When the dogma of the trinity was developing in the soon-to-become
Christian Roman Empire, there were two outspoken leaders of two conflicted streams of
Christianity. One of them was Athanasius, who was perhaps the main propagator
of the dogma of partnership in heavenly matters by the human called Jesus. The
other, Arius, strongly opposed such
ideas. Both of them were from Alexandria in Egypt.
Athanasius prevailed, and under the auspices of Cesar
Constantine the Great in 325 in Nicaea, it was declared that there are two gods
in heaven. Some fifty years later in Ephesus, the third god was added, and that
is how the trinity dogma was formed. Since then, many groups among the
Christians opposing this dogma of trinity have been called Arian.
When Martin Luther was nailing his 95 Theses to the
cathedral church of Wittenberg
A significant amount of the Polish aristocracy joined or was
under the influence of the Polish Arians. The movement was not monolithic, and
tolerated different streams of social and theological thought. On one side, for
example, there were so called judaizantes
represented by Szymon Budny, or Marcin from Olawa, my town of birth; they were
observing Sabbath as the holy day instead of Sunday and observed some basic Biblical
dietary laws. On the other side of the spectrum, perhaps, was Italian-born
theologian Faust Socin. In the later stage of the development of the Polish Brothers
movement, they were even called ‘Socinians,” especially among foreigners.
The Brothers built several printing houses and the Academy
of Rakow, which attracted students from all over Europe. Many of the Polish Brothers were pacifists and
refused to participate in any military conflicts of the country or even appear
with a weapon in public. Polish law, however, required the members of the aristocracy to
wear a sword as one of the symbols of being its member. Many Brothers chose to
wear a wooden sword, which obviously said everything about their owners.
For almost one hundred years, the Polish Arians influenced the
religious and political thought of Europe. But the Polish Church soon was able
to influence the king to bring in a powerful anti-Reformation force – the
Jesuits – and in what had been till then tolerant Poland, the war of words and
pamphlets exploded. In 1638, the students of the Rakowian Academy were accused
of throwing stones at a roadside cross. An out-of-control young students' prank
served the influential Church to justify further persecution. Arians didn’t believe
in either the human deity or its material representation hanged on the wood, in
this case hung all over Poland. The Jesuits brought the issue to the Polish
Parliament and king. The academy of Polish Brothers was closed, and in 1658,
the group was sentenced to banishment under penalty of death. Those who
converted to Catholicism were spared, but those who chose emigration were stripped
of all their possessions.
Many of the Polish Brothers immigrated to Amsterdam, which
then was the most tolerant city in Europe. They didn’t develop there into any
significant movement, but some of them and people influenced by their ideas
emigrated further to America, where they became what are known today as Unitarians.
Enlightenment
In Poland and abroad, the recollection of the Polish
Brothers diminished, and a few centuries later in a then-strong Catholic Poland,
their memory was almost completely forgotten. The Polish Brothers left, however,
a heritage in the form of a few volumes written by different members of the movement.
Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum was a set of books which influenced
religious and political thinkers in Europe and on the new continent in the 17th
century.
In those writings, Polish Antitrinitarians developed ideas
of freedom of religion and government arrangement unknown in Europe until then. One of the
most innovative thoughts discussed in those books was the idea of separation of
Church and State for the first time in the history of the continent.
"As one should not mix together matters of religion
with matters of state, so one should not allow for religion and state to be in
opposition to one another," and "one should not bring into conflict
religion and state nor should they be mixed together," writes Samuel
Przypkowski in his work “De iure Christiani magistratus et privatorum in belli
pacisque negotiis,” published in approximately 1650.
One of the consequences of the separation of Church and
state is the disengagement of government from persecution of heretics and other
dissidents.
Marian Hillar's work on the topic of Polish Antitrinitarian
influence on fundamental ideas at the roots of the American political system is
probably the best written to date. In his work “From the Polish Socinians to
American Constitution,” he describes the political beliefs rooted in Bibliotheca
Fratrum Polonorum as follows:
“To be a heretic is not a political but ecclesiastical
infraction. The matters concerning the church are different from matters
concerning the state. Their fusion leads to disasters and wars. The function of
the State is protection of all religious groups—pagans, idolaters, heretics,
apostates... The State flourishes when an accord and harmony reigns among the
citizens as it was recommended by Moslems and not by Christians.”
Mr. Hillar summarizes the Polish Brothers' impact on
political thinkers in contemporary Europe and, by extension, on the new
continent:
“We find arguments used by Przypkowski, Szlichtyng, and
Crell repeated later in the works of John Locke, Pierre Bayle and even
Voltaire, and their echo in writings of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
Przypkowski's ideas were the most original and his work the most exhaustive
Polish study on the mutual relations of Church and State.”
“The intellectual ferment Socinian ideas produced in all of
Europe determined the future philosophical trends and led directly to the
development of Enlightenment. The precursor ideas of the Polish Brethren on
religious freedom were later expanded, perfected and popularized by John Locke
(1632-1704) in England and Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) in France and Holland.
Their ideas on religious freedom, toleration, their philosophical and religious
arguments, coincide with those used by the Polish philosophers. Locke possessed
in his library works of earlier Antitrinitarians, works of Szlichtyng, Socinus,
Smalcius, Wolzogen, Wiszowaty, BFP, Racovian Catechism, Przypkowski's
Dissertatio de pace ... etc. He certainly read them and was influenced by them.
( [51] ) Grandson of Jan Crell, Samuel Crell, was Locke's friend. Locke went
further presenting a detailed analysis of toleration and state church relations
from a political point of view, obviously under circumstances in England.
Bayle makes numerous references to Socinians and their rationality.”
“The ideas of John Locke were transplanted directly to the
American continent by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who implemented them
for the first time in the American legislation. They were
philosophers-statesmen who shared a strong conviction for absolute freedom of
conscience and distrusted any kind of established ecclesiastical institution.
Their conviction was that the established churches create only "ignorance
and corruption", introduce "diabolic principle of persecution."
The exercise of religion should be completely separated from government,
toleration was not enough only absolute freedom could be acceptable. Democracy
understood as the institution erecting a "wall of separation" between
church and state, and protecting the liberties of minority groups
against the imposition of majority views was for them the
best guarantee of religious freedom. Both were broadly educated and Thomas
Jefferson had a keen interest in studying religions including the Socinians.
Their writings follow Locke and quite echo the Socinian literature. ([55]) The
Polish Brethren were forerunners of the later thinkers who developed ideas of
the Enlightenment and humanistic modern times.”
In my research, I found yet another link connecting
Jefferson, Madison and Adams to Antitrinitarians.
In his essay on the religious affiliations of Thomas
Jefferson, Mr. Thom Belote writes:
“While a student at William
and Mary College, he began to read the Scottish moral philosophers and other
authors who had made themselves students of church history. These scholars
opened the door for Jefferson's informed criticism of prevailing religious
institutions and beliefs. But it was the world renowned English Unitarian
minister and scientist, Joseph Priestley, who had the most profound impact on
his thought.” Later, he writes that “Jefferson never joined a Unitarian church.
He did attend Unitarian services while visiting with Joseph Priestley after his
immigration to Pennsylvania and spoke highly of those services. He corresponded
on religious matters with numerous Unitarians, among them Jared Sparks
(Unitarian minister, historian and president of Harvard), Thomas Cooper,
Benjamin Waterhouse and John Adams. He was perhaps most open concerning his own
beliefs in his long exchange of letters with John Adams during their late
years, 1812-26.”
Conclusion
As I stated at the beginning
of this essay, there are not my innovative thoughts; I followed other
researchers collecting the data for this article. What may be innovative,
however, is the sequence in which I put some of the more and less known
historical facts together.
Many of our contemporaries
presume that the American political system is a child of the European
Enlightenment, and when they think ‘Enlightenment,’ this means antireligion or
antibiblical.
I hope that, with G-d's help,
I was able, if not to prove, then at least to expose, that there is a solid
link between Jewish scripture, and even Jewish political philosophy, and the political ideas of some of the
Founding Fathers. At least we can say that various political philosophies are
rooted in those Jewish scriptures.
Today, many of those who
declare themselves atheists, i.e. they consider G-d as their personal enemy, regard
themselves as children of the Enlightenment and humanists.
At these final lines of this
essay I will take the liberty of quoting one of the fathers of Enlightenment, Voltaire himself, who writes: "What is
faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to
my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being.
This is no matter of faith, but of reason."
And one more time, the same Voltaire: "It does not require great art, or magnificently
trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I,
however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers.
What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? (Thank you, Mr.
Voltaire.) The Siam
Well, if this is what makes a person a humanist, then Matys
Weiser is a humanist. But the reason for my humanism lays not in writings of the
fathers of the Enlightenment, or the
Polish Brothers or any other group of people inspired by Jewish teachings. It
is the following of the Jewish teachings which makes me a humanist.
In Mesechtas Nedarim of the Talmud Yerushalmi, there is
discussion recorded between two Sages and leaders of the Jewish people. They
were asked which of the the verses of the Torah is most important? “V'ahavta
l'rei'acha kamocha – you should love your neighbor as yourself,” answered Rabbi
Akiva. But Ben Azzai pointed to a different verse of Torah,“Ze Sefer Toledos
Adam – this is the book of generations of Adam,” stating that we are all
children of the same father who was created by G-d.
Maybe the words of Voltaire were an Enlightenment for his European contemporaries and later
followers. Maybe it was a chiddush, a novelty, for bnei Esaw to recognize that
all people are descendants of the same father and creation of the same Creator.
This wasn’t any chiddush for Jews, as we always knew it, as our children learn
it in cheider, that ahavas briah – the love of creation – is what the Creator
wants from us. And if sometimes “creation,” some of bnei Adam, persecuted and
killed Jewish children and as a reaction to this persecution some of us
developed certain distrust toward our non- Jewish or sometimes Jewish neighbors, we still learn our old Scriptures,
our old Talmud, and we still have leaders who, when the time is right, remind
us of our principles.
Preamble to Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent
of the governed, That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to
suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the
forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security.
When I read these words I truly feel proud, not because I
contributed to it in any way, but happy
that I found the Source of it.
Matys Weiser
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| 4th of July in Orthodox Synagogue - Bozeman Montana |
This is not all what I want to share on the topic and I-H further
essays will follow.
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