Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

All races start very far away from any Monotheistic or Unitarian belief. The Hebrews are no exception to that rule. The early part of the Bible shows very plain traces of the fact that the Jews were polytheists and nature-worshippers. If I should translate literally the first verse of the Bible, it would read in this way: In the beginning the Strong Ones created the heavens and the earth. "The word that we have translated God is in the plural; and I have already given you its meaning. This is only a survival, a trace, of that primeval belief which the Jews shared with all the rest of the world."

From this polytheistic position the people took a step forward to a state of mind which Professor Max Muller calls henotheism; that is, they believed in the real existence of many gods, but that they were under allegiance to only one, their national Deity, and that him only they must serve.

I suppose this state of thought was maintained throughout the larger part of the history of the Hebrew nation. You will find traces constantly, in the early part of the Old Testament, at any rate, of the belief of the people in the other gods, and their constant tendency to fall away to the worship of these other gods. But by and by all this was outgrown, and left behind; and the Hebrew people came to occupy a position of monotheism, spiritual monotheism, that is, they were passionate Unitarians, so far as the meaning of that word is concerned. Though, of course, I would not have you understand that many, perhaps most, of the principles which are held today under the name of Unitarian were known to them at that time, or would have been accepted, had they been known.

In the sense, however, of believing in the oneness of God, they were
Unitarians.

Now, when Christianity comes into the world, what shall we say? It is the assumption on the part of most of the old- time churches that Jesus made it perfectly plain to his disciples that he was a divine being, that he claimed to be one himself, and that the claim was recognized.

So far, however, as any authentic record with which we are familiar goes, Jesus himself was a Unitarian. All the disciples were Unitarians. Paul was a Unitarian. The New Testament is a Unitarian book from beginning to end. The finest critics of the world will tell you that there is no trace of any other teaching there. And so, for the first three hundred years of the history of the Church, Unitarianism was its prevailing doctrine.

I have no very good memory for names. So I have brought here a little leaflet which contains some that I wish to speak of. Among the Church Fathers, Clement, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Lactantius, all of them in their writings make it perfectly clear and unquestioned that the belief of the Church, the majority belief for the first three centuries, was Unitarian. Of course, the process of thought here and there was going on which finally culminated in the doctrine of the Trinity. That is, people were beginning more and more to exalt, as they supposed, the character, the office, the mission of Jesus; coming more and more to believe that he was something other than a man, that he was above and beyond humanity.

But one other among the Fathers, Justin Martyr, one of the best known of all, takes care to point out explicitly his belief. I will read you just two or three words from it. He says: "There is a Lord of the Lord Jesus, being his Father and God, and the Cause of his existence."

This belief, then, was universal, practically universal, throughout the first three centuries. But the process of growth was going on which finally culminated in the controversy which was settled by the Council of Nicaea, held in the early part of the fourth century; that is, the year 325. The leaders of this controversy, as you know, were Arius, on the Unitarian side, and Athanasius, fighting hard for the doctrine then new in the Church, of the Trinity.

The majority of the bishops and leading men of the Church at that time were on the side of Arius; but at last the Emperor Constantine settled the dispute. Now you know that the sceptre of a despotic emperor may not reason, may not think; but it is weightier than either reason or thought in the settlement of a controversy like this at such a period in the history of the world. So Constantine settled the controversy in favor of the Trinitarians; and henceforth you need not wonder that Unitarianism did not grow, for it was mercilessly repressed and crushed out for the next thousand years.