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This is the first chapter of a very interesting book I found called 'Jesus: A prophet of Islam'- a commendable effort to study the sacred life of Jesus (pbuh) using both Christian and Muslim sources- A penetrating scholarly study which explores the origins of Christinity by examining all the evidence with thoroughness and care to separate the facts from the myths. It includes a study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christian Scripture, Gospel of Barnabas, Quran and Hadeeth. It is the result of thirty years of study! I advise anyone who can get a hold of it to do so... or wait till summer cuz I plan on typing it all up inshAllah. The other chapters are: A Historical Account of Jesus, The Gospel of Barnabas, The Shepherd of Hermas, Barnabas and the Early Christians, Early Unitarians in Christianity, Later Unitarians in Christianity, Christianity Today, Jesus in the Quran, Jesus in Hadeeth. THE UNITARIAN VIEW AND CHRISTIANITY Historical research has shown that the animism and idol worship of primitive peoples in the world is in all cases a regression from an original unitive belief, and the One-god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam grew up in opposition to many-gods rather than evolving out of them. Thus in any tradition, the pure teaching is to be found at its beginning and what follows is necessarily a decline, and it is from this perspective that the history of Christianity should be viewed. It began with the belief in One God and was then corrupted, and the doctrine of the Trinity came to be accepted. The result was a confusion which led men more and more away from sanity. In the first century after the disappearance of Jesus, those who followed him continued to affirm the Divine Unity. This is illustrated by the fact that the 'Shepherd of Hermas', written in about 90 A.D. was regarded as a book of Revelation by the Church. The first of the twelve commandments which it contains begins: First of all, believe that God is One and that He created all things and organised them and out of what did not exist made all things to be, and He contains all things but alone is Himself uncontained...[The Apostolic Fathers, E.J. Goodspeed] According to Theodore Zahn, the article of faith up until about 250 A.D. was, "I belive in God, the Almighty" [Articles of the Apostolic Creed, Theodore Zahn, pp. 33-37]. Between 180 and 210 A.D. the word "Father" was added before the "Almighty". This was bitterly contested by a number of the leaders of the Church. Bishop Victor and Bishop Zephysius are on record as condemning this movement, since they regarded it an unthinkable sacrilege to add or subtract any word to the Scriptures. They opposed the tendencey to regard Jesus as divine. They laid great stress on the Unity of God as expressed in the original teachings of Jesus and asserted that although he was a prophet, he was essentially a man like other men, even if highly favoured by his Lord. The same faith was held by the Churches which had sprung up in North Africa and West Asia. As the teaching of Jesus was spread, it came into contact with other cultures and into conflict with those in authority. It began to be assimilated and adapted by these cultures and was also altered to diminsh persecution by the rulers. In Greece, especially, it became metamorphosed, both by its being expressed in a new language for the first time, and by its realignment with the ideas and philosophy of that culture. It was teh many-gods viewpoint of the Greeks which largely contributed to the formulation of this doctrine of the Trinity, together with the gradual elevation of Jesus by some, notably Paul of Tasus, from a prophet to God. It was only in 325 A.D. that the doctrine of the Trinity was declared to be the orthodox Christian belief. Even then some of those who signed the creed did not believe in it, as they could find no authority for it in the Scriptures. Athanasius, who is considered to be the father of this creed, was himself not very sure of its truth. He admits that, "Whenever he forced his understanding to meditate on the divinity of Jesus, his toilsome and unavailing efforts recoiled on themselves- that the more he wrote the less capable was he of expressing his thoughts." At one point he even wrote, "There are not three but ONE GOD." His belief in the doctrine of the Trinity was not based on conviction but on policy and apparent necessity. That this historic decision was based just as much on political expediency as on the faulty reasoning of philosophy is shown by the part played by Constantine, the pagan emperor of Rome, who presided over the council of Nicea. The growing communities of Christians were a force whose opposition he had no wish for, who weakened his Empire and whose support would be invaluable in strengthening it. By remodelling Christianity, he hoped to gain the Church's support and at the same time end the confusion which had arisen within it and which was the source of yet more convlict within his empire. The process by which he partially acheived this aim may be illustrated by an incident which occured in the Second World War.
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