Trinity

More documents

Recommendations

Info

TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: PROF. M. M. NINAN Anabaptist works and the idea is precisely the Anabaptist ideal of the restoration of primitive Christianity. The second new element was the Neoplatonism of the Florentine academy with which he became acquainted through the medical humanists of France. In accord with this tradition he interpreted Christ to be the light of the world in terms of the metaphysics of light. Servetus' identity and of the publication of his book came to be known in Geneva and were brought to the attention of John Calvin with whom Servetus some time previously had carried on an exacerbated correspondence. A certain Guillaume Trie, a Protestant of Geneva, had betrayed Servetus to the Inquisition at Vienne and then, being challenged for evidence, inveigled Calvin into supplying the necessary documentation. Servetus escaped, however, from the prison of the Inquisition and after wandering for three months turned up in Geneva on 13 August 1553. There he was recognized and was denounced to the Town Council on the capital charge of heresy at the instance of John Calvin. After a trial of two months Servetus was condemned as guilty of the two religious crimes subject to death in the code of Justinian, namely, the repetition of baptism and the denial of the <strong>Trinity</strong>. He was sentenced to be burned at the stake. Servetus petitioned for death by the sword lest he recant and lose his soul. Calvin seconded his request, but it was denied by the Council. From the flames Servetus called upon "Christ, the Son of the eternal God." Had he been willing to shift the position of the adjective and call upon "Christ, the eternal Son," he might have been saved. The Restitutio Christianismi was so effectively suppressed that only three copies survive, though there is an 18th-century reprint. 1532, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Spain began proceedings to summon him, or to apprehend him, if he would not voluntarily appear before the tribunal. His youngest brother, Juan, a priest, was sent to persuade him to return to Spain for questioning. Servetus was terrified. He later wrote of this period, “I was hunted far and wide that I might be seized and put to death.” He fled to Paris and surfaced there with a new name, Michel de Villeneuve. Calvin played a prominent part in the trial and pressed for execution, although by beheading rather than by fire. Despite his intense biblicism and his wholly Christocentric view of the universe, Servetus was found guilty of heresy, mainly on his views of the <strong>Trinity</strong> and Baptism. He was burned alive at Champel on October 27. Spectators were impressed by the tenacity of Servetus’s faith. Perishing in the flames, he is said to have cried out, “O Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have pity on me!” Farel, who witnessed the execution, observed that Servetus, defiant to the last, might have been saved had he but called upon “Jesus, the Eternal Son.” A few months later Servetus was again executed, this time in effigy, by the Inquisition in France. Nearly all copies of Servetus’s magnum opus, Christianismi Restitutio, were destroyed by the authorities. Only three have survived. 111
TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: PROF. M. M. NINAN Theology of Servetus: http://uudb.org/articles/michaelservetus.html “Servetus had no use for 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 but 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, the Son of God, 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’s 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’s 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. Dualism, millenarianism, and modal trinitarianism are not elements of the Servetian legacy which Unitarian Universalists today celebrate. Nor were they affirmed by those of Servetus’s contemporaries most in sympathy with his thought, the Italians—later known as Socinians—who developed and spread an early form of Unitarianism in Poland. They took heart from some aspects of Servetus’s doctrine and ignored or rejected the rest. 112
Page 3 and 4:
TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD Pr
Page 5 and 6:
The Doctrine of Trinity asserts the
Page 7 and 8:
The only way to avoid this contradi
Page 9 and 10:
TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: P
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68: TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: P
Page 117: TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD: P
Page 169 and 170:
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Page 183 and 184:
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Peter and Andrew: First Called Disc
Page 189:
The Mystery of tefillin The Manduky
show all

Trinity

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?