Hebrew Voices #118 - Trinity and the Christian God

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Nehemia: No, no. I want to jump in here. He mentioned about seeing the glory, and it’s really interesting. In Judaism in the Middle Ages, there was a big dispute about what is the glory of God, and what’s called the “Shechina”, or what Christians will call “Shekinah Glory.” Is the Shechina God Himself, or is the Shechina an angel of God?

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkhot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon with Hebrew Voices, and I am here today with two gentlemen who are going to engage in a conversation about the nature of the Christian God, whether that God is a Trinity or, I guess, a unity – I don’t know what the term is – or oneness. We have here author and Southern Baptist pastor Reverend Brian Garcia of Crossroads Church in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, representing the Trinitarian position, and author and Christian Unitarian pastor Carlos Xavier, of Restoration Fellowship in Atlanta, Georgia, who’s representing the unitarian position, and that’s unitarian with a small “u”. Guys, shalom and welcome to the program.

Brian: Shalom.

Carlos: Thank you for having us.

Nehemia: This is kind of an unusual program, because I’m the Jew [laughing] and I’m having the two Christians engaging in a conversation - and I really hope it’s a conversation and not a debate - but engaging in a conversation about what is the nature of God according to the Christian understanding. I mean, this is an unusual thing. You know, in history there was this thing where Jews were forced into these debates - usually with Catholics, but sometimes with Protestants - and the Jew usually wanted nothing to do with the debate, because if he won the Jews could be persecuted. If he lost, well, they could be forced to convert to Catholicism, or Protestant Christianity. So, in a sense, the tables are turned. You’re now here on my program, but voluntarily. Nobody here is under duress.

Brian: Help!

Nehemia: [laughing] No one’s here under duress. You guys voluntarily came, and I appreciate you joining me to have this conversation. Over the years, I have people all the time come up to me and say, “Nehemia,” they say, “Nehemia, we’re believers in Yeshua and we keep the Torah. We follow the New Testament, but we’re struggling with the nature of God, vis-à-vis whether it’s a Trinity or one.” We’ll get to some of the ideas that are out there, because I’ll ask other people, “What’s your idea of who is Jesus, who is Yeshua to you?” And I’ll get all kinds of different answers, even from regular, mainstream Christians. Ideas that, there was a time they would be considered heretical, maybe even still today. Like Patripassianism is the most common one I hear almost all the time, or some form of Jesus being a created being.

So, this is an unusual format. I don’t think I’ve ever done three people in a program before, and I’ve definitely never done this sort of conversation before.

When people ask me this, I say, “Those are theological questions. I’m not a theologian. Go ask your pastor, rabbi or priest.” So, now we have two pastors to discuss this. [laughing] And I just want to say up front, I’m Jewish. I’m not a Trinitarian. So, in a way, maybe this is a little bit unfair, Brian.

Brian: It’s okay. I like the odds.

Nehemia: Okay, beautiful! Well, and maybe from your perspective, there’s only one of us here, right? I don’t know.

Brian: That’s right, yeah. Well, there’s definitely one with me.

Nehemia: Okay, there you go. But I’m going to try to be as fair as possible, and actually just let you guys have the conversation. Brian, I’m going to start with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, because you’re not the typical Southern Baptist… or maybe you are, I actually don’t know. You’re not what I think of as a typical Christian as far as your background, so tell us a little bit about yourself.

After we do these intros, guys, then I’m going to ask each of them to present their position of what they believe for five minutes, uninterrupted, and then we’ll just have a conversation. But let’s start with who you are, before we get to that.

Brian: Sure, well I appreciate you having us on, Nehemia. I met you a couple of years ago up when I was ministering in Canada. And my background is, I am a former Jehovah’s Witness. I was born and raised in a second-generation Jehovah’s Witness family, and so my default growing up was that of Arminianism - believing that Jesus Christ was inferior to the Father, that he was not equal to Yah, that he was in fact a created being. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a unique Christology. They believe that Jesus is Michael, the Archangel.

Nehemia: Sorry, Brian, was that Arminianism or Arianism?

Brian: Arianism, sorry, and Arminian, because they are Arminian, as well.

Nehemia: Okay, but tell us who Arias is.

Brian: So, Arias was a guy in the 2nd and 3rd century who believed that Jesus was not of the same substance as the Father. And so, this is kind of what brought upon the Council of Nicaea, was this debate within the Church - was Jesus of a similar substance, or was he of the same substance as the Father? And so, the Arian position, which is held on by modern-day Jehovah’s Witness, unitarians and the like, is that Jesus is not God, that he is not of the same substance as the Father. And so, my background is, of course, I defended it. I was actually one of the first individuals on the platform of YouTube defending the Jehovah Witness Christology back in 2007.

And so, when I was defending Jehovah’s Witnesses, I would debate Christians often, and it was during those debates and discussions that I began to open my mind a bit, and started to read the Scriptures for myself, and I found that the Christology of the Old and New Testament were very different from what I was being taught by the Watchtower Society. And so, long story short, I became a Christian. I surrendered my life over to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am born again. And from that, God has thrust my life into a lifestyle of ministry, where I’ve been blessed to be able to serve all across the world as a missionary, a Church planter and right now, as a pastor.

I’ve written a book on this subject called, Can I Get a Witness? How to Understand and Set Free the Jehovah’s Witnesses, obviously helping individuals understand the theology of the Watchtower, and also Christian theology, and how we can best have these types of conversations.

So, I really appreciate, Nehemia, you bringing us here to have this dialog, this conversation. I think it’ll be really productive.

Nehemia: You said the “Watchtower”. For those who don’t know – and I can’t say I know exactly, I’ve heard of it – what is that?

Brian: The Watchtower Society is the organization that dictates all the doctrine, standards and practices of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. So, when you have a Jehovah’s Witness knock on your door, they’re typically carrying around magazines called The Watchtower and Awake! Those are written by the Watchtower Society. The Watchtower and Awake magazines are the most printed magazines in the entire world. As a matter of fact, they print more magazines per month than the entire Christian Church does combined in a year.

Nehemia: Wow. How many Jehovah’s Witnesses are there in the world?

Brian: There are over eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, in over 235 countries.

Nehemia: Wow, so how do you explain, and I know this is off-topic a bit, but you’ve piqued my curiosity. How do you explain that eight million people produce more literature than… what is it, two billion Christians? That’s actually… wow.

Brian: It’s pretty remarkable, and the reason why is because again, Jehovah’s Witnesses are advents, are proselytizers. And so, they collectively preach more than two billion hours a year. And so, every member of the Jehovah Witness congregation and religion is expected to go out and preach the message, go door to door, stand on street corners, pass out literature and do Bible studies. Where unfortunately, in most Evangelical Christian circles, the person who does the most proselytizing would be the pastor or the minister.

But the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a unique view, which I actually think is correct, that every member of the congregation is a minister. And so, I as a Southern Baptist preacher, I believe the same thing, that every born-again Christian is a minister of the Gospel. But they have done so very effectively, and partially, it’s because of their view of salvation – which is kind of off-topic – but they believe that they have to do this in order to be saved, whereas the Christian believes in salvation by grace or faith in the Lord Jesus. And so, we’re not out there actively working for salvation like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other groups out there.

Nehemia: So, how did you go from debating, or essentially defending, being an apologist for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to where your whole ministry – or maybe not the whole ministry – but you wrote a book about how the Jehovah’s Witnesses are wrong, I guess, mainly about the Trinity, or about other things too…

Brian: Yeah, there are a lot of other discussions in the book. But the main, it would have to deal with the divinity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity, of course. That’s the major contention that Jehovah’s Witnesses have. They are one of the largest unitarian groups, and I use the word “unitarian” lightly here in regard to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they are the largest movement that deny the deity of Christ within Christiandom, or Christian circles.

Nehemia: Let’s jump now to Carlos. Carlos, you describe yourself as unitarian, Christian unitarian with a small “u.” Were you raised a unitarian? How did you become a unitarian? Give us a little bit about your background.

Carlos: Right, so thank you, Nehemia, for having us, and Brian. I was born in Nicaragua, which is in central America. We left when I was four years old. My father was in the military, there was a civil war, as it happens a lot in those Third World countries, unfortunately, and I started to bounce around. So, I didn’t have any formative religious upbringing.

Coming from Nicaragua, which is Catholic land, right? Central America of the Spaniards back in the good old days, [laughing] the Spanish Empire days, colonized all those places, and enforced Catholicism. So, my mother was a sort of lukewarm, if you will, Catholic. My father was an army guy, and never really religious.

We bounced around in my youth, went from country to country, school to school. We finally landed in Australia, of all places - Sydney, Australia, to be exact. And that’s really where I grew up. I was 20 years there, from around the ‘80s to the 2000s. Again, I grew up agnostic, if you will. So obviously, if you look around, there is a Creator. There is design. Just look at your hand, you know, [laughing] it’s an incredible design.

So obviously, you know, you grow up not knowing what’s out there, but there is something out there. That lasted until I was 32, 32 years of age. And then, out of the blue, I fell into a deep depression. I don’t suffer medical depression, thank God. But suddenly, it was just a weird thing, you know, when something you’re not familiar with hits you. And that sort of led me to the Bible for the first time. I had never read the Bible. I had heard of Jesus through relatives who were religious, but to me, Jesus was like Zeus, like some kind of mythological character from history.

Now, I did like history, especially ancient history, in school. I took a lot of ancient history courses at college. So I started reading the Bible for the first time. I asked a family friend who was a pastor, and I said, “Where do I start? This is such a big book.” And he said, “Start in the Gospel of John,” of course, [laughing] not knowing at the time this whole debate, by the way.

So, I started reading, “In the beginning it was the word,” and so on. And very quickly, just by reading the Scriptures, you learned that there is a God. So for the agnostic it’s different, right? You first have to jump over the… There is a personal God hurdle, and then you get to Jesus. So, this God, this one God called the Father by the New Testament, Yahweh or Jehovah in the Old Testament, He had a son and his name is Jesus. And then you learn about what it means to be the Christ. It’s not a last name, you know, he’s it’s not the son of Joseph Christ and Mary Christ.

So, you learn about that whole background, the Jewish background, the ancient theories background, and so on. And I got very deep into it, to this day. So I did a lot of reading, and then eventually, you come to the Trinity. So I looked at the Trinity. I did not know any better at the time. I asked my relatives, and I didn’t know their backgrounds, theologically, and I just researched it for myself. That probably lasted around six months, and pretty quickly, when you read standard dictionaries, standard history books, standard commentaries, Biblical commentaries, you see that the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity, is a later creation, 300 or 400 years later, depending on where.

Nehemia: Of course, Brian’s going to dispute that, but okay. [laughing]

Carlos: Well, sure. But it’s skating uphill, because the history books say what they say. I mean, there’s really… it’s a standard knowledge.

Nehemia: Wow, come on. The same history books say that the world was created in a big bang, and those same history books will say we evolved from apes.

Carlos: Okay.

Nehemia: And there are ways of reconciling that with the Tanakh, from my perspective. There are Jews who believe there was a big bang and that we evolved, but God guided it. There are different views on that, but I don’t know that you can cite the history books which are written by secular people and say, “Well, this proves theology.” History books don’t deal with theology. I know there’s the history of theology, right? We’re getting into all kinds of…

But anyway, you said that you looked at Jesus as Zeus, originally, Carlos. How did you go from that to what you believe now?

Carlos: I believed that Jesus was like a Zeus character.

Nehemia: Yeah, a mythological character who maybe never existed, did you believe?

Carlos: Right, that’s as an agnostic, that’s what you believe. But when you read the Bible…

Nehemia: I don’t know if that’s true. I think most agnostics probably believe that Jesus was crucified, died on a cross. Whether he was resurrected or not, I guess probably agnostics don’t believe that. But I don’t think agnostics usually think of him as Zeus, do they? I don’t know. I haven’t been an agnostic, so I don’t know.

Carlos: Well, I’m not here representing agnostics.

Nehemia: No, but I’m trying to understand your thought process - how you went from being agnostic to where you’re now a small “u” unitarian.

Carlos: Sure. So, what happened with me, in my experience, was, you start reading the Bible, and it’s a historical book. I mean, there’s a lot of history, “faith” as some put it. And you’d look into it – I did, anyway. I mean, did this guy really exist? Are characters like Paul and so on - did they historically exist? To me, history, to this day, is very important.

So, you know, you read a bunch of books, F.F. Bruce, and people who have done work on historicity, so-called, of Jesus and the Apostles, and the places, and the events and so on. And it’s pretty clear, you know, [laughing] that this guy did exist. The Christian movement wasn’t just some mythological creation. And obviously, the Jewish roots, if you will, of Christianity, are very strong. Obviously, so…

Nehemia: Carlos, did you ever believe in the Trinity during this six-month period?

Carlos: You know, good question. As I read more and more about the Trinity and the history of the Trinity, it just made it impossible, because when you read the creeds – and I’m sure Brian’s going to go into some creedal language here – so, when you talk about essence, and substance and hypostasis and all this stuff, it’s clearly post-New Testament things.

Nehemia: Hey, so I posted this thing on Facebook and I didn’t get a chance to read them all, there were 27 pages of comments. But one person made a really good comment, “The word ‘Bible’ doesn’t appear in the Bible, but you believe in the Bible.” So it’s true - Trinity doesn’t appear in the Bible. And look, I’m playing, in a sense, the advocate here… I don’t want to say the Devil’s advocate, right? [laughing]

I want to challenge both of you. So, the terminology might not have existed, but maybe the concepts did, right? Meaning, that’s what Brian’s going to argue. Brian, you’re not claiming the term “Trinity” appears in the New Testament, right?

Brian: The last time I checked, it’s not there.

Nehemia: Okay, it’s not there. Brian, could you just jump in? I want to give you a…

Carlos: Sorry, Nehemia. Just to be clear, I wasn’t arguing for our words or terms found in the Bible. I’m arguing for the teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity, yeah.

Nehemia: So, the teaching could be there, even though the terminology isn’t? Can we agree on…

Carlos: Sure.

Nehemia: Can we all agree on that?

Brian: Correct.

Carlos: Sure. I’m focused on the actual teaching as opposed to words or terms.

Nehemia: Okay. So, I’m going to give Brian an opportunity to share a little bit about his background a little bit more, because I want to give equal time.

Brian, how did you go from debating on the side of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and a small “u,” unitarian doctrine to now writing a book about the Trinity?

Brian: It’s a great question. You know, I became a Christian when I was a young man, and having been defending the Jehovah’s Witnesses, really entrenched in the theology, the history of teachings of the Witnesses, I started to see a lot of inconsistencies in the history, in the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And what it came down to, you know, I just want to read the Bible. Kind of like what Carlos was saying, I really appreciate Carlos’ heart, and how he’s sharing his testimony, his story. And he just wanted to read the Bible. He just wanted to know the God of the Bible, and that’s all I wanted, too.

And so, as I started to read the New Testament, I started to read… Now, Jehovah’s Witnesses are kind of like Jews in this respect. They focus heavily on the Old Testament, on the Hebrew Scriptures. They don’t even call it the Old Testament, they call it the Hebrew Scriptures. And they subscribe to the name “Jehovah”. Obviously, you have through your teachings and your scholarly work, have brought out the name Yehovah. And so, very similar in that sense as well, and so the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a huge emphasis on the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, Yehovah, and the New Testament’s almost like an afterthought.

So, if you ever went to a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses, they will mention Jehovah like 10-to-1 compared to Jesus, even if that. Jesus is kind of like just the afterthought. He’s kind of like just the cheerleader who kind of brings home the point, but he’s not what the show’s all about. And so when I started to read the New Testament, having already a pretty good background in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures, I started to see that the whole narrative of the New Testament through the Gospels, through the Epistles, through the writings of Paul, was heavily on the person and work of Jesus.

And so I started to see that Jesus is a way bigger deal than what the Jehovah’s Witnesses are telling me, and starting to study New Testament Greek, Koine Greek, and starting to see the interlinear Scriptures, and starting to look into the translations of the Bible in regard to how the Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own translation, the New World translation, and how they have purposely changed verses in the Scriptures that point to the deity of Christ, John 1:1 being a famous example, where there are translations…

Nehemia: What do you mean, “change”? Do you mean they’ve translated it in a way that is different than what you understand in the Greek…?

Brian: They’ve translated it in a way to affirm their theologies. So instead of taking the Scriptures, the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, and saying, “Okay, let’s translate this as faithfully as we can, and let’s believe what it says,” the Jehovah’s Witnesses came into the situation in the 1950s where they translated their Bible. And the way they did it is, “Okay, here is our theology. Let’s make sure we have a Bible that supports our theology.”

Nehemia: So they didn’t actually change the Greek, they just translated it in a way that, in your view, is contrary to the Greek, is that right?

Brian: It is incredibly contrary to the Greek, and every New Testament Greek scholar would agree.

Nehemia: Did they ever actually change the Greek?

Brian: They have changed their Greek New Testament translation. They haven’t changed…

Nehemia: Translation, okay.

Brian: You can’t change the actual Greek. They predicated their translation on Westcott-Hort manuscripts.

Nehemia: Ah, that’s interesting… We’re going to get to manuscripts later, hopefully, if we have time. One of the things that actually inspired me to do this program is, I saw a conversation that Carlos had had, and he mentioned that there were certain verses in the New Testament he believed were corrupt. Am I right about that, Carlos? And that these were verses that supported a divine Jesus.

Carlos: Yeah.

Nehemia: I want to get to that later, if I understood you correctly, Carlos. Did I understand that right, Carlos?

Carlos: Yes, definitely. There’s actually a book called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which was written by…

Nehemia: By Bart Ehrman, a very good book, very interesting. So, what Ehrman does in his book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which is a scholarly version of his book, Misquoting Jesus - it’s the same book, basically, but with more details and Greek stuff - so what he does is, he takes what earlier scholars had understood to be scribal errors and says, “No, these aren’t errors. These were actually intentional changes by different factions in the Church.” And some of the changes were done by Orthodox. Now, you could agree with Ehrman or disagree with him about those conclusions, the facts are the facts, that there are different readings in the Greek. Whether he’s right about his conclusions, that’s a matter of opinion.

It’s not always clear, if you’re not an expert in this, where the opinion enters and the facts end. But it’s a fascinating book. I don’t know that you can cite it as definitive evidence, right? Because it’s Ehrman’s opinion, and Ehrman is not a Trinitarian or a unitarian. [laughing]

Carlos: Well, if I could add…

Nehemia: Sure.

Carlos: Ehrman wrote this book back in, I believe, 1993, when he was a Fundamentalist Christian. So, that’s how Ehrman grew up. Eventually, through his studies, he says if you listen to his testimony, through his studies of manuscripts he is what’s called a “textual critic”. He says that he eventually lost the faith because he saw too much corruption at times. He had problems…

Nehemia: Actually, what Ehrman says is that he stopped believing in God because of the problem of theodicy.

Carlos: Right.

Nehemia: It wasn’t textual criticism that caused him not to believe in God.

Carlos: No, not as such.

Nehemia: That’s what he says.

Carlos: Yeah.

Nehemia: That… theodicy is why righteous and innocent people suffer.

Carlos: Right, the infamous God’s problem question. So, that’s what’s interesting about that book, because people, when I bring up Ehrman, that name is an anathema, because he’s become such an enemy to the faith, which I agree. Ehrman is very dangerous now, so you have to handle Ehrman with care. So, Misquoting Jesus is a book I always warn people about, so you have to be very careful with Ehrman.

But that book is such a seminal book, because he was a Christian - not just a Christian but a Fundamentalist Christian, which means a literalist. But nonetheless, he spends years, he gets degrees, he gets a doctorate. And you say it’s his opinion, Nehemia. Let me just push back a little bit and say that a lot of his opinions are based on the evidence he’s finding.

Nehemia: I would hope all of his opinions are based on the evidence he’s finding. [laughing] But evidence is subject to interpretation.

Carlos: Well…

Brian: Carlos, can I interject real quick?

Nehemia: Sure, please do.

Brian: You’re holding up Bart Ehrman, and rightfully so, as an enemy of the faith, and yet you’re willing to go along with certain statements or beliefs that he has, because it affirms your preconceived notion of Jesus, is that correct?

Carlos: No. So, Ehrman comes on the heels of other scholars like the famous Walter Bauer from, I believe, the ‘40s or ‘50s. He was a German Protestant scholar. He was the precursor to textual criticism. So I’m coming at it, Brian, from the fact that these people… Daniel Wallace today, Daniel Wallace, if you look at the texts that are corrupted clearly, you know, the infamous 1 John 5:7, even the Pope had to admit for goodness sake…

Nehemia: Save 1 John 5:7, we’ll get to that. I want to discuss that later. I’m going to give each of you five minutes to introduce your positions, Brian representing the Trinitarian view and Carlos representing the unitarian, small “u,” unitarian view. Before you guys get into that, I want to read a quote here, it’s a very famous quote from Gregory of Nyssa, who was a bishop in, I think that’s France. And he’s writing in the late 300s, in the 370s. And he’s talking about how the big issue, the big debate of the time is between the Arians and the Trinitarians. And as Brian mentioned before, the Arians believed that Jesus was - I don’t know if you mentioned it this way - but basically, I think they believed Jesus was God, but a created God. That he was essentially the first of the creation.

And this was the hot topic 50 years after the Council of Nicaea, where he lived. He says, “Everywhere in the public squares at crossroads on the streets and lanes, people would stop you and discourse at random about the Trinity. If you asked something of a money-changer, he would begin discussing the question of the begotten and the unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion, the Son simply comes from nothing.”

[laughing] So it really gives you an interesting understanding that this was a hotly debated topic in Christianity in the 4th century, because the impression that Trinitarians sometimes give, or that I get – I’ll blame myself – and it’s kind of what happened. There was a Council of Nicaea. There were two people who dissented, Arias and I think, one other guy. And everybody else agreed on the Trinity, and then they excommunicated those heretics and the heresy disappeared. But here, 50 years later, and we still have this idea of a debate between Trinitarianism and Arianism that Jesus is a created God.

And it’s interesting, I heard this lecture a few years back from this Reform theologian who was talking at a seminary, and this was like a podcast where they had recorded him, and he was talking about the martyrs of the early church. And he said one of the things Christians need to accept is that some of the martyrs of the early church who were fed to the lions or crucified by the Romans, are right now in hell because they didn’t have the right doctrine concerning the Trinity. And if you look, for example, at Justin Martyr, he, I believe, describes Jesus as a “God subordinate to the Father”.

So, I guess on that note, who wants to go first here? I feel like Brian has to respond to that, to be fair.

Carlos: Yeah Brian, please, if you want.

Nehemia: Brian, I’m going to let you go first. You have five minutes uninterrupted, and then we’re going to give Carlos five minutes, and then we’ll just continue the discussion.

Brian: I appreciate that. I’d be glad to open up this discussion.

You were mentioning kind of the internal struggles of the church between Arianism and Trinitarianism. Well, the first debate of the early Church wasn’t between Arius and the Trinitarian side, it was actually between the Orthodox Church Christians and the Gnostics. And the Gnostics didn’t deny the divinity of Jesus. I’m going to say that again. The Gnostics did not deny the divinity of Jesus. The early Christians didn’t deny the divinity of Jesus. They denied whether Christ had truly become flesh, whether he was truly physical, whether he was truly man and could be held onto. This is why John, in his writings and his Gospel and three letters, he’s adamant. He’s like, “We have seen the word of life who has become flesh. We have seen this word who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God, and the word has become flesh, it has dwelt among us. We beheld his glory.”

And so the position that I will take in this discussion is quite simple. It is the historic and Biblical view of the Christian God of the Trinity. And the first thing that I want to put out there is again, Christians are one of the great monotheistic faiths. We believe in one eternal self-existing God, who was never created, who always was and ever will be. And we believe in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Listen o’Israel, Yehovah our God is one, Yehovah.” We believe in one God.

And we do, however, believe, that God being one in nature is not limited to His nature. We believe that God throughout Scripture has revealed Himself in three distinct persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We begin to see hints of this revelation at the very first chapter of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 1. We see in Genesis chapter 1 that Elohim, God, created the heavens and the earth. And then, when we see that God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” and it says, “after the likeness of God, He created Him.” You see plurality, and you also see singularity in the one true God of the Bible and the opening verses of Scripture.

So, we affirm that there is only one true, eternal God, Yehovah, Yahweh, Jehovah is His name. We, however, do believe that He is distinctly three in person. And this would come down to our view of Jesus, who the Messiah would be. We believe that the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, teaches that the Messiah is of divine, eternal origins. Isaiah 9 gives us this imagery of the Messiah who is called the “mighty God, el Gibor”. He is referred to as “a prince of peace”. He’s referred to as being given this everlasting kingdom that his reign will never come to an end.

The Scripture teaches also throughout the Old Testament that the Messiah would be of divine origin. Micah chapter 5 verse 2 says that the Messiah would be from Bethlehem, but his origin is from time indefinite. It’s from the days of eternity, the Scripture says.

Our friend Carlos does not believe in the pre-existence of Jesus, and I’ll let him speak for himself in that regard, but the Scriptures both in the Hebrew and the Greek New Testament seem to indicate clearly that Jesus is eternal. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the word,” not, “In the beginning, the word became or sprang forth” like the Jehovah Witnesses would say, or some other groups. But more distinctly, that Jesus Christ was already there and, “he was with God. And he was God, and His word became flesh, and dwelt among us, we beheld his glory.”

The Scripture also says in Jeremiah 23, because I want to focus some of our time on the Hebrew Scriptures, and in Jeremiah 23 verses 5 and 6 a clear Messianic prophesy concerning the son of David, that his name will be Jehovah, Yehovah, our righteousness, and that the Messiah is divine. I think it’s a clear narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures. Again, we will spend some more time on this, but Zechariah chapter 11 verses 12 to 13 gives us a divine Messiah. Zachariah 12:10, Zachariah 14:3 to 9 gives us a divine Messiah, the Messiah who is called Yehovah. And so, we believe in the divinity of Jesus. We also believe in the personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit.

In Genesis chapter 1 verse 2, the Holy Spirit is active in creation, hovering over the surfaces of the deep. “He is of the persons,” that was referred to in Genesis chapter 1:26 where He says, “Let us make man in our image.” Job chapter 33 verse 4, the Bible says, “And Job says that the Spirit of the Lord has made, and the Spirit of God has created me.” So, it’s the Spirit of God is also the creator God. Ezekiel chapter 3 verses 12 to 14 and verse 24 gives us interaction between the Prophet Ezekiel and the Spirit of the living God speaking to him, breathing onto him, giving him divine commands and revelation.

And so clearly, we have three distinct divine persons in the Scriptures - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - yet we affirm, as the Scripture teaches, that Yehovah is one Yehovah, undivided, and forever glorified in the persons of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

Nehemia: Thank you very much, all right. Five minutes and 15 seconds, I’m going to give that now to Carlos, whenever you’re ready.

Carlos: All right, thank you. First, I do believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But according to the Bible, the Father, called Yahweh, Jehovah, however you want to say it, by the way, is God. Only the Father is God. Now again, does the Bible teach, does it actually teach? I’m not talking about terms or words, or things like that. But do we find that teaching that the one God of Israel, Yahweh, Jehovah, is three persons? That’s the question here.

Now, I hear a lot of the divinity work, Jesus is divine, the divinity of Jesus. Now, I hope I can get to ask, “What do Trinitarians mean by the word ‘divinity’ or ‘divine?’ Do you mean he’s God in the absolute sense of the word, the only true God?” Well, yes. They would say, “Jesus is God, absolutely.” So, why not just say that? Why use “divinity” or “divine” words? Of course, Jesus was not just a mere man, by the way. He’s the most exalted human being, the most exalted creation of God, period. We believe that. Obviously, he’s at the right-hand of the Almighty God. I mean, what higher position is there? But does that make him also God? That’s the question.

I want to share quickly a quote from a noted German Jesuit priest called Karl Rahner. He wrote that the Father was regarded as God par excellence, that is, above all things, for the first Christian communities, because, “It is based on Scripture itself.” And then Karl Rahner quotes Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and other so-called Church Fathers. “Even Origen,” he says, “gives sharpness of definition to this view and distinguishes between the God, or Theos, and God, Theos.” Now, I’m using the modern Greek pronunciation, by the way, of the Greek.

Rahner goes on to say that, “This conception, even if not in so sharply defined form, finds expression in the early creeds of the church, and it continued to be handed down in tradition.”

Now, that’s an interesting statement, and it’s true. If you look at the creeds from Nicaea to Chalcedon 451, you might even argue that they’re unitarian. All the creeds, all the formal, Catholic, Protestant creeds, begin with the line, “We believe there is one God, the Father, the Creator of all things.” I say, amen. That’s what they believed.

Now, the only creed of the early church, if you will, that gives you what became the doctrine of the Trinity, is called the “Athanasian Creed”. Now, this creed, if you look it up – don’t believe me – they don’t know where it came from. They don’t know how early it is. They do know, however, that the Catholic Church only adopted the Athanasian Creed in the Mediaeval age, maybe as late as the 1100s. That’s 1,100 years later - the Athanasian Creed.

The Gospel of John, which will be probably spoken of a lot here, brought up, in the Gospel of John if you read it, for John, the only God, the one God, is the Father all the time. Thirty times at least, explicitly, the Father is God alone. And the famous statement is found in John 17 verse 3, where Jesus is praying to the heavens, looking up. He says, “You, Father, You are the only true God.” Now, if you’re the only true God, can someone else, can anything else be the only true God? And that’s an interesting verse, because the early so-called Church Fathers like Augustine, Ambrose, and even later Protestant reformers, tried to change the meaning of that verse. And this is from a Protestant German scholar in his famous Meyer’s Commentary of the New Testament, just look it up. It’s online, and he’ll tell you what they did with that.

So it’s clear that in the Gospel of John, the Father is the only true God. It’s clear that the whole Gospel, John says, was written so you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. So, that’s who I believe Jesus is. He’s the promised Jewish Messiah of Deuteronomy 18 that Moses said would come along. He is the seed of the woman. He is the Son of David. Now, if you’re the seed and the Son of David, how can you be God? You have to be a descendant from the line of David, as far as my knowledge of Judaism goes. And I think that’s my five minutes.

Nehemia: Okay, so each of you has had five minutes to introduce your positions, and I hope we understand them. Well, I don’t know that we understand them, [laughing] but I want to throw some questions that I got from the audience, that I had asked on Facebook, and I’m going to give each of you an opportunity to respond.

So here, a woman named Josephine wrote something that I literally don’t know if this is a parody, or she actually means it. You know, there’s something called Poe’s Law, that if you look at extreme positions online, it’s difficult to distinguish someone who’s an extremist from someone who’s a parody of an extremist. And I feel like that. She writes, “I have proved Trinity from grammar. I is the Father God, Am is Jesus God, and the Holy Spirit is the subject. When you put all three in a sentence it becomes a complete one sentence that stands alone. And the whole Trinity in one sentence is, ‘I am the Lord,’ all three parts of grammar are found in the one sentence in the form of a subject, verb and object, Trinity is complete.”

I actually don’t know if she’s joking or not, but it does raise an interesting question for me, which is in Hebrew, okay, we’ve got the famous passages, three of them, where God says, “Let us make man in our image. Let us go down,” and Jews understand that as referring to God speaking to the angels or using the royal “we”. I’m going to give each of you an opportunity to respond, how do each of you understand those? And then, while you’re discussing that, the other issue is in Hebrew in the grammar, we always hear about God and “He spoke,” and “He said.” We never once hear, “And they spoke, and they said.” I guess the “we” thing, I’m going to throw to Carlos to answer, to respond to, and the “He spoke” and “He said” to Brian, because I’m sure each of you has a response. Do you want to take like one minute or so, for each of you guys to respond?

Carlos, you go first.

Carlos: So, you want me to respond to the “let us”?

Nehemia: Yeah, “let us”. How do you explain that?

Carlos: Right, so I believe it appears three or so times, a couple of times in Genesis 1:26. So, God says, “Let us make man in our image.” And then the text goes on to give us what you alluded to - a singular personal pronoun. “He made them,” or, “He created,” et cetera. So the question is about the audience. Who is God speaking to? It’s not about how many is the speaker, if I’m clear. So I’m saying, Carlos is saying, Brian is saying, Nehemia is saying, “let us do this.” So, you see, it’s almost like a switcheroo. It’s not about how many is the speaker, it’s about who the speaker is speaking to.

Now, this was debunked by the ancient rabbis and Nehemia can correct me. They used to say that this is about the Creator taking council with the ministering angels, and you have a good precedence of that in Job 38 verse 7, where it says He’s speaking to the heavenly ghosts – He, God, one person.

Protestants - I just learned this fact by the way, in the Geneva Study Bible, the Geneva Study Bible – the commentary there in Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make ‘signifying that God takes counsel with His wisdom and virtue.’” That’s the Geneva Study Bible. So, this has been debunked, if I can use a harsh word, but it’s true. Check out the Cambridge Bible Commentary of the 1960s, for goodness sake.

So, I don’t believe serious Evangelical scholars nowadays would use that, about the “let us” thing, just as they wouldn’t use the word Elohim is plural, and therefore, God must be multi-personal. So, that’s my response.

Nehemia: Okay, and I only brought it because a number of people on Facebook had posted it, that argument. I’m not saying that Brian thinks that, or that others say it. That was posted there, and they were arguing that, so I brought that up.

Brian, you’ve got now, in minute and 45 seconds, to give your thoughts.

Brian: Yeah, I think Genesis 1:26 is actually pretty Trinitarian, and I would disagree with Carlos’ example of scholars not agreeing. I think most Trinitarian scholars would still affirm and agree, even the ancient scholars of the early church would use Genesis 1:26 as Trinitarian proof. And the reason is because again, you see the “Let us make man in our image,” whoever He is speaking to is also sharing His image. And I am not aware of angels being in God’s image in the same way that humans are. Humans are uniquely in God’s image, so whoever God is speaking to has to equally share in that same image.

Uniquely, Jesus Christ in the New Testament is spoken of “having the image of God.” He’s the image of the invisible God. And so, throughout the Scriptures we see this teaching and narrative that God is Trinitarian. We even see this in Genesis chapter 19 verse 24, where it says that the Lord, Yehovah, rained down fire and brimstone onto Sodom and Gomorrah from Yehovah in heaven. And Jehovah in Amos chapter 4 uses this again. In Amos 4:11 it says, “I overthrew some of you as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” You see God speaking in the first person. He says, “I overthrew some of you,” but then He speaks in the second and third person. He says, “As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” So, you see clearly throughout Scripture, in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures, there is a progressively revealing that God is one in being, but also not limited to His nature.

Carlos: If I can quickly respond.

Nehemia: Sure.

Carlos: I agree, Brian. The question is, who God is speaking to in Genesis 1:26? You said it, who…

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: Not “they”, who they are speaking to. So, I think in order for us to communicate to the audience, not just to ourselves, we have to be precise with our language. It’s difficult when we use words like “divinity” or “divine”, and what exactly are you saying about that? It’s difficult when you keep using, as you will, and as I’ve heard you already, use singular personal pronouns to talk about your multi-personal Godhead. Just quickly, if I can reply to the Genesis 19:24?

Nehemia: Sure.

Carlos: Okay, so yes, Genesis 19:24, it comes on the heels of Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction. Abram, later becoming known as Abraham, is pleading with God, “Save 40, save…” you know, he goes down the list, and God finally says, “Okay, I’ll concede this number of people to be saved.”

The first person, as far as I know historically, to make this argument that it’s somehow two Yahwehs was Justin Martyr in the 2nd century, in a document called the Dialog of Trypho. He said, for the first time ever, as far as I know, that that text was saying that God the Son rained down fire from God the Father.

Now, it’s true, the text might seem difficult for us Westerners, but the Bible’s not a Western book, it’s a Hebrew book. And not only that, it’s an ancient Near East book. There is a text in 1 Kings chapter 8 verse 1, where it says – 1 Kings chapter 8 verse 1, “Solomon, King Solomon, assembled the people before Solomon.” How many Solomons were there? That’s 1 Kings 8:1. And I can give you whole other examples where people are speaking as some scholars, even Evangelical scholars say this, it sounds or it looks like it could be speaking of yourself in the third person.

David in 1 Samuel says, so David speaking says, “May God curse David,” 1 Samuel 25. So, these are just language issues, issues of language and background, the background of the Bible, which is not English, Spanish, German, especially modern-day Greek. It’s about the background of the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures.

Brian: I think you made a good point. I think that language is important, and I think context is just as important, which is why you see in that Genesis narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah that in chapters 17 and 18 it says, “The Lord, Yehovah, appeared before Abraham.” And so, you have a physical sense in which Abraham is seeing, beholding of his eye, the Lord, Lord of glory. And then you have this narrative of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which God was walking with Abraham. God is in the presence of Abraham, raining down sulphur and brimstone from Yehovah in the heavens. And that’s not to say that this is definitive proof of the Trinity, but that the language that you find in the Hebrew Scriptures gives you the notion and leaves for the room that God, although He is one, He is more complex to His nature than you or I can admit or comprehend.

Carlos: I agree, I agree.

Nehemia: Can I jump in here?

Carlos: Sure.

Nehemia: So, you said a really profound statement there, Brian - that God is more complex. And I want to read something that Deborah posted on Facebook when I asked for questions. She said, “Everyone thinks they have it all figured out. Those who believe one mock those who believe in three. Just be careful not to get high-minded and think you have the answers. Stay humble and be kind,” and I really appreciate you guys coming on here in humility, and kindness. In a minute, I’m going to ask each of you to throw the other person what you think is maybe the most difficult question for the other person to answer, so ponder upon that. It just came to me, that idea.

But in the meantime, here’s something else somebody wrote. They wrote, “Well, Jews believe in 10 sephirot.” All right, that’s the elephant in the room for me. A lot of times, people will say, “Well, there’s no way Jews could ever believe in a Triune God, and therefore, Carlos by default wins.” The medieval kabbalah has this idea of a decaune deity that is “10 that are 1, and 1 that is 10”. And these are understood as 10 emanations, manifestations of the infinite God. I think in theology they’d call these hypostases, that is, if I’m pronouncing that word correctly, you have crown and royalty, and mercy. These are attributes, 10 attributes of God, but in kabbalah, especially in the Zohar, these actually take on their own personalities in the way that the person’s... To the point where actually, some historians have said, “This was Christian influenced,” because the Zohar was probably written in Spain in the 12th or 13th century, maybe even in Christian Spain.

But you do have this idea in kabbalah of a God that’s both 10 and 1. And so, my question for Brian will be; you say that God is complex, but you would not accept... Well, you wouldn’t get it based on the Tanakh. Would you say that the Tanakh is consistent with a decaune deity? That’s really my question for Brian.

Brian: If it’s consistent with what?

Nehemia: A decaune deity, 10 in 1, right? You believe in a triune deity.

Brian: Right, right. So, I take a Sola Scriptura approach to Scripture. I think the creeds are helpful. I think that actually, extra-Biblical writings are helpful. But in terms of faith and practice, I think the Scriptures are sufficient. And so the reason why as a Trinitarian I believe in three persons being part of the one true Godhead would be because that is what Scripture limits it to.

So you have one God who’s been revealed as one God, Yehovah, yet we see that there’s the Father, He is called God. We see the Son, he is called God, and we see the Holy Spirit, he’s also God. And so, we affirm the Scripture in its oneness, but we also affirm the Scripture when it speaks of the uniqueness and the triunity of the Godhead.

Nehemia: Okay, so I want to make a distinction. You’re saying that the Old Testament, the Tanakh, could be consistent with a triune God. But if you only have the Old Testament, would you necessarily come to that conclusion? I guess that’s my question.

Brian: So, I would come to the conclusion, just through the Hebrew Scriptures, that God is first of all, complex. I think that’s super clear. I wouldn’t come to the conclusion that God is 10 persons, but I think there is this narrative that God is revealing Himself through His spirit. God is revealing Himself through His wisdom. God is revealing Himself through things that seem to be taking on personalities, that are both inexplicably a part of Him - of Him, through Him, of Him, but also distinct from Him, if that makes sense.

Nehemia: All right, now I’m going to throw a question at Carlos, and it’s actually one that you brought, Brian. So I hope I’m not stealing your question. [laughing]

Carlos: Can I quickly follow up on something?

Nehemia: Oh absolutely, please.

Carlos: Yes. As highly favored as the Jews were and are, yes, they were obviously not immune to Gnostic and aberrant and paganism, right? I mean if you read the Hebrew Scriptures, that’s the issue - idolatry. So, we’re humans, all of us. So I’m not in any way saying that, “Well, look. The Jews nowadays, Orthodox Jews or Karaite Jews like yourself, look, they’re not Trinitarian. Game over.” You know, a ball game.

Nehemia: So you’re not making that argument.

Carlos: No, no, not at all. You can go back to the so-called “two powers”, the ancient heresy of the two powers. Many Jews believed that there were two Yahwehs, two Jehovahs up there. So, I’m not saying that at all.

Nehemia: I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, Brian, but the Talmud mentions this entity which is an angel of the presence, and that angel of the presence, it says, “His name is according to the name of his master,” and that the angel in the desert was actually called - and the pronounciation here isn’t important - Yehovah, or Yahweh, or Jehovah. That is, both the master was called that and His angel that He sent were called that. That’s in the Talmud.

And then, that is developed in kabbalah and expanded upon. So yeah, okay. What would be the most powerful argument that you would say, for the Trinity, Brian, that you think Carlos needs to explain? And it doesn’t have to be from the Old Testament, it could be from the New Testament, as well.

Brian: Okay, well, that’s great. I think that the crux of any Trinitarian argument and conversation has to revolve around the person and work of Jesus Christ. It’s who do you say Jesus is? You know, the famous question. You mentioned earlier, Carlos, you said that only the Father is referred to as God. Well, I’m not sure what translation you read from, and that’s answered in your question, but numerous translations of the Bible, including the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, you see Jesus being referred to as God in many places, Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6, John 28 where Thomas has seen the risen Lord says, “My Lord and my God.” It couldn’t be any more clear, especially in the Greek text.

You have so many places both in the Old and New Testaments that refer to the deity of Christ. So what do you do with those verses? Do you translate them differently, or… how do you harmonize? What’s your hermeneutic and exegesis of those verses?

Carlos: Right. I think maybe, you misheard me. Jesus calls the Father “the only true God”. So, there’s a difference, right? We know that the word God is used very, if you will, loosely throughout the Bible, throughout the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. So, for example, as we all know, Moses is famously called “Elohim” twice, at least - Exodus 4:16, Exodus 7:1. The prophets speak in the first person as Yahweh, as Jehovah, sometimes. So, what do we say about that?

So, obviously, if you’re called God, and many people are - Jesus in John 10 famously points to Psalm 82 and says, “Wait a minute. Hold on. The Judges were called Gods, right? And now you’re trying to kill me because I’m saying I’m the Son of God?” The Son of God, not God the Son?

So, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say just because you’re called God, Jesus is God. Now, this is not a debate about whether Jesus was called God… Sorry, a conversation about whether the one God of Israel is three persons. All the texts, by the way – and now I’ll be quoting quickly, if I may, Murray Harris, Evangelical. Jesus As God, a very famous book. “The application to Christ of the title, the word “God” is exceedingly rare. And the rare occasion,” says Harris, “all of them have problems.” He calls them either punctuation problems, textual problems, or contextual problems.

So a famous example is Romans 9:5, “May God be over all,” right? Is that talking about the Father? It’s ambiguous. So that’s Murray Harris - I think he’s still alive – an Evangelical author. So whether you’re called “God” or even if you do God-like things, because that’s another argument that, well, look, Jesus forgave sins.

Brian: Okay, maybe I wasn’t specific enough then.

Carlos: Yeah, sorry.

Brian: Let’s just look at one verse of Scripture then, John 20:28. Thomas says to him, “My Lord and My God.”

Nehemia: Can I read that?

Brian: Yeah, please.

Nehemia: Let me read it in the context here. Do you guys have a particular translation you prefer I read from?

Brian: ESV is good, if you have that.

Nehemia: ESV, I do. Okay. “So, the other disciples told him…” I’m starting in verse 25, “We have seen the Lord but he said to them, ‘Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my fingers into the marks of the nails, and place my hands into his side, I will never believe.’ Eight days later, his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hands and place them in my side. Do not disbelieve but believe.’”

Verse 28, “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen he? Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed.’”

Brian: So if I could ask Carlos based on that verse - is Jesus your Lord and your God, and if not, why?

Carlos: Yes, He is my Lord, and in a representational sense, God.

Brian: Where is that language of representation in the text of John chapter 20 verse 28? Hermeneutically, how do you come from that from the text?

Nehemia: Can you just quickly explain what hermeneutics is, for people who don’t know?

Brian: Right, so hermeneutics is the principle of how you harmonize Scripture, what harmonious text do you use? And exegesis is what you take out of Scripture, eisegesis is what you put into Scripture. So I’m trying to exegete the Scripture with Carlos; how do you get that representation of only God from that text of Scripture?

Carlos: Right. In context, John 20, if you notice, identifies who God is. So, for example, previous to this declaration by Thomas in verse… where is it, verse 17.

Brian: 17.

Carlos: Right? So, he says to Mary, “Don’t hold onto me. I have not yet ascended to the Father,” right? And, “Go tell my brothers that I’m going to the Father.” And who’s the Father? The God of Jesus. So, that’s the context here.

Nehemia: Can you read the whole verse?

Carlos: Oh yeah, sure. So, he says in 17, “Don’t cling to me.” I’m using the Holman Christian Study Bible. “Do not cling onto me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers, tell them I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God…” My God. Jesus has a God, “and your God.” By the way, this is the resurrected Jesus. This is not the Jesus before the resurrection, which means this is the deified, if you will, the glorified Jesus.

So the so-called “double nature”, which is what a lot of Trinitarians use to try and get through the difficult issues about the Son, for example, not knowing the day or the hour in Mark 13:32, they say, “Well, look. That was the double nature, his deity part as opposed to his human part.”

Brian: I want you to realize that this doesn’t at all harm the Trinitarian position, that Jesus refers to the Father as God. He’s making a true statement. Again, this actually is still a problem on the unitarian side, because I am practicing a strict monotheism. I believe in one true and eternal God. And yet, what happens inevitably with the unitarian position or the Arian position is that you have one true God, the Father, Yehovah, Jehovah. But then, you kind of have this second-tiered God named Jesus where the Bible says there’s only one God, and so you run into this problem with polytheism eventually, in this worldview. And it’s not supported by the Scriptures.

Carlos: Is that what Jesus runs into in John 10 when he calls the Judges “Gods?”

Brian: Again, this is why context is so important, because he’s referring to Psalm 82. In Psalm 82, God is speaking to the divine council and He says that, “You are Gods but you will die like the sons of man.” So, this isn’t a statement where God in Psalm 82 or Jesus in John 10 is saying, “Oh, look. There are other Gods.” No, He’s saying, “You are in a position of power and authority, but you’re going to die just like a regular human.” And so, He’s not in any means, trying to use a polytheistic worldview, and neither is Jehovah doing the same thing in Psalm 82.

Carlos: Can we agree that if you’re called “God”, it doesn’t mean you are the only true God?

Brian: I think context matters, and I think that if the Scripture refers to someone as “God” in a religious and true sense – because of course, Baal is called “God”. You have other false Gods who are referred to as gods. Satan is referred to as a god of this age, but in what sense then is Jesus uniquely God? For instance, in John 1:18 it says that Jesus is the only begotten God. He’s the only begotten God. 1 John chapter 5 verses 20 or 21 it says that Jesus Christ is the one true God as well. In Hebrews chapter 1 verse 8 the Father refers to the Son as “God”. And in verse 10 of Hebrews chapter 1 the Father refers to the Son as “Jehovah God”, as Yehovah, referring back to Psalm 102, that, “You, oh Lord at the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and the heaven are the works of Your hands.”

And so, the Father affirms the deity of the Son, just as the Son affirms the deity of the Father in John 20:17. So for a Trinitarian, this is not a problem whatsoever. Again, the issue that you’re going to keep falling into is the problem of polytheism.

Carlos: Right. So did we agree or not? If someone who represents God, not the devil, not Satan. Satan is called “the God”, right, as we know, or “Deus” in one of the letters to the Corinthians. So, if an agent of God is called “God”, can we agree that that does mean they are the only true God?

Brian: Of course, of course.

Carlos: Okay.

Nehemia: Can I ask a question before you go on to that, I want to get an answer to the original question. So when Thomas says, “My Lord and my God,” who is he referring to, Carlos? Is he referring to Jesus?

Carlos: So my point, Nehemia, is that even if Thomas is calling Jesus “God”, even if I grant that, if you grant that interpretation – and you can.

Nehemia: What’s the other interpretation?

Carlos: Well, let me just finish. It doesn’t mean you’re the only true God, that’s the simple point, because in the Gospel of John the Father is God par excellence. He’s always God in the context of it. I just showed you here in John 20 that John identifies the Father as the God of Jesus. So even if Jesus is called “God”, it has to be in a representational sense. Now, the alternative view…

Brian: But that’s your presupposition. You have to understand, that’s your presupposition. You are putting that rule of interpretation into Scripture when it may not necessarily be there.

Carlos: Right. It’s based on what I just said about the use of God in the Gospel of John. There’s a book by Marianne Thompson, an Evangelical, called The God of Jesus, Marianne Thompson. She makes this point that the Gospel of John identifies the Father as the only true God. I mean, I’m just giving you the context.

The alternative view, Nehemia… an alternative reading to this would be, okay, if he’s not calling Jesus “God”, what’s going on here? Well, back in John 14 you had a situation there where the Apostles… so in John 14, for example, Jesus is talking about his impending departure, the fact that he’s going to be raised from the dead, and so on. And then Thomas says to Jesus in John 14 verse 5, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?” Jesus tells him, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will also know my Father…” who he later calls “My God”, “From now on, you do know Him and have seen the Father.” So, what’s going on here?

“Lord,” said Phillip, “show us the Father.” “That’s enough.” And then Jesus says, “Have I not been with you all this time and you still don’t know? The one who has seen me has seen the Father.” So that’s an alternative argument. That’s an alternative reading that they finally get it. Just before Jesus ascends, the Apostles finally see the Father who’s always called “God”, the only true God - I’m sorry, not always, I should modify my language – overall called “God”. Obviously, the Judges were called “Gods”. But they finally get it, so that’s an alternative reading you can try.

Brian: So Carlos, is Jesus a true God or a false God?

Carlos: Jesus is the representation of God.

Brian: Is he a true God or a false God, though? If there are two categories of gods in Scripture, true and false, Jesus, what category does he fall into, a true or a false God?

Carlos: Well, I believe that’s a false…

Nehemia: Dilemma.

Carlos: …a false choice, because again, the Gospel of John doesn’t call Jesus the “only true God”. It’s the Father who’s the only true God.

Brian: But it refers to him as “God” clearly in numerous places in John’s Gospel.

Carlos: Again, I thought we agreed that if someone is called “God” it doesn’t mean you are the only true God. I thought we agreed.

Brian: Right, but here’s where you still have to contend with. If the Scripture refers to someone who in their nature is God, and that is completely different than a representation of someone who is representing God.

Carlos: Right. Where does John say that?

Brian: So for instance in John 1 you see, “In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God.”

Carlos: I see.

Brian: Okay? And then you also see throughout the narrative of John’s Gospel where Jesus is linked to the one true God in Isaiah chapter 6, John quoting from it in John 12 says, “We’ve seen His glory,” referring back to the God of the Old Testament. Jesus himself refers to himself as the “I am” of the Old Testament. Jesus says, “Why do you desire to stone Me?” The Jews understood, because the claim we are making, he’s not claiming to be just a mere man, but he is claiming to be God.

And so again, the overwhelming narrative - not just of some Scriptures but all the Scriptures, including the testimony of the Hebrew prophets - is that the Messiah is God as to his nature. And we see that confirmed by the writer of Hebrews, where he says in Chapter 1 of Hebrews, in verse 3, that ‘He…” Christ, “is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of His nature. He upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

And so Jesus Christ is the exact imprint, representation of His nature. So, as to His nature, he is what God is. Whatever God is, Jesus is, as to his nature.

Nehemia: I’m going to let you answer in a minute, Carlos, but I want to jump in here. I kind of do feel like this wasn’t a fair choice, or a false dilemma. In other words, you agree, Brian, that Moses is called “God”, but nobody’s going to call Moses a “false god”, is that right?

Brian: Right, but again, if someone is referred to as to their nature as being God…

Nehemia: Okay.

Brian: So, you have Baal, who is clearly a false god. The claim is that he is a true god by the pagans. But as to his nature, is he truly God? Is he made of the stuff that God is made of? No, the Bible refers to him as a worthless idol. So, I’m talking about nature, not simply representation. So, as to Jesus’ nature, is he a true God or is he a false God?

Nehemia: Right, but what Carlos is saying is that Jesus is god, maybe with a small g, representing God with a capital G, is that right, Carlos? Is that what you’re saying?

Carlos: Yes, I’m simply saying that, again, if you call someone God, it doesn’t mean they’re the only true God. So when you say, “Well, is Jesus a false God then?” that’s a false choice. I mean, there are alternatives, and I just gave them. But is it my turn to ask…?

Nehemia: No, no. I want to jump in here. He mentioned about seeing the glory, and it’s really interesting. In Judaism in the Middle Ages, there was a big dispute about what is the glory of God, and what’s called the “shechina” or what Christians will call Shekinah Glory. Is the shechina God Himself, or is the shechina an angel of God? Meaning, when Ezekiel saw the glory of God, when the Israelites saw the glory of God, did they actually see God, or did they see one of His angels? And this is actually debated to the point where different rabbis burned the books of the other rabbi, because one says it’s God and the other says, “No, that’s idolatry. That’s an angel. You can’t call an angel God,” and God, capital G.

So this is a debate that Jews have struggled with, as well - the spirit of Elohim hovering over the waters. Is that Elohim Himself, or is that an angel that He sent? This is something Jews have debated about, so it’s interesting to see the same thing in Christianity.

Carlos, I’ll give you an opportunity to respond.

Carlos: Yeah, I just want to ask a question to Brian.

Brian: Sure.

Carlos: So Brian, let’s see. So, this whole debate comes down to this. We just went through is Jesus called God? I mean yes, fine. I mean, John 20:28, Hebrews 1:8. Hebrews 1:8 by the way, citing Psalm 45, where it’s the king there, called God as well. I’m sure you agree. So again, it’s not about who is called God. It’s not even about, does this person represent perfectly the nature of God? It’s not even about that. It’s about the teaching that God is three persons.

So I want to ask you, and you’ve probably heard this question - you said that you see one God revealed as three persons. So I’m after the teaching here, not does the New Testament, the Bible use the word Trinity or a term. So, can you point the audience and myself to a verse, a chapter, where the one God is the three persons at the same time? In other words, it’s saying that God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit at the same time?

Brian: Yeah, in the New Testament there’s Matthew 28 where it says… it’s Jesus giving us the Great Commission. It says, “Go ye therefore to all the world, baptizing in the name” singular, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded You.” And so you see that within the New Testament narrative there certainly is the name, the one true name of God revealed in Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

Again, we start with the premise that God is one, the Shema is true and it will never stop being true. “Listen o’Israel, Yehovah our God is one, Yehovah. There’s only one true Yehovah.” And yet, Yehovah has revealed Himself in the person of the Father, Isaiah 64 refers to Yehovah as “our Father”. Jesus is referred to as “Yehovah”, I believe, in Romans chapter 10 verse 9 through 13, where Paul, quoting from Joel 2:32 says, “Whoever calls the name of Yehovah will be saved.” He attributes that to the name and person of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is also called Yehovah, in Hebrews chapter 3 you see the Holy Spirit being quoted, “The Holy Spirit says,” and then that quote is attributed actually to Psalm 102 to the God of the Bible, to Yehovah.

And so, throughout Scripture you see this revelation that God is one, yet He is revealed and manifested Himself in the three persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Nehemia: Can I ask you a quick question here? This is actually from one of the people on Facebook, and it ties into what you just said. It says, “If Jesus is Yehovah, for he claimed to be the great ‘I am,’ how many Yehovahs are there then? And if more than one Yehovah, please support the claim through Scripture.” Brian asked that on Facebook – a different Brian, not you.

Brian: Yeah. I think, again, the Trinitarian claim is not that there are three Yehovah’s, there’s only one. There is one God. Even the creeds, which I haven’t really been quoting or subscribing to in this conversation - because I think they’re relevant but they’re not Scripture - but the creeds say that God is of one substance; you can’t compound, you can’t divide the substance. And so ultimately, we understand that there’s only one true and eternal God, who’s revealed and manifested Himself in these three persons.

Carlos: If I could ask quickly.

Nehemia: Sure.

Carlos: So, the Shema, “The Lord our God is one Lord,” one Yahweh, one Jehovah. So, how many Yahwehs are one Yahweh?

Brian: It’s one, one Yahweh. You’re not going to get me to say three Yahwehs. There’s only one Yahweh.

Carlos: See, this is the thing. You posted, I think, you wrote something. You said something interesting, I hadn’t really seen it this way. The way you put it was very interesting. You said, if I may quote you, “If the Scriptures do not distinguish the persons of the Godhead, then we accept that Yehovah is the singular speaker.” So, I want to follow up on that. So you have a classic text in Isaiah 44:24. “This is what the Lord your redeemer, who formed you from the womb. I am Yahweh, who made everything, who stretched out the heavens, by Myself, who alone spread out the earth.” So, I’m emphasizing what’s known as the singular personal pronoun.

So in English, we have 14 forms, at least, of it – I, me, myself… So, just to follow up, so the Scripture there is not distinguishing – and you can correct me – so, you’re saying it’s not telling us who is speaking, which person. So, if I’m reading that as a Trinitarian…

Brian: Well, it’s telling us that Jehovah is speaking, that Yahweh is speaking.

Carlos: Right, but who’s that? Which person of the Trinity is that?

Brian: That is God. That is the singular God of the Scriptures…

Carlos: Okay.

Brian: …as Yehovah speaking.

Carlos: Right. Is that…?

Brian: And it’s actually a beautiful text. I’m so glad you quoted from it, because it actually, again, makes the Trinitarian point so more powerfully. Because you have this one true God who’s creating all things, who’s stretching out the universe by Himself. You know, some translations insert the rhetorical question, “Who was with me?” And yet, the Bible says in Genesis 1:2, “The Spirit was with Him.” The Bible says in Job chapter 33 verse 4 that “the Spirit of God created Me.”

The Bible says in the revelation of the New Testament that “Jesus Christ created all things and upholds the universe by the word of His power.” And yet you have three distinct persons referred to in Scripture apart from that text that say that Jesus is the Creator, the Spirit is the Creator, the Father’s the Creator. And yet, Isaiah 44 brilliantly says, “There’s only one true God Creator.”

And so if we want to be hermeneutically consistent with the revelation of Scripture, the only conclusion that we can come to is that these three divine persons are the one true Yehovah, Creator.

Carlos: So, you’re saying, if I understand you, that Isaiah 44:24, “I am Yahweh who made everything by Myself…”

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: That’s all three persons?

Brian: That’s right. It’s the singular God.

Carlos: Okay, so it’s Father, Son, Holy Spirit, they’re speaking…

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: …as if they were a singular subject, a singular…

Brian: The Scriptures teach that God, and the creeds and the Scripture teaches, God is of one substance. This is the one substance of God who is revealing Himself and speaking in the Holy Scripture.

Carlos: Okay, now we know that Yehovah is a name.

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: Right? And I think you call it the “One What and Three Whos?”

Brian: Sure.

Carlos: Right? So, God is a being, right? And in the being, there are three Whos.

Nehemia: Can someone explain that for the audience? Brian, can you explain?

Carlos: Brian, please.

Nehemia: Since it’s your position.

Brian: [laughing] I think that’s what he was trying to get to. So again, God is one What. When you think of God as one substance, He is one What. And He has revealed Himself in three Whos, three persons, in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So it’s an interesting way of thinking of the Trinity.

Now, every earthly analogy of the Trinity will fall short. The Bible says that “God is so much greater than us. As far as heavens are above the earth, so high are His ways towards ours.” And so, every earthly analogy… language begins to break down when we speak of the complexity and the uniqueness and the awesomeness of our Creator. And so what I really think it comes down to is, it’s a language barrier. It’s a language problem. We don’t have a language yet that can speak so gloriously of the Trinity.

It’s like trying to think of five dimensions in a three-dimensional world. It’s just really hard for our minds to wrap around. But I would use as a good analogy would be the example of time. We think of time in the singular. We always speak of time in the singular, yet time is expressed in three distinct eras, so you’ve got past, present and future. Yet it’s one time. God is one God. He’s revealed Himself in three persons.

Carlos: Brian, can we agree that the Hebrew Scriptures are inspired?

Brian: Absolutely.

Carlos: Can we agree that the Greek Scriptures are inspired?

Brian: Totally, and I don’t think you can agree with that, because of what I learned earlier.

Carlos: You have heard of the “sufficiency of Scripture”?

Brian: Absolutely, and I subscribe to it. I believe in sola scriptura.

Carlos: Okay, but what you just said sounds contrary to that. You said there is no language, basically, that can make us understand the complex three-persons in one God, isn’t that what you just said?

Brian: Well, I think Scripture backs it up with saying how great God’s ways are above ours, that we can only begin to grasp the greatness and the grandeur of our Creator.

Carlos: Let me go back to the one What, because he also said one thing, right? So, you said, “God is one thing in three Who’s, one What in three Who’s.”

Brian: That’s right. Sure.

Carlos: Now, that text in Isaiah 44:24 describes, I guess, to you, the Trinity, the three persons, by the name Jehovah, Yahweh, right?

Brian: Sure.

Carlos: It also is describing the being of God, yes?

Brian: Yeah.

Carlos: Okay, so this is my problem. If you look up a dictionary definition of the word “thing - an object you do not want to, or cannot give a specific name to,” yet, Isaiah gave it a name, “As distinct from a living, sentient being.” That’s the dictionary meaning of the word “thing”. Isaiah gave your Trinity God, the three persons, a name and He is a being.

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: Can you say they are a being?

Brian: Yeah, I think “being” is a better word than “thing”, for sure.

Carlos: But if you call God a “What” or a “Thing”, the Bible just doesn’t do that. The Bible, for people who believe in the Bible, both Jews and Christians, God is a person. God is not a “What”, not a “Thing”. I mean, this text in Isaiah 44:24, that’s why I want to sort of anchor ourselves there. And I agree with you, we have to try and communicate with each other, as well, right? And I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. I believe that the Hebrew Scriptures are as inspired as the Greek Scriptures. I believe they’re enough - by sufficiency of Scripture, by the way, we mean they’re enough for my understanding and belief, which is faith.

In other words, that there is a God and He loves me, and who wants the best for all of us, who wants everyone to be saved, right, Paul? So, when you say that there’s no language that can express the three-in-one God, that’s where we start to get into trouble, I believe. You see where I’m coming from?

Also, why personal pronouns, let alone singular pronouns are being used, thousands and tens of thousands of times, probably, for God, if God is a Thing or a What?

Brian: Yeah, I think again, it’s not my intention to try to say that. I think the best language to be used is that God is one being, because He is not an inanimate object. He is a personal being with life and “To Him or from Him are all things,” the Scripture says. So again, it’s the inadequacy of language, I would say, in which we see the breakdown of talking about the infinite God with finite minds and finite words. And so, I think ultimately, though, the Trinitarian argument would be that God is one being and yet again, Scripture reveals that there’s a person called the “Father”, He’s called “Jehovah”. You have a person called the “Son,” He’s called “Jehovah”. And you have another person called the “Spirit”, He’s also called “Jehovah”. And these three persons, we’re not Modalists, we don’t believe that God is one person and that He switches faces, or modes like the Sabellian heresy, but rather that God is distinctly one and uniquely three.

Nehemia: Can you expand upon Modalism or Sabellianism, because I asked a lot of people, just regular Christians, they’ll say, you know, “Who is Jesus to you?” And they’ll say, “Well, the Father came down to earth in the form of a man. The Father came to us and walked among us.” And that is actually a heresy called Sabellianism, right?

Brian: That’s right. That’s right. So, Modalism, again, when you talked earlier about Arianism and the debates that were going on in the 3rd century, you know, Sabellianism came in the 4th century, and this is… So you have in the 2nd century, Gnosticism and you have Arianism, and then you have Sabellianism. And so you have these three major heresies against the personal work of Jesus Christ, and all from very different perspectives. And yet, what continues to win out is the historic and Orthodox view of the Trinity.

Modalism basically says that there is one person of God, similar to what the Unitarians would say, that they affirm that God is one person. But in the Modalist perspective, Jesus is the one person of God. So, for instance, in modern context, there’s what we would refer to as Oneness Pentecostals. They sometimes go by the Jesus Only movement. They believe that Jesus is the one person of the Godhead, and that he manifests himself in a different sense from the Trinitarian sense, in that these are difference of modes, which is where the word “Modalism” comes in.

Nehemia: So, let me ask this question to Brian. So, if somebody believes in the Oneness Pentecostal doctrine, are they saved?

Brian: You know, that’s a great question. I think that we have to be careful with attributing perfect theology in terms of salvation, because if you say, “Hey, in order for you to be saved you have to have a perfect theological view of the Godhead, or eschatology, or whatever pet doctrine you have,” I think we’re limiting the atonement, because there are individuals who have sincere believe in the Lord Jesus, and they’re not scholars, they don’t understand the in-depths of all the areas of theology, or God. That doesn’t mean they’re not saved.

But I think if a person persists in a false doctrine, especially concerning the nature of God, I think that puts you on very shaky grounds.

Nehemia: What about somebody like Carlos, who believes in Jesus. Carlos, you believe in the Virgin birth and the…

Carlos: You’re not going to do that to Brian, are you? [laughing]

Nehemia: No, no. What…

Carlos: Don’t judge me.

Brian: I will gladly answer the question.

Nehemia: No, I don’t mean Carlos per se, but somebody who comes with a doctrine… Let’s even not say Carlos, because Carlos knows the Trinitarian side and rejects it. Someone who doesn’t even know this. They grew up in a church and they don’t really know the theology, and I sent you guys an article of an Evangelical organization that did a survey, and they found a large percentage of Christians will say they believe in the Trinity, but when pushed and questioned, they believe Jesus is the first creation. So, is a person like that saved?

Brian: Yeah, again, the good news is that God is the Judge of the living and the dead and I’m not.

Nehemia: Amen!

Brian: So I’m not qualified to make that judgement. But I would say this, that God has revealed plainly in Scripture how one is to be saved, and it’s through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The problem I would have is, if someone persists in a false view of Jesus, is that we’re not talking about the same Jesus.

Carlos and I do not believe in the same Jesus, I think he’d agree with that. But we believe in two totally different Jesus’s, and so I believe that I believe in the Jesus of the Scriptures of the Bible. He is true God come in the flesh, revealing the will of the Father. He lived a life that we could not live, died a death that we deserve, raised again on the third day, ascended now for more interceding on behalf of our sins before the Father. He’s coming again to judge the quick and the dead. So, our Christology is very different.

So the big answer is, God is the Judge and we’ll leave that up the big guy. The smaller answer is, if he persists in a false view of Jesus, then I think from my limited view, that you’re not of the faith.

Nehemia: Okay, a quick lightening round. When Jesus on the cross – and I get people asking me this all the time – and I say, “I’m not a theologian. Ask your pastor, rabbi or priest.” Here’s the pastor. On the cross, Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Who was He talking to?

Brian: He’s speaking to the Father. He’s quoting from Psalm 22, in which you had the suffering Messiah, the suffering servant of God. That Psalm ends with a jubilant and conquering Messiah over God’s redemptive people. So he’s quoting Scripture. It’s just like if I start to the words, “Amazing Grace,” you would know what I’m trying to speak of. You’d know the song that I’m singing. The same thing, Jesus on the cross. He’s singing a song from Psalm 22.

Nehemia: So he’s not praying to God, he’s actually singing a song, is what you’re saying?

Brian: Yeah, and I think it could be a prayer and a song, that’s fine.

Nehemia: Carlos, a question for you. You’ve made the statement not here, but in other contexts, I’ve heard you make the statement that there are certain verses in the New Testament that are corrupt. You kind of alluded to that with Ehrman’s book. Could you give us, other than 1 John 5:7, which Brian, do you agree that 1 John 5:7 has been changed?

Brian: Yeah, I don’t believe in the Johannine comma as being…

Nehemia: You don’t?

Brian: As being…

Nehemia: As being authentic?

Brian: Yeah.

Nehemia: Is that what you’re saying?

Brian: Most likely not authentic, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Brian: Which is why the majority of modern Bible translations don’t have...

Nehemia: Right, okay. So, guys, you can look that up, 1 John 5:7 and the controversy. Other than 1 John 5:7, what is a verse, Carlos, that you believe was changed in the New Testament, that points to Jesus being God?

Carlos: Well, I’ll defer to the textual critics. Again, this is not… I hope you do your homework, by the way. Listening to both of us, don’t believe any of us. Go do your own homework. Check it out.

So I’m going to rely on those textual scholars, people who have devoted most of their life, adulthood for sure, on this. So I’m talking Walter Bauer in the 1940s, a German scholar. I forgot to mention Bruce Metzger, who was the teacher of Bart Ehrman, and modern-day Daniel Wallace, Evangelicals, at one time Ehrman was. And all these books we’re citing were written while they were Trinitarians, Evangelicals, as far as I know.

Another text, and deep text probably, that opened my eyes, Nehemia, I remember to this day I was in Sydney. I took the train an hour-plus away downtown to get this book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. And I opened it up, I chewed it up, to this day. Matthew 1:18, interesting verse. So, most translations have the rendering, “The beginning of Jesus Christ,” or, “The genealogy of Jesus,” or some such thing.

So, again, these are the textual scholars, not just Ehrman, although Ehrman in his books says, “It is a corruption. It was biased.” In other words, the copyists - you know, what we have as New Testament, by the way, are copies of copies of copies. No one has originals of anything, by the way. So actually, the Greek has “Yenesis” in other words, the Yenesis of Yesu Christu, the Genesis, the origin of Jesus Christ. Now, the interesting thing about that, quickly, is that there are two Greek words for Yenesis.

So, we know Yenesis from the Book of Yenesis, 1N. But there’s another Greek word with a double-N, which can simply mean “birth”. But, the textual scholars, and I’ll rely on their expertise, have found that the copyists changed the one N, so they believed the one N was the original reading, to a double-N, to soften, if you will, the fact that Jesus, the Christ, his origin was in the womb. And this actually would harmonize with Luke’s virgin birth narrative, which, by the way, I believe in the virgin birth.

I believe in incarnation, not capital I. In other words, I don’t believe God the Son took on flesh, or came into the womb of Mary. Actually, he’s procreated in the womb, Matthew 1:20, look at that. He’s begotten, procreated in the womb, Matthew 1:20. But Luke 1, verses 30 to 35 actually back up the truth of the virgin birth, that through the Holy Spirit, which is the power of God, depending on the context, God effected a miracle.

Nehemia: So, Carlos, what you’re saying is that… I don’t want to say what you’re saying. Is what you’re saying that there was a different Greek word in Matthew 1:18, it’s now been replaced with this other word, and the original word implied that Jesus didn’t come into being before he was conceived in Mary’s womb? Is that what you’re saying?

Carlos: Well, I’m just quoting you the textual evidence. That appears to have been the case. So, in other words, Ehrman puts it, now this is his opinion that it was a corruption. But actually, I had a copy of today’s New International Version. Some modern-day versions actually have a footnote on Matthew, I believe it’s in 1:18, it could be in 1:1, because Yenesis is used both times in Matthew 1:1 and Matthew 1:18. But some modern translations, I believe, have a footnote where they give you the actual Greek, the origin of Jesus.

Brian: So, Carlos, I say this respectfully, but you are undermining the Lord that you claim to serve with this higher criticism view of the Scriptures. Right now, you have Jewish listeners who are listening to our words and our discussion, and you’re giving them ammunition to say, “Oh, well. We don’t need to believe in the New Testament. The New Testament has been corrupted. It’s defiled. We don’t need to believe it.” The Lord Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.” Jesus, “Not one jot or tittle will go away.”

The Bible says in Isaiah 40 that the word of the Lord will stand forever. I’m going to stand with the prophets and with the person of Jesus, and not with Bart Ehrman, and not with the liberal scholars of higher criticism, who will by all means try to distract and move people away from faith in the God of the Bible. And so I think you’re doing a grand disservice to the Lord that you claim to serve.

Carlos: Did we not just agree? I think you agreed that 1 John 5:7 is a forgery, if you don’t want to call it a corruption?

Brian: That’s a great question. So, when we look at the manuscript evidence, that’s the beauty of the New Testament Scriptures. It’s not like the Book of Mormon, where you have no backup, you have no evidence that this was even ever a real Book of Mormon. We have manuscripts upon… over 5,000 in the Greek manuscripts to be able to see if there were any changes in the Greek Scriptures. That’s different from saying that there is a corruption of the Greek Scriptures.

You see, we were able to pinpoint where there was forgery, and be able to, again, the word of the Lord is still standing forever. Jesus’ words are still true.

Carlos: If I may, Brian, I’m not saying… By the way, Ehrman admits that 99 percent of the so-called “textual problems” are minimal. In other words, they forgot to dot the “i,” they forgot to cross the “t.”

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: Ninety-nine percent. I’m not in any way… And I think I agree where you’re coming from. Please do not misunderstand - I’m not saying the New Testament in general is corrupted. No, no. There are a few what look like corruptions. I thought we agreed on 1 John 5:7. So, there are some, I mean, one percent, maybe less than one.

Brian: Yeah, but there’s only one of us that’s quoting Bart Ehrman here to undermine Scripture. And so, we can discuss textual criticism, but in no way are we going…

Carlos: Okay.

Brian: … to hear from my side to undermine certain Scriptures.

Carlos: Sure. You’re accusing me of undermining Scripture when I pointed to another possible corruption, when we agreed that there is corruption in 1 John 5:7, is that right?

Brian: Yeah, but 1 John 5:7 is not included in the majority of Protestant Scriptures.

Carlos: It was at one time.

Nehemia: Can I jump in here? Carlos, so you’re saying that this one Greek word was exchanged with another Greek word. But you have manuscripts with the other Greek word, is that right? Or do you?

Carlos: Yes, yes. So, what happens in textual criticism is that basically, it’s a very tedious job. You have to collect all the known manuscripts and scraps. By the way, we have more than 10,000 by now, according to Daniel Wallace, who is an Evangelical Trinitarian. And Daniel Wallace, you can ask him if you’re a Trinitarian, you can check his work. He agrees with this type of research by Ehrman, so I’m not just quoting Ehrman here. You can check Daniel Wallace.

Nehemia: Let me jump in there for a second. So, we do a similar thing with the Tanakh, in fact my background here is a manuscript that I discovered - I can’t even say where it is – from around the 10th century. And the type of things that we’ll find is, like for example, we have the word here, “hayitem”. And you might find it in some manuscripts, it has one Yud and in some it has two Yuds. And what we do is we compare all the manuscripts, and that’s actually what’s called “textual criticism”.

You had mentioned a higher criticism, Brian. A higher criticism is how the text was written by different sources, that Matthew is cribbing off of Mark, that kind of thing. That’s the higher criticism. I’m not sure that Carlos is saying that. I think he’s saying we have thousands of manuscripts, and 30 of the 10,000, or whatever, have this other Greek word, and the majority of texts supports a divine Jesus, and the small number apparently, he’s saying, according to Ehrman, support maybe a not divine Jesus. Is that what you’re saying, Carlos?

Brian: But that’s a huge problem. If you subscribe to that theory, that’s a huge problem in textual criticism, in higher criticism, as well. Because then you’re saying that truth is obscure, that through the manuscripts, the truth about God and the truth about Jesus has been obscured in some way. This is very similar to the Mormon talking point on the Scriptures. They say the Bible is insufficient. The Bible’s been corrupted. This is why we need the book of Mormon. This is why we need Joseph Smith, the Prophet of God. And ultimately, I think that this liberal view of Scripture is dangerous.

Nehemia: Okay.

Carlos: Can I ask you a question, Brian?

Brian: Sure.

Carlos: In John 1:18, I’ll just ask this question. I don’t know your answer, by the way, this is not a…

Nehemia: And after this, I’m going to ask you guys to each make a final statement to wrap it up.

Carlos: Yeah. Just quickly, in John 1:18, how do you read John 1:18, Brian? Just quickly. How do you read it?

Brian: “No one’s ever seen God, but the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father has explained Him.”

Carlos: Okay, so you accept the “begotten God” reading?

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: Because most translations, as you know – well, maybe not most – but a lot of translations, a lot of your fellow Trinitarians, do not accept that reading.

Brian: Correct, and this is all based upon manuscript evidence.

Carlos: Okay.

Brian: So the oldest manuscripts that we have, have “only begotten God” readings.

Carlos: Okay. And also, because it really doesn’t help your cause – in other words…

Brian: Actually, it does.

Carlos: In other words, it’s a procreated God. That’s what “begotten” means. By the way, we’re using the very antiquated, old English word “begotten”, which basically means procreated. So a lot of Trinitarian Evangelicals like yourself don’t opt for that reading, even though the earliest manuscripts, it’s true, have that reading, “mono yenis deios,” truth. But overwhelmingly, the manuscripts favor the only Son.

So my point is, in just asking you that – and thank you for answering – is that we can talk about undermining each other’s Lord and Savior, right? But if we agree that there is at least one corruption in the New Testament, which happens to be 1 John 5:7, I’m just saying, we have to be careful…

Brian: There’s a difference between saying there’s a corruption in the New Testament – I’m sorry for interrupting, but there’s a difference between saying there’s a corruption in the New Testament, there’s a corruption in manuscript evidence. That’s a huge difference. The New Testament as originally written is inspired of God and is perfect and inerrant. Now, we’re here, 2,000 years removed from the writers of the New Testament, having to pick and choose manuscripts. And so I tend to favor manuscripts that are closer to the original thing in writing…

Carlos: Right.

Brian: …as I’m sure you probably do, as well. But I think it would be good if – because I know we’re wrapping up – there’s one question that I really wanted to get to, that I never got a chance to. Would it be okay if I asked that question?

Carlos: Please.

Nehemia: Go for it, please.

Brian: Okay, perfect. So, let me preface it first. In Isaiah chapter 42 verse 8 in the Old Testament, the Lord Yehovah says, “I am the Lord, I am Yehovah. That is My name and I shall not give My glory to another, neither my praise to graven images.” And John 17:5, the High Priestly prayer, which you referenced before, where Jesus refers, says, “This is eternal life, knowing You are the only true God, and from whom You sent forth Jesus Christ.” In verse 5 of that High Priestly prayer, Jesus says, “Now, Father, glorify me, for the same glory that I had with You before the world was.” How can an exalted man receive the same glory as the Father?

Carlos: Obviously, other figures are given the glory. The saints of the most-high God in the famous Daniel 7 vision, they’re given not just glory but power and supremacy over the nations. So God can give His glory. He does it in the Old Testament. I can’t from memory cite the verses, but it’s there. And also, John 17:5 which is really a debate about pre-existence, right? Whether Jesus literally pre-existed. Again, that doesn’t prove whether God is three persons or one person.

Nehemia: Do you believe that Jesus pre-existed, Carlos?

Carlos: I believe the New Testament teaches what’s known as “an ideal pre-existence”. For example, all believers are said to have pre-existed. "We were chosen before the foundation of the world", for example, says Paul to the Ephesians and to the Thessalonians.” So, what some scholars call “ideal pre-existence, notional pre-existence”, but I just gave you Matthew 1:18, which I’m glad to see elicited a reaction from Brian – and I hope you continue to do your research on that – but the Son of God is clearly procreated in the womb of Mary. If you don’t want to go the Matthew 1:18 witness, go to Luke 1:30 to 35, where it says that the most-high God, through the Spirit, the power of the Spirit, brings about the creation of, who Jesus calls, by the way, the “second Adam”, the second human being. Jesus is the second Adam, he’s not the second God, man.

And just quickly, if I can ask this question. You said, Brian, that Jesus Christ is the God-man. So you hold to what’s known as “double nature”, right? So, He’s both God and man. And you said that the phrase, “Son of God” as to His nature, God, right? And the phrase, “Son of Man” as to his nature, his humanity.

Brian: That’s right.

Carlos: So if I understand you correctly, every time I see, “Son of God” it’s referring to His Godness… I don’t know if that’s okay to say, and when we talk about, or Jesus talks about himself as the “Son of Man”, He’s talking as a human being, is that correct?

Brian: So, I think, again, so you’re talking about the Hypostatic Union, that Jesus Christ, being one person yet having two natures, Jesus is fully man and fully God. We see that in Scripture throughout the narrative of the Scriptures, John chapter 1 being a perfect example of the word was God, and the word became flesh, he walked among us, we beheld His glory. If that’s not an argument for pre-existence, I don’t know what is.

The Bible also refers to his pre-existence in Micah 5:2, that the Messiah would come from the days of everlasting, or the days of time indefinite. But in regards to Jesus having two natures, absolutely. When he’s referred to as the “Son of man”, he’s making a statement that he is man. That’s when the Spirit of God referred to Ezekiel as “Son of Man” throughout the Scriptures, he is referring to his nature as a man. And when he’s referred to as “the Son of God”, he’s referring to his deity…

Carlos: Okay.

Brian: …as being of the same substance and nature as his Father.

Carlos: So, on that basis, on that foundation, two questions, if I may. So how do you understand Mark 13:32? So the Son, right, speaking, or Jesus says that the Son does not know the day or the hour of what we call the “Second Coming, the Parousia”, that’s one question. So how do you understand that? And how do you explain the fact that the Son of Man, not the Son of God, is given latrevo, which is the Greek for divine worship? So, why is the Son of Man treated as the Son of God, I guess, by the nations in Daniel 7, please?

Brian: Well, you’re making the same arguments that the ancients made against the Hypostatic Union. And the response from the creed was that you cannot confound or divide the person. So again, the issue here is, Jesus is referred to as the “Son of God” as to his nature. And I’m forgetting the last part of your question - why is the Son of Man worshipped? Because that’s a great question for you to answer.

Nehemia: Yeah, that’s what I thought. [laughing]

Carlos: Well, first of all, what’s your answer to Mark 13:32? So the Son doesn’t know?

Brian: Okay, yeah, yeah. Right, so that’s a great question. So, of course, we believe that Jesus Christ is man in his earthly ministry. He limits himself. The Bible says in Philippians chapter 2 that “though he was in the form of God he did not make himself equal to God, to be held onto or grasped, but he emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave and by humbling himself and becoming obedient to the point of death on the cross.” So Jesus through his self-humiliation was able to limit – not put away his deity, but limit exposure to his deity.

So, for instance, in other Scriptures, like in John 16:30, it’s just said of Jesus that he knows all things. Well, does he know all things, or does he not know all things? I believe that Jesus knows all things, but there are times in his ministry where he purposely limits himself, so that he can have a true human experience, and be a High Priest, and like unto our weaknesses.

Nehemia: Hey, guys. All right, so I’m going to ask you to each of you take two minutes, wrap it up. I’ll give each of you two minutes for a final statement. And, you know, I hope this is the beginning of a conversation and not the end of a conversation.

Carlos: Just quickly, Nehemia, the question to the Daniel 7, because you wanted an answer from me about why is the Son of Man rendered divine worship? So, it’s a bit long-winded, but the bottom line is this. The word latrevo, so Daniel 7 was written in Aramaic, by the way, not Hebrew. So in Aramaic it’s palac. Now, that’s actually used for others, for example, the nations in Genesis 14 and 15 and Exodus 14. So, in the translation of the Aramaic there, palac is used for others. Latrevo, which appears in one of the Septuagint readings, I believe it’s the Theodocian, so there’s the Aquila… Sorry, I think the Aquila, in the Aquila Septuagint you have latrevo, in the other Theodocian, it’s another word which means just worship for anyone, God or man. But latrevo is true in the New Testament, latrevo is only used for God. But in the Old Testament, did you know, Brian, that latrevo is used as well for the nations that worship Israel?

So if you want to check the LXX of Deuteronomy 28 verse 48, Deuteronomy 28 verse 48, and also if you’re a Catholic, in the Book of Judith, Judith 3 chapter 8, latrevo is given to King Nebuchadnezzar. So that’s another incidence where a word can be used for others, apart from God. And also, just to throw this in for the audience, Isaiah 45 verse 14, the nations, this is a picture of the kingdom, redeemed Israel, “and the nations will both worship and pray” – and check the word carefully. The Hebrew there is “prayer”. Prayer, as to a God. Prayer as to Jehovah, Yahweh. Isaiah 45:14, “the nations both worship and pray to the Israel of God,” there. Thank you.

Nehemia: Okay. All right, I’m going to give each of you two minutes. Brian, do you want to go first?

Brian: You know, I went first last time, so I would like to go last.

Nehemia: All right. Carlos, you want to go first?

Carlos: Well, that’s pretty much… We’ve been going hours. So no, I just want to thank you, Brian. I hope we have another conversation. I invited you to a sort of formal debate. I really hope we have it. I think we make a good back and forth together. You’re a well-natured guy, very respectful. Thank you. Thank you for being so respectful. As you know, as a former JW, we’re sort of on the outside, and we’re always sort of mistreated, but we’re blessed. We’re blessed. Thank you, Nehemia, for this forum, for this place. You have a lot of viewers, so I hope your viewers can check all of us. Don’t believe Nehemia. Don’t believe me.

Nehemia: Definitely, don’t believe me.

Carlos: Don’t believe anyone. Folks, check it out for yourselves. Thank you, guys, so much. I had a lot of fun. Thank you.

Nehemia: Thank you.

Brian: Amen. Again, I have the same sentiment. Thank you very much for having me on this program. Again, it’s so good to be with you again, Nehemia, and Carlos, it’s been a pleasure, and just a real delight.

I do want to close with my closing statement, and that I agree - we should not trust the testimony or witness of any one man or person. Scripture is sufficient. Scripture has revealed to us the true nature of Yehovah, of our Creator. And one of the brilliant promises of the Old Testament is in Jeremiah 23. It says, “Concerning the coming King and behold, the days are coming.” Jeremiah 23 verse 5, “Are coming, declares Yehovah, ‘When I will raise up for David a righteous branch. And he shall reign as King and deal wisely. He shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved and all Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name which he will be called, ‘Yehovah is our righteousness.’”

I believe that Yeshua, Jesus, is indeed Yehovah, our righteousness, manifested, come in the flesh as a human being, who lived a life that you and I could not live, was a perfect sacrifice for our sins as the lamb of God, died and was raised again on the third day, now alive forever interceding at the right hand of God, the Father. And we see, the last glorious visions we see of human history in the Book of Revelation, the New Testament, it says this, “Where all the angels and the myriads upon myriads of angels are worshipping, they say, ‘Worthy is the lamb who was slain, to receive power, wealth and wisdom, honor, glory and blessing. To Him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing, honor and glory and might forever and ever.’”

And it says, “He saw every creature on heaven and earth, underneath the earth and in the sea,” and it says, “the four living creatures said, ‘Amen.’ And they fell down and worshipped.” I can invite you today to come kneel and bow down before the one true everlasting God, Yehovah, revealed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My hope is that this is a conversation that will spark interest and passion, but also that would lead you to an accurate knowledge of who the one true God of Scripture is. Thank you, Nehemia. Thank you, Carlos. Shalom, and God bless you.

Nehemia: Thank you, guys, both. And will just jump in and say, may the prophesy of Jeremiah be soon fulfilled…

Brian: Amen.

Nehemia: …that Israel is saved, and the Messiah is here on earth, bringing peace and putting an end to the coronavirus. Amen.

Brian: Amen.

Nehemia: Shalom.

Carlos: Yeah, thank you.

Brian: Thank you, guys.

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