Tertullian, On Flight in Persecution

You asked recently, brother Fabius, whether we ought to flee when persecution breaks out, prompted by some rumor I haven't quite caught. I did speak on the spot, but the pressure of certain people forced me to walk away with the matter only half-treated. Now I'm setting it down in full, as your request and the times themselves demanded. The more frequent the persecutions, the more urgently we need to work out how faith should receive them. That work falls to you — and it's a fair question whether you're up to it, since you've refused the Paraclete, the guide into all truth (John 16:13), leaving you still liable to every other doubt. So I'll impose some order on your inquiry. First, we must decide the nature of persecution itself: does it come from God or the devil? The answer makes it far easier to settle what happens in it. Any investigation clears up once the author is known. It's a baseline that nothing happens without God's will. But I won't let that axiom swallow the whole argument right away, or someone will retort: 'Then evil comes from God, sin comes from God; the devil has nothing left, and neither do we.' The question at hand is persecution. For now, I say it happens by God's will — looking at it as something peculiarly worthy of God, even necessary, for the testing or the rejection of his servants. What else is the outcome of persecution but the testing and rejection of faith, by which the Lord has always examined his own? (John 15:20; 1 Peter 4:12) Persecution is the whole judgment: through it a person is judged either approved or rejected. And judgment belongs to God alone. It's the winnowing fan that even now cleanses the Lord's threshing floor — the Church — tossing the mixed heap of the faithful, separating the wheat of martyrs from the chaff of deniers. (Matthew 3:12) It's the ladder Jacob dreamed of, showing some the ascent to higher things, others the descent to lower. (Genesis 28:12) You can read persecution as a contest, too. Who announces the contest but the one who offers the crown and the rewards? The edict of this contest stands in the Apocalypse, listing the prizes that call us to victory — above all for those who have truly conquered in persecution, struggling and winning not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness. (Revelation 2:10; Ephesians 6:12) So you'll see the judging of the contest belongs to the same judge who invites to the reward. Everything done in persecution serves the glory of God, who tests and rejects, who raises up and casts down. And whatever serves God's glory certainly happens by his will. When is God more believed than when he is more feared — if not in the time of persecution? Then the Church stands in awe; then faith grows more earnest and disciplined in fasts, vigils, prayers, humility, in diligence and love, in holiness and self-control. Nothing is done except in fear and hope. That alone shows it can't be the devil's work — what makes God's servants better. If wickedness is not from God but from the devil, and persecution consists of wickedness — for what is more wicked than treating the priests of the true God, all followers of truth, like the vilest criminals? — then persecution seems to come from the devil, from whom wickedness proceeds and by which persecution consists. But we must grasp this: persecution is not without the devil's wickedness, nor is the testing of faith without persecution. The necessary wickedness serves the testing of faith — not as a patronage of persecution, but as its ministry. God's will precedes, aimed at the testing of faith, which is the reason for persecution; the devil's wickedness follows as the instrument of persecution, which is the reason for the testing. Wickedness rivals justice, and in that rivalry it becomes the material for the testimony of the one it rivals, so that justice is perfected in wickedness, just as virtue is perfected in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9) God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong, the foolish to shame the wise. (1 Corinthians 1:27) So wickedness is employed to prove justice, confounding wickedness itself. This ministry is not one of judgment but of service — judgment is the Lord's, persecution for the testing of faith; the ministry is the devil's wickedness, for the arrangement of persecution. Thus we believe it happens *through* the devil, not *by* the devil. Nothing is permitted to Satan against the living servants of God except what the Lord allows — either to destroy him through the victorious faith of the elect in temptation, or to hand over those who have defected to him. You have the case of Job: the devil could inflict no temptation until he received power from God, nor even touch his substance until the Lord said, 'Behold, all he has is in your hand; only do not stretch out your hand against him.' (Job 1:12) And he did not stretch it out until the Lord granted even that: 'Behold, I give him to you; only spare his life.' (Job 2:6) The same with the Apostles: he asked for the power to tempt them, and had it only by permission. The Lord told Peter in the Gospel: 'Behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail' (Luke 22:31-32) — that is, it would not be permitted to the devil to the point of endangering faith. This shows both the shaking of faith and its protection are with God, since both are asked of him: the shaking from the devil, the protection from the Son. And when the Son of God holds the protection of faith in his power, asked from the Father from whom he receives all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), how could the devil hold the shaking of faith in his own hand? In the Lord's Prayer, when we say to the Father, 'Lead us not into temptation' — what greater temptation than persecution? — we confess it comes from him from whom we beg deliverance: 'But deliver us from evil' (Matthew 6:13), that is, do not lead us into temptation by handing us over to the evil one. We are snatched from the devil's hands precisely when we are not handed over to him in temptation. The legion of demons had no power over the herd of swine except what they obtained from God (Mark 5:12-13); how much less over the sheep of God? I'll say even the bristles of the swine were numbered by God then; how much more the hairs of the saints? (Luke 12:7) The devil appears to have his own power only over those who do not belong to God — once given over to him, like a drop in a bucket, dust on the threshing floor, spittle of the nations appointed by God and thus exposed to the devil in a kind of empty possession. (Isaiah 40:15) But in God's household, nothing is permitted to him from his own authority. Scripture's examples show when and why permission is granted: either the right of temptation is granted for the sake of testing, whether provoked or provoking, as in the cases above; or for the sake of rejection, the sinner is handed over to him as executioner for punishment, as with Saul: 'The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a harmful spirit from the Lord tormented him' (1 Samuel 16:14); or for the sake of restraint, as the Apostle recounts — a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him (2 Corinthians 12:7) — not permitted in the saints to humble them through fleshly vexation except so that the virtue of endurance may be perfected in weakness; for the Apostle himself handed Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme. (1 Timothy 1:20) You see now that the devil receives power more readily *from* the servants of God — so far from possessing it by right. Since these examples occur most in persecutions, when we are more tested or rejected, more humbled or corrected, they must be permitted or commanded by God — from whom both the testing and the protection are sought. For our peace, what is war but persecution? If persecution's outcomes bring either life or death, wound or healing, you have its author: 'I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal' (Deuteronomy 32:39). 'I will refine them like silver, and test them like gold' (Zechariah 13:9). When we are refined by persecution's fire, then we are tested by the tenor of faith. These are the devil's fiery darts (Ephesians 6:16), by which the burning and testing of faith are administered — yet from God's will. Who could doubt this except a frivolous, cold faith that seizes on those who timidly gather in the Church? You say: 'We meet in disorder, we crowd together, many of us, and the nations take notice; we fear they'll be disturbed.' Do you not know God is Lord of all? If God wills, you will suffer persecution; if he does not, the nations will be silent. You ought to believe — if you believe in that God without whose will not a single sparrow falls to the ground. (Matthew 10:29) And we, I think, are worth many sparrows. So, once it's settled where persecution comes from, we can bring your inquiry to a conclusion: from this very preamble it follows that one must not flee in persecution. If persecution comes from God, there is no fleeing what comes from God. A double reason defends this: what comes from God must not be avoided, and cannot be evaded. It must not be avoided because it is good. Everything God has seen fit to do is necessarily good. Isn't that why Genesis says: 'And God saw that it was good' (Genesis 1:10) — not because he didn't know it was good unless he looked, but to signal by this very phrasing that whatever God has seen is good? Many things happen from God and turn out evil for someone. Yet they are good *because* they come from God — as divine and rational. What is divine is not irrational, not evil. What is good is not undivine. If it seems evil to someone's sense, it is not human sense that judges the state of things, but the state that judges the sense. The state of a thing is fixed, and it gives sense its law: to perceive the state as it is. If the state is good — what comes from God (for nothing from God is not good, because it is divine, because it is rational) — but sense perceives it as evil, the state remains secure, the sense is in error. Chastity, truth, justice are optimal by state, yet displeasing to many people's sense. Should the state therefore be subjected to sense? So too persecution is good by state, because it is a divine and rational disposition.