Why Accurately Handling History Matters Part I

Tyler Vela
freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com
In this series I would like to spend some time responding to Leighton Flowers recent article Why
Servetus Is a Valid Argument Against Calvinism.1 This is, in my estimation, one of the worst articles I have
read on the topic which is extremely problematic since it is written by a PhDd professor in a somewhat
related field,2 and who has a position training youth and future seminarians. His article, as a I will
demonstrate, is not only wrong, but is actually misleading, heavily influenced and blinded by bias, is driven
by ideology to misrepresent sources, and is so under researched (if at all) that I wouldnt accept this from
a high school student, let alone a seminary professor.3
A common complaint about Flowers is that he does not understand (or flat out misrepresents)
basic Calvinistic doctrine. Having read much of his work I am in full agreement with this and find that he
often will only engage with one aspect of Calvinism while ignoring other mitigating or related concepts
that give a more fully orbed and robust theological construct.4 This reminds me of a common trend when
dealing with atheists and their objections against Christianity. For those of you familiar with my blog and
podcast, I am continually needing to remind atheists that their own arguments are an internal critique
and that they must engage with the fully developed system of thought that they are critiquing. This means
that they cannot simply cherry pick one aspect of the Biblical narrative, say, the wrath of God against
Sodom, to the exclusion of others, such as divine holiness and human depravity, if they want to present a
valid argument. When they do this kind of cherry picking, they are engaging with a lessor concept than
the Christian one and are therefore posing a kind of strawman objection. Flowers frequently does this
same thing, and we will see it happen in this argument where he conflates a lessor conception of Reformed
soteriology (stripped bare of relevant doctrines that would undermine Flowers caricature) with a brand
of theistic fatalism.5
Flowers opens his article with a statement that when he was a proud Calvinist, that he knew very
little about the historical man John Calvin or his writings. This admission, that one can be a Calvinist
theologically while not being an expert (or even a novice) on the history of John Calvin himself, will
become very relevant later on in undermining some of Flowers own rhetoric. During this time he said
that he would dismiss protestations to Calvinism based on the events surrounding Servetus trial and
1

https://soteriology101.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/why-servetus-is-a-valid-argument-against-calvinism/,
accessed on 8/1/2016 for this article.
2
Flowers has an MDiv and a DMin though both focus on ministry they should have some theological training
involved. His article is mostly about the theological ramifications of soteriology and so he should be at least
proficient to discuss these issues, so even though his degrees do not specifically expert him in the field, especially
in the matters of history, he should be at least competent to adequately research and discuss them.
3
Some will say that this is too harsh, but we would never allow this level of bias and lack of research from the likes
of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, and likely Flowers himself would never allow this from a Calvinist, so why should
we allow it from him?
4
Having read much of his work, I think Flowers is barely familiar with Calvinism but the main problem is that he is
completely ignorant of broader Reformed and Covenantal theology that fill out the theological system which is
here somewhat anachronistically and narrowly called Calvinism.
5
We will observe this in Part III of this series.

execution as people just attempting to avoid the Biblical evidence and replace them with ad hominems. I
have to admit, Flowers should have held on to that view even if he abandoned his Calvinism (as shallow
and uninformed as it may have been). Maybe he does not know that an ad hominem argument just is a
logical fallacy. It doesnt matter how sincerely one wants to believe it or if your views have changed on
the conclusion it is always fallacious. For Flowers to think that an ad hominem fallacy can ever be a valid
objection shows a level of logical confusion on par with an eastern mystic who thinks that contradictions
can be true from time to time if it sounds interesting. The strange thing is that he admits this from the
beginning. He writes, Proof that John Calvin treated dissenters in a sinful manner does not prove that
Calvinisms soteriology is wrong. Well that is an absolute fact. However at that point, Flowers should
have closed his laptop and ended his article. Instead, he opts to go against that statement and attempts
to make one giant ad hominem argument. He says later that if the Calvinist does step into the arena of
defending John Calvins actions, then the non-Calvinist has every right to bring the full weight of these
charges for consideration. Which is true but misleading. If the topic is whether or not Calvin did
something wrong in his role in the Servetus affair, then yes, we should be able to talk about the history of
the events and the ethical ramifications that had in Calvins historical context and if it has any relevance
to ours. However, what we will see is not only that Flowers misrepresents the history, but that he is not
content to leave it there. He attempts to make a much larger theological objection to Calvinistic
soteriology based on these historical charges, which puts his feet firmly back into the manifestly fallacious
ad hominem position from weakness to weakness.
At this point Flowers links the only source for the entire paper. This is likely the only thing that
constituted any research for Flowers own article. And what does he cite? Is it a scholarly peer reviewed
article? No. Is it some academic book written by a professional historian expert in this time period? Not
even close. What Flowers cites is a Patheos article written by blogger Frank Viola6 a man with no
expertise himself, with a penchant for rather idiosyncratic views of his own making, and whose article is
almost as biased and lacking in research as Flowers article. And what is this article supposed to support
what claim is Flowers attempting to sustain? Well, that Calvin believed that torturing and killing heretics
who held to false doctrines (or dissenters as Flowers calls them) was justified. Anyone even remotely
familiar with the history will know that this is not only wildly overstated (for Calvin thought many people
had false doctrines about non-essential matters and got along with them fine) but also that this is a grossly
chronocentric evaluation of the historical background. We will delve more into why this is as this response
progresses.
Flowers then presents the first example of a kind of misleading rhetoric that will plague his article.
He will mention Calvinistic scholars several times and will try to sneak them through as experts or
reliable sources on the history of the man Calvin. That is, he will equivocate between a Calvinistic scholar
and a Calvin scholar a scholar who is theologically Calvinistic and a scholar who has their expertise in the
Reformation period and specifically in the life of the man, John Calvin. This first mention is rather
innocuous but it will set the stage for future examples. In this case he complains that many Calvinistic
scholars will attempt to defend Calvin by saying that he lived in a different time or that he was a man
of his day or that this type of harsh treatment was the more common belief and practice of Christians
in the 16th century. What this does is show that Flowers is not only a bad historian, but also does not

Viola, Frank, Shocking Beliefs of John Calvin,

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankviola/shockingbeliefsofjohncalvin/, accessed 8/1/2016.

even understand how objective historiography works, for those statements are rather banal statements
about the job of the historian (or someone attempting to engage in the task of historiography.)
When we are seeking to engage in objective historiography and come to an accurate
understanding of the past, the goal is to leave evaluation to the wayside in the process. We do not seek
to evaluate the actions of the person as if they lived in a modern context but rather seek to understand
their actions within in their own historical setting their own Sitz im Leben. The irony is that Flowers
would likely seek to do this in order to understand the events in the life of Biblical persons like Moses or
Abraham, and yet when it comes to Calvin, no such consideration is given. This means that while I can say
that I 100% disagree with Calvin on his views of how to treat heretics, I also understand that his views are
largely in line with what nearly every person of every theological system believed at the time and it was
due in full measure to their views on the role of the state than anything else. In addition, this means that
Calvin may not have been better than his peers, but it is nearly impossible to say that he was worse or
that he is deserving of some kind of special condemnation, or that his theological views in made his civic
views any more radicalized than the general beliefs of the time.
Other reformers such as Melanchthon (the theological head of the Lutheran church at the time),
Bucer, Bullinger, Farel, Beza, and others, all emphatically supported the outcome of the Servetus trial.
Melanchthon wrote to Calvin about a year after the trial saying, I have read your book, in which you
clearly refuted the horrid blasphemies of Servetus.... To you the Church owes gratitude at the present
moment, and will owe it to the latest posterity. I perfectly assent to your opinion. I affirm also that your
magistrates did right in punishing, after regular trial, this blasphemous man.7 We know that Luther and
the councils at Wittenberg had approved of numerous death penalties for Anabaptists that they thought
were dangerous to German Christianity. Even Zwingli had no objections specifically to the execution for
heresy of six Anabaptists in Switzerland during his leadership there. In fact, at the time, there was almost
no protestation to the execution of radical heretics like Servetus from any municipality in Europe we
have to remember that this was not a man who simply disagreed with Calvins view on the bondage of
the will and the tension between the sovereignty of God, like Flowers does. Schaff describes Servetus this
way: a restless fanatic, a pantheistic pseudo-reformer, and the most audacious and even blasphemous
heretic of the sixteenth century.8 Bullinger went so far as to say that Satan himself could not speak more
blasphemy against the Trinity than Servetus had written. This was a man that was writing and spreading
his heresies all over Europe and was wanted by not just nearly every protestant municipality, but in every
Catholic controlled area as well. In fact, while Servetus was awaiting trial in Geneva, a dispatch from the
Catholic judges in Vienne (where Servetus had already been burned in effigy) was sent to request that
Geneva hand over Servetus so that he could be executed by Rome. Furthermore, we have every indication
that Servetus preferred to be tried in Geneva because he would only face the prospect of execution there,
rather than brutal torture before execution at the hands of the Vienne Inquisition.
An even further irony of those who criticize Calvin for this affair, is that Servetus himself appears
to think that execution was a fitting end for certain heresies. In his petition from his cell, Servetus argues
7

Notice here that Melanchthon approves of Calvins refutation of Servetus heresies, since Calvin was the expert
witness on theology, and affirms that it was the city magistrates who were the ones overseeing the trial and the
sentencing not Calvin. We will see later that Calvin did not even have enough political capital to change the
means of execution when he begged for a softer sentence, so why should we think that he had the authority to
influence to outcome of the entire trial?
8
Schaff, History of the Swiss Reformation, vol II. 669.

not that he is innocent of all heresy, but that Calvin (as the theological witness) was incorrect in his
interpretation of what he has published. The absurdity of this is that Servetus called for Calvin to be
imprisoned with him for the duration of the trial for misrepresenting his views, and that the outcome
ought to be that either he be executed for his heresy if found guilty, or Calvin be executed for
misrepresenting his views if he is found innocent. He writes in his introduction, referring to the false
doctrine that he claims not to have taught,9
Whoever says this does not believe that there is a God, or justice, or resurrection, or
Jesus Christ, or Holy Scripture, or anything (at all); only that everything is dead, and man
and beast are one and the same thing. If I had said that(and) not only said it, but written
it for all to see, to defile the worldI would sentence myself to death. For which reason
messeigneurs I request that my bogus prosecutor be punished according to the lex talionis
and that he be held prisoner, like me, until such time as the case is decided by (a ruling
for) either his death or mine, or some other sentence. And to this end (I hereby bring a
charge against him according to the aforementioned lex talionis). And I am willing to die
if he is not proven guilty, as much for this as for other things, which I will describe later. I
ask you for justice, my lords: justice, justice, justice.10
Notice that while Servetus thought that he was blameless for these two specific theological
heresies (see fn 6), he not only thought that he should have been executed if he did hold to them (and
would come to the same punishment if he were judge over the case), but also appears to have believed
that Calvin should have been executed if he was simply mistaken in his understanding and representation
of Servetus! Here we have Servetus agreeing that if the council found him guilty of heresy, that he should
have been executed.11 Now, in modern secular Western culture, we may think that such offenses are best
left to church and not state discipline, but that was not the times that Servetus found himself in, and he
admits as much. This is relevant historical evidence that goes to the fact that Calvin, as a theological expert
witness, should not be given any special scorn that we would not heap on the entire culture of
Reformation Era Europe.
We need to understand further the time period that Servetus was unfortunate enough to find
himself in. The Protestants had only recently freed themselves from Rome and were in a theological life
or death or death struggle for legitimacy. During this time the political understanding of nearly every
European was that one of the major roles of the civil magistrate was to establish and protect orthodoxy
and to stamp out the spread of heresy. Typically this was done by minor means such as banning books,
but when some heretic (like Servetus) became a fly in the ointment and remained obstinate or stubbornly
chose to continue spreading their views, the state was understood to have the right and the duty to see
them expelled or put to death. Religious belief was such an integral part of life that heresy was viewed as
9

Servetus seems keen to ignore the cornucopia of heresies that he was on trial for and focuses in on two: a) that
souls are mortal, and b) that Jesus only received of his body from the Virgin Mary. These are the doctrines that
he references in the quote that follows. Kleinstuber, Joy, An Eye for and Eye: A Petition Written by Michael
Servetus in Prison, RRR 11.2 (2009). 228.
10
Kleinstuber, 229.
11
He will later go on to say that matters of doctrine are not liable to a criminal charge but given his prior
statements affirming execution for certain heresies, it is not clear whether he only thinks that this means that it
should not be the church that brings civil charges against them and thus usurp the role of the state in these
matters.

something like a deadly rot that would corrode the very fabric society, akin to treason or sedition. The
Reformers largely broke theologically with Rome on their soteriological views and understanding of the
role of authority and scripture, but there was not a lot of movement on their civic views this would
evolve slowly over centuries, and the relationship of church and state is still a contentious issue that future
generations may look back and judge us for. Again, this does not excuse the actions of the early Reformers
as ethical, or even biblical, but it does completely undermine the idea that Calvins soteriological beliefs
had any causal impact on his treatment of heretics. Though we will see that Flowers understanding of
the role of Calvin in the Servetus affair in the first place is grossly inadequate.
Part of the problem with Flowers presentation of the Servetus affair is that he presents almost
no evidence concerning the events or his misrepresentation of the incident as something that Calvin was
personally and solely responsible for. He attempts to show that one Anabaptist (Bathasar Hubmaier) who
lived and died before Calvin ever crossed paths with Servetus, had a differing view on the treatment of
heretics and that this somehow supports his view that Calvins soteriological beliefs led to his treatment
of dissenters that Hubmaier is evidence that Calvin was not just a man of his time because there were
other views. However, we must remember that this is in an article where Flowers is attempting to argue
that proper theological beliefs, specifically soteriological beliefs, lead to habits of dealing with dissenters.
That is his main thesis. Yet who does Flowers find as his main foil contrary to Calvin? A man who was killed
for heresy a motivating reason for not wanting the state to be involved in theological affairs to be sure.12
Hubmaier may have broke from Rome on their view of the relationship of church and state (though, again,
this had absolutely nothing to do with his soteriological views of the nature of the will) but he maintained
the Roman view of the perpetual virginity of Mary and compared the discipline of God for his people with
a teacher whipping a student or a husband beating his wife. Should we think that his soteriology was to
blame for this because he broke from Rome on some issues but not on these? Of course not. Yet if we
assume Flowers line of argumentation here to be valid, then that is precisely the conclusion we would be
permitted to draw.
Another major problem that Flowers appears to have missed due to his abysmal lack of research,
is that it is not even clear that Hubmaier was not himself something like a quasi-Compatibilist and affirmed
that sinners were both bound and free!13 So not only is Flowers attempting to use as an example of the
ramifications of good theology over and against bad someone who could be charged with wicked
treatment of students and women contrary to modern standards, but he also picks someone whose view
of the will is not an example of an advocate for pure libertarian freedom that he wants him to be, but is
rather closer to the Reformed Compatibilist view that he is seeking to undermine than he would like. At
the very least, Hubmaier was a bridge from the earlier scholastics and a Christian humanistic tradition that
helped both the Reformers and Counter-Reformers (such as Molina) formulate their understanding of the
relationship between human freedom and divine sovereignty.
Flowers also lumps in most of the Anabaptist believers of the Reformation in a group that taught
that even atheists (and especially Christians with differing doctrinal beliefs) should be shown grace. Not

12

When Hubmaier said, A heretic is not convinced with fire, but only with patience and prayer, his own
impending punishments likely loomed large.
13
Though he appeared to campaign for a kind of libertarian freedom in much of his writing, the way that he
incorporated and reconciled it with divine sovereignty is far more reminiscent of the very Compatiblism that he
rejected. http://www.directionjournal.org/35/2/hubmaiers-concord-of-predestination-with.html

only is this riotously oversimplified (as we saw that he got his one and only example wrong), and is a
completely bald assertion with zero evidence given to support it, but it is also absolutely irrelevant.
Flowers is here trying to show that Calvinistic soteriology leads to (or is at least is weighted toward) a
brutal outlook upon heretics or, more in his more pedestrian semantic relabeling, dissenters. At that
point, then, the beliefs of those with different views than the Calvinist are rather irrelevant to that claim.
This would be akin to saying that Trinitairnaism must be false or problematic because other people have
other views that lead to other conclusions. Again, I wonder if Flowers would ever allow this kind of
barefaced non sequitur from any of his Calvinistic opponents.
I am additionally curious as to why he leaves out major counter examples to his claim, such as the
Anabaptists involved in the Peasants Revolt, or the horrendously violent and debauched events that
occurred in the Mnster Rebellion under the control of some rather off-putting Anabaptists like Jan van
Leiden, Jan Matthys, and Bernhard Kinpperdolling. Under these free-will affirming Anabaptists, countless
more people died brutal deaths and an orgy of debauchery spread through the town in just their brief one
year tenure, than in all of Calvins long career in Geneva. Would Flowers draw such a straight line from
their views on the freedom of the will to the heinous and repulsive actions and oppressive regime in
Mnster? I doubt it. He would likely want us to do good historiography and see that it was a far more
complex situation than that. This manner of ignoring any and all counter-examples by Flowers is either
unconscionable from a trained professor, or else reveals an utter lack of interest in unbiased research and
a total privation of understanding of the historical period that he has frantically trampled all over. At this
point, Im honestly not sure which is worse or more unsettling.
Flowers then engages in a kind of shotgun attempt to poison the well against Calvin by listing off
several statistics concerning the punishment of supposed criminals in Geneva during Calvins residence
there. The import of this list is clearly meant to play on the appearance that Calvin ran Geneva like an
iron-fisted dictator and show things got bloody and violent for those who stood in opposition to Calvin
during his reign of terror there. This will therefore allow Flowers to sneak in the misconstrued Servetus
affair through the backdoor of viewing Calvin as some dictatorial monster after all, isnt mistreating
Servetus just in line with this evil tyrants persona? However, this list is wildly problematic for a whole host
of reasons but I will here only catalogue a couple of them.
Firstly, there is not a single citation in sight for any of these events.14 This is not surprising given
that many are simply factually incorrect, or at the very least, misleading. Consistent with what we saw
above about the broader European view of the role of the state in protecting doctrinal (and moral) purity,
most of this list should not be surprising to any student of that historian period. On the list is that Calvins
own step-daughter and son-in-law were found guilty of adultery and executed.15 This alone is problematic
for several reasons. As we will show shortly, this has almost no relevance to Calvins role in Geneva. We
will see in the second part of this series that Calvin was a pastor and was neither a member of the city
council, nor even a voting citizen of Geneva until just several years before his own death. This means that
Calvin had literally no say in what occurred legally in Geneva at that time period (a very important fact
14

Granted he says that he is citing Violas article but when we look at Violas article there are very few citations for
the list that Flowers copies, and the citations that are there are wanting of much clarity or relevance.
15
While I can find many references to his step-daughter being caught in adultery (indeed Calvin gravely laments
over it in a letter to his friend Viret), I have yet to find any credible source about their punishment being execution.
This does not mean that the claim of execution is false, just simply at the time of publication I have not been able
to locate a credible source to corroborate this claim.

when we explore more deeply the Servetus affair). In addition, adultery being a capital offense was nearly
universal in Christendom at this time period and Geneva was in no way unique. We can put this in
perspective by realizing that fornication and adultery were criminal offenses in nearly every state of the
US until the mid-20th century, and adultery is still a crime (with punishments ranging from $500 to a month
in jail) in 16 states. More relevant to this article, adultery was only decriminalized in Switzerland in 1989.
To try and place the blame on Calvins view of the bondage of the will and divine sovereignty is asinine in
the highest degree. This is yet another example of unfairly placing a special blame on Calvin, even despite
the fact that he had no control over civil matters or criminal sentencing.
Another problem with the list is that it is not only vague but largely uninformative and even
skewed to the point of being intentionally misleading. For example, Flowers (via Viola) state that during
Calvins time in Geneva there were 76 banishments and 139 executions. As an emotional appeal that may
be compelling but when we stop to consider what those numbers represent, it is hardly so clear. What
were the 76 banishments and 139 executions for what crimes did these people commit to receive these
punishments? How many were for other issues like theft, assault, treason, witchcraft, or even murder?
What about the litany of other crimes that in the Reformation Era of European Christendom would have
led to such sentences that have categorically nothing to do with heretical or heterodox theological beliefs?
This list gives us no information in this regard. However, Calvin himself does mention 38 executions in his
writings and 23 of them he gives the justification for them as spreading the plague by witchcraft. We read
in his letter to Myconius of Basel (March 27, 1545) that this spread of the plague was accomplished not
by some mystical secret ritual but rather by maliciously smearing blood from infected corpses onto door
handles of the homes of Genevas citizens. This attempt to spread the plague accounts for at least 23 of
the executions, and those are only the cases that Calvin mentions could there be others in that same
vein or something similar? For Flowers to throw down these statistic as if they reveal some specifically
heinous and oppressive activity due only to Calvin, as a result of his views on the freedom of the will, is
appallingly misleading.
The list also doesnt tell us if these statistics represent an increase from before Calvin arrived in
Geneva or a decrease, or if his arrival had no impact whatsoever. We know for example that in the case
of adultery, prior to Calvin coming to Geneva the council and the law only required that the woman would
have been executed. Calvin preached hard against this and actually did convince the city council that if a
charge of adultery could be sustained, that both parties should be equally punished. This had the effect
of a substantial decrease in the number of adultery cases that people were willing to levy, and to a near
complete abolishment of the death penalty for such offenses.16 This makes it hard to trust the list as
presented by Flowers and Viola. What these statistics also do not do, is compare Geneva to other local
municipalities to see if it was divergent from the prevailing civil trend of the day to any statistically
significant degree. Simply throwing out these numbers without understanding how misleading and
uninformative they really are, reveals more of a bias than a studied understanding of what these statistics
even represent.
Flowers then, somewhat strangely, quotes Sebastian Castellio who did lay down scorn against
Calvin after the Servetus incident. This is a bizarre thing for Flowers to do because Castellio was very much
in line with Calvins theological views of the freedom of the will, and during the early part of their
16

This may negatively reflect on the misogynistic double standard of the era, but it does go to show that rather
than increasing the severity of Genevas response to adultery, it actually made it far more lax.

relationship together Calvin had endorsed his work and even requested that he take up the post of Rector
at the Collge de Genve in 1542. Calvin even approved of Castellios commission to preach in
Vandoeuvres, which a hamlet of Geneva. Castellios later disagreements with Calvin came not as a result
of differing soteriological beliefs but largely based on his own variety of pre-enlightenment beliefs of
separation of church and state and a rather radical view of limited government for the time. This means
that citing Castellio as an example of someone who took exception to Calvin categorically cannot go to
support Flowers overall claim that it is the Reformed concept of the will that lends itself to oppressive
views against dissenters, because here we have someone who is right in line with the Reformed view of
the will and yet viewed the relationship of the church and state in a much more secular, postenlightenment manner. This disagreement then, again, simply comes from other considerations unrelated
to soteriological convictions. In addition, although somewhat tertiary, it is fairly misleading to call Calvin
and Castellio friends at the time of Castellios criticism since they had not be friends, by all accounts,
since 1544 after a dispute over if Castellio could get Calvin to endorse his translation of the NT a full 9
years before Servetus came to Geneva. The scorn between the two, and it was reciprocated both ways,
was well established long before the Servetus affair, and so to caste Castellio as a friend is to attempt
to convey a kind of, even Calvins friends thought he went too far, which is highly misleading.
However, as we saw above, we could still argue a kind of reductio ad absurdum that if Flowers
desires to maintain his thesis, then this scalpel cuts deep back the other direction against his own position.
This is because, as we have shown, not only that soteriological views of the will are irrelevant to these
issues, but also that the body count was much higher in the Free-Will and (Semi)Pelagian municipalities
even if we limit ourselves to just examining Rome and Mnster.
With that list now successfully dispatched, in the next section I would like to turn my attention to
a brief sketch of what actually did happen leading up to and during the time that Servetus came to Geneva
and Calvins role in the whole ordeal. If it is not already clear that the main thesis of Flowers article, and
the evidence he uses to prop it up are nothing but bitter and biased pie in the sky, the next section will
put the final few nails in the coffin.