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St. Justin Martyr on Creation
00:20:24
Dr. Ben Akers sits down with Dr. Elizabeth Klein to discuss St. Justin Martyr—an early Church martyr who lived from about AD 100 to 165 and wrote several significant Christian apologetic works. St. Justin was a convert to the Catholic faith, philosopher, and is famous for his idea of the "seeds of the Word" found throughout all of God's creation. St. Justin explains that all things are created by God and that there are seeds of God's truth found in all things. This allows Justin to confidently seek the truth present in other philosophies and even the pagan myths and draw out what is true and good and relate it to the Word—Jesus Christ. Watch Catholic Saints on FORMED. Sign Up for FORMED. Support this podcast and the Augustine Institute on the Mission Circle.
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Podcast Host
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Hello and welcome to form. Now, this is a conversation we're having about Catholic Saints. If you're listening on the podcast version of this, you can also watch the video version of this conversation on forum.org My name is Dr. Ben Akers. I'm the Chief Content Officer here at the Augusta Institute. And joining me today is Dr. Elizabeth Klein, professor of Theology at our graduate school here. Thanks for joining me, Liz.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Thanks for having me.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So today we're going to be talking about what's been very popular with our viewers and also listeners now on the podcast is going through saint stories we've been patterning ourselves on the liturgical year. And on June 1st, we celebrate a great saint named Saint Justin Martyr.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, I love that I get invited to talk about all my favorite early Christian saints. So Justin Martyr is an incredibly important early Christian saint. He's an incredibly important witness to many things in the early church, to sort of earliest citations of the Gospels and reflections on Christ, to one of the earliest witnesses to the Christian liturgy. He's also saw Christianity as the highest form of philosophy and is a martyr. So there's so many things to talk about when it comes to Justin.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So Martyr is not his last name?
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
No.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Is it interesting, though, it makes it into his name, like that's how prominent he was as a. I think it was Tertullian, the early church ecclesiastical writer, called him the philosopher martyr.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right. This is a rare category. Not a lot of, you know, people who are sort of highly skilled academically also have fame for their courage to confess their faith unto death. So that makes Justin really special.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So what are his dates? Let's get some historical context, and we'll go to some of what he wrote.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. So Justin Martyr lived in the early second century, so from about 100 to 165. And he talks about his conversion to Christianity as really a kind of intellectual conversion. He tells the story of his conversion in a work called the Dialogue with Trypho, which is an apologetic work. He has many apologetic work, his first and second apology. And so we're talking about apologetic work, not talking about, you know, apologizing, saying sorry for things. We're talking about defending the faith. And so just I always say that
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Dr. Ben Akers
when someone's, you know, apologist is not someone who goes around, like you said, and apologizes and says they're sorry for things, but someone who does that, who goes around apologizes for things all the time, is called a husband.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's right, yeah.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Which I apologize. But you're like someone who defends the faith. It becomes like a whole class of writers in the early church.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right, exactly. And a prominent theme in Justin Martyr's apologies is a kind of misconceptions about Christianity. So his apologies are specifically directed against pagans. And one of the things that Christians were criticized for was sort of their secret rituals in the Eucharist being Hannibals. And so that's one reason why we have the liturgy in that context. The dialogue with Trypho is kind of an apologetics vis a vis the Jewish people. And so Trypho, who he's talking to, is a Jew. And so it's really about sort of prophecy and the interpretation of the Old Testament and whether or not we should keep the law and how Christ has fulfilled the law or changed the law. And so there are kind of different modalities of this apologetics towards different groups.
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Dr. Ben Akers
It's interesting when you look at the early church, it's fun to look at what the church is being accused of because it gives it kind of an external confirmation of what the church actually believes. As you mentioned with the early Christians are being accused of cannibalism when. Okay, that's from the outside. They hear eating the body, blood of Jesus Christ, the flesh of Christ. That sounds like cannibalism to someone who's not within the fold.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right, yeah. And they were accused of incest because they called each other brother and sister and exchanged the kiss of peace.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Yeah.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
So incest and then atheism was the other main charge because they rejected the existence of the state gods. Right, yeah.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So baptism. There's another one that struck me was that they said that they drown babies.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Oh, because of baptism.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Because of baptism. And they would say that it is a beautiful kind of custom that they. One of the apologists, one of the. Sorry, the accusers of the faith, says that they drown their babies and then they cover them with flowers, this weird ritual like. Oh, that's actually a beautiful thing. Actually a baptized baby to then surround them with. So they're baptizing babies.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. And they have, like, almost like a
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Dr. Ben Akers
crown, maybe a crown of flowers that they. To show the beautiful new life that's within the baby.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So Justin has this great reputation then as a philosopher, as sort of an early Christian scholar. He taught others. So in the story of his martyrdom, it's the story of the martyrdom of Justin and his companions. So it's kind of his little school. He lived in Rome, but he spoke Greek. And so he's kind of an interesting figure in that we don't entirely know if what he's telling us is representative of the larger Roman population or Greek speakers in Rome. But it is really cool that he's in Rome and sort of as a witness to the Christianity there super early.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And he's from the Holy Land, right? Like Samaria or something like that. I think that's where he was born before he goes to.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. I don't remember exactly his original birthplace before he's in Rome, but he talks about traveling in his. This little autobiographical thing at the beginning of the dialogue with Trypho that I mentioned. It's just really interesting. You can go look it up on, you know, if you just Google dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr, and you read the opening six or seven sections, you'll have this story of Justin's conversion. And the reason he's telling it is. So he's. By his own report is like strolling around in the philosopher's garb. So philosophers used to dress differently. I think we should still do this. So, you know, wear academic robes around so people know. But anyway, they used to wear the pallium, so this sort of specific dress. And some other philosopher sees him and approaches him to speak with him. And this is Trypho. And so he introduced himself as one of the Hebrews. And so this kind of kicks off the conversation. And Justin then tells him about his search for philosophy. Right. The love of wisdom, the love of truth. And so he talks about all the different philosophical schools and how he kind of like sampled all of them. So first he studied with the Stoic, but the Stoic just wanted to sort of talk about ethics and not God. And so he was like, well, I'm not really. I want to search after the highest truths. Then he goes and studies with a peripatetic who tries to charge him a fee. So he has to think he's not
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Dr. Ben Akers
really like the highest Aristotelians.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, that's not the highest level of philosophy. Then he goes to a Pythagorean who wants him to learn math and music before he can learn about God, and he wants to go to the highest truths. But then he studies with the Platonists and he's really attracted to Platonist philosophy, which, of course, a lot of early Christians were. And some, like St. Augustine says there's a lot of overlap. And the Platonists teach the immortality of the soul and the eternal God and all of these things. And so he's a Platonist philosopher. But then he tells the story that one day he's kind of taking a lonely stroll by the beach, by the sea, sort of contemplating his philosophical thoughts, trying to be alone, and he sees an old man following him. And some people have theorized that the old man is Christ, but he doesn't name him. And he asked the old man what he's doing, and the old man says he's looking for some lost members of his own household. So some people take that to mean looking for his lost sheep. And then he starts to ask Justin a series of questions about Platonicus philosophy, which really revolve around the question of the sort of the immortality of the soul and whether or not human beings can kind of find God by the power of their own reason. And really challenges Justin to think about, like, you know, is the soul giving life to itself or is it created? You know, can a person really see the immortal God even with his mind, without divine aid? And Justin is persuaded by the speaker that this is impossible. And then that's when he's introduced to the idea of the fact that God has revealed himself to man and so that we can come to know him through the prophets. And so Justin is very passionate, defender of the prophets, as foretelling Christ and helping us see who God is through the Scriptures. And so that becomes the basis then of the dialogue with Trypha, who clearly sees a different view of, you know, what the prophets are saying and who Christ is. And so that. That's kind of the kickoff point for their dialogue.
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Dr. Ben Akers
No, it's a beautiful work. So you'd recommend maybe the six. The first six or seven sections.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. If you want to kind of get that cool story of his life of looking through these different philosophies and then this encounter, the nameless old man, that's in the very beginning of the dialogue with Trypho.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And you can get those on New Advent, as you mentioned, if you just Google it. But newadvent.org has a great Fathers of the Church resources that you can go. And it's free. Download and read it.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Read them.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Okay, so dialogue with Trypho, then he has other. So he's reaching out to those who receive the first covenant, what we call the Old Testament, the Old Covenant. But he also has dialogues with those who are pagans.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Trying to bring them to Christianity as well.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right. So the apologies. And I can't remember if it's the first or second one. Is nominally written to the emperor and is, you know, responding to a number of these challenges about Christianity and atheism and these kinds of things and kind of disclosing, like, what the Christian life is like and sort of the Christian moral practice especially kind of affirming that, you know, Christians are good citizens and that their way of life is sort of holy and pure. And, you know, clearly Justin doesn't win out in a major way since he's martyred for his beliefs. But I thought we would get a kind of good sense of. Of Augustine, sort of Justin's sort of apology for the faith and what his confession is based on. I brought with me the acts of the Christian martyrs. That includes the story of Justin. And of course, we don't know always the dating of these things, but I just thought I'd read a little passage where Justin is asked to profess the faith. And so he's brought before the prefect named Rusticus.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So this is in Rome.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
This is in Rome. So the Prefect Rusticus has asked him if he's a Christian. This is always the fundamental question that Christians are asked on trial. And the sort of confession of faith is, I am a Christian. And that. And Justin complains about this in his apologies. It's for the name alone that sort of Christians are persecuted. So he says. Then he asks him further, what are these doctrines then that you prefer? I said, yes, said Justin. I adhere to them on the basis of belief. The Prefect Rusticus said. What belief do you mean? Justin said, the belief that we piously hold regarding the God of the Christians, whom alone we hold to be the craftsmans of the whole world from the beginning, and also regarding Jesus Christ, the child of God, who is also foretold by the prophets, as one who was to come down to mankind as a herald of salvation and a teacher of good doctrines. So this is really fundamental to the beginning of the dialogue with Trypho, where he's convinced that God is a creator of all things. He alone is a creator. He created the soul and everything, and that he reveals himself through the prophets and then fundamentally through Jesus Christ. And he says, what I say is insignificant when measured against his Godhead. But I acknowledge that the power of prophecy for proclamation has been made about him whom I have just now said to be the Son of God. For know you that in earlier times the prophet foretold his coming among men, and so then that confession of humility that he learned through that dialogue, that you cannot simply get to God by the power of your reason. Although Platonists learned true things about God. But you have to accept the limitations of your humanity that has to be revealed to through God's Word and then through His Son. And so I just thought that that was. It's really interesting sort of the. He has to sum up the faith when he's put on the spot on trial, that, that those sort of maintenance come out there that also come out in his other apologies.
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Dr. Ben Akers
One of the things I love about the early Christian martyrs that shows up in their apologies is it's not just like, yes, I'm Christian now, cut my head off. It's they give a testimony, they give the witness. And that's what martyr means, of course, is that they give the witness of yeah, and this is what I believe.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah.
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Dr. Ben Akers
So they're giving them sometimes to the
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
like, great boredom or irritating those who put them on trial. Like, I didn't ask you that. But I think something that the first thing that Justin confesses is belief in the Creator God, which is also the first article of the creed, of course, that we profess every Sunday at mass. And so to think about that as sort of. That's the fundamental conviction for which they're willing to die. Because if God created all things, God can promise them new life, God can recreate them. And so that's virtually all the martyrdom stories you'll find some kind of confession, usually one of the first confessions in the God who is the Creator and in Jesus Christ his son. And I was working on this recently for an academic paper. But it's interesting that that's really the fundamental parts of the creed that we say now, right? We've God and God the Creator and Jesus Christ his son. And that really forms the structure of the creed right back to what the martyrs were confessing on trial.
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Dr. Ben Akers
One of the things that I remember from reading my time years ago of Justin was this idea that he has of like the seeds of the Word, so of the Logos, so that the Logos, everything is created through this word or the reason, and so that there's almost seeds everywhere. So you find it most specifically in the prophets of the Old Testament. But you can even read some of the pagan myths.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Absolutely. And so I read Justin probably in my first year of college, and I was totally blown away by that. At the time I was an evangelical Christian, so I hadn't done a ton of like, you know, theology and that challenge of like, well, there seems to be a lot of truth in other world religions. There seems to be a lot of truth before Christ. And yet we say that Christ is the only way to the Father. So how do we reconcile that? And Justin, as coming from these philosophical traditions, being led to Christianity as the highest form of philosophy, doesn't kind of repudiate everything. True. But he says, well, of course, if Christ is truth itself, truth incarnate, then anyone who is accessing the truth is in some degree accessing Christ. And of course, if God created the world and is present to all things, of course his truth is going to be found everywhere. And it's almost like the reverse of how a modern person goes about apologetics, by proving the kind of uniqueness of the faith. He actually says, well, this is the most true form of all of the other things that you've been experiencing. And I found that especially striking with things like myths of dying and rising gods or sort of myths that parallel things that happen in the life of Jesus. And he kind of. He says, you know, well, if this is the truest story, if this is what's going to happen to the Word Incarnate, like, why wouldn't you find echoes or shadows or imitations of that everywhere? That actually makes sense. And, like, to our modern mind, like, the thing that's the most unique is, like, the best thing. And so it's really counterintuitive. But he sees that as an argument. Like, he actually leverages that as an argument for the truth of Christ. Like, he's not defending against that charge. He's saying, look, this is. Of course this is true. Because we have all these other parallels.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Yeah, it's amazing how open he is because, you know, it'd be rare to find somebody today that was kind of a similar kind of approach to, like, yeah, I'm open to all truth. He's a seeker, for sure. I mean, as you read his story, it is beautiful. He's like, I want to find the truth. Right. He's like, wherever the truth is, it's the Lord's because the truth God becomes man and truth incarnate. And so it can lead you to Christ.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, I think about that, that kind of sort of fearlessness of the Christian philosopher. You get that, Justin. Then you get that all the way through to someone like Thomas Aquinas who's dealing with a lot of the rediscovery of Aristotle. And, you know, can we incorporate this? Or how do we deal with this? And Aquinas saying, like, look, whatever is true is from God.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Yeah.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And so if we're confronted with an argument from another philosophy, another religion, whatever that appears to be true, we should investigate it and if we discover it's true, it means it can't compete with the gospel.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Yeah.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And so we don't have to run away from these things, but we should confront them and investigate them to decide if they are true or they are not true, because that's how we know that they're from God.
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Dr. Ben Akers
I love that. You can't. Yeah. To have the real confidence that God is truth and he won't contradict himself. Right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And sometimes I think we can be afraid of the Bible even, or be afraid. And like, it's really striking in all the great apologetic works of the early church. You think of Justin Martyr's apologies also origins, contra Calcium Augustine, City of God, how unafraid they are of the Bible and how the Bible is so central to their defense of the faith, so central to proving who Jesus is. And in the case of Justin, you know, he is dialoguing with people who aren't necessarily going to take these things for granted, who don't necessarily think that these texts are worth reading, but he has that confidence in the truth that is God's, that this is really where the answer is to be found, and this is what needs to be brought into dialogue with all these other truths.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Always a great challenge to us, to never be afraid of the truth, to always seek the truth wherever it can be found, and to know that it's always going to lead us to Christ and his church. Now, in the time we have remaining just a couple minutes, one of the other things that you mentioned that Justin is known for is his teaching on the worship of God.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right. So Justin, as I mentioned, in the context of the apology, he describes the early Christian liturgy because he's proving that it's not cannibalism. And so we have a lot of really interesting details about the liturgy from him. Again, this is something if you look up, like, you know, the details of the earliest Mass. I also also recently did a short course on the Eucharist and the early church. And I talk about Justin Martyr's account of it. So he talks about it, you know, being on Sunday and it being partaking for the baptized and those who are free from serious sin. He talks about the bread and wine becoming truly the body and blood of Christ.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Eucharistized bread.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, once he said. Yeah, he says once the bread and wine has been Eucharistized that you prayed over, once it's been been given, thanks for it is the body and blood of Christ. So pretty strong, clear statement of the true presence. And then, you know, talks about the last Supper and the sort of basis for the celebration. So I think it's very edifying to look at. Even if you just. The first time I read it, I was like, wow, this is actually really similar.
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Dr. Ben Akers
It's the structure too. It's like Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It really is.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
It's really. Yeah. He says, you know, they first they say the Scriptures, then someone expounds on them, and then they have the Liturgy of the Eucharist. So it really is. It really is edifying to see that connection that we're celebrating a continuous sort of tradition of the liturgy going back all the way to the earliest records we have of it.
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Dr. Ben Akers
He's a very prominent second century apologist martyr of the faith. He's quoted nine times in the Catechism. So that's. Which is actually a high number for people.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
I was going to say, how does that compare? How does that compare?
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Dr. Ben Akers
Augustine's the highest, Aquinas is second, and then Justin Martyr is in the top five.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's awesome.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Yeah. So he's a. We go to him and in the Catechism, you can find that structure underneath the sacraments about the structure of the Mass in there. It's quoted at length.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for giving me a chance to talk about Justin. He's one of my first experiences of reading the Fathers. I really love Justin.
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Dr. Ben Akers
What would you say for someone who's watching and wants to get to know these early church martyrs? What can we learn from Justin in particular for today?
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, I think something you brought up before that to have that confidence in God's truth and in the Bible, to not be afraid of sort of challenges from whether it be the sciences or social sciences or humanities, to have that confidence that if it's true, then it will be shown to be compatible with the faith and I don't have to be afraid of sort of investigating and exploring it. And then I think the second thing to learn from Justin is that there is no conflict between having a really robust intellectual life and a really robust spiritual life. And very beautiful in his account of his martyrdom that the person who's the sort of the judge is asking him, do you believe these things? And he says, no, I don't only believe them, I am fully convicted of them. And so to be so fully convicted by those truths that be able to lay your life down for them, that he has that strong conviction because of this robust intellectual life and it's not weakened by that, which is a really false dichotomy. We can sometimes buy into.
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Dr. Ben Akers
That's beautiful. No, thank you for that. So you can be a saint and a scholar.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
You can be. Yep.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And one of the things that strikes me, and the last thing I'll say is that he was martyred with his students.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yes. Yeah.
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Dr. Ben Akers
We say companions, but, like, those are his students.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yep.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Like to have a teacher with his students, like, what a beautiful witness that they give.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Oh, Jesus.
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Dr. Ben Akers
And we hug him to the collar. A lot of pressure to be a teacher. And, you know, they're now rejoicing forever in heaven and truth, seeing God as he is in himself.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's right. Yeah.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Well, thank you, Liz, for joining me and thank you for all the work that you do at the graduate school with the short courses at the Augusta Institute.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Thanks.
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Dr. Ben Akers
Thank you for joining us and God bless.
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Podcast Host
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