Another snippet from my marathon debate yesterday at Speakers’ Corner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsdxBxtQxpQ
and before anyone complains (as they have done) that I’m preying on Christians who don’t know their faith, Josh is doing a PhD in Christian theology.
Categories: Bible, Christianity, God, History, Islam, Judaism, Philosophy, Speakers Corner
Blogging Theology 
brother paul, has the full conversation been uploaded?
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no not yet. Various people filmed bits of it. It lasted over three hours without a break
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WOW a PHD Student, well that’s defiantly a step up from the girl on roller blades…
By the way is this chap a fundamentalist?
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No, he’s definitely not. He is a traditional conservative Christian but accepts critical scholarship (unlike nearly all of the Christian apologists I know – apart from Richard of course)
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Oh so then he has the same view of the bible that you have of the Quran, that being it has errors and is not the literal word of God
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a silly comment
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Why is that Paul? Your not a fundy Muslim are you?
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instead of playing the troll why don’t you comment of the issues discussed in the video?
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Oh I will comment… Comment I will Indeed
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well get on with it.
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Yes please more!
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Hi Paul, I have watched the first and nearly finished the second part. Good talk overall. The only issue I have is that the person you are talking to is assuming that just because its written in the bible that it is and I quote “fact” when talking about the “visions” that either paul had or the supposed 500…
For me personally shut down that line of enquiry by using the bible itself as a proof against the theory of a resurrection. Things that you know already. The bible does not even prophesies it let alone mention it. We only have a handful of people who never met or were alive during Jesus ministry. We even have letters from the earliest “christians” refuting the church father Ignatius” about that very fact.
It’s like me saying “Paul, we know from Holy harry potter the fact that Harry studied at Hogwarts”.
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@1:15 you say “It not enough to say that Jesus was accorded divine titles to suggest he was part of a trinity… you then go on to bring up a Roman Emperor who was given divine titles\status. “So people addressed him as my lord and my God, I think it’s quite proper in Greek in Johns Gospel…that here we have John her saying in a sense Jesus is my Lord and My God not the Roman Emperor. “
You opine on “But the point is, I don’t think anyone thought Domitian was Jupiter, or Zeus, … no one thought that of a Roman Emperor. He was accorded divine status because there was a hierarchy of Divine beings. All the way from the Great un caused God to Hercules who was half man and half God…
Do we mean that Jesus is YHWH or that Jesus was a lessor subordinate being?”
To which the PHD candidate responds and rightfully so…
“That would cause a problem for the Unitarian picture then, because if Jesus is given that Divine status and lets say it wasn’t YHWH. That still contradicts a Unitarian understanding of Jesus”
You then ask as you blow your nose “How? How? How does it contradict it?”
You then say that “there is still one God” and then go on to make a case of how the English Language is used in the 21st century to say that saying someone or something is divine does not mean they are deity.
So with that being said I was hoping you could clarify your Islamic position.
In the first part you seem to make the case that Unitarianism in the first century, there was a belief in a hierarchy of divine Beings. So calling someone a God was not calling them the ONE Un Caused God just a lesser God. And Thomas saying “My Lord and My God” is Thomas saying that Jesus is his Lord and His God. Not the Roman Emperor.
When confronted on how this would be a problem for Unitarians, having lessor Gods you then seem to switch gears and make it a thing of language. That because in 21st century English calling someone divine or saying something is divine does not make it God.
So what is your Islamic Unitarian Position?
Is it that there is a Hierarchy of Gods, with Allah the un caused being at the top, and a bunch of lesser Gods including Hercules or even Jesus being a half man half God?
Or
Is it they’d called people and things Divine without really meaning they were Gods? Like in 21st century English, saying or calling something divine or giving it divine qualities is just a figure of speech?
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