Chapter 1 outlines the volume’s cases, methods, and arguments. It begins by tracing the linguistic history of the term “martyr” before proceeding to locate martyrdom as an act simultaneously religious and political, personal and collective, and seeking self-actualization rather than self-destruction. In contrast to studies that treat martyrdom as a subset of suicide, I articulate a distinction between self-killing—sanctioned towards certain ends—and self-murder, which is condemned in all religious (and political) traditions. As such, I argue, martyrdom must be approached through a dual window that appreciates both the rationales given by martyrs and their celebration by social groups. I analyze the promise and perils of comparative study towards that end by giving global context to localized crises, and offer a brief reconsideration of the category of sacrifice that will guide my discussion. Finally, I outline the structure of the work and the methodology that uses words written by martyrs in tandem with contemporary accounts and statements by religious and political leaders.

Agape-justice conflicts provide unique opportunities for growth in supernatural excellence. There are “no tidy answers” in sorting through competing duties of justice and agape. However, justice’s obligees who hold strong legal and moral claims can voluntarily and generously choose to forego their claim-rights in favor of those who have none—agape’s beneficiaries. If we can give of ourselves with alacrity, then, even the most intractable agape-justice conflicts can be resolved with the adjudication of last resort—to love as Christ loves. Doing so leads to growth in Christified agape, that is, caritas. Such self-giving dissolves the competing claims of agape and justice.

This chapter explores the ethical tension between kinship and love in the realm of self-chosen marriages or ‘love-marriages’ in India. Central to the discussion are notions of personal autonomy as revealed in the deliberations of young people who must contend with normative ideas about acquiescing to marital ‘arrangement’ (by parents, elders, or kin) and who appear to eschew them by seeking to base their self-made kinship on love. In contrast, societal delineations of selfishness and selflessness play an unusually large part in narratives about love-marriages in North India and impose a measure of authenticity of self and of ethical distinctiveness between persons. This chapter seeks to explore the meanings of the ‘selfishness’ of love-marriages ethnographically by identifying bekhudiyat (literally, ‘losing the self’) as a form of self-forgetting that is poignantly linked to experiences of love and marriage in Delhi.

This chapter acknowledges that Paul’s gospel of divine self-sacrifice may seem too good to be true, even a fairy tale, to some people. We need a reality check for it, and Paul’s injunction to “test everything,” including ourselves (2 Cor. 13:5), lends support to this cause. This chapter identifies Paul’s approach to the needed testing, and thereby clarifies the foundations of his perspective on human knowledge of God. Paul’s message of divine self-sacrifice rests on resources needed to commend that message as not just helpful but also true. According to this chapter, Paul’s message of self-sacrifice in Romans 12:1–2 itself holds the key to suitable assessment of his good news. A key consideration is that suitably apprehending divine righteousness in self-sacrifice will confirm God’s reality and redemptive will. Such apprehending enables one to experience firsthand the divine self-sacrifice in one’s own life, with its distinctive power to obey God. There is no circularity here, because the relevant experience is not the same as a message of divine self-sacrifice, but it can be a truth indicator, and thus evidence, for such a message. The chapter explains why Paul does not rely on arguments of natural theology.

This chapter summarizes Paul’s gospel of divine self-sacrifice, giving special attention to the character of the righteous God responsible for his gospel. It identifies how divine righteousness figures in a solution to the human predicament of the corrosive powers of sin and death by offering a remedy in reparative self-sacrifice. The needed reparative sacrifice begins with divine self-sacrifice that includes the sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, but it does not end there. It calls for human reciprocity in self-sacrifice to God, as voluntary sharing in the life-giving obedience of Jesus Christ to God. The chapter identifies how God agitates in human history to attract the cooperation of humans in such reparative self-sacrifice. This divine effort is at the center of God’s righteous love for humans, regardless of their national, ethnic, or religious background. Paul focused his calling from God on the good news that God has intervened in human history, climactically in Jesus Christ, to attract humans to cooperation with this good news.

This chapter clarifies the relation between sacrificial love and human faith in God in Paul’s gospel of divine self-sacrifice. Paul offers a critically important but disputed connection between the two: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working [or made effective] through love” (Gal. 5:6). The chapter contends that Paul understood faith in God to have a formative basis in divine agapē, and that this basis secures a foundational role for divine grace. The case benefits from a neglected appreciation of a bimodal, combined middle and passive voice of a participle for Paul. The result is Paul’s view of a divinely intended ground and expression of faith in divine agapē. The chapter explains how this approach illuminates Paul’s view on the fulfillment-expression of the law of God in divine agapē. It thus offers an underappreciated basis for the importance of such agapē in faith and in pursuing the law, according to Paul. It also relates faith in God to dying with Christ, as sharing in his obedience to God.

This chapter analyses the various forms of coercion and violence that have played a central role in the shaping of the Middle East and that have affected all aspects of social life since the First World War. Notwithstanding its permanence in time and in space, the violence observed in the region is defined by distinct historical cycles. Each of these cycles began as a result of one or more violent disruptions that have a de-structuring and re-structuring impact beyond one country. Each is also determined by a specific ideological and political ‘microclimate’ and bears the mark of a given generation. The first cycle, which began with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its Arab provinces, continued until the foundation of the State of Israel. The second covers a period of thirty years from 1948 to 1979. The third begins in 1979 with the Camp David II Accords and the recognition of the State of Israel by Egypt, the Iranian Revolution, the Islamist insurgency at Mecca and the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Army. The last cycle begins with the Arab revolutionary protests of 2011 and their disruptive effects on some societies.