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AUR has posted the first half of Isaac Newton’s “Paradoxical Questions Concerning the Morals and Actions of Athanasius and his Followers.” These sixteen arguments demonstrate that the instigator of the Nicene Council, Athanasius of Alexandria, was a fraud with little concern for the truth, probably a murderer, and a seditionist against the Church.

Considering how critical this turning point in ecclesiology was—setting the foundation of subsequent trinitarian history in all of its crusades, suppressions, and inquisitions—it is of paramount importance that we understand the truth of the events and intrigues of the day, that we might better understand the initial moral conditions and motivations which conceived and promulgated trinitarianism. More importantly for believers, it is important to know whether the faction that established the theology that now defines mainstream Christianity were honest and worthy of trust and respect.

Sir Isaac’s rational investigation and dismissal of the claims made by Athanasius still ring true three centuries after they were written.

The following is not a creed, but a statement of general principles justifying the reform of American Unitarianism.

1. FOR CHRISTIANITY.

To capture the spirit of Jesus, the spirit that moved people to moral action and carried a message that appealed to the process of analogy and rational discourse typifying the Gospel teachings of Jesus, it is important to rediscover original Christianity, once called “primitive” before that word took on a negative connotation.

It is generally recognized by non-sectarian scholars that Trinitarianism as articulated after the Alexandrian controversy is nowhere found in the canonical Torah, Prophets, Writings, Gospels, Letters, or Apocalypse. Nor is it to be found in Jewish or Christian writings before the Alexandrian faction had defeated traditionalists. Even the often-cited consubstantialist theology of Tertullian never asserts that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are coequal and coeternal. Trinitarian theology was so absent from the original teachings of the Church that Nicene Christians had to insert it into the text of the Gospel of John, and forge a spurious Trinitarian confession for St. Lucian after his death.

And yet, this anti-rational innovation has become the single greatest dividing line between Christianity and other faith communities, the greatest barrier to understanding, and the greatest hurdle to Christian ministry.

The original Unitarian, rational, discursive, and ecumenical spirit of Jesus is important not only to Christianity itself, but to the relationship of the Church with other religions. AUR believes that Christianity should be distinguished by its devotion toward Christ, not to its credulity toward the Trinitarian views of Athanasius and his supporters.

2. FOR MORALITY.

A Unitarian view of God is not only original to Christianity, but essential to the assertion of any religious morality that has as its purpose aligning the human will with the Ultimate Reality rather than aligning religion to the comfort of human frailty and confirmation of human prejudice. A Unitarian view provides no refuge for exclusion, no refuge for self-worship disguised as spiritual partisanship. In a world where all things have an explicitly singular Source, the ultimate reconciliation of all things is an impossible reality to ignore

Nilitarian and Trinitarian conceptions of the Ultimate provide no ultimate reconciliation of parts. Purely materialist views of the world simply ignore the issue, and Trinitarianism obfuscates ultimate concerns with an unnecessarily complicated and irrationalist dogma that distracts us from the most important lesson to be learned from religion: universality of the moral Source of the world.

3. FOR REASON.

The ultimate issue of reasoned inquiry into the nature of reality is the origin of reality itself, the so-called Fundamental Cause. As causation itself is part of that class of things for which we seek a Cause, that Fundamental Cause is by necessity itself Uncaused. A more apt definition of “God” is hard to imagine than “the uncaused fundamental cause of reality.”

Causation being the ability of things to affect one another, it is necessarily tied up with multiplicity. Multiple things in relation to each other imply a context or medium of interaction, and that environment itself implies a greater Cause. Non-Unitarian conceptions of Ultimate Reality thwart reason and hobble rational philosophy.

4. FOR RELIGION.

Religion, if it is to be believed, must be about reality. The God described by Semitic tongues and cultures must not be the god of Semitic language and culture, but the God of the universe. A Christianity that denies that truth is possible in other religions or, as Justin of Caesarea proposed, that the truth in other religions was a pre-emptive trick by devils to confound Christianity, is not a religion of the God of Creation, but the god of a church of self-worship.

Attacks against religion often take the form of criticizing sectarian squabbles, each church and school of thought condemning all others to perdition. Often these condemnations take the crude form of group loyalty rather than sincere principle.

AUR views all religion as idioms of the truth, attempts by fallible creatures to experience God, even as we emphasize that the discipleship of Christ is our excellent path. Incomplete truths in primitive religions are not the result of mischievous demons, but have the same explanation as the incomplete medicine, engineering, and astronomy of primitive cultures: inadequate time to develop and investigate and clarify concepts and models.

Holy wars and unprincipled sectarian hatreds sabotage religion from within.  The principled ecumenical spirit of Unitarianism (which is inherent to the original Christianity of the Three Magi, the Good Samaritan, and the faithful pagan Centurion) is important to religion itself.

We have recently added two works critical to the history and development of American Unitarianism: William Ellery Channings sermon “Unitarian Christianity” and Samuel Barrett’s “100 Scriptural Arguments.”

 We appreciate your patience as we build the online library.

We just wanted to share an excellent story in the Burlingont (VT) Free Press about Unitarian Universalist minister Gary Kowalski’s new book on the religion of the Founders of our Republic, Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith Of America’s Founding Fathers.

This title is available at the AUR Bookstore.

Meaghan McDermott reports, in today’s Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, on the finale of a four-week series of sermons by Rev. Lee Ann Bryce of Community Christian Church in the town of Chili, asserting a friendly relationship between science and religion, and a non-idolatrous approach to scripture.

The story quotes Rev. Bryce saying, “It is possible to believe in miraculous stories while not believing the stories are the literal truth.  Taking the Bible seriously does not mean taking it literally.”

AUR would contest that so-called Literalists actually interpret the Bible “literally.”  Despite their proud self-description as Literalists, they often resort to metaphorical interpretation of scripture, in regard to “Lamb of God” or the dragon the the Apocalypse, for example. 

On close observation, the interpretation of fundamentalists is always materialistic or quasi-materialistic in nature: apocalyptic figures are seen as external political entities rather than internal spiritual forces, and the afterlife is conceived as a sort of science-fiction alternate reality, just like this world in all of its artifacts and sensory characteristics, but just somehow “better.”  Materialism is a much more accurate description of the allegedly fundamentalist approach to scripture and religion than literalism.

However, Community Christian’s solution to the heresy of bibliolatrous “literalism” is right on the mark, emphasizing the spiritual meaning of scripture, and the incomparable nature of God.  Speaking to the error of Creationism, one member of Bryce’s congregation ponders, “The Bible says God created the world in seven days.. if God is infinite, what is a ‘day’?”

Bryce is also one of over 11,000 clergy members who have signed on to the Clergy Letter Project rejecting the Creationism of bibliolaters and encouraging school boards to teach good science, rather than bad religion, in biology class.  Kudos to Rev. Bryce, and to much thanks to the Democrat & Chronicle for reporting on this story.

Before endorsing Seattle Post-Intelligencer guest columnist Anthony Robinson’s three-part series on “Why Religion Matters,” we wanted to read through them all.  They only got better as he went along. Here are the entries of this well-informed and insightful series:

Religion And Its Institutions Are Worthy Of Respect

Religion Is An Integral Part Of The Total Scheme Of Things

Many Religions Wrongly Center On Human Ego

It’s been rather busy here, so we’ve missed a few key events.

 Today is, of course, the 12th Day of Defiance: the Day of the Spark commemorating the 258th anniversary of Jonathan Mayhew’s sermon Discourse On Submission, asserting the moral right of people to overthrow an unjust government.  (The full text can be found here.) John Adams called this sermon “the spark that ignited the American Revolution.”

Commentary on Mayhew’s role in the Revolution can be read at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website and Christian History Institute at Gospelcom.net.

This year, Interval overlaps with Eastertide!  Friday the 25th, Spear King’s Day in the Interval Calendar, was also the first of the 12 Days of Carnival which culminate on Mardi Gras, which falls very early this year, on February 5th.

 Celebrate Liberty, and enjoy the Carnival!

Why celebrate John Hancock’s birthday?  Wasn’t John Hancock a smuggler, a rancorous extremist whose stubborn personality caused schisms between himelf and other Patriots like Samuel Adams?  And why should a political figure be celebrated by a religious movement anyway? Continue reading →