[Vision2020] Calvin, Wilson, Wesley

[keely emerinemix]

Good work, Nick.

I've long felt that the worship our Lord most favors is that forced by a 
knife's edge, serrated or not, to the throat.  And, having just today read 
Blog and Mablog, Doug Wilson's entry into the blogosphere, I can also say 
that the entire essence of the Gospel is to separate the chosen and the 
unchosen -- again, at knife's edge if need be.  A ministry of reconciliation 
from the Prince of Peace?  It would appear not, if Calvin in the 16th 
century and Wilson in the 21st are to be believed.

Chastened as I am by Wilson's recent essay on the form, benefits, and 
purpose of imprecatory prayer and the comments that follow it, I now see 
where the church has gotten it wrong.  A typical grape-juice, feminized 
statement of evangelical wimpiness by John Wesley, whose theology evolved 
into what we now know as Methodism and who occupies, on the evangelical 
scale, a position almost as far from Calvin's as is possible, is an example:

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, 
in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you 
can, as long as ever you can, in the name of Christ Jesus."

Yeah.  Like we need any more of THAT in the world . . .

keely











From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] John Calvin's Pursuit of Michael Servetus
Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 14:17:57 -0800

Greetings:

As we have seen from a recent post, there are some in the Kirk who wish to 
exonerate John Calvin from any association with Unitarian Michael Servetus' 
martydom in 1553.  All that he did, according to this revisionist history, 
is testify about Servetus' heresy at his trial.

The fact is that Calvin had been gunning for Servetus ever since Servetus 
had refused to show up for a debate in Paris.  After the publication of his 
book "On the Errors of the Trinity," Servetus had taken on an assumed name 
and had done wonders working as a doctor.  (Servetus discovered pulmonary 
circulation before Harvey did.)  Calvin discovered his disguise and turned 
him in to French authories, but they initially failed to act. When they 
finally did, Servetus managed to escape.

Here is a direct quote from a letter that Calvin sent to Jerome Bolsec: 
"Servetus desries to come hither [to Geneva], on my invitation; but I will 
not plight my faith to him; for I have determined, did he come, that I would 
never suffer him to go away alive."

Appearing to have a death wish, Servetus did go through Geneva on his way to 
Italy.  Only Calvin knew his face, and he happened to be a church in Geneva 
where Servetus had stopped to pray.

No one else in Geneva would have recognized him, and no one else in the 
world wanted Servetus dead more than John Calvin.  As the highest 
theological authority in Geneva, Calvin made sure that Servetus did not 
leave Geneva alive.

Those interested in my own debate on the Trinity with the Kirk can read the 
entire exchange at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/trinity.htm. Happily, there 
have been no burnings at the stake in Friendship Square--not yet anyway!

Nick Gier, Proud Unitarian,
but friend to many good Trinitarians without a Serrated Edge

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