MEET A HERETIC: Sebastianus Castellio (1515 - 1563)

        In January 1540, as a young man of 25, Castellio attended an execution at Lyons. Tranfixed and horrified at the cruelty of the execution, his life was forever tormented by the question of how Christians could do this to a human being. He defected from Roman Catholicism to join the Reformation. In Geneva, he worked for a while with Calvin, but resigned from his teaching post there due to disappointment with Calvin. Then, when he saw the execution of Michael Servetus  in Geneva, he was shocked to the core that the Protestants had become just as cruel as the Catholics.

        Castellio collected statements of other critics of such cruel persecutions of heretics and argued the definition of the word "heretic;" what is it that warrants such a terrible indictment of a man? His conclusion was that heresy merely indicates one who is of a different opinion. He published a treatise against punishment of heretics. Nothing but evil could come out of the widespread mania for condemnation among Christians. "To kill a man does not mean to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man."  He asked the question, "what would Christ do if He were here now?"

        Castellio writes: "O Christ, Creator and King of the world, do you see these things? Can it be that you have become so altogether different from what you once were, so cruel and self-contradictory? When you were still on earth, none was milder, gentler, more forbearing; like a sheep before its shearer you uttered no sound though you were beaten and spat upon. Have you now wholly changed? I implore you, by the holy name of your Father, to ask whether you really ordain such punishments for those who disagree in interpretation of your commandments and instructions; whether you would truly have them plunged underwater, the flesh flayed from their bones with clubs, their wounds strewn with salt, pricked by swords, roasted over feeble fires, and with all possible agonies tormented as long as possible? O Christ, do you command and do you approve these things? Are those who torture these victims really your representatives in this butcher's work?" 

        In his book, Heretics, Walter Nigg writes: "Castellio's greatest contribution was his emphasis on love as the key element in Christianity. He may have been no towering genius in the kingdom of the mind, yet we feel ourselves more closely drawn to this simple Christian than to all those intellectual giants who had forgotten the supreme commandment of Christianity, the one which God had equated with Himself."