On the Trinity

I feel the need to say this: Unitarian does not mean the same thing as "anti-Trinitarian." There, I've said it. 

The Unity of God (and its corollary, the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth) is the idea with which we have been labeled, but it is not at all the idea on which we hang our hats. Putting it another way, "unitarianism" is not the island on which we live, but rather the bridge by which we originally got there. Rather, we live on the Island of Human Goodness (as opposed to Calvin's Island of Human Depravity). And we live there quite happily, Trinity or no.

I can't believe the number of people at Seminary this week who have been tossing Trinity-related jokes, barbs, and generally good-natured ribbings my way -- probably in the wake of Dave Jensen's comment in theology class that "a number of anti-Trinitarian movements have cropped up over the years...hey wait, where's James?" (this happened to be the only Seminary class I have missed this entire semester, and perhaps the one where I most needed to be there to defend myself!) I'm not sure what people thought my response would be, but the general expectation seems to be that sparks would have flown or I would have burst into flames or something.

That said, my Unitarian ancestors-in-the-faith found the Trinity to be:

• unnecessarily complicated (that is, God could be understood perfectly well without the idea),
• doxologically unhelpful (that is, the core teaching of human moral perfectability, that Jesus was able to live a perfect life and therefore so should we, was obfuscated by the teaching that Jesus was both God and human and therefore Not Like Us), and
• unbiblical (that is, they could find no point in the Bible where Jesus claimed to be of one substance with the Father or where God was described as being three persons - rather, the Hebrew Bible goes to great lengths to assert that God is One and worship of substitute persons, idols, emanations, etc is bad - if soli scriptura is really the way to go, then the Trinity is right out).

Modern Unitarian Universalists find the Trinity to be:

• unnecessarily complicated,
• kinda weird, and
• so (exclusively) Christian it hurts.

Other than that, we don't really give it much thought. So we are not really anti-Trinitarians. Sorry to confuse you. You Trinitarians can go about your business, we will not be burning any of you at the stake.  ;-)