بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ,

I’m still waiting for Chessie Edwards to explain how he refuted me. He continues to incessantly claim this, yet all he has done is state that Muslims believe in a Ruh and that according to two Qur’anic ayat he has supposedly refuted a Christological question. Yet, as I have aptly demonstrated, he has not answered my criticisms, and as such, he is merely pussyfooting around for some attention. I’m not going to waste much time on him as I reiterate the notion that he is of no importance to the apologetic community, he says and I quote:

This just proved my point that Muslim apologists do not have a accurate grasp of Christian theology just like whom ever wrote the Quran didn’t.

He makes this absurd statement in response to my claim:

” Christians believe the flesh (a body) has both a soul and a spirit and Christ became God in flesh when the Holy Spirit became incarnate in the body of Jesus and replaced the human spirit. “

Since Chessie believes that the above is wrong, then he believes that the body does not have a soul and a spirit, which would be in contradiction to mainstream Christian beliefs:

• Man, a Trinity: Spirit, Soul and Body – Bible.org
• Are Spirit and Soul the Same – Contending for the Faith
• The Difference between the Soul and the Spirit – Bible Study Interactive

From this, we now know that Chessie has apostated from mainstream Christian belief, or he is a Christian who is highly uneducated about basic Christian doctrine. He denies basic beliefs which he is not even knowledgeable about and expects me to respect him or to even consider him as worthy of my attention, since this is the case, I suggest that he goes study his faith before arguing about it with someone with superior study. I will come to the matter of the Holy Spirit being incarnate in Christ, but first I want to highlight his denial of this lower down. Before I do so, let’s examine his other statements:

I have to point out that Muslim’s also believe a body contains a metaphysical consciousnesses as well..he doesn’t see the logical implications of that.

I really have to stop and ask Chessie if he has lost the plot at this point. Let me break this down for him, I asked:

• Did Christ’s human nature die, or divine nature, if so, what does it mean to die?

Chessie’s response to this question, was to claim:

• Muslims believe in a ruh and I somehow don’t see the logical implication of that.

We refer to this in logic as a non-sequitur argument, in addendum to being known as a argumentum ad ignorantium, as Chessie himself is arguing from a position of ignorance on basic Christian doctrine concerning the soul and spirit, not to forget his complete foregoing of responding to my Christological question on Christ’s nature. Now, returning to the issue of the Holy Spirit being incarnate, he denies this (to his peril) and says:

The part he is wrong in is that Christ is the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, no Christ is the incarnation of the Word of God i.e the Son. Speaking of John chapter one Athanasius states …”  For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world.(1) ”

Maybe the Muslim blogger doesn’t think its expedient to be accurate about the doctrines he is speaking about or maybe he doesn’t care?

Hang your head in shame ignoramus, for the same St. Athanasius says:

“When the Word came upon the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Spirit entered her together with the Word; in the Spirit the Word formed a body for himself and adapted it to himself, desiring to unite all creation through himself and lead it to the Father” – St. Athanasius’ Epistle, Ad Serapion.

Yet, I will not cease in embarrassing you there, I now turn to Tertullian who says:

“Nay, but he adds, And that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit,3 because God is spirit,4 and He was born of God:5 this certainly has him in view, the more so if it has also those who believe in him.’ Then if this too applies to him, why not also that other? For you cannot divide them, this to him, the other to the rest of men: for you do not deny the two substances of Christ, that of flesh and that of spirit. But if he possessed flesh no less than spirit, when he makes a statement concerning the condition of the two substances which he bore within himself, he cannot be thought to have made a pronouncement concerning spirit as being his but flesh as not his. Thus, since he was himself by the Spirit of God (and the Spirit is God) born of God, he was also of human flesh and as man conceived and born in the flesh.” – Tertullian, De Carne Christi, 18.

Please study your religion before you try to discuss it with others Chessie, you only seek to show how weak and uneducated you are and I will not hesitate to lay the law down on some petulant ignoramus whose ranting does not befit my time. He continues:

He states the following which is basically a restatement of the same question he raised that I refuted already.

” My question was and remains, if Christ died, is it the soul that perished, or the Holy Spirit that perished, or just the flesh (which according to him did not die but resurrected itself), or some combination of all three? ”

He actually claims I never answered the question, yet I did answer the question.. that is what the whole post was about. Either he could not understand what I wrote, which would not be a shock considering the Word of God says non believers suffer from spiritual blindness(and Islam is the religion of confirmation bias), or this is some Jihad of the pen tactic. I am going to assume it was just that he didn’t understand me, so allow me to restate my argument in other terms.

I searched Mr. Edwards’ previous post and the only ‘answer’ I saw to my questions was that Muslims believe in a ruh. Although Chessie believes this is an answer, I do not see how this answer of what Muslims believe in, somehow answers my statements concerning a Christological belief. It’s as if I asked Chessie, what is the nature of your Christ’s death, and he responds by telling me that Muslims believe in an afterlife and soul. I am sorry Chessie, but this is wishful thinking on your part, you did not answer my claims and if you think you did, then you would have simply referenced your previous article, but since you know you did not answer my claim, you finally give an answer in this present article which I am responding to, wherein you state:

No his soul did not perish, no the Holy Spirit did not perish especially since it was not the Holy Spirit who incarnated, and no it was not a combination of the three.

So Christ’s human soul did not perish and according to Chessie, the Spirit of Christ is not the Holy Spirit, which contradicts the Bible:

“ Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, ¹¹ trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. ¹² It was revealed to them that  they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.” –  1 Peter 1:10 – 12.

In these verses (which clearly Chessie have not read), in relation to the quotes from Tertullian and St. Athanasius, the Spirit of Christ is the Holy Spirit which was of Christ and is that which prophesied about the Messiah to the Prophets of old. This is confirmed by Matthew Henry’s exegesis which says of the Spirit of Christ in 1 Peter 1:11;

“The revelations of God to his church, though gradual, and given by parcels, are all perfectly consistent; the doctrine of the prophets and that of the apostles exactly agree, as coming from the same Spirit of God. (5.) The efficacy of the evangelical ministry depends upon the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The gospel is the ministration of the Spirit; the success of it depends upon his operation and blessing.” – Matthew Henry’s Exegesis, 1 Peter 1:11.

Clearly, Chessie is out of his league and does not know much about Christology, I wish that he does study this matter more sincerely before making more of a fool out of himself. He continues:

As I stated in the last post which he never addresses the question itself is illogical, non-physical things can not experience physical death. The physical death of a person does not mean there immaterial existence stops existing. Again this is the same thing Islam teaches, and this is what common sense tell us.

While I am happy to see the Chessie concedes that what Islam teaches is common sense, I must take him to task on his other statements. If the Spirits and Soul of Christ did not perish, and the flesh also did not perish, as the flesh returned to life, then what sacrifice was actually done if nothing died?  This leads to my third argument from my original article of which Chessie has also failed to address, it reads:

“If we take John 3:16 as a literal study, then we have numerous paradoxes being applied, for if the Son did ‘die’, but did not truly ‘die’, then the ‘sacrificial death’ was not fulfilled. If you claim the sacrificial death was fulfilled, then this is disproven by Thomas touching a physical body of Christ, whose wounds he felt. Thus if Christ was meant to be an ultimate sacrifice but did not die, but merely suffered wounds and continued to live, then there was no actual sacrifice.”

Chessie continues:

So my question to the Muslim blogger is this, are you arguing that the immaterial soul dies and stops existing at the point of physical death ? “

You mean to say that you have written two articles, told me I am wrong, that I have been deceptive and that I am not educated on the issue of which I am speaking, yet after your second reply, you are now asking what it is I am actually arguing?  If you want to know what I am arguing, read this article: Some Musings About Jesus’ Death.

wa Allaahu ‘Alam.