A lecture by Michael Kuhn at Istanbul University, 2 May 2018
Christians in the Muslim milieu of the Abbasid era faced critical questions concerning their concept of God. Islamic tawhid occupied the intellectual high ground and was the standard for correct speech (kalam) concerning deity. The Christian doctrines formulated through the early church councils became a favorite target of Muslim polemicists. These doctrines include the Christian Trinity and the divine and human natures united in the one Christ (Christology). In the early eleventh century, two theologians of the Church of the East (Nestorian) arose to claim Christian adherence to tawhid through their formulation of the Trinity and Christology. Ibn al-Tayyib and Iliyya of Nisibis are all the more interesting for their having written in the language of their Muslim sovereigns–Arabic. This lecture will explore their doctrinal formulations in response to Islamic tawhid.
