Ethelbert Stauffer on 'The Martyr Church'

One of the few New Testament Theologies to pay direct attention to the concept of martyrdom is that of Ethelbert Stauffer, published in the 50s (at least, the English edition).

'We have already remarked how the life of Christ constitutes a prototype for the life of the believer. Nowhere is this pototype more concretely and seriously expressed than in the correlation between th epassion of Christ and the sufferings of the martyr Church.' p. 185

'The man who confesses Christ is taken up into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings; indeed his destiny is conformed to the death of Christ.' p. 185

Stauffer argues that the passion of Christ was envisaged under three themes: doxological, antagonistic and soteriological, and that the imitation of his passion must follow the same pattern.

Thus, martyrdom doxologically undergoes great suffering on the path to glory. Via crucis - via lucis ! What the world rejects, God honours and accepts and even glorifies.

Of course, this rests on the antagonism of the world: 'the doxological interpretation of martyrdom finally comes to expression in an antagonistic conception: the tempter, the accuser, the opponent, the violent enemy and slanderer and evil one, the opponent of the generation of the righteous, puts everything in the wolrd to action so as to effect the downfall of the saints of God, or to destroy them... (p. 186). Hence, the imagery of a battle or a struggle become more and more the stock in trade of the martyrologist - 'It is but a little thing for the Satanic powers of the world to get rid of God's witnesses. But the Christian who has confessed CHrist in his death stands for a power in history that cannot be got rid of, a reality not of this world that the persecutor can never master.'(p. 187)

The soteriological understanding of martyrdom links for Stauffer to the indea of the final massacre of the saints...'The witness who gives his life helps by his death to complete the toll of suffering that God has descreed for the world as punishment and expiation for its sin, so that the divine wrath should be truned and at long last the day of grace should dawn.' (p. 188) Martyrs in this way actually bear the afflictions of Christ in the service of his Church. The bear upon themselves the punishment of the world (after a fashion). Not in quite the decisive way that Christ does of course, but in imitation and conformity to him. After all:

'it is not just the Church of Christ that will benefit from the atoning power of the apostle's sufferings - the confessor suffers for mankind that despises him, the martyr dies for the cosmos that rejects him...the death of the martyrs is a plea for the ending of affliction, culminating as an intercession for the sins of many. (p. 188)