Calvin & Servetus: Brother, my heart goes out to you in hearing of your afflictions. If you mentioned them earlier, forgive me for failing to hold them in mind. But from now on they will not be forgotten. May the Lord remind me often to pray for you. I also appreciate you bringing up the Servetus question. (The Servetus incident was the 1553 execution of Michael Servetus in Geneva for heresy, carried out by the magistrates with Calvin’s approval.) Honestly, it wasn’t something I’d have thought to take up again, but since others have asked about it before, I went back through some earlier thoughts, and along with some notes, there was this quote by John Calvin, which is spot on, so I’m going to begin by sharing that.
“We ought to read the Scriptures with the express design of finding Christ in them. Whoever shall turn aside from this object, though he may weary himself throughout his whole life in learning, will never attain the knowledge of the truth; for what wisdom can we have without the wisdom of God?” Commentary on John 5:39. 1553. What a Christ-exalting truth. Calvin reminds us that Christ is not merely in the Scriptures, but is their very center and end. Luke 24:27.
When I think of Calvin, I’m struck by how short his life was, and how much of it was marked by excruciating pain. He endured migraines, asthma, tuberculosis, and even painful kidney stones that left him writhing, yet he pressed on with his labors to the end. Though he died at just fifty-four, and though his days were filled with sickness and trial, he persevered, sealing his short life with a testimony of unshaken confidence in Christ. In a letter written near the end of his life, to William Farel, April 2, 1564, he writes, “as for me, I am fast going down-hill, and draw nigh to death; nor is it to be wondered at if I feel weary and faint after such weakness. But it is enough for me that I live and die in Christ, who is gain to all his people, both in life and in death.” From his will, written just weeks before his death, he says, “I give thanks to God that He has had mercy upon me, whom He has made partaker of His gospel, and has given me grace to serve Him by means of my work.” I can scarcely read these words without feeling ashamed of my own unthankfulness. Calvin, wasting away in weakness, gives thanks simply for the fact that the LORD had brought him into the fellowship of the gospel.
I’m also reminded of the Puritan John Owen, who endured sorrows almost beyond belief. He buried eleven children in succession, lost his wife, suffered under ongoing weakness of body, bore the shame of political disgrace, and felt the pressures of persecution, and yet through it all, the Lord kept him thankful, fixated on the glory of Christ. And like Calvin, his testimony was not of resentment but of Christ. At the end his words were still full of Christ. From his final letter to a friend, dated August 23, 1683, one day before his death, Owen writes, “I am going to Him whom my soul hath loved, or rather, who hath loved me with an everlasting love, which is the whole ground of all my consolation. The passage is very irksome and wearisome, through strong pains of various sorts which are all issued in an intermittent fever. All the things of the other world are grown exceedingly small. Oh, how vain is everything in respect of Christ, and the salvation of the gospel!” What astonishes me most is that Christ so filled his thoughts, that even at the very door of death he could see all else as nothing, and Christ alone as his everlasting treasure.
I’d better stop myself before I start rambling on about ‘reformation’ history or parliamentarian history, two of my favored side topics, so back to Servetus. It goes without saying that what follows is largely my own conjecture, perhaps better called perspective, offered from more of a historical lens than a strictly scriptural one. But whatever the path, our desire is to bring every thread back to the Scriptures and to Christ. It is worth noticing that those who most eagerly bring up the Servetus affair are usually not sincere seekers of truth, but opponents of the gospel itself. Arminians, skeptics, and enemies of sovereign grace often seize upon this single episode as a weapon to discredit the doctrines Calvin taught. They are less concerned with Servetus’ fate than with using his death to obscure the glory of Christ’s finished work, and to tarnish the memory of a man whose chief offense was exalting God’s sovereignty and exposing the emptiness of human merit.
This incident has long stood as the darkest blot on John Calvin’s legacy, yet I believe that much distortion surrounds the event. The picture of Geneva as a blood-stained tyranny under Calvin is greatly exaggerated. In fact, history records only two (compared with the tens of thousands slain by the Roman Inquisition) capital punishments during his lifetime, the beheading of Jacques Gruet, who had openly conspired to murder Calvin and overthrow Geneva’s government, and the burning of Michael Servetus, who had long been condemned throughout Europe as a heretic. It’s worth mentioning that Servetus wasn’t an innocent victim of Calvin’s personal vendetta; he was a long-standing agitator, a denier of the Trinity, and condemned by both Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. His case exposes more the mindset of sixteenth-century Europe, where heresy was treated as a civil crime threatening the fabric of society, than Calvin’s personal cruelty. Additionally, Calvin though he approved of Servetus’ execution as just, himself had no civil authority to arrest or execute; these were decisions carried out by Geneva’s magistrates. Still, his theological approval of Servetus’ execution as a blasphemer and “murderer of souls” reveals the limitations of his thinking, and the blind spot of the reformers who still tied church and state together, still entangled in medieval assumptions that the church must enforce orthodoxy. The lesson is clear, the gospel is defended not by the magistrate’s sword but by Christ’s Word. Calvin was a gifted servant of God, yet like all men, he was fallible and in need of the same grace he preached.
Thus, while we may honor Calvin as a profound teacher and instrument in God’s hand, we must also recognize that his approval of Servetus’ death was a serious departure from the spirit of Christ. It reminds us that history, though infallibly ordered and maintained, is full of flawed vessels, men who advanced the cause of truth, yet remained in need of the very grace they proclaimed. MPJ