Justin Martyr

Justin was born around 100 at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria, the town the Old Testament calls Shechem, now Nablus, to a Greek-speaking pagan family. He tells his own story in the opening of the Dialogue with Trypho, and it is the earliest conversion account in Christian literature after Paul's.

He went shopping for a philosophy. A Stoic could tell him nothing about God. A Peripatetic asked for his fee up front. A Pythagorean sent him away to learn music, astronomy, and geometry first. A Platonist finally satisfied him, and he was contented, thinking he was close to seeing God.

Then, walking by the sea, he met an old man who asked him questions he could not answer, about the soul, about whether reason alone could ever reach God, and told him about the prophets, men older than the philosophers, who had not reasoned their way to God but had been spoken to. Justin says a fire was kindled in his soul. He never described it as leaving philosophy. He said he had found the only philosophy that was safe and profitable, and he kept wearing the philosopher's cloak for the rest of his life.

He taught in Ephesus and then in Rome, in rooms above a bathhouse, where anyone could come and argue.

He wrote openly to the men who could kill him. The First Apology, addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius around 155, argues that it is unjust to punish a name; that Christians are the empire's best subjects; and that the truths in Plato are shards of the same Word who became flesh, the seeds of the Word, scattered in every people, so that Socrates and Heraclitus lived by a light they did not know the source of.

Then, because he wanted the charges of secret crimes dead, he described exactly what Christians did at their meetings: the baptism, the reading of the memoirs of the apostles, the bread and the cup, the collection for orphans and widows, on the day called Sunday. It is the earliest detailed account of Christian worship that exists.

The Dialogue with Trypho is a long, courteous argument with a Jewish teacher about whether Jesus is the Messiah of the Hebrew prophets.

A Cynic philosopher named Crescens, whom Justin had beaten in public debate, denounced him. Justin predicted it in writing before it happened. Around 165 he and six students were tried before the city prefect Junius Rusticus, ordered to sacrifice, and refused. Rusticus asked whether he supposed he would ascend into heaven. Justin answered that he did not suppose it, he knew it. They were scourged and beheaded.

The court record survives, and the church has called him Justin Martyr ever since.

Sources: Justin, First Apology, Second Apology, Dialogue with Trypho (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1); the Martyrdom of Justin and His Companions; Eusebius, Church History IV.16–18.