test of the five books of the Torah and the four Gospels and the Psalms, and I saw that the similar pattern does not exist in these books, which leads me to believe that the Quran is the word of God.

I visited your website to look at some of those numerical patterns. I found that the evidence was not there to substantiate what you're saying. I don't know how to turn that into a question, though, so I'm going to move on to a question and say this: You referred to lost beliefs about the apostles. Would you not at least agree that the pre-Nicene hymns that we have are the earliest? And as I presented, they proclaimed Jesus as Yahweh, as you said in your debate with James White. And also, you haven't touched any of the Mark evidence I gave. Would you at least not agree that Mark presents Jesus as Yahweh?

I wouldn't agree that either Paul or Jesus or Mark presents Jesus as Yahweh. Paul, despite what he says about Jesus and raising Jesus to a high status, which Muslims would not accept, Paul stopped short of making Jesus Yahweh. For example, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 24, shows that in the final end game, Jesus is going to return all power to God who gave it to him in the first place, and Christ will be subjected to God so that God will be all in all. Which means that you do not have three co-equal and co-eternal beings. You have God who is greatest, and Jesus who is under God. That's why Paul could say in 1 Corinthians 11:3 that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.

Mark, as well, does not present Jesus as Yahweh. Even though there are some passages which, as you mentioned, about preparing the way of the Lord, which might tease the boundaries a little bit, but that's different from Mark coming out and saying, "Oh, looks like Jesus is actually Yahweh." Mark is actually very clear when he quotes Jesus in 12, number 29, Jesus repeating the same Shema Yisrael, saying that there was only one God, the God of Israel. And then the man who asked Jesus about this said, "You are right, teacher. There is only one God, and besides him there is no other." So the Him is somebody else other than Jesus. And then Jesus praised the man for having such deep insight. So it's clear from Mark's gospel that Jesus is not Yahweh. Mark 13:32 shows that Jesus does not know when the hour will occur.

And you just ended with talking about the Shema, and Jesus praises him. He says there's no God but He. Do you realize immediately after that, Jesus then quotes Psalm 110:1, which talks about two Lords? Mark is introducing Jesus in the way he introduces Yahweh. He has Jesus calming the storm the way Yahweh calms the storm. He has Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath, as Yahweh is Lord of the Sabbath. He has Jesus coming on the clouds of heaven as Yahweh is on the clouds of heaven. And you yourself did say in your debate with James White that in Philippians 2:10-11, Paul substitutes Jesus with Yahweh.

Do you not agree the fact that Paul teased the boundaries in this way by substituting Jesus for Yahweh, apparently in some verses, should not be taken as a way of canceling everything that Paul has said? It's very clear from elsewhere in Paul's writings, as I've mentioned, that Jesus the Christ is subjected to Yahweh. If we take Timothy as the writing of Paul, 1 Timothy 2:5 says that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. So it's very clear from a passage like this that Jesus Christ is not Yahweh.

When Jesus calms the storm or does these marvelous things, that doesn't prove that he is God, unless you define God as someone who does some of the things that Yahweh does. But you have to come with a better definition than this. God is that beyond which nothing greater can be conceived. That is a definition of God. It's a classic one. So if Jesus does some of the things that some of the prophets, for example, can do, like Elisha and Elijah have done in the Old Testament, they perform miracles. Even if Jesus has done some greater ones, even if Jesus is the first creature that God created and then used him to create everything else, that would make Jesus the most powerful created being we can imagine, but he's still a created being, and he's still not Yahweh who created him in the first place.

All right, thank you, gentlemen. That was invigorating. All right, now we're going to switch positions. Dr. Shabir Ali, you will get to ask Dr. Nabil Kaisi five questions. You'll have 30 seconds for each question, and Dr. Kaisi, you'll have 90 seconds for each response.

Yeah, um, now, Dr. Kaisi, you said that the says three persons in the Godhead. Can you tell us where in the Bible that phrase occurs?

Well, I mean, in the exact same sense that you said the is found in the Quran. The word, these words, these terms were not found in the text, just like you say, just as the worded is not found anywhere in the Quran. And the word, again, we're talking about the words, the worded is not found in the Hadith. Now, I find it interesting that you quoted B. Phillip's Fundamentals of Tawhid. That's exactly what I'm quoting because he also says in the same book that there is no word in the Hadith. It's true, but the concepts are there. In the case of the Trinity, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, we do see, like I said, from the beginning, that the concept of God, Elohim, allows for plurality. And then we take a look and see who are those, those appearances, those theophanies, who claims those kinds of prerogatives? What exactly is the text saying? Jesus is introduced as Yahweh, as I said, from the earliest level of Christian history. There is no development that Jesus ultimately became God. There is no, oh, the Romans thought that Son of God meant there's none of that. The very earliest evidence is that Jesus is Yahweh. And you take a look at some of the other texts in the New Testament, and you see that the Holy Spirit is also called God, and he's also made personal. So he's not this impersonal force. The text says that you should not grieve the Holy Spirit. It says, do not lie to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit refers to himself as "me," not "it." "It" would be impersonal. And yet the Holy Spirit is not the same as the Father, because we see the Father present in some verses along with the Holy Spirit. And Jesus is not the Father, because we see Jesus praying to the Father, for example.

Oh, I get till another 15 seconds. Well, he didn't take his long for his question. You tricked me. I'm sorry. All right. So Dr. Ali, look at the clock right in, right there. That's the one to Okay. Sure. I have 30 seconds and he has 130. Yeah. Okay. My fault. Sorry. Now, Dr. Kaisi, in your speech, you said that Psalm 110, or rather Genesis 19, speaks of Yahweh being here on Earth with Abraham, but he's also in heaven. And now, when you speak, when you say Yahweh is Yahweh, the name of the three together, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or is he just the, is Yahweh just the name of the Father? And if the, if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how do you explain the contradiction? Because it will mean that you have three on Earth and three in heaven as well.

That's a good question. I'm really glad you asked that because it's important we understand it. Um, it's Genesis 18:1 and 2, which says that Yahweh appeared as a man, and then 19, verse 24, is the one where you see Yahweh in front of Abraham, and Yahweh from the heavens. Now, Yahweh is the word that we use to describe what God is. It's the description of God's essence. God is all three: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. When Jesus, when we say that Jesus is Yahweh, we mean that he has that essence. He is one of the persons of Yahweh. So Yahweh is the tri-personal Trinity God. Jesus is one of the persons in the Trinity. We see that again throughout the Old Testament. You have these two Yahwehs appearing, not that there are two Gods. We know that because there's only one God in the Old Testament. But then in the New Testament, in some of those verses again, like Daniel 7 and like Psalm 110:1, Jesus is one of those two. So it's not necessitating that Yahweh is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit every time the term is used. When we say Jesus is Yahweh, we're talking about he is Yahweh. He's the second person of Yahweh.

In defining Yahweh in this sense, where sometimes Yahweh is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and sometimes he's not, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, aren't you falling into the fallacy of equivocation, where you change the given? Almost like in a math problem where X = 1, Y = 2, therefore X + Y = 3, but somebody says, "No, X + Y = 4," because X = 2. So they're changing the given. Aren't you changing the given when you say that sometimes Yahweh is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and sometimes he's not?

I want to clarify. So, thanks for giving me that opportunity again. The Christians are working out, as the Jews are, as the Muslims are, as we've all agreed, that people are working out their theology. And the point I was making about, you know, worshiping the Quran, the point I'm saying is that people are continuing to work out their theology even up to this day. They're going to work out their theology. The person I mentioned, Abu Zayd, is a modern historian. They're still working out their theology. So for your question, at that time, they're figuring out how exactly to approach these issues. Now, the term Yahweh, the concept Yahweh, always, the concept Yahweh always applies to Father, Son, Holy Spirit. God is always tri-personal. He's been tri-personal from eternity past. I'm not changing the given. It's these people who are beginning to wrestle with and grapple with how do we describe Yahweh? How do we talk about him? Of course, the Chalcedonian Creed and the Nicene Creed are not found in scripture. They're still working that stuff out. So they're hammering out the terms as they go. And that's what we find in the scripture when Yahweh is referred to, and you say, well, which person of Yahweh is that? They're still hammering out the terminology, but the concepts are there. And that's the exact same thing that you say about the in the Quran.

In your speech, you spoke about Psalm 110, where it says Yah says to my Lord, do you realize that the "my Lord" there is Adonai? It's not Yahweh. So you have Yahweh speaking to my Lord, and my Lord is someone else other than Yahweh. So if you say that Jesus is the "my Lord" here, isn't Jesus someone other than Yahweh, who is the tri-personal God? So you have the tri-personal God speaking to Jesus, which means that Jesus is somebody else.

Great question. I would suggest for you this book by Richard Bauckham and also this book by Ed Kaschefi and Rob Bowman. What they do is they talk about, and this is something that scholars today are seeing as some of the most powerful evidence for the deity of Jesus, is that you do have in Psalm 110, verse 1, Elohim, I'm sorry, Yahweh and Adonai. Both those terms are used. But we should come into this with a background of understanding that the term Yahweh throughout the Old Testament, whenever read, even by Jews today, is read Adonai. So there is this, these are analogous terms, sometimes synonymous terms even. They're just not saying the word Yahweh out of respect for God. In fact, it's one of the things they could be killed for; it's uttering the divine name. So they're still synonymous in that sense. But also, one of the most powerful evidences to people that Jesus is claiming to be God is when he says that he can sit at the right hand of the Power. That's what Psalm 110:1 is saying, that Jesus can rule alongside the Father. In second temple Jewish history, no one was ever depicted sitting next to God, never. So when Jesus says, "I can sit next to the Father," what he's essentially saying is, there's a throne upon which God is sovereign, God sits on His sovereign throne, He rules over the universe. I am the heir. I can sit next to Him, rule over the universe with Him. That's why this was such a powerful claim. Interestingly, this is the claim that we find in the New Testament most commonly, over 20 times this is used. It shows just how deeply the deity of Christ was embedded in the early Christian mindset.

You refer to Daniel 7:13 and Mark's statement where Jesus seems to make the claim that he is that apparently divine figure. But you realize that in Daniel 7, Daniel 7, rather, that this Son of Man that is spoken of there is not the Ancient of Days. This is the one who approaches the Ancient of Days. So you have here a divine figure, but not necessarily God, and in fact, not God, because God has to be the Ancient of Days. So aren't you doing the same equivocation thing where you're looking at my...

My time is up. Okay. Dr. Kaisi, I love talking about the Son of Man. This is my favorite thing. I want you guys to get this. I want everyone to understand this. It's not that when Jesus calls himself the Son of God, he's talking about being divine, and when he talks about the Son of Man, that's when he talks about being human. Wrong. It's actually this verse, Daniel 7:13. Yes, you do have the Ancient of Days sitting on His throne, and then you have one who has all the prerogatives of God, is described as coming in as God, He receives worship that only God can receive. And this is why we say that, okay, you have two different persons who are both God found in Daniel 7:13-14. It's because of verses like these that Jewish scholars like Daniel Boyarin have said, Jews in general did not entertain, did entertain Aos, and were implicitly binitarian in their theology. It is only the rabbis, it is only the rabbis in response to Christianity who begin to make such opinions heretical. So even the Jews, according to a Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarin, and even the Jews saw this as two yet one. That's why they were binitarian at the time of Jesus. Alan Segal, in this book, says that Jews at that time were binitarian, and he says it's apt to call them binitarian if you look at page 150. They were binitarian because of verses like this, where you have two in one. It was their exegesis, not their philosophy, not some sort of evolution, which led them to believe that God is plural in His nature.

Okay, we have a few seconds left, but I don't think that's enough to ask any more questions. So this concludes the cross-examination portion of our debate. Again, if you are just joining us by our live streaming video or by radio, you are listening to a debate between a Muslim scholar, Dr. Shabir Ali, and a Christian scholar, Dr. Nabil Kaisi, on what God is really like. I'm Julie Roy, serving as moderator this evening. And now the formal part of our debate is drawing to a close. Now they each, both Dr. Ali and Dr. Kaisi, get to offer their closing statements. They will have five minutes for each. And as the pattern that we have established, Dr. Nabil Kaisi will go first. So, Dr. Kaisi, you have five minutes for your opening state, or for your closing statement.

Thank you very much. Well, this has been interesting. I really thank you, Dr. Ali, for taking the time to come down from Toronto and to engage in dialogue. These questions about the nature of God are extremely important, which is why I found it shocking when he said, "Oh, that's not really a big deal when we're talking about the nature of God." When we're talking about is the Quran eternal or not? I'm telling you, early Muslims thought it was so important that they were willing to kill one another over it. Even today, people are being expatriated from their countries over questions like this. In some places, like in Turkey, the debate is raging, and some people are still discussing the nature of God to such an extent that they have to ask these questions because they are so important. So to simply say, "Well, I don't find that question important," is extremely problematic. But I thank you that you've come out to talk about the Trinity versus the Tawhid in general. The history of the Quran, we briefly talked about it, we briefly mentioned it. Please look at it. One of the greatest shocks that came to me as I was studying when I believed that the Quran was perfectly preserved, the promise in Surah 15 is that the Quran has been changed. From day one until 1924, there is no manuscript of the Quran before 1924 that looks exactly like the Quran today. And in fact, today there are at least five Qurans that are still being used. Hafs 'an 'Asim is the one that most people use, but Warsh, for example, is in Northern Africa. So look at these things. Learn about it. I know you're going to find that this stuff is unbelievable. I did too, but that was 15 years ago, and I really kept looking at these things because they are important. The fact of the matter is something I did not hear disputed is that he said that Paul toes the line when you take out Yahweh and put in Jesus' name. That's not towing the line. You're saying Jesus is Yahweh. That's what Paul does. That's pre-Nicene hymns. The earliest Christians that we have, they take Yahweh's name and they put Jesus' names in. That's the earliest stuff we know about Christianity. That's why no arguments can be used which say that turning Jesus into a God is what happened. They ultimately turned him into a divine. The earliest evidence is that Jesus was treated as Yahweh. I postulate that can only happen because Jesus himself declared to be Yahweh. Even in Mark's gospel, you've heard today no response to the fact that Jesus is Yahweh from the earliest of the four gospels. I want to take a moment to say briefly about St. Anselm's argument that the greatest being is God. He brought this up. I completely agree. If we can envision something greater than what we call God, that has to be God, because God is the greatest. That's by definition true. That is why I have to believe that every single sin ever committed has to be punished, because someone who is just punishes every crime. If I imagine a judge who just punishes some crimes and not others, oh, he's not the most just judge. He might be merciful. He might be nice, but he's not the most just judge. I can imagine someone more just, someone who punishes every crime. At the same time, I can imagine someone who's merciful, who forgives someone of everything they've ever done, even from something small to something huge. Now, if I forget, if I can envision a judge who forgives some things, that's not God. God has to be the one who's absolutely merciful. So he has to be absolutely just and absolutely merciful at the same time. But he also has to be absolutely loving in his essence. We've already seen that, unfortunately, the Mantic conception of Allah does not allow for an absolutely loving God. But if love is a good thing, then I postulate that God has to be the most loving being. If self-sacrifice is a good thing, I postulate that God has to be the most self-sacrificial. If God, if humility is a good thing, I postulate that God has to be the most humble being in the universe. And we see all these things coming together because God himself forgives all our sins, not by overlooking them. He wouldn't be just if he overlooked them, but by paying the penalty himself. And that is why we can know that God has loved us from eternity past. When he created us, he's loved us. He created us in His image because this Triune God allows love to be part of His nature. Love is in His essence of who He is. And that's what I'm telling you today. None of us can make our way into heaven by ourselves. I don't care who you are. Do you think you're perfect? Because heaven is a perfect place. Can you be perfect enough to enter into heaven? We're all relying on the mercy and grace of God. But I'm here to say that God gave it to us 2,000 years ago. Just accept His mercy. The Jews have said that God was pluriform. We see that in the New Testament, that one of those persons became flesh and dwelt on this earth. Jesus claimed to be that God. And when He died on the cross, it was an act of forgiving our sins. Islamic theology, Christian theology, Jewish theology, we can argue all day long, but do not neglect the one true God. Thank you very much.

Thank you, thank you, Dr. Kaisi. And now, Dr. Shabir Ali, you have five minutes for your closing statement.

Now, to close, folks, I'm so glad we did this debate tonight. I'm very thankful for Nabil and his great gracious approach in dialogue, and to Julie for so graciously hosting this event, the timekeepers, and everyone. For my closing statement, I just want to remind you of where we have traveled. In my presentations, I have spoken about three points: text, history, and reason. The three H's of three. As for text, I said that the text of the Bible actually supports the Islamic belief in Tawhid more so than belief in the Trinity. I specifically said that there is no verse in the Bible which actually says that God is a Trinity or even limits the number of divine persons to three. Nabil says that there was, but he actually would not produce a passage. He referred to some triadic formulas, but I showed other formulas in the Bible which mention, for example, the Holy Angels or mention the seven spirits, Revelation 1:4. So how do you reconcile that with the Trinity? You have no way of knowing from the Bible itself that there are only three divine persons. There could be other divine persons. If you open that up, there is no closing it. So the Muslim belief that there is only one God is a sensible approach to the Bible. Nabil said that Mark 14 has Jesus claiming to be that divine Son of Man, but as I pointed out, that Son of Man actually was not God. He approached the Ancient of Days, who actually is God, and God sends him. And even though he has given a lot of glory and a lot of respect, and people are subjected to him, and he's spoken about in a glorified sense, still this is not God. There is only one God who is called the Ancient of Days. Moreover, followers believe that Jesus wasn't even claiming to be the Son of God. They said that in Mark, when Jesus spoke about the Son of God, here he was actually referring to somebody else to come after him. Yes, the Son of Man would come, but that's not Jesus. It's some other person. That's why he spoke about that person in the third person, someone else. Whether those scholars are right or not, they are great scholars such as Bruce Chilton, and there are many others, Gerhard Börmann, the German scholar. I believe tried to change the topic to make it a topic about the Quran, but this has got nothing to do with the Quran directly, because even if we take Islam out of the picture, we still have the problem of the Trinity. The Eastern and Western Church are still divided over the Filioque clause, whether God, whether Jesus gives out the Holy Spirit or not, whether the Spirit proceeds only from the Father or from the Father and the Son. You still have the Council of Nicaea, you still have all of the debates between Christians. Nabil says, well, the question of the Quran being the word of God is important, but he is neglecting the fact that in fact people killed each other over minor things in the past. The fact that people fought over this doesn't mean that it's important for us now. He himself mentioned that Jews killed each other over the mention of Yahweh. You're not supposed to mention Yahweh. Somebody mentions Yahweh, he gets killed. Both Nabil and I were mentioning Yahweh tonight. If you ask me now, is it important that people were killed because they mentioned Yahweh? You shouldn't be mentioning Yahweh. Why are you mentioning Yahweh? It is a moot point. I spoke about the history and I showed that in fact Christianity developed over time. Nabil is saying, well, binitarianism actually was before Christianity among Jews, but what he neglects to show when he held up Alan Segal's book on the Two Powers in Heaven is that this in fact is a deviation from the Torah and from the rest of the Old Testament. The Old Testament does not tell you that there are two equal powers in heaven. The Old Testament does not teach you binitarianism, but Unitarianism, that there is only one God, Yahweh. Everyone else are His creatures. Finally, I spoke about reason as my third point. Nabil is saying, well, isn't the Quran eternal? And we say that there is a distinction between the eternal Word of God and the word of God which is revealed to us. But that is different from the Trinity, in which the Word of God was taken and made into a separate person who himself has words, and he is now worshiped as a second person in the Trinity. He agrees with Anselm, and I'm happy for that. But he doesn't, he says that that means God has to be loved and ultimately and absolutely so. Well, yeah, okay. So that means he has to love himself. If the three persons in the Trinity love each other, that is still a self-love. It's not loving others. And then he says, well, God must be absolutely just, and that means he must punish the sinner. But as Steve Chalke wrote in his book, The Last Message of Jesus, if you speak this way, this is like speaking of cosmic child abuse. You cannot speak this way about God punishing His Son for the sins of the guilty. Finally, I think this is important, and I'm glad we had this discussion tonight. Thank you all very much.

Thank you to both of our debaters this evening, Dr. Shabir Ali, also Dr. Nabil Kaisi. This concludes the formal part of our debate. But what's coming up next is what many of you have been eagerly waiting for, and this is your opportunity to ask your questions of each of our debaters. But before we do that, we need to take a short break to allow for evening prayers. So what we're going to do, if you would just abide with us and give us a little bit of grace here, we would ask that first, you would send your cards to the aisle if you haven't already, so that the ushers can get those to have your questions. And then also, we would ask that you would wait for to allow the Muslims to leave first, because our Muslim friends want to get to their prayer time before sunset, although it looks like it's getting pretty close to that right now. So if you would do that, we are going to take a short break. Please be back in your seats by 8:15. Okay, we're going to stick to a very close schedule. By 8:15, be back in your seats, but you're dismissed for a little while. Thank you.

Break into every heart, we want to see Your light. Come, Lord Jesus, You alone have the words of life. You were the first. Your glory never ends. You are the Lamb of God who died and rose again.

Break into every heart, we want to see Your light. Come, Lord Jesus, You alone have the words of life. You were the first. Your glory never ends. You are the Lamb of God who died and rose again. You are alive. You are alive. You're the light that breaks the darkness. You're the hope of all the earth. You're the love that reaches into every heart. You are love. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive.

Lord, let Your kingdom come. You are the great I AM. Mighty Savior, all who alone conquered death and sin. Light of all the world, the glory never fades. You are the life to all who called upon Your name. You are alive. You are alive. You're the light that breaks the darkness. You're the hope of all the earth. You're the love that reaches into every heart. You're the light that breaks the darkness. You're the hope of all the earth. You're the love that reaches into every heart. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive.

You're everything. You're everything that I need. Singing, you're everything. Everything that I need. Spirit, bring down on me. You're everything that I need. To bring down on me. You're everything that I need. Spirit, come. Break down on me. Do everything that I need. Spirit, come. Break down on me. You're everything that I need. You are alive. You are alive. You're the light that breaks the darkness. You're the hope of all the earth. You're the love that reaches into every heart. You're the light that breaks the darkness. You're the hope of all the earth. You're the love that reaches into every heart. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive. You are alive.

Here in Your presence, are taken by the wonders of You. He, inside Your glory, we give our lives fully. You sing that again. Start Your presence, seeing by the wonders with You. Of glory, we give our lives fully to You. It's Your voice. Sing Holy, and we cry, Holy, Holy are You. Our hearts are burning, burning for You.

Sing it again. Holy, and we cry, Holy, Holy are You. Our hearts are burning, burning for You. Singing, we are, we are Your burning walls. We are consumed. We are consumed by You. When we, we set our lives apart. We are consumed. Again, we are, we are, we are consumed by You. We, we set our lives apart. We are consumed by You.

Oh, we are consumed by You. By You. Like, let like a bring You. Let this love feel like a spark. Let my feel like a spark. We, we are human. Sing it. We are consumed. We are consumed by You. We, we set our lives apart. We are consumed.

Oh, we are. We are. We are consumed by You. We, we set our lives apart. We are consumed. Feel like a bring. Be like, like, like. Feel like a let passion bring You. Let the love feel like a spark. Let our lives be like a spark. Let our passion.

I am not my own. It's by Your blood You have saved me. You have overcome. It's by Your love You have claimed me. You have called me out. And I'll give, give You for ransom. You have changed me. Now I'm Yours alone. It's by Your grace You sustain me. Oh, I'm living for eternity, living with Your spirit. Nothing's going to hold me back. Yours now forever. I fix my gaze on You. My heart in Your pursuit. Love is going to hold me back. Yours now forever.

I know Your Spirit's power. By Your life, You have saved me. I walk in victory. From sin and death, You've redeemed me. You redeemed me. I'm living for eternity, living with You, Father. Me. Nothing's going to hold me back. Yours now forever. I fix my gaze on You. My heart in Your pursuit. Nothing's going to hold me back. Yours now forever. There's a shout that's coming. There's a shout that's coming. There's a shout that's coming. It's the shout of the redeemed. There's a shout that's coming. There's a shout that's coming. There's a shout that's coming. It's the shout of the.

I'm living for eternity, living with You, Father. Me. Nothing's going to hold me back. Yours now forever. I fix my gaze on You. My heart in Your pursuit. Nothing's going to hold me back. Yours now forever. Yours now forever. Yours now forever. Yours now forever.

Nothing can tear us. Strong the grip of His mighty love. We only glimpse His vast affection. Her whispers of His heart and passion. It's glorious. His love is deep. His love is wide and covers us. His love is fierce. His love is strong. It is furious. His love is sweet. His love is wild and it's waking us to life. Oh, our Father loves and sends His Son. Down His life for all. And He lavishes such love upon us. He calls us now His sons and daughters. He's reached. His love is deep. His love is wide and it covers us. His love is fierce. His love is strong. It is furious. His love is sweet. His love is wild and it's waking us. His love is deep. His love is wide and it covers us. His love is fierce. His love is strong. It is furious. His love is sweet. His love is wild and it's waking us. Yes, You're waking. Yes, You're waking.

10 seconds, please get quiet. Well, welcome back to our debate on what God is really like. Is He one and indivisible, as the Muslim doctrine of Tawhid teaches, or is He three in one, as Christians believe? I'm Julie Roy. I host a program on Moody Radio called Up For Debate, and I'm moderating tonight's debate. And again, with us today, defending the Muslim position is Dr. Shabir Ali, president of the Islamic Information and Dawah Center International, and defending the Christian view is Dr. Nabil Kaisi of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And now comes to the portion of our debate, or the informal part of our debate, that many of you have been waiting for, and this is the opportunity for you to ask your questions of each of our debaters. So we have gotten questions for both Dr. Ali and Dr. Kaisi from our audience here at Wayne State University, and we'll have 30 minutes for this part. So let me start with you, Dr. Ali. If Allah is perfectly just, then how are His demands of perfect justice satisfied by imperfect ways of imperfect man?

Well, we believe as Muslims that God is also forgiving, and we do not see that the expression of His forgiveness and mercy is contrary to His justice. When we speak about justice in the world, we're usually speaking about some human judge who is responsible to a system, to a government. The judges don't make their own rules. When we speak about God, God has within His prerogative to forgive people, and He does not lose anything if one harms another one. We expect that we, the one committing the harm, should compensate the other person, and then God will forgive. It's like Jesus saying, if you have a gift before you present it to the altar, go and say sorry to your brother, and then present your gift to God. So something like this reconciliation. If we didn't reconcile in this life, God can still forgive us and reconcile by compensating the person who suffered a loss or an injury on our behalf. So God can do all of this, and then God freely forgives us. He does not require somebody else to be penalized in our stead.

Okay, this question is for Dr. Kaisi. If Jacob wrestled with God and saw His face and lived, yet in Exodus, God indicates to Moses that he must not see the face of God because no one can see the face of God and live, isn't this a contradiction in scripture?

It would be if there weren't three persons of the Godhead. Um, when the Bible says, you know, it says is that no one has seen the Father. And some people say, well, then what does it mean when they saw the Father in the Old Testament? When they saw God in the Old Testament, it's because they saw Jesus. So I think throughout the scripture, we have to be careful not to conflate issues. We have to be careful not to make the scripture say something it's not saying. And then what the scripture just briefly talks about, we shouldn't, unless the scripture talks about something, we shouldn't jump to our own conclusions. We shouldn't come up with defenses for things that are not said in the scripture. So what the Bible says very clearly is that Jesus is God. John chapter 1 says that. I didn't refer to John the whole night, but if you want a very clear statement, go to John chapter 1. Jesus is God. And people saw Him. They beheld His glory, glory of the only begotten. John 1:14. So people have seen God. When people say to Jesus, "We haven't seen the Father," He says, "You've seen Me, and you don't get it yet." And the climax of John 20, "My Lord and my God." Kuru. And Jesus says, "Finally, you get it. I am God." That's that's the implication. It's not a contradiction from when it says no one can see God and live, because they're talking about the Father. So, uh, we got to be careful not to make the Bible say things it doesn't say, but we also have to be careful not to say that there are contradictions when there aren't any. That's the most problematic thing we can do when doing exegesis.

Dr. Ali, how do you answer Nabil's claim that there are multiple versions of the Quran?

The Quran is a complex document. We believe that it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in such a way that it could be recited in a variety of methods, and all of this is the word of God. Now, to explain this in a short answer would not be easy, because we need to first understand that Arabic, like Hebrew, is written without vowels. And the Torah has had many different readings because of this. The Masoretic Brothers in the 10th century put in the vowels that we know today, and so the Bible is translated according to the reading prepared by the Masoretes. Well, the readings of the Quran were fixed by Muslim scholars according to what they understood from the earliest generations of Muslims, and this was done way back in the early history of Islam. So seven readings became popular out of that whole effort to put the vowels in the right places and pronounce the words of the Quran as they were pronounced by teachers who were and by previous teachers and so on. So for Muslims, all of these various readings are the word of God. And sometimes these various readings expand the meaning. It's read one way, or sometimes there's a variation in the wording, but they have the similar meaning. Two words, for example, and both mean wool. So one reading has, another reading has SF, that goes back to an early companion of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And Muslims generally recognize that all of this is the word of God. In essence, the message is the same in all of these readings, and the variety of readings do not give rise in Muslim thought to, okay, this one supports that somebody is a God, and this one does not support the same idea. The readings do have variations, but it's not that kind of significant variation, and this is acknowledged by academic scholars who are not Muslims.

If you don't mind, I'm going to call an audible here and I'm going to allow Dr. Kaisi to respond to that, but then I'll also allow you to respond to his, to his question, his response to the question I posed him. We're not going to go that far, but I'm going to let it go back because I think we'll have enough time for that, but we'll do it equally. So Dr. Kaisi, please read Sahih al-Bukhari, volume 6, book 61, read the book on the collection of the Quran. It talks about different Muslims such as Abu Bakr in book 61. Sahih al-Bukhari says that there are four teachers of the Quran. Abdullah ibn Masud is first, Ubay ibn Ka'b is fourth. It says that Ubay has words in his Quran that are not present in today's Quran, talking specifically about chapter 33. It's not a synonym, it's missing. We have Abdullah ibn Masud in, um, in, he has different chapters than Ubay. There is no manuscript before 1924 exactly like today's Quran. The two Turkish scholars whose names I put up there, they have said that people have not studied the Uthmanic Qurans. They themselves did so and found many differences. Two Muslim Turkish scholars found many differences from the earliest Qurans to today's Qurans. These aren't just differences in vowels. There aren't just differences in readings. There are differences in even canon in the Rasam text. So I agree with you that generally speaking, substantially the message isn't really changed. But if you're going to say that the Quran is word for word exactly the same, not a jot, a letter, tittle, iota has been changed, as I had been taught as a Muslim, that is demonstrably false. And the Quran, because of man's burning of all the earliest Qurans, does we will never know what it originally said. We can only know what Uthman's Quran said at best, even theoretically, whereas no one was ever in the position or ever did do it for the Bible. It's never been controlled. It's never been changed or altered in a controlled sense like man's Quran was.

All right, we'll have to postpone the actual debate on the Quran though till the sequel. Did you want me to say something about that too? No, I tell you what, I'm going to ask him a question now, but I will give you a chance to respond to his question as well. Okay. Uh, Dr. Kaisi, if Christ is fully God as well as fully man, how can he speak of being forsaken by God as he dies on the cross?

And that's a very interesting question. And once again, we have to make sure that we don't go beyond what scripture says. And that's why theologians will discuss these things like we said, in theology, you know, the answer for over a thousand years has been, we don't know. And if we say, we don't know, and we turn to the Trinity and say, you need to explain everything that's inconsistent, I think we should all understand the greatness and glory of God, and that there is going to be some lack of comprehension because God is greater than our comprehension. He created our comprehension. All that said, the response that I've heard to that question that seems to work is that when Jesus is on the cross, His, the death of His human self on that cross, you know, some people ask me the question, if God died, where is He? I mean, can God then rule the universe? And the answer is, even when we die, it's not like we cease existing. We're going to live eternally. In the same way, when Jesus' body was killed on the cross, it's not like He ceased existing. But the punishment that was imputed to Him upon the cross is then transferred to kind of the divine nature. It's imputed. There's some interpenetration that happens. So when Jesus' body dies on the cross, it's imputed to His divine essence, and that's why it can pay for all the sins of mankind. I find an interesting analog to this, and I've never said this publicly, so tell me if I'm wrong in an email or something, don't get too mad. When people burn the Quran, which by the way, some people say I've burned a Quran. I've never burned a Quran. I made a video in 2010 saying, no, do not burn Qurans. It's not the right thing to do. But when people burn the Quran, everyone gets enraged. Why is that? Why do people get furious when the Quran is burned? It's because...

I think the Quran is by in by Muslim, uh, understanding has two natures. It has a physical nature, the pages of the text, the ink on the paper, which everyone would say that's not, you know, that's not eternal. That's fine. It's just ink and paper. But then there's also this nature of the eternal Word of God that the Quran also has a second nature. And when someone burns the physical pages, that offense is imputed to the eternal nature of the Quran. That's why people get angry. It's because you burned this eternal Word of Allah. No, you didn't. You burned the pages. But it's imputed in the same, same way when Jesus dies on the cross, that punishment is imputed to the eternal divine self.

Okay, Dr. Ali, I, I don't agree with Dr. Kesi that when people, um, see the Quran being burnt, they're thinking that, well, something of the eternal nature of God is being burnt here. I think people are responding emotionally, which they shouldn't do. And they should, Muslims should recognize that if somebody burns the Quran, uh, that actually, uh, is a person who needs to be pitied because that person is putting himself against God, and that person will have to face God on the day of judgment and answer for why he or she burnt the Quran. Uh, there's nothing we can do to that person that would be more severe than God's punishment for that person in the life hereafter. Rather, we should call on such a person to repent and pity such a person if that person is not repenting.

But I think Dr. Kesi has actually touched upon a very important point here in speaking about, uh, the eternal Son of God, uh, dying on the cross, because it would mean that the second person of the Holy Trinity is expendable, and we can have the other two surviving and continuing to run on the universe. And, and this actually ties into the previous, uh, question about different versions of the Quran, because actually we have four different Gospels, and we do not have comparably four different Qurans at the same, uh, level of operation. And when we look at the words of Jesus, his dying words on the cross, the four different Gospels have different wording. Michael Goulder, in his book *St. Paul versus St. Peter*, has shown, uh, that this is part of the two streams of thought that went out from early Christianity. And Mark, the death of Jesus appears very bleak. In Matthew, it appears better. In Luke, better still. In Luke, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." So it looked like Jesus is actively engaged in doing something with his own spirit here. And in the Gospel according to John, it is finished. That's what Jesus says last, as if Jesus is in full control. He completed his mission. He finished the whole thing. And now he's gracefully leaving. Not the loud cry, it's not there in John. Why the story about Jesus has been changed from one Gospel to another? Jesus's image has been photoshopped. In Mark's Gospel, he appears very weak, and his death appears very bleak. In John's Gospel, he is triumphant, and his death appears to be a victory.

Okay, Dr. Ali, someone asking, uh, why when Nabil is quoting the scriptures, primarily do you primarily cite scholars? I, I don't know if that, I don't know if that question is actually fair. And, and I trust that it is fair. And, and may God lead us all to the best understanding here tonight. I believe I've quoted both scripture and scholars. Uh, we cannot do without scholars. Citing scholars in any field is, is a valid way of proving a point. Uh, scholars may disagree. And if the scholars disagree, then of course, it's a question of whose scholar is bigger and greater and more dependable. Uh, the scholars I've cited are, are, are mainly and largely Christian scholars. I've cited some very conservative scholars, people who have written in defense of the Trinity, like Michael Bird and Gregory Boyd, and have shown that what they have admitted actually proves the point that Tawhid is better supported by even the Christian scriptures.

A brief response to that would be, I mean, it is important to quote scholars for sure. Scholars spend their time studying these issues. We need to quote what they say, but let's quote their reasoning too, and let's apply their reasoning consistently. When he quotes Gregory Boyd, he doesn't tell you that Gregory Boyd's an open theist who doesn't believe that God knows the future. That's not traditional Christianity. So if I were to take someone like that in Islam and make that kind of my Muslim authority to discuss that, that would be unfair. So, and James White has brought this up in many debates with you, that if you use reasoning to criticize the Bible, use the same reasoning to criticize the Quran. Be consistent. And that's the thing which led me to leave Islam was when I consistently criticized Islam and Christianity, I found that when you apply the reasoning equally, it's just like we talked about today with Trinity and Tawhid. The words aren't found in either. The theology was developed for hundreds of years in both. These are complex issues in both religions. But B is not as good an answer as Trinity. And so when you compare these equally and we're consistent, that's where things come to light.

Dr. Kesi, can you explain how God is forgiving and merciful, 'cause He's awesome? [Music] We, we can clap for God. That's okay. Um, I think, I, I don't know if the question, uh, intended to say, is He both just and merciful, um, which I did talk about in my conclusion, um, but it was mentioned, so I'll briefly recap that because the question has been asked. The way that God can be both just and merciful, um, you really can't do that unless God is somehow able to reconcile these two ends of the spectrum. Justice requires punishment, uh, mercy requires forgiveness. How do you do both and be an absolute God? And that's been a question that's been very difficult to answer. Dr. Ali said in his conclusion, uh, that, well, God can just forgive. God is an absolute being, an infinite being, and if we approach Him in this kind of, well, He can just forgive if He wants. He, that, that's not giving the due weight to an absolute being. And, and it's the same reason why I think that he doesn't see the issue on the eternality of the Quran like, well, it's eternal, it's not eternal. Um, no, this is important. And I'm not just saying people have said that throughout Islamic history. How do you reconcile these things? And in a monotheistic conception of God, you can't. You can't. And you have to end up with Bikh, and there is no way to reconcile His justice and His mercy. Well, He just somehow, He does it. He just forgives. I think that is the primary difference. Um, whenever I've talked to my family, um, on Islam versus Christianity, we always come down to this exact issue. Can God just forgive sins versus does He demand every sin be paid for? And I think that if you have a view of a God who's infinitely holy, and you have sin, which is a crime against that infinitely holy God, that cannot just be overlooked. That's something you have to pay for unless you have a lower image of God or a lower image of sin, as sin not being that bad. Uh, but this, I think, is the primary point, and it does require a Triune God, a non-monotheistic God to resolve.

Dr. Ali, I think this is another kind of after-the-fact justification. First, you start with the idea that Jesus died on the cross, and then you want to know why did he die. St. Paul seemed to have worked this out by saying that Jesus died as a curse for us. But that was a mistaken idea of St. Paul. He was looking at the Old Testament, which says, "Cursed is the one who hangs on the tree." And where it occurs in Deuteronomy, that was actually about a person who was justifiably crucified for his crimes. That's why he was under the curse of God, not because he was crucified, but because of his crimes. Paul took that and placed it on the head of Jesus and made Jesus a curse for us. That was Paul's mistake. That is being actually propagated in Christianity. Don Cupitt, in his book *Jesus and the Gospel of God*, regrets the fact that the Reformation, uh, only questioned papal authority, but did not go back as far as to question Paul's authority. We need to ask, who made Paul really a disciple of Jesus? Did he really see Jesus on the road to Damascus? Or did he see something else? Didn't he himself say in his Corinthian correspondence that even the, um, devil appears as an angel of light to deceive many? So who was Paul? And, and why did the original disciples of Jesus, uh, have a different view with Paul? And why was there this split between, uh, Paul and, and Peter, as acknowledged by Martin Hengel? And it's not enough to dismiss the scholars, the scholars by saying Gregory Boyd is an open theist. Martin Hengel is dead now, so he must know that the is true. No, you have to look at the scholarship of these scholars. These are great scholars who have written their books. And yes, you can refute their books, that they're not infallible, they're not God, but at the same time, they are scholars, and they've given their reasons, like Gregory Boyd has given his reasons, yet showing that Elohim and El are actually used of other individuals who are not God, and they are singular, and yet these plural terms are used. So you cannot say because the plural term is used of God, that means that this is, is actually a, a multiplicity within the one God.

Dr. Ali, one of the points you mentioned is that the Trinity cannot possibly represent a monotheistic worldview. But doesn't God's omniscience make the doctrine of the Trinity completely possible, yet beyond human reason? In other words, isn't it understandable that God might be, uh, not fully understandable by man? Occam's Razor basically says that you cannot, you should not multiply beings beyond necessity. The proofs for the existence of God, even as worked out by St. Anselm of Canterbury, five ways of proving the existence of God, they all arrive at one God. As I've mentioned in my opening presentation, none of these proofs arrive at a Trinity. Now, if you say, but yes, we should have a Trinity, then why do you stop at three? Once you open it up, there is no, yeah, you say it's possible for God to do this within His knowledge, that this is all possible. Yes, so it's possible for another divine being to be revealing himself on another planet in this galaxy or another planet in another galaxy. Several divine persons, maybe the Father reveals himself as Krishna or Vishnu in the Hindu tradition at one time. Maybe other incarnations or avatars will occur. We don't know. Paul, trying to find Jesus in the Old Testament, said in 1 Corinthians chapter 10:4, that Jesus was the rock that accompanied the Israelites throughout the desert. So that means that Jesus first became petrified before he became, uh, in in flesh. So you can multiply the gods like this. But the Old Testament is very clear, there is only one God who is not a man. Numbers 23, number 19, "God is neither a man nor the son of man." So when Nabil says Jesus was a man, that means he's not God. When Nabil says Jesus was the Son of Man, see that? That means according to Numbers 23:19, he is not God because he's the Son of Man. And that passage says that God is not the Son of Man.

Dr. Kesi, are you sure you don't want to have another debate? I think, uh, well, you ended with Numbers 23. Um, the verse is talking about God not lying, uh, and God not needing to repent. That's what it's talking about. Just like when he quoted the first of the Ten Commandments, he quoted it and then he gave a completely different exegesis of it that wasn't related to what the verse was saying. It's what he's doing here as well. The verse, yeah, it does say, "God is not a man that He should lie, He is not a man that He should repent." But the talking is about lying and repentance. And God, in His essence, is not a man. He comes into this world, He takes upon Himself a human nature. Jesus has two natures, the hypostatic union. But the essence of God is not that of a man. He talks about Occam's Razor here. I find it interesting that you bring that up. The exact reason why we don't believe in seven Holy Spirits is Occam's Razor. When we take a look at what the Old Testament is saying and what the New Testament is saying, here's what we find: There is one God. Every, the scriptures say that very clearly. But then it says that the Holy Spirit is God, as we saw in the book of Acts. It says that Jesus is, we, is God, as we see through the earliest writings of the New Testament. And the Father is God, which we all concede. And the scripture also says Jesus is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and Jesus is not the Holy Spirit. That is the data before us. How do we resolve it? The only way to resolve it is we say that God is one, just like it's part of the data, God is one. But that He has multiple persons within that being. That explains why you can have Yahweh here in Genesis 18:19 and Yahweh there. That explains why Yahweh can say He was sent by Yahweh and the Holy Spirit. So the best way to explain the data, and that's what I find we should make sure we are doing, not bringing our conclusions and trying to fit that to the data. Take a look at the data, see what all the verses say, and then come up with the best explanation of the data at hand. And that's where you'll end up with the view of the Trinity from scripture.

Dr. Kesi, don't you think it's problematic that such a core tenet of Christianity, the Trinity, is so difficult for so many Christians to explain? Shame on Christians. I think most people don't think about their faith as much as they should. Whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, doesn't matter. People simply are born into their culture, and, uh, sometimes they'll identify with that culture. Oh yeah, they'll fight for Christianity or they'll fight for Islam or whatever, but they've never actually thought about Allah. They've never thought about the Triune God. The Trinity is fairly, fairly easily, easily understood as far as being one being and three persons. When you make that differentiation, you can understand. But when we start going deeper, and we start saying, explain this to me, explain that to me, I'm not saying those are bad exercises. Those are great exercises. Let's talk about God, but be consistent. Because on both sides of the equation, it's the same problems. And, and that's why I kept talking about the Quran today. I know some of you are probably thinking, well, the debate was on Trinity, why in, why did you keep bringing up Quran? Because the Quran was the biggest challenge to Tawhid amongst Muslims from the earliest century, like this is the problem. And if you believe this about the Quran, then you're doing this with Tawhid. And so I'm simply saying that those questions were asked amongst Muslims. And if we today sit down and say, can you explain to me how, uh, Allah is eternal and the Quran is eternal, but there are not two Gods? Most Muslims have not thought about that question before. And then if they start saying, well, the Quran is His Kalam, which is separate versus, no, it's part of Himself. It does get tricky. It is hard to explain, just like for the average Christian, the Trinity is hard to explain. Let's think about it. Let's give each other grace. You know, if you've got B on one hand, don't get too upset with a Christian who can't explain it to you on the other. And let's be gracious to one another and pursue God together.

Dr. Ali, I agree. Let's be gracious to each other. And in being gracious to my Christian friends, I, I wouldn't say shame on Christians. In fact, I, I respect that Christians are struggling to understand this, uh, feature of their faith, and, and it's a difficult feature. And, and it's not the average Christian who has invented this, so it's not their fault. And, uh, uh, Christians, uh, uh, do not understand this, even at the highest, uh, levels. I showed you a book written by four scholars, and one of them responded to the writing of the other. Paul Molnar, responding to Thomas McCall's article, keeps saying, "Oh, this, this smells like the Trinity, like tritheism. That smells like that, sounds like tritheism. This smacks of tritheism." So one Christian scholar is, is saying that the other scholar's explanation of the Trinity seems to amount to tritheism, which means three gods, and that's a heresy. It's unacceptable to Christians. So it's not the average Christian alone who was struggling to understand this, even Christians who have thought about this a lot and wrote about this a lot, who Christians who are representative of the faith. It is a deep problem. And, well, Nabil is trying to shift the problem to the Muslims and say, you have this problem, you don't know if the word of God is eternal or not. Well, I've asked Nabil several times, and he's never explained what do Christians say about the Torah? Is that eternal or not? Is that part of God or not part of God? So the Christian has two problems to explain this Torah problem and the rest of the word of God, and also to talk about the Trinity. Now, he's saying that Muslims have one of these problems, and I'm saying the one problem which you're talking about that Muslims have, we're not debating that. Muslims, Christians, and Jews have that problem. But Muslims, Christians, and Jews have not held a debate to deal with this as an, an interfaith issue. It's an internal issue. But the interfaith issue is, did Christians follow the Benians among the Jews who said that they were put two powers in heaven, in which case they deviated from the Old Testament? Did Nabil try to tell us that Christians are following those who deviated of old? And isn't that what the Quran says, that they followed those who deviated of old? In fact, what Nabil said actually to me confirms what the Quran told us 1,400 years ago.

Okay, I think this will probably be our last question, and so it's one to both of you. Uh, Nabil, you had mentioned that Islam had an inquisition. Of course, the one that we most often are taught about in our schools was a Christian Inquisition. And I think to the skeptic tonight, or to somebody tonight who may not be of either faith, they may think, well, this is the problem with dogma altogether, that it leads to inquisitions, to killing, to strife. So, uh, Dr. Ali, if you would answer that, and then Dr. Kesi, and keep it to, uh, just over a minute, please, so we can both get them in.

Yeah, uh, I, I would say that, uh, it is small-mindedness that leads to this, these inquisitions. We should recognize that, uh, matters like we're discussing tonight are very complex. Put, uh, two persons in a room to discuss this, and you'll come up with three different opinions. And, and so we, we should be tolerant and respectful of each other. We should listen, we should dialogue, we should supply our reason, evidence, and proof. But at the end of the night, we should walk away knowing that we are different persons. God guides us differently, and He has equipped us differently, and we will have different opinions. We have to be respectful of each other. We have to continue our dialogue, and we have to continue to be tolerant. The Quran tells us in the fifth chapter, in the 48th, uh, verse, that, "God has given for each of you a, a traced out way and, and a law to follow. Follow that and race with each other in doing good deeds, and you will eventually return to God, and He will inform you of the things that you used to differ about," which means that we won't settle these issues in this lifetime. Thank you all very much for your patient listening. I was, uh, very delighted to be with you all here tonight. Thank you.

Dr. Kesi, I am going to try my best to represent Christ here. Jesus is the most peaceful man who's ever walked this earth, and that is we have because we have a God who is in His essence love, and He became a man. And the most perfect being, living a most perfect life, would show the most perfect love. I want to consider briefly, I mean, I, I was always raised to believe, uh, that Islam is a religion of peace. And it wasn't until I read certain Surahs and certain Ayahs and certain Hadith that I began to see that Jesus is the most peaceful man who ever lived. So take a look. I do want you to take a look at Surah 9, like Surah 9, verse 101. I want you to take a look at Sahih Muslim, Book number one, Hadith number 30. Take a look at these, and then compare it to Jesus, who says that even if someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. Jesus says, even if your enemy is thirsty, give them something to drink. If they're hungry, give them something to eat, because love everyone the way God loves everyone, even people who sin against God. God loves them. And "Be perfect like your heavenly Father is perfect." Read Matthew 5-7. Tell me if that's not the most beautiful thing you've ever read in your entire life. This is the nature of our God, to love, to be gracious, to even be self-sacrificial. The fact that God was willing to die for the sins of man tells me that if I want to follow God, I should be willing to die for the sake of others in love for them. That's why I think that the Inquisition, anything that when a Christian tries to kill somebody else, is not following Jesus. Jesus is the most loving, peaceful man who ever lived. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share my heart with you.

Well, and I would just like to reiterate, this debate, I think, was offered in such a good spirit between both groups. Thank you so much for that. Tonight, we have been challenged to think deeply about God, and also to use our intellects to discern truths about God. There are those who say that this is a completely futile endeavor, that you can only know about God subjectively. However, Galileo suggested centuries ago that this is not true. He said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forego their use." It, it strikes me as odd that often at our universities and our colleges, that we have courses on practically every topic under the sun, and yet so often we neglect to carefully investigate the most important questions of all. And so that's why I so appreciate what we did here this evening. I appreciate, uh, Dr. Kesi, whose questioning led him to faith in Christianity. Dr. Ali, a sincere and devout follower of Allah. Thank you so much for, uh, challenging us to think. And we have a lot of information that you've offered us tonight, and it's going to take a lot of processing. If any of you would like to, uh, listen back to tonight's debate, you can do that at a number of different websites, actually. W, or, rzim.org is one of them. rzim.org, also Islaminfo.com, Islamindoom. Julie Roy, my name, spelled R-O-Y, Roy.com as well. And also Moody Radio, spelled M-O-O-D-Y, Moody Radio.org. Again, I'm Julie Roy, and I have so enjoyed moderating this debate. Just want to give some thanks to, uh, where it's deserved, specifically thank Ratio Christi for sponsoring tonight's debate. Also Crew for their contribution as well. Thank you to Wayne State University for allowing us to use this facility. And lastly, I want to thank you, uh, our live audience here at Wayne State. You've been incredibly attentive, polite, uh, and you've offered some great, insightful questions. So it's just been a joy, uh, to be able to moderate this debate with you as the audience. Thank you so much. So on behalf of Moody Radio and myself, God bless. Thank you so much. And now, would you take, uh, this last chance to thank Dr. Shabir Ali and also Dr. Nabil Kesi? [Applause] [Music] [Music] Oh, your love is devoted like a ring of solid gold, like a vow that is tested, like a covenant of old. And your love is enduring through the winter and beyond the horizon with mercy. For today, faithful you have been, and faithful you will be. You pledge yourself to me, and it's why I sing. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. [Music] [Music] You Father, the author of all. Your kindness makes us whole. And you shoulder our weakness, and your strength becomes our own. Now you're making me like you, clothing in white, bringing beauty from ashes, for you will have your bride. Free of all her guilt and rid of all her shame, and known by her true name. And it's why I sing. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. So praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips. Your praise will ever be on my lips, ever be on my lips.