Last Things Read online

  The passions of the martyrs became a still-frame of mediation. They revealed and documented the transcendent truths that arose from the stunning exposition of suffering in the arena. This world and the next had collided; normal boundaries separating distinct realities had dissolved. God and the angels watched their champions, while demons wore the masks of blasphemous persecutors. Living at once with the natural and supernatural, Christians could see what remained veiled to others, which if others saw, they too would surely believe.25 The martyrs’ passions show how and by what processes the carnal was linked and could be elevated to the spiritual world. In this, the very reality of suffering and death provided the equivalent of “scientific” evidence to convince skeptics of realities beyond. Death was the great guarantor, the ineluctable salesman: Christian teachings must be true, for no one would die for a false doctrine or volunteer his or her life without a purpose.26

  In this logic, just as Christ’s resurrection foreshadowed the resurrection of all humanity and the afterlife was anticipated in the martyrs’ sacrifice, in a circular way the martyr’s sacrifice proved Christ’s resurrection: how could martyrs die unless there were really a resurrection?27 By extension, martyrdom was proof of all Christian truths: the genuine passibility of Christ’s flesh, the immortality of the soul, the inevitability of the Last Judgment, and the divine mystery of how Christ’s passion could generate the new life of the resurrection.28 The proof of the pudding was in the making, so to speak. One need not wait until the wrath of the Last Judgment to see Christianity vindicated. One could glimpse truths now in the sacrifices of the martyrs.

  The truths revealed were broadly twofold. Every martyrdom was both a private and public, an individual and communal “revelation.” Personal identity was connected with communal truth, and communal truth depended on personal valor. Certainly, martyrdom was deeply personal and immediate, an exercise in defining individual authenticity or identity: what did it mean to be a “real” Christian? How could one be saved? Yet individual testimony could not be separated from communal concerns. The community validated truth and won adherents through the sacrifice of its members: “The blood of martyrs was seed.”29 Paradoxically, by death the Church gained life. “God permits persecutions,” wrote Lactantius, “that the people of God might be increased. Some desire to know what that good is that is so defended even unto death.”30

  Simply by taking a stand and proving beliefs by their deaths, martyrs sharpened even further the boundaries between Christians and nonbelievers. Among members of the body of Christ, hostility to external enemies reenforced the internal sense of fellowship and underscored the need for unwavering obedience to the authority of the bishop.31 Martyrs both reenacted the sacrifice that was the foundation of Christian doctrine and illustrated the charity that should animate the institutional Church as it grew. All should be as the martyr Stephen: wounded, yet praying for the enemies who persecuted him.32 Predictably, then, the rising enmity of the pagans correlated with Christian exhortations to bury internal dissensions and be animated by the Holy Spirit.

  How did the present troubles relate to the end? Not every writer made an explicit equation of his or her own times with the apocalypse.33 Perhaps it did not seem necessary. A more accurate index of apocalypticism is simply the liberal use of signal passages and imagery from the Bible such as those from the Apocalypse of John, or the dire predictions of Christ of persecution and catastrophe to befall Jerusalem.34 These texts present the immediacy of revelation: Christians faced the devil now in persecutions, and the Lord was present now to help Christians in their trials. If the secular world was polluted with demons,35 Christians needed to cultivate the purity of their own community all the more vigorously. Sacred and profane worlds could not be mixed. “No one can serve two masters,” Tertullian quoted Matthew 6: 24. “What fellowship has light with darkness? (see 2 Cor. 6: 14). What has life to do with death?”36

  Loyalties were polarized. No middle ground, neutrality, or ambiguity existed in this world of stark black and white contrasts. “No one extends a welcoming hand to an opponent. No one admits another unless he is a kindred spirit.”37 Lines were drawn and sides taken. This imposed a dreadful urgency to come to one’s senses and reaffirm one’s true allegiance. “He who is not with me is against me,” Christ had said (Luke 11:23).38 The sharp lines demarcating adversaries were typical of this manner of thinking in general. Rigid dichotomies prevailed.

  In this militant mentality, the imagery of conflict and competition further defined one’s adversaries. Christians were “soldiers” “fighting in battles” against the devil or “athletes” and “gladiators” “contending” in a “race” or in the “agon” of the “arena.”39 Christians were set in opposition to the devil and his proxies: governors, executioners, and the pagan audience in general. One could choose to please either God or man.40 In this polarized world, those of merely earthly birth stood in contrast to those recreated in spirit and reborn in Christ. No longer did Christians live in this world; they awaited God’s gifts in heaven.41 So deep was this antagonism that Ignatius of Antioch imagined human beings as being one of “two coins,” stamped either with God or the world.42 Two corporate bodies existed: one of the devil and his members, the other of Christ.

  This very opposition to the enemy bonded Christians more closely to each other. Christians came to think of themselves as a persecuted elect, the righteous few hounded cruelly by the world but chosen and beloved of God. “From the beginning, righteousness suffers violence,” Tertullian observed; Cyprian and Augustine repeated his judgment. Abel, David, Elias, Jeremias, Esaias, Zacharias, the Maccabees, all suffered.43 “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Ps. 145: 25). This being so, the zealous Tertullian concluded that all Christians were called to be martyrs.44 “ ‘For thy sake we are slain all the day long. We are regarded as sheep for the slaughter,’ ” Cyprian quoted the Bible to explain Christians” consecration as offerings to God and their vows or devotiones (Rom. 8: 35–36, Ps. 43: 21–22).45 History proved that Christians had a mission, a divine calling separating and elevating them from the squalor of the profane world. To bear the world’s contempt became a badge of honor. Christians might be “bound as sheep,” but they belonged to a mighty shepherd. “The shepherd will not desert you, nor can the love and promises of the Lord fail you here or in the next world.”46 To know this could make a vast difference: persecution was a mark of pride, not shame; of God’s favor, not his neglect. Indeed, God disciplined his children from love, Lactantius argued. This was one reason why persecutions were permitted.47

  Urgency, inflexibility, and a passion for the absolute drove Christians in a search for finality: the resolution of antipathies and the restitution of right order. Cyprian and others anticipated and even welcomed the worst: this would be the agon, a discernment to sort things out. To be purged like gold in the crucible (cf. Wis 3: 6), to offer the sacrifice of a broken spirit (Ps. 51: 17), to suffer for Christ’s sake gained one the crown.48 In the church of the martyrs, Christians expected the hatred of the world. Writers warned Christians to be prepared for affliction, as if there were no alternatives. “Since the world hates a Christian, why do you love that which hates you and not follow Christ who has redeemed and loves you?” Cyprian asked.49 Christ’s words prophesied a war of extermination:50 “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.”51 Christians had to learn to confess God while expiring in the persecutor’s hands. To become coheirs of Christ meant learning to overcome tortures and to love punishments. If Christians were to be hated, they would accept gladly the torments of the enemy to beat them in a contest of wills. “We are strengthened by harshness and destroyed by softness,” Tertullian asserted.52 Others agreed: Christians were strengthened by the scourge;53 one must get through the contest without flinching.54

  The trial of martyrdom would discern realities and eliminate the derangement of manifold choices
. Singularity meant certainty, and this meant truth and security. Persecution was a winnowing fan separating the wheat from the chaff, the elect from the damned (Matt. 3: 12).55 The net had been cast indiscriminately, and now those caught would be examined.56 At last, the sheep would be separated from the goats.57 Confusion and ambiguity were dangerously unpredictable and unstable; decisions must be final and unconditional. “Persecution [was] a judgment,” Tertullian concluded, “and the verdict [was] either approval or condemnation.”58 In this all-or-nothing universe, loyalty must be absolute and unquestioned. Hesitant souls were fodder for the devil.

  Martyrs were needed in this hostile world if the Church were to prosper and be “built up.” Persecution heightened the urgency of the message, specifying the quintessential characteristics of the Christian. A lukewarm convert was worthless because declaring one’s loyalty was the point. To be unwilling to confess was to deny Christ in Tertullian’s eyes.59 Simply to be a Christian was to put oneself on the line. “We are a people willing to die,” wrote Tertullian.60 We thank the executioner when we are sentenced to death.61 Ignatius thought he would merit the title of authentic Christian only when he was martyred.62 To Minucius Felix it was a point of honor that Christians could express their free will in undertaking suffering to exhibit loyalty to their master. “How beautiful a spectacle for God, when a Christian measures his strength with pain” when “he esteems his liberty above all things; when he yields to God alone, whose he is.”63

  In a similar vein, Tertullian wrote majestically of demonstrating fidelity through voluntary sacrifice: “I am [Christ’s] servant, I alone worship him; for his teaching I am put to death.”64 This willingness to sacrifice one’s life made a Christian part of the body of Christ, a corporate member of the Church animated by the Holy Spirit and indwelt by Christ.65 According to Ignatius, “If we are not in readiness to die into [Christ’s] passion, his life is not in us.”66 To seal one’s faith with death signified the highest commitment one could make. Unity and cohesion could not be stronger.

  To suffer and die joyfully not only marked one as choosing to participate in Christ; such self-sacrifice was also an obligation or duty members owed to imitate their head, “suffering willingly what Christ suffered,” for “no servant was better than his master.”67 Whether described as a covenant,68 a duty to die for the Name (kiddush ha-shem),69 a vow or devotio,70 pledge (pignus)71 or an oath (sacramentum),72 Christians had obligations as God’s chosen people especially to repay their redemption. Christ had ransomed Christians from death with his own life. Now Christians were bound to repay the debt. Christ ransomed humanity with his own blood; destined for hell, they were instead purchased for heaven.73 Cyprian quoted Paul, “ ‘You are not your own, for you have been bought at a great price. Glorify God and bear him in your body’ ” (1 Cor. 6: 19–20),74 Being Christ’s body, Christians were obligated to “complete” the “afflictions” in Christ’s body (Col. 1: 24) for themselves and for others.75 Like Christ, martyrs were high priests offering themselves as “blameless sacrifices,”76 or eucharistic offerings replicating the sacrifice of Christ.77

  Like all contracts, such covenants, pledges, and vows were reciprocal. Christians repaid the debt they owed Christ for their salvation by bearing witness to his name, but this also gained Christians a reward in return. “So everyone who confesses me before men, I also will confess before my Father who is in heaven,” Christ assured his followers (Matt. 10: 32). “The measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6: 38, Matt. 7: 2, Mark 4: 24).78 Suffering now for the sake of Christ would insure one’s future integrity at the Last Judgment. “We pray that if we suffer the penalty for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, for this is the confidence and salvation we shall have at the terrible tribunal of our Savior and Master sitting in judgment over the whole world,” Justin replied to the prefect.79

  In this economy, redactors would even write of martyrs “purchasing” heaven or salvation through their suffering. “Fixing their eyes on the favor of Christ [the martyrs] despised the tortures of this world, in one hour buying an exemption from eternal fire.”80 Following the equity of this universe, greater sufferings would necessarily merit greater rewards.81 In this universe of retribution, martyrs’ deaths and confessions glorified God as forms of loyalty and worship. In return, the martyrs themselves would be confessed; moreover, they would be glorified in the measure of their self-giving.82 Bearing witness through death won the ultimate reward of being assimilated to Christ’s body, and thus glorified in one’s own body.83

  The candid economics of this transaction may strike the modern reader as simplistic, but early Christians continued classical tradition, viewing justice as retributive. Suffering was rewarded with the resurrection in heaven: “we pay out the very things whose benefit we pay to gain, the very things are expended which become profits, the price and the commodity are the same,” Tertullian calculated unsentimentally.84 Universal order meant balance, equilibrium, and reciprocity.85 Such sublime orderliness was God’s providential dispensation.86 Disorder was by definition diabolical. Apocalypticism arises when this cosmic balance is perceived to be out of order: Christians held this perception; most pagans did not.87

  Such a rigid and harsh universe might well disturb Christians of a later age. A God of dreadful severity upheld this dichotomous universe, but in that very punctilious exactitude lay mercy as well as justice. Certainly, God was a stern taskmaster who would “exact every last penny”88 and scrutinize the hidden recesses of one’s conscience.89 This divine judge oversaw the martyrs and demanded excellence and supreme effort. Justly and fittingly, this God was strict precisely because he had been so merciful in his initial creation. In contrast to the Necessity and Destiny of paganism, Christianity meant freedom and hope: liberation from a deterministic fate, illumination instead of ignorance, the conquest of death and all its attendant fears.90 Despite the severity of God’s justice, his mercy still offered a path out of this dangerous universe.

  This merciful God had given humanity open opportunities that allowed martyrs (and later monks) to become the astonishing heroes of legend. Reason allowed imitation of the Lord’s perfection; a will unfettered by compulsion enabled free choice of the good.91 Grace and free will worked together: “If you desire to do the good, God stands ready to assist you,” Ignatius explained.92 One’s “earnest efforts to imitate God” would gain at last the “likeness,” the “similitude to God” that was the goal of creation. God made humanity with the ability to acquire the knowledge and discipline to gain incorruptibility.93 Balance and synergy interwove divine grace and human will, so that Christians could be divinized.94 Many Christians optimistically anticipated an a restoration, or an recapitulation of all creation.95 The fundamental goodness and beauty of the first creation would be recaptured.

  If so much had been given, much was expected. “The mercy of God consisted in this,” wrote one redactor, “that the very ransom [martyrs] believe to be paid by [their] own blood was granted to [them] by God almighty.”96 Christ’s body was knit closely with ties of gifts and obligations, grace and free will, freedom and necessity. The most precious and binding exchange, of course, was the gift of self. To express this as gifts of love deemphasized the necessity of fulfilling an obligation, although such a mandate was there and sanctioned by hell if one failed. Instead, gratitude sprang forth: “What can we give God in return for all he has given us?” Origen asks, quoting Psalm 116: 12. His answer: “perfection in martyrdom.”97 Nothing else would demonstrate and return such love.

  While love and free choice motivated martyrdom, hell was never out of the martyrs’ ken. Despite optimistic hopes for a cosmic restoration, these beliefs did not negate the monumentality of evil. Evil could not be temporized in a “world soaked with blood,” where impunity was wrested by “the sheer magnitude of cruelty.”98

  Hell was a negative incentive driving the martyrs to face the agon. The typical warning in martyrs’ passions was that “hell is w
orse than any earthly torture.”99 Allusions to hell applied to Christians as well as pagans, for both would undergo the “same death, judgment, and punishment for all mankind.”100 This should have sobered shaky Christians. Like Biblis, martyrs who wavered would come to their senses after recalling the eternal punishment of Gehenna awaiting them. Instantly steeled by fear of the future, they could master any temporal punishment.101 The afflictions of the flesh were momentary and worked for eternal glory; our sufferings would be less than our rewards, Tertullian argued.102 Hell put martyrdom into perspective. If martyrs did not fear death, rightly, they feared hell.

  The martyrs’ hell was not only the common late antique inheritance of Tartarus and Gehenna. More specifically, it was defined a fortiori by the sadistic practices of the Roman court and army. Hell was as physical as heaven was spiritual in this dichotomous thinking of apocalypticism. The lack of spiritual and psychological definitions of hell points again to the agon. The martyrs’ hell was far from Augustine’s anguished separation from the face of God. Discipline was the martyrs’ goal, training for the agon, and this was above all corporal ascesis. Fear of hell built a muscular spirit, capable of withstanding trial and torture.