The History of Unitarianism

What Is This?

Many people assume that the belief that Jesus is not God is a modern invention — a revisionist position that the church has always rejected. This page tells the actual history.

Unitarianism (in the broad sense: the belief that the Father alone is the one God, and Jesus is a human being exalted by God) has been present in every century of Christian history. It has been consistently suppressed — by execution, imprisonment, exile, book-burning, and legal prohibition — but never eliminated.

This is not an argument that Unitarianism is correct because it is old. It is a correction of the false claim that it is new.

The Early Church — Paul of Samosata

Paul of Samosata was bishop of Antioch from 260 to 272 — one of the four most important sees in Christendom. This was not a fringe figure.

His Christology held that Jesus was a human being, born of the Virgin, in whom God's Logos dwelt uniquely — but the Logos was not a separate personal being. Jesus did not pre-exist as a conscious divine person. He was anointed by God, empowered by God's Spirit, and exalted after the resurrection — but he was a man, not God.

Paul was condemned at the Council of Antioch in 268. But the connection to later Unitarianism is direct. The Socinians of the 16th century held essentially the same core position, and both they and their opponents recognised the continuity. Paul's opponents accused the Socinians of being "the ancient Samosatenians under a new name," and the Socinians did not entirely deny the comparison. Paul was the proto-Socinian.

A century later, Photinus of Sirmium — a pupil of Marcellus of Ancyra — held that Christ began his existence at birth. He was condemned at the First Council of Sirmium in 351, during the turbulent decades between Nicaea and Constantinople when anti-Nicene positions dominated the church.

The Reformation — Servetus, Socinus, and the Polish Brethren

The Reformation's insistence on sola scriptura — Scripture alone as the final authority — opened a door that the mainstream reformers did not intend. If Scripture alone is the standard, what happens when someone reads Scripture and concludes the Trinity is not there? The answer, for the first generation of anti-Trinitarian reformers, was persecution.

Michael Servetus (1511–1553)

Michael Servetus published his first anti-Trinitarian work, De Trinitatis Erroribus ("On the Errors of the Trinity"), in 1531 — at the age of 20. He argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was a post-biblical corruption derived from Greek philosophy, not from Scripture.

In 1553, he published Christianismi Restitutio ("The Restoration of Christianity") — a title deliberately echoing and challenging Calvin's Institutio Christianae Religionis. The work rejected the Trinity and predestination.

Calvin reported Servetus to the Catholic Inquisition in Lyon. Servetus was arrested but escaped. His effigy and 500 copies of his book were burned by the Inquisition.

Servetus then made the extraordinary decision to travel through Geneva. He was recognised, arrested, and tried for heresy. Calvin personally participated in the prosecution. On 27 October 1553, Servetus was burned alive at the stake, with the last remaining copies of Christianismi Restitutio chained to his body. Only three copies of the original edition survive.

Calvin requested beheading instead of burning; the Genevan council refused. The irony is hard to miss: the champion of sola scriptura used the power of the state to execute a man for reaching different conclusions from the same Scripture.

"Servetus was burned alive... for the crime of denying the Trinity and the baptism of infants."

— Thomas Rees, Introduction to the Racovian Catechism (1818)

Faustus Socinus and the Polish Brethren

The Minor Reformed Church of Poland was established in 1565 — a fully organised anti-Trinitarian church, not a secret underground movement. The town of Raków was founded in 1569 as a deliberate safe haven, with its own academy and printing press. It became a major intellectual centre that attracted students from across Europe.

Faustus Socinus arrived from Italy around 1579 and systematised the theology. The result was the Racovian Catechism (1605) — the definitive statement of Socinian theology. First published in Polish, it was translated into Latin (1609), German, Dutch, and English. Its full title declared "that no other save the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is that one God of Israel, and that the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of the Virgin, and no other besides or before him, is the only begotten Son of God."

The Latin edition was provocatively dedicated to King James I of England — effectively challenging the king to engage with its arguments.

The Destruction of the Polish Brethren

In 1638, the Polish Sejm closed the Raków Academy and suppressed their printing press. In 1658, the Sejm enacted the Banishment Ordinance — all Polish Brethren expelled from the Commonwealth within three years, on pain of death. They were accused of collaborating with the Swedish invaders during the "Deluge" (1655–60), though this was largely a pretext.

The Brethren scattered across Europe — to Transylvania, the Netherlands, Prussia, and England. Their books survived in exile. Their ideas took root wherever they landed.

Transylvania — The Oldest Unitarian Church

Ferenc Dávid (c. 1520–1579) persuaded King John Sigismund of Transylvania to allow public debate on the Trinity. The result was the Edict of Torda (1568) — one of the first legal guarantees of religious freedom in Europe. It recognised four official denominations: Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian.

The Unitarian Church of Transylvania, founded in 1568, is the oldest continuously existing Unitarian denomination in the world — still active today, more than 450 years later.

England — Biddle, Newton, and the Blasphemy Act

John Biddle (1615–1662) — "Father of English Unitarianism"

John Biddle holds the grim distinction of being persecuted for anti-Trinitarianism under virtually every government that ruled England during his lifetime:

• 1645: Imprisoned in Gloucester for his views
• 1646: Imprisoned again by Parliament
• 1647: Published Twelve Arguments Drawn Out of Scripture while still a prisoner. Parliament considered executing him.
• 1654: Published his Two-Fold Catechism. It was burned by the common hangman.
• 1655: Oliver Cromwell, reluctant to see him executed, banished him to the Scilly Isles.
• 1662: Arrested while conducting a Bible study in his own home. Died of jail fever five weeks later, aged 47.

The Racovian Catechism in England

John Milton — the poet of Paradise Lost, himself privately anti-Trinitarian — licensed the Racovian Catechism for publication in 1650 while serving as Secretary of Foreign Tongues to Cromwell's Council of State.

On 2 April 1652, the English Parliament declared it "blasphemous, erroneous, and scandalous" and ordered all copies seized and burned publicly.

Isaac Newton (1642–1727)

Sir Isaac Newton — possibly the most influential scientist in human history — spent decades researching the Trinity's historical development. He produced extensive manuscript studies concluding that the doctrine was a post-biblical corruption introduced through Greek philosophy. He conducted rigorous textual criticism, identifying key proof-texts (especially the Comma Johanneum, 1 John 5:7–8) as later interpolations — a conclusion now accepted by virtually all textual scholars. He traced the historical development of Trinitarian doctrine and concluded that the early church did not believe in the Trinity as later defined.

Newton kept these views secret for his entire life. Open denial of the Trinity would have cost him his Cambridge professorship and potentially his freedom under the Blasphemy Act. His anti-Trinitarian manuscripts were not published until decades after his death. The sheer volume of his theological writing — over a million words — testifies to the seriousness with which he engaged the question.

He shared some of his conclusions privately with John Locke in 1690. Locke's own theological position is debated by scholars, but it is clear that he was at minimum deeply sympathetic to anti-Trinitarian arguments. His The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) was widely suspected of Socinian sympathies in his own day — it conspicuously minimises the Trinity's importance and makes no attempt to defend it. Whether Locke privately held a fully Socinian Christology or simply considered the Trinity non-essential remains an open question, but what is not in doubt is that he did not consider Trinitarianism to be clearly taught in Scripture.

A note on Newton's precise position: his manuscripts suggest he held something closer to an Arian view — believing the Logos was a created being who pre-existed, rather than denying pre-existence altogether. However, the exact contours of his Christology are debated, since he wrote across decades and may have developed his views over time. What is beyond dispute is that Newton was not a Trinitarian, that he studied the question with extraordinary rigour, and that he concluded the Trinity was not taught in Scripture.

The Blasphemy Act (1697)

In 1697, England passed the Blasphemy Act, which made it a criminal offence for any professing Christian to deny the Trinity. First offence: loss of all civil office. Second offence: loss of all legal rights and three years' imprisonment without bail.

It was not until the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 that Unitarians were finally decriminalised in England — less than 220 years ago.

The Modern Era

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) — the discoverer of oxygen and one of the most important scientists of his era — was an open Unitarian minister. In 1791, a mob incited by opposition to his religious and political views burned his house, library, and laboratory in the Priestley Riots in Birmingham. He was forced to flee to America, where he established one of the first openly Unitarian churches in Philadelphia.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both sympathetic to Unitarianism, though their positions were shaped as much by Enlightenment rationalism as by biblical exegesis — a distinction worth noting, since modern biblical Unitarianism is more exegetically focused. Adams wrote to Jefferson on 25 December 1813 that the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers "probably concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity" — a letter preserved at founders.archives.gov.

The Unitarian tradition continues today in Biblical Unitarianism, represented by scholars and writers including Anthony Buzzard, Sean Finnegan, and Dale Tuggy, with growing scholarly engagement and a developing body of peer-reviewed work.

Why This Matters for the Debate

Unitarianism has been present in every century. It is not a modern invention.

It has been held by bishops (Paul of Samosata), scientists (Newton, Priestley), philosophers (Locke), poets (Milton), and presidents (Adams, Jefferson).

It was not eliminated by argument. It was eliminated — repeatedly — by execution, imprisonment, exile, book-burning, and legal prohibition.

This does not prove Unitarianism is correct. But it destroys the claim that it is fringe, that the Trinity has always been the universal belief, and that no serious thinker has ever disagreed.

Christos exists to help you evaluate those arguments for yourself. That requires knowing that reasonable, learned people throughout history have read the same texts and reached different conclusions — and were persecuted for it.

Go Deeper

For rigorous engagement with the history of Unitarianism and its suppression:

• Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism (2 vols — the definitive history)
• Richard Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God (accessible popular account)
• Thomas Rees, The Racovian Catechism (1818 translation with historical introduction)
• Marian Hillar, The Case of Michael Servetus (1511–1553)
• Dale Tuggy, What Is the Trinity? (includes historical overview)
• Stephen D. Snobelen, Isaac Newton, Heretic (on Newton's anti-Trinitarianism)