Here comes in the practical or ethical side of this Christian philosophy. It is wisdom which emanates from God and leads to God. It is a new law and a new covenant, promised by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and introduced by Christ. The old law was only for the Jews, the new is for the whole world; the old was temporary and is abolished, the new is eternal; the old commands circumcision of the flesh, the new, circumcision of the heart; the old enjoins the observance of one day, the new sanctifies all days; the old refers to outward performances, the new to spiritual repentance and faith, and demands entire consecration to God.
IV. From the time of Justin Martyr, the Platonic Philosophy continued to exercise a direct and indirect influence upon Christian theology, though not so unrestrainedly and naively as in his case. [1358] 358 We can trace it especially in Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and even in St. Augustin, who confessed that it kindled in him an incredible fire. In the scholastic period it gave way to the Aristotelian philosophy, which was better adapted to clear, logical statements. But Platonism maintained its influence over Maximus, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, and other schoolmen, through the pseudo-Dionysian writings which first appear at Constantinople in 532, and were composed probably in the fifth century. They sent a whole system of the universe under the aspect of a double hierarchy, a heavenly and an earthly, each consisting of three triads.
The Platonic philosophy offered many points of resemblance to Christianity. It is spiritual and idealistic, maintaining the supremacy of the spirit over matter, of eternal ideas over all temporary phenomena, and the pre-existence and immortality of the soul; it is theistic, making the supreme God above all the secondary deities, the beginning, middle, and end of all things; it is ethical, looking towards present and future rewards and punishments; it is religious, basing ethics, politics, and physics upon the authority of the Lawgiver and Ruler of the universe; it leads thus to the very threshold of the revelation of God in Christ, though it knows not this blessed name nor his saying grace, and obscures its glimpses of truth by serious errors. Upon the whole the influence of Platonism, especially as represented in the moral essays of Plutarch, has been and is to this day elevating, stimulating, and healthy, calling the mind away from the vanities of earth to the contemplation of eternal truth, beauty, and goodness. To not a few of the noblest teachers of the church, from Justin the philosopher to Neander the historian, Plato has been a schoolmaster who led them to Christ.
Notes.
The theology and philosophy of Justin are learnedly discussed by Maran, and recently by Möhler and Freppel in the Roman Catholic interest, and in favor of his full orthodoxy. Among Protestants his orthodoxy was first doubted by the authors of the "Magdeburg Centuries," who judged him from the Lutheran standpoint.
Modern Protestant historians viewed him chiefly with reference to the conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. Credner first endeavored to prove, by an exhaustive investigation (1832), that Justin was a Jewish Christian of the Ebionitic type, with the Platonic Logos-doctrine attached to his low creed as an appendix. He was followed by the Tübingen critics, Schwegler (1846), Zeller, Hilgenfeld, and Baur himself (1853). Baur, however, moderated Credner's view, and put, Justin rather between Jewish and Gentile Christianity, calling him a Pauline in fact, but not in name ("er ist der Sache nach Pauliner, aber dem Namen nach will er es nicht sein"). This shaky judgment shows the unsatisfactory character of the Tübingen construction of Catholic Christianity as the result of a conflux and compromise between Ebionism and Paulinism.
Ritschl (in the second ed. of his Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 1857) broke loose from this scheme and represented ancient Catholicism as a development of Gentile Christianity, and Justin as the type of the "katholisch werde de Heidenchristenthum," who was influenced by Pauline ideas, but unable to comprehend them in their depth and fulness, and thus degraded the standpoint of freedom to a new form of legalism. This he calls a "herabgekommemer orabgeschwächter Paulinismus." Engelhardt goes a step further, and explains this degradation of Paulinism from the influences of Hellenic heathenism and the Platonic and Stoic modes of thought. He says (p. 485): "Justin was at once a Christian and a heathen. We must acknowledge his Christianity and his heathenism in order to understand him." Harnack (in a review of E., 1878) agrees with him, and lays even greater stress on the heathen element. Against this Stähelin (1880) justly protests, and vindicates his truly Christian character.
Among recent French writers, Aubé represents Justin's theology superficially as nothing more than popularized heathen philosophy. Renan (p. 389) calls his philosophy "une sorte d'eclectisme fondé sur un rationalisme mystic " Freppel returns to Maran's treatment, and tries to make the philosopher and martyr of the second century even a Vatican Romanist of the nineteenth.
For the best estimates of his character and merits see Neander, Semisch, Otto, von Engelhardt, Stähelin, Donaldson (II. 147 sqq.), and Holland (in Smith and Wace).
[1333] Tertullian (Adv. Valent. 5) first calls him philosophus et martyr, Hippolytus (Philos. VIII. 16), "Just. Martyr;" Eusebius (H. E. IV. 12), "a genuine lover of the true philosophy, " who "in the garb of a philosopher proclaimed the divine word and defended the faith by writings" (IV. 17).
[1334] Dial.c. Tryph. Jud. c. 2-8. The conversion occurred before the Bar-Cochba war, from which Tryphon was flying when Justin met him. Archbishop Trench has reproduced the story in thoughtful poetry (Poems, Lond. 1865, p. 1-10).
[1335] This city may be Flavia Neapolis, or more probably Ephesus, where the conversation with Trypho took place, according to Eusebius (IV. 18). Some have located the scene at Corinth, others at Alexandria. Mere conjectures.
[1336] Apol. II. 12, 13.
[1337] Tillemont and Maran (in Migne's ed. Col. 114) infer from his mode of describing baptism (Apol. I. 65) that he baptized himself, and consequently was a priest. But Justin speaks in the name of the Christians in that passage ("We after we have thus washed him, " etc.) and throughout the Apology; besides baptism was no exclusively clerical act, and could be performed by laymen. Equally inconclusive is the inference of Maran from the question of the prefect to the associates of Justin (in the Acts of his martyrdom): "Christianos vos ferit Justinus?"
[1338] tribon, tribonion, pallium, a threadbare cloak, adopted by philosophers and afterwards by monks (the cowl) as an emblem of severe study or austere life, or both.
[1339] thilosophe, Chaire !
[1340] I add the estimate of Pressensé (Martyrs and Apologists, p. 251): "The truth never had a witness more disinterested, more courageous, more worthy of the hatred of a godless age and of the approval of Heaven. The largeness of his heart and mind equalled the fervor of his zeal, and both were based on his Christian charity. Justin derived all his eloquence from his heart; his natural genius was not of rare order, but the experiences of his early life, illumined by revelation, became the source of much fruitful suggestion for himself, and gave to the Church a heritage of thought which, ripened and developed at Alexandria, was to become the basis of the great apology of Christianity. If we except the beautiful doctrine of the Word germinally present in every man, there was little originality in Justin's theological ideas. In exegesis he is subtle, and sometimes puerile; in argument he flags, but where his heart speaks, he stands forth in all his moral greatness, and his earnest, generous words are ever quick and telling. Had he remained a pagan he would have lived unnoted in erudite mediocrity . Christianity fired and fertilized his genius, and it is the glowing soul which we chiefly love to trace in all his writings."
[1341] The year of composition cannot be fixed with absolute certainty. The First Apology is addressed "To the Emperor (autokratori)Titus Aelius Adrianus Antoninus, Pius, Augustus Caesar; and to Verissimus, his son, philosopher [i.e. Marcus Aurelius]; and to Lucius, the philosopher [?]--son by nature of a Caesar [i.e. Caesar Aelius Verus] and of Pius by adoption and to the sacred Senate;-and to the whole Roman people, " etc. The address violates the curial style, and is perhaps (as Mommsen and Volkmar suspect) a later addition, but no one doubts its general correctness. From the title "Verissimus, " which Marcus Aurelius ceased to bear after his adoption by Antonine in 138, and from the absence of the title "Caesar" which he received in 139, the older critics have inferred that it must have been written shortly after the death of Hadrian (137), and Eusebius, in the Chronicon, assigns it to 141. The early date is strengthened by the fact that in the Dialogue, which was written after the Apologies, the Bar-Cochba war (132-135) is represented as still going on, or at all events as recent (phugon ton nun genomenon polemon, ex bello nostra aetate profugus, ch. I; Comp. ch. 9). But, on the other hand, Marcus Aurelius was not really associated as co-regent with Antonine till 147, and in the book itself Tustin seems to imply two regents. Lucius Verus, moreover, was born 130, and could not well be addressed in his eighth year as "philosopher; " Eusebius, however, reads "Son of the philosopher Caesar; " and the term philosophos was used in a very wide sense. Of more weight is the fact that the first Apology was written after the Syntagma against Marcion, who flourished in Rome between 139-145, though this chronology, too, is not quite certain. Justin says that he was writing 150 years after the birth of the Saviour; if this is not simply a round number, it helps to fix the date. For these reasons modern critics decide for 147-150 (Volkmar, Baur, Von Engelhardt, Hort, Donaldson, Holland), or 150 (Lipsius and Renan), or 160 (Keim and Aubé). The smaller Apology was written likewise under Antoninus Pius (so Neander, Otto, Volkmar, Hort, contrary to Eusebius, iv. 15, 18, and the two rulers, but only one autocrat, while after his death there were two older view, which puts it in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; for it presupposes " Augusti" or autocrats. See on the chronology Volkmar, Die Zeit Just. des M., in the " Theol. Jahrb."of Tübingen, 1855 (Nos. 2 and 4); Hort On the Date of Justin M., in the " Journal of Classic and Sacred Philology, " June 1856; Donaldson, II. 73 sqq.; Engelhardt, l.c. 71-80; Keim, Rom. u. d. Christenth., p. 425; Renan, l.c. p. 367, note, and Harnack, Texte und Unters., etc. 1. 172 sq.
[1342] Hort puts the Dial. between 142 and 148; Volkmar in 155; Keim between 160-164; Englehardt in 148 or after.
[1343] On these anti-heretical works see Harnack, Zur Quellenkritik des Gnosticismus (1873), Lipsius, Die Quellen der ältesten Letzergeschichte (1875), and Hilgenfeld, D. Ketzergesch. des Urchristenthums (1884, p. 21 sqq.).
[1344] Oratio ad Graecos logos pros Hellenas.
[1345] See above, § 170, p. 702.
[1346] Cohortatio ad Graecos, logos parainetikos pros Hellenas . Based on Julius Africanus, as proved by Donaldson, and independently by Schürer in the Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch."Bd. II. p. 319.
[1347] On these doubtful and spurious writings see Maranus, Otto, Semisch, Donaldson, and Harnack (l. c. 190-193).
[1348] On these doubtful and spurious writings see Maranus, Otto, Semisch, Donaldson, and Harnack (l. c. 190-193).
[1349] Comp, Otto De Justiniana dictione, in the Proleg. LXIII-LXXVI. Renan's judgment is interesting, but hardly Just. He says (p. 365): "Justin n'était un grand esprit; il manquait à la, fois de philosophie et de critique; son exégèse surtout passerait aujour d' hui pour très défectueuse; mais il fait preuve dun sens général assez droit; it avait cette espèce, de crédulité médiocre qui permet de raissonner sensément sur des prémisses puériles et de s'arrêter à temps de façon à n'être qu'à moitié absurde." On the next page he says: "Justin était un esprit faible; mais c'était un noble et bon coeur." Donaldson justly remarks (II. 15 sq.) that the faults of style and reasoning attributed to Justin and other Apologists may be paralleled in Plutarch and all other contemporaries, and that more learned and able writers could not have done better than present the same arguments in a more elaborate and polished form.