Latest post in my blog on popular science:
Religious persecution of scientists?
https://populscience.blogspot.com/2024/10/religious-persecution-of-scientists.html
Regards,
Calvin’s execution of Servet because the latter denied the Trinity of God reminded me that that was one of the reasons why Lewis hated theocracy.
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)
It’s also why I have been on record my entire life (and time in SpareOom) hating Theologians’s soul-condemning creedal tests.
As for Miguel Servet, discoverer of the pulmonary circulation of the blood, he was executed by the Protestant Calvin
No, he was executed by the Geneva City Council, when both the Roman Catholics and the Protestants agreed he was a heretic (which he indeed was). Calvin didn’t execute anyone, and Rome would have been just as willing to do the deed if they’d gotten their hands on him first.
And, of course, as you point out, this had nothing to do with any scientific theories he may have promoted; it was purely theological.
This is what Wikipedia says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus):
After being condemned by Catholic authorities in France, he fled to Calvinist Geneva where he was denounced by John Calvin himself and burned at the stake for heresy by order of the city’s governing council.
Regards,
Friends,
From 2012 to 2018, I took Belmont students for a study abroad in global public health. I got to know Geneva and its history pretty well. I was raised Mennonite and now am a member of a Lutheran congregation, Missouri Synod.
What I’ve learned from my own history and from the many opportunities to learn church and civic history in Geneva is that the Reformation was a time of chaos, religiously and in governments as well. The Roman church had become corrupt, new nationalism was rising, colonies were being established by European powers all over the world, and the relationship between church and state were just beginning to be questioned.
It is no wonder to me that in the mix of both Catholic and Protestant reformers, one would find heretics. Folks at the time loved to lob the accusation of “heretic” and excommunicate each other. Servetus was definitely a heretic and there were others as well. We shouldn’t be surprised at the scope of heresy possible amongst fallen human beings.
In the midst of all that, I believe true believers in Christ have continued quietly (sometimes not quietly) on. The true universal church is very much alive and moving to the final culmination of worldly history where Christ and His church will be revealed victorious.
I am full of confident expectation that one day (the sooner the better), as Lewis says somewhere, the play will be over and the Author will walk on stage.
Blessings,
Ruby
“Servetus was definitely a heretic” says Ruby. Because his explanation of the Triune descriptions of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - differed from the wholly illogical Athanasian “explanation” that the orthodoxy demanded be repeated, even though it could not be rationally understood.
Servetus’s biggest mistake was in believing that Christian charity and obedience to Christ’s commands could be found even in the orthodox. He said before leaving to Geneva that he thought by the explaining his views to Calvin in person, there could be peace and a measure of understanding between them. Calvin responded by telling his compatriots that he would have Servetus burned alive if he dared to set foot in Geneva; a promise he kept.
So, the Lord High Heretic of SpareOom wonders: who was the true heretic? Was it not Calvin, who decided against the idea of “love covering a multitude of sins” (errors) and who was willing to torture and kill rather than love his perceived enemies?
It could not be said of non-believers in those days that they looked upon Christianity and exclaimed “look how they love one another.” No, those days ended with the rise of Theologians and the institution of orthodoxy.
Sincerely,
Michael
Lord High Heretic
I think that all of us agree on what I said in my blog post: that Servetus (and Bruno) were not martyrs of science, as was implied in the article I was commenting.
Regards,
No, I agree. Servetus, at least, was martyred by orthodoxy because he was attempting to peaceably uphold his Christian conscience.
There really are three distinct main questions in play here:
Was Servetus a martyr for science?
No, he wasn’t. But atheists like to complain about how oppressive “religion” is, so of course they’ll try to inflate those numbers while ignoring the hundreds of millions murdered in the name of atheistic communism.
Was Servetus a heretic?
Yes, he was. It did take the church a while to sort it out (J.I. Packer has said that understanding the Trinity was the hardest thing the church has had to do), but for the last 1600 years or so, it has been rightly understood to be definitional of Christianity. And Servetus not only believed heresy, he taught it, and the latter was his crime.
Did Calvin deal rightly with Servetus?
I believe he did.
To be clear (and to repeat), Calvin did not burn Servetus. He did not order Servetus to be burned, nor did he even ask that Servetus be burned. In fact, he specifically asked that Servetus not be burned. Calvin was a witness at Servetus’ trial for heresy, and rightly testified that Servetus was a heretic.
Every book in the New Testament save one (Philemon) warns against false teachers. This inescapably implies that there’s an objective, knowable standard for true teaching. Moreover, many of the epistles teach that we are to “mark and avoid” false teachers (Romans) and have nothing to do with them (1 John). Jesus himself says that there will be many who will teach in his name, to whom he will say, “I never knew you,” and it’s he who teaches that the church is to excommunicate unrepentant public sinners (Matthew 18). Your demand that “Christian charity” override all of this is misplaced.
Dan writes;
Did Calvin deal rightly with Servetus?
I believe he did.
To be clear (and to repeat), Calvin did not burn Servetus. He did not order Servetus to be burned, nor did he even ask that Servetus be burned. In fact, he specifically asked that Servetus not be burned. Calvin was a witness at Servetus’ trial for heresy, and rightly testified that Servetus was a heretic.
Let’s have a little honesty here. Calvin was instrumental in having Servetus tried and condemned. Yes, at the last minute, Calvin suggested to the council that it was sufficient for Servetus to be beheaded rather than suffer the torture of burning. It was still unjustifiable for Christians to kill people because of false belief.
Michael_Nicholson:
obedience to Christ’s commands
Every book in the New Testament save one (Philemon) warns against false teachers. This inescapably implies that there’s an objective, knowable standard for true teaching. Moreover, many of the epistles teach that we are to “mark and avoid” false teachers (Romans) and have nothing to do with them (1 John). Jesus himself says that there will be many who will teach in his name, to whom he will say, “I never knew you,” and it’s he who teaches that the church is to excommunicate unrepentant public sinners (Matthew 18). Your demand that “Christian charity” override all of this is misplaced.
“Mark and avoid” does not sound like “capture and kill” to me. Indeed, there are many to whom Jesus will say “I never knew you,” and no one can be sure that he won’t say that to John Calvin. Jesus also says not to attempt to condemn people to the point where you declare them to be “chaff” and surely not wheat. Leave that to the judgments to be handed down at the final harvest.
Perhaps your justification of Calvin is that he cnly condemned Servetus to death (by proxy), but did not judge his soul to be hell-bound. I am pretty sure Calvin did not make that distinction, but even if he did, he is still guilty of disobedience to Christ in his hand in the killing.
If we can’t be clear about that, then the very command to “Love you enemy” is as clear as mud, and is as impossible to make sense of as is the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity.
Sincerely,
Michael
Lord High Heretic, and very glad that the realm of SpareOom does not have council with the power of life and death for SpareOomians who may have what some consider heretical beliefs.
Here is what Lewis writes about Calvin and Servetus in “English Literature in the 16th Century”:
“All parties inherited from the Middle Ages the assumption that Christian man could live only in a theocratic polity which had both the right and the duty of enforcing true religion by persecution. Those who resisted its authority did so not because it had no right to impose doctrines but because they thought it was imposing the wrong ones. Those who were burned as heretics were often (and, on their premises, logically) eager to burn others on the same charge. When Calvin led the attack on Servetus which ended in his being burnt at Geneva, he was acting on accepted medieval principles”.
Lewis’s formulation allows for the legitimacy of all of the above descriptions (Wikipedia’s, Dan’s and Michael’s), unless Dan is certain that Calvin did not want Servetus to be executed at all. And it does show, I think, why Lewis hated that kind of “theocratic polity”.
Dimitry
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)
Thank you, Dimitry, for this Lewis input. I especially love that Lewis did NOT say that “all parties inherited…the assumption that Christian man could live only in a theocratic polity which had both the right and the duty of enforcing true religion by persecution” from scripture, or from Christ himself. The parties got it from the ethos of the Middle Ages.
And what a fun time was had by all!
Sincerely,
Michael
Lord High Heretic of SpareOom