Academic Articles on Justin Martyr

Justin is an early Christian figure who is very much of his own time, yet his ideas and intellectual legacy transcend temporal confines. He does not represent just a snapshot of the Christianity of Rome in the mid-second century, but was a courageous figure who challenged the prevailing philosophical systems of his own day with a muscular and robust presentation of Christian thought. Rather Justin, leader of a `schoolchurch’ in Rome, is a key figure in the early development of Christianity. Some of the ideas he offered remain central to Christian thinking.

Justin Martyr was one of the most important of the second-century Christian Apologists. He made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual tradition of Christian thought by his interpretation of the logos and was also the first thinker after St. Paul to grasp the universalistic element in Christianity and to sum up the history of civilisation as finding its consummation in Christ. Yet Justin was far more than a Christian intellectual for his approach is biblical, pastoral and evangelistic and firmly based on God’s care and love for men revealed supremely in Jesus Christ. And, as has long been recognised, the information that he gives about Christian worship and sacraments is of high value as being the fullest account to have come down from the ante-Nicene period of the Church.

1. Justin Martyr’s Christology
2. The Church Fathers surely considered Jesus as divine and closely associated with YHWH as his son. However, Justin Martyr (and almost all 2nd century christian theologians) distinguished the Son and the Father and saw the Son as, to some extent, subordinate to the father. In 1 Apology 13, Justin Martyr, for example, explicitly states that the Son is “in the second place”.

1. And in the Dialogue with Trypho 56:4, Justin states that there is “another god.. under the Creator of all things” in the Scripture who is also called the Angel. The Son is “another god” and is subordinate to the Father according to Justin.

Early church fathers simply were not trinitarian. The concept of the Trinity only gradually emerged between 2-4th century within christological debates.