THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.--HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS.
The examination of the quotations in Justin Martyr of the Synoptic
Gospels occupies nearly one hundred and fifty pages; and deservedly so,
for the acknowledged writings of this Father are, if we except the
Clementine forgeries and the wild vision of Hermas, more in length than
those of all the other twenty-three witnesses put together. They are
also valuable because no doubts can be thrown upon their date, and
because they take up, or advert to, so many subjects of interest to
Christians in all ages.
The universally acknowledged writings of Justin Martyr are three:--Two
Apologies addressed to the Heathen, and a Dialogue with Trypho a Jew.
The first Apology is addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and was
written before the year 150 A.D. The second Apology is by some supposed
to be the first in point of publication, and is addressed to the Roman
people.
The contents of the two Apologies are remarkable in this respect, that
Justin scruples not to bring before the heathen the very arcana of
Christianity. No apologist shows so little "reserve" in stating to the
heathen the mysteries of the faith. At the very outset he enunciates the
doctrine of the Incarnate Logos:--
"For not only among the Greeks did Logos (or Reason) prevail to
condemn these things by Socrates, but also among the barbarians were
they condemned by the Logos himself, who took shape and became man,
and was called Jesus Christ." [10:1] (Apol. I. 5.)
In the next chapter he sets forth the doctrine and worship of the
Trinity:--
"But both Him [the Father] and the Son, Who came forth from Him and
taught these things to us and the host of heaven, the other good
angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the Prophetic
Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth."
[10:2]
Again:--
"Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who was also born for
this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of
Judaea, in the time of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably
worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the True God
Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the Prophetic
Spirit in the third." (Apol. I. ch. x. 3.)
Again, a little further on, he claims for Christians a higher belief in
the supernatural than the heathen had, for, whereas the heathen went no
further than believing that souls after death are in a state of
sensation, Christians believed in the resurrection of the body:--
"Such favour as you grant to these, grant also unto us, who not less
but more firmly than they believe in God; since we expect to receive
again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth,
for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible." (Apol. I. ch.
xviii.)
In the next chapter (xix.) he proceeds to prove the Resurrection
possible. This he does from the analogy of human generation, and he
concludes thus:--
"So also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies of men
after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved into earth,
should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption."
In another place in the same Apology he asserts the personality of
Satan:--
"For among us the prince of the wicked spirits is called the
serpent, and Satan, and the devil, as you can learn by looking into
our writings, and that he would be sent into the fire with his host,
and the men who followed him, and would be punished for an endless
duration, Christ foretold." (Apol. I. ch. xxviii.)
In the same short chapter he asserts in very weighty words his belief in
the ever-watchful providence of God:--
"And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things (the
welfare of the human race), he will thereby either insinuate that
God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He
delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue
nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things
are reckoned good or evil, and this is the greatest profanity and
wickedness." (Apol. I. ch. xxviii.)
Shortly after this he tells the heathen Emperor that the mission and
work of Jesus Christ had been predicted:--
"There were amongst the Jews certain men who were prophets of God,
through whom the Prophetic Spirit published beforehand things that
were to come to pass, ere ever they happened. And their prophecies,
as they were spoken and when they were uttered, the kings who
happened to be reigning among the Jews at the several times
carefully preserved in their possession, when they had been arranged
in books by the prophets themselves in their own Hebrew language....
In these books, then, of the prophets, we found Jesus Christ
foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate,
and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead,
and being hated, and unrecognized, and crucified, and dying and
rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being
called, the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain
persons should be sent by Him into every nation to publish these
things, and that rather among the Gentiles (than among the Jews) men
should believe on Him. And He was predicted before He appeared,
first 5,000 years before, and again 3,000, then 2,000, then 1,000,
and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets
after prophets arose." (Apol. I. ch. xxxi.)
Then he proceeds to show how certain particular prophecies which he
cites were fulfilled in the Jews having a lawgiver till the time of
Christ, and not after; in Christ's entry into Jerusalem; in His Birth of
a Virgin; in the place of His Birth; in His having His hands and feet
pierced with the nails. (Ch. xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxv.)
Again, immediately afterwards, he endeavours to classify certain
prophecies as peculiarly those of God the Father, certain others as
peculiarly those of God the Son, and others as the special utterance of
the Spirit. (Ch. xxxvi.-xl.)
Then he proceeds to specify certain particular prophecies as fulfilled
in our Lord's Advent (ch. xl.); certain others in His Crucifixion
(xli.); in His Session in heaven (xlv.); in the desolation of Judaea
(xlvii.); in the miracles and Death of Christ (xlviii.); in His
rejection by the Jews (xlix.); in His Humiliation (l.) He concludes with
asserting the extreme importance of prophecy, as without it we should
not be warranted in believing such things of any one of the human
race:--
"For with what reason should we believe of a crucified Man that He
is the first-born of the unbegotten God, and Himself will pass
judgment on the whole human race, unless we have found testimonies
concerning Him published before He came, and was born as man, and
unless we saw that things had happened accordingly,--the devastation
of the land of the Jews, and men of every race persuaded by His
teaching through the Apostles, and rejecting their old habits, in
which, being deceived, they had had their conversation." (Ch. liii.)
After this he speaks (ch. lxi.) of Christian Baptism, as being in some
sense a conveyance of Regeneration, and of the Eucharist (ch. lxvi.), as
being a mysterious communication of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, and
at the conclusion he describes the worship of Christians, and tells the
Emperor that in their assemblies the memoirs of the Apostles (by which
name he designates the accounts of the Birth, Life, and Death of
Christ), or the writings of the Prophets were read, as long as time
permits, putting the former on a par with the latter, as equally
necessary for the instruction of Christians.
Besides this, we find that Justin holds all these views of Scripture
truths which are now called Evangelical. He speaks of men now being
"Purified no longer by the blood of goats and sheep, or by the ashes
of an heifer, or by the offerings of fine flour, but by faith
through the Blood of Christ, and through His Death, Who died for
this very reason." (Dial.)
And again:
"So that it becomes you to eradicate this hope (_i.e._ of salvation
by Jewish ordinances) from your souls, and hasten to know in what
way forgiveness of sins, and a hope of inheriting the promised good
things, shall be yours. But there is no other way than this to
become acquainted with this Christ, to be washed in the fountain
spoken of by Isaiah for the remission of sins, and for the rest to
lead sinless lives." (Dial. xliv.)
So that from this Apology alone, though addressed to the heathen, we
learn that Justin cordially accepted every supernatural element in
Christianity. He thoroughly believed in the Trinity, the Incarnation of
the Logos, the miraculous Conception, Birth, Life, Miracles, Death,
Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. He firmly believed in the
predictive element in prophecy, in the atoning virtue of the Death of
Christ, in the mysterious inward grace or inward part in each Sacrament,
in the heart-cleansing power of the Spirit of God, in the particular
providence of God, in the resurrection of the body, in eternal reward
and eternal punishment.
Whatever, then, was the source of his knowledge, that knowledge made him
intensely dogmatic in his creed, and a firm believer in the supernatural
nature of everything in his religion.
The Second Apology is of the same nature as the first. A single short
extract or two from it will show how firmly the author held the
supernatural:--
"Our doctrines, then, appear to be greater than all human teaching;
because Christ, who appeared for our sakes, became the whole
rational being, both body, and reason, and soul.... These things our
Christ did through His own power. 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 Word 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 artizans 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."
(Apol. II. ch. x.)
The dialogue with Trypho is the record of a lengthy discussion with a
Jew for the purpose of converting him to the Christian faith. The
assertion of the supernatural is here, if possible, more unreserved than
in the First Apology. In order to convert Trypho, Justin cites every
prophecy of the Old Testament that can, with the smallest show of
reason, be referred to Christ.
Having, first of all, vindicated the Christians from the charge of
setting aside the Jewish law or covenant, by an argument evidently
derived from the Epistle to the Hebrews, [15:1] and vindicated for
Christians the title of the true spiritual Israel, [15:2] he proceeds to
the prophetical Scriptures, and transcribes the whole of the prophecy of
Isaiah from the fifty-second chapter to the fifty-fourth, and applies it
to Christ and His Kingdom. (Dial. ch. xiii.) Shortly after, he applies
to the second Advent of Christ the prophecy of Daniel respecting the Son
of Man, brought before the Ancient of Days. (Ch. xxxi.) Then he notices
and refutes certain destructive interpretations of prophecies which have
been derived from the unbelieving Jews by our modern rationalists, as
that Psalm cx. is spoken of Hezekiah, and Psalm lxxii. of Solomon.
Then he proceeds to prove that Christ is both God and Lord of Hosts; and
he first cites Psalm xxiv., and then Psalms xlvi., xcviii., and xlv.
(Ch. xxxvi., xxxvii., xxxviii.)
Then, after returning to the Mosaic law, and proving that certain points
in its ritual wore fulfilled in the Christian system (as the oblation of
fine flour in the Eucharist--ch. xli.), he concludes this part of his
argument with the assertion that the Mosaic law had an end in Christ:--
"In short, sirs," said I, "by enumerating all the other appointments
of Moses, I can demonstrate that they were types, and symbols, and
declarations of those things which would happen to Christ, of those
who, it was foreknown, were to believe in Him, and of those things
which would also be done by Christ Himself." (Ch. xlii.)
Then he again proves that this Christ was to be, and was, born of a
virgin; and takes occasion to show that the virgin mentioned in Isaiah
vii. was not a young married woman, as rationalists in Germany and among
ourselves have learnt from the unbelieving Jews. (Ch. xliii.)
To go over more of Justin's argument would be beside my purpose, which
is at present simply to show how very firmly his faith embraced the
supernatural.
I shall mention one more application of prophecy. When Trypho asks that
Justin should resume the discourse, and show that the Spirit of prophecy
admits another God besides the Maker of all things, [17:1] Justin
accepts his challenge, and commences with the appearance of the three
angels to Abraham, and devotes much space and labour to a sifting
discussion of the meaning of this place. The conclusion is thus
expressed:--
"And now have you not perceived, my friends, that one of the
three, Who is both God and Lord, and ministers to Him Who is
[remains] in the heavens, is Lord of the two angels? For when [the
angels] proceeded to Sodom He remained behind, and communed with
Abraham in the words recorded by Moses; and when He departed after
the conversation Abraham went back to his place. And when He came
[to Sodom] the two angels no longer converse with Lot, but Himself,
as the Scripture makes evident; and He is the Lord Who received
commission from the Lord Who [remains] in the heavens, i.e. the
Maker of all things, to inflict upon Sodom and Gomorrah the
[judgments] which the Scripture describes in these terms: 'The Lord
rained upon Sodom sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.'"
(Ch. lvi.)
It is clear from all this that Justin Martyr looked upon prophecy as a
supernatural gift, bestowed upon men in order to prepare them to receive
that Christ whom God would send. Instead of regarding it as the natural
surmising of far-seeing men who, from their experience of the past, and
from their knowledge of human nature, could in some sort guess what
course events are likely to take, he regarded it as a Divine influence
emanating from Him Who knows the future as perfectly as He knows the
past, and for His own purposes revealing events, and in many cases what
we should call _trifling_ events, which would be wholly out of the power
of man to guess or even to imagine.
I am not, of course, concerned to show that Justin was right in his
views of prophecy; all I am concerned to show is, that Justin regarded
prophecy as the highest of supernatural gifts.
Such, then, was the view of Justin respecting Christ and the Religion He
established. Christ, the highest of supernatural beings, His Advent
foretold by men with supernatural gifts to make known the future, coming
to us in the highest of supernatural ways, and establishing a
supernatural kingdom for bringing about such supernatural ends as the
reconciliation of all men to God by His Sacrifice, the Resurrection of
the body, and the subjugation of the wills of all men to the Will of
God.