The true comfort of Calvinism, the whip, the sword and the stake.
This is beneath you, ftD,
Let's try an analog:
The year is 313 AD. Christianity would be legalized that same year. 50 years ago, Diocletian gave the fledgling church the worst persecution she had endured to date, and one yet to be paralleled. Bibles were outlawed on pain of death. Under the pressure, some cracked and handed over their contraband Bibles in hopes of alleviating the persecution. These quslings were known as "traditors," and many rejected them as Christians. Unfortunately, many were bishops.
In 311 AD, Caecilian is ordained the Bishop of Carthage. He himself was not a traditor, but the bishop that had appointed him was, and thus, he was considered tainted by a segment of the Carthaginian church. Accordingly, these dissidents ordained Donatus as their bishop, arguing that the purity of the church and church offices was at stake, and (since sacramentalism had already prevailed early on) thus, the efficacy of the sacraments was in question.
Augustine, following the line of argument proposed by Stephen, the bishop of Rome, argued that the sacraments were efficacious ex opere operato, that is, they were efficacious in and of themselves, and not dependant upon the moral status of the bishop.
Augustine, however, could not win this argument -- the Donatists would not submit to what he saw as clear and incontravertible logic and reason, so he convinced the Emperor to have the Roman army burn down the Donatist churches, and in 412, the emperor outlawed the Donatist beliefs and exiled them. Augustine's justification of this was from Lu. 14:23, the parable where the master tells his servants to, "Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled." Augustine saw here his mandate to use force to convert people and ensure doctrinal orthodoxy.
Now, in part due to our heritage of democracy, we understand this to be unscriptural -- that the Christian leadership model is not the sword, but the basin and the towel. But the question we must ask -- if Augustine, Calvin, whoever made a mistake like this-- does it automatically disqualify their theology? Was Augustine wrong when he debunked Pelagius' rejection of original sin? That has been the orthodox Christian doctrine, whether Calvinist, Arminian, or Catholic ever since Augustine. Do we automatically disqualify what he taught because he made a mistake, and believed force was a legitimate means of church discipline? I would think not.
This is known by debaters as a classic fallacy. Ad hominem attacks enflame the passions of an observer, and might pursuade the uncritical thinker, but they do not prove or disprove anything. All recounting the sagas of Augustine and the Dontatists or Calvin and Severtus can prove is that Augustine and Calvin were imperfect men -- something they themselves would have been the first to admit if asked. The execution of Severtus, scandalous though it might be (though Jean Chauvin has done a good job of putting forward a reasonable explanation of why it might not have been quite so egregious as one often hears), is ultimately irrelevant to the central question: is the will of man held inviolate, or does God work all things accordint to the counsel of His will.
FTD: I urge you to reconsider your tactics: you can be a better debater than this. Please try to do so.
Unfortunately it is not
Funny how it is not 'beneath' a Calvinist to deny that Calvin was responsible for the death of not only Servetus, but others in Geneva.
Funny, how it is not 'beneath' a Calvinist to defend the burning at the stake of a man who pleaded for mercy.
Where were the cries of outrage from the Calvinist 'brethren' when Dr. Steve called me a liar and a liabler for stating an historical fact.
Where the honest Calvinists when OP was stating that Servetus deserved what he got!
Where were the objective Calvinists when I was asking why Dr. Steve was asking about a believers personal life and what that had to do with his theology.
Where are the Calvinist brethren when a brother in Christ is being attacked as a tare, an unbeliever etc.
When your Reformed history is put out for the world to see, the beatings, the hangings and the burnings then comes the outrage!
Knox's tirade shows that if the Reformed churches had had as much power as Rome, they would have behaved no differently.
The silence of the Calvinists on these threads when fellow believers are vilified is proof that they would sit quietly by while it happened.