Pre-existence

Did the Son of God already exist before Jesus of Nazareth was born? The great churches affirm it, as binding doctrine since the councils of the fourth century, and even among the opponents of the Trinity some held fast to it. Fausto Sozzini denied it — not to diminish Christ, but to see him as the apostles proclaimed him: as a true man whom God by his Spirit caused to come into being in the Virgin’s womb, led through death and resurrection, and raised to a glory that surpasses all things.

The Question: Was There a Son of God before Jesus?

Pre-existence (from Latin prae, “before”, and existere, “to come forth, to exist”) is the name for the doctrine that Christ already existed as a person before his human birth. That Christ was settled in God’s plan before the world began is denied by no one who reads the Bible. Peter calls him the one “who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (1 Pet 1:20). What is disputed is whether he also actually existed at that time: as an acting being who later became man.

In the preface to his disputation with Erasmus Johannis, Sozzini distinguishes the two forms in which this doctrine was held in his day. He regards both as the source of a momentous ignorance, for whoever thinks in this way fails to recognise the exaltation of the man Jesus:

“But the origin and head of an ignorance so great and so ruinous is, and always has been, not to think rightly about the existence of the only-begotten Son of God, and to suppose that before Jesus of Nazareth was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin, there already existed in reality and completely an only-begotten Son of God — one, namely, who had either been begotten from the very essence of God the Father, or created out of nothing by God himself before anything else was created, and who in his own time assumed human nature, or put on the man, or, as others prefer to say, a human body, that is, flesh.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Dedicatory Preface to Hieronim Moskorzowski › Why the Knowledge of Christ’s Exaltation Is Necessary

The first form is the doctrine of the great churches. The Council of Nicaea had laid it down in 325 against the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, for whom the Son was a creature, made by God out of nothing before all ages. The second form is that of Arius himself. In the sixteenth century it was taken up again by some antitrinitarians who rejected the Trinity but would not give up a heavenly pre-existence of Christ. Still others, such as Michael Servetus, who was burned at Geneva in 1553, denied the eternal Son but held fast to an eternal Word in God. Sozzini contests every one of these forms: there was no Son of God before Jesus of Nazareth was conceived.

How deeply this question divided even the antitrinitarians is shown by the disputation that Sozzini held with Erasmus Johannis in Kraków in 1584. Both confessed the one God, the Father. But Erasmus, later preacher of the Unitarian congregation at Kolozsvár in Transylvania, held Christ to be a spiritual substance which God had created first of all things and which afterwards put on a human body. He asked the congregation in Kraków for leave to set out his reasons, and the brethren charged Sozzini with the reply:

“The brethren consented; and, in accordance with the wish of Erasmus himself, they committed to one of their number by name the task of answering his arguments in the presence of the others who were to be there. And that one was I myself. So for two days we disputed in a friendly and peaceable manner, I answering singly and in order to everything that Erasmus brought forward — although my answers could by no means be approved by Erasmus.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Dedicatory Preface to Hieronim Moskorzowski › How This Disputation Came About

Sozzini completed his written refutation on 30 November 1584. Erasmus never replied; in 1595 Sozzini nonetheless had the disputation printed, expressly so that godly and learned readers might judge for themselves. He had already defended the same doctrine against the other side. The Reformed theologian Andreas Volanus (Andrzej Wolan) of Lithuania had attacked the Polish Brethren in a written admonition as “Samosatenians” and “Ebionites”. Sozzini’s two answers to it, On the Nature of Jesus Christ, likewise go through the proof texts for a pre-existence of Christ one by one; the second is dated September 1583, the dedication of the work 14 June 1588. Together with the Racovian Catechism, Sozzini’s commentary on the First Epistle of John and the expositions of György Enyedi and Johannes Crell, these two writings form the basis of the account that follows. The Catechism is quoted according to the Latin version revised by Johannes Crell, Jonas Schlichting and Martin Ruar.

The Other Side in Its Own Words

The doctrine of the Church found its binding form in the Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople, which is recited in most churches to this day. In the West it was said in Latin; the section on Christ reads, in the classic wording of the Book of Common Prayer (1662):

It contains three elements: a Son before all worlds, a creation through him, and a descent from heaven into the flesh. Erasmus Johannis contested the first in the council’s form, for his Christ was not eternal but the first creature; to the second and third he held fast. According to a note in the printed edition, the disputation reproduces his reasons from his own summary, “so far as it could be done, word for word”. The second reason shows what mattered to him:

Christ’s dignity, God’s majesty, the greatness of redemption, the encomia of Scripture: all this seemed to Erasmus to require that Christ be more than a man, even more than a man endowed with greater gifts than all others. His fifth reason, on which, as he said, the whole controversy depended, was that Sozzini’s opinion “cannot be defended unless very many sayings of Scripture are violently wrested”. Sozzini answers this charge by going through the passages one by one. The other reasons he attacks at the root.

Sozzini’s Starting Point: A True Man and Yet God’s Son

For Sozzini the question of a pre-existence of Christ is no learned subtlety; it touches the very ground of salvation. In the preface to his disputation he writes:

“See where that opinion about the existence of the only-begotten Son of God before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth from the virgin leads in the end: namely, that not only is the wonderful work of God, surpassing all others and most salutary for the human race — the raising of the man Jesus Christ to equality with himself — darkened, but that Jesus Christ is denied to be a true human being. That is to say, the very ground of our eternal salvation is almost utterly overthrown, and the most wise purpose of God himself, to hand down and to point out to us the way to immortality, is rendered well-nigh void.”

En quo tandem perducat sententia ista de unigeniti filii Dei, ante Jesum Nazarenum ex virgine natum, existentia …

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Dedicatory Preface to Hieronim Moskorzowski › Why the Knowledge of Christ’s Exaltation Is Necessary

God’s greatest work, according to Sozzini, is not that a heavenly being came down to earth, but that God raised a man from our midst to his own majesty. Whoever assumes a Son before this man turns attention away from the exaltation to the pre-existence and loses sight of the very one in whom it is shown where God means to lead mankind. That is why Sozzini insists on Paul’s word that the one mediator is “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5):

“But the leader and guide of that way, by the purpose of God himself, was Jesus Christ as a man, and no other; as the Apostle Paul expressly attests, that there is only one mediator between God and human beings: the man Christ Jesus. Therefore we must acknowledge that this very man has been raised to so great a majesty. And this they only will do rightly and truly who acknowledge no other only-begotten Son of God before or besides this man.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Dedicatory Preface to Hieronim Moskorzowski › The Dedication and the Aim of the Congregation

What, then, makes Jesus the Son of God, if not a begetting before all time? The Racovian Catechism opens its doctrine of the person of Christ with the statement “that by his nature he is a true human being, once indeed mortal when he lived on earth, but now immortal”. Immediately afterwards it asks whether Jesus is then an ordinary man:

“Is the Lord Jesus, then, a mere or ordinary human being?

“By no means. For although he is a human being by nature, he is nevertheless at the same time the only-begotten Son of God, and this even from his very first origin. For he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin without any intercourse with a man and had no other father than God; … About this the angel speaks to Mary in Luke 1:35: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy one who will be born of you will be called the Son of God.’”

Racovian Catechism — Of the Knowledge of Christ

The conception is not the only reason why Jesus is called the Son of God. In his examination of a Trinitarian line of argument, Sozzini lists the reasons that Scripture gives for it. A begetting from God’s essence is not among them:

“For nowhere will you find that cause expressed or even hinted at, that he was begotten of the substantia or essence of God itself. But either on account of the manner of his conception in his mother’s womb; or on account of his sanctification by God and his sending into the world; or on account of his resurrection from the dead, upon which, namely, followed his glorification and his exaltation above all created things; or on account of the eternal priesthood and kingdom which he received from God; or on account of other such things you will find that he is and is called the Son of God.”

Fausto Sozzini, An Examination of the Argument for the Triune and One God (Argumenti pro trino et uno Deo examinatio), in the volume On the Authority of Holy Scripture — Christ’s Sonship of God according to the Flesh

Even the psalm verse to which the doctrine of eternal generation readily appeals — “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (Ps 2:7) — is referred by Paul to the raising of Jesus (Acts 13:33). The Catechism soberly observes: “For the word ‘today’, since it designates a definite time, cannot possibly designate eternity.”

Johannes Crell (1590–1633), rector of the Academy of Raków, drew a further argument from Luke’s account. Had Jesus already existed as a person from eternity, he would already have been the Son of God at the Annunciation, and the angel could at most have spoken of a second, new sonship. Crell asks:

“Why, then, is there not the slightest indication of this in the angel’s words? Why did he not speak so as to make it evident that this same person had indeed already been the Son of God before from all eternity, but would now come to be so in yet another, new manner?”

Johannes Crell, On the One God, the Father (De uno Deo Patre, 1631) — Book One, Second Section, Ch. XXXI

Divine sonship, then, begins with the conception. Of an earlier sonship the angel knows nothing, and had there been one, he could not have kept silent about it.

Dignity without Pre-existence

Sozzini turns the charge that he robs Christ of his dignity on its head. For him dignity lies not in the stuff of which someone is made but in what he does. And God’s glory is all the greater, the humbler the instrument through which he works great things:

“But a dignity of that sort is not so much to be sought for the person of Christ; and far more highly than it is that to be esteemed, and far more is that to be said to pertain to the glory and honour of Christ, with which that dignity cannot stand together: namely, that although, as regards the essence itself, Christ was nothing other than a human being, he nevertheless showed himself in voluntary and praiseworthy sayings and works such as no human being has shown himself or ever will show himself.

“Add to this that we ought not to be so solicitous for the glory of Christ himself — much less for that dignity — as for the glory of God. But this appears far greater if God accomplished so many and so great things through Christ, although a mere human being, than if he had accomplished the same things through him as endowed with some more divine essence — even though that essence had been given him by God. Just as a craftsman is far more worthy of praise and glory if with some meaner instrument, and one in itself less fit for the matter, he makes some notable work, than if he made the same work with some more excellent instrument, and one in itself most fit for the matter — even though that instrument had been fashioned by himself.”

Atqui haec multo major conspicitur, si per Christum, licet purum hominem, tot tantaque Deus patraverit …

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — The Five Reasons of Erasmus Johannis and Their Refutation › Answer to the Second Reason: Dignity of the Person

This is no concession; it is the heart of Sozzini’s thinking. The most wonderful thing about Christ is not a heavenly origin but that God has given a crucified man “all power … in heaven and in earth” (Matt 28:18). When Erasmus listed the most excellent works of God, Sozzini reproached him:

“This one thing only will I say: that I wonder greatly that among the immediate works of God which are by far the most excellent you have not mentioned that one which I named — namely the creation of the redeemer —, and at the same time the exaltation of the man Jesus Christ; whether anyone can grasp, even in thought, a work of God more excellent and wonderful than these, I do not know.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Eighth Argument: The Dignity of the Works › Recollection of the Spoken Conversation

From this basic thought follows a series of reasons that Sozzini and his successors advance again and again against a pre-existence of Christ:

1. The mediator is a man. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). Otherwise, says Sozzini, Paul “would not have been content here with the simple appellation ‘man’”.
2. The Messiah had to be a man. Israel awaited a king of the seed of David, and a true king must be of the same kind as those over whom he rules.
3. A Son who puts on a man would be neither. If Christ consisted of a heavenly Son and the man whom this Son had put on, he would, according to Sozzini, really be “neither the only-begotten Son of God nor the son of Mary”, just as a human being made up of soul and body is neither the soul nor the body.
4. An example must be visible. Paul holds Christ up for imitation (Phil 2:5; 2 Cor 8:9). What someone is supposed to have done before his birth no one has seen, and no one can imitate it.
5. Exaltation presupposes lowliness. “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him” (Phil 2:9). Only through death and resurrection did Christ become our Lord “really and in full right” (Rom 14:9). Whoever ascribes this lordship to him before the world makes the exaltation a mere return.
6. Scripture is silent about an incarnation. Luke tells of the manger, but says nothing of a heavenly being taking flesh. For Crell such silence about so great an event is inexplicable.

The Proof Texts of the Other Side

Erasmus had brought forward fourteen arguments from Scripture, Volanus similar ones. The Racovian Catechism names three principal proofs of the opponents: Christ was in the beginning, in heaven, and before Abraham. Sozzini’s method is the same throughout. He takes the wording seriously, reads the context, and asks what the first readers could have understood. For the burden of proof he laid down a clear rule:

“From which it is understood that not only in this but also in most of your other arguments, in which the same thing in fact happens, there is a certain tacit begging of the question; and since this turns upon the affirmation of a thing which is otherwise of itself plainly paradoxical and utterly absurd — namely, that someone existed before he was born of his mother — any exception whatever, even one of little probability, provided there can by any reasoning be room for it, is enough to weaken and dissolve these argumentations of yours.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Third Argument: Humiliation Presupposes a Former Glory › Two Absurdities of the Contrary Position

Whoever asserts something as extraordinary as a life before one’s own birth must prove it conclusively. Sozzini therefore need not prove the right interpretation in every case; it is enough to show that the text admits another, simpler one. For the most part, however, he does more.

John 1:1–3: “In the Beginning Was the Word”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him” (John 1:1–3). There is no passage in the New Testament, writes György Enyedi, the superintendent of the Transylvanian Unitarians, from which people believe they can prove “the divinity and existence of Christ before his mother” more surely than from this one. Sozzini and the Catechism read it differently, word by word.

“The beginning” does not mean the beginning of the world. A beginning, says the Catechism, is the very opposite of eternity; which beginning is meant follows from the subject about which John is writing:

“In the cited passage, where it is said that the Word or Speech was in the beginning (John 1:1), nothing is found about that pre-eternity, since here the beginning is mentioned, which is the opposite of pre-eternity. But the word ‘beginning’, used indefinitely, is understood from the subject and the matter at hand: since for John this is the Gospel, that is, the things that took place under the Gospel, nothing else remains to be understood here than the beginning of the Gospel, and indeed one already known to the Christians to whom he writes; which was the coming and preaching of the Baptist, as all the Evangelists testify, who arrange the Gospel itself from the coming and preaching of the Baptist.”

Racovian Catechism — Of the Knowledge of Christ › Examination of the Scriptural Proofs for Christ’s Divine Nature › The Word in the Beginning

Mark, too, begins in this way: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1), and at once tells of the Baptist. John uses the word in the same way when Jesus says to the disciples: “because ye have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:27). In his commentary on the First Epistle of John, Sozzini makes a rule of this: the phrase “from the beginning” does not mean the beginning of the world but “must be referred to the subject treated of”.

For Sozzini the Word is no second being beside God, but a name of the man Jesus, because through him God made known his gospel:

“Further: as to what John says, that all things were made through the Word, this is to be referred to all those things which pertained to the business of the Gospel, of which he himself had undertaken to write, and which that man Christ Jesus first laid open to the world; for which cause he had called him ‘Word’ or ‘Discourse’.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › Colossians 1: The Firstborn of Creation

The Catechism explains the name in a similar way: Jesus is called the Word of God “because he has been the interpreter and executor of the divine will”. In the Catechism’s view, the statement that the Word was “with God” also has a historical sense. Jesus, it says, was “already in possession of his office at the beginning of the Gospel, although he was not yet exercising it, since at that time he was dwelling with God” — that is, while the Baptist was preaching; what is meant by this will become clear in the section on the coming down from heaven. And “the Word was God”? According to the Catechism, the Word of God “must necessarily be something other than God himself”, for the Word was with God. He is called God because God gave him divine power. In this sense Sozzini does not shrink from calling Christ true God:

“Since that Word, which is nothing else than the man Jesus Christ, owes his divinity wholly to the creator of heaven and earth, the true God, and is plainly subordinate to him, then, even though he too is true God, two true Gods are nevertheless not thereby set up in such a sense that anyone could rightly take offence at it.”

Fausto Sozzini, Answers to the Theses on the Exclusion of Christ from the True Divinity (Theses de Christo a vera divinitate excludendo), in the volume On the Authority of Holy Scripture — To the Sixth Thesis

The Racovian New Testament, the German translation of the Polish Brethren of 1630, renders the verse accordingly: “In the beginning was the Speech, and the Speech was with God, and the Speech was a God.” Finally, Sozzini refers the statement that “all things” were made through the Word to the new creation brought about by the gospel. Enyedi bases this on the promises of the prophets:

“For God had once promised through Isaiah a new heaven and a new earth, and through Jeremiah a new covenant. These things the apostles apply to the time and the appearing of Christ. And of him it is said that he himself is the new man, the new Adam, that he has a new kingdom, new citizens (Luke 19:12, 27; Matt 21:41) — why not, then, a new creation as well? Certainly it is said more than once that a new creation has been made through Christ. Therefore the matter itself not only counsels us but even compels us to understand this saying of John, too, of the new creation.”

György Enyedi, Explanations of the Biblical Passages on the Trinity (Explicationes locorum, 1598) — The Gospel according to John › John 1: On the Prologue of John’s Gospel

What is meant, then, is not the creation of heaven and earth, but everything that became new with the gospel: the new covenant, the church, the hope of eternal life. The Catechism speaks of the things “that belong to the new creation brought about through his Gospel”.

John 1:14: “And the Word Was Made Flesh”

If the Word is Jesus himself, how can it be said that the Word “was made flesh” (John 1:14)? The Catechism confronts the other side with a dilemma:

“To become or to be born a human being is said of someone who did not previously exist. And if the speech became flesh in the proper sense — for nothing compels us to depart from the literal meaning — then it was either actually already a person before it became flesh, or it was not. If it was a person, then by becoming flesh, that is, another substance, it ceased to be that substance and consequently that person which it was. Therefore it was not that one God. But if it was not an actually existing person, it was even less that one God.”

Racovian Catechism — Of the Knowledge of Christ › The Incarnation of Christ and Its Scriptural Testimonies › The Word Became Flesh

The Greek egeneto, the Catechism adds, can also mean “was”: “The speech was flesh”, that is, a human being “subject to misery, afflictions, and finally death no less than the rest of humankind”. In the Bible “flesh” denotes mortal man: “for that he also is flesh” (Gen 6:3). Enyedi points to Heb 2:14: because the children “are partakers of flesh and blood”, Christ “also himself likewise took part of the same”. But the children did not become flesh; they were born as human beings, and the same is true of Christ. In the same way Sozzini understands the “come in the flesh” of the First Epistle of John (see below).

John 1:15, 30: “For He Was before Me”

The Baptist says of Jesus: “After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me” (John 1:30). A man who existed before John, though John was the elder — so a pre-existence after all? Following Beza, Enyedi shows that the Greek emprosthen (“before”), which the King James Version here renders “preferred before”, is nowhere in the New Testament used of time, and that the second half of the sentence gives the reason for the first:

“But if we say that both ἔμπροσθέν μου and πρῶτός μου signify time, then the same is proved by the same, and there would be manifest trifling in the words of the Baptist. For what sort of inference, pray, would this be: ‘He was before me in time, because he was earlier than I in time’? It would be just as if someone said: ‘Aristotle lived before me, because he existed earlier than I in time.’”

György Enyedi, Explanations of the Biblical Passages on the Trinity (Explicationes locorum, 1598) — The Gospel according to John › John 1:15

What is meant is rank. Jesus was preferred before the Baptist because he is “more excellent”. The Racovian New Testament translates accordingly: “for he was more excellent than I”.

Come Down from Heaven: John 3:13; 6:38, 62; 16:28

“For I came down from heaven”, says Jesus (John 6:38), and: “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” (John 6:62). Volanus objected to Sozzini that Christ testifies to his descent from heaven “expressly and without the wrappings of figures”. Sozzini first replies that Volanus himself cannot take these words literally:

“But how do you dare to affirm that Christ spoke so without any figure, since in the same discourse he says that the bread which he will give is his flesh, which he will give for the life of the world, and had before repeatedly testified that this life-giving bread had descended from heaven? Certainly the flesh of Christ was formed in the womb of the virgin Mary, and did not really fall down from heaven — or at least you yourself think so. Therefore ‘to descend from heaven’ in the words of Christ must necessarily be taken otherwise than those words seem to you to sound.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › Descended from Heaven

In the language of Scripture, “to descend from heaven” means first of all “to proceed from God himself”, just as the baptism of John was “from heaven” (Matt 21:25) and every good gift is “from above” (Jas 1:17). Paul calls Christ the second man “from heaven” and adds: “as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly” (1 Cor 15:47–48). Enyedi concludes that if the phrase denoted a movement from one place to another, “all the godly too must be said to have really descended from heaven”.

But then Sozzini goes a step further, and here lies the most distinctive doctrine of the Socinians. The words about descending and ascending again can even be taken literally if they are referred to the man Jesus:

“But what follows at last if it be granted that Christ, truly and properly speaking, was in heaven before he was taken up thither after his death? Does it follow from this that he existed from eternity, or at least before he was born of Mary? By no means. For he could really have been in heaven before he died, after he was born of Mary; and not only could he, but — so to speak — he had to be. For if that man Paul, the servant of Christ, was caught up before his death even to the third heaven and was in paradise itself, it becomes in no way probable to us that Christ himself — that man, namely — was not in heaven before his death, and that the servant obtained greater things in this life than the Lord … Especially since, if Paul, as is probable, was caught up thither in order to see those mysteries of God which he himself testifies that he saw and that a man cannot utter, then in the case of Christ, in whom the knowledge of all divine things was without measure — as indeed it had to be —, it seems in no way to be doubted that he abode there for some time before he publicly undertook the office committed to him by the Father of imbuing men with heavenly doctrine.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › The Communication of Properties

In his second answer to Volanus, Sozzini calls this interpretation “the truest of all” and affirms “that Jesus of Nazareth was for a while in heaven in that intervening time”. The Greek hopou ēn to proteron in John 6:62 can, he notes, be rendered “where he was before or had been before”, and so proves no permanent dwelling in heaven. On John 3:13 he states that, by Christ’s own words, the one who came down from heaven was “the Son of man himself — that is, he as man”. The Racovian Catechism adopted this doctrine. To the question how Jesus came to know the will of God it answers:

“But in what manner did the Lord Jesus himself arrive at the knowledge of this divine will?

“By ascending into heaven and there beholding his Father, as well as that life and blessedness which he proclaimed to us, and by hearing from the same Father all that he was to teach; from whom he was then sent down from heaven to earth and endowed with an immeasurable fullness of the Holy Spirit, by whose inspiration he uttered all that he had learned from the Father.”

Racovian Catechism — The Prophetic Office of Christ › The Origin of Christ’s Knowledge

Sent into the World: Galatians 4:4

Erasmus inferred from the sending of the Son that he had been sent forth in order to be born, and so had existed beforehand. Sozzini confronts him with Paul’s own wording: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman” (Gal 4:4).

“Good God, what do I hear? That anyone is sent forth to be born? Who has ever spoken so? Certainly the testimonies brought forward by you do not say that Christ was sent forth to be born. But you will say that this is your interpretation. A wonderful interpretation indeed, which makes Paul say the contrary of what he openly says. For he, as you yourself recited his words, says that God sent forth his Son, born of a woman. But now he who is sent forth born is already born when he is sent forth.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Eleventh Argument: “He Sent His Son”

“To be sent into the world” means to be entrusted with an office among men. Jesus says it of his disciples in the very same words: “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world” (John 17:18). Enyedi draws the conclusion:

“But that such a going forth and such a sending signifies no pre-existence in heaven can easily be shown from similar sayings. For Christ says in John 17:18: ‘As thou (Father) hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.’ And in John 20:21: ‘As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you.’ If, then, from the fact that Christ was sent into the world by God it must be concluded that he was previously in heaven, the same will have to be said of the apostles too; for Christ says that he sent them in like manner.”

György Enyedi, Explanations of the Biblical Passages on the Trinity (Explicationes locorum, 1598) — The Gospel according to John › John 16:28

Likewise Jesus says before Pilate: “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” (John 18:37) — first born, then come into the world, as Sozzini and the Catechism stress. And when the Father “sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14), he did so, according to Sozzini, not because the Son had already been Saviour before he was sent, but “that he might be Saviour of the world”. The saying about going forth and returning in John 16:28, too, speaks of mission and homecoming, not of a life before birth.

John 8:58: “Before Abraham Was, I Am”

Hardly any saying of Jesus is cited so often for his pre-existence (John 8:58). Sozzini first observes that Jesus never claims to have seen Abraham: Abraham, as a prophet, saw Christ’s day in advance (John 8:56). Then he turns to the grammar. The Greek infinitive, he argues, depends on verbs in the present tense and must therefore be referred to the future: “before Abraham is”, that is, before Abraham comes to be. And the clause belongs not to “I am” but to “I say unto you”:

“Although, as I judge, that member of the period, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, is rather to be joined not with the verb εἰμί but with the verb λέγω; and the word ὅτι, or ‘that’, which must altogether be understood in this period, is to be placed not before it but immediately before the verb εἰμί, so that the whole passage is rendered in Latin thus: ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham is, that I am.’”

Amen Amen dico vobis, antequam Abraham fiat, quod ego sum.

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Fourth Argument: “Before Abraham Was, I Am” › The Reading of the Saying of Christ

“I am” has the same sense here as in John 8:24 (“if ye believe not that I am he”): I am the Christ. And Abraham has yet to “come to be” what his name signifies:

“That man Abraham had indeed already come to be; but there had not yet come to be that which his name signified and on account of which that name had been laid upon him by God. Not yet had many nations obtained the faith, and therefore that man Abraham, who is the father of believers, had not yet become the father of many nations; nor further could it yet be said that Abraham himself had truly come to be, since ‘Abraham’ is nothing else than ‘father of a multitude’, that is, of many nations. … As therefore Christ on another occasion admonished the Jews that they should walk while they had the light, and repeatedly threatened them not obscurely that it would come to pass that the kingdom of God would be given to the nations, but they themselves deprived of it, so in this place too he admonishes them, not without silent threats, that before the door of faith is opened to the nations they should acknowledge that he is the Christ.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › Before Abraham Was

Enyedi considers the usual translation a solecism: “Who, pray, would speak like this: ‘Before Alexander fought with Darius, I am’?” The Racovian Catechism completes the “I am” from John 8:12 as “I am the light of the world”, and the Racovian New Testament translates: “before Abraham comes to be, I am”. Sozzini himself stresses that the interpretation is not his own but comes from the man who “in our age first brought to light” the truth about the essence and person of Christ. He presumably means his uncle, Lelio Sozzini.

John 17:5: “With the Glory Which I Had with Thee before the World Was”

“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). Erasmus read this as a petition to be restored to the glory which Christ “had enjoyed in the heavens before the founding of the world”. Sozzini points to the same prayer, in which Jesus himself explains his words: “for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Before the world, Christ had the glory in the way believers have the grace “which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Tim 1:9): in God’s counsel.

“That love, therefore, with which God loved not only Christ but also us in him before the foundation of the world, is the cause why Christ rightly said that he already then had clarity or glory with God, or that it had been given him by him — and why we can rightly say the same of ourselves. Christ did not, however, speak thus of himself because he already then had it in reality.”

Non autem ita locutus est de se Christus, quia jam tum illam reipsa haberet.

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Sixth Argument: “The Glory Which I Had with You Before the World Was” › Christ’s Own Explanation of His Words

In this interpretation Sozzini does not stand alone. He appeals, of all people, to a Trinitarian: in his tractates on the Gospel of John, Augustine had referred the passage to the man Christ and explained it by predestination:

“And now glorify me; that is, as then, so now also; as then in predestination, so now also in perfection. Do in the world what was already with you before the world; do in its own time what you determined before all times. … For we are chosen just as he is glorified: because, before the world was, neither were we, nor was he himself, the mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.”

Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 105, quoted in Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Sixth Argument › The Testimony of Augustine

The Catechism sums this up in the principle that someone can have something “with the Father” without actually existing at the time. Elsewhere Sozzini states the general rule: “For what God has decreed is held as already done”. The glory prayed for, moreover, presupposes what did not exist before the world. God gave Christ “authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man” (John 5:27). A judge of the living and the dead, appointed because he is a man, could not possess this glory in reality before men were created. That Christ was “foreordained” (1 Pet 1:20) says exactly this.

Philippians 2:5–11 and 2 Corinthians 8:9: The Form of God and the Form of a Servant

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Phil 2:5–7). For Erasmus as for Volanus, so deep a humiliation presupposed a former glory. In his answer to Volanus, Sozzini begins with the subject of the sentence:

“But Jesus Christ himself truly was not before he was a man — even if that ‘Logos’, which you have feigned for yourselves beside that man, had really already been. For ‘Jesus’ is the proper name of that man, and ‘Christ’ means ‘the anointed’ and therefore necessarily refers to a man. For the divine nature cannot be anointed, nor has it any need to be anointed.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › Philippians 2: The Form of God

Paul, moreover, holds Christ up as an example. But an example must be something one can see and imitate. Enyedi makes this vivid with an image:

“If, for instance, someone wished to exhort another to swiftness by an example and spoke thus: ‘Be swift, as you see that that bird is swift’, this example would be inept. For the one exhorted could answer that he is neither a bird, nor has wings, nor is able to fly, and that therefore he is not bound to be swift either. In like manner the exhortation of Paul would be inept and empty if the opinion of the adversaries were true. For according to them this is the sense of Paul’s words: ‘Be humble, as Christ was, who, although before his mother he was the eternal God, afterwards became man, or took flesh.’ To this the Philippians could have answered that they had neither been eternal gods before their mother, nor could they have become men, or could become so; and that it therefore did not follow that, if Christ was humble, they too must be humble.”

György Enyedi, Explanations of the Biblical Passages on the Trinity (Explicationes locorum, 1598) — The Epistle to the Philippians › Phil 2:5

The “form of God” was, according to Sozzini, the divine power that Jesus exercised on earth. He “commanded the sea, the winds and the storms, and besides all diseases and infirmities, and death itself, and finally the demons”. He “never held it as a robbery, but always as a gift bestowed upon him”, and in his passion he “laid aside in appearance” this equality with God, when he let himself be seized, beaten and crucified. In the same way Sozzini reads 2 Cor 8:9: Christ was rich in heavenly gifts and divine operations “while he announced the Gospel of the kingdom of God”, and became poor when he no longer made use of them in his suffering. Sozzini translates word for word: “he begged, being rich”. Finally, on the Church’s doctrine the one who abased himself would not be the same as the one who was exalted:

“Moreover, he who abased himself would in truth not be the same as he who was afterwards exalted. For, as you would have it, it is God who abased himself, but the man who was exalted. Yet God, or the divine nature, as it cannot be exalted, so also cannot in truth abase itself.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › Philippians 2: The Form of God

That is why in the hymn the exaltation follows as a reward: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Phil 2:9), and all this is “to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11).

Colossians 1:15–17 and Hebrews 1:2: “By Him Were All Things Created”

“Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth” (Col 1:15–16). Against Volanus, Sozzini turns the title of firstborn into a dilemma:

“But if the expression ‘of every creature’ be referred to the ancient creation of things, then Christ must needs, as a created thing, have existed before the creation of heaven and earth, as Arius said. For the word ‘firstborn’ refers not only to dignity, but chiefly to time; and this is manifest from that very place. … Wherefore, unless you wish to be an Arian, you must altogether confess that it is not the first creation of things that is treated of there, but the second: in which Christ truly goes before all created things, as a created thing, not only in dignity but also in time — as all admit; and thus everything will be perfectly plain.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › Colossians 1: The Firstborn of Creation

Paul names “thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers”, not the sun, plants and animals. He means the new order of all rational beings, ever since God set the risen Christ as head over angels and men (Eph 1:20–22). Sozzini explains it with an image from political life:

“Namely because, as we said from the beginning, those things are created — that is, reformed — through Christ chiefly in so far as he began to have dominion over them and to rule and govern them. For besides that this of itself introduces a new form into that hierarchy, which before did not have such a lord and ruler, it is also the cause of the power and offices of all those who are contained in it being changed, increased or diminished, as it shall seem good to him. Just as we see happen if someone has been made prince and lord of some commonwealth. Which commonwealth, even for this reason, that it has obtained a prince and lord which it did not have before, no one will dare to deny to have obtained at the same time a new form.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Fourteenth Argument: “Through Him All Things Were Created” › The Circumstances of the Passage and the Comparison with Ephesians

And that Christ is “before all things” (Col 1:17) is, according to Enyedi, “to be referred not to time but to dignity”.

The same applies to Heb 1:2, where God “made the worlds” by the Son — in Greek, “the ages”. Which ages, the author himself explains: “For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak” (Heb 2:5). The Catechism adds that these ages were made through him whom God appointed “heir of all things”, which happened only after the resurrection. Sozzini sums up the rule as follows:

“But I say that, since it seems of itself utterly ridiculous and absurd to attribute to Christ that the world was first created through him, unless it be first established that he already existed then, when the world was first created; or at any rate, since nothing has anywhere been expressly written about that first creation made through him, it is plainly fitting that the passages in which it is said that a creation was made through Christ should be taken not of the first but of the second creation.

“For neither is nor can there be anything absurd in this, that the second creation was made through Christ; and that it was made is both most certain and most attested.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Fourteenth Argument: “Through Him All Things Were Created” › The Last Objection

The statements about creation through Christ therefore describe not the beginning of the world, but the new beginning that God made with the risen Christ.

Hebrews 1:6, 10–12: The Angels and the Psalm of Creation

In the first chapter of Hebrews a psalm verse that speaks of the creation is also applied to Christ: “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands” (Heb 1:10, quoting Ps 102:25). Sozzini replies that the author quotes the passage for the sake of what follows: the changing of this present age and the everlasting duration of the King. He had to include the first sentence, Sozzini says, only because what follows would be unintelligible without it. Above all, he argues, a creation of the world does not fit what the chapter sets out to prove:

“Then, therefore, does this divine writer affirm that Christ was made more excellent than the angels: when, or after, purgation of our sins having been made through himself, he sat at the right hand of the majesty on high. Who then does not see that it cannot be that he adduced, for that pre-eminence of Christ over the angels which he means and afterwards sets about confirming from the Sacred Letters, a testimony in which the first creation of heaven and earth was attributed to Christ?”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Existence of the Only-Begotten Son of God (De unigeniti Filii Dei existentia) — Fifth Argument: “You, Lord, in the Beginning Founded the Earth” › Why the Whole Psalm Is Adduced

Enyedi argues in the same way: had the apostle wanted to prove that the Creator is greater than his creatures, he could have spared himself all these testimonies. “But no one has ever doubted that the Creator is more excellent than the creature.” The worship by the angels (Heb 1:6), too, is according to Sozzini paid to the exalted Christ: it “was not owed to Christ except after the death of the cross, as the reward of the utmost obedience”. Finally, the Catechism names a sense in which even the first creation can be referred to Christ. Because God had destined him for glory before all creation, “the world was created for the sake of the Messiah”.

John 12:41 and 1 Corinthians 10:4: Isaiah and the Rock in the Wilderness

“These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him” (John 12:41). Did Isaiah, then, see Christ, who was already living at that time? Sozzini refers “his glory” to the appearance of God in Isa 6 and points to an ancient manuscript which, according to a marginal note in the Greek edition of Robert Estienne, read “the glory of God”. But even if Christ is meant, Isaiah saw his glory as prophets see: “not indeed present then, but to come”. It is similar with Paul’s statement about the Israelites in the wilderness: “for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:4). The rock, says the Catechism, was Christ “in a figurative sense, namely because it was his image and likeness”. Enyedi recalls that a sign usually points to what is absent and still to come. And when Paul warns, “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted” (1 Cor 10:9), it follows for Enyedi from the very name “Christ”, that is, “Anointed”, that he cannot have been meant at that time: “How, then, could that be tempted which was not?”

Proverbs 8 and Micah 5:2: Wisdom and the Goings Forth from Everlasting

From the Old Testament two passages above all were adduced. In Prov 8:22–23 Wisdom speaks: “The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.” The Catechism sees in this not a person but the wisdom of God: Solomon “introduces it as speaking only through a prosopopoeia”, that is, lets it speak as though it were a person. Paul, it adds, calls the crucified Christ “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24) because God’s wisdom is revealed in him. Enyedi adds that Paul speaks “of Jesus crucified. But in the age of Solomon Jesus neither existed nor was crucified.” Of the future ruler from Bethlehem, Micah says that his “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Mic 5:2). The Catechism objects: “For here a beginning and days are mentioned, which have no place in such an eternity.” The Hebrew, it says, reads “from the beginning or from of old, from the days of antiquity”, and it refers this to descent from ancient times: Christ would trace the origin of his birth back to David, “who was both a Bethlehemite and the founder of the tribe and family of Christ”.

The First Epistle of John: “That Which Was from the Beginning” and “Come in the Flesh”

The First Epistle of John begins: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes … of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). In his commentary Sozzini points out that John uses the neuter gender: he means “not a persona but a thing”, namely the gospel. And the life, “that eternal life, which was with the Father” (1 John 1:2), was with the Father “because, namely, it had not before been disclosed, but was known only to God himself, who had resolved to bestow it upon men obedient to him”.

Later we read: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:2). Luther’s German Bible reads “into the flesh” here (in das Fleisch), and so the verse was understood as a confession of the incarnation. Sozzini rejects this reading, which the Protestants of his day followed in Theodore Beza’s Latin translation. The Greek has en sarki, “in the flesh” — as the King James Version, too, renders it — not “into the flesh”, and Jesus Christ could not have come “into the flesh” at all, since he “cannot even be conceived without human nature or apart from it”. “Come in the flesh” means that he appeared as a mortal, suffering man. It is in this context that we find the sentence which sums up Sozzini’s Christology most concisely:

“… Jesus Christ — who is no other, neither besides him nor before him, than that man Jesus of Nazareth, who first came into existence when he was born of the virgin …”

… Jesum Christum, qui nullus alius est nec praeter neque ante ipsum, quam homo ille Jesus Nazaraenus, qui tunc demum extitit, cum ex virgine natus est …

Fausto Sozzini, Commentary on the First Epistle of John (Commentarius in Epistolam Johannis Apostoli Primam) — The Testing of the Spirits and the Love of God › A defence of the affirmative rule for discerning spirits

Objections and Answers

“Then Jesus is only a man like any other.”

No. By a “mere human being” Sozzini understands “one who has indeed the essence of a human being and no other besides, but who for the rest can be endowed with qualities common to no other human being”. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, is without sin, was raised by God and exalted to his right hand. Sozzini even calls him God — not by essence, but because God appointed him to be so, and yet not in name only: “But now Christ, although a created thing, is God not by opinion only but in the thing itself — and indeed our God, really given and appointed to us by that one God.” How the worship of the exalted Christ is to be understood is discussed on the page The Worship of Christ.

“That is the old heresy of Ebion and of Paul of Samosata.”

Volanus even claimed that the Brethren venerated Ebion, Cerinthus and Paul of Samosata as saints. Sozzini’s answer is precise. With Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch in the third century, they agreed, he says, in that Paul denied “that the Son of God really existed before he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary”, and in other respects, too, his view of the person of Christ differed little from their own; yet they did not venerate him as a saint. From the Ebionites, who held Jesus to be the son of Joseph and clung to the law of Moses, they were separated by essentials. And he turns the charge around: the doctrine of his opponents is rather reminiscent of Cerinthus, according to whom a heavenly Christ came down upon the man Jesus only at his baptism:

“Now what, I ask, have these ravings in common with the view of our people, who steadfastly believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary without any act of Joseph and without any seed of his intervening, and who acknowledge no other Christ than this very Jesus who was born of Mary and really underwent the death of the cross and rose again? Does not rather the view of Volanus and of his followers agree with the opinion of Cerinthus, when they say that the eternal Son of God descended from heaven and joined the man to himself in one and the same hypostasis, and that that Son suffered and rose again not really but only by a figure of speech which they call the ‘communication of properties’ — while meanwhile that man alone really suffered and rose again?”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — Second Answer to All that Volanus Objected to the Foregoing Answer › Ebion, Cerinthus and the Samosatenian

The doctrine, he adds, is not new in any case. Paul of Samosata, Photinus and others had many disciples, and it had already been taught by “the apostles of Christ themselves”.

“Did not Christ raise himself?”

Erasmus appealed to John 2:19 (“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”) and John 10:18 (“I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again”). Whoever raises himself, he argued, must carry within him a being that does not die. Sozzini points to the sign of Jonah (Matt 12:40): Jonah did not free himself from the fish; the creature spewed him out because God willed it; in the same way the underworld gave Christ back at God’s command. The Greek labein in John 10:18, he says, often means not “to take” but “to receive”: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to receive it again.” For Sozzini, this is precisely where Christ’s greatness lies. He died trusting that God would give him life anew.

“The Church has always taught otherwise.”

Volanus appealed to the “perpetual judgement of the whole Church”. Sozzini counters that the Church must be measured by the apostles, and they distinguish the one God, the Father, from the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor 8:6; John 17:3): “How then does Volanus dare to assert that the perpetual judgement of the whole Church is despised by us, if we constantly assert this very thing which the apostles themselves held?” Where Scripture seems obscure, Enyedi’s rule for interpreters applies: men of understanding are wont “to illustrate and interpret what is said obscurely and ambiguously from what is plain and clearly delivered elsewhere”.

“Must one believe this in order to be a Christian?”

Firmly as Sozzini rejects the pre-existence of Christ, he does not make its rejection a condition of fellowship. In his first answer to Volanus he writes:

“For, so far as this matter is concerned, it is enough for us if everyone confesses: that that most high God Jehovah is one, namely he who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that there is no other beside him; but that Jesus of Nazareth, namely that man who was truly crucified, is the Son of the living God, into whose hands all things have been delivered by God, whom we must worship and from whom we must expect eternal life — whatever anyone may otherwise think about the Son of God himself as regards the time before he was born of Mary. Although we greatly desire and labour according to our strength that everyone may understand the truth itself most exactly.”

Fausto Sozzini, On the Nature of Jesus Christ (De Jesu Christi natura) — First Answer to the Admonition of Andreas Volanus › What the Church of Christ Is

And in the second answer: although he denies that Christ is the God who founded heaven and earth, “yet I do not make those heretics who affirm it”.

What Scripture Testifies

Over against the passages that seem to teach a pre-existence stand the testimonies that speak of Jesus’ origin, mission and exaltation without so much as mentioning a life before his birth. The Bible quotations on this page follow the King James Version.

• Luke 1:35 — “therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”: the angel names the conception by the Holy Spirit as the reason for the divine sonship.
• Galatians 4:4 — “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman”: sent as one already born.
• Romans 1:3–4 — “which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power … by the resurrection from the dead”: shown to be the Son of God through the resurrection.
• Acts 13:23 — “Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus”: what was promised was a descendant of David.
• Acts 2:36 — “that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”: lordship as a gift, not as a return.
• 1 Timothy 2:5 — “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”: a man even after the exaltation.
• Hebrews 1:1–2 — “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son”: only in the last days does God speak through the Son.
• 1 Peter 1:20 — “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times”: foreordained before, not existing before.
• John 17:3 — “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”: the one who is sent is distinguished from the only true God.
• Hebrews 2:17 — “Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren”: a brother of men, not a heavenly being in human form.
• Mark 13:32 — Of that day “knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father”: the limited knowledge of a true man.

Legacy

The Racovian Catechism, published in Polish in 1605 and in Latin in 1609 and later expanded by Crell, Schlichting and Ruar, adopted Sozzini’s Christology down to its details, the rapture of Jesus into heaven included. It also asks how right knowledge of Christ’s nature is “most highly beneficial for salvation”, and answers that the contrary opinion obscures the honour of God, shakes our hope and makes of Christ “a different subject”. Under the third reason it names the pre-existence expressly:

“What is the third reason?

“It makes of Christ that one God himself and says that he is the Son of God who actually existed before the conception of the man Jesus by the Holy Spirit and before his birth from the Virgin, indeed before all ages, and directs our worship, honor, and faith toward this one; whereas he who is truly Christ and the Son of God, considered alone and in himself, would either be an idol to them if he were worshipped, or it is not apparent in what way he could simultaneously be that one God and man and be worshipped both as that one God and as a man exalted by him.”

Racovian Catechism — Of the Knowledge of Christ › The Benefit of Right Knowledge Concerning the Nature of Christ › The Falsification of the True Son of God

In their German translation of the New Testament of 1630 the Polish Brethren carried this exegesis into the biblical text itself, as the renderings of John 1:1, 1:15 and 8:58 quoted above show. In Transylvania György Enyedi (1555–1597), superintendent of the Unitarian Church, expounded the proof texts of the doctrine of the Trinity one by one; his Explicationes appeared in 1598, after his death. In Raków Johannes Crell gathered the arguments together in his work On the One God, the Father (1631). Finally, Sozzini’s grandson Andrzej Wiszowaty (1608–1678) presented the proofs from John 1:1 and Phil 2:6 in his Rational Religion as examples of inconclusive inferences:

“It is said that the Word of God, that is, Christ, was in the beginning; therefore he was from all eternity, or at least at the beginning of the old creation. And yet ‘beginning’, when referred to the subject matter in hand, is often taken otherwise in the Holy Writings, as in John 15:27; 16:4; Luke 1:2; Acts 11:15; 1 John 2:7, 24; 3:11; 2 John 5f. Christ was in the form of God; therefore this is to be understood of the essence of God itself. And yet ‘form’ in the Holy Writings is not taken of the inward essence, as appears from Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2; 16:12; Rom. 12:2.”

Andrzej Wiszowaty, Rational Religion (Religio rationalis) — Seventeen Proofs for the Use of Reason › Seventeenth Proof: The Practice of the Disputants Refutes Their Own Doctrine

With the expulsion of the Polish Brethren around 1660 their writings reached the Netherlands and England. In the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, which appeared in Amsterdam from 1665 onwards, Sozzini’s works were published in a collected edition. Since then the question whether Jesus lived before his birth has been asked outside the Socinian tradition as well: from free-church communities that reject a pre-existence of Christ to New Testament scholarship, which debates whether Paul himself already thought of such a pre-existence.

• Trinity — the doctrine of the Trinity tested by Scripture
• The Worship of Christ — the veneration of the exalted man
• Predestination — Sozzini’s answer to Calvin
• Fausto Sozzini — life and work