Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 1.4

What you will learn

• Tell the story of Justin’s life and conversion as he and the tradition report it.
• Explain what the Greek word Logos meant and how Justin used it to connect Christ and philosophy.
• Describe Justin’s idea of seeds of the Word and its limits.
• Summarize the debate over whether Justin helped or distorted the Christian message.

The big idea

Justin Martyr was a philosopher who became a Christian teacher in Rome in the middle of the second century. His central move was to read the opening of John’s Gospel together with Greek ideas about reason. The Logos, the divine Word or Reason, was the one through whom the world was made and who became flesh in Jesus. Because every human being shares in reason, Justin argued, the truth found by philosophers is partial, while Christ is the full truth. Scholars debate how well this bridge held.

Key terms

Logos

A Greek word meaning word, reason or account. In John 1 it names the Word who was with God and was God and who became flesh. In Greek philosophy it often meant the rational order of the universe.

Seeds of the Word (logos spermatikos)

Justin’s phrase for the partial truths that all people can find through reason, because the Logos is at work in every human mind.

Platonism

The philosophy that goes back to Plato. It teaches that the visible world depends on a higher unchanging reality and that the soul can know it.

Stoicism

A philosophy that taught life according to reason and nature, and that spoke of a divine reason pervading the universe.

Subordinationism

The view, or the manner of speaking, that makes the Son lower or lesser than the Father. Later teaching rejected it, but some early writers use language that sounds like it.

Dialogue

A written conversation. Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho records a debate with a Jewish man about the interpretation of Scripture.

Natural theology

What can be known about God by reason, without special revelation.

Background

Justin was born around the year 100 in Flavia Neapolis, in Samaria, in what is now the West Bank. By his own account, he studied several philosophical schools, including Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean and Platonic teaching, in search of knowledge of God. In the Dialogue with Trypho he tells how an old man he met by the sea led him to the prophets and then to Christ. Historians treat this as a literary account with a probable core of truth, since conversion stories were often shaped by the author’s aims.

He taught in Rome, wore the philosopher’s cloak, and wrote at least the First Apology (about 155), the Second Apology and the Dialogue with Trypho. Tradition says he was denounced and put to death in Rome around 165 together with several companions, which is where he gets the title Martyr. His works survive because later Christians copied them.

The reason Justin matters is the way he thought. He did not believe that Greek philosophy was simply false. He did not believe that it was enough, either. He wanted to show educated readers that Christian faith answered the questions philosophers asked.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Logos in John and in Greek thought

John 1:1 says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:14 says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among people. The Greek word for Word is Logos. To a Greek reader, Logos already carried meaning. For Stoics it was the reason that ordered the world. Greek-speaking Jewish writers such as Philo of Alexandria, who lived before and during the time of Jesus, also used it for God’s agent in creation.

Justin saw an opportunity. If the Logos is the divine reason by which the world was made, and if that Logos became a man in Jesus, then a Christian could speak to a philosopher in a shared vocabulary without giving up the Gospel.

Step 2: Seeds of the Word

Justin held that every human being shares in the Logos through reason. So when philosophers and lawgivers, such as Socrates, spoke truly, they did so by sharing in part of the Logos. He wrote that Christ is the Logos in whom the whole of reason has appeared. His phrase seeds of the Word names this partial sharing.

Justin even says that those who lived according to the Logos before Christ, such as Socrates and Abraham, were in a sense Christians. The point is not that philosophy saves apart from Christ. The point is that truth is never the possession of one school, and that all real truth comes from the same source. Where the philosophers contradict Christ, they have only a part, and they contradict one another.

Step 3: The Son in relation to the Father

Justin also used Logos language to say something about how the Son relates to the Father. In the Dialogue, he argues from the Old Testament appearances of God that there is a second one, called God and Lord, who is distinct from the Father yet comes from him. He speaks of the Son as begotten from the Father before creation and compares this to one fire kindled from another without loss.

Later readers noticed that Justin sometimes describes the Son as subordinate to the Father in a way that the councils of the fourth century would not allow. Some scholars say he was a pioneer who worked before the language was settled. Others say his thought leans toward subordinationism. Both agree that he was trying to defend one God and the true divinity of Christ with the tools he had.

Step 4: Justin and the Scriptures

Justin argued from the prophets that the coming of Christ was foretold. In the Dialogue, he gives many examples, and in the First Apology he points to prophecy as evidence. He considered the Old Testament to be about Christ throughout. Some of his readings, for instance, treating the Passover lamb or Moses with arms outstretched as signs of the cross, are characteristic of early Christian interpretation and are not accepted by every modern reader as the plain sense.

Step 5: The debate about his legacy

A famous nineteenth century historian, Adolf von Harnack, argued that the early church had Hellenized the Gospel, meaning that it took on Greek ideas that were foreign to it. Many scholars today reply that the world of Jesus and Paul was already Greek-speaking and shaped by Hellenistic culture, and that Justin used the language available to him without changing the message. The question is still disputed, and it is a good example of how a historical judgment can affect modern doctrine.

1. What does Justin gain by using the word Logos, and what might he risk?
2. Can truth be found outside the church? What does Justin say, and do you agree?
3. Why did Justin keep the philosopher’s cloak after becoming a Christian?
4. Where does Justin speak of the Son in ways that later writers would sharpen?
5. How do Christians today try to speak to people who use a different vocabulary?
6. What is the difference between borrowing a word and borrowing an idea?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching values Justin’s idea of seeds of the Word. The Second Vatican Council’s decree on missionary activity uses the phrase to speak of truth and goodness found in other cultures, while holding that Christ is the fullness of revelation.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers honor Justin as a saint and as a father who went to the heart of the Gospel for the sake of the pagan world. They tend to read his Logos language as a first step toward the full Trinitarian teaching of the later councils.

Protestant

Protestants are divided. Some admire Justin as a model for engaging culture. Others, following Karl Barth or the older Reformation caution about natural theology, worry that his approach gives too much to human reason. Many Protestants simply read him as an important early witness to the divinity of Christ.

Scholarly views

Historians stress that Justin was a Christian philosopher, in the Middle Platonist setting of his time, and that his Logos teaching has features that were later modified. They debate whether to call him subordinationist and how much Greek philosophy influenced him compared with Jewish tradition.

Why it matters

Every Christian who tries to explain the faith to a friend raises Justin’s question: how much common ground is there, and where does the message differ? Justin gave an early and influential answer. Whether a student agrees with him or not, the question of how the Gospel relates to human learning is still alive in universities, churches and everyday conversation.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. If someone outside the church says something true, how should a Christian respond?
2. What would be lost if the church had never used philosophical words?
3. Is it possible to translate the Gospel into a new vocabulary without changing it?
4. How does the Logos language of John 1 help you read Justin’s argument?

Independent assignment

Reading John 1 with Justin

Read John 1:1 to 14 slowly. In your notebook, write two paragraphs. In the first, explain in your own words what the passage says about the Word. In the second, explain how Justin could have used this passage to talk to a philosopher, and name one benefit and one risk of that approach. Then read the section of the First Apology on the Logos and add a note about one sentence that confirms or changes your view. Aim for 400 to 600 words.

Further study

• Justin Martyr, The First Apology Read the whole work. Note chapters on the Logos and on worship.
• J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines See the chapters on the apologists and the doctrine of the Logos.
• Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 volumes) Read selectively on the encounter of Christianity with Greek thought.
• Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity A narrative background for the second century.
• John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word.
• John 1:14 The Word was made flesh.
• Colossians 2:8 A warning about philosophy, to read alongside Justin.
• Acts 17:28 Paul quotes Greek poets in Athens.