Socinianism

Socinianism was born in Italy, in the humanist ferment that followed the Reformation, well before Faustus Socinus gave it its definitive shape. The details of the Swiss and German Reformations belong to the neighbouring articles (Zwinglianism, Lutheranism, Calvinism); only the Antitrinitarian thread is kept here.

The secret circle of Vicenza (1546)

In 1546, a secret society held meetings at Vicenza, in the republic of Venice, to discuss among other things the doctrine of the Trinity^[7]. Among its members were the physician Giorgio Blandrata, Alciati, Giovanni Gentilis (beheaded at Berne in 1566) and Lelio Sozzini, a priest from Siena and close friend of Bullinger, Calvin and Melanchthon^[8]. The object of the society was not yet the finished Socinian system, but Antitrinitarianism: the refusal of the distinction of persons in the Godhead^[9]. The nominalists, with Abelard as their figurehead, were its distant intellectual forerunners^[10].

The society was broken up and most of its members fled to Poland; Lelio himself lived mostly at Zurich, but he remained the soul of the network, which kept meeting at Cracow to debate religious questions^[11]. Lelio died in 1562, and a stormy period opened for the party: the inevitable effect of the principles of free inquiry sown by the Reformation made itself felt, and schism appeared even within the Antitrinitarian ranks^[12].

The Polish Ecclesia minor before Faustus

From about 1570, the Socinians separated from the other currents and settled at Raków, a new town founded in 1569 that became their refuge and then their capital^[13]. In 1574 they published a Catechism of the Unitarians: God is described at length in His nature and perfections, but silence is kept on the mysterious attributes; Christ is the promised Man, the Mediator of creation, that is, of regeneration^[14]. Shortly after this catechism appeared, Faustus entered the scene: he had laid hands on his uncle's papers and arrived in Poland in 1579^[15]. He found the groups of the sect divided, and at first he was refused admission because he would not submit to a second baptism, a lasting irony: having never accepted this rebaptism, he was never formally a member of the Church that would bear his name abroad^[16].

Whatever the circle of Vicenza had sketched, Faustus Socinus turned into a complete system, and he imposed that system with a firm hand on groups that had been scattered until then.

Basel (1574-1578): the De Jesu Christo Servatore

From 1574 to 1578, Socinus lived at Basel, where he perfected his doctrine and wrote his two masterworks: the De Jesu Christo Servatore and the De statu primi hominis ante lapsum^[17]. The discussion with the Reformed minister Jacques Couet on the doctrine of salvation gave birth to the treatise De Jesu Christo Servatore, finished on 12 July 1578: it is the great Socinian indictment of the doctrine of Christ's satisfaction, the most formidable piece in the whole Antitrinitarian arsenal against expiation^[18]. To the same period belongs his De auctoritate Sacrae Scripturae, in which he rejects all purely natural religion: for him the Bible is everything, but a Bible read in the light of reason alone^[19].

Kolozsvár (1578-1579): the Dávid affair and the worship of Christ

Blandrata, who had become the man of influence for heterodoxy between Poland and Transylvania, invited Socinus to Kolozsvár (Cluj) to counter the Antitrinitarian bishop Ferenc Dávid (1510-1579)^[20]. Dávid refused the properly Socinian tenet that Christ, though not God, must be worshipped: thrown into prison, he died there in 1579^[21]. Once master of the field, Socinus acted without softness: Budny, who held Dávid's positions, was degraded and excommunicated in 1584; the old catechism was suppressed and replaced by the new one, the Raków catechism^[22]. Here the decisive dividing line was fixed: between Socinianism, which worships a deified man Christ, and consistent Unitarianism, which will refuse that worship^[23].

From Cracow to Lusławice (1579-1604)

Back in Poland, Socinus succeeded where all had failed: despite the initial opposition, he rallied all the parties to himself and gave them a unity hitherto unknown^[24]. In 1598, a riot drove him from Cracow: his house was sacked and he was beaten with clubs; friends took him in at Lusławice, some fifty kilometres east, where he ended his days, worn down by colic and kidney stones^[25]. In March and October 1602, he held colloquies at Raków, theological seminars for the elders of the Church, in which he set out his doctrine and answered objections, notably those of Marcin Czechowic^[26]. He died at Lusławice on 3 March 1604, without having finished the catechism so close to his heart: its fragments were published after his death^[27].

For nearly forty years, Raków was far more than a refuge: a university, a printing press, synods, the complete apparatus of a learned counter-Church.

The academy and the press

With the support of a converted nobleman, the Polish Brethren founded an academy at Raków in 1602 and set up there from about 1600 a press that would publish some five hundred titles, reprints included, until its seizure in 1638^[28]. The Gymnasium Bonarum Artium trained over a thousand students; with Pińczów, Raków was the great cultural centre of the movement, holding synods and assemblies^[29]. From this press came an immense religious literature of controversy and edification, later collected under the title Bibliotheca Antitrinitarianorum by Christoph Sand^[30].

The Racovian Catechism (1605)

The new catechism, drawn up by Socinus himself, appeared only in 1605, a year after his death: first in Polish, then in German (1608) and Latin (1609), with revised Latin (1665) and Dutch (1666) re-editions, then an English translation as early as 1652^[31]. It is the charter of Socinianism, together with the writings of Socinus later gathered in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum: from these two sources the fundamental doctrines of the system are drawn^[32].

The leading names of the second generation

The foundation of the system is free inquiry: the Socinians reject authority and demand the free use of reason, without however rejecting Revelation^[37]. Socinus, in his De auctoritate Sacrae Scripturae, goes so far as to reject all purely natural religion: the Bible is therefore everything, but a Bible interpreted in the light of reason, which sets aside every mystery^[38]. Crell's formula sums up the method:

"Mysteries are indeed exalted above reason, but they do not overturn it; they by no means extinguish its light, but only perfect it." (Jan Crell, De Deo et ejus attributis)^[39]

A formula true in the mouth of a Catholic (who hears in it that faith surpasses reason without contradicting it), but which in the Socinian mouth means that only mysteries graspable by reason will be received^[40]. Thus the Racovian Catechism, like Socinus's Institutiones religionis christianae, insists only on the unity, eternity, omnipotence, justice and wisdom of God, of which one can convince oneself; His immensity, infinity and omnipresence are held to be beyond human grasp, hence useless for salvation^[41].

One God, without Trinity

God, say the Socinians (and rightly), is absolutely simple; yet the distinction of persons destroys this simplicity: the doctrine of the Trinity would therefore be ill-founded^[42]. Besides, there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite, hence no possible incarnation of the Godhead, since it would require such a proportion; and even if, impossibly, there were a distinction of persons in God, no divine person could unite with a human person, since there can be no unity between two individualities^[43]. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges these arguments childish, inexplicable except by ignorance of Catholic teaching, referring to St Thomas (Summa I, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4) for the first and to Petau for the others^[44]. The Socinians become neither Arians like Campanus and Gentilis, nor tritheists, nor properly speaking Unitarians: their position is sui generis^[45].

A Christ as man, without pre-existence

Here the whole of Socinianism turns on Christology. For Socinus, Christ is the Logos, but without pre-existence: He is the Word of God as interpreter of the divine will (interpres divinae voluntatis)^[46]. The passages of St John that present the Word as the means of creation are explained of regeneration alone^[47]. Christ is miraculously begotten: perfect man, appointed mediator, but not God, a deified man. And it is precisely in this capacity that He must be worshipped: there passes the dividing line with Unitarianism, which will deny the miraculous birth and refuse worship, more consistent, even its critics admit, on the principles laid down^[48].

Against this reduction, the Catholic faith holds the texts in their plain sense:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [...] And the Word was made flesh." (St John, Prologue, Jn 1:1,14)^[49]

"Before Abraham was, I AM." (Christ, Jn 8:58)^[50]

"My Lord and my God!" (St Thomas the Apostle before the Risen One, Jn 20:28)^[51]

"Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." (St Paul, Phil 2:6-7)^[52]

No original sin, no satisfaction

For Socinus, original justice meant simply that Adam was in fact without sin, not that he was endowed with particular gifts: the doctrine of original sin is therefore denied entirely^[53]. Human sin is only the imitation of Adam's sin, and salvation the imitation and adoption of Christ's virtue^[54]. Faith being only trust in God, justification in the Catholic sense is likewise denied: a mere judicial act of God, with no imputed righteousness^[55]. Being purely man, Christ did not work our redemption in the sense of a satisfaction for our sins: His Passion is for us only an example and a pledge of pardon^[56]. All this teaching is summed up in the doctrine of the Supper: it is not even commemorative of Christ's Passion, but rather an act of thanksgiving for it^[57].

Scripture, sacraments, last ends

There are only two sacraments, held to be mere stimulants of faith, with no intrinsic efficacy; infant baptism is of course rejected^[65]. There is no hell: the wicked are annihilated^[66]. The natural immortality of the soul is denied (some Socinians go as far as materialism), and the Holy Spirit is only an operation of God, a power of sanctification, as with Paul of Samosata and Sabellius, with whom Socinus has many affinities^[67]. Note one at first peaceful trait: the founders of Raków preach non-violence, even if several 17th-century Brethren justified defensive war on the order of the civil magistrate^[68].

Needless to say, the Socinian theses were repeatedly condemned by the Church: as Antitrinitarians, the Socinians contradict the express teaching of the first six councils, and their Christology offends those same councils (notably Chalcedon and the Tome, letter 28, of St Leo the Great), the various creeds (above all the one called of St Athanasius), and the 9th canon of the 5th ecumenical council for the worship of Christ^[69]. Their views also have many affinities with Adoptionism^[70].

The dogmatic answer: Trent and the controversialists

Without aiming by name at Polish Brethren yet unborn, the Council of Trent struck in advance at each of their denials: the decree on original sin (5th session, 17 June 1546), the decree on justification (6th session, 13 January 1547), the canons on baptism (including canon 13, which anathematizes whoever denies that baptized little children are counted among the faithful) and on the Eucharist (13th session, 11 October 1551)^[71]. The detail of these definitions belongs to the article Council of Trent. In the 17th century, Catholic controversialists took over: the Jesuit Denis Petau (Petavius) refuted the Socinian arguments point by point in his Dogmata theologica, and Bossuet made Socinianism a piece of his indictment in the History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (1688)^[72]. The Reformation itself was not tender: at Geneva, the execution of Michael Servetus on 27 October 1553 (a dossier treated in the article Calvinism) shows that the refusal of the Trinity was then punishable by burning on both sides of the religious fracture^[73].

Poland (1638), Holland, England: civil repression

In 1638, the Catholics of Poland demanded the banishment of the Socinians: the school and press of Raków were closed, and the dispersal began^[74]. The finishing blow came from the Diet of 1658, in the midst of the Counter-Reformation and after the ravages that had bloodied the kingdom: the Ecclesia minor was proscribed, its members had to convert or go into exile, on pain of death from 1660 for whoever remained^[75]. Protestant Europe did not welcome the exiles with open arms: one reads in Bayle how dreaded the sect was, to the point that several princes were suspected of secretly favouring it and that it was predicted it would submerge Europe^[76]. In 1639, on the proposal of the English ambassador, all the States of Holland were warned of the likely arrival of the Socinians after their expulsion from Poland, and in 1653 very severe decrees were issued against them^[77]. In England, where the sect never had great vogue (the Protestants, perhaps less logical but more conservative, not being ready to go as far as the continental reformers), one finds as early as 1612 the names of Legate and Wightman, condemned to death for denying the divinity of Christ^[78].

Driven from Poland, the Brethren scattered: Transylvania, Prussia, Holland (Amsterdam above all) and England^[79]. Their writings survived their Church: the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, published at Amsterdam from 1665 to 1669, circulated widely in England and elsewhere the works of Socinus and his school^[80]. Through this channel Socinianism irrigated nascent Unitarianism.

Biddle's England

Under the Commonwealth, John Biddle made himself the champion of Socinian principles; Cromwell banished him to the Scilly Isles, but he returned under a writ of habeas corpus and became minister of an independent church in London^[81]. After the Restoration, he was again thrown into prison, where he died in 1662^[82]. Unitarians are often identified with Socinians, but their doctrines differ on fundamental points, starting with the miraculous birth and the worship of Christ, which consistent Unitarianism abandons^[83].

A lasting legacy

The Unitarianism of Transylvania subsists to this day as a constituted Church, the last direct institutional offshoot of the 16th-century Radical Reformation^[84]. In England and then in America, the Socinian legacy (a sovereign Bible, reason as judge, Jesus as moral model) nourished the Unitarianism of the Enlightenment and the 19th century, even weighing on the American debates over religious liberty and the separation of Church and State^[85]. A historians' thesis to handle with care, but a telling sign: it is in the name of the liberty of conscience theorized in trial that the spiritual grandsons of Raków marked modern constitutions^[86].

Socinianism is the finished example of what free inquiry produces when it sets itself up as judge of Revelation: by wanting to purify faith of its mysteries, it empties it of its object, a Trinity God who gives Himself, a Christ who saves by paying the price, sacraments that communicate grace^[87]. The Church has never varied: one God in three equal persons, one Christ true God and true man, one redemption by satisfaction offered on the Cross, one baptism to be given also to little children, one eternal retribution^[88]. But she distinguishes men from error: the Polish Brethren, often learned, sincere and persecuted (Socinus beaten with clubs at Cracow, Dávid dead in prison, Biddle dead in prison), command human respect even within the firmness of doctrinal judgment^[89]. As with the other confessions born of the Reformation (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Radical Anabaptism), contemporary dialogue retains whatever is truly Christian in them (love of Scripture, moral demandingness, missionary zeal), without ever compromising on the definitions of the councils^[90].

• On the ancient denial of Christ's divinity: Arianism.
• On the radical branch of the Reformation and Münster: Radical Anabaptism.
• On Geneva and the burning of Servetus (1553): Calvinism.
• On Wittenberg and justification: Lutheranism.
• On Zurich and the symbolic Supper: Zwinglianism.
• On the 16th-century dogmatic answer: Council of Trent.
• On contemporary resurgences of Antitrinitarianism: Modern Antitrinitarianism.