Collected Works 29 part 2/3

You see how the divine Wisdom has slaughtered even her own proper Son, the firstborn and only-begotten, who was surely destined to live, nay, to bring back the rest also unto life. I may say with the Wisdom of God: 'Christ it is who gave Himself for our transgressions.' Now Wisdom has butchered even herself. By the word men become wise, not by sound alone, but by sense also; nor are they to be heard only with the ears, but also with the mind. He who does not understand, believes God cruel. And yet, even for him who does not understand, a sentence has been set down which may restrain the rashness of understanding otherwise. 'For who,' He says, 'has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor, to instruct Him? Or who has shown Him the way of understanding?'

But indeed the Diana of the Scythians, or the Mercury of the Gauls, or the Saturn of the Africans, it has been permitted in the world to appease with a human victim; and in Latium to this day human blood is tasted by Jupiter in the midst of the city, nor does anyone retract it, but either presumes some rationale or the inestimable will of his god. If our God too had demanded martyrdoms for Himself under the name of His own proper sacrifice, who would have reproached Him with a deadly religion and mournful rites and an altar for a funeral-pyre and a corpse-dresser for a priest, and would not rather have reckoned him blessed whom God had consumed? VIII.

On one step therefore we take our stand, and on this alone we make challenge: whether martyrdoms are enjoined by God, so that you may believe them enjoined with reason, if you have recognized them enjoined, since God has enjoined nothing without reason. Since indeed honoured in His sight is the death of His religious ones, as David sings—not, I suppose, that common one and debt of all (nay, that one is even ignominious, from the character of transgression and the desert of condemnation)—but that death which is approached in Himself, from the testimony of religion and the battle of confession, for righteousness and for the sacred bond. As Isaiah says: 'Behold how the just man perishes, and no one takes it to heart; and just men are taken away, and no one considers; for from before the face of injustice the just man perishes, and there shall be honour in his burial.'

Here too you have both the proclamation and the remuneration of martyrdoms. For from the beginning righteousness suffers violence. As soon as God began to be worshipped, religion drew envy as its lot. He who had pleased God is slain, and that by a brother. The more readily might impiety persecute another's blood, it began its persecution from its own, and at last persecuted not only the just, but even the prophets. David is harried, Elijah is put to flight, Jeremiah is stoned, Isaiah is sawn asunder, Zechariah is slaughtered between the altar and the temple, assigning to the flints the enduring stains of his own blood. He Himself, the close of the law and the prophets, called not a prophet but an angel, is cut off by a contumelious slaughter, as a fee for a dancing girl.

And assuredly those who were moved by the Spirit of God were by Him directed unto martyrdoms, even by suffering the very things they had foretold. Accordingly the threefold brotherhood too, when the dedication of the royal image pressed the crowd to its duty, were not ignorant of what faith—which alone in them had not been made captive—demanded, namely that one must die against idolatry. For they remembered also Jeremiah writing to those upon whom that captivity was impending: 'And now you shall see the gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, carried upon shoulders, displaying fear to the nations. Beware therefore lest you too become like the aliens and be seized with fear, while you behold the crowds worshipping them behind and before; but say in your heart: It is Thee, O Lord, whom we ought to worship.'

And so, with confidence conceived from God, they spoke—with how great vigour of soul do they shake off those conditional threats of the king: 'We have no need to answer this thy command. For our God, whom we worship, is able to deliver us out of the furnace of fire and out of thy hands; and then it shall be made manifest to thee that we will neither serve thy idol nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.' O martyrdom perfected even without suffering! Enough had they suffered, enough had they been scorched, whom God on that account covered, lest they should seem to have belied His power.

For Daniel too, a suppliant of none but God and on that account denounced and demanded by the Chaldeans, the confined and accustomed ferocity of the lions would forthwith have devoured, if the worthy presumption of Darius concerning God had been destined to be deceived. Otherwise it behoved every preacher and worshipper of God, who being challenged to idolatry had denied obedience, to suffer, according to the condition of that reasoning also whereby the truth had to be commended both to those then present and thereafter to those to come; for which the suffering of those very defenders of it declared their faith, since no one would have willed to be slain in vain, unless possessed of the truth. Such precepts and examples from the beginning show faith to be a debtor of martyrdom. IX.

It remains, lest perchance antiquity had its own peculiar sacrament, to review Christian newness, as though it held both another view concerning God and consequently a rival view concerning discipline as well, whose Wisdom would not know how to slaughter her sons. Plainly, in Christ there are another divinity and will and school—one who has enjoined martyrdoms either to be none at all or to be understood otherwise, who exhorts no one to a hazard of this kind, who promises nothing to those who suffer for Him, because He does not wish them to suffer, and therefore, deducing the first principles of His precepts, says: 'Blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'? This indeed absolutely to all; then properly to the apostles themselves:

'Blessed shall you be when they have dishonoured you and persecuted you and spoken against you every evil for My sake: rejoice and exult, for your reward is very great in heaven: for so did their fathers to the prophets also'—so that He even prophesied that they too should be slain after the example of the prophets. And yet, even if He had destined all this conditional persecution to the apostles alone at that time, assuredly through them, with the whole sacrament, with the propagation of the Name, with the transmission of the Holy Spirit into us also, the discipline of undergoing persecution too regarded us as well, as hereditary disciples and shoots of the apostolic seed. For even if again He directs His words to the apostles: 'Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves,' and:

'Beware of men; for they will deliver you up into assemblies, and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and you will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations,' and the rest; but then He adds: 'And the brother shall deliver up the brother, and the father the son, unto death, and the children shall rise up against their parents and shall put them to death'—He manifestly pronounced that iniquity against the rest, which we do not find in the apostles. For none of them suffered a brother or a father as a betrayer, which most of ours now suffer. Then He recalls it to the apostles again: 'And you shall be hated by all men for My name's sake.' How much more we, whom it behoves to be delivered up even by our parents?

Thus by this very intermingling—now to the apostles, now to all—in His arranging, He pours out one and the same issue of the Name upon all, in whom the Name has settled together with the law of its own hatred. 'But he who shall have endured unto the end, this one shall be saved.' By enduring what, if not persecution, if not betrayal, if not slaughter? For to endure unto the end is nothing else than to suffer the end. And therefore:

'The disciple is not above his master,' it immediately follows, 'nor the servant above his lord'; for since the Master and Lord Himself endured persecution and betrayal and death, much more must the servants and disciples pay out the same coin, lest, as though their superiors, they should seem exempted from injustice, when this very thing ought to suffice them for glory: to be made equal to the sufferings of their Lord and Master. And building them up unto the endurance of these things, He warns that those are not to be feared who kill only the body but have no power to slay the soul; rather is fear to be consecrated to Him who can kill and destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. And who are these slayers of the body alone, if not the governors and kings aforesaid, men, I suppose?

And who is the Lord of the soul, if not God alone? Who is this One that threatens with fires, if not He without whose will not even one of two sparrows falls to the ground—that is, not even one of the two substances of man, the flesh or the soul? For with Him even the number of the hairs has been registered. 'Fear not therefore,' as He further says, 'you are of more value than many sparrows'; and it is not in vain—that is, not without recompense—that He promises they shall fall to the ground, if we choose rather to be killed by men than by God. 'Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven. And everyone who shall deny Me before men, I also will deny him before My Father who is in heaven.'

The definition and rationale, as I judge, are plain, both of confession and of denial, even though the disposition of them differs. He who confesses himself a Christian testifies that he belongs to Christ; he who belongs to Christ must necessarily be in Christ. If he is in Christ, then assuredly he confesses in Christ when he confesses himself a Christian—for this cannot be, unless he be in Christ. Furthermore, confessing in Christ he also confesses Christ, who is in himself, while he too is in Him, as being a Christian. For if you have named the day, you have pointed to the reality of light, which furnishes the day, even though you have not named light. So, even though He did not directly declare 'whoever shall confess Me,' the act of daily confession is not different from the sense of the Lord's pronouncement.

For that which the man is who confesses himself—namely a Christian—he confesses also that through which he is what he is, namely Christ. Accordingly, he who has denied himself to be a Christian has denied in Christ, by denying that he is in Christ while he denies that he is a Christian; and by denying Christ in himself, while he denies himself to be in Christ, he will deny Christ also. So both he who has denied in Christ will deny Christ, and he who has confessed in Christ will confess Christ. It would therefore have sufficed, even if the Lord had pronounced only concerning confessing. For from the pattern of confession its contrary too—namely denial—would have been settled beforehand, that denial should be repaid with denial by the Lord in the same way as confession with confession.

And therefore, since even the condition of denial is understood within the pattern of confession, it is clear that the fact that the Lord pronounced otherwise concerning denial pertains to no other mode of denial than the one He treats when speaking of confession—saying 'whoever shall deny Me,' not 'whoever shall deny in Me.' For He had foreseen that this force too would very often follow in the assault upon the Name: that whoever had denied himself a Christian would be compelled also to deny Christ Himself by blaspheming Him. Just as not long ago, in a certain contest waged over the whole faith of some, we shuddered at this very thing. And so it will be in vain to say: 'Even if I have denied myself a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied Him Himself.' For by that very denial he will be held equally guilty, because by denying himself a Christian, denying Christ in himself, he has denied Him also.

But there is something more, in that He threatens shame with shame: 'Whoever shall be ashamed of Me before men, I also will be ashamed of him before My Father who is in heaven.' For He knew that denial is very largely shaped by shame—that the state of the mind takes its stand in the countenance, and that the blow of modesty comes before the blow to the body. X. But those who think that confession is appointed not here—that is, not within this compass of the earth, nor throughout this passage of life, nor among men of this common nature—how great is their presumption against the whole order of things that are to be undergone on this earth, and in this life, and under human powers?

Doubtless, when souls have departed from their bodies and have begun to be inspected, story by story of the heavens, concerning their reception, and those secret sacraments of the heretics begin to be interrogated—then confession must be made before the true powers and the true men, namely the Teleti and the Acineti and the Abascanti of Valentinus. 'For not even the Demiurge himself,' they say, 'consistently approved our fellow-men as men, seeing that he reckoned them as a drop from a bucket and as dust of the threshing-floor and as spittle and as locusts, and even equated them with irrational beasts of burden.' Plainly, so it is written. Yet not on that account is another race of man to be understood besides ourselves, whom, since they certainly exist, He was able to invest with such a comparison, while the property and singularity of the race are preserved.

For even if life has been corrupted, so that, being judged fit for contempt, it is compared with things contemptible, the nature is not thereby at once abolished, so that another should be reckoned under its name. On the contrary, the nature is preserved, even though life is besmeared; nor does Christ know any other men than those of whom He says: 'Who do men say that I am?' and: 'As you would that men should do to you, so do you also to them.' See whether He has preserved the race from which He both expects testimony to Himself and to which He entrusts the office of justice. But if I should demand that those heavenly men be shown to me, more easily will Aratus sketch among the stars Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne.

But who forbade the Lord to determine plainly that the confession of men was to be made there also, where He openly declared that His own would be—so that it should have been put thus: 'Whoever shall confess Me before men in heaven, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven'? He ought to have rescued me from that error of an earthly confession, which He would not have wished to be undertaken, if He had enjoined a heavenly one—since I had known no other men but the inhabitants of earth, seeing that not even man Himself had as yet then been beheld in heaven. And moreover, what credibility of realities would there be, that after my departure, being lifted up to the regions above, I should there be tested, whither I could be placed only when already tested; that I should there be examined concerning my reception, whither I could not arrive unless already fit to be admitted?

For the Christian heaven lies open before the way; because there is no way into heaven except for him to whom heaven lies open; and whoever has reached it will enter in. What porter-powers do you affirm to me, after the Roman superstition—a certain Barnus and Forculus and Limentinus? What powers do you post from the gates? If ever you have read in David: 'Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, O everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter in'; if likewise you have heard in Amos:

'He who builds His ascent into the heavens, and pours out His outpouring upon the earth'—then know that that ascent has been thenceforth leveled by the footsteps of the Lord, and the entrance thenceforth unbarred by the might of Christ; and that no delay or inquiry will meet Christians at the threshold, since they are not to be scrutinized there, but recognized; nor to be interrogated, but admitted. For even if you still think heaven closed, remember that its keys the Lord left here to Peter, and through him to the Church, which each one, being here interrogated and having confessed, will bear away with himself. But the devil asserts that confession must be made there, in order to persuade that here it must be denied. Fine credentials indeed shall I send ahead, good keys shall I carry with me—the fear of those who kill only the body but do nothing to the soul:

I shall be commended by deserting this precept; honorably shall I stand in the heavenly places, I who could not stand in the earthly; I shall withstand the greater powers, I who yielded to the lesser; I shall assuredly deserve to be admitted, I who was excluded. There still remains this to say: if confession is to be made in the heavenly places, then here also there is denial. For where the one is, there is the other; for all rival things run together. Persecution too, then, will have to be carried on in the heavens, which is the material of confession or denial. Why then, most audacious heretic, do you delay to transfer the whole order of the Christian's shaking-ordeal into the regions above, and above all to lodge there the very hatred of the Name, in the very place where Christ presides at the Father's right hand?

There you will establish also the synagogues of the Jews, the fountains of persecutions, before which the apostles suffered scourgings; and the peoples of the nations with their own circus, where they readily shout in chorus: 'How long the third race?' But you must exhibit in that same place also our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and members of our household, by whom betrayal has been arranged; likewise kings and governors and armed powers, before whom the cause must be fought out. There will certainly be also a prison in heaven, lacking the sun, or unwelcomely bright; and chains perhaps made of the zones, and for a rack the very axis that turns.

Then, if a Christian is to be stoned, hailstorms will be at hand; if to be burned, lightnings are ready to hand; if to be slaughtered, the hand of armed Orion will do the work; if to be finished off by beasts, the North will send forth the she-bears, the Zodiac its bulls and lions. 'He who shall endure these things unto the end, the same shall be saved.' Is then the end also in the heavens, and the suffering and the killing and the first confession? And where is the flesh that is necessary for all these things? Where the body, which alone can be killed by men? This assured reasoning has committed these things to us even in a sportive manner; nor will anyone thrust away the bar of this objection, so as not to be compelled to transfer the whole order of persecution, its whole cause, form, and equipment, to that place where he has granted confession its forum.

Indeed, confession is derived from persecution, and persecution is ended in confession; nor can those things fail to follow together which arrange both the entrance and the exit—that is, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, both the hatred of the Name is here, and persecution breaks out here, and betrayal produces here, and interrogation compels here, and the executioner's cruelty rages here; and this whole order confession or denial cancels out on earth. Therefore, if the rest is here, confession is not elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, the rest is not here. But in fact the rest is not elsewhere, and therefore neither is confession in heaven.

Or if they wish there to be another rationale of a heavenly interrogation and confession, then assuredly they will also have to construct for it another order, far different and diverse from this arrangement which is noted in the Scriptures. And we can say: let them see to it, so long as this order of earthly interrogation and confession—running out from the material of persecution and public discord—is altogether kept safe; that just as it is written, so it must be believed, and just as it is heard, so it must be understood. Here we sustain the whole order, since the Lord Himself appoints no other region of the world. For what does He subjoin after the term of confession and denial? 'Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the earth, but a sword'—assuredly upon the earth.

'For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law; and a man's foes shall be those of his own household.' For thus it comes about that brother delivers up brother to death, and father his son, and the children rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. 'And he who shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.' So thoroughly does this whole order of the Lord's sword—sent not into heaven, but onto the earth—establish there also that confession which, by enduring unto the end, is destined to suffer death. XI. By the same pattern, therefore, we maintain that the rest too pertains to the state of martyrdom.

'He who,' He says, 'shall value even his own soul more than Me, is not worthy of Me'—that is, he who has preferred to live by denying Me rather than to die by confessing Me; and, 'he who shall find his soul, shall lose it; but he who shall have lost it for My sake, shall find it.' For in like manner he finds it who denies, by making a profit of his life, so that he shall lose it in Gehenna who thinks to make a profit of it by denying. But he shall lose it for the present who, having confessed, is killed—yet he is also destined to find it unto life eternal. In short, the governors themselves, when they exhort to denial, say: 'Save your soul!' and: 'Do not lose your soul!' How would Christ speak, if not in the very way in which a Christian is dealt with?

But when He forbids premeditating a reply before the tribunal, He is instructing His own servants; He promises that the Holy Spirit will answer; and when He wills that a brother be visited in prison, He enjoins care for the confessor; and when He affirms that God will execute vengeance for His elect, He consoles their sufferings; even in the parable of the seed withered after springing up, He figures the burning heat of persecutions. If these things are not received in the manner in which they are pronounced, they doubtless have a meaning other than they sound, and there will be one thing in the words, another in their senses—as in allegories, as in parables, as in riddles.

Whatever wind of argumentation, therefore, these scorpions may have conceived, upon whatever sharp point they may have dashed themselves, there is now but one line to draw: they will be summoned to the realities themselves, whether they be settled according to the Scriptures. For then something else will be signified in the Scriptures, if that very thing be not found in the realities. For what is written, this must needs come to pass. And then, moreover, what is written will come to pass, if it come to pass in no other way. But behold, we are indeed held in hatred by all men for the Name's sake, just as it is written; and we are betrayed even by our nearest kin, just as it is written; and we are brought before the powers, and interrogated, and tortured, and confess, and are slaughtered, just as it is written. So the Lord decreed.

If He decreed these things otherwise, why do the things He decreed not come to pass otherwise—that is, in the manner in which He decreed them? But in fact they do not come to pass otherwise than He decreed; therefore just as they come to pass, so He decreed, and just as He decreed, so they come to pass. For neither would it have been permitted for them to come to pass otherwise than He decreed, nor would He Himself have decreed otherwise than He willed them to come to pass. So these Scriptures will signify nothing other than what we recognize in the realities—or else, if those things which are foretold are not yet enacted, how are these which are enacted not foretold? For these things which are enacted are not foretold, if those which are foretold are other things and not these which are enacted. But now, since the very things are in the realities which in the words are believed to be spoken otherwise, what would happen, if they were found to be done otherwise?

But this would be a perversity of faith: not to believe what is proven, and to presume upon what is not proven. To which perversity I shall oppose this also: that if these things, which are enacted just as they are written, are not the very things which are foretold, then other things too ought not to be enacted just as they are written, lest they too, by the example of these, be in danger of being excluded—seeing that there is one thing in the words and another in the realities; and it remains that they cannot even be regarded as foretold when they come to pass, if they are foretold otherwise than they are destined to come about. And how shall those things be believed which will not have been foretold, because they are not foretold in the manner in which they come to pass? Thus the heretics, by not believing the things that are foretold as though they were proven, believe those things which are not even foretold. XII.

Who now would know the marrow of the Scriptures better than the very school of Christ? Those whom the Lord both adopted to Himself as disciples, to be taught all things without doubt, and ordained for us as masters, to teach all things without doubt. To whom rather would He have declared the figure of His speech than to those to whom He revealed the image of His glory—to Peter, John, James, and afterwards to Paul, whom He also made a partaker of paradise before his martyrdom? Or do these too write otherwise than they mean—masters of deception, not of truth? Peter indeed, to the people of Pontus: 'For what glory is it,' he says, 'if, not as offenders, you endure that you should be punished?'

'For this is grace: for to this also you have been called, since Christ also suffered for us, leaving you Himself as an example, that you might follow His footsteps.' And again: 'Beloved, do not be terrified at the burning which takes place among you for your testing, as though something strange were befalling you. For inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that you may also rejoice, exulting, at the revelation of His glory. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you—provided that none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a spy into another's affairs; but if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify the Lord in that name.'

But John, exhorting us to lay down our lives even for our brothers, denies that there is fear in love. 'For perfect love casts out fear, since fear has punishment; and he who fears is not made perfect in love.' What fear does he give us to understand, if not the author of denial? What love does he affirm to be perfect, if not the one that puts fear to flight and animates confession? By what punishment does he punish fear, if not by that which the denier is destined to reap, being killed with body and soul in Gehenna? But if we must die for our brothers, how much more, he teaches, must we die for the Lord—being sufficiently instructed to urge these things from his own Apocalypse as well? For the Spirit had commanded the angel of the church of the Smyrnaeans:

'Behold, the devil will cast some of your number into prison, that you may be tested for ten days. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.' Likewise to the church of Pergamum, concerning Antipas, the most faithful martyr, slain in the dwelling-place of Satan. Likewise to the church of Philadelphia, that it would be delivered from the final trial, because it had not denied the name of the Lord.

Thereafter to each of the victors He promises: now the tree of life and pardon from the second death; now hidden manna with a white pebble and an unknown name; now the power of the iron rod and the brightness of the morning star; now to be clothed in white and not to be blotted out of the book of life, and to be made a pillar in the temple of God, inscribed with the name of God and of the Lord and of the heavenly Jerusalem; now to sit with the Lord upon His throne—which was once denied to the sons of Zebedee. Who then are these so blessed victors, if not properly the martyrs? For theirs are the victories whose also are the battles; and theirs the battles whose also is the blood.

But meanwhile, too, beneath the altar the souls of the martyrs rest peacefully, and feed their patience with the confidence of vengeance, and, clothed in robes, lay claim to the whiteness of glory, until others also complete the fellowship of their glory. For again there is revealed an innumerable multitude, clad in white and distinguished with the palms of victory—triumphing, that is, over Antichrist; as one of the elders says: 'These are they who come out of that great tribulation, and have washed their garment and made it white in the blood of the Lamb.' For the flesh is the clothing of the soul. The filth indeed is washed away by baptism, but the stains are whitened by martyrdom. For Isaiah too promises the snow-white and the wool-white in place of the scarlet and the crimson.