During the attack on Christianity in the early years after Jesus' death, most "true" Christians believed so powerfully in God and their religion that they were willing to declare Jesus their savior and relish in their association with such a heretical religion despite the imminent and very real threat of death, as Clark, Ehrman, and Richardson all tell us. However, I find there to be a difference in holding steadfast to one's beliefs when being captured and affronted by Roman persecution compared to looking for said persecution because one wants to become a martyr of Christianity, as we can see in the differences between the martyrdom of Polycarp and that of Ignatius.
Ehrman prefaces his excerpt of Ignatius'letter to the Romans with a summary explaining that his letter attempted to persuade his fellow Christians to let him be tortured; he "wants to be thrown to the wild beasts and so become a martyr for Christ" (28).
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Ch...
Jesus is considered by scholars such as Weber to b...
English: Photo of Bart D. Ehrman taken following t...I find this strange as I do not think Christ and/or God would have wanted their followers to be tortured willingly; it seems vaguely comparable to suicide, at least if one goes looking for this type of persecution.
Polycarp on the other hand ran and hid multiple times when he heard that the authorities were coming to arrest him. He did not want to be caught and persecuted, as we see by his moving twice to farms outside his city (32). Yet once he was arrested, he stayed true to his faith and would not declare Caesar as his "Lord" (32). We even read of "a voice from heaven" speaking to Polycarp at the beginning of his death day, telling him to "Be strongâ¦and act like a man" (33). Thus, a true Christian has such strength as to know his beliefs, cling tight...
Brief, but well written
This could have been the basis from a fairy interesting historio-theological argument. However it was really too brief to achieve that.
It is very well written however, and does raise an interesting notion, albeit in a manner slightly lacking in sophistication.
A few points:
*One should steer away from prefacing a sentence with "I find...." "it seems....." and other similarly subjectivist claims. That's not to say scholarship is free of opinion-- far from it-- the key is that academics learn to phrase their opinion in a clever, academically legitimate way.
*'"true" Christians' was highly problematic for me.. it was in the first sentence and really tainted my opinion of the essay immediately. Perhaps "devout" would have a better choice of word.
*Finally, re. 'I do not think Christ and/or God would have wanted their followers to be tortured willingly': One should avoid speculating about what God/Jesus wants.... Perhaps a better way of making that point would be to begin by begin by making the comparison of willing martyrdom and suicide and then demonstrating the Christian doctrine prohibits suicide by quoting relevant bible passage. The thing about religious scholarship is that one can't make an argument by speculating about what God may or may not want.. one must rely on religious texts to make their case.
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