Explainer
Creed
Freedom of Belief
4 min read

Why should society care about the persecution of Christians?

Believers revere martyrs, but others are also inspired by sacrifice.

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

A stone monument within which set, in the shape of a cross are statues of numerous standing praying figures.
Martyrs monument, Nagasaki, Japan.

The story of Christian martyrdom began with the death of St Stephen. On the 26th December 36 AD, Stephen the Deacon proclaimed the Christian faith before the rabbinic court in Jerusalem. His apology enraged the crowd before him. They dragged him outside of the city gates and stoned him until he perished. Looked at from one angle, all we see is chaos, fear and violence. Viewed from another perspective, however, we see remarkable courage and love for God. Stephen’s love for God so consumed his heart and mind, that he preferred to die violently than turn against Him. He became the first Christian martyr, a term which means ‘witness’ in the original Greek, because he would rather testify to his belief in Christ than live. We also use this term because his death says something about the character of God. Those who follow Christ take on his virtues. Stephen’s death showed how he possessed God’s virtues of courage and love more than the average believer.  

More stories of martyrdom emerged from the first three centuries after the death of Christ. A number of sources have told of the harrowing death of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Each presented it differently. Basil of Caesarea recounted how the Roman emperor enacted a law, making it illegal to confess faith in Christ. As an imperial official was posting up the law in a public place and demanding obedience, forty soldiers stood up and declared, ‘I am a Christian.’ The official promised them riches and high office to deny their belief in Christ. But they did not relent. He threatened violence and they remained steadfast. They said that because of their love for God they would readily accept torture on the wheel, by screws, and being burned alive. In response the official exposed them to the cold, where they stood until they froze to death. In this story, these same two perspectives emerge. One reveals violent death at the hands of a state scared of the consequences of people refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods. The other speaks of people full of love for God, and the courage and integrity to refuse to turn their backs on Him.  

The martyrs show us that the virtues we need so often grow out of suffering and struggle.

Stories about martyrdom punctuated the worshipping life of the Early Church. Each year as the anniversary of a martyr’s death rolled around, crowds would gather at their tombs. Singing hymns, they held a candlelit vigil all night. In the morning the crowds processed into the tomb, where the bishop celebrated the eucharist and gave a speech commemorating their violent deaths. By the fourth century, each region celebrated dozens of different martyr festivals. These were joyful and ecstatic occasions. Early Christians treasured the opportunity to honour the martyr’s memory through commemoration. 

They also invested these stories with great spiritual potential. The martyrs were seen to be guides in the path of holiness. The deaths of St Stephen and the Forty Matyrs of Sebaste revealed how to express one’s love for God: to treasure Him so much in one’s heart, that nothing is worth denying one’s belief and trust in Him. Additionally, early Christian writers began to articulate that these stories also inspire and embolden their audiences to imitate the martyrs. Until the early fourth century, when Christianity became legally tolerated, some Christians faced the choice of denying Christ or death. For these Christians, the stories of the martyrs showed them that the Christian life involved proclaiming their faith and facing death, and crucially it gave them the inner strength to follow it through. After Christianity was made legal, Christians still saw the martyrs as spiritual guides. They revealed how to express courage and love for God in the face of hardship. These stories ignited a fire of zeal to imitate the martyrs in some way.   

They are, I propose, also of great inspiration to those who do not think of themselves as Christians.  The martyrs reveal to us how a love for God generates virtues we prize so greatly in society, namely courage, integrity, and faithfulness. If it were not for love for God, Stephen and the other martyrs would not have chosen to suffer, and they wouldn’t have expressed these precious qualities. In short, they give insight into how Christians understand love for God to be the wellspring for those precious virtues. The martyrs show us that the virtues we need so often grow out of suffering and struggle. In a sense, they reveal the value of suffering for virtue. However, they do not encourage us to suffer for its own sake. Rather, they reveal that the full expression of love for God can so often involve suffering and struggle. When Christians faithfully say yes to this hardship out of love for God, it transforms them into the embodiments of these precious virtues, which perhaps we need more than ever today, in an age where comfort and ease seems the goal of life.

Article
Creed
Romance
Wildness
4 min read

St Valentine and the great mystery of romance

Saints were martyrs for more than love.
A cupid statue fires an arrow of love.
Volodymyr Tokar on Unsplash.

Valentine’s Day is the great Western celebration of ‘romance’. On the day restaurants are filled with couples – new and nervously trying to be constantly adoring in their gaze, or longstanding, staring out of the window, comfortable in the silence which can only truly be inhabited by those who really know each other. On this day garage flowers become a precious commodity. It is undoubtedly kitsch and forced and performative…but most great and important festivals are. 

But who’s day is this?  

Valentine, or Valentinus, was a third century martyr. Some legends claim that his faith was put to the test by a local judge, who brought his blind daughter before Valentine, and demanded he heal her. He did. The judge and his entire household renounced pagan idols and were baptised. This scandalous incident, and further bothersome evangelism, led to the Emperor Claudius commanding that Valentine be executed. Another legend claims him as a Roman priest who defied imperial orders and secretly married Roman soldiers in the Christian rite, allowing the soldiers to escape further conscription. I assume it is this latter legend which led to Valentine being adopted as the patron saint of heart-shaped chocolates – that and the mediaeval folklore that the birds would couple in mid-February. Whatever the case, I’m not interested in the legends of Valentine, entertaining as they are. It doesn’t matter to me if he married couples in secret, or healed the blind, or was an early avian dating app. He is a martyr.  

Martyrdom is not a concept we are much familiar with in this country anymore. Yes, it is still a word in common parlance. We call people a ‘real martyr’ when they punish themselves doing work no is expecting or wanting them to do. We call someone a ‘martyr for the cause’ when they glue themselves to a set of railings, or get arrested vandalising a painting with soup. This isn’t martyrdom. True martyrdom is an act of romantic desire. True martyrdom is an act of love! 

One of the earliest accounts of Christian martyrdom come from St Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch. At some point in the middle of the second century he was condemned to death and was transported to Rome under guard. As he travelled, he wrote letters to different Christian communities, including one to the Church in Rome. The account of martyrdom in this letter is both astoundingly beautiful, and the key to understanding martyrdom. He is writing, in part, to beg the Christians of Rome not to try and save him from his fate, either by violence of bribery.  

He wishes his martyrdom and explains why. He writes that in this suffering he is “…beginning to be a disciple.” He compares his unfortunate situation to ‘birth pains’ now coming upon him and then makes a remarkable claim: he is not about to die, but is about to truly live!  

“Grant this to me brothers: do not keep me from living; do not wish me to die…Allow me to receive the pure light; when I have arrived there, I will be a human.” 

It has been suggested by some who can only see the dreadful, painful, grabby nature of martyrdom – and it is a blessing we live in an age and a land where we do not kill each other on account of our faith – that Ignatius was either a showman or a madman. I disagree. Ignatius does not want to be martyred because he wants to make a name for himself, but because he understands that in martyrdom he is becoming a type of the one true martyr: Jesus Christ. Perhaps he was mad…madly in love with Christ! He desired to be united with Christ, he desired to be as close to Jesus Christ as possible: “I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ…and for drink I desire his blood, which is imperishable love.” He desired Jesus above all other goods, even his own life. 

In our little way, when we embark upon the great mystery of ‘romance’ we are seeking to be martyrs ourselves – martyrs for the one we love. 

Martyrdom, seen in this manner, is a truly ‘romantic’ act – an act of the one who is so desirous of, so truly, madly, deeply in love with Jesus, that they will give everything for Jesus’ sake. Martyrs show us the real pattern of love: the sacrifice, of ourselves for the sake of another. This is the lesson Jesus taught his disciples: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” In the life and death of the martyr we see this real love made manifest, and it is not unrequited but is entirely reciprocated. Jesus desires us and dies for us, and the martyr desires Jesus and dies for him. As Ignatius writes to the Romans: “Desire it, that you may also be desired.” 

This is the lesson that every couple, as they grow in their life and their love together, slowly learn. If we seek romance and love, we seek not to change, or control, or extract pleasure from the other person as an object; we seek to give ourselves to them freely and completely, in the joy of service and sacrifice. In our little way, when we embark upon the great mystery of ‘romance’ we are seeking to be martyrs ourselves – martyrs for the one we love.  

St Valentine was a man of genuine love, for he was a martyr. There is no greater reason to be a patron of passion, of matters of the heart, of romantic love. 

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