Why you got I I. Hey, J. All right, thank you for joining me on this episode of the Gospel Truth. I'm your host, Marty Wilson. We have another fantastic debate for you today. This is my final live debate for a while cuz Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson, we are taking a break. Uh, if you guys know, I've been talking about this break for a little bit because we are exhausted. We're tired. As you can see, I got the TGT engaged culture. Engaging the culture and Christian truth show. Y'all see that? That's that new appear from the TV. Y'all see that? Y'all see that? No. No. But I I wore this shirt at the conference, man. And uh just wanted to let you know that we will be taking a break, man. So, this is our final debate and we're going to have some fun. I got uh metaphysic Mike and I got Bryce Jay with me. Hypothic Union is a topic that we're going to be discussing. Is it logical? Is it biblical? That is going to be the topic of today's debate. And so, we are fully fully definitely definitely excited to have Bryce and Mike with me.

Um, so we're going to get into this, but before we do, I'm before I bring the guys in, I want to make sure you guys know to subscribe to the Gospel Truth to hit that notification bell so you miss out any shows that are coming up here in the future on the Gospel Truth. You need to make sure you stay in the loop. Even though we're going to be gone for a little bit, you know, at some point in time, God willing, we will be back. And so, you want to make sure you subscribe, hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on any shows that are coming up here in the future. Also, the Gospel Truth is not only on YouTube, but also Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok. So, flow over there and hit those follows and subscribes and likes and things like that on those channels as well, so you can send a loop over there. And if you don't know, The God Truth is on podcast, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify. So, if you just like the audio, maybe you got a long uh road trip with the family and you want to listen to some theology, there you go, man. You got the podcast, you got it and you got the tools that you need in your bag. So, there you go. There you go.

With that said, I have no announcements because like I said, this is our final live stream debate. I Well, I guess I do have one announcement. If you guys don't know, the final debate of the TGT conference will be streamed tomorrow evening at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Print Horn versus Anthony Rogers. I know a lot of people be looking forward to that one and so we're going to be streaming that and that will be the officially the last stream for the Gospel Truth for some time. All right, taking a break. Taking a break. But that said, let me bring these guys in so they can introduce themselves to you and we can get this debate on the road. What's up, fellas? How y'all doing?

>> Well, thanks.

>> Doing good, man.

>> Good, good. Glad you guys have joined me, man. And we are going to have a fun one. A lot of people looking forward to this one, man. We have a good crowd in the live chat already and we look forward to more people jumping in as well. And so before we jump into the to the debate, I want allow you guys to introduce yourselves. This is your chance to uh tell them about your blogs, YouTube channel, Tik Tok, whatever. Uh, if you want them to come check you out, uh, this is your opportunity. So start with Metaphysic Mike, man. Go ahead, give a quick introduce yourself, man.

>> Well, hey, thanks for having me on, Marlin. This is my first time on a formal on your ch on your channel, so I'm privileged to be here. So, my name is Michael Timberado. I got a YouTube channel named Metaphysics Mike and I'm on a mission to help people break free from the traditional heirs of the forefathers of the Christian faith. And one of them is the hyposatic union. So, I'll be holding the negative tonight. And shout out to Bryce. He actually challenged me and I agreed instantly to do this debate. Uh, I was supposed to have this topic with other Eastern Orthodox Christians who backed out. So much respect for Bryce and I'm excited to get into it and you can find me at MetaphysicsMike across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Thank you.

>> Thank you for the introduction, Mike. All right, Mr. Bryce, go ahead. Give a quick introduction yourself, man.

>> How's it going? My name is Bryce Jay. I'm an Eastern Orthodox apologist and I defend Trinitarian doctrines and the doctrines of the historical church. And my goal obviously is to introduce people to historical Christianity and the proper way of worship. Um, and I also want to thank Metaphysics Mike for being able to come do this as well and honestly give him kudos for the fact that he's one of the only people that I know that if I truly want to have a formal debate with a Unitarian that he's immediately able to stand up and be like, I'll do it right. Like a lot of them, in my opinion, I think they like to run a lot. Kind of like what he said about him trying to find people. But, you know, Mike stepped up immediately. So, I think this will be a really good fruitful conversation. Me and Mike know each other pretty well and like a casual level. We've had multiple conversations, so I think it'll be nice and educational tonight.

>> Right. Good stuff, guys. Thank you for those introductions, man. We're about to jump into this, man. So, the topic of this debate is, is the hyperstatic unionological and biblical? Bryce is arguing the affirmative. Mike is ar uh Mike is arguing negative. And so we're gonna start that with 20-minute opening statements. And we're gonna follow that with 10-minute rebuttals. And we're gonna have a 20-minute crossing a 40-minute total, 20 minutes each for cross-examination where both parties get 20 minutes each to ask questions. And then we have a 20 minute uh five minute closings. And then we have 20-minute Q&A from the audience. Sounds good.

>> Sounds good.

>> All right. All right. Bryce, you are the firmament of this debate. And so, uh, I'll be setting your time up. And uh when you have one minute left, you'll hear this little chime that let you know you have 1 minute left in your opening, in your rebuttal, and in your closing statements. All right. And so with that said, Bryce, you have the floor for 20 minutes if you need the full 20. And the timer will be in your upper leftand corner.

>> Am I am I able to share my screen because I have a I have a slideshow.

>> Okay. All right. Let me see.

>> I just hit this share screen button. Yeah, it should be a it might be a share screen deal.

>> If I don't have the ability to do it, it's fine. I mean, like I can just I can just read off the prompt. It's not a big deal, but like I h I do have something to read off of.

>> All right. It it should be if it it should be a share screen thing down there if you not sure if you see it.

>> I'm not uh Yeah, I'm not seeing that option. You gave the new uh the new option that you gave me to join this to try to fix the issue that I was having. I don't have like any I don't have any options for anything. I I it's not a big deal. I can I can I can just read. All right. I have I have a slideshow, but like it's it's not like it's not like if you guys can't see it, then you won't get what I'm saying.

>> It'll be all right.

>> Okay. All right. No, bro. Hey, hold on. Hold on. I think Mike is saying something. Hold on, Mike. What' you say, Mike?

>> I was just going to say try hovering your mouse over the screen and see if it pops up. If you got slides, that's what it does for me. It should be some They should like sort of pop up and

>> Well, I literally don't even have an option to hit uh screen share like at all. like like the new link that I got just made it to where like I only have the ability to turn my camera on, mute, or leave. That's it.

>> Okay.

>> It's not a big deal.

>> But I'll just do it this way.

>> Yeah. All right. No problem. All right. Sorry about that, man. But um yeah, so uh I'll start your your time as soon as you begin to speak, man.

>> All right. Cool. So my opening is not probably going to end up taking 20 minutes. A lot of the stuff and a lot of the content that I'm going to be providing in my uh debate with Mike today is going to be more cross-examination based, but I am going to at least provide you guys with a general um summary of what I'm going to be giving today. So, I obviously am taking the affirmative that the hypothetic union is biblical and logical. And what is this debate even about properly, right? Obviously, we have the title, but it's whether or not the hypothetic union is possible theologically, right? Because theological truth is something that is grounded in biblical truth and grounded in logical truth. So with biblical it right scripture calls to it and logically means that it does not entail any contradictions. Right? It does not break any of the laws of logic. Whether or not believing in the hypothatic union is epistemically sound as well is also extremely important. Right? This is a subtopic but it is majorly important to the hypoatic union being true or false. is that if we're also capable of proving that it is a historical position of Christianity. So this is a christologology debate. Obviously, we know that if the hypothatic union is something that's based in christologology, the comparison of worldviews today is going to stay within the realm of christologology. Okay. So we're going to compare our Christology understandings and their entailments on the biblical text. So teology, epistemology, and logical entailments. I will defend my view which is calcedonian diophysitism of the hypoththetic union and then I will make arguments as to its necessity by proving that Mike's view of Christologology actually makes the Bible and sotiology impossible to comprehend.

So first the biblical account most of the verses that I'm going to provide are proof texts for the incarnation theology. So, I'm not exactly going to be pro providing the normal ones that are used for trinitarian uh trinitarian proof texts because my uh burden of proof today is to show that God has the ability to incarnate and that he did in the Bible. Obviously, yes, I will still defend my trinitarian beliefs if Mike wants to press me on these things because I like defending the Trinity personally, but um my argument is going to stay within incarnation verses. My first argument that I have here is Acts 20:28, right? It says God has blood, right? This is obviously not something that Unitarians can affirm where it says, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost has ghost has made you overseers to feed the church of God, that which he had purchased with his own blood." Does God have blood? Of course, Mike's theology cannot accept something of that sort. There's no way. Earliest manuscripts and the majority of the early uh the early in general like the early manuscripts and the early church in general actually include the ho right as the render rather than church of the lord which is the other rendition that some manuscripts contain but the vast majority and the earliest contain church of god. If you want to disregard this, then bye-bye first John 5:7 argument because it creates an unjustified ad hoc method of textual criticism in today's academia because we all know that Unitarians love to basically say that we can't use 1 John 5:7 for the trinity because blah blah blah earliest manuscripts don't contain it. Right? So this is actually one that's on my side. Acts 2028, earliest manuscripts contain my view. It's actually included in the Codex Seniticus. It's included in the Codex Vaticanis. It's included in the texus receptus. It's include it's included in the Latin Vulgate. The earliest Latin Vulgate as well. The earliest Syriak versions as well. And we can actually look at it within well I can't show you my screen hilariously enough because my presentation isn't working but I had pictures of it in the Sonaticus. Um, but they all render it as church of God right in these specific um codeexes that we do have. So the problem arises with the unitarian Christology here. Either God does not have blood and the author of Acts got Christologology incorrect or God has blood because God took on flesh. Which one is more likely from this verse?

The next one that I have is 1 John 5:20. Bringing I'm bringing this verse up obviously because John 17:3 is the normal Dawa script that is used by Unitarians. So I want to at least get this out of the way now because I know it's going to be in Mike's opening. It is in every single person's opening. And we know that the son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true and we are in him that is true even in his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. This is a KJV there. This verse actually denotes that if we assume that St. John had the ability to write Greek correctly and provide proper grammar that the son is in therefore the true God and the eternal life himself. The final clause begins with the demonstrative pronoun this one. To what does a pronoun grammatically refer in Greek? to the nearest preceding antecedent. Now granted there are some um different renditions or there is some outliers to this rule. Uh, like for example uh 2 John 1:7 I think it is where it basically says that there's Jesus Christ and then there's this right that denotes antichrist. Um, that is right after that. That does not mean obviously that the people that Jesus Christ is the antichrist. But actually there's multiple academic uh books that exist on Greek uh on Greek grammar that says that there's two main rules to determining whether or not something follows the standard clause. And that's whether or not that the nearest preceding anticedant has the same uh gender and the same number. If you look at 1 John 5:20, this matches up when it talks about Jesus being a man and one and then it says this one is the true God. So it actually does follow the standard ability and Mike would have to actually make an argument as to why this is somehow an outlier even though that the outliers are the ones that don't follow these two rules. The verse rendered the way that the unitarians need is absolutely ridiculous. Actually Jesus being the nearest preceding anticedant net not being the subject of the last part is grammatically incorrect in both Greek and English in in this specific rendition. So Unarians need to read something incorrectly in grammar to make their interpretation of John 17:3 work. This denotes the necessity of Jesus pre-existing which unitarians can affirm. Um, and this is obviously um, you know problematic for whatever that they would affirm this.

The next thing that I have is Micah 5:2. This is something that's not used a ton but it's something that I do love using for formal debates especially. It starts conversations pretty well. This also denotes a necessity of Jesus pre-existing where it says, "But thou Bethlehem Epherta, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee, y'all shall come forth unto me that is to be the ruler of Israel, whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting." Right? Mumeam, I'm very bad at Hebrew. Please don't make fun of me. But this is a messianic prophecy which denotes that the origins of the person are from everlasting. Don't try to scoot around this and say that it's oh, it's the goddess source, right? This makes this pro this this prophecy possibly denote literally any person that can ever exist and does not denote anything special. This also doesn't refer to the Davidic line like a lot of people try to refute where it says out of the right Bethlehem already establishes dividic connection. So why add from the days of eternity to also denote the uh dividic line that just makes it completely redundant and useless.

The next one I have is Zechariah 12:10 where it says, "And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the habitants inhabitants of Jerusalem and the spirit of grace and supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced. And they have shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son and shall be in bitterness for him as one is in bitterness for his firstborn." This is also in KJB as well. Another messianic prophecy clearly denoting Jesus Christ. But the problem is that God is speaking here. Yahweh is speaking in Zechariah 12:10. And it says, "They will look upon me who they have pierced." And this is, hilariously enough, actually, this is something that may cause conversations between me and Mike between the Septuagen and the Maseretic. I don't know if Mike likes to prefer the Maseretic or prefer the Septuagent. Um, I'm usually somebody who likes to utilize the Septuagent, but uh most of the time Unitarians like to appeal to the KJV, which is something that's grabbed from the Maseretic uh in terms of the Old Testament. So another this is obviously a messianic prophecy right and it says Yahweh was pierced. Don't do the man manuscript mambo again either by saying like oh well it also there's other versions that say on him who they've pierced. Sadly the rendition that I have exists prior to Christianity even existing in the first place. So it couldn't have been con uh it couldn't have been um corrupted sorry by trinitarians because it's actually in the dead sea scrolls in 4q80 in the minor prophet section in Hebrew 75 to50 BC in Kuman K4 it actually renditions Zechariah in the manner that I have provided.

And finally, the killshot argument for the biblical account is Philippians 2 where it says, "Let this be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Morphe in of itself in Greek in is means properly form or outward expression that embodies the essential inner substance so that that form is in complete harmony with inner essence. This is in Strong's Greek 344. You can look that up yourself in the lexicon. And then hooparco, right? I'm very bad at Greek. I know I probably didn't say that right, but that is the um uh the being, right? Being in the form of God, right? So that so that word in Strong's Greek 52:25 says to exist to subsist in interesting Jesus did the following hypercon in the morphe of God being subsisting in the form morphe of God the thing that reveals the inner substance he existed in the nature of God divine nature it's a present active participle meaning being existing or subsisting and it denotes continuous inherent existence he took on the morphe of a servant denoted as human who took on human nature He did not cease to be in the form of God but added to the form of a servant emptied himself into this formoscent. How does one act if they do not already exist prior to the act out of the early church view Christologology whereas St. Ignatius of Antioch actually in his epistle to the Ephesians in chapter 7 he says there's one physician who is possessed of both flesh and spirit both made and not made God existing in flesh true life and death both of Mary and of God first passable then impassible even Jesus our Lord. He also says in the epistle to the magnesians chapter 6, he says, "What presides in the place of God and your presitters in the place of the assembly and the apostles along with your deacons who are most dear to me and who are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ who was with the father before the beginning of time and in the end was revealed." St. Ignatius of Antioch and his epistles the magnesians chapter 8 he says Christ his son who is the eternal word not proceeding forth from silence who is in all things pleased him that sent him. St. St. Aronyaeus of Leons against heresies. Book 3, chapter 6, section 1. He says, "For she is the synagogue of God, which God that is the son himself has gathered him by himself, of whom he again speaks, the God of gods, and the Lord has spoken and is called out to the earth. Who is meant by God? He of whom has said, God shall come openly, our God, and shall not keep silence, that is the son who came manifested to men who have said, I have openly appeared to those who have seek me not." He also says in book four chapter 17 he says and the son of God the only begotten who is the word of the father coming in the fullness of time having become incarnate in man for the sake of man and fulfilling the conditions of human nature. In book four chapter 19 he also says but that he is himself and of his own right beyond all men who ever lived God lord and king eternal and the incarnate word proclaimed by all the prophets and the apostles and by the spirit. St. just a martyr in his first apology chapter 22 he says moreover the son of God called Jesus even if only a man by order an ordinary generation yet on account of his wisdom is worthy to be called son of god and if we assert that the word of god was born of god in a peculiar manner different from ordinary generation so he was born in two different ways that's interesting St. Justin Martyr 1 apology chapter 63 he says also being the first begotten word of God is God and of old he appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of men of an angel to Moses and the other prophets obviously I can show plenty of these things in the early church you know prior to Nika and whatnot but you know if it comes up it comes up.

Let's get on to the logical aspects. The logical problem of the incarnation, right? How can one person have two natures with seemingly contradictory properties? The apparent contradiction is this: God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, immutable, impassible. And man is limited by power, limited in knowledge, localized in space, temporal, mutable, impassible. Jesus is both God and man. Therefore, Jesus has contradictory properties. Okay. The LPI response is very simple. The communicatio indomatum, or also known as the communication of idioms, is the method by which we show that there is no issue. Predication of action or attributes are something that is proper to the person, not the nature itself. The person of Jesus Christ died in so far as the undergoing the action property human nature called death. Jesus did not die in so far as an action proper to the divine nature. Jesus is eternal in so far as the person pre-existing with the divine nature. Jesus is not eternal only in so far as the flesh being created when he incarnated like receiving human nature. That birth and of itself is not eternal birth. These are two different senses. A contradiction cannot arise when a subject possesses properties in different senses. We actually see this in one of the first people to ever mention the law of non-contradiction himself. Aristotle in metaphysics book four chapter 3. He says that at the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject. In the same respect we must presuppose to guard against dialectical objections any further qualifications which might be added. There's actually a standard axiom to the law of non-contradiction is that it can't be in the same sense. Now applied to Christ, right? Same time, yes, during incarnation. Same thing, yes, the person Jesus. Same respect. No, divine nature versus human nature. All right. Therefore, a contradiction no longer arises from this. A contradiction must be shown in order to actually prove that the incarnation in of itself is illogical. Sadly, the LPI will not do it for you. So, I hope there's a new argument that maybe Mike can bring that'll actually tickle my brain a little bit because the LPI is very low tier.

And my final point that I have for my opening is that sotiology actually in the unitarian view collapses in a terrible way. There's a lot of unopened questions that we're going to probably end up talking about and it's going to lead to pretty hilarious conclusions in some situations. Whether or not Christ has concupiscence in his view, right, or a nomic will, right, the inclination to sin. Whether or not it could have been another man other than Jesus. Whether or not salvation was contingent upon Jesus synergizing his will with the father. Whether or not Jesus act of salvation applies across all possible worlds where man falls. This is also a major issue if we talk about that. Whether or not Christ as a finite being provided an infinite sacrifice. Whether or not the power of the cross has infinite worth or a finite worth. Whether or not the content of Christ's will is predetermined by God or God relied for salvation upon a contingent being's will to actualize salvation. We will get into more of these in the cross examination, but these are the main points plus some more. My conclusion is that I have demonstrated the necessity of the incarnation from biblical proof texts epistemically via the early church and the logicality of the incarnation and the issues that arise from not holding to the orthodox position on this subject. I pray that this debate remains fruitful and Mike learns more about our position and the orthodox way. And that is the rest of my time. I will uh concede the rest of my time.

>> All right, thank you so much, Bryce, for that opening statement. All right, Mike, you're up for your 20-minut opening statement, and I will restart your time here. All right, Mike. Uh, I will start your time as soon as you begin to speak.

>> All right. Can you see my slides? Can you see me?

>> Uh, just your slides.

>> Just my slides. That's it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. You just got the slides, man.

>> All right. Here we go. I'm going to go ahead and start. So, is the hypostatic union logical? Well, tonight I'm going to be arguing that it is not. And this I do not say lightly. I myself can remember believing it and how meaningful it was to me. I remember how hard it was to even consider it might not be true. So, you know, I feel like I have this massive burden uh because these questions really are not just intellectual. They touch something deeper related to our identity in God in Christ. So, thank you all so much for being here with me tonight even though you can't see me. Please listen closely and just consider the things that I'm about to tell you.

All right. So, the first thing we need to do is define our terms. And I'm going to go ahead and start with logic. So logic is the study of the principles of correct reasoning and the purpose of logic is to know what is true and false. Logic has two main branches. You have formal logic and informal logic. You know each have their own types of fallacies. So formal logic is going to deal only with the shape and structure and form of an argument. This is what we mean when we say something is valid. And get this, it can be valid even if the premises are total nonsense. So, for example, if I said all birds are made of cheese, I'm a bird, therefore I'm made of cheese. This argument is valid. You can literally call this logical in a strict formal sense, but of course, it's wrong because the premises aren't true. Speaking of which, that's what informal logic is, guys. It deals with the content of the argument, the truth of its premises, right? Most famous fallacies are usually informal, like a straw man. But arguments that don't make fallacies are how we consider something strong versus weak. Let's see one more quick example. If I said all light things are not dark, feathers are light. Therefore, feathers are not dark. What's the fallacy? That's equivocation, right? Because the meaning of light changes from P1 to P2. In P1, it's like things which are brighter verse dark. And in P2, it's talking about something heavy or light, right? So logically speaking, when we say something is true, what we really mean is that it's sound. An argument is sound if it meets both standards of logic, meaning it's valid, its structure is perfect, and all of its premises are true. You need both these folks. And if you can't get both your position and false and how this works is that we can reject people's conclusions whether it's unitarian trinitarian if we reject one of the premises. But what we can't do is just reject a conclusion if we accept them. Because if the structure is perfect and the premises are true, the conclusion follows by necessity. And so for the hypoatic union to be true, it must be sound being both structurally perfect and its premises are true. And this is the problem. It cannot meet both of these criteria. And I want to be clear, Bryce or any trinitarian can present an argument which is formally logical in a highly tailored logical system. But they can't do that without committing informal fallacies. Nor can they do it without violating logic. Bryce talked about this and I'm going to literally prove to you right now that the hypothetic union is illogical in that it violates the law of non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle and makes many informal fallacies.

So let's start with the Chaledonian definition produced at the council of Chaledon in 451. This is the council authority on the hypoatic union in church history. It doesn't mean they're the only ones to talk about it or say things which are similar. They are just the authority. All right. Now, this is simple. The hypoatic union asserts that Jesus is man and God. That Jesus has two natures and that Jesus person. So my first claim is very simple. All of these assertions cannot be true in the same respect because man and God have opposite essential properties. Bryce actually already agreed to this and by essential property that's defined as one that a thing must have to remain that thing. The law of non-contradiction states a thing cannot be P and not P at the same time and in the same respect. But that's exactly what the hypothatic union asserts when it says Jesus is one. And I want to make this very clear. All right. The same respect or sense is the one person of Christ. Can I get that in chat? Can I have some of my followers in chat put this in? Ready? It's the one person of Christ. The natures of Christ posit contradictory properties. For example, man by nature is passable, finite, and limited. That's literally what it means to be a human. But God is just the opposite. He is impassible, infinite, and unlimited. Both of these assertions can simply not be true in the same respect. But that's exactly what the hypoatic union does when it asserts that Christ is one person with the property of both natures. So you got to understand these properties are not just different. They're opposite and contradictory to each other. Okay? Okay. So it literally says they're creed that the properties of both natures are pre preserved in one person. It's over. It's done folks. This violates the law of non-contradict. And it's the same for the law of excluded middle which says that for any proposition P it's either P or not P. Okay. In reality, Jesus can either be God and not a man or he can be a man and not be Godlogically. There is no third option because again man and God have opposite essential properties. Right? You know the hypothetic union actually tries to invent a third category. Let me give you a quick example. Did you know that the hypothetic union teaches that the natures are not divided or separate in the one person? But they're also not mixed. That's a blatant contradiction because these are opposite of each other. To say something isn't divided is to say they are mixed. And to say they aren't mixed is to say they are divided. And so this is the same for Jesus. To call him fully man and fully God is like calling a single shape fully circle and fully square. A square has four sides. That's what makes it a square. A circle has none. So the notion of a square circle is outside logical possibility. Right? It cannot exist. It's not real. A square circle like a god man is not real. If he's truly God and truly man, he's a fictional character, no different than mythology. He exists only in your imagination, not in the world of logically possible things.

So now let's get very specific. Okay, Matthew and Luke 4 explicitly say Jesus was tempted by evil. But the scriptures say elsewhere in James that God cannot be tempted by evil. This is a dilemma. All right. There's only a few options if you want to keep your integrity intact. Okay, either Jesus is not God. Nope, they won't accept that. You could just reject James, right? You maybe God can be tempted by evil. or Jesus was only tempted per the human nature. That's what we heard tonight folks. That was Bryce's whole solution to this problem. And some others also say that he was tempted but only externally. So they usually apply a combination of these two. So let's go ahead. Ready? Right. The the qua argument human divine nature philosophy qua means in accordance with. That's what Bryce said. Ready? This is to claim that it's actually Jesus's human nature which was tempted or died or grew in virtues. And that would seem like it solves it because the natures act like a container that separates it from ever touching the other nature in Christ. But this is a blatant fallacy of refocation which shifts a predicate of a person to an attribute of nature. Th this is also called a fallacy of hypostasization where someone treats an abstract thing as though it were concrete. Simply put, folks, natures don't do things like be tempted or not tempted apart from person. It's a person who properly receives the predicate like temptation or dying. And honestly, this is ironic because they're the ones putting so much emphasis on the distinction between person and being, but they can't even do it consistently. You just heard Bryce conflate natures as having attributes of persons. That's nonsense. When the scripture attributes properties like being tempted, dying, or not knowing, those apply to the person, not an abstract nature. All right. Some also say that well, he was just externally tempted. But folks, this is a deafist fallacy, which is using an inaccurate definition to conveniently support their position, not a real definition of the word uh meaning to tempt. And we they do this with all other things. When it says Jesus doesn't know, same thing. Here's the proof. This is the BDAG third edition, the best Greek English lexicon used by scholarship. It does not distinguish between external and internal temptation. It acknowledges a semantic domain of attempt to try to test. Do you see that? Okay. James 1:13 uses a paras which is to deny temptation entirely. James doesn't say God is not internally tempted, right? It says, which is God is untemptable. This adjective negates the possibility of temptation itself. It does not distinguish between types. Now, this wasn't really his argument. Maybe he'll get into that later, but there you have it. That's some things that they claim. So, let's a very simple argument. All right. In order for the hypoatic union to be logical, it must be sound. In order for it to be sound, Jesus cannot have both natures in the same respect. And the problem is he does as the one person. Therefore, the hypothetic union is not sound and is illogical. Now, notice again, if the premises are true and the structure is perfect, the conclusion follows by necessity. Bryce is almost certainly going to agree with P1 and P2 and disagree with P3. All right.

So, the hypothetic union is illogical, but is it biblical? That's our second question. Well, my second claim is that really a doctrine is only biblical if it accounts for the teachings and data of scripture without external philosophy. But that's exactly what the hypothetic union depends on. So to disprove a biblical hypothetic union, all I have to do is show that it does not account for the teachings of scripture and artificially forces an interpret. Okay. So the Bible clearly teaches that God is the highest logically possible conceivable being. God is the most powerful. He can do anything which can be done. He can know anything which can be known. So the point is that to a first century Jew, God was the one who can never be given authority or lack knowledge or be tempted. But these are the exact types of limitations that is given to Jesus. In Matthew 28:18, it says that he was given all authority in heaven and on earth. If Jesus has a divine nature like the hypothetic union says, he already has that authority. You can't be given something you already possess. and virtue of a divine nature. Thank you very much. All right. Jesus confess ignorance of his second coming. This also trinitarians commit a deafness fallacy. They say it's not a cognitive knowledge. That's exactly what it says in the best lexicon. It means to have information about. Also Jesus is spatially limited. You don't usually people here say this, but it says in John, in Mark, in Acts that he left to go be with the father. All right? You must understand none of these passages say all authority is given to me or in virtue of my human nature. My human nature doesn't know the day or the hour or well I'm going to be with the father but you know I'm still with you in my omnipresent divine nature. All of this is inserted into the text artificially based on external postbiblical philosophy. You know, the Bible doesn't ever say Jesus is man and God at all. Ever anyways, it never says he has two natures. Nowhere. It doesn't say he's one hypostasis. These interpretations again rely on external philosophy. And it's not just any philosophy. It's late in developed philosophy. Folks, the doctrine of the hypoatic union was born out of a middle platonic syncric tradition that wouldn't reach the hypothatic union until 451 at the council of Chaledon. Prior to then Greek philosophers they call the church fathers who by the way are awesome in many ways but also wrong in many ways. They had to develop these confl concepts through significant disputes. I cover this in full detail in my problem called in my video called the problem of trinitarian language. You see, before Jesus could even be one person with two natures, they had to first argue and debate about what that even meant. Indeed, the hypothatic union is dependent upon prior councils and commentaries to reach this distinction. Don't take it from me. Here's a few scholars. This one is a Catholic. Okay. RPC Hansen says a hypoasis and seal were synonyms originally that could be used for either what God is as one or three. J and D Kelly says the same thing. These are famous petristic scholars folks. The Bible simply does not use these words that way. Did you know that the Bible uses the word twice for property? Usia in the Bible was something you owned. It uses hypostasis five times for confidence or nature. Can you believe that? The Bible uses the word hypostasis for the exact opposite that the hypostatic union uses it for to say Christ is one person. So the Bible literally lacks the necessary language to even define it, let alone teach a hypothetic union.

So I have a simple question for you. Are you ready for the truth? Do you want it? Here it is. Every divine or miraculous thing Jesus did is consistent with either being God's exalted human Messiah or the Jewish principle of agency. Behold, Jesus said, "I can do nothing on my own authority." That's not something God can say. He says that he does the will of him who sent him. He said his teachings aren't mine but of him who sent me. Right? It's the father who does the works. So Jesus's authority, teaching and words and acts are not his own. This is exalted human messiah in agency language in action. But hey, look at the ins 2:22. They said, "Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know." So, folks, there already existed a way in which the things Jesus said and did were perceived. And it wasn't as being one person with two natures, being homoius with the father. It was that he's God's exalted human messiah, also called the son of man in Daniel. Look at these parallel passages. Jesus heals the paralytic man and then forgives his sins. Proponents of the hypothetic union say, "Look at only God can forgive sins." But yet, what does each of these say? Jesus says, "I want you to know what? That I'm God? That I'm Yahweh? That I'm two per I'm one person with two natures? That I'm Homosius?" No, he says that they should know that the son of man has authority to forgive sins. Bryce, like the Pharisees, is blatantly wrong. He thinks he has to be God. Jesus told you he has the authority as the son of man, as a human, not God. In fact, look at Matthew's commentary on this. He says at the end, "And they glorified God who had given such authority to men." Not that they marvel well that well Jesus must be God or Jesus has a divine nature. Folks, any other interpretation than this is outright rejection of the revealed meaning and interpretation of Jesus.

So let's make a very simple argument here in closing. Okay. For the hypothetic union to be biblical, it must derive from scripture and not rely on external philosophy to avoid contradiction. But the hypothetic union does it is extremely dependent upon postbiblical philosophy developed out of middle platonism. He's out here citing middle platonist as a support for how yeah the Bible just must teach it. Folks, the simple reality is that it cannot be biblical because it relies on post-biblical concepts, post-biblical ideas, and philosophical traditions. And in order for Bryce to win this debate, he must prove that one person having the properties of opposite natures is not the same respect. He also must prove that it doesn't rely on external philosophy. I think the simple reality that we will see both even in this presentation but cross exam is that this cannot be done and thank you.

>> All right, thank you both for those opening statements. So now Bryce, you're back in the seat for your 10-minute rebuttal. Let me make sure I get your time uh set up here real quick, Bryce, before you start. So 10 minutes. All right, Bryce, you're ready to rock and roll and I'll start your 10-minute timer as soon as you begin to speak.

>> All right, cool. So, um, regarding like Mike's opening, right, I'm just going to kind of like go through the different things that he attempted to claim and then provide either my explanation towards things from my perspective or my position or uh rebutt or re uh rebutt the things that he's assuming based off of his opening. So first off I agree with him right in logic obviously there's formal and informal right validity versus soundness or strength things like that right and you said that the hypothetic union cannot hold to it being formally valid and informally sound but and you also said that it violates the non-contradiction and excluded middle laws. Uh, which is actually hilariously enough exactly what I quoted in my opening. I knew you were going to do that. It was just standard LPI. It's existed for a long time. Um, and I already addressed it. Actually, I already showed how in the same sense is something based off of the communicatio idiomatum, which I did not see in your opening at all. So, I'm assuming you don't know what the communic communicio idom is. Um, when we say that something's in the same respect, it's referring to the origination point for whatever that um that property is for. And the origination point to properties is something that would be proper to nature, not something that actually arises from a person. That's ridiculous because we would say that humanity is subject to death. We would not say that only each individual person is subject to death because then in that case right if Christ defeated death then it's not then he would have had to basically u or sorry if he defeated death right he is he healed it from the

Nature, he did not heal it. Just from every single person's individual hypothesis, that does not make sense, besides the Chalcedonian fathers as well. They say that what is not healed is not, uh, what is not, or sorry, what is not, uh, retained is not healed, or what is not possessed is not healed, right?

So, and he also quoted the Caledonian definition, of course, which, like I said, I hold to the Caledonian definition. I'm a Caledonian Dyophysite. I don't have an issue with that. But you think that the one person, right, is the thing that is the same respect for the LPI problem. But I, like I already said earlier, right, the properties are not something that originates in the person. So, like for example, the ability to suffer and the ability to not suffer, right, in the divine way, that's not something that originates in terms of in the person. Those idioms are communicated to the person. They are provided as basically being able to, uh, predicate them to the person. That does not mean that then therefore the properties actually exist, uh, or originate from the person. So that still doesn't actually follow that they're in the same respect. You'd actually have to use something else for that because that's not the Caledonian argument. The Caledonian definition does not say that the person is in that same respect.

You see, the cool thing about quoting early church fathers is that they held to a lot of these ancient laws, which the things that you're utilizing, right? That also, hilariously enough, originates from these same people that you say is external philosophy, yet you're using it to try to disprove my position. So, I'm not really sure, uh, how that possibly, you know, is something that you can deal with. If you'd like to stick with just strictly Bible, I would honestly say that trying to hold to the laws of logic, I don't think the laws of logic are in the Bible, right? Like there's just a bunch of dumb entailments to that. But you say that the properties of both there, obviously the creed states that the properties of both natures are preserved in Christ. Yeah, that does not mean the same respective properties which are grounded in the natures, right? The properties themselves are grounded in the natures, right? And they're preserved in Christ. That's the communicatio idiomatum. That's the ability. That's the communication of the idioms to the person of Christ. There's no contradiction there. And you're not able to actually show that. That's the best part.

And you also said that there's a contradiction because of the apparently not being divided or mixed in any sense, right? Apparently things can't be divided, uh, and also not mixed at the same time. That's absolutely ridiculous, right? Because you have to presuppose that distinction entails division, or that identicality in a person entails a mixture of natures, right? These two things require an argument to actually be the case, right? You're no longer, you're no better, actually, than a Roman Catholic trying to basically say that I can't hold to the essence-energies distinction because distinction entails composition, right? Or distinction entails separation. And it's the exact same thing, actually, hilariously enough, as like what the Monophysites did because the majority of the argument that you made against Chalcedonian Christology is Monophysite argumentation, which basically they hold the same ridiculous view that any form of distinction or any form of enumeration, right, entails a separation or a composition, which again, I'm still waiting, and I think the church has been waiting for over 2,000 years for an argument to actually be made on how this is actually the case and how this happens. You sound exactly like Dioscorus of Alexandria, and it's just quite funny to hear.

Regarding Matthew and Luke, uh, regarding the tempting Jesus verse, right? Obviously, we would hold that there's a distinction between external and internal temptation. Um, so, like when we go to, for example, Matthew and Luke saying that Jesus was tempted, it, it's funny that you quote James 1:13 because if you actually look, right, at the two verses later, I don't think that you would even say that Jesus actually falls into this category because you use James 1:13 where it says, "When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone." If you actually read two more verses after that, it says, "But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then after the desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death." I don't think you think that Jesus was actually tempted, right, in this regard because it says that being tempted means that they're dragged away by their, uh, that they're dragged away by their evil desire. You obviously don't affirm that Jesus was dragged away by his evil desire. So then therefore, Jesus was not tempted in so far as what James 1:13 declares. So you even, you also hold to the external and internal temptation distinction. So trying to collapse those things together makes absolutely no sense. And besides, right, if you think that Jesus actually suffers from what James 1:13 through 15 actually states, then basically Jesus was internally suffering from sin, which apparently he doesn't possess in your view. So then therefore, he suffers from an anomic will, which means that he possesses original sin, which is hilarious because that means he's not sinless, right? So he can't have an anomic will. He can't have the, he can't have the concupiscence, he can't have the inclination to sin if he actually possesses, right, a pre-lapsarian Adam's state, right? He's the new Adam. I don't know if you hold to Adamite Christology or Adamite theology in general, but that kind of like destroys the ability to have Adamite Christology. So, I hope that's not the case.

Regarding the qua understanding, right? Like, no, I did not say that nature is what is tempted. I do not say that nature is something that is acted upon, right? As natures are not actors or acted upon. Rather, persons are actors, uh, or acted upon. And the person, the temptation was something that was in the person, proper to the nature, right? External temptation, which is fine. Don't have an issue with saying that Christ was externally tempted, proper to the nature, which has, which is someone who is capable of being externally tempted. When they're talking about God cannot be tempted in any degree, right? This would be referring to him within his divine nature because we, God does not obviously possess any passive potency, so he cannot actually change his own ways, which is not even close to the same thing, right, as saying he was, uh, internally tempted, things like that.

Also, if you don't believe that there is a distinction between internal and external temptation, that means that you actually deny token and type distinction regarding operations, meaning that when we talk about the faculties, right? When we talk about the faculties of a nature, right? Like, for example, the ability to do X, right? This is something that is proper to nature, and then it is actualized, or the mode of whatever that thing is, is in the person. If you deny this said thing, then basically, uh, all properties are only property persons, and you're just a nominalist now. There's no universals at all. Now they just don't exist, which is, I mean, if you want to be a nominalist to make your view work, then go right ahead. You're free to do that.

Um, also, your first syllogism that you provided, premise three is denied in this syllogism because Jesus has both natures in the same respect as one person. That's that's what the thing said, right? That's not the same respect. So, it's an ill-formed premise. So, that's denied. Uh, Matthew verse, Matthew chapter 28:18, where it says, "Authority has been given to me." This is referred to the economy. It does not deny that Christ has eternal authority in the divine nature. So, it doesn't matter. Regarding Matthew 24:36, this is simply just him representing the kenosis doctrine of Philippians 2. Besides, oiden, right, the word that's actually specifically used in these verses to require to say that he does not know the hour. This also typically refers to just a declaration anyway. This is not something that has to, uh, hold to true originating knowledge, right? And this is also something I can even use with monarchical Trinitarianism.

Oh gosh, that scared me. Oh my god, I'm sorry. Um, it does say that he actually has two natures, like you said. That doesn't happen. It's explicitly in Philippians chapter 2, and we'll get into that, I'm sure, in the cross-examination. If the ones who built the entire church are all wrong in their theology, by the way, like you said, then you suffer from the clause of Matthew 18 where it states explicitly that Satan will not prevail against the church, which is, I mean, if if that's what you want to hold to, sure, you can go ahead and be the Great Apostasy theory.

And regarding ousia and hypostasis, it was a synonym in so far as different schools used them to mean nature. This is shown in the anathemas at Nicaea. You can literally read that they were appealing to the Alexandrian people when they said that another hypostasis from the Father. Um, and then John 5:30, that's because the authority originates from the Father triadicly. John 7:16, all, uh, teaching originates from the Father. There's no issue here. John 14:10, that's because the origination point of the works points to the Father. This still denotes triadic act. And because he doesn't use specific language, uh, the philosophy we utilize doesn't mean that the principles do not exist divinely inspired commands of the apostles. This is actually a verbatim fallacy. And that is all I got for that.

>> All right, thank you, Bryce, for that rebuttal. All right, Mike, you're back in the seat for your 10-minute rebuttal. And I will start your time as soon as you begin to speak.

Okay. All right. Let's do this. Where to start? Okay. Let's start. Let's start with the logic because that's where I started. Okay. He told me that I don't understand about the point of origination of properties, and then he followed that up by claiming that natures have the ability to suffer. Folks, natures are abstract. He accused me of nominalism. Folks, I understand some nominalists will say that abstract things have no existence whatsoever, but things that exist in the mind still exist. They're just in the mind. Okay. The difference between who you are and what you are are co-extensive, which means they extend over the same time and space. So who I am and what I am don't actually exist separately in the real world. Those are two aspects of one thing. Okay. Actually, it's him who doesn't understand the point of origination. Okay. Absolutely. That's going to apply to Christ. He said the laws of logic aren't in the Bible. Wrong. Paul uses logic. Jesus uses logic. God uses logic. There are deductive statements and reasonings made by all of them in the Bible. Jesus said, "The scriptures cannot be broken." Interesting. Did you know that statements like these presuppose the existence of logical laws as valid and binding? If they didn't, then they're talking nonsense. Okay? So, what you're doing is a fallacy of presentism. Just because we have labels today like the law of non-contradiction doesn't mean they didn't have an understanding of the same or its equivalent. Of course they did. That's they use it when they're arguing to, you know, prove that Jesus is the Messiah. Let's try and get to some of these. No, no, no, no. Actually, okay. I'm going to say something else about this. So when he says that the natures are not in the same respect just because Christ is one person, did he support that? Did he prove that? Was that not just an assertion? Sorry, Bryce. I need to know why. Why is it that Christ can be one person, can have the properties of both natures, which you agree have opposite essential properties, and that not be the same point of reference? The communication of idioms you brought up, he said it in Greek or what is that, Latin. The point is that obviously if Jesus has the properties, then of course that's going to follow. He chopped that up again to the qua argument where Jesus can do something in accordance to a nature. He denied that that is saying the natures doing it. But if that's not the case, then you're still saying Jesus is doing it. Right? So Jesus can be tempted and Jesus cannot be tempted. That's a P and not P. That's blatant. That's right in your face. Okay.

Now, now let's move on to some of these scriptures. He he brought up Acts 20:28. "God has blood." All right. Simple question. Is Jesus's human flesh God? No. Jesus's human flesh is not God. So it cannot be the God that has blood. Did you catch that? God is an immaterial substance in his view. That contradicts his position. "God has blood." Very interesting. That's just he's probably equivocating or technically in that sense it's probably more just of a conflation of God with person. Not the same. Also, he acknowledged that there's textual variance. Weak. Anybody using textual variance to support their position is giving you a weak position. He brought up 1 John 5:20, that Jesus is called the true God. But his only evidence that this was the case is that Jesus Christ is the nearest antecedent. That doesn't follow. You actually have to provide more than just being the closest antecedent because the Father is also mentioned and also mentioned as being true. How do you know that that's not also referring to the Father? We see so many places in the scripture where there is that formula of God referring to the Father because he's the true God. You know, like the Bible tells us when it calls him God. All right? Like 99.9% of the time there's like what, three places in the New Testament where Jesus is called God, which is a title which does not rigidly refer to the Most High. So this verse is ambiguous enough that it cannot carry the whole metaphysical doctrine of two natures. And I, I mean, I would also further argue that just the immediate context emphasizes the Father as the true one.

He brought up a lot of texts. I don't know how much time to spend on each of these. Uh, he brought up Micah 5:2. Folks, this is prophetic, royal, messianic language. The phrase about going forth is highly debated among scholarship. Did you know that? He's bringing up another highly debated text. These are not simple readings which just state his position. Okay. "Whose going forth are from old from everlasting." This can refer to ancient origins, like it's also translated. Okay. This can refer to God's long-established purposes and decrees, not necessarily literal metaphysical eternal pre-existence of the Messiah. He brought up Zechariah 12:10. This is another powerful messianic prophecy. That's not a slam dunk for the hypostatic union, folks. This wording is actually translation-sensitive. He didn't tell you that because yet again, it's another disputed passage. How do we translate this? What does this mean? Did you know that the RSV says that when they look on him whom they has pierced, it doesn't say me? Why are these guys always using ambiguous text with either variants or just different translations? This is highly controversial. Translators and commentators who believe that the word pierce should refer back to the pronoun him can also say that it's more clearly read this way as it flows from the sentence which continues from the word him in the phrase "they shall mourn him." Okay. So there's good reasons, is what I'm trying to tell you, that scholars disagree on these texts. I mean, they have to try and twist and squeeze this doctrine out of it because there just are no proof texts that state these things. You realize that, right? That absolutely none of these texts said anything like Jesus has two natures. None of them. That's just inferred based on late philosophy born out of Middle Platonism. Notice how he didn't address that. By the way, we might as well just take that as a concession that he does have a heavy dependence on post-biblical philosophy which had to develop. He's citing these church fathers. Irenaeus. Oh my gosh. I could spend this entire time just on Irenaeus. All right, let me see. Let me bring this one up. So, I had some pre-prepared responses. Let me cycle this. Can you see that? Awesome. Oh, I could have, oh, I could have pulled me on and off that whole opening statement. Oh, that's sad. Okay, look at this. Philippians chapter 2. This is one of his proof texts. He used Strong's concordance to prove his definition of the word here for "form." Guess what, folks? If you look at the BDAG, which is the authority amongst scholarship, it's considered the best, the most widely used one. It says just the opposite. It does not refer to this internal essence or nature. It refers, check it out, look there, the outward appearance or shape. And you can see this is the same in Mark 16:12 where Jesus, it says he appeared in another form, that they did, but they didn't recognize him. Did he appear in a different essence, in a different nature? No. That's referring to the outer appearance. So, okay, overall, his positions totally depended upon the fallacy of reification. They depended upon a definiteness fallacy. Exactly what I called out. And none of them said that Jesus is God-man, that Jesus has two natures, or that he is one person. Thank you.

>> You guys for the fantastic opening and the rebuttal. So now we're about to jump into that cross-examination. I know a lot of people are very fascinated, interested to see how you guys are going to tackle these issues as you guys interact with each other. So once again, this will be a 20-minute, total of 40 minutes, 20 minutes each to ask questions in this cross-section. I actually, you know, I expect good decorum, respect each other, allow each other to respond to the questions as well. I know that could be sort of tough when you feel, you know, your opponent saying something that you didn't ask, you know, you want to jump in and cut them off real quick. Perhaps your opponent is getting to that point. So let's allow for your opponent to get to that point. Uh, with that said, uh, Bryce, you have the floor for your 20-minute cross-exam, and I'll start your 20-minute timer as soon as you begin to speak.

>> All right, cool. Um, so Mike, question for you. Could you have died on the cross for man's, uh, man's sins?

>> No.

>> Why not?

>> Because I'm not sent by God. Because I'm not sinless. Because I'm not the Son of Man. Because I'm not the Messiah.

>> Oh, I'm not, I'm not talking about the current world. I'm saying, is there a possible world in which you were the one who died for the sins of mankind in 2026?

>> Uh, you mean like if I had those same attributes of Jesus, could I?

>> Uh, I'm talking, I'm sorry. I can't ask you questions. My bad. My bad. My bad.

>> No, it's a clarifier. It's fine. It wasn't, it wasn't bad. Um, so like my specific question, right, is that this all, this all kind of leads into an argument that I have where that you guys believe that Jesus obviously is a contingent being, right?

>> Yes.

>> Okay, cool. You're also a contingent being. And in terms of this world, the actual world that exists, Jesus just so happens to be the one in which that saved mankind. I'm asking you, is there a possible world where you were the one who saved this for the sins of all mankind in 2026 on February 20th?

>> I mean, I, I think I want to say no again because I don't have those properties which qualifies me to do that.

>> I, I said in a possible world. I did not say in this current world.

>> I know, obviously in this current world you may not possess that. I'm saying, could God have created you, metaphysics Mike, to be the one on February 20th, 2026, to save the sins of mankind?

>> Well, then sure.

>> Okay. So you could have been Jesus. Thank you. So when, uh, so Jesus just so happened to be the perfect one for it, or did God predetermine the actions of Jesus to determine to ensure that he did not fail?

>> Can you say that one more time?

>> Yeah. Did Jesus just so happen to be the perfect one for it via foreknowledge, or did God predetermine the actions of Jesus to ensure that he did not fail? So he did have a predetermined plan, but Jesus does possess free will. And so it also was contingent upon his choices. That's what the scriptures teach.

>> Okay. So salvation is contingent upon a contingent being, then, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So could Jesus have failed?

>> Of course. Absolutely. Think, think about it. So if, if Jesus, if Jesus was not able to sin, then that would undermine why say the writer of Hebrews says that he was exalted, right? He says that he was exalted because of the things that he had suffered. Hebrews 4:15 says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but he who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Right? So that's, that's, that's telling that's telling you he has to be, because if he, if he could not sin, as you're really trying to insinuate, right? Then he is not tempted as we are in every respect. And we'll get to that too, because we'll definitely talk about the internal versus external temptation thing. But, uh, when it comes to the contingency argument that I'm providing, is that salvation in of itself was not actually guaranteed. Then you would have to concede that that God did not actually guarantee salvation. Rather, it just so happened that Jesus in this current world,

>> provided us with that.

>> Of course. Why are you going to exalt him for something that he couldn't not do? Jesus was exalted precisely because he was obedient unto death, as the writer of Hebrews says. Okay. So if your position, Jesus,

>> Yeah. But again, so you're presupposing something absurd, which is that Jesus doesn't have free will.

>> No, that's not what I'm saying. I, I'm saying that you have to concede, or do you have to concede obviously that it is possible that humanity when they fell would have been eternally damned in this world and not actually been saved by God?

>> Yeah. If Jesus didn't send the Messiah, of course we needed a savior.

>> You said God sent the Messiah, or Jesus?

>> Yeah, God. God sent the Messiah. That's the Father.

>> Oh, you said Jesus sent the Messiah. I'm sorry. I'm just messing up.

>> Oh, did I say that? Yeah.

>> Is that, is that a Freudian slip? Is that a Freudian slip, man? I'm kidding. I'm just messing with you.

>> If I said that, my bad.

>> No, you're good. You're good. All right. So, I have, I'm going to move on a little bit here because that kind of like got what I needed out of that. So, I have a first thing, right? This is, have you ever heard of Anselm's, uh, argument for the atonement?

>> No, not off the top of my head. It sounds familiar.

>> Okay. All right. So, I'm just going to provide it in premise format. This is in the scholastic premise, but I'm going to just say in premise one, two, whatever, just to make it easier. Premise one, that which is required for salvation must be possible.

>> Yeah, sounds, sounds good.

>> Cool. Premise two, salvation requires an act of salv, a satisfaction of infinite worth provided by a human agent as the punishment as the, my argument for that is that the suffering or the punishment that was provided to humanity was an infinite punishment, not a finite punishment.

>> So then the final provision of recovering it would be infinite.

>> I'm not sure I understand that. It sounds like I want to reject that. You want to, you, so, so the, the, um, the punishment that God provided us was a finite punishment. It is not something that goes to the days of eternity.

>> I mean, I hold to annihilationism, if that's what you're referring to, like a finite punishment.

>> Oh, wait, wait. So you just believe that people like literally will cease to exist.

>> Yeah, that's what Jesus said. "Don't fear those who can kill only the body, but fear those who can kill both body and soul in hell." Okay.

>> That's, that's the word.

>> So, you believe that people, okay, so yeah. So, you believe that people can cease to exist. So, then with that being said, like, I'll just ask one more thing about that, and I'm honestly just going to move on because I honestly don't even need to worry about that. Um, regarding annihilationism, then with that view, do you, uh, do you believe that, or how, what is your actual argument for, um, existing being better than non-existing? So, can I ask you a clarifying question?

>> Sure.

>> Quick on that.

>> So, just, just so you know, Bryce, when I'm saying a human can cease to exist, I'm, I'm not saying that their soul ceases to exist. So, a soul can still exist, um, after death. But the point is that we need more than just a soul to exist in our world. We also need a body and a mind. I wouldn't really, I wouldn't really say that that's annihilationism. That sounds more like, uh, basically just like a, kind of, I guess, like a neo-annihilation. But anyway, I'll just move on. It's not really.

>> So, I'm, I'm talking prior to the final judgment. No, he will destroy. Jesus said, "Fear those who can kill both the body and the soul in hell." Okay. So, yes, at the final judgment, the soul will be destroyed, just like Jesus said it will be.

>> But you don't, you don't believe that something dying means ceasing to exist. You don't believe that something dying means to cease to exist, though. So saying killing the soul doesn't necessarily mean that it ceases to exist in any sense, or the body.

>> Yet, yes, it does. Because when I'm saying you die, you cease to exist. I'm saying you, as a contingent thing. You know what myology is, don't you? The study of part-whole relationships. We need a soul and a body in order to exist. So we can die, but our souls still exist.

>> It's like a reverse fallacy of composition.

>> But you, but, but do you believe, yeah. But you believe though that a soul can die, right? Based off of that verse. That's your interpretation. So it can cease to exist.

>> After. Yes. The final judgment. I'm not. But that wouldn't be now, right?

>> So people do, so people do fully cease to exist in your view, then?

>> Yes. At the end. Yeah.

>> Thank you. I'm just going to. All right. I'm just going to move on then because honestly, like this objection doesn't apply to annihilationists.

>> Okay.

>> Um, okay. So I have another argument right here. This is the tempted as we are argument, right? Because you mentioned specifically, uh, or you tried to make basically a collapse of internal and external temptation. Do you believe that Jesus suffers from the temptation described in James, uh, 1:14-15?

>> So.

>> You want me to read it?

>> That's, that's right. So you, you expounded upon that saying it what comes after. So God cannot be tempted by evil, neither does he tempt any man. But man is tempted when he is drawn away from his own desires and sin. Right? So there was.

>> It describes what temptation is in James 1. Yes.

>> Yeah. So, so there, there was a conflation on your part there. So he only needs the desire. He does not have to follow through with said desire. Yes. So Jesus can be tempted by evil both internally and externally. That's, that's what it means to be tempted as we are in every way. We are.

>> So Jesus, the desire tempted internally.

>> He was tempted with the desire internally.

>> Did he have the desire? Or James 1.

>> Did he have the desire?

>> Of course. But he is without sin. So he did not act upon that, upon that desire. That's why he was exalted.

>> Okay. So this, this actually leads to a dichotomy because if you believe that Jesus was actually internally tempted and that he actually, uh, that he had a desire to sin, right? You'd have to admit that Christ has concupiscence, then, right?

>> Yeah. So I'm going to keep it real with you. Um, I don't know what that word is. I didn't, I couldn't even look it up. Can you please describe?

>> Inclination to sin. In the East, we call it an anomic.

>> Okay. Yeah. Of course. Of dude. Consider how ridiculous it would be if we said that Jesus did not have free will to choose not to sin. What is his exaltation? It comes, it becomes.

>> Did Jesus possess original sin? Did Jesus possess original sin?

>> Okay, so this depends. I'm more nuanced on original sin. Um, I, I may not give you a straight answer on that. I, I'm not entirely sure to what degree Jesus would possess original sin.

>> Because this, this is the dichotomy I'm talking about. Either one, he possesses original sin, which is the stain of Adam, which then is anti-biblical and honestly extremely anti-Christic as well, but I know we're not really talking about that this time. Or the other option is that God specifically designed human nature to be inclined to sin. Which, which one do you want to accept?

>> So, man, the word is slipping me right now. The, the Eastern Orthodox have a really good concept for this, don't you? That's right. I think I agree with you guys on this. You have a great way of saying. So.

>> So this has to do with the inclin. Yeah, like you were saying, the inclination to do it. So I would hold to that.

>> So Jesus didn't have that, then?

>> He did have the inclination, but I, I don't think that.

>> The inclination was due to the fallen nature, though. In our view, the having the ab, having the inclination to sin is an anomic will. In our view, we don't think Jesus had an anomic will. He had a natural will. You have to say that he has an anomic will, meaning that that is due to possessing original sin. So you have to believe either he has original sin, or that God designed us to have an inclination to sin. Which one do you want to accept?

>> So, I, I really, what I need you to do is to explain what that means more because in one sense.

>> Yeah. Because in one sense I could agree with you, but in another, I wouldn't. So could you just explain that more?

>> Yeah. Original sin is the, uh, liability or the stain of Adam that was provided from the action of committing a personal sin, uh, in the garden with Adam and Eve. And this thing by nature passes on to every single human being and provides a stain to the universal human nature, which is then actualized inside of every single person. So, for example, um, us needing to be, uh, remitted of our sins, right? Like, do you believe that we're in sin when we're born, or no?

>> Yes. But I don't see why that, but in what sense are we in sin when we're born?

>> Yeah. So Paul said that in Adam all die. That since by one man came death. So I understand that to be that there is some curse upon all of us, upon man, woman, and even the earth due to Adam's sin. I don't know if I would say that means that we then have to sin, right? And that's what I'm getting at in far as the inclination. Like, what, what does it really mean?

>> I'm not, I'm not saying that inclination, I'm not saying that inclination leads to the necessity of Jesus committing personal sin. But the inclination to sin in the first place is something that is from the fact that he would have to possess the stain of Adam. He literally wouldn't be the new Adam if he believed that he has an inclination to sin. Because Adam did not have an inclination to sin. Rather, he possessed a natural will and then was confused and ignorant of what is true and what is false, and therefore he chose the wrong decision. Not because of the fact that he was inclined to choose the wrong decision. He didn't know the difference between the good or the wrong decision.

>> It's not the same. So you'd have to say that Christ possesses original sin, which makes him not the new Adam anymore.

>> So I do not believe that Jesus cannot be the new Adam. Like, I agree with that. He is. You mentioned it earlier, Adamite Christology. Of course. So, I mean, if that means that I have to reject original sin as you're defining it, then I, I'll just go ahead and concede to that. The, the problem in my mind, Bryce, is that if Jesus lacked original sin or concupiscence, in the way that all other humans have it, then in what sense is he like us in every respect? Right? Like we've talked about Hebrews 17, Hebrews 4:15.

>> So I'll answer that. Right? He's like us in every respect in so far as naturally, right? He's not, he's not like us in so far as the way we have to deal with it, uh, in a corrupted manner. He possesses a pre-lapsarian Adam nature. He does not possess us in, in the terms of being actually corrupted. He actually chooses to suffer from the corruption and of himself, as in dealing with, like for example, him growing and things like that. But, uh, other than that, I want to go ahead and move on to like the main argument.

>> That's a, that's a good, that's a good qualification. Yeah, I, I would actually agree with that. And as long as you're still acknowledging a real temptation and suffering, I'm with it. Again, to me, there's an external temptation of Christ. Sure, I don't have an issue with that. But he was not internally tempted in our view because of our distinction of that. But, um, regarding Philippians 2, right, when it says that he was being in the form of God, right, morphe specifically, like you, you obviously use the BDAG instead of, uh, Strong's Greek 34:44 where it says "properly form, outward expression." Even if, right, that I were to say, okay, fine. Let's just use, uh, the outward expression. What does the outward expression represent? Because you want to use the BDAG, which gets rid of the clarifier to that. So if it's, if it's referring to an outward appearance or or shape, the, the point is that this describes like a status or role, a status or role, ontological essence, right? And I gave you the status. I gave you the, the example of the Gospel of Mark. Same word is used. That well-known story, Luke chapter 24, uh, 13-33, right? About Jesus appearing to two men on the road to Emmaus. Okay. Mark tells us that he appeared in a different morphe.

>> You know, we would have to confirm that he appeared in a different, uh, ontological essence, right? I'm, I'm arguing against that, and the BDAG supports it.

>> Yeah. So the thing that I'm trying to get across though, is that in Philippians 2, it's denoting specifically, this is a Christological verse, you would agree.

>> This is a verse specifically telling us about how Jesus came to earth, why he came to earth, etc., right? That's the whole point of Philippians 2.

>> Karm. So then if, so, so then, so then obviously, like if other verses are talking about morphe in a context of appearance, that's obviously a different thing than if we're talking about Christology, or we're talking about the method by which, for example, Jesus came to earth or exists. So if we actually read Philippians 2:5-8 where it says, "And morphe theoarkon," right, sorry, my Greek is absolutely horrible, people are going to make fun of me, very bad.

>> No, you're good, man. Me too, don't worry.

>> Where it says, "being where it says, 'being in the form of God'," right? First off, harkon in itself is a present, it's an active present participle. So like, would you, would you agree that Jesus prior to taking on the form of assistant or form of a servant was subsisting in the form of God because huparkon actually means to subsist? Did you say that?

>> So in reference to the word of God, the Logos, absolutely. But that is not in reference to post-biblical Logos theorists like Justin Martyr. He's like your, is Jesus, Saint? Right? Or.

>> Yes, he is. But that's the word incarnated. Okay. Prior to that, he's just the word, as in God's literal speech. That that also entails his wisdom.

>> In what, in what sense is Jesus identical as the word? Because now I'm confused because if you say that Jesus is the word, this creates a lot of different arguments that I could bring up.

>> Jesus is the word.

>> Okay. So listen, when John is using the word Logos, that word can only be understood and interpreted in light of texts and concepts which already existed. Okay? So the Logos, there's already a word and Logos tradition in wisdom tradition. Okay. In the Old Testament, Proverbs, Psalms, some places in Job, intertestamental Jewish literature, Phoenician Jewish literature. I get it. I get it.

>> Okay. So, so then that is not a separate person.

>> So, how is Jesus identified as it then? So, how is Jesus identified as it?

>> John 1:14, "The Word became flesh." The Word incarnates and becomes flesh. Okay. So that is.

>> Jesus, the one that became flesh. Is Jesus the one that became flesh?

>> No. So it's when the Word and flesh combine, then you get Jesus. Prior to that, it's just a reference to God's Word. Again, every example I just gave you, the Word.

>> Jesus's soul.

>> So Jesus's soul is the Word?

>> No.

>> Okay. So then when you say that the, when you said that the spirit and the flesh come together, that makes what? Jesus.

>> Yeah. That's, that's the, the pattern of John. Is his spirit the Word?

>> No.

>> Okay. So then is the body the Word?

>> No. Did, did you not hear me, dude?

>> So then how does, so then, so then how does, how does the body and the soul coming together somehow make the Jesus identified as the Word? You still haven't.

>> Okay. So, so listen, your, your question is ignoring what I just told you about wisdom and Logos tradition. There's already a tradition on this. Okay. That refers to God's.

>> Okay, I just told you it refers to God's word. Okay. Your word is not a separate person than you. Neither is God's word in the Old Testament.

>> How is Jesus identified as it? That's what that's my whole question. How is he identified as it?

>> I just told you in those traditions, the Word is closely associated with God's wisdom, with his character, his virtues, the divine attributes identical to his wisdom. Will you let me answer the question or you're, I'm sorry, you're pressed for time, but let, here, let him have another word after I respond, please. So listen, the point is that the Word having all those attributes in the Old Testament, in intertestamental literature, when we say the Word incarnated, we're saying Jesus has all those properties. That's it.

>> Okay. Uh, so am I able to just kind of like.

>> Yeah. You can have the last word. That's fine.

>> Okay. So, just one quick question. I'm not going to respond to it. My, the thing I want to ask, it's, it's just a question. Okay. So, you said that it's the, you said it's properties, right? That it's like the properties of the Word.

>> And that Jesus has these properties.

>> Mhm.

>> That's what makes him the Word. Okay. So, Jesus has the properties of the Word, which is God.

>> That's correct. Yeah. He has many properties and attributes of God. Absolutely.

>> That's all I, that's all I needed. Thank you.

>> All right. All right.

>> All right. Mike, you're up for your 20-minute cross-exam. And Bryce, and I'll start your 20-minute timer as soon as you begin to speak.

>> Bryce, do you agree that in order for the hypostatic union to be logical, it must be sound?

>> Uh, yes.

>> Sure.

>> Do you agree that in order for the hypostatic union to be sound, Jesus cannot have both natures in the same respect?

>> Uh, yeah. Wait, what do you mean? Wait, what do you mean? Sorry, I have to clarify for that. What do you mean that Jesus has the natures in the same respect? I don't know what that means.

>> So, it would really be any respect, right? We're talking about the law of non-contradiction. They, they can't be in the same respect. So, whatever respect that is, it would be the same.

>> I would say the properties of the nature cannot be, uh, identified in the same respect.

>> Sure.

>> Yes. Perfect. Yeah. That's fine. That's totally fine. Okay. And so you also agree then that the essential properties of a man are opposite of the essential properties of God?

>> I could say that most of them are oppositional. Sure. Yeah.

>> Okay. Do you agree that Jesus has both natures in the same respect as one person?

>> Um, I don't believe that the person is the term that is the same respect because the actual properties themselves originate from the nature. So if we're talking about the difference between the faculty of having something versus actualizing said thing in the person, that doesn't mean that then therefore the same respect is regarded as the person.

>> Yeah. Right. Awesome. Okay. So that just means that you're rejecting P3. I don't know if I can show it sort of on my on my screen.

>> I did say that. Yeah.

>> All right. Awesome. So great. Would you accept P1, P2? We just disagree on P3. Perfect. Okay. So.

>> Here we go, Bryce. Is Jesus God?

>> All right. Jesus is God.

>> Okay. So he has all the essential properties of being God?

>> Uh, yes. The faculties of divine, of divine properties are proper to the nature, and the communicatio idiomatum allows us to say that Jesus is whatever those things are.

>> Okay. Is Jesus a man?

>> Uh, in so far as possessing human nature. Sure.

>> In so far as. Okay. So Jesus the person has all the properties of being man? Yes or no?

>> Uh, I mean, if you're talking about natural properties, sure, but not, uh, properties that are, uh, accidents of the corruption of the fall.

>> Sure. Yeah. Great. Okay. So is the person that has all the properties of being God a different person than the one who has all the properties of being man?

>> No.

>> So then the one person of Christ does have both sets of opposite essential properties as one person.

>> You just admitted that there's two sets. You already conceded that there's not a contradiction just by saying there's two sets. You know that, right?

>> No. Wrong. Okay. Is.

>> You said there's two sets of properties. It's, it's already over at that point.

>> No. You see, listen. Oh my gosh.

>> That's two different senses, Mike.

>> Okay, Bryce. A nature is a conceptual category of a list of properties. There are two sets of those properties. Ones that pertain to God, ones that pertain to man. Answer the question. Is all, is, is the person that has all the properties of being God a different person than the one who has all the properties of being man? I already said no to that.

>> Okay. So then the one person of Christ does have both sets of opposite essential properties.

>> Yes. One person possesses two sets of properties. Absolutely.

>> Okay. Thank you very much. So then you, you are conceding then that Jesus has both of essential properties.

>> Properties belong to the nature. So if there is two, if you're even saying if your critique in of itself is saying that there's two sets within the person, and the properties, like I said, over 100 times, I think already, are proper to the nature, then if we say, if we, the communicatio idiomatum is just saying that we can apply things to Christ based off of his actions. So again, that doesn't show that then therefore the person is regarded as the same respect there.

>> Bryce, you just admitted that Jesus as one person has all the properties of being man and God. If he is not two persons, then yeah, then you have two sets of properties contained in one person. Okay. So is that not the same respect?

>> Originate from the person.

>> No, it wouldn't be because themselves are proper to the nature.

>> Okay. So how is it that a nature can have properties which apply actually to persons? So, or the point is that I disagree with that. So would you agree that dying is a, is a property proper to persons?

>> It's a faculty of human nature and it's something that's actualized by persons.

>> Okay. Is that, was that a yes or a no? Is dying a property that applies to a person?

Um, I, I, I just gave you the answer to that. It's not just a simple yes or no question. That's a fallacy by just assuming that it's just a simple yes or no. And there's, there's, you know, there's qualifiers to arguments, right?

Of course, there's qualifiers. What you need to do—

Okay, listen. I, I'm not trying to put you in a position where you can't qualify something, Bryce, but you need to demonstrate how it's possible that he could have both those sets of properties as one person, okay, and not be contradicting each other. You're just claiming that, well, these properties are proper to the nature and not the person. I'm rejecting that. So how do you know that a property like dying does not apply to a person?

I'm saying that it, so I'll say that it only applies to a person in so far as the token, right? Do you know the difference between like type and token when it comes to like energies in our view?

Yes, that's all that's doing is protecting it in another layer of philosophy. You're just pushing it into mysterious territory.

Do you have, do you have, do you have an, you have, I mean, like if you want to go ahead and reject my argument, then you'd have to provide a reasoning as to why I can't affirm that. I'm holding a philosophical position on the hypostatic union, of course, the same way while you would hold a position, a philosophical position, you call yourself metaphysics, Mike.

Okay, so listen.

It's metaphysics.

How is it that two natures united in one person is not the same respect?

It's not the same respect because the properties themselves are, are in the set, they're in the set of divine nature and they're in the set of human nature. They exist in those sets and they're only actualized by those persons. So again, it's not, it's not the same respect could not be denoted as the person just because of that.

Okay, Bryce, does Jesus—

Jesus, the person Jesus, does he have all the properties of being God?

Yes.

Does that same per, does that same person have all the properties of being man?

He possesses them in so far as nature. Sure.

So you're saying that the same person has both sets of properties. That's a contradiction. P and not P. All right.

Properties to the nature. So again, it doesn't make it a same respect.

Okay. Here we go. Bryce, can a nature die apart from a person?

No.

Okay.

Okay. So then the property also applies to the person. You just refuted yourself. That was awesome.

It's, it's utilized by a person.

Okay. Let's do another. Let's do another, Bryce. So—

Okay.

Can, uh, can, can a, a nature be tempted by evil apart from a person?

No.

Okay. So then the per, okay. So then the person has the property of being tempted by the nature. You just dunked on yourself a second time. Thank you very much.

The origin, the, the origination point is not the person. So—

All right. We're, we're just going to move on from that. No. Yeah. We, you just lost it. All right. Question two. Are the two natures in the one person of Christ divided or separate from each other?

No, they're distinct.

Oh, so they're, so they're united in the one person?

They're united and they're distinct. Yes.

Okay. So, Bryce, that's an affirmation of the same respect. You just said that they're united in one person. Yes, you did.

They're united as in the communicatio idiomatum of being able to be applied to the person, but that doesn't mean the origination point of those properties actually originate from the person. They originate from nature. Again, you're just applying an artificial layer of protective philosophy that moves it into mysterious territory.

I'm glad, I'm glad you agree that the philosophy at least makes it work. Thank you.

Every, yeah. And on paper, it's logical in a, in a strict formal sense, but in formally that's fallacious because natures don't die or be tempted apart from persons. You agree those properties apply to the person in the sense of being instantiated by a hypostasis? Okay. So, yeah, that's a lot.

Do you mind if I explain? Do you mind if I explain like what I mean when I say Jesus died? Because I can tell you what I mean by that.

Yeah, I know. In accordance with the human nature, it changes nothing.

I mean, I can tell you, I can tell you exactly like what that actually means.

Dude, you're still applying a concrete property to an abstract thing. Okay, that's fallacious. That's a fallacy of reification.

Okay.

I don't know what you're laughing at. You're busy baking yourself. All right. So, do you affirm, so, you affirm that the natures aren't divided. Next question. So, are they mixed?

No.

Oh, so you believe that the natures are not divided in the one person but also not mixed?

Correct. You'd have to make an argument as to how that's a dichotomy.

Okay. So, what's the law of excluded middle and do you reject or affirm it?

I, I accept the law of excluded middle and that just means that there's just not a third thing. Things are either true or false.

Okay. So, this is a defeater to your position, Bryce. Look at the screen. Here we go.

Okay. Look at, look at, is it, is that showing? Can you see that on my screen?

My, my stream is pretty far behind at the moment. I can only see half of your screen. I can only see half of the screen.

All right. Look at the cup. That's oil and water. Is that divided in the one cup?

Yeah. I think that's a created analogy and it doesn't apply properly to what we're talking about with the incarnation.

It doesn't matter. You're still dealing with an immaterial substance. We're dealing with the same type of terminology. It changes nothing. Okay. So—

Yeah. Yeah. Oil and water are not immaterial substances, by the way.

Yeah, I know that. But it's still professing the same concept. Okay, next question.

You said it was immaterial.

Okay. So, yeah. No, I didn't say it's immaterial. I said you believe the divine essence is an immaterial substance. You're the one using substance language. So, we can still use these as metaphorical analogies. So, you agree that the oil and the w— Dude, you keep laughing. You're losing this. All right. So, is, so, you, so, you agree that the water and oil is not mixed, right?

Correct. Yeah, they're not mixed.

Oh, okay. Is the milk and water divided or separate in this one cup?

Uh, talking about like milk and, I can't even really see the picture very well cuz it's like blurry on my screen, but is there like milk and water both in the cup or what?

Yes. Yep. They're both in the cup. Is it divided?

Yeah. I mean, if we're, if we're using it as a created manner, like we would say that they're divided as their atoms. Sure. I mean, like there obviously there's different atoms that are contained in the milk versus different atoms contained that make up the water.

But yeah, they're still missable though. Shall you look at the oil and water? Will that help you understand? The oil and water is divisible. All right. But the milk and water is not. You understand that?

Yeah. They would, yeah. Yeah. Those things would be mixed.

So, so, so then divided and mixed are opposites. You agree?

Um, I mean, they would be opposites because you have two different sets applied to each one. Sure.

Exactly. Okay. So tell me, how can Jesus' two natures be both undivided and yet not mixed?

Yeah, again, the incarnation being applied to oil and water in a glass and milk and water in a glass is like completely irrelevant to like the actual argument we're having.

Okay, Bryce.

An analogy.

Bryce. Yes, that is an analogy to display the concept. Okay, it doesn't have to be exact in the same sense. The point is that you are using—

Well, then it doesn't properly apply to the ontology, then. Thank you.

Oh my gosh, Bryce. You and your creeds are the ones using language which are metaphors drawn from material objects. It's your creed that says they are quote indivisible.

No, they're not.

Don't sit here and play.

Don't sit here and play with me like that's something I'm doing. Your creed applied to material objects. The concepts are derived from the immaterial.

Thank you very much, Bryce. Everybody knows this. That's not the problem. The problem is that because—

You're using language which are metaphors drawn from material objects. You are expounding a mystery that the natures can be undivided and yet not mixed. So my qu, my next question to you is what's the third option? If they're not divided and they're not mixed, what, what are the natures in Christ?

United and distinct.

United and distinct. Okay, that's ambiguous. Can you, can you explain more something that is the same type of category as being divided or mixed? What's the third category? You gave me a description.

Yeah, they're united.

United.

Yeah, they're, okay. Yeah, they're united in so far as being in the person of Christ and they're distinct in so far as the individual sets that we're denoting.

All right. All right. I have to move on. Okay. Do you agree that for the doctrine of the hypostatic union to be biblical, it must derive from the scriptures and not external philosophy?

No, I reject that.

Okay. So—

My epistemology is more than just Bible alone. So—

All right. Do you agree that the hypostatic union then relies on external philosophy? You agree with that?

I believe that it's in synergy with biblical principles.

Okay. Does the hypostatic union depend upon the person-nature distinction?

Uh, sure. Yeah, I can say that.

Where does the Bible make that distinction?

I mean, I would say that that's something that's derived from the, from the church, the early church.

Oh, so is that an answer? So, is that, it doesn't arrive from the Bible? Is that what that was, Bryce?

Well, I already admitted that not everything in our paradigm derives only from the scriptures.

Okay. So, okay. So your necessary distinction for the hypostatic union doesn't come from the Bible. Is that correct?

I, I already said that my epistemology doesn't necessitate Bible alone. So I mean, it's not an issue for me to say that not everything just falls into the Bible.

All right, folks. That's a yes. That's a yes. Bryce's view depends upon post-biblical philosophy. Question. Does Chalcedonian Christology borrow from middle Platonic language?

I would say they use the language. Sure. They use. Does the, does the Bible use middle Platonic language?

Um, I would say that when they're, that the concepts that are present within the scriptures do talk about it in that regard, but not like obviously in the direct context of Plato. Sure.

Okay.

So, that's not really a yes or a no directly.

Yeah, I understand. So, do you, can you give me an example in the Bible where they make the person-being distinction in the same way that was later used borne out through middle Platonism?

I already, already told you that my epistemology doesn't necessitate only things that derive only from the scriptures by itself. That there's also the church end of itself and the philosophy derived from those scriptures. There's also philosophy derived from the scriptures as well.

Okay. So the way that you know it's biblical is because the church fathers. Is that your answer?

Uh, I mean, my epistemology definitely does necessitate that I don't rely on my own interpretation. So sure.

I do believe church fathers are a necessary part of understanding the scriptures. Yes, I do. I do that. All right. So you're saying then, let's just be clear. You're acknowledging that the language needed for the hypostatic union is not in the Bible. It borrows from middle Platonism.

I believe the conceptible, the language is not.

Please let me finish. But the Bible does not use that language and you need the church fathers for the hypostatic union. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, my epistemology like I said already doesn't already, uh, doesn't necessitate that the Bible alone is the only thing which we use to come to the truth of God. I already said that.

Listen, that's, I would even agree with that. Okay, I'm not saying that it's only this like it's the difference between solo scriptura and solo fide. I'm not saying solo scriptura. You can use some other things outside of the Bible. Listen. No, we're talk— Oh my gosh, Bryce, you did not just— Well, I'll let that go. Okay. So, listen. So, so then you know, you know then that the hypostatic union depends upon language the Bible does not use. I just want a straight answer. Is that correct?

Yeah. I said that I said that the concepts are things that we can derive using that language. Sure.

Okay. And then when I concept with—

And when I asked you for those concepts, you appealed to the church fathers. I'll ask you again. Where is Bible, can you give—

Where in the Bible can you derive these concepts? Where specifically?

Like the two natures.

Person and being, yes, of course. Person and being, that the distinction.

I believe that I believe that Philippians 2 is very clear on that.

That there's the form of God and the form of a servant. I believe that that's literally like that can be derived as two natures of Christ.

Okay. But is— All right. So, okay. So, form of God—

Committing the same fallacy that I was even. All right, you, you got to stop. Even, even if I were to grant you form of God referred to the divine nature, form of a servant is not identical to quote human nature. You just inserted that into there, didn't you?

It said it says it right in the next verse where it says made in the likeness of men. You don't think that has to do with being possessing human nature? Like, come on.

Okay, so we already did, we already talked about this. I use the BDAG, which was better than your source, which said it refers to the outer appearance. So what you just said proves my position. Thank you.

All right. So—

Being made in the likeness of men is not the same verse as morphe. That word is not used in being made in the likeness of men.

Okay. Here we go. So why did it, so you would, you would say that all this external philosophy and terms really are clear in the Bible when you have the church fathers. Is that correct?

Sure.

Okay. So why did it take centuries for them to settle this doctrine that the Bible allegedly already teaches?

I mean, our position is that we can actually show that Jesus has two natures even in people like St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Irenaeus. I mean, I already provided verses that actually show an answer.

Why?

So I don't believe it was developed at Chalcedon. I believe that it existed prior to Chalcedon with the earliest fathers.

Oh, okay. So then you disagree with the scholars RPC Hansen and J. N. D. Kelly then. Right. So then ousia and hypostasis were were not synonyms.

Ousia, I mean, I explained that.

Yeah, I explained that in my rebuttal actually that like you can look at the nine anathemas to see what it means by synonyms. When it says that there can, that the Father is not another hypostasis in the Son, that's because the Alexandrian school utilized hypostasis to mean nature.

Yes. Yes. The old Nicene. I'm totally with you. That totally debunks your position. You just said a second ago that you just said a second ago that you disagreed with those scholars and then now you're acknowledging that those words were used as synonyms in the nine creeds anathema. You just dunked on yourself. That was beautiful.

Yeah. Because they, because they allowed both positions to be there so that both positions could—

Okay. Okay. Question. Do you think that the hypostatic union is present in the Greek language of the Bible?

Um, I, I'm agnostic on that. I haven't read into that.

Okay. All right. Well, then we'll just let that one go. But to me, if you, if you said that it was, I think it just poses a problem because then you have to conclude that like everybody who didn't have that position, Arians, semi-Arians, you know, they, they were just failing at Greek. I just think that's historically implausible. Uh, but that was good. That was a good one.

An Arian, are you?

No.

You don't believe in Jesus? Go ahead.

All right. Can I hit you with one more? All right. Let me hit you with one more. Okay. Is Jesus a divine person, a human person, or both?

Uh, he's a divine person, but he's economically a divine human person if you want, just for the economy.

Okay. So, how can Jesus be a real human if you're not a human person?

Uh, because he possesses all of the qualities of human nature. So, he can be denoted as a human in that manner.

So, Jesus is a human but not a human person. Is that correct? That's my last question.

All right, Mike.

He's, he's not, in of himself, a human person. His properties are derived from grabbing or apprehending human nature rather than, uh, originating on human nature.

Thank you for that. Jesus is not a human person. Got it.

All right. All right, guys. I enjoyed you guys, man. Uh, you guys really, I'm back here just, I'm glued to the screen. I think you guys really did put a fantastic cross-examination. Man, what, this was probably going to go down to one of my favorite ones. Uh, I really enjoyed it. Good job, guys. Um, so now we're going to transition to our closing remarks and then we have a 20-minute Q&A. So, audience, make sure you get your questions in. So, we got a fabulous Q&A. Um, uh, so start with, uh, Mr. Bryce, you're up for your five-minute closing. Uh, let me get you set up. Let me get your timer here, Bryce, before you, before you get going here. All right. Uh, Bryce, I'm ready when you're ready, and I'll start your time, uh, when you begin to speak.

All right, cool. So, uh, in this debate specifically, right, the whole point was to show that it is at least, uh, that it can be derived from the scriptures and that it can be derived from logic. One, I already showed that, uh, in terms of logic that the LPI does not follow if we actually show our proper position. It requires a straw man in order to actually make the LPI work. I already talked about the communicatio idiomatum when it comes to actually the way in which we provide properties to Jesus. So it would not make Jesus the one who actually is the origination of that property in of itself, like the type-token distinction I talked about earlier. The faculties do not originate from, uh, from Jesus, rather they originate from the natures and then they're actualized by the person. So it's not the same respect in that manner. Again, that is a defeater to the LPI. So I showed that that is not, um, a contradiction. And then regarding the biblical stuff, I already provided plenty of verses that shows that God incarnated. Uh, and I wasn't able to get through, uh, all of my things within the cross-examination regarding these scriptures because I was actually going to tackle a lot of these scriptures more directly. Like, for example, Zechariah 12:10 or, uh, things like Acts 20:28 where it says God has blood. I think it's actually quite funny that the way that Mike refuted, uh, Acts 20:28 was basically just saying, uh, trying to straw man my position and saying that, oh, well, so then the blood, the blood is God. Like, no, it's not what I meant. We say that God has blood, right? We're saying this is the communicatio idiomatum. Jesus is God. God possesses blood in so far as possessing human nature and having a body because a body is something that would be provided by possessing human nature. The person of Jesus Christ took on flesh in of himself. So then therefore Jesus possesses blood in that manner. Right? I think it's actually quite funny that there was multiple different situations in the cross-examination that I gave where Mike actually conceded that basically salvation wasn't even certain. He even said himself that basically there's a chance or there was a possibility in this actual world that Jesus would have failed his mission and if he could have failed his mission, then therefore God relied on a contingent being in order to provide the salvation for mankind. He did not predeter, I don't think Mike held to the predetermination of his acts and rather that Jesus actually had to synergize his will with the Father. But that also then means that Jesus could have not synergized his will with the Father. He could have just not done that. And then salvation, we would all still be damned right now if Jesus would have just decided to not follow God. And then he also even admitted himself that there's a possible world in which Mike is the one who saves all mankind. On February 20th, 2026 at 9:13 p.m., he could have died on the cross for the sins of mankind. Or maybe in a different way because the cross isn't even really a necessary aspect of it either, right? I didn't even really get more to, I wasn't even able to really apply the Anselm critique because he's a full-fledged annihilationist, which is just, I, that's just way too left field for me to even deal with. That was something that was refuted very early on in the early church. So there was like no reason even to just try to like address that by itself. It's also not really pertaining to the topic. I didn't want to go off topic. But um, I do believe that I demonstrated this biblically. I demonstrated this logically as well. I showed that there's not, there's not a contradiction that's involved in this. And also I didn't see any unsoundness to the argumentation that I was providing. Um, and then as well as epistemically, I was able to show that the earliest church fathers even held to these things and he didn't even address the church fathers. He didn't even address the ones that I brought up. I brought up multiple church fathers and I could have brought up a lot more than that. And finally, the last thing that I think was strange is that he believed that Jesus possesses divine properties. He said that Jesus himself possesses properties that are proper to God. But then somehow he does not possess the nature in which those properties are derived from. So either he has to say that Jesus possesses divine properties but not the divine nature, which is just absolutely ridiculous philosophy to affirm, or that Jesus has to possess the divine nature, but we also know that Jesus possesses human nature, meaning that he implicitly actually affirmed the dophysite position, Chalcedon, right? He's the first Unitarian dophysite that I've ever met in my life. But other than that, this is very fruitful. I appreciate this conversation and the debate because, you know, me and Mike like to go at each other all the time. We're, we're fun with that. You know, me and him are actually, uh, on really good standing. I actually, out of all the Unitarians, him and Andrew Griffin are my favorite, right? Because, uh, they're willing to actually have these types of conversations. They don't, they don't hide on TikTok on their own little personal panels. They actually want to get on a neutral platform. So, I do appreciate that a lot. Mike, thank you for, um, coming on and doing this. But that, that with all that, I'm good to go. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Shout out to Mr. Andrew Griffin. I'm very familiar with Andrew. Me and Andrew had a debate some years ago. Years ago. Probably about five years ago now. I think me and Andrew debated. So, shout out to Andrew. I see him in the live chat. So, with that said, uh, Mr. Mike, metaphysics Mike, you're up for your five-minute closing. And I will start your time as well as soon as you begin to speak.

All right. So, tonight's debate was about proving that the hypostatic union is logical and biblical. Starting with logic, he said that he defeated the LPI. He did not because it was dependent upon his qua argument that he does things in accordance with the human or divine natures. He agreed that natures don't die or be tempted apart from persons. So he lost. He did not, he did not prove that the LPI is wrong. That follows if I'm right that that's a fallacy of reification, which of course again, he concedes to when he acknowledges that natures don't do things like die, like be tempted apart from persons. Those are properties proper to persons as well. So he lost that. All right. He said that I created a straw man when I said, well, is Jesus's human nature God in referring to God having blood. Hold up a minute. He was the one who said God's own blood. That's his reading. He said that. Okay. And and he tries to qualify that statement by God possesses blood in so far as having a human nature. There's the qua argument again, folks. Human natures don't have blood. All right? Jesus's human nature is not God. So God does not have blood any which way you try and do this. Okay? All right. He said that, you know, he made it like it's so crazy to suggest that Jesus could fail. But folks, that's exactly what the Bible says when it says that he was tempted in every respect as we are. Hebrews 4:15. This is a simple argument. If Jesus could not fail in temptation and we can fail in temptation, then Jesus was not tempted as we are. That is an outright denial of what the writer of Hebrews says. I also cited Hebrews 5:7-9 where it says that he learned obedience and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation. Okay, so language of learning obedience and suffering under trial sounds like a real process, folks, not a scripted impossibility. I mean, it completely undermines Jesus's exaltation. Honestly, what a weird position. He said, "Wow, I'm so wrong on annihilationism because of the church fathers." But he failed to refute the key text which where Jesus said, "Don't fear those who can only kill the body." What does kill mean? What's it mean? He said, "Fear those who can kill both body and soul in hell." It doesn't matter at all what the church fathers say if they disagree with Jesus. And the fact anyone thinks that a church father has authority over Jesus is freaking ridiculous. He said, "Michael agreed that Yeshua can have divine properties or excuse me, Jesus can have divine properties." Yeah, those aren't the omni-attributes, Bryce. By divine properties, I'm clearly talking about his miraculous birth, his performing miracles. The key example I gave was forgiving sins. Is that a divine property, Bryce? Because according to the Bible, Jesus has authority to forgive sins as the Son of Man, which as it said at the end of Matthew's parallel passage, they glorify God who had given such power to men. So Jesus can in fact have divine properties because those properties aren't essential properties to being God. He just didn't catch that. Okay. So he failed. Oh, he totally admitted that his view is dependent upon external philosophy that developed out of middle Platonism and when asked to support it from the scriptures had to refer to anything but the scriptures. Folks, he failed to refute it being logical or biblical. I think everybody should be able to see that. But the last thing I want to say is I totally love Bryce. I would love to send everything he said to me back to him. We've talked many times. Bryce is a stand-up solid Christian man who I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking with even before this debate. And you know, even disagreeing on this, I think it's clear he embodies the same values that make a Christian: to love God, to love other people. While I think he's caught in a whole lot of tradition, I have much respect for him and I'm thankful to him for also doing this debate.

Glad you guys got mutual respect for each other. That's always appreciated when we're debating, right? I always appreciate it and able to engage with that foundation of respect for the interlocutor. So, we I definitely appreciate both of you and respect both of you for your efforts today and, uh, the audience definitely got a great deal out of it. Um, the audience was defin, definitely very chipper. And, um, speaking of audience, we're about to go into the Q&A here. We're going to do a 20-minute Q&A. Uh, some of the super chats were not necessarily questions, but they were sort of,

>> How can I put it? Sort of poking the bear, if you will.

That's fine. Comments.

>> No issue with that. You can read them all. No.

Super chats. Um,

>> And it, it's, you know,

>> I mean, I'm used to it, man. I'm used to it, man. You can quote—

>> Yeah. I won't let that's just—

>> Some of them are just not, uh, I don't think fitting for, you know, I try to keep it professional, you know, I don't want, I don't want people jabbing at your guys' name talking crazy about y'all, but, um, let's start, let's start here, uh, where is a question here? Question.

>> W's in the chat for the wanted Gear 5 Luffy poster in the background too, by the way. I see you. On the way, three billion berries, by the way. Three billion berries. All right. So, this question is for Bryce. Super chat for Bryce here. Thank you for the question. Flatless. Thank you so much. Uh, question for Bryce. Thank you for the support as well. If Jesus is one person with two natures and personhood is what possesses attributes, who is the conscious subject of Jesus' limited knowledge in the passage like Mark 13:32?

Yeah, it would be Jesus in so far as possessing a human mind because we also believe that because Jesus has two natures, he also possesses two minds and two energies and two wills. And so if we're talking about, for example, him possessing the quote unquote limited knowledge that would be proper to human nature, which he possesses in his human mind.

All right, your honor, motion to strike everything after "it's Jesus." The moment he said "it's Jesus," it's over because he's agreeing that Jesus has these properties and then he'll also say Jesus doesn't have these properties. Okay, just hitting us with the qua. Oh, in so far as the human nature is again, a fallacy of reification because those properties still properly applied to a person. He admits that when he said "it's Jesus."

All right. Are we just doing like, are we just doing like the question too and then like someone responds or—

What?

Yeah, I meant to explain the rule. Sorry about that. Uh, so it's one minute each for, you know, you get the, but whoever got the question initially, like first or whatever, uh, you get 30 seconds after—

The opponent gets his minute. So, so right now Bryce, you would have 30 seconds to respond.

Uh, to after he responds.

Yeah. No. Yeah. So I always get this goofed up and Mike was at the debate and I kept goofing this up. So, at the conference, I kept goofing this up.

So, so for this question, for example, you got one minute, Mike would get one minute, and then you would get 30 seconds extra because the question was initially for you.

Okay, cool. Um, so no, that wouldn't be considered a fallacy. The qua distinction when we're talking about like nature and person, that's essential to when we're talking about our philosophy, which I already said that our epistemology is not something that is only grounded in the Bible alone, like people try to assume it is. So when we're using these types of, uh, distinctions, right? And we're using things like proper to, etc., like proper to means that it originates from. And so if we say that the person's actualized these said properties, that doesn't mean that they're grounded in those, uh, grounded in that subject, right? Uh, Mike, this question is for you here. Let me pull it up here. Thanks for the super chat. Uh, Jesse, appreciate it. Uh, thanks, Mike, for being a chef and proving that the Trinity is unbiblical. Once again, glory to our personal God, our one-person God. I don't know if you want to chime in on that, and I can let Bryce sort of debate that with you as well.

Well, hey, uh, thanks for being here and for, uh, saying the nice comment and for supporting, uh, the Gospel Truth channel with the, with the super chat. And yet, you know, I think that when we get caught up in external philosophies, we're falling prey to what Paul talks about in Colossians chapter 2, where he says, "Do not be taken captive by vain philosophy, which depends upon human tradition rather than on Christ." That's what all of this is, in accordance with human nature and the communicatio idiomatum and and all the different, the essence-energy distinction and type and token. These are human philosophies which muddy the waters and really teach people to be subservient to an authority because it's hard to comprehend. It usually is an appeal to mystery. And I think the opposite is true, where really our faith should be based in simple good works and faith in Christ. And over time, we should, you know, grow in righteousness, but not depend upon anything else but Christ to, to do that, to grow in, in our Christian walk. Bryce, any thoughts?

Uh, I mean, I don't really have like too much to say about it. It was kind of just like a statement of like saying congratulations to Mike. But, um, like when we're talking about these external philosophies, right? Like you have to within, like his view, obviously, you have to presuppose these external, quote unquote, philosophies, right? It's kind of like, honestly, muddying the waters to say that it's just external entirely, as in it's not something that's actually grounded in the early church in any way, shape, or form. Because if I'm able to show, right, that this external philosophy that he quotes is incorrect, is something that is not utilized by the first Christians to ever exist, you know, the disciples of the apostles themselves, um, then of course, you know, it's still epistemically sound to be able to utilize these said things. If the earliest Christians that ever existed utilize these things to actually make their argumentation against heretics, okay, yo, did you catch that, Bryce? I hate to tell you this in front of all these people, but the earliest Christians were not the disciples of the disciples. They were the disciples themselves. It was the people who wrote the New Testament, not the commentary which followed after. All right. The fact that the disciples don't make the essence-energy distinction, even though in fact, in some ways I think there's very, there's a lot of insight you can draw from that. The fact they aren't using the person-being distinction, the fact that they aren't even, they feel no need to teach it, justify it, expound upon it at all is proof that they did not have these beliefs, right?

And I had a question over here. There's this question for you, Bryce. Um, listen, uh, for Brian, thank you for the support. Uh, Amanda, appreciate it. Uh, Bryce, who in the Bible teaches the hypostatic union as doctrine?

I mean, like I would say that all of the verses that I brought up specifically, like I believe teach the hypostatic union, that was the entire point of my opening, cross-examination rebuttals, all of that. So, I mean, like I don't really know what that kind of question would be denoting. Obviously, if they're not like expounding on like the extreme, uh, nuances of the philosophy, doesn't mean that then therefore the concept does not exist within biblical texts. So that's, I don't even understand what that kind of question would would be entailing. Obviously, I would say that it's something that's grounded in the Bible, but it's, but it's something that also we utilize other things for our epistemology to come to those conclusions of what the interpretation really means.

Okay. All right. So he is right that just because it doesn't contain the exact wording doesn't mean the concept couldn't be present. Right? Like a word-concept fallacy. But what he would have to do is actually present in the text where those different words which have the same concepts exist. He didn't do this. He said, "I gave a bunch of scriptures." Yeah. You gave Acts 20:28 where God has blood, debunked. You brought up 1 John 5:20 where Jesus must be the true God because he's the closest antecedent, debunked. You brought up Micah 5:2, which is just prophetic royal messianic language. You brought up Zechariah 12:10, which is another messianic prophecy. Folks, none of these texts say Jesus was one person with two natures which exist inseparably but not mixed or expounds any of that other philosophy. He read all of that into the text. The concept is not even there.

I find it, I find it actually quite funny that he agreed with me at the beginning saying that not everything has to explicitly be in the Bible. But then the very end of his, uh, refutation to what I just said was basically saying it does not say this thing, right? Like my entire argument is that the concepts do exist within the biblical scriptures if we actually utilize that via the interpretation of the church and showing that these things do exist. Right? Just because the exact words are not in there doesn't mean that it's not then therefore true. Right? That's a verbatim fallacy, which you agreed to in the beginning, but then also said that it's, you know, you also said that it's not in there, so then you literally, I guess, contradicted yourself, right?

All right, next question here. This for you, Mike. Put it up here. Thank you. Based Theology for the support. Mike, Bags son, the saving one is sub-exclusive to Yahweh only. One son as per Isaiah and Zechariah 9:9. Does applying it to the Messiah imply God identity or a logical problem of the Savior?

So, I'm not entirely sure what he's saying this in reference to. I cited the BDAG mainly for Philippians chapter 2 where the word morphe refers to an outer appearance, right, not an internal essence. So Bryce cited Strongs for that, which, hey, Strongs isn't always wrong. The BDAG is just better. And I gave other reasons for why that is correct, like from the Gospel of Narc, right, which is also a well-known story, um, sort of alluded to in Luke chapter 24 where Jesus appears in a different form. All right. So, I'm not sure what you're specifically referencing the BDAG for. That's what I used it for, and I think that's correct.

So, he used the BDAG to try to go against what I said, right, when it comes to my explanation of Philippians 2. But then when obviously somebody brings a question providing something in BDAG that would then therefore kind of make his own view problematic, then at that point it's kind of like, oh, no, no, no, I only use the BDAG for Philippians 2. That's not how lexicons work. That's not something that you basically just say, oh, well, uh, it fits my theology and this view, but it doesn't fit my theology in this other view, right? That's not, that's not how interpretation works. It actually just shows that you're actually retroactively putting your own worldview into the scriptures. And then when things don't interpret your way, then at that point, right, oh, we'll use a different, we'll use a different understanding of Greek from someone else at that point, right? Because like the other view doesn't work for me, right? That's, that's just ad hoc. Okay. So, I got 30 seconds, right? So, all right. Um, I'm looking here on the live. I see it's cut off. It says in Zech. So, he must have been saying that Basement Theology, which is a unique name, in reference to Zechariah 12. Now, that that has, uh, context to me. Before you answer that, Mike, I did read the whole thing because it is cut off on the screen. I read the whole thing here. It says in Zechariah 9:9, does applying it to the Messiah imply God identity or a logical problem of the Savior?

Okay, my, my bad. So, I'm, I'm also trying to look at it and in our stream it's blurry, but when I go to YouTube, I can see it clear. They probably do that just so it, it doesn't, there's no latency in the stream. So, yeah, I'm seeing it now. Okay. So, quickly to answer this. So remember I gave you a translation, the RSV, which says that they looked on him whom they have pierced. So this is translation sensitive. Remember that's what I said. So you're bringing an example from the LXX exclusive. It looks like you're saying the BDAG is supporting that. I'm happy to look into that more. But certainly, in the least, this is an ambiguous text which is highly debated among scholarship. That's not some Unitarian thing. That's a scholarship thing. All right. It also can be validly read as him. Look on him, right? Not me. All right. Let me see. We got another question for you guys here. Um, there's another one for Bryce. Oh, here it is. And I'm sorry guys, a little, I've been having some issues with this with the, with the, with the question on the screen. It's like I re, showing the whole thing. So, I've been sort of reading off the side here. Uh, for Bryce, thank you Brandon Duke. I think this is the Brandon Duke that came to the conference and been on the show before. So, big shout out to Brandon Duke. Thank you for the support, man. Uh, for Bryce regarding knowledge, when Jesus says he doesn't know something, um, man, is that, am I pronouncing that right?

Yeah, it's fine.

>> Yeah, I think, man, is there a danger of him knowingly deceiving his audience?

A danger of who deceiving his audience? You talking about Jesus or what? I'm assum, I guess if he's talking about—

I can read it again. I can read it. It says, regarding knowledge, when Jesus says he doesn't know something, is there a danger of him knowingly deceiving his audience?

Yeah, there's multiple ways to interpret like the whole not knowing the hour and stuff like that. I mean, especially if you're talking about like the, the Greek word oidon in of itself can just simply just mean to declare something rather than it simply just meaning that you originate the knowledge from it. There's also another argument that's used by people like St. Ambrose of Milan where he actually says that, uh, the not knowing the hour or something like that is due to the fact that it is that all knowledge is something that originates from the Father. So he's just simply saying that the faculty of, for example, knowing divine knowledge is something that's provided to the Son. It's not something that originates from the Son in of itself. So it's a triadic act of basically knowing.

Okay. So—

It's not, it's not a danger of, it's not a danger of misinterpreting or, uh, confusing people.

Sorry. Okay, folks. He just made a claim that is blatantly false. Here's the text in question. No one knows. He said that's not a cognitive knowledge. That can just refer to somebody. Come on. Let me pull up. He said that can just refer to declaring it. Come on. Why? My right-click isn't working. There we go. Look up in the dictionary, the BDAG. Ready? Oida. To know. To have information about. Right here, Mark 13:32. To know something. So, who are you going to believe, folks? Who are you going to believe? Are, are you going to believe a top scholarship resource that says the word doesn't mean to declare? That's not in the definition. Or are you going to believe what this says that it means to know something about? And Brandon, your question is phenomenal because if Jesus says he doesn't know in any sense, but doesn't clarify that, that is quite deceptive, isn't it? Because he's saying that I don't know, neither the angels, nobody knows, but he does in their view. That would be deceptive.

Oh, first, uh, 30 seconds. Okay. So, um, the thing that I just talked about, right? Obviously, he decided to just use the BDAG again, which again, like this is just going back to basically whichever, uh, type of definition that we want to use based off of when it convenience, uh, conveniences us. There are different versions of when it's renditioned in Greek where it determines that it can mean to declare, right? And then I also gave a different explanation of it regarding ontology where if we're talking about the fact that all knowledge is something that's derived from the Father and that it's provided to the Son from eternity, then therefore the Son would not know it in so far as, right, originating whatever that knowledge is, right? So—

He would still know it in terms of receiving whatever that thing is, as obviously the Bible says that, uh, Jesus has everything that the Father has, right? We would say that that's something that also includes the knowledge of the Father. So again, like we don't believe that that's just like in and of itself some kind of defeater. We believe there's other parts to the scriptures that make it pretty, pretty clear.

Thank you for that. All right, this question for you, Mike.

Okay, so he says that, yeah, we, we have to.

That was my response to your rebuttal.

Oh, oh, dang it. My bad. Sorry.

Yeah, you good. You're good. Um, so this question for you, Mike. Uh, thank you for the support, philosophy. Appreciate it. Question for Mike and the support, too. Dave, question for Mike. Is it true that a a a property is predicated to a single subject by virtue of the specific nature that possesses the property rather than being predicated independently of the nature?

Not always. It wouldn't, it wouldn't matter though, because the point is that who and what you are are co-extensive. So even if you want to call it something proper to the nature, I would agree with you actually. I, I, I don't have to like disagree with that. The point is that it's also a a property proper to the person as well. We went through a ton of examples of this. Natures don't do things apart from persons. He also conceded to that. Okay? So that means that when you're saying Jesus does something qua human or divine nature, you are singling out that property to the nature. That's his position. He said it like five times. It's, it's proper to the nature. That's wrong. And and and again, he, he lost that the moment he conceded that none of those properties such as dying, eating, sleeping, temptation can exist apart from the person.

Unless.

Yeah. So even though that like I'm okay with saying that, for example, uh, properties are not technically true properties unless they're actualized by a person. That's why we have a difference between a type and token distinction. If we're talking about like the type, which would just be the faculty of something that's proper to the nature, then the token would be the utilization or the actualization of said, whatever property is. That doesn't mean that then therefore the property is proper to the person because when I already defined what I meant by proper to and proper to just means to originate from. So being in the same sense would necessitate that the both of sets of properties would have to basically be from, right, Jesus. It would have to originate from Jesus as a person, and then predicated to the nature, which is backwards from the communic model.

Yeah, you know, this was something that I wish that I could have maybe talked a bit more about in my rebuttal. It's hard to know exactly how to get to everything. Folks, I'm not saying that the type token distinction is wrong. Okay? I'm saying that it does not solve the personal unity, subject of consciousness problem. So, in other words, like it may describe how many natures there are at, like a conceptual level, but it does not by itself explain who the single conscious subject is, how one subject can bear opposite predicates, or how two natural mind wills avoid functional historianism. So the type token distinction is fine as a metaphysical tool. All right. But my objection is that that tool is not an explanation of how one personal subject avoids contradiction or becoming functionally two centers of consciousness.

Few more questions and we'll be done here, guys. Um, let me see. Last question for you, Mike. So we'll make this question for trying to spread these. I want to ask the same person. Super chat. Let me see here. Well, here's another question for you, Mike. Uh, thank you for the support. Appreciate it. Uh, hey Mike, how does a Unitarian deity ground in one in the many or relation between subjects without multiple subjects relating in the Godhead? Thanks also W for Bryce.

So, I don't know if you heard, but I said that who and what you are are co-extensive, which means that they exist across the same time and space. So we sort of Bryce and I sort of went back and forth on this earlier about whether that's nominalism or not, right? Are you just saying that abstract universals don't exist? Well, no. I think in one way we could say that they do exist in virtue of the mind. They can exist in the mind. So the point is, in our world, who and what you are don't exist apart from each other. So the way that a Unitarian or anybody in their right mind is going to understand this is that this distinction exists only in how we think or perceive you, not in the real world. So they are two aspects. That's fine. You're talking about the one, the many, the predicates, the properties. Okay? They are two aspects. They're not the same set of properties. Do you hear me? But they're two aspects of the same thing. They're co-extensive. That's the best view.

Okay. So, the problem of the one and the many has nothing to do with what you just refuted. The problem of the one and the many is something that existed in the ancients where they held to a strict monotheism that basically God was only simply a monad, like Aristotle and Plato, for example. One of the things that were called their demons, all right, was the problem of the one and the many where basically if there's if there's a multiplicity of things that exist and basically God, right, is the thing that emanates all things that exist, then therefore the principle for multiplicity in of itself must also be something that is proper to God or the monad. The obviously people like Aristotle and Plato couldn't affirm something like this because they didn't believe in any form of multiplicity in God, and they actually admitted that this was an issue in their view. He's asking you that in the problem of the one and the many, how does your view in Unitarianism actually solve that problem of multiplicity in the real world and how God is capable of causing multiplicity if only he is a single.

Okay. So actually my answer did address that because the issue is not the one and the many as such that you've described it. I'm framing this that the issue is whether the particular one in many relation is coherent when we're talking about including mutually incompatible essential properties. Okay. So when I'm talking about the distinction between who and what you are, I'm saying that God may possess some attributes and virtue of his nature that's not just going to essentially flesh out to being a many. All right. This I also mentioned mariology earlier, right? About the basically there are emergent properties of a whole. Okay? So I'm not objecting to the one in many metaphysics in general per se. I'm just objecting to using one person, two natures as a formal shell that doesn't explain how one subject can bear contradictory essential predicates without equivocation, without uh, functional notorianism. So maybe I could have been more direct, but in my mind, that is answering that question. You got to know that those are co-extensive because then we can talk about what that even means to have a one or a many. Right? You believe he's many in the hypostasis, right? The who. So, when I'm telling you they're co-extensive, that answers it, right? You, you didn't track that in actuality.

All right. So, this will be the final question here. Sorry, Mike. It's for you again. Uh, another super chat, man. Um, and this one says here, "Mike, if the written text presupposes tradition, why do you repudiate when Bryce's motives for justification are also are outside the written text?"

So the examples I provided are not outside the written text. So that wouldn't be an equivalent example. When I mentioned for, uh, as when we got on the word, what is the word? How is Jesus the word? I mentioned an existing tradition. How did I prove that? Not with oral tradition, right? Knowledge passed down orally. Uh, which is fine, by the way. The point is that that existed in, again, we have a tradition carried in proverbs and Psalms and Job and intertestamental Jewish literature. I mentioned Sarak and Baroo, uh, even Pho. Okay. So there can be pre-existing tradition, uh, even oral tradition, but that's those aren't equivalent, right? He just appealed to a tradition that comes from the church fathers without actually basing that in the Bible, right? And when I questioned it on it, he said, well, it was really their interpretation of the Bible. So I mean, please, these are just not the same.

Bryce.

Yeah, I mean, like when they were interpreting the Bible, they were utilizing these philosophical concepts. That's the reason why that we would utilize them in that case. There's nothing wrong with that in the epistemology. But when we're talking about like actually being able to ground, for example, the ability to make a philosophical arguments in the first place, either one, you have to appeal to some form of normative authority or something that actually determine these things to be the case, or you have to basically try to, uh, appeal to either your own view or modern people's view, right? Like, for example, the Unitarian Church in and of itself, if you look at that historically, that's not something that existed in the first millennia, right? Paul of Samosata, the originator of technically speaking, Unitarianism, was condemned by the council of Antioch in 268 and was actually excommunicated from the church. And from then on out, the dynamic monarchian view, which is what the standard view that Unitarians hold to, is something that disappeared and was did not even exist as an actual view up until the 1500s. So again, like his philosophy that he's using to prove his position is not even actually, uh, historical. That's the entire point I'm giving.

Oh my gosh, there is so much there. I have 30 seconds. Okay, first off, the appeal to a normative authority is false. How did Bryce even discover a normative authority without employing a standard that he's not qualified to make apart from it? That's self-refuting. I just debunked Jim Bob on this like a month ago. Also, his whole quote, his whole point about the Unitarian Church is totally false. Um, you know, I wish I had had more chance to address earlier about, you know, well, did the church fail? Did the gates of hell prevail against the church? All of this is just a false dichotomy. Even Paul himself said that he was scared wolves would rise up from among them and lead the apostles away to them or the disciples away to them. Okay? So, all that stuff has a better contextual understanding. He's picking and choosing from history. None of them just agreed with each other consistently. None of them.

All right, guys. One more question. One more question. Uh, I didn't see this one, but one more question, guys. This for you, Mike. Uh, where is it at? Ah, look how here it is. All right. Why did Mike show beag and did not read a few lines up from the red, uh, Philip from the red, Philippians chapter 2 verse 6 where it refers to the pre-existent Christ and his divinity. Although he was in a form of God for the Greek morphe. Well, I'm going to go ahead and pull this up. Okay. He said, here it is. Philippians chapter 2 refers to a form, an outward appearance, a shape. He said, why didn't I look down below in the red? Where is it? Where is it? Dr. Garza, I'm not seeing it. The risen Christ appeared in a different form. The transfiguration of Jesus. The case of synonymity. Listen, I hate to be this frank, but he might just be making stuff up. Dr. Algarza does that.

He, he does that.

I'm not, I'm looking at it right here.

Bryce.

He, yeah, he was specifically referencing Philippians 2:6 in the red when it's disc when it's talking about morphe, right? In that specific case, it's, it seems to actually be denoting that it's actually former in nature, not necessarily just outward appearance. I don't really have much more to say other than that. But he's not referring to the other verse that talks about, uh, Christ appearing in another form. It's talking about morphe in context of Philippians 2:6, which obviously matters towards each word. Okay, here, here's my screen. We're looking at it right here. Here it is. Where is it? Where is it? Okay, we have Philippians 2 right here. Okay. Under the form and outward appearance and shape. Where in here is he saying that this refers to the inner nature or divinity? Where, where is that? Where is that? It uses the one that I just read, appearing in a different form. The case against anonymity. This is what I quoted. And here we are into the next word. Where is he getting this?

All right. I don't, I don't want to include myself, but they keep telling you in the chat to look up or read up. I don't know what that means, but what you're saying.

Okay. You mean above the word up here, format appearance shape. What am I appearance changed of Christ of deities? This is a contrast expression of divinity and pre-existent Christ. No problem there. Or essential identity as a descendant of divinities, human fragility. Is this what you're referring to? Is that what he's talking about? Are you equating essential identity with an essential essence or nature? Is that what you're doing? Is that what you're doing? And he calls himself a doctor. Tell me, is an essential identity the same as an essential nature or essence? Is it, are those equivalent? Yeah, that the argument. He, he saw the word essential and thought he had something.

Folks, L's in the chat for Mr. Garza.

All right. All right. That'll be the final.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Respectful L's though. I'm just saying, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. All right. Thank you guys, uh, for a fantastic debate Q&A and do appreciate you guys, uh, keeping it, keeping it professional, man. Always appreciate that. Um, and so, uh, before I let you guys go, man, I do want to give you guys a chance to sort of remind people where they can come find you and, you know, interact with your content, man. So start with Mr. Mike. Uh, go ahead and, uh, let them know, man.

Well, hey, thank you all so much for watching this debate. Thank you again, Bryce, for, um, challenging me, agreeing to do it, and Marlon for putting it on. Uh, I thought this was a great discussion. You can find me at MetaphysicsMike across all social media channels. And, uh, hey, you know, I'm still growing. I'm still learning. I think I did a good job making my case, but I'm always open to hear more. And, uh, Bryce, thank you for being, uh, just a stand-up Christian man.

Bryce.

All right. Well, thank you very much, Mike, for coming on to do this. You know, like, uh, I'm not even going to lie to you, man, based off of the type of people that I've challenged in the past for these types of conversations. Uh, you were the only one that instantly messaged me within about five minutes and was like, "Let's do it. Let's put it on." And then you gave me some channels to go on because I don't have connections yet, right? So now I know Marlin thankfully, so I have the ability to talk to him. But I didn't, I didn't know about that. So that's really cool that we had a neutral platform to be able to have this discussion on instead of, uh, us trying to basically just echo chamber each other on TikTok. It's a lot better to do something like this.

But, um, you know, I, I really do appreciate this conversation fully. Thank you, Marlon, for putting it on and dealing with, uh, you know, two different people yelling for a little bit, but, uh, you know, I know it's all part of that.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's, that's all I got. Thank you. Oh, and also you guys can find me on YouTube and TikTok at Bryce Jofficial. I'm also on, uh, X as well at Bryce Jofficial, where I post kind of more like, uh, church father information and things like that. I'm more, I'm more so debating Roman Catholics on Twitter side, but, uh, I usually, uh, kind of like, you know, spread out what I'm doing based off of, uh, the platform, but you Bryce J. Official is where you can find me on all the platforms.

Cool. Guys, thank you guys again. Uh, I really enjoyed it. As I said, the crossex really had me glued to the screen, man. I was definitely listening intently, uh, to what you guys were definitely saying. And once again, you guys did great. I appreciate you guys. So, I'm going to let you guys go and I pray, uh, that you guys have a blessed night. And, you know, uh, but maybe we could do this again sometime.

Thanks.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

All right. No problem. Have a good one.

All right, guys. Another great debate in the books and this is going to be the last debate for a little while, but, uh, I really enjoyed it, man. I hope you guys did, too. Uh, really enjoyed this debate. Uh, took a, you know, it's one of those things. I'm not Eastern Orthodox and obviously I'm not Unitarian. I'm not a Unitarian. Um, but, um, a lot of people tend to say, "Well, you know, if if someone comes on a show and they're not arguing for, you know, my position in the way that I think is correct, you know, because I have a better view." Um, a lot of times people don't want to even interact with the debates, right? They don't even want to entertain it because there's two people on there that you, you disagree with, you ain't even thinking about it, right? I, I 100% think that's the wrong approach, man. Um, I feel that even though you don't necessarily have the the the the exact position someone holds to, you can still learn, man. You can still learn from those positions. And maybe you can sort of scope your argument, um, from those things you learn, right? Perhaps there was something Bryce said that said, maybe I could add that to my my my position where if I'm debating, I can I can add that to my argumentation, right? Or maybe something Mike said, you know, uh, maybe Mike said something that sort of pricked the, not pricked the interest. He said, "Hey, let me dive into that a little bit better and see if I can use that in my argumentation." Whatever the case may be, I do feel that we can learn from each other, uh, in that kind of capacity. And I think that's what happened today. That's why I say that in during the crossex, I was very, very intently listening and and really listen to what they were saying. And I thought I was one of the better crossex, man. They really challenged each other and I definitely appreciate that about these two. And so you should too, right? You should too. Definitely appreciate that about, uh, the debaters when they come on, man. Uh, don't, don't hesitate to give props or props. Dude, if they make a good argument, man, let's know. Give them some, give them some love, man. Show them some love and say, "Man, a good argument. Let me look at that a little deeper, right?" And so I think that's how we should approach it. Approach it. And so all that said, I thank everyone for joining me, um, tonight because this is going to be the final live stream for some time. And I'm going to take a break, man. I need a break. I am mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted. Um, from from the the move to preparing a conference throughout the move to putting on a conference to all of that, right? That is just the most exhausting thing. It's so, what I'm going to do, I'm going to take some time to take a step back and spend time with my family and really get grounded and get, you know, get settled over here in our new surroundings. And so, um, I thank you guys for rocking with the Gospel Truth for so many years and take taking time to engage with the Gospel Truth, supporting the Gospel Truth. And so, by God's grace, you know, God willing, this is not the end. This is just a break, okay? And so I really do appreciate everyone, um, for for being here and making themselves available. And so with that said, I'm going to get out of here and let me get my music cued. I'm going to get out of here and I pray that you will continue to rock with the Gospel Truth. Make sure you subscribe to the Gospel Truth and hit the notification bell so you miss any shows coming up here in the future, uh, for the Gospel Truth because you don't want to miss out any shows that are coming up here in the future. Um, also, the next show will be tomorrow, but it won't be me live in this capacity. It will be featuring the final debate of the TGC conference, which was between, um, Tren Horn and Anthony Rogers. So, hopefully you guys can look forward to it. It's a solript tour debate. And so, um, it was the grand finale of the Gospel Truth Conference, and I will be streaming that tomorrow. So, hopefully everyone will be able to check it out. All right, with that said, I am gone and I pray that you'll be blessed. May God bless you and may God keep you. Go.

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Metaphysics Mike Vs Bryce J: Is The Hypostatic Union Logical & Biblical?

Transcription