Yesterday at church I saw a bumper sticker on a friend’s car that summarizes a lot of things wonderfully. “Never trust a theologian who hasn’t been executed.”
Of course if we understand the spirit of the thing, we would not just limit ourselves to men like Cranmer, burned at the stake, but could also include men who had to hot foot it out of town (Calvin), or who rowed as a galley slave (Knox), or who spent hard time in the slammer (Bunyan).
And of course, we are careful to avoid an elementary logical fallacy in this as well. Not everyone who is executed is a theologian. But the fact remains, as Bonhoffer put it, that when Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.