[mizpeh]

I read this over at Parchment and Pen. It is written by a Biblical Unitarian, David Burke, but I am in full agreement with what he states:

Before entering any discussion about Who and what God is, it is important for us to keep in mind an essential point: the Christian God is the Jewish God and everything that we know about Him through the Christian message was already known to the Jews through Judaism. Christianity added nothing to the nature or identity of God, but took for granted the definitions and principles already present in Judaism. Biblical Unitarianism stands firmly within the context of Old Testament Judaism and first-century Christianity; our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, John and Paul.

Equally important is the origin of Christianity. Although generally regarded today as a western religion, Christianity was originally a Jewish sect, with Jesus first preached to the Jews and later to the Gentiles. Since most of the earliest Christians were Jews, we must strive to understand the Christian faith as they did, and not as it was later interpreted by Gentile Christians of later centuries, many of whom lacked an essential understanding of Jewish religious traditions.

The first-century Jewish opponents of Christianity insisted that it constituted a heretical breach from Judaism, but in the pages of the NT we are able to see that Christians proved otherwise, demonstrating powerfully from Scripture that Christianity is the end result of a process which had begun with Israel. Thus, as Christians, we must recognise and acknowledge that there is a doctrinal continuity from Judaism to Christianity which cannot be broken. This continuity is emphasised by the apostle Paul in Galatians 3:24, where he says that the Law of Moses was “…our instructor into Christ.”

But how was the Law of Moses our instructor? In what way could this rigid Old Testament legal system prepare anyone for the message of love and grace that we find in Christianity? This is a point to which I shall return in later discussions.

Trinitarians recognise the vital importance of the Judaeo-Christian continuum, as evidenced by their sensitivity to the theological tension which results from the anachronistic imposition of Trinitarian interpretations upon first-century doctrinal statements. Since it is now widely accepted that the first-century church was not Trinitarian, it has become necessary for Trinitarians to explain (a) why this was and (b) how Trinitarianism successfully emerged from an ideological climate which was wholly unfavourable to it.

Various scholars (not all of them strictly Trinitarian) have approached this problem with considerable ingenuity but limited success. For example, James F. McGrath postulates that Johannine Christological development was a tentative process which blurred the distinction between the pre-existent logos and the pre-existent Jesus without ever committing to a fully defined ontological unity between Father and Son. James D. G. Dunn takes a similar position.

Larry Hurtado (whose work reflects the influence of Alan Segal’s “angelomorphic” or “two powers” model) is bolder, but even he can only offer an “early binitarian” hypothesis which is ultimately unsatisfactory. A closer examination of these issues will be presented in Weeks 2 & 3 of the debate.

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blo...ure/#more-4264