Hey any help with this little speech by Thomas in Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral?
"They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.
They know and do not know, that action is suffering
And suffering action. Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still".
Thursday, December 15, 2005
In Thomas Becket’s sermon on martyrdom in T.S. Eliot’s drama Murder in the Cathedral the audience hears these words:
Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.[1]
Martyrdom takes place paradoxically as a moment of delight and of mourning. Archbishop Thomas makes plain the double-edge of the sign of martyrdom – that it reveals both a demonic repudiation of God and a glorious acceptance of him in the one event. Thomas reveals in his sermon that behind the play’s presentation of historical events contrived by human agents lies the counter-narrative of Christ, that the feast of Christmas celebrates. The providential design of God is always in consideration when it comes to martyrdom:
A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident…A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.[2]
Martyrdom is ultimately an act of God and not of the machinations of human plotters, nor even of the martyr him- or her-self. At least, the martyr acts in so far as he freely conjoins his will to the divine will – not in order that he might be glorified as a saint, but in order that the will of God be done, as Thomas has said earlier “that the wheel may turn and still/ Be forever still.”[3]
Thomas knows just what it is that he has renounced in accepting the path of martyrdom, which makes the sermon a moment of quiet resolution in the face of what is to come. He is visited in the first act by four tempters.[4] The first offers to him the path of sensuality and the good life. The second points out to Thomas the possibilities of political power that lay before him in returning to the king’s side – even the good he may do by means of this power. After all, as he puts it: “Power is present. Holiness hereafter.”[5] The third tempter, though similarly a tempter to power, conversely offers him the chance of an allegiance of church authority with the barons in open defiance of the king. Lastly, and with most subtlety, comes the fourth tempter, who encourages him to “think of glory after death”, for “Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb”.[6] If he seeks the way of martyrdom he will not only bear the crown of glory but be able to enjoy the spectacle of his enemies “in timeless torment…beyond expiation.”[7] This is most troubling for the protagonist and hardest to renounce: it is most difficult to disentangle his own will-to-glory from the rightness of the path he is about to take. As he says:
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.[8]
This turning of his motive towards his own self-interest would corrupt his martyrdom. Thomas recognizes that it can scarce be avoided.
And yet, knowing the complications and the risk of perdition, Thomas offers in his sermon his own resolve to submit only to the will of God. He renounces the pragmatism and hedonism of the tempters, and the thinking of those who “argue by results…to settle if an act be good or bad”;[9] in sight of the swords of his killers he gives his life “To the Law of God above the Law of Man”, in confidence that:
We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the Cross, now
Open the door! [10]
Thomas neither acts nor even suffers for his own ends. He takes his decision “out of time”.[11] It is, in other words, an eschatological decision: while it is open to question and scrutiny as to his motives and to the relative impact of the act in time, what really matters is whether his act stands (or falls) in eternity. As a true martyr he displays a self-abegnation that is a true expression of his faith in Christ.
The play itself invites the process of a judgment “in time” as with no small irony the four assassins offer their rationalizations for their actions, in plain ignoble prose. They explicitly make appeal to the “fair play” of the English audience, who feel themselves privileged as judges over the action they have just witnessed. Thomas was a provocateur; he had a fanatic’s death-wish; he was complicit in the politics of the day; and so on. Eliot admits to the table the quite credible counter-witness of the knights; and they appear to have the last say. However, the play closes not on this note but with the song of the Chorus celebrating the entry of Thomas into glory. And at this point another kind of invitation is issued: an invitation to thankfulness and repentance:
Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire… [12]
The audience is pointed to their own complicity in the shedding of blood through their tolerance of injustice and apathetic acceptance of the status quo; and invited to contemplate the example of Thomas in his submission to the will, and the love, of God.
Eliot’s re-narrates the murder of Thomas as a martyrdom for the twentieth century testifying against both cynical political pragmatism, and an ultimately self-regarding religious fanaticism. The passion of Thomas is conjoined to the passion of Christ, as in the early Christian Acts of the Martyrs; his suffering echoes Christ’s suffering and is made meaningful in those terms. However, an ambiguity remains - exactly in the way Eliot himself envisages it. On the historical plane, the nature of Thomas’ death remain subject to an element of concealment. Are not the knights quite plausibly arguing against the reading of Thomas’ death as a martyrdom? Isn’t the verdict of the chorus, simply posited as it is at the end of the drama as a kind of divine judgment (in the manner of Sophoclean tragedy) a presumption of a divine perspective on these events that isn’t really available (except in the theatre)?
[1] Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 56
[2] Ibid., p. 57
[3] Ibid., p. 32
[4] Allusions abound in the scene to the Temptation of Christ by Satan. The downfall of Thomas is being narrated in imitation of Christ’s death.
[5] The words of the Second Tempter. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 37
[6] Ibid., p. 47
[7] Ibid., p. 48
[8] Ibid., p. 52
[9] Ibid., p. 79
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p. 91
Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.[1]
Martyrdom takes place paradoxically as a moment of delight and of mourning. Archbishop Thomas makes plain the double-edge of the sign of martyrdom – that it reveals both a demonic repudiation of God and a glorious acceptance of him in the one event. Thomas reveals in his sermon that behind the play’s presentation of historical events contrived by human agents lies the counter-narrative of Christ, that the feast of Christmas celebrates. The providential design of God is always in consideration when it comes to martyrdom:
A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident…A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.[2]
Martyrdom is ultimately an act of God and not of the machinations of human plotters, nor even of the martyr him- or her-self. At least, the martyr acts in so far as he freely conjoins his will to the divine will – not in order that he might be glorified as a saint, but in order that the will of God be done, as Thomas has said earlier “that the wheel may turn and still/ Be forever still.”[3]
Thomas knows just what it is that he has renounced in accepting the path of martyrdom, which makes the sermon a moment of quiet resolution in the face of what is to come. He is visited in the first act by four tempters.[4] The first offers to him the path of sensuality and the good life. The second points out to Thomas the possibilities of political power that lay before him in returning to the king’s side – even the good he may do by means of this power. After all, as he puts it: “Power is present. Holiness hereafter.”[5] The third tempter, though similarly a tempter to power, conversely offers him the chance of an allegiance of church authority with the barons in open defiance of the king. Lastly, and with most subtlety, comes the fourth tempter, who encourages him to “think of glory after death”, for “Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb”.[6] If he seeks the way of martyrdom he will not only bear the crown of glory but be able to enjoy the spectacle of his enemies “in timeless torment…beyond expiation.”[7] This is most troubling for the protagonist and hardest to renounce: it is most difficult to disentangle his own will-to-glory from the rightness of the path he is about to take. As he says:
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.[8]
This turning of his motive towards his own self-interest would corrupt his martyrdom. Thomas recognizes that it can scarce be avoided.
And yet, knowing the complications and the risk of perdition, Thomas offers in his sermon his own resolve to submit only to the will of God. He renounces the pragmatism and hedonism of the tempters, and the thinking of those who “argue by results…to settle if an act be good or bad”;[9] in sight of the swords of his killers he gives his life “To the Law of God above the Law of Man”, in confidence that:
We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the Cross, now
Open the door! [10]
Thomas neither acts nor even suffers for his own ends. He takes his decision “out of time”.[11] It is, in other words, an eschatological decision: while it is open to question and scrutiny as to his motives and to the relative impact of the act in time, what really matters is whether his act stands (or falls) in eternity. As a true martyr he displays a self-abegnation that is a true expression of his faith in Christ.
The play itself invites the process of a judgment “in time” as with no small irony the four assassins offer their rationalizations for their actions, in plain ignoble prose. They explicitly make appeal to the “fair play” of the English audience, who feel themselves privileged as judges over the action they have just witnessed. Thomas was a provocateur; he had a fanatic’s death-wish; he was complicit in the politics of the day; and so on. Eliot admits to the table the quite credible counter-witness of the knights; and they appear to have the last say. However, the play closes not on this note but with the song of the Chorus celebrating the entry of Thomas into glory. And at this point another kind of invitation is issued: an invitation to thankfulness and repentance:
Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire… [12]
The audience is pointed to their own complicity in the shedding of blood through their tolerance of injustice and apathetic acceptance of the status quo; and invited to contemplate the example of Thomas in his submission to the will, and the love, of God.
Eliot’s re-narrates the murder of Thomas as a martyrdom for the twentieth century testifying against both cynical political pragmatism, and an ultimately self-regarding religious fanaticism. The passion of Thomas is conjoined to the passion of Christ, as in the early Christian Acts of the Martyrs; his suffering echoes Christ’s suffering and is made meaningful in those terms. However, an ambiguity remains - exactly in the way Eliot himself envisages it. On the historical plane, the nature of Thomas’ death remain subject to an element of concealment. Are not the knights quite plausibly arguing against the reading of Thomas’ death as a martyrdom? Isn’t the verdict of the chorus, simply posited as it is at the end of the drama as a kind of divine judgment (in the manner of Sophoclean tragedy) a presumption of a divine perspective on these events that isn’t really available (except in the theatre)?
[1] Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 56
[2] Ibid., p. 57
[3] Ibid., p. 32
[4] Allusions abound in the scene to the Temptation of Christ by Satan. The downfall of Thomas is being narrated in imitation of Christ’s death.
[5] The words of the Second Tempter. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 37
[6] Ibid., p. 47
[7] Ibid., p. 48
[8] Ibid., p. 52
[9] Ibid., p. 79
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p. 91
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason
The work of John Milbank is a daring attempt to demolish secular social theory from a Christian perspective. This audacious move is a characteristic of the ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ movement, whose other chief protagonists are Graham Ward and Catherine Pickstock. Milbank proclaims nothing less than to prove that the ‘governing assumptions’ of theories like secular western liberalism are ‘bound up with the governing assumptions of orthodox Christian positions’. In fact, it is not necessary to try and relate theology and social theory to one another, for, as Fergus Kerr summarises, ‘theology is already social theory, and social theory is already theology’. What Milbank attempts is to expose the theology (and anti-theology) implicit in the so-called secular disciplines like sociology. Conversely, and with much deference to Augustine, he extrapolates the social theory inherent in theology.
Milbank’s critique of political liberalism shares much in common with those of Foucault and Lyotard. Indeed it is self-consciously postmodern: Milbank explicitly adopts the Foucauldian tactic of an historicizing, ‘genealogical’ inquiry in order to expose the network of power struggles and claims to dominance at the root of liberal thinking. He claims that the discourses of liberalism, from which the secular is first constructed, read the world in terms of an ‘ontology of violence’ – ‘a reading of the world which assumes the priority of force and tells how this force is best managed and confined by counter force’. Violence is assumed to be basic; as a result, political theory is developed assuming that violence has to be forcefully surmounted. Following Foucault, Milbank asserts that any truth claims are in fact a means to assert the dominance of the inevitably clashing centres of power in society. Kant’s liberalism, for example, makes claims about freedom that are really only gestures in a wrestle for power. The liberal move – the ‘Kantian delay’ – only temporarily staves off the nihilism of Nietzche.
Milbank’s scepticism removes for him the possibility of theology building on the foundations of some secular discipline:
Theology has frequently sought to borrow from elsewhere a fundamental account of society or history, and then to see what theological insights will cohere with it. But it has been shown that no such fundamental account, in the sense of something neutral, rational and universal, is really available. It is theology itself that will have to provide its own account of the final causes at work in human history, on the basis of its own particular, and historically specific faith.
Consequently, Christianity does not recognise this ontology of violence but rather thinks of the prime reality as a ‘harmonic peace’: Milbank at this point introduces the triune God as ‘transcendental peace through differential relation’. The meta-narrative of Christianity – its ‘counter-story’ – is at least no less credible than the meta-narratives of violence by which modern social theories (including and especially liberalism) describe themselves, since all alike are unfounded in the traditional sense. The existence of a primal violence is challenged by a counter-history, which is established by the coming of Christ into history; a counter-ethics, in which love becomes the core of virtue; and a counter-ontology, in which true peaceful co-existence is won from violence by the practice of forgiveness. Christianity, for Milbank, is unique in that it
…does not allow violence any real ontological purchase, but relates it instead to a free subject who asserts a will that is truly independent of God and of others, and thereby a will to the inhibition and distortion of reality.
Echoing Augustine, Milbank posits the Church as the political anti-type or counter-society. In the Church there is an ‘ontological priority of peace over conflict’ : there, ‘difference’ is the foundation not for violence but for harmonious peace. Here is one of Milbank’s great difficulties; for the Church as a historical entity has not fulfilled this ‘vision of paradisal[sic] community’. As he rather wistfully admits:
Insofar as the church has failed, and has even become a hellish anti-Church, it has confined Christianity, like everything else, with the cycle of the ceaseless exhaustion and return of violence.
Nevertheless, it is the Christian vision of ontological peace that provides the only alternative to absolute nihilism.
Milbank’s critique of liberalism is dazzling. He is able to show how secular liberalism, like other theories of society, is not secular at all but in fact involves necessarily theological or anti-theological moves. He is able to show how liberal thinking has its own mythos or meta-narrative, despite its pretensions to an abstract universalism; and how it has not finally eluded the gravitational pull of nihilism’s black hole. His introduction of the Christian meta-narrative in response rightly points to the distinctive Christian emphasis on relationality generated by the triune God as an attractive conceptual alternative.
Nevertheless, Milbank’s thesis is problematic for a number of reasons. First, his self-conscious appeal to postmodern thinking enables him to make a devastating critique of secular reason; his own evasion of the critique is less than convincing. He adopts Foucault’s notion of genealogy, by which the power claims implicit in the political discourses he examines are brought to light and exposed as relying on an ‘ontology of violence’. And yet he also claims that his Christian ‘ontology of peace’ escapes this Foucauldian critique. An Icarus flying too near a postmodern sun, he relies on Foucault to prove that Foucault is ultimately wrong.
Secondly, Milbank’s strategy rests on a questionable ecclesiology, which is far too sanguine about the ‘church militant’. His is an over-realised ecclesiology, blurring the traditional distinction between the church visible and the church invisible, focussing on the concrete historical institutions of the universal Church at the expense of its local congregational instances. More recent ‘Radical Orthodox’ writings have tended to make the Eucharist the means by which the ‘ontology of peace’ is realised, following an almost medieval sacramental theology. Christopher J. Insole goes so far as to accuse Milbank of a tendency to theocracy. And yet Milbank seems genuinely baffled by the refusal of the Church to be itself within history. Within the Scriptures themselves, the churches were as much a site of struggle as of peace (the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, to take but one example, or the Corinthian church). Peace with God was declared in the gospel, but by no means automatically or easily realised in ecclesial relationships. God’s once-for-all act of reconciliation on the cross is not continued or repeated in the acts of the church this side of Christ’s return.
Thirdly, it seems pertinent to ask, along with Wannenwetsch, if the only way to defeat the violent ontologies of secular reason is by positing an alternative ontology. Milbank has difficulty, having so successfully deconstructed the ontology of political thought, in convincingly constructing something of the same species. The proclamation of the gospel of peace, which founds the church, is not a counter- ontology, but a promise. Further, the NT describes the cross of Christ as achieving peace through a victory against the powers of sin and evil – depicted in terms of a violent exclusion (see Rev 19-22 for just one example).
This third complaint leads to a fourth, which is that while Milbank offers a virtuoso reading of vast tracts of political philosophy, liberation theology and postmodernism, his method is insufficiently grounded in basic Scriptural exegesis. He offers almost no reflection on Israel’s political life; nor does he offer extensive readings of the relevant NT material – all of which ought to condition his explanation of the Church as alternative polis. Strangely, though he claims to be offering Christianity as an alternative meta-narrative, he nowhere offers his retelling of that story at any depth nor an engagement with the authoritative texts of the tradition he is advocating.
Milbank’s critique of political liberalism shares much in common with those of Foucault and Lyotard. Indeed it is self-consciously postmodern: Milbank explicitly adopts the Foucauldian tactic of an historicizing, ‘genealogical’ inquiry in order to expose the network of power struggles and claims to dominance at the root of liberal thinking. He claims that the discourses of liberalism, from which the secular is first constructed, read the world in terms of an ‘ontology of violence’ – ‘a reading of the world which assumes the priority of force and tells how this force is best managed and confined by counter force’. Violence is assumed to be basic; as a result, political theory is developed assuming that violence has to be forcefully surmounted. Following Foucault, Milbank asserts that any truth claims are in fact a means to assert the dominance of the inevitably clashing centres of power in society. Kant’s liberalism, for example, makes claims about freedom that are really only gestures in a wrestle for power. The liberal move – the ‘Kantian delay’ – only temporarily staves off the nihilism of Nietzche.
Milbank’s scepticism removes for him the possibility of theology building on the foundations of some secular discipline:
Theology has frequently sought to borrow from elsewhere a fundamental account of society or history, and then to see what theological insights will cohere with it. But it has been shown that no such fundamental account, in the sense of something neutral, rational and universal, is really available. It is theology itself that will have to provide its own account of the final causes at work in human history, on the basis of its own particular, and historically specific faith.
Consequently, Christianity does not recognise this ontology of violence but rather thinks of the prime reality as a ‘harmonic peace’: Milbank at this point introduces the triune God as ‘transcendental peace through differential relation’. The meta-narrative of Christianity – its ‘counter-story’ – is at least no less credible than the meta-narratives of violence by which modern social theories (including and especially liberalism) describe themselves, since all alike are unfounded in the traditional sense. The existence of a primal violence is challenged by a counter-history, which is established by the coming of Christ into history; a counter-ethics, in which love becomes the core of virtue; and a counter-ontology, in which true peaceful co-existence is won from violence by the practice of forgiveness. Christianity, for Milbank, is unique in that it
…does not allow violence any real ontological purchase, but relates it instead to a free subject who asserts a will that is truly independent of God and of others, and thereby a will to the inhibition and distortion of reality.
Echoing Augustine, Milbank posits the Church as the political anti-type or counter-society. In the Church there is an ‘ontological priority of peace over conflict’ : there, ‘difference’ is the foundation not for violence but for harmonious peace. Here is one of Milbank’s great difficulties; for the Church as a historical entity has not fulfilled this ‘vision of paradisal[sic] community’. As he rather wistfully admits:
Insofar as the church has failed, and has even become a hellish anti-Church, it has confined Christianity, like everything else, with the cycle of the ceaseless exhaustion and return of violence.
Nevertheless, it is the Christian vision of ontological peace that provides the only alternative to absolute nihilism.
Milbank’s critique of liberalism is dazzling. He is able to show how secular liberalism, like other theories of society, is not secular at all but in fact involves necessarily theological or anti-theological moves. He is able to show how liberal thinking has its own mythos or meta-narrative, despite its pretensions to an abstract universalism; and how it has not finally eluded the gravitational pull of nihilism’s black hole. His introduction of the Christian meta-narrative in response rightly points to the distinctive Christian emphasis on relationality generated by the triune God as an attractive conceptual alternative.
Nevertheless, Milbank’s thesis is problematic for a number of reasons. First, his self-conscious appeal to postmodern thinking enables him to make a devastating critique of secular reason; his own evasion of the critique is less than convincing. He adopts Foucault’s notion of genealogy, by which the power claims implicit in the political discourses he examines are brought to light and exposed as relying on an ‘ontology of violence’. And yet he also claims that his Christian ‘ontology of peace’ escapes this Foucauldian critique. An Icarus flying too near a postmodern sun, he relies on Foucault to prove that Foucault is ultimately wrong.
Secondly, Milbank’s strategy rests on a questionable ecclesiology, which is far too sanguine about the ‘church militant’. His is an over-realised ecclesiology, blurring the traditional distinction between the church visible and the church invisible, focussing on the concrete historical institutions of the universal Church at the expense of its local congregational instances. More recent ‘Radical Orthodox’ writings have tended to make the Eucharist the means by which the ‘ontology of peace’ is realised, following an almost medieval sacramental theology. Christopher J. Insole goes so far as to accuse Milbank of a tendency to theocracy. And yet Milbank seems genuinely baffled by the refusal of the Church to be itself within history. Within the Scriptures themselves, the churches were as much a site of struggle as of peace (the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, to take but one example, or the Corinthian church). Peace with God was declared in the gospel, but by no means automatically or easily realised in ecclesial relationships. God’s once-for-all act of reconciliation on the cross is not continued or repeated in the acts of the church this side of Christ’s return.
Thirdly, it seems pertinent to ask, along with Wannenwetsch, if the only way to defeat the violent ontologies of secular reason is by positing an alternative ontology. Milbank has difficulty, having so successfully deconstructed the ontology of political thought, in convincingly constructing something of the same species. The proclamation of the gospel of peace, which founds the church, is not a counter- ontology, but a promise. Further, the NT describes the cross of Christ as achieving peace through a victory against the powers of sin and evil – depicted in terms of a violent exclusion (see Rev 19-22 for just one example).
This third complaint leads to a fourth, which is that while Milbank offers a virtuoso reading of vast tracts of political philosophy, liberation theology and postmodernism, his method is insufficiently grounded in basic Scriptural exegesis. He offers almost no reflection on Israel’s political life; nor does he offer extensive readings of the relevant NT material – all of which ought to condition his explanation of the Church as alternative polis. Strangely, though he claims to be offering Christianity as an alternative meta-narrative, he nowhere offers his retelling of that story at any depth nor an engagement with the authoritative texts of the tradition he is advocating.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Friday, December 09, 2005
The 39 Articles
We live in an age which doesn’t really like ideology very much. Systems of doctrine and great schemes of knowledge have caused plenty of trouble in our world. Demanding that there is a right way to think seems to be a way to bully others. The great “isms” of the 20th century – Marxism, Stalinism, Fascism, Nazism – left the globe awash in blood; the religions of the world are famed for their links to violent outrages. And for most right-thinking people in the West enough is enough: enough with the doctrines that claim to have an answer for everything, that say they can make a complex world neat and tidy by imposing a grid of ideas and forcing everybody to fit. It was almost ninety years ago that the Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
His words have a contemporary ring: wouldn’t it be better to “lack all conviction” and just get on with everybody? Hasn’t “passionate intensity” wreaked enough havoc, caused enough megadeath? Aren’t convictions inherently dangerous? Aren’t convictions “prisons”, as Nietzsche thought? (Anti Christ p. 184)
Furthermore, we live in a deeply skeptical age. Many people doubt that anyone can have confidence in things you can’t experience first hand. I was going to say that people doubt things you can’t experience with your senses, but it is true that there is quite a lot of “spirituality” about – that is, it is quite fashionable to speak of yourself as “a spiritual person” who is in some way in contact with the divine or the higher being or something like it. To speak of having personal religious experiences is quite common. I can be sure at least about what I feel. But to speak confidently of things that seem so outside of oneself – to say that the one God is three persons, for example – is surely impossible. To make statements about what you believe seems to be just the wishful thinking of another age.
However, much as we might imagine that it is the path to a safer world, it is impossible to live without convictions. Believing - that some things are true and that some other things are not, and that some things are good and that some other things are less good – is a part of what it is to be human. Even the person who loves peace and whatever it takes to achieve it, so that they can get on with their life as they wish to live it, is saying something about what they believe to be most important, and is staking a commitment to it. Sometimes these beliefs may be carefully worked out and thought through; sometimes they may be merely what everyone else thinks; and sometimes they may be “gut reactions”, things we are aware of the level of our instincts. But these are all at some level “convictions” about how things are and how they ought to be. So, the question is not “do I have convictions” but rather “what am I convicted about”?
Christians are people who have a particular set of convictions. Primarily, they are convicted that in Jesus of Nazareth, a human person like one of us, God the creator took on human flesh, died for sins and rose again; and that today among us we may know him by his Spirit.[1] Now, this isn’t a dry-as-dust set of propositions put to them in some kind of philosophy tutorial: it means for them that they had encountered the very source of life itself in Jesus. It transforms their lives. For the earliest Christians, this explained why they were worshipping this Jesus - a man - as the only true God – something that had been unthinkable before. These “convictions” were not a matter of ticking the box on some survey; they were a life-transforming reality, something that many of them would be happy to die for, as it turned out.
This small group of convictions obviously needs a bit of mulling over, and explaining. And there are any number of questions that you could put to them. And so, since the time of the early churches, Christians have attempted to put some flesh on the bones, so to speak: to clarify and interpret and explain them, to say what they weren’t saying sometimes as much as what they were. And so, they produced at various times great statements of the faith in order to say as clearly as possible, “these are the things which we are convinced are true (and here is what we know isn’t)”. One of these was the great creed known as the Nicene Creed, developed over the course of the 4th century AD. In it, the churches asserted that the Jesus they worshipped was both fully man and fully God.
This is an interaction with another statement of faith: a set of Christian convictions produced by leaders of the Church of England as their statement of belief in the 16th century – The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. The Church of England – known today as the Anglican, or Episcopal Church in many parts of the world – had its beginnings not with high-minded theological convictions but with the needs of international politics. In 1534, Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church and the authority of the Pope and made himself supreme governor of the Church in England – in the first place because he needed a divorce from his Spanish wife in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn.
And yet there were matters of genuine theological conviction in play – it was more than a just a matter of a king’s love life. The movement we know now as the Reformation had begun to sweep Europe in the 1520s under the influence of people such as Martin Luther in Germany and Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland. Its influence had certainly been felt in England: so much so that King Henry had written a piece staunchly defending the Pope’s position against Luther! In brief, the Reformation made a two-pronged attack on the version of Christianity that the Roman Catholic church was at that time presenting.
The first substantial issue was a matter of authority. The champions of the Reformation saw themselves as returning to the Bible as the supreme authority in the Christian faith. Only Scripture was ultimately authoritative: not the Church itself or its Pope or its traditions. These needed to be under the Bible, and shaped by it. And so translating and distributing the Bible was a major task that the Reformers and their supporters undertook at this time.
The second substantial issue was answering the question of how someone might be saved (what theologians call soteriology). All were agreed that the death of Jesus for sin was a necessary component of human salvation – but how did the whole scheme fit together? In the medieval period, various theories had been suggested as to how this came about. How much was human effort, and how much was God’s work? For example, one theory demanded that a person had to do whatever was within them to please God; recognizing this, God would graciously accomplish the rest in Christ. By their intense study of the Bible, the Reformers had discovered that no human effort was required for salvation at all – not the least because no human effort could achieve it. Rather, a person is justified by faith in the work of Christ on the cross only, and not at all by their own efforts to please God.[2] Doing good things was only the outworking of what God had done, not part of the process of being saved in the first place.
These two themes, as we shall see, underlie the attempt to provide a summary of the Christian faith that we find in these articles; for through Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and others Reformation ideas – particularly those of Luther, and later John Calvin - became a feature of the Reformation in England. In many ways the Thirty-Nine articles are a statement of faith for their own time. They reflect the controversies of their day, not ours. For example, there is an extended statement on the Lord’s Supper – which was a real bone of contention between the Reformation and the Roman Catholic church. They are certainly not a perfect list. They seem to leave out what to us may seem like important things – they say hardly anything about the return of Christ, or about the Creation of the world, for example. And they overemphasize perhaps unimportant things – a whole article is given over to Jesus’ descent into hell, and another to the swearing of oaths. At points they reflect the necessary evil of compromise rather than present a single pure vision of what is true. The grubby fingers of the committee process is certainly in evidence.
So: are they worth studying today? Today very different issues confront all Christian believers and Anglicans among them. We ask, what is the right way for Christians to behave sexually? How can we square our faith with the scientific knowledge on which we so depend? What is the best way to order our churches and what should our services look like? How should we relate to the political world in which we live? I would argue that the convictions outlined here are most certainly worth revisiting in our times. These articles are not an embarrassing skeleton in the Anglican closet but rather the result of a careful listening to the Bible and its teaching. They are an attempt to express what God says to his people in the Bible. In them, the Church of England declares itself subject to God’s Word in Scripture, and not free to do anything else but listen to what the Bible says and respond in obedience. Those who framed them were well aware that times would change, and that there would be different customs and cultures in which Christians would have to live out their faith. They themselves had lived through turbulent and difficult times, when beliefs were in a tremendous flux and when there was enormous pressure on individuals to change their beliefs to suit the times.
Our times are no less tricky. The churches that identify with the Anglican tradition are no less in a crisis of self-identity today. People who call themselves “Anglican” seem to spend an enormous amount of energy disputing what that exactly means and over who has the right to call themselves really “Anglican”.[3] The Thirty-Nine Articles - along with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer - are to this day a touchstone for what being an Anglican might be.
But more than this: these articles are reminder that for all Christians convictions do matter. They remind us that even though stating what you believe is not easy, that it is a task incumbent on Christians of every time and place. They are not a dull list of abstract statements, but the implications of thinking through a living faith in Jesus Christ, God’s Son. Agreeing to them is not at all the same as having a saving faith in Christ Jesus; but they help to protect and frame and shape the preaching of that same Jesus Christ by some of those who would follow him.
[1] There are a couple of early summaries of Christian belief in the Bible itself. 1 Cor 15
[2] This is a really brief summary of the Reformation which is one of the most interesting periods of history that anyone can study.
[3] I frequently hear people use the word “Anglican” to mean a more formal style of church service, as in “that church is more Anglican than this (usually more laid-back) one is”.
The best lack all conviction,
While the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
His words have a contemporary ring: wouldn’t it be better to “lack all conviction” and just get on with everybody? Hasn’t “passionate intensity” wreaked enough havoc, caused enough megadeath? Aren’t convictions inherently dangerous? Aren’t convictions “prisons”, as Nietzsche thought? (Anti Christ p. 184)
Furthermore, we live in a deeply skeptical age. Many people doubt that anyone can have confidence in things you can’t experience first hand. I was going to say that people doubt things you can’t experience with your senses, but it is true that there is quite a lot of “spirituality” about – that is, it is quite fashionable to speak of yourself as “a spiritual person” who is in some way in contact with the divine or the higher being or something like it. To speak of having personal religious experiences is quite common. I can be sure at least about what I feel. But to speak confidently of things that seem so outside of oneself – to say that the one God is three persons, for example – is surely impossible. To make statements about what you believe seems to be just the wishful thinking of another age.
However, much as we might imagine that it is the path to a safer world, it is impossible to live without convictions. Believing - that some things are true and that some other things are not, and that some things are good and that some other things are less good – is a part of what it is to be human. Even the person who loves peace and whatever it takes to achieve it, so that they can get on with their life as they wish to live it, is saying something about what they believe to be most important, and is staking a commitment to it. Sometimes these beliefs may be carefully worked out and thought through; sometimes they may be merely what everyone else thinks; and sometimes they may be “gut reactions”, things we are aware of the level of our instincts. But these are all at some level “convictions” about how things are and how they ought to be. So, the question is not “do I have convictions” but rather “what am I convicted about”?
Christians are people who have a particular set of convictions. Primarily, they are convicted that in Jesus of Nazareth, a human person like one of us, God the creator took on human flesh, died for sins and rose again; and that today among us we may know him by his Spirit.[1] Now, this isn’t a dry-as-dust set of propositions put to them in some kind of philosophy tutorial: it means for them that they had encountered the very source of life itself in Jesus. It transforms their lives. For the earliest Christians, this explained why they were worshipping this Jesus - a man - as the only true God – something that had been unthinkable before. These “convictions” were not a matter of ticking the box on some survey; they were a life-transforming reality, something that many of them would be happy to die for, as it turned out.
This small group of convictions obviously needs a bit of mulling over, and explaining. And there are any number of questions that you could put to them. And so, since the time of the early churches, Christians have attempted to put some flesh on the bones, so to speak: to clarify and interpret and explain them, to say what they weren’t saying sometimes as much as what they were. And so, they produced at various times great statements of the faith in order to say as clearly as possible, “these are the things which we are convinced are true (and here is what we know isn’t)”. One of these was the great creed known as the Nicene Creed, developed over the course of the 4th century AD. In it, the churches asserted that the Jesus they worshipped was both fully man and fully God.
This is an interaction with another statement of faith: a set of Christian convictions produced by leaders of the Church of England as their statement of belief in the 16th century – The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. The Church of England – known today as the Anglican, or Episcopal Church in many parts of the world – had its beginnings not with high-minded theological convictions but with the needs of international politics. In 1534, Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church and the authority of the Pope and made himself supreme governor of the Church in England – in the first place because he needed a divorce from his Spanish wife in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn.
And yet there were matters of genuine theological conviction in play – it was more than a just a matter of a king’s love life. The movement we know now as the Reformation had begun to sweep Europe in the 1520s under the influence of people such as Martin Luther in Germany and Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland. Its influence had certainly been felt in England: so much so that King Henry had written a piece staunchly defending the Pope’s position against Luther! In brief, the Reformation made a two-pronged attack on the version of Christianity that the Roman Catholic church was at that time presenting.
The first substantial issue was a matter of authority. The champions of the Reformation saw themselves as returning to the Bible as the supreme authority in the Christian faith. Only Scripture was ultimately authoritative: not the Church itself or its Pope or its traditions. These needed to be under the Bible, and shaped by it. And so translating and distributing the Bible was a major task that the Reformers and their supporters undertook at this time.
The second substantial issue was answering the question of how someone might be saved (what theologians call soteriology). All were agreed that the death of Jesus for sin was a necessary component of human salvation – but how did the whole scheme fit together? In the medieval period, various theories had been suggested as to how this came about. How much was human effort, and how much was God’s work? For example, one theory demanded that a person had to do whatever was within them to please God; recognizing this, God would graciously accomplish the rest in Christ. By their intense study of the Bible, the Reformers had discovered that no human effort was required for salvation at all – not the least because no human effort could achieve it. Rather, a person is justified by faith in the work of Christ on the cross only, and not at all by their own efforts to please God.[2] Doing good things was only the outworking of what God had done, not part of the process of being saved in the first place.
These two themes, as we shall see, underlie the attempt to provide a summary of the Christian faith that we find in these articles; for through Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and others Reformation ideas – particularly those of Luther, and later John Calvin - became a feature of the Reformation in England. In many ways the Thirty-Nine articles are a statement of faith for their own time. They reflect the controversies of their day, not ours. For example, there is an extended statement on the Lord’s Supper – which was a real bone of contention between the Reformation and the Roman Catholic church. They are certainly not a perfect list. They seem to leave out what to us may seem like important things – they say hardly anything about the return of Christ, or about the Creation of the world, for example. And they overemphasize perhaps unimportant things – a whole article is given over to Jesus’ descent into hell, and another to the swearing of oaths. At points they reflect the necessary evil of compromise rather than present a single pure vision of what is true. The grubby fingers of the committee process is certainly in evidence.
So: are they worth studying today? Today very different issues confront all Christian believers and Anglicans among them. We ask, what is the right way for Christians to behave sexually? How can we square our faith with the scientific knowledge on which we so depend? What is the best way to order our churches and what should our services look like? How should we relate to the political world in which we live? I would argue that the convictions outlined here are most certainly worth revisiting in our times. These articles are not an embarrassing skeleton in the Anglican closet but rather the result of a careful listening to the Bible and its teaching. They are an attempt to express what God says to his people in the Bible. In them, the Church of England declares itself subject to God’s Word in Scripture, and not free to do anything else but listen to what the Bible says and respond in obedience. Those who framed them were well aware that times would change, and that there would be different customs and cultures in which Christians would have to live out their faith. They themselves had lived through turbulent and difficult times, when beliefs were in a tremendous flux and when there was enormous pressure on individuals to change their beliefs to suit the times.
Our times are no less tricky. The churches that identify with the Anglican tradition are no less in a crisis of self-identity today. People who call themselves “Anglican” seem to spend an enormous amount of energy disputing what that exactly means and over who has the right to call themselves really “Anglican”.[3] The Thirty-Nine Articles - along with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer - are to this day a touchstone for what being an Anglican might be.
But more than this: these articles are reminder that for all Christians convictions do matter. They remind us that even though stating what you believe is not easy, that it is a task incumbent on Christians of every time and place. They are not a dull list of abstract statements, but the implications of thinking through a living faith in Jesus Christ, God’s Son. Agreeing to them is not at all the same as having a saving faith in Christ Jesus; but they help to protect and frame and shape the preaching of that same Jesus Christ by some of those who would follow him.
[1] There are a couple of early summaries of Christian belief in the Bible itself. 1 Cor 15
[2] This is a really brief summary of the Reformation which is one of the most interesting periods of history that anyone can study.
[3] I frequently hear people use the word “Anglican” to mean a more formal style of church service, as in “that church is more Anglican than this (usually more laid-back) one is”.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Martyrdom - something to die for?
The Greek word marturion of course means "witness" or "testimony". Already in the NT we see the possibility of this idea being linked to the shedding of blood - a testimony unto death. Jesus himself of course did exactly this. The gospel accounts - especially John - make much of the sham trial at which Jesus was convicted as a kind of ironic antitype of the real eschatological trial at which he was mightily vindicated. The truth about Jesus' "kingdom of God" and all his teaching about his Father and himself and the state of the world under sin were all revealed by his death and resurrection.
The life of the follower of Jesus is thus always already a life lived in preparation of the possibility of such a trial. The hatred of the world for Jesus is shared by his followers. They already lay down their lives, and take up their crosses and follow him. They die to the world... Baptism is a symbol of this offering of the old self over to death which is what every Christian does as a testimony to the truth of Jesus Christ. Every Christian, we might say, is already a martyr. That there are some who suffer to the point of pain and death is a glorious sign for us of the reality of this.
Martyrdom is a radically unsettling idea for the secular individual. The world characterised by avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure, even in its most honourable forms, has little place for the possibility of martyrdoms. The old rhetoric of martyrdom applied to the war-dead now seems rather hollow given that these lives were given to dubious causes and by questionable means. A life in which the possibility of martyrdom has been accepted is not a life that appears to be lived to its greatest possibility. It is perhaps freely determined, but it is given away too cheaply; it has too little regard for the ties of family and friends; it is too committed to a notion of 'truth' which has fallen into disrepair. It is too unassertive and too tragic. It tries to make meaningful that which we have decided already is meaningless - suffering. The martyr is committed to another way of understanding the world - a "superior realm of signification" (Castelli) - an understanding which is not merely an idea for the martyr, but in the act of offering of the body to its own destruction becomes a material reality. At this moment, the testimony of the martyr to the other-worldly reality intersects with the material world and displaces the complancy of the materialist. It makes the lovers of comfort uncomfortable.
Martyrdom is not a cult of death, for the Christian martyr loves life. The death of the martyr is not a resignation to fate, but truly has a tragic, mournful aspect: for it points to the value of life. You cannot consider laying down one’s life for your friends a sacrifice of any significance if you hold life cheap. Charles Taylor notes that there is a “powerful sense of loss” at the heart of Christian martyrdom, because life is hallowed by it in its fullness. Jesus came to give abundant life (John 10:10), after all – an intensification of life. This is important – the structure of resurrection belief is an affirmation of the goodness of the created order, pointing not its eradication by the coming new order but its transformation. Liberation theologian Boff writes: “The resurrection of the martyr Jesus Christ has, among others, this theological significance: who loses his life in this way receives it in fullness. To the martyr is reserved full participation in the meaning of life, that is, enthronement in its immortal kingdom.”
Martyrdom exposes the death of Adam for the hollow sham that it is. The martyr who dies the death of Christ by faith shows that death has lost its sting. He or she does not embrace oblivion or rush headlong into nothingness; rather, it is an entry into an endless end (Karl Rahner).
The martyr is an imitator of Christ par excellence. The early martyrologies dramatized martyrdoms as repetitions of the passion of Christ.
Of Sanctus, the martyr of Lyons, it is written by Eusebius: ‘And his body was a witness of his sufferings, being one complete wound and bruise, drawn out of shape, and altogether unlike a human form. Christ, suffering in him, manifested his glory, delivering him from his adversary, and making him an example for the others, showing that nothing is fearful where the love of the Father is, and nothing painful where there is the glory of Christ.’
Of Blandina: ‘Blandina was suspended on a stake, and exposed to be devoured by the wild beasts who should attack her. And because she appeared as if hanging on a cross, and because of her earnest prayers, she inspired the combatants with great zeal. For they looked on her in her conflict, and beheld with their outward eyes, in the form of their sister, him who was crucified for them, that he might persuade those who believe on him, that every one who suffers for the glory of Christ has fellowship always with the living God.’
The gesture of the suicide bomber is not at all the same, though an attempt to use the same word is made. The self-destruction of the suicide bomber is a radical denial of the goodness of life. By his or her gesture, he or she says like the martyr “I testify to another reality, superior to this one.” However, this other reality is not of the nature of an affirmation of this one, but its denial. By choosing death, he says to the enemy: “you have made my life not worth living: let me return the favour”. He cannot find any corrupt judicial process, or false testimony, or unjust law to take his life, so he does the job himself. He aims to produce fear; and by and large succeeds, because secularism has no good alternative. His gesture does not call for those outside his tribe to be included in it, but rather points to the ongoing exclusion of most people from it. His death does not expose state-sanctioned violence for what it is; but rather perpetuates it. Where the true martyr may actually absorb spilt blood and by the beauty of his or her gesture reveal to a culture the futility of its persecutions, the suicide bomber only invites a conversation in blood. He proclaims his own victimization and makes a victim of himself at his own hand, which
Martyrdom is a political gesture. It is a witness to citizenship in another kingdom, to service of another Lord. The earliest martyrs instantly recognized – or were forced to recognize – that theirs was a choice between two forms of worship, two forms of citizenship. When the aged Polycarp was commanded to sacrifice to the genius of Caesar and to revile Christ, he replied to his persecutor:
Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?
For Polycarp there was no choice: the two Kings were rivals. Only one was worthy of his allegiance. Polycarp’s “he hath done me no wrong” seems a little subdued, admittedly. But, has Caesar saved him? His reasoning is the simple logic of the servant.
The early martyr narratives emphasis the possibility of escape for each martyr – just as Jesus was at all times in the gospel narratives shown as going to the cross freely, though he could have escaped. The voluntary act of choosing for martyrdom shows that Caesar’s coercive power has not succeeded. The martyr is a revolutionary in that way, for the political power that would exercise itself through killing the body is shown to be no power at all.
But while martyrdom unsettles the secular self, the rhetoric of martyrdom itself is not unproblematic. The Christian church has made martyrs as well. It is a fact of history that those who have martyred readily make martyrs of others, (apparently) unconscious of how self-defeating it is. The celebration of martyrs can appear to link sacrifice and violence inextricably. The glory of martyrdom requires a culture that punishes heterodoxy violently; and it reflects a culture that makes violent death meaningful.
The martyr is first of all a witness, then a performer of a dramatic action, which is in turn witnessed. It is a witness that compels further witness. It “requires an audience, retelling, interpretation, and world– and meaning-making activity. Suffering violence is in and of itself not enough” (Castelli, p. 33). Interestingly, baptism is a kind of proto-martyrdom, with the act of testimony to Christ and renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil. The plunging into the water symbolises a death and then a rising to new life. In 1 Tim 6:12ff Paul explicitly compares the "good confession" of Jesus under Pilate with the confession of Timothy made at his baptism.
The life of the follower of Jesus is thus always already a life lived in preparation of the possibility of such a trial. The hatred of the world for Jesus is shared by his followers. They already lay down their lives, and take up their crosses and follow him. They die to the world... Baptism is a symbol of this offering of the old self over to death which is what every Christian does as a testimony to the truth of Jesus Christ. Every Christian, we might say, is already a martyr. That there are some who suffer to the point of pain and death is a glorious sign for us of the reality of this.
Martyrdom is a radically unsettling idea for the secular individual. The world characterised by avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure, even in its most honourable forms, has little place for the possibility of martyrdoms. The old rhetoric of martyrdom applied to the war-dead now seems rather hollow given that these lives were given to dubious causes and by questionable means. A life in which the possibility of martyrdom has been accepted is not a life that appears to be lived to its greatest possibility. It is perhaps freely determined, but it is given away too cheaply; it has too little regard for the ties of family and friends; it is too committed to a notion of 'truth' which has fallen into disrepair. It is too unassertive and too tragic. It tries to make meaningful that which we have decided already is meaningless - suffering. The martyr is committed to another way of understanding the world - a "superior realm of signification" (Castelli) - an understanding which is not merely an idea for the martyr, but in the act of offering of the body to its own destruction becomes a material reality. At this moment, the testimony of the martyr to the other-worldly reality intersects with the material world and displaces the complancy of the materialist. It makes the lovers of comfort uncomfortable.
Martyrdom is not a cult of death, for the Christian martyr loves life. The death of the martyr is not a resignation to fate, but truly has a tragic, mournful aspect: for it points to the value of life. You cannot consider laying down one’s life for your friends a sacrifice of any significance if you hold life cheap. Charles Taylor notes that there is a “powerful sense of loss” at the heart of Christian martyrdom, because life is hallowed by it in its fullness. Jesus came to give abundant life (John 10:10), after all – an intensification of life. This is important – the structure of resurrection belief is an affirmation of the goodness of the created order, pointing not its eradication by the coming new order but its transformation. Liberation theologian Boff writes: “The resurrection of the martyr Jesus Christ has, among others, this theological significance: who loses his life in this way receives it in fullness. To the martyr is reserved full participation in the meaning of life, that is, enthronement in its immortal kingdom.”
Martyrdom exposes the death of Adam for the hollow sham that it is. The martyr who dies the death of Christ by faith shows that death has lost its sting. He or she does not embrace oblivion or rush headlong into nothingness; rather, it is an entry into an endless end (Karl Rahner).
The martyr is an imitator of Christ par excellence. The early martyrologies dramatized martyrdoms as repetitions of the passion of Christ.
Of Sanctus, the martyr of Lyons, it is written by Eusebius: ‘And his body was a witness of his sufferings, being one complete wound and bruise, drawn out of shape, and altogether unlike a human form. Christ, suffering in him, manifested his glory, delivering him from his adversary, and making him an example for the others, showing that nothing is fearful where the love of the Father is, and nothing painful where there is the glory of Christ.’
Of Blandina: ‘Blandina was suspended on a stake, and exposed to be devoured by the wild beasts who should attack her. And because she appeared as if hanging on a cross, and because of her earnest prayers, she inspired the combatants with great zeal. For they looked on her in her conflict, and beheld with their outward eyes, in the form of their sister, him who was crucified for them, that he might persuade those who believe on him, that every one who suffers for the glory of Christ has fellowship always with the living God.’
The gesture of the suicide bomber is not at all the same, though an attempt to use the same word is made. The self-destruction of the suicide bomber is a radical denial of the goodness of life. By his or her gesture, he or she says like the martyr “I testify to another reality, superior to this one.” However, this other reality is not of the nature of an affirmation of this one, but its denial. By choosing death, he says to the enemy: “you have made my life not worth living: let me return the favour”. He cannot find any corrupt judicial process, or false testimony, or unjust law to take his life, so he does the job himself. He aims to produce fear; and by and large succeeds, because secularism has no good alternative. His gesture does not call for those outside his tribe to be included in it, but rather points to the ongoing exclusion of most people from it. His death does not expose state-sanctioned violence for what it is; but rather perpetuates it. Where the true martyr may actually absorb spilt blood and by the beauty of his or her gesture reveal to a culture the futility of its persecutions, the suicide bomber only invites a conversation in blood. He proclaims his own victimization and makes a victim of himself at his own hand, which
Martyrdom is a political gesture. It is a witness to citizenship in another kingdom, to service of another Lord. The earliest martyrs instantly recognized – or were forced to recognize – that theirs was a choice between two forms of worship, two forms of citizenship. When the aged Polycarp was commanded to sacrifice to the genius of Caesar and to revile Christ, he replied to his persecutor:
Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?
For Polycarp there was no choice: the two Kings were rivals. Only one was worthy of his allegiance. Polycarp’s “he hath done me no wrong” seems a little subdued, admittedly. But, has Caesar saved him? His reasoning is the simple logic of the servant.
The early martyr narratives emphasis the possibility of escape for each martyr – just as Jesus was at all times in the gospel narratives shown as going to the cross freely, though he could have escaped. The voluntary act of choosing for martyrdom shows that Caesar’s coercive power has not succeeded. The martyr is a revolutionary in that way, for the political power that would exercise itself through killing the body is shown to be no power at all.
But while martyrdom unsettles the secular self, the rhetoric of martyrdom itself is not unproblematic. The Christian church has made martyrs as well. It is a fact of history that those who have martyred readily make martyrs of others, (apparently) unconscious of how self-defeating it is. The celebration of martyrs can appear to link sacrifice and violence inextricably. The glory of martyrdom requires a culture that punishes heterodoxy violently; and it reflects a culture that makes violent death meaningful.
The martyr is first of all a witness, then a performer of a dramatic action, which is in turn witnessed. It is a witness that compels further witness. It “requires an audience, retelling, interpretation, and world– and meaning-making activity. Suffering violence is in and of itself not enough” (Castelli, p. 33). Interestingly, baptism is a kind of proto-martyrdom, with the act of testimony to Christ and renunciation of the world, the flesh and the devil. The plunging into the water symbolises a death and then a rising to new life. In 1 Tim 6:12ff Paul explicitly compares the "good confession" of Jesus under Pilate with the confession of Timothy made at his baptism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)