The Life
Justin was born about the year 100 in Samaria, in the town of Flavia Neapolis (modern Nablus) to Greek pagan parents. He was an intellectual from his earliest years and tried every philosophy of his time looking for the truth: Stoicism first, then a Peripatetic, then a Pythagorean, then finally the Platonists, where he thought he had found what he was looking for. One day, walking by the seashore in thought, he met an old man who began questioning his Platonic confidence. The old man pointed him to the Hebrew prophets and to the One they had foretold. Justin began to read the prophets and the Gospels. He was converted to Christianity around 130 AD. After his conversion he kept on wearing the white toga of the philosopher, only now he taught that Christ is the true Philosophy. He moved to Rome, opened a Christian school, and wrote the first major works defending Christianity to the educated pagans. The emperor Marcus Aurelius eventually had him beheaded for the faith, around 165, with six of his students.
The young Justin was relentless. He wanted to know God, and he believed that philosophy was the way to know Him, so he went to every philosophical teacher he could find. First he went to a Stoic. The Stoic told him that knowledge of God was unnecessary and unimportant, which struck Justin as absurd — if not God, what did philosophy hope to know? He left. Then he went to a Peripatetic, a follower of Aristotle. After a few days the man asked Justin what fee he intended to pay for the lessons. Justin was offended — a real philosopher would teach for love of truth, not money — and he left. Then he went to a Pythagorean. The Pythagorean told him he must first master geometry, music, and astronomy before he could begin philosophy proper. Justin had not yet studied these and did not have the time, so he left. Finally he went to the Platonists, and at last he felt at home. The Platonists taught the contemplation of immaterial reality, and Justin loved this. He thought he was very close to finding what he had always sought. Then he met the old man.
Justin used to walk in solitary places to think and pray and seek the truth. One day he was walking along a quiet stretch of seashore, in his Platonic meditations, when an old man appeared and began walking beside him at a respectful distance. They began to talk. The old man asked Justin what he was studying and what he hoped to find. Justin explained his Platonic confidence: through philosophical contemplation the soul could ascend to the vision of God. The old man asked some pointed questions. If the soul itself is divine, why does the soul forget the divine vision when it enters the body? If the soul is immortal by nature, why does it require God to keep it in being? If God is the source of truth, why have the philosophers reached only fragmentary and contradictory accounts of Him? Justin, who had grown confident in his Platonic answers, found that he could not answer these questions. The old man told him: there were once truly wise men, before any of these philosophers — men who had spoken not from their own thinking but by the Spirit of God; they were called the prophets, and what they wrote is preserved. Read them. Above all things, pray that the gates of light may be opened to you. Justin read the prophets. He read the Gospels. The light came on. He became a Christian.
After his conversion Justin made an unusual choice: he kept wearing the philosopher’s pallium. In his world, the pallium was a kind of identifying uniform: a white woolen cloak that announced the wearer was a teacher of philosophy. By keeping it, Justin was saying something deliberate: I am still a philosopher. Christianity is not the abandonment of philosophy but its fulfillment. He moved to Rome and opened a school for instructing converts and inquirers in the Christian faith. The school was located in a private home, above the bath of Myrtinus on the Esquiline Hill. He took on students, both men and women. He taught them the Old Testament prophecies, the Gospels, and the rational structure of Christian doctrine. He taught them how to answer pagan objections. He taught them about the Eucharist. He prepared a number of them for the day when they would have to give witness to Christ before the Roman authorities. When that day came for Justin himself, six of his students stood with him.
Justin wrote a great deal, but only three of his works survive. They are the most important pieces of Christian writing from the second century outside the New Testament. The First Apology was written about 155 to the emperor Antoninus Pius. In it Justin defends Christians against the false rumors that were circulating about them: that they were atheists because they refused to worship the gods, that they were cannibals because of misunderstandings about the Eucharist, that they were sexually immoral because of the love-feasts. He demonstrates that Christianity is morally serious and intellectually defensible. He also gives the first detailed description of the Christian Eucharist that has survived from antiquity. The Second Apology was written about 161 to the Roman Senate after the new emperor Marcus Aurelius came to power; it protests three executions that had recently happened. The Dialogue with Trypho is a long conversation between Justin and a Jewish rabbi named Trypho about whether Jesus is the Messiah; Justin argues from the Hebrew prophets, especially Isaiah, that He is. These three works together established the foundations of Christian apologetic literature.
Justin had been a Platonist and a student of Greek philosophy. After his conversion he had to think carefully about what to make of his old teachers. Was Plato simply wrong? Was Socrates a deceived pagan? Justin’s answer became the foundation for all subsequent Christian thought about non-Christian truth. He taught that the Logos who became flesh in Christ — the Word who in the beginning was with God and was God — had been at work in the world from the beginning. The Logos had scattered, as it were, seeds of truth into every people and every wise teacher. Wherever a pagan philosopher recognized something genuine — Socrates with his ethical seriousness, Plato with his contemplation of the Good, Heraclitus with his sense of cosmic order — there was the Logos at work, planting a seed. These seeds were partial, fragmentary, often mixed with error. But they were genuine seeds. When Christ came in the flesh, the full Logos was made present, and the fragments could now be recognized for what they were: prefigurations and partial graspings of the One who is now seen face to face. Justin therefore did not throw away his Plato; he integrated him into a larger picture in which Plato’s genuine insights were taken up and completed in Christ.
In the First Apology Justin gives the emperor a detailed description of what Christians actually do when they meet for worship, in order to dispel the rumors of cannibalism. It is the most complete description of Christian worship that survives from the second century. Christians, he says, gather on the day called Sunday, the day of the Sun, because it is the day the Lord rose from the dead. They read the writings of the prophets and the memoirs of the apostles — our oldest reference to the Gospels as scripture — for as long as time permits. The president of the assembly then preaches a sermon. They all rise and pray. Bread and wine mixed with water are brought; the president gives thanks at length, and the people respond Amen. The deacons distribute the consecrated bread and the cup to all present. The elements that remain are taken to those absent. A collection is taken for the support of orphans, widows, and prisoners. Justin says explicitly: the food we receive is not common bread and common drink, but the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was incarnate. This is the apostolic Eucharist.
About the year 165, under the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, Justin and six of his students were arrested and brought before the prefect of Rome, Junius Rusticus. The acts of their martyrdom were carefully written down by an eyewitness and have survived. Rusticus first asked them what doctrines they taught. Justin answered: I have endeavored to learn all doctrines, but I have at last chosen the doctrine of the Christians, although it does not please those who hold false opinions. Rusticus asked: are these the doctrines you approve of, you wretched man? Justin replied: yes, I approve of them, since I follow the right teaching. Rusticus asked where the Christians met. Justin replied: above the bath of Myrtinus on the Esquiline. Rusticus asked: are you a Christian? Justin said: yes, I am a Christian. He asked the same question of each of the six students. Each said: yes. Rusticus then said: if you are not flogged and beheaded, you do not believe you will go to heaven? Justin answered: I hope to receive what those who follow Christ have already received. We are Christians, and we will not sacrifice to idols. Rusticus pronounced the sentence: those who refuse to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the imperial command shall be scourged and beheaded.
The deepest claim of Justin’s thought is that Christianity is the true philosophy. This was his answer to the Greek world, which considered Christians to be uneducated and superstitious, and his answer to the Christians who wanted to reject all pagan learning as worldly. Justin said: no, the philosophers were not simply wrong, and the Christians do not need to abandon philosophy. Philosophy at its best is the love of wisdom, the search for truth about the deepest things. The philosophers who have searched honestly have found fragments of the truth. But the truth itself, the wisdom that is sought, is the Logos of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ. The philosophers were searching for Him without knowing it; we Christians have found Him, and so we are the true philosophers. This claim has been the basis of all subsequent Christian intellectual life. The Fathers, the medieval doctors, the modern Christian thinkers — all stand on the foundation that Justin laid: that there is no proper opposition between authentic learning and the Christian faith, because the same Logos who is the source of all genuine truth is the One whom Christians worship as the Incarnate Lord.
Justin and his six companions — Chariton, Charito, Evelpistus, Hierax, Paeon, and Liberian — were scourged and beheaded together at Rome about the year 165. They were buried by Christian hands somewhere in the city. The exact location was preserved in Christian memory but has been complicated by later reburials and the long history of the Roman catacombs. Justin’s writings, however, were preserved with great care. The First Apology, the Second Apology, and the Dialogue with Trypho have been read continuously in the Church from the second century to the present day. They were known to Irenaeus, who succeeded Justin as the leading Christian theologian of the late second century, and through Irenaeus they entered the foundation of patristic theology. They were known to Eusebius of Caesarea, who preserved fragments of Justin’s lost works in the Ecclesiastical History. They were known to the Fathers of the great Ecumenical Councils, whose Christological formulations stand within the Justinian framework. They are known and read to this day. Justin remains, in this sense, a permanently present teacher in the Church.