If you would like a free newsletter on this or other subjects, just give us a call at Christian Answers. The phone number is area code 512-218-8022. That's 512-218-8022. Or you could email us at cdebater at aol.com. That's cdebater at aol.com. so so Well, greetings everybody. This is Larry Wessels with Christian Answers with my Director of Research for Christian Answers, Steve Morrison. Great to have you here, brother. Thank you. Alright, well, some of our viewers may have seen it, some may not. Hopefully the ones that haven't will maybe get a chance to see it after we have a little discussion about this. But we are literally sitting here just a few minutes after you just had a four-hour debate with one of the Pentecostal representatives. This four-hour debate is available on our YouTube channel, SeeAnswersTV. Debate 1 of 4. Did Jesus pre-exist as God the Son before time began? Morrison, yes. Ritchie, no. Debate 2 of 4. Jesus is not God the Father, but God the Son of the Trinity. Morrison, yes. Ritchie, no. Debate 3 of 4. Is the Holy Spirit really God the Father and Jesus also? Morrison, no. Ritchie, yes. Debate 4 of 4. Does early church history and scripture prove the Trinity? Morrison, yes. Ritchie, no. On the very nature of God, whether the scriptures reveal doctrine of the Trinity or whether they reveal this wondrous Pentecostal theological doctrine that basically Jesus is the Father and Jesus is the Holy Spirit. And so they don't like the doctrine of Trinity, say it's heresy and all that kind of stuff. And so we're gonna just kind of sit here for a little bit and just talk about how that debate went and everything. And I just want to say I was the moderator in the debate. I had to keep the time and everything. And it went smoothly. It was a nice pleasant type of debate. I thought, Steve, you were just too nice. But anyway. You've always been that way. You've always been that way though. Stephen was nice also. Yes he was. I kind of knew that was coming because when you and I debated those representatives from the Unification Church years ago, which is available on YouTube, I would also agree that the Father and the Son, and the Spirit for that matter, are distinct. There is a heresy called modalism that says they're not distinct, and we don't believe that, and you don't believe that either. But we say they can be distinct without being separate. So that's why we say Jesus is still God, but yet he is not the Father. And Jesus voluntarily gave up many things when he came to earth. It's why, for example, he had the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, God the Father. But I guess to kind of wrap up what we would say about this is in the 120-day training manual, page 362, there is a quote that, Father, meaning Rev. Moon, is visible God. In Master Speaks, the 30th of June, 1973, page 4, Rev. Moon has said that he is greater than Jesus. Yeah, I'd like to respond to that. I wanted to thank you first, Steve, because actually studying Divine Principle, most people, they are using media and And today with 90% that are journalists and believe in God and Christ at all, you know, they take quotes from them. But I'm really amazed that you actually studied the one principle and quotes from that. I'm really grateful you did that. To understand the fall of man again, what is the most serious crime that could have been committed at the beginning of time? And what is it that Adam and Eve could have desired? so intensely that it would cause them to possibly deviate from God's commandment. God's commandment to them was very clear. We question that this overpowering desire could have been for a piece of fruit. We as Christians follow the Christ, the Messiah, Jesus. I don't consider myself a Christ in the sense that Jesus was. Jesus himself said in Matthew chapter 24 he says many false prophets would come and he says there will be many that come in my name saying I am the Christ. And he said that if someone says well lo there's a Christ or here's a Christ don't go after them. They're not telling you the truth. So there's false prophets, there's false messiahs, there's antichrists. And there's abundant scripture to teach this very fact. You know, I thought you were too nice to those Moonies then, too, but still, you know, you made good points. And I really like the way you presented the material. You had the information there. I was concerned at the end, on the last hour of the debate, when you're doing your closing comment, that this whole thing is about Trinity versus oneness. But praise the Lord, you mentioned the name Trinity and you got into that stuff. In fact, maybe the word Trinity was the last thing on your lips as you finished, so I was happy about that. Because really there is a great distinction between a one is Pentecostal believer, we didn't get into their Colerary points about, well, you must speak in tongues in order to be saved. You know, you've got to be baptized in the name of Jesus only if you're going to be saved. We didn't even touch any of that stuff. We just stuck to the topic, which was, you know, does the Bible reveal the biblical doctrine of Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, much like you find in Matthew chapter 28, verse 19? Or is it this other concept? Well, let me correct you here. As I was preparing for this debate, I found out that there's not just one oneness. There are at least four, or maybe, you know, Stephen Ritchie represents five kinds of oneness. And two of them are similar, two others are similar, but the different kinds of oneness are actually quite different from each other. Like Bishop Callistus of Rome, who was definitely oneness, he excommunicated Sibelius, the other kind of oneness. And one thing I didn't I neglected to ask Stephen Ritchie about was that how does he feel about people who think that the Father died on the cross, you know, or about the blood of the Holy Spirit. He does not believe those things himself, but I didn't get a chance to ask him. You bring a great point there because you really hammered that home in the debate about this variety among the women's Pentecostals themselves. And in fact, off air, Stephen Ritchie was telling us about some of these other ones, Pentecostals. He doesn't agree with it. It's a different thing. Well, there are strange groups that are humanitarian too, so it's not unique to them. Right, right. So you have to kind of figure out which one you're dealing with. Just like Mormonism has a whole bunch of varieties to it. They had over 200 historically, yeah. Exactly. You can't just pigeonhole them all into one particular theological, doctrinal peg. It seemed like during that debate, you really tried to fish him out on that. You were constantly bringing that up. Now, in the interactive, that's where I thought you were a little too nice, because you were waiting for him to finish, but he was hogging the time. You got to interact if you don't want to use too much time, because he's going into these long discourses trying to answer a question. You're kind of waiting for him. But still, even though he has less time in some of those cases than he did, just the very questions you ask him kind of punctured like a balloon almost everything you just said, in my opinion, which I thought was a great way to go about it in that sense, even though he's getting more time on those interactives. All right, we will now go to the seven minute interactive phase of this debate. It's just open dialogue. Both people can ask any questions, respond, interact however they want to go. So gentlemen, begin. You have seven minutes. All right, if I can start. On early Christians and Sabellianism, you mentioned Alexander of Alexandria, who was the Bishop of Alexandria, a very important city. He says that on the third day after his death, Jesus rose again, bringing to us the knowledge of the Trinity. All nations of the human race were saved by Christ. Jesus was made like as to man, ascended to the height of heaven, and the Father raised him and made Jesus the judge of the peoples and king forever and ever. Sounds Trinitarian to me. Marcellus of Ankara, he was after Nicaea, and if he was an embarrassment to the church, that would mean that in general the church did not accept that. You said, where does God say that, you know, show a plurality, you know, this is my soul. Again, Genesis 1.26, it says, let us make man in our image. Isaiah 6.8, who will go for us? So I'm not denying that it shows a singularity from God. I'm saying that the scripture shows a plurality and a singularity. But I want to ask you, the Creed of Nicaea, would you agree with that or disagree with that? I agree with the original Nicaean Creed, 325. I don't quite agree with the changes made to the Constantinopolitan Creed around 381 AD. I do agree, because I do believe the modalists did agree with that. The semi-Trinitarians at the time, also such as Athanasius, agreed. Of course, the Arians were the only ones that couldn't, because they totally denied their view that Jesus is not divine, the same substance. So you're with the original Nicaea, but not necessarily later stuff. Right. Okay. Correct. How about Ephesus, which was against Nestorius, and Chalcedon, which was against the Monophysites? I still, like I said, from 381 A.D. onward, that's when the church started, you know, murdering their opponents under Damasus, for instance. So that was the one that first started, you know, that's when the Catholic Church really started getting formulated, I believe, where they started using the imperial authority to begin killing people, and that's where Mariology started developing, obviously in the very 5th century, 400s, so I don't give them any credence as being true Christians whatsoever by then, as far as the state church. So let me go to the let us make man real quick. I like to stick with scripture as much as possible. You know, there's two different views held by one of us Christians. One is that, you know, God always speaks to his heavenly court. And I kind of think both ideas might be correct. Even some prominent Trinitarian scholars admit that Genesis 126 does not prove a plurality of divine persons. Gordon Wenham wrote in his Word Biblical Commentary on Genesis, Christians have traditionally seen Genesis 126 as enumerating the Trinity. It is now universally admitted that this was not what the plural meant to the original author. The NIV Study Bible admits in Genesis 126 that it describes God speaking to the members of His heavenly court. So, you know, God could have said, let us make man just like, you know, a human can, a human king would say, why don't we do this? Let us, you know, Adolf Hitler could say, let us, you know, let's invade Poland or whatever, you know, they include, God always included his angels. God doesn't do anything without his prophets and God doesn't do anything without his angelic advisors as well. I don't think that we were made really at all by angels. You know, I think God made Adam and Eve and of course he made us different than the animals. And so I don't really, I know other Trinitarians do hold to what's called the royal we view, I don't myself. But the early Christians, Letter of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, they all accepted that that was the father and the son. And as far as it being prophetic, that view, it's like, well, then it's kind of non-falsifiable if you just say everything's prophetic, because it's like, why would he be having a discussion? Don't you believe that, do you believe that the Word was there in the beginning? Could he have been talking to the Word? Well, the word doesn't mean a person. The word is just the expressed thought of God the Father. It doesn't say the word was a person. There's no scripture anywhere in the Old Testament or New Testament that says, or the Greek word logos means a person. Well, it means Jesus Christ and Christians are pretty unanimous about it, including early Christians. So do you think that the impersonal logos became the manifestation of God or do you think it's just like kind of extraneous material in John 1 before talking about Christ? How does that relate? In a sense, God, before the world was even created, God already prophetically knew what he was going to do. But anyway, the situation was, what do you feel about how the debate went? Tell us about your I mean, we just finished a while ago. How do you feel about it? Well, I kind of, you know, Stephen really initiated the debate, so he kind of had the right to do the affirmative first. But I kind of wish we had done about the Trinity first, because that would have kind of set the stage. Instead, we started with the Holy Spirit, and I was like, well, how does that all fit in with, let's say, the Trinity? Well, it really isn't specified until later in the debate. But anyway, we started with that, and then along with that. And quite frankly, the Bible doesn't say as much about the Holy Spirit. Well, neither should, because the Holy Spirit's testifying about Jesus. Right, right. So, and the Scriptures is breathed out to the apostles and prophets, and that's going to be to the glorification of Jesus. So that's why there's not that much. But I hope the listeners of the debate didn't misunderstand and think, you know, that either myself or Stephen Ritchie, for that matter, thought that the early church fathers were equivalent of scripture or anything like that. But both of us would agree that they can show us things about the Bible that are true, but they made mistakes too. Oh, of course. In fact, I'm debating constantly with Roman Catholics on our YouTube channels on a regular basis, because we do have over 132 videos dealing with just Roman Catholicism by itself. I have to constantly explain to these people that because they think the Roman Catholic Church is only one true church, and church history proves it. You know, that's always their argument. The early church fathers prove all. And I have to say, no, there's a declension. It seems like the further you get away from the original apostolic scripture and writings of the apostles, that you get a whole bunch of strange stuff starting to take place, you know, down the line. Well, there's sort of a decline, but then there's also kind of a steep drop-off, and I would say it happened sometime after Nicaea. Stephen Rich and I talked about it a little off-camera, and he thought around 381 A.D. But regardless, we both see, I guess, eye to eye on that, that there was a big decline around that time. So you can't really use early, you know, depending on where you're quoting from and what's going on. I like that you stress in the debate, though, that generally speaking, if you're knowledgeable about the subject, you can understand certain things. And of course, we know from your 18-part series that we did on early church history, you're not going to find a Roman Catholic church Right, right. Back there either in scripture or in the early church. But what you would find is you would find people that were very averse to any worship of images and probably would have been burned at the stake by Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages. Exactly, exactly. So I thought it was interesting that he's jumping on, and of course I knew this was coming in because I've watched his other debates on YouTube, but he's jumping on this prophetic Jesus You know, the foreknown, you know, he's quoting these Calvinistic-type verses, you know, predestination, the Ephesians 1, and all these other things. God speaks like it already exists when it really doesn't, and all of a sudden, of course, from my perspective, he's taking it totally out of context. In that case, so he can promote his oneness theology, when the Scriptures themselves show that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, See, he's trying to deny that by using all the stuff like, well, he speaks things that aren't as if they were. What were your thoughts on that? Well, if he's going to deny the plain meaning of those verses, he kind of has to. Yeah, of course. And there's some, I guess, ambiguity when he talked about pre-creation. And which he later clarified and said he doesn't mean there was like a two-step or created thing, he meant it prophetically. But it's like, why can't you just take it how it is? And that was a great point you made during the day. That's how the early Christians took it. Right, right. And you see that clearly when you read a lot of writings. I don't see pre-created anywhere in scripture. God knew everything in advance. God ordained in advance. But basically, Stephen says that you have to understand Hebrews 1-2 and Colossians 1-15-16 as really didn't say created, it's really pre-created. And I just don't see that. The Bible says that all things were created through him. and for him, and he sustains all things. And so when it says created, it means created. The word for ages, aeons, that can mean age. It is a generic word that could be a synonym. for everything that's there, essentially, in time and space. And so, everything was created by the sun. Now, you quoted scriptures that said God created everything by his hands. Well, in a sense, the sun, you say, functioned as his hands, or the word functioned as his hands. And back to John 1.1, It's like all things were created through him. You can't just put in your own definitions and say pre-created. No early Christian, Greek-speaking or otherwise, thought of the concept of pre-creation, which I understand you kind of have to hold to, to not interpret these verses in their plain sense. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple of John the Apostle, who are most dear to me and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time and the end was revealed. So he was there then. Clement of Rome, who may have been Clement written in the Bible. The name of the Bible, we're not certain, but he was a bishop of Rome. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with every other call of God through him, through him be honor, glory, and dominion, eternal dominion from everlasting to everlasting. And so Methetus to Diognetus, or Methetus just means disciple, we don't actually know the guy's name, it says, This is he who was from the beginning, who appeared as if new and was found old, who yet is ever born afresh in the hearts of the saints. This is he who, being from everlasting, is today called the Son. The letter of Barnabas. For Scripture says concerning him, while I speak to the Son, let us make man after our image and after our likeness, and let him have dominion over the Beast of the Earth, the Fowls of the Heavens, and the Fishes of the Sea. Justin Martyr also says similar, I'll skip for the sake of time. Shepherd of Hermas says that the Son of God is older than all his creatures, and he was a fellow counselor with the Father in his work of creation. Theophilus of Antioch, maybe I'll skip him for the sake of time because he mentioned the Trinity. Diotesteron, who I said we kind of have to take with caution because he became a heretic, but he did write out the scriptures, putting the four Gospels together, and taking out the parts showing Christ as a man, by the way. But it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word is with God, and the Word is, and God is the Word. This was in the beginning with God. Everything was by His hand, and without Him not one existing thing was made. Okay, so it talks about the Word being there. Athenagoras, but the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, an idea and an operation, for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And the Son being in the Father, and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of the Spirit, the understanding and reason of the Father is the Son of God. But if in your surpassing intelligence it occurs to you what is meant by the sun, I will state briefly that he is the first product of the Father. Not as it has been brought into existence, but from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind, had the logos in himself, being from eternity, instinct, actually distinct to the logos, but as much as it came forth the idea of the energizing power of all material things. So the sun was there. So Melito of Sardis, Jesus is the firstborn of God, begotten before the Son. He didn't really specify when he was begotten, but before the Son was, there was Jesus. There's others with Malico stars. And the point of quoting all these early Christian writers is, again, not that they're necessarily inerrant, but this is their understanding. And many of them, they didn't just learn Greek, they spoke Greek, they learned Greek as little kids, they dreamed in Greek. And it wasn't any old Greek, because there are different dialects of Greek. But the Koine Greek, which is the Greek of the common people, sort of started at the time of Alexander the Great. That's the Greek that the New Testament is written in, and this is the Greek that these guys spoke. And these guys didn't see pre-creation anywhere in Greek. All they see is that the Son, or the Word, as Irenaeus would say, the Word, namely the Son, was always with the Father. And we can go on to later ones, but you kind of get the point. The Greek doesn't talk about pre-creation. The early Christians don't understand anything about pre-creation. All they understand is basically our understanding today that they were created. Right behind you here, you mentioned this during the debate, these books here, what have you got there? These are all of the early Christian writings up through here after, of course, the Bible and prior to the Council of Nicaea. There are a few things, Athanasius wrote a little bit prior to the Council of Nicaea and a whole lot afterwards. And then there's some councils like Neokaiseria that were before. And then this was a, these are copies of the New Testament Greek, which we used. I didn't know if they would be used. We used one for one small place. And then I thought he might bring up Philo with the logos. to say it was like a Greek idea, and it came from him. No, he did not. But actually, John 1 and the idea of the word in the Old Testament kind of predates Philo. And Philo was an interesting guy. He was a Jewish guy who wrote around 30 AD, the time of Christ. But he was from Alexandria, and as far as we know, had no contact with Christ. And he was a Hellenistic Jew, so he had some kind of Greek thought to him. And then on the right, there was one thing that we didn't get into. Many Oneness Pentecostals, and there are different groups of them like we said, stress that if you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and elsewhere in the New Testament it says you're baptized in the name of Jesus, therefore they have to be the same. And there was a one theologian named, I think I pronounced it right, D-U-L-L-E, who basically admits and said, no, it doesn't semantically mean that. It can mean name of the Father and name of the Son and name of the Holy Spirit. I read a fascinating thing in this book, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, on page 6061, which said, okay, so even if we say it's Trinitarians, it doesn't mean that they all are just one. What exactly does in the name mean to people living back then? And the answer is interesting. Greek and Hebrew are actually slightly different answers. They say in classical Greek it wasn't used, but in Koine Greek, which is the New Testament Greek, they used in the name of all the time, you know, not in just regular writing. And what it means is it's a financial term that means for the account of. Now remember there are different kinds of baptisms. You know, you might have a baptism to convert to Judaism. John the Baptist had a baptism. Later on, after Christ, some Gnostics had baptisms. But when you were baptized, you weren't just taking a bath, you weren't just converting to Judaism, you were baptized in the name of Jesus, for the account of Jesus who died for you. Now that's the Greek understanding. Now the Hebrew understanding includes the Greek understanding, But it's a little bit broader. For example, they might give a sacrifice. This is just in their regular writing, in the name of God, or in the name of the temple, or in the name of this or that related to God. And so it can mean to the account of, but it can also mean on behalf of, or it can mean for the sake of. And so it has a little bit broader meaning than the Greek, but it includes the meaning of the Greek. But either way, when you're baptized in the name of Jesus, which is finally said, or in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it's not the actual word, it's not the actual formula, it's the actual meaning and intent. Why are you going in this water? Is it because it's a thing to do? Is it because you're covering Judaism? So I thought that was interesting, but because of the time, we didn't really get into that. But there are different groups of one as Pentecostals, and my impression is he didn't really stress the name of that that much either, so other Pentecostals One is Pentecostals that they stressed it. Oh, I need to differentiate, by the way. The Pentecostal movement originally was Trinitarian. And, of course, they were charismatic and believed in speaking in tongues. But then afterwards, with Charles Parham in Kansas, then afterwards a group of them became One is Pentecostals. And the One is Pentecostals, they denied the Trinity in various groups and maybe in various ways. And then they also believe, at least the one that's Pentecostal that I've encountered, say that if you don't speak in tongues, you are not going to heaven. And if you're not baptized, then why are you not going to heaven? Well, what about the thief on the cross? We don't know that the Romans let him down and get baptized. Or what about a Roman soldier we read about, Thessalonians, in church history. He did not believe in Christ. He was with a martyr. and she talked with them, and later he believed in Christ, and the other soldiers thought he was joking. But when they saw that he was serious, they imprisoned him, and they executed him, and we don't know that they said, oh, we'll give you a few days to go get baptized first. So he didn't get baptized, not because of disobedience, not because of laziness or anything else, but what if you believe in Christ and don't have opportunity? Well, you can still go to heaven. That being said, it is the duty of all Christians who are obedient to Christ to obey Christ, and Christ does command us to get baptized. So it's not this little optional thing. where somebody says, well, you've got to do it one of these days to get around to it. No, it's important to obey. Yeah, you are to get baptized because Jesus said to, but it's not required for salvation. Right. You don't have to get water baptized in order to be saved. That's what a lot of false prophets out there peddle. Right. Now I wanted to ask you, and I was giving you a hard time about this before we sat down to do this, but Why in the world, during this debate, now he brought up a lot of good points, but why didn't, when he's talking about this, well Jesus didn't exist until he was created, you know, later by the Father, and really he's part of the Father and all that kind of stuff, but why in the world didn't you bring up Hebrews chapter 7, verse 3, which says, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, but at the priest continually. And all I can say is that I should have discussed that verse, but I didn't. No problem, but she did bring up John 1.1, which is an outstanding verse to bring up in this situation. Right. Now, on Hebrews 7, though, some people say that Melchizedek was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. Other people say, no, he was a type of Christ. But regardless of that, Melchizedek, the point of Hebrews 7 is that Melchizedek was someone who appears on the scene without any genealogy, whose origins are, looks like eternal, and that it compares that to Christ's son. In fact, the reason I knew it so well is because our ministry has a video on this, the eternal son of God, on Hebrews 7.3, so if y'all do a check on our channel, Christian Answers Television, CAC Answers TV on YouTube. You can find that Eternal Son of God video with Bob Ross and Doug Kulak who really get into all the scripture verses besides just this one, a bunch of them. And you brought up some of them already in the debate that will help you on that because if Jesus eternally existed, you know, all the way back just like God, then obviously it destroys 90% of everything that Steve Ritchie was bringing up during this argument. Now, James Wyatt, Dr. James Wyatt of Alpha Omega Ministries, he's done more debates and apologetics than anyone I know. I think the last time I heard his dividing line on YouTube was last week. He said he's been in 140 moderated debates. 140 of them with all Roman Catholics, Muslims, You name it, he's had a debate with one of them out there. And he says, in some debates, there's always that gotcha moment. There's this gotcha moment where all of a sudden, you catch the other guy and he doesn't seem to know what to do about it. And I, from my observation as the moderator off to the side, feel that you had a gotcha moment in there where you got it. And there wasn't a thing he could do about it. And that happened in, episode number one of this four-hour debate. In episode one, you got it, because you brought up that scripture reference, I think it was out of Revelation, and he said, well, that's not in the Greek, is it? But you had your Greek text with you. And then, while he's doing a little talking, you pull out your Greek text, and you look up that thing, just find out the word, word, there, in Logos. See? And then when he sees that you've got it, and you show it to him from the Greek, all of a sudden he starts changing his story right there. He says, well, you know, that doesn't have to mean that. Because at first he's challenging you about that not being in the Greek. And then when you pull out that Greek text, which he didn't expect. I'm sitting over here watching all this. Then all of a sudden he starts trying to peddle his way out of that, because you nailed him on that point. You talked about a scripture that would show it meaning a person. If you look in Revelation 19, 13, this is talking about the return of Jesus, where Jesus physically and visibly returns to earth in glory on a white horse. Anna talks about him, his eyes were like flame of fire, his head were many crowns, he had a name written that no one knew except himself. And then 1913, he was clothed with a robe, dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. Okay, so his name is called the Word of God. Yes. Now, of course, he has other titles, too. Okay, so the word there is Lagos. His name is called the Lagos of God in the Greek text. Actually, I don't know the Greek text, sir. As far as I'm aware, it's not Lagos there, but I'm not 100% sure, so I'd like to look up. But his name is called the Word of God. Again, this is post-incarnational. This is not pre-incarnational reference. And of course Jesus is the Lagos of the Father. So Jesus can be, Jesus' Lagos is the expressed thought of the Father. So in any event, even if it does have the word Lagos in that text, it doesn't prove that Jesus, as far as that the text there, doesn't prove that the Greek word Lagos shows that Jesus is the Logos himself. It is Logos, Logos of God right here. Okay, so give me the Zadok chapter in verse 19, 13, 30 seconds. So it shows that he is a Logos. I agree with you, it doesn't show pre-incarnate, but it does show he's a Logos. And his name is called? Okay, his name is called. the Logos of God. Well to me I just see this as identifying, you know, the Logos being referenced to Jesus, and Jesus said the Logos which here is not mine but the Father's, so I don't see how that's a contradiction there. I don't really see... In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos, you know, John 1.1, and then Logos became flesh, John 1.14. It's kind of like someone once said, I reserve the right to get smarter. See, he was already trying to deny it after he saw that you could prove it. He was, even while you were about to show it to him, you were starting to shove your book over here so he could look at it for himself. He started to realize, uh oh, you've got a Greek text. He's trying to peddle his way, because he realized you called his bluff. It's like playing poker. That's what made him so powerful, because you said you didn't know if that was in the Greek. So then he starts playing on that and saying some other stuff, but you pull out that Greek text and just prove the point right there. I suppose so, but I mean, if I'm wrong on something, and I've been wrong on things before, I admit that. In a sense, that's a good thing when I realize it because I can change and become closer to the truth. So being wrong on a point isn't the most terrible thing, if you can improve on that. Anyway, I just thought that was a powerful moment because of the fact of what I just described. Now, there was also another thing that happened, I think it was also in episode three, where I felt like he made a mistake during the interactive by asking to read your reference from an early church father, which you had on your laptop. And he's starting to read it, but he can't understand what he's reading, see that? At the mercy of you. All right, we will now go to the seven minute interactive phase of this debate. It's just open dialogue. Both people can ask any questions, respond, interact however they want to go. So gentlemen, begin. You have seven minutes. OK. I would like to cover the church history part. Alexander of Alexandria, it clearly shows that, I'm trying to read the exact quote here that you have there, but that he is equal with the father, unchangeable, immutable, wanting in nothing, and the perfect son, like to the father. We have learnt, and this alone he is inferior to the father, that he is not unbegotten. Okay, I'm trying to understand the meaning of that. He's inferior to the father. Okay, so in my understanding of this text, he's inferior as to his being born, him being a son. As to his deity, he is completely equal with the father. So there's nothing there that actually shows a trinity to me. It still could be a view that would be a monarchian type view. I don't see a clear teaching of the eternality of the son here. this shows a distinction between the father and the son, and it shows a co-equality, because you had mentioned earlier that you said early Christians didn't show a co-equality, and so this is the list that shows co-equality. Okay, let me just go right into the scriptures, because that's the most important thing. Early church writers had many virtues, but succinctness isn't one of them. And sometimes it is a little hard to understand, so I kind of gave up passing that one. I just, you know, having been in a lot of debates myself, and you've been in debates before also, you know, you try desperately to avoid any kind of problems like that. Early Christians wrote extensively about the Trinity. Some of them weren't perfect. Athenagoras, at least that's the way I would pronounce it, was very Trinitarian, except that some of them believed that Jesus was begotten in time, which we say is a mistake in later Arian's thought. But except for that error, a lot of them wrote about the Trinity. Ones who mentioned the Trinity were Theophilus of Antioch, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Novatian, Cyprian of Carthage, Vermilion of Caesarea, Bishop Minubus and Eucladius, both of the Second Council of Carthage, Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius Bishop of Rome, Peter of Alexandria, I'm sorry, he didn't use the word Trinity, but Methodius, Alexander of Alexandria, they all talked about the Trinity. Before you rebut, I'll give you the sheet so you can see who they are. They all talked about the Trinity, and they all talked about a distinction between the Father and the Spirit. Importantly though, none of them talked about a separation of the three. None of them talked about that the son was lesser than the father, which the Arians believed. The essence of Arianism, which is a heresy, is that the son is a different substance. Maybe dissimilar, maybe similar, but either way, a different substance from the father. And Arians, you also typically, there's a time when the son was not. And I do concede that a few early Christians did say that last part also, but they never said the first part. And so you find nothing about oneness in early church history until about the time of Tertullian, when you have Sibelius, who contrary to what Stephen says, the first oneness, they would say that the Father died on the cross, and they see no distinction at all, contrary to what Stephen said. Now, the one that's today, though, is a little different, and I'll get into that later on in the Trinity, in that they do see a distinction between Father and Son, like you said. But then, I didn't hear Stephen say, is there one spirit inside Jesus Christ when we walk on the earth, or two? He said there is a human spirit of Christ, which I fully affirm. Human, fully human, completely human. But, there was just one spirit, and that same spirit was also divine. There were not two Jesuses. There were not two spirits that died on the cross. There weren't two souls, or there weren't two wills that died on the cross. There was one being who died on the cross, and he was completely human, like us, except without sin, and he was completely divine also. He was of the same essence. I thought it was very educational as far as early church history. By the way, you do have a website that you're the webmaster of called HistoryCart.com and you were able to utilize a lot of that early church history like you just pointed out behind you here. I have read all of these, including all of Athanasius. I haven't read all of Apollo and these two books, but I've read All of these, and I have notes on all of these, and you can read the notes on the website. It's on HistoryCart, it would be What Early Christians Taught, and it's .htm, or a little secret, if you don't put .htm, if you put .doc, you'll get the Word version of it. I also have another one, it's not very far along, but it's What Nicene to Ephesus Christians Taught, which has a whole lot more in Athanasius, and Christ is Still Home, and Augustine, They're about the same number of people writing from 325 to 431 A.D. as there were from the time of the Bible to 325 A.D. and they had a lot of good stuff to say. But of course they had a little bit different issues, more on Arianism and stuff like that. But it's kind of interesting to look at the Christianity and look at the Bible through the eyes of fellow believers who are separated from you by time. And some of the things that you think are critical, they don't they didn't deal with, or they missed, and some of the things they thought were critical, they're not today, or maybe you missed. And I haven't learned any great new doctrines in all my state of church history, but they are very, very good echoes of what's in the Bible, and they help kind of highlight things in the Bible that you would maybe otherwise kind of skip over until what they said. Now I thought it was interesting on the church history issue, he kept referencing quotes from these Roman Catholic guys. The Roman Catholic book says this, and this Roman Catholic guy says this, and this Roman Catholic book says that. And I think you answered that because you really didn't care for that. But to me, Having the knowledge, particularly of Catholic apologetic groups like Catholic Answers, they have traditionally twisted the tar out of early church history because they know that most people aren't going to take the time to even look at it or know about it. If they try, they'll probably fall asleep in five minutes reading some of that stuff. So they can get away with quoting about anything you want to quote, and people just accept what they're saying. But I like the way you handled that during the debate. But I'll say, it's not just Roman Catholics. There are a lot of liberal Protestants who say weird things, too. But anyway, for me to see something prudent in the literature, I need to see the quotes put by the writer. His point that he made that, well, we really don't have the writings of Sibelius or Cleitus Leopild himself, only what their opponents wrote, is kind of halfway true, but it's not the whole story. Essentially, that is true. But on the other hand, we do have a whole lot written by different people about what they said. So we can, while they weren't necessarily friendly, like a Callistus had a lot of moral issues according to Hippolytus. Maybe that's true, maybe that's exaggerated, but I kind of left that out because we were just quoting what he said. But when they say that someone believed this, and which is different from this other heretic and this, then he probably did teach that. So I think we do have that. I wanted to ask him, I said this already, what he thought about patriarchal passionism, what I would call simple oneness. And while he did not believe that himself, I didn't get a reading from him as to just how bad he thought it was. One thing that surprises a lot of people is that, well first of all, backing up, is that, you know, people said kind of weird stuff today. They said weird stuff back then. Like Irenaeus, who said a lot of good things. He said Jesus was about 50 when he started his ministry, because that's what describes, you know, they say you're not yet 50 years old. Well, nobody else said that, so he was kind of out on a limb when he said that. So, again, he is not perfect. But if you take a consensus of what four or more writers said and none denied, then how many things, how many biblical truths or truths related to the Bible do you think they would have say that we would pretty much agree with today. I love the way you organize that too from all your research and studying early church history. It comes out in that 18 part series that we did. Well actually I gotta say the 18 part series is, I'm not so happy with it because it's too simplified. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But at least the common man can keep up with that. Yeah, it has something like 128 things or something that four more early Christians taught in 99. Right, right, right. That number really isn't 128. It's really something more like 786 and counting. And it's like, that's a lot of stuff. So every Bible in the world disappeared magically, or whatever, and all you have is early church writings. What would you know about Christianity? Well, you'd only know about 786 things. Which is pretty much everything. And so, again, not that you would want to learn truth just from them, because they made some mistakes too. And a few of those things were errors. Like, they knew about the concept of atoms. and from the Greek philosophers, and they say, Abs are ridiculous. Okay, well, they messed up on that one. But when they talk about who God the Father is, and the Son, and everything else, it's pretty consistent with the plain reading of the Bible today. And we can learn from our older brothers, not that they're prophets themselves, but we can learn from them, and just kind of confirm, I guess, from that. Anyway, with that said, any other general comments you have on this debate that you just participated in? It seems like with Juandis Pentecostals, a lot of the differences have to do with the definitions. You know, who exactly is Jesus? Who is Christ? Well, to some people semantics means like it doesn't really matter. Well, actually it matters a lot in this case. With some other kinds of people like, you know, we debated the Unification Church people, for example, A lot of that is not as much semantics. A lot of it is just denial on their part of stuff. So a little fundamentally different there. Steve Morrison will now have five minutes of rebuttal. Okay, it seems like that Stephen Ritchie has to talk about pre-creation and that Christ had to be, or the Son had to be pre-created before created, which I don't see. And he mentions the believers written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And the believers were written in the Lamb's Book of Life. But that doesn't mean that they were created, they were listed. God knew of Jeremiah before he was in his mother's womb, that does not mean pre-existence, that means that God knew and God ordained. And God knowing and God ordaining is different than saying created by. And so, on one hand you have this new concept of pre-creation, on the other hand, I don't know that I can really say it any clearer than Hebrews 1-2, in these last days, God is in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the worlds, or aeons in Greek. And so the sun must have been around. So whether it's worlds or universe or whatever is not the main point, the sun must have been around to do that. When was the sun around? Well, in the beginning, the word was around in John 1, 1. And then in John 1, I believe, 14, it says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So there was the word around there, and you have to go to the pre-creation concept. And there's no pre-creation of us, even though God foreordained it. ordained and foreknew us. And so before the foundation of the world, God knew for certain that Jesus Christ would die on the cross for our sins. And I agree with Stephen that that doesn't mean that he died twice, any more than it means that we were born twice. But Jesus Christ was incarnated on earth only once, but he was begotten of God when he was in the beginning with God. But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb, without blemish and without spot. And indeed, he was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in his last times for you." So it was foreordained that he would die as a lamb, but that doesn't mean that he was pre-created or a two-step creation necessarily, but it just says that they're one. And again, all the The early church writers, many of whom Greek was their native language, said this. It's a little bit like if you studied, let's say, Italian, and you read your books and you took a year or two of language, and you go to Italy, and you tell the Italians, no, no, no, you got Italian all wrong. It doesn't really mean this. It means this other thing instead. You'd probably be laughed at. It's a little bit like us telling these early Christians, many of whom spoke Greek, some of whom weren't the apostles or disciples of the apostles, that you got it all wrong. The word or the son wasn't created back then, he was pre-created. that's totally absent from their mind. We have so many people that all say he was created and the, I guess, choices between what the early Christians and the plain meaning of scripture versus this new pre-created idea. So everything was made through the Son, through Christ, through Jesus, and he is like the hands of God. Also in Genesis 1, actually in the Hebrew, when it says God created, there's a nuance there that's almost like created by his word. And of course John 1.1 picks up on that, all things were created through the word. And so yes, God created everything, it wasn't Angels didn't have to be doing stuff, God did it, but God did it through the agency of his word. So to me it's pretty plain that God ordains, he foreknows, but When he created, it was created through his word. That's just kind of what it says. So the early Christians were all agreed upon that. Tertullian said, if the number of the Trinity offends you, I ask you, how is it possible for being one and singular to speak in a plural sense? Let us make man in our image. Hippolytus said he's co-eternal. I think you said before that they never said he's co-eternal. Well, he's not an Arian like you said. If you said co-eternal with the Father, and also in other places a co-equal, They thought he was co-eternal and co-equal with the Father, which is the plain sense of the Bible. Who said co-eternal? Co-eternalist apologists. With that said, to summarize this whole show here, give us a biblical exposition quickly, just off the top of your head, of why it's important to believe the biblical doctrine of the Trinity as opposed to what you see as errors in the oneness doctrine. Okay, if you were to become married to your wife, you would probably want to know about her. and understand it. Maybe you'll say you never know all about it, but you probably know about it. In the same respect, we want to know about our God. Furthermore, we don't want to say things that are kind of disrespectful, like, you know, it was the Father who died on the cross, or something like that. And we want to keep away from certain errors that I kind of emphasized more with Stephen Ritchie to get him to repeat that this is wrong. You know, kind of an historian view that there were two beings. And I wasn't totally happy with his way of coming up with it, but he did agree with me in denying that there were two different beings inside the body of Jesus. So he did at least, you know, probably do that. which is a good thing because I almost have gotten that feeling talking to other one. Kind of like that's how they explain stuff, and no, that's completely wrong. But it's kind of like, you know, the word Bible's not in the Bible. Well, do you want to believe the Bible? You know, because the word's not in there. You know, the word One's in the Bible, but Oneness is not in the Bible. You brought that up. Yeah, I'm not sure if you got that, but the fact that Oneness is not in the Bible doesn't mean actually it's wrong. I know it's on itself. Trinity is not in the Bible, it's just a quick kind of peg to list a collection of doctrines that are in the Bible. So it's kind of like if you talk to Muslims, they say trinity is not divinity. Well, Tawhid, which is their term for oneness, that's not in the Quran either, so I guess you can't believe in Tawhid. It's a specious argument whether you make it one way or a specious argument whether you make it the other way. So anyway, these particular doctrines, can a person be saved if they don't believe everything about the trinity? And my answer actually is yes. is that a person, when they first come to Christ, they may not necessarily have all this figured out. Especially if they come from some other background, like a Muslim background. But they are on the road, and God is guiding them in the truth. So eventually they'll come to the truth of the Trinity, just because the Spirit indwelling them will lead them to that truth. Right. But it's questionable how someone can be saved if they deny there's one God, if they deny that they're inseparable, like a triatheism or something, and so how much of the Trinity can you deny and still be saved? Well, as far as the details of that, I'll leave that to God. But with that, I'm going to let our viewers know that we do have a newsletter. This is our latest one at the time of this filming. You know, ten years from now, it will be true. But anyway, we just came out with this one. This one's Seventh-Day Adventism is Not the Truth. But I just wanted to point out, these are free to anyone that wants to contact us about this. You see the email address, cdebater.com and they can send me, actually you're the one to get those emails. They can send you your email address or your mailing address. Steve will send it to me and I can mail it off to them. In some cases, Steve just sends computers. By the way, we have all these newsletters on one of your websites, BibleQuery.org. How do they find these newsletters on BibleQuery? You go to BibleQuery.org and there's a navigation panel on the left. And if you go down about halfway down, you'll see newsletters. And it'll have the newsletters on there in Word format. I think we have HTML also, but again, you're probably better off with the Word format. on various topics, not just Seventh-day Adventists, but Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, atheism, a couple on Islam, you know, things like that. And we have a lot of other materials, too, answering over, you know, around 8,500 questions it changes on the Bible, and talking about, of course, church history. And when I did the church history, it's not really geared toward talking to one of those people. or any other group, for example, I mean, for that matter. It's just geared for, well, what did these guys say? What did these guys believe? And if four more people said something and nobody denied it, you know, what did they say? And it kind of gives a lie to the idea that, well, Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodox, which are kind of different, you know, are based on church tradition. Well, they may be based on later traditions, but not before Nicaea. And it's like, if you put a Catholic, an Orthodox, a Protestant, and an early Christian all in the same room and they're all quote, average, the early Christian would be as close or closer to the Protestants as he would be to a Greek Orthodox with all the icons and stuff, or the Roman Catholics. I'll finish up this as we get ready to sign off. I wanted to show this to our viewers at home, and you can see it on your screen there, but we have a special section in each one of our newsletters called Steve's Q&A. And as you're looking at this thing here, Steve, just tell the viewers, you don't have to read all that stuff. They're looking at it on the screen right now. This is just one example of your many Q&A's where people are asking you different questions about different things and your responses. Well, I mean, I get all kinds of questions from the very, very simple to things from pastors who believe different things, or sometimes they add historical facts, or in a few cases, I have to admit, they give corrections. which I'm very enthusiastic to get. And then a number of the questions on the website is like, I want to come up with that question in 100 years. But it's a good question. And so I get questions from them. And sometimes you can kind of tell by the tone of the question. It's not my tone necessarily. But they're good questions. So I answer them. Now, I don't always put a question on the website. if I've answered it before, I just send the answer and stuff like that. Kind of be a little, I guess, considerate of time. One guy, one time, a Christian, he sent me 100 objections that Muslims had to the Bible. So 100 questions at once, and they were all common things. So within 24 hours later, I sent him 100 answers. Most of them was looking them up. And you know what he did? He sent me another 100. And I think I took a couple days on that one. But that does take some time. You know, I believe, in fact, you get questions, Mike, to your cdebater.aol.com email address from all over the world. Yep. I mean, I've gotten to some. About half seem to be from Muslims or people of ministry to Muslims and half seem to be other. And Muslims are like any other kind of people. You can't stereotype them. They're all different kinds. I mean, there's one who, like, cursed my mother. And then there was one kind of a lawyer, I think, from Kazakhstan who was, you know, he was Muslim, but he was a pretty nice guy. I think you told me that you've already had, what, one and a half death threats from the Muslims? How do you get a half of this one? It was kind of a bail if you kind of be taking the... Oh, a bail one. So you kind of get that half credit. I get it. So, um, but, um, you know, it, um... You know, you get all kinds of people and you get some interesting conversations and it's interesting to see how people kind of change. I mean, they might email you, you email them back, a week or two goes by and then we might have another exchange and then over a month you might get people. And it's interesting to see how things I know you answer a lot of questions because your wife complains that you're on the computer all day. But with that, we're going to sign off. We're about out of time here. I'm Larry Wessels with my good brother Steve Morrison for Christian Answers. Need the free newsletters? Give us a email him. All right. Well, God bless. Remember John 14, 6, Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me. God bless you all. 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