he's sort of a champion of what's called transpersonalism, or nirguna Brahmanism, which means not this, not this, nothing in, nothing that you see in the so-called creation is, and I said so-called creation, we'll talk about what that means in Judaism, sorry, in Hinduism, because everything is ultimately an illusion in Hinduism, nothing is actually God that you see. He is utterly transcendent. So why theologize like this, again, to uphold God's radical uniqueness, his yakhiduth, his wahdaniyah, because God's nature is wholly other. So if you look at the first two commandments, so we talk about the 10 commandments, famous movie made in the 19, I guess it was in the late 50s, Charlton Heston as Moses, the 10 commandments, I think they made another, a couple more Moses movies after that, they weren't very good, and that movie's not very good, it's not very accurate according to the Bible anyway, but everyone has heard of the 10 commandments, but that's only 10 of them, those are the sort of the 10 main commandments, but as we said, Jews believe that there are 613 commandments, but let's look at the first two commandments, so we'll find this in the book of Exodus chapter 20, right at the beginning of chapter 20, remember Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the five books, the Pentateuch, the Chumash, right, the five scrolls of Moses, so this is the second book, Moses is on the mountain, and God says to him that I am the Lord, thy God, who brought you out of the house of bondage out of Egypt, then he says, you shall not have any other gods before me, so this is the first commandment, that the God that brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he's the only God, right, and when it says, you shall have no other gods, that doesn't mean that there are other gods, right, what that means is that you shall have no other so-called gods, you shall not worship anything else other than me, because the God that is bringing you out of Egypt is the only true God, right, we find that term alihah in the Quran also, like the people of Ibrahim alaihi salam, they were devoted to their alihah, they're gods, those aren't really gods, they're so called gods, right, so that's the first commandment, and then he says, so now we're getting into the second commandment, it's kind of a long one, he says, God again, speaking directly to Moses and by extension, so this is the capital Qitab, so speaking second person, masculine, singular to Moses, but as we, as Imam Ash-Shafiqi says about the Quran, whenever Allah speaks to the Prophet, salallahu alayhi salam, in the Quran directly, it is also by extension to the ummah unless it's very obvious that it's only speaking to him, right, so in this case the rabbis would say to Moses and by extension the Am Israel or the Bani Israel, right, the children of Israel, so he says, you shall not make unto yourself the likeness of any image which is in the heavens above you, or the likeness or the image of anything which is in the earth or on the earth below you the likeness or the image of anything that is in the water beneath the earth, right, that covers everything, that covers the universe, everything above the earth, on or in the earth and below the earth, right, nothing like God, those are the first two commandments of Exodus, right, we talked about Numbers 2319, we talked about that, God is not a man that he should lie, and we mentioned that Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea who died in 320 of the common era, who was actually a brilliant orator and a defender of Jewish faith in the face of the Christians, he was a sort of anti-Christian polemicist or apologist, Jewish apologist, he said the meaning of that is that whoever claims to be God is a liar, that's that's what the Hebrew actually means, according to Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea, right, we talked about Hosea 119, I am God and not a man, mutually exclusive God and man, right, Isaiah 558 is a very famous verse of transcendence, all of Deutero Isaiah, so according to historians of the Old Testament, the Book of Isaiah actually has three authors, it was authored at three different times, so you have Proto-Isaiah from chapter one to chapter 39 and then chapters 40 to 66 is called Deutero Isaiah, and it's really in Deutero Isaiah where you get a strong teaching of God's transcendence, and then after that you have Trito-Isaiah, third Isaiah until the end of the book, but in Deutero Isaiah, basically if you believe that God exists literally within the four elements, then you're a mushrik, then you're an idolater, God is transcendent, so 558 of Isaiah is right there, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, right, or Isaiah 40, chapter 20, sorry, chapter 40 verse 25, to whom will you liken me, right, it's a rhetorical question, nothing is like God, in fact the name Michael in Arabic, sorry the name Michael in Hebrew, it's Hebrew in origin, it's also, you know, Mikael or Mikael, it's in the Quran, the name of one of the archangels, but its origin is Hebrew, Mikael, me, it means man, who in Arabic, and then Ka is the Ka'f, Ka'f tashbih, like we say, Lisa Ka, Mithlihi Shaitwan, right, so man Ka'ael, Allah, or Ilah, who is like God, it's a rhetorical question, it doesn't mean a man whose name is Michael is like God, doesn't mean that, his name is a rhetorical question, who is like God, nobody is the answer, it's already understood that you know the answer, that's the point of our Isthif Hamtaqiri, you already know the answer to the question, it's really just a reminder, right, okay, so negative theology, so according to Maimonides, right, when referring to God's nature or essence, right, so according to Maimonides, the name of God's essence is the tetragrammaton, the four letter word, or the four letters that you find all throughout the Hebrew Bible, right, it's the sort of initials of God's name, right, yod hay vav hay, yod hay vav hay, right, so you'll see that in the Hebrew you'll see it, usually in English it's just translated as Lord with a capital L, or Lord all letters in caps, but that's actually the four letter name of God, or the initials of God, now how do you articulate yod hay vav hay, the articulation is not known for sure, once a year on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the high priest of the temple, who was called the haqquhen al-Qadol, he would go into the Qadosh al-Tashim, the holy of holies, inside the temple, right, the bait, what's called the bait mikdash, bait ul-maqdis in Jerusalem, he would go into the innermost chamber on Yom Kippur, and he would pronounce the holy name of God, the actual ismul avam of God, right, the initials of which are yod hay vav hay, Y-H-W-H, so the high priest knew the name, and he would make a toba on behalf of all of Israel by calling on God's most sacred name, tshuvah or toba, repentance, and then he would pass knowledge of the name to his successor, and he would pass it to his successor, and so on and so forth, but since the temple is destroyed in 70 by the Romans, general Titus, the priesthood is gone, no more sacrifices, right, the name has become lost to my monities, the yod hay vav hay, the tetragrammaton, the shem hamaforosh, as it's called in Hebrew, this is the name of God's essence, all right, and generally the Orthodox agree with him, the kabbalah, a text of Jewish mysticism, it disagrees with this and says that the actual name of God's essence is e'en-sulf, which means the one who was without limit, the limitless, that's the name of God's essence. Other rabbis, they use the name Mahut, Mahut, so right in the middle of Mahut, you have the the letters in Hebrew, hay and vav, or ha and waw in Arabic, also if you look at that tetragrammaton again, yod hay vav hay, right in the middle again, you have the hua, right, so these are the prominent letters of the sacred name of God, and oftentimes in the Hebrew Bible, the tetragrammaton is shortened by just hu, right, for example the name Elijah, Elijah in Hebrew is Eliyahu, Eli means my God, Yahu is Yahu, right, which is again a shortened way of articulating the yod hay vav hay, but how to actually articulate all four letters is not decisively known, of course, and it's actually impermissible and a mortal sin for Jews to try to articulate that tetragrammaton. The Christians, of course, they don't have these religious scruples, so you'll find, for example, Jehovah witnesses, their claim to fame is that the hayad hay vav hay is pronounced Jehovah, right, so they'll come to your door and they say, do you know the name of God, and you know, they come to a Muslim house and the Muslims say Allah, and they say, no, that's not a name, that's a title, of course we say no, it's actually a name and there's a debate, but they're trained that no, Allah is a title, it's from the God, that's a minority opinion, anyhow, so we can ask them, how do you get Jehovah, and they say, well, from the tetragrammaton, so we ask them then, okay, those are four consonants, how do you know how to vowel it, and 100% of the time, 100% of the time, the Jehovah's witness will have no answer for you, and then you say, okay, fine, that's how you vowel it, so Jehovah, so Jehovah with a J, and they say, yes, but this is a Yod in Hebrew, how do you go from a Yod to a J, and again, 90% of the time, they won't have an answer for you, so it's conjecture, they really don't know, others would say Yahweh, you hear that a lot too, Yahweh, it just seems to roll off the tongue, so that might be what it is, my opinion is it's probably Yahweh, is a present tense verb in perfect tense, which means he is, right, so verb meaning he is and continues to be, and then the shortened form of it, or Hua is the third person masculine pronoun, which again means he is, but it's a pronoun this time, it's not an actual verb, right, Ibn Arabi, he says Ha-Hut as a possible name of the essence of God, Ha-Hut, so again that Hua is in the middle, Imam Al-Razi suggests that Hua is Al-Ismul-Ahmam, Allahu la ilaha illa Hua, there's no God but Hua, say Hua is Allah, that's the Ismul-Ahmam, Allahu Alam, there's a difference of opinion, nonetheless according to Maimonides, when referring to God's essence or nature, there are three main attributes, existing theologians would agree with that, the Sifatunafsia, sort of the core attribute of God is existence, and it's not an accident, the attributes and accidents are different, God doesn't have accidents, it's an essence and attributes, right, the attributes are necessary, accidents are not necessary, so it was an accident that I was born Iranian and have a white beard now, that's an accident, if I was not born Iranian and my beard was black, I would still be me, it's not essential to my nature, that's an accident, but the fact that I have an intellect, that is an attribute of me, if I did not have intellect then I wouldn't be classified as the rational animal, right, as the human being, the homo sapiens, the homo sapiens means the rational human being, right, so intellect is an attribute of the human being, whereas skin color, eye color, so on and so forth, all of these things are accidents, they're only possible, they're not necessary, it could have been different, if I had different color eyes, if I had no eyes I would still be a human being, I was blind, I'd still be a human being, okay, so existence, unity and eternity, three main attributes according to my monities, and even these, he says, we should understand them negatively, so it's better to say God is not non-existent, it's better to put things negatively, it's better to say that with God there is no plurality or multiplicity associated with him whatsoever, we talked about kathara and adad and so on and so forth, it's better to say that God is not bound by time, so even these core attributes as articulated by my monities are better to put them negatively, however he says, we may speak of God positively, so in other words, kathaphatically, so we have apophatic negatively, kathaphatic positively for the note takers, you can make kathaphatic expressions, positive expressions of God, but only in reference to a divine action in scripture, so for my monities one cannot speak positively about God in any way, shape, or form unless one relates it to an action that was done in scripture, I'll give you an example, so if you say for example God is good in any language, so in Hebrew, you would say adonai tov or tov elohim, so in English God is good, God there is the subject, the muptada is, it's called the copulative verb, the linking verb, and then good is the predicate or the hubba, this is a kathaphatic expression, my monities would say that expression is shirk, it is idolatry to make that statement, God is good period, idolatry because we did not relate it to an action, and also you can say moshay tov in Hebrew, Moses is good, so good, the predicate good, the word good, the noun good can be predicated of many things, so how can you possibly use the same predicate for God and Moses, so for my monities that's a big problem to do, from a akita standpoint, you're qualifying God with the same noun that you're qualifying Moses, so you're saying using the same noun, so that's problematic, so for my monities you would have to say something like God is good or he is all good because he led the Jews out of Egypt and defeated the Pharaoh or something like that, so you can make a kathaphatic expression, you can make a positive statement about God as long as you use it in sort of the superlative and then relate it to something that God actually did in Scripture, so the divine names for my monities are simply and strictly descriptions of God's actions, that's all they are, the divine names of God in the Tanakh in the Hebrew Bible are simply and strictly descriptions of God's actions, so referring to God as king like melech, right, while not referencing an action in Scripture is shirk, is idolatry according to my monities because king can be predicated of many different human beings, right, David HaMelech, King David, Shlomo HaMelech, King Solomon, right, so it's God's action that makes him unique, not his names, no one can do God's actions, Solomon and David, not even Moses, can bring the, has the power intrinsically to bring anyone out of Egypt and defeat the Pharaoh, Moses didn't do that, Moses was a vehicle through which God actually did it, remember God is a doer of all actions, he's al-fa'il, free agent as my monities articulated in this first principle, okay, my monity says something interesting, he says, if you praise a king who possesses millions of gold pieces for possessing millions of silver pieces, then you're actually disparaging and insulting the king, even though your intention is to praise the king, look at this king, he has so many millions of silver pieces, while he actually has gold pieces, your intention is to praise him but you're actually insulting and disparaging him, Aquinas said, even the praise of God is extremely remote from his reality and praising God actually requires a repentance, the praise of God, forget about the cursing of God, disbelief in God, so on and so forth, the praising of God because you're using language and language is created, God is uncreated, right, so positive attributes may not be assigned to God unless these refer to God's actions and scripture, God is powerful because he did this, he saved us from the pharaoh, right, so all divine names are derived from God's actions and scripture according to my monities, in other words, Jews cannot say that these names of God, and this is my monity's opinion, these names of God had no reality until after the creation of the world, according to my monities, God is king like Melech and Shepard, Doro'i and Selah, God is the rock, you know, the exception to that is the tetragrammaton, the Yod-Hei-Wafe, because my monities that that actually refers to God's essence and God's essence was existent, it's a necessary existence obviously before creation, but if you say before creation that God was Melech Ha'olam, he's the king of Rabbu al-Alamin, Meleku al-Alamin for example, then that is too speculative for my monities, it's, you know, it's true in principle but my monities just does not want to go there, it's too conjectural because these names are describing God's actions, that's what they're doing, so we cannot talk about God's essence by using these names before he actually did the action, of course, Imam At-Tahawi says something very interesting in his creed, he says that God can be his mousufun bi jami'i sifatihi min azaliya, that God, Allah SWT, is, can be described by all of his attributes from pre-eternality because the capacity to create is always with God, is always with Allah, right? So, so he says istahaqa ismal khalaq qabla l-khalq, he merits, he deserves the name, the creator, even before creation, he merits the name Rab, even before Marbu, he merits the name Lord, even before anything to Lord over any creation he means because the divine omnipotence, the potential, the full potential and capacity is there to create, so I'm sitting right now, this wa lillahi al-mathil al-a'la, this is just an example to sort of maybe bring our understandings, I'm sitting right now, but you can still describe me as al-qa'im, the standard, because I have an ability to stand, now that ability could be taken away from me, right? Because Allah SWT, God is in control of all things, he can incapacitate me, la qadr Allah, but the fact that I'm sitting now doesn't mean that I can't stand, that you can't describe me as a standard, you can describe me as a standard because I have that ability, so with God, just because he did not create, he merits the name khalaq and nothing can incapacitate him, he makes a decision out of his absolute volition within his nature to create, nothing can stop his irada, right? He is intrinsically independent, right? So Maimonides would disagree with that and say that's just too speculative, don't talk about God's essence before creation, that's conjecture, don't go there, the names of God are describing his actions and scriptures, full stop. Okay, now returning now, so that was, now we can go to the third principle, where he begins by saying the same way, وَاَنِيْ مَعَمِيمْ بِأُمُنَا شَلَيْمَا شَيْحَبْ وُرَيْ يِثْبَرَخْشْمَا I believe with complete faith that to create or bless it be his name, he says, اِنُهُغُفْ that he's not a body, a jisum. وَاَيْنِلُهُسُمْ دِمْيَانْ كَلَلْ And there is, there is not for him any likeness whatsoever, right? He's not a body, he's not matter, like a jisum murakka, a compounded body, he's not composed of anything, there's nothing like him whatsoever, الَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْوَنْ And what's interesting is that this statement was actually a bit controversial in 12th century Judaism, because many rabbis tended to be literalists, they were ذَهِرِيَّ when it came to the Tanakh, right? They were مُجَّسِّمة, they were anthropomorphists, so they actually denied that the Bible has, the Hebrew Bible had a مجَّاسِّ meaning, it didn't have a figurative meaning, everything was حقِقِ, everything was literal, it's very problematic. Moses Ben-Taku, for example, was one of the famous anthropomorphists, rabbis, he died in 1290, a few decades after the death of Maimonides, where he said the Tanakh is حقِقِ, it's absolutely literal, it's like in Psalm 18 it says God has ears, he says yeah, he has ears, and you know, they're physical ears, and he has, you know, it says smoke exuded from the nostrils of God in the Psalms, right? He says yeah, that's exactly literally what happened, how does Maimonides deal with passages like this? Well, the Tanakh has what we would call مُحْكَمَات and مُتْشَابِهَات, and these terms are Quranic, right? مُحْكَمَات or verses, so آيات مُحْكَمَات وَأُخَرُمَتَشَابِهَات, right? So an آية مُتْشَابِهَ is a verse in the Quran that is on the face very clearly understood, kind of one-dimensional, even in translation very clearly understood. مُحْكَمَات and you know the name suggests that there's there's a verse of legal import, right, or what we would say in Jews would say in Judaism, it's halakik, it relates to the halak'a, right? There's a juristic aspect to that. And then you have مُتْشَابِهَات, which are obscure verses or polyvalent verses that are not easily grasped, they require some study, they require commentary, they may be theological, they may be anthropomorphic, right? يَدُوا اللَّهِ فَوْقَ اَيْدِهِ The yad of God is above their hands and yad is usually translated as hand, so doesn't mean God has a hand, God's hand is above their hand, what does that mean? God has a physical hand, right? No, it doesn't mean that. لَيْسَكَ مِتْفَ لِهِ شَيْوَنَ. So the best example, the quintessential example of an آية مُتْشَابِهَ, right, of a which is the word for آية in Hebrew, that is anthropomorphic in the Torah is Exodus 33-23, right? The quintessential anthropomorphic verse. This is when Moses asks to see God's face, he says, let me see your panim, your face, and God says, you'll see my ahor, you'll see my back. So what does this mean? So Maimonides engages in T'awil, T'awil, esoteric exegesis of the Torah as Muthushabi'at. In other words, he interprets these verses in light of God's transcendence, right? And this is the whole project of the guide of his magnum opus, دَلَالَتُ الْحَائِرِينَ, right, the مُرَيْنَ وُخِينَ, the guide for the perplexed. What is he trying to do? He's trying to bring together Naqal and Aqal, Revelation and reason, right? And preserve T'anzi, preserve transcendence of God. So this is what he says. Now, before we get to Maimonides, there was another theologian that preceded Maimonides. He died in the 10th century. His name was Sa'adiah Gion. He was probably the very first Jewish systematic theologian, very, very famous. Wrote in Arabic also. His book is called Beliefs and Opinions. كتاب الأمانات والإعتقادات I believe is the actual title. And then it was later translated as Safer Amunat or something like that. I don't remember exactly the Hebrew title. But Sa'adiah Gion, he lived in Iraq. He also did an incredible translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into Arabic. Hebrew and Arabic are very close. It is by far the best translation of the Hebrew ever done. So how does Sa'adiah Gion, how does he deal with this? You won't see my face, you'll see my back. So he says, seeing the back of God means seeing, it means seeing a created light, right? Which he calls the sheikhina, which is related to the Arabic sakina. The sheikhina represents God's presence on earth. It's a symbol of God's presence. It doesn't mean it's not God's presence literally. It symbolizes God's presence or toe field, right? This created light that Moses would see when he would go into the Mishkan, the Tabernacle of Meeting, the sort of portable temple, the prefigurement of the actual temple in Jerusalem, right? A temple that Moses would go into in the Sinai Peninsula and he would speak with God. Sa'adiah says, when God wanted to speak to Moses, he would create a light in front of Moses, telling Moses, getting his attention essentially, right? And this light is called the sheikhina. And this light was so brilliant that Moses could not look at it. He can only look at it when the light was sort of leaving and he would sort of see the tail end of it. And Sa'adiah says, that sort of tail end of the light, that's the ahur adonai, that's the back of God. So he takes the passage as total majads. It's a figurative expression. Seeing the back of God for Moses means that he saw a created light that God would manifest in the Tabernacle of Meeting. And after some point, it actually says in Exodus that Moses had to wear a veil over his face because the light was beginning to shine off his own face and it was a blinding light. So he would wear a veil, right? So the sheikhina act is an intermediary between God and human beings during prophetic encounters. Now Maimonides, he agrees with Sa'adiah with respect to the sheikhina, but he adds an interesting esoteric dimension. By the way, the rabbis quote from the Talmud that says, the sages, meaning the rabbinical sages, they teach that the Torah speaks in the language of man, right? So this is why there's mutashabi hat in the Hebrew Bible. This is why there's anthropomorphic verses in the Bible, right? Because it's trying to communicate something true that you can understand, but it's not literally true. It's rhetoric, it's very effective form of rhetoric, right? And God has to, in a sense, condescend, as it were, to speak to us. As one of my teachers said, like a mother has to sort of condescend to speak to her young child.  You can't do that. You have to sort of make a game out of it, or you have to sort of use different intonations and things like that. So in order for us to understand, right, theology and understand the will of God, God has to use expressions that we can relate to. And that's the purpose of these anthropomorphic verses, but they have to be interpreted in the light of transcendence. I'll be done in five minutes, inshallah. So then Maimonidesa, he adds an interesting esoteric dimension. So he says, yes, the back of the sheikhina, that's true. But what is the panay adonai? What is the face of wajhullah? What is the face of God? Maimonides says the face of God refers to an intense, clear knowledge or a complete apprehension or comprehension of God. So a comprehension of God is impossible for any human being. No one really comprehends, has idrak of Allah, of Allah, other than God himself. So it's impossible. Moses, can I comprehend you as you comprehend yourself? And of course, from an Islamic standpoint, that's a problematic request, according to many of the theologians. The prophet would not ask for something that's impossible, inconceivable, considered bad adab. But this is the opinion of Maimonides, whereas the back of God, the ahor adonai, is a reference to the knowledge of God which man can know. The man's capacity is to only know the quote back of God, to have ma'rifah of God. Right? So in other words, Moses seeing the back of God means that Moses had the most ma'rifah of Allah, the most gnosis, the most intimate knowledge of God that is possible for a human being to have. So none of the rules of physics apply to God, certainly not Newtonian physics. He transcends physicality completely, getting into a little bit of the halakah, Jewish law, no iconography of God, or even human beings, or even celestial bodies are allowed in Orthodox halakah, or even like painting pictures of planets, or human beings. Animals are okay, it seems, as long as there's something sort of left off, like an eye is left off, or there's some deformity given. Most rabbis are against tasweer, photography, even with the dolls, you know, to cut the nose off or something, or missing finger, no complete image is allowed. That's the halakah, the Hashem, the God, right? God is not the four elements, fire, water, earth, and wind. So the rabbis say, you know, it says in the Psalms, God is outstretched to arm, right? Virah is you, like arm, Virah, and the Hebrew, Zorah. And the meaning of this, it means that he's the savior, not that he's a physical arm, right? He lends a hand as it were, right? So the Torah speaks to us in the language of human beings. I think that's a good place to stop. So I'm almost, so yeah, I mean, we're done with Judaism, we have to move on. There's a lot more to say, obviously. That's only the third out of 13 principles. Maybe we can do a second part of this course later, but we are going to move. I gave you the basics of Jewish theology. So we're going to move next week, inshallah, to Christianity. So I look at the New Testament. What is the New Testament? I look at Issa alaihi salam from a Christian perspective. And I look at the Trinity. What is the Trinity? What is it not? It's important for us to understand what is the Trinity? What do Christians actually believe? At least what do their books? How do their classical, traditional books find the Trinity? It's very important for us to understand that. So we'll see you next week, inshallah. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. This is Thursday evening, August 18th. We are live from MCC for our class, the basics of the world, religions. Inshallah tonight we're going to start a two-part program or session on Christianity. So we finished Judaism last week, inshallah. So we're going to start Christianity. And we're going to begin tonight by talking about the New Testament. That is to say the Christian Scriptures. And then next week, next Tuesday, inshallah, we're going to look at the Nicene Creed, Orthodox Christian Creed, Trinitarian Creed, as well as the Trinity. So that's the plan for Christianity. And again, we are live. I'm looking at the chat box here. So if there are any questions, I forgot to mention this in weeks past, unfortunately. But if there are people that want to ask questions, you can go ahead and type them into the chat box. And I'll answer them. If they're appropriate, I'll answer them on the air, inshallah. Okay, so last week we said that the primary text of Judaism is the Old Testament. Of course, again, Old Testament, it's Christian terminology. It's called the Tanakh in Hebrew, which of course, again, stands for Torah Nebim Ketobim. The Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books, the prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the writings like Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, First and Second Kings, so on and so forth. Okay, with the New Testament, we have something interesting. So the Christians now, they believe in the Old Testament, right? They believe it to be the Word of God, however they have their own set of primary scriptures. And these scriptures are not affirmed by the Jews. So it doesn't look like the video was working here. Inshallah, it'll come back. So I can, if people have questions, we can deal with that, inshallah. So New Testament, right? It's called the Hei, Kei Nai, Diyathei, literally the New Testament. Now the phrase New Testament is actually in the Old Testament. It's in Jeremiah 31, 31, where there's this promise of God that I'm going to establish what's called a Berit Chadasha in Hebrew, which literally means New Testament. Of course, the Jews take that to mean something completely different than the Christians. In Jewish circles, Jeremiah is prophesizing that towards the end of time, during the reign of the Messiah, the Messiah will implement the Jewish law. And that's going to be new for most people because most people are not Jews. And it's going to also be sort of a renewal for Jews that weren't practicing the law. But nonetheless, this is the name of the Christian scriptures, the New Testament. So what is the essence of the Old Testament? The Old Berit, the word Berit means Testament. It basically is the following. It is if you adhere to the law of Moses, if you follow the law of Moses, then you will gain salvation. Right? That's basically the essence of the law, the essence of the law in a nutshell. Let me just quickly try something here, so I can try this again. I think we're okay now. Yes. So let me just reiterate. It's Tuesday, August 18th, Tuesday evening. We are live for people out there that want to ask me a question. Feel free to type that into the chat box, inshallah. Okay, so the essence of the Old Testament is, or the mosaic covenant, which is preferred language according to Jews, is that if you follow the law of God, you follow the mitzvot, and you will be saved, you will gain salvation. And this is interesting because this is the answer of Jesus' peace be upon him, at least according to the New Testament Gospels. We'll talk more about these, what are these Gospels? There are four Gospels in the Christian New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You have this pericope or this story in three Gospels, where a Jewish scribe comes to Jesus, and he says to him, Good Master, what must I do to gain eternal life? And then Jesus says to him, Why are you calling me good? There's no one good but one, and that is God. And then he continues, Follow the commandments, and you shall enter the life. There's variations. I mean, that's the reading in Mark. That's how Mark has it. There's slight variations in Matthew and Luke. That's Mark 10, 18. And you have it in Luke 18, 18, and Mark, Matthew 19, 17. So here, Jesus peace be upon him, according to these Christian texts, is affirming the old berit, the mosaic covenant. But then by Gospels end, later on in the Gospel, Mark 14, Matthew 26, and Luke 22, we are told that Jesus celebrates the Passover, the Last Supper with his disciples, and he takes the bread, and he gives it to them and says, This is the bread and the wine. This is my body. This is my blood of the new covenant, of the new testament. So now he's establishing a new covenant, a new agreement. So what that means is now, is that the old covenant that God made with the Israelites is Sinai. This covenant has been revoked. It is abrogated. And now one has to simply believe in Jesus as a Lord, as Paul says, and that God raised him from the dead, and you shall be saved. So that's the essence. Paul states this, I believe in 1 Corinthians. That's the essence of this new covenant then. Okay, so let's take a closer look then at the New Testament. So there are 39 books in the Old Testament. There are 27 books in the New Testament. It's called a Canon of 27 books. There are four major types of books in the New Testament. The first major type of book is called a Gospel. So a Gospel is basically a narrative about Jesus that really focuses on the passion. The last week of Jesus's life, according to these texts. So they're basically four extended passion narratives. The real focus is on the suffering and death resurrection of Jesus. That's really where the focus is. So you have a Gospel. One of the types of books of the New Testament. There are four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We'll talk more about them, inshallah. Then you have a book of history. One book of history in the New Testament is the fifth book of the New Testament. It's called the book of Acts, ACTS, also called Acts of the Apostles in the Catholic version, English versions. So basically this is early ecclesiastical history, early church history. There are three main characters, really two main characters. There's Peter and there's Paul, but there's also James, right? Acts chapter 15. You have the famous Jerusalem Council. This is really this sort of seminal event in the early Christian movement and the sort of prototype of the later church councils, ecumenical church councils that are going to follow in the fourth century all the way into the 21st century or 20th century. We haven't had one. There hasn't been an ecumenical church council in the 21st century. The last one was in the 1960s called Vatican II. So the sort of prototype of that, the archetype was the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15. And the issue of that time was how much of the mosaic law is required for these Gentile proselytes, for these Greeks. The Greeks are becoming Christian. How much of the law of Moses should we impose upon them? That's why they held the council basically. So you have early church history, the book of Acts. And then you have something called the epistles, which simply means letters. And there are 21 of them. So four gospels. There's one book of history called the book of Acts. Then you have 21 epistles or letters. And these are written by various apostles, various apostolic authorities, various disciples of Jesus, at least according to Christian tradition. So these epistles, they deal with a doctrine. They deal with council instructions. They deal with just different issues that arise in various congregations. According to historians, seven of these 21 epistles were genuinely written by Paul, the apostle Paul. We'll talk about him, inshallah. So scholars agree almost by consensus that seven of them are written by Paul. Seven of them, another seven of them are disputed, but claimed to have been written by Paul. In other words, someone pretending to be Paul. So scholars have deemed these to be pseudo-Pauline, which is sort of a nice way of saying they're forgeries. Someone is writing these letters pretending to be Paul, and they're not Paul. They're forging these letters pretending to be Paul. And then you have seven, what are known as Catholic epistles, not Catholic with a capital C, not Roman Catholic, but Catholic with a lower case C, which simply means universal epistles. And these are written by various apostles as well, like James and Peter and John and Jude. Although, again, the vast majority of historians do not believe that these men actually wrote these books, that bear their names. These are also forgeries. When it comes to the Gospels, they're called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But in reality, they are anonymous. None of the authors identify themselves. Church tradition assigns them or attributes these books to two disciples of Jesus, Matthew, the tax collector, who's also called Levi, and John, Yohanan, the son of Zebedee, who's one of the disciples of Jesus, the beloved disciple, according to the Gospel of John, although it's disputed whether John, the son of Zebedee, is the beloved disciple. That's the dominant opinion. Historians do not believe that these two men actually wrote these Gospels. And then you have the Gospel of Mark. Mark was, according to church tradition, he was a student of Peter. So he's like a tabiri. And then you have the Gospel of Luke, who is a friend of Paul, or Paul's traveling companion. So this is very interesting. We notice that you have the Gospel of Mark, which is accepted by the church is totally canonical and written around, according to the vast majority of historians, probably around 70 of the common era or so. Most historians put the even many confessional Christian scholars. They place the date of Mark's Gospel around 70, around the time of the destruction of the temple. But there's also something called the Gospel of Peter. The Gospel of Peter is not accepted as canon. And the reason is, well, it's just too late. That's one sort of way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that it contains material that is offensive to the early Christian movement. So in the Gospel of Peter, it states that Jesus, when they were crucifying him, he was silent as if he felt no pain. So that doesn't work with the early church, because for the early church, at least the early Pauline church, Jesus needs to suffer. It really needs to hurt. His pain is our gain, as they say.  He's bearing the sins of the world. He's smitten and afflicted. He's bruised for our iniquities. He's crushed for our transgressions, as Isaiah chapter 53 says, which Christians believe to be referencing Jesus. So it seems like in the Gospel of Peter, he's just, he's not feeling pain or perhaps his soul has left his body. They're crucifying an empty shell. Something's going on there. The church didn't like it. So the Gospel of Peter is rejected, but the Gospel of Mark, whose Peter's student is accepted as canonical. And then the Gospel of John, there's good reasons for placing John around 70 or even earlier as well, but the vast majority of historians placed the Gospel of John anywhere from about 90 to 110 of the Common Era. If we just take the low number, the earliest date of 90, that's called the Terminus Postquem, the earliest of date, 90. So the Apostle John, who wrote the Gospel, was probably, let's say he was, I don't know, 30 years old at the crucifixion around the age of Jesus, probably the same age. The disciples were probably not old men, they were probably young men around the age of Jesus. So he's 30 years old in the year 30. So he waited then 60 years to write his Gospel around 90. Again, we're taking the low end date of 90.  And John the son of Zebedee is supposed to be a Galilean fisherman and 95% probably of people in Palestine at the time, certainly fishermen and peasants, they were illiterate, they could not read or write, they were unlettered. So how is it that he can produce this Gospel where he's talking about referencing the logos, which is a Hellenistic philosophical idea that goes back to Heraclitus. Maybe he studied for 60 years, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense that he would write it in Greek and not in Aramaic or in Syriac. Another issue is that in John, so if you ask a Christian, where does Jesus claim to be God in the New Testament and the four Gospels? Invariably, the Christian will quote something from the Gospel of John. It is the highest Christology. So a Christian would say, well, John 1030, the father and I are one. There you go. John 858, before Abraham was, I am. Right? So, before Abraham was, I am. I already was before Abraham. So here, Jesus, he's intimating his pre-eternality that he predates Abraham. Oh, they'll say, I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? John 14.6. So you have these I am statements. That's what these are called, the famous I am statements of the Johannin, or Gospel of John, the Johannin Gospel. We find none of these I am statements in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, these three Gospels, which are called the Synoptic Gospels, right? Synoptic, meaning one-eyed. Basically that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they follow basically the same chronology of events in the life of Jesus. Whereas in John, we have this drastic departure from the Synoptic chronology, not only in chronology, but in content. So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the preferred method of teaching, his preferred pedagogical method of teaching is through parable. But in John, he is giving these very long monologues about his relationship with the Father, making big, big claims. He's engaged in these long and sometimes very tense debates with the Jews, as it says, right? The Jews. It's very clear in the Gospel of John that the enemies of Jesus are not scribes and Pharisees, right? I mean, you find that language in Matthew, which is written around 70 or 80, 85. But by the time John comes around, there's a clear departure. You have Christians and you have Jews, right? In the earliest of Christianity, the Christians were a sect of Judaism. They're called the Nazarenes or the Evionim, which means like the spiritual poppers, the poor people. But now we have a definitive split in the late first century. These are Jews. So it's very clear, if you read the Gospel of John, hoi iudaioi, right? The Jews are the enemies of Jesus. And Jesus is always butting heads with the Jews. So it's very, very interesting. But the main point I was going to make is that these IM statements, which are supposed to be divine claims of Jesus, Jesus is claiming to be God in these IM statements. If he truly made these statements, then we really have to sort of give an F to Matthew, Mark, and Luke for how they wrote their Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke mentioned, all three of them mentioned that Jesus, he rode a donkey into Jerusalem when he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He rode a donkey into Jerusalem. All three of them mentioned that, right? You might think, well, is that really important?  So it's a fulfillment of prophecy. Okay, still doesn't seem very important. But if Jesus is making a divine claim, he's claiming to be God, he said, before Abraham was, I am the father and I are one. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the good shepherd. I am the door. These big, big claims that he's making in the Gospel of John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke 100% failed in recording these divine claims. How could they not record these divine claims of Jesus? So the answer is, they're completely inept and they've done a horrible job at writing their Gospels. Or Jesus never made those statements, right? And the majority of historians nowadays, they believe that the latter is actually true, that the Gospel of John is really an ahistorical document. It's really just sort of a Christological meditation of a certain community of Christians called the Johanin community. And, you know, this community, if you read the Gospel of John, for example, he's aware that you have Matthew, Mark, and Luke floating around in the Mediterranean. But he, at times, deliberately contradicts the synoptics, right? For example, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it says Jesus was crucified on the day of Passover, which is a strange day to be crucified. But John says that he was crucified on the eve of Passover. So the question then becomes, who's right? Can they both be right? Were there two crucifixions? How can these texts be inerrant, right? And this is the position of fundamentalist Bible colleges like the Moody Bible Institute, probably Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, that these books are inerrant. How can both of these be true? Was Jesus crucified on Passover or the eve of Passover? Which is it? Were there two crucifixions? Somebody got it wrong. Or they both got it wrong, right? It says in the Synoptic Gospels that when Jesus was going to be crucified, for no apparent reason, the Romans pulled a random guy out of the crowd named Simon of Cyrene, and compelled him to bear the cross, right? So he took the cross of Jesus, or probably the cross beam. It says Starros, which is like a steak or a beam, probably just a crossbar, and made him bear the cross while Jesus sort of just followed in front or behind. I don't remember what it says in the synoptics, but that's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John knows this, but John goes out of his way to contradict the synoptics, and he says, Jesus bore his own cross to Golgotha, the place of the skull, where the Romans used to crucify Jews, insurrectionist Jews, or troublemaking Jews. So why does John do that? Well, there's probably some sort of Christological or polemical reason why he does that. Now, we know that there were early Christian groups that denied the crucifixion of Jesus. One such group were the Basilidians, named after Basilides. I might have mentioned him in the past. He was a Christian teacher in Egypt, Alexandria, in the first quarter of the second century, and Basilides, his opinion was that Simon of Cyrene was transfigured, he uses that word in Latin, transfiguratum, transfigured to look like Jesus, and Jesus was transfigured to look like him, and so the Romans grabbed the apparent Jesus. This is called substitution theory, supernatural identity, transference, and so Jesus was able to escape the crucifixion. So it seems like John is familiar with this belief around the time when he's writing at 90 CE or at 100 CE, possibly 110 CE. So what he does is he completely eliminates the entire episode of Simon of Cyrene for a Christological reason, even though he knows he's contradicting the synoptics, even though his readers will eventually know that he's contradicting the synoptics. But his whole point is to teach you is not to give you accurate history. John admits at the end of the gospel, these things have been written to convince you that Jesus is the Son of God, that's the whole aim, that's to tell us, that's his maksad of writing his gospel, is to convince you by any means necessary that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for your sins. So don't get it twisted, he wasn't substituted, died on the cross, and then John tells us something else at the crucifixion scene. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we were told that Jesus is on the cross for a few hours, and Mark, it's maybe three hours, and this is why Pilate marveled Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. This man has died already after just a few hours on the cross. Pontius Pilate made a career of crucifying Jews. So if he's astonished and he's marveling that this man has died already, then there's something happening there, there's something to look into. How can he be dead already? And of course Christians will say that, well Jesus, he was beaten beyond recognition, and he was flogged front and back down to his bowels, I mean his intestines were falling out. You read things like this in Christian polemical writings like Joshua McDowell and others, Mike Lacona and things like that.  Why is Pilate shocked? Pilate is an expert Jew killer. He is an expert Jew crucifier, and he says he marveled. This man is dead after three hours. Are you sure he's dead? How can he be dead? And he oversaw all of, you know, these so-called beatings and flogging and so on and so forth. I mean nowhere in Matthew, Mark and Luke does it say that he was nailed to a cross, right? That's not mentioned in the synoptic tradition. We find that in John, and it's not mentioned directly. It's when, you know, in the upper room where the doubting Thomas and Jesus shows his hands, you know, in his feet, apparently the marks of the crucifixion, so we find that in John, right? But something else that happens in John is Jesus is on the cross and he's impaled on the cross. We don't find this in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Why didn't Matthew, Mark and Luke, if Matthew is an eyewitness, this is what Christians believe, at least traditional Christians, Matthew is an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus, right? Why didn't Matthew, we say, well, he foresook Jesus and fled. I mean that's what it says in Matthew, Mark and Luke, when Jesus was on the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Jewish temple guard came to arrest him. And as all of his disciples foresook him and fled, so Matthew wasn't there. Okay, but Matthew could have, there were people that were there, Matthew could have interviewed somebody, an eyewitness, and what happened at the crucifixion? Matthew seems to know a lot about what happened at the crucifixion, even though he wasn't there. Matthew records the final words of Jesus on the cross. How did he know that? Somebody told him, why didn't somebody tell him that Jesus was impaled on the cross? John, that's what John says, writing in 90 or 100. Well, it probably didn't happen, that's why. It's not historical. Why does John say that Jesus was impaled on the cross? Because apparently there might have been Christians who had the belief that Jesus was put on a cross, but he didn't actually die, he might have swooned, he might have survived the cross, right? That's why he was seen alive in his fleshy body after the supposed, his supposed death. Well, John eliminates this type of heresy according to him and says, no, no, no, don't get it twisted. He was impaled on the cross, he's dead, there's no doubt about it. So basically, okay, so we went a little bit off course here, but that's okay. So we said that there's four Gospels, there's the Book of Acts, there's 21 Epistles, and then we have one Apocalypse, right? Apocalypse is a Greek word, apocalypse, meaning an unveiling or a disclosure, kashf, it's called kitabu mukhash. And this is sort of a book that describes visions of the eskaton, the sa'a, towards the end of time. It's very, very cryptic, it's very symbolic, very, very strange, very enigmatic.  You have the Mark of the Beast, the Mark of the Therion in Greek, which is 666. It's stated in Revelation chapter 13 verse 18. So this book is called the Book of Revelation, right? In the Catholic version, it's called the Apocalypse. Okay, well all these strange things happening, the Mark of the Beast, the Antichrist is 666. Nobody knows what that means. Some people believe it's the numerical value of his name. Some scholars believe that it's a reference to Nero, the Roman emperor who was, who was compared today by Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump. He said, I think he said, Sanders said today, what did he say? He said, when Rome was burning, Nero was, was playing his fiddle, but Trump was golfing, right? So Nero is sort of seen as this, this sort of prototypical horrible leader, right? So some scholars believe that the numerical value of Emperor Nero is 666. Okay, so you have these 27 books. Okay, now the first books of the New Testament to be written were not the Gospels. Okay, the first books chronologically of the New Testament were the Pauline epistles, right? The letters written by Paul. So who is Paul? So Paul his actual name is Saul of Tarsus. He was a Benjaminite Jew from Sicily who was also a Pharisee who early on was a very zealous Christian persecuting Pharisee. So he would persecute the earliest of Christians, like the disciples, right? Before they were actually called Christian, they were, they were the Nazarenes, right? So Jews who happened to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, Paul was the, the man that the high priest would call upon to, according to his own words, he would bind them up, capture them, bring them back to Jerusalem for, for trial. So he was a persecutor of the early Jesus movement. And then according to Paul, he had some sort of conversion experience on the road to Damascus where he claims that he had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus who commissioned him to go into all nations and admonish the Gentiles, right? So he's the apostle to the Gentiles. So then Paul goes to different major metropolitan areas around the Mediterranean and he begins to preach what he calls my gospel. That's what he says. My gospel. Remember Jesus of the seed of David rose from the dead according to my gospel, he says. And he uses that phrase three times in his, in his, in his letters. Two of them are genuinely written by Paul. One of them is Pseudo Paul. So when Paul says my gospel, it seems like he's making a distinction between what he is saying and what this other gospel is saying. And he actually says that in the book of Galatians, he chastises his congregation in Galatia, which is in Turkey for believing in quote, another gospel. So there's another gospel. According to Christian historians, the story is this, Paul went to Galatia and he made a lot of converts to his gospel, his understanding of the gospel, that Jesus was the divine son of God and that he died for your sins. And that's the new, that's the new covenant. And, and, and then he left Galatia. And then a group of apostles from Jerusalem sent by James, who is Jesus's brother or cousin. It's not really clear what brother means, half brother or cousin possibly step brother. Nonetheless, the book of Acts tells us that James is the leader of the Jerusalem apostles. He sends messengers, other apostles into Galatia to correct Paul's deviant teachings. And so they're able to convince these Galatians that Paul was wrong about many fundamental issues. So then Paul writes now the book of his letter to the Galatians, where he chastises the Galatians. How dare you believe in this other gospel, right? We didn't bring this gospel. And then he goes on to accuse Peter, James and Barnumus of hypocrisy in the book of Galatians. So Paul is budding heads. He has fundamental big issues with actual disciples of Isa, he admits this in the book of Galatians. He refers to them sarcastically, so-called pillars. That's what he says. These so-called pillars of the church. He says these super apostles. Who do they think they are, these super apostles? This is his sarcasm. Who is he talking about? He's talking about actual disciples of Isa, he says, I don't need a letter of recommendation. You know, I have my experience. I experience the resurrected Jesus. What does he mean? I don't need a letter of recommendation. According to New Testament scholars, these apostles that are coming into these cities and Paul's wake and correcting his deviant gospel have actual hijazat. They have these teaching licenses that they've brought from Jerusalem, signed by James, who is the leader of the Nazarenes, the early Christian movement. Paul has no such letter because he's a freelance self-appointed apostle. So he says to his congregations, I don't need a letter. I had this experience and he brags, I didn't take this teaching from any human being, from any man. I took it directly from Christ. This is what he says. Yet he is at odds. Iktai, fundamental issue, he's butting heads with the actual disciples of Isa, all right? So Paul is a highly problematic person to say the least. So Paul began writing around 52. His first letter was to his congregation at Thessalonica, a major Greek city, right? It's called First Thessalonians. And in First Thessalonians, Paul is very clear. And there's certain central Pauline themes. This is how scholars, like textual critics, can tell if this is written by Paul or not. So you have these 14 epistles that are claimed to have been written by Paul. According to historians, seven of them are by Paul, because they would analyze the texts through certain textual measures. And the other seven are deemed to be forgeries in the name of Paul, right? So the seven genuine letters, the first genuine letter is called First Thessalonians. And then you have Galatians, Philemon, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Philippians, and Romans. And in these seven letters, you have these central Pauline themes. The second coming of Jesus will be in his lifetime. This is absolutely fundamental to Paul's understanding of his gospel, what he is claiming he has taken from Jesus. Absolutely fundamental. We're going to be transformed in the twinkling of an eye, he says, in First Thessalonians, caught up in the clouds with the Lord. And all of his advice on marriage, celibacy, on commerce, all of it is predicated upon his belief that at any moment Jesus will manifest in his second coming and set up his kingdom of God on earth, as the Jews believe the Jewish Messiah would do. And of course, this never happened. It never happened. So we have here a falsifiable claim of Paul. Paul is very, very clear. He believes the second coming will occur in his lifetime. In fact, the author of Mark's gospel and these four gospels, so you have the Pauline letters that are written between, you know, 52 and 65 or something. And then you have the first gospel mark. So the four gospels are highly influenced by Pauline doctrine. Right. And again, that's why in these four gospels, I mean, they're basically four extended passion narratives, because the cross is so central for Paul. Paul says in First Corinthians, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. If Christ did not raise from the dead, if he was not resurrected, our faith is in vain. There's no point to this religion. Right.  He's never crucified. He's never killed. He's never resurrected. Christianity is in vain. But this is what Paul says in First Corinthians. So now in Mark, right, you have Jesus saying that among those standing here, right, he says, there are some standing here that shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. Right. And for Mark, the Son of Man seems to be a title of Jesus himself. Coming in the clouds, he's paraphrasing something found in the book of Daniel chapter seven, the apocalyptic Son of Man, which Christians or Mark at this point believes to be a prophecy of the Jewish Messiah, the bar in Nash, the Son of Man, who's exceedingly powerful on the earth. Jesus is saying there's some standing here. He's telling this to Jews around 29 or 30 of the common era. There are people here now alive that will see me coming with great power in the clouds. Now we cannot possibly attribute such a statement to Esa, because that would make him a false prophet. And true prophets do not make false prophecies. Christians have ways of sort of working around these things. But what's very interesting is Mark wrote that around 70.  What's happening in Jerusalem between 67 and 73, it's the Jewish war that Josephus writes about. So you have an all out assault upon the Jews in Palestine by the Roman war machine. So there was an insurrection by the Qanaim, the zealots or the proto zealots. These were Jewish insurrectionists that tried to seize the land and implement Jewish law from the heathen colonizers, the Romans. They were absolutely crushed over this six year period. The Romans started in the north in Galilee where Jesus was raised, and they just swept right down the entire country, destroyed the temple in 70 and massacred, you know, men, women and children of that mass suicide that happened at the fortress in Masada around 73 of the common era. So Mark believes this is the end of the world, right? So if this is the end of the world, then the second coming of Jesus is imminent.  All right. We would not attribute this false prophecy to a true prophet, Issa alaihi salam. Mark is influenced by Paul who made this false prophecy. Paul believed the second coming was imminent. It did not materialize. Paul also believes in justification by faith alone. He believes that the law of Moses was abrogated almost completely. And he believes in vicarious atonement, this idea that Jesus was a Savior, man God, a divine Son of God who died for your sins. All right. What's also interesting about Paul is that he does not mention anything about the historical Jesus. Paul does not quote Jesus accurately one time in any of his letters, whether they're genuine Paul or pseudo Paul. Paul never mentions a miracle that Jesus performed, like these exorcisms that are such a big part of the synoptic tradition, the healings, right? The resurrection of Lazarus. He doesn't mention any of these things. Paul does not mention anything about the historical Jesus. He's completely focused on the crucifixion and resurrection, the significance of the death of a Savior, man God. That's what his attention is almost exclusively focused on, right? He doesn't mention the virgin birth of Jesus. Why wouldn't he mention that? Very, very strange. He actually says Jesus who was of the seed of David, I mean it seems like he believes that Jesus was just born as a descendant of David in a conventional sense, right? Why wouldn't he mention these things? He doesn't quote Issa al-Islam. He doesn't quote the Jesus of the Gospels. If there's an oral tradition floating around where Jesus is making divine claims that are recorded by John, Paul doesn't seem to quote it. He doesn't quote them. Why doesn't he quote them? Either he doesn't care that Jesus claimed to be God and I think he would care. Or these statements did not exist and John invented them out of whole cloth in order to convince his audience that Jesus is the Son of God. Now Paul does something quite radical. What he does is he appropriates an old pagan motif. Okay, this is known as the dying and rising savior man-god motif. So this was a motif, a belief that predated Christianity by hundreds and hundreds of years. This idea that some sort of incarnation, a divine Son of God comes to the earth, suffers and dies for the sins of humanity. It's a very beautiful story. You have a personal savior. What Paul does is that he gives it a Jewish makeover and he uses it to explain what he believes to be the gospel. So what Paul basically does, I liken it to like a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree, right? So we have this tree which is brought into the home, which is what the ancient pagans used to do. I mean in Jeremiah, I think chapter 10 verse 2, he says, imitate not the way of the heathen, the infidel who brings a tree into their house and decks it out with golden silver. That's what the tree worshipers used to do. Today we call them tree-huggers. No, I'm just kidding. But that's what they used to do. What Paul is doing is basically he's taking a tree, a Christmas tree, a symbol of paganism, that's his foundation, and he's putting a star of David at the top of it. So he takes paganism as his foundation and he kind of dresses it up with the trappings of Judaism. Before Christianity, you had Osiris, the savior man god of Egypt, Adonis of Syria, Romulus of Rome, Zalmoxis of Thrace, who's mentioned by Herodotus in his histories, Inanna of Sumeria, who's a female daughter of God, and of course Mithras, the Persian sun god, who, although he didn't actually die, he did suffer for the sins of his people. There's a book called The World, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Curse Graves, written in 1875. There are some problematic elements to this book from a historical standpoint, but it's an interesting book. Christianity Before Christ is the subtitle. There's another book by Tom Harper called The Pagan Christ, which is quite interesting as well. So Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, Zalmoxis, Inanna, Mithras, all savior gods, all sons of God, with the exception of Inanna, who's a daughter of God, but basically all children of God, but not the god. They are not the god. So all of these traditions are what's known as henotheistic, and I am convinced that Paul himself was a henotheist. I do not believe that Paul is a monotheist. Paul believes that Jesus is a second deity. Paul is highly, highly influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, Hellenistic motifs like this one here, The Dying and Rising, Save Your Man-God Motifs, but also this idea of, you know, this middle platonic idea that the godhead is three unique deities where there's a hierarchy of being, the one, the word, the logos, and the spirit, right? All three are divine. The latter two are the effect of the cause who is the one. He's the source and origin of everything, even the logos and the spirit. So even though the logos and spirit are from the very essence, their ex-deo, they're from the very essence of God, they are not as exalted as the one who is without origin, who is the origin and is the cause of the others. So you have this hierarchy of gods. So Paul is borrowing this idea. So is John. John directly calls Jesus the logos. So it's hard to, it's very difficult. I mean, eventually Christian apologists in the third and fourth century, they had a way of sort of working out how this is still monotheism. It's not monotheism according to the Islamic definition of monotheism, but they sort of took these middle platonic and neoplatonic ideas of a hierarchy within the godhead and said there's really no hierarchy of being just a person. So kind of sleight of hand. We'll talk about that next week, inshallah ta'ala. But anyway, you have the Savior, man gods, they all undergo a passion, some sort of suffering, and they obtain victory over death. It's very interesting, you know. The Quran says that the Christians say, al-Masih ibn Allah, that Christ is the Son of God. That is a saying that issues from their mouths. In this they but imitate what the unbelievers of all these ancient pagans used to say. It's all the way back hundreds and hundreds of years. And of course, Hellenistic religion tended to be syncretistic. They would mix and match different elements. So like the cult of Mithras was an amalgamation of Hellenistic, meaning Greek, as well as Persian beliefs. The cult of Dionyses was an amalgamation of Hellenistic, as well as Phoenician beliefs. The cult of Pauline Christianity is an amalgamation of Hellenistic and Jewish beliefs. So now you have this kind of new hybrid religion. And when that happened, now you have this definitive split. Paul set the foundation in the middle of the first century. By the end of the first century, you have this definitive split. These are not Jews. These are a separate religion. They're called Christians. They worship Christ as a God. So you have these 27 books then, just to wrap up, inshallah. Four Gospels, one Book of Acts, 21 Epistles, one Apocalypse. Okay. I think that's good for tonight, inshallah. So we will see you next time. I think that's a good place to stop. I don't want to start. I know there's a few minutes left here, but I don't want to get into a new topic. This is going to take a bit of explaining to do. So we'll save that for next time. We'll finish our discussion on the Gospels. There's one more thing I wanted to say about what's known as backward Christology, which is very, very interesting that we find in the four Gospels, Christology and the Making, James Dunn, this idea. We'll talk about that, and then we'll go into the Nicene Creed and talk about the Trinity, inshallah. Okay. So this is our final session on Christianity. So last time we talked about the four 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 the Christians has become higher and higher throughout the Gospels. So in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is a peace be upon him according to Mark. He is a prophet. He's the hidden Messiah. 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 prophecies of 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 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 written by the prophet, he shall be called the Nazarene. He shall be called the Nazarene. Matthew is presenting the statement as if it's from the Old Testament, from the Tanakh, but there is no such statement in the Old Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is called Esoter 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-Aristatelian philosopher where he is expounding truths through 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 three or four centuries of the Christian era with the Christian religion.  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 pre-existent or pre-eternal son, that he was the Logos. Again, this is a good idea. You had Christians who believed that there were three gods. You had Christians who believed that there was one God, but this God had three different modes, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's like God putting on three different masks. One person of God who has sort of three modes. So he was 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 Sebellianism. So you have many, many types of Christianity. Now, Constantine, who was the first Christian emperor, he wanted unity in his empire. And so after defeating his rivals to the throne, he called for this council, the council of Nicaea, very important council, 325 of the Common Era, the first so-called ecumenical world church council. Although all of the bishops that attended Nicaea believed already that Jesus, some, at least be upon him, was divine in some way, right? Although that is debatable, but certainly there were no ebunites present at the council, you know, Nazarenes. They weren't any Jewish Christians that were at the council. The Jewish Christians were extinct by this time. 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 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 Vinci Code, in which he gives a lot of false information as to what happened. But at the end of the council, and whether Constantine was actually Christian or not during this council, was actually open to debate. 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 drafted this creed, and it's a short creed. So we'll just go through it. The creedal exposition of the 318 fathers. That means the bishops that attended the council. So they say, and it begins, and it's written in Greek, right? Whether Issa alaihi salam spoke Greek or not is open to debate. It seems like he probably knew some Greek because it was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean at the time. So the New Testament documents, the New Testament books are all written in Greek, and those are original documents originally written in Greek. Paul wrote his letters in Greek. He did not write them in Syriac or Hebrew. The original documents are in Greek. So Issa alaihi salam, 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. Does it make any sense? Or just being an alem and not knowing Arabic. So he knew Hebrew. He knew Aramaic or Syriac. Syriac is sort of late Aramaic or sometimes called Christian Aramaic. It's related to Semitic language. It's 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 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 Arisa alai salam. And many of the Jews at the time probably spoke Greek as well. But since the New Testament was written in Greek and Koine Greek, which is also called Alexandria in Greek. So this is the language of Alexander. But don't forget what Alexander did is that he conquered all of North Africa and and the ancient Near East during his time and his influence in that region was still very much alive in the first century of the common era. It's called Hellenization, like Greek influence in 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, inshallah, in the chat box. And I will get to them, inshallah. It begins by saying, Pisteu amen, we believe, eis hen atheon patera panto kratora. So that's the Greek. It says we believe. That's how the the creed begins. We believe in one God, the Father. Panto kratora means the Panto crater, the sort of creator of all. Sometimes that's translated as the almighty. The Latin says, kredimus in unum deum patrem amniputim. So they translate Panto crater, Panto kratora, 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, eis hen akoryon eisun kristan ton huyon tuthayu. We also believe in one Lord. Horyon 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 kurye kurye, 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 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 an originalist when it comes to these creeds, right? Just as when we read things in the New Testament, when Esalae Salaam is called Lord, kuryos, 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, kurye kurye, my, the Lord God, Lord God, all right? That's, that's kufr, that's apostasy. A Jew would not do that. So looking at the sort of context, the social location of Esalae Salaam himself, the word is a bit ambiguous. Kurye can simply mean master or even rabbi, even the word rabbi, rabbi, right? Means my Lord, right?  When people refer to him as rabbi, rabbi, they mean to say master, teacher, right? But here in the creed, they're taking kuryos 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, genethenta ectupatros monagene, which means be gotten from the Father uniquely. And they say, this is from the essence of the Father, right? This is from the usias tu patros. 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 offspring of God and Mary in that, that physical sense. That's not what Christians believe, at least not what Trinitarian Christians believe. Mormons, on the other hand, do believe that, but Mormonism is a very strange form of Christianity, if we can even call it Christianity. Certainly Orthodox Christians, whether they're Eastern Orthodox or Protestant, 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. That was Arius' position, who was also at the Council of Nicia, by the way. And whether Arius believed that Jesus or the Son was 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 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, that the meaning of that is that God generated or caused the Son to be from his very essence, from the Usias to Patras, as it says in the Creed. So the Father did not create the Son out of nothing, ex nihilo. 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 man begot this child. So we sort of take it in this physical sense, but it's not meant to be taken physically. 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. So this is their position. He's the Son of God in the sense that he shares an essential essence. Essence is called that in Arabic. You know, we say in our theology, no one shares with Allah's that, his essence, his sifat, his attributes, and his af'al. No one can do the actions of God, right? Whereas the Christians say, no, God shares. God is three persons, at least these three persons share God's essence, actions, and attributes. One God, but three 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. Pre-eternal Son. Well, the Son is always an effect of a Father, so it comes after, but you're saying He's pre-eternal. The pre-eternal Son seems like a bit of a oxymoron. Nonetheless, this is their position. And this was to avoid this idea that you, like other Christians at the time and other, and Jews and pagans were saying about the early Christians, you're worshiping two gods, just admit it. You're saying that this God is a Son of God. He has a Father. That's two gods, right? Even if this was done before time, the fact that the Son is an effect of the Father, the fact that 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. He's 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, inshallah. So that's what they mean by Son of God. He's gotten 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? Sayon eqtayu, God from God, God capital G, from God capital G. Fos eqtotas, light from light, true God, from true God, begotten not made. It's a very famous phrase here, begotten not made. Right? What does it mean, begotten not made? Meaning generated or caused naturally, not created. The Son is not created. What do I mean when I say the Son? Am I talking about Jesus of Nazareth? No, I'm not talking about Jesus. Jesus was created. Jesus was a human being. That's not the Christians. The Christians are not saying that Jesus is uncreated. 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 Son was not willed into existence. Right? That's Judaism. Right? That God chooses and wills something to exist. Whenever he decrees a matter, he merely says to be and it is. Right? That's not what happened with the Son. He wasn't willed into existence and it wasn't sort of this involuntary emanation that happened. That's the sort of Neoplatonic idea. That's how the Logos in Neoplatonism 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 and this hierarchy of being. Right? So 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 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, hama-usian, hama-usian or homo-usian. So again, a little bit of a Greek lesson. I didn't intend to get so technical with these classes. I was told to keep it very, very simple. But 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 homo-usian, 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 a homo erectus. Right? Like the man who stands upright. Right? So that's a different language. So hama-usia, so hama means same or homo means same. Usias means essence. Same essence. This is the position of the Trinitarians called hama-usian Christology. That word hama-usian 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 Christians will counter here and say, oh yeah? Well, what's the most important theological concept in Islam? We say tohed and the Christian will say, take the Quran and show me the word tohed in the Quran. It's not in the Quran. So the Christian point here is that the concept of tohed is in the Quran, just as the concept of hama-usian, 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 second century that did not believe that the son was equal to the father. They still revered these four texts. I mean, the Aryans still believed in the Gospel of John. Jesus says in John 10.30, remember those IM 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 one. So Trinitarians they say, ah, you see the father and I are one. They're the same essence. Right?  Jesus is 100% God. He is co-substantially 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 Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he's saying that, you know, I'm watching over my disciples. No one can snatch 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 was greater than all is also watching over them. And no one can snatch them out of his hand. The father and I are one. So one in purpose, one in intention. Right? Not one in essence, one in objective to protect the disciples from the enemies. Right? So we'd read it in its context. So anyway, so you have homo-oucian Christology and then you have something homo-oucian. H-O-M-O-I, just an iota in Greek. So the difference between the words homo and homo-oi, H-O-M-O-I, is a difference of one iota, one iota. But it makes a difference in theology. So homo-oucian Christology means that the father and son are exactly the same essence. Whereas homo-oucian 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 sort of in this middle space. Right? So homo-oi means similar, ha-ma means the same. And then of course you have hetero-oucian, heterosexual. Hetero-oucian, heteros in Greek means another. Right? Another essence. And this is the position of Unitarian Christians, that the son of God, the son of God, that's a title, it's honorific, it's takrimi, it's majaz, figurative, it's just a way of sort of exalting Issa alaihi salam. It's not to be taken literal in any way, shape or form. Right? And that Jesus's essence is other than God, the father. And by father they mean, again, the Rabb, the Lord. That's also a figurative expression. Okay. And then they say here, so co-substantial 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? And anthropesanta is the Greek, but the Latin translation says incarnatus est. Right? Incarnatus, incarnate. In means in, carne 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. Then they continue, became flesh and dwelled in man. We said that suffered and rose on the third day, ascended into the heavens and will come to judge the living and the dead. So belief in a second coming, he will basically be the judge on the Yomul Qiyama. 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 going to 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 what's on the table. And of course, they voted and 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 22 of them, I believe. The last one was in the 1960s called Bikin II. So the first seven of them are accepted by Protestant Christians, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox. And then after that, from 8 to 21 or 22, the decisions are believed by Catholics only. So the Eastern Orthodox stop after seven, 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 a product of the providence of the Holy Spirit, who was also the third person of the Trinity. We don't get that here in the Creed yet, but we will get that later. And then the very last part of the Creed here, they actually quote the proto-Orthodox or Trinitarian. I mean, they're not Trinitarian at this point again. So I'm using Trinitarian as somewhat anachrodistic. So we can say the proto-Orthodox bishops, they quote their theological opponents here and say, as for those who say, there was once when he was not. 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. So the Son is not pre-eternal. They're saying those who say that, and then they quote a few other things that the Arians were saying out of non-being he became, and the Son is changeable or alterable. These, the universal and apostolic church deems accursed, anathematizes. I mean, that's the Greek word anathematizai, which is where we get the word anathematize. In other words, they're saying that we are pronouncing kufur. We're making takfir, right, of the Arians now. That, that the Arian position that the Son of God is not pre-eternal and not fully God is kufur. 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 emperors theodosius the first, and he's definitely a Christian. There's no doubt about it, 115 bishops are present. So what's the issue now? So the issue at, or the problem for the proto-Orthodox at Nicaea was these Arians who are saying that the Son of God is inferior to the Father.  In 381 now the issue is what about the Holy Spirit? So now you have Christians who are saying, okay, fine, the Son and Father are Hama'u Sian. 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 by unity because Trinity comes from triune and then unity. 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. And then you have the rest of creation beneath the Holy Spirit. So these enemies were dubbed Numotomachians 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. Hama'u Sian, Numotology, Holy Spirit shares an essential essence of the Father and the Son, although he's a different person. We have three persons, one essence. Three persons, one essence. There was a Christian theologian in the Middle Ages, Hilary of Poitiers, who came up with this diagram and it's a very famous diagram. Basically it's a triangle. And so 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 each side of the triangle you have the words is not, is not, so equilateral triangle at each point Father, Son, Holy Spirit and then written along the lines of all three sides is not.  The Father is not the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son. Right? So this is their belief. Three separate and distinct persons. Now imagine three lines, three arrows coming or pointing towards the middle of the triangle from each corner and at the center and written 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. Probably would have been better if I brought visual aids of some sort. But you can Google this, Hilary of Poitiers, the triangle, airgram of the Trinity. Right? Persons separate and distinct who are all three God because 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 water, right? You have water that can exist in three different states. You have liquid, vapor and ice and all three are H2O essentially. One essence, three forms. The problem with that is that you can't get all three forms at the same time in place. That's what I'm told at least. So it's inadequate. Another example is or analogy is like an egg. It's very famous analogy. They say God is like an egg. So there's three parts. There's a shell, there's a yolk, 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 three persons that share an essence. It's like, it's like three species of the same genera. So imagine you had, imagine you had three 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 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 a vertical tail, right? If a shark didn't have one of these things, it's not a shark. Right? 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 bull shark. Right? So you have, you have, you have three, as it were, persons of shark that all share in the essence of sharkiness. Three persons of God. So the bull shark by itself is totally shark, even though it lacks an attribute of the great white, right? Or it lacks an attribute of the hammerhead.  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 perichoresis in Greek. Whatever the Son is doing, it necessitates the participation at some level of the Father in 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 three people that all share a mind. Right? Three different people that say, I don't know, you have Peter, Paul and Mary. Right? But they all share a mind. It's one consciousness. So if Peter has a thought, Mary and Paul have that thought. If Peter is hungry, the other two as well. If Peter stubs his toe, the other two feel it as well. One mind, one consciousness. 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 fact that 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, a big question is, how did we get here? How did they get from a basic and simple message of Tahit being in northern Palestine by a Jewish prophet to, you know, three hypostasists, one Usia, Perichoresis, Hama Usian, this type of thing? I would say it's from Hellenistic influence. Right? We have to be careful about that. Because, as we said in the past, the Greeks were very gifted. I mean, the Arabs say, al-Hikmah nazalat al-Thalatha, that wisdom descended upon three people, the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Arabs. Of course, the Arabs also had wahi. But hikmah is not wahi, 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.  Right? So we can take from Greek thought and, you know, logic, ethics even, as long as it doesn't contradict our essentials. But Greek metaphysics we have to be careful about. And this is what Rosali says. Rosali was not anti-scholastic. He didn't condemn all things Greek or Hellenistic. He was a great proponent of logic. Kostas al-Mustaqim, right, in his text on logic, says the Kostas al-Mustaqim is the intellect, is reason. When Allah says in the Qur'an, judge by a just balance, Rosali says, that's using your reason, using logic. He'll argue that the prophet in the Qur'an, the appeal to logic, logic and arguments. Ibrahim al-Islam is appealing to logic when he's telling Nimrod that, you know, 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 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 what I would say is that a significant influence of Hellenistic metaphysics just saturated the early proto-Orthodox Christians, many of whom were basically 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 Tohed, that Islam that was by the prophet Isa al-Islam. And of course if you don't have a basis in Sharia, you don't have a basis in law, you don't have a basis in theology, correct theology, then you're going to make these theological and metaphysical mistakes. Okay, so just have a few minutes. The Council of Constantinople revised the Council of Nicaea, and now we have something called the Niceno Constantinopolitan Creed, the Niceno Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, which is the first truly Trinitarian Creed, because all three constituents are now dealt with, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So now 381 of the Common Era, you have Trinitarianism officially. So this is sort of a Nicene Creed 2.0. It's very much similar. There are some additions. We believe in one God, the Father, the Creator, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and all things seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God. Now they add the one begotten from the Father before all the ages, right? So they're not just stressing the pre-temporality of the Son, which seems to have been the Aryan position. Aryus says, okay, fine, the Son, the Son 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, he's not pre-temporal. 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, two types of being, right? There's their mumkinat, possible beings, and then there's wajibul wujud. 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, co-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 the sort of parents, as it were, 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 Theodos, 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 and 20th centuries, at the strictly Roman Catholic councils, Mary, the Catholics believed that Mary was assumed into heaven. She never died. She was carried into heaven. And they also espoused 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 in Nicene Creed. He was crucified. You notice the Nicene Creed did not say crucified. The Nicene Creed said, suffered and rose on the third day. So they want to make it, that doesn't mean that the bishops at Nicea did not believe Jesus was crucified. Of course, they believed 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. He was crucified by Pontius Pilate. It's not just saying he suffered. What do you mean he suffered? That's so vague. Okay, fine. He was crucified, but can anyone corroborate that? Here there's 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 dosetism. There's another term for you, dosetism. Very common Christology, Christological belief in the first few centuries of Christianity. You have dosetic Gnosticism that espoused that Jesus never had a physical body. So you can't bury a phantasm. That's what he was. He was just a sort of ghost. You have dosetic substitutionism, this belief that Jesus' body somehow escaped the crucifixion. Someone else was crucified, right? It's called the substitution theory. Someone else, facilities believe that Simon of Cyrene was supernaturally transformed. Transfigured is the term he uses, transfigurato. That Jesus was transfigured to look like Simon and vice versa. That's called dosetic substitutionism. You also have dosetic separationism, also a belief of some of the Gnostics, that okay Jesus had a flesh body, and okay they're crucifying him, but at some point his soul left his body before his body died. So his body didn't actually, so he didn't actually feel the pain as it were of the crucifixion. They simply crucified an empty shell of a body, right? So they're saying here he was buried. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He was suffered and he was buried. The body was underground, or he was in the tomb in this case, and rose on the third 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 believed 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 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, 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?    That's from Isaiah 53. And the Christians say, yes, that's exactly what happened in Jesus. But 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 ascended to heaven and a seated at the right hand of the father. And he will come again with glory. So they add that part to he seated at the right hand of the father, not that like he seated next to the father like his vizier or something. No, he seated on the same level. They share a throne. That's what they mean by this. The judge living in the dead. So Jesus according to them will be the judge on the Yom Al-Qiyamah in the Quran says, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, ya'is, Ibn Maryam, and ta'ala, did you ever say to the people that you are your mother are divinities? Jesus not judging anyone on the Yom Al-Qiyamah. You'll be questioned in front of the whole of humanity according to the Quran. Of course, his response, subhanak, glory be to you. Never did I say what I had no right to say. I said, Inna Allaha Rabbil Rabbil Kufa'budu Hadha. So let's see how we're doing that. Yeah, it's nine o'clock now. There's a few more things mentioned in the creed, but basically they just repeat the Nicene Creed. So 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, inshallah. So next week we're going to get into Hinduism. Go way back in time and look at the basic tenets and beliefs of Hinduism, inshallah. We're going to discuss the theological basics of the religion of Hinduism, inshallah. So we covered the Islamic tradition. We've covered Judaism, Christianity. So there's two weeks of this class left tonight and next week. So Hinduism and Buddhism next week, inshallah. Again, we are live here on Tuesday night. This is September 1, 2020. If you're watching live, if you have questions, you can go ahead and type them into the chat box, inshallah. Okay, so Hinduism, the term Hinduism is a neologism. It was probably invented by the British or British Orientalists. It comes from the Greek word Indus, like the Indus Valley. So the ancient Sanskrit name of the religion is sanatana dharma, which means something like the eternal way or the eternal duty, something like that. Now there's different schools of thought in Hinduism, different philosophies, right? Probably the most common or popular philosophy is called Vedanta philosophy. And Vedanta philosophy espouses three propositions. Okay, so number one, first and foremost, our real nature is divine, right? And you're going to see how Hinduism is quite different than the Abrahamic religious tradition. That's the first proposition. Our nature, our real nature is divine. Our collective soul is God, right? Is Brahman. Brahman is the term Sanskrit that I'm going to use interchangeably with God. So we are all God, right? That's the first proposition. Number two, the aim or tell us of our lives, right? The goal of our lives is to realize this divinity within us. Come to this realization, this actualization, right? This taqiq, if you will, to take an Arabic term. This realization that we are divine, right? So not everyone realizes, in fact, most people don't realize that they're actually God, that they're Brahman. So that realization in Sanskrit is called moksha, which has been translated various ways. Transcendental liberation, self-actualization, we'll get to this term, inshallah. But that's the second proposition of Vedanta philosophy. The third is that all major religions are essentially in agreement, right? So Hinduism is a perennialist philosophy. All major world religions are essentially in agreement, because the goal of all of the major religions is the same. So Hinduism is looking at the telas, not necessarily at the method, right? So the method is important, and some methods are better than others. We'll talk about that, inshallah. But it's because of this, what's what Aldis Huxley called a highest common factor, right? That these religions, these major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, that they share this highest common factor, and that is the unitive mystical experience with God. So mystical union with God. So any major religion that preaches mystical union with God as its goal in this life is a true religion according to Vedanta philosophy. Now in Hinduism, there are two major theological approaches, and this might surprise some people, but there are two major approaches. The first major approach, and by the way, both of these are considered to be correct, right? I mean, Hindus consider Judaism to be a correct religion. So within their own tradition, there are two ways of attaining this self-actualization, what they call moksha. The first way is called nirguna brahmanism, N-I-R-G-U-N-A, nirguna brahmanism. It's also called transpersonalism, God transcendent, right? So what I mean by God transcendent is God is not represented by anything physical. Not that God is imminent, not that God isn't close or kareeb. He is imminent, but he's just not represented, right? And the champion of transpersonalism was a Hindu sage named Adi Shankara, very famous Shankara. He died in the ninth century of the common era. He's as popular, or not quite, but he's somewhat comparable to like Hazali's position in Islam or Aquinas in Catholicism. And he was actually accused of teaching Buddhism because the Buddha was an iconoclast, right? He rejected these, what are known as ishtas and murtis, these sort of icons representing God in his various forms, or idols representing God. However, for Shankara, ishtas were not incorrect, right? They're just not the optimal way. So again, Hinduism is religiously pluralistic, right? But it's not relativistic. So there's a difference between being a religious pluralist, where you say that there's truth and other religions, and many of these other religions will get to your goal. And a relativist, where you say it doesn't make a difference, that all of these religions are on the same plane as it were. They're all the same on the same level. But Hindus do believe that all religions are valid. And the analogy that's used by Shankara is like a man trying to get to the top of his house. That's his goal. He can use a ladder. He can climb a rope. He can take stairs. I mean, there's different ways of doing that.  So for Shankara, the easiest and quickest way, most effective way, is through Hinduism, whereas the other ways represent the other religions. So no major world religion is invalid. Again, why? Because they have the same goal, the unitive experience with God. So there are good ways of getting to God, and there are better ways. If a religion does not preach this unitive experience with God, then it would be considered an incorrect religion. So what is this unitive experience? Moksha. It's called Moksha in Sanskrit. In Arabic, it's called al-jama'a, which means to join. Mystical union is usually how it's translated. It's a union mystica in Latin. So that's the Catholics that would call it union mystica. It's called a theosis in Greek. And it's called devekut in Hebrew. Devekut means to cling to God. So all of these major religions have this idea. Now, Shankara said that the only accurate description of Brahman, of God, is neti neti. So not this, not this. And we, of course, accurate according to this approach. So imagine, like flying through the universe, you see the sun, you see the moon, neti neti. This is not God. This is not God. You pass by the, I don't know, the Andromeda galaxy. This is not God. This is not God. Until you basically have eliminated the whole of the cosmos. Right? So the world, right, which is called the jagat, the world, the phenomenal world, is aset. Aset means unreal. It's not real. It doesn't really have an ontological reality.  There's no ontological reality to evil. It's just the absence of good. Right? Or like, there's no such thing as cold. I mean, we call something cold, but it doesn't have a reality ontologically. There's no essential thing called cold. It's just the absence of heat. Right? So the world is unreal and we are under an illusion. Right? The world is aset unreal and we are under an illusion. Illusion is called maya in Sanskrit. Very important concept. So it is our association with matter and mind. Right? That deludes us away from the truth, which is a realization that we are, in fact, Brahman. Matter in mind. This is called prakriti in Sanskrit. So probably the best text to study to get a sort of firm hold or comprehensive understanding. I mean, Hinduism is an extremely vast religion. Right? And again, it's very, very difficult to distill an entire religion in one hour, but some books are better than others. Like in Buddhism, the Dhammapata is basically all you need unless you want to go into more advanced studies in Buddhism. In Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita is the best text. Right? And all of these ideas are discussed. You should get a good commentary as well, though. Maybe study it with a guru or a swami. But a very important concept is that mind and matter called prakriti is what causes the illusion. So what is matter? That which is material, like this table here, this computer, my own body. Right? That's an illusion. It's not really there. By mind, they mean individual or subjective psychological constraints or constructs, I should say. Right? Subjective psychological constructs. They are not real. Right? So these delude us into thinking that we are a separate existence consisting of an individual body and mind. So that is an illusion. Right? So behind the, I guess, veil of this world, there is one seamless, unchanging eternal reality. And that's called Brahman. Everything is actually Brahman. Brahman is the real. Brahman is satt, S-A-T, capital S-A-T. The world is a satt. It is unreal. It is only Brahman that is real. And we are under an illusion thinking that it is real. It's not really there. There's no ontological reality. Anything other than Brahman. Matter is not real. So this is called metaphysical idealism, by the way. This is the technical term in Western philosophy. Metaphysical idealism, this idea that only our ideas and some of our ideas in our minds are real or can be real. Only some of our ideas in our minds have the potential of being real if it's a big if, if our minds are purified of its subjectivity. So Hinduism is basically teaching us how to think correctly, how to step out of our subjective psychological constructs and think about reality. And when we can tap into reality, we tap into the Brahman. Okay. So Brahman, according to Nirguna Brahmanism, is satt, chit and ananda. Very important, right? He is satt, S-A-T. He is, what is satt? He is real. Uh-huh. He is real. He is infinite being. That's a better way to translate satt. He is chit, which means knowledge, infinite knowledge. And ananda, which means infinite bliss. This is taken from the Upanishads, which is another very important Hindu text, the Upanishads. Um, so these are not his attributes, right? We're not saying that Brahman has existence. What they're saying is Brahman is existence. He is existence itself. He is the ground of being. We're not saying that he has knowledge. He is knowledge. They're not saying that he is bliss. He is infinite bliss. So these are describing the very essence of Brahman, right? And he cannot be described in any other way except neti neti, according to Nirguna Brahmanism. And this includes calling him creator and destroyer and sustainer, right? So Nirguna Brahmanism then is essentially a form of apophatic theology. Remember this term apophatic, when we talked about the theological positions of Maimonides or his method that he was a negative theologian via negativa apophatic theologian, right? Lahut salbi, as they say in Arabic, right? So not this, not this. God is none of these things. And the only three, the only three names that you can reference to or predicate to the deity, Brahman, is infinite satshit and ananda. Now, according to Nirguna Brahmanism, the atman, atman is loosely translated as soul, right? Like it's not a one to one, right? But if we have to think of a word to use, it would be soul, the human soul. The soul eventually becomes completely identified with Brahman, with God. And in doing so loses every trace of its former distinctness, which again was only illusory to begin with. So distinction, right? And duality, this idea that I am not you, you are not me, this idea that there's heaven and earth, this idea that there's God and creation, that is illusory according to Nirguna Brahmanism. It's Maya, it's an illusion. So here with Nirguna Brahmanism, mystical union then, mystical union, moksha with Brahman is non dualistic. It's a realization. It's not a realization that there is God, right?  That would be a type of dualistic realization. In Hinduism, moksha, in Nirguna Brahmanism, moksha is non dualistic, right? Total annihilation in God's essence. So dualism and all apparent multiplicity will fall away, right? You are Brahman. It's like a drop of fresh water into a lake, total dissolution, right? Atman equals Brahman. If you want to put it sort of mathematically, Nirguna Brahmanism espouses atman equals Brahman. Shemel calls this the mysticism of infinity. So while this method, right, is one of affirming transcendence, neti neti transcendence, tanzi in Arabic, the goal is a realization of absolute imminence, of absolute tashbi, right? The method is one of, the method is one of affirming transcendence, while the goal is a realization of absolute imminence. Because what is the goal?  So let's talk more about moksha then. Moksha is the term that is used to describe this, this liberation, this transcendental liberation, self-actualization. I think it was translated a state of super consciousness. Moksha, it comes from muk in Sanskrit, which means to loosen or to set free, to release. It's not related to mucus. A lot of people make that mistake. Mucus is from a Latin etymology. Moksha is transcendental liberation. Spiritual release from samsara. Samsara literally means the wheel, right? Or it means to wander around. What is samsara? It's this endless cycle of birth and rebirth, right? So in the Kabbalah, it's called Gil-Gul-Ha-Nashama, which means sort of the rolling of the soul, right? In Plato, it's called metempsychosis, right? In Latin, it's called reincarnation, right? Reincarnation. So Hindus believe in reincarnation. The Buddhists believe in reincarnation. And a lot of people don't know this. I don't know if I talked about this, but most orthodox Jews, most orthodox Jews believe in reincarnation, right? Metempsychosis. So it is released from the finitude that restricts us to identify the true self, the soul, the atman, right? With Brahman, with God. So atman, Brahman identity. The word Brahman has a dual etymology. The word that is used for God in Sanskrit, a dual etymology. There's brr, brr, brr, which means to breathe. And maybe the word breathe comes from Sanskrit. I don't know, Allah knows. But then also brr, brr in Sanskrit means to be great, right? So the great breath, meaning, you know, life or existence itself. Again, Brahman is the ground of being, right? An infinite, eternal, non-contingent existence. Now moksha is what's known as the fourth purushartha. Purushartha means a stage of life, right? So Hindus believe in these stages of life on earth. So they begin with kama. Kama means pleasure. And kama is to be sought, but not hedonistically, right? It should be tempered and sought intelligently. So like, you know, the kama sutra is written for young married couples. It's not written for people so they can go live a cavalier lifestyle of licentiousness and fornication. So there's kama. And then you advance to artha, which is the next stage. Kama, then artha, right? Which is described as worldly success. You reach your thirties, you reach your forties, right? You come into some wealth. But again, this is not as an end, but as a means to an enriched life. And then you have dharma. And dharma is more of a perennial stage. Dharma means duty, right? And so to participate in these social structure, basically, to do one's role. And this is throughout your life, right? And then finally, we have moksha. So when a person becomes around 60 years old or so, it's expected that this person will now sort of settle down, retire, and pursue moksha, pursue other worldly types of enlightenment. So that's the ultimate goal then, is to actualize Brahman. So atman is the incorruptible soul or the spiritual substance within the body. Again, there's different ways of thinking about atman. Some would say the supreme being residing in every heart, the God within to be actualized, the divine spark, right? So like the name Mahatma, right? Mahatma Gandhi, right? Mahatma is a compound word. It comes from maha, which means big or great, and then atman soul. So Mahatma means the great souled one, the one with a big or great soul. The atman, according to the School of Nirguna Brahmanism, is Brahman, right? Your soul and my soul are actually the very same substance. It's the very same thing, and that thing is Brahman. We just simply need to realize, well, not simply, it's not so simple, but we need to realize that, according to Hinduism. Our individual mortal souls or selves, right? Our individual consciousnesses are subjective selves. Those are not called atman. Those are called jivas, right? And that's in the plural. So there's one atman. My atman is the same as yours, right? There's one soul, because that soul is actually Brahman. But we have individual jivas, right? The jiva is the term for the atman when it is bound to prakriti, right? When it is bound to what? To matter in mind. And matter in mind in the Hindu conception is made of three elements. They're called sattva rajas and temas. These are called the gunnas. I don't want to get too technical here, but again, I highly recommend getting the Bhagavad Gita with a good commentary. But basically it is the gunnas that create these psychological constructs, right? Which is half of prakriti, does matter in mind, that fool us into thinking that we know reality. But in reality, in real reality, capital R, all of our psychological constructs are in illusion. They're not real, right? So the jiva then is the term for the atman that is still unenlightened, has not reached moksha. So one needs to transcend the gunnas. And the gunnas are represented by, we said sattva rajas and temas, tranquility, action and agitation. So this is the state of our minds. We're in one of these three states. We're either in a state of tranquility or we're an action or striving or an agitation, right? So again, we have this idea of this kind of tripartite soul or lower self. We see that in, right? We see it in Plato, we see it in Christianity, even in Islam. I mean, obviously, again, it's not a one-to-one, right? But you have this idea of nafsul lawama, nafsul mutsma inna, right? Nafsul amarabisu, this tripartite division of the nafs. Okay. So that is to say that the person will actualize the God within. And then when that happens, the jiva, right? Free of the impediments of prakriti will realize its divinity. And that's called moksha. Okay. So the world is not real. It is an illusion. It's like a psychological construct, like when you're dreaming. This is an analogy that is used by Hindus. When you're dreaming, you accept the reality, even if it's fantastical, even if strange, very strange things that are breaking natural