St. Justin Martyr
(100/110 AD - C. 165 AD)
Historical Note
St. Justin Martyr was the first of the outstanding apologists of the Church
and the greatest of the second century. He was born of pagan parents in
Flavia Neapolis (Palestine) some time after 100 AD. St. Justin embraced
Christianity around the year 130 after being a Stoic, Peripatetic,
Pythagorean and Platonist.
We know of St. Justin’s life mostly through his own writings. He was a
prolific writer and itinerant Christian philosopher defending the teaching of
Christ as the highest and most perfect philosophy. He was the first to study
the relation between faith and reason and introduced Greek philosophical
terminology into his expositions.
He was admired for his earnest convictions, noble character and perfect
loyalty in his dealings. He was an apostle and saint in the true sense of the
words. After spending time teaching in Ephesus, St. Justin moved to Rome
and there set up a successful Christian school, having Tatian the Syrian as
one of his students.
Of all his writings only three have survived substantially intact, namely his
two Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. St. Justin wrote his
apologies to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, his sons and to the Roman
Senate explaining and defending Christian faith and practice. In his works
we find the first open written account of the Christian mysteries,
particularly baptism and the Eucharist, hitherto kept under wraps by the
“discipline of the secret.”
St. Justin wrote convincingly to dispel the widely spread calumnies that
Christians were atheists, cannibals and sexually immoral. The Christians
were not only moral but also loyal to all legitimate authority and therefore
deserving of tolerance: “And if these things seem to you to be reasonable
and true, honor them; but if they seem nonsensical, despise them as
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