Chapter Eight
tater Unitarians
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Christianity
Whereas the early Unitarians in the history of Christianity tended
to come from the Holy Land and North Africa and were Unitar
ians because theyhadaccess to the original teachings of Jesus, peace
be on him, the later Unitarians tended to come from Europe - and
then later from America and the rest of the colonised world as weIl
- and became Unitarians largely as a result of the exercise of com
mon sense and rational thought.
In other words, whereas the early Unitarians were in a position
to benefit from direct transmission of both behaviour and knowl
edge, the later Unitarians no longer had access to this kind of wis
dom, but were nevertheless still in a position to work things out
for themselves - sometimes because of and sometimes in spite of
what limited written records there still were in existence, and of
ten in spite of the misconception shared with the Trinitarians that
Jesus was crucified and then rose from the dead.
The later Unitarians no longer had access to the original teach
ings of Jesus in their entirety, nor to his way of life, both of which
had long been lost to posterity and in any case superseded by the
advent of Islam, but when they looked at what had become of the
Trinitarian Church and its doctrines, then they realised that sorne
thing was seriously amiss and, after using their intellects to criti
cally appraise the main doctrines and practices of the Trinitarians - neither of which derived from Jesus - they at least arrived at an
intellectual recognition of the Divine Unity, especially once they
had the good fortune and the courage to realise and appreciate
that much of the dogrna and religious practices which had been
evolved by the European Trinitarian Christians, during the course
of many centuries, not only had not come from Jesus in the first
place, but also simply did not make any sense anyway.