Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 8–13

We press on, then, on one step, and challenge on this point alone: whether martyrdoms have been commanded by God, so that you may believe them commanded with reason, once you know they have been commanded, since God has commanded nothing without reason. For the death of his devout ones is honoured in his sight, as David sings: not, I think, this common death, which is everyone's debt (and this death is even ignominious, from the record of transgression and the deserving of condemnation), but the death that is undergone in him, in witness to religion and in the battle of confession for righteousness and the sacrament. As Isaiah says: “See how the righteous man perishes, and no one takes it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no one notices; for the righteous man perishes before the face of unrighteousness, and his burial will be in honour.” Here too you have both the foretelling and the rewarding of martyrdoms. For from the beginning righteousness suffers violence. As soon as God began to be worshipped, religion was allotted envy. He who had pleased God is killed, and by his brother at that. So that ungodliness might more readily pursue another's blood, it began with its own; and it pursued, in short, the blood not only of the righteous but of the prophets too. David is hounded, Elijah put to flight, Jeremiah stoned, Isaiah sawn asunder, Zechariah slaughtered between the altar and the temple, leaving on the stones the lasting stains of his blood. He who was the very close of the law and the prophets, called not a prophet but an angel, is beheaded in a shameful murder as the fee for a dancing girl. And surely those who were led by the Spirit of God were directed by him into martyrdoms, suffering even what they had foretold.

So also the three brothers, when the dedication of the king's image was pressing the crowd to its duty, did not fail to know what faith, which alone in them had not been taken captive, required: namely, to die rather than commit idolatry. For they remembered Jeremiah too, writing to those on whom that captivity was impending: “And now you will see gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, carried on shoulders, displaying fear to the nations. Beware, then, that you too do not become like the foreigners and be seized with fear when you see the crowds worshipping behind them and before them, but say in your heart: ‘You, O Lord, we must worship.’” So, with a confidence conceived from God, they said (and with what vigour of mind they shook off those conditional threats of the king!): “We have no need to answer this command of yours. For our God, whom we worship, is able to rescue us from the furnace of fire and from your hands; and then it will be made plain to you that we will neither serve your idol nor worship your golden image which you have set up.” O martyrdom made perfect even without suffering! They suffered enough, they were burned enough, whom God protected for this reason, that they might not seem to have lied about his power. For Daniel too, a suppliant of no one but God and for that reason denounced and demanded by the Chaldeans, the ferocity of the lions, shut up and accustomed to its work, would surely have devoured at once, if Darius's worthy presumption about God had been meant to be disappointed. For the rest, every preacher and worshipper of God who, challenged to idolatry, refused compliance had to suffer, in accordance also with that principle by which the truth had to be commended both to those then present and to posterity thereafter: the suffering of its very defenders would vouch for its credibility, since no one would have been willing to be killed in vain unless he possessed the truth. Such precepts and examples from the beginning show that faith owes martyrdom.

It remains, in case antiquity perhaps had its own sacrament, to review the Christian novelty, as though it came from a different God and so also from a rival discipline, whose Wisdom does not know how to slaughter her children. Plainly, Christ has a different divinity and will and school: he has commanded either no martyrdoms at all or martyrdoms to be understood otherwise; he urges no one into danger of this kind; he promises nothing to those who have suffered for him, because he does not want them to suffer; and so, setting out the first principles of his precepts, he says, “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”! This indeed is said absolutely to all. Then specifically to the apostles themselves: “Blessed will you be when they dishonour you and persecute you and say every evil against you for my sake. Rejoice and exult, for your reward is very great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets also”: so that he even prophesied that they too would be killed after the example of the prophets. And yet, even if he had destined all this conditional persecution for the apostles alone at that time, surely through them, together with the whole sacrament, with the propagation of the Name, with the transmission of the Holy Spirit, the discipline of undergoing persecution too would have looked to us as well, as to hereditary disciples and shoots of the apostolic seed. For although he again addresses the apostles, “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves,” and, “Beware of men, for they will hand you over to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations,” and so on, when he then adds, “Brother will hand over brother to death, and father son, and children will rise up against parents and put them to death,” he clearly declared this wickedness for others, since we do not find it among the apostles. For none of them suffered a brother or a father as betrayer, as many of ours have now. Then he returns to the apostles: “And you will be hated by all for my name's sake.” How much more we, who must be handed over by parents too? So by this very mingling, directing it now to the apostles, now to all, he pours out the same fate of the Name on all in whom the Name has settled with its law of hatred. “But he who endures to the end will be saved.” By enduring what, if not persecution, betrayal, killing? For to endure to the end is nothing other than to suffer the end. And so there follows at once, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord”: because, since the teacher and lord himself endured persecution, betrayal, and killing, much more will servants and disciples have to pay the same, lest they seem as superiors to be exempt from wickedness, when this very thing ought to suffice them for glory, to be made equal to the sufferings of their lord and teacher. To build them up for the endurance of these he warns them not to fear those who kill only the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather to devote their fear to him who can both kill and destroy body and soul in Gehenna. Who are these slayers of the body alone, if not the governors and kings mentioned above, men, I suppose? Who is master of the soul too, if not God alone? Who is this threatener of 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, flesh or soul? For even the number of the hairs is recorded with him. “Do not fear, therefore”: when he adds, “You are worth more than many sparrows,” he promises that they will not fall to the ground in vain, that is, not without reward, if we choose to be killed by men rather than by God.

“Everyone, therefore, who confesses in me before men, I too will confess in him before my Father who is in heaven. And everyone who denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” Clear, I think, is the definition and the rationale both of confession and of denial, although the wording differs. He who confesses himself a Christian testifies that he is Christ's; he who is Christ's must be in Christ. If he is in Christ, he surely confesses in Christ when he confesses himself a Christian; for he cannot be this unless he is in Christ. Further, by confessing in Christ he also confesses Christ, in whom he is, since Christ too is in him, as he is a Christian. For if you have said “day”, you have pointed to the thing, light, which gives the day, even if you have not said “light”. So, even if the Lord did not directly declare, “He who confesses me,” the act of daily confession does not differ from the sense of the Lord's declaration. For in confessing what he is, that is, a Christian, he also confesses that through which he is, that is, Christ. Accordingly, he who has denied that he is a Christian has denied in Christ, by denying that he is in Christ when he denies that he is a Christian; and by denying Christ in himself, while he denies himself in Christ, he will deny Christ too. So he who has denied in Christ will deny Christ, and he who has confessed in Christ will confess Christ. It would have been enough, then, even if the Lord had declared only about confessing. For from the form of confession its contrary too, denial, would have been prejudged: that denial is repaid by the Lord with denial, just as confession with confession. And so, since in the form of confession the condition of denial is also understood, it is clear that it does not concern some other kind of denial that the Lord spoke of it differently than of confession, saying, “whoever denies me,” not “in me”. For he had foreseen that this violence too would usually follow in the assault on the Name: that whoever had denied that he was a Christian would be compelled to deny Christ himself as well by blaspheming; as not long ago … we shuddered at the struggle of certain people, with their whole faith at stake, in this very way. So it will be useless to say, “Even if I deny that I am a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied him.” For by that denial he will be held just as liable, because by denying that he is a Christian, denying Christ in himself, he has also denied Christ. There is more: he threatens shame with shame as well: “Whoever is ashamed of me before men, I too will be ashamed of him before my Father who is in heaven.” For he knew that denial is shaped above all by shame, that the state of the mind shows in the forehead, that the wound of shame comes before the wound of the body.

But those who think that confession has been appointed not here, that is, not within this circuit of the earth, nor during this passage of life, nor before men of this common nature, what presumption is theirs, against the whole order of things that are to be experienced on this earth and in this life and under human authorities! No doubt, when souls have left their bodies and begun to be examined at each storey of the heavens about their reception, and to be questioned on those secret sacraments of the heretics, then confession must be made before the true powers and the true men: the Teleti, of course, and the Acineti and the Abascanti of Valentinus! “For even the Demiurge himself,” they say, “did not consistently approve our men, whom he reckoned as a drop from a bucket and the dust of the threshing floor and spittle and locusts, and even likened to irrational beasts.” Plainly, it is so written. Yet that does not mean we must understand another kind of man besides ourselves, whom, since it is certain that we exist, he could clothe with a comparison while keeping both the property and the uniqueness of the race. For if life has been corrupted, so that, judged contemptible, it was compared to contemptible things, nature has not at once been taken away, so that another should be reckoned under its name. Nature is preserved, even if life is overspread with shame; and Christ knew no other men than those of whom he says, “Who do men say that I am?” and, “As you wish men to do to you, so you also do to them.” See whether he has kept to the race from whom he expects testimony to himself and to whom he commands the reciprocity of justice. But if I demand to be shown those heavenly men, Aratus will sooner sketch Perseus and Cepheus and Erigone and Ariadne among the stars. And who prevented the Lord from plainly determining that men's confession too was to be made there, where he openly declared his own would be, so that it would have read: “Whoever confesses in me before men in heaven, I too will confess in him before my Father who is in heaven”? He ought to have rescued me from this error of earthly confession, which he would not have wanted undertaken if he had commanded a heavenly one; for I knew no other men than the inhabitants of the earth, since not even man himself had yet been seen in heaven at that time.

Further, what credibility is there in the idea that after my departure, lifted up to the heights, I should be tested there, where I would not be placed unless already tested; that I should be examined there about my reception, where I could not arrive unless I was to be admitted? For a Christian, heaven lies open before the way does, since there is no way into heaven except for one to whom heaven lies open; and whoever reaches it will enter. What doorkeeping powers do you assert to me, after the Roman superstition, some … Barnus, Forculus, and Limentinus? What powers do you station at the barriers? If you have ever read in David, “Lift up your gates, you princes, and let the eternal gates be lifted up, and the King of glory shall come in”; if you have likewise heard in Amos, “He who builds his ascent into the heavens and founds his outpouring upon the earth”: know that that ascent was thereafter levelled by the Lord's footsteps, and the entrance thereafter unbarred by the power of Christ, and that no delay or questioning will meet Christians at the threshold, since there they are not to be distinguished but recognized, not questioned but admitted. For even if you think heaven is still closed, remember that the Lord left its keys here to Peter and through him to the church, keys which everyone who has been questioned here and has confessed will carry with him. But the devil asserts that confession must be made there, so as to persuade us that denial must be made here. Fine credentials, obviously, I shall send ahead; good keys I shall carry with me: the fear of those who kill only the body but do nothing to the soul! I shall be commended for deserting this precept; I shall stand honourably in heaven, I who could not stand on earth; I shall withstand greater powers, I who gave way to lesser ones; I shall deserve, no doubt, to be admitted, when I am already shut out!

It remains to say further: if confession is to be made in heaven, denial is too. For where one is, both are; rivals always meet. Persecution too will have to be carried on in heaven, since it is the material for confession or denial. Why then do you hold back, most audacious heretic, from transferring the whole order of the Christian ordeal to the heights, and above all from placing there the very hatred of the Name, where Christ presides at the Father's right hand? There you will also set up the synagogues of the Jews, fountains of persecution, in which the apostles endured scourgings, and the peoples of the nations with their circus, of course, where they readily shout, “How long the third race?” But you must also produce there our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and the members of our household, through whom betrayal has been arranged; likewise kings and governors and armed authorities, before whom the case is to be fought out. There will certainly also be a prison in heaven, without sun or lit against its will, and chains perhaps made from the zones, and for a rack the very axis that turns. Then, if a Christian is to be stoned, hailstones will be at hand; if burned, thunderbolts are ready; if slaughtered, the hand of armed Orion will do the work; if finished off by beasts, the north will send out the Bears, and the zodiac bulls and lions. “He who endures these to the end, he will be saved.” Is the end, then, also in heaven, and the suffering, and the killing, and the first confession? And where is the flesh, necessary for all these? Where is the body, which alone can be killed by men? Sound reason has made us say these things, even in a playful manner; and no one will push aside the barrier of this argument so as not to be compelled to transfer the whole order of persecution, its whole cause, form, and apparatus, to the place where he has given confession its court. For confession is derived from persecution, and persecution ends in confession; and things that arrange the entrance and the exit, that is, the beginning and the end, cannot but go together. Further, the hatred of the Name will be here, and persecution breaks out here, and betrayal brings forward here, and interrogation compels here, and the executioner rages here; and confession or denial completes this whole order on earth. Therefore, if the rest is here, confession is not elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, the rest is not here. But the rest is not elsewhere; so neither is confession in heaven. Or if they want there to be a different rationale for a heavenly interrogation and confession, they will certainly have to construct for it an order of its own, far different from this arrangement which is recorded in the Scriptures. And we can say: let them see to it, so long as this order of earthly interrogation and confession, which runs its course from the material of persecution and public discord, is kept wholly intact, as a matter of faith, so that it is to be believed as it is written and understood as it is heard. Here we endure the whole order, since the Lord himself appoints no other region of the world. For what does he add after the declaration on confession and denial? “Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth, but a sword”: on earth, certainly. “For I have come 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 enemies will be the members of his household.” For so it comes about that brother hands over brother to death, and father son, and children rise up against parents and cause them to die. “And he who endures to the end, he will be saved.” So this whole order of the Lord's sword, sent not into heaven but onto the earth, appoints confession too to be there, which, by enduring to the end, is to suffer death.

In the same way, then, we maintain that the other sayings too concern the state of martyrdom. “He who values even his own life more than me,” he says, “is not worthy of me”, that is, he who would rather live by denying me than die by confessing me; and, “He who finds his life will lose it, but he who loses it for my sake will find it.” For he who denies finds it, by gaining life, only in such a way that he who thinks he gains it by denying will lose it in Gehenna. But he who confesses and is killed loses it for the present, but he will also find it in eternal life. Indeed the governors themselves, when they urge denial, say, “Save your life!” and, “Do not lose your life!” How would Christ speak, if not in the way the Christian would be treated? And when he forbids them to prepare their answer before the tribunal, he is instructing his servants and promising that the Holy Spirit will answer; and when he wants a brother in prison to be visited, he commands care for the confessor; and when he affirms that God will avenge his elect, he consoles their sufferings; and in the parable of the seed that withered after it sprouted he pictures the heat of persecutions. If these sayings are not to be taken as they are spoken, then without doubt they mean something besides what they sound, and there will be one thing in the words and another in the sense, as in allegories, parables, and riddles.

Whatever wind of argument, then, these scorpions catch, with whatever sharpness they drive themselves on, there is now only one line: they will be challenged to the facts themselves, whether they are being carried out according to the Scriptures. For something else will be signified in the Scriptures only if that very thing is not found in the facts. For what is written must come to pass. Further, what is written will have come to pass if it does not come to pass otherwise. But see: we are hated by all men for the Name's sake, just as it is written; and we are handed over even by those nearest to us, just as it is written; and we are brought before the authorities, and questioned, 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 about otherwise, that is, as he decreed? But they come about just as he decreed; therefore as they come about, so he decreed, and as he decreed, so they come about. For neither would they have been allowed to come about otherwise than he decreed, nor would he have decreed otherwise than he willed them to come about. So these Scriptures will not signify anything other than what we recognize in the facts. Or, if the things foretold are not yet happening, how is it that the things that are happening were not foretold? For these things that are happening were not foretold, if the things foretold are other and not these that are happening. But now, since the very things are found in the facts which are believed to have been meant otherwise in the words, what would happen if they were found to have been done otherwise? But this will be a perversity of faith: not to believe what is proved, and to presume what is not proved. Against this perversity I will also set this: if these things, which are carried out just as they are written, are not the very things foretold, then other things too ought not to be carried out as they are written, lest they too, following the example of these, be in danger of exclusion, if there is one thing in the words and another in the facts; and it follows that they would not seem foretold even when they have come about, if they are foretold otherwise than as they are to come about. And how will things be believed which will not have been foretold, because they were not foretold as they come about? So the heretics, by refusing to believe that the things foretold are as they have been proved to be, believe things that were never foretold.

Who, now, would know the marrow of the Scriptures better than the very school of Christ, those whom the Lord both adopted as his disciples, to be taught all things, and appointed as our teachers, to teach all things? To whom would he rather have explained the figure of his words than to those to whom he revealed the likeness of his glory, Peter, John, and James, and afterwards Paul, whom he also made a sharer in paradise before his martyrdom? Or do they too write otherwise than they think, teachers of deceit, not of truth? Peter, indeed, writing to those in Pontus: “For how great is the glory,” he says, “if you endure, not being punished as wrongdoers? For this is grace; to this you were called, since Christ too suffered for us, leaving you himself as an example, so that you may follow in his steps.” And again: “Beloved, do not be terrified at the burning which is taking place among you to test you, as though something new were happening to you. For inasmuch as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, so that at the revelation of his glory you may also rejoice and exult. If you are dishonoured in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because glory and the Spirit of God rest upon you; only let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer, or a spy on others' affairs; but if as a Christian, let him not blush, but glorify the Lord in that name.” John, indeed, exhorts us to lay down our lives even for our brothers, and says that there is no fear in love: “For perfect love casts out fear, since fear has punishment, and he who fears is not perfect in love.” What fear would it be best to understand here, if not the one that brings about denial? What love does he declare to be perfect, if not the one that puts fear to flight and gives courage to confession? With what punishment would he punish fear, if not that which the denier will bear, to be killed body and soul in Gehenna? And if he teaches that we must die for our brothers, how much more for the Lord, he who was well enough instructed by his Apocalypse too to urge these things? 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 angel of the Pergamenes, concerning Antipas, the most faithful martyr, killed where Satan dwells. Likewise to the angel of the Philadelphians, that he who had not denied the Lord's name would be delivered from the final trial. Then to each of the victors he promises now the tree of life and exemption from the second death; now the hidden manna with a white stone and an unknown name; now authority with a rod of iron 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 become 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 on his throne, which was once refused to the sons of Zebedee. Who are these victors, so blessed, if not, properly speaking, the martyrs? For theirs are the victories whose are the fights, and theirs are the fights whose is the blood.

Meanwhile, too, the souls of the martyrs rest peacefully under the altar, and feed their patience on confidence of vengeance, and, clothed in robes, take on the whiteness of glory, until others also fill up the fellowship of their glory. For again a countless multitude is revealed, clothed in white and marked by palms of victory, triumphing, of course, over the Antichrist, as one of the presbyters says: “These are they who come out of that great tribulation, and have washed their robe and made it white in the blood of the Lamb.” For the flesh is the clothing of the soul. Dirt, indeed, is washed away by baptism, but stains are made white by martyrdom. For Isaiah too promises snow and wool from red and scarlet. When great Babylon too is described as drunk with the blood of the saints, without doubt her drunkenness is served with the cups of martyrdoms; and what the fear of them will bring is equally shown. For among all the reprobate, indeed before them all, come the fearful. “But for the fearful,” he says, and then for the rest, “their portion is in the lake of fire and sulphur.” So the fear which love casts out has punishment.

But the apostle Paul, changed from the persecutor who first shed the church's blood, afterwards exchanging the sword for the pen and turning the sword into a ploughshare, the ravening wolf of Benjamin who then himself brings food, according to Jacob: how he commends martyrdoms, now desirable to himself as well! When rejoicing over the Thessalonians he says: “So that we boast of you in the churches of God for your endurance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions which you endure, a manifestation of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of his kingdom, for which you also suffer.” So too to the Romans: “And not only that, but we exult in afflictions too, sure that affliction perfects endurance, and endurance approval, and approval hope, and hope does not put to shame.” And again: “And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” And so afterwards: “Who,” he says, “will separate us from the love of Christ? Affliction, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us. For we are persuaded that neither death nor life nor power nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And to the Corinthians too, listing his sufferings, he certainly laid down that we must suffer: “In labours more abundantly, in prisons very often, in deaths many times; from the Jews five times I received forty lashes less one; three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned,” and the rest. If these seem hardships rather than martyrdoms, yet again he says, “For which reason I take pleasure in weaknesses, in insults, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ.” And earlier too: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; in want, but not utterly destitute; harassed by persecutions, but not forsaken; cast down, but not perishing; always carrying about in our body the dying of Christ.” “But even if,” he says, “our outer man is wasting away” (the flesh, that is, by the violence of persecutions), “yet the inner man is renewed day by day” (the soul, that is, by the hope of the promises). “For our present light and momentary affliction is working out for us, beyond all measure, an eternal weight of glory, as we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporary” (speaking of hardships), “but the things that are not seen are eternal” (pledging the rewards).

Writing from his chains to the Thessalonians, he surely declared blessed those to whom it had been granted not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him: “Having the same contest,” he says, “which you both saw in me and now hear of in me. For even if I am poured out upon the sacrifice, I rejoice and rejoice with you all; likewise you too rejoice and rejoice with me.” You see how he defines the happiness of martyrdom, when he gives it the solemnity of mutual joy. And when at last he came near to his desire, how he writes to Timothy, exulting at the prospect of it: “For I am already being poured out, and the time of my departure is at hand; I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; there remains the crown which the Lord will give me on that day”: the crown of suffering, that is. He himself had also said enough above: “The saying is faithful: for if we have died with Christ, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny, he too will deny us; if we do not believe, he is faithful; he cannot deny himself.” “Do not, then, be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner,” because he had said before: “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.” For we suffer with power, out of love toward God, and with a sound mind, when we suffer for our innocence. But wherever he enjoins endurance, for what does he foresee it more than for sufferings? Wherever he tears us away from idolatry, what does he hold out against it more than martyrdoms?