Was Servetus a Oneness Pentecostal?

Michael Servetus is a sixteenth-century figure well known for his discovery of pulmonary circulation and non-trinitarian theology. In their effort to find expressions of Oneness Pentecostalism before the twentieth century, Oneness writers have sought to claim Servetus as one who affirms the rudiments of the Oneness doctrine of God. For example, David Bernard notes, "On the doctrine of God, Servetus was essentially biblical."[1] William Chalfont similarly claimed, "Servetus denied the trinity and apparently held some type of Oneness belief."[2] However, a cursory examination of Servetus' key works on the nature of God indicates that Servetus affirmed a form of Christological subordinationsim and adoptionism.

The term "subordinationism" refers to Christologies which view Christ as essentially inferior to God. These can range from the claim that Christ is a mere man who did not preexist his birth as with so-called "biblical unitarianism" to Arianism that views Christ as the Godlike figure who created all created things but himself. "Adoptionism" refers to the view that Christ was made to be the Son of God at some point, whether his birth, baptism, resurrection, or ascension.

Servetus claimed that Christ was made God: "For if we admit as touching Moses that he was made God to Pharoah, much more, and in a way far more exceptional, was Christ made God..."[3]

For Servetus, Christ was made "equal with God in power" but not in "nature or essence."[4] "Christ there [i,.e., John 10:34] makes it clear that he is God not in nature but in appearance, not by nature but by grace."[5] “By way of privilege, therefore, it was given to him to be God, because the Father sanctifies him; he was anointed by: grace, exalted because he humbled himself, exalted above his fellows.”[6] Servetus viewed Paul's claim that Christ was in "the form of God" (Phil. 2:6) not as an affirmation of Christ as God but as an indication that Christ "had in himself an equal power with God by reason of the authority that was given him in equal measure with God."[7]

These claims are not remotely consistent with Oneness Pentecostalism and are more in keeping with the low Christology of the Dynamic Monarchianism of the third and fourth centuries. In an attempt to validate the antiquity of their theology, Oneness writers have erroneously appropriated Servetus for their project. This revisionism betrays a nominal reading of Servetus and undermines the credibility of those like Bernard and Chalfont who seek to find evidence of their viewpoints before the twentieth century.

Notes

1. David K. Bernard, A History of Christian Doctrine: The Reformation to the Holiness Movement, vol. 2 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1996), 106.

2. William B. Chalfont, Ancient Champions of Oneness: An Investigation of the Doctrine of God in Church History, rev. ed. (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 2001), 123.

3. Michael Servetus, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, Harvard Theological Studies, trans. E. W. Wilbur (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1932), 19.

4. Servetus, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, 4.

5. Servetus, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, 21.

6. Servetus, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, 21.

7. Servetus, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, 30.