HERESY SERIES: PART 8
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QUESTION: The orthodox Christian belief is that God consists of a single essence and three persons. We tend to take this for granted, but the Bible (like many other things) does not specifically teach this. Non-trinitarians like the Socinians cite verses like Mt. 24:36 to show that Jesus cannot be divine: “But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” How do you reconcile this verse with the Son being part of a triune God?
SOCINIANISM is a developed form of Unitarianism that is (1) anti-trinitarian, (2) views Jesus as a normal person, and (3) understands the life, suffering, and death of Jesus to be a moral example for us. Socinianism had its start with the Italian priest Lelio Sozzini (1525-62) and was later developed into a complete theological system by his nephew Fausto Sozzini (1539-1604). The Latin form of Sozzini is Socinus, which is why this heresy is called Socinianism. The complete theology of Socinianism can be found in the Racovian Catechism, which was written by Fausto. Our reading is from Section 3, Ch. 1, titled “Of the Nature of God.”
READING: The principal thing is to guard against falling into the common error, wherein it is maintained, with palpable contradiction, that there is in God only ONE essence, but that he has three persons. Prove to me that in the one essence of God, there is but one Person? This indeed may be seen from hence, that the essence of God is one, not in kind but in number. Wherefore it cannot, in any way, contain a plurality of persons, since a person is nothing else than an individual intelligent essence. Wherever, then, there exist three numerical persons, there must necessarily, in like manner, be reckoned three individual essences; for in the same sense in which it is affirmed that there is one numerical essence, it must be held that there is also one numerical person. Who is this one divine Person? The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. […] How happens it, then, that Christians commonly maintain, that, with the Father, the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT are persons in one and the same Deity? In this they lamentably err deducing their arguments from passages of Scripture ill understood. [The Racovian Catechism, 3-1]
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