Calvin & Servetus: Trinity II

"Disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question whether a rule has been obeyed or not. People don't come to blows over it..That is part of the framework on which the working of our language is based" (Wittgenstein, 88). Shapin and Schaffer use Wittgenstein's insight to form their "pattern activity" model to explain how controversies emerge and are settled. In this case, the controversy is over the Trinity between Calvin and Servetus and the proper theological language to describe this Christian mystery. Ironically, while Calvin and Servetus cannot follow the same rule concerning this mystery, they use the same metaphysical vocabulary derived from the 15th century Florentine philosophical theological discourse. Usually, whenever people use the same language, agreement follows: "It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use" (Wittgenstein, 88). In the Calvin and Servetus' case, however, agreement or obeying the rule is not guaranteed by the use of the same theological language. So controversy emerges over the Trinity, and is settled very easily: Servetus is burned and can no longer speak. 

That is too easy of an answer. The 15th century Florentine Neo-Platonic language in which Calvin and Servetus inherit implicitly has contradictions that make what Wittgenstein calls "rule following" impossible." Ficinio uses Neo-Platonic language and develops a more rigorous Trinitarian view than Calvin. Pico, on the other hand, uses the very same language in a slightly different manner and almost comes to the opposite conclusion: pantheism. In this article, Servetus is the victim of inheriting the hopelessly ambiguous metaphysical Hermetic and Neo-Platonic language, which inevitably leads to controversy, because this language cannot generate what Wittgenstein calls "rule following." Servetus inherits the pantheistic conclusion of this language game and, like Bruno, burns at the stake. So what Shapin and Schaffer call the continuous "pattern of activity" between the 15th century Florentine theological controversies and the Calvin & Servetus controversy is caused by inheriting a hopelessly vague language game (Neo-Platonic/Hermetic metaphysics) which cannot generate rule following or consensus. Let us examine the specifics of Servetus' position and Calvin's criticisms to see whether or not Shapin and Schaffer's explaination is the best.    

On Shapin and Schaffer's view, the mystery of the Trinity is under attack by new heretics, “such as Servetus and others, who by new devices have thrown everything into confusion, it may be worthwhile briefly to discuss their fallacies” (Calvin, 81). Servetus' “new device” is to show that nowhere in Scripture is the doctrine of Trinity is ever mentioned, nor does the Early Church believe in such a doctrine, and that this dubious doctrine is Augustine’s creation. Servetus wants to apply Proclus’ principle that “all things exist in all things in their own mode” to explain the alleged Trinity. Jesus Chris and the Holy Spirits are distinct modes of God, but are not distinct persons. Servetus is going to replace the Trinity with pantheism, because he believes that Christ’s message to Jews is part of an esoteric wisdom about God which can be traced back to Hermes Trismegistus:" For Trismegistus the same light of the world [God] is the archetypical light of and the archetype of soul…not only the souls themselves, but even the substantial forms of other things are contain the form of the whole which they project into a mirror in an act that immiatates that of the first exemplary light” (Servetus, 206).   

On Servtus' view, Jesus Christ is a mode which reflects or mirrors through the Word God’s divine light, but is not distinct and is reducible to Him. Christ contains all the seeds of divine creation, which makes all the modes of existence possible. Servetus even quotes Trismegistus directly to make this point about Christ: “The will of God contains the Word that saw in itself the cosmos as something beautiful, has furnished on the model of its own exemplar the elements of nature and everything else with its own vital seeds” (Servetus, 208). Servetus is using Hermetic beliefs about God and the divine seeds to generate his pantheism. God generates forms or modes of existence from his divine light, which are all contained in Him. Calvin is fully aware that Servetus is trying to replace the Trinity with this pagan doctrine, because he calls Servetus pantheism as “absurd babbling,” which make God into a stone or piece of wood.   

 Calvin charges Servetus for maintaining this heresy: any time the “three fold Deity is introduced wherever three persons are said to exist in his essence and that this Triad was imaginary, inasmuch as it was inconsistent with the unity of God” (Calvin, 81). With regard to Calvin’s first charge, he is correct, because Servetus regards the Trinity as imaginary. On Servetus’ view, we confuse personhood with modes of existence. Water is the same essence, but has three modes: steam, liquid, and solid. We do not say that steam, liquid, and solid are three distinct persons of water, but are modes of Water. Analogously, when we speak of Christ, Holy Spirit, and the Father, we are not strictly speaking about three distinct persons contained in one essence, but rather three distinct modes of an essence. Our problem is our inability to distinguish a mode of something in the case of water from a similar case with God. Accordingly, the Trinity is an imaginary theological concept based upon this simple confusion of language.

Calvin is also correct that Servetus believes that the Trinity is inconsistent with the unity of God. The second Person of the Trinity is metaphysically absurd, because the second person of Trinity contains corporeal body, which would mean that God’s ousia is corporeal. Servetus draws interesting analogies from the Second person of Trinity: “the son of God is a human being as equivalent to the other proposition that the second person of Trinity maintains human nature and in this way this Second Person is a human being in a connotative sense” (Servetus, 21). Since the second person of Trinity is a human and if God’s essence is distinct from man’s essence, then the second person’s essence in the Trinity is, as Calvin notes, “inconsistent with the unity of God.”

Servetus goes onto to say that by the same logic, an ass or mule could any of the persons of Trinity: “By the same logic, [Trinitarians] concede that God could be an ass and that the Holy Spirit be a mule, maintaining mule’s essence” (Servetus, 21). If all the three persons in the Trinity are of the same ousia, then any of the persons of Trinity could maintain a different essence. The second person is a human being, and divine. The first person could be an Ass and divine. The third person could be a mule and divine. Servetus believes that the idea of Christ being man and divine as a person in the Trinity is mad, because by the same logic, you can make God into an Ass, because both persons in the Trinity have the same essence. 

In the Restoration of Christianity (1553), Servetus argues that the Trinitarian view of the second Person of God is not the original view of the early church. Calvin finds this move unacceptable, because Servetus is using Luther and Calvin’s rhetoric of returning back to the early church and away from Popery against the doctrine of the Trinity. According to Servetus, the first heresy of the church stemmed from Simon Magus’ claim that Christ was not human but a mere phantasm. “The first heresy was that of Simon Magus’s disciples who were saying that Christ was a phantasm without true flesh” (Servetus, 26). The early Church counters Simon Magus and his disciples’ heresy by “referring to the flesh specifically” (Servetus, 26). The early Church stresses Jesus’ humanity and his essence being distinctly his own.

The early church fathers could never imagine that Jesus would have the same essence as God himself, because such a claim would be a contradiction. Jesus was the True Messiah, son of God, which is distinct metaphysically from God. As Servetus claims, “[Early church fathers] made the simple declaration that Jesus was the true Messiah, son of God, and that the same son was in His own person and substance the word of God in a way that was unknown to all the sophisticated Trinitarians but must now recognize” (Servetus, 26). Servetus remarks are interesting in that he claims a) that the early church has no conception of Trinity, b) that Jesus or the Word is understood as its own essence and substance distinct from God, and c) he refers sarcastically to the Trinitarians’ view of Jesus as “sophisticated,” which implies that this doctrine is not part of the early church, but Popish non sense.

 The early Church regard Jesus as the Word, as a distinct substance from God, and dividing God up into a Trinity is as much as a heresy as Simon Magus, because you would be making God into an Ass, instead of making Christ into a phantasm. The Trinitarian view is not only illogical, but is contrary to the teachings of early Church and is heretical. Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity is attacked by Servetus with former’s own rhetoric of return to the early church. Accordingly, the doctrine of Trinity is as superstitious and ridiculous as Purgatory. The early Church teaches that Jesus was born in the substance from God, but as a distinct substance from God. Just as the Son is born from the father and Son is distinct from the Father, Jesus is born from God, but is not the same essence of God." Thus it asserts that God the father of Jesus Christ is God the father of this human being. This human being is everywhere and openly shown to be the son of God, and with respect to him God is shown truly the father. He is truly the father because Jesus was born in substance from Him just as you are born from your own father” (Servetus, 11).

Just as Tertullian is the inventor of Purgatory, the Trinity is the invention of Augustine, is not part of the early Church, and is a subsequent invention by the Catholic Church. In short, Servetus is arguing that Calvin is not following through with his claim of returning to the true doctrine of the Early Church and is still holding onto the Popish non-sense of the Trinity. Calvin argues that Servetus “would have it that the persons are certain external ideas which do not subsist in the divine essence” (Calvin, 81). Calvin is correct that Servetus does not believe that the persons of the Trinity subsist in the divine essence, because this would make it possible for God to be an ass and is heretical to the early Church. According to Servetus, the “son of God” means the same as “the son of John,” but we do not say that the son of John subsists in the Father of John as one substance.

Augustine is the father of Trinity. Pierre d’ Ailly admits that he and Augustine believe that the doctrine of Trinity is not demonstrated from Scripture, but from Church tradition. “Consider Augustine in the beginning of his books On the Trinity and the opening remarks of Pierre d’Ailly in Book I, question V, where they both acknowledge that the triad of the three entities is not demonstrated through the holy writings, but rather is received from tradition” (Servetus, 41). Since the doctrine is not revealed wisdom, it is subject to natural reason.

Accordingly, if you reason that Trinity consists of three hypostases, which, as Calvin thinks, have distinct subsistences, and which distinct order, then you have “three substances, three essences, three beings and by extension, three Gods” (Servetus, 42), because how could something being distinct and same at the same time. To argue that the law of non-contradiction does not apply to God would be an acceptable defense of the Trinity as long as the doctrine is in contained in Holy Scripture, but the doctrine is not in Holy Scripture, which means the law of non-contradiction does apply to the Trinity. Jesus Christ in the second person of Trinity is distinct from the Father, because he is incorporeal and corporeal at the same time. “If they are truly distinct, applying argument of convertibility absolutely, they are also distinct in essence” (Servetus, 42).

Any distinction which is essential to form a distinct person would also be sufficient to make a distinct essence. Calvin’s unique properties, subsistences, and order of hypostases are essential distinctions to individuate them as persons, but who participate in the same essence. Servetus is correct that given Aristotle’s rule of convertibility, these essential distinctions would mean three distinct essences. Since the Trinity is not in revealed religion, this doctrine is subject to the laws of logic. Accordingly, the Trinitarians are, as Calvin claims about Servetus, “true atheists who do not consider God to be one but only threefold and an aggregate. They understand God figuratively, not absolutely. They believe in imaginary Gods –mere projections of demons” (Servetus, 43). Servetus is using the word atheist loosely, because he is only demonstrated that the Trinity generates three Gods. Servetus has some more fun with the logic of Trinity by forcing it to conform to an Aristotelian syllogism.  “This a is b, and this a is c, and yet there is no conclusion that b is c” (Servetus, 65). Servetus is pointing out that in Aristotelian logic the essence of something is not transitive: “a is essence, b is the father, c is the son” (Servetus, 65). Accordingly, “No person is a Trinity, every person is God; therefore, God is not Trinity” (Servetus, 65). 

Servetus’ view of God is heavily Neo-Platonic and Hermetic. Unlike Calvin, Servetus is explicit about his Neo-Platonic and Hermetic beliefs and, like Ficino, believes that the Trinity is non-sense. Calvin’s charge that Servetus transforms Christ to a mode of God in history, because Servetus believes, like Proclus, that “all things exist in all things in their own mode.” Or, as Servetus says, “God himself is the essence of all things” (Servetus, 181). All essences have their origin in God, because all things are modes which are reducible to one essence. “There God is said to be the one who gives essence to the essences so that those essences may, in turn, give essences (Servetus, 179).” Jesus has two modes of essence: one bodily, the other spirit. Jesus’ bodily mode is his corporeal presence in history as the Incarnation of Christ. His spiritual mode is that of the Word of God, who is always present with God, but the corporeal is nothing, but the spiritual mode is something.

Jesus’ spiritual mode is not distinct from the God as a distinct person, but is an image or mode reducible to God, because God is the essence who gives essence (or modes) to essences, so that they may in turn give essences. All of creation is nothing more than a chain of God’s modes of essences which are contained in Him. This theological insight is not limited to the Bible, but is taught by all religious and philosophical men about God: “On the basis of Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, the learned Zoroaster, Trismegistus, and Plato, posit the one first being and state that all things are contained and cohere in one” (Servetus, 183). All the essences of creation are contained in God as illusionary modes. They are illusionary because their individuation is temporary and not permanent.

 All modes are reducible to the One: “all things are one, because all things are one in God, in whom, as the One, they exist. All things are one Trismegistus teaches throughout in the Asclepius and To His Son, Tatius” (Servetus, 229). Servetus accepts Ficino’s One, rejects the Trinity, but breaks down all of Ficino’s Neo-Platonic metaphysical distinctions, because believes that all modes of ousia are reducible to the One. In this sense, he is more like Pico, who tries to reconcile the One with Ousia with his two senses of Ousia. Or, as Calvin correctly puts it, “according to the mode of distribution, there is a part of God as well as in the Son as in the Spirit, just as the same Spirit substantially is a portion of God in us, and also in wood and stone” (Calvin, 81). Calvin is again correct about Servetus and his pantheistic aims: “so, too, God’s Spirit and the spirit of man are one spirit. God dwells in the son, and the son of God. God dwells in the holy spirit, and the holy spirit is God. Our own spirit itself is God; it goes forth and is born from God, just as Christ is God, having gone forth and been born from God” (Servetus, 282).

Just as Christ is the first mode of God, all subsequent forms of creation are contained in Christ as a mode of God, which means that all the forms of creation are modes of God. When Calvin says that rails Servetus in making the God’s divinity transitive to not only Christ and the Spirit, but also to man, wood and stone, he is correct, because transitivity of the modes of existence makes Servetus’ pantheism not possible, but necessary. Just as Christ and Holy Spirit are modes or forms of God, the various modes of genus and species of creation are contained in Christ, so the species, such as man, or the genus wood and stone are in God. 

In the Restoration of Christianity, Servetus sums up his pantheism: “the forms of things, in which the things themselves exist as in the One being, are one in God, and in this way they make other things exist as one with God in the shadow of this truth, by which Christ without meditation hypostatically is one with God” (Servetus, 230). Servetus uses the typical Neo-Platonic rhetoric of “shadow,” which we find in Ficino’s description of the hierarchy of being. Ironically, Servetus’ logical arguments against the Trinity equally apply to his pantheism. If all modes of existence are reducible to God, then Jesus being corporeal is not inconsistent with God’s unity, because all are modes contained in God.

The funny analogy between God the Father being an ass and the Holy Spirit a mule are equally funny with Servetus’ pantheism, because the species ass and mule are modes contained in God. So God can be an ass, mule, human, or stone. Servetus’ correctly argued points that distinct persons are not reducible to the same essence, nor are they transitive equally apply to his pantheism. How can God have the Mode of Christ, who has the Mode of species, be transitive? If these are distinct forms or modes, how are they reducible to the One, unless the God is same form as those modes? God may be same essence as the subsequent modes of existence, which would preserve the unity of God, but those modes are not the same form, because God is all those modes (sum), while those modes are not the sum, because they are individuated from each other by mode or form.

While Ficino clearly understands this metaphysical problem, because he separates the One (singular form) from the Angelic mind (plurality of modes or forms); Servetus does not understand that his pantheism has the problem of transitivity not of essence but of form. How does the multitude of forms or modes become reducible to One form or mode? His well-executed arguments about the Trinity only fall upon Servetus in his effort to replace the Trinity with pantheism. Servetus’ only discovery may be that the Early church before Augustine are pantheists, but the Early church believes that Jesus’ substance is distinct from God’s; ergo, the Early church is not pantheism, because the early Church does not believe that the Son is the same substance as the Father. Servetus should have railed the Trinity, but not try to replace the Trinity with Hermetic pantheism. The Trinity may be imaginary and contrary to the unity of God, but his pantheism becomes absurd babble, because his doctrine suffers the same problems to which he charges the Trinity. Servetus should have quit while ahead in his critique of Trinity, instead of trying to revive the Hermetic God through the language of returning to the Early Church. Ficino, on the other hand, wisely understood that his God is not compatible with Christianity and wisely separated singularity from plurality.