Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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Servetus has been more thoroughly discussed and defended in recent times
than any man connected with the Reformation.
The greatest Servetus scholar and vindicator is Dr. Tollin, pastor of a
Huguenot Church in Germany, who calls himself “a Calvinist by birth and a
decided friend of toleration by nature.” He was led to the study of
Servetus by his interest in Calvin, and has written a Serveto-centric library
of about forty books and tracts, bearing upon every aspect of Servetus: his
Theology, Anthropology, Soteriology, Eschatology, Diabology,
Antichristology, his relations to the Reformers (Luther, Bucer,
Melanchthon), and to Thomas Aquinas, and also his medical and
geographical writings. He has kindly furnished me with a complete list, and
I will mention the most important below in their proper places.
Dr. Tollin assumes that Servetus was radically misunderstood by all his
opponents—Catholic, Calvinistic, and Lutheran, and even by his Socinian
and other Unitarian sympathizers. He thinks that even Calvin
misunderstood him, though he understood him better than his other
contemporaries. He makes Servetus a real hero, the peer of Calvin in
genius, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, the founder of
comparative geography (the forerunner of Ritter), and the pioneer of
modern Christology, which, instead of beginning with the pre-existent
Logos, rises from the contemplation of the man Jesus to the recognition of
Jesus Christ as the Messiah, then as the Son of God, and last as God. But
he has overdone the subject, and put some of his own ideas into the brain
of Servetus, who, like Calvin, must be studied and judged in the light of the
sixteenth, and not of the nineteenth, century.
Next to Tollin, Professor Harnack, Neander’s successor in Berlin, has
formed a most favorable idea of Servetus. Without entering into an analysis
of his views, he thinks that in him “the best of all that came to maturity in
the sixteenth century was united, if we except the evangelical
Reformation,” and thus characterizes him: “Servede ist gleich bedeutend
als empirischer Forscher, als kritischer Denker, als speculativer
Philosoph und als christlicher Reformer im besten Sinn des Worts. Es ist
eine Paradoxie der Geschichte, dass Spanien—das Land, welches von den
Ideen der neuen Zeit im 16 Jahrhundert am wenigsten berührt gewesen
ist—diesen einzigen Mann hervorgebracht hat.” (Dogmengeschichte, Bd.
III. 661.)