Kevin Alan Wells

In 112 A.D., Pliny the Younger was governor of a northeastern Roman province named Bithynia. A successful and experienced Roman diplomat, Pliny had built a lifelong career of traveling the empire to work with vastly different people on many different projects. But when he arrived in Bithynia, Pliny came across a strange cult that he had no idea how to deal with.

Its beliefs were spreading through the cities, villages, and farms, and reaching into every rank of the society he was charged with governing. Alarmed at this growing foreign influence, Pliny interrogated members of the cult to discover the nature of their beliefs. He concluded that it was a “depraved, excessive superstition,” and punished with execution anyone who adhered to it. But it wasn’t the beliefs of this religious group that Pliny deemed deserving of death. There was something else—something about the religious group’s followers—that angered Pliny. He wrote:

In the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment. Those who persisted I ordered executed, for I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their belief, such stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished.

Pliny was demanding that Christians stop being Christians. He might as well have ordered them to stop being human. Pliny couldn’t comprehend the impossibility of what he was asking anymore than the father of a young girl named Perpetua could a hundred years later.

In 203 A.D., Vibia Perpetua was a 22-year-old Roman citizen, born from a noble family, educated, well married, and a new mother. She was also a new believer imprisoned by the Roman Empire for refusing to recant her Christian belief.

While incarcerated and awaiting trial, her father visited relentlessly and as she, herself, wrote, “continually strove to hurt my faith because of his love.”

“Have pity, daughter, on my grey hairs!” he cried. “Have pity on your father, if I am worthy to be called father by you. If with these hands I have brought you into this flower of youth, and I have preferred you before all your brothers, do not give me over to the reproach of men. Think of your brothers. Think of your mother and your aunt. Think of your infant son! He will die without his mother to care for him. Give up your resolution; do not destroy us all together!” All this he said fatherly in his love for me, kissing my hands and groveling at my feet with many tears.

Perpetua tried to explain to her father the impossibility of what he asked. Through the bars of her cell, she pointed to a clay jar sitting on the floor in a corner. “Dad, do you see that pot?”

His tear-strained eyes followed her finger to the floor. “Yes, sweetheart, I see it.”

“Can that pot be anything other than what it is?”

“…No.”

“Neither can I be anything other than that which I am, a Christian.”

Days later, on March 7th, 203 A.D., Perpetua walked with a small group of fellow believers into the Carthage amphitheater, surrounded by blasts of a cheering crowd. For that crowd’s amusement, and as part of the birthday celebration for the emperor’s son, these believers were thrown into the arena unarmed and unclothed at the feet of wild beasts and gladiators—because they refused to denounce their Christian beliefs.

My dear fellow Christian, the ancient world knew us—and despised us—for unyielding, obstinate belief past all reason, against the odds, beyond every hope, through despair, in crisis moments, under the blade, to the very bottom of the lion’s stomach. If we are following in the ancient faithful’s footsteps, this shouldn’t be any different today. We are believers. We believe.

There is a reason why we are so obstinate in our faith. There is a reason why we will never recant. It’s the reason I’ll tell you about next week.

The painting is The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer (1883) by Jean-Leon Gerome. Sources: The Letter of Pliny. The Passion of Perpetua.