Theopedia

Justin Martyr

“I esteemed philosophy as the greatest possession, and most honourable before God.” Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, quoted in Carter1

Overview

Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165) was a Christian apologist who came to the Christian faith after studying Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean, and Platonist philosophy, and who was executed for his faith in Rome.23 He is the earliest Christian writer whose First Apology, Second Apology, and Dialogue with Trypho survive complete, and he is generally regarded as the greatest of the second-century apologists.2

Life and Ministry

Justin was born to a Roman father, probably in Samaria, and received a philosophical education.1 In his own account in the Dialogue with Trypho, he describes moving from one school of philosophy to another in search of a direct vision of God, settling for a time with the Platonists: “I expected forthwith to look upon God, for this is the end of Plato’s philosophy.”1 While walking on a beach to meditate, he met an old man who used Socratic questioning to show him that the philosophers could not even say what the soul is, then directed him instead to the Hebrew prophets, “more ancient than all those who are esteemed philosophers… who spoke by the Divine Spirit, and foretold events which would take place, and which are now taking place.”1 Justin dates his conversion to Christianity to this encounter.

He went on to teach in Rome, where Tatian became his student; Tatian later revised part of his teacher’s doctrine of creation.4 The Dialogue with Trypho, a two-day debate with a Jewish interlocutor over whether Gentiles must keep the law of Moses to receive God’s mercy, was written sometime between the mid-150s and his death, since it refers back to the First Apology (dated to about AD 150-155) and Justin was martyred around AD 165.3 He was executed, along with several companions, under the Roman prefect Junius Rusticus during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a death that earned him the surname by which he has been known ever since.3

Theological Contribution

Philosophy as preparation for the gospel

Justin’s central apologetic argument was that whatever truth pagan philosophy contains, it holds because a “seed of reason” (the logos spermatikos) is scattered among all people; Bavinck cites Justin’s own language of a “human teaching” obtained from this “seed of reason.”5 On this basis Justin argued that Plato had not surpassed Moses but borrowed from him: Moses, he insisted, was “the first prophet, and of greater antiquity than the Greek writers,” so that where Plato’s account of creation agrees with Genesis, Plato is the debtor, not Moses.6 Rather than treating Greek philosophy as an enemy to be refuted, Justin presented Christianity as the “true philosophy” that fulfilled what the best of pagan thought had only partly attained.

The Logos and the question of eternal generation

Justin’s doctrine of God centers on the Logos, the divine Word through whom the Father made himself known and through whom the world was made. Quoted in a later study of John Gill’s use of the patristic sources, the First Apology states that the Son “was begotten by the Father before all creatures, and that which is begotten is numerically another from him that begets.”7 Charles Hodge judged that this “Logos theory,” shared by Justin with Tatian and Theophilus, succeeded in exalting Christ “above all creatures” and making him “the creator and preserver of all things,” but ultimately failed to satisfy the church’s later, fuller Trinitarian confession: it represented Christ’s divinity “as essentially subordinate” and made his generation “antemundane, but not eternal,” a formulation the church would only fully resolve at Nicaea and Constantinople.8

Whether Justin held to creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) in the fuller, later sense is a question library scholarship answers differently. Ronald Heine reads the First Apology’s statement that “God created all things… from formless matter” as still working within Plato’s own framework of God shaping pre-existing matter, a reading he argues Justin’s student Tatian later corrected toward full creatio ex nihilo.4 Craig Carter, engaging the same evidence at length, argues instead that Justin’s definition of God as the unchanging “cause of all other things,” together with his handling of the word “begotten” (Greek gennētos) in the Dialogue with Trypho, shows that he “did not deny creatio ex nihilo and probably affirmed the concept, even if he did not say it explicitly.”6

Justification by faith in the Dialogue with Trypho

The Dialogue with Trypho opens with Trypho urging Justin to be circumcised and keep “the precepts concerning the Sabbath, the feasts, and God’s new moons” to “experience the mercy of God.”9 Justin’s recurring answer, repeated in full for readers who missed the first day of the debate, is that Abraham was himself justified by faith apart from circumcision or obedience to any law.9 Brian Arnold reads this argument, built on the same use of Abraham that Paul makes in Galatians 3 and Romans 4, as evidence that a broadly Pauline doctrine of justification by faith was still alive in Gentile Christian argument a century after Paul’s death, even though Justin never names Paul directly.9 Arnold cautions against expecting a “full-orbed” doctrine of justification from a second-century apologist whose immediate concerns were survival under persecution and the argument with Trypho itself, rather than systematic theology.9

Historical Significance

Justin’s argument that Christ fulfills both Hebrew prophecy and the philosophic quest of the noblest gentiles was, on Carter’s reading, characteristic of the church fathers generally as they took up the case for Christianity before an educated pagan audience.1 Justin’s own student Tatian carried forward, and revised, his teacher’s account of creation.4 At the same time, Hodge’s later assessment of the Logos theory Justin shared with Tatian and Theophilus is a reminder that the church’s Trinitarian vocabulary was not yet settled in Justin’s own lifetime: subsequent Trinitarian orthodoxy needed the fourth-century councils to distinguish clearly between the Son’s eternal generation from the Father and the world’s creation “out of nothing,” a distinction Justin’s own language anticipates without yet stating outright.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Craig A. Carter, “The Biblical Character of Pro-Nicene Theology,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 7. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 6, “Faith,” editorial note 2: “The most notable example was Justin Martyr (ca. 100-ca. 165), arguably the greatest of the second-century apologists and author of Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, The First Apology, The Second Apology.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Brian John Arnold, “Δικαιοπραξίας Ἔργον: Dialogue with Trypho,” in Justification One Hundred Years After Paul (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013), 197-230: “Justin was no exception to the onslaught, and he was likely beheaded under the prefect Junius Rusticus during the tumultuous reign… of Marcus Aurelius. His death has forever earned him his surname Martyr.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Ronald E. Heine, “God the Father,” in Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 104-115: “Justin’s student Tatian modified Justin’s doctrine and taught that God first created matter and then created the universe by imposing order on this unformed matter he had already created.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 4, “Revelation.” ↩

  6. Craig A. Carter, “Creatio ex nihilo and the Rejection of Mythology,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition, chap. 8. ↩ ↩2

  7. Steven Tshombe Godet, “John Gill: Patristic Scholar,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 122-180, quoting John Gill, Sermons and Tracts, 6:188. ↩

  8. Charles Hodge, “Chapter VI. The Trinity,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), 442-483. ↩ ↩2

  9. Brian John Arnold, “Conclusion,” in Justification One Hundred Years After Paul, 231-240. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4