I don't know what you mean about being defensive - your assertion just doesn't make sense, and I note they aren't closely associated at all to my understanding -- again, I only brought up the article as it answered one of your questions and for the analysis that it provides to the extent that is useful as it "answers" at least from one perspective your assertion that the text was clear and plainly trinitarian. I didn't provide it as any sort of secondary authority.dwight92070 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 10:27 amYou are the one who brought it up with your article, not me. I'll admit that I know very little about "biblical unitarianism", but I'm learning, starting with the article that you sent, and now other articles online. It appears that there exists unitarian thought apart from the Unitarian church - maybe that's where you're coming from - I don't know. But it also appears that unitarian thought evolved relatively quickly into a denomination - the Unitarian Church. The original thinking still appears to be around 1560. So I don't know why you would be so defensive about the fact that the 2 are very closely associated.
God bless you,
Dwight
But, it's also not surprising that both ideas are "around" in 1560 - most of history has had some flavor of non-trinitarian movement, and the "unitarian" movements were most notable around the 4th century and the 16th century (and again at the turn of the 20th century). Unitarian ideas haven't been orthodox since the 4th century I guess (I might argue they were the original thinking that was quickly infected by hellenized/gnostic Christianity, but that begs the question).
It seems that today's "Unitarian Universalist" church may have stemmed from some "Unitarian" denominations in the 16th century and that they had a number of "rational" bases for their positions, including a denial of the trinity. It's possible that evolved to be today's Unitarian Universalist church of today, which has no bearing on God or the godhead or anything remotely monotheistic -- they are quite the rationalists, but are not scripturally based at all and hardly can even be considered Christian (they are an "all-faith" spiritual gathering). Today, many non-trinitarians use the term "biblical unitarian" not to associate at all with that movement, but to distinguish themselves from it.
With the 16th century in mind, you might be interested to read about the life of Michael Servetus - a notable thinker/writer who was persecuted/martyred (largely at the hand of John Calvin) for these ideas (and in response to his honest yet critical inquiries about Calvin's own writings) in the 1500s. Most of his writings were lost to book burnings and the like, but some remained (notably along with his medical discovery of the circulatory system) - a brilliant man who's writings were as devout as any you might have read from anyone. You might find that history interesting. The following book is a very interesting historical read and does a great job of telling that story -- https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/out-of ... 1112274482 and it introduces some of the historic circumstances surrounding suppression of non-trinitarian ideas.