Pilgrim Holiness: Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness

Abstract

Martyrdom, as an explicitly christological witness, offers limited but vital description within the various and unpredictable arenas of living, suffering and death. That is, martyrdom is not the tragic conclusion of some fatal idée fixe but a momentary truthful glimpse of present circumstances. Martyrdom is something which reveals, clarifies and illumines what we take for the real. The martyrs are significant for the church today because they exhibit that sort of truthful living which refuses the claims of history and power without Christ and which show the sort of living and dying that returns forgiveness upon murder and patience beyond domination.