Calvin & Servetus: Trinity I

As the smoke clears away from the burning of Savonarola and his three confederates, the fire is ready to be set once again for another heretic, but not in Florence and not by the Catholic Church. In the first act, we saw how the Catholic Church burned a heretic of its own clergy, for demanding reform of the Church and claiming to be a prophet; while an astrologer peddled a completely alien theology to Christianity, had some fun, and was richly rewarded by the Medici family; and Pico tried to work out the One and Ousia to help keep the faith with two senses of Ousia.  In our second act, we see how a heretic burns another heretic, because both are heretics from the standpoint of Rome. In 1553 October 27, A Spaniard named Michael Servetus is burned by John Calvin for denying the Holy Trinity in Geneva.  There may be honor among thieves, but no religious tolerance among heretics.

The Premodern theological controversy between Servetus and Calvin over the Trinity and predestination have been traditionally regarded as distinct from the Renaissance and regarded as part of the Reformation. On my view, such a distinction is meaningless. In fact, Servetus and Calvin's debate is a continuation of 15th century Florentine theological controversies discussed in the last three articles. Calvin and Servetus use Neo-Platonic metaphysics to clarify, defend, explain or deny predestination and Trinity, succumb to similar philosophical problems, and assume the same assumptions. Interestingly, their debate follows what Shapin and Schaffer call the same "pattern of activity" as the 15th century Florentine theological controversies. Accordingly, the distinction between Renaissance and Reformation is not helpful in understanding what I call Premodernity, because such a distinction distorts the shared "pattern of activity" of the 15th century Florentine and Calvin-Servetus theological controversies. This discussion is divided into two articles due to length to show the continuity between the 15th century Florentine and Calvin-Servetus theological controversies. 

The controversy unfolds by Servetus railing Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and his Trinitarian God, as one ousia and three hypostasis(s), because Trinitarian places God in time by claiming that God himself, as an independent entity, comes to earth at a certain time. Placement of God as a hypostasis in time through Jesus Christ makes “the will of God itself a slave, and everything there exists a certain fatalistic necessity (Servetus, 79).  Trinitarians do not understand that by making everything come from necessity, “they do not realize that God is beyond all time and beyond necessity” (Servetus, 80). If God is beyond time and necessity, then Jesus is a separate entity from the Father which is non sense, because He could never come at a specific time. Since God is beyond time and necessity, the doctrine of predestination is equally unnecessary, because “where is the necessity of predestination” (Servetus, 81).

Obviously, Calvin, who is a committed Trinitarian, does not like having his doctrine of predestination undermined by a Unitarian view of God. As Calvin says, “The name of Trinity was so much disliked, no, detested by Servetus, that he charged all whom he called Trinitarians with being atheist” (Calvin, 81). Servetus regards the Trinitarian view as atheistic only insofar as this doctrine does not explain God Himself, but only the agents of God, so they really do not understand God. They do not understand that God is beyond necessity and time. There is no scriptural support for the doctrine of Trinity. Servetus’ claim of no Scriptural support for the dogma of the Trinity is hitting Calvin dead center, because Calvin’s reform against the Catholic Church is grounded upon an alleged better interpretation of Scripture than Catholicism and the application of his superior interpretation to Christian institutions.    

In the Insitutes of the Christian Religion (1536), Calvin provides one of the best explanations of Trinity in Premodernity. Calvin begins by refuting the Stoic belief in pantheism: “[Seneca] fancied that the divinity was transfused into every separate portion of the world” (Calvin, 66). Calvin regards pantheism as vulgar and confused, because the Stoic anima mundi involves the knowable and measurable parts of the world. Like Servetus, Calvin regards those who literally interpret from Scripture God as a person or corporeal are confused, because Scripture occasionally refers to body parts to God: “The Anthropomorphites also, who dreamed of a corporeal God, because mouth, ears, eyes, hands, and feet are ascribed to him in Scripture, are easily refuted (Calvin, 66)”.  Servetus and Calvin agree that “God is incomprehensible,” (Calvin, 66). God is unity, but “he distinctly sets it before us as existing in three persons” (Calvin, 67). God is not a threefold God, because God’s essence is “simple and undivided” (Calvin, 67) and is contained in Himself fully and perfectly, without partition or diminution of his essence. Calvin’s Divine essence is reminiscent of Ficino’s One: a simple, perfect, indivisible essence, without any partition, unity and whose negation is impossible. 

God has decided to only speak to Man through his Son.  “But because the Father, though distinguished by his own peculiar properties, has expressed himself wholly in the Son, he is said with perfect reason to have rendered his person (hypostasis) manifest in Him” (Calvin, 67). Father is distinguished by the Son “by his own peculiar properties,” so the Son can speak to man and has rendered him distinct from the Father. Like Ficino’s One, the Father is beyond creation and time, because he is the One, who knows neither privation nor diminishment. Time is privation, because the past is no more and the future has not yet come to pass. If the Father wants to enter time and speak to man, who is in time, the Father must become a distinct person (hypostasis), as the Son, or he would not be perfect, indivisible, and know privation and diminishment. Accordingly, in order to preserve the metaphysical integrity of the Father as the One, we must infer a distinct person (hypostasis) the Son from the Father, because the Father cannot be subject to privation and diminishment. 

Like Ficino’s Angelic mind, the Son is the word (or idea) of the Father in Time, who participates in His divine essence. The world of God is spoken several times to man in the Bible, so God has many Words to say to man. Accordingly, the Son is plurality, because not only is He speaking frequently to man in history, but also due to Him being fully man and God at the same time.  Calvin’s uses “subsistence” to distinguish the Father from the Son: "The fair inference from the apostle’s words is, that there is a proper subsistence (hypostasis) of the Father, which shines refulgent in the Son. From this, again it is easy to infer that there is subsistence (hypostasis) of the Son which distinguishes Him from the Father” (Calvin, 67). Calvin is saying that the Father has an attribute which the Son does not have which he calls “subsistence” that distinguishes the two as distinct hypostasis.

The only clear distinction between the Son and the Father as separate hypostasis is that the former can enter time, and suffer privation but still remain perfect; while the latter is beyond time and does not suffer the privation of Time. The other distinction is that the Father is singular, while the Son is plurality.  Calvin does not say much about the Holy Spirit, but that “the same holds in the case of the Holy Spirit” (Calvin, 67). The Greek Church refers to the hypostasis as the “three aspects of God, not persons as the Latins, but are perfectly agreed in substance” (Calvin, 67).

Calvin rails the early Church fathers, Hilary and Jerome, for confusing the three hypostasis as three substances or confusing three hypostasis with ousia:” But in Hilary you will find it said more than a hundred times that there are three substances in God” (Calvin, 69). Jerome is so stupid that he cannot distinguish between a hypostasis and ousia:” Jerome certainly shows little candor in asserting that in all heathen schools ousia is equivalent to hypostasis” (Calvin, 69). Unlike these early church fathers, Calvin is aware of the Premodern metaphysical principle that ousia can have distinct usages. Pico shows two distinct uses of ousia applied to God: God is the absolute container of all things, but is also independent of them. Calvin’s three hypostasis(s) or persons may be three distinct senses of Ousia, which make them distinct but part of the same substance.

On Shapin and Schaffer's view, Pico’s Premodern approach to ousia enables Calvin to make sense of the Trinity, because the early church father are not entirely clear about the metaphysics of this doctrine. God the Father is unknown to us, but God the Son is known to us from our diachronic perspective in time. In this sense, the difference between the hypostasis(s) of Father and Son is only man’s perspective of Him in time, which would be nothing more than another perspective, sense, or “aspect” of ousia. I suspect that Calvin is using 15th century Florentine metaphysical techniques to make sense of this nebulous Christian doctrine. Without the aid of Ficino and Pico’s metaphysical distinctions about God, Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity is incomprehensible, as an interpreter.

What exactly does Calvin mean by “subsistence,” because each person of Trinity is distinct from one another due to “subsistence?” “A subsistence, while related to other two, is distinguished from them by incommunicable properties” (Calvin, 70). Subsistence is not ousia. The Word (the Son) and God (the Father) have always been together, because the Son could not be unless He is in the Father. “But because he could not be with God without a dwelling in the Father, hence arises that subsistence, which, though connected with the essence by an indissoluble tie, being incapable of separation, yet has a special mark by which it is distinguished from it” (Calvin, 70). The necessity of the Son to dwell in the Father is the subsistence of the Son in the Father, but Son is distinct from the Father, because He is what we see, while the Father is hidden from us. The Father and Son, however, are of the same Ousia, because the Son dwells in the Father forever. Another incommunicable property of the Son is that He knows privation, while Father does not due to Him being the Word to man. One of the two incommunicable properties of Son to the Father is similar to Pico’s first sense of Ousia: just as the Son is our perception of God, so the ousia of God is the source of all.

Just as God speaks through the Word (the Son) and creation is so, man perceives that all of creation comes from God. God’s independence from creation (Pico second sense of Ousia), however, is hidden from us, because the Father is perfect unity and not opposite is possible. He creates the cosmos by speaking, not by using matter, and only speaks through the Son.  We hear his words (the Son) creation, Jesus, revelation, but we do not see Him (the Father).  Like Ficino’s Angelic mind which contains all the species of creation, the incommunicable property of the Son is “to the wisdom ever dwelling with God” (Calvin, 70). “This is clearly enough shown by Moses in his account of the creation, where he places the Word as intermediate” (Calvin, 70) between God and creation. When God (the Father) speaks His words (the Son) to create the cosmos, provide revelation, or becomes flesh, His words (the Son) are distinct from Him (the Father), but still part of the same ousia or essence. Just as Ficino’s Angelic Mind has all the species, so the Word of God (the Son) contains all of the letters and words of God (the Father).  

The Son and the Father are always together, which means the Son’s subsistence is not completely dependent upon man’s perception of Him, because the Son is with the Father before creation and for eternity. “We, therefore, again conclude that the Word was eternally begotten by God, and dwelled with him for everlasting. In this way, his true essence, his eternity, and divinity are established” (Calvin, 71). Calvin needs to have the Son be eternal with the Father, or they will not share the same essence or ousia, but the most distinctive difference between the Son and the Father is that the Son is Word and mediator, who creates the cosmos, reveals to the prophets, and becomes the incarnation of Christ.

All of these functions involve time. Creating the cosmos obviously involves time, because it took seven days. Speaking to the prophets throughout the Bible involves the sequence of Time. Incarnation of Christ involves not only time, but becoming fully man. Secondly, all these activities are relative to the perspective of man, who is stuck in time. The Word Inspires Moses to know how the cosmos is created, inspires the Prophets, and becomes Man. Calvin has two real opposites in his Trinity: first, the Father and Son are of the same essence or Ousia, which functions like the One (Pico); but the fundamental difference between the two hypostasis(s) is their respective subsistence in that the Son is the creator of the cosmos, inspiration of prophets, and incarnation of Christ which involves time and the perspective of man.

On Shapin and Schaffer's view, Calvin’s only solution is to say that the Son is the potentiality of eternity and that potentiality is contained in the actuality of the Father, because the potential and actual distinction would draw another subsistence or difference between the Father and the Son, and still preserve their shared ousia.  Calvin pulls the same trick with the Holy Spirit: “it shows not only that the beauty which the world displays is maintained by the invigorating power of the Spirit, but that even before this beauty existed in the Spirit was at work cherishing the confused mas” (Calvin, 76).  Just as the Holy Spirit is constantly involved with the creation of the Son, which is His subsistence, He has always been such an active agent, because He shares the same ousia with the Father and the Son. Calvin is perfectly clear that only these three persons (hypostasis) know God or His ousia: “Hence it plainly appears, that the three persons, in whom God is known, subsist in the divine essence (Calvin, 77).

Calvin uses a “rational miracle": “I cannot think of the unity without being irradiated by the Trinity; I cannot distinguish between the Trinity without being carried by its Unity” (Calvin, 78). Just as you cannot imagine a married bachelor, you cannot easily individuate the three persons of Trinity and not imagine their unity. Unity is necessarily implied by the concept of Trinity. Ousia necessarily implies form, matter, and function or activity. You cannot conceive ousia independently from any of these qualities. Analogously, you cannot conceive God’s ousia independently from any of the three hypostasis(s).  Calvin is cautious about using analogies to describe this “rational miracle,” but is partial to this analogy: “This distinction is, that to the Father is attributed the beginning of action, the fountain and source of all things; to the Son, the wisdom, counsel, and arrangement in action, while the energy and efficacy of the action is assigned to the Spirit” (Calvin, 78). Calvin’s Trinity is also analogous to Ficino’s hierarchy of the One, Angelic Mind, the world soul, because the One is the beginning of the sequence, the Angelic mind is the wisdom which descends from the One, and the world Soul preserves the created cosmos.

It is ironic how 15th century Florentine astrologer’s God can be superimposed upon a Reformer’s Trinity and generate the same explanation.  Let us continue the comedy of the "patterns of life" in theological controversies: “though in eternity there can be no room for first or last, still the distinction of order is not unmeaning or superfluous, the Father being considered first, next the Son from Him, and then the Spirit from both” (Calvin, 79). Calvin’s Trinity mirrors Ficino’s hierarchy: the One is first, from the One comes the Angelic Mind, and then World soul comes from both. Ficino’s hierarchy is not the same as Calvin’s Trinity, but they reflect the same organizing structure, and the terms serve the same use. Calvin borrows heavily from the 15th century Florentine metaphysics of God, because his doctrine of Trinity is incomprehensible without the latter. “For the mind of every man naturally inclines to consider first God, secondly the wisdom emerging from him, and lastly the energy by which he executes the purposes of his counsel” (Calvin, 79).  “Wisdom emerging from him” sounds exactly like Ficino’s Angelic Mind emerging from the One. Calvin may have had a use for Ficino’s Platonic Theology, but he never refers to him or Pico in his work, but his doctrine of Trinity does not make sense unless you understand 15th century Florentine metaphysics. 

Given the “rational miracle” and the distinct subsistence(s) of hypostases, “when we profess to believe in one God, by the name is understood the one simple essence, comprehending three persons or hypostases; and, accordingly, whenever the Name is used indefinitely, the Son, Spirit, not less than the Father, is meant” (Calvin, 79). The Father, Son, and Spirit are of the same essence, but their personal subsistences carry an order with them, which has the Father first, descending from the Father is the Son, and from the Father and the Son comes the Holy Spirit. Calvin makes curios remark that “the principle and origin in the Father, whenever mention is made of the Father and Son or of the Father and Spirit together, the name of God is especially given to the Father” (Calvin, 80). First, Calvin speaks of the Father “as principle or origin of the other hypostases, which means not only, is He first in order structurally, but also is the cause (origin) of the other two hypostases. If God, the Father, is the cause of the Son and Spirit, how can they be of the same essence, because cause and effect individuate an essence. Ficino knows that the One is distinct metaphysically from the Angelic mind, because the former is singularity, while the latter is plurality. Calvin says that “we, therefore, hold it detestable blasphemy to call the Son a different God from the Father” (Calvin, 80) due to difference in name.

Calvin, however, draws distinctions between the Father and the Son, which beyond mere name. The Father is first numerically in the Trinity and is the origin of the other two hypostases, so the Son is different than the Father more than name alone. Secondly, Calvin’s doctrine of subsistence in the Trinity makes the Son distinct from the Father more than by name alone, because the Son has properties which the Father does not.  Ficino’s Neo-Platonic metaphysics meant to serve astrological ends makes more sense than Calvin’s Trinity, because Ficino draws sharp metaphysical distinctions between the One, the Angelic Mind, the world soul which preserves some coherence, while Calvin is trying to have one essence, but three distinct hypostases, which have distinct attributes, that belong to the same essence. Calvin can only make the Trinity work if and only if he enables the Son and Spirit to be reducible inside of the Father, but this would make their respective subsistences accidental or nothing.