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27.10.2007
Welcome! I'm glad to present You the new site about Michael Servetus.
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In these books, Servetus built a theology which maintains that the belief of the Trinity is not based on biblical teachings but rather on what he saw as deceiving teachings of (Greek) philosophers. He saw himself as leading a return to the simplicity and authenticity of the Gospels and the early Church Fathers. In part he hoped that the dismissal of the Trinitarian dogma would also make Christianity more appealing to Judaism and Islam, which had preserved the unity of God in their teachings, whereas trinitarians, according to Servetus, had turned Christianity into a form of "tritheism", or belief in three gods.
Servetus affirmed that the divine Logos, which was the manifestation of God and not a separate divine Person, was incarnated in a human being, Jesus, when God's spirit came into the womb of the Virgin Mary. Only from the moment of conception, the Son was actually generated. Therefore the Son was not eternal, but only the Logos from which He was formed. For this reason, Servetus always rejected that Christ was the "eternal Son of God", but rather that he was "the Son of the eternal God" [3].
In describing Servetus' view of the Logos, Andrew Dibb explained: In Genesis God reveals himself as the creator. In John he reveals that he created by means of the Word, or Logos, Finally, also in John, he shows that this Logos became flesh and 'dwelt among us'. Creation took place by the spoken word, for God said "Let there be …" The spoken word of Genesis, the Logos of John, and the Christ, are all one and the same. [4]
Servetus states his view clearly in the preamble to Restoration of Christianity (1553): "There is nothing greater, reader, than to recognize that God has been manifested as substance, and that His divine nature has been truly communicated. We shall clearly apprehend the manifestation of God through the Word and his communication through the Spirit, both of them substantially in Christ alone."[5]
This theology, though original in some respects, has often been compared to Adoptionism, Arianism, and Sabellianism or Modalism, which were condemned as old Christian heresies by Trinitarian scholars. Nevertheless, based on the secondary and often partial sources available to him at that time, Servetus rejected these theologies in his books: Adoptionism, because it denied Jesus's divinity[6]; Arianism, because it multiplied the hypostases and established a rank[7]; and Sabellianism, because it confused the Father with the Son[8].
Under severe pressure from Catholics and Protestants alike, Servetus clarified this explanation in his second book, Dialogues (1532), to show the Logos coterminous with Christ. This made it nearly identical with the pre-Nicene view, but he was still accused of heresy because of his insistence on denying the dogma of the Trinity and the individuality of three divine Persons in one God.
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