Bettenson's Documents

Justin Martyr, Apology I.46:1-4
“Let’s anticipate a possible objection to what we are teaching and answer it just in case anyone decides this would be a clever way to turn people against that teaching. Suppose they say, unreasonably of course, that since we teach that Christ was born 150 years ago in Cyrenius’ time and taught during the days of Pontius Pilate exactly what we claim he taught, then we must  hold that all who taught prior to the time of Christ are entirely irresponsible.

“Here is our response: First, Christ is the first-born of God and (as I have shown previously) he is the Reason (Logos) of which the whole human race partakes from the beginning. So then, all who live according to Reason are Christians, even though some may mistake them for atheists. I have in mind here persons like the Greeks Socrates and Heraclitus, and others like them.”

Justin Martyr, Apology II.13
“I laughed at their feeble trick and those who were suckered in by it. I refer to when I heard about the false report that evil demons spread as a disguise over the anointed Christian teachings for the purpose of turning people away. I prayed and strove to maintain a Christian attitude in this debate. It’s not that Plato’s teachings are diametrically opposed to those of Christ, but that Plato’s teachings are not like them in every way. This same could be said of others like the Stoics, poets, and prose-authors. Each of these spoke rightly where what they talked about were things that concerned Christianity because each of them are sharers of divine Reason, while those who opposed them did not live according to Reason and thus lacked wisdom and knowledge. Whatever has been rightly said by anyone in any place belongs to us Christians, because second to our devotion to God is our love of Reason which is from the self-existent and indescribable God. Because of us he became incarnate so that by sharing in our suffering he might also bring healing. For those teachers and authors of old were able to see the truth faintly through the seed of Reason which was implanted in them. For the seed of Reason and the attempt to imitate the Logos according to limited capacity are one thing, but far different it is to share in Christ himself, the sharing of whom and the knowledge that comes of that relationship is given according to the grace of God.”

Justin is attempting to deal with the value of the wisdom offered by Greek philosophers, so loved by many in the ancient world, and indeed loved by many Christians and seekers in Justin’s day. In the first section Justin overstates his case by declaring the peripatetics to be “Christians.” I think we can understand better what he is driving at if we focus on the latter part of today’s selection. Today we might say it like this: “all truth is God’s truth.” For example, whatever God says is true not because God said it, but God only says what it true. God does not require us to believe the Bible whether it is true or not, but tells us to believe the Bible because it is true. In the same way, Socrates taught many things that were true and Justin says that nothing that is true is in opposition to Christian teaching. In this way Socrates teaching is “Christian,” though Justin makes it clear that his chrisitianly teaching is given by a common grace of sharing in the Reason that is available to all who are bearers of the imago Dei. I think it apparent that there is a difference in Justin between “Christian” as an adjective, which can be applied to any true thing that Socrates teaches, and “Christian” as a noun, or one who has a relationship with God by the application of grace, in which God did for the Christian what he or she could not do for him- or herself.

I confess that when I meditated on this passage last April, I lost momentum as I tried to understand Justin’s words in context. I have jumped back into the game now, and I hope I can show some consistency. It is obvious I am not going to plow through Bettenson in a year, though there is still plenty of time!