To Be Martyrs for Christ
Christianity has always been a religion about salvation, but, if one studies its history, early Christians were concerned about other things than soteriology. Sure, soteriology was important; Christians recognized they were sinners, and they needed grace. But their interest was more in the way they integrated themselves into the work of God than it was about questions of justification. Because of all kinds of abuses at the time, it is understandable why many in the time of the reformation, Catholic and Protestant alike, focused on the question of justification. However, it is quite clear that this has caused Christianity to be excessively focused on salvation, and ignoring the expectation God has for those who are Christian. It even changed the way people look at salvation. Exclusivism makes sense after the debates over justification; early Christians, on the other hand, never looked at the faith in such terms. They understood the Christian faith as being one of grace, and that it helped transform the Christian into the person God wanted them to be, but they didn’t use this to think that everyone else was damned (St Augustine, sadly, helped begin the diversion away from this view, and it is without surprise, he is the source for many of the debates over justification). If we look at the foundations of Christian thought, we can trace a line of thought from St Paul to St Justin Martyr (and others like him), and see how they suggested people were already following the Logos, that they were, in a way, Christian. Rahner’s anonymous Christian makes a lot of sense if one studies the way early Christians looked to non-Christians. They were not threatening non-Christians with hellfire; rather, they were showing how the natural inclinations of the human heart and the intuitions of human reason directly led one to the Christian faith and integration into the Logos.
Nonetheless, there is a problem. Christianity can’t be anonymous. Being a Christian brings real expectations with it. This, of course, also got lost in the arguments over justification. There is more to the Christian life than being justified, being saved. The Christian life is about being a martyr for Christ. Martyrdom can come in many forms. Certainly some will find their lives taken from them by public authorities, and this is what most people think about when they think of martyrdom. But this is not all there is. Indeed, it is only an extraordinary form of martyrdom. We are all called to give up our lives for the sake of Christ. We are called to live for Christ, not for ourselves. We are called to live a life of love. This is not easy and indeed, for most of us, it is a struggle which we have to deal with daily. And it is quite clear, we fail often; when we do so, the response is just to get back up (with grace) and try, try again.
When we focus on upon ourselves, on our own wants and needs, we have failed to be a Christian. This is why a consumerism is destructive to Christianity, because it leads Christians away from martyrdom, directing them to give in to their desires and passions instead of fighting against them for the kingdom of God. Ascetics provide to us one example of how to deal with the passions, but, just as we will not have our lives taken away from us by public authorities, not all of us are expected to take on the extraordinary monastic vocation. Monks and nuns take on one aspect of martyrdom and follow it through; their experiences give them wisdom, and it is that wisdom, once it is realized, properly distinguishes their life and gives it credibility. It’s not meant to be held on for themselves, but to be shared by all. Yet, this should not be seen as indication that their way of life is necessarily holier than those who are not ascetics. Rather, it is different. Those who don’t take on the ascetic mantle have a different kind of martyrdom to follow, and gain a different kind of wisdom, indeed, one which is also to be shared by all. St Anthony of Egypt learned this when he found out about a doctor in Alexandria who was his spiritual equal.
For those of us engaged with the world, and not on ascetic retreat, our martyrdom, our witness for Christ, must always be the witness of love. It must be affirmative. It must be incarnational. It must follow the dictates of the Gospel. It must be pro-life. It must be pro-poor. More importantly, it must also be detached. That is, our action must still be selfless; we must give up the individualized ego seeking to master and control everything, attaching itself to everything around it like a spider-web. Instead, we must learn how to experience selfless giving, and detached living; to experience the joy and beauty of the moment, while being able to let it, and everything contained in it, go, so as to have their own life in Christ instead of trying to make it have a life in us. We give to it, we help it, but we do so without regard to ourselves. We are to be transparent witnesses of Christ’s love, unconcerned whether or not we are noticed for what we do. True humility doesn’t seek rewards for one’s deeds, but it also doesn’t seek to reject them, either; it is unmoved by either reaction. Once we can die to the self so as to attain such humility, then, we have lived our life as Christ would have us. We will find such a selfless witness is a joy—we can recognize this is true, even before we fully attain it, but until we have become true martyrs for Christ, the process of purification which leads to such selflessness will bring pain and suffering, the pain and suffering of detachment. And that’s what purgatory is all about.
Christians should focus on such a change here and now; it’s easier now; the longer we wait, the more attached to the world and to the things of the world, the more we don’t want things to change, the more we don’t want to let go, the worse it will be for us, and the harder our purgatory will be for us. We are all called to be martyrs. Today is a good day to die to the self.
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“For those of us engaged with the world, and not on ascetic retreat, our martyrdom, our witness for Christ, must always be the witness of love.”
“Instead, we must learn how to experience selfless giving, and detached living; to experience the joy and beauty of the moment, while being able to let it, and everything contained in it, go, so as to have their own life in Christ instead of trying to make it have a life in us.”
“Christians should focus on such a change here and now…. Today is a good day to die to the self.”
The badly believing or unbelieving will lacks not the exterior contribution of some alienating will, but its own transvaluation IN LOVE: no longer to will (in order) to affirm itself and thus master a possession, which would be empty if assured, but to will (in order) to abandon itself to distance, traveled over, RECEIVED, and unsurpassable. To believe, the will needs only to will otherwise: to abandon itself to the gift, instead of assuring itself of a possession. To believe, the will needs only to convert. Nothing separates it from faith but love. Before this smallest of abysses, not only does the will remain alone, but it must renounce its solitude, undo itself from its idiotic solitude, strictly, in order to lose itseld in the alterity where, with the other who is found always already there, one enters into distance. Grace, in this play, does not intervene as a surplus, illegitimate and incompehensible, but as a new modality (tropos, says Maximus Confessor) of the same will. Thus grace constitutes the most proper depth of the will–interior intimo meo–as well as its most intimate stranger.
–jean-luc marion, ‘evidence & bedazzlement”
Henry,
I just happened to read the above last night, before retiring to bed. It seemed apropos. It is from Prolegomena to Charity. (New York, Fordham UP, 2002).
Faith is organized according to the best requisites of revelation, through tradition. Hope unfolds in accord with revelation’s of obligatory future. There remains the present — the here and now a revelation, the instance ceaselessly proposed anew, in which we are able to see whether and to what extent we are becoming disciples of Christ. A present that has nothing of the nicely wrapped present about it, because it clears the space of truth in which
…each time, for us alone if not for the public, we experience without any doubt whether or not “we are rooted and grounded in Christ charity (Eph 3:17). Indeed charity plays itself out in the present: in order to know if I love, I need not wait, I only have to love; and I know perfectly well when I love, when I do not love and when I hate.
This, no doubt, is the reason why charity disheartens us, worries us, and taxes us: because when it comes to charity.
—Marion.
Mark
I’ve not read Marion yet, actually. He’s been on the list of “one of those who I will get to someday,” though I know enough to know he is worth looking into. And yes, it’s quite apropos. Of course, for me, I just wanted to redirect discussions around here (as you can tell) with Constantine and soteriology. I think the whole Western approach (since the Reformation) is in part an issue even now. The whole “do you have the only right faith” is apparent even in political debates. It’s sad. But I think opening it back to fact that we are called to be witnesses for Christ (beyond all politics) and in a way which is self-giving instead of self-taking, it would help in many of the debates as well.
Henry,
Another good post. I have been thinking similar things of late. The priority of and desperate need for integral Christian witness.
Henry, I love your call to love which is union with God. The ascetic obviously seeks union with God, but, is the ascetic’s detachment from the world driven by overwhelming intrusions in the world that distract her/him from feeling connected to God?
My search for love began when I became independent at age 18 and led me into transcendental meditation which then led me into Buddhist philosophy and psychology. I did not see nor feel love within Catholicism as I was exposed to it in the ’50′s and ’60′s but I did develop a conscience of right living and right thinking even if it was based on the sense of guilt rather than love.
Buddhism instilled interior openness and honesty with myself and compassion towards others in the process of becoming aware of my identity as a product of the friction created when external demands for conformity differed from the instinctive awareness of self as yet unknown and mysterious but awakened in this conflict. The core awareness of not fitting in yet knowing that I must act as though I fit in was the way of being from birth until this new awareness developed.
This sense of not belonging to this world has always been a part of my awareness. In the beginning it was a sense that there was something wrong with me, but now I know that I have always belonged to God, but, not the God I was told about in my early years.
To be in this world and not a part of it has always been within me and for many years it was a source of fear because I thought I was made wrong.
Since God returned me Home in ’05 I now know that I have only been made for God and no longer do I react to this world with an attachment of aversion and fear and attempted love. I now know that I am to be united to this world through God’s Love and in that process God creates the reality of the environment I operate in if I keep attached to Him.
Ronald,
I think it depends upon the ascetic. I think some forms of asceticism are quite selfish, and seeking a new kind of attachment. Siddhartha would say the same thing — look to the extremes he followed before he went to his Middle Way.
I too find much which is good and useful in Buddhism, and I think (as many do) its ideas work great as a hermeneutic by which one should address the Christian life. It is a technique, a kind of science, at times, and like all sciences, can and should be applied within the Christian spiritual quest — but of course in a way similar to St Thomas Aquinas and how he applied Aristotle to the Christian faith.
One of the interesting things you find with asceticism is that many go on “hermitages” only to eventually “give it up” after the wisdom and be with the people. I think in some ways, your words read like that, which is very Bodhisattva like.
I am in total agreement Henry. What is interesting to me is the Holy Spirit being open to anyone and the evidence that exists in the wisdom that is found in all cultures.
I am not familiar with St. Thomas Aquinas’ path. You have sparked an interest here. Any suggestions?
Ronald,
There are many books, but one which I think (in a scholarly way) shows Aquinas as “comparative theologian” engaging not just Aristotle — but Jewish and Islamic thought, adapting and borrowing, and debating all in one — is:
Knowing The Unknowable God by David B. Burrell
Another book which might be of interest, though not on Aquinas, is:
Scholasticism: Cross-Cultural and Comparative Perspectives by Jose Ignacio Cebazon (Editor), Laurie L. Patton (Foreword by), Jose Ignacio Cabezon (Introduction)
Thanks Henry. A good father’s day present.