Thanks for your comment.

1. Your summary of the position on the Trinity seems fair, and I would agree with… of course the words ‘person’ and ‘nature’ are not Biblical words, nor is Trinity!
But the question is, how do we understand God based on what in revealed in the Bible… a) There is one God, b) The Father, Son and Spirit are all ‘persons’ who are revealed as God. One God, Three Persons… this is not a contradiction, but rather a divine paradox which we use words like ‘nature’ and ‘person’ to help explain.
Why does the Qu’ran accuse Christian of worshipping Mary as God? This seems to show the Qu’ran does not understand Christian doctrine… the speaker did not address this misunderstanding.

2. Abdullah gave a false view of the NT, stating that the NT books were constructed based on their chronology rather than on anything special about their authorship. This is false. The inclusion of books in the NT is based on apostolic authorship and content… the Apostles were not simply “theologians” as he said, but eyewitnesses.
One example of a false claim… James White gave Abdullah a copy of a Bible highlighting the source parchment of every verse. However, Abdullah failed to answer the retort about the burnings of contradictory sources in Islam and the dates between events and the earliest manuscripts.

Abdullah’s thoughts about logic, rationality, trinity, persons, nature etc. were helpful and provoking… but he did not accurately and fairly engage with the Bible or what Christians actually believe… IMHO

Cheers

I believe you have made a mistake regarding your appraisal of the Muslim speaker’s postion. I was there, and this is what I understood from what the Muslim speaker was saying.

1. He came from a position that rejects the Christian doctrine of the trinity, and aired the contention, that the explanation of the Trinity is vacuous. He then quoted Augustine saying that the words ‘person’ and ‘nature’ are not biblical references, not have any objective real meaning in and of themselves.

2. Abdullah’s criticism of the NT was multi-pronged and his use of highlighting the multiple Biblical variants, was only to show that the text is not ‘write-protected’. He then went on to produce internal contradictions within the text, to show that ultimately, he did not believe it was the inerrant and literal word of God.

3. You’re right, he did not give reasons why we should believe in Islam, however, the debate was only about Islam’s contentions to the Trinity and Christian Theology, not whether Islam can be substantiated.

All in all, whether you were convinced by the arguments, the Muslim speaker produced or not, it is clear that the speaker did give a good attempt to air the Islamic contentions to Christian theology.