Inside the Core this Week: Justin Martyr and Augustine
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Justin Martyr was born in Neapolis in Samaria, an area which today is called the West
Bank. Born into a pagan family, he studied diverse philosophies before becoming a
Christian at about thirty, feeling that Christianity fulfilled, as no other philosophy
did, the longing for truth that had prompted his searching. However, unlike Tertullian
(who famously said, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"), Justin instead sought
to reconcile what was best in prior and contemporary pagan philosophies with Christianity.
Arguing that former philosophers were essentially "Christians before Christ," so long
as they searched and argued for the truth, he was more in line with modern perspectives,
like those expressed in Nostra Aetate, that all that is good and true in any religion
should be affirmed. Justin even used terminology like Logos, meaning "Word" or perhaps
"Wisdom" or "Truth," to describe the nature of Christ – intentionally using a concept
familiar to Greek philosophers in order to relate to them meaningfully. However, despite
his own open-mindedness, Justin encountered persecution directed against Christians,
as a minority group feared and hated as being subversive and a threat to the status
quo. He was beheaded in the year 165.
Augustine, born in 354 in Thagaste, Algeria, North Africa, also studied philosophy,
but particularly focused on rhetoric. Though his mother was a Christian, and he was
trained in that faith, his father was a pagan. With Christianity legalized in 313
by the Emperor Constantine's Edict of Milan, Augustine came of age in a world much
like ours – eclectic, hedonistic, and materialistic. Drawn into the seductions around
him, he indulged in stealing (the famous pear tree incident), lust, intellectual pride,
and worldly ambition. However, the search for truth and the longing for love, ultimately
God's love, eventually led him to conversion to Christianity. He says in the Confessions, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." In his famous City of God, which we read excerpted (Book XIX) in Core II, Augustine distinguishes the difference
between the earthly city and the heavenly city, the City of God. The bond of the City
is ordered love (meaning love that reflects the order of creation), bringing peace
and harmony. Augustine, though rejecting the teaching of rhetoric and pagan literature,
uses the skills acquired in his background to make the points in his famous treatise.
Love is central to the life of the City of God on earth (as it is in heaven), and
ordered love means that one loves appropriately, according to the will of God. Examples
would be loving one's child more than one's pet, or loving one's friend more than
one's status. There is a hierarchy of values in Augustine's view, and loving rightly
is part of loving at all.
Both Augustine and Justin lived at times of transition in the Roman Empire. For Justin,
it was a time where Christianity was expanding, an exciting time, but a dangerous
one. For Augustine, the dangers were more spiritual, and his search for truth was
complicated by desires for other, lesser goods. He came to peace after a spiritual
journey that took him from one continent (Africa) to another (Italy in Europe) and
back (to Africa) again, and through many philosophical and religious positions. When
he finally became a Christian, he had found what he was looking for in the many venues
in which he searched.
Today we live in a society that is both complicated and eclectic, but also one that
is transitional, and where people who are different can be seen as suspect and even
hated (as were the early Christians). In fact, in many parts of the world people are
dying for their faith as they did in the time of Justin. But in our culture, like
that of Augustine, the dangers may be in some ways worse because they are more subtle.
Overall, reading these texts, ancient as they are, can be very important and relevant
to life in the world of 2020.
Categories: Education
