Ali Ataie – Christianity 101 An Islamic Approach to Understand Christian Beliefs
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So we're gonna start Christianity,
and we're going to begin tonight by
talking about the New Testament,
that is to say, the Christian scriptures.
And then, next week, next Tuesday,
we're going to look at the Nicene Creed,
Orthodox Christian Creed, Trinitarian Creed,
as well
as the Trinity.
So that's the plan
for Christianity.
And, again, we are live.
I'm looking at the chat box here, so
if there are any questions I I forgot
to mention this in weeks past, unfortunately,
but if there are people that want to
ask questions, you can go ahead and type
them into the chat box,
and, I'll answer them if they're appropriate.
I'll answer them on the, on the air,
inshallah.
Okay. So
last week, we said that the primary text
of Judaism,
is the Old Testament. Of course, again, Old
Testament is Christian terminology.
It's called the Tanakh in Hebrew,
which of course again stands for Torah, Nabi,
Ketovim.
The the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five
books, the prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
the writings like Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
1 2nd Kings, so on and so forth.
Okay.
With the New Testament,
we have
something interesting. So the Christians now,
they believe in the Old Testament.
Right?
They believe it to be the Word of
God. However, they have their own set of
primary scriptures.
And these scriptures are not
affirmed
by, the Jews.
So it doesn't look like the
video is working here.
It'll come back
so I can, if people have questions, we
can deal with that.
So New Testament,
right,
it's called
the
Literally the New Testament.
Now the phrase New Testament is actually in
the Old Testament. It's in Jeremiah 3131
where there's this promise of God that I'm
going to establish what's called a B'rit Chaddasha
in Hebrew, which literally means New Testament.
Of course the Jews take that to mean
something completely different than the Christians.
In Jewish circles,
Jeremiah is prophesizing that towards the end of
time, during the reign of the Messiah,
the Messiah will implement the Jewish law, and
that's going to be new for most people
because most people are not Jews.
And it's going to also be sort of
a renewal for Jews that weren't practicing,
the law. But nonetheless,
this is the name of the Christian scriptures,
the New Testament.
So what is the essence of the Old
Testament?
The old birit, the word birit means testament.
It
basically is the following: it is if you
adhere to the Law of Moses,
if you follow the law of Moses,
then you will gain salvation.
Right? That's that's basically
the the essence of the law,
the essence of the law in a nutshell.
Let me just quickly try something here
so I can
try this again.
Sorry about that.
Okay. I think we're okay now.
Yes. So let me just reiterate.
It's Tuesday, August 18th, Tuesday evening. We are
live.
For people out there that want to ask
me a question, feel free to type that
into the chat box.
Okay. So
the the essence of the Old Testament is,
or the Mosaic Covenant, which is preferred language
according to Jews, is that if you follow
the law of God, you follow the mitzvot,
right, and you will be saved. You will
gain salvation. And this is interesting because
this is the answer of Jesus, peace be
upon him, at least according to the New
Testament gospels.
We'll talk more about these
what are these gospels?
There are 4 gospels in the Christian New
Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You have
this,
pericope or this,
this story
in 3 gospels where a a Jewish scribe
comes to Jesus, and he says to him,
good master, what must I do to gain
eternal life?
And then Jesus says to him, why are
you calling me good? There's no one good
but 1, and that is God. And then
he continues, follow the commandments,
and you shall enter the life. Right? There's
variations. I mean, that's the the reading in
Mark.
That's how Mark has it. There's slight variations
in Matthew and Luke. That's Mark 10 18.
And you have it in Luke 18 18
and Mark, Matthew 1917.
So here,
Jesus, peace be upon him, according to this
Christian text, these Christian texts
is affirming the old berit, the Mosaic covenant.
But then by gospel's end,
right, later on in the gospel, Mark 14,
Matthew 26,
and Luke 22,
we are told that Jesus celebrates
the Passover,
the Last Supper with his disciples,
and he takes the bread, and he gives
it to them and says,
this is my, the bread and the wine.
He says this is my body. This is
my blood of the new covenant, right, of
the new testament. So now he's establishing
a
new covenant,
right, a new agreement.
So what that means is now that the
old covenant that God made with the Israelites
at Sinai,
This,
covenant has been revoked. It is abrogated.
Right?
And now
one has to simply believe,
in,
Jesus as Lord,
as Paul says, and that God raised him
from the dead, and you shall be saved.
Right? So that's the essence.
Paul states this, I believe, in 1st Corinthians.
That's the essence of this New Covenant then.
Okay. So let's take a closer look then
at the New Testament.
So
there are 39
books in the Old Testament. There are 27
books
in the New Testament.
It's called the canon of 27 books.
There are
4 4 major types of books in the
New Testament.
The first major type of book is called
a gospel.
So a gospel is basically a narrative about
Jesus
that really focuses on
the passion.
Right?
The last week
of Jesus' life
according to these texts.
So they're basically 4 extended passion narratives. The
real focus is on
the suffering
and death, resurrection,
of Jesus.
That's really where the focus is.
So you have you have,
gospel,
one of the types of books of the
New Testament. There are 4 of them, Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. We'll talk more about
them, inshallah. Then you have a book of
history, one book of history in the New
Testament. It's the 5th book of the New
Testament.
It's called the book of Acts,
ACTS, also called Acts of the Apostles
in in the Catholic,
in the Catholic version, English versions.
So basically, this is early ecclesiastical
early church history.
There are 3 main characters really 2 main
characters. There's Peter and there's Paul,
but there's also James.
Right? Acts chapter 15.
You have the famous Jerusalem Council. This is
really this sort of seminal
event
in the early Christian movement,
and the sort of prototype of the later
church councils, ecumenical church councils,
that are going to follow in the 4th
century all the way into
the 21st
century,
or 20th century. We haven't had one. There
hasn't been an ecumenical church council in the
21st century. The last one was in the
1960s
called Vatican II. So the sort of,
prototype
of that, the archetype was
the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15,
and the issue of that time was how
much of the Mosaic Law
is required for these Gentile proselytes,
for these Greeks? The Greeks are becoming Christian.
How much of the Law of Moses
should we impose upon them? That's why they
held
the Council, basically.
So you have early church history, the Book
of Acts. And then you have something called,
the epistles,
which simply means letters.
And there are 21 of them. So 4
gospels.
There's one book of history called the book
of Acts.
Then you have 21 epistles
or letters,
and these are written by various
apostles,
right, various apostolic authorities,
various,
disciples of Jesus, at least according to Christian
Christian tradition.
So these epistles, they deal with doctrine. They
deal with counsel, instructions.
They deal with,
just different issues that arise in various congregations.
According to,
historians,
7 of these 21
epistles
were genuinely written by Paul.
Right,
the apostle Paul. We'll talk about him, Insha'Allah.
So
scholars agree almost by consensus that 7 of
them are written by Paul.
7 of them
another 7 of them are disputed,
but claimed to have been written by Paul.
Right? In other words, someone pretending to be
Paul.
So scholars have deemed these to be
pseudo Pauline,
which is sort of a nice way of
saying they're forgeries.
Right? Someone is writing these letters pretending to
be Paul, and they're not Paul. They're forging
these letters,
pretending to be Paul. And then you have
7 what are known as Catholic epistles, not
Catholic with a capital c, not Roman Catholic,
but Catholic with a lowercase c,
which simply means universal
epistles.
And these are written by various
apostles as well, like James and Peter and
John and Jude, although again the vast majority
of historians
do not believe that
these men actually wrote these books,
that bear their names. These are also forgeries.
When it comes to the gospels, they're called
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but in reality,
they are anonymous.
None of the authors identify themselves.
Church tradition,
assigns them or attributes these books
to 2 disciples of Jesus, Matthew the tax
collector, who's also called Levi,
and John
Yohanan, the son of Zebedee, who's one of
the disciples of Jesus, the beloved disciple
according to the Gospel of John, although it's
disputed whether John the son of Zebedee is
the beloved disciple. That's the dominant opinion.
Historians do not believe that these two men
actually wrote these gospels.
And then you have the gospel of Mark.
Mark,
was according to church tradition, he was a
student of Peter.
So he's like a tabiri.
And then you have the gospel of Luke
who is
a friend of Paul or Paul's travelling companion.
So this is very interesting, we notice, that
you have the Gospel of Mark, which is
accepted by the church as totally canonical,
and written around,
according to the vast majority of historians,
probably around 70 of the Common Era or
so.
Most historians put the date even many confessional
Christian scholars, they place the date of Mark's
Gospel around 70, around the time of the
destruction of the Temple.
But there's also something called the Gospel of
Peter.
The Gospel of Peter is not accepted as
canon.
And the reason is, well, it's just too
late.
That's one sort of way of looking at
it.
Another way of looking at it is that
it
contains material that is that is offensive
to the early Christian movement.
So in the Gospel of Peter,
it states that,
Jesus, when they were crucifying him, he was
silent as if he felt no pain.
So that doesn't work with the early Church
because for the early Church, at least the
early Pauline Church, Jesus needs to suffer. It
really needs to hurt.
You know, his pain is our gain, as
they say.
It's the most painful death ever. He's bearing
the sins of the world. He's smitten and
afflicted.
He's bruised for our iniquities. He's crushed for
our transgressions, as Isaiah chapter 3 53 says,
which Christians believe to be referencing Jesus. So
it seems like in the gospel of Peter,
he's just he's not feeling pain, or perhaps
his soul has left his body. They're crucifying
an empty shell. Something's going on there. The
church didn't like it. So the gospel of
Peter is rejected, but the gospel of Mark,
who's who's Peter's student,
is accepted,
right, as canonical.
And then the gospel of John,
there's good reasons for placing John around 70
or even earlier as well, but the vast
majority
of historians place the Gospel of John,
anywhere from about
90 to 110
of the Common Era. If we just take
the low number,
right,
the earliest date of 90,
right,
It's that's called the terminus post quem. Right?
The earliest of date,
90. So
it's, you
know, gospel the the the the apostle John
who wrote the gospel was probably let's say
he was, I don't know, 30 years old,
at the crucifixion, around the age of Jesus,
probably the same age.
Right?
The disciples were probably not old men.
They were probably young men around the age
of Jesus. He's 30 years old,
right, in the year 30.
So he waited then
60 years, right,
to write his gospel
around 90. Again, we're taking the low end
date of 90.
So he's 90 years old.
Right? And he's writing this gospel. And he's
writing it in Greek,
and it's quite sophisticated Greek.
And John, the son of Zebedee, is supposed
to be a Galilean fisherman.
And,
95%
probably
of of people in Palestine at the time,
certainly,
you know, fishermen and peasants, they were illiterate.
They could not read or write. They were
unlettered.
So how is it that he can produce
this gospel where he's talking about
referencing the logos, which is a,
Hellenistic
philosophical
idea
that goes back to Heraclitus.
Maybe he studied for 60 years,
but it still doesn't make a lot of
sense that he would write it in Greek
and not in Aramaic or in Syriac.
Another issue
is that in John
so if you ask a Christian,
where does Jesus claim to be God in
the New Testament,
In the 4 Gospels. Right? Invariably,
the Christian will quote something from the Gospel
of John.
Right? It is the highest Christology.
So a Christian would say, well,
John 10:30. The Father and I are 1.
There you go.
John 858,
before Abraham was, I am.
Right? So,
Alright? Present tense. Before Abraham was, I am.
I already was before Abraham. So here, Jesus,
he's intimating his pre eternality
that he predates
Abraham.
Or they'll say,
I am the way, the truth, and the
life. Right? John 14:6.
So you have these I am statements. That's
what these are called, The famous I am
statements of the Johannine
or gospel of John, the Johannine gospel.
We find none of these I am statements
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, these three gospels,
which are called
the Synoptic
Gospels.
Right?
Synoptic meaning one eyed.
Basically, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they follow
basically the same chronology of events,
in the life of Jesus.
Whereas in John, we have this,
drastic
departure,
from the Synoptic chronology,
not only in chronology but in content. So
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the preferred method
of teaching, his preferred
pedagogical
method of teaching is through parable.
But in John,
he is giving these very long
monologues
about his relationship with the father, making big,
big claims. He's he's engaged in these long
and, sometimes,
very, tense debates
with, the Jews as it says. Right? The
Jews.
It's very clear in the Gospel of John
that the enemies of Jesus are not scribes
and Pharisees.
Right? I mean, you find that language in
Matthew,
which is written around 70 or 80, 85.
But by the time John comes around, there's
a clear departure.
You have Christians and you have Jews.
Right?
In in earliest of Christianity,
the the Christians
were a sect of Judaism.
They're called the Notsurim
or the Nazarenes
or the Evionim, which means like the spiritual
paupers, the poor people.
But now we have a definitive,
split
in the late 1st century. These are Jews
so it's very clear if you read the
gospel of John,
right? The Jews
are the enemies,
of Jesus, and Jesus is always
butting heads with the Jews.
So it's very very interesting.
But the main point I was gonna make
is
that these I am statements, which are supposed
to be divine claims of Jesus
Jesus is claiming to be God in these
I am statements.
If he truly made these statements,
then we really have to sort of give
an f
to Matthew, Mark, and Luke
for how they wrote their gospels.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention all 3 of
them mention
that Jesus,
he rode a donkey into Jerusalem.
When he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday,
he rode a donkey into Jerusalem. All 3
of them
mentioned
that. Right? You might think, well, is that
really important?
Apparently, there's something in the book of Zechariah
or Zephaniah
that says, you know, the King of Zion
comes to you seated humbly upon a donkey.
So it's a fulfillment of prophecy.
Okay. Still doesn't seem very important,
but if Jesus is making a divine claim,
he's claiming to be God.
He said before Abraham was, I am. The
father and I are 1.
I am the way, the truth, and the
life. I am the good shepherd.
I am the door.
Right? These big, big claims that he's making
in the gospel of John,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke a 100% failed
in recording these divine claims. How could they
not record
these divine claims of Jesus?
So the answer is they're completely inept,
and they've done a horrible job at writing
their gospels.
Or,
Jesus never made those statements.
Right?
And,
the majority of historians nowadays,
they believe that the latter is actually true,
that the Gospel of John is really
an ahistorical
document.
It's really just sort of a Christological
meditation
of a certain community of Christians called the
Johannine community.
And, you know, this community if you read
the gospel of John, for example,
he,
and he's aware that you have Matthew, Mark,
and Luke floating around,
in
the Mediterranean,
but he at times deliberately contradicts the Synoptics.
Right? For example,
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it says Jesus
was crucified
on,
the day of Passover,
which is a strange day to be crucified.
But John says that he was crucified on
the eve of Passover.
So the question then becomes,
who's right?
Can they both be right?
Were there 2 crucifixions?
How can these texts be inerrant?
Right? And this is the position of, like,
fundamentalist Bible colleges like the Moody Bible Institute,
probably Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, that these
books are inerrant. How can both of these
be true?
Was Jesus crucified
on Passover or the eve of Passover? Which
is it? Were there 2 crucifixions?
Somebody got it wrong,
or they're they both got it wrong.
Right?
It says in the synoptic gospels
that when Jesus was,
going to be crucified
for no apparent reason,
the Romans pulled a random guy out of
the crowd named Simon of Cyrene
and compelled him to bear the cross.
Right? So he took the cross of Jesus,
probably the cross beam. It's a which is
like a a stake or a beam,
probably just a crossbar,
and made him bear the cross while Jesus
sort of just followed in front or or
behind. I don't remember,
what it says in the synoptics, but that's
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John knows this, but John goes out of
his way to contradict
the Synoptics,
and he says Jesus bore his own cross
to Golgotha,
the place of the skull where the Romans
used to crucify Jews, insurrectionist,
Jews or troublemaking Jews.
So why does John do that?
Right?
Well, there's probably
some sort of Christological
or polemical reason why he does that.
Now we know
that there were early Christian groups that denied
the crucifixion of Jesus.
One such group
was the were the Basilidians,
named after Basilides. I might have mentioned him
in the past.
He was a Christian teacher in Egypt, Alexandria,
in the Q1 of the 2nd Century.
And Thucydides,
his
opinion
was that Simon of Cyrene
was transfigured
he uses that word in Latin,
transfiguratum,
transfigured to look like Jesus,
and Jesus, the maid, was transfigured to look
like him, and so the Romans grabbed,
you know,
the apparent Jesus.
So this is called substitution theory,
supernatural identity transference.
And so Jesus was able to escape the
crucifixion.
So,
it seems like John is familiar with this
belief
around the time when he's writing at 90,
CE or at 100 CE, possibly 110
CE. So what he does is he completely
eliminates
the entire episode of Simon of Cyrene
for a Christological
reason.
Even though he knows he's contradicting the Synoptics,
even though his readers will eventually know that
he's contradicting
the Synoptics.
Right? But his whole point is to teach
you
is is not to give you accurate history.
John admits at the end of the gospel,
these things have been written to convince you
that Jesus is the son of God.
Right? That's the whole aim. That's the telos.
That's his maqasad of writing his gospel,
is to convince you, by any means necessary,
that Jesus is the Son of God.
Right?
And that he died for your sins, so
don't get it twisted.
He wasn't substituted.
He died on the cross. And then John
tells us something else at the crucifixion scene.
So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we're told
that Jesus is on the cross for a
few hours.
In Mark, it's maybe
3 hours, and this is why Pilate marveledPontius
Pilate, the Roman governor.
This man has died already after just a
few hours on the cross.
Pontius Pilate made a career of crucifying Jews.
So if he's astonished and he's and he's
marveling
that this man has died already, then there's
something happening there, something to look into. How
can he be dead already?
And, of course, Christians will say that, well,
Jesus, you know, he was beaten beyond recognition
and,
you know, he was flogged
front and back down to his bowels. I
mean, his intestines were falling out. You read
things like this in in in Christian polemical
writings like by Joshua McDowell
and others,
Mike Lacona and things like that.
So he's just you know, he's a *,
* mess. You know, he's going into,
his body's going into shock, and and so
3 hours I'm surprised he even lasted,
3 hours. Why is Pilate shocked?
Pilate is an expert Jew killer.
He is an expert Jew crucifier.
And he is it says, he marveled.
This man is dead after 3 hours. Are
you sure he's dead? How can he be
dead?
And he oversaw all of, you know, these,
so called beatings and floggings
and so on and
so forth. I mean, nowhere in Matthew, Mark,
and Luke does it say that he was
nailed to a cross.
Right?
That's not mentioned in the synoptic tradition.
We find that in John, and it's not
mentioned directly.
It's when, you know, in the upper room
where the, you know, the doubting Thomas and
Jesus shows his hands, you know, and his
feet, apparently the marks of the the crucifixion.
So we find that in John.
Right? But something else that happens in John
is
Jesus is on the cross and he's impaled
on the cross.
We don't find this in Matthew, Mark, and
Luke. Why didn't Matthew, Mark, and Luke? If
Matthew is an eyewitness
This is what Christians believe,
at least traditional Christians.
Matthew is an eyewitness of the ministry of
Jesus.
Right?
Why didn't Matthew so he he forsook Jesus
and fled. I mean, that's what it says
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke when Jesus was
on it was in the on the Mount
of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The Jewish,
temple guard came to arrest him, and his
all of his disciples forsook him forsook him
and fled. So Matthew wasn't there. Okay. But
Matthew could have there were there were people
that were there. Matthew could have interviewed somebody,
an eyewitness.
How what happened at the crucifixion?
Matthew seems to know a lot about what
happened at the crucifixion even though he wasn't
there. Matthew records the final words of Jesus
on the cross. How did he know that?
Somebody told him. Why didn't somebody tell him
that Jesus was impaled on the cross?
John? That's what John says, writing in 90
or 100.
Well, it probably didn't happen. That's why. It's
not historical. Why does John say that Jesus
was impaled on the cross?
Because apparently there might have been Christians who
had the belief that Jesus was put on
a cross,
but he didn't actually die. He might have
swooned. He might have survived the cross.
Right?
There that's that's why he was seen alive
in his fleshy body
after the supposed
his supposed death. Well, John eliminates
this type of
heresy according to him and says, no. No.
No. No. Don't get it twisted. He was
impaled on the cross.
He's
dead. There's no doubt about it.
Alright?
So basically,
okay.
So we went a little bit off
course here,
but that's okay.
So
we said that there's 4 gospels. There's the
book of Acts.
There's,
21 epistles,
and then we have one
apocalypse. Right? Apocalypse
is a Greek word,
meaning
an unveiling or a disclosure.
It's called Kitabulumu Kashifa,
and this is
sort
of a book that describes visions
of the eskaton, the Sa'a,
towards the end of time.
It's very, very cryptic. It's very symbolic.
It's very, very strange, very enigmatic.
I mean, you have, you know, the 4
horsemen, and you have, you know, the lake
of fire. It's
a very strange book. You have the mark
of the beast,
the mark of the therian in Greek,
which is 666.
It's stated in Revelation,
chapter 13,
verse 18. So this book is called the
Book of Revelation.
Right? In the Catholic
version, it's called the Apocalypse.
All these strange things happening. The mark of
the beast, the Antichrist,
is 666.
Nobody knows what that means. Some people believe
it's the numerical value of his name. Some
scholars believe that it's a reference to Nero,
the,
the Roman emperor
who,
was who who who
was compared
today by Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump.
He said I think he said Sanders said
today
what did he say? He said when Rome
was burning,
Nero,
was was playing his fiddle,
but Trump was golfing.
Right?
So Nero is sort of seen as this
this,
this sort of prototypical,
horrible
leader. Right?
So some scholars believe that
the numerical value of
Emperor Nero is 666.
Okay.
So you have these 27 books.
Okay. Now
the first books of the New Testament to
be written
were not the gospels.
Okay?
The first books chronologically
of the New Testament
were,
the Pauline
epistles.
Right? The letters written by Paul.
So who is Paul? So Paul,
his actual name is
Saul of Tarsus.
He was a Benjaminite Jew from Sicily
who was also a Pharisee
who early on was a very zealous
Christian persecuting Pharisee. So he would persecute the
earliest of Christians, like the disciples.
Right? Before they were actually called Christian,
they were the Nazarenes.
Right? So Jews who happened to believe
that Jesus was the Messiah.
Paul was
the man
that the high priest would call upon
to,
according to his own words, he would bind
them up, capture them, bring them back
to Jerusalem for for trial.
So he was a persecutor of the early
Jesus
movement.
And then according to Paul,
he had some sort of
conversion experience
on the road to Damascus where
he claims that he had an encounter with
the resurrected Jesus
who commissioned him to go into all nations
and admonish the Gentiles.
Right? So he's the apostle to the Gentiles.
So then Paul goes
to different major
metropolitan areas around the Mediterranean,
and he begins to preach what he calls
my gospel.
That's what he says.
My gospel. Remember Jesus of the seed of
David,
rose from the dead according to my gospel,
he says. And he uses that phrase three
times
in his in his
in his letters. 2 of them are genuinely
written by Paul. One of them is Pseudo
Paul. So when Paul says my gospel, it
seems like he's making a distinction between what
he is saying and what this other gospel
is saying. And he actually says that
in the book of Galatians.
He chastises
his congregation in Galatia, which is in Turkey,
for believing in quote another gospel. So there's
another gospel.
According to Christian historians,
the story is this. Paul went to Galatia,
and he made a lot of converts
to his gospel, his understanding of the gospel,
that Jesus was
the divine son of God and that he
died for your sins.
And that's the new that's the new covenant.
And,
and and then he left Galatia.
And then a group of
apostles
from Jerusalem sent by James,
who is Jesus's brother or cousin. It's not
really clear what brother means.
Half brother or cousin, possibly stepbrother.
Nonetheless,
the book of Acts tells us that James
is the leader of the Jerusalem apostles.
He sends messengers,
other apostles, into Galatia
to correct Paul's deviant teachings.
Right? And so they're able to convince these
Galatians,
that Paul was wrong
about many fundamental,
issues.
So then Paul writes now the book of
Galatians his letter to the Galatians
where he chastises the Galatians.
How dare you believe in this other gospel?
Right? We didn't bring this gospel.
And then he goes on to accuse
Peter, James, and Barnabas
of hypocrisy
in the book of Galatians. So Paul is
butting heads. He has fundamental
big issues
with actual disciples
of Isa
He admits this in the book of Galatians.
He refers to them sarcastically,
so called pillars.
That's what he says. These so called pillars
of the church. He says these these super
apostles.
Who did they think they are? These super
apostles.
This is his sarcasm.
Who is he talking about? He's talking about
actual disciples
of Isa alaihis salam. He says, I don't
need a letter of recommendation.
You know? I have my
I, I have my experience. I experienced the
resurrected Jesus.
What does he mean? I I don't need
a letter of recommendation. According to New Testament
scholars,
these apostles
that are coming into these cities in Paul's
wake and correcting his deviant gospel
have actual
Ijazat.
They have these
teaching licenses
that they've brought from Jerusalem, signed by James,
who is the leader of
the Nazarenes,
the early Christian movement.
Paul has no such letter because he's a
freelance
self appointed
apostle.
So he says to his congregations, I don't
need a letter. I had this
experience.
And he and he brags. I don't I
didn't take this teaching from any human being,
from any man. I took it directly from
Christ.
This is what he says. Yet he is
at odds.
Big time.
Fundamental issues. He's butting heads
with the actual disciples
of Isa alaihis salam.
Alright?
So Paul is a highly problematic person to
say the least.
So
So so then so Paul began writing
around 52.
His his first letter was to his congregation
at Thesalonica,
a major Greek city.
Right? It's called First Thessalonians.
And in First Thessalonians,
Paul is very clear, and there are certain
central
Pauline themes.
This is how scholars, like textual critics, can
tell
if this is written by Paul or not.
So you have these 14,
epistles that are claimed to have been written
by Paul.
According to historians,
7 of them are by Paul because, you
know, they they
they they would,
analyze the text
through certain textual measures,
and the other 7 are deemed to be
forgeries in the name of Paul.
Right?
So the 7 genuine letters
the first genuine letter is called first Thessalonians,
and then you have,
Galatians,
Philemon,
first Corinthians, second Corinthians,
Philippians,
and Romans.
And in these seven letters, you have these
central Pauline themes.
The second coming of Jesus will be in
his lifetime.
This is absolutely fundamental
to Paul's understanding of his gospel,
what he is claiming he has taken from
Jesus.
Absolutely fundamental.
We're going to be
transformed in the twinkling of an eye, he
says in first Thessalonians,
caught up in the clouds
with the Lord.
And all of his advice
on marriage, celibacy,
on ecommerce, all of it is predicated upon
his belief that at any moment,
Jesus will manifest in his second coming and
set up his kingdom of God on earth.
Right? As as the Jews believed the Jewish
Messiah would do.
Right?
And, of course, this never happened.
It never happened.
You know? So we have here
a,
a a
falsifiable
claim of Paul.
Paul is very, very clear. He believes the
second coming will occur in his lifetime.
In fact, the author of Mark's gospel and
these four gospels
so so you have the Pauline letters
that are written between, you know, 52 and
65 or something,
and then you have the first gospel, Mark.
So
the 4 gospels
are highly influenced
by Pauline doctrine.
Right? And, again, that's why in these 4
gospels, I mean, they're basically 4 extended passion
narratives
because the cross is so central for Paul.
Paul says in 1st Corinthians, if Christ is
not raised, our faith is in vain.
If Christ did not raise from the dead,
if he was not resurrected,
our faith is in vain. There's no point
in this religion.
Right?
So you can see how
Christians are,
oftentimes
offended
by the Muslim suggestion,
that Isa, alaihis salam, was never crucified.
He's never crucified. He's never killed. He's never
resurrected.
Christianity is in vain.
But this is what Paul says in 1st
Corinthians.
So now in Mark,
right,
you have Jesus saying
that among those standing here
right, he
says, there are some standing here
that shall not taste death
until they see the Son of Man coming
in the clouds.
Right? And for Mark,
the Son of Man
seems to be a
title of Jesus himself,
coming in the clouds. He's paraphrasing
something found in the book of Daniel, chapter
7, the apocalyptic Son of Man, which Christians
or Mark at this point believes to be
a prophecy of the Jewish Messiah,
the Bar Inas,
the Son of Man, who is exceedingly powerful
on the Earth.
Jesus is saying there's some standing here.
He's telling this to Jews around 29 or
30 of the Common Era.
There are people here now alive that will
see me coming with great power in the
clouds.
Now we cannot possibly attribute such a statement
to Isa, alayhis salam, because that would make
him a false prophet,
and true prophets do not make false prophecies.
Right? Christians have ways of sort of working
around
these things.
But what's very interesting is
Mark wrote that
around 70.
So he's, you know, he's taking a big
risk because,
you know, if if there are few people
alive in the generation of Jesus around 70
of the common era.
But it seems like Mark believes
because because of what's happening
in Jerusalem
around the time of Mark's composition,
Mark believes it is the end of the
world.
What's happening in Jerusalem between 60 7
and 73? It's the Jewish war that Josephus
writes about.
So you have an all out assault
upon the Jews in Palestine
by the Roman war machine.
Right? So there was an insurrection by the,
the the the Zealots or the proto Zealots.
These were Jewish insurrectionists
that tried to seize the land,
and implement Jewish law from the heathen colonizers,
the Romans.
They were absolutely crushed
over this 6 year period. The Romans started
in the north in Galilee where Jesus was
raised, and they just swept
right down the entire country,
destroyed the temple in 70,
and massacred,
you know, men, women, and children. The that
mass,
suicide that happened at the fortress in Masada
around 73 of the Common Era. So Mark
believes this is the end of the world.
Right? So if this is the end of
the world, then the second coming of Jesus
is imminent, so he has no problem saying
putting the words into the mouth of Jesus,
there are some standing here that shall not
taste death
until they see the Son of Man coming
in the clouds with great power.
Alright? We would not attribute this false prophecy
to a true prophet, Isa alaihis salam. Mark
is influenced by Paul, who made this false
prophecy.
Paul believed the second coming was imminent. It
did not materialize.
Paul also believes in justification
by faith
alone.
He believes that the law of Moses was
abrogated
almost completely,
and he believes in,
vicarious
atonement,
This idea
that Jesus
was
a savior,
man god,
a divine son of God,
who died for your sins.
What's also interesting about Paul is that he
does not mention anything about the historical Jesus.
Paul does not quote Jesus accurately one time
In any of his letters, whether they're genuine
Paul or pseudo Paul,
Paul never mentions a miracle that Jesus performed,
like these exorcisms that are such a big
part of the Synoptic tradition, the healings,
right,
the resurrection of Lazarus.
He doesn't mention any of these things.
Paul does not mention anything about the historical
Jesus. He's completely focused
on the crucifixion and resurrection,
the significance of the death of a savior,
man god.
That's what his
attention is almost exclusively focused on.
Right?
He doesn't mention the virgin birth of Jesus.
Why wouldn't he mention that?
Very, very strange.
He actually says Jesus, who was of the
seed of David,
mean, it seems like he believes that
Jesus was just born,
as a descendant of David in the conventional
sense.
Right? Why wouldn't he mention these things? He
doesn't quote
or Isa, alayhis salam, doesn't quote the Jesus
of the gospels. If there's an oral tradition
floating around
where Jesus is making divine claims that are
recorded by John,
Paul doesn't seem to quote it. He doesn't
quote them. Why doesn't he quote them?
Either he doesn't care that Jesus claimed to
be God, and I think he would care,
or these statements did not exist,
and John invented them out of
whole cloth
in order to convince his audience that Jesus
is the
son of God.
Now Paul does something quite radical.
What he does is
he appropriates
an old pagan motif.
Okay. This is known as the dying
and rising savior man god
motif.
So this was a motif, a belief, that
predated Christianity
by 100 and 100 of years,
this idea that
some sort of
incarnation,
a divine Son of God,
comes to the earth, suffers and dies for
the sins of humanity.
It's a very beautiful story.
You have a personal savior.
Right?
What Paul does is that he gives it
a Jewish makeover,
and he uses it to explain
what he believes
to be the gospel.
Right? So what Paul basically does I liken
it to, like, a Christmas tree.
A Christmas tree. Right?
So we have this tree,
which is brought into the home,
which is what the ancient pagans used to
do. I mean, in Jeremiah, I think, chapter
10 verse 2,
he says, imitate not the way of the
heathen,
the infidel
who brings a tree
into their house
and decks it out with gold and silver.
That's what the tree worshipers used to do.
Today we call them tree huggers. No. I'm
just kidding.
But that's what they used to do. Right?
What Paul is doing is basically he's taking
a tree, a Christmas tree,
a a symbol of paganism, that's his foundation,
and he's putting a Star of David at
the top of it. Right? So he takes
paganisms
he takes paganism
as his foundation,
and he kind of dresses it up with
the trappings of Judaism.
Before Christianity,
you had Osiris,
the savior man god of Egypt,
Adonis of Syria,
Romulus of Rome,
Salamoxus
of Thrace, who's mentioned by Herodotus
in his Histories,
Inanna of Sumeria, who's a female
daughter of God,
and of course Mithras,
the Persian sun god, who although he didn't
actually die, he did suffer
for the sins of his people.
There's a book called the world
the world's
16 crucified
saviors by Kersey Graves
written 18/75.
There are some problematic
elements to this book from a historical standpoint,
but it's an interesting book.
Christianity Before Christ is the subtitle. There's another
book by Tom Harper called The Pagan Christ,
which is quite interesting,
as well.
So Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, Amoxus, Inanna,
Mithras, all savior gods,
all sons of God, with the exception
of Inanna, who's the daughter of God, but
basically all, you know, all children of God,
but not the god.
They are not the god.
Right?
So all of these traditions are what's known
as henotheistic.
And I am convinced that Paul himself was
a henotheist.
I do not believe that Paul is a
monotheist.
Right? Paul believes that Jesus is a second
deity.
Paul is highly, highly influenced
by Hellenistic philosophy,
Hellenistic
motifs like this one here, the dying and
rising, save your man god motif, but also
this idea
of, you know, this middle platonic idea
that the Godhead is 3,
unique
deities
where there's a hierarchy of being,
the 1,
the word, the logos,
and the Spirit.
Right?
All 3 are divine.
The latter 2 are the effect of the
cause who is the one. He's the the
the the source and origin of everything, even
the the logos
and the spirit.
So even though the logos and spirit
are from the very essence, they're ex Deo,
they're from the very essence of God,
They are not as exalted
as the one
who is without origin,
right,
who is the origin
and,
and is the the cause of the others.
So you have this hierarchy of gods.
Right? So Paul is borrowing this idea.
So is John. John directly calls Jesus the
Logos.
Right?
So it's hard to it's
very difficult. I mean, eventually,
Christian apologists in the 3rd 4th century, they
had a way of sort of working out
how this is still monotheism.
It's not monotheism according to the Islamic definition
of monotheism,
but
they they sort of took these Middle Platonic
and Neo Platonic
ideas of a hierarchy of of a hierarchy
within the Godhead and said there's really no
hierarchy of being, just of person.
So a kind of sleight of hand. We'll
talk about that,
next week,
inshallah.
But, anyway, you have the savior, man gods.
They all undergo a passion,
some sort of suffering,
and they obtain victory over death.
It's very interesting. You know? The Quran says
that the Christians say
that Christ is the Son of God.
That is a saying that issues from their
mouths
in this day, but imitate
what the unbelievers of all these ancient pagans
used to say. It's all the way back
100 and 100 of years.
And of course Hellenistic religion tended to be
sync syncretistic.
Right? They would mix and match different elements.
So like the cult of Mithras
was an amalgamation
of Hellenistic,
meaning Greek, as well as Persian beliefs.
The cult of Dionysus
was an amalgamation
of Hellenistic
as well as Phoenician beliefs.
The cult of
Pauline Christianity
is an amalgamation
of Hellenistic
and Jewish beliefs. So now you have this
kind of new hybrid
religion.
And when that happened,
now you have this definitive
split. Paul set the foundation.
Right? In the middle of 1st century, by
the end of 1st century, you have this
definitive
split. These are not Jews.
These are separate religion. They're called Christians. They
worship Christ as a god.
Right?
So that's
so you have these 27 books then. Just
to, wrap up,
Four gospels, 1 book of Acts, 21 epistles,
1,
1 apocalypse.
Okay.
I think that's
good for tonight,
So we will see you
next time.
I think that's a good place to stop.
I don't wanna start a new I know
there's a few minutes left here, but I
don't wanna get into a new topic. This
is gonna take a bit of explaining to
do.
So we'll save that for next time. We'll
talk we'll finish our discussion on the gospels.
There's one more thing I wanted to say
about
about what's known as backward Christology, which is
very very interesting that we find in the
4 gospels Christology in the making, James Dunn,
this idea.
We'll talk about that, and then we'll go
into the Nicene Creed and talk about,
the Trinity, inshallah.
So this is our
final session on Christianity.
So last time we talked about
the 4 Gospels
and something of the Christology.
Christology is an academic term,
meaning
belief about Christ. We talked about the Christology
that's found
in each gospel.
Historians have noticed that,
through the years, the Christology
of of the Christians,
has,
become higher and higher
so in in in throughout the gospels.
So in the gospel of Mark,
Jesus is, peace be upon him, according to
Mark.
He is a,
a prophet. He is the hidden messiah.
He is,
it's a very, very short gospel.
His statements are very brief.
And then in Matthew, he is now the,
open
Messiah.
He fulfills all of these prophecy the Old
Testament.
Many times, Matthew,
takes a lot of liberties as to how
he's
interpreting Old Testament
stories and texts and applying them to Jesus.
It seems at times he is simply,
making things up.
For example, he says in,
in at the beginning towards the beginning of
his gospel
that because Jesus came from Nazareth,
this is so that it might be fulfilled.
What was what was written by the prophet,
he shall be called the Nazarene.
He shall be called the Nazarene. Matthew is
presenting the statement as if it's from the
Old Testament, from the Tanakh, but there is
no such statement
in the Old Testament.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is called
Soter in Greek, which means savior,
although there's different ways of understanding that term
in Luke.
But the main thing about Luke is Jesus
becomes now this universal
messenger,
universal prophet.
Jesus becomes this sort of quasi,
Aristotelian
philosopher,
where
he is,
expounding,
truths
through
a parable. I mean, we get some of
that obviously in Matthew
and Mark as well, but especially
in Luke because Luke is trying to appeal
to
a Gentile audience, a Greco Roman audience.
And then finally, in the gospel of John,
Jesus is called the word, the logos,
the Word made flesh,
made divine incarnation.
So
today then, we're going to look at
the Nicene Creed. This is an Orthodox
Christian creed.
When I say Orthodox, I'm talking about Trinitarian
Christianity.
And this creed was
ratified in the early 4th century
of the Common Era,
following the Council of Nicaea in 325
of the Common Era.
Before the Council of Nicaea, you have
many different types of Christians,
many different types of Christianities,
too numerous
to even mention here. It would take
a seminar to mention
what was happening,
in the first,
3 or 4 centuries of the Christian era
with the Christian religion.
You had Christians who believed
that
that Jesus, peace be upon him, was only
a human.
You had other Christians who believed that he
was only God.
You have Christians who believed that he was
one of many gods.
You have Christians who believe that he was
the only god.
You have Christians,
who believed that
he didn't have a physical body.
He was a phantasm.
There were Christians who believed that he was
both divine and human.
You had Christians who believe that not only
was he both divine and human,
that he became divine
at his birth.
There are Christians who believe that he became
divine at his baptism.
There were Christians who believe that he became
divine at his resurrection.
It's It's called exaltation Christology.
Yet Christians who believed that he was always
divine.
Right? That he was the preexistent
or pre eternal sun, that he was the
logos. Again, this is a Greek
idea.
You had Christians who believed that there were
3 gods.
You had Christians who believed there was 1
god,
but this god had 3 different modes,
father, son, and holy spirit. It's like God
putting on 3 different masks. One person of
God
who has sort of 3 modes. So he
father and then he became totally became
the son,
and then he becomes the spirit,
resurrects the son, he becomes the son again,
and then he becomes the father again.
This type of Christology
is called modal monarchianism
or Sabellianism.
So you have,
many, many types of Christianity.
Now
Constantine,
who was the first Christian emperor,
he wanted
unity in his empire.
And so after defeating his rivals
to the throne,
he called for this council, the Council of
Nicaea, very important council,
325 of the Common Era,
The first so called ecumenical
world church council.
Although all of the bishops
that attended Nicaea believed
already that Jesus,
some,
peace be upon him, was divine in some
way.
Right?
Although that is debatable, but certainly,
there were no Ebonites
present at the council. You know, Nazarenes. There
weren't any Jewish Christians
that were at the council. The Jewish Christians,
were
extinct by this time. And and if they
were still,
practicing,
and there were pockets of them, they certainly
were not going to be invited to the
Council of Nicaea. So it's not really an
ecumenical or universal or world
church
council. So Konstantin called for this,
this council,
and there's a lot of,
sort of
misinformation
as to what actually happened
at this council. Dan Brown wrote a book
called The Da Vinci Code
in which he is, gives a lot of
false information as to what happened. But
at the end of the council and and
whether Constantine was actually Christian or not during
this council is actually
open to debate. It's it's not clear.
Certainly, his mother was Christian. His mother was
a very hardcore Christian.
But, it seems like Constantine called the council
for more political reasons. He wanted unity in
the Empire.
So at the end of the council,
after deliberations
upon deliberations,
the bishops draft
this creed, and it's a short creed. So
we'll just go through it.
The creedal exposition of the
318 Fathers.
Alright. That means the bishops
that attended the council.
So
they say
and it begins and it's written in Greek.
Right?
Whether
Isa alaihis salam spoke Greek or not
is open to debate.
It seems like he probably knew some Greek,
because it was the lingua franca
of the Mediterranean
at the time.
So,
the New Testament
documents, the New Testament books are all written
in Greek, and those are original
documents,
originally written in Greek. Paul wrote his letters
in Greek. He did not write them in
Syriac or Hebrew.
Right? The original documents
are in Greek. So, you know,
he he grew up in a very eclectic
environment
in the north of Palestine,
in a province called Galilee.
So no doubt he knew Hebrew. That was
a language of the synagogue liturgy.
He was a rabbi. You have to know
Hebrew. It's like being a sheikh today and
not knowing Arabic. It doesn't make any sense.
Or just being an and not knowing,
not knowing Arabic. So he knew Hebrew. He
knew Aramaic or Syriac.
Syriac is sort of late Aramaic or sometimes
called Christian Aramaic. It's related Semitic language related
to Hebrew and Arabic,
the language of the sort of masses.
Right? The sort of, AMIA.
So he certainly knew that as well.
He probably knew some Latin, which was the
official language of the Roman Empire, and, of
course,
Palestine at the time was a colony
of Rome,
and then,
and then Greek as well, which was widely
spoken in that area. Even, the Romans adopted,
Greek,
in that area in the Middle East and
the ancient Near East. So the Romans spoke
Latin and Greek, so are Yisraeli Salam, and
many of the Jews at the time probably
spoke Greek as well.
But since the New Testament was written in
Greek, in Koine Greek, which is also called
Alexandrian
Greek, So this is the language of Alexander.
But don't forget what Alexander
did
is that he conquered,
all of North Africa
and
and the ancient Near East during his time,
and his
influence in that region was still very much
alive in the 1st century of the Common
Era.
It's called Hellenization,
like Greek influence, and all spheres of life
and many disciplines, including theology and philosophy,
but also cultural aspects,
right, linguistic aspects,
very heavy,
influence.
So the creed begins like this.
And,
if
you're watching live, you can feel free to
ask questions
in the chat box, and I will get
to
them inshallah.
It begins by saying,
pisteo amen, we believe,
So that's the Greek.
It says we believe. That's how the the
creed begins. We believe in one
god,
the father,
means
the panticrator,
the sort of creator of all. Sometimes that's
translated as the almighty.
The Latin says,
so they translate
as basically omnipotent,
and that's why we get the English
almighty.
So the father, we believe in one god,
the father,
the creator of all.
He continues,
the maker of all things seen and unseen.
And we believe, he says,
or they say,
We also believe in one
Lord.
Hurrian means Lord in Greek.
Now this word Lord,
is a tricky word because the word lord
can apply to both god and man
in New Testament Greek.
Right?
Philip in the gospel of John, somebody comes
to Philip and says, kurier. Kurier. Right? Lord.
Lord. Now Philip is certainly not god. Philip
was a disciple of Jesus.
But in the creed, the fathers don't mean
it like that. The fathers mean to say
that Jesus is God. He is divine.
Right?
So it's important for us when we're reading
this creed that we understand these terms as
they were understood,
how they were understood at the time they
were written.
So we have to be a bit of
a, originalist when it comes to these reads.
Right? Just as when we read things in
the New Testament,
when Isa alaihis salam is called Lord, Qurias,
in Matthew, for example, you can make a
good case
that Jews are not referring to Jesus as
lord god. Why would a Jew do that?
A Jew comes to Jesus,
My The Lord God, Lord God.
Right? That's that's kufur. That's apostasy. A Jew
would not do that.
So looking at the sort of context, the
social location
of
Isa alaihis salam himself, the word is a
bit ambiguous.
Can simply mean master or even rabbi. Even
the word rabbi,
rabbi,
right,
means my lord.
Right?
You know, rabbi
Shmueli Botak,
you know, he he's not the lord god.
People refer to him as rabbi,
they mean to say master, teacher.
Right?
But here in the creed, they're taking Kurios
to be a divine title.
And we believe in 1 in 1 lord
Jesus Christ, the son of
God. That's what they say here. The son
of God. And then it says,
which means begotten from the father uniquely.
And they say this is from the essence
of the father.
Right? This is from the to
So what does it mean then Jesus is
the son of God according to Trinitarian Christianity?
What do trinitarians
mean by that? It's important for us not
to build a straw man and say, oh,
Christians believe
that when that that,
God had relations with Mary,
physical relations, and Jesus was
the the offspring of God and Mary in
that that physical sense. That's not what Christians
believe, at least not what Trinitarian Christians believe.
Mormons, on the other hand, do believe that,
but Mormonism is,
a very strange
form of Christianity,
if we can even call it Christianity.
Certainly, Orthodox Christians, whether they're Eastern Orthodox
or Protestant or Catholic,
would probably not consider Mormons to be true
Christians
any more than they would consider Muslims to
be Christians.
But what they mean by son of God
is that
the father
generated
the son.
So we have to be careful about our
language.
Generated, not created.
The Son of God was not created. That's
a heresy.
Right? That was,
Arius' position, who was also at the Council
of Nicaea, by the way. And whether Arius
believed that Jesus or the son was
a a semi deity somehow
is open to debate,
but, certainly,
from what has survived from his writings
and what we can take from his opponents,
albeit with a grain of salt, it seems
as though Arius believed,
that
the the son of God was created by
the father.
So that's not the trinitarian position.
The trinitarian position is that when they say
Jesus is the son of God or when
they say we believe in the son of
God,
right,
That
the meaning of that is
that god generated or caused
the son
to be from his very essence.
Right? From the to
as it says
in the creed. So God did not so
the father did not create
the son
out of nothing.
Right? That's a heresy.
The father created the world out of nothing,
but the father generated
or begot. That's the term they use, begot,
which, of course, has a lot of baggage
to it because we think, okay. This father
begot this son, and this this man begot
this this child.
So we we sort of take it in
this physical sense,
but it's not meant to be taken physically.
Right? That god generated
the son from his own being, and this
was done in pre eternality.
This is their position.
So in other words, there was never a
time when the father was sort of alone
by himself
and then the son came after him. There's
no before or after.
This is in pre eternality. There is no
time
when this happened. Even my language cannot cap
because I'm saying when this there's no when
when this happened.
Right? So this is their position.
He's the son of God in the sense
that he shares an essential essence.
Right? Essence is called that in Arabic.
You know, we say in our theology, no
one shares with Allah's that,
his essence, his his,
attributes,
and his. No one can do the actions
of God.
Right? Whereas the Christians say, no,
God shares.
God is 3 persons, and these these three
persons share
god's essence, actions, and attributes.
One god, but 3 persons.
Right? The essence of the son is identical
to the essence
of the father, but they're different persons. What
does it mean to be a different person?
Meaning, they have different attributes.
Right? For example, the son has the attribute
of begottenness.
He's an effect of the father who is
his cause.
So the father has uncausation,
the son is cause, but they're equal in
essence because the father generated or produced the
son from his very own essence.
This is their position.
Obviously, they're they're
very problematic from our perspective.
The whole idea of a pre eternal sun
seems like a bit of a contradiction.
Pre eternal son. Well, the son is always
an effect of a father, so it comes
after, but you're saying he's pre eternal. So
pre eternal son seems like a bit of
a oxymoron.
Nonetheless, this is their position. And this was
to avoid this idea
that that you, like other Christians at the
time and other and Jews and pagans were
saying about the early Christians,
you're worshiping 2 gods. Just admit it.
You're saying that this god is a son
of god. He has a father.
That's 2 gods.
Right?
Even if this was done before time,
the fact that the son is an effect
of the father, the the fact that the
the the father is
uncaused and produces a son,
even if it's done
before time,
in pre eternality.
The fact that the father is uncaused means
that he is ontologically
superior to the son.
He's a higher state of being.
Right? And so, like, a Neo Platonist or
a Middle Platonist would make that argument.
The Middle Platonist would also say that the
one generated the logos from his being, his
ex deal. But the logos,
who's also divine, is not as divine as
the one because the logos is the effect
of the one, of the cause.
Alright? I think the camera just panned out,
for some reason. There we go.
Okay.
Again, people that are watching, you can ask
questions
for clarification or,
questions that are,
related to,
this topic, Insha'Allah.
So that's what they mean by son of
God. Begotten from the father uniquely, this is
from the essence of the father, and they
continue and say, describing the son.
How do they describe the son?
God from God.
God, capital g, from God, capital g.
Light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten not made. It's a very famous
phrase here. Begotten, not made.
Right?
In
the Greek. What does it mean begotten? Not
meaning,
generated or caused naturally,
not created.
The sun is not created.
What am I what am I mean when
I say the sun? Am I talking about
Jesus of Nazareth? No. I'm not talking about
g Jesus was created.
Jesus was a human being. That's not the
Christian the Christians are not saying that Jesus
is uncreated.
Right?
Jesus was a human being. We're talking about
the son of God
that
incarnated into Jesus of Nazareth,
The essence
that dwelt within,
the flesh of the man Jesus,
is pre eternal, is God.
This is their position.
Right?
So the sun was not willed into existence.
Right? That's Judaism.
Right? That that that god
chooses and wills something to exist.
Whenever he decrees a matter, he merely says
to it be and it is.
Right? That's not what happened with the sun.
He wasn't willed into existence,
and it wasn't sort of this involuntary
emanation
that happened.
That's the sort of Neo Platonic idea. That's
how the logos in Neo Platonism
and Middle Platonism
came to exist,
that God, the one, was sort of thinking
about his own thoughts,
as they say, and there was an involuntary
sort of spillage of light.
Right? And this light became the logos,
the second,
tier of being in this hierarchy of being.
Right? So it wasn't it wasn't something willed.
It wasn't involuntary.
They used the word naturally. The son was
born just naturally from the father.
What they mean is it's just who God
is.
God is naturally a father. He's always been
a father.
Right?
That's just who he is. God is personal.
He's social.
He is he he is in relationships.
Right? This type of thing.
Begotten, not made. Then they say co substantial
with the father.
And this is also a famous phrase,
or
So, again, a little bit of,
a Greek lesson.
I don't wanna get too
I didn't intend to get so technical with
these classes. I was told to keep it
very, very simple,
but,
I I I I don't think it's too
difficult, but, we do have to sort of,
push ourselves a little bit to get more
of a substantive understanding of these things. It's
still not difficult, I think.
So if we look at the word homoousian,
h h o m o, homo means
same. Right? Like, homosexual.
Right? Everyone knows that word.
So that's from a Greek,
homo same. Homo in Latin means man, like
homo erectus.
Right? Like the man who stands upright.
Right? So that's a different language. So
so means same or means same.
Means,
essence.
Same essence.
This is a position
of
the
Trinitarians called homoousian
Christology.
That word, homoousian, is mentioned here in the
Nicene Creed. It is not mentioned anywhere in
the New Testament.
Right?
This term
is so important,
yet it is not mentioned in the New
Testament. Now now Christians will counter here
and say, oh, yeah? Well, what's the most
important theological concept in Islam? We say tawhid,
and the Christian will say, take the Quran
and show me the word tawhid in the
Quran.
It's not in the Quran.
So the the Christian point here is that
the concept of Tawhid
is in the Quran just as the concept
of hamausian,
same essence Christology
is found in, the New Testament.
And that's,
the latter obviously is open to debate,
that,
Christians certainly take that position.
The Aryans certainly did not take that position.
The early Christians did not take that position,
or at least the Christians in the 2nd
century that did not believe
that the son was equal to the father.
They still revered these four texts. I mean,
the Arians still believed in the gospel of
John.
Jesus says in John 10:30 remember those I
am statements we talked about last week?
That logic tells us we're probably never uttered
by Jesus, but let's just entertain the text
for now. Let's say he did say that,
the father and I are 1. So trinitarians,
they say, You see? The father and I
are 1. They're the same essence.
Right? I mean, that's sort of a a
well, it is a giant leap to go
from a statement the father and I are
one to saying that they're the same essence.
Jesus is a 100% god. He is cosubstantially
god.
The Aryans also believed in that statement.
What did they how did they interpret that
statement?
Well, they would look at it in its
context.
Right?
So,
he's Jesus is talking,
to the Pharisees, and he's saying that,
you know, the,
I'm I'm watching over my disciples. No one
can * them out of my hand.
In other words, no one can take them
out of my protection. I'm watching over them.
And then he says the father who is
greater than all
is also watching over them,
and no one can * them out of
his hand.
The father and I are 1.
So one in purpose,
one in,
intention.
Right? Not one in essence.
1 in,
in in,
in objective
to protect the disciples
from the enemies.
Right? So would read it in its context.
So, anyway, so you have,
homoiousian
Christology, and then you have something homoiousian,
h o
m o I,
just an iota in Greek.
So the difference between the words
homo and homo homoi,
h o m o I, is a difference
of 1 iota, one iota.
But it makes a difference in in theology.
So
Christology
means that the father and son are exactly
the same essence,
Whereas, Hormoy Hussian Christology,
which,
could have been the position of Arius,
I don't think it was, but some have
argued that that the son is similar in
his essence to the father.
He's still divine, but he's not as divine
as the father. But he's still not the
same. He's not like a human being.
Right? He's he's sort of in this middle
space.
Right? So
means similar.
Means the same. And then, of course, you
have heteroousian.
Hetero, like, again, heterosexual.
In Greek means another.
Right? Another essence,
And this is a position
of Unitarian Christians
that the son of God the son of
God, that's a title. It's honorific. It's Taqqrimi.
It's majaz,
figurative.
It's just a way of sort of exalting
Isa, alayhis salam.
It's not to be taken literal in any
way, shape, or form.
Right? And that Jesus' essence is other than
God,
the father. By father, they mean, again, the
the
Lord. That's also a figurative,
expression.
Okay.
And then they say here,
so cosubstantial
with the father through whom
all things in heaven and earth became.
The one, meaning the son,
the son of
God, who for the sake of us human
beings and for the sake of our salvation,
came down,
and became flesh
and,
dwelled in man.
Right?
Is
the Greek, but the Latin translation
says
Right?
In means in. Means
flesh.
Like, if you ever had some chili con
carne,
chili with meat or flesh.
Right?
So the son of God, he descended
from the metaphysical realm
and incarnated
into a human being,
Jesus of Nazareth,
2000 years ago according to
Trinitarian
Christianity.
And then they continue,
became flesh and dwelled in man, we said
that, suffered and rose on the 3rd day,
ascended into the heavens,
and will come to judge the living and
the dead.
So,
belief in the second coming will he will
basically be the judge on the Yom
Kiyama.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit. So
that's all the Holy Spirit gets
in the Nicene Creed. He just gets that
one little thing at the end, and, by
the way, we believe in the Holy Spirit.
Because the Holy Spirit is not on the
table for discussion
at the Council of Nicaea. That's gonna come
at the next council.
Right? What happened at Nicaea is
they're simply dealing with the Son of God.
Is the son of God
the same essence as the father or a
different essence or a similar essence?
That's that's what's on the table.
And, of course, they voted,
and Christians,
like,
Christians believe
that,
and Catholics still believe this,
that at the Council of Nicaea,
there were actually 319
persons there.
So 318 bishops, and then the Holy Spirit
was there. And the Holy Spirit
sort
of guides the discussion
of the bishops
towards the right answer.
Right?
So
what doctrine or dogma is hammered out at
these
ecumenical councils and there have been 20
22 of them, I believe. The last one
was in the 19 sixties called Bacon 2.
So the the first seven of them are
believed to are are accepted by Protestant Christians,
Roman Catholics,
and Eastern Orthodox.
And then,
after that, from 8 to 21 or 22,
those are only those are,
the decisions
are believed by Catholics only.
So the Eastern Orthodox stop after 7, and
so do the Protestant,
Christians.
So if in other words, all Trinitarian Christians
believe
that whatever came out of the Council of
Nicaea, which was the first ecumenical council, it
is infallible
because
it was,
it was a product of the providence of
the Holy Spirit,
who is also the 3rd person of the
trinity.
We don't get that here in the creed
yet, but we will get that
later.
And then
the very last part of the creed here,
they actually quote
the proto orthodox or trinitarian
I mean, they're not trinitarian
at this point again.
So I'm using trinitarian as
somewhat anachronistic.
Right?
So
we could say proto the proto orthodox bishops,
they quote their theological
opponents here and say, as for those who
say, there was once when when he was
not.
Right? So they're actually quoting the Aryans.
This was a sort of
credo of the Arians,
in the early 4th century. And, of course,
again, Arius is present at the council.
What did they used to say?
There was a time when he was not.
There was a time when the son of
God did not exist.
Right?
So the son that is not pre eternal.
They're saying those who say that, and then
they quote a few other things,
that the Arians were saying out of non
being he became and,
the sun is changeable or alterable.
These, the universal and apostolic church,
deems accursed,
anathematizes.
I mean, that's that's the the Greek word,
which is where we get the word anathematize.
In other words,
they're saying that we are pronouncing
kufur.
We're making takfir,
right,
of the Aryans now,
That that the Arian position
that the son of God is not pre
eternal and not fully God
is
Right? So that's the that's the Nicene Creed.
Now
a few years later,
in 3/81,
they held another council.
It's called the Council of Constantinople.
Right? So they're both in Turkey. Constantinople
means the the polis of Constantine,
the city of Constantine, which is now Istanbul
in Turkey.
So now the bit the Roman empress Theodosius
the first,
and he's definitely a Christian.
There's no doubt about it. A 115
bishops are present. So what's the issue now?
So the issue at or the the problem
for the proto orthodox
at Nicaea was these Arians who are saying
that the son of God
is inferior to the father.
So they put it to vote
and majority rules,
and the son of God officially becomes God
the son after the Council of Nicaea. In
381, now the the issue is, what about
the Holy Spirit?
So now you have Christians who are saying,
okay, fine.
The Son and Father are hamausian.
They are the same essence.
But the Holy Spirit is inferior to both
of them.
So you have you don't have a trinity.
You have I don't even know what the
word is.
You have a a biunity, because trinity comes
from triune and then unity.
So so they're saying now there's the father
and the son. That's the true god. And
then beneath them,
you have the Holy Spirit,
who's not quite God.
Right?
And, and then you have the rest of
creation beneath the Holy Spirit.
Right? So these enemies were dubbed pneumotemacians
by the proto orthodox. These are that literally
means the spirit fighters,
those who are fighting against the Holy Spirit
and will not recognize
the full divinity
of the Holy Spirit.
So Theodosius the first, he called for this
council.
And
after, again, many deliberations,
they came to the conclusion that indeed the
Holy Spirit is also God.
Hamaousian,
pneumatology.
Holy Spirit
shares an essential essence
with the Father and the Son, although he's
a different person.
We have 3 persons, one essence.
Three persons, one essence. There was a Christian
theologian in the Middle Ages,
Hilary of Poitiers,
who came up with this diagram, and it's
a very famous diagram. Basically, it's a triangle.
Right?
And this is supposed to sort of be
a diagram, if you will, of the trinity.
So you have a triangle.
At each point, you have father, son, holy
spirit.
Right?
And so imagine that
on on each side of the triangle,
you have the words is not
is not. So equilateral equilateral triangle.
At each point, father, son, holy spirit. And
then written along the lines of all three
sides,
is not. So in other words, the son
is not the father. You're a different person.
The father is not the spirit, the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the son.
Right? So this is their belief.
3 separate and distinct persons.
Now imagine
3
lines, 3 arrows,
coming or pointing towards the middle of the
triangle from each
corner.
And at the center
And
on the lines of these arrows is is.
So in other words, the Son is God.
The Holy Spirit is God. The Father is
God.
Right?
Probably would have been better if I brought
visual aids of some sort, but you can
Google this,
Hilary of Poitier,
the triangle
diagram of the trinity.
Right?
Persons
separate and distinct
who are all 3 god because they share
an they share an essence.
The analogy that we can maybe use here,
and there's no there's no,
adequate analogy,
but
Christians have,
you know, they've tried to posit
approximations,
like, for example,
a water.
Right?
You have water that can exist in 3
different states.
You have liquid, vapor, and ice,
and all 3 are h two o, essentially.
One essence, three forms.
The problem with that is
that you can't get all three forms at
the same time in place.
That's what I'm told at least, so it's
inadequate.
Another example is or analogy is like an
egg. It's a very famous analogy.
They say god is like an egg.
So there's 3 parts.
There's a shell, there's a yolk,
and there's a white,
yet it's one egg. The problem with this
analogy is that if I just took the
shell of the egg and I put it
off to the corner,
can I still call that egg?
I can't. Now it's just shell.
But if I took the son of God
and isolated him, he's totally 100%
in and of himself god.
So that analogy doesn't quite work either.
So
3 persons that share an essence. It's like,
it's like 3 species
of the same genera.
So imagine you had,
imagine you had 3 species of shark.
Right? So what makes a shark?
How do we know what a shark is?
We have to abstract the essence from attributes.
A shark in other words, a shark has
certain attributes.
And if it doesn't have those attributes, it
doesn't qualify as being a shark.
A shark has a dorsal fin.
A shark has, is is is made of
cartilage.
A shark has teeth. It has these sort
of dots on its nose where it can
sort of detect motion in the water.
It has,
it has a vertical tail.
Right?
If a shark didn't have one of these
things, it's not a shark.
Right? So it so that's how we establish
the essence of shark or sharkiness.
Right? So imagine you have a hammerhead shark,
you have a great white shark,
and you have a a bull shark.
Right?
So you have you have
you have 3,
as it were, persons of shark that all
share in the essence of sharkiness.
Three persons of god so the bull shark
by itself is totally shark
even though it lacks an attribute of the
great white.
Right? Or it lacks an attribute of the
hammerhead. The bull shark's head is not like
a hammer,
but it is a 100%
shark.
Right?
This analogy also doesn't work because each one
of these sharks has its own consciousness.
Right?
A great white shark is over eating something.
This bull shark over here is,
I don't know, just swimming around.
But with the trinity,
Father, Son, Holy Spirit are inseparable in action
and
thought. It's called
in Greek.
Whatever the son is doing, it necessitates
the participation
at some level
of the father and the Holy Spirit.
So the great white shark is eating something.
The bull shark has no idea what that
shark is doing.
So
maybe a better analogy is imagine
3 people
that all share a mind.
Right? You have 3
different people.
Let's say,
I don't know.
You have Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Right? And,
but they all share a mind. It's one
consciousness.
So if Peter
has a thought, Mary and
Paul have that thought.
If Peter, you know, is hungry, the other
2 as well. If Peter stubs his toe,
the other 2 feel it as well. One
mind, one consciousness.
Right?
So the son of God, according
Christians, according to trinitarians,
does not have the attribute
of uncaustation.
Only the father has that.
But Christians will argue that still does not
deny him his
godness,
the essence of godness.
Just as,
again, using this crude analogy, just as the,
the
the fact that the,
the great white shark doesn't have a hammerhead
does not deny
the great white shark of its full sharkiness
as it were.
Right?
Okay.
I mean, the big question is, you know,
how did we get here?
How do you
how did they get from,
you know,
a a a a basic and simple message
of Tawhid
being in Northern Palestine
by a Jewish prophet
to,
you know, 3 hypostases,
1, usia, peri, koresis, hama usian,
this type of thing.
I would say
it's from Hellenistic influence.
Right?
We have to be careful about that,
because
as we said in the past,
the Greeks were very gifted. I mean, the
Arabs say,
that wisdom descended upon 3 people,
the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Arabs. Of
course, the Arabs also had Wahi.
But Hikma is not Wahi, but it's but
it's very close. It's a great type of
wisdom,
they were given. So there's a lot of
truth in what they're saying. I mean, Aristotle
was incredible
intellect.
Plato, an an incredible intellect.
Right? So we can take from Greek
thought and, you know,
logic,
ethics even,
as long as it doesn't contradict our,
our essentials.
But Greek metaphysics, we have to be careful
about.
Right?
And this is what Ghazali says. Ghazali was
not anti scholastic.
He didn't condemn all things Greek or Hellenistic.
He was he he was a great proponent
of logic.
Right? In his text on
as the is the is the intellect, is
reason.
When Allah says in the Quran,
judge by a just balance, Ghazali says, that's
using your reason, using logic. He'll argue that
the prophet in the Quran, they appeal to
logic, logic arguments.
Ibrahim alayhis salam is appealing to logic
when he's when he's telling, Nimrud
that, you know, bring bring the sun,
from the east from the west and put
it in the east.
He's teaching him a lesson that you're not
god. You have you have a very limited
volition. You don't have you're not omnipotent.
Right?
So when it comes to metaphysics, we have
to be careful. So that's that's what I
would say
is that
a,
a significant influence
of Hellenistic metaphysics
just saturated
the early proto orthodox Christians, many of whom
were
basically pagan philosophers
pagan philosophers
before they became Christian, like Justin Martyr,
as an example.
So they took these concepts and they apply
it to
the basically, the Judaism,
the Tawhid,
that Islam that was by the prophet Isa
alaihis salam.
And, of course, if you don't have a
basis in Sharia, you don't have a basis
in law,
you don't have a basis,
in
theology correct theology,
then you're going to make these theological and
metaphysical mistakes.
Okay.
So just have a few minutes.
The Council of,
Constantinople
revised
the Council of Nicaea,
and now we have something called the Niceno
Constantinople
Constantinopleitan
Creed, the Niceno Constantinopolitan
Creed
of 381, which is the first truly Trinitarian
Creed, because all three constituents
are now dealt with: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
So now, 381 of the Common Era, you
have Trinitarianism
officially.
So this is sort of a Nicene Creed
2.0.
It's very much similar. There are some additions.
We believe in one God, the Father, the
creator, the maker of heaven and earth, and
all things seen and unseen. We believe in
one Lord Jesus Christ, the unique son of
God.
Now they add the one begotten from the
Father before all the ages.
Right? So they're they're not just stressing
the pre temporality of the sun, which seems
to have been the Arian position.
Aries says, okay, fine. The sun
the sun predates time.
He's the first creation.
Right? That still doesn't make him god,
just the first creation.
But what they're saying here in this creed
is no,
it's not he's not pretemporal, he's pre eternal.
The son shares an essential pre eternality
with the father, so he's not a possible
being. So, you know, if the son is
the first of creation, then he's still just
a possible
essential pre eternality, then he's a necessary being.
There's 2 types of being.
Right? There's there mumkinat,
possible beings, and then there's
There's the necessary being, the necessary
existent.
So that's what they're saying here. He's absolutely
necessary.
Light from light, true God from true God.
That's Now they're saying They're going back to
the Nicene
Creed begotten, not made, cosubstantial,
so on and so forth. And then they
say he became flesh, and then they add
by the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin.
So they mention here
these sort of parents, as it were, of
of Jesus.
Mary is mentioned
explicitly now in the creed, so the status
of Mary
keeps climbing. By the next ecumenical council,
431, the Council of Ephesus,
Mary will be given the title of Theotus,
which is sometimes translated as mother of God,
but that's not a good translation.
It really means the bearer or carrier of
God.
Right?
And then, in the 19th 20th centuries,
at the strictly Roman Catholic councils,
Mary
the the Catholics believe that Mary was assumed
into heaven. She never died. She she was
carried into heaven, and they also,
espoused the the belief in what's known as
the immaculate
conception
that Mary was conceived without sin. She never
had original sin.
Those are much later developments.
And then they continue.
And they say something now that's not a
Nicene Creed. He was crucified.
You notice the Nicene Creed did not say
crucified.
The Nicene Creed said, suffered and rose on
the 3rd day.
So they want to make it that doesn't
mean that the bishops at Nicaea did not
believe Jesus was crucified. Of course they believe
Jesus was crucified,
but they just want to be more explicit
here.
He was crucified
for our sake under Pontius Pilate Now they
mention
explicitly
the Roman governor of Judea,
who was Pontius Pilate. So they want to
situate, it seems,
Jesus in
history, that he was,
really crucified.
It is historical.
It's not a myth. It wasn't a rumor.
Right? He was crucified
by Pontius Pilate.
Right? It's not just it's not just saying
he suffered. What do you mean he suffered?
That's so vague and Okay. Fine. He was
crucified, but,
you know,
can anyone corroborate that? Here it is, yes,
he was crucified,
under Pontius Pilate
and suffered
and was buried. So they do mention suffering
too, and was buried. That's something new,
we get here,
in this creed. So it seems like they
want to say that it was an actual
body.
Right? Because you have different types of literal
docetism. That's another term for you. Docetism.
Very common
Christology Christological belief in the 1st few centuries
of Christianity.
You have docetic Gnosticism
that espoused that, Jesus never had a physical
body.
So you can't you can't bury a phantasm.
That that's what he was. He was just
he was just a sort of ghost.
You have docetic
docetic substitutionism,
this belief that,
Jesus's body,
somehow escaped
the crucifixion.
Someone else was crucified.
Right?
It's called the substitution
theory.
Someone else
Vasiliades believed that Simon of Cyrene
was supernaturally
transferred,
transformed,
transfigured
is the term he uses, transfiguratum,
that that Jesus was transfigured to look like
Simon and vice versa.
That's called docetic substitutionism.
You also have docetic separationism,
also a belief of some of the Gnostics
that, okay, Jesus had a flesh body,
and, okay, you know, they're crucifying him, but
at some point,
his soul left his body
before his body died.
So his body didn't actually,
so so he didn't actually feel the pain,
as it were, of the crucifixion.
They simply crucified an empty shell of a
body.
Right?
So they're saying here
he was buried. He was crucified under Pontius
Pilate. He was suffered, and he was buried.
The body was underground,
or he was in the tomb, in this
case, and rose on the 3rd day, and
then they add according to the scriptures.
They didn't say that in the Nicene Creed.
So this is very important for them, fulfillment
of scripture, that this was foretold to happen.
Right? The Jews at the time, they had
this belief. And I also believe that what
the Jews were expecting about the Messiah, by
the way, was erroneous. But their belief was
this Messiah will be a military leader.
That he will come and he will,
you know, he will take up the sword,
and he will completely annihilate
these heathens, these Romans,
and purify the land
that God gave us
as an inheritance.
Right? So,
so, obviously, Jesus didn't do that.
So the Jews were going to the early
Christians and saying, what kind of messiah is
this?
You know? He gets killed?
You know? What are you talking about? How
can this be the Messiah?
So the Christian retort can only be, well,
you're misreading your scripture.
And I think the Jews were misreading the
scripture. But then now we have compounded misreadings
where the Christians are saying, oh, look over
here in Isaiah 53.
There's this prophecy of someone who's going to
be
crushed for our iniquities,
the suffering servant,
and this is about
the Jewish Messiah. Right? Of course, nowhere in
that text
does it even mention the word Messiah
at all,
but
Christians would go back into these texts,
and they would sort of rework them
and interpret them to fit in with what
they believed happened,
to Jesus. Isaiah 53,
you know, this person,
whoever this person is who's being tortured
is is saying he says I was I
was led as a lamb to the slaughter.
They cut me off from the land of
the living. That's from Isaiah 53.
And the Christians say, yes. That's exactly what
happened to Jesus.
But if you read the if you read
the book of Jeremiah,
Jeremiah actually says those words
and applies it to himself.
I was as a dumb lamb led to
the slaughter.
I opened not my mouth. I was cut
off from the land of the living.
So it seems whoever wrote Isaiah 53 was
sitting in Babylon after the exile and was
remembering the words of Jeremiah. Jeremiah
is the suffering servant.
I mean, it just works out completely by
looking at the text.
But this is how to justify
what happened to Jesus.
Right?
That it was, they say, according to the
scriptures,
and is sent into heaven and is seated
at the right hand of the father,
and he will come again with glory. So
they add that part too. He's seated at
the right hand of the father. Not that
like, he's seated next to the father like
vizier or something. No. He's seated on the
same level. They share a throne.
That's what they mean by this.
To judge the living and the dead according
to them will be the judge.
And the Quran says,
Jesus is not judging anyone
on the Yom Kiyama.
You'll be questioned in front of the whole
of humanity
according to the Quran.
Of course, his response,
glory be to you. Never did I say
what I had no right to say. I
said.
So
let's see how we're doing on time. Yeah.
It's it's 9 o'clock now. There's there's a
few more things mentioned in the creed, but
but basically, they just repeat the Nicene Creed.
So we've we've,
come to the end of our section on
Christianity.
As you can see that it's quite involved
and requires I hope these sessions just sort
of inspire you to do,
some more research.
So next week, we're going to get into
Hinduism, go way back in time,
and look at the basic tenets and beliefs
of Hinduism.