... suggest that Calvin did not always practice what he preached. They accuse him of failing to live according to the gracious and gentle standards, which the hymn attributes to God. The controversy surrounds the life and death of a Spanish physician and theologian by the name of Michael Servetus. To make a long story short, Servetus thought of himself as a Protestant, but he rejected the traditional Christian belief in the Trinity, that is that God exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because ...
... of the Trinity is not a modern-day invention. From the very inception of the thought that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are three manifestations of the same God, the debate began to rage. One early scholar, Michael Servetus, did an exhaustive study of Scripture, the result of which was, according to Servetus, conclusive proof that there was no biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. The reward for all his hard work and research was to be burned at the stake for heresy. Christians don’t burn one ...
... there have always been faithful leaders who heard a different word than that of the majority. The one person who stood up against the persecuting and burning at the stake of Michael Servetus (1511-1553), a Spaniard martyred for his theological views, was the rector of the College of Geneva, S?bastien Castellio. About the time Servetus was executed Castellio published two books. One was On Heretics: Whether They Should Be Persecuted and How They Are To Be Treated, and the other, which wasn't published in his ...
... to keep practicing. And this is not “air guitar” practice. We will get it wrong sometimes. We will hit sour notes and clashing chords. Apathy. The Crusades. The Inquisition. Witch Trials. Michael Servetus escaped the Inquisition, but was burnt at the stake by John Calvin. OK . . . you’re right. It is true that Calvin didn’t want Servetus to be burnt at the stake for heresy. He wanted the lesser punishment of beheading. And you don’t want to read the writings of Martin Luther on certain subjects ...
... in that town. He saw the government as an instrument to force that will upon everyone else. As a result, struggle and conflict broke out over doctrinal points. That led to the actual beheading of Jacques Gruet for blasphemy and the burning of Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician, for an antitrinitarian belief. In Calvin’s day in Geneva, the scene I imagined earlier when I began this sermon was very likely. Our [Lutheran] tradition holds that there ought to be an institutional separation of the church and ...
