Tertullian (c.160/170–c.220) had a genuine knack for pithy sayings that stick in the mind. For instance, there is his well-known take on the antithesis between ancient philosophy and Christianity: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Or the equally famous quip: “The blood of the martyrs is seed.”
Later generations expanded this to “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”, which may well bring out what the North African theologian originally had in mind. Tertullian, who was an advocate for never fleeing from persecution or seeking to evade arrest for one’s faith, here pictures the church flourishing through her martyrs.
This pithy saying recognises that martyrdom was one of the ways that God grew his Son’s church in this early period of her history. As men and women watched the martyrs die, some wondered as to why they were willing to give up their lives in such a brutal manner. This statement also rightly captures a key truth about the early church up until the embrace of Christianity by the emperor Constantine: the church defined herself as a church of the martyrs. Ideally, she consisted of those men and women who had counted the cost in following Jesus and were prepared to die for Him. While the actual number of martyrs in these early centuries was not enormous, nonetheless, all who were baptised into Christ had to reckon with the possibility that they might be called upon to die as a martyr.
