I bring this all up not as a poor reflection upon King David for we know that David was a man "after God's own heart". I bring this up simply because we cannot look back on history and judge people for the way they lived their lives. It is a different time and different era with different values.
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.
You are trying to make a case that Calvin set up a kangaroo court to execute Servetus and what he did was wrong. If this is the case then it should be pointed out the Catholic Church had no such court and sought to execute Servetus without a trial or legal proceedings all with decrees from the Chair of Peter. As a historian and a Catholic I'm sure you can appreciate what that means. If you condemn Calvin then you must condemn the Church. Assuming your authors are even remotely correct, if anything Calvin sought to work within the legal system. The Church did not. You can't have it both ways.
There was a judge and a jury who tried and convicted Servetus. I don't know about you but I get a team of five people in a room and it is next to impossible to get them to agree on anything. I doubt if Calvin weighed that much control over 12 jurors regardless of how important you may feel his position was.
You wrote:
“I wonder how you would looked upon King David who would line people up (men, women and children) and execute every third person; how he would put people "under the saw", slowly chopping them in half; murdering unsuspecting villagers and cutting off their foreskins; or what you would have thought about him taking a high ranking official's wife and having him murdered. This was the person who wrote most of the Psalms we enjoy today. Do we discount the Psalms?”
How I would look upon David – no matter what he did – is of course completely irrelevant in a discussion about Calvin. David did not start Calvinism. I cannot discount any part of scripture nor would I ever dream of so doing. David was inspired. Calvin was not – at least not by God.
“I bring this all up not as a poor reflection upon King David for we know that David was a man "after God's own heart". I bring this up simply because we cannot look back on history and judge people for the way they lived their lives. It is a different time and different era with different values.”
We must judge to some extent. If we do not then we fail to delineate right from wrong. In that way are we not working in the image of God no matter how poorly we copy our Lord in His perfect justice? Did David murder Uriah or not? Yes, he did so. Did God not decide that he had sinned? Did God not reveal to Nathan David’s sin? Was he not punished? So am I not to notice that Calvin sinned against justice? The simple fact is that neither Calvin nor any of his followers possessed the authority to executed a man for heresy when they themselves were heretics.
“You are trying to make a case that Calvin set up a kangaroo court to execute Servetus and what he did was wrong. If this is the case then it should be pointed out the Catholic Church had no such court and sought to execute Servetus without a trial or legal proceedings all with decrees from the Chair of Peter.”
Incorrect. Gee, I guess you are not at all familiar with Pierre Cavard’s, Le Procés de Michel Servet a Vienne (1953), right? Big shock there. Servetus had several cases pending against him in Catholic countries – principally Spain and France. Servetus escaped from Vienne. Notice the word ESCAPED? He was under arrest. He was to be tried. The authorities were building a case against him when he escaped. If you knew what you were talking about AND YOU DON’T you would know that the Genevan killers of Servetus wrote to Vienne to ask that they send all of their court records and evidence against Servetus to them so they could use that information in their trial in Geneva! Vienne refused pointing out that the info was for their own case against Servetus. Honestly, how can you be so grossly misinformed to think that a man could be put to death for heresy in the sixteenth century by the proper authorities in a Catholic country without a trial? There were ALWAYS trials in such cases.
The simple fact was that Servetus worked in Vienne for 12 years as a private physician. He worked on his heretical treatises in his spare time. Eventually he was caught. The inquisitor of Lyons, Matthieu Ory became the lead investigator in the case on March 12, 1553. Servetus was questioned on March 16th. He was arrested only on April 4th! That’s right. He hadn’t even been arrested when first questioned. That was the law in a case such as that. He was questioned again on April 5th and 6th. He escaped on April 7th at 4 in the morning. He first decided to go to Spain, his homeland, but then turned back because he knew he would be arrested if caught. The Spanish inquisition had already begun investigating Servetus in 1532! The inquisitors even sent Servetus’ brother, who was an orthodox Catholic priest to him to try and convince him to return to Spain. He knew, however, that this would mean a trial and a conviction and only if he disavowed his beliefs would he survive. He fled instead. He changed his name to Villeneuve. Why is that important? Because in 1538, under the name Villeneuve, Servetus was tried for mixing astrology and medicine after being denounced for doing so by the faculty of medicine in Paris. He was acquitted of the charges. The inquisitors did not know that Villeneuve was really Servetus. He ran off to Vienne after he was cleared by the inquisition. In around 1540 he became the personal physician of Pierre Palmier, Archbishop of Vienne. Read Goldstone.
Thus, he was under investigation by the Spanish inquisition (which always used trials as required by law) since 1532. He was tried in Paris in 1538, but under an assumed name. In 1540 he went to Vienne. In 1553 he fled Vienne when he was arrested by the inquisition which was preparing a trial case against him. He fled – to Geneva. It is ironic, by the way, that a letter to or from Calvin is what got Servetus caught in Vienne. By then Calvin had already vowed to kill Calvin.
“As a historian and a Catholic I'm sure you can appreciate what that means. If you condemn Calvin then you must condemn the Church.”
Not at all. Calvin had no proper authority to engineer the trial of a heretic since he was a heretic himself. Also, it is clear that he wanted Servetus dead because of his personal animus against him.
“Assuming your authors are even remotely correct, if anything Calvin sought to work within the legal system.”
It was Calvin’s legal system. He essentially wrote it.
“ The Church did not. You can't have it both ways.”
The Church most definitely did work within the legal system – both the secular and the ecclesiastical. I am not having it both ways. My way is logical and according to history. Your way is completely out of touch with the facts.
“There was a judge and a jury who tried and convicted Servetus.”
The trial was in the consistory. What exactly makes you think there was a jury?
“I don't know about you but I get a team of five people in a room and it is next to impossible to get them to agree on anything. I doubt if Calvin weighed that much control over 12 jurors regardless of how important you may feel his position was.”
12 jurors? Again, we see you have no idea of what you are talking about.
"If he comes, I shall never let him go out alive if my authority has weight."
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Baker Book House, 1950), p. 371.
"I hope that the verdict will call for the death penalty."
Walter Nigg, The Heretics (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1962), p. 328.
Calvin, in 1561, wrote a letter to Marquis Paet, the chamberlain to the king of Navarre in which he wrote: "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels, who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard." David Benedict, “A General History of the Baptist Denomination”— Gallatin: Church History Research and Archives, 1985, Vol. 1: 186.