Calvin: Anti-Trinitarian? by Stanford Rives

In the Institutes, after the 1553 execution of Servetus, Calvin tried to weave a version of Christology that appeared Trinitarian. He saw Christ as subordinate to the Father only in His humanity, etc. However, the different views of Calvin were in numerous commentaries.

For example, in Calvin's Commentary on Zechariah, it appears he clearly holds the identical view of Servetus for which he had Servetus executed in 1553. (It is unclear when this commentary was written.) Servetus believed Jesus was the Eternal Word (resident in Jesus), but not the Eternal Son for to make this claim would make it appear there are two Gods from eternity. This precise argument is accepted in Calvin's Commentary on Zechariah (1849) at 75:

“Whenever then Christ announces his own divinity, he takes the name Jehovah; but he also shows, that there is something peculiar and distinct belonging to him as the messenger of the Father. For this reason, and in this respect, he is inferior to the Father; that is, because he is sent as a messenger, and executes what has been entrusted to him. These things do not militate the one against the other, as many unlearned and turbulent men think, who entangle themselves in many vain imaginations, or rather in mere ravings, and say, “How can it be, that there is one eternal God, and yet that Christ, who is distinct from the Father, and is called his angel, is a true God?” So they imagine that the origin of divinity is God the Father, as though the one true God had begotten, and thus produced another God from himself, as by propagation. But these are diabolical figments, by which the unity of the Divine essence is destroyed. Let us then bear in mind what the Prophet teaches here clearly and plainly,—that Christ is Jehovah, the only true God, and yet that he is sent by God as a Mediator.”

In this quote, Calvin clearly says Jesus was God, just as Servetus did (in an indwelled sense), and that Jesus was sent by the Father, just as Servetus said, but Calvin says, just as Servetus said, is it is improper to say Jesus was “begotten” (as Son) in his divine essence because that would constitute “two” Gods. This was exactly Servetus's argument against believing in an “eternal Son of God”, for which later Calvin had Servetus killed.

Calvin says a similar thing in the Institutes that refutes Jesus could be the eternal Son of God begotten by God (and thereby imparted divinity) for this would lead to the notion that they were separate beings from one another and both God:

“Whoever asserts that the Son owes his essence to the Father, denies him to be self-existent…If we admit the whole essence to be solely in the Father, either it will be divisible, or it will be taken away from the Son; and so, being despoiled of his essence, he will be only a titular God. The divine essence, according to these triflers, belongs solely to the Father, inasmuch as he alone possesses it, and is the author of the essence of the Son. Thus the Divinity of the Son will be a kind of emanation from the essence of God, or a derivation of a part from the whole…Although we confess, in point of order and degree, that the Father is the Fountain of the Deity, yet we pronounce it a detestable figment that the essence belongs exclusively to the Father, as though he were the author of the Deity of the Son; because, on this supposition, either the essence would be divided, or Christ would be only a titular and imaginary God. If they admit that the Son Ls God, but inferior to the Father, then in him the essence must be begotten and created, which in the Father is unbegotten and uncreated.” John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1. chap. 13. 23, 24. (Quoted in Unitarian Principles Confirmed by Trinitarian Testimonies at 266)

Edward Wightman: Last English Martyr

“If, then, dead books may be committed to flames, how much more live books, that is to say, men?”[1]

This is the story of Edward Wightman[2], a name unknown to modern bible students, yet known to history as the last person in England to be burned at the stake for heresy[3]. Like most cases of this kind, it is a story dominated by the religious and political climate of its time, an environment firmly controlled by men who held sway over all matters pertaining to the Christian faith. Most sources are biased in their portrait of the ‘heretic’ as some kind of demon-possessed, deranged mind. Yet Wightman was a well-respected business man and community leader, whose zeal for his faith and freedom of expression ultimately took him to the attention of the King of England, James I. His own religious zeal as the “Defender of the Faith”, led him to sign the last known execution for burning via the stake.

Wightman’s parents hailed from Burton-upon-Trent, near Staffordshire. He was born there in 1566 and like most residents was baptized in traditional orthodox fashion[4]. He attended Burton grammar school and entered the clothiers business of his maternal family[5]. In 1593 he married Frances Darbye[6].

He became involved with the Puritans and in 1596 was chosen as one of the leaders assigned to the investigation of demonic possession by 13 year old Thomas Darling[7]. This suggests that by the mid-1590s Wightman was an important and well-respected public figure, taking part in the newly formed movement that began to hold sway over Burton’s society and politics. His involvement in the Darling case proved a turning point in his life, making him entirely amenable to the possibility of unmediated spiritual intervention. Darling claimed not just to be possessed by the devil, but engaged in a series of ‘spiritual wars’ in which both demonic and angelic voices were said to emanate from him[8]. This was something that, as we shall see, affected the way Wightman later perceived traditional orthodoxy.

His initial descent into heresy involved his understanding of the mortality of the soul, a view that progressively became more radicalized and unorthodox[9]. Between 1603/4 and 1610/11, his behavior grew increasingly bolder and louder. According to court records, he was a prolific writer, although none of his writings is yet to be found[10]. He came to the attention of the local church authorities and a warrant for his arrest was issued. The order instructed the constables of Burton to immediately bring him before Bishop Richard Neil for interrogation[11].

He set about in putting together a compendium of his theology for his upcoming hearing and defense. Perhaps thinking that he would at least be allowed time to plead his case, he delivered copies of it to members of the clergy in an effort to shore up support. But then, perhaps as a last resort, he delivered a copy to King James I[12], a move that would ultimately seal his fate.

James I came to the English throne in 1603, “thinking himself a competent judge of religious questions and disposed to take seriously his title of ‘Defender of the Faith’”[13]. Since 1607 he had been engaged in a battle of books with Roman Catholic apologists over the Oath of Allegiance, both personally and by encouraging others to write in his defence. “One of the central planks of the king’s case was the preservation of his catholic orthodoxy through his adherence to the three great creeds of the church, the Apostles’, the Nicene and the Athanasian.”[14]

Wightman was fully aware of the King’s firm Catholic stance, yet he set about to willfully combat both his State and Church. Of the handful of fragments of his defense treatise that have survived, he refers to the doctrine and “heresies of the Nicolaitanes[15]…most of all hated and abhorred of God himself…the common received faith contained in those 3 inventions of man, commonly called the Three Creeds…the [Apostles’], Nicene and Athanasius Creed, which faith within these 1600 years past hath prevailed in the world.”[16]

Wightman had by now totally isolated himself from all other groups, calling into question all aspects of Christian truth, arguing “that the baptizing of Infants is an abominable custom…the practice of the Sacraments as they are now used in the Church of England are according to Christ his Institution… [and affirming that] only the sacrament of baptism [is] to be administered in water to converts of sufficient age of understanding converted from infidelity to the faith”[17].

But what finally spelled his end was his grievous departure from the Trinity and the nature of God. It was presumably on these points that he so vehemently rejected the formulae of the Nicene Creed of 325 and the subsequent ‘Athanasius’ Creed of 381[18]. He claimed that the doctrine was a total fabrication stating that Christ was only a man “and a mere Creature and not both God and man in one person… [Although this did not mean that Christ was a man like all others but] only a perfect man without sin.”[19] King James was by now more set than ever in securing the execution of Wightman, since in the intervening years he had launched a dual campaign against heresy at home and abroad[20].

After months of being subjected to a series of conferences with “learned divines”, Wightman was finally brought before Bishop Neil for the last time. According to Wightman, the Bishop told him “that unless I did recant my opinions he would burn me at a stake in Burton before Allholland day next.”[21] The final verdict and list of charges included “the wicked heresies of Ebion, Cerinthus, Valentinian, Arius, Macedonius, Simon Magus, Manichees, Phontinus, and of the Anabaptists and other arch heretics, and moreover, of other cursed opinions belched by the instinct of Satan”.

He was ordered to be placed “in some public and open place below the city aforesaid [and] before the people burned in the detestation of the said crime and for manifest example of other Christians that they may not fall into the same crime…”[22]

When he was finally brought to the stake his courage had all but left him. As the fires were lit he is said to have quickly cried out to recant, although by then he had been “well scorched”. But this would not last, since 2 or 3 weeks later he was again brought before the courts and, no longer fearing the searing flames, refused and “blasphemed more audaciously than before”[23]. The King quickly ordered his final execution, and on April 11, 1612, he was once more led to the stake.

“[Wightman] was carried again to the stake where feeling the heat of the fire again would have recanted, but for all his crying the sheriff told him he should cost him no more and commanded faggots to be set to him whence roaring, he was burned to ashes.”[24]

In the months that followed his execution, a number of religious radicals nearly met the same fate[25], even though the downfall of the bishops and abolition of the High Commission in 1640–2 did not bring about any changes to the constitution[26]. In May 2, 1648, a new ‘Ordinance for the Punishment of Blasphemies and Heresies’ was created[27]. Opposition from Independents and sectaries, however, meant that the ordinance was never enforced[28]. And only with the passage of another act in 1677 [“forbidding the burning of heretics” [29]], was Wightman’s position in history ‘as the last person in England to be burned at the stake for heresy’, secured [30]. Mention of his case came almost 100 years later by a handful of writers in the wake of the 1689 Toleration Act[31]. The only immediate result was that of a minority opposition to his execution, a shift in public opinion which may have led to a relative decline in the practice[32].

Meanwhile, King James I seemed to have lost faith in this method of discouraging heresy[33] and seeing that heresy still survived, “publicly preferred that heretics hereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in the prison rather than to grace them, and amuse others, with the solemnity of a public execution”[34].

Footnotes
________________________________________
[1] ‘Matthieu Ory, Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity for the Realm of France, Paris, 1544’. Lawrence Goldstone, Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames, Broadway, 2003.
[2] “In the King’s letter, under the privy seal, as well as in the warrant for his execution, he is called ‘Edward Wightman, of the parish of Burton-upon-Trent, in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield’.” Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E.T. Whitfield, 1850, p 567-568.
[3] Narrowly edging out another accused anti-Trinitarian and heretic, Bartholomew Legate, burned in London three weeks earlier.
[4] “…in the parish church of Burbage, in south-west Leicestershire.” Leicestershire Record Office, Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole 1521 B, 7, 16–17; The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.
[5] Eventually, he served an apprenticeship as a woolen draper in the town of Shrewsbury. A. Macdonald, A Short History of Repton, London, 1929, p 86, 91, 244.
[6] Staffordshire Record Office, marriage recorded as Sept. 11, 1593.
[7] D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits, London, 1981, p 56; J. Bruce (ed.), Diary of John Manningham, Camden Society, 1st series, 99, 1868, p 169.
[8] “As I know at this present for a certainty, that I have the spirit of God within me: so do I with the like certainty believe, that in my dialogues with Satan, when I [quoted] sundry places of scripture, to withstand the temptations he assaulted me with: I had the spirit of God in me, and by that spirit resisted Satan at those times, by [quoting] the scriptures to confound him.” S. Harsnett, A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrel, London, 1599, p 290.
[9] In one of his early public messages he claimed that “the soul of man dies with the body and participates not either of the joys of Heaven or the pains of Hell, until the general Day of Judgment, but rested with the body until then” M. W. Greenslade, ‘The 1607 Return of Staffordshire Catholics’, Staffordshire Catholic History, 4, 1963–4, p 6–32; Clarke, Lives of Two and Twenty English Divines, p 147.
[10] Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E. T. Whitfield, 1850, p 567-568.
[11] Durham Dean and Chapter Library, MS Hunter 44/17, fo. 216r.
[12] Collections for a History of Staffordshire, Staffordshire Record Society, 1982, p. 176.
[13] Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, Harvard, 1945, p 177.
[14] F. Shriver, ‘Orthodoxy and Diplomacy: James I and the Vorstius Affair’, ante, lxxxv, 1970, p 453–4; James VI and I, The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince, Iames by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, London, 1616, p 302.
[15] The Nicolaitans are mentioned in Rev 2:6, 15 as a heretical group who apparently taught that Christians could eat meat offered to idols and practice sexual immorality, and of whom the churches at Ephesus and Pergamum are warned. The Church Fathers (notably Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Eusebius) added little to this understanding of the group, beyond seeing the Nicolaitans as libertines or antinomians.
[16] Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions and Warrants for the Condemnation and Burning of Bartholomew Legate and Thomas Withman, 1521 B, 7, 1a–1b, London, 1651, p 8.
[17] Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions and Warrants for the Condemnation and Burning of Bartholomew Legate and Thomas Withman, London, 1651, p 8-9, 23.
[18] Both of the Creeds had been structured primarily as responses to Arian denials of the Trinity. And like the Arians of the 4th century, Wightman flatly denied them.
[19] All quotes, Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions, p 5.
[20] Wightman’s trial was played out against the backdrop of the so-called “Vorstius Affair”, involving the intense opposition on the King’s part to block the appointment of the German academic Conrad Vorstius to the University of Leiden. Vorstius was being accused of atheism, Arianism and heretical opinions about the Holy Spirit. James Doelman, King James I and the Religious Culture of England, DS Brewer, 2000; Ralph Anthony Houlbrooke, James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government, Ashgate, 2006.
[21] Lincolnshire Archives Office, D & C, Ciij/13/1/2/2, fo. 1r.
[22] All quotes, Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E. T. Whitfield, 1850, p 567-568.
[23] All quotes, ibid.
[24] All quotes, George Birkhead, Michael C. Questier, Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p 153.
[25] Champlin Burrage, The Early Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research (1550-1641), vol. I, p 169-171.
[26] “The act of the Long Parliament which abolished the Court of High Commission used such very general words that, if it did not abolish the old ecclesiastical courts, it practically deprived them of their power. At the Restoration, however, by statue passed in 1661 (13 Car II, c. 12) it was ‘explained’ that this was not the desired result; the Court of High Commission was not to be re-established, but the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was to be exercised as of old.” F.W. Maitland, H.A.L. Fisher, The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures, Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2001, p 522.
[27] “…principally those of the triune God, the resurrection, the last judgment, and that the Bible is the Word of God…relapse is to be punished as felony with death without benefit of clergy.” Felix Makower, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England, Ayer, 1972, p 193.
[28] C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols., London, 1911, p 1133–6; H. J. McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England, Oxford, 1951, p 163–217.
[29] Burning at the stake remained on the statute book in England until 1790, as the punishment for a woman who murdered her husband. A. Aspinall, A. Smith, English Historical Documents 1783-1832, Routledge, 1996, p 339f.; F. E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550-1700, Cornell, 1994.
[30] M. Fisher, The Constitutional History of England, p 522.
[31] G. Croese, The General History of the Quakers, London, 1696, 2, 193; E. S. De Beer, The Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols., Oxford, 1976–89, 6, nos. 2621, 2631, 2653; Truth brought to Light: Or, the History of the First 14 Years of King James, London, 1692.
[32] The case “much startled the common people”. Thomas Fuller, J.S. Brewer, The Church History of Britain: From the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year 1648, University press, 1845, p 506-508.
[33] His actions owed more to a thaw in his private attitude to Roman Catholics than to any feelings about the impropriety or inadvisability of burning heretics. A. J. Loomie, ‘Bacon and Gondomar: An Unknown Link in 1618’, in A. J. Loomie (ed.), Spain and the Early Stuarts 1585–1655, Aldershot, 1996, ch. 10.
[34] Ibid.

Works Cited:
Aspinall, Anthony Smith, ‘Debate in the House of Commons on the Bill for altering the sentence of burning women’, English Historical Documents 1783-1832, Routledge, 1996.

Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions and Warrants for the Condemnation and Burning of Bartholomew Legate and Thomas Withman, London, 1651.

D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits, London, 1981.

E. A. Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, Harvard University Press, 1945.

Felix Makower, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England, Ayer, 1972.

F. W. Maitland, H. A. L. Fisher, The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2001.

G. Birkhead, M. C. Questier, Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

J. Loomie, ‘Bacon and Gondomar: An Unknown Link in 1618’, in A. J. Loomie (ed.), Spain and the Early Stuarts 1585–1655, Aldershot, 1996.

Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World, Broadway, 2003.

M. W. Greenslade, ‘The 1607 Return of Staffordshire Catholics’, Staffordshire Catholic History, iv, 1963–4.

A. Macdonald, A Short History of Repton, London, 1929.

Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E. T. Whitfield, 1850.

S. Harsnett, A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrel, London, 1599.

Staffordshire Record Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 1982.

T. Fuller, John S. Brewer, The Church History of Britain: From the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year 1648, University press, 1845.

Calvin on Psalm 110.1

“Might not God have raised up someone of human race as Redeemer to be David’s Lord and Son at the same time? For it is not God’s most essential name that is used, but only Adonai (Lord), which in fact is often applied to men. I reply that Christ takes it for granted that He who is taken out of the number of men and elevated to the extent of headship over all in the Church is no more man, but endowed as well with the Majesty of God.

The eternal God who takes an oath to Himself and affirms that in His presence every knee shall bow swears also that He will not give His glory to another (Isa. 45.23 and 42.8). On Paul’s testimony, when Christ ascended into His Kingdom there was given Him a name which is above every name, that before Him every knew should bow (Rom 14.11; Phil 2.9). And although Paul never said it, the fact is that Christ took rank above David and all other kings, for he also excels the angels: and this could hardly be for a mortal man unless in His flesh God were also manifest. I admit that His divine essence is not expressed exactly and in so many words, but we can readily infer that He is God, who is placed above all creation.” Calvin’s NT Commentaries: A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark & Luke and James & Jude, v. 3, p 43, John Calvin, David W. Torrance, A. W. Morrison.