Londoniyyah - Part 22 - Christianity / 1

A very important one at that. Today, we're going to be talking about the incoherence of the Trinity. So, as per our tradition, we're going to have the read, inshallah, the pertinent part of the poem, and then we're going to come back. Beautiful. Okay, thank you very much.

So, we're going to be going through, um, some of the main points about what the doctrine of the Trinity is in the first place. What are the problems with it? The early church will describe what that means and how that's important. Um, what the Islamic view is. And we're going to have some questions and discussions after that.

But before we, uh, do so, in the poem, the Sheikh mentioned something quite interesting and important, which is a Quranic argument, a rational argument in the Quran, which many of you would be aware of, which is in chapter number 23, which is verse number 91. Allah mentions, "So Allah has not taken a son, and He does not have any lord with Him, or only God with Him. Had that been the case, each god would have taken away what it has created, and they would have tried to outstrip one another for power and dominance."

Now, this is a very straightforward, but really the big, the best argument that I've seen, you know, in dealing with the Trinity. Like I mentioned, this argument in the David Wood debate. David Wood, for all his shenanigans, he's a philosopher. He's a PhD in philosophy. He's, he's actually written his, he's got good friends in the academy. Uh, and he didn't even address this point because he knows it's, uh, one of those things which you don't want. You're either going to fall into fallacy or you're going to fall into heresy. This is the Quranic argument. It's what the Quran does to you. Either it makes you renounce parts of your religion, which is what the end goal is in the first place, or it makes you go into a fallacy.

And so, think about it. How can you have three all-powerful beings? All-powerful being defined as having power over all things. If you have three entities which have all power over all things, then you have a contradiction. Because has entity one got all power over entity two? Does entity two have all power over entity three? Does entity three have all power over entity one? And so you're stuck in a contradiction. If they say, "Well, actually, they can compromise," so they can share the power, but then they don't have all power if they need to compromise in order for power to be shared. Or they say, "No, actually, in this, we say that entity one has power over entity two and three," in which case entity two and three are not gods at all, then. And so you calling them that is incorrect.

So, this argument of the Quran is, is an undercutter. It's a rational and logical undercutter. Which means, really, at this point, you don't even require more elaboration. It's that deep. It's that deep. That's it. Like, you've, the calm of the Hajj has been done. The, the delivering of the message has been done. You've done your job. You can, you can say to them, "Look, you've got three all-powerful beings. That's it. You can't have it. It's impossible by definition." And it could be that's it. You're finished. Like, you know, it's done. And if they want to accept it, they can accept it. If they want to reject it, they can reject it. But this is the Quranic argument. It's called *Dalil al-Tammah*, meaning literally preventing, is prevention. Like, because this is impossible for there to be. It's logically prevented, if you like, this reality where you can have three all-powerful things or beings, entities, or whatever. Or things, because you can refer to Allah as a thing. I'm not sure if you know that the Quran says, "Which thing is the highest in testimony? Say, Allah." You know, anyway, this is a side point.

So, that's the first thing. The doctrine of the Trinity is as follows, and we need to make sure we get this right, especially because if we are caught straw-manning the opposition, then they will use that as a way to claw out of whatever situation they're in. Right. The doctrine goes as follows: You have the same essence, but you have a different persona. You have different persons, sorry. Now, this distinction of essence and persona, where did it come from? It's a question to the people. Where is it? Does anyone know where this? Well, let me ask an easier question: Where did it not come from? The Bible. Okay. You will not find this distinction between essence and persona in the Bible.

Augustine, I'm not sure if he's the first person to ever mention this or not, but he, when he was mentioning, he was mentioning the issue with what we've just said, having three almighties and one almighty at the same time. And he wrote a book, which is a long book about the Trinity, many different volumes. And remember, he's positioned in the fourth century. We're talking like 300 years after Jesus' disappearance. He said, "In order to get away from the contradiction," and he, by the way, in his book, he put so many different analogies of the Trinity, and many, all of them have problems, which other Christians have outlined. All of his analogies. We're going to cover some famous analogies today as well. But he said, "In order to avoid the contradiction, we need to separate essence and person." So, it's because if we say there are three persons and one person at the same time, that's a contradiction. If we say there are three essences in one essence at the same time, that's a contradiction. So, the only way to get out of these contradictions is to create two categories. But of course, this doesn't solve any problem because you've still got three gods and one god. So, having two different categories in, in essence and personality, does not stop you from having two different characters when it comes to the category of God, or divinity, or Godliness, or, yeah. It wouldn't, it wouldn't stop you from having. So, the only way to eliminate this is to say, "Well, Jesus is not God." But you can't say Jesus is not God because that is the basis of your belief. The Holy Spirit is not God. Because they say Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is the Father is God, the Son, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. But there are not three gods, but one God. That's it. That's a contradiction. That's a perfect example of a contradiction. How could the mind and the intellect accept such a proposition?

Allah has made it very clear because now *Dalil al-Tammah* has to be made so easy that anyone over the age of puberty can understand it. It's not like complex stuff. It's, it's very, very clear. So, what they believe is that you have the same essence. What they say, what they believe may be completely different. In fact, and that they are, these are the two words that you need to be aware of: they are co-eternal and co-equal. And why that's important is because there's evidence to the contrary of those two things in the Bible itself. For example, we always say, "Well, Jesus didn't know the fig tree and the things that you've seen at the base of ahmad did that." Like, if he was all-knowing, he didn't know, you know, the fig tree and all this. And he doesn't know when the hour will be. And they have their ways of getting out of it. "No one knows the hour except for the Father." Right. But what about the Holy Spirit? And all this, he's meant to know everything. Because what they do with Jesus, and you've got to be aware of this, is they say Jesus has two natures. He has the manly, he has the human nature, and he has the God nature. So, the nature that didn't know the tree, the figs on the tree, was what nature? That was a human nature. But the God nature, he knew that. He knew the tree. He knew this and that. So, the, the human nature of Jesus didn't know when the hour will be. But God's nature of Jesus, he knows when the hour will be. You see? So, we say, "What about the Holy Spirit?" Because it says, "No one knows the hour except for the Father." He's only, the Holy Spirit has only got one nature. So, why is he excluded from knowing when the hour will be? This was one of the things I asked David Wood in the discussion on the debate, and he didn't have any response. You can go and find this. It's a very, very troubling question for them. Biblically, especially with Protestants, how are you going to respond to this?

So, they believe that there's co-equality and co-eternality. So, it's the same essence, and it's co-equal and co-eternal. And it's about this co-equality and co-eternality which you can clearly see a development in. You can clearly see it. And we're going to go through that today, and how the church fathers didn't believe that at first, and then they started to believe in that. So, we'll start off by doing a quick warm-up discussion. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So, there's three groups. We can have three groups. We'll have one, the Christian group, okay? And two Muslim groups. Actually, we have two Christian groups and one Muslim group. Yeah, because I think you'll need all the help that you can get. Okay. And then, what we'll do is, we'll, we'll do some role-playing early on, just to see how you would, how, just using this one evidence that we've provided, would be the arguments you use, and what would be the objections that the Christians would have, and how you would counter those objections. Okay? So, let's have a break, and we're going to give you, I'm going to tell you who's in what group. And then after that, we'll have five minutes of just, uh, speaking amongst your peers, planning what to say. You know, what the Muslim group is gonna. So, you guys are gonna be the Christian group. One, two, three, and all from, from Ibrahim onwards, yeah. It's gonna be the Christian group. Okay.

So, um, so here's the Trinity, like, uh, as you guys understand it, right? And you can correct me if I'm wrong. But what you're saying is that, um, you have the Father, you have the Son, and you have the Holy Spirit, right? And you're saying that they are equal, and that they are co-eternal, right? And at the same time, they are, you know, the same essence. However, they are at the same time three different persons, okay? And, you know, this is obviously a clear contradiction, right? Because if you're saying that the Father is God, he's saying that the Son is God, and you're saying that the Holy Spirit is God, right? Then this would mean, you know, through the law of identity, that the Father must also be the Holy Spirit, who must also be the Son, right? But obviously, you guys won't accept this. This is heresy by your standards, right? So, this is why, you know, this is a clear contradiction, clear, you know, it's clearly illogical, and therefore, it's an impossible position to hold for you guys. He wants to stand up and, well, this should not be contentious for a Muslim, because you two believe in something very similar with your God. You believe that God's speech, which is a different person, will come on the Day of Judgment. And you also believe that God Himself will come on the Day of Judgment. So, one essence, two different persons. How do you respond?

I would say that you didn't respond to what I said, and you just brought something else. Like, can you first just respond to what I said, and then we'll deal with that later? What's the question? Is are you saying this is, this is a contradiction or is it heresy? It's a contradiction, because the alternate is heresy. What was the contradiction? Right. So, the contradiction is, right? Are you, do you guys believe that the Father is the Son, is the Holy Spirit? Do you guys believe this? Yeah. So, yes, you guys don't believe it, because to believe so is heresy, right? It's a contradiction, because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are different beings, right? They have different things about them, so they cannot be at the same time identical to each other. Um, okay, wait. So, he just said that. So, you said that they shared the same essence, right? Um, okay. Okay. So, if they share the same essence, and you're saying that they are all God, right? So, if you think they share the essence of Godness, are you saying that a third of God is the Holy Spirit? Okay. So, what do you mean by this "share the same essence of Godness"? There is the essence which is goodness. And so, therefore, in the same ways, we will have, we should all share the essence of humanness. You are a human, you're a human, you're a human. They all share that essence. Okay. The reason why that is different, right, is because, yeah, it's because for us, um, we share the essence of humanness, right? But for example, the person next to me, whose name is, uh, I always say the name, actually, yeah. So, for example, there's a person next to me. We share the same essence of being human, but we're two different beings, right? So, this isn't analogous to your position, because you wouldn't say that you have three gods, right? But there's only one essence, which is the God. Okay. I agree. You're saying that they're one essence. Let's get some other people involved. Okay. Yeah. So, you're saying that they're one essence, but they're three gods, three beings. It's good. It's good. That's the kind of thing you would hear, definitely. The Holy Spirit, the Father, and the Son all share the same essence of Godness. So, can the Father do something which the, and which the Son disagrees with? No. If they share the same essence, as, as we humans do, different stuff. We don't have other things that I don't need to ask him, or I don't need to give permission. I do my own things. That's his own things. [Laughter] By the way, sorry, that's a really good point, and that's actually another Quranic argument. Um, who, who knows from where again? I say that again. What you said? No, so basically, we share the same essence as humans, but we are totally different. I do, I do my things differently. He does these things differently. We can't be, we can have the same becoming humans, but we know the same. We, we are totally different. Using that, you share the same essence of God, so does that mean that Jesus, or that stuff, that is totally different to what the Holy Spirit does, and the Holy Spirit does sometimes totally different to what, uh, the Father does? So, what are you saying? First of all, before you answer, what, what am I thinking? No, no, no. The argument now is saying that this, he's basically saying he's got a different will to the, to all humans, but you share differently. Yes. He says, "If, if in the heavens and the earth there was any god beside in Surah Al-Anbiya, that, uh, beside Allah, then they would have been corrupted." This is the argument of there has to be one will, because if there was more than one will, the universe wouldn't be uniform and regular. We talked about this before, actually, when they're talking about the proof of God's existence. But this is a good point. It's a very good point, because have they got different wills? And if they have, if the Father has a will, and the Son has a will, and the Holy Spirit has a will, then what is it? One will or three wills? Number one. And then, is it possible for the will of the Father to be differentiated, or to be in contradiction to the will of the Son and the Holy Spirit? And if you say no, then is it really a will in the first place? Because a will is, what's a will? Volition, or a will is the ability to, to choose X over Y. Yeah. So, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Got an answer. Yeah. Now, try and get somebody else. Yeah. Let's try and. So, just to make sure I understand your question, you're asking about the wills, whether they have different wills or whatever. I'm saying that, um, because they all have the essence of goodness, and they will, they will have the attribute of absolute goodness, so, uh, and other similar attributes as well. So, um, their wills necessarily coincide with each other. So, it's not even this will, say, is, uh, it's inconceivable that they would ever disagree. They have, they have different wills, but they never contradict. That's what they would actually say. Yeah. That's, that's a good representation of what they would actually say. So, my question is, if they have a, so, this is, imagine Father has a will. Stuff. Is that will going to be the same as Jesus or the Spirit? The Holy Spirit? Yeah. So, why in the Bible, there's so many examples of Father's wills, neither the Son nor neither the Holy Spirit are aware of, or just they don't know? You're the Christian. Is the Father prevented from? Is he not able to go against the will of the Son? What was saying is, it's inconceivable. That's impossible. So, he's not able to say inconceivable. Right. Which is different to being illogical. Right. Same thing. No, it's just not. Well, it's inconceivable. Like, in some ways, it's like God, you can't, because that doesn't give us all. Right, guys, we're going to wrap this up. It's good. Let me just give you guys a bit of a thing. The thing about will is, it's a, the reason why it's such a powerful argument of the will, and remember, once again, it is a Quranic argument, and we say that the best rational arguments are the ones found in the Quran, right? So, we've already got the *Tammah*, and this one doesn't have a name per se, but you find it in the ayah, or the implications of the ayah, is because a will is defined as being able to choose X over Y. Right? If you're saying that the wills are all practically, it's necessary, or there's a necessary relationship between will one, will two, will three, then that, that absolves will one, two, and or three, the ability to choose one over two, or A over B, because you're forced. It's an unless necessity means you don't have a choice. So, that would, in fact, be doing *nafy* of the will, or that would be negating. If you can't say you have a will, but the will is forced to comply by some necessity, does that make sense? So, will one cannot be there. There cannot be anything which supervenes, okay? Which means it acts upon. So, if you have will one, and that will is an ability to choose A over B, there cannot be anything which is supervenes on that will, such that it doesn't have that ability to do it. Likewise, there cannot be anything that supervenes on will two, that would not give it its full ability to choose A over B. Likewise, there should not be anything on will three that supervenes on it, which would give it the non-ability to choose A or B. If, if there's a collection of supervention happening, or even a singular instantiation of it happening, then that nullifies the fact that the will is the will in the first place. It's no longer a will. If you're saying it's forced to act in a certain way, or in harmony, they are collectively forced to act harmoniously, or in a necessary relationship, then it's not will anymore. We're talking about more situation like the sun and the rays. If you go back to even Sina, remember he said that it's, what his belief was, God doesn't have a will. It was just more about like, God is like the sun, and the creation is like the rays. That's what he believed. [Music] So, if I do something, uh, if I change anything in this one, there should be changing in that one's, okay? If they're connected to each other. Yeah, exactly. If you have that situation, then, then it's no longer a will. Yeah. But we intend to. We see that exactly. The Father does something. So, if, if the, if the wills have to comply by an order outside of its own choosing, it's no longer will. That's basically it. If, if the will, if one of, or all of the wills have to comply by an order or a choice outside of its own choosing, it cannot be defined as a will, because the will is the ability to choose autonomously A over B. Like, if you just, for a second, imagine the, the Father in isolation, yes, he independently is making, uh, a decision, and his decision is informed by his attributes which he has. And then the Father, the Son does the same thing, and the Holy Spirit does the same thing. You can say that there's nothing external to each individual person that is influencing their decision, but as a, as a consequence of the attributes that they have, the perfect attributes that they have, they will inevitably make the same decision. It's not because they've been like, they're choosing to harmonize with each other. It's just because that's what they'll do. But have they got the choice? And here's the point. This is fine. That's that's intelligible. What that articulation is, is coherent so far. That's fine. But that's not the question. The question is, does the first will have the capability? Can it choose to go against the second world? What is it that they don't say? That's impossible for that to happen. No, but if, if, can it choose? If it's a will, it should be able to choose whether it does it or not. That's a separate question. So, there's two, there's two separate lines of inquiry. Yeah. Like, let me give you a human example. Would you kill your child? Now, is it like human impossibility? Moral impossibility? Like, obviously, on a lesser level, and it's not fully analogous, but just, no, you wouldn't. But is it conceivable? Yeah, I can. It's possible for me to do it. In the same way, I'm not asking whether in reality or materially, all free wills, the entitlement of them being X, Y, and Z in terms of attributes means that they will never contradict each other in terms of actions or materializations, whatever they do. I'm asking, is it capable? Is it capable of doing it? Is Jesus, who has a will and who is God, capable? Is it in his ability to go against in will what the Father says? If they say yes, but he won't do it, that's a contradiction. Because the Father should have nothing to, uh, supervene on his will. Because if you're saying that Jesus can supervise on his ability to do something, then we'll go back to *Tammah*. We'll go back to the idea that, you know, you have these rivaling gods fighting for each other. You know, if they say no, if they say no, it's not possible for Jesus to go against the Father, like you're saying, "We all share this human spirit, but I can go against you." And then, what you're saying in that situation is that he doesn't have will. Then there's something missing in his choice-making ability. That his choice-making ability, Jesus's choice-making ability, is obscured by something which is external to Jesus, and which supervenes on Jesus. So, if Jesus is incapable, if it's impossible for Jesus to make a choice that goes outside of the scope of the choice of the Father and the Holy Spirit, then the Father and the Holy Spirit are acting as active superventions on the Fa, on Jesus. That there is something which is in his, within the Father and the Holy Spirit, which supervenes on Jesus and disallows Jesus from doing something that would otherwise have happened, had the Father and the Holy Spirit not there, which is that he has the choice to do things, uh, which would otherwise not be obscured. Which is that he has the choice to do things, uh, which would otherwise not be obscured. So, in other words, there is an external element here, you see. And this, we're going to find with the analogies that they give, how this kind of thing is very problematic, very problematic. Because they go into two different directions. One of them is Modalism, and the other one is Tri-theism. Okay? And historically, these are two separate directions, and we'll come into, we'll, we'll cover that, inshallah, as we go through it. Would they have some kind of, um, would they come back at us with something like, you know, 99 different aspects of, uh, law? They do. That's what they try and do. But the answer is simple: that we don't have the equivalent of persons. The difference between God's attributes, according to us, and their conception of the Trinity, according to them, is that God's attributes, and this is a very important question, actually. It's a very important question. God's attributes, according to us, relates to, to the oneness of God, which is how, what God is, what God is. What God is? God is the all-knowing one, all-powerful one, all that. Yeah. The, the what-ness of God. But when it relates to the Christians, it doesn't relate to whatness. Who does it relate to? Who-ness. Who is God? Do you see the difference? So, it's with us, the question is, what is God? Have there been controversies in Islamic history between Ash'aris, Maturidis, Mu'tazilis, Salafi, this, that? Yeah, of course. I mean, yeah, no problem. What is the controversy? What is the subject of controversy? What God is. That's the subject of controversy. How do we understand God? Is it possible for us to understand Him in this way or that way? Or these are the controversies that we've had in Islamic history. But we've never had a controversy about who God is, ever, in Islamic history. They, they have had this controversy: Is the Holy Spirit God? This is a question they've had. So, you don't even know who God is. And this is deep, you know. And this is deep. So, let's, actually, this is the next slide. Who God is changes. Who God is changes. In mainstream Christian doctrine, this can be coined as the Incarnation Problem. Because we already said who God is. Now, the Holy Spirit comes into the Godhead as a co-equal, co-eternal aspect of the Trinity. Somewhere when what you call the Cappadocian Fathers, that's what they're referred to as, yeah. The Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of, uh, uh, I forget the other one, and, uh, we'll cover them. And I forget the third one. Uh, the guy from Nyssa. I forget. We'll have this good thing. I'm recapping this. Basil. Basil of Nyssa, I think, is, yeah. Those three guys, they decided they were writing about, should the Holy Spirit be part of the, um, the Godhead? And so on, as a co-equal, co-eternal. And they won the argument before 381, or the Constantinople Creed. So, who God is changed from that aspect. But also changed from the aspect of the Incarnation. Remember, Jesus before and after the Incarnation. So, before the Incarnation, who was Jesus? Was he a man? Was he God? Well, they believe he had a spirit form. He had a God form. So, okay, he was, he was a goddess spirit, and then he became flesh. So, now, who God, who Jesus was, went from being God in a spirit form to being God and man at the same time. You see? So, you have two different levels of who-ness changing. You have the who-ness of God, i.e., the Trinity, in the case of the, the third person of the Trinity, being co-eternal. And then you have the who-ness of Jesus himself, who went from being all God to human and God at the same time. Jesus Christ, according to them, is man-God. He is both. That itself is a contradiction. So, you have layers of contradiction. You have contradiction. You have simple: Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but they're not three gods, but one God. Contradiction. Jesus is a man, but Jesus is God. Contradiction. So, you have so many contradictions here. At every turn in their theology, there is a contradiction. And this would refute the idea of the immutability of God, according to Christian doctrine. If God is meant to be unchanging, his who-ness is literally the wholeness of God is changing. You know, if Jesus is part of the Trinity, and Jesus is man and God at the same time, then, then is it okay for us to say a man is part of the Trinity? So, some will say, "These are the analogies now that they'll come with." You are talking about judgment in the, in the debate against you. You know, what was, what's the point of this? It doesn't say it's a person. Yeah. It doesn't say it's a person. It says that, you know, there's lots of, we, there's lots of discussions about the, of the Quran, you know, and so it's, they differentiate between the Quran. This is a big misconception. The Quran is different from the Quran itself. The Quran that we read, and we are rewarded for it, except Quran states, and that's different from the Quran itself. So, the Quran, according to, and I'll mention the Ash'ari view and the Salafi view, is the unchanging word of God. Yeah. It's the unchanging word of God. It's not created. Believed it was created. Okay. That was the big *fitna* at the time of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, you know. And so, they were, they were saying it was created. So, mainstream Ash'ari, Maturidi, and Salafi, humbly people say this is, uh, not correct. Now, the Salafis have a different way of defining the Quran than Ash'aris, okay? So, Salafi says, "Other, which is that it's words, and it is sounds also. It's, uh, letters and sounds." Whereas the Ash'aris and Maturidis, they define it in a *selb*. They don't define what the, what the speech of God is, but they define it where it isn't. And literally, it's the opposite of all the things that Hanbali say. It's not. They know. So, just not sound. This, not all these things. So, this is one of the differences. But they all agree that it's not created. And they all, and they will all say happily that it's the, is the word of God. So, for the purposes of speaking to disbelievers, you don't need to go into these details of difference. The major point of agreement is, we all say it's the word of Allah, which is uncreated. The Quran is a subset of the greater category of Allah's speech. So, the Quran is not, uh, the only words of Allah. Allah has spoken many different words. He says, "This is a word." If you know, Allah has spoken words before in revelations that came before Allah. In fact, He mentions in different, you know, different places of the Quran, "There is no exhausting the words of Allah." You know. So, that's what we need to remember. Them trying to equate the Quran with the Trinity is a fallacy. It's not the same. Is this analogous? We don't consider the Quran a person. We don't consider the Quran, you know, a separate entity from Allah in that sense. We don't, we don't, we consider the Quran something which Allah, He speaks to the people, to whoever He wants, or whatever He wants. And that's what the Quran is, according to Islamic theology. Any other questions on that? In the Quran? All right.

So, when you mention the Trinity to the, to Christians, they'll give you some analogies, and some of these analogies are very, very poor. Very poor. Life. What? Huh? The egg. We've got them all here, actually. So, let's read some of those up. So, the egg, and knowledge. Three main parts: the shell, the white, and the. In fact, let's do this. Yeah. Instead of me telling you the answers to this, let's have another five minutes, and you guys, with the person next to you, what are the problems with the analogies that you can see on the PowerPoint slides? You do it yourself. Yeah. What are the main problems? And remember, what the, what they say the Trinity is, they say the Trinity is one essence and three persons. Okay? So, five minutes, and then we'll come back and jump right here. Yes. Stop recording.

Okay, so we've got four. Is it three or four? One, two, three, four. We've got four different analogies here, which are very common that they'll use, okay? And I want you, when you're unraveling and deciphering and just dissecting and deconstructing these analogies, so think about some of the things that we said, and it all goes back to the two main arguments, logical arguments that the Quran itself makes. One relating to will, and one relating to power. And you could say a third one, which is relating to creation itself. And because, you know, Allah, He mentions, "Each of the creators would have taken what they have created." So, like, the ultimate, how many ultimate creators are there? Is Jesus the ultimate creator? So, for example, did Jesus create this? Like, pretend this is the universe. Did Jesus create this? Did you, I mean, did the Holy Spirit create this? Did the Father create this? How did all three create this? Who is responsible ultimately for the creation of the universe? Now, you say all three are responsible. No, but one is responsible. Is Jesus holy and fully responsible for the creation of the universe? If you say no, then he's disqualified from being God on our standards. If you say yes, they're not about the Holy Spirit and the Father. It's a catch-22. It's, it's really beautiful because it's straightforward. You know, we don't need to go into too much details, as I said, the Quran has the best rational arguments. We don't just say that as lip service. We actually mean that, you know, as you can see with this. So, what are the father? So, they would say they were co-eternal, remember? They say they all were there at the same time. That is the official position of the Protestants and the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox. The three major Chr, or even the Orthodox, let's say, because that includes the Orientalist, or Oriental Orthodox Church, like the Copts and stuff. That is the, and they have their own answer for it, which, which is not satisfactory, you know. But that's, it's a good question, actually. These are good questions, you know, and these are good arguments you make. Now, let's, uh, what is the first analogy? And how would you respond to it? Do you want to start? You've got, yeah. So, the egg analogy is the first one, right? Three main parts: the shell, the white, and the yolk, but one egg. All right. Therefore, goods, fruit, therefore good heads are pretty good, right? So, they say that they, remember their their conception, the Trinity is that God is made from the same *uzia*, meaning the same essence. Yeah. So, what is disparate here with this analogy, or what is in conjunction with it? Well, first of all, there are essentially three different parts, yeah, and three different essences. I mean, the shell of the egg is completely different. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Good. Good. Good. Good. So, so add to it, um, yeah, I guess if they say that, um, these three different parts are good, then I guess you're saying that, you know, your God is made out of parts. And as we, that's a good point as well. That wouldn't go through that parts. But also, if you say that, you know, no one would say that the shell itself is the egg, or that the yolk is the egg, right? So, this analogy, it's, uh, it doesn't work, right? So, the, the, the shell is not the same as the white, and the white in substance is not the same as the yolk. And so, it's not three different essences. It's not one essence and three different, uh, things. It's three different essences. It's three different essences. All right. Good. Any other thing you want to add to that, anyone? Exactly. Exactly. There's a good point. Why does it have to be three? Why, why is there no, the number three is completely unnecessary. So, why don't you make a quadru, quadrunity? Why not a quadrilateral? Why not, um, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Excellent. That's a really, really good point. That is a really good point. There's no need for there to be only three. There can be a million, uh, such persons of God, a billion. So, we can go, speak about Hinduism. Hinduism is an acceptable option. Why not? You have this God and that God and Ganesh and this one, Vishnu and Ram and all, all of these different ones. And the pantheism and they were the golden side and they put the milk like this and then they come back and then they see the boat is gone. This is, uh, no, but Indians are very clever people. As you, I'm not, who's Indian here again? No one's Indian. But are you Indian? Where are you from? New York, yeah. India's Indians are realistic. Indians are some of the most clever people in the world. Whenever they go into a university, no, they go into the university. They, and Indians and Chinese, they go into university and they just overtake it, right? As the Quran says, they make the high people the low ones, you know. But when it comes to, uh, religion, it's like, we'll just believe in anything, whatever the forefathers said, you know. If it was, if there was maybe a God, Santa Claus is there. And the point we're making is really, Hinduism is not too dissimilar from this religion. Because why? This is a really good point. Why three? You have to prove the logical necessity of the number three, which is absolutely impossible. Well, it's a good point. So, what's the next analogy? I think we might need to cut some of those parts out. All right. Water. The water analogy. Yeah. Okay. Who wants to deal with the water analogy? Um, you can't have, um, it's, you can have what you can have the actual, uh, water in three different states. Yes. You have a given, you know, quantity of water. Yes. It can't be both for all three at the same time. Beautiful analogy. Doesn't work. Beautiful. So, this is, by the way, this is a kind of, it's called Modalism. We'll come, we'll cover it, right? So, Modalism is that they believe God takes different forms, different modes. So, the Father takes, this is the Father, basically transforms and becomes the Son, and the Son becomes the Holy Spirit. And that is a heresy, by the way. That's the first thing we need to know, in accordance with present-day Christian notions and theological understandings, that's a heretical belief. And remember, we told them, you're either going to go to heresy or fallacy. And in this case, they went for the heresy option. They'd rather be more, or not even more, like innovators and heretics. Like, it's heresy, it's the *bidd'ah al-mukaffirah*, the, the, the kind of *bidd'ah* that takes you out of the fold of Christianity. Before we don't care about that, but, you know, for them, it's this, you know, it's this deep one. And so, so Modalism, number one, if they say, if they use the water analogy, you have to bring up Modalism. The opposite of Modalism is Tri-theism, where they basically say that there are three gods which are separate. They will say that, they will say three gods which are separate. So, they will not say, "And all three are one," because they know it's a contradiction. So, they try and resolve it by saying, "And all three are three." So, we believe in three gods. That's why it's called Tri-theism. So, on the one hand, Modalism says you've got one God, but it takes three different modes: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, like the water analogy. The water can be water, it can be ice, and it can be steam, okay? So, but that's Modalism. That's heresy. The Tri-theism is like they're admitting their politics. They're admitting it. Yeah, because they're trying to maintain a monotheistic label for some reason, right? We would say their policies in their current, uh, articulations of the Trinity. But these are the two extremes. The problem, as you've mentioned, with the, the water analogy is that, and I remember this one time, I think William Lane Craig and Zeke and Ike had a debate, and Zach and Ike came up, and he said, "But the water is H2O, and the steam is H2O, and the, what they call it, the ice is H2O." So, it's, it's, uh, it's not differentiated in any way in the sense of persona. It's not differentiated in any way, because it's got the same essence, but different, uh, constituents. It's the same constituents. It's not really different in terms of personas. How do you differentiate? Where did you get the idea from? Father, Son, Holy Spirit? It's, it's a difficult one to, uh, to do. But as we said, Modalism is anyway, would be seen as unacceptable, and you would have a changing God here. Yeah. Something to do with like, um, the, the, there's nothing necessary about the composition of, of, because when you have water, and then it changes composition, and it becomes ice, and the atoms move around, and changes, becomes steam, whatever it is, there's nothing necessary about the way that it's organized. So, you've basically just admitted that, I guess, the way your God is, is beautiful. Excellent. That's very good. That's good. Because if your God can change in full, and full, uh, composition, if you like, then, then you can't say that He was necessary in the beginning. Which is really important to realize that, you know, the arguments for God's existence, where we start from first principles, they do well in disproving the Trinity. Because if God, if God can change in full composition from Father to Son, Son to Holy Spirit, then that means God was never necessary in the beginning, too much. Yeah. It's too much for them, isn't it? How can you remain to be Christian after this? We have to go down and speak opportunity and assume a lot of things that otherwise people didn't assume. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. What's the next? Yeah. Oh, yes. You've got the physicist. Oh, for the next one. All right. The next one is the man. Man who is simultaneously a husband, a father, and a son. Have you heard this one before? I've heard this. People have made this. Yeah. What do you want to say about this one? Yeah, it's not problematic for a man to exist in three forms. So, he can be a father, he can be a husband, he can be your son. But that implies that, you know, the father calls the son. But at the same time, for God, if we give him this analogy, he can't. How can he cause God? Beautiful. God is uncaused, obviously. Excellent. Excellent. So, in the case of the analogy of the father, son, and the grandson, or the father, grandfather, whatever it is, yeah. In the human example, well, the father is the cause of the son. But according to them, Jesus is uncaused. You know, so, how, how can you have it both ways? Number one. That's number two. Is it relational? And having a relational, uh, kind of, it doesn't, doesn't change your intrinsic attributes. Because say, this is the relationship I have with why does that have to be three? So, they always choose examples where there's three. So, what did they say? Father, father, son, husband, grandfather, niece. What about the grandfather? What nephew? Why do you put that in there? Yeah, you're choosing which ones to put in and which one's not. And this goes back to the necessity of three, which is nonsense. There's no necessity of three, as you mentioned. Yeah. It could be a million. But yeah, that's just good. That's a good point. Any other points you want to make on that? Yes. It's the, like, it's, um, to be a father is like, it's just like, it's like a role, yeah. It's not, it's not like, it's not a person. It's just like, it's a role that you have. Uh, yeah. In the same way that you being a son, you'll be, and he's, it's also just bad, add up as well. I don't know, like, for me, that's when I'm listening to his analogies, that's what it's feeling in my heart, like, you know. Yeah. Though the next one's gonna make you very triggered, isn't it? I think it's gonna make all of us. I mean, look at this one. And this is what William Lane Craig, this is, you can see this in his scholarly articles, so-called scholarly articles. And this is the heavyweight, okay? This is the guy who refuted me. Uh, I still to respond to him. I feel like I forgot to respond to him. He spoke my name wrong on the refutation. He spoke right in the first two paragraphs, and then he's very wrong in the second two. But this is, uh, cerebral, uh, sebum. How did you pronounce his name? Cerberus. Cerberus analogy. A three-headed dog dwelling in the underworld from Greek mythology. Three heads, three personalities, but one dog. How do you respond to this? With the face partner, just don't put me in a property. It is. But let's, let's refute him. Let's refute him. Go back to, by example of Cerberus twins, okay? Being conjoined by the neck is very, uh, it's not really dissimilar from being controlled by the hip. This, we're talking about three heads, three dogs. This is like, um, giving him an analogy. At least make it something that I've seen before. Something I can relate to. Something like, if he's, [Laughter] that's a valid point. Good. Yeah. This is the main point. This is the main point. Is they've got three separate brains, and they've got.

Three centers, separate centers of consciousness. Right. This is the words you want to use. They've got three separate centers of consciousness. So the dog one can decide to turn around and nip the other dog. The other one can bite the other dog. This is all possible. And we already said it's gone back to the will argument. And this should not be possible if you're saying that the wills are all aligned. One dog could want to eat the food, the other dog wants to sleep, the other dog wants to yawn. Lola's tongue. It's like Siamese twins. You have to imagine. Imagine presenting this dog thing as an argument in the debate. I would love to see what he has to say. Even William Haskell, his colleague, he says this is they have overlapping bodies. It doesn't mean that they're one dog just because they have overlapping, you know. This all of this. So they don't have to say, you know, we believe in Allah. We believe in one God. Clearly, Islam came to clean up the problems that came before these insurgents of these ideologies and myths that have been inserted to the pure theology. I'd rather believe in this dog thing. Come on.

Is there anything in the Old Testament that because that they hooked this on to, you know, saying because there's the whole of the Old Testament? It's got nothing about three years behind you've got the forgive me. Yeah. So, you know, there's nothing in the Old Testament about three natures of God. And then all of a sudden, exactly. They have this exact and they try and contrive things. But the easy argument is, if it was clear in the Old Testament, why were Jews not following it for all these thousands of years? If it was so clear in the Old Testament and the Jews were completely oblivious to it, no one mentioned it. Is there anything they they point to that this could, you know? No, no, no. They can't. Nothing's substantive. They can. They do point to. They do point to stuff like, for example, in they point to, for example, Jesus, uh, wrestling, sorry, God wrestling with Jacob in the garden. And they say, well, this is an angel. And actually, that was Jesus, you know. And they'll put Jesus in there. In this Isis Jesus kind of way. Like they'll put Jesus. Oh, he was there. Why is it speaking? Why is it Elohim? Why is it, you know, why is it in the plural? You know, Elohim because him is like a it's a pluralized. Yeah, yeah, yes. But why, why is it like that? You know, this kind of these are the arguments you anticipate. Nothing to say that there were three co-equal, co-eternal, uh, persons. This is really what the arguments. They don't want to hear because they, it will shatter the faith of any any sincere person in Christianity. You believe in these things. What you need is just one. I mean, imagine if Christians were listening to this. Imagine if you were a Christian and you believed in this and you were listening to what we were saying today. What would happen to your faith? If you're being honest with yourself, you say, look, there's no way to justify this. Like I can't believe this. The fact that people still believe this is one of the best anthropological evidences of tribalism. Where either said to them, believe in what has come down to you. They say, no, we believe in what our fathers have, you know, what we have found our fathers upon. Because there's, I mean, really, I can't see. And there's a reason why Christianity is crumbling. It's because of this.

I think what we should do here is end it here, actually, because what I don't want to do is, um, I think we need another session on this, basically. The next segment will be historical element. But to try and cover this all in one session, I think would be would be too much. So I'm going to defer this to Monday's session. Today, we've covered basically, to summarize, the logical aspects, the logical aspects of this. We have in particular covered, uh, in the Quran, the other adil in the Quran against the Trinity, against their theology, uh, and obviously, you know, the verses, "kanna yet kolani tayam," they used to both eat food, and things that indicate limitations. The best evidences are in the Quran. And we'll continue with this same kind of sentiment when we talk about in the next session, the Church Fathers and how they and the development of the Trinity historically.

And this itself, and I thought about, well, this is a very strong argument. Well, like this is how I thought of it. I thought this is a very strong argument. Is there any us in the Quran? And then I realized that there is an for this in the Quran as an argument. You know, it's in the ayah in chapter 9:30, where Allah says that they follow the the when it says the Christians, uh, you know, said Jesus is the Allah, and Isaiah the Jew said Isaiah is Allah, you know, and then that they follow the sayings of those who just believed before. And I thought about this thought, what does this mean? And really, what Allah is telling us is that there were polytheists that came before that Christians are copying. That's what it's saying. Christians and Jews are so basically the religions of Christianity and Judaism have been corrupted by mythological elements or polytheistic elements of those which preceded them. And this is clear because when when Christianity entered the Roman Empire, you'll see that the Roman Empire had the gods of, yeah, not just Mithraism, but they had all types of gods. Venus, they had all these gods, basically from the the Greek times. They were put through kind of remarketed in the Roman way. And I came across one interesting. There's a guy called Justin Martyr. He was a Church Father. And he said something really interesting. He said he was, and we'll present this hopefully next time, but he was saying that just like you guys believe in Venus or Jupiter, one of these gods, I can't remember which one it was, yeah, it says, and he was basically giving them their mythology and saying, we also believe in the Father and the Son, like in the same kind of way. And if you think about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, that construction itself has been around for years, like thousands of years. You had, you know, Zeus and Hercules, and then all these children. You had like Mithraism, Isis, Horus, and, uh, or Osiris, Osiris, you know, you have these this idea of a God and then the demigod or the Sun God. And this idea has been there for years. So it was, it's easy to make an argument that this was because of the influence of Roman mythology that came from Greek times that this whole construction of the Trinity came about in the way that it came about. But we will speak about how the Trinity developed next time. And as for now, we say, Salaam Alaikum warahmatullahi.