Servetus ? Different views?

Ferdinand (king of Aragon from 1479) and Isabella (queen of Castile from 1474) were married in 1469 thus uniting the thrones of Aragon and Castile.  This united kingdom, coupled with money from gold imported from America and the renaissance flowering of culture in Europe caused Spain to enter a glorious age with many developments in the arts and science.  Into this time frame Michael Servetus was born in 1511. He suggested the theory that blood circulated around the body, a novel concept at that time, yet he also attacked conventional notions of the Trinity.  For these he was condemned by the Sorbonne and forbidden to teach in Paris.  Some chapters of his Systematic Theology book “The Restoration of Christianity” were sent to Calvin for comments.  Calvin was opposed to them and so alerted the Inquisition.  Servetus was prosecuted by the church in Geneva for blasphemy.  This carried a sentence of death.  The government of Geneva accepted the Church decision and Servetus was burned in 1553.

About Servetus, Calvin wrote to his colleague Guillame Farel: He [Servetus] should ask pardon of God whom he has so basely blasphemed in his attempt to efface the three persons in the one essence saying that those who recognise a real distinction in the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit create a three headed hound of hell.

In Spain, Servetus was a ground breaking scientist.  In Geneva  he was a heretic.  The same person was viewed in different ways. How many people do you know in our twenty first century society who can be viewed in such polarised ways?

June and July 2020 COVID-19 – Do we obey our secular rulers? What does Calvin say?

As restrictions on our movements due to the COVID 19 pandemic are relaxed, how seriously do we need to take the advice offered by our Government?  Calvin devoted the whole of Book four, chapter 20 of the Institutes to the relationship of the Christian believer with the state authority. Luther had published work on this question, but no-one knows if Calvin ever read this.

Before we consider the contents of Book Four, Chapter 20 (the final chapter of the Institutes, entitled Civil Government) we must acknowledge that the Dedication of the 1559 version of the Institutes was to the secular King, Francis I.  In this Calvin assures the monarch of the political dutifulness of his protestant subjects. Is this then developed in the thirty two sections of Book Four, Chapter 20?

At the end of Book Four Chapter 20, the exhortation is that we must “obey God rather than men”  a reference to Acts 5:29 (when Peter and the Apostles appeared before the Council after their imprisonment).  Yet throughout the preceding chapters Calvin exhorts obedience to the secular authorities, for example in Book Four, Chapter 20, section 31:

But we must in the meantime be very careful not to despise or violate the authority of the magistrates, full of venerable majesty which God has established by the weightiest decrees even though it may reside with the most unworthy men who may defile it as much as they can with their own wickedness.

How can we comment on our own situation based on Calvin’s approach?  Calvin is known as a second generation Christian Reformer, working several years after Luther and the initial split of Protestantism from the Church of Rome.  By this time Protestantism was dividing into denominations (such as the Anabaptist rule in Munster from 1533-1535) and Catholicism was redefining itself through the Council of Trent in 1563.  Calvin may have seen the Christian religion as needing protection from radical Protestantism and from supporters of the Papacy.  He may have been of the view that the early Reformers such as Luther had given up too much to secular authority and so wanted a balance of church rule by clergy, with lay people policing the activities of the clergy.

Calvin assumed firstly that the Church was vigorous and independent of the state.  In the twenty first Century in England could it be that the Church of England is not in this place, being the Established Church of the nation?  Secondly he assumed that the secular power (mediated through the magistrates) was godly.  Are our politicians godly?  We can only wonder……………….