The absence of the word 'Trinity' in early Christian writings does not mean the concept was absent; the early Church Fathers from the first three centuries taught the deity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and the hypostatic union of Christ being 100% divine and 100% human is a union without change, confusion, diminution, or division, not a new third thing (tertium quid).
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TRINITY IS FALSE!? Muslim Objections Against The Trinity Thoroughly OBLITERATED by Jay DyerAdded:
that's I think it's probably related to this one, too, that um the church fathers in the first 300 years before the Council of Nicaea also did not uh talk about a trinity. But um I'm not sure >> are super this is really Yeah. some texts um which do talk about it.
>> Yeah, this is really low-tier objections. So, the word trinity has nothing to do with whether or not the idea of the trinity is present. Do you understand that?
Yeah. Right. So, I can coin a term later on down the road like, for example, the fifth council coining the term. By the way, uh Right. So, the the patristic tradition of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit being divine, you could easily look that up on any even Catholic website like within 5 minutes. For example, uh what just I mean I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I'm just saying this is so easily verifiable. For example, what the early church believed about the trinity. And this is just two pages of quotes from uh the Excuse me, three pages of quotes from the first three centuries about the deity of the persons of the triad. It would take you about 5 minutes to find and read that. So, I'm not trying to be mean to you. I'm just saying I don't understand this Muslim objection because they love to go to this and I don't know where or how they've come up with this because it's one of the dumbest things that they argue.
Cuz you could literally find within 5 minutes that even if you think it's wrong, it's just simply obviously not the case that the post-apostolic fathers from the time of Ignatius, Clement, uh up to Nicaea, that they denied the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
Like it's just obviously that they they don't have to use the word trinity.
Right? I don't understand why people can't get Even Trent Horn couldn't get this argument, right?
It doesn't matter whether the word Trinity is used. What matters is, as St. Jerome says, the concept or the ideas behind the word. If it was a matter of the words, then we could never translate the gospel into other languages. How could we translate the the New Testament into Aleut or something like this? Or how could we convey these ideas to them if it was all hinging on the Latin word Trinitas? This is so dumb. It's like the lowest IQ possible objection. And I think what it is is that a lot of Muslims don't know anything, so they just kind of go to like evangelical liberals, and they go to dumb cults like Seventh-day Adventists or people like this or or Jehovah's Witnesses, and they look for They just look for like Googled like proof texts that the Church Fathers don't teach the Trinity. And they usually argue from the position first that the word Trinity isn't used until uh Tertullian or something. Cuz again, it's nothing to do with whether the ideas are there.
Because, I mean, my whole presentation, the first 15 minutes, was that first of all, first, second century Judaism was not a monolithic entity.
And the idea that it was a strict unitarianism is not clear until Maimonides.
So, Maimonides is one of the first clear argumentations of a strict unitarian philosophy for Judaism. Now, that doesn't mean that there's no uh unitarian ideas in the first and second century. It's just simply to say that if you read Segal, if you read Summer, if you read Peter Schäfer, if you read Boyarin, all the people that I cited, all the Jewish scholars that I cited in the first 15-minute opening statement, you will see that they make the point very clear that first-century Judaism, second-century Judaism is not a monolithic unitarian enterprise.
In fact, there are admissions of three hypostases, Sommer says.
You see? So, they're just simply being honest with what Boyarin says, quote, "First-century Christianity is a conservative Judaic movement." Meaning that they read the texts of the Torah and the prophets in a conservative way such that they recognize Yahweh, the angel of the Lord, and his spirit present throughout all of those texts from Genesis up to the minor prophets, especially Ezekiel, Isaiah.
Right? So, do you see what I'm saying is that I'm not saying that Judaism is true. I'm not saying that it's true because Jewish scholars are saying it, okay? I'm saying that the Jewish scholars are admitting our point. That's That's the argument.
You understand?
All right. Okay. So, yeah, thanks for the clarification. I will look into this.
Um, I have one final question.
>> Sure.
Um, and it has to do with the hypostatic union, which I was a little bit confused by. Uh, this was also a point of contention that Hijab brought up in the debate, and his contention was that how can Jesus Christ be 100% human but at the same time be 100% divine?
And he was taking it into like a logical direction that you can't really believe in a squared circle.
And yeah, I would be interested to know what your response to that one is.
Well, that would be a false analogy because a square is one thing and a circle is another thing.
So, the idea that one thing could not have two different properties or the 100% of two different things is just a basic philosophical misunderstanding. So, in other words, um, if I take an object and I compose it of two different things, um, I don't know. Let me What's Let's Let's say uh I take a uh Let's say I take two pieces of LEGOs, right?
And I combine the two pieces of LEGOs.
And one of them is a circle LEGO, and one of them is a square LEGO. And I have And they perfectly fit together, right?
Isn't it true to say that the new object is 100% circle LEGO and 100% square LEGO?
Uh Yeah, I guess so. Right. So, it doesn't mean that the new object is a tertium quid. Do you know what a tertium quid is?
Uh no.
Yeah, so you should learn this term. So, a tertium quid is a new third thing, okay? The Muslim argument there is hinging on the new thing that's a result of the hypostatic union being a new third type of object that is a single individuated object. That's why the Orthodox Church and even the Roman Catholic Church believes that Christ maintains the two distinct natures even after the union.
Does that make sense?
Okay. Yeah. So, it doesn't become a new third god-man hybrid thing. It retains the properties, the natural properties, of the divinity and the humanity even after the union.
So, in other words, in other words, what Muhammad Hijab or whoever you're talking about is arguing against, it would be more akin to arguing against the Monophysite or the Coptic position, which typically thinks that maybe not in every one of their theologians' case, but in many cases they've argued that Christ is a tertium quid, a third thing.
Mm okay. Yeah. Do you understand that?
Or I'm not calling you out. Hold on.
Does that Does that answer the question that's um that Jesus uh cannot be 100% divine at the same time as being 100% Okay, again. In the LEGOs, okay?
If I take one circle Lego and I squish it to a square Lego, it's a new it's a new it's a new thing, but it still has the properties of both the square and the circle, right?
Yeah. Okay. So, it's not a tert- it's not a tertium quid that it meaning it's not a It is a third thing in the sense that it's a it's a new a new reality, but the new reality didn't destroy the circle and the square previous reality.
It still retains the properties of both while being a new thing.
>> [clears throat] >> And that new thing would be the for Jesus Christ >> union. So, now the second person of the Godhead >> Okay. the second person of the Godhead has entered into a new mode of being as incarnate. That's the new third thing.
But it's not a tertium quid that destroys the realities of the properties of the previous state.
So, the divinity did not change and become man. This is why we say he underwent no change in the incarnation.
Okay. He entered into a new mode of being without losing or altering or changing his deity.
All right. Okay. Well, I have to I will have to look into the tertium quid as you said more to wrap my head around this concept. So, the concept again to make it clear is tertium quid is a new third thing such that it no longer has the properties of the previous, okay?
Jesus didn't lose the properties of deity and humanity in the incarnation.
It's that simple. Okay. Yeah. All right.
And Monophysite theology, Coptic theology, has tended to say that Christ is a new third thing that is not divine nor human. It's a divino-human hybrid, right?
Anyway, good questions. Just think about that.
It might take you a little bit for that to click, but um you know, I mean, I it's just kind of like >> [sighs] >> it's it's it's weird to me that they they So, one of the reason that they have a hard time, I think, with 100% God, 100% man is that they they're thinking in terms of counting by identity, which is really hilarious because obviously we don't typically count by identity. We count by division. And the church fathers and the creed all count by division.
This is not counting by identity.
Sometimes you can count by identity, and we'll get into this more in the future uh when Dr. Branson comes on.
Uh we'll be covering [clears throat] some of these papers, and we'll be covering counting by identity and counting by division.
Typically speaking, we count by um division, especially when it comes to uh the ancient medieval world. This is why the creed says he's uh undivided, right? God is undivided.
Maximus uses the same ideas uh about the energies. The energies are one and many, and they're indivisible and undivided in their uh multiplicity, right? That's a terminology that Maximus uses.
And so, it's a way to note that we're not counting by identity in the ancient medieval world, although there are instances where you do that. For example, uh in objects of second order imposition, those are uh at times or most often counted by identity. For example, sets.
You can't count sets, and you can't count uh things like abstract groupings like the 10 category Aristotle's categories, you have to count those by identity Uh because there's no you can't for example think of a third of a set or a third of a law of logic. So objects like that second-order imposition they're sometimes counted or they're oftentimes counted by identity.
But most things are counted by division.
And it's very we'll get into this more in the future. It's not today's topic.
Uh but it's very easy to show that you don't count by identity. I mean you can use a piece of paper to show it. But also uh the analogy of Legos is helpful because it's just an analogy.
So and it's just showing that saying something is 100% one thing and 100% another thing in its joining has nothing to do with the two different diaphysite things changing.
So it's a union without change, confusion, diminution, or distinction, or division.
Pretty simple.
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