To accept a martyr’s death in the name of the one in whom all things are reconciled to God is not then as astonishing as it might seem. The nonchalance with which the first generations of martyrs are depicted as accepting their terrible fate is no doubt exaggerated: but the truth that it serves to illustrate is that for the disciple of Christ there is both a way to make sense of the persecution and no reason to fear its consequences. Not only are the martyrs recorded as entrusting themselves to the providential care of the Father in the face of demonic opposition; the very martyrdoms themselves are depicted as being (in Eliot’s words) ‘by the design of God himself’. They even understand their own suffering as under his providential hand. As the author of ‘The Martyrdom of St Polycarp’ comments:
Blessed indeed and noble are all the martyrdoms that took place in accordance with God’s will. For we must devoutly assign to God a providence over them all.
Under interrogation, Pionius replies to the question ‘Which god do you worship?’ thus:
The God who is almighty…who made the heavens and the earth and things that are in them, and all of us; the God who richly furnishes us with everything, the God we know through Christ his Word.
Pionius knows God in Christ; and in Christ he knows God the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. And for that divinity, he is prepared to die – though, as he describes it, he is ‘not rushing towards death, but towards life.’
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