Monarchy of the Father & The Early Church - A CIRA Interview with Jay Dyer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Jay'sAnalysis

Episode: Monarchy of the Father & The Early Church — A CIRA Interview with Jay Dyer
Date: March 2, 2026
Host: Al Fadi
Guest: Jay Dyer

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Overview

This episode features a deep dive into the doctrine of the "Monarchy of the Father," the early Church’s understanding of the Trinity, and the unique Eastern Orthodox perspective on these foundational theological issues. Host Al Fadi and guest Jay Dyer—a philosopher, theologian, and Orthodox apologist—explore how these doctrines developed, their biblical roots, and their relevance in engaging with other traditions such as Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and even modern secular challenges. Jay also reflects on his debates, particularly with Shabir Ali, and unpacks some of the distinctive Orthodox theological frameworks.

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Guest Introduction & Background

[03:13]

• Jay Dyer introduces himself as someone whose work spans philosophy, theology, film analysis, pop culture, and apologetics.
• Initially engaged in debates with atheists and Protestants, Jay began focusing on interfaith dialogues, including Islam, only recently.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 05:43):
  "It was kind of a surprise that Shabir was willing to do it. I didn't think he would be willing, but he was. And so it was a good debate."

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Why Study Church History and the Early Fathers?

[07:24 – 10:56]

• The Orthodox position: the Church is and has always been Orthodox; understanding early Church history is crucial for remaining true to apostolic tradition.
• The continuity between apostolic teaching and post-apostolic fathers is stressed.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 08:33):
  "We all desire hopefully to be in unison with the apostolic deposit, as Scripture says—‘Keep the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints...’"
• The importance of liturgy and councils in defining doctrines, including the canon of Scripture.

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Addressing Common Misconceptions: Trinity, Nicaea, and Arianism

[10:56 – 16:39]

• Many (including Muslims and some Protestants) misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity, seeing it as an invention of Nicaea.
• Arianism explained: Christ as of "similar" but not "same" essence as the Father, influenced by philosophical simplicity.
• Jay distinguishes between the Eastern and Western (Latin) theological approaches—especially regarding distinctions and divine simplicity.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 12:17):
  "There's an appearance of kind of simplicity...if there's one God, then that one God is identical to the essence of God and that essence is identical to the Father."

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Philosophical and Scriptural Reasoning on the Trinity

[16:39 – 19:55]

• Distinctions in God do not mean division; the Cappadocian Fathers used philosophical language to clarify, not to substitute or corrupt, revealed doctrine.
• The analogies and explanations from the Church Fathers (Maximus, Basil, Gregory) demonstrate the triadic structure of reality, reflecting the nature of God: Father, Son, and Spirit.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 19:42):
  "That triadic mode of existence that we see in this world, Maximus argues, is a reflection of the ultimate reality, which is the triad itself, Father, Son and Spirit."

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The Monarchy of the Father in Orthodox Triadology

[19:58 – 23:39]

• The Father is the sole cause (arche, source, principle) of the Godhead; the Son is eternally begotten, not created.
• Distinctions of ordinal numbering ("first, second, third") do not imply ontological hierarchy or subordination.
• This doctrine avoids both Arian subordinationism and Western essentialism/impersonalism.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 23:14):
  "That makes sure that protects the Trinity from any kind of impersonalism or essentialism...Any kind of Hellenism is ruled out by the monarchia of the Father."

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Explaining Difficult Passages (e.g., “The Father is Greater Than I”)

[25:01 – 28:25]

• The "ordinal" subordination (order, not essence) resolves scriptural difficulties: the Son is eternally from the Father, but not less in divinity.
• The Incarnation is a unique action of one divine person, not the entire Godhead.
• God is primarily known as personal, not as mere essence; Trinity is not abstract but personally revealed.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 26:20):
  "He is the origin, source, arche, fount, cause, principle, autotheos of the Godhead. That's the predicate of the person of the Father."

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Objections & Pushbacks From Evangelicals, Protestants, Muslims

[31:19 – 41:27]

• Most objections involve:
  1. Alleged absence of Trinitarian language in the Bible (Jay argues for a holistic rather than “proof-text” approach).
  2. The claim that Jews don’t hold to the Trinity (Jay: this is irrelevant or historically questionable).
• The angel of the Lord in the OT is recognized as a pre-incarnate Christ, a view lost in later Latin theology but consistent in Eastern tradition.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 36:00):
  "Jesus says, no man has seen the Father at any time. Well, who did they see in the Old Testament? Jesus. It's really a no brainer here."

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The Role of Academic Authority vs. Church Authority

[44:29 – 46:10]

• Protestantism’s tendency to appeal to academia and new discoveries is contrasted with Orthodoxy’s focus on Church authority and liturgical continuity.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 45:16):
  "Christ didn't leave us a lineage of PhDs and academics. He left us a lineage we believe of church authority."

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The State of the Church in the Modern Era

[46:10 – 48:03]

• Jay characterizes contemporary Christianity as experiencing “mass apostasy,” cautioning that liberalism and modernism have affected all traditions equally.
• Despite this, Orthodoxy holds to Christ’s promise that the Church will endure.

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Insights from Debating Shabir Ali and the “Energies” of God

[48:29 – 54:21]

• Jay reflects on his debate with Shabir Ali, noting that Orthodox distinctions (especially essence-energies) provide answers where Western approaches fall short.
• The “seven spirits” in Isaiah are interpreted as the uncreated energies/operations of God, not separate persons or created entities.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 49:26):
  "Really only orthodox theology...has a consistent teaching on the essence-energy distinction."
• Jay notes that many Muslim and Arian arguments rely on reductive philosophical assumptions.

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The Energies of God: Activities or Attributes?

[54:45 – 58:15]

• Energies (energeia) are actions, activities, or “attributes” of God, but not identical with God’s essence; they allow for real participation in divine life.
• Scriptural references (Paul’s epistles, Gospels) and patristic use are explained.
• Quote (Jay Dyer, 57:40): "Remember when the woman touches Jesus and she's healed, but I noticed power went out from him, energy went out from him to heal—the divine power."

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Differences with Oriental Orthodox (Ethiopian, Eritrean, Coptic)

[58:20 – 59:59]

• Jay briefly covers theological and liturgical differences, noting the main divergence involves Christology: how nature and person are understood and related.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Trinitarian Continuity:
  "When we read Clement, Ignatius, Cyprian, Irenaeus...we find the key doctrines of Christianity still consistently taught."
  (Jay Dyer, 09:50)

• Nature of Unity in God:
  "The principle of unity, first and foremost, is personal—the person of the Father."
  (Jay Dyer, 29:08)

• The Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament:
  "The only lawful image of the Father is the Son. Jesus is the direct icon of the Father, as Scripture says."
  (Jay Dyer, 37:15)

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Important Timestamps

• Jay's Introduction & Apologetics Journey: 03:13–05:43
• Value & Necessity of Church History: 07:24–10:56
• Definition and Origins of Arianism: 11:41–16:39
• Triadology and Philosophy: 16:39–23:39
• Explaining Scriptural Difficulty "The Father is Greater": 25:01–28:27
• Common Objections (Evangelical, Jewish, Muslim): 31:19–41:27
• Debate Reflections & Energies of God: 48:29–54:21
• Energies, Attributes, Actions of God: 54:45–58:15
• Ethiopian/Eritrean (Oriental) Orthodox Differences: 58:20–59:59

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Conclusion

This rich, high-level conversation clarifies key Orthodox teachings on the Trinity, the Monarchy of the Father, the role of Church history, and the necessity of nuanced philosophical/theological distinctions. Jay Dyer guides listeners through the logical, scriptural, and historical foundations of these doctrines—often correcting misunderstandings common among Protestants, Muslims, and secular critics. The episode concludes with practical advice for articulating the faith, especially in response to objections, and nuances regarding inter-Christian dialogue.

Host closing words (59:59):
"The hope is that you have heard our brother and what he says makes it much easier for you right now to explain phrases and sentences...that are raised against us, usually in arguments."

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Further Listening

• For more, check out Jay’s work on topics like film symbolism, classical philosophy, or upcoming debates via his blog “Jay’s Analysis.”
• For detailed critique of Ethiopian/Eritrean Orthodox views, see David the Real Medway’s recent lecture (referenced by Jay).

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Episode Transcript Prepared by Jay'sAnalysis & CIRA

Transcript

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[Al Fadi]

Well hello everyone, this is Al Fadi and you are joining us in another live stream. This is a very special one, especially the Friday ones. This is of course where we reserve it for our special guest and with us here today. And we're so thankful of course that he made the time for us, our brother Jay Dyer. And of course I have to admit folks that I did not know a whole lot about Jay until Sam Shamon brought him to my attention. And then of course when he debated with Shabir, Ali and I got excited. Of course anyone who debates Shabir or gets involved in this field is indeed someone that worthy of our time to discuss the various things. Then I began to learn more and more about his background and it was really intriguing to me. So I want to thank everyone for being here with us. Please pay attention to our moderators. Thank you to the moderators for doing the great job that you typically do. Everybody please stick to the topic anyone. And I have to tell you right now that wages any verbal attack, use bad language, I will personally remove you from here because we're not here to attack and Nash at each other. We're here to respect one another and learn from each other. Brother, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us, and I know your time is precious.

[Jay Dyer]

Thank you.

[Al Fadi]

So we appreciate at least the next hour or so that you will be given to us.

[Jay Dyer]

Thank you. Glad to be here. I have seen your stuff, and I'm glad to know that there's people like you out there that have made the interesting journey that you have. And so I'm honored to be here.

[Al Fadi]

Thank you. And you know, Jay, I want you to, in your own words, take a few minutes, just let people know who you are, you know, and what is it that you do right now. Of course, I also came across your blog, if you want to call it the Jay's Analysis. I. I appreciate it, really, the information in there. Although you have a variety of information, actually, on topics.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, I cover a lot of things. I cover philosophy, geopolitics, movies, culture. The two books that I did focus on film analysis. Some of the big movies that you. You may have heard of or seen, the symbolism in those films, the religious connotations of those films. And then I did a TV show a couple years ago, kind of based on the book called Hollywood Decoded. That's worth checking out if you're into movies. So I try to tie in the philosophy of movies and pop culture with the gospel, with theology, with those kinds of topics. But at the same time, I kind of got gradually roped into doing more and more debates. It wasn't something I really set out to do, but I'd always done debates. I studied philosophy in undergrad and grad school. I did a year of theological seminary a long time ago. And so it's always been an interest, debated for a long time on campus, in different philosophy club meetings, this kind of stuff. But I never really took it into any kind of public sphere until people were really goading me on to kind of do public theological debates a few years ago. And we did a few debates with atheists, and that went pretty well. So then we just kind of branched out and got debates with other people. In the Roman Catholic sphere, you got debates with other groups, Protestant or two here and there.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And then finally somebody said, well, when

[Jay Dyer]

are you going to debate some Muslims? And I said, well, I don't really

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

know a lot about Islam.

[Jay Dyer]

So within the last eight months, we've kind of done a pretty fairly intensive study into Islam. I'm still very much a noob, so I wouldn't at all consider myself fluent in Islamic tradition or theology in the different schools and so forth. But I do have, you know, my different lectures and notes and Quran study. Study, I always call it a study Bible.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I have my Qurans, I study Quran now.

[Jay Dyer]

So yeah, it was kind of a surprise that the Shabira was willing to do it. I didn't think he would be willing, but he was. And so it was a good debate. And then we've had, you know, Matt Dill Hunty, the well known atheist, Stefan Molyneux, another kind of agnostic type of guy. So. So yeah, so that's what I do is cover all those topics, cover a lot of orthodox theology, which we believe is unique from Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. So that's what I do.

[Al Fadi]

Yep, thank you. And of course, like I said, I thought you did a very good job with Shabir. I mean, I didn't even know that you only spent few months digging deeper into it. You've done a great job. And you know, I have to be fair and say Shabir strikes me as still respectful person. Even though he has his own unique style of how he delivers his zings. But it's okay. At least he is professional more so than others. And you know, for that we're thankful that he's willing at least to dive or delve into a number of important issue with that in mind. Brother. You know, when I accepted Christ, you know, about 20 years ago, obviously I began to get more and more familiar with the early Church fathers and you know, you know, creeds and you know, doctrines and things like that. And then at the seminary I studied under the likes of Dr. Wayne Grudem and you know, one of the classes that I've taken of course has to do with the church history or historical theology. So I'm always intrigued by that because there is some benefit for that. If you want to give at least an overview of why is it important for any believer really to learn about church history and especially early church fathers?

[Jay Dyer]

Well, I'll give you the orthodox position on that. And that's because of course, as Orthodox we believe that the church is and has always been orthodox. So that's not to denigrate people in other traditions. I myself came from a Protestant tradition, so I'm not trying to be rude to anyone, but I kind of studied my way into Orthodoxy. And so I think that if we

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

want to understand that from our perspective, you know, the church as a body,

[Jay Dyer]

as an institution is just as miraculous

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

and just as divine in origin as

[Jay Dyer]

the other doctrines of Christianity. Right. Just like the Virgin birth, the resurrection, the Deity of Christ.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Those doctrines are definitely at the core, but the Church is also a corollary in one of those doctrines. So how we view Christ, his incarnation, the triad is going to condition how

[Jay Dyer]

we view the doctrine of the Church.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And that's kind of what I eventually

[Jay Dyer]

came to in studying the early Church fathers for, I don't know, about 14 or 15 years. I got really serious into that back

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

in my early 20s. And what we want to know is, do we have the same faith that the apostles laid down? I mean, I think that's the key

[Jay Dyer]

question here for everybody, is everybody, at least we all desire hopefully, to be in unison with the apostolic deposit, as Scripture says, right? Keep the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, as Scripture says.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So we want to be in continuity with that. We want to have the same confession of faith that has always been true. Paul says, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There's one vine, one body, one kingdom, one sheepfold, one covenant. So we want to be part of that covenant.

[Jay Dyer]

And so the history of the Church,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I believe, displays God's continuing activity via

[Jay Dyer]

the promise of Pentecost, right within the

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

centuries that follow after the Church, after the apostles. So when we look at the post apostolic period, when we look at the pre Nicene Church Fathers, when we look at the post Nicene Church Fathers, rather than what a lot of evangelicals tend to think, we actually see a lot of continuity. So any, even Islamic apologists will bring this up a lot. They'll say, oh, the Trinity, you know, this was a later doctrine that was

[Jay Dyer]

made up, you know, after Nicaea, or it was made up by Athanasius or whatever.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But we actually find all of these same core doctrines taught in the post apostolic Church Fathers.

[Jay Dyer]

When we read Clement, when we read Ignatius of Antioch, when we read Cyprian, when we read Irenaeus, right, We find

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

the key doctrines of Christianity still consistently taught by these. By these important Church fathers and in the liturgy.

[Jay Dyer]

The ancient liturgies are very crucial as well to this.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And that ultimately is what gives us the Bible itself, right? The tradition of the Church coming together in councils, different ones, over many centuries, looking at the lectionaries, looking at the tradition of what the different apostolic sees had done. And that's eventually what gives the Church

[Jay Dyer]

a consensus on the canon of Scripture itself. So there are many reasons why church history is important. I'm certainly not trying to elevate it above or put it in contrast to revelation or Scripture itself, but it's an. A necessary fabric that all goes together kind of works in tandem is our view. So that's what I eventually came to believe from reading a lot of the Church fathers and from a lot of years of studying Scripture as well, is that it all kind of hangs or falls together is what I'm trying to say.

[Al Fadi]

Yeah, And I appreciate that. I appreciate you mentioning also about the Islamic view. In fact, I grew up as a Muslim believing that the Trinity is the belief in three gods. And later on I began to buy into this argument that it was the Council of Nicaea that invented something like this and, you know, so many other accusations and claims. And of course, when I accepted Christ, I began to realize, you know, none of this is true. Now, speaking of the Council of Nicaea and specifically maybe Arianism, you know, because I want to talk about Trinity and the monarchy of the Father, you know, if you want to give people believe it or not, not everybody knows about Arianism and this heresy or even support nationism, you know, if you want to give a brief overview so you can dive into the doctrine of Atran, specifically the monarchy of the Father.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Right.

[Al Fadi]

So

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Arianism is, of course, the doctrine that the Son of God or Christ

[Jay Dyer]

Jesus is of a similar or like essence as the Father, but not the same essence as the Father. Perhaps he's a little lower on the scale. Perhaps he's a creature. Perhaps he's the first of God's creatures. A lot of different types of Aryan positions. There was Aryanism, semi Aryanism, and even a radical position known as Unomianism. And the reason that these views got

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

popular was very similar to the reasons why even today, or with Islam, those

[Jay Dyer]

kinds of views can catch on and be popular, is that there's an appearance of kind of simplicity. There's an appearance of, well, that's just logical, right? That if there's one God, then that one God is identical to the essence of God and that essence of God

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

is identical to the Father. So person, nature, essence, will all these things kind of get fused into what's

[Jay Dyer]

sometimes referred to as absolute divine simplicity.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

The Eastern Church fathers especially, I'm not

[Jay Dyer]

negating the Latin Church fathers, but the

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Eastern Church fathers especially had at their disposal some of the nuances in Greek philosophical terminology.

[Jay Dyer]

I'm not talking about Greek philosophical pagan

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

corruptions, but the nuances in the Greek philosophical tradition allowed for there to be rational types of explanations for the Trinity and for the deity of Christ that

[Jay Dyer]

didn't violate the unity of God.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So that's the chief usage of philosophy in the period of Athanasius and the

[Jay Dyer]

Cappadocian Church fathers, Basil, Gregory, the.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

The reason for this, the two Gregory's. The reason for this is that it helps us to see that it's not a contradiction. It's. It's fully rational, fully coherent to believe in the Trinity also on the basis of revelation.

[Jay Dyer]

I'm not saying that always just, you know, we just come up with these

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

philosophical speculations, but that is actually in

[Jay Dyer]

tandem with what's revealed.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And what's revealed everybody knows is that

[Jay Dyer]

there's one God, right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

That that proposition everybody agrees with. Whether that one God has a son and a spirit is of course, where it gets controversial. We believe that even in the Mosaic period, the Mosaic revelation, the law and the prophets and the writings, that that continuous tradition is there even in the Old Testament. So there's no contradiction in saying that the one God is God the Father, because there is one God who is primarily spoken of as God the Father. But does revelation stop there? Because our approach and the approach of

[Jay Dyer]

the church fathers, in our view that

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

are correct, is that revelation as a whole, it's a holistic body, so we don't approach it in a piecemeal fashion. Of this verse says this, therefore I'm

[Jay Dyer]

only going to go with that.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

This verse says this. This verse seems to say something a little nuanced that may appear to contradict with this, right? But we don't believe Scripture contradicts, right? Jesus says the Scripture cannot contradict. So it's a matter of understanding in what senses both of these things are true at the same time. And so that's where philosophical nuance can help us to understand how we all do this. We all do it with language. We understand that in linguistic predication, words have different senses, they can mean different things. Even though it's the same word in different senses, it can mean different things, right? A kid as a goat, a kid as a child, right? And we could equivocate, we could do word concept fallacy if we only took one sentences of a word in all cases, right? Univocal predication, right. These kinds of things can cause us to have super wide ranging mistakes. And a lot of the heresies in the early church, I'm not saying it's only grammatical or linguistic, but a lot of the heretics messed up precisely because they weren't able to understand nuance or

[Jay Dyer]

allow there to be multiple senses of terms. So they would say, oh, Elohim, since

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

that's sometimes used of multiple types of angelic beings, then God must be one

[Jay Dyer]

of the many angelic beings, the word angel, since at times that means a created angelic messenger. It must always mean a created angelic messenger. Therefore, the logos of the Old Testament and the theophanies is a created. You see what I'm saying?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

It's a sort of all or nothing

[Jay Dyer]

view where everything is smushed into one definition.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

The very same thing happens with simplicity, the doctrine of divine simplicity in the history of the Church and where you get these assumptions in philosophy that if God is one, he can only be one in all senses. But to boil this down back to the original question, just simply put, Arianism is an assumption about what divine simplicity is and must be and who God is and must be in a pretty strict philosophic sense.

[Jay Dyer]

A lot of people don't know that

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Arianism wasn't a strictly biblically based argumentation. Arianism was actually based on a lot of philosophical assumptions about the identity, the isomorphic identity of the term God, the term Father and the term divine essence. And when all those are combined, any real distinctions that are made.

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[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

be separate, lesser ontological status or a creature. So if there's a son, the sun can't be identical because everything a God

[Jay Dyer]

predicated of God is identical, right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So you'll notice the Islamic doctrine of Tawhid, the Islamic doctrine of Tanzi. These corollaries that go together are all premised on kind of the same idea as what the Aryans argued. The Aryans argued very similar things. Nestorius, famous early church heretic, he. He argued very similar things as well. And the assumption again is that distinction must entail composition, separation or Division. And that's just simply not true.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Even Thomas Aquinas hinges a lot of his argumentation later on in the medieval tradition on this assumption that real distinctions have to entail division or composition. But when we read the Eastern Church Fathers, who we would argue really do correctly develop in the sense of explicating,

[Jay Dyer]

not develop in the sense of changing,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

but develop the doctrine of the triad

[Jay Dyer]

and the monarchy of the Father, as

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

you said, they have no problem speaking of real distinctions that do not entail division or composition. So we can have different realities that are truly distinct and yet at the same time, also one and even numbers themselves. The Church Fathers are very frequent, especially the Cappadocians and later on Saint Maximus for using analogies for the Trinity even

[Jay Dyer]

within the created order.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I mean, Saint Maximus even thinks in questions and doubts that the entire world is structured in a triadic way because

[Jay Dyer]

it was created from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So that triadic mode of existence that we see in this world, Maximus argues, is a reflection of the ultimate reality,

[Jay Dyer]

which is the triad itself, Father, Son and Spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So ultimately, when you look at the Nicene Creed, it retains this doctrine of the monarchia of the Father. By pointing out that the Father alone is the sole cause. Arche alone, autotheos, right principle in the Godhead, this becomes the normative Cappadocian doctrine.

[Al Fadi]

Cause or source. Is it safe to say source also?

[Jay Dyer]

Absolutely.

[Al Fadi]

Or origin.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Yeah. A lot of those terms are kind

[Jay Dyer]

of synonymous for what the Cappadocians and Athanasius are getting at, which is that

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Jesus, Athanasius argues, is the direct offspring of the Father's nature. He's not a work of will.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. So Arians and, well, primarily the Eunomians, eventually the Aryans argued this too. But the Eunomians really hammer this home

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

where they say that the divine simplicity is so strong and such that any action, any distinction, has to be a work of will. So the Son has to be a

[Jay Dyer]

work, something that God created, maybe God's first work, even. But he's still a work and therefore have some lesser sad.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

He doesn't share all of the predicates

[Jay Dyer]

of divine nature as the Father does.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But we believe, and the Cappadocians are

[Jay Dyer]

very explicit in many, many places throughout their theology, that strictly speaking, yes, the

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

term God in the Nicene Creed, in Paul's Epistles, for us, there's one God, the Father.

[Jay Dyer]

I think James has the Father of Lights. Paul says there's one God for us, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

the Strictly speaking, yes. The Nicene Creed. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty. So the beginning of the Godhead is the Father. But we don't restrict it or stop it there because we also believe that

[Jay Dyer]

the Father has the ability and has

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

revealed that he eternally generates a Son that is the direct offspring of his own nature. And so therefore he possesses, even though he is second in ordal order. So Basil calls this the ordinal numbering of the Trinity, which does not entail any kind of lesser ontological or metaphysical status. So just because the Son is second in the triad and he's from the Father and has his eternal existence eternally from the Father, it doesn't follow. It's a non sequitur to argue that. Well then he must also therefore be some sort of secondary lesser God, right? And that's the only reason that the Aryans and the Semi Arians and the Unomians argued that was because of philosophical assumptions. They argued that, well, the first principle has to be primary in a metaphysical sense. And if there's a second personage or whatever, he's got to be lesser.

[Jay Dyer]

And that is a big part of Basil's argumentation, right? He says, look, when I say the

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Father is cause, I'm not saying cause in a strict identical sense in the

[Jay Dyer]

way that creatures are caused, right? He says that it would be. Athanasius says this to you. He says it would be a mistake

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

to read a one to one correspondence

[Jay Dyer]

between creaturely relations and the divine, personal relations, right? So we don't do that.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But he says there is an analogy so we can speak of analogies. The Father is the cause in the way that a Father in this time space created world creates a Son in

[Jay Dyer]

the sense of his offspring.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

That's an analogy to the way that the Father has an eternal offspring, that is the Son. And the reason we say that is because there are many texts that speak of Christ having the same properties as the Father in terms of divinities, not his hypostatic property. That's why we reserve the role of

[Jay Dyer]

cause to the Father alone.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And that makes sure that protects the Trinity from any kind of impersonalism or essentialism. Any kind of Hellenism is ruled out by the monarchia of the Father. That's what's so unique about this doctrine.

[Jay Dyer]

That's why ultimately we don't believe in

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

a double procession, hypostatic origin of the

[Jay Dyer]

Spirit in sense of the filioque.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

We believe the Father alone is the

[Jay Dyer]

origin of the hypostasis of the Spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Now that's a different topic.

[Jay Dyer]

I know we're not going to get into Filoque, but I'm just saying that it relates to pretty much it relates to all of our theology and also to Islamic theology.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Because what I noticed in going really deep into Arianism and Eunomianism, if you

[Jay Dyer]

read, for example, St. Gregory Nyssa's gigantic

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

work against Eunomius, you'll find that Eunomius is really saying a lot of the same things that I would hear Islamic debaters and apologists say that unity must mean this. Simplicity must mean this. All of the predicates must be reducible

[Jay Dyer]

to the divine essence in this very strict reductionist sense. And therefore any, you know, it's just

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

very similar kind of argumentation.

[Jay Dyer]

And so all I did was just

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

kind of apply that argument against divine simplicity to the debate with Shabir or any other debates I've had with Muslims, as well as the incarnational kind of

[Jay Dyer]

argument regarding the eternal Quran and this

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

kind of stuff that even though it might seem on the surface that you're avoiding the problems, you're actually, you've got all the same quote, problems in the

[Jay Dyer]

Islamic system as we do as the Aryans had. The Aryans had all these same problems.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So that was long winded.

[Jay Dyer]

I apologize.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But that's kind of the. That's why the philosophy. No, no, that's why they're false.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah.

[Al Fadi]

I want you to take your time. This is important, by the way. In fact, you know, Jay, I have to tell you, what you just described, I think makes people easy. It makes it easier for people to explain when Jesus say the Father is greater than I.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Exactly.

[Al Fadi]

You have a way to explain it, you know. Yeah.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And that's why for us, for example, this. We would believe that there's an equal ultimacy, people like Saint Maximus say, between

[Jay Dyer]

one and many in God.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So there's not. God's not more one than he is three. He's not more three than he is one. So there's this kind of flexibility in terms of God being both and, and not either or. And what that does is that frees up the theology to be able to better explain than something like Roman Catholicism or typically Protestantism. Can things like how does one hypostasis of the Trinity enter into a mode of being in time and space that the other two don't? How does the Son undergo death on the cross but the Father and the Spirit don't you see? So there's a means and a mode in orthodox theology by which one HYPOSTASIS. Can enter into a mode of existence, a mode of being, while still being fully united to the other two that the other two don't enter into, right? So that we retain that unity, not just in the sense of one and many, but also in the ability for one hypostasis to enter into that mode of being in time and space that the other two do not. And by extension, that's how Jesus can be incarnate, walking around and saying that I honor the Father, I honor Him. I'm here to direct you to Him.

[Jay Dyer]

You see, right? Because He.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And when he says the Father is greater, we believe that it's in this sense that we're talking about. It doesn't mean that the Father is greater metaphysically, right? He doesn't have more being. He doesn't have more unity, more power. He's greater in the sense that he is the origin, source, rk fount, cause, principle, autotheos of the Godhead. That's the predicate of the person of the Father. For us, the Trinity, God is always known first and foremost as personal God. When God reveals himself to Moses, he doesn't say, I'm an essence. He doesn't say, I'm the supreme it, I'm supreme principle monad. He says, I am he presupposing personal covenantal relationship with God. Now, it's not. I'm not saying philosophy itself is bad, but we don't believe in the Hellenic conceptions that the Greeks were so obsessed with and so. So known for, is the impersonal forces idea, right? God is like this great number in

[Jay Dyer]

the sky, like Platonism or Pythagoreanism.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

He's like the great number seven.

[Jay Dyer]

Or he's.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

He's just this force, this impersonal, abstract essence, right? We avoid that by stressing the direct interaction and knowledge of God through the Person of the Father. Now the Father has the divine essence fully, and he communicates by his eternal generation that same full divine essence to the Son that He eternally generates. But the Son's existence, the Sun's hypostasis, is not of its own. It's of another. He is of another. And so that's the sense in which he is caused, in which he is speaking of the Father as greater. Because the Father is the Source, right? And so for us, once we. Once we grasp this, this is why for us, reality, the Trinity itself is Father generating the Son and then manifesting the Spirit. So there's this movement, Basil says, from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, that's the same for how the world is created, right from all eternity. There's the movement of the energies. In that way, creation happens from the

[Jay Dyer]

Father through the Son in the Spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Paul says redemption happens from the Father

[Jay Dyer]

through the Son in the Spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So that same triadic model is consistent. It explains both creation and redemption. And for us, creation itself presupposes and is the archetypal pattern for redemption. We believe that Jesus was always going to become incarnate. You see, it's not a plan B like Thomas Aquinas says. Anyway, long story short, that's the sense in which Christ is second, right, and in the ordinal sense, Basil says, not in a metaphysical or ontological sense of

[Jay Dyer]

primacy and lesser status. The Holy Spirit is third, right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

That doesn't mean that he's like one

[Jay Dyer]

God, lesser God and then small God, right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

They're fully equal. But for us, the principle of unity in the Godhead, first and foremost is not the essence. First and foremost is not the essence, it's the person of the Father. The principle of unity, first and foremost is personal, the person of the Father. And yes, you can say in a secondary sense. For us in the theology, it's true that each hypostasis possesses the same nature

[Jay Dyer]

and therefore there is a unity there.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But primarily when we speak of the unity of God, it's the person of the Father that St. Gregory Nazianzio says

[Jay Dyer]

recapitulates the unity of the triad.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And so also Saint John Damascus says that we can also speak of unity

[Jay Dyer]

in terms of perichoresis, which is the divine indwelling.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Each hypostasis fully indwells the other hypostasis.

[Jay Dyer]

And yet at the same time, there's a real distinction.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So there's different models and ways to speak of unity in God while retaining the triadic reality. But that's the way that we believe it is properly spoken of.

[Al Fadi]

Thank you. I want to thank everyone, of course, for joining us. I'm looking at some of the comments and I'm just laughing. Some people come in with presuppositions all the time. We are here discussing, of course, the Eastern Orthodox position and explaining the Trinity, explaining something called the monarchy of the Father. And of course, Jay Dyer is a brother that I felt is more than capable of handling topic like this. We're here to learn what the Bible teaches. I didn't hear anything Jay says that the Bible did not talk about. That's the original, if you wish, position that I asked him about. The Church, the early Church. How did they Understand things. Now I get it. I understand that there are different views today which I will be discussing right now. And we have our own presuppositions sometimes, Jay, and we come with our own ideas, but are based on, in my view, things that developed versus what is original, you know, and that's what is so important for me, for my faith. So what are some of the pushbacks of you like you just described right now? Could be.

[Jay Dyer]

Oh, you mean anticipated or commonly voiced objections, you're saying?

[Al Fadi]

Exactly.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, that's a great question. Let's see. Well, most common would be the idea that this is a philosophical position that's not in the Bible. Well, again, I would say that the way that we're going to determine the biblical presentation is not going to be in a piecemeal this text versus this text thing.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

We're going to have to look at the holistic context.

[Jay Dyer]

And I mean, we can't obviously do that right now.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But I mean, just in the book of Genesis, for example, if we were to start our view of understanding the Trinity, we're going to look at all the different theophanic manifestations. Now, there's multiple without throughout Genesis, where we see what appears to be a, a second personage. I mean, it's not in Genesis said

[Jay Dyer]

to be second quote person.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

That's just a term that's used to

[Jay Dyer]

describe what's going on there for, for. For our view. Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So when we see, for example, the Lord walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve, you could say that that's a kind of a theophany. When we see the angel of the Lord appearing to Abraham, when we see the angel of the Lord appearing to Hagar, and the angel of Lord is

[Jay Dyer]

said to be God. She says, I saw God. He is the God who sees. Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

When we see the wrestling with the angel, right. This is not just a mental construct or some sort of mental thing. There's an actual manifestation of a theophany. Now it's a. It is mysterious. I'm not trying to downplay the mystery, but there is a reality that's even in Genesis made clear that there's some kind of distinction going on between the father origin of the God head, you could say, and the second personage that's present here and perhaps even in Genesis a third, with the presence of the Spirit being mentioned. But what's really clear just in Genesis is the many instances of this angel, the Lord who is spoken of in chapter 48, for example, as a redeemer. We know that we can't typically speak of angels or creatures as redeemers. Typically speaking. It doesn't make sense, right? That's a divine power.

[Jay Dyer]

It's something that we speak of God

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

alone as our Redeemer, right? And yet we see in Genesis 48, this angel, the Lord as the one

[Jay Dyer]

who redeemed them from their sins.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Now there's many, many more. But as we pass over into Exodus, we see that same pattern. We see the I am that manifests

[Jay Dyer]

in Exodus 3 in the.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

In the bush is later said to be the same angel, the Lord that guides them into the promised land, who has the. The name of God.

[Jay Dyer]

Right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

The name of God is in the

[Jay Dyer]

angel, so to speak.

[Al Fadi]

Yeah. Exodus 20:3.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And then, you know, there's. There's many more Theophanic manifestations. Moses goes up and eats with God. Now you can say, well, that's all just symbolic language. It's all just. Just imagery and symbolism, which, I mean, that's a whole other route that I.

[Jay Dyer]

I don't necessarily want to go down,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

but I don't think that really holds up given the fact that many of these passages are not strictly totally symbolic.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. I mean, Isaiah, right. I've been going through a study on Isaiah, right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Now, there's multiple places where we see this kind of stuff in Isaiah. Isaiah 60 says, I saw with my own eyes the Lord on the throne, right?

[Jay Dyer]

And we know from John 12 that he's talking about Jesus, right? We have other passages in Isaiah where

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

it says that the son who was born unto us, that everybody, most people,

[Jay Dyer]

unless you're Jewish, I guess most people believe is a messianic prophecy, right? Identifying that son that's born unto us with the angel of wonderful counsel from Judges 13, right? Who appeared to man, to Samson's parents, to Manoah, and they identify that angel as God.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

We find worship, right? Prostration in a worshipful sense.

[Jay Dyer]

Not just reverence, but worship being given to the angel of the Lord. And we know from the Apocalypse that when John worships angels, he's forbidden to do that. You can't worship creatures in that way.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So the worship given, the worship and the name given to this angel clearly signify that it's not the Father and

[Jay Dyer]

also that it is a manifestation of a full divine person.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And we also have to keep in mind that as Jesus is pretty clear,

[Jay Dyer]

and even the Old Testament is pretty

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

clear, you can't see God face to face and live. But we're told Moses saw God face to face. Jesus says, no man has seen the Father at Any time. Well, who did they see in the Old Testament?

[Jay Dyer]

Jesus.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

It's really a no brainer here.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But what I'm getting at is that that consistent biblical approach, and there's many, many more theophanies, but that consistent biblical approach is what led to the reasoning behind the Trinity ultimately coming from Scripture.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

All the Eastern fathers are really consistent on explaining who the angel of the Lord is. It's Jesus. Later Latin church fathers after Augustine, they do begin to doubt this and they say, well, maybe it's actually just an angel.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. Augustine has a problem with this in the, in on the Trinity, he kind

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

of, he speculates, he's unsure for us in the orthodox tradition, it's very clear.

[Jay Dyer]

There's no doubt, no dispute. All the liturgy constantly identifies this personage as, as Jesus. And that's really the consistent idea here. Again, I mean, I think this is,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

this argument is actually kind of downplayed that you don't see the Father. There's no, Even though it's, you're not typically supposed to make images of God the Father, we don't really believe you

[Jay Dyer]

should do that, technically speaking, even though people still kind of do that.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Really the only lawful image of the Father is the Son. Jesus is the direct icon of the

[Jay Dyer]

Father, as Scripture says.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So we see again, our trinitarian theology not being just a bunch of philosophical

[Jay Dyer]

speculation, but very much grounded in.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

That's just the Old Testament.

[Jay Dyer]

I mean, you could go to Zechariah 1, 2 and 3.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

All the persons of the Trinity are clearly present there.

[Jay Dyer]

You can find the Trinity all through Isaiah.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Isaiah literally is like a fifth gospel, right?

[Al Fadi]

Absolutely.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I mean, there's, there's, I mean, it's

[Jay Dyer]

not explicitly stated as all the, you know, New Testament doctrines, but the New

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Testament doctrines are present in Isaiah. And that shows, of course, that continuity

[Jay Dyer]

between the Old Testament and the New Testament period.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So when we come into the New Testament, when we look through the Synoptic Gospels, when we look through the, especially

[Jay Dyer]

the Gospel of John, we see a

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

very, very clear, very consistent, well, flourishing doctrine of the Trinity, even though it's not explicitly stated. What will become the doctrine of the

[Jay Dyer]

Trinity is if you get really deep

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

into it, very clearly and very obviously reasoned from the Scripture.

[Jay Dyer]

I mean, when the church fathers are

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

debating this, it's not a bunch of Plato and Plotinus, it's Scripture. They're constantly arguing the biblical text.

[Jay Dyer]

All right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And so, I mean, you could, you could really find most. I'm not, I wouldn't do this, but I'm just Saying, I mean the full fledged trinitarian doctrine that we hold is pretty much in the Gospel of John. I mean you can look at John 1, you have the only begotten God, right?

[Jay Dyer]

Right. Who is in the bosom of the Father.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Even when he's incarnate, it said he's still in the bosom of the Father, right? So there's parakoresis, there's eternal generation, there's a second personage, right? Jesus very quickly begins to, in his ministry speak of the Holy Spirit. He speaks of this to the woman of the well. He's already talking about the person and he says, she says, we know when the Messiah comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus says, I who speak to you am he. I am. So he identified. People say, oh, Jesus never says he was the Messiah. All these dumb arguments right? Now he says it right away to

[Jay Dyer]

the woman of the well. What are you talking about?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And so we progressing just through the book of John, we begin to see this very mind blowing, deep relationship between the relations of the persons, right? We do believe in relations of persons.

[Jay Dyer]

By the way, San Gregory Nazienza speaks of this. Maximus speaks of this.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

We see this relationship constantly mentioned of the Son coming to direct us to the Father. The Son is sent by the Father to direct us to the Father. And this directing will be done by the person of the Holy Spirit. He's spoken of as he.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

He will come at Pentagon. Jesus anticipates Pentecost, right? So consistently from John, you know, 1617, the high priestly prayer, you get this just amazing from John 1 to John 4, John 8, John 9, 1617, right.

[Jay Dyer]

You're getting a lot of trinitarian theology

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

just packed in there. And so the second most typical bad argument that I hear is the Bible never really covers this. If you mean, and a lot of

[Jay Dyer]

people do kind of in ignorance mean this.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

They mean well, there's no specific text

[Jay Dyer]

that lays out, there's three hypostases, one shared nature. Usia, right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

No, it's not like that because you

[Jay Dyer]

know, scripture is like a, a, a mining, a mining operation, right? It's like a cave and the jewels

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

are in the walls, right? And you have to, you mine it out and you find the jewel right in the cave and you say here, you see, so the jewel kind of

[Jay Dyer]

is like the explanation of what's in the cave, the doctrine, right? I'm not saying cave because it's like unexplainable or unknown. It's not, that's not what I mean. I just Mean that it's kind of raw or that has, that is there to give you the explanation that you kind of display.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

That's what I'm trying. So the church sort of displays the

[Jay Dyer]

doctrines that are fully present in Scripture. That's how we, we see it. Yes.

[Al Fadi]

So you mentioned something about Jews. You know, obviously some of the pushback especially Muslims use is that, well, wait a minute, looks like the Jews don't believe in a trinity and they have the Old Testament. What would be our response to that, Jay?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

There's multiple responses.

[Jay Dyer]

I mean on the one, just on

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

the logical level that's really irrelevant, right? I mean that doesn't really matter because

[Jay Dyer]

that just assumes that because the Jews were in the covenant during that, that older time period that therefore whatever they do is the determining factor. But of course that just assumes that the way that the Old Testament prophecies

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

speak of the divorce of Israel and the covenant curses for disobedience. As if that doesn't apply, Right?

[Jay Dyer]

As if the prophecies and predictions in Isaiah, like I will call those who, you know, were not my people. My people. I will take priests from amongst the Gentiles.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

How can you have priests that are gentiles? It doesn't make any sense. Right. So there's a lot of problems with

[Jay Dyer]

just this sort of simplistic appeal to, well, the Jew.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But I mean, the Jews don't believe the Quran. So that's like, that's a terrible argument

[Jay Dyer]

if you're a Muslim. Right?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So what, like the Jews don't believe all kinds of things. That doesn't really tell us anything.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. About whether the present positions are true or false.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Secondly, it's not actually that clear what pre first century Judaism believed.

[Jay Dyer]

I mean, there's multiple scholars and writers,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Dr. Michael Heiser Siegel, who've written on the fact that there were intertestamental period Jews who did believe in more than one heavenly power.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

The two heavenly powers, this kind of stuff.

[Jay Dyer]

Or perhaps three, you can look at the Merkavah tradition where you have this notion of, well, what is this angel

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

of the Lord, right. They had rabbinical debates themselves as to

[Jay Dyer]

whether this was the essence of God, whether it was a creaturely appearance, whether

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

it was Metatron, right. Some sort of super angel or something

[Jay Dyer]

like Voltron or something. Right. Like Transformers. I mean, so it's not exactly clear in what sense even older Judaic theology was quote monotheistic. And by the way, just because you're

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

quote Judaic doesn't mean you escape any of the questions and problems of absolute simplicity either.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. So I think that's a, that's a pretty bad argument just to say, well,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

but the Jews didn't believe in the Trinity.

[Al Fadi]

So what I just brought it up because. No, it's commonly fascinated by that. And another thing, let me, let me just play for a second the devil's advocate. You know, some of the Protestants or evangelicals will say, well, wait a minute. The Eastern Orthodox doctrine of the monarchy of the Father was discovered because of the so called patristic renaissance. And they went back and they began to look at teachings of the Father. But you know, that's not the case. I mean, it seemed like this is from early on. These are the positions that were taken by the early church fathers. Am I correct? Is there anything wrong with stating it this way? And why are they trying to push back by making claims like this?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Well, I think that comes from the

[Jay Dyer]

tendency within the Protestant world to default to academia. I mean, that's kind of one of the big problems in Protestantism.

[Al Fadi]

That's what I want you to go.

[Jay Dyer]

One of the big problems in Protestantism is to that, that who's going to

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

determine and solve a lot of questions and issues.

[Jay Dyer]

Well, the only people to look to are the academics.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But this has been a big problem in the world of Protestantism for many

[Jay Dyer]

centuries, especially since Julius Bellhausen and higher criticism.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I mean, the, the academics are not typically the friends of Christians.

[Jay Dyer]

I'm not saying there aren't good evangelical scholars. There are, you know, that there's Protestant scholars who I, I refer to and read all the time.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I'm not denying that. But I'm just saying in general, I know Christ didn't leave us a lineage

[Jay Dyer]

of PhDs and academics.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

He left us a lineage we believe of church authority. So we literally believe in a succession. I'm not saying that the Church is

[Jay Dyer]

just based on the succession of bishops.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I'm saying this one component of the

[Jay Dyer]

existence and history of the Church, that's who we're going to look to.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So if we have a question about do we have. We always confessed the monarchy of the Father absolutely has nothing to do with

[Jay Dyer]

what some guy in some German university thinks somewhere. Who cares? We believe what is confessed by our bishops that we're in communion with in the liturgy.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

We have a big focus on looking to the liturgy.

[Jay Dyer]

We have always confessed the primacy of the Father in terms of his role as cause and arche. It's never been in question in orthodox theology.

[Al Fadi]

And you know, Jay, you know, we're approaching almost the End of the hour. But I want you to give us an idea about where do you see the state of the Church, the Church in general headed these days with, you know, so many humanistic, you know, basically teachings, postmodernism, all kind of liberal theologies that are infiltrating into our academic arenas. Do you think if this trajectory continues in the way it's going, that the Church will stand a chance in defending its positions and, you know, standing against persecution and so on and so forth?

[Jay Dyer]

Well, we know the promise that the Church will never completely fail for us. You know, we Trust in Matthew 16. We know that Christ says that the Spirit will guide us, he would never leave us, and that he would always be present in the life of the Church. But the present state is mass apostasy. I don't think there's any question about that. There have been many centuries now of mass apostasy in Christianity, generally speaking, Christianity. And that's true of any of the different gatherings. Right. Whether you're Roman Catholic, whether you're Protestant or even evangelical, or whether you're Orthodox. There has been the same types of infiltration. It's the same types of academic assumptions and presuppositions, liberalism, modernism, higher criticism. And this has really affected all of the groups and even outside the bounds of Christianity. So that is definitely probably the biggest factor. I mean, I'm not necessarily saying we live in the great apostasy. I don't know. I think maybe in the next 20 or 30 years we'll be able to tell.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

But if we are in the great

[Jay Dyer]

apostasy, I think it'll be evident whether it's the great apostasy or just a large apostasy. That's definitely what's happening.

[Al Fadi]

Well, that's great, brother. Your debate with Shabir Ali. Would you like to reflect a little bit on that? What prompted you to think about it and the topic that was chosen and what is your assessment of what took place? In fact, one time during the Q and A, I enjoyed when Shabir was asking you about the seven spirits from Isaiah and your answer was, those are the energies of God. God. I thought that was brilliant. So you might want to touch on that as well before we close.

[Jay Dyer]

Right.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Well, I. I had been working through

[Jay Dyer]

all the works of Saint Maximus the last year. That's in English. I can't read Greek, but, you know, Maximus actually comments pretty extensively or. Well, a few times on that passage, I think in Athalasium, at the end of athalasium. And then St. Gregory Palomas comments on Maximus's comment on that passage. And. And when St. Gregory Palomas is debating with Barlium, the kind of the Roman Catholic theolog today, they have a lengthy dispute in the debate over the barley and might. I know they have a lengthy dispute over that passage and what it means. And really I think that the orthodox position makes the most sense of it because we know that God's knowledge, God's wisdom, the Spirit of God's, you know,

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

these spirits of God, they're not persons

[Jay Dyer]

and God's knowledge isn't created.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So really they have to be uncreated energies.

[Jay Dyer]

Right. And really only orthodox theology, I believe, has a consistent teaching on the essence

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

energy distinction, which is not from Palomas. It's.

[Jay Dyer]

It's actually, it's in Athanasius, it's in Cyril of Alexandria, it's in the Cappadocians, It's a big part of the Cappadocian argument for the full deity of the Spirit. Basil, Gregory, they argue that if the

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Holy Spirit has all the same powers and energies as a Father and the Son, then he's just as divine as the Father and the Son.

[Jay Dyer]

Even if he's third in order, he's the third in the ordinal numbering doesn't mean that he's at third. Lesser status, Basil argues. And against Eunomius. So

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Basil's against Eunomius would be a

[Jay Dyer]

really good thing to read on that, if you want. Catholic University of America actually has published that. So I would say that in the

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

debate with Shabir, I didn't expect that. That was kind of an odd question.

[Jay Dyer]

And later on, when we had a debate review with some of the former Muslims, in my discord, they kind of enlightened me on kind of where he was going with that in terms of Islamic theology having different notions of spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So I didn't understand at the time of the debate where he was going or what he was saying.

[Jay Dyer]

I'm not trying to be rude. I just didn't understand what he was getting at. Now I kind of get where he was going with the way that they understand spiritual and ghost kind of, you know, the, the spirit of a man or whatever. But overall the debate, I think went very well. It was a. It was a lot. I don't want to be rude. It was a lot easier than I

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

expected because I, I expected Dr. Shabir to, to focus mainly on textual critic problems. And he stayed within kind of the domain of philosophical theology, which, which I.

[Jay Dyer]

So pretty quickly, I think when we got into the philosophical areas of the Trinity, I, I Think that was pretty. That was a defining moment because, you know, he agreed beforehand to a interrogation. Some of the people who were mad about the debate said, why are you being so aggressive?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And why are you interrupting? Well, we actually had it stated beforehand

[Jay Dyer]

that the interrogator has the right to interrupt and he does have the right to change the subject and he can ask whatever questions that he wants. So that was agreed to at the beginning. So I don't at all feel bad for that. I don't think I was unfair to him in any way. He didn't say that I can't talk about philosophy or something like that, or I can't ask him about, you know, Islamic doctrine of the attributes. So I think that was a defining moment. You know, a lot of the people in the discord set that debate up. I didn't really. I had heard of Shabir and I'd seen some of the debates. I'd seen his Samshi Moon debate. I saw him debate some of the other evangelicals. I think really the defining issue was that he had not interacted with a person who knew orthodox theology. He was used to kind of the Protestant arguments and the emphasis on divine simplicity, which Protestants kind of inadvertently adopted from Roman Catholicism since they come out of, you know, Catholicism historically.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

So they didn't have. We have a different triodology than Roman Catholics do.

[Jay Dyer]

So I don't think he was prepared to really deal with a really nuanced view of the Trinity. He was kind of relying on just these pat questions that a lot of times Protestants aren't philosophically equipped to answer.

[Al Fadi]

Yeah, I thought really the debate definitely was a. A win, you know, for everybody. But I thought you took a really good stand. That's why I was surprised when you told me you just only spent few months trying to learn about Islam. So you did a great job. Is there any other debates in the works for you in general or with Muslims in particular?

[Jay Dyer]

We've reached out to multiple different Islamic debaters, philosophers. We not had any. We can't really find anybody who's ready to come back and do it. No, we've had a hard time finding people to come. Come back and debate. I'm not trying to be arrogant. I'm just saying we haven't really. We've reached out to some Roman Catholics. Peter Williams, he expressed some interest and then kind of backed off. We reached out to Trent Horn, Catholic Answers. I think we. We've reached out to. Is it Muhammad Hijab?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Is he one of the big debaters?

[Al Fadi]

Oh, that would Be great if you can take on Muhammad Hijab.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

I think it's been discussed.

[Jay Dyer]

I don't know if he has any interest in it, but we've discussed reaching out to him. We may try that. But no, I mean, beyond that, we don't.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

We had some other atheist academics that

[Jay Dyer]

we reached out to, and then they kind of backed off. So, so now it's not really. It's not. It's.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

It's harder and harder to find people

[Jay Dyer]

who even want to debate.

[Al Fadi]

Yeah, I hear you. Shamon is here and he's asking a great question. Maybe you touched on it already, but let's revisit again with energies. He's saying, would energies refer to God's activities?

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Right.

[Jay Dyer]

Typically, the, the term in the new

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

test, I mean, we would say it kind of goes.

[Jay Dyer]

It's in, it's present in the Old Testament. It is in the Septuagint, if you read Dr. Bradshaw's book, if you want like a really philosophic analysis of the Septuagint usage. But it's used in Paul's epistles and first 1 Corinthians when he's talking about the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit tells about the inner gaia of the Spirit. The term is used also for operations of other beings as well. Humans can operate.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And yes, it refers to actions, activities, and it corresponds loosely to what would

[Jay Dyer]

later become the Western theological term of attributes. When they talk about the attributes of God, they really mean the energies of God. Even if early Latin fathers use the term attribute, they're mainly talking about the energies. So Basil uses it for operations. St. John Damascus uses it for operations of God. So the love of God, the mercy of God, the wisdom of God, knowledge of God, justice of God, those are for us, energies or operations which are not identical to the essence of God. They proceed from the essence in the sense that they're. It's a. The essence is what we call in hypostatized. It exists in the mode of person. That's kind of a loaded, deep philosophical term. But originally, ultimately, the Church fathers will apply this to Christology. They will speak of nature never existing in some raw, abstract state, but always in some particular person in this case. So in the triad, the divine nature exists in hypostatized, in the Father, in the Son, and in the Spirit, in each person, fully in each person, in humanity. Human nature exists in hypostatized in the mode of created hypostases or created persons. So that's always the mode in which nature exists. It's typical in ancient medieval philosophy, to distinguish between the thing itself, thing qua thing, and the mode of thing or

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

the essence of the thing, versus the

[Jay Dyer]

mode in which the essence exists. This is common philosophic terminology. So that's applied ultimately to resolve some of the Christological disputes between Monophysites and Nestorians and so forth. So for us, the fifth council, sixth council, the theology of St. Justinian is very important for that. But Sam is correct to basically just point out that energy signifies the action or operation of the agent, right? So if you read John Damascus, he has a great book, Defense of the Orthodox Faith.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

And in book three, he looks at Christology.

[Jay Dyer]

In chapter 15 he says, there's the agent, there's the nature that the agent possesses. The agent being the person, right? The action of that agent. And he's saying these are all distinct and that that action is the operation of that agent. In the case of God, it's a real power that goes forth from him. Remember when the woman touches Jesus and

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

she's healed, But I noticed power went

[Jay Dyer]

out from him, energy went out from him to heal the divine power.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

Now that power is never impersonal. It's not a New Age force, it's not magical forces. It's always in hypostatic as well.

[Jay Dyer]

The energies are in hypostatic, meaning they're probably personal. So the love of God is the personal love of God from the Father through the Son and the Spirit.

[Jay Dyer's Co-speaker / Assistant]

The knowledge of God is personal from

[Jay Dyer]

the Father through the Son and the Spirit. It's always that same triadic mode we believe. So that's what the energies are.

[Al Fadi]

Wonderful. Do you have time for a couple

[Jay Dyer]

of more questions here?

[Al Fadi]

I'm going to put it right here in front of you, brother, so you can look at it. It's asking about what do you think about the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox. I think it's called Tawahdu, which holds slightly different view in worship theology, ceremonial traditions from the Eastern Coptic Church, for instance.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, we have a, one of the guys in our apologetic circle who just did a two hour talk on that topic. So I mean, in brief, I would say that, you know, we have some problems with the theology that develops in what's called the Oriental church churches due to, it's not just linguistic because even though they have a different notion of what nature usia and hypostasis come to mean, what energy comes to mean, ultimately we do have some, some theological differences with them. And so if you, if you go and watch David, the real Medway, he just Did a two hour stream just on that question. So really the issue, I mean, there are liturgical differences. It's not so much like, oh well, the tehiro sway in the liturgy. So we disagree with them. It's not like that. They do some weird kind of quasi Judaize practices like circumcision and these kinds of things that we don't accept. They do have influences that are kind of Judaized. But the main problem is the Christological issues where they're kind of confusing nature and person. They're not basing nature and person in Christology on nature and person in the triad. That's our main critique with them.

[Al Fadi]

Very good, brother. Well, I've been looking to see if there's any questions. Looks like everyone was really soaking it in. Some says they're gonna have to watch it again to listen to some of the terminologies you're using. I thought you did a great job in explaining that. I just want people to know. The hope is that you have heard our brother and what he says, everything he says makes it much easier for you right now to explain phrases and sentences and wording that came out of the mouth of our Lord. For instance, the Father is greater than I. I came to do the will of him who sent me. Many of these things that are raised against us, usually in arguments to try to point you out. Do you see Jesus is lower than the Father and so on and so forth. And also the fact that in, in the Old Testament, sometimes people make that, well, I don't see the Son in there. I don't see the Holy Spirit. Well, you know what? If you put it all together like this, it's a full package. It's a one complete package. You'll be able to explain it in ways that are much simpler if you wish. That's why we like to have great guests like our brother here. And Jay, I hope you would accept our invitation to come back again. And there's so many things of course we can talk about and it will be great anytime.

[Jay Dyer]

Yeah, I'd be glad to.

[Al Fadi]

Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. I appreciate you. And thank you for those who gave through the super chat. We appreciate your sacrifice as well and thank you for our moderators. And tomorrow we're going to have Matt Slick and on Sunday we're going to have a special guest. She will be sharing her testimony on leaving Islam and becoming a follower of Christ. Hopefully you would tune in to both.