Introductory Note to the Writings of Justin Martyr
[ 110–165.] was a Gentile, but born in
Samaria, near Jacob’s well. He must have been well educated: he had
travelled extensively, and he seems to have been a person enjoying at
least a competence. After trying all other systems, his elevated tastes
and refined perceptions made him a disciple of Socrates and Plato. So he
climbed towards Christ. As he himself narrates the story of his
conversion, it need not be anticipated here. What Plato was feeling
after, he found in Jesus of Nazareth. The conversion of such a man marks
a new era in the gospel history. The sub-apostolic age begins with the
first Christian author,—the founder of theological literature. It
introduced to mankind, as the mother of true philosophy, the despised
teaching of those Galileans to whom their Master had said, “Ye are
the light of the world.”
And this is the epoch which forced this great truth
upon the attention of contemplative minds. It was more than a hundred
years since the angels had sung “Good-will to men;” and that
song had now been heard for successive generations, breaking forth from
the lips of sufferers on the cross, among lions, and amid blazing
faggots. Here was a nobler Stoicism that needed interpretation. Not only
choice spirits, despising the herd and boasting of a loftier intellectual
sphere, were its professors; but thousands of men, women, and children, withdrawing themselves not at all from the ordinary and humble lot of the people, were inspired by it to live and die heroically and sublimely, —exhibiting a superiority to revenge and hate entirely unaccountable, praying for their enemies, and seeking to glorify their God by love to their fellow-men.
And in spite of Gallios and Neros alike, the gospel was
dispelling the gross darkness. Of this, Pliny’s letter to Trajan is
decisive evidence. Even in Seneca we detect reflections of the daybreak. Plutarch writes as never a Gentile could have written until now. Plato is practically surpassed by him in his thoughts upon the “delays of the Divine Justice.” Hadrian’s address to his soul, in his dying moments, is a tribute to the new ideas which had been sown in the popular mind. And now the Antonines, impelled by something in the age, came forward to reign as “philosophers.” At this moment, Justin Martyr confronts them like a Daniel. The “little stone” smites the imperial image in the face, not yet “in the toes.” He tells the professional philosophers on a throne how false and hollow is all wisdom that is not meant for all humanity, and that is not capable of leavening the masses. He exposes the impotency of even Socratic philosophy: he shows, in contrast, the force that works in the words of Jesus; he points out their regenerating power. It is the mission of Justin to be a star in the West, leading its Wise Men to the cradle of Bethlehem.
The writings of Justin are deficient in
charms of style; and, for us, there is something the reverse of
attractive in the forms of thought which he had learned from the
philosophers. If Plato had left us nothing
but the Timæus, a Renan would doubtless have reproached him as of feeble
intellectual power. So a dancing-master might criticise the movements of
an athlete, or the writhings of St. Sebastian shot with arrows. The
practical wisdom of Justin using the rhetoric of his times, and
discomfiting false philosophy with its own weapons, is not appreciated by
the fastidious Parisian. But the manly and heroic pleadings of the man, for a despised people with whom he had boldly identified himself; the intrepidity with which he defends them before despots, whose mere caprice might punish him with death; above all, the undaunted spirit with which he exposes the shame and absurdity of their inveterate superstition and reproaches the memory of Hadrian whom Antoninus had deified, as he had deified Antinous of loathsome history,—these are characteristics which every instinct of the unvitiated soul delights to honour. Justin cannot be refuted by a sneer.
He wore his philosopher’s gown after his
conversion, as a token that he had attained the only true philosophy. And
seeing, that, after the conflicts and tests of ages, it is the only
philosophy that lasts and lives and triumphs, its discoverer deserves the
homage of mankind. Of the philosophic gown we shall hear again when we
come to Tertullian.