Justin Martyr was born about 100 AD in the ancient city of Shechem in Israel. However, he was not Jewish. From his writings, we find out that he delved into various Greek philosophical systems. He rejected them all until he settled on Platonism. After he moved to Ephesus, in Asia Minor, he became a Christian. He became a Christian apologist defending Christian doctrines and practices.
In his writings, he defended the resurrection of Christ and his deity. In the 2nd century A.D., he wrote concerning the 4 gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He quoted from Paul’s letters and from the book of Revelation. He defended Scriptures:
I shall prove to you as you stand here that we have not believed empty fables, or words without any foundation but words filled with the Spirit of God, and big with power, and flourishing with grace.[1]
Despite writing a defense of Christianity to the Roman Emperor, the governor had him arrested with his friends. He was martyred with his friends.
The significance of Justin Martyr is that he was one of the first apologists to use philosophical methods to defend Christianity. One can consider him the first structured formal Christian apologist. He has influenced many church fathers after him. However, with the good work that he has done, some wrong theology passed through as well. It affected Christendom even today.
He was the first to teach replacement theology. Ironically, he taught it with the intention to reach out to the Jewish people and yet it resulted in some hurtful comments blaming the Jewish people of his time for the death of Christ among other things.[2]However, the gospels have totally different accounts. Furthermore, he taught that Christ was the Platonic Logos, an unfortunate doctrine.
In my estimation, the root cause for both replacement theology and the Platonic Logos is the failure to divorce Platonism after his conversion to Christianity. Somehow in the 2nd century A.D., Christians started to lose the Jewish background that comes from the Old Testament and replaced it instead with Platonism and later with Neoplatonism.
It seems that the church fathers initially wanted to use contextualization to reach out to the Hellenistic world. However, there is a theological cost for this. Ironically, this theological compromise probably has part of the share of the failure to reach out to the Jewish people.
Nevertheless, no perfection is found in any writings. Only Scripture is inerrant and only the Gospel has the power to save. This is an important message of the early church fathers including Justin Martyr. With all their disagreements and varying opinions, they all agreed that Scripture alone is the highest authority; and that is a good message.
[1] Justin Martyr, Dialog with Trypho, chapter 9.
[2] CF Justin Martyr, Dialog with Trypho, Chapter 16-18.
By Daniel Amari
Copyright © 2021, by Daniel Amari.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2000; 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used bypermission. All rights reserved.