Beeson podcast, Episode 431
Dr. Han-luen Kantzer Komline
February 12, 2019

Announcer:          Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the Campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:     Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. This past fall we were privileged to have as a guest speaker at Beeson on Finkenwalde Day, a special day in the life of our school, Dr. Han-luen Kantzer Komline. She came to share that special day which remembers Bonhoeffer's community of faith and how we try to incarnate that again here at Beeson in a special way. She gave a wonderful lecture that day on Augustine on martyrdom and death.

Timothy George:     This fit in with the semester-long theme of our school, The Noble Army of Martyrs. Let's listen to Dr. Han-luen Kantzer Komline as she takes us back into the world of Saint Augustine as he speaks on these perennial things of martyrdom and death.

Kantzer-Komline:    I think an earlier iteration of my title is printed in your bulletin but I've renamed this lecture Remaking Martyrdom: Augustine on the Theological Virtues of a Christian. Martyrdom was a calling so sacred some early Christians believed that you had to be specially elected to it. Just as certain human beings were singled out to receive salvation in Jesus Christ so a select subset of these elect believers was chosen for even greater intimacy with their savior, a literal sharing in his sufferings through martyrdom.

Kantzer-Komline:    Not just anyone, in other words, could join the ranks of the martyrs. One had to be handpicked by God for this distinction. An average Christian could no more make herself a martyr than Esau could earn back his birth right. Martyrdom was only for the specially favored.

Kantzer-Komline:    Was this the view of Augustine of Hippo? Certain statements in Augustine do make it sound like the martyrs were a class apart, a select group with which the rest of us ought never presume to compare ourselves. "And which of us would ever have the nerve to compare our own birthdays which we celebrate in our homes in the slightest degree with these birthdays of the martyrs?" Augustine asks rhetorically in a sermon. "Anyone who did so," he warns, would automatically convict himself of sacrilege."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine would have been long familiar with the idea of an elite among the general adherence of a religion from his days with the Manichees, which he spent as a lowly hearer who never quite managed to promote himself to the first class status of one of the elect. He would also have seen a hierarchical perspective on martyrs at work in the Christianity of his day in which the martyrs tended to be regarded as larger than life heroes. Martyrs were the objects of admiration, even more than imitation. They were divinized more than democratized.

Kantzer-Komline:    But in Augustine, we find a striking idea that seems to turn these kinds of elitist views of martyrdom on their hands. Augustine was not only persuaded that we should all admire the martyrs and that we should all imitate them. He also taught that we should all see ourselves as martyrs. That martyrdom was a fitting metaphor for the intrinsic character of the Christian life.

Kantzer-Komline:    In choosing us for his own, God had in effect already handpicked each of us for the heavenly calling of martyrdom. Why would Augustine think of martyrdom as a universal Christian calling? What did this calling look like in his view? What practical advice and encouragement did he provide for living the life of a martyr that might benefit people like us, people who have perhaps not experienced threats to their life because of their faith? We will address of each of these questions in turn.

Kantzer-Komline:    In what follows, I'll draw mainly on a dozen or so sermons that Augustine preached in honor of the feast of day of Saint Cyprian, the famous Carthaginian martyr bishop who had died about a century before Augustine's birth but whose memory remained a powerful presence in the North African Christianity of his day.

Kantzer-Komline:    Part 1, the martyr's calling. In a sermon preached toward the end of his, Augustine observes that the literal meaning of the Greek term martur is witness. Martyrs, he remarks, are called witnesses in Latin. But in a sermon likely stemming from earlier in his career, Augustine also acknowledges that the term martyr has taken on a technical meaning that involves more than just telling others about the good news of Jesus Christ. He says Cyprian, "He gained the triumphant name of martyr because he carried on the fight for the truth to the shedding of his blood."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine recognizes that in common Christian parlance being a martyr means not only bearing witness but also dying a violent death for it. But seemingly, more and more as time goes on, a subtle subtraction takes place. Augustine gives us martyrdom without the blood. "What is it that we admire in the faith of martyrs?" he asks, "That they fought to the death for the truth and that is how they were victorious," is his answer in a sermon thought to stem from 417.

Kantzer-Komline:    Martyrdom entails death, yes, but a bloody one? Not necessarily. This is a significant difference because as Augustine says elsewhere we are all bound to die. This new description of martyrdom immediately raises a question. Since in Adam all die, can't we all fight to the death for the truth? Can't we all be martyrs? That we would inquire in this vein is just what Augustine intends.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine wants to push us towards solidarity with the martyrs and to make us doubt our reasons for congratulating ourselves or regretting that we have avoided their fate. In one sermon he warns so don't imagine my dearest brothers and sisters that you cannot share the merits of the martyrs because there are no more persecutions such as there were in those times when the martyrs were crowned. There are not persecutions nowadays but temptations never cease. You thought you were off the hook, the bishop of Hippo seems to say, not so fast. There's a contemporary version of martyrdom just for you.

Kantzer-Komline:    In another place, Augustine makes clear, "God wishes to test every single Christian in such a way that once the test is passed, he may as he desires crown us all together with the martyrs." Fellowship with the martyrs in their sufferings is not just possible, it's desirable. This is how God wishes to bless us. But Augustine doesn't simply assert that martyrdom is a universal Christianity calling. He gives us reasons why we should think this is a case. What are they? He names four.

Kantzer-Komline:    First, we can know martyrdom is a calling of every Christian because the Lord said so. As Augustine explains we should learn from the martyrs what they learned from the master himself. "This I repeat is a unanimous advice of the martyrs. This they learned together from their instructor and redeemer and Lord because he said to everyone whoever loves his soul will lose it and whoever loses it for my sake will find it in the eternal life."

Kantzer-Komline:    According to Augustine the united voice of the martyrs reminds us not of their uniqueness but rather of the call everyone has to deny themselves and follow Christ. In fact, the martyrs were merely echoing what they had first heard and observed in Christ himself. The Lord himself invites us to lay down our lives for his sake and thereby find life to the full.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine does not want us to think that Christ's difficult teachings on self-sacrifice were not meant for us. In another sermon he makes it quite explicit that we should understand ourselves to be directly addressed by the Lord when it comes to the necessity of martyrdom.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine insists, "So the Lord was exhorting all of us to martyrdom when he said in the same way whoever does not renounce everything that he has cannot be my disciple." Martyrdom is not optional. It is a nonnegotiable cost of discipleship. We know this because of Christ's own teaching.

Kantzer-Komline:    Second, Augustine argues that Christ's person as well as Christ's word points to martyrdom as a universal Christianity calling. Because of our identity in Christ we are members of Christ's body. This means that since Christ suffered martyrdom, we, his body, also suffer it by virtue of our attachment to him. According to Augustine, Christ's body today continues to endure what Christ once suffered. In his own words, "What the Lord endured we know. Do you think his body endures nothing of the sort today? How could that be if they have called the master of the household Beelzebub, how much more his servants? A disciple is not above his teacher nor is servant above his master. These are the very words we just heard.

Kantzer-Komline:    The body too suffers from those who disobey the law and they rise up against Christ's body just as much as against him. Augustine quotes Jesus himself to underline an uncomfortable truth. "If Christ, our powerful master, had to suffer persecution, how much more must this be true for us his lowly servants?" Christ continues to share in our sufferings. This is why Christ appeared to Saul on the Damascus road asking, "Why are you persecuting me?" It's only natural, Augustine points out, that as members of his body we must also share in his sufferings.

Kantzer-Komline:    Thirdly, Augustine also makes the argument that scripture proves that suffering is not the exception but the norm for a Christian. He declares, "If a soul is Christian it knows that it suffers. If it begins to live a god-fearing life in Christ then it will inevitably suffer persecution." How does Augustine know this? He continues, "For the apostle teaches that all who want to live devoted to God and Christ suffer persecution." He's quoting from Second Timothy.

Kantzer-Komline:    Thus, while Augustine does not here explicitly say that all Christians ought to be martyrs, as he does elsewhere, he helps to explain why this might be the case by making biblical arguments confirming that suffering a constituent part of the experience of martyrdom is an unavoidable aspect of a committed Christian's life.

Kantzer-Komline:    Finally, all Christians are called to martyrdom in a sense that Christians must share each other's sufferings just as each Christian shares in Christ's sufferings and he in ours. This point can be inferred from Augustine's statements about the fellowship of suffering between Christ and the church. Echoing First Corinthians 12 on the many gifts of the body, Augustine states, "It is the same when your tongue instinctively protests, 'you are treading on me' when it is your foot that has been trodden on. No one has touched your tongue. It cries out in sympathy not because it itself has been crushed. Even so, Christ isn't want here, Christ is a stranger here, Christ is ill here, Christ is confined to prison here."

Kantzer-Komline:    On analogy to Christ's suffering because of the body, so each member of the body is affected by the health of the others. Augustine then not only states explicitly that all Christians are called to martyrdom but also provides a number of arguments for why we should all accept this calling as our own. The Lord's teaching and command, our unity with Christ in his sufferings, apostolic teaching and our solidarity with other Christians who are suffering, all point to each Christian's call to undergo a kind of spiritual martyrdom.

Kantzer-Komline:    But what does being a martyr mean concretely, particularly if it does not entail a bloody death that results directly from our faithfulness to Christ. This brings us to our second question, what does spiritual martyrdom look like? Now we turn to part 2, the martyr's path.

Kantzer-Komline:    It's common to see the martyrs as immovable pillars of the faith. They are steadfast in purpose, unshakable in their loyalty to Christ, unwavering in their confession. The martyrs as praised not for their flexibility but for standing firm. Not for adaptability but for resisting compromise. Not for agility but for refusing to be moved despite all manner of taunts and threats. Like the love described in Shakespeare's sonnet they are an ever fixed mark that looks on tempest and is never shaken.

Kantzer-Komline:    This is held to be the reason that they inspire. Martyrs guide others because they themselves do not waver. Augustine complicates this view. He describes martyrdom not so much in terms of fixity as in terms of constant dynamism. To be a martyr requires change and conversion. It requires moving outward in love and it involves plotting ahead along the narrow way.

Kantzer-Komline:    The martyrs invite us to join them on the road of spiritual growth and transformation. A first feature of this martyr's path of the way of spiritual martyrdom is change and conversion. Strikingly, Augustine doesn't just say that we spiritual martyrs need to change. Augustine also tells the stories of famous literal martyrs of the Christian faith such as Cyprian and Peter in a way that highlights their changeability.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine repeatedly brings up Cyprian's conversion, for example, observing Cyprian's own habit of "calling to mind what he had changed." Augustine reminds us not only of Cyprian's glorious achievements but also of the winding journey that led him there. Far from a superhuman species naturally predisposed to perfection, the martyrs too need the change, conversion and cleansing that only Christ can bring. Rather than fixating on the final contest, Augustine wants us to see martyrdom as part of a transformative process.

Kantzer-Komline:    What results is a more complete account of what it means to be a martyr. We are taken behind the scenes to see the agonized conversion that produces the serene saint. Describing Cyprian Augustine pronounces, so the uprooter and planter approach that soul and he overthrew the old Cyprian and after laying himself there as a foundation, he built up the new Cyprian in himself and made him into a true Cyprian out of himself.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine reminds us that every martyr who is found was once a sinner lost. Only in light of this larger history can we understand the true glory and cost, the amazing grace that is a martyr's sacrifice. To imitate martyrs like Cyprian, the rest of us need to change as well. Augustine notes with frustration that while his listeners applaud his exegesis, their enthusiasm fails to take the form of real improvement in their lives. "The thing is said. It's applauded and there's no changing anybody," he observes drily.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine continues contrasting his congregation's response with that of Cyprian and other heroes of the faith. "Surely not. It's not true what I've just said." In other words, it's not true that there's no changing anybody. Some fishermen underwent a change. Afterward, even a great many senators were changed. Cyprian underwent a change whose memory we are celebrating today. He writes himself, testifies himself to the sort of life he led once, how profane, how godless, how reprehensible and how detestable. He adapted himself to a good song. He adapted, he loved, he persevered, he fought, he won.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine presents Cyprian as a model for how we too maybe converted and reconverted in our Christian walk of how we too may undergo a change. Our path or spiritual martyrdom just like the path of the illustrious martyrs before us should be one marked by sharp twists and turns. If we listen to the word proclaimed and nothing new happens in our lives, something has gone wrong.

Kantzer-Komline:    To be a spiritual martyr then is to be like the famous Cyprian, constantly turning toward God and away from anything that might pull one away from God. Augustine puts it this way. "Your love must migrate. Cast off your moorings from creatures. Moor yourself to the creator. Change your love. Change your fear. The only things that make good or bad lives are good or bad loves."

Kantzer-Komline:    This quote I just read already begins to lead us into the second feature of the martyr's path, loving rightly. Augustine finds it ironic that people express so much admiration for the martyrs yet remain themselves in love with exactly the same worldly trappings the martyrs rejected. Riches, honor, good health, yes taken abstractly, these are all good things but we should not love them according to Augustine. "Why do I find you to be a lover of these very things who [inaudible 00:22:09], the martyr, you venerate. Certainly, if he had loved these things you wouldn't be venerating him."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine pushes us to be ready to give up whatever worldly benefits we find most alluring as we inevitably will at the end of this earthly life. Augustine urges "So despised the world, Christians despise the world, despise it. The martyrs despised it, the apostles despised it, the blessed Cyprian despised it."

Kantzer-Komline:    This may seem to be a rather grim path to tread as it threatens to take us away from many of the things in our lives we most enjoy. But Augustine uses a dire metaphor to describe where the alternative allowing worldly goods however wonderful to compete with our allegiance to Christ ultimately leads. We like to be consumers, don't we? To devour the resources of our planet, to gobble up man's empty praise, to eat up our time with hours at the gym and fine meals but the truth is that any passionate pursuit that competes with our loyalty to Christ will consume us before we can ever be satisfied by consuming it.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine applies this imagery of eating to the martyrs. "The persecutors wished not to kill but to devour. That is to transfer the martyrs into their own body. They were heathen. They were godless. They were worshippers of demons and idols. That's what they wanted to make us when they were longing to devour us." Giving our love and allegiance to any other body is in essence allowing that body to consume us so that we are incorporated into it, serving its larger purposes. This means ultimately not that we become more free and satisfied as individuals but rather that we become fodder for a set of larger values and objectives that are completely outside of our control.

Kantzer-Komline:    For the martyrs, the larger body threatening to consume was the state and the idolatrous worship it demanded. The path of the martyr is to avoid the snares of worldly loves but to leave it at this is to miss the whole point for loving rightly in the way of a martyr goes beyond refraining from improper loves. The key is what the martyr does and should love.

Kantzer-Komline:    After describing the many cruelties the apostles endured for the sake of their faith, Augustine asks, "All this for heaven knows what? I mean, really, my brothers and sisters. Was Peter dying for his own glory or proclaiming himself?" Peter could sustain all the trials he faced because he was drawn on by a mighty love for Christ. "One man was dying that another might be honored. One being slain that another might be worshipped." Would he have done this if he hadn't been on fire with love and utterly convinced of the truth?"

Kantzer-Komline:    Peter moved forward on the path of his martyr's calling because he was motivated by love. Though as Augustine observes many times prioritizing love of God ultimately works to our benefit, personal advantage was not what moved Peter to martyrdom. Peter was not focusing on the fringe benefits but on their source. Thus, in loving rightly the spiritual martyr must never be contented with the meager substitutes that pass for ultimate value in this world.

Kantzer-Komline:    The greatest gift is the giver himself. He is our feast hence Augustine argues, "Beg him to give you health and salvation and he himself will be your salvation. Do not pray for external health merely, but for that health and salvation which is himself. Pray that you may never again be attracted to any kind of health apart from him but make the prayer of another psalm your own. Say to my soul I am your salvation."

Kantzer-Komline:    The one thing necessary for the path of the martyr is to love God himself. Given the high standard that Augustine sets for how a martyr needs to change and how she ought to love, it's no wonder that the path of spiritual martyrdom is the road less traveled. In Augustine's words, imitating the martyrs means seeking a narrow way. This is the third feature of the path of the spiritual martyr that I wish to highlight.

Kantzer-Komline:    We already observed how Augustine disturbs and complicates the picture of martyrs as unbending bulwarks of the faith who serve us our examples only in their inflexibility. Before the martyrs were unbending they had to be swayed by Christ. In a similar way, Augustine fills out the picture of what it means to walk on the narrow way of spiritual martyrdom by appealing to the martyr's example but not perhaps in quite the way we would expect him to.

Kantzer-Komline:    "The martyr's triumphed, yes, but in faith and patience. They were courageous, yes, but through meekness and mildness. They became great but precisely through humility. The great thing is to imitate the martyr's faith and patience," Augustine explains. "Of Cyprian," he declares, "he was a meek and mild person, you see" and he describes the paradox of the martyrs in these terms. "Rightly did he earn the highest honors in the Catholic church since he maintained the bond of peace in it with such humility."

Kantzer-Komline:    Following Christ himself, people like Cyprian serve us our trailblazers along the path of spiritual martyrdom but not through glamor and power. In brief, this narrow way of patience, meekness and humility is the way of self-denial. Augustine suggests that there is a qualitative analogy between how Cyprian lived his life and how we live ours even if he outdid quantitatively. "The fact is we are certainly living in the same life as the one in which he endured his labors even if not as meritoriously as he lived here.

Kantzer-Komline:    What is the nature of this shared life? Augustine's answer, Cyprian spent his mortal life in the way of self-denial. Not only Cyprian however but Christ recommends the sacrificial path. Whoever wishes to follow me, let him deny himself. Whoever loves his soul will lose it and whoever loses it for my sake will find it. That's the way Augustine says. The bishop of Hippo sums up the upshot in a succinct rule of thumb.

Kantzer-Komline:    The formula for following in the way of Christ established by the martyrs and urged also on us is this. "Deny yourself, confess to God." In Sermon 3:25 Augustine puts yet another kind of road on the map of martyrdom.

Kantzer-Komline:    Recognizing how intimidating it can be to try to imitate God or even God in Christ directly he points to the martyrs as provided examples that accommodate to our weakness. By imitating the martyrs we can follow imitators of the one we ultimately seek to imitate. Thus, they provide what Augustine calls a paved road whose flagstones we can use to keep us from getting bogged down along the way. The life of martyrdom then not only follows the narrow way established by Jesus Christ but paves the way for others to follow too.

Kantzer-Komline:    So far we have examined Augustine's case that martyrdom is a universal calling and considered some of the key characteristics of the path or martyrdom. Martyrdom is a journey, not a resting point. A journey of constant transformation made possible by the conversion and cleaning brought by Christ.

Kantzer-Komline:    Secondly martyrdom is marked by rightly ordered loves. It is a sumptuous feast that we are to keep not gorging ourselves on mundane fare but by saving our appetite for the one who made us.

Kantzer-Komline:    Spiritual martyrdom is two taste and see that the Lord himself above all else is our highest good. Finally, spiritual martyrdom involves taking the narrow way, the way of patience, weakness and humility and the way of self-denial. The path of martyrdom in short is the path of faith and the path of love and the path of hope in the all-sufficient goodness of God.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine does not make this sound easy and that brings us to our third and final section. Part 3, the martyr's struggle. Ever the solicitous pastor, Augustine rushes to dig his sheet from the ditch when it comes to following the bath of martyrdom. He's eager to encourage, coax, and exhort them to continue to move forward along the way. What encouragement does he provide? What encouragement does he have for us? Augustine adopts three basic strategies. He emphasizes the importance of God's work. He stresses the normality of human weakness and he cultivates a vibrant hope in the resurrection.

Kantzer-Komline:    Over and over again, Augustine uses Cyprian's example to drive home to his listeners that the martyr's struggle is never solitary. Often he opens a sermon with lavish praise of the martyr but then hastily qualifies. Cyprian, he underlines, should never be commended on his own account as if his achievements occurred to him individually. Cyprian deserves praise only in God and Augustine makes this point repeatedly in a number of sermons.

Kantzer-Komline:    Moreover, Augustine emphasizes, God's help was not a one-time event limited to, say, the moment of Cyprian's death or to his initial conversion. Rather, God helped Cyprian over and over again. In two different sermons, Augustine takes the time to enumerate the ways in which God enables Cyprian's victory. These lists overwhelm by attrition. In 312, Augustine confesses. "To him be praise, to him be glory who was pleased to predestine this man before all time to be among his saints, to create him among men at an opportune time. To call him when he strayed, to cleanse him when he was defiled, to form and shape him when he believed, to teach him in his obedience, to guide him in his teaching, to aid him in the fight, to crown him in his victory. To him be praise, to him be glory who made this man."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine piles verbs upon verbs upon verbs. Can you remember how many there were? Nor can I and that is the point. God's work in Cyprian's life is unquantifiable. There is no way of counting God's mercy or putting bounds on them. That's why Augustine uses an inclusio to surround this list of God's works in Cyprians' life with the phrase "to him be the praise, to him be the glory." It's as if to say we can't find the beginning or end of God's marvelous works. The best we can do is to start and finish with praise.

Kantzer-Komline:    Yes, great things were accomplished in Cyprian's life but when Augustine thinks about this, he's thinking mainly of God. He asks, when could he have overcome if the Lord had not come to his aid? When could he have been victorious if the spectator who was preparing a crown for him in his victory had not provided him with the necessary strength in his foils?

Kantzer-Komline:    The implication is clear. If even Cyprian relied so heavily on God's help, by how much more may we do the same? Despising the world is hard. Augustine urges us to follow Cyprian's example and rely on God as we face this difficulty. Going after him, he says, the way in lies open. Christ is a door. Thus, Christ is not only the martyr par excellence who serves as the ultimate object of our imitation even as we imitate the martyrs. Christ is also the one who enables our imitation. He opens the door so that we might follow the example of the martyrs in the first place.

Kantzer-Komline:    Thus, by Augustine's lights, we are not left to our devices to stand up in persecution. As we seek to be faithful we should call upon the one who commanded it and we should ask him to help us keep his commands in you. I'm going to get myself a tissue.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine then encourages his flock in their own martyr struggle by reminding them that they do not struggle alone. God in Christ will come before and after every contest. God helps again and again. God will not forsake his people in the hour of their need. God will fight on their behalf. Martyrdom, Augustine teaches, is not only or even primarily the work of human beings. It's the work of God.

Kantzer-Komline:    This is one way in which we may understand a striking statement Augustine makes in a sermon preached on another occasion, "God never stops sparing witness." This theocentric theology of martyrdom takes the pressure off those in the midst of earthly struggles. Still, God's aid does not mean that the Christian life of martyrdom is made easy. Quite to the contrary, it's full of difficulty and this brings us to the second word of encouragement Augustine has for martyrs amid their struggles.

Kantzer-Komline:    Human weakness is to be expected and even embraced. Augustine had not always been persuaded of the legitimate place of grief, weakness and even fear of death in the Christian life. Earlier in his career, Augustine had been much more optimistic about the possibility that human beings could face death and loss with stoic equanimity. With time, however, his youthful confidence was eroded. He began to doubt whether this ideal was attainable or even desirable. We see visages of his earlier mentality in a sermon whose date is uncertain but possibly stems from the year 403. Here Augustine pronounces, "Whoever loves his soul to the extent of being afraid to die for Christ will lose it so that he does not live in Christ."

Kantzer-Komline:    Woe to those who fear death, it seems. Referring to Cyprian, he also observes confidently, "At his discussion of mortality and his commendation of the joys of immortal life, all fear in the souls of the faithful who are dying blushed for shame. As did all grief in the souls of those who are mourning the dead."

Kantzer-Komline:    Woe too, Augustine seems to be saying, to those who mourn. But in other sermons we observed a softening of both tone and content, discussing the challenges of losing one's life for Christ. Augustine empathetically adopts the perspective of a person struggling with self-denial. He says, "But it's hard. It's difficult. It's something sad. It's miserable."

Kantzer-Komline:    He's speaking out loud here what his listeners may tremble to name. Switching parts, Augustine replies in his own voice again, he says, "I sympathize with you because the Lord, our God, also sympathize with us, suffered with us. You see, he revealed himself in you and you in himself when he said, 'my soul is sad to the point of death.'" He's quoting Mark 14:34. The person who struggles, who suffers, who grieves is no longer pitted against the ideal of Christian faithfulness. Rather, she's aligned with Christ. Her very suffering and sadness are a sight for the revelation of Christ's heart. To the struggling sufferer, Augustine proclaims Christ's sympathy and solidarity.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine not only lends an empathetic ear to those grieving death to self, he acknowledges that they are justified in feeling this way for "death is such a sad business." It is miserable he says. Augustine uses the image of the sadness and misery, those are the terms he uses, of the cold at seed time to capture both the difficulty and the promise of death to self. The sowing will eventually bear fruit but it's painful and difficult and even sad to get the seed in the ground. There's a tragic element to martyrdom and the kind of spiritual life that it represents. The external expression of grief as well as the internal experience of it finds a positive reception in the same sermon as Augustine waxes eloquent on Psalm 126 verses 5 and 6.

Kantzer-Komline:    Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. Going, they were going in weeping, casting their seed. Augustine contends that the martyrs exemplify this pattern. He states, "That's the way of the holy martyrs, the way all the just toiling away on earth, weeping cast their seed. This life after all is full of tears. Not only real men but real martyrs including all the just do cry. Tears are not an embarrassing accident. They are the natural adornment of a faithful Christian life. Blessed are those who mourn."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine also concedes that facing death with absolute composure and openness is impossible for mere mortals. Only Christ, who was of course not only human but also divine, could lay down his life of his own free will without wavering for a moment. "Who is this?" Augustine asks, "Who departs from life in the way that Christ went forth from his body? Whoever could? He alone who had first said I have the power to lay down my life and I have the power to take it up again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord and I take it up again."

Kantzer-Komline:    The desire to live is good and natural so it only stands to reason that we would fear death. There is blessing too for those who hem, haw and hesitate to take up their cross. Perhaps surprisingly to those who think of him as a judgmental killjoy, Augustine is prepared to extend consolation to the morally weak in addition to those struggling with weakness of nature. This becomes clear as he improvises on the theme of First Corinthians 3:11 through 13, "For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light." There is the biblical passage.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine identifies those who have built using gold, silver and costly stones with those who "live upright lives who honor and praise God, who are patient under trials, who are homesick for their fatherland." These people obviously have their Christian lives together. To use a modern analogy, they are tortoises in the race of the Christian life pursuing the path of martyrdom with relentless consistency. But there's also a second group, those who have built with wood, hay or straw. These poor people are "still in love with the things of this world and are enmeshed in earthly affairs and tied up in various attachments such as the desires of the flesh, their homes, their spouses and their possessions."

Kantzer-Komline:    Do the hares of the Christian life rushing about from distraction to distraction intending to finish the race but so often forgetful, do they have a chance? Augustine's answer is, "Yes, these people," Augustine explains, "are busy building an edifice that will not last. The wood, hay and straw in which they are investing will be burned away." However, "They are Christians notwithstanding for their hearts do not desert Christ and they put nothing before Christ. Just as when we build, we put nothing else in before the foundation."

Kantzer-Komline:    As Augustine would have it, even people like me who are not entirely consistent in their Christian lives and are too enmeshed in earthly concerns can, when it comes down to it, still be considered faithful to Christ. It's possible to be defective in virtue but still survive the test of one's faith because of the foundation that has been laid in Jesus Christ. Augustine does not regard this situation as ideal but he does hold out hope to those of us struggling to keep our feet on the path of self-denial.

Kantzer-Komline:    Blessed are the spiritual losers. In fact, Augustine points to the example of the martyrs to illustrate this point. Augustine points out that many martyrs were spiritual hares, to return to our anachronistic analogy from Aesop's fables. People who loved the things of the world too much. "Some of them," he says, "had been building in wood, hay, or straw by their self-indulgence and worldly concerns." And I'm quoting now, "Nonetheless because they had Christ as a foundation on which they built, he set fire to the hay and they remained firm on the foundation."

Kantzer-Komline:    The martyrs who have gone before us are evidence that God will be faithful in the foundation he has laid. They were not all paragons of Christian virtue consistently practicing the self-denial that should characterize a Christian life. Yet, at the last they fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith. God enabled them to drink the cup that Christ had drunk. To those hungrying and thirsting for righteousness, Augustine's gospel word is, "You will be filled."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine also exhorts his fellow pilgrims on the martyr's path not to forfeit the prize because failures along the way have caused them to despair. Not only constant minor distractions but major moral defeats after all can tempt the spiritual martyrs to give up.

Kantzer-Komline:    In sermon 286, Augustine outlines a three-step process for faithful confession of Christ. Like Bernard of Clairvaux's Four Degrees of Love, these three degrees of faithful confession helped the less advanced among us to be able to identify some progress and to track some development even when we know that we're going to fall drastically short of our ultimate aims.

Kantzer-Komline:    At the first level, one believes but fears to confess the faith out loud. At the second, one has mustered up the courage for public confession but still lacks the willingness to die for Christ. At the third, a person not only believes and publically confesses Christ but is willing to do so to the death.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine reminds his listeners that even the Apostle Peter was once in the first of these stages as shown in his devastating denial of Christ on the eve of his death. Even moral weakness as painful as an outright denial of God in the flesh is not outside the bounds of repentance and grace. The poor in spirit are blessed as well.

Kantzer-Komline:    Finally, Augustine uses a third strategy to encourage his flock in their struggle as spiritual martyrs. He seeks to inspire them with a vivid hope in the life to come. There's an unavoidable assumption in Augustine's account of martyrdom that does not always sit well with our contemporary culture. A focus on the glories of the hereafter has come in for some fire for justifying the abuse of our natural world, for opiating the oppressed and for promoting religious fanaticism both in Christianity and in other religions.

Kantzer-Komline:    Certainly, Augustine who was well-acquainted with the voluntary suicides and violent attacks of the Circumcellions, an extreme Donatist group of his own day, would have appreciated the weight of these concerns. But Augustine was convinced that hoping in the hereafter was not only valid but salutary. If there were no resurrection then Christians struggling along the path of self-denial would be of all people most to be pitied. Seeing the Christian life as a form of martyrdom would only be a compelling vision if there were some purpose to earthly sacrifice and suffering. Augustine therefore devoted all his art to showing people what this purpose was.

Kantzer-Komline:    When enjoining self-denial, Augustine had to be able to point to something positive that justified pursuing painful detachment from worldly desires. In one sermon, he sought to capture the imagination this way. "Think, my brothers and sisters. Reflect on the good things God gives to sinners and infer from them what he is keeping in reserve for his servants. He gives the sky and earth to sinners who blaspheme him every day. He gives them fountains, crops, good health, children, wealth and plentitude. God alone is a giver of all these good things. If he gives such gifts to sinners, what do you think he is keeping for his faithful? Could you think him so stingy as to hold nothing in reserve for the good when he gives such gifts to the wicked? Far from it. He's reserving for them not earth but heaven or perhaps I am understating it when I say heaven for he is reserving himself who made heaven. Heaven is beautiful yet he who fashioned it is more beautiful still."

Kantzer-Komline:    Ultimately, our inspiration in the life of spiritual martyrdom is nothing other than God himself. It isn't so much that God is in heaven. God is heaven. Origin infamously seems to have taught that the preexistent souls that took on flesh to become the embodied creatures we now are originally fell from heaven because of boredom. The ruination of mankind was not so much overt rebellion as the tiniest of yawns. For some unfathomable reason, these souls got tired of God himself.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine tries to explain why such distraction is utterly inconceivable. To do so he has to strike a delicate balance. On the one hand, he maintains that God gives us perfect satisfaction, else why would God be our highest aim? Yet at the same time he insists that at the feast of God's presence we never become sated. Otherwise, what would keep us at the table? Augustine's vision of the saints in heaven is paradoxical. "Even as they eat, they will still feel hunger and those who drink of you will be made thirsty even by drinking."

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine seeks to encourage spiritual martyrs in their struggle by stoking the fire of their love for God appealing to the insatiability that is inherent even in earthly forms of love that we know now. What mother would ever say to her sons, "Wow, it was great to read you this book. In fact, it was so great that I'm completely satisfied. I never want to read to you again"? Precisely because reading to my children is to satisfying, I wish to keep doing it. True love awakens an appetite for more.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine attempts to empower us for martyrdom by describing and encouraging a love for God for which this kind of human love is a faint analogy. At the wedding feast of the land, God will so nourish us that we will never again be hungry or too full for more. It's because of this promised joy that we can endure persecution in this life. "If then this inexpressible and everlasting sweetness is waiting for us, my brothers and sisters, what does it demand of us now except sincere faith, firm hope and pure charity and that we should walk in the way our Lord has given us, bare trials, and receive his consolation?"

Kantzer-Komline:    As we are now in a position to see, these three theological virtues, faith, hope and love, are the key to Augustine's vision of martyrdom as a universal Christian calling. They serve to organize the overarching features of his description of the martyr's path. Spiritual martyrdom involves first change in conversion wrought by Christ through faith. Second, pursuing God single-mindedly in love and third, taking the narrow way of self-denial in hope.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine's three strategies for encouraging the spiritual martyrs in their struggle fit this threefold pattern as well. He reminds us of the importance of God's work on our behalf in Christ through faith. He gives us hope that human weakness is compatible with the path of martyrdom and he seeks to instill in us a vibrant vision of the love of God that will be our eternal occupation.

Kantzer-Komline:    In conclusion, let's step back for a moment to ask a normative question. What do we make of this account as a whole? Some would regard the entire enterprise of clothing contemporary Christians in the mantel of martyrdom as suspect. The scholar Candida Moss, for example, has argued that the tendency of Christians to, "think of themselves as the successors of the early church," promotes, "the view that Christians are by their very nature at odds with the world."

Kantzer-Komline:    She argues that this view has devastating consequences including the polarization of today's global society, the escalation of interreligious violence, the erosion of the virtue of compassion among Christians who are convinced that they always stand on the moral high ground. Other objections to the tendency of Christians to align themselves with the martyrs include the idea that the spiritualization of martyrdom trivializes the struggles of literal martyrs, that it devalues the goodness of the body, that it glorifies self-harm and that it promotes fanaticism. In short, there would seem to be many reasons to be weary of seeing ourselves as heirs to the legacy of the martyrs.

Kantzer-Komline:    Does Augustine's theology of a universal and spiritual Christian martyrdom create a martyrdom complex, damaging to both Christians and the world? Well, I believe there are rejoinders to many of these objections. I will not respond individually to each of them now. Instead, I would like to note a crucial distinction that Augustine makes and give one example of its implications.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine acknowledges and points out that there are people claiming to be martyrs who in fact justify the concerns about martyrdom we have just considered. Such types were not uncommon among populations in Augustine's fourth and fifth century North African world who claimed to be Christian but Augustine points out that, "There are," and I'm quoting now, "There are true martyrs and false ones because there are true and false witnesses." Should the misuse and misunderstanding of the nature of true martyrdom mean that it ought to be abandoned entirely as a category for describing the Christian life? Augustine certainly does not think so despite having been merely murdered by people from a group that promoted particularly egregious forms of allegedly Christian martyrdom.

Kantzer-Komline:    One of the sermons Augustine preached on the feast of Cyprian provides a helpful typology giving us an example of the Christian martyr par excellence Jesus but also of the anti-type of the true martyr. A tragic example of a rejection of the Christian life of discipleship represented in none other than Judas of whom Jesus made the terrifying pronouncement, it would be better for him if he had not been born.

Kantzer-Komline:    There are many things Augustine might have highlighted about Jesus's example as a martyr, but against the backdrop of the Donatist controversy, Augustine focuses in the sermon on the extreme length to which Jesus went to tolerate his prosecutors. Though Christ could have used Judas's intent to persecute him, in Augustine's words, to bring about a separation, he didn't because Christ commanded us to love peace. Instead, Augustine notes while Jesus tolerated Judas to the very end, it was Judas himself who separated himself from the Lord.

Kantzer-Komline:    Moreover, Augustine does not believe Jesus's extreme tolerance in this situation ought to be exceptional, quite to the contrary. Augustine's states, "He knew what he could do and he didn't do it. The one who knew didn't do it so that any who didn't know," that's us, "wouldn't dare to do it." Jesus who could have thwarted Judas's violent schemes in a single stroke refrained from this action, why? So that we, his followers, would know we must pursue the path of tolerance and peace.

Kantzer-Komline:    According to Augustine, to urge Christians in the path of a Christ-like martyrdom is not to promote divisiveness and retaliatory violence but to guard against them. Judas, on the other hand, is the paradigmatic false martyr. Instead of bearing witness to the truth of Christ's identity at the risk of his own life, he bore false witness against Christ in the vain hope of improving his own life. Whereas Christ tolerated Judas's violent intentions, continuing even to fellowship and worship with him, Judas separated himself from Christ of his own accord.

Kantzer-Komline:    Just as Christ's true witness to his own identity and love ultimately sowed life, reconciliation and peace so Judas's false witness sowed discord, division and death. The greatest tragedy of Judas, Augustine points out, was not that he betrayed Christ's love. The greatest tragedy of his life was that he underestimated it. Judas failed to realize that he needn't have been perfect. He could still have been a true martyr instead of a false one even at the eleventh hour. Had he only repented, Christ assuredly would have forgiven him.

Kantzer-Komline:    What Judas illustrates is that distancing ourselves from Christ may seem like the life-affirming path that will bring us prosperity and blessing but rejecting the way of the cross, Christ's way of martyrdom is ultimately a rejection of life itself, true life. Sooner or later, because the spiritual and physical are connected, being cut off from the spiritual source of life is going to lead to physical death too. That's what Judas shows us.

Kantzer-Komline:    This brings us to a positive point. We've just noted some resources in Augustine for addressing concerns that have been raised about urging Christians to think of themselves as martyrs but it's not only its ability to resist common abuses that recommends Augustine's theology of martyrdom. Its chief advantage is not what it avoids doing but what it does do, namely shed a light on the way to resurrection and life.

Kantzer-Komline:    Augustine's theology of martyrdom paradoxically sends this message. Choose life. Augustine notes in one of his sermons in honor of Cyprian the church's practice of referring to the day of a martyr's death as her birthday. This practice fits the paradoxical logic of Christ's own teaching, for whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me will find it. On this same logic, to deny Christ is to choose spiritual death. This was a death Peter experienced just before the cock crowed. In Augustine's words he denied Christ. He denied life, he died. Yet the one who is the resurrection and the life did not abandon Peter to the tomb. "By denying, he perished. By weeping, he rose again."

Kantzer-Komline:    Peter's story like the broader Augustinian theology of martyrdom of which it is a part reminds us of a simple gospel truth. This was a truth that Bonhoeffer also strove to teach and understand. The Christian life of martyrdom is not for the strong but for the weak. It's not just for saints but for sinners. It's not only for times long gone by and lands far away but for us, here now in this very moment, so that we might have life and have it to the full. May God help us to be faithful in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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