Justin Martyr: An Introduction — David Bercot — Ep. 115

Well, hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here again with David Burso, and today we're going to be talking a little bit about Justin Martyr. So first off, how do we even know he existed? Like, what texts or pieces of writing do we have about Justin Martyr? Okay, we have several writings of his. Some of his works have been lost, but we have his first apology.

We have a second apology. There's another one, I think it's concerning the resurrection that's in existence. And then it's called Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. It's an apologetic work addressed to Jews and explaining how Jesus is the Messiah. In addition to that, Irenaeus talks about him, Hippolytus, Eusebius. He's talked about quite a bit by other early Christians. So we have his writings, and then we have other people who talk about him. We know he was Orthodox, that he was respected by the church in general, and those writings were preserved. It's too bad any of them got lost. You know, someone had to sit down and make a hand copy of a book in order for it to be preserved, or otherwise, over time it just decays.

And so after a while, it's like, well, let's copy Augustine. You know, he's more important than Justin Martyr. And so a lot of writings disappeared that way because they thought the important people were people like Augustine. And here they had these treasures that they let literally go into dust. But thankfully, most of his writings, I believe it's the majority, have been preserved. We do have a list by Eusebius of the ones that were in existence in his day. And so we do know some of them got lost. Yeah. So can you just give us a kind of a broad overview of his life as far as we know? We know a bit about his life because in his work entitled Dialogue with Trypho, he talks about how he became a Christian.

Interesting. And so through it, we know it's part of the dialogue, you know. So he goes through his whole conversion story, which is really interesting. He was a Samaritan, interesting enough. Probably had a pretty high-class upbringing. I mean, he's an educated person. So we can be pretty sure he wasn't, you know, a farmer or something like that. We don't know for sure what his parents were. When we first learned about him in his testimony, he's a philosopher, okay? He's on a search for truth, for to learn about God. Well, the Greek philosophers were the ones who had the answers in those days, or at least if you were a pagan, that's where you would go, you know, for answers.

And so he had studied the Stoics, which was the main philosophy that the Romans had embraced. And then he felt like, well, there's something lacking there. So then he went on to study Pythagoras. We know him through the mathematical Pythagorean theory. But he was a philosopher. Mathematics was just part of it. But so he studied that. And then he went on to study Plato. And that's where he was. And he thought, yeah, I think I've really found it now. And he's, you know, contemplating all these deep things from Plato. And he's out just taking a walk by the seashore. And this elderly man's there who strikes up a conversation with him. Well, he was wanting to be left alone so he could, you know, meditate and all of that.

And this guy comes up. Well, you know, he's not going to be unfriendly. So, you know, he answers the guy. And the man asks him, you know, a little bit about himself. And he said, well, I'm a philosopher and all that. Well, the man's a Christian, okay? So he starts then asking, you know, pointed questions about this or that. And by the end of it, Justin decides that he wants to look into the scriptures. Now, what was interesting from that exchange is that the man never went to the New Testament. He really taught, he preached Christ from the Old Testament, which is something you and I almost never think about doing. Chuck Pike, for those of you listeners who listen to him, if they haven't ever discovered him, you can find him, you know, Google him.

Chuck Pike is the name. He's done a lot on this from Justin Martyr, you know. And just that whole concept struck him and me both that, wow, you would preach Christ from the Old Testament. Hey, if you wanted to reach a Muslim, you know, they accept the Old Testament.

Or a Jew, either one. I mean, you know. And so this man was pointing out about Moses and the prophets and how they pointed to this other person, Jesus Christ, you know. And then all of this stuff these people wrote back a long time ago before Plato existed, before Socrates, before any of these people. They're older than, you know, these Greek philosophers. And then they talked about this man who would come. And he actually came, this Jesus Christ. And all these things they predicted, he fulfilled, you know. So they got him excited. So he goes and starts reading the, you know, the Jewish writings and stuff. And he becomes a Christian.

And then he decides he's going to make that his life mission to spread the gospel. So he became an itinerant missionary, you might say. Traveled across the Roman world. And the dialogue with Trypho the Jew takes place in Ephesus, you know. And he's witnessing the Jews there. He does a very nice job. He's very respectful. I was talking about Tertullian earlier, who kind of grates you. Justin Martyr is very kind. And he presents things in a way designed to open your mind instead of kick you in the mouth. So yeah, he's very respectful in addressing the Jews. And yet he's very frank, you know, as well. But he goes through, it's his longest work. And he goes through all of these prophecies and types in the Old Testament, things I would have never thought about.

I didn't even know what's a prophecy or a prophetic type. For example, the one that stuck in my mind and comes to my mind right now was Moses when the Israelites were fighting the Amalekites. And he was told to hold up his staff. And as long as he held it up, the Israelites prevailed. And then when his arms got tired and they dropped, then the Amalekites, I think it was the Amalekites, prevailed. And so finally they put him on a rock or something. And they sat and they held his arms up. So, and then Israel prevailed. Well, yeah, that was always just, you know, a neat account. But yeah, the early Christians, they see that that's a prophetic figure of the cross, Jesus being on the cross, you know, with Moses with his arms outstretched.

And it's why that's in there. Why does he prevail only when his arms are out? And then, you know, well, because God is giving a picture that would be written down that thousands or 1,500 years later that people are like, oh, wow, this was all planned, you know, this was all there, you know. And both direct prophecies from the Psalms and, you know, other Old Testament books and then all these prophetic figures that the Jews, you know, would recognize and stuff. So he's, you know, preaching to a Jew. But I'm reading this, it's like, man, I didn't know that. You know, they didn't have any commentaries. They had no concordances. I mean, you know, you know, if you want to look up something, yeah, you go in a concordance or, yeah, he's got to know all of this by memory, you know, all of these, you know, prophecies and all of that.

And it's like, wow, I need to increase. I thought I had a really good knowledge of the Bible. But I thought, man, I don't know nothing like this, you know. And that made quite an impression. Not that he's trying to, you know, impress anybody. Yeah, I liked his outlook. It's funny. He's often labeled in certain works as people who really don't know anything about the early church. But they label Justin Martyr as one of the liberals, you know, from that period, you know. And it's like, he would be so conservative compared to, you take the most conservative, you know, Baptist or church or whatever. I mean, he would be so much more conservative than that Justin Martyr.

I mean, it's funny to even think of him as liberal. The only issue he would be liberal on was the value of philosophy. And the only reason he feels positive about it is because that's how he came to Christianity was, you know, philosophy was his journey, you know. And Clement of Alexander had the exact same experience. He was searching for truth, started off with Greek philosophy and ended up with Christianity. So people who that was their journey to Christianity, yeah, they looked at philosophy as, okay, this was a stepping stone. You know, obviously, you know, it's, you know, once they found the truth, they didn't need it anymore. Because he has a more whatever generous view, you know, towards that, then he's labeled liberal.

Now, in contrast, we were talking about Tertullian. Yeah, his famous quote is, what does Athens have in common with Jerusalem? Meaning, what does Greek philosophy have in common with the scriptures? And then his first apology, he gives a description, a lengthy description of a baptism, which is just so valuable. I mean, to have, man, this is how they do it. And the only reason he's doing it, he's not, this is in his apology. So he's not saying, now this is how we should baptize to do it properly. He's explaining to the Romans, okay, this is what we Christians do. So, you know, you're reading an objective sort of thing. And then he says, this is what our service is like.

We meet on Sunday. And it's like, oh, wow. Wow, it's neat. And he explains the whole thing. And it's like, wow, this is really, really neat. I remember reading that. And it was so exciting. It's like, wow, just having a window suddenly in time, you know. And I include that in that the book, We Don't Speak Great Things, We Live Them. That was, I chose that as one of the works to put in there just because of some of those things. I thought, wow, this is a really valuable writing and helps us to see, you know, 2,000 years later what the Christian life was like. And he's writing like 150. So this is like 50 years after the Apostle John died.

I mean, that's that close to the New Testament. Okay, so we have a bit of an overview of Justin Martyr, who he was and when he lived. What are some of the threads that he emphasizes, like through his writings, some themes that come out? Or I guess you could say, what is a hill he would die on? Well, yeah, definitely, you know, Jesus Christ and him crucified, you know, Paul's words. And he literally did die. I mean, Justin Martyr, I mean, that wasn't his name, you know. It was like his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Martyr, and they named their boy Justin. It was actually the philosophers. He was witnessing to them in Rome. And one of the philosophers didn't like that, you know, he was showing the errors of the philosophers.

Yeah, some of the philosophers who didn't like that, they got a plot together and brought an accusation against him. And he lived in a time when it was against the law to be a Christian. So you didn't have to invent anything, you know. Just if someone brought a charge, said you were a Christian, you either deny it or you get martyred. And we have his testimony. We have an account of it. That's pretty neat. Because they asked him, you know, where do you all meet? And he says, well, yeah, you don't suppose we all meet in the same place, you know. He says, you know, I meet, he says where. I'm assuming he probably got arrested there because I don't think he would give it away.

But he says, I meet over the store. Us and a few other families, we meet over this, you know, so-and-so's place of business. But yeah, we all meet different places, you know. And so it gives us a little bit of an idea of what, you know, the church was like in those days and how they met and things. I forget some of the other things. But yeah, he would not deny Christ. So he was taken out and beheaded. But his big passion was preach the word, you know, everywhere. He was interested in Samaritans, you know, his own where he was from Samaria. But like I say, the Jews, one of the few apologetic works we have written to the Jews and then to the, you know, to the Romans.

But like I say, he traveled all over whoever he could reach. And he tried to open doors, you know, to make the gospel believable to them and to bring it to, like I say, if he's talking to a Jew, then he presents it, he takes a different tact than if he's talking to a pagan or if he's talking to a Greek philosopher and that sort of thing. So that's Justin Martyr, you know. There were no heretical issues that he necessarily, I mean, he, you know, upheld orthodoxy.

But yeah, his passion was getting the gospel, spreading it to everyone he could. He never married, just lived a simple life and traveled about preaching. Yeah. Never held an office in the church as far as we know. Yeah. What would be the ways he would have viewed the Bible, like viewed scripture, maybe the certain ways? I don't know. What kind of glasses was he looking at scripture through? Yeah, he's not, he is very generic as far as the early church. The same thing that I would say about Tertullian, except Justin Martyr writes in Greek and Tertullian in Latin. Okay. His thought pattern is more Greek than, say, Tertullian. But other than that, yeah, it's taking scripture very literally, very, very seriously, you know, obeying it.

It's not, you don't end up with a bunch of different schools of thinking in the early church. Like I say, Origen stands out a little bit. But even he wasn't that different. It's just the degree that he took the allegorical looking at things in the Old Testament. Yeah, they all take, yeah, very literally, very seriously, unless it is a metaphor or, you know, a figure of speech or something like that. They lived in that time. They spoke the same language, you know. They lived in the same world, you know. Nothing had changed since the days of Jesus. It was still ruled by the Romans. It was still people, you know, plowed the same way and, you know, fished the same way.

And, you know, nothing had changed, which is the exciting thing. Now, on his view of scripture, now, again, he's no different than any other early Christian. But he's the one who made me aware of the Septuagint. The, I mean, I'd always heard of it from, boy, the time I was a young teen of the Greek translation made of the Old Testament. But I'd never realized that the Septuagint was made from a different Hebrew text than the Masoretic text that our Bibles are from. Not that it's a huge difference. You're going to get most of the same prophecies and most, I mean, the same events and all of that. There are a number of Messianic prophecies in the Septuagint that are not in the Masoretic text.

They're not in our Bibles. You know, he would quote these prophecies and he's like, well, I never read that one before, you know. And I'd go look it up. And then I became aware of that. Well, then he's talking to Jews in this, you know, dialogue with Trypho the Jew.

And they're saying, it doesn't say that. And he's saying, you all changed the Bible. You know, this is, you know, is what it said. And, you know, your leaders, yeah, changed the scriptures because of these prophecies about Jesus that they wanted to take these out, you know. And so it is really fascinating. And it's like, wow, this is a whole new world to me. I'd never heard any of this before, you know. And it got me, in fact, as soon as I got through reading or maybe before I even got through, I ordered a Septuagint. And I thought, man, I got to start reading this myself. This is really, really interesting. So in your opinion, why does Justin Martyr matter to us today?

Like, what can we learn from him? And how can he speak into, you know, maybe current events that we would be facing? Yeah, I think for me, the biggest is how close he is to the apostles. Now, there are earlier writings. His is not the earliest. But 150, that's, like I say, that's not very long after John. And his are, it's the lengthiest writings we have so close to the apostles. So, like I say, you see all about the Septuagint. You see about church services, about baptisms, about the things the Romans were saying about Christians and things like that, you know, their understanding of the Trinity. He goes into a lot on explaining the Father and the Son and that sort of thing.

And, yeah, it's exciting that, wow, this is just 50 years after the apostle John, you know, just like one generation. And we get all this insight into what's going on. And then the neat thing is when you read Tertullian, who's not, you know, who's maybe 40 years later, yeah, it's the same thing. Nothing's different. Irenaeus, you know, another part of the world. He's way over in France. He's 20 years later. Same, yeah, they still hold to the same teachings. I mean, it's all, yeah, you start seeing it's all a jigsaw puzzle. But Justin Martyr would certainly be one of the key pieces of that because of being so early and having written so much that, you know, gives us more than just, like the Dedicate is, you know, extremely early.

But boy, it's really short, you know. Whereas Justin Martyr, yeah, you get such a complete discussion of so many things. Then, like I say, his witness, his discussion of the Septuagint is, it's very valuable because he talks about the whole Jewish thing of rejecting it, see, which we were all raised to believe that, oh, you know, everyone used the Masoretic text. And the Septuagint is just something, you know, strange thing. And so to read this, that, you know, him saying, you know, your leaders rejected this because of these prophecies. Yeah, this prophecy isn't in your Bible because your leaders didn't want it in there, you know. And it's pretty compelling because some of the, yeah, strongest ones, like they pierced my hands and my feet, that's in the Septuagint, is not in the Masoretic text.

Now, it's in our Bibles because it's such a key prophecy. It's like, hmm, dare we take this out of the Bible? So they, when they get to that, they go to the Septuagint and then they go back to the Masoretic text, you know, which to me is dishonest. Either don't translate it, you know, they pierced my hands and my feet, you know, go with the Masoretic text. Or if the Septuagint's right there, then why don't you accept it other places? You know, did it just accidentally come up with a, by dumb luck with this incredible prophecy about the crucifixion? But anyway, so he, but he talks about that specific one, you know, plus a bunch of others.

And it is really interesting. Then he talks about then that even though the Septuagint was a Jewish translation, that then their leaders hired these other men to come and come up with new translations in Greek, you know, for the Jews who didn't read Hebrew. They're terrible translations, you know, these other ones. They never caught on, you know, the way the Septuagint had, you know. So it's, he provides a lot of interesting history on top of all of the other things. But I guess to me, you know, reading him was, it's like, you can be sold out for Christ. You can live this really obedient lifestyle to Jesus. And yet you can have a kind, large heart.

You know, you don't have to be narrow-minded and crabby and that sort of thing. And I like that spirit. I thought that's what I want to come away with. Both the zeal for Christ, the obedience for Christ, and yet a kindly, generous spirit towards people instead of one that's always looking for condemnation or that thing. And how do you build bridges with this culture, you know, instead of how to condemn this culture? Okay, how do I reach them? What do they have that's good in their culture that I can build a bridge to help them come to Jesus Christ? So that's probably just influenced so much of my life's philosophy, you know, his approach to things.

Yeah. So maybe this is hopefully an inspiration to our audience to maybe pick up some of Justin Martyr's works and read them. Yes. And like I say, to make that easy, if you can read it directly, you'll get a lot more from, you know, the Anti-Nicene Fathers. But we did do, we don't speak great things. We live them. That's in modern English. I made that just as for somebody to get their feet wet. If they're not quite ready to handle the whole thing, get their feet wet there. If they like that, they can handle that. Yeah. Then plunge in and read the rest of what he has written. Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to share.

And hopefully this is an inspiration to a lot of people. Reagan, I've enjoyed being here. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Absolutely.