The Philosophical Legacy of the 16th and 17th Century Socinians: Their Rationality :: Philosophy Religion Essays

The Philosophical Legacy of the 16th and 17th Century Socinians Their understandingABSTRACT The doctrines of the Socinians represent a rational reaction to a medieval theology based on submission to the Churchs authority. Though they hold Scripture as something supra rationem, the Socinians analyzed it rationally and believed that nothing should be accepted contra rationem. Their companionable and political thought underwent a significant evolutionary touch on from a very utopian pacifistic trend condemning participation in war and holding public and judicial office to a mollify and realistic stance based on mutual love, support of the secular power of the state, active participation in social and political life, and the defense of social equality. They spoke out against the enserfment of peasants, and were the first Christians to postulate the separation of Church and state. The spirit of absolute religious freedom expressed in their practice and writings, determined, more or l ess immediately, all the subsequent revolutions in favor of religious liberty.(1) The precursor ideas of the Socinians on religious freedom later were expanded, perfected, and popularized by Locke and Pierre Bayle. Lockes ideas were transplanted to the States by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who implemented them in American legislation. The rationality of the Socinians set the trend for the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment and determined the future using of many modern intellectual endeavors. 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 such(prenominal) as the Polish Brethren, Antitrinitarians, Arians, and U nitarians. The name Socinians was used mostly in western Europe.(2) They were eventually expelled from Poland in 1660 to fulfill King John Casimirs religious vow to the saintly Virgin to avenge the denial of the Divine Trinity by heretics. Such a denial was deemed an act most blasphemous according to Catholic ideology. diachronic OutlineAt the roots of Socinianism 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.