• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Socinian Church

The fathers of the Socinian Church were the two Sozzini, uncle and nephew, Lelio and Fausto, both natives of the town of Siena. The uncle, Lelio Sozzini (b. 1525), was by profession a lawyer. He was a man of irreproachable moral life, a Humanist by training, a student of the classics and also of theology. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with the condition of the Jlomish Church, and early began to entertain grave doubts about some of its leading doctrinal positions. He communicated his views to a select circle of friends. Notwithstanding the precautions he had taken, he became suspected. Cardinal Caraffa had persuaded Pope Paul m. to consent to the reorganisation of the Inquisition in 1542, and Italy soon became a very unsafe place for any suspected person. Lelio left Siena in 1547, and spent the remaining portion of his life in travelling in those lands which had accepted the Lutheran or the Reformed faith. Lelio died at Zurich in 1562 without having published his opinions, and without his neighbours and hosts being aware of his real theological position. He bequeathed all his property, including his books and his manuscripts, to his nephew, Fausto, who had remained at Siena. This nephew was the founder of the Socinian Church.

Fausto Sozzini (b. 1539) was, like his uncle, a man of irreproachable life, a lawyer, a diligent and earnest student, fond of theology, and of great force of character. How early he had come to think as his uncle had done, is unknown. Report affirms that after he had received his uncle's books and papers, and had given sufficient time to their study, he left Italy, visited the places where Lelio had gathered small companies of secret sympathisers, to confirm them in the faith. His uncle had visited Poland twice, and Fausto went there in 1579. He found that the anti-Trinitarians there had no need to conceal their opinions.

Polish Unitarians were largely Anabaptists. They insisted that no one could be a recognised member of the community unless he was rebaptized. They refused to enroll Fausto Sozzini himself, and excluded him from the Sacrament of the Supper, because he would not submit to rebaptism. They declared that no member of their communities could enter the magistracy, or sue in a civil court, or pay a war tax. They disagreed on many small points of doctrine, and used the ban very freely against each other. Sozzini saw that he could not hope to make any progress in his attempts to unite the Unitarians unless he was able to purge out this Anabaptist leaven. Shortly before his death, a synod held at Krakau (1603) declared that rebaptism was not necessary for entrance into a Unitarian community. Many of the lesser differences had been got rid of earlier. The literary activity of Sozzini was enormous: books and pamphlets flowed from his untiring pen, all devoted to the enforcing or explaining the Socinian theology.

At Socinus' death there were a number of Unitarian congregations in Poland, made up largely of noblemen. Good schools were connected with them. The city of Rakow was the chief citadel of Unitarianism, and the excellent institution of learning was attended at one time by nearly a thousand students, three hundred of whom were of noble birth. The general synod of the Socinians met there every year. Many of their theologians and preachers were celebrated.

The united Unitarians of Poland took the name of the Polish Brethren; and from this society what was known as Socinian theology spread through Germany (especially the Rhineland), Switzerland, and England. Its principles were not formulated in a creed until 1642, when the Racovian Catechism was published. It was never formally declared to be the standard of the Unitarian Church, but its statements are universally held to represent the views of the older Socinians. Socinianism, unlike the great religious movement under the guidance of Luther, had its distinct and definite beginning in a criticism of doctrines, and this must never be forgotten if its true character is to be understood.

The doctrines of Socinianism are not to be regarded as identical with the doctrines of modem Unitarianism, and are laid down in the writings of Socinus, the Rakow Catechism, and the works of the principal Socinian writers down to the middle of the seventeenth century. The genuine Socinians held firmly to the authority of the Scriptures and to a very positive supranaturalism.

While Socinianism did undoubtedly owe much to Humanism, and to the spirit of critical inquiry and keen sense of the value of the individual which it fostered, most of its distinguishing theological conceptions are mediaeval. It laid hold on the leading principles of the Scotist-Pelagian theology, which were extremely popular in the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and carried them out to their logical consequences. In fact, most of the theological principles of Socinian theology are more akin to those of the Jesuit dogmatic — which is the prolongation of Scotism into modern times — than they are to the theology of Luther or of Calvin. It is, of course, to be remembered that by discarding the authority of the Church the Socinians are widely separated from both Scotists and Jesuits. Still the roots of Socinian theology are to be found in the Scotist doctrines of God and of the Atonement, and these two doctrines are their starting point, and not the mere negation of the Divinity of Christ.

But the Socinians were not exclusively mediaeval; they owed much to the Renaissance. This appears in a very marked manner in the way in which they conceived the very important religious conception of the Church. It is a characteristic of Socinian theology, that the individual believer is considered without much, if any, reference to the Church or community of the saved. This separates the Socinians not only from mediaeval Christians, but from all who belonged to the great Protestant Evangelical movement.

Jesus was for them only the teacher of a superior kind of morality detailed in the commands and promises of God; they looked to Him for that guidance and impulse towards a moral self-culture which each man can appropriate for himself without first coming into a society which is the fellowship of the redeemed. Had they ever felt the burden of sin as the Reformers felt it, had they ever yearned for such a fellowship with Christ as whole-hearted personal trust gives, or even for such as comes in the sense of bodily contact in the Sacrament, had they ever felt the craving to get in touch with their Lord somehow or anyhow, they would never have been able to do without this conception of a Church Catholic of some kind or other. They never seemed to feel the need of it.

The Racovian Catechism was compelled to make some reference to the kingly and priestly offices of Christ. It owed so much to the New Testament. Its perfunctory sentences show that our Lord was for the Socinians simply a Prophet sent from God to proclaim a superior kind of morality. His highest function was to communicate knowledge to men, and perhaps to teach them by example how to make use of it. They had no conception that Jesus came to do something for His people, and that what He did was much more valuable than what He said, however precious that might be. They were content to become His scholars, the scholars of a teacher sent from God, and to become members of His school, where His opinions were known and could be learned. They had no idea that they needed to be saved in the deeper sense of that word. The Unitarianism of the Socinians is simply the legitimate conclusion from their theory of the nature of God and of the work of Christ.

In Germany, Socinian doctrines were first taught by Ernst Soner, professor of medicine and physics at Altdorf. He taught clandestinely, but with success, till his death, in 1612. His principal writing is a treatise upon the eternal duration of future punishment. Altdorf became the hearthstone of Socinianism, but the Council of Nurnberg forbade the publication of Socinian views there. Socinian synods were held in Kreuzburg in 1661 and 1663. Some of the Polish exiles were permitted to remain for a while at Mannheim. In Germany the movement was always very weak and insignificant. In Holland it was more successful; and, in spite of persecutions, the Socinians increased. The Socinians finally were identified with the Remonstrants.