That, I think, is the $587 question.

Halden: Thanks for your post, and for highlighting this review.

“. . . the important thing is not to be for Chistendom or against it, . . . . . but to have such a sympathetic understanding of it that we profit from its politico-theological gains and avoid repeating its politico-theological mistakes. . . .”

“That the kingdoms of this age are not in the business of saving subjects’ souls, is something it was hard for [Justinian] to learn. Yet Christendom learned it; and in the end, the ‘defence of Christendom’ amounts to no more than this, that any well-taken criticism of Christendom that we may think of turns out not to be ours, but theirs.”

“They do not understand their witness as a force of of effective persuasion that they hope will sway the Empire to do them homage. Rather they understand their life and death as the enactment of a different sort of kingship altogether.”

… needs to be qualified in light of this:

“But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles *and kings* and the children of Israel…” (Acts 9:15). The rest of Acts describes Paul doing that: witnessing to the Jews, the the Gentiles, and to rulers. He says to Agrippa, for example: “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am–except for these chains.” (26:29). And of course, the entire narrative of Acts is about the Gospel going from Jerusalem to Rome, and obviously Paul was going to Rome to witness to Caesar himself.

This doesn’t quite go the whole way towards proving that the martyrs thought their martyrdom would call the emperors to submission, but if you add the fact that the martyrs thought their martyrdom was a “martyring” (witnessing) to the above objectives of witnessing, I think we get the whole way.

But again, the real issue is not whether the martyrs thought their martyrdom had the objective of getting the emperor to bow the knee; the issue is what “bowing the knee” means on the part of the emperor.

I was commenting on the “early church” bit because of this brief closing comment: “Hopes of winning the homage of the Empire are just not to be found in the early church’s self-understanding”

I know that Eusebius is often seen soley as villain but I think his revionist history cannot be merely a creation of his own mind. Considering the Empire was often viewed as “the world” it seems that Eusebius’s logic of Church conquering Empire must have drawn on previous Christian understanding of the Church’s telos.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with everything O’Donovan says but I do think that a Christendom geography of Christian life and mission makes a lot of sense.

And who’s singling out anything as perfect or pristine? My only point is that O’Donovan’s construal of early Christian martyrdom is, on the whole, incorrect. What importance one accords that part of the church’s witness is another matter. All that matters to me here is the fact that O’Donovan is reaching to establish a certain sort of theological credibility for his own project by an illegitimate construal of early Christian martyrdom and the broad understanding of the church’s mission that obtained among the martyrs themselves.

I disagree. They understood their life and death as witness to a different King altogether. This is effectively what O’Donnovan seems to present.

There is also the presenting issue of the fetishism of “the early church” or the “pre-constantinian church” which ends up being “whatever aspect or part of the early church that supports my argument.” I’m with the great Rowan Williams in his book on doing Christian history…it is strange that we should single out a particular period as being the sine qua non of being a Christian.