Michael Servetus - His Vision Did Not Go Up In Flames
Sermon by Steve Edington
November 4, 2005
Each spring I offer as an auction item a sermon of one's choice. Each year I anticipate the bidding with some trepidation. What if nobody bids? What's the message there? Fortunately for me (I think) that has never happened. Instead my trepidation generally runs in another direction-especially if the bidding gets competitive and keeps going up. How am I to come up with something that merits these escalating bids? Whatever the amount ends up being, I know I'd never pay that much to hear myself hold forth on anything!
Last spring we had a first in that the last two people who were bidding against each other stopped doing so and mutually agreed on a price that they would share. Which means I've not got two people who want their money's worth instead of one. Steve Ladew and Jim McCormick combined their assets and purchased the auction sermon last April. They agreed they wanted to hear me do one on Michael Servetus, who is generally credited with being the founder of Unitarianism-or what eventually became Unitarianism, since I don't believe he ever claimed the term for himself. He's also regarded as the first Unitarian martyr. I don't believe we have a second Unitarian martyr so Servetus gets his martyrdom all to himself--not that he wanted it, because he didn't.
So how do I tell this man's story and find any contemporary relevance in it? As I reviewed his rather remarkable life it struck me that it could make a pretty decent period piece movie, in the manner that A Man for All Seasons did many years ago. A Man for All Seasons ends with the execution of the protagonist, Sir Thomas More, at the hands of the antagonist, King Henry VIII of England. But I think I'd start my Servetus flick off with the execution and then do it in flashback. So for the next few minutes you're going to witness my extremely short career as a screenwriter.
Okay, here we go: Black screen upon which appears the words: "October 27, 1553. Geneva, Switzerland." We see the sun coming up over 16`'' century Geneva. Move in for a tight shot of a jail from which a bedraggled, chained prisoner is being led forth by guards and a clergyman, whom the prisoner ignores. They proceed to the center of town where a crowd is gathering around a large pile of freshly cut boughs with a stake in the middle. The prisoner is tied to the stake, his books are tied to his waist, he is given one last chance to recant his heresy, which he refuses to do. The fires are lit. The green wood has been deliberately used so it will burn slowly, so slow that it actually takes a couple of hours to burn the poor man to death. [I couldn't use that much screen time, but I'd try to show the time passing.] Going by what I know of this incident I'd have the condemned man, Michael Servetus, at some point cry out, "0 Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy upon me."
The next scene would show a conversation later in the day between the attending clergyman, a one Guillaume Farel, and John Calvin, in which Mr. Farel recalls Servetus' final words and remarks to Calvin that if Servetus would have called Jesus the "Eternal Son of God" rather that the "Son of the Eternal God" he would have saved himself from the flames. For that was indeed Servetus' capital crime; he believed Jesus to be the Son of God but not God himself, as the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity holds. Unbelievable as it may seem to us it was Servetus' unwillingness to rearrange his words in a certain way cost him his life. But, of course, there was more to it than that, as would come to be seen in the flash-back part of the movie, which now gets underway.
Those are the opening scenes. We go back 30 years to the town of Villanueva, Spain where Servetus grew up and show a 14 year old Michael, as Miguel Serveto, studying under the tutelage of a Franciscan monk with a possible eye on the priesthood, and have it run it from there.
The real challenge in putting a film like this together would be to somehow put it in the context of its time so that when it comes full circle to the execution the viewers could see a chain of events that led to it in a way that makes some kind of sense-a pretty perverted sense by our standards but a certain kind of sense nonetheless. To do this you have to illustrate a society in which there is no such thing as secular democracies, in the way most western nations are today. Any kind of democracy, secular or not, is still in its most fledgling state. And, of course, there is no such thing as church/state separation. To challenge the official religion of a nation/state was to also challenge the legitimacy of the nation/state and make oneself, in effect, an enemy of the State. In the days of the young Servetus that system is beginning, but only just beginning, to break down. He was either 6 or 8 years old--the year of his birth is open to question--when Martin Luther, over in Germany, posted his famous 95 Thesis that began the Protestant Reformation.
The other major happening of this time, as I'm sure you well know, was the invention of the printing press; which meant, among other things, that any literate person who could get his hands on a printed Bible could read it for himself (and I'm afraid it was "himself" in nearly all cases), and draw his own conclusions as to what the text said and meant rather than rely solely upon what the church authorities said it said and meant. That is just what Servetus did, and that gets us back to our story.
He chooses a career law over the priesthood and goes to the University of Toulouse in France. There he reads the Bible, and its contents work their way through his brilliant, precocious, and-by most accounts-his insufferably argumentative mind. What strikes him the most is that there is no Biblical basis for the Trinity. This is important to Michael because back in his native Spain, even though Catholicism has come to reign supreme, there is still a Jewish and Muslim population there. He thinks: You know, the person of Jesus--his life and teachings--would probably be pretty attractive to Jews and Muslims if they weren't also forced to believe he was God in order to be a Christian. And he further thinks: Well why don't I make that happen.
Servetus was almost as naive as he was brilliant. He thinks, I'll become a Protestant I'll go sign on with the Reformation, and then I'll debunk the idea of the Trinity, and Protestant Christianity will become a universal religion. So he heads for Switzerland, first Basel then Strasburg, which is where he published a book in 1531, written in Latin, called On the Errors of the Trinity. This gets him in more deep stuff with the Protestants than it does the Catholics. Remember, the Protestant Reformation was more of a protest against certain practices of the Catholic Church than it was over doctrine. The Protestants wanted to show that they we doctrinally pure Christians - didn't want to become an enemy of the state, after all - who were questioning the excesses of 16th century Catholicism.
So Servetus ends up getting ostracized by the most of the Protestants right about the same time that his book attracts the attention of the Spanish Inquisition back in his native Spain, and he is ordered to appear before them. No way he going to do that. At that point in his life he still has enough sense to hide out. He changes his name, goes to Paris, takes up the study of medicine, and becomes Dr. Michel de Villeneuve. In the course of his medical career he makes some significant discoveries about the circulation of the blood, for which he is given credit to this day in the annals of medical history.
One of the mysteries of Servetus' life is why he just didn't live it out as a doctor. He'd have saved himself a lot of grief, to say nothing of his life. Well, during his French doctor phase he became a part of a movement of 15th and 16th century Frenchmen who called themselves humanists. Theirs was not an anti-religious humanism, however, but rather one that held that persons glorified God by celebrating their intellect, their creative powers. This stance led him to deny the doctrine of original sin, for which he also found no Biblical basis. So he just couldn't leave this religious thing alone. He wrote another book called The Restoration of Christianity which called for a type of Christianity in line with the type of humanism he'd embraced. In this view Jesus was the Son of God because he was the human being who best lived out the Godliness that is in all of us. Servetus became, that is, a Christian humanist who wanted to "restore" Christianity along those lines.
At this point his naiveté get the better of him. He begins a correspondence with John Calvin, who is now the chief architect of the Protestant Reformation. While holding no political office, Calvin made himself the most powerful person in Geneva, Switzerland which is his base of operation. Staying with the movie motif, Servetus is the protagonist and Calvin the antagonist, and to make this movie thing work you'd have to show all the stuff going on in Calvin's life, interspersed with that of Servetus, to demonstrate how they eventually and fatefully came together in Geneva. I don't have time for that piece of it here. Very briefly however, Calvin was building a Protestant theology based on the idea of the inherent sinfulness and depravity of humanity, as well as predestination, both of which were at odds with Servetus' Christian humanism. And Calvin, also to indicate his doctrinal correctness, strongly upheld the Doctrine of the Trinity. But Servetus believed in the power of ideas above all. He figured that if I can just convince Calvin by the strength of argument and reason of my brand of Christianity, he'll see the light and Christianity itself will find harmony with Enlightenment principles and values.
Servetus furhter believed that if I can just go to Geneva, and talk this whole thing over with my pen pal John Calvin, we can work it out. Big mistake. Huge mistake. Fatal mistake. Servetus may have been good, if not brilliant, when it came to theology or medicine; but he didn't understand politics too well--especially hard-ball, down-and-dirty politics. So now in my movie the scene I show is Michael Servetus riding into Geneva with his books in his saddlebags and full of confidence in his argumentative powers; and Calvin looking out a window seeing him coming into town and saying to an aide, "He doesn't get out of here alive." It didn't happen that way, but I figure I can give myself some cinematic license.
What did reportedly take place, however, is that when Calvin read some of his correspondence with Servetus about matters theological he (Calvin) did say to the aforementioned Guillaume Farel (the man who accompanied Servetus to his death just in case there was a final recantation) that if Servetus ever came to Geneva, "if my authority is of any avail I will not suffer im to get out alive." That's what the Servetus versus Calvin show down was really about It was about Calvin's political authority and influence as much as it was about his theology. Hear Calvin's words again: "If my authority is of any avail, I will not suffer him to get out alive."
So Servetus was doomed as soon as he crossed the city limits. He was arrested, jailed, tried for heresy and condemned to death in a very expeditious manner. Now technically none of this was done by Calvin. It was all accomplished by decisions of the Council of Geneva, a very early experiment in democracy, no less. This was not a King ordering Servetus's death in an off-with-his-head pronouncement, but rather a body of officials in a supposedly enlightened city. And because Calvin commanded the religious allegiance of the overwhelming majority of the citizenry of Geneva, he also represented and embodied the political base of the Council of Geneva, something you can be sure the Council did not take lightly. And if Calvin had already sworn that Servetus would not leave town alive, then to have him do so would have compromised Calvin's political as well as his religious authority, and he wasn't going to let that happen. So Servetus went to an agonizing death, and Calvin's power, and his political power base in Geneva, remained secure. I'm not sure if Servetus ever even figured it out that he was dying for political as much as for theological reasons. Unlike Servetus, Calvin knew his politics as well as his theology, and he knew how to play quite skillfully in both ballparks. He was the tail that wagged the dog of civil law in Geneva.
So if I were making a movie of all this - Michael and John would be as good a title as any I figure - I'd offer it as both an historical piece and a metaphor for our time. Note I said a metaphor for our time and not a replicaation of our time. Of course we don't execute people now over obscure points of theology. Religious persecution for the sake of religion alone has gone its way in this country. But the political dynamics that led up to the execution of Servetus have a certain ring of familiarity to them-at least in my ears. For what you had there in Geneva were the political powers that be, and the faith base that supported them, each doing what they had to do in order to stay simpatico with one another. That piece of it does sound rather familiar to me.
After all, it was James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who was reportedly the first person consulted by the President's chief political adviser when Harriet Miers was nominated for the Supreme Court. In this case, as we now know, the move backfired. But I'm struck nonetheless by how it was the person who represented a particular religious constituency who got the first call, and whose approval was the first one sought, when it came to placing a person--or attempting to place a person--on the highest civil court in our land. No, we're not burning religious heretics at the stake, but certain echoes of Calvin's Geneva are still very much with us.
Consider this as well: No demonstrable reason has ever been demonstrated to me as to how the presence of legally married same-sex couples in our society pose any threat to the civic and political order, or to our societal well-being. So why, then, has this issue become the most politically hot-button issue of our time? The only reason I can discern is because there's a religiously motivated political base that opposes such a move, and that base holds a nice chunk of political capital for those who will cater to it. If there is ever a case of a particular religious constituency being the religious tail that wags the civic dog, this is it. Mr. Calvin, I would say, is alive and doing rather well in some quarters.
Finally, why do we in this religious community, and with the religious tradition we represent, claim Michael Servetus as our founder? Most of his theology we would find arcane and incomprehensible. He had some truly weird ideas about the Devil, and a whole demonology that I did not have time to develop. His Christian humanism, on the other hand, still resonates favorably. But he was not, by most accounts, a very pleasant person. He loved to argue, sometimes just for the sake of an argument. Personality-wise he was not what you'd call a "nice guy" and we UUs sure do love nice. You probably wouldn't want to invite him to a Circle Dinner unless you were prepared to debate practically any topic that might come up.
But his legacy is important to us for severalreasons. As word of his death, and the manner in which it happened spread, a certain revulsion over it set in among at least some of the Protestant reformers causing them to repudiate the idea that alleged heretics should be punished by civil magistrates. There was a certain turn towards tolerance; and even in Geneva, years after his death, the Genevan Calvinists erected what they called a "expiatory monument" to Servetus [to "expiate" means to make amends and atone for], not because they had come to agree with his views but because they repudiated the idea of violence, to say nothing of death, being used to enforce orthodox doctrine. So part of Servetus' legacy was a backlash that led to a more general mood of toleration in matters of religion in Europe, which eventually and slowly evolved into the religious freedom we know today.
For us as religious liberals I see his legacy rooted in that moment when he read the Bible for himself and drew his own conclusion accordingly, apart from the dictates of any ecclesiastical body or authority. Most of his conclusions were not ones any of us would draw, but the process of what happened to him is important. What Servetus did was find his religious truth in the interaction between the content of faith, which in his case the Bible represented, and the workings of the human mind. Faith and reason, working together rather than as adversaries, is what best guides our journeys of the mind and spirit even as they did for Servetus. The point for us is not to reach the same conclusions that he did, but to trust the workings of our minds and the workings of our human experience in tandem with what is often called the "wisdom of the ages" in coming to the truths we feel we can live out. This is what Servetus did-and this, I feel, is why he merits being regarded as our spiritual ancestor and founder.
So the lesson of Servetus' death is a lesson in what can happen when religious authority becomes the tail that wags the dog of the civic order. The legacy of his death proved to be one of increased toleration in the civic realm when it came to matters of religion. The legacy of his life is one that celebrates the workings of the human mind and the human spirit in the search for truth.
I'll end on this: John Calvin, for a number of legitimate historical reasons, is considered the founder of Presbyterianism. But much of Calvin's theology probably seems as distant to many Presbyterians today as does Servetus' theology to us. So please, don't go ganging up on your Presbyterian friends and telling them that "your guy killed our guy." That's true, but we've all gotten past that by now. And Rev. Tom Woodward over at the Presbyterian Church is one of my closest interfaith colleagues and a hard working member of the Granite State Organizing Project, so don't go getting his parishioners all upset.
Just give thanks for the life of Michael Servetus, and carry for his spirit of the free mind in the search for religious truth.
Stephen Edington
November 4, 2005
