I recently read from a budding South African theologian of Ad Lucem Ministries that the New Testament’s concept of God is not based on Graeco-Roman philosophy. Yet this does not seem to be the case…(see attached photo), Acts 17:28 (NIV):
It is quite peculiar that the New Testament uses the term “ειμι” (to exist) for God but never in the present participle form of “ὤν” (being). What’s interesting is that New Testament’s translators continue to replace in their translations “ειμι” for “ὤν” in English, almost as if the allegedly inspired texts in and of themselves use insufficient language…
We see further examples of a dependency on Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics in Philippians 2:6, where “μορφε” (form) is translated as “nature or essence”, a completely Platonic-Aristotelian pre-Christian concept in philosophy, referring to the “material whole”.
This is why in Christianity, God who is a “ουσια” (substance) can also be immanent, because it fits into the Aristotelian pre-Christian concept of an “accident” (a substance that exists in another substance), i.e. God (a being) in flesh (another substance). This can also be seen in the sense of passion, from the “Praedicamenta”/ 10 Categories of Being, where God (a being) uses a form and thus can experience pain in one sense and not in other because this Being can distinguish between itself (read as quantitatively, therefore “Persons” in the Godhead) and can have various forms (read as qualitatively) hence the hypostatic union.
While some Christian apologists deny these dependencies on Platonic-Aristotelian pre-Christian philosophies, by using these terms, they are implying an already understood meaning, which in this case would be the predominant Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics for their onto-theology of “God”.
It should be noted that this is the reasoning behind Justin Martyr’s statement of:
“And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound NOTHING DIFFERENT from WHAT YOU BELIEVE regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.”
Today, he’s done it to me. He’s deleted his comment but his follow up comments are still visible at this point.
Jonathan’s reasoning is strange here, he claims that the issue has not bothered him but at this point he’s been sharing a video about the very issue everywhere, going so far as to have his friends tag me in it and responding personally to me about it. He’s even gone and uploaded the video of him being defended with rather poor excuses, why go through all of this trouble, if it isn’t bothering him?
I’ve repeatedly asked him to provide evidence of my plagiarising from Rabbi Tovia Singer, instead he’s deleted his initial false accusation but continued to imply it in other comments. So the question stands, if he doesn’t have the time to work through this issue and it isn’t bothering him, why make a false claim about me and attack me?
Seems like very odd behaviour for someone who doesn’t believe they plagiarised, but as admitted in the screenshot provided in this blog post, Jonathan’s presentation was actually written by someone else and the extent of his involvement was to use it as his own without reference, that is plagiarism.
Edit: He’s admitted the comment with the false claim of plagiarism was deleted but is blaming his colleague Rudolph Boshoff for the deletion…
The debate between Jonathan McLatchie and Br. Yusuf Ismail that recently occured has brought to light severe and shocking plagiarism by Jonathan McLatchie. A video illustrating the plagiarism was created by Calling Christians but published by EFDawah:
Another popular Muslim YouTube channel, MuslimByChoice also took notice of Jonathan’s dishonesty and also published the video. However, this was the second video to be produced, the first video to be published (also by both EFDwah and MuslimByChoice) was purposefully published to demonstrate one instance of plagiarism in the debate. This was to assess the response that Jonathan would give, before releasing more incidents of plagiarism. As expected, Jonathan claimed that his plagiarising of Sam Shamoun in the debate was an “isolated case”. When the second video (embedded above) was published, it was then clearly demonstrated that he had lied. The videos demonstrating his plagiairism have gathered more views than the debate itself, with several prominent Muslim and non-Muslim academics, and debaters, taking notice of Jonathan’s dishonesty.
It was then at this point I reached out to Rudolph Boshoff who not only chaired the debate under fire at the moment, but whose organization Ad Lucem was party to the debate itself, as representative of the Christian side. It should then be noted that Jonathan McLatchie was representing Ad Lucem, that is Rudolph Boshoff’s ministry in that debate. Evidentially, here is the debate poster itself:
As can clearly be seen, Ad Lucem was party to debate. Due to his involvement, we reached out to Rudolph for comment, given that he is a party to the debate, chaired the debate itself, is a student at a seminary, a teacher himself, it became necessary to solicit his comments on this matter:
Initially, I did not want to involve Rudolph, but as Jonathan’s deception grew and questions began to be raised, it became necessary given his role and his ministry’s role in the affair. To date, three days have passed and Rudolph’s only “statement” thus far was to be complicit in the plagiarism by removing the tag of the query posted by myself.
Plagiarism is highly impfactful when it comes to the moral standards of interfaith debates. When we have interfaith debates we put trust that the speakers will be honest and up front, that they would use sources and cite them responsibly. Such an issue discredits the hard work that debaters put into the events, as study and research is paramount to interfaith discussion.
The questions have been asked, the plagiarism has attempted to be covered up and the silence of the responsible parties are perhaps the most damning words of all.
Recently, a quote from Samuel Zwemer’s “Moslem Doctrine of God” has been circulating on the internet and is being celebrated as a succinct explication of how Christianity fundamentally overcomes the “distance of God” in Islamic theology.
As is typical in missionary writings, Islamic theology is portrayed as having a distant God, that Christianity is superior to either Islam or Judaism because God is within Christians through the Holy Spirit. Here’s the problem though, does God have to be spatially within us for our hearts to be renewed? Christians themselves refute this idea by saying that God is truly a Spirit in nature and not a material being, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – John 4:24, therefore what is the reasoning for God having to be spatially (materially) within us for us to be guided? Therefore this concept that God must be spatially within us for any of us to be guided is both irrational and self-contradictory. The Qur’an itself responds to this claim, it says:
“And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein.” – Qur’an 50:16.
God is closer to us, without having to be in the material world. God’s sovereignty is such that space does not affect what He can and cannot do, so the belief that a God from afar is somehow less superior than a God that is “within us” does not make any sense. This fundamentally means that Christians believe God is not all powerful and that God somehow loses power and ability based on distance. Yet, I’m sure if we ask them if God loses power based on distance, they’d disagree, yet they’d gladly offer this as an argument for the truth of Christianity in a book about Islam, as is seen above. This sort of deceptive inconsistency permeates throughout Christian missionary works.
Here’s another problem with that quote above, do Christians really expect us Muslims to believe that God is within them, that God within them is renewing their hearts and bringing them into submission with God’s will? Consider this, if obedience to God’s will means living a good, moral life, no pre-marital sex, no substance abuse, not stealing, not lying, etc, then it means that Christians need God within them to do things Muslims can do without having God within us. On the simple example of substance abuse, a druggie, if it takes a Christian needing the Holy Spirit within them to renew their heart and have them overcome an addiction, and yet a Muslim through their belief in Tawheed can overcome such a problem, then it means to say that Muslims by themselves are greater in will and power than the very Christian God.
In other words it takes God and a human to do what a Muslim can do by themselves through their belief in the truth of Islam. What Christians need to do is present an objective metric to measure the work of the Spirit within them. What do Christians do with the Spirit that a Muslim, Jew, Atheist or Hindu cannot? Can they point to a single living person today that meets this metric standard? Just one person, that’s all. In the end, the quote from the above book is an indictment against the Christian faith, as opposed to a rational critique of the Islamic faith. I’m not sure why Christians find it useful to pat themselves on the back with such drivel, when in the end it paints Christianity in a bad light, if only a moment is spent considering the theology presented in their propaganda.
Jonathan has just released another article about me, and I’m honestly flummoxed with respect to his opening few words. Polemicists like Jonathan, have always claimed that Muslims do not understand the Trinity (well, who does?), and so we should rely on the Christian community for the explanation of this doctrine. Therefore it causes me concern that when Muslims do seek counsel from the Christian community about the statements of their polemicists about the Trinity, we are regarded as promoting division and discord. If we don’t ask them about the Trinity, it’s because we’re allegedly ignoring what they say and when we do ask them, it’s because we allegedly want to sow discord amongst them.
I’m okay with Jonathan making false claims about me, because I understand that he’s upset that during a discussion about Jonathan’s heretical ideas about the Trinity one of his close friends denounced his views as “not orthodox”. One can see that video here:
Here’s the funny thing about Jonathan and his friend, Jonathan’s friend is now attempting to backtrack on his statements after putting Jonathan into hot water. Unfortunately, in a poor attempt to save face, Jonathan falsified comments about his friend, here is one such example:
Here’s the thing though, I did meet Jonathan yesterday, and I did play the clip for him up until 1 minute after the sound bite in the video ends. Nowhere in that 1 minute after the sound bite above does his friend Rudolph ever say, “But Jonathan did not say that”. In fact, nowhere in the 36 minutes and 31 seconds Jonathan’s friend and I spoke, did he ever utter such a statement. In fact, the entire conversation is currently circulating and has been circulating among both Muslims and Christians since yesterday, Jonathan was even told he could come to Hyde Park and collect a copy if he wished. What this means, is that in order to save face, Jonathan has lied about his friend Rudolph, and even after hearing the clip himself and never hearing Rudolph ever state “But Jonathan did not say that”, Jonathan continues to claim his friend Rudolph was misrepresented. Simply, what’s going on here is that Jonathan has found himself in a bad position and I do not blame him for going to desperate ends. Jonathan’s very friend is also in a tough position and is put between his faith and his friend. It’s a very uncomfortable position for Jonathan, his friends and fellow Christians. The interesting thing though, is that I don’t need a voice recording to show Jonathan that his friend has already publicly criticized him for his heretical views about the Trinity.
Take note of the above public conversation. Christians are “not quite comfortable” with the claims of Jonathan regarding the Trinity. In fact, his friend Rudolph replies that he agrees, he says, “I agree”. So what do we have now? We have a voice conversation where his friend states clearly that Jonathan’s view were not orthodox as expressed in the video, we have a conversation on Facebook where his friend agrees that he’s uncomfortable with what Jonathan said, and then as a good friend he goes on to correct Jonathan by trying to explain what Jonathan meant to say, as opposed to what he did say. Jonathan tried and fell into error, his friends are in agreement that they’re uncomfortable with what he stated in that video and now they have to try and say what Jonathan didn’t in that video clip in Hyde Park. It’s clearly caused division among them, and that’s why Jonathan blames me in his article. It’s his way of expressing that his friends themselves, have publicly denounced him as being in error.
With respect to his claims about me “misrepresenting” Sam’s article, Jonathan has also changed his position. Yesterday he proclaimed I misquoted Sam. Today, I’ve apparently no longer misquoted but misrepresented Sam. The problem is this, Sam claims the Qur’an makes an error by stating:
They have certainly disbelieved who say, “Allah is the third of three.” And there is no god except one God. – 5:73.
So here’s the problem, for a number of years Sam has claimed that Christians do not teach that God is a third of three. On Sunday, Jonathan claimed in Hyde Park that God was a third of three. So now there’s a conundrum. If as Jonathan said that God in Christianity is a third of three, then it makes Sam Shamoun a liar in his numerous articles claiming the Qur’an is wrong. If Jonathan is wrong and what Sam claimed in his articles is true, then Jonathan is a heretic. Either way, Jonathan has put Sam into hot water and that’s why you see Sam not commenting on the issue but only Jonathan, because once Sam makes a statement one way or the either, he then publicly embarrasses himself and Jonathan. That’s one of the reasons that Sam’s quote was used and why Jonathan had to change his false claim of me misquoting, to me misrepresenting Sam. Jonathan then goes on to say:
Ijaz also, unfortunately, butchered the comments of Dr. James White regarding the meaning of theotetos, translated by the KJV as “godhead” but which White objects to since Godhead is commonly used to refer to the Trinity and the word theotetos is referring to Deity, i.e. to that which makes God God.
Jonathan completely missed the point. I in fact, didn’t touch the comments of Dr. James White, they are unedited and properly cited, this is just another poor attempt at deflection and deception by Jonathan. With respect to the quote itself, I agree with Dr. White, in fact, in the video I published the very quote was used to show that Christians do believe the Godhead is God, is a Deity. Jonathan is so caught up in trying to respond to the trouble he’s found himself in, he doesn’t even recognize when I agree with him. So, uh, thank you Jonathan for demonstrating that you’re simply not paying attention and are merely trying to respond rather than to understand what is being said, your mistake and your haste speaks volumes about your character.
I also do not see why he had to re-explain Dr. White’s words on the Father not being 1/3rd of God. That’s exactly what the quote I used said:
“The Father is not ⅓ of God, the Son ⅓ of God, the Spirit ⅓ of God. Each is fully God, coequal with the others, and that eternally.”
White, James R.. The Forgotten Trinity (p. 27). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The quote stands as is, I’m in agreement with what Dr. White said, not in disagreement. That’s exactly why I quoted him in the first place. Now, what Jonathan said next is extremely important to the situation he now finds himself in, he says:
“What I meant is that the Father is a third of the Godhead in the sense…”
Jonathan accepts he made a heretical claim about the Trinity, he distinguishes between what he said in the video, and today by what he currently means. It’s no longer, “what I said…,” but is now, “what I meant…”. Jonathan knows that he screwed up, his friends know that he screwed up, and now the recorded conversations, the recorded Facebook comments, the silence of some of his friends, the criticism from the Christian community and now Jonathan’s lying and falsification of statements all stand against him. Jonathan himself acknowledges that he’s disappointed in himself, that he has to write such articles:
“It disappoints me that I even need to write responses like this.”
I agree Jonathan, we are all disappointed in you, that you need to write such poor articles. We recognize and stand in solidarity with the disappointment you have in yourself. We do call you to a higher standard, so that you can no longer be disappointed in yourself.
Calling Christians 
You must be logged in to post a comment.