5

Irresistibly Imposed “Christianity”

Arguably, one of Satan’s cleverest and most effective strategies was to delude the Emperor Constantine with a false conversion. Accounts differ, but whether this came about through a vision or a dream as recounted by Eusebius and Lactantius,¹ Constantine saw a “cross” in the sky and heard a “voice” proclaiming (by some accounts the words were inscribed on the cross), “In this sign thou shalt conquer.” In the prior year the god Apollo had also promised him victory.

Constantine’s edicts of toleration gave every man “a right to choose his religion according to the dictates of his own conscience and honest conviction, without compulsion and interference from the government.” ² Schaff views Constantine’s conversion as a wonderful advance for Christianity: “The church ascends the throne of the Caesars under the banner of the cross, and gives new vigor and lustre to the hoary empire of Rome. ³ In fact, that “conversion” began the corruption of the church and its marriage to the world. ⁴

How could a true follower of the Christ whose kingdom is not of this world and whose servants do not wage war proceed to wage war in His name, and under the banner of His cross to conquer with the sword? Of course, the Crusaders did the same, slaughtering both Muslims and Jews to retake the “holy land” under Pope Urban II’s pledge (matching Muhammad’s and the Qur’an’s promise to Muslims) of full forgiveness of sins for those who died in this holy war (Muslim jihad). But it was all very Augustinian. The City of God had to be defended!

From Constantine To Augustine

As Durant and other historians have pointed out, Constantine never renounced his loyalty to the pagan gods. He abolished neither the Altar of Victory in the Senate nor the Vestal Virgins who tended the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta. The Sun-god, not Christ, continued to be honored on the imperial coins. In spite of the “cross” (actually the cross of the god Mithras) on his shields and military banners, Constantine had a medallion created honoring the Sun for the “liberation” of Rome; and when he prescribed a day of rest it was again in the name of the Sun-god (“the day celebrated by the veneration of the Sun” ⁵ ) and not the Son of God. ⁶ Durant reminds us that throughout his “Christian” life Constantine used pagan as well as Christian rites and continued to rely upon “pagan magic formulas to protect crops and heal disease.”⁷

That Constantine murdered those who might have had a claim to his throne, including his son Crispus, a nephew and brother-in-law, is further evidence that his “conversion” was, as many historians agree, a clever political maneuver to unite the empire. Historian Philip Hughes, himself a Catholic priest, reminds us, “in his manners he [Constantine] remained, to the end, very much the Pagan of his early life. His furious tempers, the cruelty which, once aroused, spared not the lives even of his wife and son, are … an unpleasing witness to the imperfection of his conversion.” ⁸

It was not long after the new tolerance that Constantine found himself faced with a problem he had never anticipated: division within the Christian church to which he had given freedom. As we noted in the last chapter, it came to a head in North Africa with the Donatists, who, concerned for purity of the faith, separated from the Catholic churches, rejected their ordinances and insisted upon rebaptizing clergy who had repented after having denied the faith during the persecutions which arose when the Emperor Diocletian demanded that he be worshiped as a god. ⁹ After years of futile efforts to reestablish unity through discussion, pleadings, councils and decrees, Constantine finally resorted to force. Frend puts it well:

In the spring of 317 he [Constantine] followed up his decision by publishing a “most severe” edict against the Donatists, confiscating their property and exiling their leaders. Within four years, the universal freedom of conscience proclaimed at Milan had been abrogated, and the state had become a persecutor once more, only this time in favor of Christian orthodoxy ….

[The Donatists] neither understood nor cared about Constantine’s conversion. For them it was a case of the Devil insisting that “Christ was a lover of unity” …. In their view, the fundamental hostility of the state toward the church had not been altered. ¹⁰

In his own day and way, Augustine followed Constantine’s lead in his treatment of the Donatists, who were still a thorn in the side of the Roman Church. “While Augustine and the Catholics emphasized the unity of the Church, the Donatists insisted upon the purity of the Church and rebaptized all those who came to them from the Catholics – considering the Catholics corrupt.”¹¹ Constantine had been “relentless [as would Augustine and his disciple Calvin be] in his pursuit of `heretics’ [forbidding] those outside of the Catholic church to assemble … and confiscated their property … the very things Christians had endured themselves were now being practiced in the name of Christianity.” ¹²

As a good Catholic enjoying the blessing of the Emperor and believing in the state church Constantine had established, Augustine persecuted and even sanctioned the killing of the Donatists and other schismatics, as we have already seen. Gibbon tells us that the severe measures against the Donatists “obtained the warmest approbation of St. Augustine [and thereby] great numbers of the Donatists were reconciled to [forced back into] the Catholic Church.” ¹³ Of Augustine it has been well said that “the very greatness of his name has been the means of perpetuating the grossest errors which he himself propagated. More than anyone else, Augustine has encouraged the pernicious doctrine of salvation through the sacraments of an organized earthly Church, which brought with it priestcraft with all the evil and miseries that has entailed down through the centuries.” ¹⁴

From Augustine To Calvin

There is no question that John Calvin had a great zeal for God and His Word. As we have already seen, however, there was a serious defect in his understanding of true Christianity. In many ways which colored his perspective until his death, he still viewed the church of Christ through Roman Catholic eyes. One of those ways was his acceptance of the church as Constantine had molded it and Augustine had cemented it: a partner of the state, with the state enforcing orthodoxy (as the state church defined it) upon all its citizens. Based upon this misunderstanding, Calvin applied his legal training and natural brilliance to the development of a system of Christianity based upon an extreme view of God’s sovereignty which by the sheer force of its logic would compel kings and all mankind to conform all affairs to righteousness. Indeed, in partnership with the church, kings and other civil rulers would enforce Calvinistic Christianity.

Calvin has impossibly been called both an amillennialist and postmillenialist. Of those who believed in a thousand-year reign of Christ upon earth, Calvin said their “fiction is too puerile to need or to deserve refutation.” ¹⁵ As far as Calvin was concerned, Christ’s kingdom began with His advent upon earth and had been in process ever since. Rejecting the literal future reign of Christ upon the earth through His Second Coming to establish his earthly kingdom upon David’s throne in Jerusalem, Calvin felt obliged to establish the kingdom by his own efforts in Christ’s absence.

The Bible makes it clear that one must be “born again” even to “see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3) and that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50). Ignoring this biblical truth and following Augustine’s error, Calvin determined (along with Guillaume Farel) to establish a beachhead for the kingdom of God on earth in Geneva, Switzerland. His first attempt there ended with his expulsion from that city. Boettner acknowledges, “Due to an attempt of Calvin and Farel to enforce a too severe system of discipline in Geneva, it became necessary for them to leave the city temporarily.” ¹⁶

Three years later, however, facing Catholic opposition from within and the threat of armed intervention by Roman Catholics from without, Geneva’s city council decided that they needed Calvin’s strong measures and invited him back. This time he succeeded in imposing his religion upon Geneva’s citizens with an iron hand. His first act was to hand the city council his Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which were adopted November 20, 1561. Stefan Zweig tells us:

One of the most momentous experiments of all time began when this lean and harsh man entered the Cornavian Gate [of Geneva]. A State [the walled citystate of Geneva] was to be converted into a rigid mechanism; innumerable souls, people with countless feelings and thoughts, were to be compacted into an all-embracing and unique system. This was the first attempt made in Europe to impose … a uniform subordination upon an entire populace.

With systematic thoroughness, Calvin set to work for the realization of his plan to convert Geneva into the first Kingdom of God on earth. It was to be a community without corruption, disorder, vice or sin; it was to be the New Jerusalem, a centre from which the salvation of the world would radiate … the whole of his life was devoted to the service of this one idea. ¹⁷

Tyranny in Geneva

Perhaps Calvin thought he was God’s instrument to force Irresistible Grace (a key doctrine in Calvinism) upon the citizens of Geneva, Switzerland, even upon those who proved their unworthiness by resisting to the death. He unquestionably did his best to be irresistible in imposing “righteousness,” but what he imposed and the manner in which he imposed it was far from grace and the teachings and example of Christ.

Many of those who profess a “Reformed” faith today, especially those known as Reconstructionists such as the late Rousas J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Jay Grimstead and others (including organizations such as the Coalition on Revival), take Calvin’s Geneva as their model and thus hope to Christianize the United States and then the world. Many Christian activists of looser attachment to Calvin hope in their own way, through protest marches and the organizing of large enough voting blocks, to force an ungodly American citizenry into godly living. No one ever worked so hard at attempting to do this and for so long a time as Calvin. Durant reports:

To regulate lay conduct a system of domiciliary visits was established … and questioned the occupants on all phases of their lives …. The allowable color and quantity of clothing, and the number of dishes permissible at a meal, were specified by law. Jewelry and lace were frowned upon. A woman was jailed for arranging her hair to an immoral height ….

Censorship of the press was taken over from Catholic and secular precedents and enlarged: books … of immoral tendency were banned …. To speak disrespectfully of Calvin or the clergy was a crime. A first violation of these ordinances was punished with a reprimand, further violation with fines, persistent violation with imprisonment or banishment. Fornication was to be punished with exile or drowning; adultery, blasphemy, or idolatry, with death . . . a child was beheaded for striking its parents. In the years 1558-59 there were 414 prosecutions for moral offenses; between 1542 and 1564 there were seventy-six banishments and fifty-eight executions; the total population of Geneva was then about 20,000.¹⁸

Certainly, much of Calvin’s unusual zeal could not have come from the Holy Spirit’s guidance but rather from his powerful personality and extreme view of God’s sovereignty that denied all power of choice to man. Thus “grace” had to be irresistibly imposed. This was evident in the unbiblical manner in which he attempted to inflict his understanding of godliness upon the citizens of Geneva. In contrast to the humility, mercy, love, compassion and longsuffering of Christ, whom he loved and tried to serve, Calvin exerted authority much like the papacy which he now despised. Ironically, in spite of opposing the tyranny of the papacy, Calvin wielded the same unbiblical authoritarianism in attempting to enforce godliness upon ungodly people. Moreover, he criticized other Protestant leaders for not doing the same:

Seeing that the defenders of the Papacy are so bitter and bold in behalf of their superstitions, that in their atrocious fury they shed the blood of the innocent, it should shame Christian magistrates that in the protection of certain truth, they are entirely destitute of spirit. ¹⁹

Calvin’s defenders turn a blind eye to the facts when they attempt to exonerate him by blaming events in Geneva on the civil authorities. In the face of so much evidence to the contrary, Boettner even insists that “Calvin was the first of the Reformers to demand complete separation between Church and State.” ²⁰ In fact, Calvin not only established ecclesiastical law but he codified the civil legislation. ²¹ He held the civil authorities responsible to “foster and maintain the external worship of God, to defend sound doctrine and the condition of the church” ²² and to see that “no idolatry, no blasphemy against God’s name, no calumnies against his truth, nor other offenses to religion break out and be disseminated among the people … [but] to prevent the true religion … from being with impunity openly violated and polluted by public blasphemy.” ²³

Calvin used the civil arm to impose his peculiar doctrines upon the citizens of Geneva and to enforce them. Zweig, who pored over the official records of the City Council for Calvin’s day, tells us, “There is hardly a day, in the records of the settings of the Town Council, in which we do not find the remark: `Better consult Master Calvin about this.’ ²⁴ Za Pike reminds us that Calvin was given a “consultant’s chair” in every meeting of the city authorities and “when he was sick the authorities would come to his house for their sessions.” ²⁵ Rather than diminishing with time, Calvin’s power only grew. John McNeil, a Calvinist, admits that “in Calvin’s latter years, and under his influence, the laws of Geneva became more detailed and more stringent.” ²⁶

Don’t Cross Dr. Calvin!

With dictatorial control over the populace (“he ruled as few sovereigns have done” ²⁷), Calvin imposed his brand of Christianity upon the citizenry with floggings, imprisonments, banishments and burnings at the stake. Calvin has been called “the Protestant Pope” and “the Genevese dictator” who “would tolerate in Geneva the opinions of only one person, his own.” ²⁸ Concerning the adoption in Geneva of a confession of faith that was made mandatory for all citizens, the historian Philip Schaff comments:

It was a glaring inconsistency that those who had just shaken off the yoke of popery as an intolerable burden, should subject their conscience and intellect to a human creed; in other words, substitute for the old Roman popery a modern Protestant popery.” ²⁹

Durant says that “Calvin held power as the head of this consistory; from 1541 till his death in 1564, his voice was the most influential in Geneva.” ³⁰ Vance reminds us that

Calvin was involved in every conceivable aspect of city life: safety regulations to protect children, laws against recruiting mercenaries, new inventions, the introduction of cloth manufacturing, and even dentistry. He was consulted not only on all important state affairs, but on the supervision of the markets and assistance for the poor. ³¹

Most of these were laudable efforts, but matters of faith were legislated as well. A confession of faith drawn up by Calvin was made mandatory for all citizens. It was a crime for anyone to disagree with this Protestant pope. Durant comments:

All the claims of the popes for the supremacy of the church over the state were renewed by Calvin for his church …. [Calvin] was as thorough as any pope in rejecting individualism of belief; this greatest legislator of Protestantism completely repudiated that principle of private judgment with which the new religion had begun …. In Geneva … those … who could not accept it would have to seek other habitats. Persistent absence from Protestant [Calvinist] services, or continued refusal to take the Eucharist was a punishable offense.

Heresy again became [under Calvin as under Augustine] … treason to the state, and was to be punished with death … in one year, on the advice of the Consistory, fourteen alleged witches were sent to the stake on the charge that they had persuaded Satan to afflict Geneva with plague. ³²

Calvin was again following in the footsteps of Augustine, who had enforced “unity … through common participation in the Sacraments . . . .” ³³ A medical doctor named Jerome Bolsec dared to disagree with Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. He was arrested for saying that “those who posit an eternal decree in God by which he has ordained some to life and the rest to death make of Him a tyrant, and in fact an idol, as the pagans made of Jupiter.” ³⁴ Bolsec was arrested and banished from Geneva with the warning that if he ever returned he would be flogged. ³⁵ John Trolliet, a city notary, criticized Calvin’s view of predestination for “making God the author of sin.” ³⁶ In fact, the charge was true, as Calvin’s own writings clearly state. The court decreed that “thenceforward no one should dare to speak against this book [Institutes] and its doctrine.” ³⁷ So much for the freedom of conscience which had been promised would replace the popes’ intolerable oppression!

Calvin’s power was so great that it was tantamount to treason against the state to oppose him. A citizen named Jacques Gruet was arrested on suspicion of having placed a placard on Calvin’s pulpit which read in part, “Gross hypocrite … ! After people have suffered long, they avenge themselves …. Take care that you are not served like M. Verle [who had been killed] . . . .” ³⁸

Gruet was tortured twice daily in a manner similar to which Rome, rightly condemned by the Reformers for doing so, tortured the victims of her inquisitions who were accused of daring to disagree with her dogmas. The use of torture for extracting “confessions” was approved by Calvin. ³⁹ After thirty days of severe suffering, Gruet finally confessed-whether truthfully, or in desperation to end the torture, no one knows. On July 16, 1547, “half dead, he was tied to a stake, his feet were nailed to it. and his head was cut off.” ⁴⁰

Good Intentions Gone Astray

No one has ever been as successful as John Calvin at totalitarian imposition of “godliness” upon a whole society. And therefore no one has proved as clearly as he that coercion cannot succeed because it can never change the hearts of men. Calvin’s theology as laid out in his Institutes denied that unregenerate man could choose to believe and obey God. Apparently he was ignorant of the commonsense fact that genuine choice is essential if man is to love and obey God or show love and real compassion to his fellows. By his determined efforts to make Geneva’s citizens obey, Calvin disproved his own theories of Unconditional Election and Irresistible Grace. What he did prove, seemingly, by years of totalitarian and surely ungodly force, was the first of Calvinism’s Five Points, Total Depravity. Try as he might, there were many whom he simply could not persuade to live as he decreed, no matter how severe the penalty for failing to do so. He did succeed in creating many hypocrites who outwardly conformed to the law so long as the authorities were looking, but in their hearts longed for and practiced, when possible, the same old sins of the past.

Yes, there were reports from visitors that “cursing and swearing, unchastity, sacrilege, adultery, and impure living” such as were found elsewhere were absent from Geneva. ⁴¹ John Knox, of course, was enthusiastic. He called Geneva “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles.” ⁴² A visiting Lutheran minister, who thought Calvin’s coercion was commendable, wrote in 1610, “When I was in Geneva I observed something great which I shall remember and desire as long as I live.” He praised the “weekly investigations into the conduct, and even the smallest transgressions, of the citizens” and concluded, “If it were not for the difference of religion, I would have been chained to Geneva forever.” ⁴³ Difference of religion? Yes, Calvinism was not Lutheranism, although both persecuted the Anabaptists. Protestantism involved several rival factions to say nothing of millions of true Christians who had never given allegiance to Rome and thus had not come out of her as “Protestants.” These believers had been martyred by Roman Catholics at the instigations of various popes for a thousand years before Luther and Calvin were born. Thus today’s representation of Calvinism as “Reformation theology” that supposedly revived true Christianity is grossly inaccurate. Calvinists have, in fact, hijacked the Reformation.

Admirers of John Calvin cite favorable stories as proof of the godly influence he and his theories exerted in changing a godless society into one that honored God. His methods, however, far from Christlike, could not be justified by any results. Nor could Calvin’s means, as we have already noted, be justified by the fact that torture, imprisonment and execution had been employed by Luther and the popes and other Roman Catholic clergy to force their religious views upon those under their power. A true follower of Christ is not to be conformed to this world but in his behavior is to follow Christ’s example.

Calvin’s followers boast that he was the greatest of exegetes and followed Scripture meticulously both in formulating his theology and in guiding his life. Supposedly, Calvin “was willing to break sharply with tradition where it was contrary to the Word of God.” ⁴⁴ At the same time, he is defended with the excuse that he was only conforming to the traditions long established by Rome which began with Constantine. Scott says, “In the early years of the Reformation, censorship of manners and morals remained a settled, accepted part of existing, ancient police regulations not only in Geneva, but in all Europe.” ⁴⁵ This is true. Such curbs discouraged rebellious attempts to leave one’s “class,” etc. But that was not Christianity as taught and exemplified by Christ and His apostles.

There is no way to defend Calvin’s conduct from Scripture. Yes, he was loving and caring toward those who agreed with him. Yes, he expended himself and shortened his life through visiting the sick, caring for the flock and preaching continually. But in his treatment of those who disagreed with him he was anything but a Christian.

The Hopelessness Of Imposed “Godliness”

Sadly, upon looking a bit more closely we find that in spite of threats and torture, Calvin’s Geneva was not as righteous a city as the selected optimistic stories seem to indicate. The surviving records of the Council of Geneva unveil a city more similar to the rest of the world than Calvin’s admirers would like to admit. These documents reveal “a high percentage of illegitimate children, abandoned infants, forced marriages, and sentences of death.” ⁴⁶ The stepdaughter and son-in-law of Calvin were among the many condemned for adultery. ⁴⁷ Calvin had done his best, but at his death he felt that he had failed. Certainly he had not been able to produce among sinners, by the irresistible grace he sought to impose upon them, the ideal society – Augustine’s City of God – which he had envisioned when he wrote Institutes.

Some critics have falsely accused Calvinists of teaching that totally depraved man is incapable of responding to God. That is not exactly their position. They believe that the unsaved can and do respond to God but only in unbelief, rebellion and opposition. White explains: “Unregenerate men who are enemies of God most assuredly respond to God: in a universally negative fashion.” ⁴⁸ That being the case, by his own theory, Calvin’s efforts at Geneva were doomed before they began! Speaking for all Calvinists, R.C. Sproul explains that according to the “Reformed view of predestination … before a person can choose Christ … he must be born again” ⁴⁹ by a sovereign act of God. How could Calvin be sure that God had done this work in the hearts of all in Geneva? If God had not predestined every citizen of Geneva to salvation, then Calvin was wrong in trying to force them into a Christian mold. Yet coercion even by force was an integral part of the system as practiced by Calvin himself and his immediate successors.

Do Calvinists today approve of such conduct? It’s doubtful. Then is it not probable that the Calvinism which produced such tyranny was also wrong in other respects?

How many of the “elect” were there in Geneva? As Jay Adams points out, no one, not even Calvin, could know. Calvinism has no explanation for how the elect could have been identified with certainty among the hypocrites who acted as though they were among the elect by behaving themselves, but did so only out of fear of the consequences. No matter how hard Calvin tried, if God had not elected every citizen in Geneva to salvation (and He apparently had not), then evil would still persist – though not as blatantly as in other cities of that day.

One wonders why Calvin, while insisting upon the doctrine of Total Depravity, didn’t realize the hopelessness of trying to impose godliness upon the totally depraved citizens of Geneva. One wonders also, considering Calvin’s abysmal record of failure, why today’s Reconstructionists who hold to the same dogma nevertheless believe they will be able to impose righteous living upon entire nations – or why evangelicals continue to praise Calvin, the oppressor of Geneva.

Servetus: The Arch Heretic

Born Miguel Serveto in Villanova in 1511, the man known to the world as Michael Servetus “discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood – the passage of the blood from the right chamber of the heart along the pulmonary artery to and through the lungs, its purification there by aeration, and its return via the pulmonary vein to the left chamber of the heart.” He was in some ways “a bit more insane than the average of his time,” announcing the end of the world in which “the Archangel Michael would lead a holy war against both the papal and Genevese Antichrists.” ⁵⁰

There is no question that he was a rank heretic whose ravings about Christ reflected a combination of Islam and Judaism, both of which intrigued him. He was, however, right about some things: that God does not predestine souls to hell and that God is love. His otherwise outrageous ideas might have passed unnoticed had he not published them and attempted to force them upon Calvin and his fellow ministers in Geneva with aggressive, contemptuous and blasphemous railings. That Servetus titled one of his published works The Restitution of Christianity could only be taken as an intentional personal affront by the author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Servetus’s persistence is seen in the fact that he wrote at least thirty letters to Calvin, an attention which must have irritated the recipient greatly. On February 13, 1546, Calvin wrote to Farel, “Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings. If I consent he will come here, but I will not give my word, for should he come, if my authority is of any avail, I will not suffer him to get out alive.” ⁵¹ Servetus made the mistake of passing through Geneva seven years later on his way to Naples and was recognized when he attended church (possibly out of fear of arrest for nonattendance) by someone who saw through his disguise and notified Calvin, who in turn ordered his arrest.

The Torture And Burning Of Servetus

Early in the trial, which lasted two months, Calvin wrote to Farel, “I hope that sentence of death will be passed upon him.” ⁵² To understand Calvin, we need to consider that if the God one believes in predestines billions of the “totally depraved” to a burning hell (all of whom He could rescue), then to burn at the stake an obviously totally depraved heretic would seem quite mild and easily justifiable. That logic, however, seems somehow to escape many of today’s evangelical Christians who admire the man and call themselves Calvinists.

The indictment, drawn up by Calvin the lawyer, contained thirty-eight charges (including rejection both of the Trinity and infant baptism) supported by quotations from Servetus’s writings. Calvin personally appeared in court as the accuser and as “chief witness for the prosecution.” ⁵³ Calvin’s reports of the trial matched Servetus’s railings with such un-Christian epithets as “the dirty dog wiped his snout … the perfidious scamp soils each page with impious ravings,” etc. ⁵⁴ The Council consulted the other churches of Protestant Switzerland, and six weeks later their reply was received: Servetus should be condemned but not executed. Nevertheless, under Calvin’s leadership, He was sentenced to death on two counts of heresy: Unitarianism and rejection of infant baptism. Durant writes:

He asked to be beheaded rather than burned; Calvin was inclined to support this plea, but the aged Farel … reproved him for such tolerance; and the Council voted that Servetus should be burned alive.

The sentence was carried out the next morning, October 17, 1553…. On the way [to the burning] Farel importuned Servetus to earn divine mercy by confessing the crime of heresy; according to Farel the condemned man replied, “I am not guilty, I have not merited death”; and he besought God to pardon his accusers. He was fastened to a stake by iron chains, and his last book was bound to his side. When the flames reached his face he shrieked with agony. After half an hour of burning he died. ⁵⁵

The Failure Of Attempted Exonerations

Many attempts have been made by his modern followers to exonerate Calvin for the unconscionably cruel death of Michael Servetus. It is said that Calvin visited him in prison and pleaded with him to recant. Calvin’s willingness for Servetus to be beheaded rather than burned at the stake was not necessarily motivated by kindness, however, but was an attempt to transfer the responsibility from himself to the civil authority. Beheading was the penalty for civil crimes; burning at the stake was for heresy. The charges, however, were clearly theological rather than civil and brought by Calvin himself.

There is no question that the civil authority only acted at the behest of the church. According to the laws of Geneva, Servetus, as a traveler passing through, not a citizen and not being guilty of any crime within the city, should have been expelled from the city, not executed. It was only his heresy which doomed him – and only because Calvin pressed the charges. Calvin did exactly what his view of God required in keeping with what he had written to Farel seven years before. Here again, over Calvin’s shoulder, we see the long shadow of Augustine. To justify his actions, Calvin borrowed the same perverted interpretation of Luke 14:23 which Augustine had used. Frend said, “Seldom have gospel words been given so unexpected a meaning.” ⁵⁶ Farrar writes:

To him [AugustineI are due … above all the bitter spirit of theological hatred and persecution. His writings became the Bible of the Inquisition. His name was adduced – and could there be a more terrible Nemesis on his errors? – to justify the murder of Servetus. ⁵⁷

There was wide acclaim from Catholics and Protestants alike for the burning of Servetus. The Inquisition in Vienne burned him in effigy. Melanchthon wrote Calvin a letter in which he called the burning “a pious and memorable example to all posterity” and gave “thanks to the Son of God” for the just “punishment of this blasphemous man.” Others, however, disagreed; and Calvin became the target of criticism.

Calvin’s Self-Justifications

Some critics argued that burning Servetus would only encourage the Roman Catholics of France to do the same to the Huguenots (70,000 would be slaughtered in one night in 1572). Stung by such opposition, in February 1554, Calvin published a broadside aimed at his critics: Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate contra prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti. He argued that all who oppose God’s truth are worse than murderers because murder merely kills the body whereas heresy damns the soul for eternity (was that worse than predestination by God to eternal damnation?) and that God had explicitly instructed Christians to kill heretics and even to smite with the sword any city that abandoned the true faith:

Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them [with death] makes himself an accomplice in their crime … it is God who speaks, and it is clear what law He would have kept in the Church even to the end of the world … so that we spare not kin nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory. ⁵⁸

Historian R. Tudor Jones declares that this tract, which Calvin wrote in defense of the burning of Michael Servetus, “is Calvin at his most chilling … as frightening in its way as Luther’s tract against the rebellious peasants.” ⁵⁹ Eight years later Calvin was still defending himself against criticism and still advocating the burning of heretics. In a 1561 letter to the Marquis de Poet, high chamberlain to the King of Navarre, Calvin advises sternly:

… do not fail to rid the country of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard. ⁶⁰

A year later (just two years before his own death), Calvin again justifies Servetus’s death, while at the same time acknowledging that he was responsible: “And what crime was it of mine if our Council at my exhortation . . . took vengeance upon his execrable blasphemies?” (Emphasis added.) ⁶¹ Much further documentation could be presented to expose the partisan bias of Calvinists who persist in offering one excuse after another for their hero. No wonder that even such a staunch Calvinist as William Cunningham writes:

There can be no doubt that Calvin beforehand, at the time, and after the event, explicitly approved and defended the putting him [Servetus] to death, and assumed the responsibility of the transaction. ⁶²

Does The Christian Life Conform To Culture?

Today Calvin’s supporters complain, “No Christian leader has ever been so often condemned by so many. And the usual grounds for condemnation are the execution of Servetus and the doctrine of predestination.” ⁶³ In fact, Servetus was only one of many such victims of Calvinism put into practice. Calvin is defended with the plea that such dealings were common practice and that he should be judged by the standard of his time. Do Calvin’s defenders really mean that “new creatures in Christ Jesus” are to rise no higher than the conventions of their culture and moment in history?

God’s sovereignty in controlling and causing everything that occurs is the very heart of Calvinism as conceived and taught by Calvin himself. Staunch Calvinist C. Gregg Singer declares that “the secret grandeur of Calvin’s theology lies in his grasp of the biblical teaching of the sovereignty of God.” ⁶⁴ Could Calvin truly have believed that he was God’s instrument chosen from past eternity to coerce, torture and kill in forcing Geneva’s citizens into behavior that God had predestined for them? How else could he have justified his actions?

Calvin has been acclaimed as a godly example, one who based his theology and actions upon Scripture alone. We have seen that his actions were in fact unbiblical in the extreme but were consistent with his theology. Is not that fact sufficient reason to question Calvinism itself and to examine it carefully from Scripture? That the Pope and Luther joined in unholy alliances with civil rulers to imprison, flog, torture, and kill dissenters in the name of Christ is no excuse for Calvin having done so also. Do his modern defenders really believe that Calvin’s conduct conformed to Scripture? Is it not possible that some of his theology was just as unscriptural as the principles which drove his conduct? William Jones declares:

And with respect to Calvin, it is manifest, that the leading, and to me at least, the most hateful feature in all the multiform character of popery adhered to him through life – I mean the spirit of persecution. ⁶⁵

Is not Christ alone the standard for His followers? And is He not always the same, unchanged by time or culture? How can the popes be condemned (and rightly so) for the evil they did under the banner of the Cross while excusing Calvin for doing much the same, though on a smaller scale? Calvin’s conduct day after day and year after year was the very antithesis of what it would have been had he truly been led of the Spirit of God. We cannot escape drawing that conclusion from God’s Word. The following are just two passages among many that condemn Calvin:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17)

He that saith he abideth in him [Christ] ought himself also so to walk, even as he [Christ] walked. (I John 2:6)

One wonders why so many of today’s Christian leaders who call themselves Calvinists are so quick to laud a man who was so far removed from the biblical exemplar reflected above.