Justin Martyr

Today is the Memorial of Saint Justin, Martyr.  He lived from 100 C.E. to 165 C.E.  It’s a bit strange to memorialize Justin in view of his “war” against the Jews.  He was an early Church Father who waged an active polemic against Jews and Judaism. 

(begin) Justin Martyr was born to pagan parents in Neapolis, the modern Nablus. After his conversion to Christianity he became a staunch advocate of his new faith against its major then current adversaries, Greek philosophy and Judaism. He was martyred for his faith as a Christian by the Roman authorities sometime between 163 and 167.

Justin's principal polemic against Judaism was waged in his work, Dialogue with Trypho. The latter is presented as a Jew who during the Bar Kokhba war fled from Jerusalem to Ephesus, where he encountered Justin, and the two engaged in a dialogue on the merits of Judaism and Christianity. All the issues then current between the two faiths are marshaled in the dialogue. Justin is the aggressive protagonist; Trypho seeks to counter Justin's arguments, but he is clearly the weaker of the opponents. Justin's goal is to convert Trypho to Christianity, and while this is not accomplished by the end of the dialogue, the reader feels that Trypho has been seeded with the Christian truth, and conversion will follow.

Justin's thesis is an extension of the kind of reasoning which pervades the New Testament. In essence it makes the claim that Christianity is the authentic flowering of biblical Judaism, and that the Jews who cling to their faith in its old form are clinging to an obsolete doctrine. For doing so they are berated as blind and stubborn and insensitive, a fossil people clinging to a superseded faith.

Justin does not content himself with the exposition of a Christian interpretation of the Bible. He often denounces the Jews for having crucified Jesus, and he accuses them of continuing to persecute Christians. He finds many indications that God had deemed the Jews as especially reprehensible. In repudiating the efficacy of the law as prescribed in the Bible, Justin makes the bold assertion that the law was initially given to the Jews because, as an especially unspiritual race, hard-hearted, rebellious, and ungodly, they needed a more elaborate law, with many more disciplines as a means of mitigating some of their offensive qualities. For the gentiles, however, it was enough to prescribe two commandments as Jesus did, the love of God and the love of man (Dial. 93:4). 

Justin also makes himself into a philosopher of history and offers the theory that the defeats of the Jews in the wars against Rome, both in the year 70, and again in 135, were God's visitation of a deserved punishment, because they had sinned so grievously by crucifying Christ and rejecting his new faith. Justin gloated as he contemplated the destruction of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Jewish struggle for freedom, and he taunted Trypho with this sweeping assertion: "All this has happened to you rightly and well, For ye slew the Just One and His prophets before Him, and now ye reject, and … dishonor those who set their hopes on Him, and God Almighty and Maker of the universe who sent Him …" (Dial. 16:3–4).

Justin's invective against Jews and Judaism entered the mainstream of Christian thought and became a sinister influence which contributed not a little toward the development of what is known as Christian antisemitism. (end)

Wow!! We Christians do not understand the backgrounds of many of those to whom we give honor, such as a Memorial.  The more we know about our religion and faith history, the more we will appreciate what Christians have done to the Jewish people – a history misunderstood, hidden, or lost in time.

With rising anti-Semitism in the United States, we should appreciate the extent to which we have contributed to that hateful behavior.  A good way to improve our understanding would be to read John Carroll’s outstanding book, “Constantine’s Sword – the Church and the Jews: A History.”  I’m influenced by what Carroll had published in 2001.  

One review said: (begin) Carroll, a former priest, documents the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the long European history of religious antisemitism as a precursor to racial antisemitism. The primary source of anti-Jewish violence is the perennial obsession with converting the Jews to Christianity (my emphasis); an event which some theologians believed would usher in the Second Coming.

Carroll disclaims the notion that Christian anti-Judaism leads inevitably to the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany, but he argues that Church's long history of "Jew-hatred" laid the foundation for Hitler's crimes. Carroll also points out the many "turning points," as he labels them, where the Church's attitudes and actions toward Jews could have been shifted. Just one example cited in the book is that of Pierre Abelard (1079–1142), the French theologian and philosopher, whose teachings, had they been accepted, would have radically changed the direction and cast of Christian dogma. (end)

The rest is sordid and devastating history most Christians would prefer not to know.  

Deacon David Pierce