Our next author, Justin, lived from about A.D. 100 to 165 and was thus a contemporary to most of the Apostolic Fathers from whom we just read. Justin, however, had no direct contact with apostles, and so he is often classed with Irenaeus and Athenagoras (whom we will read next) as one of the early apologists—a defender (ἀπολογία) of Christian belief to the outside world.

Biography

Most of what we know of Justin’s life comes from his own writings, so we will encounter biographic details as we read. Though Justin was born in northern Palestine, he was a Gentile who was well educated in Greek language, literature, and philosophy. After finding dissatisfaction with Stoic, Aristotelian, Pythagorean, and Platonic philosophers, Justin converted to Christianity, strongly influenced by the bold and gracious witness of Christian martyrs.

Justin ever thought of himself as a philosopher, and after his conversion he continued to wear the distinctive robes of a philosopher and set up his own school of philosophy in Rome, where he defended his faith both in writing and in oral debate. After one such debate during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Justin’s opponent Crescens, a Cynic, denounced him to the Roman authorities, who beheaded him along with several of his companions. From the transcript of the trial, Justin retained the honorific appellation “the Martyr.”

Works

Justin wrote his First Apology while in Rome during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161), to whom the work is addressed. The apology defends Christians against the charges of atheism (based on the Christian refusal to worship the gods of Rome) and of ritualistic brutality (based on rumors surrounding the Eucharist). Justin’s detailed explanation of Christian belief and ritual offer a fascinating glimpse of early church worship.

Justin addressed a Second Apology to the Roman Senate, from which only fragments survive.

Justin’s other major work is his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, composed in the 130s. Although the early church historian Eusebius believed the debate to be a real event with a historic rabbi from Ephesus, more recent scholars are inclined to think the dialogue is merely a literary device Justin used in order to lay out his argument that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled Messianic prophecy (although a recent work by Timothy Horner revives the argument for the historicity of Trypho).

For the other works included in our collection, Discourse to the Greeks, Address to the Greeks, On the Sole Government of God, and On the Resurrection, Justin’s authorship is highly doubtful. Only On the Resurrection has any real chance of being originally written by Justin, and only fragments of that work remain. Like the spurious epistles of Ignatius, however, these works are nevertheless examples of early Christian writings, as each was composed around the turn of the third century.

Theology

Justin’s Apologies and Dialogue neatly map out the two cultural poles through which early Christianity navigated: the philosophy of the Greeks and the religion of the Jews, and aspects of both are captured in the concept of the Logos, the foundation of Justin’s theology.

Logos (λόγος) is often translated word in English versions of the New Testament, most prominently in John 1:1–14 (a cherished text during this season of Advent). The Greek term carries a much broader meaning, however, akin to the English term rationality. In Stoic strands of Greek philosophy, the Logos was understood as a rational force that ordered the universe and was present in every human being. During the time of Christ, the Alexandrian Jew Philo likewise employed the term, explaining the Logos as the “reason of God” through which the universe was created.

Justin is clearly familiar with Stoic philosophy of the Logos and with the Apostle John’s additional teaching that the Logos was personally identifiable with God himself yet also fully tabernacled in a particular human being. Justin recurs often to the doctrine of the Logos to puzzle about how Christ the Logos could be both God and yet distinct in some way from the Father. He also uses the concept to argue against the Greek philosophers that Christianity, rather than representing just the religion of the poor and ignorant, is actually the highest and greatest of all philosophies.

As the Dialogue makes clear, Christians in the second century continued to wrestle with their relationship to Judaism. In arguing for the incarnation of the Logos to Trypho, Justin quotes liberally from the Septuagint (a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek), and he argues that Moses and the prophets foretold one who would set aside the law of the Jews and replace it with a law that was superior, universal, and eternal—the law of Christ.

Justin also quotes from what he calls the “memoirs of the Apostles,” identified at one point in the Apology as the “gospels.” Justin clearly relies on John’s teaching about the Logos, and he draws at length either on the other three gospels or on a single volume that harmonizes them (similar to Tatian’s Diatessaron, which we will read). In his Dialogue, Justin assumes their authority, treating them the same as the passages he cited from the Old Testament Scriptures.

Alternate Editions

If you happen to reside near a well-endowed academic library, you may have access to the Oxford Early Christian Texts volume of Justin’s Apologies, which represents the best of recent scholarship on the Greek manuscripts and presents the Apologies in a Greek-English diglot.

For those simply seeking a more modern English translation, Thomas Falls provides a useful volume covering all of Justin’s writings, including the apocryphal works. Falls’s work on the Dialogue has recently been updated in a new volume by Thomas Halton.

Other recent translations of the Apologies are Leslie William Barnard’s for the Ancient Christian Writers series, and E.R. Hardy’s for Early Christian Fathers, a volume that includes most of the Apostolic Fathers literature and a selection from Irenaeus (our next reading) in addition to the First Apology.