Justin Martyr was born in Roman Palestine in the province of
Samaria around 100 AD. His parents were
not Jewish by race or faith but were Greek and Roman and had migrated to Israel
for reasons of employment. As Justin
grew up he knew about the Jewish and Christian religion as both had their
origins in his homeland and were the faith of most of his neighbors, but as
Justin began his own quest for ultimate things, he looked in the direction of
philosophy and the life of the mind and was inspired to begin his journey.
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| The Philosopher Plato |
In Justin’s day institutional universities as we understand
them didn’t exist but higher learning certainly did. Philosophers and scholars would teach pretty
much any student who was a paying client.
Justin traveled through several schools of philosophy studying
Aristotle, Pythagoras, Stoicism, and finally found himself at home studying
Plato. Justin truly was studying
philosophy to understand the deeper meaning in life and Platonic teaching on
the soul’s vision of God captured his mind.
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| Ephesus seaport dried up today |
Justin was at the time living and studying in the seaport
town of Ephesus in Asia Minor where only 30 years earlier the last of Jesus’
apostles St. John had died at the ripe old age of 100 and was buried outside of
town. It is during this period that
Justin has a fateful encounter with an elderly Christian man while in the midst
of meditating on the existence of God at the seashore. There is an illustration here of Jesus’
principle that if we act on the light we are given, we will be given more (Mt.
13:12).
We don’t know the exact content of this conversation or even
who really initiated it, but we know three important details. First, that the evidence that proved
convincing to Justin was how the Old Testament prophets gave detailed
information about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ centuries
before it happened. Secondly that there
was a gentle, yet firm confrontation of Justin’s motives in studying philosophy
as being more about winning debates than seeking to live by the truth. And finally an exhortation to seek the God of
the Bible in earnest prayer asking Him in humility to reveal Himself and Christ to his heart and mind rather than
trust his own philosophic reasoning.
His encounter in Ephesus set the tone for his future
ministry. After coming to the Christian
faith he became the first apologist (from the Greek apologia “a defense”) for the Christian church, writing books aimed
at showing ordinary people the reasonableness of the Christianity. Ultimately Justin ends up coming to Rome
where he opens a school where he teaches Christianity as the fulfillment of all
philosophy. An interesting sidelight to
this is that for the remainder of his life he wears the costume of a
philosopher which makes him the first minister in the church who wore any
specific clothing to conduct their ministry.
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| Philosophic debate a public activity in the ancient world |
For what is believed to be the next 35 years, Justin
studied, collected information, wrote, taught, and even debated other
religionists and pagans in an effort to show Christianity was the reasonable
path to take and the true philosophy. Justin was eventually beheaded in Rome under
the emperor Marcus Aurelius in 165 after being betrayed by a disgruntled critic
of his work. Justin was brought to trial
and refused to renounce his faith and make a sacrifice to the Roman gods. He famously said “you may be able to kill us
(fellow Christians) but you can never actually do us any harm.” As Justin faithfully ended his life and laid
down his work here on earth, it was taken up by others and has been an
important ministry in every generation of the church ever since.
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| You can kill us but you can't really hurt us |
Although Justin is quite removed from us by time and
culture, I would like to end this essay by focusing on 10 ways his thinking has
become a legacy to the Church:
1. Christ is the
culmination of all partial knowledge discovered by the Greeks (in philosophy)
and the completion of all Jewish history.
2. Justin believed Christ is the Logos who was present in
the Greek philosophers and is in germ form in all men. God dwells in men insofar as they are
susceptible and open to Him. To the
pagan and evil man he dwells not at all.
3. All truth, no
matter where it comes from is God’s truth.
4. Prophecy is the
supernatural basis by which the Christian faith is established.
5. While Christianity
can be understood philosophically, intellectual powers alone will not make you
a Christian. You must have a changed
heart. Teaching must include reaching
the mind and heart.
6. He believed that
Plato was like Abraham. He was a
Christian before Christ who acted upon the light he had by God’s universal
revelation.
7. Justin took the
Apocalypse of John quite literally and believed Christ would return to earth,
rebuild Jerusalem as his capitol and would reign there for 1000 years.
8. Justin one of the earliest writers to refer to the
Eucharist as a sacrifice offered to God and that the bread and wine once “eucharized”
become the actual flesh and blood of Christ to the faithful.
9. Oddly, virtually all the knowledge in the world today
that we possess about Gnosticism and other mystery religions which were
Christianity’s competitors, is found only in the writings of Justin, Irenaeus,
and Hippolytus (the Church’s most important ancient apologists). These groups themselves did not produce their
own theologies.
10. People must be
reached with a language they can understand.
In Justin’s day philosophy was an important medium and culturally
relevant way of communicating. While
speaking in terms of philosophy is not as important today, the principle of
finding the language of a culture in evangelization remains.
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| Justin's burial spot today |
Sources
“Apologists” New Dictionary of Theology. Ferguson, Wright, Packer Eds. (Downers Grove : Intervarsity Press, 1988)
Bartlet, J. Vernon. Early History of Christianity. (London: Religious Tract Society, 1897)
Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church. (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1984)
Christie-Murray, David.
A History of Heresy. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989).
Eusebius. The History
of The Church. G.A. Williamson
Trans. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965)
“Justin” Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and
Ecclesiastical Literature.
McClintock and Strong Eds. (Grand
Rapids : Baker Books, 1981)
Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. (San Francisco : Harper and Row, 1978)
Peterson, Curtis, Lang and.
The 100 Most Important Events in
Christian History. (Grand Rapids:
Revell, 1991)
Pope Benedict XVI. The Fathers. (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing,
2008)
Norwood, Frederick A.
Great Moments in Church History. (Nashville: Graded Press, 1962)
Weiss, Johannes. Earliest Christianity: A History of the
Period AD 30-150 vol. 1. (New York :
Harper Torchbooks, 1959)
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