Category Archives: teachings

02/7/08

The Political Implication of Trinitarian Talking Points

A recent brouhaha in the United Kingdom over the hosting of a Women’s World Day of Prayer service outlines the problematic relationship of Trinitarian churches with their own Trinitarian beliefs.

As reported in the Burnley Citizen newspaper, Anglican, Baptist, and Methodist churches in Padiham rejected the invitation of the Padiham Nazareth Unitarian Chapel to host the annual event celebrating Christian unity, which falls on the first Friday of March. The Roman Catholic Church, interestingly enough, accepted. Continue reading →

02/4/08

A Fellow Monotheist Echoes AUR Teachings

Art, the Universal Language of Religion by Naif al-Mutawa in today’s Lebanon Daily Star newspaper, contains this remarkably inciteful message about the idolatry of scripture:

When people first communicated through the use of images, idols were – well, idolized. As methods of communication improved, the written word – in the form of holy books – often took the place of these idols. The more concrete the interpretation of a word, the more the actual image of that word is being idolized. Words communicate a depth and breadth of meaning that transcends the sum of their letters … In essence, then, a rigid interpretation of God’s words by man is nothing more than idol worship.

We unreservedly concur with this assessment. It is not only images of stone and wood that can turn us from God to the worship of created things.

01/14/08

Homosexuality and What Paul’s Letter to the Romans Really Says

There are numerous scriptural arguments against homosexuality, but none as commonly used as Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which describes the apostle’s vision of the Gospel for the mixed Jew/Gentile church in Rome. Paul wrote it in the 1st Century, long before the idea of “sexuality,” when people spoke merely of various sexual acts. Even so, we’ll take a look at this proof text to see what it says about God’s attitude toward what we call homosexuality today. Continue reading →

01/7/08

The Meaning of Love, Faith, and Hope

Our English word “faith” comes from the Latin fides, meaning “fidelity” or “loyalty,” and in Christian usage it was employed to translate the Hebrew emunah (אמונה) which carried a meaning of security, supportiveness, and firmness.

Faith originally did not mean credulity, believing something simply because someone tells you to believe. It meant being secure in what you know, a meaning closer to “confidence,” although there is an element of non-thinking: emun means “craftsman” in Hebrew, someone who is confident of his ability without having to think about it.

Many Christians derive their conception of faith from the Letter to the Hebrews:

11:1 And faith is confidence in things hoped for, a conviction in matters not seen, 2 the elders were recognized for this; 3 by faith we understand the universe to have been caused by the Word of God, that visible things did not arise from something visible.

Far from justifying blind acceptance of dogma, this definition of faith merely distinguishes the “invisible God” (Letter to the Colossians 1:15) from created things, which we can detect with our senses, and establishes faith as applying specifically to the former. Even so, there is a much richer vision of faith in AUR, giving it an integral meaning in the Christian idiom beyond merely justifying belief in the unseen.

Faith has been described as one of the three “theological virtues” alongside love and hope, and it helps to think of it in relation to the other two. Continue reading →

12/31/07

Resolution Day – Finding Comfort Through Spiritual Strength

One key distinction of AUR is the commitment not to offer false consolation on the cheap, whether its the sort of “bow to dogma and your soul will be spared” comfort of conservative churches or the “I’m okay, you’re okay, nothing we believe really matters” comfort of liberal churches.

Spiritual peace is not won by reciting a confession or catechism as if it were a magic spell, or by impulsively tossing your life over to God like a hot potato for which you can abdicate all responsibility.

Nor is spiritual peace achieved through conflict-averse relativism or laissez-faire creedlessness, what Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams described unflatteringly as religion “you can’t flunk.”

Spiritual peace is achieved only through a resolute struggle, by committing of one’s character to moral growth and accepting a higher Good beyond one’s individual interests. Continue reading →

12/26/07

Bibliolatry – Why Scriptural Sufficiency and Literalism are Wrong

Do you believe that Jesus was a baby sheep or a cat with a tawny mane?  Do you think that a ten-headed dragon is going to crawl onto the beach at the end of time?

If you answer No, then you do not believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture.  Each of those are symbols used by the Bible: the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah, and the Dragon of the Apocalypse.  Dedication to a truly literalist interpretation would force you to answer Yes to the questions above.

Even so, many leaders of the Christian community who would certainly answer No to the above questions still insist that their interpretation of the Bible is “literal.”  Clearly their claims are either dishonest or deluded.  Even worse, the fact that Jesus taught with fictional parables clearly shows that stories do not need to be literally true in order to be spiritually valuable, which means that the attitude of some church leaders that religion requires the Bible to be historically and materially factual implies that Jesus was a fraud.

So why do so many insist on scriptural literalism and bibliolatry?  Continue reading →

12/15/07

Unitarian vs. Anti-Christ

Many Unitarians have asserted the unity of God merely as a means of distancing themselves from uncomfortable Christological issues, including the “Father and Son” language used to describe Christ’s relationship with God. Sadly, for many American Unitarians in the 1800s, this developed to the point of dismissing Jesus and declaring themselves non-Christians.

It is particularly ironic that Muslims take the Christhood of Jesus more seriously than many who continue to call themselves Unitarian, a theological term that makes little sense outside of the context of post-Nicene Christianity.

Still, the Reform understands the difficulties that Christology has posed for rationalist Unitarians, and particularly the difficulty that the Father-Son relationship creates for those dedicated to worship of One God.  AUR also sympathizes with the monotheistic impulse in Islám to condemn the easily misinterpreted Father-Son Christology, even as Islám recognizes Jesus as the Christ/Messiah (مسيح) and the Word of God, or Kalimat-Alláh (كلمة أﷲ ) in Arabic.

Talking about the relationship of God and Christ in such creaturely biological terms as “Father and Son” carries with it the danger of confusing the ignorant and diminishing the Creator.

However, Reform Unitarianism does not stand in rejection of Father-Son Christology, but in defense of its underlying meaning.  The theological purpose behind describing the link between God and Christ in terms of a Father and His Son is to establish an intimate but vertical relationship between the two as the very definition of Christhood.

Fathers and sons are not equals; fathers are above and sons are below. Continue reading →

12/4/07

Why AUR seeks to revive traditions

Protestant Unitarianism has traditionally been about shedding traditions, for example the traditional belief in the Trinity.   Churches that take the name “Unitarian” have generally rejected these traditions because they fail to stand up to reason, while other groups with Unitarian theologies (like the Jehovah’s Witnesses) reject them on the grounds that they are not found in scripture. 

For example, the Unitarianism of St. Lucian of Antioch, whom Reform Unitarians honor on the anniversary of his martyrdom on January 7th, was of the latter variety: unfortunately drawing justification from the idolatrous concept of scriptural inerrancy.

The Reform has recognized, however, that traditions serve a valuable cultural function in drawing a community together with shared metaphors and a common language in which to discuss spirituality, morality, and justice.  Over the past two centuries, American Unitarianism has abandoned its commitments to tradition and, in the process, reduced a once-powerful movement to a religious curio.  Continue reading →

05/14/06

Neither Mug Nor Magdalene : The True Divine Vessel

With the controversy over Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code reaching a high pitch as the release of Ron Howard’s film version nears release, one can hardly turn on the television without hearing the debate about whether the “Holy Grail” was the cup of the Last Supper mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew 26:27, Gospel of Mark 14:23, and Gospel of Luke 22:20, or was actually Mary Magdalene in her purported role as wife to Jesus and mother of his child or children.

But, does this debate really mean anything for the spiritual truth of Jesus’ last days, or are both sides materialist distractions from the real message? If we speak of a Divine Vessel, are either the womb of Mary or the chalice of the Last Supper up to the task?

The important cup of Jesus’ final days was neither the physical cup passed around the table at the Last Supper, nor the symbolic vessel of Mary Magdalene’s maternity even if she actually were his child-bearing wife.  The cup of Gethsemane, the cup of ultimate sacrifice which Jesus in prayer asks to be taken away but then immediately accepts, is the truly important vessel.  Appropriate to one who taught by way of parables, it is a metaphorical cup pointing to the spiritual reality that underlies our material world.

The Divine Vessel holds not a dram of symbolic wine nor the seed of a royal bloodline, but the absolute surrender of the personal will to the Divine… in Jesus’ case, the surrender of the Son of Mary to the Son of God.

This event in the Passion sequence (which appears in Mark 14:35-36, Matthew 26:39, and most elaborately in Luke 22:41-44) depicts an agonized plea for mercy which Jesus follows with a central phrase from the prayer that he specifically instructed his followers to pray: “Thy will be done.”

This is the true Divine Vessel, a metaphoric cup holding the will of God, an unfathomable Ocean of meaning and purpose that overwhelms the life of any mere creature who lifts that cup to the lips.