Martyrdom, Individuals, Natural Law

In a fascinating passage, Kahn draws links between early Christian martyrdom and the operation state power in the Western world.

Start with martyrs: “The martyr [like Jesus] denies the state power, while yielding to its violence . . . . This is not a kind of quietism in the face of the state, but a faith imbued with an idea of resistance from the very beginning.” Kahn says that “Resistace to the state is built into the fundamental tenets of Christianity.”

Martyrs are, we might say, the first individuals. But not the last.

Christian resistance “has been generalized as a fundamental tenet of the Western – and particularly American – understandings of the relationship of the individual to the state,” producing that unique form of political life, the “conscientious objector.”

Because martyrdom gets generalized, “politics and morality can never merge completely” in Western politics: “Conscientious objection remains a moral possibility that stands outside of every political value. The conscientious objectors bears witness; he does not organize a political party.”

There are, however, efforts to make politics and morality commensurable. Kahn claims that this is the intent behind “theories of natural law,” which are “understandable, but unfulfillable, especially in the States, where “resistance to the claims of natural law is as old as the practice of constitutional interpretation.”

There’s a lot I like about this: The church doesn’t just limit the state’s power theoretically; more importantly, it enacts those limits in martyrdom. Martyurdom is the great Christian contribution to Western political order. And, even juicier perhaps: Natural law as an effort to reverse the political achievement of the martyrs. Natural law theory as anti-martyrology.