Who was Justin Martyr?

We will now conclude this general account of the persecution in Asia, and notice particularly the two most eminent persons who suffered death at this time; namely, Justin and Polycarp.

The Martyrdom of Justin, Surnamed Martyr

Justin was born at Neapolis, in Samaria, of Gentile parents. He carefully studied in his youth the different philosophical sects; but not finding the satisfaction which his heart longed for, he was induced to hear the gospel. In it he found, through God's blessing, a perfect rest for his soul, and every desire of his heart fully met. He became an earnest Christian, and a celebrated writer in defence of Christianity.

Early in the reign of Aurelius, Justin was a marked man. Information was laid against him by one Crescens. He was apprehended with six of his companions, and all were brought before the prefect. They were asked to sacrifice to the gods. "No man," replied Justin, "whose understanding is sound, will desert true religion for the sake of error and impiety." "Unless you comply," said the prefect, "you shall be tormented without mercy." "We desire nothing more sincerely," he replied, "than to endure tortures for our Lord Jesus Christ." The rest assented, and said, "We are Christians, and cannot sacrifice to idols." The governor then pronounced sentence — "As to those who refuse to sacrifice to the gods, and to obey the imperial edicts, let them be first scourged, and then beheaded, according to the laws." The martyrs rejoiced, and blessed God, and being led back to prison, were scourged, and afterwards beheaded. This took place at Rome about the year 165. Thus slept in Jesus one of the early Fathers, and earned the glorious title, "Martyr," which usually accompanies his name. His writings have been carefully examined by many, and great importance is attached to them.

Many others, not inferior in faith and fortitude to Polycarp, though not all so distinguished for their abilities, suffered during this persecution, and it would have been interesting to speak of some of these had space permitted. It would have been interesting to tell of Germanicus, a young Christian whose constancy and courage witnessed so brightly to the reality of his faith, even in the solemn hour of death, that many were converted; or of Justin of Neapolis, who, having investigated all the philosophic systems of his time, and taken a high place among professors of learning, found it his joy and gain to become a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus; to tell how he afterwards sealed the testimony which he had borne, with his blood; and gained for himself a name far nobler than that of Justin the Philosopher, the name of Justin Martyr; a name by which he is known in the churches to this day, and by which he will yet be known in a future day, when the martyrs' crowns are awarded.

In this state he wandered about, lost in meditation, till one day as he strolled along the sea shore, he was arrested by the venerable appearance of an old man. They entered into conversation, and Justin told the old man what he felt and his desire of finding out God. His companion told him of the uselessness of all that the philosophers could teach, and recommended him to study the Hebrew scriptures and the doctrines of Christianity, and to pray for light; for they could be understood only by the help of God and of His Son Jesus Christ. They parted, and never met again. But Justin had new work before him. He read and studied and found what he wanted. He was converted to Christianity, and became a champion for the truths he had learned. He argued with the philosophers, and confuted those in error among the Christians; he also wrote two "Apologies" to the emperors. At length he was seized, and carried before Rusticus the prefect. He was still dressed as a philosopher, and the prefect asked him what he had studied.

"I have, endeavoured," said Justin, "to learn every sort of knowledge, and have at last embraced the doctrine of Christianity, rejected though it be by those who are in blindness and error."

I must add that I do not think an honest man, knowing our Gospels, could read the passage in Justin throughout, and hesitate one moment as to his acquaintance with them. It is a long discourse, in which he brings forward, so as to satisfy the heathen, the various teachings of Christ as they stood in his mind from the Gospels, to clear the Christians from the false notions held of them, quoting as I might quote scripture myself, sometimes verbally exact, sometimes the sense, and bringing in passages from another place which gave the connected thoughts which were in his mind for the heathen. There is one passage, "and walk," not accounted for, in reference to the cross, and not a whit more accounted for by the infidel writers. For their view of Justin's quotations there is not the least ground whatever. In one place the author of Supernatural Religion, to make it easy to think that he used a Hebrew Gospel or other Jewish traditions, says Justin was a Jewish Christian; whereas he states himself, as was the case, that he was a heathen, and after trying Stoicism, Peripateticism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism, found rest in Christianity; visited many Grecian cities, and afterwards went to Rome. The best thing the reader can do is to read the passage chiefly referred to (in my copy of Justin, col. 1686, pp. 61-66, about a tenth of the whole Apology from the beginning).

As to the apocryphal Gospels which remain to us, of which there are several, their contents speak for themselves; a proof of the total want of spiritual discernment in the primitive church, and also how impossible it was than an age which concocted, and more or less valued, such stuff, could have produced anything in the least resembling our Gospels. In this sense they afford the strongest proofs of the inspiration of the others. The Epistles according to the Hebrews, of Peter to the Egyptians, are not extant, and so afford a fine field for rational criticism; the connection of these with Justin I have spoken of. In Bleek's introduction, sec. 119, and also 87, 88, the reader will find the whole system fully judged. Bleek is a rationalistic critic. Perhaps it may be well to quote his words (Clark's Translations, Lec. 119, 1, 335): "But with regard to the memoirs of the apostles, so repeatedly cited by Justin, it is at once quite clear that these were not some single treatise, but a collection of writings differing from one another, and usually called Gospels."

204 Now, since he expressly attributes these writings to the apostles and their coadjutors, we are directly led to conclude that they were the canonical Gospels we have, which ecclesiastical traditions and their very titles assign partly to the apostles and partly to their fellow-labourers and disciples. The citations made from the memoirs are, at any rate as to the greater part, unquestionably taken from our present Gospels: only, like most of the Fathers, and according to his own practice in Old Testament passages, Justin uses greater freedom in quoting, and mixes together the text of different Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke. He describes them as written by the apostles and their companions. The supposition of some modern scholars that what Justin refers to and makes use of was some one distinct work is clearly false. Again: "His own words (Justin's) explicitly declare that they were more than one, and the citations themselves witness that all our four canonical Gospels were included." (Sec. 87, p. 242.)

As to the other professed quotation, we find it in others of the earliest Fathers in different words and order; and, just as in Justin, by Fathers who beyond all question recognised the four Gospels and nothing else. That Justin used other traditional accounts, and perhaps the Gospel to the Hebrews, is very likely, There is no question that the four Gospels were held to be of paramount authority at that date. Tatian's harmony of the four was made only some twenty years after; and Jerome recounts the same of Theophilus a few years still earlier. When the Supernatural Religion says competent critics agree, it only means the infidel Tubingen school so hold. Take not only Westcott, who may be thought a prejudiced churchman, but Bleek's introduction, a theologian sober-minded and candid, but as free-thinking as any rationalist could desire, and the statements alleged in Supernatural Religion to be quite certain are treated as certainly false. The system followed by the author is a mere and evident effort to get rid of the large and developed testimony given with so much fulness in Justin to the Christian Gospels. The citations, says Bleek, are for the greater part unquestionably taken from our present Gospels.

199 Few, as I have said, in words saying it is written in the memoirs, but quoting them as they were in his mind with a reference to other current statements as to those found in other writings of the Fathers. The allegation which refers them to one given writing or to heretical sources has no foundation, though the doctrines and position of Justin would give no guarantee for his own soundness. He was doubtless a Christian, but still a Platonist philosopher. It seems another philosopher got him put to death through jealousy. This statement, accompanied by a reference to Bleek in page 289, contradicts all Bleek's teaching (as does page 293), and is as careless as it is unfounded. As to inspiration, indeed, none of them believed it; but as to the repute and esteem in which our four Gospels were held in Justin's days, Bleek is as clear and decided as possible, and as to the use of them by Justin Martyr, among others. See with other places sections 261, 2. That infidel Germans have disputed over it, as in page 288, is perfectly true, seeking by all means to undermine the scriptures and contradict the testimonies which support their authenticity. The whole of this part of the book is full of statements which are unfounded. It is not my part to go into it in detail here.

220 Here is his doctrine of the Trinity, which I notice only to remark that its main points are wholly borrowed from Philo; for all this philosophy is only bringing us down to the reveries of the unbelieving Jew, who mixed the law with Neoplatonism. "The profoundest analysis of our world leaves the law of thought as its ultimate basis and bond of coherence." This is pure Philonism. "This thought is consubstantial with the being of the eternal I AM. Being, becoming, and animating — or substance, thinking, and conscious life — are the expressions of a triad which may be represented as will, wisdom, and love; light, radiance, and warmth, etc." Dr. Williams is very confused in what follows, or rather lower in doctrine than Bunsen; he makes wisdom the word, consciousness the spirit; but then, in order to have Christ, he says, "Consciousness or wisdom becoming personal in the Son of man;" it is the spirit or the word, and becomes personal. He adds, no wonder, "If all this has a Sabellian, or almost a Brahmanical sound, its impugners are bound, even on patristic grounds, to shew how it differs from the doctrine of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and the historian Eusebius." Now Justin Martyr was deeply tinged with Platonism, and always wore his philosopher's cloak; Origen was plunged into every wildness Platonism and an extravagant imagination could plunge a person in. Eusebius was an Arian, not a Sabellian; whereas this doctrine is more Sabellian, or, as the writer justly says, almost Brahmanical — rather Buddhist, which Philo tended to. And this is what we are to get by leaving scripture!

As regards what I have stated as to the Antenicene Fathers being obscure as to fundamentals, I do not deny that passages may be found shewing that they held Christ to be God — there are many. But it is not denied that there are many which deny that He was the God over all, o epi panton Theos, that being ascribed to the one supreme God. It cannot be denied that Justin Martyr, for example, teaches, in reasoning with Trypho as to the Being who visited Abraham, that it could not be the supreme God, who is the Lord of the Lord on earth (that is, of Christ in these appearances to the old Fathers) as being Father and God, and is the cause of His being both powerful and Lord and God (I use the translation of a learned and orthodox theologian). The passage is to be found in Dial. c. Tryph. 388 E. Justin declares (Dial. c. T. 283 A.), that it was not the supreme God who appeared to Moses in the bush. Trypho had said there was an angel and God there. Justin answers, that even so it was not God the Creator of all things. On the other hand, he declares, pages 227-8, that there neither is, nor ever was, any other God than He who created all things, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who led the Jews out of Egypt. He held (and it is not denied to have been the general doctrine of the Antenicene Fathers) that the wisdom of God, which dwelt in Him always, came out, as it were, into distinct existence, in order to the creation by the will of the supreme God. They owned Him to be God, but His eternal existence was endiathetos and not prophorikos. There was more than one source of this. First, they had only the Septuagint Greek translation, which in Proverbs 8 reads, "The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways," ektise (not possessed me, ektesato). Secondly, Platonism, to which indeed Justin refers, and the efforts to meet the accusations of the heathens as to God the Son, to which the Platonic doctrine of the logos afforded a reply.

83 Now I do not desire to accuse these Fathers of heresy, save Origen. But I am forced to read a mass of barbarous folio volumes to know what they do hold, and there I find Platonism in abundance. There I find it denied, over and over again, that Christ is God over all. There I find Him spoken of as having personal existence only just before the creation, and existing by the will of the supreme God as His minister or servant. I find indeed, when they are not philosophising or meeting difficulties, that their own faith was for the most part more orthodox. But if I want to make orthodox theology out of them, I am obliged to read another set of volumes, in which Romanists deny and affirm their orthodoxy, as in Zacharia's edition of Petavius' Dogm. Theol.; and Protestants labour honestly, as Bull, and Burton, and Horsley, and Kaye, to prove they are all right and orthodox against Romanists and Unitarians; declaring that these learned Romanists undermine the orthodoxy of the Fathers, that there may be no resource but the church, and proving very clearly that the Unitarians are utterly unfounded in what they have said. But what security does this afford for the truth? — what reliance can be placed on the Fathers?

Many standard-bearers fell in the battle front. If we may rely on history, all the Apostles but John died violent deaths. Ignatius, one of John's disciples, was brought from Antioch to Rome to be thrown to the lions to make a Roman holiday in the year A.D. 107. Justin Martyr, with six companions, was beheaded in A.D. 163. Polycarp, with eleven fellow-sufferers, was burned alive at Smyrna in A.D. 167.

The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, A.D. 161-180, has been much admired as a philosopher, but evidently he had not wisdom enough to see that, when he unjustly condemned to death men like Justin Martyr and Polycarp, he was destroying the noblest and most loyal of his subjects. In spite of his "philosophy," or because of it, he was one of the most cruel oppressors of the Early Church. Every year of his long reign was defiled with innocent blood. The Church at Lyons in France produced many faithful witnesses.

Marcus Aurelius succeeded Antoninus (A.D. 161). Marcus was accounted a philosopher, but he was a persecutor of the Christians. Among those who suffered under him was the well-known Justin Martyr.

Oh, yes; they were attached to the Person of Christ in an unintelligent way, and they suffered martyrdom for His sake. Justin Martyr denies the full personal divinity of Christ. Presently they got praying for the saints after they were dead. Origen held that all souls existed before, and that the fall of man was just his coming down into a body, and he was the most learned Father of the Church. Clement, too, did not hold the divinity of Christ. It was the Platonic philosophy that corrupted the doctrine. Origen was the teacher of a school of doctrine. Hermas says the Holy Ghost was God's Son, and took counsel with God what he should do, and he did more than God set him to do, and therefore God gave him a great reward. It was lately ascertained that Hermas was the brother of Pius I, and not an apostolic Father at all.