236. How Christ’s death was martyrdom, not suicide
236. HOW CHRIST’S DEATH WAS MARTYRDOM, NOT SUICIDE
If Christ’s death was not imposed upon Him but freely chosen, why wasn’t it suicide?
He says Himself (Jn 10:18): No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. . . .
A thing may cause an effect in two ways. In the first way by acting directly so as to produce the effect; and in this way it was Christ’s persecutors who slew Him. . . . In another way someone causes an effect indirectly, that is, by not preventing it when he can do so. . . . For He could have prevented His Passion and death. . . . Therefore, since Christ . . . willed His corporeal nature to succumb to such injury, He is said to have laid down His life, or to have died voluntarily (III,47,1).
We can understand martyrs best by looking at the supreme martyr, Christ. The same answer to our question about Christ must apply to all martyrs.
Like the suicide, the martyr freely offers his life. Yet martyrdom is not only not the same as suicide, it is the polar opposite of suicide, since the suicide loves nothing in life enough to keep living, while the martyr loves something so much that he gives up everything for it, even life. The suicide sees less value and meaning in life than anyone else, while the martyr sees more.
Christ freely offers His life. It was not an accident, or a “tragedy”. He did what we do in the Mass.
But it was not a suicide (and neither is any martyrdom) because, as St. Thomas explains, this offering is not the direct efficient cause, the necessary-and-sufficient cause, of His death. The people who shouted “Crucify Him!” and Judas and Pilate and Caiaphas and Herod and the Roman soldiers were the direct cause of His death, both physically, by nailing Him to the Cross, and legally, by setting in motion the legal and military forces to kill Him, and also spiritually and morally, by wanting Christ dead rather than alive.
A second, and morally different, way of bringing about an effect is not to stop it. God does not (usually) miraculously stop evil from happening, either physical evil or moral evil, by interfering with physical laws or with human free will. His providence allows evil so as to bring about a greater good by it—but indirectly, not directly.
This is morally different from directly causing evil, as choosing to endure, tolerate, or suffer the lesser evil is morally different from choosing to commit an evil, even a lesser one. We should never do anything that is intrinsically evil, and we never need to choose to do so; but sometimes we need to choose to endure or suffer an evil, when it is a question of suffering a greater or a lesser one, e.g., choosing to endure painful side effects of chemotherapy in order to save one’s life from cancer, or choosing not to criminalize many private moral evils, such as alcoholism or sodomy, because to do so would require the greater evil of tyranny and totalitarianism.
A concrete example of this allowing evil for a greater good can be found in The Lord of the Rings. Sauron, the Satan figure, is allowed to fight the last battle, in fact “egged on” to do so, by the warriors of the Fellowship; and his very force is used against him, as in judo, by distracting him from his true peril, Frodo’s mission of destruction of the Ring of Power. As in judo, the enemy’s own force is made to recoil against him. This is what God providentially did with Judas and the others who directly killed Christ. God is the great judo master.
Thus the martyr, like Christ, actively chooses to endure death (which is caused by others, not self-inflicted) when he could prevent it. Christ could have prevented His death, but that would have made void the whole purpose of the adventure of His Incarnation; and the early Christian martyrs could have avoided death by blaspheming, apostasizing, and worshipping the emperor, but that would have made void the whole purpose of their adventure of faith.