Biblical unitarianism (otherwise capitalized as biblical Unitarianism,L. Sue Baugh, Essentials of English Grammar: A Practical Guide to the Mastery of English, Second Edition, 1994, p. 59 "Religious Names and Terms: The names of all religions, denominations, and local groups are capitalized." sometimes abbreviated as BU)Randy Rheaume, God the Son: What John’s Portrait of Jesus Means and Why it Matters, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018, "Abbreviations." is a Unitarian Christian tradition whose adherents affirm the Christian Bible as their sole authority, and from it base their beliefs that God the Father is one singular being, and that Jesus is God's son but not divine.
Unitarian Christianity began in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Transylvania in the mid-16th century; the Christian denomination that emerged is known as the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, founded by the Unitarian preacher and theologian Ferenc Dávid ( – 1579). The creed of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania is:
The early Unitarian Christian leader Demeter Hunyadi led the effort to catechize the faithful. The first Unitarian Christian confession of faith was the Consensus Ministrorum, which holds to a Unitarian view of God and teaches that Jesus Christ should be adored; the confession of faith titled the Complanatio (1638) established the necessity of infant baptism and reception of the eucharist. The widely used Racovian Catechism (1605) of the Polish Brethren explicated the Unitarian Christian faith from a Socinian perspective, supporting its doctrine with proof-texts from the Bible.
Used to herald this historic Unitarian Christian faith that emerged after the Reformation, the term "biblical Unitarianism" is connected first with Robert Spears and Samuel Sharpe of the Christian Life magazine in the 1880s. As liberal Unitarian churches moved away from mainstream church traditions and, in some instances in the United States, towards merger with Universalism, bodies of traditional Unitarian Christians sought to distinguish themselves by using the terms "Biblical Unitarian" or "Unitarian Christian" or by asserting traditional definitions of the "Unitarian" denomination of Christianity.
The history of Unitarianism was as a "scripturally oriented movement" which denied the TrinityUnitarianism The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (2007). Accessed 10-30-2010 and held various understandings of Jesus. Over time, however—specifically, in the mid-19th century—liberal proponents of Unitarianism moved away from a belief in the necessity of the Bible as the source of religious truth. The nomenclature "biblical" in "biblical Unitarianism" is to identify the groups that did not make such a move, and continue to herald the Unitarian Christian faith based on biblical teaching.
Early Unitarians and the Bible Biblical unitarians claim that history shows that the earliest Christians (especially in the first century CE) believed in one God and did not believe that Jesus was himself God.Ehrman, Bart D. ‘’How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.’’ HarperOne, US. 2014. ISBN 978-0-06-177818-6.
Their beliefs are based primarily on arguments that both Old Testament and New Testament describe a strictly Unitarian theology with no explicit description of God as three co-equal persons of one substance, and that Trinitarianism is a theory that was developed by some church leaders over the course of centuries, heavily influenced by their contemporary cultures and philosophies. It was not until disputes with Arius that unitarianism began to be labeled as heretical.
To support these arguments Biblical unitarians point to the statements of the Bible that consistently proclaim the unity of God along with descriptions of Jesus as God’s anointed, human Messiah—distinct from and subordinate to God. For example: “One God, the Father," and "One Lord, Jesus the Christ."
There is also historical evidence for the gradual development of Trinitarian doctrine from the second century through the fourth century, culminating in the formal statement of the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE.
Historians such as George Huntston Williams (1914–2000) rarely employ the term "biblical Unitarian," as it would be anachronistic.Only once in Williams, The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the History and Thought of Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the Diaspora 1601–1685, Scholars Press, 1980, Those individuals and congregations that we may now think of as Unitarians went through a range of beliefs about Jesus: that he was eternally pre-existent but was created by God the Father (Arianism); or that God the Father and God the Son were two distinct Gods (Binitarianism); or that he originated at the virgin birth (Socinianism); or that he was simply a godly man (Adoptionism or Psilanthropism).The works of Sir John Suckling: Volume 1 ed. Thomas Clayton, Lester A. Beaurline – 1971 "'Socinianism' was both a flexible body of contemporary Biblical-Unitarian doctrine, formalized in 16th-century Italy chiefly by Faustus Socinus, and a catchword 'used to cover different kinds of unorthodox religious opinion.'"
For early unitarians such as Henry Hedworth, who introduced the term "Unitarian" from Holland into England in 1673, the idea that Unitarianism was "Biblical" was axiomatic, since the whole thrust of the 16th and 17th century Unitarian and Arian movements was based on sola scriptura argumentation from Scripture, as in the case of the Christological writings of Isaac Newton.Stephen D. Snobelen, "Isaac Newton: His life and religion," in Arri Eisen and Gary Laderman, eds., Science, religion, and society: An encyclopedia of history, culture, and controversy, vol. 1 (Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2007), "A manuscript list of twelve statements distinguishing God from Christ according to his biblical unitarian theology confirms this association and reveals that it has a heretical corollary. Newton asserts that it is only the Father who is [God]."
The Unitarian Churches (1774 onwards) The Unitarian Church of Transylvania remained a conservative "Biblical" Unitarian movement largely isolated from developments in the West. The Summa Universae Theologiae Christianae secundum Unitarios (1787) represents a conservative position that held into the late 19th century.
In the West, Theophilus Lindsey established the first avowedly Unitarian church in England in 1774 at Essex Street Chapel.Chapter 2. Mortimer Rowe, B.A., D.D. The History of Essex Hall. London: Lindsey Press, 1959. Full text reproduced here .} Nontrinitarianism was against the law until the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813, but legal difficulties with the authorities were overcome with the help of barrister John Lee, who later became Attorney General. Unitarians of this time continued to consider their teachings as "Biblical", though increasingly questioning the inspiration of the Bible and the accounts of the miraculous.Gerald Parsons Religion in Victorian Britain Vol 3- 1988 p80 " two theologically incompatible strands (one Bible-based, orthodox and distinguished from the rest of evangelical dissent only by its conviction that the doctrine of the Trinity was unscriptural; the other heir to the rationalism and deism of the Enlightenment and possessed of a calm and intellectual rather than fervent and ethos, Unitarianism was always destined to be firmly middle class." (See Rational Dissenters for more.) Divergence in the Unitarian Church was increasingly evident after 1800 with the majority following the rationalist views of writers such as Thomas Belsham and Richard Wright, who wrote against the miraculous conception, while a minority held to the views of traditionalists.R. K. Webb "Miracles in English Unitarian Thought" Essay, chapter 6 in ed. Mark S. Micale, Robert L. Dietle, Peter Gay Enlightenment, passion, modernity: historical essays in European Thought and Culture 2007 p120 cf ref 22 p423 "Compare Richard Wright, the celebrated Unitarian missionary, An Essay on the Miraculous Conception of Jesus Christ (London, 1808)."Wright A review of the missionary life and labors of Richard Wright p68 "After they were excited to think freely, some gave up the doctrine of the miraculous conception, from reading the scriptures only, and observing certain things there with which it could not be reconciled."Robert Spears The Unitarian handbook of scriptural illustrations & expositions 1883 "The prophet uses not the Hebrew word which properly signifies a virgin, but which denotes a girl, a young woman. ... Originally and literally this seems applicable only to the birth of a child, a sign to Ahaz,"
The New Encyclopædia Britannica notes that the Transcendentalist movement of Ralph Waldo Emerson "shattered rationalist, biblical Unitarianism — now grown conservative — and replaced it with intuitional religion and social idealism. When Unitarianism spread to the newly opened Middle West, its religious fundamentals changed to human aspiration and scientific truth, rather than Christianity and the Bible."New Encyclopædia Britannica 1987 p264; same article also appears Merriam-Webster's encyclopedia of world religions – 1999, p1117
First uses of the term An early example of the term "Biblical Unitarianism" occurs in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review (1882) in an article on the "Waning of Biblical Unitarianism".James Oswald Dykes, James Stuart Candlish, Joseph Samuel Exell – 1882 "Waning of Biblical Unitarianism. Testament criticism, Dr. Ezra Abbot, of the Boston Unitarian School of Divinity, and, as a member of the American Revision Company is justly looked up to as an authority in that department, has published ..." In the following year, Peter William Clayden's biography of Samuel Sharpe (1883) describes him as a "Biblical Unitarian", adding, "His intensely practical mind, and his business training, joined with his great though rational reverence for the Bible, made him long for definite views expressed in scripture language."Clayden Samuel Sharpe: Egyptologist and Translator of the Bible Page 247-248
The context of the term in the above examples relates to the tension from the 1830s onward between more traditional and relatively scripture-fundamentalist Unitarians and those advocating a freer approach such as transcendentalists Theodore Parker and James Martineau. This conflict came to a head in 1876 when Robert Spears resigned from the British and Foreign Unitarian Association and, with the support of Sharpe, a former president of the Association, began to publish a rival magazine.Tim Dowley Eerdman's handbook to the history of Christianity 1977 p496 "But in the 1830s James Martineau and some younger Unitarians led a revolt against biblical Unitarianism and its dogmas. They advocated a less argumentative religion. They wanted a more refined, romantic and devotional spirituality." In this context, Sharpe is referred to again by John M. Robertson (1929) as a "Biblical Unitarian," Robertson J. M. History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century Vol2 429:"Samuel Sharpe, the scholarly "Biblical Unitarian," though he had championed the cause of James Martineau (with whom he did not agree) when the party of Grote objected to making him Professor of Philosophy at University College, spent much of his time in his latter years in combating the new movement. and adds that Sharpes' magazine, The Christian Life, was largely aimed at combatting growing agnosticism in Unitarian pulpits. However, though Sharpe may have used the term, and later been called, "Biblical Unitarian", he did not set up any lobby group of that name within Unitarianism.