Anti-Trinitarians

adherents of the religious doctrines and sects that do not accept the basic dogma of Christianity—the dogma of the Trinity.

Before the Council of Nicaea of 325, when the fundamental dogmas of the Christian church were being formed, a great majority of Christians were anti-Trinitarians—for example, gnostics, monarchians, and Arians. In the Middle Ages anti-Trinitarian views were in many cases original expressions of free thought. Anabaptists, Socinians, and other radical sects appeared during the Reformation. The 16th-century Russian thinker and freethinker Feodosii Kosoi subscribed to anti-Trinitarian ideas. A major anti-Trinitarian ideologist was the Spanish scholar M. Serveto. Anti-Trinitarians had considerable influence in England and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. Uni-tarianism is a widespread form of anti-Trinitarianism.