The Orthodox Muslim Debunks the Incarnation?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01][music] [music] So, uh, some of the rational arguments.

[00:00:12]>> Let me present an argument, >> the best ones that you can. Okay.

[00:00:15]>> That you've used.

[00:00:15]>> I'm going to present the two best most simple arguments.

[00:00:18]>> Sure.

[00:00:19]>> Okay. Against the incarnation first.

[00:00:22]>> Okay.

[00:00:22]>> And then against the trinity.

[00:00:24]>> Sure.

[00:00:24]>> Okay.

[00:00:25]>> Okay. Let's see his argument against the incarnation.

[00:00:29]So the argument against the incarnation is as follows.

[00:00:35]If it is the case that Jesus is truly God and truly man and it is the case that Jesus bears all the predicates of humanity and all the predicates of divinity. That is to say Jesus has all the attributes of humanity and all the attributes of divinity.

[00:00:53]>> Okay. Cool. It is a predicate of humanity to be mutable.

[00:00:59]It is a predicate of divinity. Divinity to be immutable.

[00:01:03]Cool.

[00:01:05]Immutability.

[00:01:05]>> Can you define predicate for those who >> it's a it's a predicate is something picked out about the thing. It's a description about the thing. An attribute.

[00:01:14]>> Okay.

[00:01:14]>> I guess you could say. Okay. So Jesus has all the human attributes. All the divine attributes.

[00:01:20]>> Mutability is a human attribute.

[00:01:22]Mutability is sus being susceptible to change. Mhm.

[00:01:26]>> Immutability is a divine attribute.

[00:01:29]>> It's uh >> unchanging.

[00:01:31]>> Okay.

[00:01:32]>> Now, if Jesus is a person, >> yeah, >> then he is the subject of predication meaning we are given these attributes to Jesus and not to natures because natures are the set of attributes themselves.

[00:01:54]We're off to a bad start. No, natures are not just sets of attributes. That is a modern analytic tradition way of defining what a nature is. Even in classical Islamic theology, natures are just not the sets of predicates, right?

[00:02:12]They're not the sets of attributes.

[00:02:14]That's why in his own theology, they make the distinction between the attributes of Allah and the essence, right? So, no, we're already off to a bad start. Classical Christianity is fundamentally arisatilian in which Aristotle does not just define nessence as the set of properties or attributes or whatever it is. It is the quiddity of a thing.

[00:02:39]>> True.

[00:02:40]>> Sure. Okay.

[00:02:41]>> When Christians say Jesus has a human nature and a divine nature, Christians are saying Jesus has a set of human attributes and a set of divine attributes.

[00:02:50]>> Sure. Okay.

[00:02:51]But is not what we are saying. We are saying that Jesus has two principles, two quidities, right? Two whatenesses which is humanity and divinity of which properties flow from the essence from the essence or come forth from the essence into reality. Right?

[00:03:11]>> The attributes belong to whom?

[00:03:15]The one person who is Jesus.

[00:03:16]>> Y >> following?

[00:03:18]>> Yeah.

[00:03:18]>> Okay. So if Jesus is human then Jesus is mutable.

[00:03:22]>> Yeah.

[00:03:22]>> If Jesus is divine then Jesus is immutable.

[00:03:25]>> Correct?

[00:03:26]>> Now that's a contradiction. But they'll say look they'll say Jesus is human or Jesus is mutable >> qua or in accordance to his humanity.

[00:03:38]Jesus is immutable >> qua or in accordance his divinity. So there's no contradiction because it's two different senses. Mhm.

[00:03:46]>> Now, humanity is limited.

[00:03:52]>> Mhm.

[00:03:52]>> That's the formula.

[00:03:53]>> Yeah.

[00:03:54]>> Jesus qua divinity >> is >> unlimited.

[00:03:58]>> Unlimited.

[00:03:59]>> Yeah.

[00:04:00]>> Okay.

[00:04:01]>> So, you have two subjects here in in the mind.

[00:04:07]>> Sure.

[00:04:08]>> Not in reality, it's one. But how we formulated this, there's Jesus qua humanity and there's there's Jesus divinity.

[00:04:15]The question is are these two co-referential or are they co-substantial?

[00:04:24]>> What do you mean by that?

[00:04:25]>> He just answered his own question, right? Because reference or co-referent co-reerentiality just means that X and Y are the same object in reality. So when he asks are they the same person in reality, he's already answered his question. And then he says, "Or are they co-substantial?"

[00:04:46]Meaning, do they share the same substance? These two statements of the same objects. Well, that's not a an eitheror situation, right? In an exclusive sense, when I say Superman, Clark Kent, >> I'm saying Superman co-refers Clark Kent. That is to say, Superman just is Clark Kent.

[00:05:09]>> Okay. When I say orthodox Muslim, libiano, >> orthodox Muslim correers libiano.

[00:05:16]>> Okay.

[00:05:17]>> That is Orthodox Muslim just is Libbyiano.

[00:05:19]>> True.

[00:05:20]>> Right.

[00:05:20]>> He says just is Libyano. He's trying to sneak something rhetorical in there.

[00:05:26]He's trying to make it seem as if co-reference means you remove the qua objects or any form of qualification in a statement. When he says just is Libyano, he's not saying that you can't qualify statements in reference to Libyano or the Orthodox Muslim as his profession. He's saying that they just refer to the same thing in reality. He's not saying there that they remove the qua objects in just in virtue of them being co-referential which is again just to say that orthodox Muslim and Libyano are the same object in reality.

[00:06:05]>> So Jesus qua humanity >> does he co-refer Jesus qua divinity?

[00:06:12]>> Yeah they well they'd have to concede right because >> there's two options.

[00:06:15]>> Yeah.

[00:06:16]>> Either they'll say yes >> in which case there's a contradiction.

[00:06:19]Yeah. In which case then you're saying the same subject bears two contradictory properties.

[00:06:24]>> Exactly.

[00:06:25]>> Jes, >> you see what I said he was going to do?

[00:06:27]He does it. He says Jesus qua humanity just is Jesus quad divinity. But notice how he leaves out just is in reality.

[00:06:38]Right? He's trying to make it seem as if the just is removes the quad devices and collapses all predicates or any qualification of the subject and just removes it. So there's a bunch of contradictory predicates, right? That's obviously false, right? There's a bunch of qualifications we make in ordinary language. That's just naturally how we speak about things even though they co-reer to the same object. Right? Okay.

[00:07:06]>> So that's why I gave you the argument, but I'm also giving you the counterargument to the counterargument >> because the counterargument is we use qua devices.

[00:07:16]>> Mhm.

[00:07:16]>> The qua devices are qua humanity, qua divinity. So that's how we uh that's how we maintain the distinction without contradiction. Mhm.

[00:07:24]>> I'm saying the the argument to that is to say, look, it's either these two are co-referring, which just means there's just the same subject who bears a contradictory properties, or >> no, that's not what co-referring means.

[00:07:41]I mean, just look up the standard definition of what co-reference means.

[00:07:46]None of it includes erasing qua devices or qualifications in accordance to the same subject in reality does not. He's just adding that in there and asking and acting as if it's just naturally a part of the sort of definition of co-reference or entailment. He has to argue that and he has to argue that with some sort of metaphysical argument, right? Or whatnot because it's just not a logical truth, right? Just because something has the same extension does not mean you cannot qualify statements about it, right? As soon as someone says, "Oh, it co-reference, those are co co-referential statements." That does not automatically just logically entail that boom, the quad devices are removed and then contradictions. He's just making that up.

[00:08:38]>> By the way, I I was reading William Craig try and grapple with this.

[00:08:42]>> Yeah.

[00:08:43]>> And I can try and find the the quotation for you, but he found it very difficult to deal with this.

[00:08:48]>> You you can't deal with this. Can you find >> There's no way. There's no way to deal with this. Okay.

[00:08:52]>> After then rambling about the second option that if they say they're not co-reerential, well, we don't have to entertain that because we do say they are co-reerential. He then says, "There's no way to deal with this."

[00:09:04]Well, there's no way to deal with what you didn't even from the start understand how Christians use the term essence, right? And then you didn't understand what co-reerentiality was. So what is there that we cannot deal with here?

[00:09:18]>> Okay. Are you also immaterial >> in what sense? Like a soul >> in what? In a sense. In a sense. You see?

[00:09:26]>> Yeah.

[00:09:26]>> But it pushes them into that.

[00:09:29]>> But the problem with that is Muhammad hijab is not fully soul, is he? He's not fully body, is he?

[00:09:36]>> There's an aspect of him that's a soul, immaterial, >> and another aspect that's a body.

[00:09:41]>> But these aspects are parts of the whole.

[00:09:44]>> Sure.

[00:09:44]>> If it's like that, then Jesus is part God and part man, >> which is impious. You can't say that's right. Oh yeah.

[00:09:51]>> He tries to anticipate a rebuttal and say an example where a Christian is forced to say I am material qua my body and I am immaterial qua my soul. And he says, well, if you say that this doesn't work because those are parts of us, right? Under hyomorphism, this is true, right? Under our metaphysics about created creatures, this is true, right? Us, we are composed of matter and form, right? The issue why this is not a rebuttal is because he's not proving why co-referentiality itself removes qua objects. He's just saying in a very in a specific metaphysical example, you can use qua objects because things are parts as they relate to the whole. Right? In a way, he's actually conceding the point because he's saying you can use qua objects. It will just in this very specific example, it will lead to part hole relations. So he's actually conceding his earlier point where he said using co-reference just automatically collapses um the two statements into a contradiction. He has yet to prove that right. He's just saying something about extension which he's trying to act as if is just a purely logical truth. It's not the case. He's quietly importing a metaphysical assumption into there. He's saying if you have the same extension in reality, then here comes his metaphysical claim. He says that those two whatever two statements you have of that same object in reality, it removes the qua objects and then boom, automatically you get a contradiction.

[00:11:46]But he has yet to prove that. The only thing he's rebuttled so far is a specific example of where there is a composite being like a human being and we are using qua objects to delineate differing respects of that being.

[00:12:11]Now let's make this more intuitive.

[00:12:13]Let's take a mological simple. Now what is a myriological simple? Well, think of it in a sort of physics sense. Imagine the most fundamental particle in reality, right? By definition, by being most fundamental, it has no parts by definition. Hence, it is a mural logical symbol. It's the most fundamental constituent of reality. Right? But we can still have qua aspects of it, right?

[00:12:44]We can say the murological s simple uh changes qua its location and it does not change qua its identity right now those two statements are co-referential right they mean they point to the same murological symbol in reality but notice this again by definition it is partless right it is absolutely simple yet we have deferring respects And according to the orthodox Muslim, we shouldn't have a counter example like this, right?

[00:13:17]Because according to him, if you say it's co-referential, then it leads to part whole relations. But we just gave a counter example, right? Myological simple has qua objects, qua operators, right? differing aspects that co- refer to the same object in reality.