The Abuse and Misuse of Justin Martyr

On September 26, 2009, up in Newburgh, Oregon, I debated

Dan Barker, the head of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and author of two books.

One of his books is titled Losing Faith in Faith, and then in 2008, that basically same book came out in paperback form called

Godless. Godless has a foreword by Richard Dawkins, and it says how an evangelical preacher became one of America's leading atheists.

So that is the claim being made by Mr. Barker himself, that he is one of America's leading atheists.

In that debate, toward the end of the debate, Mr. Barker quoted from Justin Martyr.

Now, I had expected that he probably would do this, and so in my preparation, had spent a fair amount of time, actually a number of hours, with Justin Martyr.

In fact, ironically, had presented either one or two

Wednesday nights beforehand a study at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church in our

Wednesday evening devotional time on Justin Martyr and on his first apology.

So I was not surprised whatsoever when at the end of his presentation, Mr. Barker presented a citation of Justin Martyr, the one that I expected him to use.

During the cross -examination, I asked him a basic question. I asked Mr. Barker, have you read

Justin Martyr? And his answer was no. Now it's interesting, I will play for you the clip from the debate where he gives

Justin Martyr's citation. And he uses it sort of as his conclusion to say, well look, if Christians say that there is no difference between them and pagans, who am

I to say otherwise? And this was his concluding argument. If we discover that, in point of fact,

Justin Martyr said nothing like that, that Mr. Barker has completely misunderstood the context and meaning of Justin's first apology, then we have very good reason for questioning really all of Mr.

Barker's argumentation. In fact, this particular debate included one of the most unusual events in any debates

I have done where Mr. Barker objected when I began my opening statement because I began quoting from his book,

Godless. Well, this debate isn't about my book, that's what he said. Evidently, in Mr.

Barker's mind, even though for 17 years, in books he continues to sell, you can still find these on the

Freedom From Religion website, he had a stack of Godless out in the foyer of the church, for 17 years he has included a chapter on the very subject of our debate.

And evidently, when you debate Mr. Barker, you have to somehow use your mind to mind -read what his presentation is going to be.

You don't get to have a positive presentation where you actually go through what the man has actually published and argued for 17 years.

No, you can only rebut what he himself has presented. So in other words, your opening statement and your rebuttal, same thing, you have to be limited that way.

It's amazing new rules for debates, never heard of by anybody else, but that's what was presented. And I really think that it goes to Mr.

Barker's credibility as a researcher and a writer, as a thinker, as an apologist for atheism, which he certainly views himself as being, that he could ask people to pay for books for 17 years and then when challenged by someone on those very issues, he abandons pretty much every argument that he presented in that book.

And I can understand why, they're very bad arguments. But I think the book's still in print. And so I think it goes to credibility that not only does he abandon those arguments, he did use the

Justin argument in there, by the way, he did use that, and as we're going to see, in an inappropriate way.

But he likewise came up with all new stuff that he got from other people.

I think that goes to the level of argumentation we find throughout the entirety of the book

Godless. The alleged contradictions in the Bible, very poor, very poor level argumentation.

And yet, this is the kind of material that we hear from atheists all the time in our culture.

So, what I want to do is I first want to play his own statements from his own presentation.

And then I'm going to play the cross -examination period where I asked him if he had actually read

Justin Martyr. And then I'm going to provide about 20 minutes worth of quotations from Justin's first apology and go through them to demonstrate what

Justin's actual argumentation was. This is how

Christians handle debates. We have a standard that atheists don't have.

I can't engage in certain behaviors that Mr. Barker seems quite free to engage in during the cross -examination period, even though we had together, with the moderator, stood out in the hallway and agreed to the rules of the debate, which specifically included a discussion that during cross -examination, you only ask questions, you not argue points.

If you want to argue a point, you do it by your questions. You don't just start making statements. That was agreed to before the debate.

During the debate, Mr. Barker decided he didn't want that and openly said, right there, right there in the audio recording, right there in the video recording,

I pointed out he was breaking the rules of the debate and he says, that's one rule I'm proud to break. Atheistic ethics and morality.

There's no reason for him not to do that. What does it matter? If it gives him an advantage, why not, right?

I have transcendent moral values that preclude my engaging that kind of behavior.

And that also is why Christians should, anyway, be doing the kind of study we're going to do here.

Spend a fair amount of time putting together graphics, looking at the actual text to determine what

Justin's real intention was. Now I realize that the vast majority of atheists are not going to listen to this and they don't care and they'll keep using

Justin's citation. But for those who do care about the truth, it is, I think, evidence of the substantial difference that exists between Christian apologetics and atheistic attacks upon theism, that one side seeks to be truthful and consistent in their argumentation.

I think that says a lot. So let's look at what Dan Barker originally said. The path from history to faith.

Now it's not just modern scholars, but even early Christians. In the second century, there was a Christian apologist who had been a pagan believer who converted to Christianity, Justin Martyr.

And he was arguing with the pagans about, you should all convert to Christianity. You know why? Because it's no different. Look what he says.

When we say also that the Word was the firstborn of God, was produced without sexual union, that He, Jesus Christ, our

Teacher, was crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you, pagans, believe regarding those whom you esteem to be the sons of Jupiter.

Like Mercury, Jesus is the locust. Like Perseus, He was born of a virgin. Like Asclepius, Jesus healed the sick.

If early Christians claimed that the Jesus story was nothing different from paganism, who am

I to disagree? The martyr right at the end, do you recall what the quotation is from?

Yep, I do. It's from his first apology? Yep, first apology chapters 21, 22.

And it looks like also, what is LX? 60, 64.

Dan, have you read all the first apology of Justin Martyr? No, I haven't read all the first apology. So, you said, quote, and I quoted this,

I read this, that Justin Martyr's argument is you should all convert to Christianity because it is all the same.

Do you really feel that's what Justin Martyr was saying to those guys? Well, the words he used is we propound nothing different.

And those were Justin Martyr's words. Nothing different from what you believe. But you haven't read the rest of his argument.

You don't know what context that was. No, I haven't read all of Justin Martyr. But if you can enlighten us how the phrase nothing different means something different, let us know.

The only fair way to deal with any type of ancient document, especially Justin's apology, is to place it within the context of its original writing.

It is written in the face of martyrdom, of almost certain death, already many

Christians had given their lives for their testimony to Jesus Christ under Roman rule. The Romans had outlawed

Christianity, and obviously what Justin is attempting to do is attempting to appeal to them to consider the inconsistency of the way that they are ruling, the way that they are engaging in governance.

Notice the third section, or the third chapter, of the apology that Justin provides.

Notice it says, And every sober -minded person will declare this to be the only fair and equitable adjustment, namely, that the subjects render an exceptional account of their own life and doctrine, and that, on the other hand, the rulers should give their decision in obedience not to violence and tyranny, but to piety and philosophy.

This is an apology that seeks to demonstrate that Christians are good subjects of the

Roman Empire, and that they are not worthy of the kind of treatment they are receiving at the hand of the

Romans. That is his intention in this apology. He continues on,

Hence are we called atheists, and we confess that we are atheists so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true

God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity.

But both Him and the Son, who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow

Him and are made like to Him, and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth, and declaring without grudging to everyone who wishes to learn as we have been taught.

That is from the sixth chapter. So notice, he embraces, in a sense, the accusation of atheism, because he is saying, these other gods, these gods that you promote, do not exist.

In fact, his whole argument in this is that they are demonic imitations of the real.

That because of the giving of prophecy in the Old Testament, the demons, knowing these things, attempted to create imitations of these things.

Now you can disagree with Justin all you want. That is the position he is arguing. And so, we could stop right here.

And this would be more than enough to demonstrate that Justin Martyr was not saying, oh, you should all become Christians because we all believe the same things.

He is not saying we believe all the same things. He is saying that their gods don't even exist, that their gods are demonic imitations.

But when we get to the key text, which is often cited by atheists, we will discover that what he is clearly saying is, look, there is no reason for you to be killing us when there are others in your jurisdiction who believe these things, and yet you don't kill them.

We say God has a son. They say God has many sons. You don't kill them, you kill us.

Now, does that mean, oh, we are saying the same thing. It is just the same thing. No. He has already indicated, we believe that the gods who worship do not even exist.

So it is only by isolating that that you can come up with this kind of misreading of Justin.

But I want to provide some more so that we are perfectly fair. In the ninth chapter we read,

And neither do we honor with many sacrifices and garlands of flowers such deities as men have formed and set in shrines and called gods, since we see that these are soulless and dead, and have not the form of God.

For we do not consider that God has such a form as some say that they imitate to his honor, but have the names and forms of those wicked demons which have appeared.

So there is his argument. And we do not honor these gods. Your gods are nothing but having names and forms of those wicked demons which have appeared.

They are imitations. They are not the true thing. He continues, What sober -minded man, then, will not acknowledge that we are not atheists, worshipping as we do the

Maker of this universe, and declaring, as we have been taught, that he has no need of streams of blood and libations and incense, whom we praise to the utmost of our power by the exercise of prayer and thanksgiving, for all things wherewith we are supplied.

As we have been taught that the only honor that is worthy of him is not to consume by fire what he has brought into being for our sustenance, but to use it for ourselves and those who need, and with gratitude to him to offer thanks by invocations and hymns for our creation, and for all the means of health, and for the various qualities of the different kinds of things, and for the changes of the seasons, and to present before him petitions for our existing again in corruption, through faith in him.

Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar, and that we reasonably worship him, having learned that he is the son of the true

God himself, and holding him in the second place, and the prophetic spirit in the third place, we will prove.

For they proclaim our madness to consist in this, that we give to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal

God, the creator of all. For they do not discern the mystery that is herein, to which, as we make it plain to you, we pray you to give heed.

So here is some explanation of Christian theology from Justin's perspective.

Remember that Justin has very little access to the entirety of the New Testament. He primarily has the books of Matthew and Luke as his sources, and the

Old Testament. And yet, despite that rather small amount of exposure, he gives a very clear testimony to the centrality of Jesus Christ.

And in the one place he says, yes, we are atheists because we don't believe that those gods exist, but we are not atheists in the true sense, for we worship the one creator of all things.

So from the very beginning, Justin is clearly differentiating between pagan mythology and the pagan beliefs, and what

Christians believe. So when he brings up parallels later on, he's not saying, oh, it's just all the same thing, we've all taken it from the same source.

No. What he's saying is, evil demons have imitated these things. And yet he then goes on to say, and yet there is a fundamental difference.

And his whole reason for bringing up the parallels is, why do you kill us, but you don't kill them?

Why do you kill us when we say that Jesus Christ is God's son, but you don't kill the pagans when they say that Zeus has all these children by various and sundry women, etc.,

etc. He continues on. If therefore on some points we teach the same things as the poets and philosophers whom you honor, and on other points are fuller and more divine in our teaching, and if we alone, please notice that, if we alone afford proof of what we assert, why are we unjustly hated more than all others?

For while we say that all things have been produced and arranged into a world by God, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of Plato.

And while we say that there will be a burning up of all, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of the Stoics. And while we affirm that the souls of the wicked being endowed with sensation even after death are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from punishment spend a blessed existence, we shall seem to say the same things as the poets and philosophers.

And while we maintain that men ought not to worship the works of their hands, we say the very things which have been said by the comic poet

Menander and other similar writers, for they have declared that the workman is greater than the work.

Chapter 20. So notice the context that is provided by Justin himself.

He says, we do say many of the same things, but that's because we're addressing simple matters of truth, and we believe that there is an afterlife, and so that might sound like someone over here.

Or we say that you shouldn't engage in idolatry and worship the work of your hands. Well, someone has said something similar to that.

Is he in any way, shape, or form? Remember, keep this in context. He's already said we've been taught these things by God.

He's already made the differentiations preceding this. So is he saying, oh, we just got this, we just derived this from over here, and we grabbed this from over there?

No, he's saying that there are elements of God's real truth found throughout man's philosophies, throughout man's poets and writers, and so on and so forth, but it is clearly not consistent in any single one of them.

That is what he's saying. And notice his specific assertion that we are unjustly hated.

We alone afford proof of what we assert. Why are we unjustly hated more than all others?

There is the key. That is Justin's apology, his point, to point out the inconsistency of the

Roman leaders at this time. And then we come to the section that is most often quoted, not without the stuff that comes before, of course.

And as we saw, Dan Barker hadn't read the stuff before. Might that have changed his use of it? I don't know.

But here's the section that's normally cited. And when we say also the Word, who is the first birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our

Teacher, was crucified and died and rose again and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem, sons of Jupiter.

For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter. Mercury, the interpreting

Word and Teacher of all, Asclepius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt and who ascended to heaven, and Bacchus, too, after he had been torn limb from limb, and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils, and the sons of Leda and Dioscuri, and Perseus, the son of Danae, and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse

Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars?

And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, whose behalf you produce someone who swears that he has seen the burning

Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? I stop for just a moment. Can you sense a little bit of sarcasm here?

Just a little bit! And what kind of deeds are recorded, each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell those who already know.

This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars, for all reckon it an honorable thing to imitate the gods.

But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well -conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parasite and the son of a parasite, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came into Ganymede, and those many women whom he had violated, and that his sons did like actions.

This doesn't normally get cited, because it's very, very clear that what's going on here is a differentiation.

He's not saying, we've got all the same things, we've pulled these from the same things. What he's saying is, you have no ground for persecuting us, given what you believe about gods.

You allow people to believe these things, you don't persecute them, but you come after us, you are hypocrites.

But as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. Not all, we all believe the same thing, no, wicked devils perpetrated these things, and we have learned that those only are deified, who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue, and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.

Not exactly politically correct, of course, but that is what Justin said.

And of course, since we call him Justin Murder, we know how politically incorrect speech worked back then as well.

Then he continues, And if we assert that the word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God.

Now notice he didn't say we borrowed this. He's saying, again, why do you persecute us when you don't persecute these others?

But if anyone objects that he was crucified, and this also he is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated, for their sufferings at death are recorded to have been not all alike, but diverse, so that not even by the peculiarity of his sufferings does he seem to be inferior to them, but on the contrary, as we promised in the preceding part of this discourse, we will now prove him superior, or rather have already proved him to be so, for the superior is revealed by his actions.

And if we even affirm that he was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus, and in that we say that he made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Asclepius.

Now remember, again, this is another part where they pop back in and quote this, because, oh see, it's all the same thing.

Is it? In the sense of accusation of hypocrisy on the part of the

Romans for persecuting Christians, yes. But, when you read what

Justin says, he says, we alone will give evidence of these things, he's going to go into prophecy, he's going to say we don't believe any of these gods exist, in fact,

I forgot to stop earlier and mention, the well -conditioned soul would never believe in any of these deities who engage in these kinds of activities.

The whole point is to say, why throw me to be killed and torn painfully and slowly by a lion, when you don't do that to these people?

You have no ground or basis for doing this. It makes no sense.

He continues on, and that this may now become evident to you, firstly, that whatever we assert in conformity with what has been taught us by Christ and by the prophets who preceded him, are alone true, and are older than all the writers who have existed, so much for getting it from them, right?

That we claim to be acknowledged, not because we say the same things as these writers said, but because we say true things.

Now, may I just stop right there, and submit to you that anyone who quotes Justin, in his first apology, that does not deal with this, is simply dishonest.

Just dishonest. That's the only way to describe it. If you don't include this, if you don't include this claim, if you try to make it sound like Justin was doing something he wasn't doing, you're lying.

It's dishonesty. Happens a lot, but it's still dishonesty. And secondly, that Jesus Christ is the only proper son who has been begotten by God, being his word and first begotten in power, and becoming man according to his will, he taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race.

Section 23, please note, again, Justin's assertion is not, oh, become

Christians because we all believe the same things, just the opposite. Jesus taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race.

Not the alleged parallels, but the call to repentance, the call to live morally, to abandon pagan idolatry, etc.,

etc., that is the essence of Justin's moral teaching. In the first place, we furnish proof because though we say things similar to what the

Greeks say, we only, we only are hated on account of the name of Christ.

And though we do no wrong, are put to death as sinners. Other men in other places, worshipping trees and rivers and mice and cats and crocodiles and many irrational animals, nor are the same animals esteemed by all, but in one place one is worshipped and another in another, so that all are profane in the judgment of one another on account of their not worshipping the same objects.

And this is the sole accusation you bring against us, that we do not reverence the same gods as you do, nor offer to the dead libations and the savor of fat and crowns their statues and sacrifices.

For you very well know that the same animals are with some esteemed gods, with others wild beasts, and with others sacrificial victims.

Section 24. Same section, same argument, if you don't represent what he actually said.

Well, dishonesty demonstrates the reality that your argument is empty and vacuous.

Finally, and secondly, because we, who, out of every race of men, used to worship Bacchus, the son of Semele, and Apollo, the son of Latona, who in their loves with men did such things as is shameful even to mention, and Porcipine and Venus, who were maddened with the love of Adonis, and whose mysteries also you celebrate, or Asclepius, or some one or other of those who are called gods, have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we be threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impassable

God, of whom we are persuaded that never was he goaded by lust of Antiope, or such other women, or of Ganymede, nor was rescued by that hundred -handed giant whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor was anxious on this account that her son

Achilles should destroy many of the Greeks because of his concubine Briseis. Those who believe these things we pity, and those who invented them we know to be devils."

There is Justin's real argument. That's his real argument.

If you don't represent it completely, then you're simply being dishonest in your presentation.