So What About Calvin and Spurgen? From Phil Johnson's Pyromaniac Blog www.phillipjohnson.blogspot.com

A specimen from the week's e-mail

When the recent pacifism thread got interrupted by my brief hiatus, I received a smattering of e-mail from angry pacifists. Their usually non-agressive tranquility was greatly disturbed by my suggestion that some forms of killing may actually be authorized by God—and therefore are righteous acts.

I could not possibly answer all who wrote or commented, but I did try to answer as many as possible, starting with the people who seemed most serious.

Here's one of my favorites. This guy is a radical Arminian pacifist and political left-winger in the Anabaptist tradition. Noticing that a few of my commenters were appalled at the idea of chub-clubbing the world's most infamous terrorist in the aisle of a Costco store when you could just as easily invite him to a Saturday men's Bible study, our liberal Anabaptist friend sensed blood in the water, and seized the opportunity to berate me about Calvin and Spurgeon.

Here's my reply:

From: "Phillip Johnson"
To: A____ B_____
Subject: Violence, Calvin, Spurgeon

> I'm appalled at your attacks on
> pacifism. I'm a Christian and a
> total pacifist. In fact, I've
> become a vegetarian partly in
> protest of wanton violence
> against animals.
>
> Your kind of thinking is exactly
> the kind of sick human reasoning
> that turned Calvin into a killer.
> In Calvin's Geneva, if you did not
> believe exactly what he taught then
> you were an unsaved person. A heretic.
> and he killed heretics, right?

No.

Calvin did not believe people should be executed (or even ostracized) simply for disagreeing with him. Many people—including the whole Geneva city council—disagreed openly, passionately, and outspokenly with Calvin on various issues. He was actually quite a reasonable man when it came to simple matters of disagreement.

There were only a handful of executions in Geneva over cases of conscience during Calvin's era. Of these, the best known and most frequently cited against Calvin was Servetus, who was not executed merely for disagreeing with Calvin. Servetus's crime—and it was a crime in those days—was deliberately propagating serious heresy in a way designed to undermine the established order of European society.

Servetus's heresy involved a fanatical hatred of the Trinity and a determination to breed his error by any means across central Europe. He was not merely duped by some insignificant theological error; he was a brazen anarchist, determined to overturn both civil and religious athority. He refused to cease and desist, though he knew he would ultimately die for his actions. Calvin and Geneva were not even his primary targets, initially. He fled to Geneva in a desperate attempt to avoid a death sentence already passed against him by the Catholic Church.

Incidentally, I don't approve of Servetus's execution. But it's simplistic and grossly unfair to Calvin to portray him as someone who was prone to employ violence or even excommunication in order to quell all dissent from his personal opinions. (As a matter of fact, Servetus's conduct was deemed criminal first by civil authorities; Calvin did not initaiate the call for Servetus's execution.) Civil autorities in Geneva tried heretics only in the most extreme cases. In the context of his age, Calvin was actually quite a tolerant man.

> By the way, Charles Spurgeon smoked cigars.
> Since smoking cigars is unregenerate behavior,
> how can you hold this man up as an example
> of what a Christian should be?

Well, at least he never killed any deer or Anabaptists.

Posted by Phil Johnson