Ali Ataie – Christianity in a Nutshell The Basics of World Religions (Part 6)
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AI: Transcript ©
So this is our
final session on Christianity.
So last time we talked about
the 4 gospels
and something of the Christology.
Christology is a 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 a 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 believed 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 believed that not only
was he both divine and human,
that he became divine
at his birth.
You had Christians who believed that he became
divine at his baptism.
There were Christians who believed that he became
divine at his resurrection.
It's called exaltation Christology.
You had Christians who believed that he was
always divine,
right, that he was the preexistent
or pre eternal son, 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.
Like god putting on 3 different masks. One
person of god
who has sort of 3 modes. So he
father and then he
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
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 Constantine 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.
Right? That means the bishops
that attended the council.
So
they say
and it begins and it's written in Greek.
Right?
Whether
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 it's 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 Isai alaihi 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.
So 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,
Right? 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 in
It begins by saying,
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 pantocrater,
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.
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,
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 is
called lord,
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 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,
right, means my lord.
Right? You know, Rabbi
Shmueli Botak,
you know, he he's not the Lord God.
When people refer to him as rab
rabbi,
they mean to say master, teacher.
Right?
But here in the creed, they're taking
to be a divine title.
And we believe in one in one 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 in 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
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 Arias 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 sun
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 sifaat,
his,
attributes,
and his.
No one can do the actions of god.
Right? Whereas a Christian say, no.
God shares.
God is 3 persons, and these these 3
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
very problematic
from our perspective.
The whole idea of a pre eternal son
seems like a bit of a contradiction.
Preeternal 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 his 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 neoplatonist 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.
Right?
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.
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 made? Meaning
generated or caused naturally,
not created.
The sun is not created.
What do I what do 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
homoousiano,
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
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 tawheed,
and the Christian will say, take the Quran
and show me the word in the Quran.
It's not in the Quran.
So the the Christian point here
is that the concept of
is in the Quran just as the concept
of,
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
I well, it is a giant leap to
go from a statement the father and I
are 1 to saying that they're the same
essence. Jesus is a 100% god. He is
cosponsually
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 1 in purpose,
1 in,
intention.
Right? Not one in essence.
1 in,
in
in
in objective
to protect the disciples
from the enemies.
Right? So we'd read it in its context.
So, anyway,
so you have,
homoiousian
Christology, and then you have something,
h o
m o I,
just an iota in Greek.
So the difference between the words
homo
and homoi,
h o m o I, is a difference
of 1 iota 1 iota.
But it makes a difference in in theology.
So
Christology
means that the father and son are exactly
the same essence.
Whereas
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 homoi 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
It's
figurative.
It's just a way of sort of exalting
It's not to be taken literal in any
way, shape, or form.
Right?
And that Jesus' essence is other than god,
the father. And 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?
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 al 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
the decisions are believed by Catholics only.
So the Eastern Orthodox stop after 7 and
so do the Protestant,
Christians.
So 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.
I mean, 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 he was not.
Right? So they're actually quoting the Arians.
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 nonbeing
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.
We're making,
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 381,
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
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
They're 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 byunity 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
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.
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 Poitier,
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.
And 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 triangleagram
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, 3 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 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 to Christians,
according to trinitarians,
does not have the attribute
of uncausation.
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
being
in Northern Palestine by a Jewish prophet
to,
you know, 3 hypothesis,
1,
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
But is not 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, logical 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, that Islam that was by the prophet,
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 NICEA,
and now we have something called the Niceno
Constantinople
Constantinopleitan
Creed, the Niceno Constantinopleitan
Creed of 3.81, 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
1 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 pretemporality
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 being. But if he has an
essential pre eternality, then he's a necessary being.
There's 2 types of being.
Right? There's there
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, cosa substantial, 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,
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 wanna 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? He's not just he'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, who 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.
It'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'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, Vasiliides 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 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
this 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
judged on the In the Quran, it says,
Allah
Did you ever say to the people that
you or your mother are divinities?
Jesus is not judging anyone
on
the He will 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 tenants and beliefs
of Hinduism.