Conclusion
CHAPTER XIII
CONCLUSION
WHEN we study objectively and dispassionately the first two centuries of our era we cannot but be struck by the way in which Christianity, originally a semitic faith, spread throughout the Graeco-Roman world and laid hold of the Greek tradition moulding it to its purpose. In this process, which was inevitable,
Justin Martyr was a pioneer. He made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual tradition of Christian thought by his interpretation of the logos. He was moreover the first thinker after St Paul to grasp the universalistic element in Christianity and to sum up in one bold stroke the whole history of civilisation as finding its consummation in Christ. It cannot be said that the Church has as yet fully explored Justin's insights, although there are signs, in the contemporary encounter with the non-Christian faiths, that these are proving relevant again.!
Justin was no mere academic philosopher but a man with a mission. Christianity was, for him, not a theory but philosophic truth itself and this he served with unswerving devotion and courage. It is not without justice that he is revered as Justin the Martyr who gave his life for his faith.
Justin did not believe that he was an innovator drastically revising and reinterpreting the traditional faith. He believed exactly the opposite—that he was a traditionalist who was handing on the faith which had come down to him.? His approach is biblical, pastoral and evangelistic rather than radical. His own ideas were of less importance to him than his desire to demonstrate that God had revealed himself through the prophets and redeemed mankind in Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is not without significance that he is the first post-apostolic writer to describe openly what went on in the weekly worship of the Church.
1 See the Christian Presence series published by the 8.C.M. Press.
2 This baffled Albert Schweitzer who said: 'there is something unformed about him [i.e. Justin], though, curiously enough, it is uncertain whether he is to be numbered among the pioneers or the epigoni' (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 349).
JUSTIN MARTYR
Justin, the philosopher, was not conscious that he was grafting on to the biblical basis of Christianity a philosophical interpretation which was bound to modify it—even in essentials.
Although his writings faithfully reflect the eclectic Middle Platonism of his day they are no neat amalgam of Plato (as he understood him) and the biblical faith. Platonism, for Justin, was as valid a preparation for the Gospel as Judaism had been.
But the Gospel came first all the time. The heart of Christianity, for Justin, was God's care and love for man revealed in the Bible and supremely in Jesus Christ. Whatever Justin's shortcomings and however incomplete his theology this fact stands to his credit. It places him in the main stream of the Christian tradition and not on the outskirts as one who grievously distorted the Christian kerygma by his excursions into philosophy.
Many readers of Justin miss the immediacy of the Pauline conception of 'being in Christ'. Justin never says explicitly anything about the believer's inner life of communion with God and Jesus Christ. But in fairness we must remember that St Paul was sharing his deepest thoughts with fellow believers in the communities he had founded or visited. He was writing for Christians while Justin was writing primarily for the nonChristian world. How difficult it would be to know anything of St Paul's mysticism if we only had the reports of his speeches contained in the Acts of the Apostles! Justin's beliefs are not circumscribed by the special purpose of his writings. When he speaks to non-Christians of the whole logos as being in Christians he might well have spoken, in a Christian context, of the indwelling Christ. His conception of baptism as 'illumination' (a highly mystical idea) might well have become 'dying and rising with Christ' to another audience.
Justin's strong emphasis on the Christian life and his witness to the moral elevation found among Christians is one of the most convincing proofs of the difference Christianity had made by its coming to the Graeco-Roman world. The marvellous spectacle of a specifically Christian morality arising from within the depraved society of paganism, portrayed in his pages, cannot but encourage us in an age which is likewise facing 'the shaking of the foundations'.
Justin impresses us by his rugged simplicity, modesty, love of fair play, honesty and courage. He was no plaster saint tortured
Me 170".
CONCLUSION
by his own inhibitions but an uncomplicated character who openly states what he believes—and he is courageous enough to assume that his message will be clearly understood and heeded.
Loyal to the past and to the Church he was yet open and alive to the intellectual currents of his age and friendly to the stirrings of the human spirit.
Dean Inge was fond ofsaying: 'We cannot preserve Platonism without Christianity, nor Christianity without Platonism, nor civilisation without both.' Justin Martyr would have endorsed this. For him Christianity was philosophic truth itself. Christian philosophers may yet find that he was not mistaken.