{"id":19,"date":"2010-06-01T11:29:16","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T11:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/faith-and-philosophy-justin-martyr.html"},"modified":"2010-06-01T11:29:16","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T11:29:16","slug":"faith-and-philosophy-justin-martyr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/faith-and-philosophy-justin-martyr.html","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Philosophy: Justin Martyr"},"content":{"rendered":"

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June 1 celebrates Justin Martyr<\/a> (d. 165), a Christian philosopher who integrated faith and philosophy–appreciating ancient wisdom and argued that “Socrates was a Christian before Christ.” Before embracing Christianity, Justin mastered many ancient philosophies (he studied at the best schools of antiquity) including Stoicism and Platonism.  While walking on a beach in Ephesus, an elderly Christian man witnessed to Justin of Jesus.  The young philosopher felt “a flame kindled in his soul” and “a love of the prophets and those who are friends of Christ possessed me.” <\/span><\/h3>\n

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 Justin has always seemed to me a very contemporary sort of saint, whose mystical insights and intellectual journey serve as a great example for Christians today.  He developed what is know as the “correlationist method” of Christian theology by relating pagan intellectual traditions to Christianity in order to prove the new faith’s credibility to a skeptical and hostile Roman audience.  He hoped to show that Christianity was an intellectual system that, like the best of ancient philosophy, entailed growth in a life of virtue and deserved a fair hearing.  Unlike some other Christian theologians, Justin did not reject the philosophy and science of his day but tried to find elements of Christian wisdom in pagan thought and ideals.  The best of the ancient world acted as a bridge to the fullness of Christian revelation.  He hoped to draw people to Christ by affirming the riches of ancient culture.  He wanted to engage the world, not flee from it.  In many ways, Justin’s intellectual life of “both-and” embodies the Christian dictum to be “in the world, not of it.” <\/span><\/h3>\n

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 A prayer for Justin from the Episcopal tradition: “Almighty and everlasting God, who found your martyr Justin wandering from teacher to teacher, seeking the true God, and revealed to him the sublime wisdom of your eternal Word: Grant that all who seek you, or a deeper knowledge of you, may find and be found by you.”  <\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

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Portions of this post were adapted from my book, A People’s History of Christianity<\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 1 celebrates Justin Martyr (d. 165), a Christian philosopher who integrated faith and philosophy–appreciating ancient wisdom and argued that “Socrates was a Christian before Christ.” Before embracing Christianity, Justin mastered many ancient philosophies (he studied at the best schools of antiquity) including Stoicism and Platonism.  While walking on a beach in Ephesus, an elderly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-history-and-theology","category-saints"],"yoast_head":"\nFaith and Philosophy: Justin Martyr - Christianity for the Rest of Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/06\/faith-and-philosophy-justin-martyr.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Faith and Philosophy: Justin Martyr - 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}