Justin Martyr

Simon returns, demonstrates his superiority by magical means, and takes the title of the Standing One.

Justin Martyr already portrays Simon as a Samaritan magician who claimed to be the highest power, carried about with him a woman named Helena, whom he called his first thought or Anoia.

The first thought.

Damn.

That.

I got better.

So Justin Martyr already doubted the cannibalism and incest stories circulating about Christians in general.

I think many of us today also would doubt that.

Examples of patristic apologists, medieval apologists, early modern 19th century, 20th century content.

I mean, it all it goes all the way back to like Justin Martyr.

It goes back to Origen, Irenaeus, Athenagoras of Athens, Tertullian, all of these people.

And Mike, I mean, these are people, for instance, Irenaeus, right? Do you know who he studied under? Who's that? Polycarp.

Second, Scripture calls us to participate.

1 Peter 3.15 says to explain the hope that we have in Jesus, and the rest of Scripture shows God's people reasoning, defending the truth, and participating in the proclamation of the gospel.

And then third, the church has always needed apologetics from Justin Martyr to Irenaeus to Christians throughout the century.

You have people responding to the challenges and false accusations to give reasons to believe.

But then you'll also see some instances where they do entertain battling over scriptural interpretation with these outsiders.

Like one of the best examples, Justin Martyr, his dialogue with Trifo, with a Jew outside of the church.

And, well, whatchamacallit.

Who was it? You'll have responders to Porphyry, one of the arch enemies of the church, who said, oh, your scriptures say this.

And this is common to the period.

It drove Philo, the Gnostics, Justin Martyr, who was also a Platonist, And so the Logos is absolutely huge to understand Platonism.

And it's really important in Philo because Philo talks about the Logos all the time.

Now, the idea is this, that God could not possibly have created the universe or acted.

Let's go all the way to the mid second century.

And Justin Martyr was an early Christian evangelist.

writer and he's writing approximately 155 to 160 AD and he writes this book called Dialogue with Trifo and here he's debating with Jewish opponents of Christianity and once again he's saying that you know that the stolen body allegation was false so he's still you know a hundred plus years later still addressing the stolen body controversy and we have that again at the end of that century With Tertullian writing around 197 to 200 AD, again, the objection isn't that the tomb wasn't empty, but that the apostles moved the body.

So what we have is this earliest recorded counter story being addressed for 150 years that the disputed explanation was how the body disappeared.

That would require a separate explanation.

You've got James, I mentioned earlier, who's the doubting relative of Jesus, who basically becomes a subsequent leader of the early church and also gets executed for his beliefs in the early 60s.

And as I mentioned already, the centuries long counter story talks about, you know, the stolen body, not the, you know, allegation, but it's addressed by Justin Martyr in the mid second century.

It's addressed by Tertullian.

Yeah, but so these people wouldn't be Christians that they're debating against.

So you have Polycarp, you have Irenaeus, and you have Justin Martyr who all condemned Marcion as a heretic because he, one, rejected the gospel and held on to Luke and edited Luke, wrote his own things into Luke.

to match up with his theology while rejecting the gospel that's written by Matthew, Mark, and John, and then rejects the entire Old Testament.

So you can't be rejecting the entire Old Testament and any other gospel accounts and be a Christian.

It's entered into the consciousness of the Christian church fairly broadly.

Justin Martyr is using it.

He's referencing it probably already in the 130s.

He talks about the apocalypse of John and the image of the new Jerusalem.