Not accurate. While he did exert considerable influence in Geneva and appeared as an expert witness against Servetus at the trial, Calvin was not a member of the City Council and did not have the power or authority to personally impose a death sentence for what was then a capital crime. Calvin actually sought, unsuccessfully, to mitigate the death sentence to the less painful beheading. It should also be noted that in the spirit of the age Servetus had already been sentenced to death by the Roman Catholic inquisition.
Calvin and Servetus. It is sometimes said that John Calvin burned Michael Servetus at the stake. Servetus was burned at the stake just outside Geneva on October 27, 1553. John Calvin had some connection with the affair, and the part he played is not excusable in the light of the twentieth century, but it is not accurate to say that Calvin did the burning. Let us look at the facts.Michael Servetus was a Spaniard with a brilliant but erractic mind. He renounced Roman Catholicism, but did not embrace Protestantism. He was a prolific writer and wrote vehemently against some of the most chedrished doctrines of Christianity. Both Catholics and Protestants considered his writings not only heretical but horribly blasphemous.
In 1553 Servetus was arrested by the Roman Catholic authorities in Vienne, France, and sentenced to be burned. While awaiting execution he escaped, and went direct to Geneva. With all the world before him, why did he go to Geneva when he had been warned to stay away? He knew that Calvin had many bitter enemies, and probably knew that at that particular moment the majority of the City Council were opposed to Calvin. The City Council had banished him once, and might be induced to do it again. Servetus probably went to Geneva to ally himself with the enemies of Calvin and thus help to overthrow Calvin and his work. When Calvin heard of the presence of Servetus in Geneva he reported the matter to the City Council. Bear in mind that Calvin was not a member of the City Council and that the majority of the Council were opposed to him. The Council arrested Servetus and put him on trial for heresy and blasphemy. John Calvin appeard as a witness against him.
After a long trial the City Council found Servetus guilty of heresy and blasphemy, and sentenced him to be burned. Accoring to the Old Testament, blasphemy was punishable with death. John Calvin urged the Council not to burn Servetus, but to take a more humane method of executing him. The Council refused. The whole story is a sad one, and Calvin does not appear at his best in it, but we should judge him by the light of the century in which he lived. The large majority of both Protestants and Catholics in that century approved of the death penalty for heresy and blasphemy.
http://capthk.com/2009/07/16/john-calvin-and-michael-servetus/
Thank you for the Reformed apologetics interpretation.
Here is a more neutral statement of the facts.
“Meaning to flee to Italy, Servetus inexplicably stopped in Geneva, where Calvin and his Reformers had denounced him. On 13 August, he attended a sermon by Calvin at Geneva. He was arrested after the service[22] and again imprisoned. All his property was confiscated. Servetus claimed during this judgement he was arrested at an inn at Geneva. French Inquisitors asked that Servetus be extradited to them for execution. Calvin wanted to show himself as firm in defense of Christian orthodoxy as his usual opponents. “He was forced to push the condemnation of Servetus with all the means at his command.”[22] Calvin’s delicate health meant he did not personally appear against Servetus.[23] Nicholas de la Fontaine played the more active role in Servetus’s prosecution and the listing of points that condemned him.
At his trial, Servetus was condemned on two counts, for spreading and preaching Nontrinitarianism and anti-paedobaptism (anti-infant baptism).[24] Of paedobaptism Servetus had said, “It is an invention of the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity.”[25] In the case the procureur général (chief public prosecutor) added some curious sounding accusations in the form of inquiries—the most odd sounding perhaps being, “whether he has married, and if he answers that he has not, he shall be asked why, in consideration of his age, he could refrain so long from marriage.” To this oblique imputation about his sexuality, Servetus replied that rupture (inguinal hernia) had long since made him incapable of that particular sin. Another offensive question was “whether he did not know that his doctrine was pernicious, considering that he favours Jews and Turks, by making excuses for them, and if he has not studied the Koran in order to disprove and controvert the doctrine and religion that the Christian churches hold, together with other profane books, from which people ought to abstain in matters of religion, according to the doctrine of St. Paul.”
Calvin believed Servetus deserving of death on account of what he termed as his “execrable blasphemies”.[26] Calvin expressed these sentiments in a letter to Farel, written about a week after Servetus’ arrest, in which he also mentioned an exchange with Servetus. Calvin wrote:
...after he [Servetus] had been recognized, I thought he should be detained. My friend Nicolas summoned him on a capital charge, offering himself as a security according to the lex talionis. On the following day he adduced against him forty written charges. He at first sought to evade them. Accordingly we were summoned. He impudently reviled me, just as if he regarded me as obnoxious to him. I answered him as he deserved... of the man’s effrontery I will say nothing; but such was his madness that he did not hesitate to say that devils possessed divinity; yea, that many gods were in individual devils, inasmuch as a deity had been substantially communicated to those equally with wood and stone. I hope that sentence of death will at least be passed on him; but I desired that the severity of the punishment be mitigated.[27]
As Servetus was not a citizen of Geneva, and legally could at worst be banished, the government, in an attempt to find some plausible excuse to disregard this legal reality, had consulted with other Swiss Reformed cantons (Zürich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen.) They universally favoured his condemnation and suppression of his doctrine, but without saying how that should be accomplished.[28] Martin Luther had condemned his writing in strong terms. Servetus and Philip Melanchthon had strongly hostile views of each other. The party called the “Libertines”, who were generally opposed to anything and everything John Calvin supported, were in this case strongly in favour of the execution of Servetus at the stake (while Calvin urged that he be beheaded instead). In fact, the council that condemned Servetus was presided over by Perrin (a Libertine) who ultimately on 24 October sentenced Servetus to death by burning for denying the Trinity and infant baptism.[29] When Calvin requested that Servetus be executed by decapitation as a traitor rather than by fire as a heretic, Farel, in a letter of 8 September, chided him for undue lenience.[30] The Geneva Council refused his request. On 27 October 1553 Servetus was burned at the stake just outside Geneva with what was believed to be the last copy of his book chained to his leg. Historians record his last words as: “Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me.”[31]
Calvin agreed that those whom the ruling religious authorities determined to be heretics should be punished:
Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are. There is no question here of man’s authority; it is God who speaks, and clear it is what law he will have kept in the church, even to the end of the world. Wherefore does he demand of us a so extreme severity, if not to show us that due honor is not paid him, so long as we set not his service above every human consideration, so that we spare not kin, nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory.[32]
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