Was Calvin to tell the reporters, Be quiet, let the man go? Then Calvin would have been branded the great Judas of Protestantism instead of the great persecutor of "dissenters"!
Like democracy today, the Christian religion at the time formed the basis for criminal law and civil government. Vienne already had Servetus executed symbolically. His effigy, a straw puppet, was burned. Because apprehended in Geneva, Servetus now was the responsibility of that leading Roman Catholic City-State. The ecclesiastical tribune of Vienne nevertheless requested that Servetus should be sent back, but Geneva’s Councils felt obliged to try Servetus themselves. Servetus was to be removed from society … by death.
"The trial, which therefor took place in Geneva, was a lengthy one. Sometimes, by order of the Council, the evidence for prosecution and defence was in writing … Sometimes there was a face-to-face confrontation, with wordy battles. Servetus was very abusive. He did not expect to be sentenced to death, and felt very sure of himself. Seeing that the Libertines – loose living men – had once more gained power in Geneva, and were plotting Calvin’s downfall, the Spaniard was counting on their help. However, the Little Council decided to ask advice of Bern, Zurich, Basle, and Schaffhausen, and when the replies came in, it was seen that each of the four Swiss cities denounced Servetus as a heretic and blasphemer, harmful to the Church. … Michael Servetus was found guilty, and was sentenced to death by burning. Calvin implored the Council to substitute death by axe, as being swifter and more merciful, but his request was brushed aside, and the condemned man was burned at the stake, on the hill called Champel on October 27th, 1553.
If Servetus had been put to death at Rome or Vienna, most probably the sad event would have been forgotten within a comparatively short time. That a man should be put to death in the Protestant city of Geneva, came as a shock, and called forth a storm of criticism and controversy. Time itself has not removed the stain which this left on Calvin’s reputation. But Calvin lived in an age when heresy was everywhere regarded as a crime to be punished by the State, and in the matter of Servetus, the Government of Geneva, and Calvin himself, acted according to the laws of that age. In the standard civil law-book, it stated clearly that for the crime of denying the Trinity, the penalty was death." (E.M. Johnson, The Man of Geneva, BTT 1977 Chapter 11.)
Bacchiocchi the Church historian doesn’t know these things? He says nothing of the fact that six Governments found Servetus guilty of a crime punishable by death? He mentions not Calvin’s plea for a more humane method of execution but makes him the sole sadist of the occasion? Bacchiocchi the Church historian doesn’t know the Council employed Calvin – that he was responsible to the Council in the trial of Servetus in his capacity of state-lawyer? Bacchiocchi the Church historian didn’t know Calvin had to provide laws on every imaginable aspect of life, like building and sanitary regulations … approved or rejected by the Government of the day? (Which incidentally, at the time was in the hands of the Libertines and not in the hands of Calvin or the Church) Bacchiocchi doesn’t know? I don’t think so. I think Bacchiocchi the Professor knows very well but loves to be the cruel executioner of Calvin the Calvinist for his "roots" and "teachings" – the doctrines of free grace and God’s sovereignty and predestination.
So far for Bacchiocchi "as Church historian".
Says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations, A Collection by Otto Dudzus, from an Afrikaans translation of the German by Leo van der Westhuizen, Tafelberg Uitgewers, ISBN 0 624 01238 7, p. 65/66, The Hazardous Undertaking of Responsible Act, "Responsible man acts … in the gloaming of the relativity that extends the historic situation over good and bad; it happens in the midst of innumerable perspectives that surround every given. It should not by the act simply be distinguished between right and wrong, good and bad, but between justice and justice, between injustice and injustice. Justice struggles with justice, Aischulos said. Precisely therein responsibility is a free enterprise – no law justifies it, no valid self-justification, no ready-made finality. The good as responsibility happens without knowing about the good, in the surrendering of the inevitable yet free deed to God who sees the heart, weighs the deed and guides history. Herein opens to us the deep secret of history. This man who in the freedom of his very own responsibility acts, sees his act flowing into the dispensation of God. Free act eventually sees itself as act of God, free decision sees itself as divine guidance, option as divine necessity. In the free surrendering of the knowledge about the own good and justice, occurs the good of God. Only in this last perspective is it possible to speak of the good in the historic act."
