III. Why did Calvin execute Servetus?

Deep dive into obscure theology. Enter at your own risk.

Jul 26, 2024

Updated: July 30, 2024

Why did the Protestant Reformer John Calvin execute Michael Servetus? It is a very good question that requires digging into some very obscure questions. If Raiders of the Lost Ark appeals to you, read on. You definitely will encounter lots of spiders webs and dusty books. The Lost Ark? Maybe not.

Not quite this story, but about the same amount of effort

What exactly was the problem with the teaching of Servetus that caused Calvin to demand his execution? To answer this, we need to dust off some old books in the back end of an old library, put on our white gloves and carefully pry open the 500 year old pages of some very rare books, assuming of course the librarian knows where stacked. They were not exactly popular books not good reads. The books Servetus left behind were dense, obscure, odd and frankly weird. But they are very important for the development of modern society, especially for freedom of religion and surprisingly, for scientific thinking in a sidebar sort of way. So, at risk of entering these forbidden lands, let’s do some archeological work and discover the reasons why Calvin did something he would never regret.

De Trinitatis Erroribus (On The Errors of the Trinity)

Michael Servetus’ most famous work – De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity)1 – is key to our story. This short treatise is the link between Michael Servetus and the Polish Brethren (who would later be called the Socinians).

Arriving in the Reformed lands, Michael Servetus came into contact with several leading Reformers such as Melanchthon, Butzer, Capito, Oeclolampadius, and perhaps even Zwingli. Servetus had sought out Erasmus (it is uncertain they ever met), although at any rate Erasmus did not take him seriously. These reformers gave the twenty-year-old an audience but upon hearing his attacks on the Trinity they felt Servetus held dangerous teachings and they determined the Spaniard must be convinced of the errors of his theology.

Unable to be convinced, Servetus found himself opposed by virtually all the leading Reformers. Undaunted, he decided in 1531 to go to Basel, at that time a city that tolerated dissidents. Staying only a short time, probably to see Erasumus who lived there, he departed to Strasbourg2 where he was able to publish his Erroribus. While in Strasbourg that he met some of the Anabaptists who would play a leading role in spreading Servetian thought. This included the leading Reformer Butzer.

1531 - De Trinitatis Erroribus and its reception

During July 1531 Michael Servetus published he most important work, De Trinitatis Erroribus, libri septem (On the Errors of the Trinity) which was written in Latin. Perhaps against his better judgment Servetus put his name on the cover as Michaelem Serveto, alias Reves ab Aragonia Hispanum. Had he kept the work anonymous he might have escaped trouble, although the authorities probably would have suspected Servetus anyway. At any rate, The city council of Strasbourg The Erroribus was banned in Strasbourg as a heretical work and Servetus found himself persona non gratis.

This medium-length work circulated amongst the leading reformers. Luther called it “a most virulent book”and wrote that it opposed the Word of God and the Holy Scripture. Melanchthon said it was the source of dangerous opinions. Interestingly he wrote,

“As for the Trinity you know I have always feared this would break out some day”, and “This does not please me that Servetus does not make Christ truly a natural Son of God.”

He saw in Servetus’ Erroribus a revived version of the teachings of Paul of Samosata who a Bishop of Antioch during the 3rd century taught a Jesus not as a God who became a man but as a man who became God. This was known as Monarchism.

Melanchthon also saw in the Erroribus a revived version of the teachings of the Christian Bishop of Sirmium (modern day Serbia) during the 4th Century Roman Empire. Photinus taught that Jesus did not pre-exist before birth thus making Jesus not divine. Any references to Jesus occurring in the Old Testament were simply manifestations of the Father, such as Son of Man or the Logos (Word). All this is to say, Bishop Photinus taught a Jesus that was antitrinitarian and is seen, even today, as a precursor to the Polish Brethren.

Neither of these accusations were true but it became a recurring charge against Servetus. Even the Bishop Quintana was outraged that his former acquaintance should turn out to be such a heretic. The Catholics as much as the Protestants saw in the Erroribus a dangerous heresy and determined to suppress it. The Inquisition was ordered to arrest Servetus if he ever came within their jurisdiction.

The German (read Luther) and Swiss (read Calvin) Reformers were concerned for the success of their efforts and anything that might jeopardize their work was carefully stamped out or disowned. The Emperor was Catholic and they did not want to give the Catholics any good cause to pressure the Emperor to restrict or stop the Reformation. Servetus and his thinking fell into that category.

If Servetus was free to promulgate his views, the Catholics could claim that Protestantism was undermining the very foundations of Christianity and drifting into apostasy. Servetus and his book could not be tolerated and so Servetus was censured.

Servetus eventually found himself without a safe haven in either Protestant or Catholic lands. So, at only twenty years of age he found himself a wanted man by both the Reformers and by the Catholics. In despair he believed his only escape was to migrate to the New World, perhaps South America although he never went through with this idea.

Why was the Erroribus so heretical?

What was the nature of this banned work? The Erroribus is now an extremely rare volume bound with several other treatises he wrote at the same time.

It is a seven chaptered monologue with a loosely developed argument. Servetus began his analysis by looking at the man Jesus. He then proceeded to describe his understanding of the Godhead.

Jesus, surnamed Christ, was not a hypostasis (or unique essence of the Godhead) but a human being…He, and not the Word, is also the miraculously born Son of God in fleshly form…not a hypostasis, but an actual Son. He is God, sharing God’s divinity in full…Christ, being one with God the Father, equal in power, came down from heaven and assumed flesh as a man. In short, all Scriptures speak of Christ as a man. (The Holy Spirit) is not a separate being, but an activity of God himself.

To modern ears, this must seem unintelligible but for Calvin, it was crysal clear. These were words of a heretic and heretics in Geneva did not deserve to live.

To attempt at simplifying, Servetus understood Jesus and God as the same being. Jesus is God who assumed flesh upon earth during the incarnation (he became a human being). Jesus was not a part of God nor an essence of God but was God himself in the form of human flesh. As for the third part of God, the Holy Spirt, it was just God’s activity.

This is not the semi-Gnostic formulation3 which characterized Servetus’ later work. The formulations of many other Reformation-era antitrinitarians also lacked a Gnostic edge to them. It could be seen as an “early” development of Servetus antitrinitarianism that spread throughout Europe, not like his later writings which had a semi-gnostic formulation of antitrinitarianism.

Earl Morris Wilbur, a leading historian of Unitarianism wrote,

In so far as Servetus had influence upon the course of the religious thought in the reformation period or later, it was almost wholly due to the Errors and the Dialogues.4

The Erroribus had been circulating in Europe despite efforts to ban it. Servetus’ work and the circumstances surrounding his controversy thrust him into prominence. Those who had doubts about the orthodox formulations of the Trinity saw him as a martyr or as at least a pioneer and were sometimes labeled Servetian by opponents to his views. This label did not imply that they had actually read the Erroribus even though they shared similar concerns and doubts about the Trinity. They merely sympathized with Servetus and served to raise his profile in the Reformed lands.

1553 - Christianismi Restitutio and its influence

Twenty years later in 1553 Michael Servetus had developed a complete reinterpretation of all aspects of Christianity in a work he entitled Christianismi Restitutio or The Restitution of Christianity. But this complete overhaul had little influence amongst unlike his earlier work - the Errorbus - which came to be Servetus’ definitive theological legacy.

The Restitution had little influence primarily because it was so effectively banned. But The Restitution remains Servetus’ mature thinking.

Nevertheless, Servetian antitrinitarianism in The Restitution of Christianity represented his mature thinking. The Godhead (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) described in this work can best be called Modalism.

In this system the Godhead is monotheistic, but it is also Trinitarian in the sense that it is manifested historically where the one God expressed himself differently for different ages. God manifested himself in five different ways for the five ages into which Servetus divided history. Jesus Christ is only one of the five expressions of God. God is himself the hidden root, unseen and unnamed. Proceeding from him is the Logos as the first “circle” outside the hidden root. From the Logos comes the Word. From the Word comes the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is thus the expression of God in human form, a concept expressed in the Erroribus.

Viewing the Servetian system as stated in terms of time, God has expressed himself through the means of progressive revelation over time and Servetus divided this structure into five sections. God expressed himself in human history first as Elohim, then as El Shaddai, then as Jehovah, and finally as Jesus Christ. He is to express himself as a fifth and final mode at the initiation of the Millennium, a thousand-year period. When God expressed himself as Jesus Christ, he did so to establish a mediator between himself and humanity. But the terms Jesus and Christ only apply to the mode whereby God manifested himself as man. Thus, Jesus is, as Servetus says, a man created in Mary’s womb as a celestial being by the infusion of divine semen. This Jesus was celestial flesh, that is, flesh made from God, but who was before the incarnation the Word. After the resurrection the celestial flesh was put off and the Word reestablished itself.

This was Servetus’ mature conception of the Trinity. It is, according to Servetus, a Trinitarian formulation without the Scholasticism of the Athanasian creed. It might also be a form of Pantheism whereby God enters the material world without polluting his own goodness and divinity and does so through a celestial, or heavenly Jesus. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he was not the man Jesus but the restored divine non-human Word. This demonstrates how much the thinking of Servetus changed during the intervening twenty years between the Erroribus and his execution in Geneva.

Still following me here? You can be excused if I lost you. It is difficult for me to grasp as well, but this was his views when he entered Geneva.

Servetus and Calvin

For his views, especially his theology as described in the Errorbus was the evidence used to justify his execution. His views as described in the Christianismi Restitutio was mostly unknown to the theologians of Geneva.

In the broad brushstrokes of the Reformation, the charges that both the Catholics and the Reformer Calvin laid against him are not that significant. The main charge against him was that he challenged two of the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity - the Trinity and Infant Baptism.

But other reformers in the mid sixteenth century also held those two positions, especially amongst the Anabaptists. Servetus was not unique in this. The real significance of this event lay in the fact that Servetus was a protestant Reformer who like Calvin was attempting a wholesale reformation and improvement of life in the Republic. Servetus saw himself in common cause with Calvin. That’s why he fled the reach of the Catholics in France to find refuge in Calvin’s Geneva. He expected rather naively that Calvin would embrace a fellow traveler. Little did he expect the fate what would await him.

After listening to Servetus explain his positions, Calvin considered him so diabolical that in the midst of the rupture between Rome and the Reformers, Calvin found time to have common cause, at least in theory, with the Roman Inquisition which itself had condemned Calvin.

The enemy of the Catholics shared an enemy with Calvin.

Did that make these enemies friends? Not quite, but it sure made Calvin quite uncomfortable after Servetus’s execution. It was the first time Calvin had supported the execution of anyone for heresy and the blowback against him was severe. He was charged with “copying” Rome’s practice of burning heretics.

Servetus and religious tolerance

Servetus burning at the stake in the city of Geneva during the mid 1550s providing some serious entertainment for the locals and plenty of chatter around the tables in pubs and kitchens throughout the Reformed lands.

Why did Calvin give the go ahead to “redeem his soul in fire”? Couldn’t he have just banished him out of the country? Of course, but that would have deprived the good citizens of Geneva with a spectacle. More specifically, it revealed the limits of Calvin’s tolerance. Zwingli, Calvin’s competitor for the hearts and minds of Protestant Europe based in Zurich, managed to also banish and/or execute dissenters. The precedent for public executions of heretics and dissenters in Protestant lands had already been made by Zwingli, so what was wrong with Calvin’s turn at being an executioner.

Turns out quite a bit.

Europe was splintering into massive powerful groupings and power was clearly on the side of the Catholic powers. For Calvin, maintaining a higher moral stand was all part of the propaganda against Papal rule. But how could Calvin make any such claims if he was going about doing just what the Inquisition was busy doing in France, Spain and elsewhere. When the Spaniard Servetus entered Geneva, he came there as a refugee believing that propaganda. Servetus wanted support from Calvin. Instead he found the limits of how far a person can go with novel ideas not sanctioned by existing authorities. And on this point Calvin and the Inquisition were on the same page.

Tolerance finds a home in Poland

And as it turned out, Servetus was not alone in questioning received notions of doctrine. He was just the most high-profile case. Far to the north and east lay the lands of the King of Poland and Lithuania ruled by Sigismund Augustus, a rather worldly-wise king who had a rather dim view of religion and doctrinal debates. He didn’t care much for his father’s staunch Catholicism. He was Catholic but didn’t care much who his subjects were – as long as they were Catholic or Protestant or even Jewish or Muslim and made money for his Kingdom. He even extended this tolerance to any dissenting Protestant.

By the time of Servetus’ execution, the King of England Henry VIII had just ripped apart the Catholic Church in England and established himself as Defender of the Faith and head of the Anglican Church. The significance of this event for Europe cannot be underestimated. The mystic and aura of Rome had been tarnished. Henry showed Europe that the power and authority of Rome could be successfully challenged and overthrown.

This fact hadn’t gone unnoticed by the King of Poland. In northern Germany, the strength of Protestant forces grew and defeated many Catholic forces. It seemed the days were numbered for Catholic powers in northern Europe. This left Poland out on a bit of a limb.

King Sigismund Augustus could see the writing on the wall and wanted an English-type state with himself as Defender of the Faith of Poland-Lithuania. Dissenters aided that project. And into that tolerant space entered the Polish Brethren.

Beyond Brant and Brock

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