No God but God: The martyrdom of Polycarp

The life and death of Polycarp reminds us of Hebrews 11:35:  “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.”  Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, would not have been burned at the stake if he had burned a small pinch of incense to the Roman emperor on a February morning in the year 155.  His story is inspiring and instructive for our time, which has been described as “the new age of the martyrs.”

Early life

Polycarp was born around the year 69 or 70, shortly after Peter and Paul had been put to death under Nero in Rome. According to one source, he had been born a slave but was adopted as a young boy by a woman of faith named Callisto, who brought him up as her own son. As a young man, he was saturated with the scriptures, powerful in prayer, and known for deeds of mercy to those in need. Later, Ignatius of Antioch would remind young Polycarp of the commitment he had made at his baptism. Through his baptism he had enrolled in the militia Christi, the army of Jesus that sheds no blood. “Let your baptism endure as your arms; your faith as your helmet; your love as your spear; your patience as a complete panoply.” …

Polycarp never knew Paul, but he did know his writings and quoted them often. He certainly knew those who had been won to faith in Christ through the witness of the great apostle. …

Polycarp commended Paul, but he had a personal relationship with the apostle John. We know this through the witness of Irenaeus, the great teacher and bishop of Lyons, who was also a native son of Smyrna. Irenaeus grew up in this city in the very shadow of Polycarp, sitting at his feet just as Polycarp had earlier sat at the feet of John. As an old man remembering something vivid from his youth, Irenaeus tells us how he recalled the very chair where Polycarp sat, how he tilted his head, the sound of gravel in his voice when he spoke, the weight of his hand on his shoulder. …

Polycarp’s theology of life and ministry

[In] Polycarp … two great streams of New Testament Christianity [converge], the Pauline and the Johannine: Paul’s emphasis on union with Christ, which declares, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27), and “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17), uniting with the distinctive message of John, which says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And this is what we are! . . . See how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. . . . God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1 John 3:1a; 4:9-10, 16). From Paul, Polycarp heard Jesus say, “Will you follow me?” From John, he heard Jesus say, “Do you love me?” These two questions would shape his life and ministry and give meaning to his martyrdom. …

In the Church, contending with heresy

The great challenge facing the Christian church in Polycarp’s day was an ethereal, docetic view of Christ that marked the movement we call Gnosticism—the idea that Jesus only seemed or appeared to have a real physical body but was actually a ghost-like phantom figure. Its main exponent was Marcion, a shipbuilder and the son of a bishop from Pontus on the Black Sea. Marcion liked certain passages from Paul, but not others, and he had no use for John whatsoever. He wanted to brush out of the Christian story anything that smacked of the material, the corporeal, the physical, the tangible, the vulnerable. Jesus, he said, had come to offer an alternative way of salvation, one that bypassed the world of matter, the world of “bugs and mosquitos and crocodiles and vipers.” Marcion preached a gospel with no Christmas: Jesus was not born of Mary. He had no natural, human birth at all. “Away,” he said, “with that poor inn, those mean swaddling clothes, and that rough stable.” Along with his disembodied Christology, he also wanted to rip the Old Testament out of his Bible. “It’s the book of the Jews,” he said. “It’s not our Bible.”

One of the few trips we know Polycarp made outside of Smyrna was a visit to Rome, where he was accosted by Marcion. “Do you know who I am?” Marcion asked. “Yes,” Polycarp replied. “I know you. You are the firstborn of Satan!” The church has never faced a greater turning point, nor had a more acute crisis, than the one Polycarp was involved in refuting. The decision to retain the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, as part of the Christian Bible reaffirmed the coinherence of creation and redemption. It also confessed the full, unvarnished humanity along with the undiminished deity of Jesus, Son of Mary, Son of God. This made possible the full Trinitarian faith in the great councils of the fourth century. …

In the culture, refusing to worship the emperor 

It is not as though the Christians were violent revolutionaries bent on the overthrow of the state. No, they wanted to be good citizens. As they repeatedly told those in authority, we willingly pay our taxes, and we gladly pray for those in authority, including the emperor. It is our duty to pray for the emperor, but we cannot pray to him. For we are also citizens of another realm. We belong to the ecclesia, the church, and we worship another King who sits on a different throne.

Around the time the Book of Revelation was written, the emperor Domitian had his likeness stamped on a Roman coin with the words “Dominus et Deus,” “Lord and God.” But the Christians said, “We will not say ‘Dominus et Deus’ to the emperor for, while we are citizens of two realms, our ultimate political loyalty, what Paul calls politeuma in Philippians 3:29, is not to the empires and kingdoms of this world, which rise and fall, and come and go. We will not say ‘Kurios Kaiser,’ for there is another sovereignty we must acknowledge. Jesus alone is Lord, and him we must follow.” To be a baptized Christian was to have made this commitment, and there was no going back.

This was not revolutionary in the usual sense of that word, but it was subversive. For it was a way of saying that Caesar is not everything. There is a divinely appointed distance between church and empire. Because the Christians had embraced the Hebrew Scriptures, they knew the Ten Commandments, especially the first one: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery: you shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:2–3). The state is ordained by God, as Paul taught, but it is not God. It is not sacred in itself. …

No God but God:  The martyrdom of Polycarp

For eighty-six-year-old Polycarp, on Sunday, February 23, in the year 155, it was simple: The proconsul offered him a way out. “Just take a pinch of incense and place it on the altar of the imperial deity. A simple gesture. Symbolic, that’s all. Then you can go on worshiping Jesus all you like. We’ll check you off our list.” …

The proconsul said to Polycarp: “Take the oath, and I will let you go. Revile Christ.” But Polycarp said: “For eighty and six years have I been his servant, and he has done me no wrong, and how can I now blaspheme my king who saved me?” Polycarp offered a prayer in the name of the triune God, and then he was bound. The faggots were lit. …

“Faithful Unto Death:  What We Can Learn Today from St. Polycarp,” by Timothy George, is available on the website of First Things.  

Dr. George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and the general editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture.  He is the author of over 20 books, including Reading Scripture with the Reformers, The Great Tradition of Christian Thinking: A Student’s Guide (with David Dockery), and Amazing Grace: God’s Pursuit, Our Response. His Theology of the Reformers is the standard textbook on Reformation theology.