The Gnostic Gospels (18 page)

What does Christ’s passion mean to him? Ignatius says that “Jesus Christ … was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified, and died.”
⁴³
He vehemently opposes gnostic Christians, whom he calls “atheists” for suggesting that since Christ was a spiritual being, he only
appeared
to suffer and die:

But if, as some say … his suffering was only an appearance, then
why am I a prisoner, and why do I long to fight with the wild beasts? In that case, I am dying in vain.
⁴⁴

Ignatius complains that those who qualify his view of Christ’s suffering “are not moved by my own personal sufferings; for they think the same things about me!”
⁴⁵
His gnostic opponents, challenging his understanding of Christ’s passion, directly call into question the value of his voluntary martyrdom.

Justin, whom tradition calls “the martyr,” declares that before his own conversion, when he was still a Platonist philosopher, he personally witnessed Christians enduring public torture and execution. Their courage, he says, convinced him of their divine inspiration.
⁴⁶
Protesting the world-wide persecution of Christians, he mentions those persecuted in Palestine (c. 135):

It is clear that no one can terrify or subdue us who believe in Jesus Christ, throughout the whole world. For it is clear that though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to the wild beasts, in chains, in fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but the more such things happen, the more do others, in larger numbers, become believers.
⁴⁷

Consistent with his personal convictions concerning martyrdom and his courageous acceptance of his own death sentence is Justin’s view that “Jesus Christ, our teacher, who was born for this purpose, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died, and
rose again.”
⁴⁸
Justin concludes his second
Apology
(“Defense” for the Christians) saying that he has written it for the sole purpose of refuting “wicked and deceitful” gnostic ideas. He attacks those who, he says, are “called Christians,” but whom he considers heretics—followers of Simon, Marcion, and Valentinus.
⁴⁹
“We do not know,” he says darkly—combining admission with insinuation—whether they actually indulge in promiscuity or cannibalism, but, he adds, “we do know” one of their crimes: unlike the orthodox, “they are neither persecuted nor put to death” as martyrs.

Irenaeus, the great opponent of the Valentinians, was, like his predecessors, a man whose life was marked by persecution. He mentions many who were martyred in Rome, and he knew from personal experience the loss of his beloved teacher Polycarp, caught in mob violence, condemned, and burned alive among his enemies. Only twelve years later, in the summer of 177, Irenaeus witnessed growing hostility to Christians in his own city, Lyons. First they were prohibited from entering public places—the markets and the baths. Then, when the provincial governor was out of the city,

the mob broke loose. Christians were hounded and attacked openly. They were treated as public enemies, assaulted, beaten, and stoned. Finally they were dragged into the Forum … were accused, and, after confessing to being Christians, they were flung in prison.
⁵⁰

An influential friend, Vettius Epagathus, who tried to intervene at their trial, was shouted down: “The prefect merely asked him if he too was a Christian. When he admitted, in the clearest voice, that he was,”
⁵¹
the prefect sentenced him to death along with the others. Their servants, tortured to extract information, finally “confessed” that, as the Romans suspected, their Christian employers committed sexual atrocities and cannibalism. An eyewitness account reports that this evidence turned the population against them: “These stories got around, and all the people raged
against us, so that even those whose attitude had been moderate before because of their friendship with us now became greatly angry and gnashed their teeth against us.”
⁵²

Every day new victims—the most outspoken members of the churches in Lyons or the neighboring town of Vienne, twenty miles down the Rhône River, were arrested and brutally tortured in prison as they awaited the day set for the mass execution, August 1. This was a holiday to celebrate the greatness of Rome and the emperor. Such occasions required the governor to display his patriotism by sponsoring lavish public entertainment for the whole population of the city. These obligations burdened provincial officials with enormous expenses for hiring professional gladiators, boxers, wrestling teams, and swordsmen. But the year before, the emperor and the Senate had passed a new law to offset the cost of gladitorial shows. Now the governor could legally substitute condemned criminals who were noncitizens, offering the spectacle of their torture and execution instead of athletic exhibitions—at the cost of six aurei per head, one-tenth the cost of hiring a fifth-class gladiator, with proportionate savings for the higher grades. This consideration no doubt added incentive to the official zeal against Christians, who could provide, as they did in Lyons, the least expensive holiday entertainment.

The story of one of the confessors in Lyons, the slave woman Blandina, illustrates what happened:

All of us were in terror; and Blandina’s earthly mistress, who was herself among the martyrs in the conflict, was in agony lest because of her bodily weakness she would not be able to make a bold confessor of her faith. Yet Blandina was filled with such power that even those who were taking turns to torture her in every way from dawn to dusk were weary and exhausted. They themselves admitted that they were beaten, that there was nothing further they could do to her, and they were surprised that she was still breathing, for her entire body was broken and torn.

On the day set for the gladitorial games, Blandina, along with three of her companions, Maturus, Sanctus, and Attalus, were led into the amphitheater:

Blandina was hung on a post and exposed as bait for the wild animals that were let loose on her. She seemed to hang there in the form of a cross, and by her fervent prayer she aroused intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their ordeal … But none of the animals had touched her, and so she was taken down from the post and brought back to the jail to be preserved for another ordeal … tiny, weak, and insignificant as she was, she would give inspiration to her brothers … Finally, on the last day of the gladitorial games, they brought back Blandina again, this time with a boy of fifteen named Ponticus. Every day they had been brought in to watch the torture of the others, while attempts were made to force them to swear by the pagan idols. And because they persevered and condemned their persecutors, the crowd grew angry with them, so that … they subjected them to every atrocity and led them through every torture in turn.

After having run through the gauntlet of whips, having been mauled by animals, and forced into an iron seat placed over a fire to scorch his flesh, Ponticus died. Blandina, having survived the same tortures,

was at last tossed into a net and exposed to a bull. After being tossed a good deal by the animal, she no longer perceived what was happening … Thus she too was offered in sacrifice, while the pagans themselves admitted that no woman had ever suffered so much in their experience.
⁵³

Although Irenaeus himself somehow managed to escape arrest, his association with those in prison compelled him to bring an account of their terrible suffering to Christians in Rome. When he returned to Gaul, he found the community in mourning: nearly fifty Christians had died in the two-month ordeal. He himself was persuaded to take over the leadership of the
community, succeeding the ninety-year-old Bishop Pothinus, who had died of torture and exposure in prison.

In spite of all this, Irenaeus expresses no hostility against his fellow townsmen—but plenty against the gnostic “heretics.” Like Justin, he attacks them as “false brethren” who

have reached such a pitch of audacity that
they even pour contempt upon the martyrs, and vituperate those who are killed on account of confessing the Lord
, and
who … thereby strive to follow in the footsteps of the Lord’s passion
, themselves bearing witness to the one who suffered.
⁵⁴

This declaration concludes his detailed attack on the Valentinian interpretation of Christ’s passion. Condemning as blasphemy their claim that only Christ’s
human
nature experiences suffering, while his divine nature transcends it, Irenaeus insists that

the same being who was seized and experienced suffering, and shed his blood for us, was both Christ and the Son of God
 … and he became the Savior of those who would be delivered over to death for their confession of him, and lose their lives.
⁵⁵

Indeed, he adds, “if any one supposes that there were two natures in Christ,” the one who suffered was certainly superior to the one who escaped suffering, sustaining neither injury nor insult.” In the day of judgment, he warns, when the martyrs “attain to glory, then all who have cast a slur upon their martyrdom shall be confounded by Christ.”
⁵⁶

Tertullian, another fierce opponent of heresy, describes how the sight of Christians tortured and dying initiated his own conversion: he saw a condemned Christian, dressed up by Roman guards to look like the god Attis, torn apart alive in the arena; another, dressed as Hercules, was burned alive. He admits that he, too, once enjoyed “the ludicrous cruelties of the noonday exhibition,”
⁵⁷
watching another man, dressed as the god Mercury, testing the bodies of the tortured with a red-hot iron, and one dressed as Pluto, god of the dead, dragging corpses out of the arena. After his own conversion Tertullian, like Irenaeus, connected
the teaching of Christ’s passion and death with his own enthusiasm for martyrdom: “You must take up your cross and bear it after your Master … The sole key to unlock Paradise is your own life’s blood.”
⁵⁸
Tertullian traces the rise of heresy directly to the outbreak of persecution. This, he says, impelled terrified believers to look for theological means to justify their cowardice:

This among Christians is a time of persecution.
When, therefore, the faith is greatly agitated and the church on fire … then the gnostics break out; then the Valentinians creep forth; then all the opponents of martyrdom bubble up
 … for they know that many Christians are simple and inexperienced and weak, and … they perceive that they will never be applauded more than when fear has opened the entries of the soul, especially when some terrorism has already arrayed with a crown the faith of martyrs.
⁵⁹

To what he considers “heretical” arguments against martyrdom Tertullian replies:

Now we are in the midst of an intense heat, the very dogstar of persecution … the fire and the sword have tried some Christians, and the beasts have tried others; others are in prison, longing for martyrdoms which they have tasted already, having been beaten by clubs and tortured … We ourselves, having been appointed for pursuit, are like hares being hemmed in from a distance—
and the heretics go about as usual
!
⁶⁰

This situation, he explains, inspired him to attack as heretics those “who oppose martyrdom, representing salvation to be destruction,” and who call encouragement to martyrdom foolish and cruel.

Hippolytus, the learned Greek teacher in Rome, also had witnessed the terror of the persecution under the Emperor Severus in the year 202. Hippolytus’ zeal for martyrdom, like Tertullian’s, was matched by his hatred of heresy. He concludes his massive
Refutation of All Heresies
insisting that only orthodox
doctrine concerning Christ’s incarnation and passion enables the believer to endure persecution:

If he were not of the same nature with ourselves, he would command in vain that we should imitate the teacher
 … He did not protest against his passion, but became obedient unto death … now in all these acts
he offered up, as the first fruits, his own humanity, in order that you, when you are in tribulation, may not be discouraged, but, confessing yourself to be one like the redeemer
, may dwell in expectation of receiving what the Father has granted to the Son.
⁶¹

In his mid-seventies, Hippolytus himself fulfilled his own exhortation: arrested on the order of the Emperor Maximin in 235, he was deported to Sardinia, where he died.

What pattern, then, do we observe? The opponents of heresy in the second century—Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus—are unanimous both in proclaiming Christ’s passion and death and in affirming martyrdom. Also, they all accuse the heretics of false teaching about Christ’s suffering and of “opposing martyrdom.” Irenaeus declares:

The church in every place, because of the love which she cherishes toward God, sends forth, throughout all time, a multitude of martyrs to the Father; while all others not only have nothing of this kind to point to among themselves, but even maintain that bearing witness (martyrium) is not at all necessary
 … with the exception, perhaps, of one or two among them … who have occasionally, along with our martyrs, borne the reproach of the name … For the church alone sustains with purity the reproach of those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, and endure all sorts of punishments, and are put to death because of the love which they bear toward God, and their confession of his Son.
⁶²