# Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Justinus Martyr, philosopher

Justinus (2) Martyr, St., son of Priscus, grandson of Bacchius; born at Flavia Neapolis, hard by the ruins of ancient Sychem (now Nablous), in Palestine (Apol. i. 1). He calls himself a Samaritan (Dial. c. 120, § 349 C), so that his family had probably settled there definitely; but he is obviously not a Samaritan by blood or religion; nothing in his writing would point to such an origin. He has not heard, even, of Moses or of the prophets until well on in life; he classes himself among those Gentiles to whom the Gospel was opened so largely when the main mass (Apol. i. 53, § 88 B) of the house of Jacob, in which he includes by name the Samaritans as well as the Jews, rejected it. He speaks of being brought up in heathen customs, being uncircumcised (Dial. c. 29, § 246 C), and receiving a thoroughly Greek education (Dial. c. 2, § 219). The name of his grandfather is Greek; of his father and himself Latin. What we know of him is gathered almost entirely from his own writings, and chiefly from his famous description of the studies through which he passed to his conversion, given in his Dialogue with the New Tryphon. The opening of the Dialogue discovers Justin walking in the colonnades of a city, which Eusebius identifies with Ephesus (H. E. iv. 18), shortly after the wars of the Romans against Bar-Cocheba in 132–136 (Dial. c. 1, § 217). To the Jew, who greets him as a philosopher, he recounts his philosophic experiences, though we gain but little clue as to where or at what time these experiences occurred. He speaks of his first longing to share in that wisdom "which is verily the highest possession, the most valued by God, to Whom it alone leads and unites us"; when with this hope he went successively to a Stoic teacher, a Peripatetic, and a famous Pythagorean, but in each case to no purpose. Much grieved at this, he thought of trying the Platonics, whose fame stood high. He went chiefly to one lately settled in his town, who was thought highly of by his school; advanced some way with him, giving him the greater part of every day; was delighted with the perception of the Incorporeal; the contemplation of the Ideas "gave wings to my mind, quickly I thought to become wise, and expected that, if it were not for my dull sight, I should be in a moment looking upon God; for this sight is the fulfilment of the Platonic philosophy." "While in this frame of mind I one day had a wish for quiet meditation, away from the beaten track of men, and so went to a bit of ground not far from the sea; and there, just as I was nearing the place where I looked to be alone with my thoughts, an old man, of a pleasant countenance, and with a gentle and dignified mien, came following me a little behind." The old man asked Justin, "'For what are you come here?' 'I delight,' I answered, 'in these strolls, in which I can hold converse with myself, without interruption; a place like this is most favourable for such talking as I love.' 'Ah! you are a lover of talk, and not of action or of reality,' he said. 'You are one, I suppose, who cares more for reasons than for facts, for words than for deeds.' 'And how, indeed,' I answered, 'can a man act more efficiently than in exhibiting the reason that governs all, or than in laying hold of it, and there, borne aloft on it, looking down on others who stray helplessly below, and do nothing sane, or dear to God? Without philosophy and right reason there is no possible wisdom. Every man, therefore, ought to esteem philosophy as his noblest work, and to let all else come second or third to it; for by philosophy things are made right and acceptable, without it they become common and vulgar.' 'Philosophy, then, is the true cause of happiness, is it?' he asked in reply. 'Yes, indeed, it is,' I said, 'it and it alone.'"
A discussion follows on the possibility of philosophy giving the true knowledge of God, which is Happiness; at its close Justin confesses that his philosophy supplies no clear account of the soul, of its capacity to perceive the Divine, nor of the character of its life; the old man speaks with a decision that he professes to owe neither to Plato nor to Pythagoras, who are the bulwarks of philosophy. What teacher is there who can give certainty where such as these fail? asks Justin. The old man replies that there have been men, far older than all these philosophers, men blessed and upright and beloved of God, who spoke by the spirit of God, and are called Prophets. These alone have seen the truth, and spoken it to men; not as reasoners, for they go higher than all argument, but as witnesses of the truth, who are worthy to be believed, since the events foretold have come to pass and so compel us to rely on their words, as do also the wonders they have worked to the honour and glory of God the Father and of His Christ. "Pray thou, then, that the gates of the Light may be opened too for thee; for these things can only be seen and known by those to whom God and His Christ have given understanding." Justin saw the old man no more; but in his soul the flame was fired and a passion of love aroused for these prophets, the friends of Christ; and as he reflected upon it he found that here indeed lay the one and only sure and worthy philosophy.
This is all we know of his conversion. The scene is, perhaps, idealized; it has a savour of Plato; but the imagination of Justin was hardly equal to producing, unaided, such vivid detail of scenery and character. The description would imply that he was somewhat advanced in study, but not past the enthusiasms of earlier life. The event, apparently, occurred in Flavia Neapolis, i.e. "our town," in which the Platonist teacher had settled;
but "our town" may mean that in which he and Tryphon were conversing, i.e., according to Eusebius, Ephesus. It must have been before the Bar-Cocheba wars, if it is from them that Tryphon was flying when Justin met him. The conversion takes the form of a passage from the imperfect to the perfect philosophy; throughout his life it retains that impress. He was not rescued from intellectual despair, but was in the highest condition of confidence when the old man met him. The aim with which he started on his studies was achieved when he became a Christian. Hence he is not thrown into an attitude of antagonism to that which he leaves; his new faith does not break with the old so much as fulfil it. He still, therefore, calls himself the philosopher, still invites men to enter his school, still wears the philosopher's cloak (Dial. i. § 217; Eus. H. E. iv. 11; cf. the Acts of Justin). From the first, philosophy had been pursued with the religious aim of attaining the highest spiritual happiness by communing with God; the certified knowledge of God, therefore, professed by the prophets, and made manifest in Christ, comes to him as the crown of his existing aspiration.
One other motive he records to have affected his conversion, i.e. his wondering admiration at the steadfastness of Christians under persecution. "When I was still attached to the doctrine of Plato, and used to hear the accusations hurled against Christians, and yet saw them perfectly fearless in the face of death and of all that is terrible, I understood that it was impossible they should be living all the time a life of wickedness and lust" (Apol. ii. 12, § 50 A). This appeal, which the moral steadfastness of the Christians had made to him, he continually brings to bear upon others (i. 8, § 57; i. 11, § 58 E, etc.). Perhaps, too, the lack of moral reality and energy in the doctrines of philosophy was not unfelt by Justin, for his words seem sometimes to recall the old man's taunt, "You are a man of words, and not of deeds" (cf. i. 14, § 61 E, "For Christ was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God").
We have no details of his life after baptism. He seems to have come to Rome, and, perhaps, to have stayed there some time, according to Eusebius (H. E. iv. 11). His peculiar office was to bring the Christian apologetic into the publicity of active controversy in the schools. The collision with Tryphon in the Colonnades is probably but a specimen of the intellectual intercourse which Justin challenged by wearing the philosopher's cloak. The introduction to the Dialogue appears to record a familiar habit. The Second Apology mentions a dispute with Crescens the Cynic (3, § 43, B, C). The memory of Justin's characteristic attitude is recorded by Eusebius: "It was then that St. Justin flourished, who, under the dress of a philosopher, preached the word of God, and defended the truth of our faith by his writings as well as by his words"; and the Acts of his martyrdom speak of Justin as sitting in the house of Martinus, a recognized place of meeting for Christians, and there conversing with any who visited him, imparting to them the true doctrine. The persons condemned with him are companions whom he has gathered about him and converted. "I took delight," says one of them, Evelpistus, "in listening to Justin's discourse."
When persecution fell sharply upon the church, he was in the van of those who considered it their first duty to make public to their judges the doctrine and life so foully accused (Apol. i. 3, § 54). So, in the Dialogue with Tryphon, he speaks of the guilt he would incur before the judgment seat of Christ if he did not freely and ungrudgingly open to them his knowledge of the meaning of Scripture (Dial. c. 58, § 280 B).
This freedom of apologetic crowned itself towards the close of Justin's life in the three works which alone can be accepted as undoubtedly authentic: the two Apologies and the Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew. This same freedom brought him to his death.
The secret cause of his seizure is supposed by Eusebius to have been the enmity of an opponent whom he had convicted of ignorance, Crescens the Cynic. "Crescens," Tatian write, "who made himself a nest in Rome, while professing to despise death, proved his fear of it by scheming to bring Justin and myself to death as to an evil thing" (Or. c. 32; cf. Eus. H. E. iv. 16). For the reality of his violent death for Christ we have the indubitable testimony of his historic title, Justin Martyr. For the actual account of it we are dependent on the Acts of his martyrdom, which embody, probably without serious change, the simple and forcible tradition which the 3rd cent. retained of the death-scene. They have the appearance of containing genuine matter. According to these, he and his companions are brought before Rusticus, the prefect of the city, and are simply commanded to sacrifice to the gods, without any mention of Crescens, or of Justin's Apologies to the emperors. Justin, on examination, professes to have found the final truth in Christianity, after exploring all other systems; this truth, he declares, consists in adoring the one God, Who has made all things, visible and invisible, and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who was foretold by the prophets to be coming into the world to preach salvation and teach good doctrine. He declares that Christians meet wherever they choose or can, seeing that their God is not limited to this or that place, but fills heaven and earth; but that he himself, on this, his second visit to Rome, held meetings for his followers in the house of one Martinus only, near the baths of Timotinus. After a brave refusal to sacrifice, and an assurance of salvation in Christ, he and those with him were condemned to be beaten with rods and beheaded. They died praising God and confessing their Saviour. The faithful secretly carried their bodies to a fit burial.
Such are the fragments left to us of his life; between what dates do they fall? The title of the First Apology is decisive; it is addressed to the "Emperor Titus Aelius Antoninus Pius, Augustus, Caesar; to Verissimus his son, philosopher, and to Lucius, the natural son of a philosophic Caesar, the adopted son of a pious Caesar." Here we have Antoninus Pius as sole emperor, with his two imperial companions, adopted by him as
sons at the request of Hadrian, i.e. Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (cf. Neander, Ch. Hist. [trans.] vol. ii. 446, 1851). With this the Eusebian tradition agrees; according to it, the first Apology was addressed to Antoninus; in the Chronicon it is assigned to c. 141, the fourth of that reign. Antoninus reigned from 137 to 161; will 141 suit Justin's language?
According to some, this is not early enough, for the title omits to salute Aurelius as Caesar, which he became publicly in 140. Against this lie several weighty objections: (1) Lucius Verus is called, possibly philosopher, certainly "ἐραστὴς παιδείας," lover of culture; but by 140 he is only ten years old. (2) Marcion is in the Apology the greatest type of heresy, "with a following spread over every race of men." Justin's language seems to belong to a time when Marcion's pre-eminence had overshadowed the earlier heretics (cf. Lipsius, Die Quellen der Ketzergeschichte, 1875, pp. 21, 22), and this could hardly be till well after 140. It was under Antoninus (according to general authority, cf. Tertullian, Clement, etc.) that Marcion succeeded in putting himself .in the front, and arrived at Rome. Yet, already before the Apology, Justin has written a book against him, with other heretics (Apol. i. 26, § 70 C). It is difficult to attribute to Marcion this immense position in the very first years of Antoninus (cf. contra. Semisch, Justin, p. 73, 1840). (3) Justin professes to be writing 150 years after our Lords birth, a round number, it is true, but in a context where the object is to diminish the interval. Without very positive evidence against it, the year 148—i.e. Justin's A.D. 150—should be taken as the approximate date. These reasons would place the first Apology near the end of the first half of the reign of Antoninus. This would not conflict with two other references to times—to the deification of Antoninus, i.e. 131 (Apol. i. 29, § 72), and to the wars of Bar-Cocheba, 132, 136 (31, § 72). Both have the same formula: τῷ νῦν γεγενημένῳ πολέμῳ and Ἀντινόου τοῦ νῦν γεγενημένου. The expression is vague, but requires the two events to be well within the memories of Justin's readers.
The address of the second Apology has at last, after many confusions, been determined to refer to Antoninus again, and Marcus Aurelius. It is indirect, and found in 2, § 42 C, where a single emperor is definitely meant, and in the last chapter, where the rulers are spoken of in the plural; in 2, § 43 B there are two people in office, Pius the αὐτοκράτωρ, and a philosopher, who is saluted as son of Caesar; and continued reference is made to the mingled piety and philosophy of these personages. These two, with the well-known titles, can hardly be other than Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. This is made almost a certainty when we consider that the second Apology seems to have followed close upon the first and bears all the mark of a sequel or appendix (cf. Volkmar, in Theolog. Jahrb. 1855, N. 14; cf. Hort, in Journ. of Classic and Sacred Philol. vol. iii. p. 155 (1857), of which much use is made in the art.). This is clear, among other things, from the references in the second to the first Apology (Apol. ii. 4, § 43; 6, § 45; 8, § 46) as to a writing close at hand and freshly remembered. The date of the Apologies may be thrown back as far in the reign of Antoninus as is consistent with the prominence attributed to Marcion.
Of the date of Justin's birth we have nothing certain. Epiphanius states that he died when 30 years old. The evidence is not forthcoming. For the date of his conversion we have scarcely any evidence except that it was before the wars of Bar-Cocheba, 132–136 (Dial. i. 1, § 217) Eusebius supposes he was unconverted at the date of Antinous, A.D. 131 (H. E. iv. 8), but it is doubtful if Eusebius had any ground for this except Apol. i. 29, § 72, which certainly does not require it.
The genuineness of the three writings already mentioned is universally accepted. The first Apology definitely pronounces itself to be Justin's; the second obviously belongs to the first; the Dialogue claims to be written by a Samaritan, who had addressed the emperor—its personal history of the writer exactly tallies with Justin's attitude towards philosophy in the Apologies. The peculiar phrase ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν Ἀποστόλων occurs in these three works, and in them alone. The whole tone of the works agrees with the period assigned. The external evidence gathered by Eusebius is strong and unbroken (cf. Eus. H. E. iv. 18).
But it is otherwise with an Oratio ad Graecos; a λόγος παραινετικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας, Cohortatio ad Graecos; a fragment, περὶ Ἀναστάσεως; and a book, περὶ Μοναρχίας, which must be classed as very doubtful; others are decidedly not genuine.
Several works of Justin have been entirely lost: (1) The book Against all Heresies, to which he refers in Apol. i. 26, § 70. (2) Against Marcion, referred to by Irenaeus (iv. contra Haer. c. 14; cf. v. 26), supposed by some to be part of (1). (3) A book called Ψάλτης, and (4) περὶ ψυχῆς, in which he contrasts his own doctrine with that of the Greek philosophers (Eus. H. E. iv. 18).
"Many other works of his," says Eusebius, "are in the hands of the brethren." Evidently he must have written a great deal, and the three undoubted works still extant perhaps account for this voluminous character of his writings. For these three pieces are written loosely and unsystematically, and read like the outpouring of a mind that had ranged widely in heathen literature and philosophy, and had massed a large store of general knowledge, which could be easily and effectively brought to bear upon current topics, without any scrupulous regard to the artistic or symmetrical appearance of the result.
Justin's writing, especially in the first Apology, is full of direct and striking force; it moves easily and pleasingly; his thinking is fresh, healthy, vigorous, and to the point; his wide knowledge is used with practical skill; his whole tone and character are immensely attractive by their genuineness, simplicity, generous high-mindedness, and frank and confident energy.
In the first Apology, composed with much more care and completeness than the second, he defines and justifies his position of apologist before the rulers, with supreme dignity, and confidence. He calls upon them to let it be seen whether they are the loyal guardians of
right and lovers of culture, which they are reported to be. He demands for himself and his fellows the justice of an exact and critical examination, without regard to prejudice, superstition, irrational panic, or any long-established evil fame. It is, as it were, for the sake of the governors and their justice that he seems to be asking a trial, for, "as for us Christians," he proudly declares, "we do not consider that we can suffer any ill from any one, unless we are convicted of wickedness or evil-doing; you can kill us indeed, but damage us you cannot" (Apol. i. 2, 54 A); "Princes who prefer prejudice to truth can do no more harm than robbers in a desert" (Apol. i. 12, § 59 E). So he opens his Apology, which can be roughly divided into three divisions, cc. 3–23, in which he refutes, generally, the false charges made against Christianity; cc. 23–61 exhibiting the truth of the Christian system and how it has got misunderstood; cc. 61–68 revealing the character of Christian worship and customs.
The charges against the Christians, encountered in pt. i., are: (1) The very fact of Christianity is itself treated as a punishable crime (c. iv.). (2) Atheism (c. vi.). How can they with any justice be called atheists, who reverence and worship the Father of all Righteousness, the Son Who came from the Father and taught us this, the whole Host of Angels and the Prophetical Spirit? "These are they whom we honour in reason and truth, offering our knowledge of them to all who will learn of us." (3) That some Christians have been proved malefactors. Yes, very likely, for we all are called Christians however much we vary. Therefore let every one be tried on his merits. If convicted of evil, let him pay the penalty, only as an evil-doer, not as a Christian. If innocent of crime, let him be acquitted though a Christian. (4) Christians are charged with aiming at a kingdom. But this can hardly be a kingdom on earth; for, then, we should be ruining all our hopes of it by our willingness to die for Christ. Yet we never attempt to conceal our faith; and here Justin makes a direct appeal. "Surely," he cries, "we are the best friends that a ruler could desire, we who believe in a God Whose eye no crime can escape, no falsehood deceive; we who look for an eternal judgment, not only on our deeds, but even on our thoughts! So our Master, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has taught us." For the reality and true character of this faith in God through Christ, he offers the proof of the Christian's moral conversion. "We who once delighted in adultery, now are become chaste; once given to magic, now are consecrated to the one good God; once loving wealth above all things, now hold all our goods in common, and share them with the poor; once full of hatred and slaughter, now live together in peace, and pray for our enemies, and strive to convert our persecutors." All this is emphasised by our belief in the resurrection of the body, in which we shall hereafter suffer pain for all our sins done here (c. 18). Is this incredible? Yet it is believed not only by us, but by all who turn to magic rites, to spiritualists, to witches, to frenzied seers, to oracles at Dodona or Delphi; by Empedocles and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, by Homer and Virgil.
Here begins a defence of Christian doctrine, on the ground of its likeness to doctrines already held in heathenism (c. 21). We alone are hated, even though we hold the same as the Greeks; we alone are killed for our faith, even though we do nothing bad.
(C. 30.) He turns to a new objection. "How do you know the genuineness of your Christ, or that He was not some clever magic-worker?" Justin's answer is, by the proof of prophecy. The books of the Jews, translated in the LXX, in spite of the bitter hatred of the Jews against us, speak, years before the event, of us and of our Christ.
(C. 46.) A new objection: were all men irresponsible before 150 years ago, when Christ was born under Quirinus? No; there were Christians before Christ, men who lived in the power of the Word of God, Socrates and Heraclitus, Abraham and Elias.
(C. 56.) The demons have deceived men before Christ by the tales of Polytheism; and, after Christ, by the impieties of Simon, Menander, and Marcion: but have never been able to make men disbelieve in the end of the world and the judgment to come, nor to conceal the advent of Christ.
(Cc. 61–67.) He has spoken of Faith in Christ and Regeneration of Life; he will now tell what this exactly means; and so proceeds to describe the baptism by which the regeneration is effected; the reasons for this rite; its accomplishment in the Name of the Nameless God called the Father, in the Name of the Son Jesus Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the Name of the Holy Spirit Who spake by the Prophets. He describes (c. 65) the Eucharistic Feast to which the baptized are admitted, and gives a brief account of the character to be attributed to the bread and wine then consecrated and of the authority on which this rests.
He speaks once more of the feast, as it recurs on the Sundays, when they all assemble together, and (c. 68) closes rather abruptly, with the personal directness which throughout gives dignity to the Apology. "If my words seem to you agreeable to reason and truth, then give them their due value; if they strike you as trifling, then treat them lightly as trifles; but, at least, do not decree death against those who do nothing wrong, as if they were enemies of the state. For, if you continue in iniquity, we foretell that you will not be able to escape the future judgment of God; we shall be content to cry, God's will be done!"
He adds an epistle of Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus, by which he could claim a fair trial; but he would rather ask that as a matter of plain justice than by right of law or precedent. This letter of Hadrian's, we are told by Eusebius, was preserved by Justin in its Latin form (H. E. iv. 8), and thrown by him into Greek. Its style suits the age of Hadrian (Otto, ed. of Justin, vol. i. note on p. 190); it is considered genuine by Aubé, Ueberweg, doubted by Keim (Theol. Jahrb. t. xv. Tüb. 1856, p. 387). It gives so little to the Christians, that it seems hardly likely to be fictitious.
The second Apology, possibly an appendix to the first (Otto, ed. p. lxxxi.; Volkmar, Baur and Zell. Theolog. Jahrb. t. xiv. Tüb. 1855; Keim, Protest. K.-Z. Ber. 1873, n. 28, col. 619), anyhow written at no long interval after the first, begins abruptly with an appeal directly to the Romans, but in reality addressed to the imperial rulers (cf. cc. 3, 14, 15), together with the whole people. These rulers, under whom the affairs which led to the Apology occurred, are, it has been argued, the emperor Pius and the philosopher Marcus Aurelius, and, according to a suggested reading, Lucius Verus son of Caesar. The opening betrays by its suddenness, and emphasizes by dwelling on the speed with which the Apology had been produced, the excitement under which it was composed. "Things had happened within the last two days in Rome," such as the irrational actions of the magistrates, which had driven Justin to write an Apology for his own people, who are, though the Romans know it not and will not have it, their brothers, of like feelings with themselves.
(C. 2.) He relates the case which had so fired him with indignation; it is very typical of what Christians were subject to. The dissolute wife of a dissolute man is converted and is anxious to separate from her husband. He holds out some hopes of amendment, so she forces herself to remain, but he plunges into worse debauchery. She sends a writ of divorce and leaves him. Then this "good and noble husband" bethought himself of accusing her of being a Christian. While her case was pending, a certain Ptolemaus, the wife's master in the faith, whom Urbicus had imprisoned, is challenged with being a Christian. Ptolemaus, brought up before Urbicus, is asked, "Are you a Christian?" and on confessing it is at once condemned to death. Lucius a Christian publicly challenges Urbicus to justify a decision which punished a man simply for the name of Christian. "You, too, are a Christian, I suppose?" is the only answer he gets from Urbicus; and on confessing it he is condemned to death, declaring as he goes that he is glad to be free of rulers so unjust and to depart to the Father and King of Heaven. A third in the same way passes to a like punishment; "And I myself," breaks in Justin, "look for the same fate, for I, too, have enemies who have a grudge against me, and are likely enough to take this way of avenging themselves; Crescens especially, the sham philosopher, whom I have convicted of entire ignorance about the Christianity which he slanders."
(C. 4.) It may be said in scorn, "Be off, then, to your God to Heaven by killing yourselves, and trouble us no longer!" But Christians believe the world to be made by God to fulfil His purpose; they are not at liberty to destroy, as far as in them lies, the human race, for whom the world was created. Nor yet can we deny our faith; for this would be to allow its guilt and to lie, and would leave you in your evil prejudices.
(C. 5.) "Why does God not help His own?" He spares to punish and destroy the evil world, for the sake of this holy seed, the Christians, who are the real reason why God still preserves the order of nature, which the fallen angels have so corrupted.
The effect of these Apologies upon the rulers of Rome is unknown; but Justin's expectation of death was not disappointed, and Marcus Aurelius still mistrusted the motives which made Christians martyrs and saw no reason to stay the outcry of the Roman crowd when it demanded Christian victims. It remained a legal crime to be a Christian. Indeed, according to Roman ideas of government, it could hardly cease to be criminal as long as Christianity continued its private and peculiar organization and found it impossible to conform to the tests of good citizenship, such as the oath to the emperor. The Apologies never hint at concession on such points, but persist that their present position is entirely innocent. Their vigour must have revealed the irreconcilability of Christian life with the mass of pagan custom and temper in which the solidity of Rome had its foundation.
The Dialogue with Trypho follows the first Apology, and probably the second also, between 142 and 148 according to Hort; in 155 (Volkmar); or in 160–164 (Keim). It was written to report to a dear friend, Marcus Pompeius (cf. c. 8, § 225 D; c. 141, § 371 B), a discussion which Justin had held with the Jews during the Bar-Cocheba wars. The discussion represents the Christian polemic against the Jews; but Trypho makes his advance as a philosopher rather than as a Jew, and it is Justin who turns the talk to the Jewish Scriptures by expressing his surprise at a Jew being still engaged in searching for truth in the pagan philosophers when he possessed already in those Scriptures the authorized exponent of revealed wisdom, for the sake of whose secured certainty Justin himself had left all other human systems. Trypho is, indeed, a curious type of Judaism; a light and superficial inquirer in the courts of the schools, surrounded by a band of loud and lively friends, he begins with a reference to a Socratic at Argos, who had taught him to address courteously all who wore the philosopher's cloak, in the hope of finding, through the pleasant interchange of thoughts, something useful to both. He smiles gracefully as he inquires what opinion Justin holds about the gods, and, apparently, justifies his philosophic studies in the face of Scripture, by claiming that the philosophers are equally with Moses searchers after the Being of God. The noisy friends having been avoided by retirement to a quiet seat, Trypho opens the question with the air of a free and tolerant seeker after truth; he has read the Gospel, and found in it a morality too high for real practice, and is ready to acknowledge the piety of the better Christians. What he wonders at is that with so much goodness, they should nevertheless live as Gentiles without keeping the pure laws of God, e.g. the Sabbath and circumcision, by which He separates the holy from sinners; he wonders, too, how those who place their hope in a man can yet hope for a reward from God. He would gladly have all this explained (cf. c. 57, § 280 A; c. 68, § 293 A). Trypho, then, is no fierce Jewish opponent, prepared to attack, but adopts the tone almost of an inquirer. It
is the Jew under a new aspect that we find here, the Jew of culture, of open and tolerant mind, with the easy courtesy of the literary world. Before such, apparent openness and easy-going lightness it is perhaps not without artistic skill that Justin hints at the fierce and implacable hatred of Jew against Christian which had tortured and slain Christians without pity under Bar-Cocheba and made Jews everywhere the most violent and remorseless of the church's slanderers and persecutors (c. 108, § 335).
The Dialogue takes two days. Some fresh friends of Trypho join him on the second day (c. 118, § 346 C); he speaks sometimes of them as if only two, at other times as if many. One is named Mnaseas (c. 85, § 312). They shout disapproval once, as if in a theatre (c. 122, § 351 A). The whole is spoken as they sit on some stone seats in the gymnasium, Justin being about to sail on a voyage.
The actual argument begins at c. 10. The points especially raised by Trypho were two, i.e. how the Christians could profess to serve God and yet (1) break God's given law, and (2) believe in a human Saviour (cf. c. 10, § 227 D). The purity of Christian living is acknowledged; the problem is its consistency with its creed.
Justin's argument may be roughly divided into three parts (Otto, Prolegomena). In cc. 11–47 he refutes Trypho's conception of the binding character of the Jewish law, which refutation involves him also in a partial answer to the second part of the problem, i.e. the nature of the Christ in Whom they trust; for the passing away of the Law turns on the character of the Christ of Whom it prophesies. In cc. 48–105 he expounds the absolute divinity of Christ, His pre-existence, incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension, by virtue of which the belief in Him is proved consistent with belief in God alone. In c. 109 he passes to the necessary outcome of these two principles—the conversion of the Gentiles, the new Israel, and the abandonment of the old Israel, unless they accept the new covenant. The whole is rested on the Scriptures, on the interpretation of prophecy. Justin starts with a claim to believe absolutely in the God of Israel; here is his common ground with Trypho (c. 11)—both accept the old revelation (c. 68, § 298 A; cf. 57, § 279 B; 56, § 277 D). "I should not endure your argument," Trypho says (c. 56, § 277 D), "unless you referred all to the Scriptures; but I see you try to find all your reasons in them, and announce no other God but the Supreme Creator of the world."
The Dialogue, therefore, is a perfect storehouse of early Christian interpretation of Scripture. This forms its wonderful value; it carries us back to that first effort at interpretation which dates from St. Peter's speech at the election of Matthias, and knits itself so closely with the walk to Emmaus, when the Scriptures were first opened and it was seen from them that Christ must suffer. The O.T. is still the sacred guide and continual companion of the Christian life, the type of the written revelation; everything is there. Yet by the side of it we already feel in Justin that a new power has appeared, a fresh canon is forming, another book is beginning to assert itself. The work is full of crucial interest, just because Justin appears at the moment when this is gradually becoming clear.
In the two Apologies and the Dialogue Justin covers a large part of the theological field. His treatment is peculiarly typical of the earliest form of Christian speculation outside and beyond the immediate lines laid down by the apostolic writings. The apostolic Fathers were rather practical than speculative. The doctrinal works of people like Melito of Sardis are lost. In the Apologists Christianity, according to its preserved records, first prominently applies itself to the elucidation of its dogmatic position, and of them Justin is among the earliest and the most famous. But in considering his theology we must remember that we only possess his exoteric utterances. He is not spontaneously developing the Christian's creed, but is striving, under the stress of a critical emergency, to exhibit it most effectively and least suspiciously to an alien and unsympathetic audience, prepared not merely to discuss but to judge and kill. The whole position tended to quicken the natural tendency of Justin's mind towards an optimistic insistence on likenesses and agreements, rather than on differences between himself and his opponents. This is not said to discredit his utterances, but simply in order to consider them, as all intelligent criticism must consider them, under their actual historical conditions. Justin is on what is yet new ground to a great extent; he is pioneering, he is venturing along unmarked and unexamined roads. Christian doctrine is still forming itself under his hands, even on some essential and cardinal points.
Justin's Theology, then, begins in the presence of (1) Jewish Monotheism, and (2) of the Primal and Absolute and Universal Cause of all Existence, posited by the philosophic consciousness of paganism. He has to state how his conception of the Deity stands to these.
He answers, that he believes (1) in a God identical with the God of the Jews: "There is no other God, nor ever has been, but He Who made and ordered the Universe; that very God Who brought your fathers, Trypho, out of Egypt, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (Dial. 11, § 228 A). his God of creation is the one cause of all existence, therefore known as the Father: ὁ πατὴρ τῶν ὅλων (ib. 114, § 342 A), or τῶν πάντων (Apol. i. 8, § 57 A). In Apol. ii. 6, § 44 D, he sums up all the names by which the absolute God may be known, πατήρ, Θεός, κτίστης, κύριος, δεσπότης. This is his cardinal and prevailing expression for God the Father—that He is the Maker and Ordainer and Lord of all creation. (2) But, besides the Father, Justin undertakes to exhibit the Divinity of a Second Person, the Son, ὁ μόνος λεγόμενος κυρίως υἱός (Apol. ii. 6, § 44). υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τοῦ ὄντως Θεοῦ (ib. i. 13, § 60 C), to whom is allotted the second place, in honour and worship, after the ἄτρεπτον καὶ ἀεὶ ὄντα Θεὸν γεννήτορα τῶν ἁπάντων. He is, primarily, ὁ Λόγος, the Word of God, with God before creation began, συνῆν τῷ πατρὶ πρὸ πάντων τῶν ποιημάτων (Dial. 62, § 285 D). With Him the Father communicated (προσομιλεῖ), having
begotten Him before all things (γέννημα ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐγεγέννητο). The manner of this begetting is spoken of as a projection (τῷ ὄντι ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς προβληθὲν γέννημα). Such is the Λόγος, called by Solomon the Wisdom, who co-existed with the Father at that moment when, at the beginning, by Him the Father made and perfected all things (Apol. ii. 6, § 44 E; Dial. 62, § 285 D). He it is Who is ὁ Θεός, ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων γεννγθείς, and Who is known as the Word, and the Wisdom, and the Power, and the Glory of Him Who begat Him (Dial. 61, § 284 A, B). The Son is the instrument of "Creation" (δἰ αὐτοῦ πάντα ἔκτισε); hence (in addition to His primal names, Λόγος, Υἱός) called Χριστός, κατὰ τὸ κεχρίσθαι τὰ πάντα δἰ αὐτόν; but this name is in itself of unknown significance, just as the title "God" is no real name, but rather expresses a natural opinion, inborn in man, about an unutterable fact. Christ's Being, therefore, as well as the Father's, is beyond all human expression, and is known only economically; for, if this is true of the title Χριστός, it can hardly but be true of the higher names, Λόγος and Υἱός. This Λόγος is identical with the Man Jesus, conceived through the will of the Father on behalf of man, named Jesus as being a Man and a Saviour. Justin holds, then, the entire Divinity of Him Who was born a Man and crucified under Pontius Pilate. Nothing can be more pronounced or decided than his position; it is brought to the front by the necessities of his arguments both with the Jew and the Gentile. He starts with this position, that he worships as God, a man Christ Jesus; it is this that he has to justify to the Gentile (cf. Apol. i. 21, 22, § 67). "In that we say," he says, "that the Word, Which is the first-begotten of God, has been born without human mixture, as Jesus Christ, our Master, Who was crucified and died, and rose again;" or, again, "Jesus Christ, Who alone was begotten to be the only Son of God, being the Word of God, and the first-born and the Power of God (πρωτότοκος καὶ δύναμις), became Man by the will of the Father, and taught us these things." He justifies the possibility of these statements to the emperors by appeals to Greek mythology, i.e. he is so fast bound to this belief that he has to run the risk of all the discredit that will attach to it in the minds of the philosophic statesmen to whom he is appealing from its likeness to the debasing fables which their intellectualism either rationalized or discarded. That Justin is conscious of this risk of discredit is clear from cc. 53 and 54 of the first Apology, with which we may compare the taunt of Trypho (Dial. 67, § 219 B). So again, in the Dialogue, it is the Christian worship of a man that puzzles Trypho; and the first necessity for Justin is to exhibit the consistency of this with the supreme monarchy of God. "First shew me," asks Trypho (ib. c. 50), "how you can prove there is any other God besides the Creator of the universe?" and this not in any economical sense, but verily and indeed (cf. ib. 55, § 274 C); and Justin accepts the task, undertaking to exhibit Jesus, the Christ, born of a virgin, as Θεὸς καὶ Κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων (ib. 36, § 254 E), to shew Him to be, at the same time, both Θεὸς καὶ Κύριος, and also ἀνὴρ καὶ ἄνθρωπος (ib. 59, § 382 C). The rigour with which this is posited may be tested by the crucial case of the appearance to Abraham at Mamre. Here, it is allowed, after a little discussion, that no angelic manifestation satisfies the language used by Scripture. It is certainly God Himself Who is spoken of. Justin undertakes to prove that this cannot be God the Father, but must be other than He Who created all things—"other," he means, "in number, in person, not in will or spirit" (ib. 56, § 276 D, ἕτερος, ἀριθμῷ λέγω ἀλλ᾿ οὐ γνώμῃ). So, again, he applies to this Divine Being the tremendous words delivered to Moses from the midst of the burning bush, and he will not suffer this to be qualified or weakened by any such subtle distinctions as Trypho attempts to draw between the angel seen of Moses and the voice of God that spoke. He insists, against any such subtleties, that whatever Presence of God was actually there manifested was the Presence, not of the Supreme Creator, Who cannot be imagined to have left His Highest Heaven, but of that Being Who, being God, announces Himself to Moses as the God Who had shewn Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To Him, therefore, apply the words "I am that I am." By these two cases, specimens of a hundred others drawn from Law and Psalm and Prophets, it will be seen how clearly the problem was present to Justin, and how definitely he had envisaged its solution so far as the O.T. was concerned; in direct collision with the Monotheism of the Jew, he defends himself, not by withdrawing or modifying his assertions, but by discovering the evidence for His dual Godhead in the very heart of the ancient Revelation itself; not in any by-ways or minor incidents, but in the very core and centre of those most essential manifestations of God to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, on the truth of which the whole fabric of Jewish faith and worship was reared.
Justin has next to consider in what relation these two Divine Beings stand to each other. Given the existence of a Second Person Who can so effectually identify Himself with the First as to be called ὁ Θεός, how can we conceive the harmony and unity of such a duality? Justin is clear that the distinction between the two Beings is real; it is a numerical distinction. The Word is no mere emanation of the Father, inseparable from Him as the light is inseparable from the sun. He is a real subsistence, born of the Father's Will (Dial. 128, § 358 B). The words used, therefore, to express their relation are words of companionship, of intercourse, of συνῆν, προσομιλεῖ (cf. ib. 62, § 285 C, D, where he brings out the fact of this personal intercourse as involved in the consultations at the creation of man). They are two distinct Beings, but yet must be One in order not to dissolve the absoluteness of the only Godhead. Such a unity may be pictured by the connexion between a thought and the Reason that thinks it, or by the unity of a flame with the fire from which it was taken. Each of these examples of the unbroken unity has the shortcoming that they compel us to think of a
stage prior to the dual condition in which that which is now dual was single. What, then, of the existence of the Word before It became the προβληθὲν γέννημα? Justin is content with the statements: (1) That "before all things," already "at the beginning," this projection had been effected, the two Persons were already distinct (cf. ib. 62, § 285 D; 56, § 276 C, τὸν καὶ πρὸ ποιήσεως κόσμου ὄντα Θεόν). (2) That besides this actual projection of the Λόγος there is a state which may be described as a condition of inner companionship with God the Creator (συνῆν). This precedence is never distinctly asserted to be temporal by Justin. In the Dialogue the συνών is stated to be eternal in exactly that sense in which the γέννημα is eternal, i.e. as being "before all things."
Justin does not appear to definitely pronounce on the question how the process of Begetting consists with the absolute eternity of the Personal Word begotten. There is no precise realization of a Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικός. He hardly seems conscious of this difficulty in his two analogies of the thought and the flame; he is satisfied with expressing, by them, the unity, and yet distinctness, of the Father and the Son. He is content to state that this unity in difference existed from the very first, before all created things. His analysis seems hardly to have pressed back to the final question, which Arian logic discovered to lie behind all minor issues, i.e. was there a moment when the Father was not yet a Father? Such a suspension of analysis is not unnatural, since Justin, in the writings before us, hardly enters on the contemplation of the Nature of God in and to Himself. It is always as the source of all things—the Father, the Maker, the Lord of the Universe—that he presents God to us. It is God in His relation to His works that we contemplate. What He was in Himself before all His works does not seem considered, and it is therefore all the more sufficient to state that God came to the making of the world already dual in character. The moment at which creation was to begin found the Son already existent, as ὁ Θεός, in personal intercourse with the Father. With this he leaves us, only affirming that that character of paternity which constitutes the relation of God to the world had a prior and peculiar significance and reality in the relation that united the absolute God and His Word (cf. Apol. ii. 6, § 44, ὁ μόνος λεγόμενος κυρίως υἱός).
Justin's metaphysic, then, culminates in the assertion of this essential Sonship pre-existent to the creation. This being so, his language remains as indecisive on the ulterior question of the origin of the Sonship as is the language of Proverbs on the eternity of the Wisdom. In both cases the utmost expression for eternity that their logic had attained to is used. It is useless to press them for an answer to the puzzles of a later logic, which carried the problem back into that very eternity which closed their horizon. It was inevitable that the natural and unsystematized language used before the Arian controversy should be capable of an Arian interpretation. Since the Father is indeed alone ἀγένητος, the sole unoriginate fount of the Divine life, the expressions used about Him, and about the Son, must necessarily impute to Him an underivative, to the Son a derivative Being; and must, therefore, tend to class the Son rather with the rest of τὰ γενητά than with the sole ἀγενητόν. It could only be at the end of a most subtle and delicate reflection that Christian logic could possibly realize that it was bound, if it would be finally consistent with itself, to class the derived Being of the Son, by virtue of the absolute eternity of its derivation, on the side of τὸ ἀγενητόν rather than on that of τὰ γενητά. Justin, in the full flush of readiness to sweep in to the service of faith the dear and familiar language of his former Platonism, may have left himself unguarded and careless on this uttermost point of the philosophy of the Incarnation; but it will not easily be doubted—by any one who has observed how he develops the full divinity of the Son over all the ground which his logic covered with a boldness and a vigour that, in face of the inevitable obstacles, prejudices, misunderstandings excited by such a creed, are perfectly astonishing—what answer he would have given if the final issue of the position had once presented itself definitely to him.
Justin had also affirmed the moral unity of the Son with the Father. This is not stated to be the ground of the Unity. The analogies of the thought and of the flame, on the contrary, imply a unity of substance to be the ground of the κυρίως υἱότης, but it is introduced in order to explain the consistency of his belief with the reality of a single supreme Will in the Godhead (Dial. 56, § 274), and the explanation naturally led him to affirm the complete subordination of the Son to the will of the Father. The Son is the expression of the Father's mind, the δύναμιν λογικήν, which He begat from Himself. He is the interpreter of His Purpose, the instrument by which He designs. In everything, therefore, the Son is conditioned by the supreme Will; His office, His very nature, is to be ὁ ἄγγελος, ὁ ὑπηρέτης. All His highest titles, υἱός and λόγος, as well as others, belong to Him by virtue of His serving the Father's purpose and being born by the Father's Will (ἐκ τοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς θελήσει γεγενῆσθαι, ib. 61, § 284 B). "I say that He never did anything but what the Maker of the world, above Whom there is no God at all, willed that He should do" (ib. 56, § 276). The Father is above all. Trypho would not endure to listen to Justin if he did not hold this (ib. 56, § 278 B). The Son is then subordinate, and perfectly subordinate, but this subordination is such that it can allow the Son to identify Himself utterly with the Father, as with Moses at the bush, and so to be called ὁ Κύριος and ὁ Θεός.
In the expression "born of the Father's Will" we are once more close to Arian controversy. Was there, then, a moment when the Father had not yet willed to have a Son? If so, how can the Son be eternal? Yet, if not, how was the Father's will free? Justin has no such questions put to him. He states this dependence of the Son for His very Being on the Will of the Father without anxiety as to His right to be named ὁ Θεός, and to receive
worship in the absolute sense in which a Jew would understand that title and that worship. And here, again, surely it was inevitable that the Christian consciousness should have so stated frankly the subordinate and dependent character of the eternal Sonship, before it appreciated the subtle puzzle that would ensue when logic began its critical work upon the novel and double-sided conception. Subordination of the Son to the Father must represent the immediate, primary, natural, and intelligible method of presenting to the reflecting mind the reconciliation of the duality of Persons with the unity of Will. The very name of Son, or of the Word, implied it. So far, too, the logic inherited from the philosophies would supply the needful formula. It would take time to discover that Christianity held implicitly, in its faith in the entire Divinity of the Son, a position which, if ever it was to be made consistent with the explicit formula of the subordination, must necessitate an entirely new and original logical effort, such as would justify the synthesis already achieved by the Christian's intuitive belief in the absolute Divinity of a dependent and subordinate Son. This new logical effort was made when Athanasius recognized the dilemma into which the old logic of the Schools had thrown the Christian position, and, instead of abandoning either of the alternatives, evolved a higher logic, which could accept both. For it must be remembered, if we are to be impartial to Justin, that the Nicene controversy was not closed by the church throwing over the subordination, while the Arian threw over the entire Divinity of the Son. Nicaea confessed the subordination, and made it theoretically consistent with the absolute Divinity. This being so, the only possible test by which to try Justin (who certainly held both the divinity and the subordination) would be to ask whether, if he had seen the dilemma, he would have held the subordination of the Son to be the primary and imperative truth to the logical needs of which the fulness of the divine Sonship must be thrown over, or whether he would have felt the latter truth to be so intimately essential that a novel logic must be called into existence which should interpret it into accordance with the subordination. It cannot but be felt that Justin's faith is a great deal more pronounced and definite than his Platonic logic; that the one is clear and strong where the other is vague and arbitrary; and, if so, that in a conflict between the two his faith would have remained supreme. Justin's temper of mind is the complete reverse of that of Arius.
On the ministerial activities of the Son for the Father Justin is much more explicit.
The Word has one chief mission from the Father, that of interpreting Him to man; hence He received the name of ἄγγελος (cf. Dial. 56, § 275). He accomplishes this (1) to the Jews by means of the Theophanies and through the lips of the prophets. The Word is the direct inspirer Whose spirit moves the prophets, and Whose words they speak (cf. Apol. i. 36, § 76 D). The whole manifold Scripture, with all its many parts and voices, is, as it were, a great play written by a single author, the Word of God, Who alone speaks through all the characters displayed. Of this Justin gives instances in cc. 37, 38, 39. Again, He is not only the inward force, but the outward object also, to Which all prophecy is directed. The Jewish Scripture has in Him a permanent aim, a fixed canon; it all arranges itself round Him (cf. Apol. i. 31, § 73 A). To foretell Him and His work is the one purpose of prophecy. By it His whole life in its main outlines is described, His advent, His birth from the virgin, His coming to man's estate, His curing of the sick, His raising the dead, His being hated, and unknown, and crucified, His death, resurrection, and ascension, His divine sonship, His mission of the apostles, His success among the Gentiles (ib. i. 31, § 73). (2) Justin attributes a revelation of the Word to the Gentiles, as well as to the Jews; to them He is the ἄγγελος, the interpreter of the Father, not by prophetic anticipations, but by partial manifestation, of Himself. Every man in every race possesses a germ of the Word, by the power of which men knew what truth they did know, and did what good they did do; above all, the philosophers and lawgivers who, in their rational inquiries and speculations, were obeying the measure of the Word within them (κατὰ λόγου μέρος . . . δἰ εὑρέσεως καὶ θεωρίας, ib. ii. 10, § 48 C). It is Justin who promulgates the famous formula: "Οσα παρὰ πᾶσι καλῶς εἴρηται ἡμῶν τῶν Χριστιανῶν ἐστι (ib. ii. 13, § 51). "We do not believe less, but more, than Empedocles and Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato," he says: "we approve what they rightly said; but our doctrine is higher than theirs;" and so too with the Stoics, poets, and historians (cf. ib. i. 18, § 65 C; ii. 10, 13). This is the principle the Alexandrians are to develop. These ancient friends of Christ, for their obedience to the Word, were hated as Christians are hated, as impious and curious busy-bodies; chief of them was Socrates, who was martyred for Christ. With him are mentioned Heraclitus, Musonius the Stoic, etc. In the exercising of human reason to search out God such as these obeyed the power of the Word, the Reason of God (λόγῳ πειραθέντες τὰ πράγματα θεωρῆσαι καὶ ἐλέγξαῖ . . . διὰ λόγου ζητήσεως θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγνώστου ἐπίγνωσιν; ib. ii. 10, § 48; cf. i. 5, § 55 E: λόγῳ ἀληθεῖ καὶ ἐξεταστικῶς). This general differs from the Christian revelation in the partial character of the λόγος σπερματικός; each philosopher, etc., saw only a part of the Word. Hence the contradictions of the philosophic system, the inconsistencies of human law; some had one right part, some another. Christians possess the whole Word of God, in the person of Christ Jesus; they, therefore, hold the canon of truth which distinguishes all that was good and true of old, from the false and the confused with which it was mixed (ib. ii. 9, 10, § 47). This distinction is radical; "since the germ and image of something, given to man according to the measure of his capacity, is quite distinct from that very thing itself which permits itself, by its own favour, to be so given and communicated " (ib. ii. 113, § 51 C). This clear distinction exhibits the full reality of the personality attributed by Justin to the Word revealed in Christ; it is personality which distinguishes
itself so decisively from the influence and energy which it exercises; it is it again which makes the distinction between a partial and a complete revelation to be so radical. The completeness of the Christian revelation lies in its being the revelation of Christ's Person (cf. ib. ii. 10, § 48, ὅς ἐστι Χριστός; ii. 13, § 51). Hence, the Revelation of the Word concentrates itself in the Incarnation; for so only, and then only, is the Word Himself in His personal reality, as distinct from all his activities, and superior to all His influences, made manifest and actual to man. "our truth is more sublime than all human doctrine," says Justin, "on account of the entirety with which the Divine Reason has appeared, for our sakes, as Christ, being manifested as body, and reason, and spirit" (ib. ii. 10, § 48 B). It is because the Word of the absolute and ineffable God has "become a man for our sakes, sharing our passions, and curing our ills," that we surpass all the philosophers whose wisdom we claim to be ours (ib. ii. 13, § 50). Christians now can worship and love the Word. They possess in Him a doctor who will authoritatively determine the truth, separating it from the confusions introduced by the demons (ib. ii. 13, § 51; ii. 9, § 48 B). He has thus made the certain and secure revelation of the Father, which Socrates pronounced to be so difficult and perilous by the way of human reasoning; and He has made this revelation effective and universal, by being Himself no mere reasoner, but the very Power of the Ineffable God (δύναμίς ἐστι τοῦ Πατρός, ib. ii. 10, § 49 A; cf. i. 23, § 68 B). This Power of God avails to ensure security of truth to those even who cannot use reasoning effectively, to artisans and utterly unlearned people. The identification of the man Christ Jesus with the antecedent Word of God is entire and unhesitating. Nothing can exceed Justin's preciseness. "Christ Who was known in part by Socrates, for He was and is the Word which is in every man, and foretold things both by the prophets and in His own Person, when He took upon Him our nature and taught these things" (ib. ii. 10, § 49 A). Here it is identically the same Person Who is known to Socrates, and inspires the prophets, and taught mankind in the flesh (cf. ib. i. 23: "Jesus Christ, Who is the Word of God, His First-born, His Power, His only Son, was also made man"; cf. i. 63, § 96 A.) In consequence of the pre-existence, the Incarnation could only be effected by a supernatural birth. Because the Christ existed personally in Himself before the ages and then endured to be born as a man, He could not be begotten by man, but must be born solely by the will of the Father Who originally begat Him. Such a birth would be unnecessary for a human Christ; those, therefore, who held that God's Christ was not pre-existent or divine, would not hold that He was born supernaturally of a virgin. So Justin claims that Trypho might accept the proofs that Jesus was Christ, even though he should fail to convince him of the eternal pre-existence and virgin-birth of Jesus (Dial. 48, § 267 B); and here Justin confesses that some who are called Christians and acknowledge Jesus to men. He himself could never agree with them even if the main mass of Christians were to turn against him; but he speaks of these Ebionites with a mildness that is rather startling in view of the immense strength and definiteness of his own belief, with which his own church, as he tells us, fully agreed. Apparently he is justifying the possibility of the pis aller, which he proposes to Trypho. It is a novelty to Trypho, it seems, to hear of there being such Christians: he expects them to hold what Justin holds. Evidently, the common church faith in the pre-existence and divinity of Christ is so entire that it already has a theology which is anxious to use the agony in the garden and the bitter cry on the cross as proofs that Christ was actually a man Who could suffer pain (ib. 103, § 331 D, etc.), as if it were the humanity that was more likely to be doubted than the divinity. This supernatural birth is justified by Isaiah's prophecy (which he accuses the Jews of having corrupted, by changing παρθένος into νεᾶνις, and which the demons have caricatured in the myth of Perseus) (ib. 68, § 294); by Psalm cx.: "From the womb I begat Thee" (ib. 63, 286 D); and from many other texts in which Justin sees it foreshadowed that the blood of Christ would come not by human mixture, but solely by the will of God (Apol. i. 32, § 74; Dial 76, § 301). His language on this goes so far that it seems sometimes hardly consistent with the perfect manhood of Christ. He is "like a son of man," i.e. not born of human seed. His blood is called the "blood of the grape," because it came not to Him from man, but direct from the will of the Father. He is the "stone cut without hands," etc.
The purpose of the Incarnation is to save men from evil deeds and evil powers, and to teach assured truth (Apol. i. 23, § 68 C; ἐπ᾿ ἀλλαγῇ καὶ ἐπαναγωγῇ τοῦ ἀνθρωπείου γένους; ii. 9 § 48, B). He brings to bear the full divine energy (ἡ δύναμις τοῦ Πατρός) on a race diseased and deceived through the action of devils. So He is the medicine to cure (ib. ii. 13, § 51 D), which He becomes by sharing our humanity (τῶν παθῶν τῶν ἡμετέρων συμμέτοχος). He is therefore called the Saviour (ib. i. 61, § 94 A), in Whom we receive remission of sins and regeneration. His mode of action is by (1) teaching, as the Word, which is no mere persuasive argument but is a Power penetrating deeper than the sun into the recesses of the soul (Dial. 121, § 350 A), enabling us not only to hear and understand, but to be saved (Apol. ii. 12, § 49). His truth is an absolute canon by which to sift the true from the false in human speculations, since He, the Entire Word, distinguishes with certainty, amid the confusion of the philosophies, that in them which is His own working. So completely and uniquely authoritative is He, that it is by His teaching alone that men rightly know and worship the one Father and God (ib. i. 13). (2) He saves, secondly, by suffering on the cross: so sharing in all the reality of our flesh (cf. Dial. 98, § 324 D, γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος ἀντιληπτικὸς παθῶν). He destroys death by death. He gains possession of men by the cross (cf. ib. 134, $ 364 C, δἰ αἵματος καὶ μυστηρίου τοῦ σταυροῦ κτησάμενος αὐτούς). By His blood
He loosens the power of the devil (ib. 94, § 322 A); He removes death (ib. 105, § 332); by His blood He purifies those who believe (Apol i. 32, § 74 A): hence, He, as crucified is the Priest, the Eternal High Priest (cf. Dial. 116, 343 E). Man's power to keep blameless, and to drive out devils, follows the economy of His Passion (ib. 31, § 247 D). Hence He is called βοηθός and λυτρωτής (ib. 30, § 247 A), the hope of Christians is hung on the crucifixion of Christ (ib. 96, § 323 C). By His stripes we are healed (ib. 17, § 234 E), 336 D). So He is the Paschal Lamb, Who saves from death by the sprinkling of blood (ib. 111, § 338 C). He saved, by submitting to that which all men deserved for sin, i.e. the curse pronounced on all who kept not the law; therefore He was crucified, because the curse lay on crucifixion; but He was no more under God's curse when He endured our curse than was the brazen serpent, which was ordered by God, though He had condemned all images. God saved of old by an image without violating the Second Commandment; He saves now, by a Crucified, those who are worthy of the curse, without, for that, laying His curse on the Crucified. It is the Jews, and not God, who now fulfil the text by"cursing Him that hung on the tree" (ib. 96, 323). This cross and suffering the Father willed for man's sake, that on His Christ might fall the curse of all men: He willed it, knowing that He would raise Him again from this death, as Christ testified on the cross by His appeal to the Father. This coming of Christ to be despised, to suffer, to die, is justified by many appeals to prophecy, especially to Ps. xxii. (ib. 98, § 325), to Jacob's blessing, Gen. xlix. 8, 12, etc. It is the "hidden power of God which is exhibited in the crucified Christ " (ib. 49, § 269 E). This power (ἰσχὺς τοῦ μυστηρίου τοῦ σταυροῦ, ib. 91, § 318 B) began to manifest its hidden efficacy from the day of the resurrection; those who have faith in the cross, and exercise penitence, are, through the power of Christ, the great and eternal priest, stripped of the filthy garments of sin, and clothed with new robes, and made priests, through whom everywhere sacrifices are offered (ib. 116, § 344). Christ Himself is raised from the grave, to be led up into heaven, by the Father, there to dwell until He shall strike down all the devils His enemies and the number of the elect righteous shall be fulfilled, when He will be shewn in glory on the throne of His manifested kingdom. Then will be the great judgment of devils and sinners which is delayed solely for the sake of gathering in all who may yet be willing to believe and repent (Apol. i. 45, § 82 D; ii. 7, § 45 B); till it comes, Christ sends down power on His Apostles, by which they, and all who will, consecrate them selves to the one God (ib. i. 50, § 86 B; 49, § 85 B). This present efficacy of Christ is evident in the power of Christians over devils, who are bound and expelled by their adjuration (cf. Dial. 76, § 302 A). This power, offered to all, manifests itself especially among the Gentiles, and is rejected by Jew and Samaritan, as many a prophecy had foretold (ib. 91, § 319 A; cf. 120 § 348, etc. to end of Dial.). It calls men by the road of faith into friendship and blessing, penitence, and compunction, and assures them of a kingdom to come, eternal and incorruptible (cf. ib. 139, § 369 A). All on whom the power of the cross comes are gathered with one mind into one synagogue, one church, a church born of and called by His name, addressed by the Word in Scripture as His daughter, "Hearken, O daughter" (ib. 63, § 287 B). This church is described, with St. Paul, as one body, ἓν καλεῖται καὶ ἔστι σῶμα (ib. 42, § 261 A).
The eternal kingdom comes with Christ's second advent, in glory, as judge. He will judge every man, up to Adam himself (ib. 132, § 362 A); then shall sinners and devils weep, for to them He will allot a place in that eternal fire which will destroy this world; believers He will admit to the kingdom, recalling the dead to life and establishing them in an eternal and indissoluble kingdom, themselves incorruptible, immortal, painless (ib. 117, § 345, B). This is the Melchisedec, King of Salem, eternal Priest of the Most High, Who will remake a new heaven and a new earth, into which holy land His circumcised shall enter (ib.113, § 341 A). This kingdom is generally spoken of as in heaven, as not earthly (cf. Apol. i. 11, § 59 A, etc.); it is a home with God, for the sake of which Christians easily despise all earthly delights and lusts and the fear of death. In one famous passage in the Dialogue (80, § 306 B; cf. 113, § 341 A) he accepts the Jewish belief of a millennium in a restored and beautified Jerusalem; he claims to have dealt already with this point, though no such explanation is in the Dialogue; many share this belief with him, he says, yet many pious and orthodox Christians reject it; only those who are, according to Justin, ὁρθογνώμονες κατὰ πάντα Χριστιανοί, hold this faith with him, based on Is. lxv. 17 and on the Revelation of "one of themselves, by name John, an apostle of Christ," who speaks of a first resurrection and then a second eternal resurrection and judgment of all men. Evidently there are no words of our Lord's to support this belief; it is a pious opinion, resting on the literal reading of the Apocalypse, held by the most strict believers, but not necessary to a pure and true faith (καθαρὰ καὶ εὐσεβὴς γνώμη). Far different are those who deny the future resurrection of the body altogether and believe in an immediate entrance of the souls of Christians into heaven: "let Trypho beware of deeming such to be Christians at all." The resurrection of the body is a cardinal point of Justin's creed (cf. Apol. i. 18 ff.); essential to the reality of future punishment, and to the fullness of a Christian's security against all loss in death, and justified by an appeal to the wonder of our first creation and to Christ's miracles (Dial. 69, § 296 A).
When this Advent will be, we know not, though it maybe soon. It will be preceded by the appearance of the Man of Iniquity.
On the action of the Third Person, Justin is not so definite; he is continually speaking of Him, but His person and office are not always distinguished with precision from those of the Second Person. He is there, in Justin's creed, a recognized element in it, constantly occurring; but apparently Justin's metaphysic had not yet had time or occasion to dwell on this point with anxiety or exactness. The most
definite mention of Him is in the typical formula for the object of Christian worship and sacramental service; here He is distinctly allied to the First and Second Persons as the alone Third, Who shares with Them the adoration of Christians and the ministration of grace (cf. Apol. i. 13, § 60 E, Πνεῦμα προφητικὸν ἐν τρίτῃ τάξει τιμῶμεν, where he is explaining what it is that Christians worship); again (ib. i. 60, § 93 B), he claims for the Spirit the truth of that τό τρίτον which Plato was supposed to have suggested. Here, as in the former case, the τρίτον is parallel to ἡ δευτέρα χώρα, the place of the Son, and must, therefore, be understood in something of the same significance as that; and that "second place" signified, we know, a difference in number, in fact, in personality, not a mere logical distinction; yet it included such a unity of substance and will that the terminology of the Godhead could be directly applied to it, with the exception of those symbols of absolute supremacy, i.e. the titles, "Father," "Creator," etc. As the Holy Spirit is directly included within the lines of the object worshipped, so is He directly implicated in the divine action upon men: thus the baptismal and sacrificial formula unite His name with that of the Father and the Son (ib. i. 61, § 94 A; 65, § 97 D; 67, § 98 C). He, with the Son, is the medium by which praise and thanksgiving are offered to the Father; His is the third name in the might of which the Christian receives regeneration. One curious passage gives Him a strange place: Justin refutes (ib. i. 6, § 56 C) the charge of atheism by claiming that Christians honour and adore (σεβόμεθα καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν) "both God the Father, and the Son Who came from Him, and the host of good angels that follow Him, and are made like to Him, and the Prophetic Spirit also." Here the angels are brought in front of the Spirit, through the need, probably, of expressing their unity with Christ by virtue of which they become the objects of Christian reverence (ἐξομοιουμένων). Several attempts have been made to avoid this sudden introduction of the angels, by various interpreters (cf. Otto's note in loc. ed. vol. i. 1, 21); but it is hardly possible to read the passage otherwise than as it stands. It must be explained by its position; Justin is quite precise and clear in other passages, where the position attributed to the Holy Spirit is definitely marked, and this sentence, therefore, must be interpreted in accordance with them, not they be confused by it. The angels are best introduced in close company with that Divine Person to Whom they are peculiarly attached, and from Whom especially they derive their title to sanctity (cf. Dial. 31, § 247 E; Apol. i. 52, §§ 87–88; Dial. 61, § 284 B), our Lord being Himself ὁ ἄγγελος, and being therefore named ἀρχιστράτηγος the captain of the angelic host. Only through Him can they be reverenced; while the Holy Spirit receives worship by right of Himself. Justin, by throwing in at the end σεβόμεθα with προσκυνοῦμεν, covers all the varieties of adoration that his inclusion of angels may have made requisite; and he adds λόγῳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ τιμῶντες, as if to suggest there were carefully guarded lines of distinction in the Christian's worship. Elsewhere he shews himself perfectly conscious of the impossibility of paying absolute worship to any but God alone (Apol. i. 16, § 63); in order to justify the adoration of Christ, he knows clearly that he must shew Him to be higher than all angels (Dial. 56, § 276). The whole argument with the Jew exhibits the precision of Justin's distinction between God and His angelic ministers; but, on the other hand, his language in this unique passage evidences the reverential service that could be offered, according to Christian use, to those who had been fashioned into the likeness of Christ.
The Holy Spirit is concerned with creation (ib. i. 60, § 93 B), in His distinct personal fullness, as ὁ τρίτος with a third station peculiar to Himself (τρίτη χώρα) in the Godhead. His main office is with inspiration; He is τό Πνεῦμα τὸ προφητικόν; this is His cardinal name. He speaks as Himself to man, using men as His organ (διὰ Μωϋσέως προεμήνυσε, ib. i. 60, § 93 B); here, since the words follow the statement of the place of the Holy Spirit in the Triad, they must definitely intend Him, in His distinction from the Word, to be the spring of inspiration; so, too, in the formula of baptism, it is the name of προφητικός which marks His distinction from the Word; and we must, therefore, apply to Him, in His separate right and existence, the constantly recurring use of this name (cf. ib. i. 38, § 77 C; 47, § 84 A, etc., etc.), on all which occasions He is spoken of as the direct author and speaker of prophecy, and prophecy is spoken of as peculiarly the note of God (ib. i. 30, § 72 B, etc.). This Spirit is one throughout; It spoke once in Elias, and afterwards in the Baptist (Dial. 49, § 268). Yet Justin sometimes attributes to the Word this action of inspiration which gives to the Spirit His name (cf. Apol. i. 36, § 76 D); the prophets speak through the Word which moves them (so again ib. i. 33, § 75 D, θεοφοροῦνται λόγῳ θείῳ; cf. Dial. 61, § 284 C; 62, § 285; 63, § 236 D). In both cases it is the effective agency by which the prophets are stirred to speak which is attributed to the Word; and Justin attributes this on grounds which he expects the heathen emperors to acknowledge, it is language they must understand (Apol. i. 33). The action of God on man is so intimately bound up with the Word, in Justin, that it is wonderful how much inspiration he attributes to the Spirit, rather than how little.
Justin holds very decisively the belief (1) in good angels, attached intimately to our Lord (cf. former quotations), messengers of God in O. and N. T., fed in heaven on some manna (Dial. 57, § 279 C), accompanying Christ in His glory on the last day; and (2) more particularly in bad angels, to whom the earth and man had been committed by God (Apol. ii. 5, § 44 A), but who overstepped their limits in wicked intercourse with women, who, from them, bore sons, the devils; they reduced the human race to servitude, by deceitful magic, and by terror, and by instituting sacrifices, etc., to themselves, for which they lusted now that they had known the passion of fleshly desires: they sowed the seeds of war, adultery,
crime. Chief among them is the Serpent, the tempter of Adam and Eve, the Devil, Satanas, a name ascribed to him by our Lord Himself at His temptation, signifying Apostate and Serpent (ib. i. 28, § 71 B; Dial, 103, § 331 B).
The problem of the human soul occupies the chief place in the account of Justin's conversion; the philosophers were felt to be uncertain and insecure in their conception of it, especially as regards its immortality, its consequent transmigration, and its relation to the divine substance. Justin holds that the soul is no particle of the absolute mind; has no life in itself; is created; is not life, but partaker of life, so that it could perish; but receives immortality by the will of God, as is proved by a mass of practical testimony, by the word of Revelation, and by its consonance with the needs of justice; this immortality includes as its essential requisite the resurrection of the body, without which justice could not fulfil itself; it will be given both to the just and to the unjust (cf. Dial. 4, 5, 6; Apol. i. 21, § 67 D; 18, 19, § 65), though it is only rightly "immortality" for the just; for the others, eternal fire.
Man, according to Justin, has been imprisoned in sin since the fall of Adam, the first man, deceived of the devil, who fell greatly by deceiving Eve; hence "ye shall die" (Dial. 124, § 353 D, ὁμοίως τῷ Ἀδὰμ καὶ τῇ Εὔᾳ ἐξομοιούμενοι, θάνατον ἑαυτοῖς ἑργάζονται), though originally made θεῷ ὁμοίως ἀπαθεῖς καὶ ἀθανάτους (cf. ib. 88, § 316 A). Man, as the angels, was made incorruptible, if he kept God's laws. This Biblical view falls in with his account of the whole human race, as sinning through the deceit of evil angels who made them think their own bad passions possible in gods. This evil state, thus brought on, is spoken of as a tyranny from which man had to be delivered by another (cf. ib. 116, § 344 A; Apol. ii. 6, § 45 A; Christ comes ἐπὶ καταλύσει τῶν δαιμόνων. The whole race is under the curse; for, if the Jews were, by the laws of Moses, much more were the Gentiles with their horrible idolatry (Dial. 95, § 322 D). Only by Christ is the curse removed; He, our Israel, wrestles for us with the devil (ib. 125, § 354 D). Only by His grace are the devils made subject. But Justin combines with this a great anxiety to keep man's free-will intact; he is continually explaining himself on this point. Man is never deserted of God; he possesses, after the fall, the germinal Λόγος, by which he discerns between good and evil, between true and false (cf. ib. 93, § 320 D; Apol. ii. 10).
The gift of Christ to man is primarily remission of sins (cf. Dial. 116, § 344, etc.), effected through penitence on man's part, excited by his call into true faith in the Creator; by Christ's power, sin is stripped off and remitted; we are made regenerate (Apol. i. 61, § 94 D. This regeneration accomplished and the truth being now known and confessed, we become bound, and fit, to accomplish a good life, to keep the commandments, to attain eternal life (ib. i. 65, § 97 C). We are clothed with garments prepared of Christ (Dial. 116, § 344); we are to imitate God's own virtues, to exhibit ourselves worthy of His counsel by works (Apol. i. 10, § 58 B). The entire change of character is beautifully given in Apol. i. 14, § 61, 15, etc.
The most effective guard of this pure living is belief in the resurrection of the body; for this hope consecrates the entire man to the holiness of the eternal kingdom and renders real the sense of future punishment; we shall feel torture, hereafter, in our bodies; without this, future pain would be unreal and meaningless (ib. i. 18, § 65). God will raise and endue with incorruptibility the dead bodies, now dissolved and scattered like seeds over the earth (ib. i. 19).
This human race will endure until the number of those willing to become Christians is complete. It is because God acts by the free choice of man that He does not destroy evil by force, but offers men the chance of escape, and gives them time to use the chance (Dial. 102, § 329 A). The punishment that awaits sinners, when the end comes, will be by fire and for ever. On this Justin is very pronounced (cf. Apol. i. 8, § 57 B: "an eternal punishment" (αἰώνιον κόλασιν), he says, "and not a mere period of a thousand years," ἀπαύστως κολάζεσθαι (Dial. 45, § 264 B); the kingdom is αἰώνιος καὶ ἄλυτος, the κόλασις πυρός is αἰώνιος too (Dial. 117, § 345). He uses the language freely and frankly, unhampered, apparently, by his theory of the soul, which makes its immortality dependent on the Will of God, Who wills it in the shape of Holiness (cf. Iren. bk. iii. 36; cf. Apol. i. 21, § 67). He justifies the existence of reward and punishment by the forcible argument, that, without them, you are compelled to believe God indifferent to good and evil, or else good and evil to have no real actuality; both which beliefs are impious. The judgment is the witness of God's regard to the reality of the distinction (cf. Apol. ii. 9, § 47 E; i. 28, § 71 C).
The church is that society of Christians in which the power of the regeneration is faithfully manifested and the pure knowledge revealed in Christ loyally held; so Justin is anxious to explain that not all so-called Christians are real Christians, any more than all so-called philosophies mean the same thing (ib. i. 7, § 56 D). Many, professing to confess Christ, hold impious and immoral doctrine, with whom the "disciples of the true and pure doctrine" do not communicate; they are marked as heretical by assuming the names of their founders, e.g. Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides (Dial 35, § 253 D.
The true Christians hold "the pure teaching of Jesus Christ"; possess "a pure and pious doctrine" based on Scripture, and the words of Christ, not on human doctrine (ib. 48, § 269 D); prove them true by holiness (cf. Apol. i. 26, § 70 B); heretics may be capable of any wickedness for all Justin knows. He himself has written a work against all the heresies (ib. i. 26, § 70 C). The heresies confirm true believers in the faith, since Christ foretold them (cf. Dial.82, § 308 B; 35, § 253 C), though they lead many away.
True believers are admitted to the body by the rite of baptism, on their acceptance of Christian verity and their promise to live accordingly (Apol. i. 61, § 93 A). This baptism is the true circumcision of the Spirit (Dial. 43, § 261 D); works with the cross to
expiate our sins (ib. 86, § 314 A); is appointed by Christ Himself for the remission of sins; and is our regeneration, by which we are born again out of a state of sin into Light and Holiness; so called "Illumination;" φωτισμός (Apol. i. 61, 74). It presupposes penitence and a confession of faith (ib. i. 61, 65). Baptism admits to the brotherhood, the assembly, where common prayers are made (ib. i. 65, § 97 C), the kiss of peace given, and the Eucharist offered by the leader of the brethren, ο προεστως; who takes the bread and water and wine brought him, and sends up praise and glory to the Father, in the Name of the Son and the Holy Spirit; at the end of his thanksgiving the people give their consent by saying, "Amen"; after this thanksgiving, εὐχαριστία, the deacons administer the elements, with which thanks have been offered (τοῦ εὐχαριστηθέντος ἄρτου), to each one present and carry some to the absent. This food is itself called the Eucharist; no one may eat of it who does not believe the truth taught and has not been washed by baptism; for it is not ordinary bread or wine, κοινὸν ἄρτον, but "in the very manner that Jesus Christ becoming incarnate by the word of God, had, for our salvation, both flesh and blood, so have we been taught that the food, which has been made a thanksgiving by the word of prayer which He gave us, by which food our own flesh and blood are; through a process of transformation, nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that same incarnate Jesus." He proceeds to quote, from the books of the apostles, the account of the institution of the Last Supper, and compares it with the initiatory offerings in the mysteries of Mithra (ib. i. 65–66, § 97). In this passage the Incarnation is spoken of, as elsewhere, as the work of the Word Himself; though He is Himself the Incarnate One (cf. ib. i. 32, 74 B, ὁ λόγος ὃς σαρκοποιηθεὶς ἄνθρωπος γέγομεν). The principle of the Eucharist is found in the principle of the Incarnation (though the analogy is hardly to be pressed into details); it is the flesh and blood of Christ, taken for our salvation, that are identified with the food; which food is itself so intimately allied with our flesh and blood that it still nourishes our actual bodies κατὰ μεταβολήν, though it is the flesh and blood of Jesus, after the word of prayer, δἰ εὐχῆς λόγου (by some rendered, "prayer of His word," cf. Otto's notes, p. 181 of 3rd ed.), which He Himself instituted, i.e. the words ordained by Christ, given by Justin as "Do this in remembrance of Me: this is My body: this is My blood." In the Dialogue, 117, § 345 A Justin speaks again of the "dry and liquid food" in which memorial is made by Christians, according to a received institution, of the suffering of the Son of God, τό πάθος ὃ πέπονθε. This memorial is there identified, with those prayers and thanksgivings, offered by holy people, which alone are the sacrifices perfect and well-pleasing to God, in contrast with the Jewish sacrifices, and in fulfilment of Mal. i. 10. These sacrifices (θυσίαι) occur at the Eucharist of the bread and of the cup; the spiritual sacrifice of praise is then and there alone accomplished, by God's injunction. Isa. xxxiii. 13 is fulfilled in the bread which our Christ ordered us (παρέδωκεν) to offer (ποιεῖν) for a memorial of His having taken to Himself a body, and so become passible (παθητός) (Dial. 70, § 296 E).
Justin mentions, beside the Eucharist which followed the baptism, that the Christians met every Sunday (ἡ τοῦ ἡλίου ἡμέρα), the day on which God began creation and raised Christ (Apol. i. 67, § 97). All came in who could, from country and town, to one place; the memorials of the apostles or the books of the prophets were read publicly; then, the leader preached and admonished; after which all rose together and prayed; then the Eucharist is administered as before described. At such times, offertories were made of voluntary gifts, laid in the hands of the leader, who distributed them to the sick, widows, etc. "Ever," says Justin, "do we remind ourselves of this rite" which followed our baptism; and "ever we live together; we who are rich give to the poor; and for everything that we have we bless the Creator of all through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit" (ib. i. 67); sendIing up to Him solemn prayers (πομπάς) and hymns, not deeming Him to be in need of blood and libations and sweet smells (ib. i. 13, § 60 C). Sunday, then, was observed as a peculiar day (cf. Dial. 24, 241 B); this is in contrast with σαββατίζειν, and "regarding the stars," which mean, distinctly, keeping the Jewish feasts; this the main body of Christians repudiated, so that it was by most treated as a criminal heresy to keep the sabbath, and they refused to hold communion with those Christians who still held to these Jewish customs. This severity Justin condemns; but his whole argument with Trypho accepts thoroughly the abolition of the Fourth Commandment. The sabbath symbolizes Moses, and Christians hope not in Moses but in Christ; the Christian does not think himself pious for keeping one day idle, but for keeping a continual sabbath. The sabbath was given for the hardness of the Jews' hearts (cf. ib. 10, § 227 B, etc.; 19, § 237 C; 21, § 238),
Justin's conception of the Law is very strong and decided. Definite as he is against Marcion, in his belief in the revelation of the true God made in O.T., he yet takes an extreme view of the partial, local and temporal character of the law. He bases himself, mainly, on his principle of the complete universality of God: God is everlasting, throughout all time, over all people; He is judge of all the earth; His justice must be alike everywhere. Hence He cannot shut up His relations to man within the limits of a law addressed to a single people, and for a limited period of time (Dial. 23, § 240 E; 93, 320 C). Facts prove this: for God was well-pleased with Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchisedec, though they were uncircumcised and kept no sabbaths (cf. ib. 19, § 236 C). Again, if virtue lay in the mere act of circumcision, women would be in a worse case than men (ib. 23, § 241 C). It would be against God's nature to value such rites, and limitations, and new sacrifices, for their own sake, as if the good lay in them. Did the Law, then, not come from Him? Yes; but God in it accommodated Himself to the Jews; it was for you Jews alone that it was necessary; because you forgot Him, He had
to decree your sabbaths; because you fell away to idols, He had to demand of you sacrifices (ib. 19, § 236 E). He ordered you a temple, lest you should worship images. All was done to distinguish the Jewish race from the heathen; and this, not on account of the race's virtue, so much as for its proneness to evil. To justify this, Justin appeals to the "everlasting voice of prophecy"; he quotes the many words of the prophets in which sabbaths and sacrifices are declared unpleasing and unavailing. "I am not inventing all this," he says, but "this is what David sang, Isaiah preached, Zechariah proclaimed, Moses wrote" (ib. 29). Where the prophets insist on the laws, it was because of the people's sin (ib. 27, § 244 B). But Justin has, still, to account for the Law being, in a relative sense, worthy of God; and this He does by distinguishing two elements in it, one eternal, the other temporal; the two stand to each other chiefly as sign and reality; so Justin discovers in the temporal provisions of the Law allegories of eternal truths. This is what was meant when Moses gave minute rules about meats and herbs and drinks; it was to symbolize the moral laws (cf. ib. 20, § 237 C), but the Jewish people took it literally. They supposed, e.g., some herbs to be evil, some good; while, in truth, God meant all to be good, if it was profitable to men. The circumcision under Joshua was allegorical (cf. ib. iii. § 332), So, again, meat was a symbol of Christ; so, too, the Passover Lamb, and the scape-goats (ib. 40, 41, § 259 A). But if the Law was allegorical, symbolic, it necessarily ceased when the reality came. So it ended with Christ Who has enabled us to sever the eternal from the temporal elements: He is the test and canon of what was real in the Law (ib. 67, § 292 C).
If Christ took away sin, He took away the reason for the Law; He gave us the circumcision of the heart, which made the carnal circumcision needless (cf. βαπτίσθητε τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ ὀργῆς καὶ ἰδού, τὸ σῶμα καθαρόν ἐστι : ib. 14, 231 D). Justin does not consider that such a principle as this negatives the necessity of an outward baptism, or of an outward Sunday; fox both these he holds. Prophecy speaks of a new covenant to be made in a Christ; and this for Jew as well as for Gentile, for both are to be saved in the same Christ (ib. 64, § 287 B). Why, then, did Christ keep the Law? Out of the economy of God; He accepted the Law as He accepted the Cross, and the becoming-man: it was in order to carry out the Father's will; but He was not justified by keeping the Law; otherwise He could not be the Saviour of all men (ib. 67, § 292 A) nor have introduced a new covenant. The admission of the eternal significance of Christ necessarily carries us back behind the Law, to the conditions under which all men had always lived (ib. 23, § 241 B).
The failure of the Jews to believe in the Christ is no argument for their being right; for it is foretold all along that the Gentiles are the children of prophecy, the true Israel, the perfect proselytes; it is of them that all the good promises are spoken. The whole of the end of the Dialogue is devoted to shewing this.
We realize in Justin the complete Gentilism of the Christianity of A.D. 140. He regards the Law rather as an evidence of peculiar evil, than of peculiar good, in the Jews; so he even says in scorn that circumcision only serves to mark them out for condemnation, as the accursed who are forbidden to enter Jerusalem; it enables the Romans to exclude them from the Holy Land.
But if Justin is hard upon the Law, he is very different towards Prophecy. On Prophecy, on Scripture, he relies absolutely; he asks to be believed, only so far as he can prove his truth by Scripture. It is the word of God, given by God through the Word, or chiefly through the Spirit. This is reiterated continually. The whole O.T. is as a great drama, with various actors, but of which there is a single author, the Spirit of God (Apol. i. 36, § 76 D). It is a unity; so that Justin does not believe that any one part can contradict any Other; rather he would feel bound to confess his own ignorance, where such seemed the case (Dial. 65, § 289 C). His definition is: "Certain men existed among the Jews, God's prophets, through whom the prophetic spirit foretold things before they occurred" (Apol. i. 31, § 72 B). Moses he calls the first; after Moses he speaks of an "eternal prophecy going forth" (ib. i. 31; Dial. 30, § 247 A). They foretold Christ, His coming, His birth from a virgin, His man's estate, His curing disease and raising the dead, His being hated and despised and fixed to a cross, His death, resurrection, and ascension, His being, and being called, the Son of God, His sending out apostles, His success among the Gentiles (Apol. i. 31, § 73 A).
Justin offers a very storehouse of Christian interpretations of Scripture, such as cannot be classified briefly; the strongest lines lie:—
(1) In the exhibition of the divine plurality, through which Justin can, while retaining the absolute purity and separateness of God the Father such as the Jewish monotheism made imperative, yet justify and correlate all the manifold manifestations of Himself by God under local and temporal qualifications, all receiving their true and complete elucidation in the Incarnation. He Whose nature it is to be the expression and exhibition of the Father's will, was at the tent door with Abraham, in the dream with Jacob, in the burning bush with Moses, at the camp side with Joshua, above the cherubim with Isaiah, and now is made man of Mary (cf. Dial. 75, § 301 A).
(2) Justin ably gathers into one the many-sided characteristics of the Messianic prophecy—the many human, mingled with the many divine, names attributed to the Christ: He is man—yet to be adored; He is suffering, yet triumphant; He saves His people, He is rejected by His people. Justin, in the paradox of the Cross, has a key to the endless paradox of prophecy. All the shifting double-sided revelations of Godhead and manhood, of triumph and suffering, meet in a crucified king. He can give a unity of solution to a Christ Who is called "Angel of great Counsel" and "Man" by Ezekiel, "As a Son of man" by Daniel, "Servant" or "Child" by Isaiah, "Christ" and "God" and "Adorable" by David, "Christ" and "the Stone" by many, "Wisdom" by Solomon, "Joseph, Judah, and the Star" by Moses, "the Morning Star" by
Zechariah, "Suffering," and "Jacob," and "Israel" by Isaiah, and "Rod," and "Flower," and "Corner-stone" "cut without hands," and "Son of God," Who is "despised and rejected," yet also is proclaimed "King of Kings, King of Hosts, King of Glory," and is "Set on the right hand of God," "Born of a virgin," yet "Existent before all the world," "the power of God, the glory of God," "the Word," "the Lord," "the Captain of the Hosts," "King," "Priest," yet also "Man," "the Stone," "the Child," "the Sufferer" (ib. 126, § 355 B; 61, § 284 A; 34, § 251 D). In giving force to this last characteristic of the Christ, i.e. ὁ παθετός, at the same time that he gave reality to the highest title, ὁ θεὸς προσκυνητός, Justin shews his power over the Jew, who can only hover aimlessly between the two, unable to deal with or accept either the lowest or the highest. Justin declares that no one ever understood the prophecy of the sufferings, until Christ opened it to His apostles.
(3) He is powerful in his deduction from prophecy of the failure, unbelief, and ruin of the Jewish race—as the favoured people; and in the change of the manifestation of God from them to the Gentiles. Here he had much to use which was only a stumbling-block to strict Jewish reliance on blood and privilege.
(4) He is successful in exhibiting the newness of Christ's covenant, the New Law, the New Heart; under this conception the continual discontent of God with the old sacrifices and sabbaths gains intensity of meaning; the calls to wash and be clean, and put away sins, are vivified; the prophetic types of a new and wider dispensation are brought into daylight. Cf. the whole latter part of the Dialogue.
Where Justin is weakest is, naturally, in knowledge. He is ignorant of the original tongue and very arbitrary in his interpretation of details; he uses Christ as the accepted key to the whole complicated history, in a way that to a believer is often full of devotional suggestiveness, but to an unbeliever has no argumentative force. Instances may be found in such chaps. as 77, 78 of the Dialogue, or c. 81, etc. He often takes the wrong sense of a passage. He interprets the passages condemnatory of the Jewish sacrifices, etc., in a way that wins them a new meaning from Christ, but is certainly not their intended meaning. He can only meet Trypho's sharp criticism on this point by appealing to his own presumption that God's approval of the Law can only have been an accommodation to the people's sins (Dial. 27, § 244 B).
Prophecy is to Justin the main form of Christian evidences; and this for Gentile as much as for Jew. It is to prophecy he turns to prove that the Christian story of the Incarnation is not a poetic tale, without foundation; Greek mythology offers no testimony to its own reality (Apol. i. 54, § 89 A). Christ's miracles were no magic or conjuring because they were foretold (ib. i. 30, 31, § 72 A). Justin is shy of arguing from miracles: there had been too much false wonder-working for him to appeal to them. The miracles of the old Prophets he speaks of as worthy to win them credit, since they were coincident with a lofty desire to reveal God and with prophecy of Christ (Dial. 7, § 225 A). Christ's miracles are to be believed on the ground of prophecy (Apol. i. 30). Miracles are, to him, proofs, when they have been testified to, but cannot stand alone as evidence.
The other evidence to which Justin appeals is the (1) purity of Christian precepts (Apol. i. 14, § 61); (2) their constancy under torture (ib. ii. 12, § 50 A; Dial. 110, § 337 B); (3) the consecrated lives of uncorrupt virginity, the conversion of penitents to holiness (Apol. i. 15, 62 B, C; cf. ib. i. 29, § 71 E); (4) the exorcising of demons (ib. ii. 6, § 45 B); (5) the existence of prophetical gifts in the church (cf. Dial. 82, § 308 B), as well as of gifts of spiritual power (ib. 35, § 254 B), miracle, and healing (ib. 39, § 258 A).
We may briefly ask what knowledge Justin shows of (1) Jewish, and (2) Gentile learning.
(1) He refers frequently to Jewish modes of interpreting texts and seems used to dealing with them (cf. ib. 50, § 269 D); but perhaps he knows them rather in their polemic against Christians than in their own inner teaching. He charges them with escaping from texts against them by throwing doubts on the LXX, while all the Messianic texts that can be accommodated to human affairs they attach to whom they choose, but not to Christ (ib. 63, § 294 B). Thus they attribute the fulfilment of the triumphs spoken of in the Psalms to Solomon, in Isaiah to Hezekiah (ib. 64, § 287 A; 77, § 302 B). Justin does not seem to know of any Jewish theorizing on the problem of the Λόγος. The Jews expect a purely human Christ (ib. 49, § 268 A), to be heralded by Elias in person, and anointed by him; till which time the Christ is to be in obscurity; He will not even know Himself (ib. 110, § 336 C). The texts that speak of Christ as passible, yet as God and adorable, they are compelled, Justin says, to attribute to Christ, but they refuse to allow this Jesus to be the Christ, though they have to confess that the Christ will suffer and be worshipped. The divinity of Christ is, according to this, forced upon the Jews' belief by Christian logic, but they do not know what to make of it, and are in straits.
(2) As to Gentile philosophy, Justin's general knowledge was evidently large; but it is a question how far he held to any system accurately or scientifically; he sits pretty loosely to them all. He places Plato highest, and delights in his doctrine of Eternal Ideas, but no definite Platonic formulae are used; the Ideas do not appear; the doctrine of the Word has general relations to Platonism, but that is all; it is itself utterly unlike any teaching in Plato; it belongs to the process of thought which has its roots in O.T., and works through Philo up into Christianity. He gives us nothing of Plato's except the account of the "X" as the law of creation, in the Timaeus, which Justin supposes him to have taken from the account of the brazen serpent; and the statement of the triad character of things, which is taken from an epistle attributed till lately to Plato. He declares Plato's account of creation from formless matter to have been taken from Genesis; but he only means this in the most general way, for he seems to fancy that Plato's formula is consistent with Moses'
statement that this formless matter had itself been made by God (cf. Apol. i. 59, § 92 D). It is obvious that Justin's relation to Platonism is quite external; he holds the Christian formulae, and whenever he detects a likeness to them in Plato, he delights in bringing it out, without regard to context or system; these likenesses are entirely arbitrary and superficial, and can never be pressed. Justin's canon of truth is absolutely in Scripture; from that standpoint his kindly love for Plato pleases itself in exhibiting in him fragmentary resemblance to the truth; but if these fragments of truth are rooted in error, so much the worse for Plato; Justin has no idea of following them down. There is something to be said for his connexion with Stoicism; he approved their morals, and found them right, to some extent, as to the ultimate end of Nature; but objects strongly to their physical doctrines, their belief in fate, their physico-Pantheistic conception of God, by which they must either identify God with evil and change, or else deny the reality of evil (ib. ii. 7, 8); he considers their physics inconsistent with their ethics. Musonius and Heraclitus he honourably distinguishes; of the Epicureans he speaks scornfully (ib. ii. 15, § 52 B).
One problem remains to be considered, i.e. the relation of Justin to our four Gospels. The amount and frequency of his references to our Lord's life and words, in the generation immediately preceding the day in which the present Gospels emerge, secure and alone, into the full daylight of history, make him of salient importance in determining their character; and the state of the present controversy, which has detected the subtle transition, through which the gospel story passed, from the conditions of a living, oral tradition to those of formal written exemplars, increases the importance of Justin, as he begins the definite references to written records, of a fixed character, capable of being used for devotional purposes. Are these records identical in substance and in form with our Gospels?
(1) The substantial characteristics of our Lord's life, down even to minute details, are, obviously, the same for Justin as for us. We can compose, from his quotations, a full summary of the whole gospel life, from the angel's message to the Virgin until the ascension, entering into many particulars, illustrating prophecies, supplying the very words of our Lord, in many instances relating all the circumstances; and, as a whole, it is perfectly clear that the lines which limit and determine in detail our Gospel did so, too, to his. The same body of facts is selected; the same character, the same limits preserved, the same characteristics brought forward; the same motives, the same interests are concerned; the same prophetic aspects dwelt upon. This is noticeable, when we remember how very special and remarkable a choice must have been originally exercised upon our Lord's life, to select and retain the peculiar fragments, no more and no less, which are collected and sorted by our Synoptists.
Justin makes some additions or changes in detail to this main story; so few that they can be mentioned and their character seen. He had a genealogy which, whether ours or not, he attributed to Mary, not to Joseph; Cyrenius he calls the first procurator of Judaea; our Lord's birthplace is a cave; the Magi come from Arabia; all the children in Bethlehem are killed; our Lord is not "comely of aspect"; He made ploughs and yokes, emblems of righteousness; the Baptist sat by Jordan; a fire shone in Jordan at our Lord's baptism, and the words from heaven complete the text of the second Psalm; the Jews ascribed our Lord's miracles to magic; John ceased his mission at our Lord's public appearance. The Lord said, "There shall be schisms and heresies"; and "In whatsoever I find you, in that will I judge you." Of these several are, probably, confusions or amplifications of Justin's own; some represent additions found in various texts of our present Gospels, and were, probably, floating, popular, traditional interpretations of various passages. The only remaining points definitely distinct are, the home of the Magi, the cave of the Nativity, the posture of the Baptist, the two sayings of our Lord. Does Justin, then, take these from tradition or from any uncanonical gospel? We must hypothesize the gospel that he used, if it is not ours; for we have no relic of it in our hands, and here the remark seems convincing (Sanday, Gospels in the Second Century, p. 202) that this gospel, if it existed, belongs not to an earlier but to a later stage of the story than our canonical works.
That they were books that he used he tells us frequently; it is all "written"; the books are called by a name peculiar to Justin, ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν Ἀποστόλων; they are records of our Lord's sayings and doings, written either by apostles or their followers (Apol. i. 66, § 98 B; Dial. 103, § 333 D). These books constitute τὸ εὐαγγέλια, (ib. 10, § 227 E); a quotation is referred to this εὐαγγελιον (ib. 100, § 326 C); the ἀπομνημονεύματα are themselves called εὐαγγέλια, he tells us, if the text is right (Apol. i. 66). All this points obviously to the existence of various records, "written either by apostles or by their followers," constituting altogether a single story, τό εὐαγγέλιον. So far our Gospels exactly correspond. More than this, it is almost incredible that he should not have known Matthew, at least; besides the general mass of reference, which exhibits remarkable resemblance to this Gospel, he has marked notices that distinguish Matthew from the other forms of the evangelical tradition: the visit of the Magi, the descent into Egypt, Joseph's suspicions of Mary, texts, elsewhere unparalleled, from the Sermon on the Mount, the application of Is. xlii. 1–4 to the colt with the ass; above all, the comment of the disciples upon the identification of the Baptist with Elias (Dial. 49, § 269 A; Matt. xviii. 11–13), the expressions ἔνοχος εἰς (Matt. v. 22), ἀγγαρεύσει (v. 41), etc., etc. The resemblance to Luke in places where we can distinguish St. Luke's peculiar work from the general tradition are in a few cases almost impossible to resist, such as the quotation of xviii. 27 (Apol. i. 20, § 66); the use of the unique expression ἰσάγγελοι, xx. 35–36; and the most remarkable expressions at the annunciation,
ἐπισκιάζειν δύναμις ὑψίστου, etc., which are directly Lucan. Cf., also, the last word on the cross. The only statement entirely peculiar to Mark is the naming of the sons of Zebedee. Thus not only is the whole body of quotation accounted for with a few rare exceptions, from our Gospels, but in some cases where SS. Matthew and Luke affect by their individuality the common original tradition Justin reproduces them.
The inexactness of quotation is the one opposing element. Justin is inexact, it is true, in his O.T. quotations, but he is more than three times as inaccurate in his N.T. ones. It is intensely difficult to know how much to discount for free combination which Justin uses extensively, how much for lack of memory, how much for mere paraphrase; or to determine, after such discounting, how much evidence remains to shew Justin's use of any other gospel besides our own. But if Justin used some form of the gospel not now in the canon, it was either a text used by the side of Matthew and Luke, and not differing from them in any degree more than they differ from each other; and if so, it would multiply the evidence for the authenticity of the narrative embodied in our canon; or else it was a text compounding and combining with some freedom the other two; and if so, it supposes these canonical gospels to be already the formal authorities. The supposition that Justin used a perfectly distinct form of the gospel story from any we now possess is met by the invincible difficulty that, though ex hypothesi of sufficient importance and acceptance to be used in the public offices of the metropolitan church as late as the boyhood of St. Irenaeus, it has, nevertheless, totally disappeared.
As to John, the main argument against its use is that from silence. Justin is full of doctrine on the subject of the Word, on the pre-existence and divine authority of Christ, yet no words from the Johannine discourses appear in his work. This argument has necessarily great weight, yet any single distinct reference to John must outweigh such a negative. Is there any such reference?
In Dial. 88 Justin attributes to the Baptist himself the words of the prophet, φωνὴ βοῶντος. This attribution is one of those remarkable distinctions peculiar to St. John's Gospel. We know of no other ground for it. Twice (in Apol. i. 22, § 68 B, and Dial. 69, § 296 A) he speaks of our Lord healing people infirm ἐκ γενετῆς: the only recorded instance of this is the blind man in Jn. ix. 20, ἐκ γενετῆς. In Apol. i. 61, Justin, it can hardly be doubted, is paraphrasing Jn iii. 3–5. He is referring to a definite statement of our Lord; and the statement—a most marked and peculiar one—occurs here only. Justin refers to it in a way that makes it hardly possible to suppose him unacquainted with the continuation in John. In its context in the Apology the reference to the physical impossibility of a literal new birth is singularly awkward (cf. Otto, note in loc.). Justin, moreover, claims that he is believing Christ's own teaching when he believes in His Divine pre-existence; which would be more intelligible of John than of the other Gospels (Dial. 48, § 267 D). There is, again, a notice of our Lord (ib. 106, § 333) which receives its proper interpretation only in Jn. xiii. and xvii.; Christ, says Justin, knew that the Father gave everything to Him, and Himself demanded this. Such are the possible direct references, rare, indeed, but in one case, at least, remarkably noticeable. Indirectly, Justin holds a doctrine of the Word, clear, pronounced, decisive, such as finds no home or base for itself but in the Fourth Gospel. This doctrine Justin does not originate; it is the accepted, familiar, Christian faith put forth for the whole body, as their common belief, without hesitation, apology, anxiety, scruple, or uncertainty. It presents the exact features of the Johannine teaching; the universalism of the Philonic Λόγος is identified with, and made concrete by, the living, vivid individualism of the Incarnate Messiah. The synthesis is done, is complete, without confusion or doubt. Justin is as definite, as full of sanctioned certainty on the reality of this doctrine of the Incarnate Word, as he is on the facts and discourses represented by our Synoptists. The Life of our Lord is already for him the Life as it is in fusion with the dogma of the Word—the Life as it is under the manipulation that is displayed in the Fourth Gospel. Have we any cause of sufficient force to have achieved so decided a result but the Gospel of St. John? (Cf. Thoma, in Zeitsch. für Wissenschaft. Theolog. pt. 4 (1875, Leipz.): an elaborate discussion which concludes, "Justin cites only the Synopt., but he thinks and argues with the Fourth Gospel, evidencing its existence, but not its apostolicity"; but cf. on last point, Westcott, Canon of N.T. p. 100.)
In connexion with this there must be mentioned a passage in Dial. 123, § 353 B, in which, if not the gospel, then the first ep. of St. John can hardly be supposed absent from the writer's mind. The peculiar conjunction of καλούμεθα καὶ ἐσμέν is essentially Johannine (I. John iii. 1, 2); as is the connexion of "sonship" with keeping τὰς ἐντολάς. Justin, again, knows the writings of the Valentinians, and his (according to the evidence of Hippolytus and Irenaeus) must have involved a knowledge of the Fourth Gospel. Altogether, the problem presented by his not quoting John is far easier to solve than the problem of his not knowing it.
As to the rest of the canon, Justin mentions the Apocalypse by name, attributing it to St. John (Dial. 81, § 308 A). He can hardly but be thinking of Romans in ib. 23, § 241 B. He has references to I. Corinthians (ib.14, § 231 D; 111, § 333 C; Apol. 1, 60, § 93), and to II. Thessalonians (Dial. 32, § 110). He constantly repeats the πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, which suggests Colossians; he has references which seem to recall Hebrews (ib. 13, § 229 D; Apol. i. 12, § 60, ἀπόστολος . . . Ἰησοῦς Χριστός); his words appear in several places to point to Acts (cf. Apol. 50, § 86 B; 40, § 79 A). Everywhere he exhibits traces of St. Paul; and his controversy with Marcion must have involved a complete acquaintance with the theology and language of the great apostle.
Throughout Justin claims to shew forth, with a certainty attested by sacrifice and death, a solid body of certified doctrine, which
apostolic authority sealed and secured; Christ, as He had been foretold by prophets and announced to the world by apostles, is the assured ground of his faith (cf. Dial. 119, § 343 A; Apol. i. 39, 42). The apostles are the twelve bells on the border of the high-priest's garment, with the sound of whose ringing the whole world has been filled (Dial. 42, § 263 C); the apostles are the evangelical preachers in whose person Isaiah cried, "Lord, who hath believed our report?" the apostles are "the brethren in the midst of whom" Christ gives praise unto God (ib. 106, § 333 C). The Apologies have been pub. in Eng. in the Ante-Nic. Fathers (T. & T. Clark) and in a cheap form in the A. and M. Theol. Lib. (Griffith).
[H.S.H.]