Christianity has long been framed through the stories of martyrs and saints who remained steadfast in the face of death. Paul’s words, “When I am weak, then I am strong,” have echoed as a testimony that divine grace turns human fragility into power. Yet Paul himself never faltered in his allegiance to Christ. From the moment of his conversion on the Damascus road to his final days in prison, he lived as if faith was an unbreakable chain that bound him to the cross. His “weakness” was not doubt or betrayal, but the suffering of the body and the lowering of the ego, so that his own self gradually gave way and the life of Christ was revealed within him.
The same could be said for many of the first disciples. Tradition tells us that Peter accepted crucifixion upside down, others were beheaded, and countless unnamed believers were thrown to lions during the reign of Nero. Their heroism has been honored in liturgy and legend as the standard of Christian fidelity. Their weakness was not a collapse of faith but the surrender of the body and the self, transformed into strength through grace.
But what about those who could not stand? What about those who trembled before the executioner, who denied their faith, or who apostatized to spare themselves and their families from agony? For centuries, such figures were remembered as cautionary tales rather than saints. Yet Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ bring them to the center. Both works wrestle with a disturbing question: can God still love and redeem the unfaithful?
Endō’s World of Silence
Endō set his story in seventeenth century Japan, when Christianity was outlawed and believers faced merciless persecution. The authorities forced suspected Christians to trample on the fumie, an image of Christ or the Virgin Mary, as a test of loyalty to the shogunate. Refusal meant imprisonment and torture. Stepping on the fumie meant public apostasy and disgrace. The cruelty of the situation lay in its simplicity: a single act of pressure on a wooden or metal plaque determined the fate of one’s soul.
The Jesuit priest Rodrigues travels to Japan with the zeal of a missionary convinced of the glory of martyrdom. He expects to find believers clinging to their faith with the same fire that sustained the martyrs of Rome. Instead he finds peasants terrified of pain, converts who slip back into ancestral practices, and the haunting figure of Kichijirō, a cowardly man who betrays again and again. His ideals of unshakable faith collide with the desperate reality of survival.
At the heart of the story is the dilemma faced by Rodrigues and his mentor Ferreira. The authorities do not threaten them directly. Instead, they torture Japanese peasants slowly and cruelly. The message is clear: unless the priests renounce Christ by stepping on the fumie, the suffering will never stop. Faithfulness in this context is not only self-preservation but also a death sentence for others. Silence surrounds Rodrigues as he prays for guidance. The silence is God’s, but also his own, as he wrestles with the unbearable cost of fidelity.
Ferreira’s Apostasy as Unfaithful Love
Ferreira, once the shining star of the Jesuit mission, becomes the most shocking figure in the novel. After years in Japan, he succumbs to the pressure and tramples on the fumie. He then lives under house arrest, writing against Christianity and helping the authorities expose hidden believers. For the Jesuits in Europe, his betrayal is unforgivable. For Rodrigues, who idolized him, it is a scandal beyond comprehension.
Yet when Rodrigues finally confronts Ferreira, he learns a disturbing truth. Ferreira explains that his apostasy was not an act of selfish cowardice. It was an act of mercy. He could not endure hearing peasants tortured for his sake, and he believed that by denying Christ outwardly he could spare them. His faith, if it still existed, had been turned inside out. Instead of imitating Christ by dying, he imitated Christ by accepting shame to save others.
The climax comes when Rodrigues himself is ordered to step on the fumie while peasants groan in the background. At that moment he hears, in the silence of his soul, the voice of Christ. “Step on me. It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world.” The words do not absolve him of the pain of betrayal, but they transform the meaning of his act. Apostasy becomes, paradoxically, an imitation of Christ’s self-giving love. Ferreira’s choice, and Rodrigues’s, represent a strange form of faith expressed through unfaithfulness.
Kichijirō and the Everyman’s Weakness
If Ferreira represents the tragic intellectual struggle of faith under pressure, Kichijirō embodies weakness in its most ordinary form. He is introduced as a coward who betrayed his family to save himself. Throughout the novel he repeatedly vows fidelity, only to break under fear and trample on the fumie again. Each time he returns, begging for confession and forgiveness. Each time he receives it, only to fall once more.
Kichijirō is despised by both priests and fellow villagers. He is a disgrace to the community, a mirror of betrayal. Yet Endō insists on keeping him close to Rodrigues. His weakness is relentless, almost absurd. He becomes a living question mark: how many times can God forgive? Three times, like Peter? Or thirty times, echoing the thirty pieces of silver that Judas received?
By making Kichijirō central, Endō subverts the tradition of celebrating only the martyrs. Most Christians, he suggests, are not heroes. They are fragile, fearful, and full of contradictions. Kichijirō represents humanity in its brokenness, stripped of honor and courage. If God’s grace does not extend to him, then it does not extend to us. The radical claim of Silence is that even the weakest believer, who fails again and again, is still loved by Christ.
Scorsese’s Judas: Faithful Betrayer
In The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese takes inspiration from Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel, which reimagines Judas not as a greedy traitor but as the most faithful disciple. According to this vision, Jesus asks Judas to betray him in order to fulfill the plan of salvation. Judas resists, because the role of betrayer will condemn him in history. But out of obedience, he accepts the burden.
This reframing of Judas shocks audiences because it reverses centuries of tradition. Instead of being the villain of the Gospel story, Judas becomes the one who understands Jesus most deeply. His betrayal is not selfish, but sacrificial. He is willing to lose his reputation and his soul so that redemption can unfold. In this vision, betrayal itself becomes a form of obedience and love.
The idea resonates with Ferreira’s apostasy. Just as Ferreira’s denial spares peasants, Judas’s betrayal enables the crucifixion. Both figures embody the painful paradox that unfaithfulness can serve love. Yet their stories are not told with triumph. They are heavy with ambiguity, shame, and sorrow. Judas’s act may be necessary, but it is not glorious. Ferreira’s apostasy may be merciful, but it is not pure. Both remain tragedies in which grace must somehow be found.
Jesus and the Last Temptation of Weakness
The film does not stop with Judas. It pushes the question of weakness into the very heart of Jesus. On the cross, wracked with pain, he experiences a vision of an alternate life. In this dream he comes down from the cross, marries Mary Magdalene, raises children, and grows old in peace. The dream is filled with warmth, domestic love, and ordinary happiness. It is what any human being might long for.
But Judas reappears in this vision to confront him. He accuses Jesus of abandoning his mission. Judas reminds him that while he bore the curse of being the betrayer, Jesus has escaped into comfort. In this moment, Judas becomes the voice of God’s demand, calling Jesus back to the cross.
The vision collapses. Jesus awakens to the reality of crucifixion, realizing that his temptation was a hallucination. His last words are no longer simply a declaration of abandonment, but an expression of his solidarity with human weakness. By experiencing the temptation to escape, he fully shares in the frailty of those who falter. Even Jesus, in this telling, must taste the longing to turn away. His mission is completed not by avoiding weakness, but by entering it and emerging with forgiveness.
Parallels Between Silence and The Last Temptation
Placed side by side, Endō’s and Scorsese’s works reveal striking parallels. Ferreira and Judas both embody betrayal that is not rooted in selfishness but in obedience and compassion. Their choices expose the painful possibility that unfaithfulness may be required for love.
Kichijirō and the traditional image of Judas embody betrayal in its weakest form, born of fear and failure. Both fall again and again, despised by others and themselves. Yet both remain within the reach of grace.
Even Jesus participates in weakness. In The Last Temptation, his vision of a family life is a profound temptation to abandon his calling. In Silence, his voice comes from within the act of betrayal, telling Rodrigues to step on him. The line between faith and unfaithfulness blurs until the only constant is love.
It is no wonder, then, that Scorsese, who grew up in a devout Catholic household and never stopped wrestling with the meaning of grace, was drawn to Endō’s novel. Having already explored Judas and the weakness of Christ in The Last Temptation, he eventually brought Silence to the screen as well. In doing so, he recognized the same haunting question that shaped his own spiritual journey: can God’s love be found not only in heroic fidelity, but in the frailty of betrayal?
The Silence of God and the Whisper of Grace
The title of Endō’s novel refers to the terrible silence of God in the midst of suffering. Rodrigues prays and hears nothing. Yet at the climax, the silence is broken by a whisper that affirms compassion for the weak. The voice of Christ identifies with those who betray rather than condemn them. The silence becomes the ground of grace.
In Scorsese’s film, the silence takes another form. Jesus on the cross cries, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” In his hallucination, God seems absent as he slips into an ordinary life. Yet even here, grace speaks through Judas’s rebuke. By facing his temptation and returning to the cross, Jesus reveals that God’s love is present even in the near-betrayal of the Son himself.
Both works suggest that God is not only with the martyrs but also with the weak. God is not absent in our betrayals, but present in ways that transform even our failures into occasions of grace. The silence is not abandonment, but mystery.
Toward a Theology of Unfaithfulness
Traditional Christianity has often celebrated those who stood firm under persecution and condemned those who did not. Endō and Scorsese open a different path. They suggest that unfaithfulness itself may sometimes serve love, and that God’s grace embraces even those who collapse.
This is not a cheap pardon. The pain of betrayal remains real. Rodrigues, Ferreira, Judas, and Kichijirō all bear scars of shame and sorrow. Their choices are not clean victories but agonizing compromises. Yet grace does not wait for perfection. It meets them precisely where they fail.
To imagine a theology of unfaithfulness is to recognize that God’s love is not earned by strength. It is given to the weak, the broken, and the fearful. Apostasy may still be sin, but even sin is not beyond forgiveness. If Christ took on the sins of the world, he also took on the sins of those who could not remain faithful.
Weakness as the Ground of Grace
The stories of martyrs will always inspire, but the stories of betrayers may comfort us more deeply. Most of us are closer to Kichijirō than to Peter, closer to the trembling coward than to the lion-hearted saint. If salvation were only for the strong, we would have little hope.
Endō and Scorsese insist otherwise. Ferreira’s apostasy, Judas’s betrayal, Kichijirō’s weakness, and even Jesus’ temptation all testify to a God who loves the unfaithful. The silence of God is not empty, but filled with compassion. The final word is not condemnation, but grace.
To be unfaithful for love, or simply to be unfaithful out of weakness, is not the end of the story. God’s mercy extends even there. The cross itself is the sign that love reaches into the depths of betrayal. In our own lives, where we stumble and fail, we too may hear the whisper of Christ: I will bear your unfaithfulness.
Image by Gábor Bejó
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