Product Description

There is a growing concern among evangelical scholars that evangelicalism, its doctrine of God and of the Gospel, may not be as securely rooted in Scripture as is often uncritically imagined. The accounts of the historical Jesus and his saving teaching, given us in three corroborating reports in Matthew, Mark and Luke, are often played down in favor of a set of verses from the letters of Paul. That "treadmill" of favorite evangelical proof-texts also relies heavily on John's Gospel. This unbalanced use of Scripture results in a distortion of Jesus' claim to be Messiah, Son of God, in relation to his Father whom he defined as "the only one who is truly God" (John 17:3).

The crux of the problem lies in this fact: Jesus' own very Jewish creed, which he affirmed as the most important truth of all in agreement with a Jewish scribe (Mark 12:28-34), has been allowed no voice in the traditional creeds recited in Church. Worse still, when the unitary monotheistic creed of Jesus and Paul is advanced as the necessary bedrock of good Christian thinking, its exponents are likely to be charged with upsetting the longstanding findings of the church councils. They are even made unwelcome in church settings.

Anthony Buzzard invites scholars and laymen alike to take seriously Jesus' Jewish creed, his recitation of the Shema, "Hear, O Israel," which proclaims God to be one single Lord. Defining God and His Son biblically remains part of the unfinished work of the Reformation. The evidence placed before the reader shows that a major paradigm shift is needed if Christians are to worship their God in spirit and in truth, uncluttered by the philosophical and confusing ideas of God which form part of received church tradition. Buzzard's thesis has enormous significance for the discussion among three great world religions -- Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #301067 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-24
• Binding: Paperback
• 465 pages

About the Author
Anthony Buzzard was born in Surrey, England and educated at Oxford University and Bethany Theological Seminary. He holds master's degrees in theology and modern languages. Retiring after 24 years on the staff of Atlanta Bible College, Anthony continues to write, teach and travel, fulfilling a life-long desire to make the best of Bible scholarship available to the wider churchgoing public. He is married with three daughters.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Analysis Calling For A Major Re-formation
Anthony Buzzard has provided a thorough presentation that escapes the paralyzing bondage of the 4th and following centuries' faux-orthodox interpretations of Jesus the Christ. This book exposes the intellectual distortions and rut that has entombed Christology for centuries, because such scholarly honesty would probably have cost "traditional" theologians their jobs, even their lives. Readers are provided with a Jesus truly grounded in the New Testament. In the current post-Christian period, Buzzard's candor may well assist with a resurrection of a genuinely orthodox Christianity, if there is ever to be one. In my roles as a former philosophy professor and retired Episcopal cathedral canon, I heartily recommend "Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian."

A Major Work of Unitarian Theology
As a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, I can attest to the
scholarliness and soundness of this book written from a Socinian viewpoint. It is a sequel to a prior work entitled The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound. In the author's own words,
'JESUS WAS NOT A TRINTARIAN represents a Socinian view of the Son of God
(after Faustus Socinus, 1539-1604)' (page 327). It 'represents that
'marginalized' strand of Christianity which struggles to retain the words
of Jesus himself' (page 378).

The book is a tour de force. It is a masterpiece. What the author does with two passages from The Gospel of Mark (12:29 and 12:35) is absolutely amazing. He in effect dismantles the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and Chalcedonian edifice of Trinitarianism which has prevailed in all branches of Christianity since the fourth century and shows persuasively why this is an error of Gentile Christianity unsubstantiatable from the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament and why Judaism and Islam are right to reject it as heresy.

Equally breathtaking is his laying of the axe to the root of Augustine's
theological tree (page 276). 'In one fell swoop', as it were, he shows how Augustine's commentary on John 17:3 in his HOMILIES ON JOHN is an unwarranted re-writing,--an eisegesis, not an exegesis. The implication is that the rest of his magnificent and towering writings (ON THE TRINITY, THE CITY OF GOD, CONFESSIONS and so on) are seriously flawed, being built on this faulty and feeble foundation. 'It is at this verse that one of the most startling manipulations of the text of Scripture has occurred. The celebrated Augustine, unable to find his beloved Trinity in Jesus'words, decided to rewrite the utterance of Jesus to accommodate a creed about which Jesus knew nothing. Here is how he deals with John 17:3 in his HOMILIES ON JOHN:'And this,' He [Jesus] adds,'is eternal life, that they may know you,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.' The proper order of the words is, 'That they may know you and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, as the only true God.''

The book is divided into seventeen sections: between the introduction (pages 1-6) and the epilogue ('A Future for Monotheism', pages 380-384)
there are twelve chapters, some of them work which previously appeared
in non-book form (chapters 6, 7 and 12):

1. Foundations for Belief in God and His Son
2. Who Was the God of Jesus and His Followers?
3. Biblical Fact and History Against Dogma
4. The Titanic Struggle of Scholars to Find the Triune God in the Bible
5. The Son of God: Protestant Loss of Jesus' Teaching and His Promotion to Deity [Apotheosis]
6. Jesus as 'My Lord' Messiah: The Golden Key of Psalm 110:1
7. If Only We Had Listened to Gabriel
8. Church Councils, The Da Vinci Code and Modern Scholarship
9. Detective Work and Word Tricks
10. Mathematical Marvels and the Obstruction of Monotheism
11. And Introduction to Dissident Heroes
12. Does Everyone Believe in the Trinity?

Then follow three appendices: On John 20:28, Where Jewish Opposition Breaks Down, and Hebrews 1:10. -- The strongest chapters are six and 12,
in which there is massive documentation of the author's point.

'Defining God and His Son biblically remains part of the unfinished work of the Reformation,' says the back cover of the book. This, however, is
an inaccuracy. The Deists in the Enlightenment (in the U.S.A. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine) and the early Unitarians (Joseph Priestley and William E. Channing) completed that task long, long ago. Their
contributions to the advance of human thought have been woefully neglected and remain largely unknown by the public as a whole.



The author dialogues with the finest scholars writing today and deftly
employs concessions from them to make his case. If you know of anyone who is struggling with the irrationality of the doctrine of the Trinity and knows no viable alternative, I recommend that you buy them a copy of this book. This is definitely one of the most valuable gifts you could ever give to a soul seeking enlightenment. It has the power to spark a second
Reformation.

TexasGrampy's Review
This book was a light in a dark world of confusion for me. I've always felt funny about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and wondered how this had gotten into the orthodox church when it seemed so obviously wrong. If Jesus is God, who was He praying to in the Garden of Gethsemeny? If God left heaven to become a baby, who was keeping the planets and moons spinning and all the atoms in the universe from flying apart? This book is slanted toward the Jehovah's Witness beliefs but it is not hard to see where those views come into play. The author makes an honest effort to keep his own religious faith out of the text. I definately recommend this book to anyone who is neither a trinitarian nor "Oneness" believer. There is an alternative!