Servetus theological beliefs by Peter Hughes
Nearly all copies of Servetus' magnum opus, Christianismi
Restitutio, were destroyed by the authorities. Only three
have survived (detailed stroy in “Out of the flames”).
Its peculiar, unorthodox trinitarian theology, which made
Servetus a hunted man in nearly every country in Western Europe,
cannot be summarized simply. Unitarian scholar Earle Morse
Wilbur, who translated De Trinitatis Erroribus, found the
Restitutio less to his liking and passed over coming to terms
with it. John Godbey, a Unitarian Universalist scholar of
the Reformation, wrote that "most persons lack sufficient
understanding of his views to make defensible statements about
him."
Servetus rejected the doctrine of original sin and the entire
theory of salvation based upon it, including the doctrines
of Christ's dual nature and the vicarious atonement effected
by his death. He believed Jesus had one nature, at once fully
human and divine, and that Jesus was not another being of
the godhead separate from the Father, but God come to earth.
Other human beings, touched by Christian grace, could overcome
sin and themselves become progressively divine. He thought
of the trinity as manifesting an "economy" of the
forms of activity which God could bring into play. Christ
did not always exist. Once but a shadow, he had been brought
to substantial existence when God needed to exercise that
form of activity. In some future time he would no longer be
a distinct mode of divine expression. Servetus called the
crude and popular conception of the trinity, considerably
less subtle than his own, "a three headed Cerberus."
(In Greek mythology Cerberus is a three-headed dog-like creature
of the underworld.)
Servetus did not believe people are totally depraved, as
Calvin's theology supposed. He thought all people, even non-Christians,
susceptible to or capable of improvement and justification.
He did not restrict the benefits of faith to a few recipients
of God's parsimonious dispensation of grace, as did Calvin's
doctrine of the elect. Rather, grace abounds and human beings
need only the intelligence and free will, which all human
beings possess, to grasp it. Nor did Servetus describe, as
did Calvin, an infinite chasm between the divine and mortal
worlds. He conceived the divine and material realms to be
a continuum of more and less divine entities. He held that
God was present in and constitutive of all creation. This
feature of Servetus' theology was especially obnoxious to
Calvin. At the Geneva trial he asked Servetus, "What,
wretch! If one stamps the floor would one say that one stamped
on your God?"
Calvin asked if the devil was part of God. Servetus laughed
and replied, "Can you doubt it? This is my fundamental
principle that all things are a part and portion of God and
the nature of things is the substantial spirit of God."
The devil was an important factor in Servetian theology.
Servetus was a dualist. He thought God and the devil were
engaged in a great cosmic battle. The fate of humanity was
just a small skirmish in salvation history. He charged orthodox
trinitarians with creating their doctrine of the trinity,
not to describe God, but to puff themselves up as central
to God's concern. Because they defined God to suit their own
purposes, he called them atheists.
Servetus' demonology included the notion that the devil had
created the papacy as an effective countermeasure to Christ's
coming to earth. Through the popes the devil had taken over
the church. Infant baptism was a diabolic rite, instituted
by Satan, who in ancient days had presided over pagan infant
sacrifices. He calculated that the Archangel Michael would
soon come to bring deliverance and the end of the world, probably
in 1585.
|
