Now I come to the sources of the enlightenment. Here we are in the good position that the Enlightenment appeared very early as theology. The movement which did this is called Socinianism, from Faustus Socinius, who f led from Italy to Poland where he found a haven of security against the Counter-Reformation and at the same time against the persecution -complex of some of the Reformation churches; he wrote a book called,”The Catechism of Rakovitz.” where he developed the first fully rationalistic Protestant theology. Everything later is partly dependent on his ideas, and partly a restatement of the same ideas on the basis of similar sources. Therefore Harnack, in his History of Christian Dogma says that Socinianism – you can keep in mind the year 1600 – was the end of the history of Christian dogma. In Protestantism there was still some dogma – at least the early dogmas – preserved. Socinianism dissolves all the Christian dogmas with the help of Renaissance rationalism. and humanism. So this is a very important movement, more important even than the repetition of it: first in English deism, where it is radicalized; and then in modern liberal theology, including Harnack himself, where it is carried through.
1) The Socinians accept the authority of the Bible, but they declare that in non- essential things the Bible may fall into error. Beyond this, historical criticism is necessary. The criterion for historical criticism is that nothing can be a revelation of God–and therefore in the Bible–which is against reason and common sense and nothing can be in the Bible as revelation of God which is morally useless. Therefore he speaks of religio rationalis , rational religion, which is given in the Bible and which is the criterion for the authority of the Bible.
