Introduction

The introduction briefly explores Christianity’s fascination with its martyrs. It develops a series of optical metaphors—spotlight, lens, prism, mirror—to show that the core theological function of naming martyrs is to make an argument about what the faithful Christian life looks like. The martyr, from her extreme situation, illuminates and brings into clearer focus the contours of discipleship as they are supposed to be lived out in more ordinary situations. Hence the book’s central question: if martyrdom’s argument about the Christian life points to the call to suffer violence, then what are we to think about the mainstream church’s historic sanctioning of the inflicting of violence in certain circumstances?

Epilogue

The epilogue briefly returns to the perennial debate between the just war and pacifist traditions of Christianity in the face of violence. The waste and destructive synergy of all violence, even reparative violence, suggests that the just war ethic attempts the absurd. Yet the just war wisdom of the Christian tradition insists that it is possible to find a productive logic in purposeful violence for the public common good. As the pacifist traditions make the gamble that it is not absurd to refuse the temptation of violence even in the face of aggression, and the just war tradition gambles that it is possible to restrain violence and direct it toward peace, these traditions should remain in conversation with one another and open to the possibility of glimpsing the witness of martyrdom in one another.

Christian Calling and the Ideal of Martyrdom in the Real World

Setting just war reasoning into its broader context, this chapter begins by examining the logic, weight, and dangers of the “realist” traditions of Christian ethics, especially Augustine, Niebuhr, and Bonhoeffer (one often acclaimed as martyr though implicated in violent resistance). It shows how Protestant theologies of “vocation” typically sanction the sword-bearing occupations of magistrate, soldier, and law enforcement official as potentially consistent with Christian discipleship and holiness. Recent discussions of “moral injury” in soldiers are considered in relation to this “calling” of sword-bearing for the common good. In dialogue with Roman Catholicism, the chapter elaborates a Protestant conception of sainthood that acknowledges the ambiguity of the world, a conception that occasions a return to the criteria identifying Christian martyrdom.

Identifying Martyrdom

This chapter explains the origins of the language and theology of Christian martyrdom. The chapter explores the relationship between martyrdom as a passive suffering of violence for Christian identity and the possibility of martyrdom resulting from active Christian advocacy. That raises the question of whether active service of God and neighbor can ever rightly involve violence. If so, can those who die in the course of such activity ever rightly be considered martyrs? Answering such questions requires clarity on what markers identify the Christian martyr. The chapter thus concludes with a preliminary list of “criteria” of Christian martyrdom.

Violence, Jesus, and Just War Reasoning

This chapter examines the deeper logic of just war thinking by analyzing its central distinction between aggressive violence and responsive violence, as well as its recognition of the threat of destructive synergy between the two. The chapter considers whether the teaching of Jesus renders impossible any Christian sanctioning of even defensive violence, as insisted by the peace church traditions. Through a consideration of the Sermon on the Mount and a theological appraisal of the imitatio Christi motif in relation to martyrdom, the chapter upholds just war reasoning as theologically defensible. It suggests that the pacifist and just war traditions both require a precarious wager in relation to faithfulness and thus serve as one another’s external consciences in the face of the ambiguity of violence.

Violence and the Christian Life in the Light of Martyrdom

This final chapter applies the notion developed early in the book of martyrdom as a “spotlight” that illuminates the contours of discipleship. Through a final sharpening of the criteria of martyrdom, it contends that the only violence that Christians should sanction as “justified” is violence congruent with martyrdom’s implicit argument about the faithful Christian life. This requires significant constraints on the “realism” and conceptions of military “necessity” that Christians can affirm, and thus points to a just war ethic with significant restraints (both ad bellum and in bello) that reflect the sacrificial texture of the following of Jesus. While the chapter focuses on Christian martyrdom in relation to the dilemmas of war, it also analyzes what a martyrdom-shaped sense of Christian responsibility looks like in other arenas of sword-bearing, especially policing.

Nonviolence as Criterion of Martyrdom?

In view of the possibility of violence en route to Christian martyrdom, this chapter explores the pacifist tradition of Christian ethics and its claim that true martyrdom demands nonviolence, as that is the intended shape of the Christian life. After presenting the biblical case for nonviolence and charting the historical development of Christian pacifism, the chapter focuses on historic Anabaptism’s link between martyrdom and nonviolent defenselessness as the distinctive texture of discipleship, especially as reflected in the martyrologies in Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs’ Mirror (1660). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the role of the imitatio Christi ethic in the peace church traditions and the insights that this tradition offers to the question of the criteria or markers of true Christian martyrdom.

The Just War and the Horizon of Martyrdom

This chapter charts the rise of the “magisterial” expression of Christianity, as symbolized by Constantine and displayed in Christian soldiers featuring in later patristic martyr literature. It follows the emergence of Christian just war thinking from its roots in the classical world to its expression in key thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas, the Protestant confessions, and modern theorists. The chapter then explores this ethical tradition’s appeal to biblical and theological themes regarding the defense of the vulnerable, the responsibility of the state, and the nature of sin and love. The chapter concludes by examining criticisms of just war teaching, including the misgivings reflected in some of the “instincts” of Christian martyr theology.

Soldiers and Saints, Magistrates and Martyrs

This chapter shows that the martyr “instincts” of the longer Christian tradition are quite varied on the question of violence, sainthood, and martyrdom. Historically Christianity has been willing to laud figures involved in violence as martyrs and saints, usually in connection to the “sword” of the state. Largely composed of case studies as varied as the soldier martyrs of the patristic church, supposed martyrs in the medieval Crusades, civil magistrates acclaimed as martyrs in the Reformation, and missionary martyrs during the era of colonialism, this chapter probes the complexities involved when “sword-bearers” are named as saints or martyrs. After examining the language of martyrdom that some Protestant thinkers applied to soldiers for the true faith during the European “wars of religion,” the chapter ends by analyzing the important but tenuous emerging distinction between “holy war” and “just war” as articulated by Martin Luther.