What would the Unitarian answer to apparent Christophanies be?
For example: Is the “word” who came to Hosea the same as the “word” of John 1?
Who/what did Manassa converse with? Who judged Sodom with Abram? Ect?
You don’t have to examine each and every instance I bring up; but generally, what would a Unitarian say to what a Trinitarian would call Christophanies?
UU here. Unitarians (today) do not accept the Bible as authority or history. It’s just a bunch of stories. It is interesting and fruitful to study them, but there is no need to explain them, in the sense that you are asking for explanations.
If I were to say that sounds unsettling to be adrift like that, what would the Uni response be? And why do you think it will be alright at the end? What is this belief based on?
Seriously, these are legit questions. Not trying to pick an argument.
Unitarian Universalism was formed from a merger of the Unitarians, who denied the Trinity and the divinity of Christ (thus, God is a Unity), with the Universalists, who believed in universal salvation (nobody goes to Hell).
Unitarian Universalism today has no hard doctrine; it’s based on a general humanism and open-mindedness. A Unitarian can be an atheist or an agnostic or a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew or a Buddhist or a neopagan or a Subgenius or any combination of these he can square with his own mind and conscience.
Adrift? Why not be adrift? That’s the human condition. We are born in ignorance. It is hard enough for humans to know the laws of physics; though we have tried and tested means to find them out, it required a lot of work. We have no such means to find out the laws of the spirit, if there are any. God will not hold still under a theoscope. “Revelation” means nothing but to the individual to whom it is revealed; mine may not be the same as yours. And faith, sir, is a vice, not a virtue. What nonsensical arrogance, to believe one can really certainly know such things!
Why do we think it will be all right in the end? Because some Unitarians believe in God, some believe in an afterlife, but no Unitarian believes in sin. There is evil, certainly, we’re not absolute moral relativists, we judge some things good and some things bad; but evil is not the same thing as sin. And we certainly don’t believe God will judge souls based on what they believed in life, how would that be fair, see above, and being Universalists we don’t believe God will damn a soul to Hell for any reason. (Before they merged, it was said that Unitarians believe they are too good to be damned, and Universalists believe God is too good to damn them.)
Put another way, we absolutely reject this conception of God which appears, quite incomprehensibly, to be so central to most forms of Trinitarian Christianity:
“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
– Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett (RIP) and Neil Gaiman
Gimme that UU religion
Gimme that UU religion
Gimme that UU religion
It’s good enough for me!
To question is the answer
To question is the answer
To question is the answer
It’s good enough for me!
Why should you never piss off a Unitarian?
He’ll burn a question mark on your lawn!
What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah’s Witness?
Something that knocks on your door for no particular reason!
A Catholic church, a synagogue, and a Unitarian church were all built next door to each other. One morning the priest, the rabbi and the minister were all standing on the sidewalk having a chat, and someone ran out of the Catholic church shouting, “The church is on fire!” So the priest ran inside, grabbed the chalice and the Bible from the altar, and ran back out shouting, “I’ve save the church!” Then the fire spread to the synagogue. The rabbi ran inside, grabbed the Torah scrolls from the ark, and ran back out shouting, “I’ve saved the temple!” Then the fire spread to the Unitarian church, and minister ran inside and grabbed the coffee machine.
BG’s answered well. But to add a response to your first question:
I’m sorry you find it unsettling. But we are adrift. In the universe, in society, as a species and as individuals. That’s life, and yes, it can feel unsettling. We seek anchors, and for each of us the anchors are different. For many, having someone else tell us The Answer is a way to feel anchored, and that’s part of why organized religion is so widely embraced. But at the end of the day, you have to find your own anchors, and the answers that work for you.
I’d turn it back on you, really: Why do you feel unsettled? Why do you feel adrift?
(n.b.: I am not a “practicing” UU. But frankly, there is no “authoritative” Unitarian dogma in most of these questions.)
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Evil is bad behavior that causes harm. Sin is conceived of as a kind of pollution of the soul, a thing that cuts off the soul from God – that is the source of the word “atonement” – “at-one-ment,” something that unites the soul with God once again.
Unitarians are theoretically theistic and spiritual, although in practice there are a great many people attending Unitarian services who are atheists or agnostics and just enjoy the cameraderie and discussions and whatnot.
Anyway, yeah, no official dogma or creed.
You know when you go shopping in the supermarket and they have the generic products with no brand name? “Facial Tissues”, “Aspirin”, “Drip Grind Coffee”, etc? Think of the Unitarian Church as the generic edition: “Religion”, no brand name specified.
Brain: Wouldn’t evil be the manifestation of sin. If personified, wouldn’t evil be sin’s lovechild; daddies little bugger.
Andros: Personally, I’m not unsettled. I find my anchor in the God of the Bible. We may come to our own individual revelations, but at least we are semi-united in aiming for the same target.
My original question was about how a Unitarian would interpret certain Scriptures. But the discussion turned to Universalism. Not that this is a bad discussion to have; it’s just that I am not familiar to this discussion. In my mind, Unitarian and Universalists while not mutually exclusive are not the same thing. That may be why I sound so scatterbrained.
Which Bible? To be more specific, which sect do you follow? Considering all the variations of religion there are out there in the world, “The God of the Bible” tells us next to nothing.
I was being totally serious-“Czarcasm” is the name I use on this board. Would you mind telling us what religious sect you follow, and what version of the Bible you follow?
BTW, I’ve never before encountered the word “Christophany,” though its meaning is clear enough by comparison with “theophany” and “epiphany.” But the plural form “Christophanies” sounds like some kind of disease, or maybe a sexual practice for which the OT prescribes stoning.
Unitarians, or my version of what I thought a Unitarian was, will say there is only one God and that Jesus was ‘begotten’ at some point in time.
Trinitarians will say that Jesus is fully God and also always existed alongside God.
Christophanies are, so a trinitarian would say, accounts of Jesus interacting on earth recorded in the Old Testament.
I guess my version would be a Christian Unitarian. Which is a contradiction in itself because Christ wouldn’t be their God.
A UU, I’m sorry, but that could mean anything under the sun. Even trying to understand seems moot.
I took a Wiki peek at “Christophany”, and it looks like a Christian retcon of the Hebrew Bible, where they claim that some of the angels, and even appearances of God Himself, were actually a pre-born Jesus come to Earth.