God Is One

Michael F. Kuhn

Description

Since the first interactions between Christians and Muslims, a central point of contention has been the nature of God in relation to the doctrine of the trinity and divine oneness. Yet the belief that God is one is vociferously upheld by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike.
In this detailed historical study and subsequent analysis, Dr Michael F. Kuhn explores the teaching of two Arab Christian theologians from the Abbasid Era (750–1250), ‘Abd Allāh Ibn al-Ṭayyib and Iliyyā of Nisibis, and how they defended the Christian view of God as three-in-one in the Muslim milieu and in reference to the Islamic concept of tawḥīd, God’s absolute unity. The intellectual contribution of these two Christian thinkers can be seen in fact that the concepts they articulated continue to feature in Muslim–Christian dialogue to this day. Dr Kuhn shows the great lengths that Middle Eastern Christians went to explain their view of God’s oneness in the Trinity and the divinity of Christ to their fellow Christians and to commend it to their Muslim counterparts. There is much to learn from the historical debates investigated in this book to help Christians today to uphold the truth of the Christian scriptures, both in the Muslim context and beyond. Readers will appreciate the review of Nestorian Christology in light of recent studies and the important theological background to contemporary Muslim–Christian engagement that is provided.
This book also makes a significant addition to the Christian understanding of the Trinity by linking the eternal attributes of God, a common theme in Islamic thought, to the three persons of the God-head deepening our understanding of the inter-relations of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Anyone engaging intellectually or academically with Muslims with hopes to dialogue thoughtfully in the area of theology, spirituality and ethics will find this book acutely helpful.

Informations

• Publié par: Langham Creative Projects
• Date de parution: 04 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783685776
• Langue: English

Extrait

In this book, Michael Kuhn tackles essential theological questions, which have been and will continue to be a point of contention in Christian–Muslim relations in both academic and societal circles, practiced both publicly and privately, almost everywhere and especially in the Middle East. Kuhn does this by probing the rich Arabic theological tradition in medieval Iraq and Syria and coming back to the present with invaluable insights and recommendations that also makes meaningful connections with important western scholarship. All that is topped with and engraved in a rich experience of academic ministry in the Middle East. This is a materially rich, intellectually nuanced, theologically responsible study in comparative theology, which will illumine and give depth to any current Christian–Muslim conversation on Christology and the trinity.
Hani Hanna, PhD
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology,
Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt
Dr Michael Kuhn’s study is not only a significant contribution to scholarship on medieval Arabic-speaking Christians theologizing under Islamic rule, but also a delightful guide full of practical insights and helpful information for today’s peacemakers, who lovingly and willingly seek to share the power of the Triune God with their neighbours. I have already used Kuhn’s valuable study in my Christian–Muslim Apologetics course.
Ayman S. Ibrahim, PhD
Bill and Connie Jenkins Associate Professor of Islamic Studies,
Director, Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam,
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
The notions of “Abraham” and “Monotheism” are often used to qualify “the class” to which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (in this order of their historical emergence) are said to belong. The essential character of Christianity as a monotheistic tradition has, however, been historically challenged by Judaism but more vociferously by Islam. The Trinity has been at the heart of this challenge. Rather than seeing it as a particularly intimate revelation of the one God to investigate as “insiders” should, it has often been seen as a weakness to attack and undermine. Michael Kuhn’s work brilliantly juxtaposes two disparate medieval Christians whose input could potentially add a rich layer in the story of the “Christian–Muslim discourse” on God: one of these arguably embedding a cogent response to Muslims, another engaging in a candid dialogue with one of them. These cases highlight not just the humility of men who took initiatives to give an honest account of a revelatory faith but also the story of God who reveals his true nature so humanity can relate with him as sons and daughters and not as slaves and servants. I have no hesitation in recommending this excellent work to all honest people of faith, Muslim and Christian.
David Emmanuel Singh, PhD
PhD Stage Leader and Link Tutor,
Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, Oxford, UK
Mike Kuhn has established the importance of two theologians writing in Arabic in a Muslim context who both attempted to defend the oneness of God in the face of Muslim criticisms that the Trinity and Incarnation undercut God’s oneness. This ground-breaking study of Iliyyā of Nisibis and ʽAbd Allāh Ibn al-Ṭayyib is the first sustained analysis of their work in English, and so will open up the significance of these theologians for the global dialogue with Muslims that is happening in our time.
Mark Beaumont, PhD
Research Associate,
London School of Theology, Northwood, London, UK
The society that had developed in the Middle East by the tenth century was both socially plural and intellectually diverse. Religious encounters demanded great mental resilience among Christians, as they sought to uphold fundamental teachings in a climate pervaded by belief in radical divine unity. The two eleventh-century theologians presented here, Iliyyā of Nisibis and Ibn al-Ṭayyib, were leading exponents of Christian apologetic in this setting, seriously engaging with new Muslim methods and confidently meeting the challenges they encountered. Michael Kuhn’s analysis of their theologies shows how they explained and defended their beliefs in terms accessible to Muslims, and opens up a little-known but intensely rich and erudite intellectual world.
Rev David Thomas, FBA
Emeritus Professor of Christianity and Islam,
University of Birmingham, UK
Here is a compelling account of how two Christian theologians living under Islamic rule during the Abbasid era in the eleventh century engaged in serious theological dialogue with Muslim theologians about the divine unity and the nature of Christ. The thoroughness of this study makes one wonder whether Christian and Muslim scholars today are engaging in dialogue in the same depth. We can only hope that, inspired by studies of this kind, a new generation of Christians and Muslims will emerge – both in the Middle East and elsewhere – who can go beyond polemics and engage, both in Arabic and in English, in rigorous theological dialogue that is relevant to our changing and politically sensitive contexts.
Colin Chapman
Former Lecturer in Islamic Studies,
Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon
Visiting Lecturer,
Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut, Lebanon
Mike Kuhn’s erudite book, God Is One, may at first appear too academic and overwhelming for the general reader, but you will want to overcome that initial hesitation and pick it up anyway. Kuhn’s motivation and purpose are eminently practical and the outcome particularly relevant for today. His analysis of the writings of two eleventh-century Arab Christian theologians on the doctrine of God is so carefully done that it does indeed make a significant contribution to the academic study of dialogue literature. But his constant concern for relevance and applicability, coupled with a very fluent writing style, also make his book vastly accessible and useful, not only for the Arab student of theology, but also for others everywhere who desire to engage in loving, profound, and inviting conversations about God with their Muslim neighbors. I celebrate Kuhn’s unique contribution to taking the church’s positive engagement with Islam one step further in the direction of loving understanding in a world where Christians and Muslim are living as neighbors in closer proximity than ever before.
Martin Accad, PhD
Chief Academic Officer and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies,
Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut, Lebanon
Michael Kuhn’s God Is One is an outstanding contribution to scholarship on medieval Muslim–Christian relations with deep resonance for Muslim–Christian interaction in the present. Mike writes with unusual clarity and insight about two extraordinary Christian theologians, Ibn al-Tayyib and Iliyyā of Nisibis, and the impact of the Muslim milieu on their theology. The result is among the most thorough and nuanced explorations that I have read of the single most important topic in Muslim–Christian interaction, the doctrine of God.
Daniel Brown, PhD
Director,
Institute for the Study of Religion in the Middle East
Witnessing to the truth in love and with respect is a challenge for all Christians. God Is One by Michael Kuhn provides a masterful account of how two eleventh-century theologians from the church of the east defended their faith so eloquently and to the admiration of their Muslim audience. In this book, Kuhn offers a valuable example from a Middle Eastern context that ought to inform our engagement in Christian–Muslim dialogue today. This comes at a timely season when evangelicals in the Arab world are digging deeper roots in the region and developing contextual approaches for articulating their faith. This book is a great resource for anyone serious about witnessing from a minority setting.
Elias Ghazal
Executive Director,
Middle East and North Africa Association for Theological Education
Michael Kuhn’s God Is One: A Christian Defence of Divine Unity in the Muslim Golden Age lays before us in prose that is both lucid and elegant a precise analysis of the defense of divine unity as undertaken by two medieval churchmen whose historical moment was rendered inconvenient by the dominance of the “religious other.” Kuhn is at pains not to force from the legacy of his subjects a contrived relevance for those who witness to Christ in Islam-dominant contexts today. Nevertheless, one cannot help but imagine that the irenic discourse which his two theologians maintained when and as the opportunity was presented to them ought at the least to be carefully attended in these no less fitful days of Muslim–Christian exchange.
Kuhn is attentive both to the antecedents of Abū al-Faraj ʽAbd Allāh Ibn al-Ṭayyib (d. 1043/434) and Bishop Iliyyā of Nisibis (d. 1046/437) and to how each developed such legacy in a context where the Muslim notion of divine unity, captured by the word taw ḥ īd , set the unyielding agenda for any such conversation. He notes where his protagonists chose discretely not to name their respective Muslim counterparts, where their end game seems to have been less the persuasion of their Muslim interlocutors than the careful equipping of Christians with arguments that might allow them to survive in unfavorable and precarious circumstances, and where the quest to commend Christian faith as consonant with taw ḥ īd may have outrun both the biblical witness and conciliar/Trinitarian Christology.
Kuhn’s assessments are in every case cautious, patient, generous, and unafraid. His final chapter is a tour de force of chastened hope as the author notes how the unbending lines of medieval conversation about divine unity, and indeed the manner in which Muslims and Christians are prepa