Several religious and intellectual movements today claim the right to the heritage of the religious group, the Socinians, that developed in Poland and in Transylvania in XVIth and XVIIth centuries. The claimants vary from the Christian churches to the atheistic or deistic Humanists and each of them usually selects a specific set of Socinian views ignoring the rest. The Socinians were known under various names as the Polish Brethren, Antitrinitarians, Arians and Unitarians. The name Socinians was used mostly in western Europe.¹ They were eventually expelled from Poland in 1660 to fulfill the King John Casimir's religious vow to the Holy Virgin to avenge the denial of the Divine Trinity by "heretics." Such a denial was deemed an act most blasphemous according to Catholic ideology.

At the roots of Polish Antitrinitarianism are the theological ideas transplanted from western Europe and the social ideas borrowed initially from the Anabaptists and Moravian Brethren. Discussions at the meetings of the secret society of Catholic scholars in Cracow since 1546 had, as a purpose, reform of the church and included the works of Michael Servetus. Several visitors from abroad including Adam Pastor from Holland and Lelio Sozini from Italy transplanted the Antitrinitarian ideas and the doctrines of the Radical Reformation. About the middle of the XVI^th century a variety of Antitrinitarian sects emerged that were separated from the Helevetian church. They called themselves Christians or Brethren, hence the Polish Brethren, and also the Minor Reformed Church. Their opponents labelled them after the old heresies as Sabellians, Samosatinians, Ebionites, Unitarians, and finally Arians.

We can differentiate three stages in the development of the Unitarian movement:

1. The early stage from the formation of the Minor Church between 1562 - 1565 to the end of the XVIth century;

2. Late Unitarianism or Socinianism from the establishment of the Socinian doctrines to the expulsion in 1660;

3. The diaspora and radiation of Socinian ideas as precursor to the development of the Enlightenment.

Only the late stage of Polish Unitarianism can be properly labelled as Socinianism, from Faustus Socinus (Fausto Sozzini, nephew of Lelio Sozini; sic, he spelled his name with one "z") who at the end of the XVI^th century became a prominent figure in the Raków congregation for systematizing the doctrines of the Polish Brethren.

One of the characteristics of the Unitarianism/Socinianism from the very beginning was the insistence on applying reason to interpret Scripture, Revelation, and theological matters. The immediate reason for the establishment of the Antitrinita rian church was the denial of the traditional dogma of the Trinity and the arguments used in support of this view were based on the rational interpretation of the Scripture. This early "rationalism" was, however, very particular and limited. The conviction was maintained that one was supposed to believe God and not reason. The false dogmas were presented as the product of human reason. Thus among the early Antitrinitarians reason was contrasted with the Scripture which was accepted as self-evident. At the same time it was believed that for the understanding of the Scripture one has to rely on the supernatural assistance from the Holy Spirit.

In Socinianism or mature Unitarianism a question was raised on what was the role of reason in religious matters and especially what was the relationship between reason and Revelation. Socinus maintained that:

1. the content of the Revelation must be exposed in accordance to reason, and whatever is contradictory to reason must be rejected;

2. the true religion must remain in accordance with reason;

3. human reason is not able by its natural powers to acquire the knowledge of the fundamental truths about God including the fact of His existence;

4. natural religion does not exist either as an innate knowledge or a posteriori, i.e., deduced from reflection on the world;

5. all what people know about God derives from Himself through His Revelation.

From the 30's of the XVIIth century this Socinian thesis against natural religion was questioned by Racovian post-Socinian theologians and with time their new views became recognized as the classical Socinian doctrine. They attempted now to provide philosophical arguments for the natural religion and develop a scriptural exegesis to support this view. Traditional views among orthodox Catholics maintained that:

1. interpretations of the Revelation (Old and New Testaments) may vary;

2. the teaching authority of the Church inspired by the Holy Spirit and actuated in the pronouncements of the Roman bishop and Councils, known as the Tradition, is necessary for their correct interpretation;

3. the Church is at the same time the guarantor of the correctness of the interpretation.

The Protestants maintained that:

1. the Scripture is self-evident;

2. the believer is only reassured about the truth of the Scripture by the inner illumination from the Holy Spirit.

In fact the Protestant theologians often used the Tradition, the pronouncements of the Fathers of the Church, in the same way as their Catholic brethren did.

The new post-Socinian theory was exposed in 4 treatises⁵:

Brevis disquisitio (1633) and De iudice et norma controversiarum fidei (1644) by Joachim Stegmann Sr., Animadversiones apologeticae ... in ... J.A. Comeni ... libellum (1660) by Samuel Przypkowski, and Religio naturalis (1670) by Andrzej Wiszowaty.

The norm in religious matters is God, but nowadays He does not express Himself personally. The Scripture left as His Word is considered only as a norm of faith like a legal code is a norm for the law; but the actual judgment is pronounced by the judge. Someone has to interpret the Scripture, but it cannot be the Holy Spirit as it is maintained by the evangelicals. Our post-Socinians demand a rational argument and not faith. Also, the invoking of the authority of the Church or the pope is baseless, since this authority in turn must itself be somehow justified. This would lead to a vicious circle: the Church authority is justified from the testimony of the Scripture and the Scripture's veracity in turn is affirmed by the Church authority! The solution which the post-Socinians proposed is as follows:

1. the highest judge in matters of faith on earth is human reason;

2. the Scripture must be interpreted in accordance with the principles of reason;

3. the doctrines formulated from the Scriptures must also be formulated in agreement with reason; they cannot contradict reason;

4. reason is also the measure of the veracity of the Scripture, i.e., whether it contains the Word of God or not.

Hence if we draw all conclusions together, we must assert that human reason becomes the sovereign authority, and that it also judges the provenience of the Scripture and its interpretation.

The remaining issue to be clarified concerns the understanding of the truths defined as "above reason" (supra rationem). Socinians used it with two meanings. However, none of them agreed with the traditional, orthodox usage.

First meaning:

the mysteries of religion are the truths which cannot be reached without Revelation, but the human mind is capable of understanding them. As an example to this Socinians gave the mystery of the salvation of mankind by Christ. The mystery was mentioned in a vague and enigmatic way in the Old Testament. It ceased to be a mystery and truth "above reason" when Jesus revealed and explained it.

Second meaning:

the truth "above reason" is a truth that can be reached by independent human reason, but reason is not able to explain it completely. It is perceived as something in accordance with reason and in a certain way, necessary. This is exemplified by the truth of God's eternity. This truth is often treated as something inconceivable, however, reason convinces us that it is not impossible, and God even becomes a necessity as the first cause of all causes.

These types of truths "above reason" constitute the content of the natural religion accepted by the Deists. Of course, such a concept of religious mystery is quite different from the traditional one.

One of the post-Socinian writers, J. Stegmann, went further in his rationality and claimed that the concept of religious mystery is not necessary in the Christian religion, and the term the truth "above reason" becomes inadequate. Everything that is taught by a religion is measured by human reason. He agrees that certain religious truths cannot be understood completely, but the same can be said about natural ones.

Everything, matters pertaining to nature, to God and religion, remain within the reach of human reason. Hence we can know and understand the truths exposed in the Scripture which are necessary for eternal salvation. Thus, the divine matters contained in the Scripture are not "above reason." We may, however, say that some truths are "above reason," (supra rationem) since we are not able to know them by natural means - i.e. without the Revelation.

This was an extremely radical position, and it was not accepted among the Socinians - it was simply too radical for the Christian world. So later Przypkowski and Wiszowaty used the term "above reason" in the strictly Socinian meaning. Orthodoxy was not concerned with the mysteries of religion mentioned by the Socinians such as: the eternity of God, the creation of the world, or even the resurrection of the dead.

This specific rationality of the Socinians was not acceptable to the orthodox mentality and was dramatically and erroneously evaluated by Pierre Jurieu, the French Huguenot:

As we have seen since the 30's of the XVIIth century certain post-Socinian writers present their doctrine as remaining in accordance in all aspects with human reason and impute to the human mind the obligation to decide how to understand Revelation and the privilege of deciding about the veracity of the Revelation itself. From the rational point of view these declarations are subconscious mystifications - the Socinians had never intended to submit to the critical evaluation the authenticity of the Christian Revelation contained in the Bible since it was for them a self-evident fact. Their attitude vis-à-vis Scripture was not critical but apologetic.

The claim, however, made by the Socinians that one should believe in the Revelation because natural reason dictates so, was the link uniting the traditional form of religion with the Deism of the Enlightenment. This thesis suggested that as soon as human reason finds a justification, it will be completely in a position to question the divinity of the Revelation. Socinianism itself in its post-Socinian form provided enough reasons for this to state that they served as precursors to the later critical intellectul trends of the Enlightenment. Socinianism thus played a double role for the development of religiosity during the Enlightenment: one role was positive, the other was negative.

1.  it considered the moral content of religion as its center and minimized the importance of dogma, reducing at the same time almost to zero the ritual side of religion;

2. it propagated the "religion in accordance to reason" (religio rationalis) and traced such a model of the relationship between Revelation and reason such that r reason was to be an absolute hegemon. These two postulates became adopted in the ideological program of the Deists.

1. in the opinion of the ideologues of the Enlightenment, the Socinians were supposed to undertake the final attempt to rationalize Christianity. According to them it was the most ambitious and the farthest reaching attempt that ended in a fiasco. They deemed unconv- incing the Socinians' attempts to rationally interpret the behavior of the biblical Yahweh and to show that it can be understood in the categories of humanistic morality. The Socinians, standing on the position that Jesus is identical with the Messiah promised by the Old Testament, also had to defend the authenticity of the Old Testament Revelation and consequently of its cruel God of Josue and David with the God of Gospels. Hence, they claimed that there arose some deep inadequacies resulting from the impossibility of including the moral image of the Biblical Yahweh into the system of religion in which moral values were considered the highest.

From such analysis of the Socinian doctrine, which they considered a failure, the thinkers of the Enlightenment drew two conclusions:

The first one was formulated by Pierre Bayle who claimed that religion is in its essence irrational and that any attempt to reconcile it with the demands of rational thinking, is futile and doomed to failure.

Later this conclusion led the most radical thinkers to the conviction that the irrationality of religion is not a proof of its supernatural origin, but on the contrary, it constitutes a proof that it is a product of human mind.

1. Marian Hillar, From the Polish Socinians to the American Constitu-tion, in A Journal from The Radical Reformation. A Testimony to Biblical Unitarianism, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1994. pp. 22-57.

2. F. Ruffini quoted in Anson Phelps Stokes Church and State in the United States, introduction Ralph Henry Gabriel,(New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1950), Vol. 1, p. 115.

3. Stanislas Kot, Socinianism in Poland. The Social and Political Ideas of the Polish Antitrinitarians.  Translated by Earl Morse Wilbur, (Boston, 1957). p. XXII.

4. Pierre Jurieu, Protestant professor of theology at Rotterdam, cited by H. John McLachlan Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 9. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), bishop of Meaux, called the universal tolerance "cette théologie de l'impiété des sociniens." Oeuvres Complètes de Bossuet, ed. F. Lachat (Paris: Librairie de Louis Vivès, 1862-1863), Vol. XVI, p. 151.

5. Zbigniew Ogonowski, editor, Mysl arianskaw Polsce XVII wieku. Antologia tekstów. (Wroclaw, Warszawa, Kraków: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1991). pp. 263-342.