Where the project is at the moment - any thoughts?

"Our intention in this thesis has been to give a theological (rather than, say, historical or sociological) account of Christian martyrdom and of at least some of the implications of that account. In particular the question of identity was raised as a matter on which an explication of martyrdom could potentially shed considerable light. The basic theological datum with which we began was the martyrdom in the form of witness (‘white’ martyrdom) was inseperable from the identity of the Christian, with bloody (or ‘red’) martyrdom as its ‘external representation’. Bloody matyrdom then is a sign of what the inner reality of the Christian life is like.

We hastened to recognise at this stage that discussions of martyrdom occur under pressure of a severe critique: it is certainly no longer a given that martyrdom is esteemed as a form of death just in and of itself. Rather, martyrs are accused of denying life and of perverting love, of resiling from their duty to do good, of neglecting the bonds of family and friendship, of extreme egotism of a destructive kind. The spectre of religious violence hangs always and already over any discussion of martyrdom in the modern setting. Martyrs are more likely to inspire fear than reverence. However, is it the case that Christian martyrdom really falls under this critique? Chapter one, then, examined two powerful and very different attempts to describe authentic selfhood in the contemporary world and asked whether either of them could be reconciled with an identity informed by the idea of Christian martyrdom. Of Charles Taylor it could be said that he was bending over backwards to make room for the possibility of Christian martyrdom, or something like it, in his account of authenticity; but is not firm enough about the potential for inauthenticity. Martyrs are not those who accept that their understanding of reality is just one amongst many, after all. Salman Rushdie, for his part, presents a far more irascible figure. He is vehemently opposed to martyrdom as a model for human self-identity: it is far too emedded in traditional ways of seeing the world that do not adequately understand the shifting and liquid conditions of the present order. It is insufficiently open to new experiences and corrupting of the love between individuals. It perpetuates the cycle of violence by preaching resentment and hatred, by viewing the subject as identifiable through his or her victimhood. It allows human beings excuses for not feeling and for not living as they might. It is the result of fideistic religion that cordons itself off from reason. However, Rushdie’s account is not without its own difficulties: it is hard to see that he has successfully escaped from the ‘self-determination’ problem that Taylor derides in his account. Furthermore, while his depiction of martyrdom may be valid for some Christian and other religious martyrdoms, it is certainly not the case that his criticisms of martyrdom in this guise fairly describe a Christian martyrdom that is true to its own sources – in the example of Christ himself, in the canonical Scriptures and in the ripening tradition.

In fact, what Rushdie seeks in a self-identity is in some ways quite similar to that which is described by Christian martyrdom. Rushdie seeks to free the individual from the matrices of the past: culture, religion, race, gender and so on. He applauds the embrace of ‘the new’, delights in unforeseen possibilities and the potential for boundary-crossing connections between human beings in the name of peace. However, the characters that Rushdie introduces are still masters of their own destinies and makers of their own images. They are paragons of freedom, above all.
Into this context we offered our reading of Christian martyrdom as generated by Eliot in his perceptive play. The meaning of the martyrdom is informed, as we watch the visitation of the Tempters to Thomas, by that which the martyr renounces. Many of things renounced are very good and worthy ways to be: they are all the more powerful as temptations for being so. These are promising potential selves, full of opportunity to be useful to society and fulfilled and powerful as an individual.

The First Tempter offers Thomas the chance to guard himself against the twists and turns of fate by persuing a life of ease and security; or at least, he offers him the yearning for the time when he had this life. Tranposing this temptation into the terms offered by Martha C. Nussbaum in her analysis of Greek tragedy, we saw how the management of luck and the securing of safety was (and remains) a crucial component of successful existence in a world fraught with chance. However, the martyr walks away from this potential for security. Discipleship of Christ is described as not a matter for looking back to home, or even looking around in the present for cover against whatever may come, but rather for looking ahead to the eternal city promised in the gospel of Jesus (as we discovered with Augustine’s help). The martyr steps out into risk knowing that there is no turning back and that the cost may be great. However, he or she is not merely a thrill-seeker, riding a wave of risk all the way to the shoreline; on the contrary, the risk is taken in the context of hope secured in the ascended Lord Christ. This risk-taking by the disciple also exposes the temporary nature of human fortifications against luck.

The Second Tempter, in a tactic pursued also by the Fourth, tries to catch Thomas in a double-bind. On the one hand he offers to him the chance to make peace with his (God-appointed) ruler so that the two may collaborate in performing the business of government: meteing out justice for the good of the people. The price? ‘A certain submission’ to the king. When Thomas draws back from this, appealing to the ‘power of the keys’, the Tempter accuses him of power hunger. We saw next in our discussion of John Rawls that this temptation is not unique to conditions of monarchy and papacy: in fact, even under contemporary forms of liberal order a version of this temptation will be on offer. Churches may be tempted to secede their distinctive speech in favour of being able to participate in the public square; or may be accused of sectarianism if they refrain. The response from Scripture and the tradition (this time chiefly Augustine, Tyndale and O’Donovan) was to advance the insight, revealed in the martyr’s renunciation, that power and authority have a singles source though a dual expression. This helps both to relativise the power of the imperium and to show it as circumscribed by divine authority at every point; and also to encourage the Church that in the gospel it has its own authority – though it is of a distinctively non-coercive and persuasive nature.

The Third Tempter on the other hand, also interested in power, offers to Thomas the option of rebellion against the king. There is a case to be made here: tyranny is worth fighting against after all. There may be more authentic and more just forms of government available. Surely the martyr, having renounced collaboration with the ruler must persue subversive and destabilising activity to be consistent. Again the case is made that this is the way in which more just outcomes for the English people can be persued. What is more, this is a path of action, of putting noble thoughts into concrete practice. Once more we see how this may be consonant with a powerful and comprehensive account of the good life in action, as we find it this time in (a Nussbaumian reading of) Aristotle. Yet again, the martyr must also refuse. The form that his resistance to power takes is loyal; he does not hold national identity as an absolute value by any means; and he refuses to assert himself by seizing at action that will achieve that end. In fact (as we saw with the assistance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer), he rather acts ‘passively’: which is to say, in a way that takes responsibility for others, that is prepared to suffer what may come.

In the Fourth Tempter we have the most surprising of the temptations and another one that takes a two-fold course: martyrdom itself is offered, first, with Thomas imagining how he will be remembered and honoured by posterity, and secondly with imagining the crown of heaven being placed on his deserving temple. The renunciations of the first three temptations runs headlong into this fourth: if Thomas imagines himself accruing heavenly merit and forcing the divine hand on account of his repudiation of the secured self, the powerful self and the active self, he is sorely mistaken. He must also set aside the martyred self. We find these temptations maintained first in the representation of the ancient ‘honour ethic’, with all its military trappings; and secondly, in the theology of heavenly rewards which is widespread in religious accounts of martyrdom including some Christian ones, admittedly. Both of these descriptions of martyrdom were proven to be problematically self-justifying. The insight given in the renunciation of this temptation is that, as Thomas is able to declare to his congregation in the Cathedral on St Stephen’s Day, martyrdom is itself an act of God. The making of martyrs is given to divine providence and not to human hands. As we saw, it was Augustine in particular who had to wrestle with this in the context of great enthusiasm for martyrdom in the church of his day. The Christian offers himself or herself in free obedience as a witness to the divine rule; the outcome is not for him or her to determine.

In chapter six our focus was drawn to the twin poles of temptation and providence. These themes had been constantly with us as we examined the four temptations – the move is the narrative is away from temptation and, not towards a construction of a new identity or self, but towards a vision of the providence of God: namely, faith. We asked ‘who killed the Archbishop?’, which is to do just as the play itself invites us. Using Riceour’s insights, we determined that peirasmoj – a concept inclusive of trail and temptation – is part of the ‘narrative logic’ of martyrdom. Peirasmos, we determined, was an inescapable condition for human beings; but it is not clear from within the human sphere by what strength a human being may overcome it. It is an inescapable and undefeatable given. There is no self, no identity that a person may put forward or construct in order to overcome and endure peirasmoj with any hope for success. What is more, peirasmos is so severe as to threaten the individual with her own disintegration as a person. By investigating the narrative logic of martyrdom, once again with the aid of the narrative structure provided for us by Eliot in his play, we determined that it is the Christian faith in the providence of God, consummated in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, which is the foundation for resistance and renunciation of peirasmos. Christ himself undergoes peirasmos as a trial and as a temptation, and is revealed as overcoming both.

In this last chapter we have attempted to bring our study to its consummation by returning – conveniently by means of critical discussion of Murder in the Cathedral in performance – to the question of whether martyrdom represents in fact the utter breakdown in communication between two competing views of the world. What we suggested by our discussion was that Christian martyrdom, as a testimony to truth, does not repell but rather invites. The dramatic form that martyrdom takes draws the observer into the narrative thought-world which is shaped by peirasmoj from the human side and providence from the divine side, and ultimately finds these two aspects conjoined in the (hi)story of Jesus Christ."