podcast 46 – Professor Timothy Winter’s Islamic perspective on the Trinity

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In this episode I talk with Professor Timothy Winter (a.k.a. Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad), an Islamic theologian at Cambridge University. He’s the author of a chapter called “The Trinity is Incoherent” in the 2013 collection edited by J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, Debating Christian Theism. It was paired with a chapter by Dr. Tom Senor, a Christian philosopher from the University of Arkansas, called “The Trinity is Coherent.”

These chapters are very different; Senor’s is entirely philosophical and apologetic, whereas Winter’s is biblical and pastoral. Senor argues: it is not contradictory. Winter argues: it’s not in the Bible, it’s not an idea of Jesus’s, and it is a barrier to spiritual life.

Here I summarize Dr. Senor’s chapter before conversing with Professor Winter about his. We talk about his Christian background, his views on the gospels, and his reaction to Dr. Senor’s chapter.

You can also listen to this episode on youtube. (Or: itunes.)

Some relevant links:

• Timothy Winter’s personal homepage.
• Dixon’s Nice and Hot Disputes – on some of the late 17th c. trinitarian-unitarian debates Professor Winters mentions.
• Christian theologian Geoffrey Lampe’s God as Spirit.
• A 2010 article where Professor Winter discusses his conversion to Islam.
• The text of a 1996 talk by Professor Winter, ” The Trinity: A Muslim Perspective“.
• A video of Professor Winter in a mosque or madrasah teaching Muslims about the Trinty.
• A piece of an academic lecture by Professor Winter on Jesus in the Qur’an. And on Christianity.