This article is a biography on John Calvin. Focus is given to errors of Michael Servetus and his denial of the Trinity.

Source: The Banner of Truth, 2010. 2 pages.

The Errors of Servetus

Was ever theologian as much loved and as much hated as Calvin? He possessed and still possesses an extraordinary attractiveness to many; but to the Roman Catholic he is the arch-heretic and to the rationalist he is the high-priest of orthodoxy. Ingersoll the free-thinker took delight in declaring that he had come to believe in a hell, but a hell in which one alone would suffer – John Calvin!

Calvin has been greatly misjudged – particularly on this issue of the burning of Michael Servetus. Prodigious efforts have been made to blacken him. On few subjects has there been so much ill-informed and even malevolent comment.

Servetus, a Spaniard, was born in the year 1511; so he was almost of an age with Calvin. He gave a number of accounts of his early life, but they do not tally. He spent two years at Toulouse in France – from about his 15th year to his 17th. There for the first time he read the Scriptures. Two years later he spoke with enthusiasm of the Bible.

In the following years he travelled in Italy and Germany. In 1530 he was in touch with the reformer Oecolampadius, who thought Servetus contentious, conceited, and absurd in his opinions. Oecolampadius tells us that Servetus denied the deity of Christ and used words with double meanings, so as to deceive the simple. This stripling set himself up to instruct men of mature years like Oecolampadius. When he was twenty years of age he issued a book bearing the title On the Errors of the Trinity. This was the most heretical publication to have appeared in twelve centuries. Leading Roman Catholics of the time condemned the book – it was the work of a Protestant arch-heretic, for had not Servetus turned to Protestantism! The Protestant leaders – Oecolampadius, Bucer, Zwingli, Melancthon, Luther – condemned it too. The city council of Basle forbade Servetus from selling his book there, and its author only escaped imprisonment by making a sort of retractation of his views.

For the next twenty years – 1532 to 1553 – Servetus played the role of Romanist – a loyal and practising Romanist. He wrote refu­tations of Luther’s doctrine. We find him at Lyons in touch with a group of doctors, and he himself became a doctor to the Archbishop of Vienne, near Lyons. From Lyons he went to Paris. At that time Calvin was still in Paris; he had, not very long before this date, devoted his life to God. Servetus desired an interview with him and Calvin agreed to fix the time and place – at ‘the greatest risk of his life’, says the reformer’s biographer, Theodore Beza. Those were perilous times to be a Protes­tant in Paris. Calvin waited at the appointed meeting place but Servetus did not appear.

Servetus dabbled in astrology – losing himself in fantastic notions. A case was brought against him by the Rector of the University of Paris and the Deans of the Faculty of Medicine concerning his astrological fantasies. Servetus used very intemperate language to describe the Uni­versity Deans – they were ‘monsters’ and a ‘plague’. But as at Basle, so at Paris, he retracted his opinions to escape fine or imprisonment. He later maintained at Geneva that he was made a doctor at Paris, but the University’s records do not support his claim.

After this he practised medicine at Charlieu – at some distance from Lyons – for two or three years. Then he went to Vienne at the invita­tion of Peter Palmier, the Archbishop, who was a bitter opponent of Luther and Calvin. All this time Servetus was posing under the name of M. de Villeneuve. At Vienne he went devotedly to Mass. As Professor Emile Doumergue puts it, in the morning he would go to Mass and in the afternoon he would write of the Roman Church in his Restitutio Christianismi on which he was working: ‘O beast, most wicked beast, most shameless of harlots ... synagogue of Satan’ And he wrote this in his rooms near the Episcopal Palace – rooms given him by the Arch­bishop! Doumergue gives other instances of his duplicity and says: ‘It is difficult to find in history anyone who has for so long and hypocritically deceived the public and even his friends.’

He called his book The Restoration of Christianity. All was in ru­ins. Servetus was going to restore all! As a matter of fact, nearly all the early heresies crop up in this book – Sabellianism, Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Pantheism. More than one hundred times he calls the Trinity a ‘monstrous three-headed Cerberus’ or dog of hell. His Christ was neither God nor man. He had no true sense of the nature of sin. In fact, he affirmed that man does not commit mortal sin till his twentieth year. He was an Anabaptist – a millenarian Anabaptist. He seems to have calculated that the millennium would begin about A.D. 1560. He held the doctrine of the Trinity to be the chief error in theology and the baptism of infants to be the supreme error in church practice. He called infant baptism ‘a detestable abomination’ and in this connection he called Calvin ‘a thief and a robber’. He urged Calvin not only to repent but to be re-baptised to receive the graces of the Spirit. As man cannot sin before the age of twenty, so baptism should not be administered till after that age. In fact, thirty was the proper age for the rite, and in proof of this he quoted not only the example of Christ, but affirmed that it was shown ‘by Adam and the law’ (Adam was ‘born at thirty’, he said). The effrontery of the man! He could at twenty issue a book to set the world aright, and then later refuse to admit a man’s right to be among the number of the disciples till he reached the age of thirty!

The doctors in France had raised the question – Was he mad? Among others, Mosheim the historian seems to give an affirmative answer to that question. One of his defenders goes so far as to say that too close study of the Book of Revelation unsettled his mind! But he was no madman, weird and contradictory though many of his views were.

In 1546 Servetus, while posing as a devout Roman Catholic and enjoying the favours of the Archbishop of Vienne, was writing his Res­toration of Christianity. At this time also he wrote to Calvin trying to win him and his friends over to his ideas. He pestered Calvin, Viret, and Melanchthon as he had already pestered Oecolampadius. A correspond­ence of thirty letters passed between Calvin and Servetus. Calvin wrote him some very lengthy epistles and the earlier at any rate were couched in very moderate language. But Servetus used no bridle; he called Calvin ‘Simon the magician’. Calvin at length told him that his views were bold and absurd, and prayed that God would enable him to lower his lofty looks and become a humble disciple of the truth. In correspondence Calvin said that nothing but the stake would humble the pride of Serve­tus, and in a letter to Farel he wrote: ‘If he comes to Geneva, and my authority is worth anything, I will not suffer him to depart alive.’ Some even of the partisans of Servetus doubt if this was to be taken absolutely literally: but a threat it was certainly. When Servetus asked him for a pledge to ensure his safety if he visited Geneva, Calvin gave him none.

Servetus’ book was printed at Vienne. One lot was seized at Lyons, brought to Vienne, and burnt there in 1553 by the Romanist authori­ties. Another lot reached Frankfurt, but the Protestant pastors there were warned by Calvin – so this lot was seized also and burnt. Another lot possibly reached Geneva itself. Servetus was at Vienne when his book was issued. His secret, so well kept for twenty years, now came to light. Arrested in the Episcopal Palace, he found himself in the hands of the Inquisition. He first of all denied that he was the author (the book did not plainly bear his name). The defenders of Servetus accuse Calvin of denouncing him to the Roman Archbishop. Calvin’s reply was that he had no such extreme familiarity with the Pope’s satellites; N. Weiss has shown that this accusation is completely false. This charge failing, another one is laid – that he was guilty of treachery. He is accused of allowing a friend to pass on to Vienne a ‘confidential letter’ from Servetus. Actually there were no ‘confidential letters’; they were already in print – printed by Servetus himself. Servetus escaped from his deten­tion in France in April 1553. In his absence he was condemned to be burnt alive over a slow fire. Since he had fled the authorities burnt an effigy of him along with his books. If the Romanist authorities had had their way there Servetus would never have made it to Geneva, for he would have been burnt by them at Vienne instead!

Servetus, however, arrived in Geneva and was soon arrested on 13 August 1553.

Add new comment

(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.
(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.