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There would appear to be two fundamental presuppositions of the Christian witness, which proved to be more or less controlling of the later doctrinal developments culminating in Nicrea Nicaea and Chalcedon.

One of these presuppositions was radical monotheism, the other, the genuine humanity and real historicity of Jesus. Just as Christians never seriously questioned that their trinitarian faith was faith in the one and only God, so they also never seriously questioned that the Jesus whom they believed to be of decisive significance for human existence was a genuine human being and a real figure of the historical past. (Better put: neither of these presuppositions was seriously questioned except at the edges of the Christian community, where its differences from other communites communities having alternative understandings of human existence became blurred and unclear.)

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Unitarianism, as I understand it, is the form of Christianity, considered descriptively or historically, in which both of the presuppositions of the Christian witness are affirmed, but only at the expense of the convictions out of which it arises. Thus, for unitariansUnitarians, God is precisely the one and only God of radical monotheism, even as Jesus is precisely the genuine human being and real figure of the historical past. But the price they pay for this is that Christianity thereby becomes "the religion of Jesus," rather than "the religion about Jesus," and Christians become those who believe in God with Jesus and the apostles instead of those who believe with the apostles and therefore decisively through Jesus in God.

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