Apologist Fathers
Philosophy meets Christianity when Christians take a stand in relation to it. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the opposition between the terms “philosophi" and "sancti” represents two worldviews considered antagonistic: the pagan worldview and the one proclaimed according to the Christian faith.
The so-called Apologist Fathers were those Christians who, from the 2nd century d. Ç. they wrote, in dialogue with Philosophy, defenses of their faith in order to obtain legal recognition for it before the Empire.
the work of Justin, Martyr, was inserted in this period. Are two Apologies it is a Dialogue with Tryphon. The first Apology, written around 150 AD. a., was written for the emperor Adriano. The second, for the emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is in his “Dialogue” that he tells us about his trajectory, from philosophy with a religious motivation to religion with a philosophical perspective: born in Flávia Neápolis, his parents were pagans. The search for truth led him to study philosophy and his conversion to Christianity probably occurred before 132.
First, Justin approached the Stoics, but he refused them because they told him that it was not important to know God. After meeting a “professional philosopher”, a teacher who charged for his teachings, Justino sought a Pythagorean master, but walked away from him because he did not want to spend his time to study music, geometry and astronomy. He found an affinity with disciples of Plato, who fulfilled his need to think about corporeal things, but also beyond them, ideas.
The encounter with Christianity took place through an elder he met during a retreat. When questioned by him about God, Justin tried to make use of Plato's theories. The old man then sketched out a rebuttal that, despite appearing simple, demonstrated the separation between Platonism and Christianity: the soul, according to Christianity, is immortal because God wants it to be.
Justin then read the Old and New Testaments. He tells us: "Reflecting myself on all those words, I found that this philosophy was the only profitable one." We realized that Justin considered Christianity as a philosophy, even though it was a doctrine based on faith in a revelation.
This revelation predates Christ – it is the thesis that Justin defends in his First Apology, based on the concept of “divine Word” in the Gospel of John, and in his Second Apology, based on the term “seminal reason” of Stoicism: people who were born before Christ participated in the Word before he became flesh; all humans received a share of it and, therefore, regardless of the faith they professed, if they lived in in accordance with the teaching of Christ, they could be referred to as Christians, even if Christ did not yet have born. Instead of being the “beginning” mark of divine revelation, Christ would be its apex.
In this way, Justino solved two theoretical problems: 1) If God revealed his truth through Christ alone, how would those who lived before him be judged? 2) How to reconcile philosophy before Christ, and therefore ignorant of revealed truth, and Christianity?
As, as Justin defends, men could act in a “Christian” way before the birth of Christ, they acted in accordance with the Word. If they acted in accordance with the Word, what they said and thought could be appropriated by the thinking of Christians. This is what Justin says in his Second Apology (ch. XIII): "All that has been said is true is ours".
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If the thought of Heraclitus, for example, is considered to be opposed to Christian thought, the thought of Socrates is considered “partially Christian”: in acting in accordance with reason (Logos), this is a participation of the Word; Socrates (and also the other philosophers who thought “the true one”) practiced a philosophy that was the germ of Christian revelation.
O logos
In Philo of Alexandria, Justino appropriated the concept of “Logos” to establish a relationship between the “Logos-Son” and the “God-Father”. Let's see what he says:
“As a principle, before all creatures, God generated from himself a certain rational power (Loghiké), which the Holy Spirit now calls 'Glory of the Lord' 'Wisdom', now 'Angel', 'God', 'Lord' and Logos (= Word, Word) (...) and bears all names, because it fulfills the Father's will and was born from the Father's will*”.
In other words, we understand here that Justin says that Christ is the spoken word of God and can be called in different ways because he “bears all names”. Next, Justin makes a comparison between the Logos, in the sense above, corresponding to the verb, and human speech to defend the possibility of the coexistence of God-Father and Logos-Son:
“And so we see that some things happen between us: by uttering a word (= logos, verbum), we generate a word (logos), but, however, there is no division and a diminution of the logos (= word, thought) that is within us*".
What Justino says here is that, just as when we say a word, the act of speaking does not exhaust our ability to speak in the future, or decreases the number of existing words, in the same way God-Father when pronouncing the "Word", that is, with the birth of Christ, this in no way exhausts or diminishes his divinity and omnipotence. Another example that Justino offers us is that of Fire:
"And so we also see that, from a fire, another fire is lit without the fire that ignites being diminished: this remains the same and the new fire that has been ignited remains without diminishing the one of which lit*”.
Justin's importance
Although he left neither a systematic philosophy nor a Christian theology, we have echoes of Justin's work in many later Christian thinkers. His work does not make general expositions about theories, nor discusses them in depth, nor does it intend to develop philosophical conceptions. Justin, on the contrary, goes through important points of the Christian faith that he considers to be justified.
Its importance is given by the novelty of interpreting Christian revelation as the culmination of a revelation that has existed since the origin of mankind. Like his work, his death was also in tune with his faith: he was beheaded in 165, condemned by the prefect of Rome for declaring himself a Christian.
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Justin's quotes are taken from Dialogue with Trypho p. 61-62. Taken from: Greek Apostolic Fathers and Apologists, Daniel Ruiz Bueno (BAC 116), Pg. 409-412.
Apostolic Fathers and Greek Apologists (S. II). Organization: Daniel Ruiz Bueno, Library of Christian Authors, 1st edition, 2002.
By Wigvan Pereira
Graduated in Philosophy
