The Apology of Justin Martyr

Born in Flavia Neapolis, Syria, around 100 CE, Justin Martyr is known by this epithet due to his death in Rome, during the rule of Marcus Aurelius in the 160s. Likely a gentile convert to Christianity, Justin had made his way to the imperial capitol, where he assumed the mantle of a philosopher, complete with a small school. Some of his philosophy he recorded in his two apologetic works: the Dialogue with Trypho, a defense of Christianity against the claims of Judaism, and the Apology (or Apologies), a defense of Christianity addressed (probably fictively) to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his sons. Much ink has been spilled on both works, and it is into this scholarly context that David Nyström’s The Apology of Justin Martyr attempts to wade.

A lightly revised University of Cambridge dissertation, Nyström’s short book undertakes a “literary-rhetorical analysis” of the Apology (7). This study takes a different approach to the Apology than has often been pursued: Nyström insists that he is not interested in Justin’s ideas and thus does not engage in prevailing discussions of the development of doctrine or liturgy; rather, he aims to investigate “how Justin’s different strategies and arguments are used and shaped, why they are used and shaped this way, and how they work together with the purpose of reaching specific argumentative goals” (7). Nyström’s goal seems to be to offer a comprehensive analysis of Justin’s apologetic strategies and the functions of apologetic arguments (10). The chapters that follow the introduction discuss, in order, the Apology’s intended audience and purpose; its responses to the problem of Christianity’s novelty; its demonstration of the truth of Christianity on the basis of the fulfilment of prophecy; and its discussion of the demonic deception of humanity through myths and heresies.

In the chapters dealing with Justin’s apologetic arguments, Nyström makes a variety of interesting arguments with respect to the “literary-rhetorical” argumentative structure of the Apology. The most stimulating of these is his discussion of the so-called “proof from prophecy.” In a comparative reading of the Dialogue and the Apology, Nyström finds that the prophets are brought forward not as scriptural authorities, but as individual prophets akin to the oracles and sibyls of Greek antiquity. That their prophecies were fulfilled in Christ’s actions upon earth is the very proof of the truthfulness of Christianity; Christ’s prophetic pronouncements which Justin claims are fulfilled in his own day likewise demonstrate the validity of Christian claims. Nyström thus thinks that Justin’s central way of arguing in the Apology is not “rationalistic,” but “empirical” (107). On this basis, Nyström further argues that in terms of its apologetic purpose, Justin’s employment of the Logos doctrine is preparatory for such proofs from the fulfillment of prophecy—that is, the presence of the divine Logos prior to the coming of Christ enabled the prophets to speak the truth in the first place.

Although Nyström presents a variety of interesting arguments through the chapters on the rhetorical arguments themselves, it is not entirely clear what the payoff is for ongoing scholarly conversations on Justin. To take just two examples: Nyström’s comparative reading of Justin’s two works on the proof from prophecy suffers from the author’s insistence that he is not interested in Justin’s ideas, and that he wants to limit himself only to the Apology. Nyström appears not to recognize that in such a comparative literary-rhetorical reading there is potential, albeit with a second interpretive step, to shed light on Justin’s actual thought, and thus to engage more deeply in ongoing scholarly conversations as central as Justin’s Logos doctrine. Perhaps, in the light of such a study, the logos spermatikos (the “seminal word”) would not prove so central to Justin’s actual thought. However, Nyström does not say. Second, Nyström discusses the intended audience of the Apology before even giving his interpretation of Justin’s rhetorical arguments. One would think that the arguments in the Apology themselves would have some bearing on the intended audience of the work.

Because of this unusual ordering, Nyström argues for an intended audience that does not quite follow from his discussion of Justin’s rhetorical argument—namely, those on the “borderlands between paganism and Christianity” (65). For Nyström, the deciding factor is that, in the Apology, “knowledge about Christian theology and narrative is assumed” (56). Although this criterion is intuitively appealing, an in-depth exposition of theology, in modern terms, might not have been central to Justin’s actual thought. Nyström himself admits that, as an early imperial philosophy, it was not necessary for Justin’s teaching to have depth of dogmatic content, since at this time, “philosophy was understood more as a way of life than as theoretical knowledge or wisdom” (96). If Justin’s understanding of Christianity as a philosophy went beyond mere posturing in the Apology (as I noted at the outset), then we should not be surprised to find that the Apology is interested less in dogma than in the virtuous way of life delivered by Jesus and the apostles. Had Nyström discussed the intended audience as a conclusion to his findings on the argumentative structure of the Apology, his picture of the intended audience might look rather different.

Despite these criticisms, and the fact that the book could have benefited from more extensive copyediting in English and in Greek, the main chapters on Justin’s rhetorical arguments are indeed stimulating, and constitute the major contribution of this work.

Robert Edwards is a PhD candidate in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame.

Robert Edwards

Date Of Review:

August 4, 2020