On The Errors of the Trin­i­ty” By Michael Servetus

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi

Michael Serve­tus was born in Vil­lanue­va in Spain in 1511. He was the son of the local judge. He lived at a time when there was unrest in the estab­lished Church, and in a peri­od when every­one was ques­tion­ing the nature of Chris­tian­i­ty. As he grew old­er and more informed, the young Serve­tus was appalled by the shed­ding of blood by the Chris­tians towards the Mus­lims and Jews. 

Imag­ine his excite­ment when, upon exam­in­ing the Bible more close­ly, he found that the doc­trine of Trin­i­ty was nowhere a part of its teach­ing. He fur­ther dis­cov­ered that the Bible did not always sup­port what was being taught by the Church.

Michael Serve­tus wrote to the lead­ers of the Ref­or­ma­tion, Calvin and Luther, in the hopes that the Protes­tant move­ment will turn Uni­tar­i­an. Alas, the minds of the lead­ers of the Ref­or­ma­tion were still trapped in the false meta­physics. He found that both Luther and Calvin will have noth­ing to do with his belief in the Uni­ty of God.

Ori­gin of On The Errors of the Trinity” 

Serve­tus trav­elled to look for those who were open-mind­ed enough to lis­ten to what he was sure was the true Chris­tian­i­ty as taught by Jesus, and even had a cor­re­spon­dence with Calvin. How­ev­er, all his attempts to influ­ence peo­ple by per­son­al con­tact failed. Sev­er­tus lat­er pro­ceed­ed to pub­lish his views in a book which he called On The Errors of Trin­i­ty”.

The result was that the Church hound­ed Serve­tus from one place to anoth­er. Serve­tus was lat­er cap­tured in Gene­va, found guilty of heresy at his tri­al, and was exe­cut­ed by being tied to the trunk of a tree and burned on the 26th of Octo­ber, 1553.

Excerpts From On The Errors of the Trinity”

A few excerpts from On The Errors of the Trin­i­ty, which caused such vio­lent actions, fol­lows.As repro­duced & adapt­ed from Muham­mad Ata ur-Rahim, Jesus A Prophet of Islam, pp. 112 – 121 Serve­tus writes :

The philoso­phers have invent­ed a third sep­a­rate being tru­ly and real­ly dis­tinct from the oth­er two, which they have called the third Per­son or the Holy Spir­it, and thus they have con­trived an imag­i­nary Trin­i­ty, three beings in one nature. But in real­i­ty, three Gods, or one three­fold God, are foist­ed upon us under the pre­tence, and in the name of Unity…For with them it is very easy, tak­ing the words in their strict sense, for three beings to exist, which they say and yet strict­ly, sim­ply, and real­ly, so dif­fer­ent or dis­tinct yet one is born of anoth­er, and yet all these three are shut up in one jar. Since I am unwill­ing to mis­use the word Per­sons, I shall call them the first being, the sec­ond being and the third being, for in the Scrip­ture I find no oth­er name for them…Admitting, there­fore, these three, which after their fash­ion they call Per­sons, they freely admit a plu­ral­i­ty of beings, a plu­ral­i­ty of enti­ties, a plu­ral­i­ty of Essences, a plu­ral­i­ty of sub­stances, and tak­ing the word of God strict­ly, they will have a plu­ral­i­ty of Gods.

He con­tin­ues :

If this is so, then why the Tri­torites are blamed, who say that there are three Gods, for they also con­trive three Gods or one three­fold one. These three­fold Gods of theirs form one com­pos­ite sub­stance. And although some will not use the word imply­ing that these three have been put togeth­er, yet they do use a word that they are con­sti­tut­ed togeth­er and that God is con­sti­tut­ed out of three beings. It is clear there­fore that they are Tri­to­ries and we have a three­fold God. We have become Athe­ists, man with­out any God. For as soon as we try to think about God, we are turned aside to three phan­toms, so that no kind of uni­ty remains in our con­cep­tion. What else is being with­out God but being unable to think about God, when there is always present to our under­stand­ing a haunt­ing kind of con­fu­sion of three beings, by which we are for­ev­er delud­ed into sup­pos­ing that we are think­ing about God…They seem to be liv­ing in anoth­er world when they dream of such things for the king­dom of heav­ens knows none of this non­sense and it is in anoth­er way unknown to them, that Scrip­ture speaks of the Holy Spirit.

He adds :

How much this tra­di­tion of Trin­i­ty has alas, alas ! been the laugh­ing stock of Mohamme­dons only God knows. The Jews also shrink from giv­ing adher­ence to this fan­cy of ours, and laugh at our fool­ish­ness about the Trin­i­ty, and on account of its blas­phemies, they do not believe that this is the Mes­si­ah promised in their Law. And not only the Mohamme­dons and the Hebrews, but the very beasts of the field would make fun of us, did they grasp our fan­tas­tic notion, for all the work­ers of the Lord bless the One God…This most burn­ing plague, there­fore, was added and super­im­posed, as it were, on the new gods which have recent­ly come, which our fathers did not wor­ship. And this plague of phi­los­o­phy was brought upon us by the Greeks, for they above all men are most giv­en to phi­los­o­phy ; and we, hang­ing upon their lips, have become philoso­phers, and they nev­er under­stood the pas­sages of the Scrip­tures which they adduced with regard to this matter.

Serve­tus also stressed what he believed to be the true nature of Jesus :

Some are scan­dalised at my call­ing Christ the prophet because they hap­pen not them­selves to apply to him the epi­thet, they fan­cy that all who do so are charge­able with Judaism and Mohametism, regard­less of the fact that the Scrip­tures and ancient writ­ers call him the prophet.

Con­clu­sions

The writ­ings of Michael Serve­tus’ On The Errors of the Trin­i­ty cer­tain­ly shows that there are those who call them­selves Chris­tians and are yet not blind­ed by the faults of the Trini­tar­i­an dog­ma. One would no doubt won­der why the Church resort­ed to per­se­cut­ing Michael Serve­tus and his anti-Trini­tar­i­an writ­ings instead of debat­ing about it in a schol­ar­ly man­ner if the Church is cer­tain that the doc­trine is undis­putable and is indeed an inher­ent part of the Chris­t­ian faith. "On The Errors of the Trinity" By Michael Servetus 1

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