5

A new question was recently posted which makes use of a little-used tag called . I had never seen that tag before, so I was curious about whether or not it was actually appropriate for that particular question, which was just a very general non-trinitarian question. The short summary of the tag currently says:

Oneness refers to the doctrine that God is One and should be used for questions about this theology and movements that adhere to it.

That does make it sound like it would be applicable. That makes it sound like it is appropriate for all non-trinitarian questions. The full description of the tag, paints a more specific picture, however:

Oneness refers to the doctrine that God is One, as opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity. Oneness adherents see One God manifest/revealed as Father, (in the) Son, and Holy Spirit. Whereas, Trinity adherents see One God (eternally) existing as three distinct persons: God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit.

That makes it sound like it should only be used for questions related specifically to the doctrine of Sabellianism. The questions that were previously actually tagged with it, though, paint an even more specific picture:

Those questions make it look like the tag was really intended to specifically refer to questions related to the Oneness Pentecostalism movement.

As I see it, there are three possible solutions, but I'm unsure which is best:

  1. Rename the tag to non-trinitarianism and fix the descriptions to match.
  2. Rename the tag to sabellianism and fix the descriptions to match.
  3. Rename the tag to oneness-pentecostalism and fix the descriptions to match.

Unless I'm mistaken, all non-trinitarian questions seem to get lumped, currently, under the tag, since there is no non-trinitarianism or even a unitarianism tag. That seems reasonable, on one hand, but then, on the other hand, in might be nice to have two separate tags to differentiate between the pro-trinitarianism and anti-trinitarianism arguments. However, given the relatively high number of non-trinitarian questions that we get, perhaps it is worth breaking it up into separate non-trinitarian doctrines such as sabelianism, socinianism, and adoptionism. That may be getting a bit too technically accurate, though, for most people to pick or find the correct tags. Thoughts?

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

I think it would make sense to rename to ; it's a well recognised and distinct movement within Christianity.

A potential issue with the other tags you've suggested is that modern proponents of beliefs which accord with those ancient labels might not like the association. They may even disagree that they do believe those heresies. Those tags are appropriate for discussions of those historical positions, but perhaps less appropriate for modern adherents, unless they self-identify as sabelian, etc.

I think a tag would definitely be appropriate.

2
  • I agree. Since no one else voiced an opinion, I went ahead and modified the descriptions of the existing oneness tag. My changes still have to be approved by others, though. I modified the linked question to remove the oneness tag and add a new non-trinitarianism tag, but I'm not sure if I the necessary priveleges to create a new tag. I've never done that before, so I'm not sure how that works. My edit to that question still awaits the approval of others as well.
    – Steven Doggart
    Commented May 12, 2014 at 12:37
  • 1
    @StevenDoggart Looks good to me. I also re-named the oneness tag to oneness-pentecostalism as suggested in this answer. Thanks for taking the time to work on organizing tags!
    – Caleb
    Commented May 12, 2014 at 21:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .