Today is the feast of St. Justin Martyr, Patron of Apologists.
He was born in what is now the city of Nablus in Palestine. He lived c. A.D. 100-165, and he was martyred in Rome. He is the greatest of the early Christian apologists and a patron saint of apologetics. His legacy to the Church includes two written apologies for the Christian faith and his famous Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.
To read more about St. Justin Martyr, look here.
To read St. Justin Martyr’s writings, look here.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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Just a quick observation on the ocassion of the feast of Saint Justin.
I’m not one to complain about “the secular world” or “the culture” or “Hollywood” as such. I think that just foments an “us against them” mentality that leads people to drop out rather than engage society by a life of discipleship and example.
However, I find it worth noting to those on the other side who would argue that it’s unrealistical or “prudish” to attempt to instill ideals of chastity, continence and a healthy respect to sexuality to teens saturated with MTV images and easy access to pornography that Christians of Justin’s age faced the same problems.
Reading Justin’s Apologies makes clear that it wasn’t “hip” to be chaste back then either. Indeed, sometimes it wasn’t even safe, as conformity to the Christian morality cost so many their lives.
Justin didn’t just complain about “the culture”, and he didn’t give in to it either; he clearly, logically and plainly explained why we believe what we believe and live how we live. I see no reason not to follow that approach today.
St. Justin was a half millenia ahead of his time; make that a whole millenia. Not only did he have an acute grasp of the Christian faith, and that in its most profound and ‘speculative’ elements, but he also had a deep sense of the relationship between what we would call ‘Christ and culture,’ i.e. the sense in which it is the Logos who vivifies and sustains all that is good and true in human culture, and that, if the culture turns its back on this Logos, it commits moral suicide, because it denies the very Truth which upholds it.
Justin is probably best known for his view of “seeds of the Word” being present in pre-Christian thought & his favorable opinion of Greek philosophy. I don’t agree with that, but modern ecumaniacs who cite Justin generally don’t mention his harsh condemnation of non-Christian thought after the coming of Christ.