Honourable Death?

You might be - must be - familiar with this terrible image, if not because you have seen then because you have imagined, or dreamt it. A man in an office one morning, faced with the alternative of dying at the hands of the terrorists or dying at his own hand, chooses to take his own life. He jumps. This photo has been read as a symbol of the ultimate act of defiance against terror: they may take our lives, but they may never take our freedom. It is death with honour, in other words.

The ancient world knew this kind of rhetoric as it applied to death. For the Romans, victory was important. But if you couldn't have victory, then death with honour was just as glorious. So noble suicide was a way of rescuing dignity from defeat. It was an act of will when none seemed available: like choosing to jump rather than be burned. Lucan tells the story of the noble-souled Volteius and his men, who committed mass suicide rather than face death at the hands of their enemies who surrounded them. This kind of death meant that they would live on in glorious memory rather than be forgotten.

I think this ancient honour ethic of death is at work in the contemporary world. The 'euthanasia' debate appeals to the common feeling that illness and suffering that we can't control demean us as human beings. To at least take this final step out of our own volition removes us from the grasp of the cancer (for example).

The early Christian martyrologies also use the language of honour. They are full of militaristic imagery: they become soldiers of Christ, fighting a battle against the enemy, and so on. And the voluntaristic aspect is not entirely absent: it is important to show that the martyr chooses to die for Christ. But there is a difference: many of the Fathers wrote against the practice of Christians actively seeking martyrdom (which evidently was a problem as it is today) and nowhere was suicide given as an option nor practiced, and certainly not celebrated as glorious.

What is the difference? Well, I think the WILL issue is key. That is, the martyr does exercise her will, but she does so in obedience to the will of God. The great Bishop and Martyr Polycarp said ‘Blessed and noble are all martyrdoms that happen according to the will of God. For we should act with discretion leaving the power over all events to God.’ This is the vital difference... The honour that the martyr gets is not in an exercise of what free will remains, but in joining her will to the will of God, and so praising and honouring God himself. Further of course the difference is that, whereas the Romans had only statues to memorialise the honourable death, Christians looked forward to resurrection bodies - glorious and honourable bodies, radiant with the glory of God.

A great martyr once said: “I shall be a convincing Christian only when the world sees me no more” (Ignatius of Antioch). Contrast this with the pagan longing for honour and fame...