He was born at the
beginning of the second century in Nablus, in Samaria, of a pagan Greek family.
He was an earnest seeker after truth, and studied many systems of philosophy
before being led, through Platonism, to Christianity. While remaining a layman,
he accepted the duty of making the truth known, and travelled from place to
place proclaiming the gospel.
In 151 he travelled from Ephesus to Rome, where
he opened a school of philosophy and wrote defences and expositions of
Christianity, which have survived to this day and are the earliest known
writings of their kind. In the persecution of 165, in the reign of the emperor
Marcus Aurelius, he was denounced as a Christian, arrested and beheaded. The
transcript of his trial by the prefect of Rome, Rusticus, has also survived: it
can be found in today’s Office of Readings.
Justin treats the Greek
philosophy that he studied as mostly true, but incomplete. In contrast to the
Hebrew tendency to view God as making revelations to them and to no-one else,
he follows the parable of the Sower, and sees God as sowing the seed of wisdom
throughout the world, to grow wherever the soil would receive it. When we
dispute with people who disagree with us, we would do well to assume that they
too are seeking wisdom and have found truth of a kind. Since there is only one
God and one Truth, it is our task not to contradict or belittle their
achievement, but to show them how their strivings and searches are ultimately
fulfilled in Christ. This is harder to do – not least, because we have to
take the trouble to understand our own faith thoroughly – but it is
ultimately more worthwhile.
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3.
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