Early Christian Martyr Stories

M. Litfin Bryan

Description

Personal narratives are powerful instruments for teaching, both for conveying information and for forming character. The martyrdom accounts preserved in the literature of early Christianity are especially intense and dramatic. However, these narratives are not readily available and are often written in intimidating prose, making them largely inaccessible for the average reader. This introductory text brings together key early Christian martyrdom stories in a single volume, offering new, easy-to-read translations and expert commentary. An introduction and explanatory notes accompany each translation. The book not only provides a vivid window into the world of early Christianity but also offers spiritual encouragement and inspiration for Christian life today.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• History of religions
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441220073
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 2014 by Bryan M. Litfin
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . bakeracademic . com
Ebook edition created 2014
Ebook corrections 06.11.2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2007-3
Unless indicated otherwise, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007
Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
To my beloved son William Thomas Litfin May you always be a bold witness for Jesus Christ
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Introduction 1
1. The Maccabean Martyrs: Witnesses for God before Christ 19
2. Peter and Paul: Apostolic Proto-Martyrs 29
3. Ignatius of Antioch: Final Journey to Christ 45
4. Polycarp of Smyrna: A Gospel Passion 53
5. Justin Martyr: Apologetics at the Ultimate Price 65
6. The Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne: A Crown of Many Flowers 71
7. The Scillitan Martyrs: Africa Takes Its Stand 87
8. Perpetua and Felicity: Heroines of Faith 91
9. Tertullian: “The Blood of Christians Is Seed” 111
10. Origen of Alexandria: A Theology of Martyrdom 125
11. The Great Persecution: The Church’s Hour of Fiery Testing 137
12. The Peace of Constantine: An Empire Conquered by the Cross 151
13. Augustine of Hippo: Honoring the Martyrs’ Memory 167
Epilogue: The Meaning of the Martyrs 173
Index 177
Notes 181
Back Cover 185
Introduction
“God, I want to surrender all my plans to you today. I want to give you the complete, utter control in my life. I want to lift you high above all else.”
If you are a Christian, you have probably prayed or sung words like these. Maybe you often whisper such things to God. What sentiments are being expressed here? Total abandon to the Lord’s will . . . surrender of one’s daily life to the all-wise God . . . earnest desire to testify to his glory. Admirable things, all of them. The person who wrote these words has set forth a worthy goal. But what makes them all the more powerful is that soon afterward, their author took three bullets in the face from a 7mm pistol because she was proclaiming Jesus in a place that didn’t want him.
I remember attending chapel in November 2002 when it was announced that American missionary Bonnie Witherall had been gunned down by a Muslim extremist. I was a new professor at Moody Bible Institute, so I had never had Bonnie in class like some of my colleagues. But soon we all knew her story: how she had moved to Sidon, Lebanon, to minister among the poor; how she worked in a prenatal clinic providing health care to local Muslim women; how she and her husband, Gary, knew international tensions were high, yet could not turn back from the call of God on their lives. A few weeks after the shooting, Gary came to speak at Moody. He didn’t possess the charisma of a televangelist or the rhetoric of an orator, but he didn’t need to. His message of Bonnie’s profound faithfulness to Jesus Christ brought a flood of students to the front of the chapel as they renewed their commitment to God.
Was Bonnie a martyr? She has been called one, and I will not argue with that designation. 1 But my point in mentioning her story at the beginning of a book like this is not to trace an unbroken line from her experience back to the ancient church. You cannot put a toga and sandals on Bonnie, or jeans and a T-shirt on Perpetua (see chap. 8), and consider them essentially the same person. Though both were young wives who relinquished their hopes of ease, security, and the joy of motherhood for the greater glory of God, their unique historical situations defy easy comparison. A very wide river—not just of time, but of spiritual outlook—separates the personal diaries that each woman left behind. Yet for all their differences, I would argue at least one thing bridges the gulf between Bonnie and Perpetua: their total devotion to the Lord Jesus, who died and rose again.
The purpose of the present book, then, must be twofold. On the one hand, it is supposed to be a work of historical scholarship. Early church history is my field of study, and it is both a privilege and a delight to offer a professor’s expertise to my readers. A lot of nonsense is tossed around in the popular media about the ancient church, but here in this book you have direct access to the texts themselves. The present work collects in a single volume the most significant primary texts about ancient Christian martyrdom, newly translated in an easy-to-read style. When certain topics are unclear or could be explained further, study notes are included at the bottom of the page. I hope this enables you to investigate for yourself what the martyrs were all about.
Yet in light of this book’s subject—ancient Christians bearing witness to their Lord—a second important purpose cannot be overlooked. Like most accounts of martyrdoms from the earliest days to the present, my volume intends to inspire Christian readers to greater faithfulness. 2 This is not to say every instance of ancient martyrdom can find a direct parallel in modern experience. Though Bonnie Witherall’s murder or the pastor imprisoned for his faith by a foreign regime may resonate with the past, the church must not be too quick to develop a martyr complex. We can certainly expect to face opposition at times (2 Tim. 3:12), but most Western Christians do not exist in a constant state of deadly persecution. My desire is not that we point to a certain person, place, or circumstance today and say, “Look! Christian persecution! Pity us just like the ancient church!” Rather, I ask the readers of this book to reflect on what it may mean to take up their cross and follow in the Lord’s footsteps. For in the end, it is not death by leaping flames or gnashing fangs that binds the modern Christian to the ancient martyr; it is an unshakeable resolve to follow hard after Jesus Christ at any cost.
The Age of Martyrdom?
As we begin to encounter the phenomenon of early Christian persecution, let us be clear about one thing: the ancient church period was not an “age of martyrdom” in the sense of continuous oppression and mistreatment. That is a myth historians have long rejected, though it has nonetheless crept into popular imagination. When a person today considers the “ancient church,” the image that often springs to mind is a crowd of toga-clad Christians in a coliseum, their faces lifted to heaven as a steely-eyed lion approaches. Another common image would be a band of faithful believers scurrying into underground burial catacombs, while a Roman soldier with a red brush on his helmet searches in vain for his quarry.
We must leave such romantic notions behind. Aside from the historical inaccuracies—that all Romans wore togas, that the authorities didn’t know where the Christians possessed cemeteries, that ceremonial helmet crests were worn on a daily basis—this imagery is problematic because it depicts the ancient period as an unbroken sequence of persecution. The truth of the matter is, open hostility to the faith was both localized and sporadic. Many decades passed when the church was entirely left alone, and at times it even flourished under broad popular support. So when exactly did persecution occur—and why?
Roughly speaking, the phenomenon of ancient Christian persecution may be divided into three phases. During the first phase, persecution was disorganized and welled up according to local whims. In this period it was occasionally sponsored by the Jewish authorities, as can be seen most clearly in the case of Saul. After Stephen’s stoning, “there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. . . . Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” (Acts 8:1, 3). However, the Jews did not possess capital authority and so could not legally execute Christians. The focus of this book is therefore on Roman persecution, which was far more prevalent than anything coming out of Jewish circles.
A noteworthy persecution from this earliest phase, one that set the pattern for future hostilities, occurred in AD 64 under Emperor Nero, who needed a scapegoat for a devastating urban fire in Rome. The historian Tacitus describes what happened:
Nero therefore found culprits on whom he inflicted the most exotic punishments. These were people hated for their shameful offences whom the common people called Christians. The man who gave them their name, Christus, had been executed during the rule of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilatus. The pernicious superstition had been temporarily suppressed, but it was starting to break out again, not just in Judea, the starting point of that curse, but in Rome, as well, where all that is abominable and shameful in the world flows together and gains popularity. And so, at first, those who confessed were apprehended, and subsequently, on the disclosures they made, a huge number were found guilty—more because of their hatred of mankind than because they were arsonists. As they died they were further subjected to insult. Covered with hides of wild beasts, t