Creation, Incarnation and Redemption
CHAPTER IX
CREATION, INCARNATION AND
REDEMPTION
CREATION (1) The universe Justin's account of the process by which the universe came into existence is meagre in the extreme. This may be thought surprising when we consider his interest in the logos doctrine and his theory of the spermatic logoi at work in the universe.
Justin, as might be expected, connects the creative Word of God of the Genesis account of the creation with the spermatic logos of the Middle Platonist tradition. But once this was done he was content to take the rest of the Genesis account quite literally. The fact that the origin and nature of matter was widely discussed by the eclecticism of his day does not appear to have worried Justin. He is content, as a biblical and Christian thinker, to take his stand on the Genesis account.
There are however a very few passages in his writings in which Justin states that God created the world out of unformed matter. Thus J Apol. x. 2: "We have also been taught that in the beginning he in his goodness formed all things that are for the sake of men out of unformed matter' (kal Tavta Thy &pxtWVv é&yabov évta Synuioupytjoat auTov €€ cudpqou VAns S51 avOpartrous
Se518cryuc8a). Who taught this to Justin? The Church tradition or his pre-Christian philosophic teachers? The latter seems more likely as in the previous sentence (I Afol. x. 1) Justin explicitly refers to a tradition received from the Church by using the phrase regularly used for the acceptance of a sacred tradition (tapeiAngauev).t A similar passage occurs in J Apol.
Ixvii. 7 in which Justin states, in a reference to Sunday worship, that this is held on the first day 'on which God transforming darkness and matter made the universe'. However, in neither of these passages does Justin state whether matter had an eternal existence antithetical to God (as Plato taught) or whether it was
1 Asan I Cor. xi. 23, xv. 1.
Tia
JUSTIN MARTYR
itself a creation of God in an unformed state which he then used to create the material world.
There is one other passage in which Justin deals with this question:
So that you may learn that Plato borrowed from our teachers, I mean from the Word (speaking) through the prophets, when he said that God made the universe by changing formless matter (auoppov ovoav), hear the precise words of Moses, who as declared above was the first of the prophets and older than the Greek writers. The prophetic Spirit testified through him how in the beginning God fashioned the universe, and out of what, saying: 'In the beginning
God made the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness (was) over the abyss; and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. And God said, Let there be light.
And it was so.' So by God's Word the whole universe was made out of this substratum (&k Té&v UtroKeluéveov), as expounded by Moses, and Plato and those who agree with him, as well as we, have learned it (from him), and you can be sure of it too. We also know that Moses had already spoken of what the poets call Erebus.}
There is no suggestion in this passage that Justin is criticising the Platonic doctrine although several commentators have maintained this." Justin, in fact, only mentions formless matter in order to emphasise that this was accepted by Moses in Gen. i.
1-3; and that, for both. Moses and Plato, God had brought the universe into existence by working on, and changing, formless matter. It is idle to speculate how Justin interpreted Gen. i. 1,
'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth'. It is equally uncertain whether Justin believed in the eternity of matter in the Platonic sense as an antithesis to God. We must be content to state that Justin had no particular theory of the origin and nature of matter. He is content to accept Gen. i. 1 as it stands and to see in it no conflict with the teaching he had received from Middle Platonism. His rather illogical and nonspeculative approach may have been due, as Goodenough suggests,® to the fact that he did not connect the origin of evil with that of matter. In this he is at one with certain circles in * I Apol. lix. It is possible that Erebus is based on the 'evening' ('erev) of the days of creation. Cf. also J Apol. xx. 4.
* P. Pfattisch, Der Einfluss Platos auf die Theologie Justins des Martyrers, pp. 96 f.
3 Theology of Justin Martyr, p. 211.
~ Me
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
Palestinian Judaism! rather than with the Hellenistic Judaism of the diaspora and Gnosticism where this question was eagerly discussed.
Justin believed that the purpose of the creation was good and for the benefit of the human race.? It is not without significance that he adds to the verbum Christi 'no one is good but God' the phrase 'the one who made all things'. He states that all earthly things were made subject to man while the heavenly elements and the seasons were ordained for man's advantage.4 God revealed his goodness in creating the world—beyond that Justin does not speculate. A creation ex nihilo does not come within his purview.
(2) Anthropology Justin's doctrine of man is strongly influenced by his philosophic presuppositions, as might be expected in view of his emphasis on human reason. Man, Justin held, was created from the material elements. He was endowed with a soul which included his non-physical constitution with the exception of the reason—and this soul was the seat of his personality. Life and reason were however imparted to the soul by a divine element
(zeoTIKOv TrveUa). It is the soul which is the focus of personal existence—rather than the body or the spirit. Justin nowhere gives an account of the origin of the soul although, from the fact that he rejects the Platonic belief in reincarnation,® it would seem he regarded the soul as begotten, although not necessarily begotten in connection with the body.' Justin, in company with orthodox Middle Platonism, here rejects the Aristotelian belief® that the soul was an attribute of the body and could not exist without it. The fact that Justin believed in the immortality of the soul was, no doubt, the reason for this.
What of the divine element in man? Justin, as Goodenough shows,® uses two terms for this. It is a part of the logos or of the spermatic logos,! and it is the tveJya in man." However, this
1 R. Josh. b. Chananja. See Weber, Jiidische Theologie, pp. 200 f.
2 JI Apol. iv. 2.
3 J Apol. xvi. 6-7; cf. Dial. xciii. 2.
4 JI Apol. v. 2; cf. Dial. xli. 1.
5 Dial. \xii. 2.
8 Dial. iv. 5.
7 Dial. v. 2.
8 oapatds ti. See De Anima 4174.
9 Theology of Justin Martyr, p.
214. This section of his book is of great value.
10 JI Apol. x. 8, xiii. 3.
Be Dial avin.
BJM
JUSTIN MARTYR
fragment of the logos in man is not an emanation from the logos and so, in some way, inferior to the totality of the logos. It zs the whole logos. This is made clear in a remarkable passage.
After stating that Socrates had been accused of the same crimes as Christians Justin says:
For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for he was and is the logos who is in every man, and who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in his own person when he was made of like passions, and taught these things), not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since he is a power of the ineffable Father, and not the mere instrument of human reason.
The universal logos is present in all men and brings inspiration and perception of spiritual truth. As each man, even before the coming of Christ, suppressed his lower nature and lived according to the direction of the logos he was a follower of Christ and knew him in a partial sense (&1d pépous). The totality of the logos is however the Personal Christ.
It would therefore seem that Justin believed in the traditional threefold division of human nature—body, soul and trveUya or UEPOS TOU OTTepUaATIKOU Adyou—such at least we may infer from Dial. vi. In this he was at one with early Christian teaching? and with Middle Platonism.® Justin held firmly to a belief in man's moral freedom. He declares that man was created intelligent and with the power to choose the true and do the good' and that he still retains the same ability. Each man by his own free choice does right or wrong.® Man's responsibility lies in his power of choice—and in this alone. Justin gives scriptural proof of human liberty and even states that the famous Platonic dictum, 'the blame is his who chooses, but God is blameless', was taken by Plato directly from Moses.' If this human freedom did not exist then men could be neither rewarded nor punished and the moral structure of the universe would collapse. The fact that men change
1 JI Apol. x. 8.
2 I Thess. v. 23.
* See the discussion on pp. 96-9.
I Apol. xxviii; Dial. \xxxviii, cxli.
D ILAV AL 3 6 [I Apol. vii, xIV, * I Apol. xliv; cf. Republic x. 617.
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
from evil to good and from good to evil is the proof that moral freedom is a reality and not imagination.! Justin did not believe in inherited guilt or original sin. Adam's transgression is mentioned as marking the origin of human sin and death but not the cause of it during history. 'Since Adam, the race has fallen under death and the deceit of the serpent, each man having done evil through his own fault.'? Being made like unto Adam men work out death for themselves through their power of moral choice. Justin's view is very close to that of rabbinic
Judaism which held that although Adam's fall put men under the influence of Satan, yet nevertheless free-will remained.?
There is no inherited sinfulness separate from actual acts of sin.
For Justin man sins because he allows the daemons to lead him into rebellion against the law of God which every man has within him as part of his equipment for life.
With such an uncompromising semi-pelagianism Justin inveighs particularly against the Stoic idea of fate (heimarmene).
Indeed he devotes a whole chapter to this subject :4
So that none may infer from what we have said that the events we speak of, because they were foreknown and predicted, took place according to inevitable fate (Ka®' eivapyevns dvaeyxnv)—I can explain this too. We have learned from the prophets, and declare as the truth, that penalties and punishments and good rewards are given according to the quality of each man's actions. If this were not so, but all things happened in accordance with fate (kad eiuappuevny), nothing at all would be left to us. For if it is destined that one man should be good and another wicked, then neither is the one acceptable nor the other blameworthy.?
Andresen* has pointed out that Justin's arguments against Stoic fatalism are markedly similar to those of the Middle Platonists
Albinus and Apuleius. Albinus in fact devotes a special chapter to this question although he carries through his argument against the Stoic view of heimarmene as an eternal, valid law
1 [ Apol. xliii; IT Apol. vii. Justin held that all souls survive death—the good souls live eternally but the bad only so long as God wishes them to exist and be punished (Dial. v. 3).
2 Dial. Ixxxviii.
3 See Weber, Jiidische Theologie, pp. 224, 239 f., quoted in Goodenough, Theology of Justin Martyr, p. 229.
4 J Apol. xliii; cf. I Apol. vii.
5 I Apol. xliii. 1-2.
6 Z.N.T.W. xiv (1952-3), 184-8, who gives full references.
II5 8-2
JUSTIN MARTYR
from a metaphysical, rather than an ethical, point of view. It was Plutarch however who showed the logical fallacy of the Stoic position by demonstrating that the concept of individual responsibility was incompatible with a belief in hezmarmene.
Justin's argument in J Apol. xliii for man's moral freedom and the objective nature of virtue and wickedness is also found in Middle Platonism. Earlier in his Apology Justin states that if one denies that God has even a partial care for man then either one denies that God exists or one asserts that he has pleasure in evil:
In the beginning he made the race of men endowed with intelligence, able to choose the truth and do right, so that all men are without excuse before God, for they were made with the powers of reason and observation. Anyone who does not believe that God cares for these things either manages to profess that he does not exist, or makes out that he exists but approves evil or remains
(unaffected) like a stone, and that virtue and vice are not realities, but that men consider things good or bad by opinion alone; this is the height of impiety and injustice.
The final sentence of this passage appears word for word in I Apol. xliii. 6. Andresen? believes that Justin is confuting the Epicurean teaching which held that ethical concepts have only a hypothetical character. Even the ancient Stoa had attacked the belief that virtue only acquires significance when connected with pleasure. Middle Platonism took over this anti-Epicurean argument. Thus Atticus fights, like Justin, for the idea of a personal providence of God against the Peripatetics:
'the denial of providence is the furtherance of injustice'.? Plutarch affirms that the hezmarmene theory of the Stoics leads to a denial of the divine pronoia and he places the Stoics alongside Epicurus, the despiser of God.* Justin seems to be influenced by this when he points to the dangerous consequences for ethics of the Stoic belief in hezmarmene. Justin interprets the biblical emphasis on man's moral freedom from a Middle Platonist standpoint. It is this which explains his use of two Old Testament texts, Deut.
XXX. 15, 19 and Isa. 1. 16-20, in I Afol. xliv. 17. Justin deliberately alters the context of the Deuteronomy passage by stating that God, through Moses, said to the /first-formed man,
1 J Apol. xxviii. 3-4.
2 £.N.T.W. xiv (1952-3), 186.
® Eus. Praep. Ev. xv. 5.5.
* Andresen, Z.N.T.W. xxiv (1952-3), 187.
™ 116 ~~
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
'Behold I have set before thee good and evil, choose the good', although in fact these words were addressed to the Jewish people. Similarly when Justin affirms! that Plato's words from the Republic, 'the blame is his who chooses, but God is blameless', were taken by the Greek philosopher from Moses then such a statement is in no way justified by the context. Justin's view is however explained by the fact that this passage from Plato played a significant role in Middle Platonism in connection with the theory of hezmarmene.?
Justin's anthropology diverges from that of the New Testament. He has no conception of the solidarity of the human race as falling short of the Glory of God. The seventh chapter of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans finds no echo in his writings.
Sin, for Justin, is purely an individual thing and it is to be noted that, in the account of his own conversion, a conviction of sin, or a sharing in its effects, does not appear. Justin is very close to both popular Judaism and Middle Platonism in his conviction that man's responsibility lies solely in his power of choice and that all men are endowed with the ability to choose the good if they so wish. However much we should like to accept this optimistic theory of man's moral freedom Christian experience throughout the ages is a witness to its lack of depth.
Sin goes far deeper than Justin would allow.? His philosophic presuppositions so modified his biblical inheritance that he had no clear perception of the delicate interaction between Divine
Grace and human free-will. But he was not the first, and certainly will not be the last, to fail in this.
INCARNATION
We have had occasion to note, several times in this book, how Justin's philosophical presuppositions have affected his presentation of Christianity and, in some respects, have seriously modified it. However, in his doctrine of the Incarnation, which must now concern us, Justin treads on more traditional ground.
Although using the logos doctrine to explain the relationship 1 J Apol. xliv. 8; Republic x. 617.
2 Andresen, Z.N.T.W. xiv (1952-3), 188.
3 Although he places great emphasis on the activity of daemons in causing men to choose the wrong, his emphasis is on sinners rather than sin.
JUSTIN MARTYR
between God and Christ Justin, throughout his writings, presupposes the earlier faith of the Church in the person of Christ.
This is made certain by the congruity of his doctrine of the Incarnation with the teaching of the New Testament and by his confessed reliance on apostolic doctrine.
For Justin Jesus Christ was both divine and human. In Mary's womb the cosmic Reason had become available to men as a human being of flesh and blood. Justin nowhere argues why this has happened—he accepts it as a fact. The Virgin Birth looms large in Justin's account. He defends it as a common belief and follows closely St Luke's account. His only variation is his introduction of the Holy Spirit into the account of the annunciation, 'Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Spirit, and shalt bear a Son'. However, Justin was rather vague on the doctrine of the Spirit and he seems to have identified the SUvauis Scot or Trvetax &yiov with the logos,! or at least regarded them as only names for the logos.
Justin does not explain how the logos acted upon Mary. He is content with the biblical account of how she was overwhelmed
(étreoxiacev) or overpowered by his divine brilliance. This account was more credible than the stories of the births of Perseus, Dionysius or Hercules? because these myths represented the deity as having intercourse with human women. And, in any case, it had been foretold by the prophets—especially
Isa. vil. 14—in spite of Trypho's determined objections.? The divine nature of Christ's birth was also indicated by the prophecy of the 'Stone cut without hands',* and his blood, made by God, typified by the blood of the grape.®
Justin insists on the fact that Christ was both divine and human. Although a crucified man Christ was the first-born of the unbegotten God who will be appointed Judge of all men.
? I Apol.xxxiii. 6. In two other passages (I Aol. xlvi. 5 and Dial. cxxxix. 4) Justin states that through the agency of a Suvayis toU Adyou (or the power of the omnipotent Father) Jesus was born of the Virgin as man. The power of the logos was thus given by the Father to the logos. It seems improbable that this 5Uvauis is a personal power, the Holy Spirit, but rather that God has endowed the logos with power to become incarnate. Goodenough,
Theology of Fustin Martyr, pp. 236-7.
2 I Apol. xxii. 5; Dial. \xx. 5; Dial. lxix. 2-3.
3 I Apol. xxxiii. 1; Dial. Ixvii. 1, lxx. 1, 3, Ixxxiv. 1.
4 Dial. \xxvi. 1.
5 Dial. Ixxvi. 2.
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
We have already discussed the titles which Justin applies to the logos.1 What is significant is that, for Justin, these apply as fully to the incarnate Christ as to the pre-incarnate logos. Justin is insistent that the incarnate Christ is the whole logos.? In the Incarnation the logos did not assume a body but became entirely a man of body, logos or spirit, and soul. In the section on Justin's anthropology we have seen that Justin held the traditional threefold division of human nature, but it is significant that he nowhere implies that Christ was divine in the higher part of his nature and only man in body or body and soul. Christ was man inasmuch as he was, like all men, compounded of body, spirit, and soul, but he was the whole logos inasmuch as his body, soul, and spirit were what the logos, in his entirety, had become. This is quite different from the later
Apollinarian teaching and it is an error to suggest that Justin anticipates the later heresy. Apollinaris was concerned with the relation of the human and divine natures in the person of Christ and ultimately he came to hold the belief that in the Incarnation the logos was substituted for the human mind of Christ. It is likely that he came to this belief because he could not find a place for a human mind in his psychology. Dr G. L.
Prestige, in his brilliant study of Apollinaris, has reminded us that, in ancient times, psychology was ever the parent of heresy.°®
Justin however belonged to an earlier period before psychology had begun to torture the minds of Christian thinkers. Justin was not worried, as was Apollinaris, by the question how two separate minds, wills, and principles of action could co-exist in a single living being. For him Christ was the one, whole logos— whether in his pre-incarnate or incarnate state—and he does not work out the logical implications of this belief. Thus: 'But these words (i.e. the accounts of divine manifestations to the patriarchs) were uttered to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the 1 Pp. 93-6.
2 II Apol. x. 8.
3 JT Apol. x. 1: 81& TOU TS AOYiKOV TO SAOV TOV PavévTa SI Tuas XpioToV yeyovéevoa Kal odpa Kal Adyov kal wuxtv.
4 Goodenough, Theology of Justin Martyr, p. 241, gives an admirable statement of this.
5 Fathers and Heretics (London, 1940), p. 110. This essay (pp. 94-119) goes far to rehabilitate Apollinaris as a Christian thinker of the first magnitude:
'It is the supreme merit of Apollinaris that he plotted the right course by insisting on the unity of Christ's Person' (p. 116).
JUSTIN MARTYR
Son of God and Apostle, who was first the logos, and appeared, now in the form of fire, now in the likeness of bodiless creatures.
Now, however, having become man by the will of God for the sake of the human race he has endured. . ."! In other words the logos, who once appeared in theophanies, has now become man in Jesus Christ. That is the sum and substance of Justin's doctrine of the Incarnation.
Justin does not consider how the humanity is related to the divinity in Christ beyond affirming that Jesus Christ was divine and human. On occasions he gives the impression that Jesus, in his incarnate life, had no real blood relationship with the human race. He was d&v@pwrros év dvOpmrTrois? rather than
&vOpwtros &€ dvOpetrav.? Jesus was not of human seed and humanity had no more to do with the making of his blood than with the making of the blood of a grape.* The Virgin was the instrument of the Incarnation, but his flesh was not her flesh, his blood not her blood. Justin insists that the title Son of Man should be rendered like the Son of Man so as to deny his human affiliations.® Nevertheless, Justin asserts that the humanity of Jesus was a true humanity. He was a man capable of suffering (6yo10trans). He grew from infancy to manhood and ate human food like the rest of humanity.' He was really afraid during the Agony in the Garden and his sweat fell like drops of blood.® Yet although human in his bodily life and growth Jesus possessed, throughout his incarnate life, the full powers of the logos. Justin proves this from the traditional account of Jesus' life. Even as a babe, he says, the daemons recognised his supremacy when the magi, who had previously been under their control, revolted and visited Christ as their new master.® Justin tells the story of the birth of Christ, his growth to manhood,!® and his work as a carpenter! until the age of about thirty. Justin's account of Jesus' baptism is interesting. As is well known he was acquainted with the utterance of the Divine Voice in the 1 TI Apol. Ixiii. 10.
2 I Apol. xxiii. 3.
* Dial. Ixxvi. 2, liv. 2. Goodenough, Theology of Justin Martyr, p. 242.
4 Dial. liv. 2.
2S Drallscxviente § II Apol. x. 8; Dial. xlviii. 3.
? Dial. \xxxiv. 2, Ixxxviii. 2.
8 Dial. ciii. 8.
9 Dial. xxviii.
10 Dial. Ixxxviii. 2.
U Dial. \xxxviii. 8.
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
reading of the Western text: 'Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee',1 which was clearly open to an adoptionist interpretation. Justin counters this by stating that the Spirit had inspired the Hebrew prophets, but when it descended upon Christ at the baptism it ceased from such activity, rested on him and was from then on given only to the followers of Christ.
The Voice is a proof of Christ's divinity and an invitation to salvation.? In other words Christ did not, at his baptism, receive his powers—because he was born with them. To have interpreted the baptism from the point of view of adoptionism would have undermined Justin's belief that the whole logos was incarnate in Christ.
The temptation following the baptism, according to Justin, typified the whole career of the logos.? Christ's miracles he accepts as having been prophesied in the Old Testament? although he does not use them as evidence for Jesus' divine sonship. He affirms that in his earthly life Jesus was sinless.®
Justin gives copious extracts from Jesus' teaching which he takes, in the main, from the Synoptic Gospels. This teaching is a power which strikes home to the mind and heart: 'For his word of truth and wisdom is more blazing and more brilliant than the sun's might, and enters into the very depths of the heart and of the understanding."® This is similar to the New
Testament idea of the Christian Gospel as a word or power.
Justin pays much attention to the Passion narratives. The crucifixion, for him, was the supreme incident in Jesus' life. He finds references to the Cross in almost every part of the Old
Testament,' in nature,® and in Plato's Timaeus.® It is the Cross which above all delivers men from idolatry and turns them to the worship of God. Justin adds only a few small details to the synoptic account of the crucifixion such as the mockery of the bystanders!® and the soldiers' cry, 'Judge us', at the actual crucifixion."
Justin's theory of the Incarnation is not systematised and, to 1 Dial. Ixxxviii. 8 quoting Ps. ii. 7 and in Dial. ciii. 6, Luke ii. 23 (D);
Old Latin, Clem. Alex., Aug. and other 'Western' authorities.
2 See the whole of Dial. Ixxxviii.
3 Dial. cxxv. 3-4.
4 I Apol. x\viii. 1; Dial. lxix. 4.
5 Dial. xvii. 1, cii. 7 inter alia.
6 Dial. cxxi. 2.
? Dial. Ixxiii. 1, Ixxxvi, xcvii.
8 I Apol. lv.
9 I Apol. ix. 5.
HO ID PGS ig Ge ll T Apol. xxxv. 6.
I2I
JUSTIN MARTYR
later ages, must have appeared somewhat naive and illbalanced. Yet we must never forget that Justin was a pioneer
Apologist and, considering the pitfalls into which he might have fallen, it is all to his credit that he maintained so strongly that Jesus Christ was both divine and human. His logos doctrine could easily have led him to underestimate Jesus' humanity, like the later Alexandrian theologians, and the fact that, on the whole, he avoids this is significant. Docetism, Ebionite
Adoptionism and Marcionism had no attraction for him and his own Middle Platonist presuppositions did not have the influence that they had on other aspects of his thought. Justin is a witness to what the main stream of the Church believed in the mid-second century although he acknowledges that some
Christians, as in our own day, denied the Virgin Birth of Our Lord.?
REDEMPTION
For Justin Christianity was supremely the full revelation of truth because Christ himself was the incarnation of the whole, divine logos. In accordance with his emphasis on logos he tended to attribute the evil of life to the subjection of men's rational powers by the daemons who were everywhere active in the universe. Justin believed that if men are shown the truth they have the power to recognise it and can then choose to obey it. The purpose of Christ's coming is to save men from evil deeds and powers and to teach assured truth.? He brings to a race diseased and deceived by the action of daemons the full divine energy. He is the medicine to cure* which he becomes by sharing our humanity. He is therefore called the Saviour in whom we receive remission of sins and regeneration. How then are men saved?
(a) Justin emphasises that Christ saves as Teacher. He cannot conceive of anyone accepting the Christian doctrine of the future state without a determination to choose the good rather than the evil. The daemons however have darkened the light within men and deceived and led astray the human race,® making slaves and servants of men. What understanding men
1 Dial. xlviii. 4 where é&rd tot Uyetépou seems to refer to Ebionite Christians.
2 I Apol. xxiii; IT Apol. ix.
3 II Apol. xiii.
4 T Apol. \xi.
5 I Apol. liv. 1.
_ T22) O*
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
had of the truth was dim and weak until the coming of the whole logos in Christ. Now the apprehension of truth was strong through the illumination given by the teaching of Jesus.
It is by his teaching that men rightly know and worship the one Father and God. It is by his teaching of a second advent and of the dread Judgement Day that men know how to prepare themselves for the great assize and division of humanity. It is this truth which enables men to sift the true and the false in human speculations since the logos alone distinguishes, amid the confusion of philosophies, what is his own.
On the surface Justin appears to rationalise a doctrine of redemption and to teach an exemplarist theory by which Christ comes to destroy the daemons, reveal light and knowledge and so enable men to overcome their faults, purify themselves and choose the higher life. Certainly texts can be found in Justin very similar to the later teaching of Abelard which is expressed with admirable conciseness in one of his propositions condemned by the Council of Sens in 1141 and by Innocent II:
'I think, therefore, that the purpose and cause of the incarnation was that he might illuminate the world by his wisdom and excite it to the love of himself.'? However, we do Justin an injustice if we seize on one aspect of his thought to the exclusion of others. It is true that, for him, Christ saves men as Teacher and Example. But his teaching is an active power or force—a SUvauis from God—which pierces the depths of the heart and mind*'—a burning fire which inflames man's whole being.
Justin's own conversion had left him with an inner fire of love for the prophets and for Christ.t Redemption is not therefore for Justin an ethical or metaphysical theory which men can either choose or reject but the imparting to men of illumination and power which enables them to conquer the power of the daemons. The whole logos is a factor in the inner life of every
Christian. Christ is not simply an external Teacher but an active power.
(b) This theory of redemption has strictly no place for the Cross as it is in the Incarnation that men come to know the 1 J Apol. xiii.
2 Epist. ad Rom., Opera ed. Cousin, u, p. 207, quoted in Rashdall, The Idea of the Atonement in Christian Theology, p. 358.
3 Dial. xxi. 2.
IDEA vate, ik,
JUSTIN MARTYR
whole logos. However, Justin, more than any other secondcentury Apologist, states repeatedly that Christ saves us by his death on the Cross and by his resurrection. Christ brought us healing by becoming a partaker of our sufferings.' By his blood he cleanses believers.? He endured all for our sakes and on account of our sins.? By dying and rising again he conquered death.* 'He became the beginning of another race, who have been born again by him through water and faith and wood, which contains the mystery of the Cross.'> In baptism believers receive remission of sins by the blood of Christ. 'His Father', says Justin, 'caused him to suffer on behalf of the human race.'? The Jews knew not, when they inflicted the suffering upon him, that he was
'the eternal Priest and King and Christ'. Justin repeatedly applies Isa. liii to Christ and refers to almost every clause of that chapter. Christ is the Paschal Lamb whose blood will deliver from death those who have believed. Christ served men even unto the Cross and acquired them through its blood and mystery.1° He saved men by submitting to all that men deserved for sin, that is, the curse pronounced on all who did not keep 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 although 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 however 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'. 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.
Justin justifies the coming of Christ to be despised, to suffer and to die by many appeals to prophecy, especially to Ps. xxii,!? and to Jacob's blessing in Gen. xlix. 8, 12 f. It is, he says, 'the hidden power of God which is exhibited in the crucified Christ'.
1 JI Apol. xiii; Dial. \xxxvi, cxxxvii.
2 I Apol. xxxii; Dial. xiii, xl, liv.
3 I Apol. lvi, \xiii; Dial. ciii.
4 I Apol. \xiii.
5 Dial. cxxxviii.
8 Dial. liv, cxv.
* Dial. xcv.
Se Dialexcyvas 9 Dial. cxi.
10 Dial. cxxxiv.
1 Dial. xciv—xcvi.
12 Dial. xcviii.
13 Dial exlixe 124-4
CREATION, INCARNATION AND REDEMPTION
With great emphasis Justin represents Christ's death and resurrection as a triumph over the daemons.! Death has come to the Serpent through him who has been crucified, by coming to whom men also may be saved.? The daemons are now subject to his name and to the dispensation of his suffering. They are frequently exorcised in his name, so that his power over them is proved.
The significance of Justin's statements about the Cross should not be underestimated. In strict logic his philosophical presuppositions, which controlled his intellectual apprehension of Christianity, had no place for any objective theory of the Atonement. The fact that he has so much to say about the Cross and what it had effected is a strong proof that the Church of his day held this belief. Its faith rested not only on the Word of truth which Christ had spoken but also on the redemption which he had wrought by his death and resurrection. Christ's power lay not only in his character and example; not only in his power to inflame and illuminate the hearts of men; but in what he was believed to have done for men on the Cross. Justin accepted this faith as fundamental although it did not easily fit into the philosophy which he had imbibed. Justin is thus revealed as one who accepted, in this connection without question, the traditional faith of the Church.
1 J Apol. xlvi; II Apol. vi; Dial. xci, cxxxi.
SED ial Xcr == Diale ox:
4 Dial. \xxvi. The Cross played a conspicuous part in exorcisms.