Oh, please! You make innunedos and provide no facts nor references. Your statement, "There may have been a city council, but he ruled that too from behind the scenes." is worthy of being the headlines on the World Weekly News. Calvin actually lobbied unsuccessfully to have the council change the mode of execution. That doesn't sound like someone who "pulled strings".
The city council followed the law of the day and executed Servetus according to their law. You did neglect to mention that the Catholic Church also was seeking to execute Servetus, so I would think that you would be grateful that Gevena beat you to it. I would suggest you read the history of Michael Servetus Biography
If you really want a more interesting perspective of Christian leadership I would suggest an objective study of the various Popes who reportedly ran brothels, were heretics, and lived in splendor while the masses starved; all the while they were issuing decrees from the "Chair of Peter". And we won't even go into the contested "Pope Joan" incident.
You're right, HarleyD. Laura Boettner has a piece on his execution that is pretty thorough, and IIRC, even Paul Johnson, an eminent Oxford Historian and Roman Catholic asserts same in his History of Christianity.
His execution wasn't correct, but it is much better to die by the sword than to burn at the stake until extremeties turn into charbroiled stumps. What an absolutley horrific thing to do to someone!
Servetus referred to the Trinity as that 'cerberus', to give you an idea of his rhetoric, and is probably one of the reasons a death sentence was awaiting him in France.
“Oh, please! You make innunedos and provide no facts nor references. Your statement, "There may have been a city council, but he ruled that too from behind the scenes." is worthy of being the headlines on the World Weekly News. Calvin actually lobbied unsuccessfully to have the council change the mode of execution. That doesn't sound like someone who "pulled strings".”
Can you actually read? Calvin wanted to change the method of execution. That in no way meant he was against the execution that he had vowed to make happen! You want references? Okay, read Bouwsma’s life of Calvin called John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait. He notes on page 27 that “Calvin, as his apologists have pointed out, although responsible for Servetus’s arrest and prosecution, favored a less brutal mode of execution.”
Read Lawrence Goldstone’s fascinating book called Out of the Flames. G. notes that Calvin bragged about being responsible for the arrest, initiating the prosecution, and drwaing up the charges against Servetus. (page 201) Goldstone also notes that Calvin went so far as to replace the Attorney General with himself at one point in the legal process. (page 190).
“The city council followed the law of the day and executed Servetus according to their law.”
Yes, and who revised the law code and yet kept that law? Calvin. Calvin was trained as a lawyer, and hw wanted to make all things into the image of the theocratic society he wanted. I already pointed out that the law used was the prevailing law. The important point was, after Calvin’s revision of Geneva’s laws, it was really by and large Calvin’s law code.
“You did neglect to mention that the Catholic Church also was seeking to execute Servetus, so I would think that you would be grateful that Gevena beat you to it. I would suggest you read the history of Michael Servetus Biography “
I didn’t fail to mention anything that was necessary to the point. It is irrelevant, in a discussion about Calvin’s actions, to mention what the Church wanted to do. Calvin is not the Church -- no matter how much he pretended to be. Also, the Church could not seek what it could not do. The Church had no power to execute. Calvin, as the de facto law of Geneva, could be responsible for someone’s execution – and was.
“If you really want a more interesting perspective of Christian leadership I would suggest an objective study of the various Popes who reportedly ran brothels, were heretics, and lived in splendor while the masses starved; all the while they were issuing decrees from the "Chair of Peter".”
I already know the objective history of the popes. I am a Church historian. And that there were bad popes we all know. None of them, however, invented a religion and tried to pass themselves off as offering the best Christian society as Calvin did. And no pope who was hunted by the Roman pagans ever hypocritically demanded the painful persecution of heretics. Calvin, hunted as a heretic, did demand that heretics be put to death – and by “heretic” he meant anyone who disagreed with him. That’s the difference. Christ started our Church, not any pope. Calvin started the Reformed sects and he had blood on his hands.
“And we won't even go into the contested "Pope Joan" incident.”
It is not contested by scholars that Joan never existed. It is contested by fools and sciolists who already know they lost the real argument.
Oh, and lest I forget: “The quality of Calvin's cold hatred was terrible indeed. It is manifested especially in the affair of Michael Servetus. This learned doctor, a closet Protestant, amused himself by picking out all the blunders and errors that he could find in Calvin's pride and joy, The Institutes. He then sent the book with his own annotations to Calvin. That was in 1546. Calvin clenched his teeth: "If he comes hither and I have any authority, I will never let him quit this place alive" (Letter to Viret, a preacher of Lausanne). He awaited the moment of vengeance for seven years.”
So Calvin had vowed to kill Servetus seven years before Servetus even showed up in Geneva? Pretty damning don’t you think?
And do we even need bring up the fact that Calvin was a sodomite?
“It is only fair to wonder what could be the nature of such a burning self-reproach. There is one answer, based upon serious evidence, one that has always been passionately denied by the Protestants. In 1551, a Catholic controversialist revealed that the archives of the city of Noyon, Calvin's birth place, contain the record of a condemnation against Calvin, at age 18, for sodomy. He had by then already received the tonsure. His parents obtained clemency from the bishop, so that instead of being condemned to death as the law demanded, he was branded as a sign of infamy. The Catholic controversialist presented the evidence signed by all the eminent personages of the city. The English scholar Stapleton went there to examine the archives during Calvin's lifetime, and vouched for the fact. The contemporary German Lutherans spoke of it as an established fact (Schlusselburg, Théologie calvinienne).”
Translated from Le Bachais, No. 35, November-December 1999, the publication of the Priory St. Pierre Julien Eymard, France).
Have a great day Harley.