kingdomready.org

On May 24th and 25th of 2008, Michael Bugg and Matthew Janzen debated the question Is Yeshua the One God of Israel?. The debate occurred over two nights. The first night was at Michael Bugg’s church (he is a messianic Jew who holds to a modified version of the Trinity). The second night of the debate was held at Matthew Janzen’s church (he is the biblical unitarian).

When I first started listening to the debate I thought Michael Bugg was going to present a classic trinitarian case for the deity of Jesus. However, after listening to the whole thing, I’m not sure Mr. Bugg would be considered a trinitarian by any standard. His primary emphasis in this debate was that Jesus is the “shechinah” of the Father. The analogy he refers to over and over is that the Father is like the brain and Jesus is like the hand. The brain communicates to the hand and the hand sends communication back to the brain, but it is one human. Quite honestly, this analogy sounded like modalism to me, but Mr. Bugg repeatedly denied that he was a modalist. (A modalist is one who believes that God showed up in different modes (as Father, then as Son, then as holy spirit) and that there is really only one person who is God).

Much of the debate centered on whether or not Jesus pre-existed or not. Mr. Janzen gave the same types of explanations we would give here to the typical verses that always come up in this type of conversation.

An interesting feature of the debate was that it occurred in twenty minute speeches all throughout. Rather than having an opening statement followed by a couple of rebuttals, every speech was twenty minutes (at least until the question and answer time).

Here is the mp3 of the first night
Here is the mp3 of the second night

Both participants were gentleman and conducted themselves in a Christian manner. Furthermore, Mr. Bugg said the second night that this is not a salvation issue for him–he believes that Mr. Janzen is saved even though he does not believe that Jesus is deity. I’m not sure if it was because of Mr. Janzen’s thick Georgia accent or because of the Christlike spirit with which he spoke, but he was a real model of gentleness and grace throughout the debate. May we all learn to disagree with such dignity and kindness.