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Have you heard of Michael Servetus a.k.a. Miguel Servet? He was a truly amazing person. Short answer: he was a sixteenth century (1509-1553) scholar, author, translator, and theologian who attracted the ire of both the Catholic church and Calvin and his followers. You can learn more about him from the Servetus International Society and the Michael Servetus Institute.

The theology that eventually got Servetus burnt at the stake on a pyre made from his own books (literally), shares remarkable similarities with the New Christian theology presented in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. I wrote a paper doing a side-by-side-by-side cursory comparison, that is posted here.

The professor that first turned me on to Servetus, Rev. Dr. Andrew M. T. Dibb, just had his doctoral thesis published. It is available on Amazon, and directly from the publisher. The title is Servetus, Swedenborg And the Nature of God, and is a comparative look at the Christologies of the two theologians.

The following is from the official book description:

The Trinity was defined at the Council of Nicaea and the relationship of the human and divine natures of Christ was defined at Chalcedon. Very few questioned the Church's depictions of the nature of God. Two such mavericks, Michael Servetus (1509-1553) and Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), in spite of their Christian educations, rejected the Church's creedal understanding of God and the Trinity. Although they lived in two different ages- the Reformation and Enlightenment, and there is no evidence that Swedenborg ever read or even knew of Servetus- the two men came to remarkably similar conclusions about the nature of God. Each scholar stated that the Trinity does not rest in three Persons, but rather takes form in the single person of Jesus Christ, the visible God.

Servetus was a superb scholar in his day. He mastered the Church Fathers and possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible. Servetus tragically perished in the flames at Geneva because of his beliefs. Swedenborg, likewise, was a well-known and respected scholar, philosopher, and anatomist. He dedicated the last thirty years of his life to biblical research, producing a series of some thirty volumes (in English) of theological writings. His work influenced many of the great thinkers and artists of the nineteenth century and continues to be read and studied in many parts of the world today.

If you are interested in Christology, the New Christian view of the Trinity, or Michael Servetus, you've got to get hold of a copy.