The Christian Vanguard

John 17:3, from the mouth of Our Lord, reads, "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." I heard Muslims cite this passage and argue that this shows that God the Father is the only true God, and thus, Jesus is not. This is an invalid inference. And we know it's invalid because of the placement of the word "only". There is a difference between  1. God the Father is the only true God  and  2. Only God the Father is the true God The Muslim, and really any unitarian who wants to argue in this way, is saying (2) but the text only says (1). So what's the difference? (1) means that the Father is identical to God and there is exactly one God while (2) means the Father is identical to God and anything identical to God is identical to the Father. Trinitarians can affirm (1). We have to affirm (1). It is part of our faith. But (2) is clearly heretical, and is not supported by the text.  To clarify further, (...

 A common question you might hear from Muslims is, "Does Jesus have a God?" The answer is Yes, of course He does. He says this repeatedly in scripture. Romans 15:6, 2 Cor 1:3, Ephesians 1:3;7. Now where this goes from here is usually with a follow up question: How is this possible? I've listened to many Christians stumble in trying to answer this question and get steamrolled by Muslims. And I've seen it happen enough to motivate me to write down an answer.  How is possible that God have a God? There are a couple ways to answer this. The first is to analyze what "to have a God" means. Because this could be interpreted in a few different ways, I suspect that Muslim apologists get a lot of mileage out of not defining this relation. What it means to "have" a God is commonly meant as something like creator. We commonly understand the Christian God to be our Creator and Sustainer. So, to say that Jesus has a God would mean that Jesus is also a created be...

I was sharing my faith on Cal State Long Beach a few days ago and I had a conversation with a Muslim fellow about the Trinity. The objection he raised to me is a common one that the Jehovah’s Witnesses and some Unitarian sects raise against the Trinity, which is, if Jesus is God, to whom was he praying to?