Paul Beliar Williams Does It Again - Part 2a

When I got the emails last night saying PW replied to me, I was tempted to brush it off as more of Allah’s deception. I hardly expected PW to rise to the occasion since he is the same guy who never responded in the past to upwards of two dozen refutations, the following among them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. In any case, after I woke up this morning I chose to believe my "lying eyes" instead of Allah, particularly since I believe the true God is sovereign over Islam's idol-deity and protects me from Allah's duplicity, guile, and craftiness.

In an attempt to justify his most recent lie about what Christians believe, Paul Williams tried to cover it with another lie, saying:

“I do not claim that this concept of God is formally held by most Christians.”

And yet, it is precisely this concept that PW originally laid at the feet of Christians. Since he admits that Christians do not formally hold this concept, i.e. it is not what we “say” (in direct contradiction to S. 4:171 of the Qur’an), then PW was in fact guilty of misrepresenting our belief, and of doing so knowingly, which makes him even more guilty than his putative deity and false prophet. After all, Allah and Muhammad are only guilty of crass stupidity and ignorance when it comes to what Christians believe and say on this matter; however, PW is guilty of lying in order to defend their stupidity and ignorance.

The reason PW thinks it is okay to misrepresent us is because his intention “is to disclose what Christians [sic] belief unavoidably entails, especially when you critically examine their beliefs about God.” (Emphasis original)

This, of course, is nonsense. If we get to say that people believe things they do not formally hold because of what we think such a belief logically entails, then Christians get the liberty of saying that PW is a terrorist and a misogynist because that is what belief in Muhammad and the Qur’an logically entails. Would PW think it is okay to lie about him to the government he lives under and say he holds to the concept that it is okay to blow up buildings and enslave women so that he might please Allah and get closer to the black stone? Or would he register the “intemperate protest” that we are lying about what he believes? The appropriate genre for charging others with consciously holding things unwittingly entailed by their beliefs is satire, and PW was neither trying to be satirical nor does he have a satirical bone in his body.

As for whether or not the doctrine of the Trinity “entails” polytheism, PW’s reasoning is far from kosher. He offers three comments in this connection, the first two of which can be dealt with rapidly:

PW’s First Argument: PW tells us that “no practicing Orthodox Jew” believes in the Trinity, but I fail to see how this supports the conclusion that the Trinity entails polytheism. If PW thinks it does, I challenge him to show how it does so. As it stands, all he has done is make an assertion that it does so. This is not what logicians mean by "logical entailment."

PW’s Second Argument: PW tells us “Second Temple Judaism…was rigorously monotheist and unitarian.” Once again, I fail to see how this supports the conclusion that the Trinity entails polytheism, not to mention I have already pointed out how clueless PW is regarding Second Temple Jewish beliefs before, so the premise isn’t even true anyway. 

Interestingly enough, the only evidence PW tried to bring forward on this occasion for what Jews believed in the Second Temple period is from the Gospel of Mark, a gospel in which Jesus quoted the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” However, this is the very gospel I used in the past to expose PW’s ignorance on the deity of Christ, the second person of the Trinity. According to Mark’s Gospel, the same “Orthodox Jew” who quoted the Shema in Mark 12 is the same “Orthodox Jew” who declared Himself to be the great I AM in Mark 6:50, and it was the same “Orthodox Jew” who quoted the Shema that went on in the very next breath to declare His own Lordship together with the Father:

“How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at My right hand,

Until I put Your enemies beneath Your feet.”’

David himself calls Him ‘Lord’; so in what sense is He his son?” (Mark 12:35-37)

So, according to Mark, a Jew who lived in the Second Temple period, it was taught by Jesus, another Jew living in the Second Temple period, that two persons could be identified as Israel’s one Lord. If PW was not so bent on lying, it wouldn’t be so hard for him to see the truth when it is right in front of him, as it is in the very context of Jesus’ citation of the Shema, which PW quoted. In fact, this is one of the observations made by scholars like Hurtado and Bauckham, two of the major players in contemporary scholarship on Jewish monotheism at the time of Jesus. According to these scholars, the "One Lord" of the Shema included the Father and the Son. If PW would pick up and read --and be honest about his reading-- literature of the time period and learn what it actually says, he wouldn't so easily make statements that are embarrassingly easy to refute.

In my next installment I will look at PW’s third attempt to bolster the claim that Trinitarianism entails polytheism. So far, he already has two strikes against him.