Introduction

In the II century after Christ, before the hostility and the prejudices of the pagans, some Christians felt the need of defending their religion, of confuting the accusations against the Christians, vindicating their right of existing and of professing the Christian religion. They simultaneously made “propaganda” of the new religion with the missionary end of converting people. In professing the Christian faith, they cast the first foundation of theology and started a dialogue with the surrounding world, using the culture of their times. They accepted also whatever valid and positive was within the pagan philosophy and mentality (such as yearning for the truth, aspiration for a more authentic religiosity and a higher morality…), as preparation for the coming of Christianity. At the same time they reminded the Christians of their coherence and life testimony as a proof of the truth they proclaimed. Justin is the most important Greek apologist; he is one of the most illustrious and meaningful personalities of ancient Christian literature.  

Justin researched and witnessed the truth

Justin was born around 100 after Christ at Sichem, (today’s Nablus) from a pagan family. Thirsting for the truth, (as he himself narrates in his Dialogue with Trifone 1-9), he visited several schools of philosophy (stoic, peripatetic, Pythagorean and platonic), but was disappointed. Finally, a mysterious person, met in solitude along the seashore, first proved the impossibility for man to reach God through  mere human wisdom, then indicated to him the persons he could meet in order to find the way to God: the old prophets who left their testimonies in the Holy Scripture.  In parting from him, the aged man exhorted him to be faithful to prayer, “First of all, pray that the doors of light be opened to you, because no man can ever see and understand unless God and his Christ would grant him the gift of understanding”. (Dialogue 7,3). At the end of a long spiritual itinerary, when he was 30 years old, he converted himself to Christianity mainly solicited by the heroic behaviour of the Christians: if they underwent martyrdom «they could in no way live an evil life, craving for pleasures». (2 Apology 12, 1).

After his conversion, Justin committed himself with sincere enthusiasm to defend and propagate the Christian religion that was considered by him as the “true philosophy”. Around the year 140 he left for Rome where he founded a school to initiate the pupils in the Christian faith, free of cost. «I transmitted the doctrines of truth to those who came to me» (Acts of martyrdom 3, 3), he himself said during the process that ended with martyrdom.  Denounced as Christian, in 165 a. C. he was condemned to be beheaded and concluded his life with an exemplary testimony of faith, together with six more persons, perhaps his own students.

Seeds of truth in every human person

Justin states that sparks of truth can be found also among the pagans, just because every human person, being a rational creature, participates in the Logos and reproduces something of Him in himself. This means that he carries with himself a seed that enables him to catch sparks of the truth. All this is partially present in the Greek philosophy, but truth in its totality can be found only in the Logos that historically and personally manifested itself in the incarnated Christ. Thus, our Apologist concludes “Whatever beautiful has ever been expressed by anyone belongs to the Christians (2 Apology 13, 4). Every truth is oriented to Christ as a part that turns to the whole. Even the pagans, in their philosophy have found the way leading to Christ and waiting for His coming, just as the Old Testament had pre-disposed the Hebrews to welcome the Messiah.  It follows that the Christians, too, can fetch from philosophy as from their own good, though with a cautious and enlightened discernment. What the Logos has worked in the pagan world by enlightening the minds, awakening the consciences and orienting them towards the search for the good, has fully been realised in Christianity. Justin is convinced that Christianity includes the truest, the most authentic human and religious values: every man as image of God possesses sparks of truth and bounty to be appreciated and welcomed as a gift.

Mary as the new «mother of life»

Justin compares two important and decisive events in the history of mankind: the original sin and the Annunciation. A deep bond links them and guides history: man sins and introduces death in the world, God intervenes and saves the world on the same line. Just as the first man, Adam, fell because of a woman, Eve, similarly the new man, Christ, is born because of another woman, Mary.

Our Apologist writes that Christ “became man from a virgin, so that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be similarly destroyed through the same way that had caused it. In fact, Eva, being virgin and un-corrupted, generated disobedience and death after conceiving the word of the serpent, while the virgin Mary conceived faith and joy when the Angel Gabriel announced to her that the Spirit of the Lord would descend on her and the Power of the Most High would overshadow her –thus the Holy One born from her would be the Son of God-  and answered, “Let it happen to me as you have said” (Luke, 1,38). From her is born He (= Christ) (…) through whom the Father destroys the serpent, the angels and men who become similar unto it, but liberates from death all who give up evil and believe in Him”  (Dialogue 100,4-5). On one side Justin exposes the identical situation in which the two women find themselves, on the other side he shows their opposite attitude and the derived different consequences. Both of them are virgins, listen to a word and generate the future of their descendants, Eve with her disobedience welcomes the seducing word of the serpent, thus introducing death in the world and consequently dragging the human race to mortality; while Mary with her obedience welcomes the word of God, thus generating life and joy; consequently humanity is re-introduced to immortality with Christ born from Mary. Therefore, she is the “new” woman, the true “mother of life” that opens the way to salvation with her faith and availability for God: history resumes its course according to the foreseen project of God, along the very way by which it had been ruined: two women, two virgins, two responsible persons of history.  

A human person destroys and God –with another human person- re-builds: in his bounty He creates a new occasion to start from the beginning what had been spoiled; to offer new possibilities of salvation. God does not want the history of humanity to finish in tragedy and death, but in the active and patient collaboration of a “new” person, the virgin Mary; He restores the situation bringing it to a positive and happy completion by redeeming mankind. God’s love is always stronger than the sin of man.

 Mario Maritano
Pontifical Salesian University
 Piazza dell’Ateneo Salesiano, 1 - 00139 Roma