740 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Gal. 3 : 26 ; Rom. 8 : 23 ; Eph. 1:5). He is, moreover, truly and veritably God. The whole essence of God is manifest in him ; God dwells in him bodily .^
To his last breath Servetus worshipped Jesus as the Son of the eternal God. But he did not admit him to be the eternal Son of God except in an ideal and pantheistic sense, in which the whole world was in the mind of God from eternity, and comprehended in the Divine Wisdom (Sophia) and the Divine Word (Logos).
He opposed the Chalcedonian dualism and aimed (like Apollinaris) at an organic unity of Christ's j)erson, but made him a full human personality (while Apollinaris substituted the divine Logos for the human spirit, and thus made Christ only a half man). He charges the scholastic and orthodox divines, whom he calls sophists and opponents of the truth, with making two Sons of God — one invisible and eternal, another visible and temporal. They deny, he says, that Jesus is truly man by teaching that he has two distinct natures with a communication of attributes.^ Christ does not consist of, or in, two natures. He had no previous personal pre-existence as a second hypostasis : his personality dates from his conception and birth. But this man Jesus is, at the same time, consubstantial with God (^oixoovo-los:^. As man and wife are one in the flesh of their son, so God
^ " Christus est Deus. Dicitur vere Deus, substantialiter Deus, cum in e.o sit deltas corporaliter" (p. 14). He quotes in proof Isa. 9:6; 45:3; John 20;28; Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:5-11.
2 " Negant, hominem esse hominem et concedunt, Deum esse asinum. . . . Ad eundem modum concedunt fieri posse, ut Deus sit asinus, et spiritus sanctus sit muhis, sustentans nudum" (p. 15). The same profane and offensive comparisons occur in his first book, and among niedigeval schoolmen, who illustrated the relations of the Trinity by the analogy of horse, ass, and mule (in mulo equus et asinus; in spiritu pater etfilius). They also raised such foolish questions as, whether God might not have become an ass or a cucumber as well as a man, and what effect the sacrament would have upon a dog or a mouse. From reverence to profanity, as from the sublime to the ridiculous, there is only one step.
§ 147. THE THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF SERVETUS. 741
and man are one in Christ.^ The flesh of Christ is heavenly and born of the very substance of God. 2 By the deification of the flesh of Christ he materialized God, destroyed the real humanity of Christ, and lost himself in the maze of a pantheistic mysticism.
2. Theology.
The fundamental doctrine of Servetus was the absolute unity, simplicity, and indivisibility of the Divine being, in opposition to the tripersonality or threefold hypostasis of orthodoxy.3 In this respect he makes common cause with the Jews and Mohammedans, and approvingly quotes the Koran. He violently assails Athanasius, Hilary, Augustin, John of Damascus, Peter the Lombard, and other champions of the dogma of the Trinity.^ But he claims the ante-Nicene Fathers, especially Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Irenseus, and TertuUian, for his view. He calls all Trinitarians " tritheists" and "atheists."^ They have not one absolute God,
^ " Deus et homo unum sunt in Christo, quo vir et uxor unum sunt in una filii came. . . . Magnum est mysterium, quod caro ilia Jit Deo homusios l_homousios'], in itnam hypostasim ei connexa. Ita Deus coaluit cum humana natura, ut ilium extolleret Jilium sibi hominem generando. . . . Deus et homo unum in ipso sunt." Rest. 269.
2 "Caro ipsa Christi est ccelestis de substantia Dei genita." Rest. 74; conip. 48, 50, 72, 77.
3 ToUin (Thomas Aquinas, der Lehrer Seroet's, in Hilgenfeld's "Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie," 1892) tries to show that Servetus only followed out consistently the view of Thomas Aquinas, who proved the simplicity of the divine essence from reason, but the Trinity only from the faith of the Church.
•* He calls Athanasius and Augustin worshippers of the beast and of images (" Athanasium imaginum cultorem cum charactere ftes^w," p. 702 ; comp. p. 398). He probably confounded the first Council of Nicaea (325), where Athanasius was present, with the second Council of Nic«a (787), which sanctioned the worship of images. For this historical blunder Calvin takes Servetus, who set himself up as "temporum omnium censor," severely to task (Opera, VUI. 591 sq.).
5 " Veri ergo hi sunt tritoitce [for tritheitce'], et veri sunt athei, qui Deum unum non habent, nisi tripartitum et aggregativum." Rest. 30; comp. 34.