Joe reviews the debate between David Wood and Alex O’Connor on the question “Did Jesus Claim to be God?”
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shamless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I wanted to review the recent debate between Alex O’Connor, cosmic Skeptic on YouTube and David Wood, who has Acts 17 ministries. So it’s a skeptic and agnostic, I believe atheist actually against a Christian, and the resolution is, did Jesus claim to be God? Now, longtime viewers of this channel may know I’ve actually reviewed another of Alex’s debates back when he debated Dine Za, and as a Christian, I’m happy to say this one went way better for the Christian side. To be honest. I actually think it went really well for both sides. I know it sounds like participation trophies, but really both signs made really important points where I found myself thinking I was not going to go that direction at all, and I’m really glad they did and there’s something I can benefit from with what they just said, and I think other people can too.
So I wanted to unpack in both cases one thing I thought they did poorly and one thing I thought they did well. So I’m going to start with David and then turn to Alex. So as I say, I think David Wood did a good job on this debate. I think he did a spectacular job in terms of strategy, in terms of where he was going to go with the debate to prove that Jesus presents himself as God. It was a pretty unexpected direction and a really good one. However, to get there, you had to make it through about a hundred seconds of really uncomfortable opening icebreakers. Now, that might not sound like a lot, but look, I didn’t know before I watched this debate who David Wood was. I’d heard his name, I’d never watched anything he’d been in or read anything, or he had not really crossed my radar in a deep way.
That’s a bad mixed metaphor, and I think that’s probably the way it was for many people who might’ve been familiar with one or the other of the debaters. And so first impressions make a big difference not just for yourself but for the cause that you’re representing in this case, literally Christianity, literally whether Christ does or doesn’t claim to be God. And so I want to just play you his again, about the first a hundred seconds or so of his opening statement, and then I want to unpack particular things that he does. You might find it a little obnoxious, and I want to unpack why that is, because I think there’s something, I’m not doing this to pick on David Wood at all. Again, I don’t really know the guy. I’m doing this because I’ve seen something of a pattern of doing this badly, and I think what he’s trying to do is something that Alex actually does really well. So with no further ado, I’m going to let you listen for yourself and then I’m going to give my take on it.
CLIP:
Tell us when you’re ready so we can start the clock.
CLIP:
I’m ready now. Oh, you started. Okay. Well good evening. Good evening. What a beautiful audience. You’re all breathtaking. This is how you charm a crowd in America. Son, I’d like to thank LAN for arranging this conference and this debates one of many awesome debates taking place in 2025, pitting heroes against villains. I won’t say who the villain is in this debate. I’ll let all you lovely Christians judge that for yourselves based entirely on our accents. And speaking of British accents, I’d like to thank Alex for finally showing up. You got to give me some wiggle room on time, Roselyn, or you can all quit cheering for Alex. Alright, no, I’d like to thank Alex for finally showing up. He is a month and a half late, but he finally showed up. I’m teasing by the way, people have no clue how dangerous debate con is actually with the lineup they had and the number and the volume of death threats against multiple speakers. So plus he lives in what is rapidly becoming the Sharia compliant hell hellhole of the universe. So good to take precautions. We don’t want to lose Alex, by the way, are you guys starting to miss Jesus over there in the uk? Seems like you should be missing Jesus. Bye now.
Joe:
Okay, so bear in mind the opening statement that he has is 20 minutes long and he spends a little more than 5% of it doing basically open mic standup to open up. Now look, I understand I’m a public speaker. You often begin a debate or a talk with some kind of joke or something to sort of break the ice and to warm up the audience a little bit so that things go more smoothly. You don’t always just jump in 0.1 and I get that, but look at the kinds of icebreakers that he does. I’m going to just name the 10 things he does in the order that I saw them. First he says to the moderator, Ruslan, who is himself a Protestant, that he’s ready to start and then Ruan starts and he is like, oh, you started okay already like a weird start. Fine.
Then he treats the crowd fine, but then he says, this is how you charm a crowd in America, son, which manages to both play the oh watch out Alex’s English card, which I don’t know how that helps and to sound really condescending by calling him son. Third, he then calls this debate one of the many awesome debates, pitting heroes against villains and then suggests that the crowd of lovely Christians can judge. Witch is witch. Okay, so who is he building up or putting down on each of these? It’s like, well, he’s seemingly knocking on the moderator, then he’s knocking Alex, then he’s knocking Alex again. Then he tells the crowd that they should judge the debate based entirely on accents. I don’t really know what that was supposed to do because Alex, he’s got a cooler accent. I have to admit that as an American, but I think he’s knocking it.
It’s hard to tell. He then says just in case it wasn’t enough, just like bashing on Alex on ad Hominems, he says, I’d like to thank Alex for finally showing up. Now if you’re aware of the whole backstory, they had to postpone this debate because of death threats being made. Now those death threats, I think were mostly against David Wood because he’s got a lot of apologetics focused on Islam. But nevertheless, for I think fairly understandable reasons, Alex O’Connor was a little uneasy about participating as originally planned. So I’m thankful they were able to get it together and get the show literally on the road. Then he does all this and then sixth, he tells Lan that he’s going to need more wiggle room on time because people cheered or clapped that Alex wasn’t dead when he made this point. He then has an awkward laugh and says that everyone needs to quit cheering for Alex.
Then he says, again, I’d like to thank Alex for finally showing up. He’s a month and a half late the ninth, he makes fun of the UK as a Sharia compliant hellhole I believe, and then makes fun of the UK again saying they’re probably missing Jesus. Now I want you to, so all of the jokes that he makes, in other words, I get someone’s going to see this and say, what are you talking about? He’s just joking around. All of the jokes he makes are at either his opponent’s expense or at the moderator’s expense. None of them advance his case at all with the maybe quarter exception that when he says the UK misses Jesus, he sort of kind of segues that into the debate that he’s actually about to embark on. Now, want to contrast this with Alex’s opener. Now the first thing to note is Alex’s opener is substantially shorter. It’s about a third shorter. He also does some of the icebreakers, some of the cracking jokes. He even gets in one joke against David, namely that David didn’t keep time well when he had the long icebreakers we just talked about. But then listen to where he goes.
CLIP:
David didn’t factor in the clapping. I always factor in clapping into the timing of my speeches. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Or as we say in England, as I must apologize for the previous debate fiasco, David’s right that most people dunno what happened. A lot of accusations thrown my way, but I suppose that is the essence of our debate this evening. People thinking they know a thing or two about a person without hearing it from their own mouth. To which effect, I was thinking about how to approach this given that I didn’t know which approach David was going to take. I woke up this morning in this fine resort opposite Legoland, which means that there is a roller coaster just outside of my room and being a bit jet lagged. I woke up quite to the most peaceful of noises that is the sound of children screaming for their lives. Hearing the sound of innocent children screaming for their lives of course reminded me to read the Old Testament.
Joe:
Okay, so let’s unpack how Alex opened because I think it’s a lot more effective. I said he does make the joke about how David didn’t factor in the clapping. He always factors in the clapping, but then he makes a sort of self-effacing joke about, as we say in England, Salama like him, which is objectively a pretty good joke. Probably the best joke either side had over the course of the evening. So, but notice he’s not attacking David there. He’s making fun of himself in his own country. Then he apologizes, but then says there’s a lot of accusations. You haven’t really heard it from me, you’ve just heard from secondary or tertiary sources, which he’s already doing work to link to the debate at hand because his suggestion there pretty obviously is that Jesus doesn’t claim to be God the people around him do. And so he’s showing like, oh, well you wouldn’t trust just what everybody else is saying about me.
So he’s already thematically, even as he’s making these jokes, they’re number one, not tearing down the other person. And number two, they’re pushing the debate forward right out the gate, which is really well done, even though I don’t like the cause that he’s standing for, he’s doing it well, which then gets to the last joke that he makes, the sort of self-effacing. He likes children’s screaming joke again, who looks bad in this joke, him on purpose. And then he again leads it in this case to link it up to Old Testament massacres as he’s going to go in that direction. So that is a very, I think, skillful, masterful way of doing an opening statement. And I understand especially people who don’t have a lot of experience with public speaking, maybe you either don’t know how hard it is to do what he just did there, or you just say, well, I can’t do that.
Totally understandable. I’m going to give a couple pointers for maybe how to do this, not just because I think you might be doing public speaking like this. I know most of you won’t, but because I think in conversation with other people we can risk doing when we’re nervous, the kinds of things that I think David did here, I suspect that he was just nervous and that his nervousness put him in a bad direction rhetorically that actually really undermined. What is, I want to repeat here, A very good case for Christianity that he makes. So the other reason I wanted to do this is because I’ve seen now a pattern of this. As I said before, Alex had a debate previously with Dinesh DEA that Dinesh did way worse than David Wood did. It was somewhere between phoning it in and self emulation on Dinesh DE’s part, and it’s worth seeing how similarly Dinesh opens with just awkward potshots at Alex before getting into anything that might be deemed,
CLIP:
All right, here we go. If you don’t mind, I’m going to stand up. Is that okay? Please. Okay, I’m standing up because I want to kind of neutralize Alex’s accent advantage. I mentioned this because it seems to me no accident that so many of the prominent so-called new atheists have British accents. I think this is really important to that credibility because think of it, if Hitchens and Dawkins and Alex were three southern boys from Louisiana, would they have quite the same impact? I’m not sure.
Joe:
That is genuinely painful for me to watch. I’m sort of sorry to put you through it in my own. So it’s not just Alex O’Connor that this happens to. In my own debate with James White recently, I met him an hour before and he began in what I thought was a very strange kind of way by mocking my clothing and my wife and talking about how good he thought his own bow tie was.
CLIP:
Alright, well it’s great to be back here again this evening. The double header has begun, and I’m going to ask that whoever wins the debate this evening gets to take the little desk lamp home with them. I think that should be the reward for that work. That’s really cool. I’ve never had a little desk lamp before on my desk that makes me feel very warm and fuzzy inside. And I also need to make sure the bow tie is straight since I’m the only one wearing a tie this evening. Just thought I’d mention that and check the shoes out too. Just thought I’d, sorry, that’s just wow. Okay. Anyway, your wife lets you go out like that, huh? Okay. Alright. Sorry ma’am. Wherever you are.
Joe:
So what can we concretely take from that? Well, really simply, if you are in a situation whether it’s public speaking or you’re having a hard conversation or something and you feel the need to reach for a joke to break the tension to ingratiate yourself to the person you’re speaking to, whatever it is, make sure that if you are making the joke, it’s at your own expense. It’s really that simple. And if you are in a context where you’re giving some kind of formal defense of Christianity or anything, script your opening statement, David Wood is going first. He can afford to have everything written out, scripted and really carefully thought out because he doesn’t have to wait and see what Alex O’Connor comes with. He already has his prepared remarks. So I give that to say this debate was off to a pretty rocky start and I didn’t know if I was going to enjoy the debate or if I thought that the Christian side was going to do well. I was bracing myself for another bad debate where Christians embarrass before atheists like Alex O’Connor. But fortunately, immediately after that my impression changed. So as I say, there’s about a hundred uncomfortable seconds and then it presents a fantastic case in which he focuses on an angle that I’ve not heard a lot of other people make at all the so-called two powers,
CLIP:
Just when I think you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this and totally redeem
CLIP:
Yourself.
Joe:
Okay, so what are the two powers? Well, I’m going to actually let David introduce the idea in his own words and then I’m going to expand on it a little bit with some more scriptural passages, but I think he actually does a really good job in the debate explaining it. I just don’t want to play like 20 minutes of him explaining it right now.
CLIP:
Here’s the idea in a nutshell, the Old Testament is very clear that there’s one true God, but there are numerous passages in the Old Testament where we see two divine figures. I’ll give a few quick examples. There are tons of these. Sometimes God seems to be in two different places doing two different things. Common example is the story of Sodom Mcm. The Lord appears to Abraham and tells him that he’s going down to Sodom and Gomorrah to see firsthand how bad the people are. So he goes down to Sodom and Gomorrah and what happens Genesis 1924, then the Lord reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. The Lord on earth reigned down fire from the Lord out of heaven. This thing reboot every couple minutes. It sounds like there are two lords here. Watch what happens in Zechariah two, pay attention or you’ll miss it.
Come Zion escape you who live in daughter Babylon for this is what the Lord Almighty says, who’s speaking the Lord Almighty? And he says, after the glorious one has sent me, the Lord was sent by the glorious one against the nations that have plundered you. For whoever touches you, touches the apple of his eye, I will surely raise my hand against them so that their slaves will plunder them. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me, the Lord Almighty was sent by the Lord Almighty shout and be glad daughter Zion, for I’m coming and I will live among you, declares the Lord Yahweh. Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you. The Lord Yahweh will live among them and they will know that the Lord was sent by the Lord Almighty. So Yahweh reigns down fire from Yahweh. Yahweh is sent by Yahweh. Plenty of passages like
Joe:
As David rightly says, there are a lot of passages in the Old Testament that point in this direction. For instance, when the Psalm says, the Lord says to my Lord, this is one of the things that Jesus sees upon in Matthew 22 when he sort of turns the tables on the Pharisees and he asks them, what do you think of the Christ whose son is he? They say the Son of David because he clearly is to be the son of David in the Old Testament. And then Jesus challenges him and says like how is it then that David inspired by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying the Lord said to my Lord, now notice Lord is a divine title and he’s making the point that this is seemingly the God of David who preexist David and is yet somehow distinct from the other one called the Lord.
There’s something mysterious going on here and the Pharisees have no answer for it. Now we see this in several places throughout scripture and so if you’re not attuned to this, this is really important for making sense of Christianity that when Christ comes into the world and he claims to be not only the Messiah but seemingly claims to be the God of Israel, this is not just coming out of the blue. Now, it would feel that way for many people. The analogy I’d give you is like this. Imagine a good suspenseful movie. Signs is always my go-to example, which I’m dating myself here, but you watch the movie, you don’t see the twist coming, but once the twist comms, you’re able to look back and say, okay, yep, I see all the clues now I missed them before, but there they were and there might even be mysterious things that you’re actively wondering about and then they’re suddenly resolved in this way.
That makes total sense. Well, this is very much like that. The two powers are mysterious in the Old Testament. So you don’t have to argue from the Christian perspective people clearly understood the Trinity or even two thirds of the Trinity. No, no, it’s just enough to say they’re very clear that there is one God and yet there’s two somethings, powers persons, something that are clearly both at play and are both being given this divine title of God in a way that is not a refutation of polytheism. There’s something, or excuse me, monotheism, it is not the polytheistic idea. There’s just two different gods. So there is something absolutely mysterious going on here. One of the clearest places that you find this is in Daniel chapter seven, it’s almost unavoidable because the passage, you look at it and think what else could this mean? So Daniel has this vision where he sees thrones plural and they’re placed and one of them is taken by the ancient of days and he’s described in very much this divine image.
His Raymond is white as snow. The hair in his head was pure wool is thrown with fiery flames. The wheels were burning fire. And so clearly we’re talking about God here, but then a couple verses later, Daniel says that he sees in the night vision and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man now son of man in the way like the Hebrew idiom to be the son of X is to be X. The son of a dog is a dog, the son of man is a man. This is one like a man, which is already a very curious way to describe someone. Here’s my friend, she’s like a human. What that already tells me something else is weird. And David Wood rightly points out that when Jesus repeatedly refers to himself as son of man, something weird is going on there.
So one like a son of man comes and he goes before the ancient of days and is presented before him and two him was given dominion and glory and kingdom that all people’s nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away in his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed. So there’s two thrones, one for God the father and one for the son of man. And we see this not in the New Testament but in the Old Testament. And so you might be wondering, okay, well how did the ancient rabbis make sense of this? And so a lot of the modern scholarship in this field is from Alan Siegel kind of reigniting interest in this from a Jewish perspective and he’s not interested as much in Christians’ agnostics who are the two groups that this is associated with.
He’s instead interested in the rabbis who are responding to this two powers theology. And one of the things that keeps recurring is the people who believe in two powers in heaven have the better biblical argument. So he quotes one of the ancient rabbinical sources, rabbi Levi says God faced them in many guises. In other words, when you see God and then God both appearing to act in two different ways we’re to just take that to mean the God appears in different ways. Sometimes he appears standing there sitting or young and old and so on. And then as proof of this allegedly with one of the examples is given Daniel seven that you see the thrones and the ancient of days. And then in regards to this Rabbi, Hiya Barr Abba who is early two hundreds just says, if a horse son should say to you they are two Gods quote, God is saying in reply, I’m the one of the sea and I’m the one of Sinai.
So it’s just like ad hominem attacks. It’s like they don’t have a good way of explaining it, but just remind them we’re monotheists and name call. That’s basically where it ends up. And obviously Alan Siegel is not overly impressed with that. He points out not only does the passage allow the interpretation that God changes aspect, it may easily be describing two separate divine figures more than one throne is revealed and scripture describes two divine figures to fill them. One sits and the other seems to be invested with power possibly enthroned. When you read Daniel seven, you don’t come away with the impression this is one figure in two different roles. It seems very clearly the ancient of days is enthroned the son of man and both are clearly divine figures, although the son of man curiously while being a divine figure is also as the name suggests human.
That’s pretty mysterious. And as you might imagine, looks like the Christian claims about Jesus. Siegel says the ancient of days may be responsible for judgment but delegates the operation to a son of man. This is going to be really important when we get into Alex’s take. So notice that the two powers make sense of what we’re going to call divine delegation. The ancient of days delegates the operation to a son of man who accomplishes judgment by means of a fiery stream that this son of man is young, that is dominion, is to be merciful ostensibly, the point of the reference is hardly evident in the text. In other words, the rabbis are saying, oh look, this is just a way of God showing us he’s young and old and so he appears as a young man and an old man and Siegel’s like that is not clear at all from Daniel seven.
There’s no indication that the son of man is any younger than the eternal ancient of days. That’s just being added to explain away the problem of Daniel seven. He goes on to say it&... Read more on Catholic.com