Plan of a project

Author of the Application Priest Gica Bighiu The Dialogue with Trypho by the Saint Justin the Martyr

Yet from the very beginning, the Christianity had to face many difficulties both from the Jewish and the Pagan side !he persecutions which the Christians endured were very hard and lasted long time !hese put the Christian church in situations of suffering !hey began with the year "# A $, under the emperor %ero &'#(")* und lasted until the emperor Constantine the Great &+,"(++-*, who gave the edict of tolerance from .ilan which regarded the Christian population !he persecutions continued with many interruptions in spite of this edict of tolerance /nder the main causes of the persecutions we can count0 1 !he first cause was religious !he people couldn2t understand the new religion und all the calamities, deseases and bad events were associated with the new religion which didn2t act according to the old believes 3 !here were also political causes !he main political cause was the fact that the new religion taught the monoteismus which came in conflict with the cult of the emperor + 4inally there were also moral and social causes Because of the missunderstanding of the 5ucharisty, the christians were considered immoral und were acused they 6illed their children and eat them !he Christianity hat to face not only the phisical persecutions, but the spiritual and philosophical too !he 7uic6 spread of the christian religion determined the philosophers of the time to purify and ideali8e the paganism through different philosophical orientations li6e epicureismus, stoicismus, neoplatonismus and many others 9e made this short introduction in order to win a better understanding of :aint Justin2s time ;n this historical conte<t was born Justin also called the Philosopher =e raised and grew up inside of the pagan tradition and culture =e declares by himself that he learnt in a stoical and then in a pythagorical school, but he was not satisfied by their thoughts =e left the stoicismus because he didn2t get there a satisfying way of understanding the nature of God A pagan reared in a Jewish environment, Justin studied :toic, Platonic, and other pagan philosophies and then became a Christian in 1+3, possibly at 5phesus, near modern :el>u6, !ur6ey :oon after 1+' he began wandering from place to place proclaiming his newfound Christian philosophy in the hope of converting educated pagans to it =e spent a considerable time in ?ome :ome years later, after debating with the cynic Crescens, Justin was denounced to the ?oman prefect as subversive and condemned to death Authentic records of his martyrdom survive ;n this respect be6ame Justin one of the most important apologists of the christianism !he most important wor6 which remained until our days is @!he $ialogue with !ryphoA !his dialogue constitues our theme and we intend to see the main parts of Justin2s dialogue with the jew !rypho :cholars are divided over whether or not Justin2s $ialogue represents a real conversation !he majority seem to hold that some conversation occurred between Justin and !rypon, a Jewish leader, probably in 5phesus, but since Justin2s wrote the wor6 many years after the alleged event, it is 7uite li6ely that Justin embellished it substantially ;t is a lengthy, fascinating but sometimes confusing wor6 ;n the $ialogue, after an introductory section, Justin underta6es to show that Christianity is the new law for all men and to prove from :cripture that Jesus is the Christ !he concluding

section demonstrates that the Christians are the true people of God !he fragments of the wor6 BCn the ?esurrectionB begin with the assertion that the truth, and God the author of truth, need no witness, but that as a concession to the wea6ness of men it is necessary to give arguments to convince those who gainsay it ;t is then shown, after a denial of unfounded deductions, that the resurrection of the body is neither impossible nor unworthy of God, and that the evidence of prophecy is not lac6ing for it Another fragment ta6es up the positive proof of the resurrection, adducing that of Christ and of those whom he recalled to life ;n another the resurrection is shown to be that of what has gone down, i e , the bodyD the 6nowledge concerning it is the new doctrine in contrast with that of the old philosophersD the doctrine follows from the command to 6eep the body in moral purity ;nterestingly, in the $ialogue, Justin also wrote, B4or ; choose to follow not men or men2s doctrines, but God and the doctrines EdeliveredF by =im 4or if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this EtruthF, and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of ;saac, and the God of JacobD who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are ta6en to heavenD do not imagine that they are Christians B As we can see here, Justin put the resurrection of the dead as the main premise for the christian belief ;n the opening of the $ialogue, Justin relates his vain search among the :toics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans for a satisfying 6nowledge of GodD his finding in the ideas of Plato wings for his soul, by the aid of which he hoped to attain the contemplation of the God(headD and his meeting on the sea(shore with an aged man who told him that by no human endeavor but only by divine revelation could this blessedness be attained, that the prophets had conveyed this revelation to man, and that their words had been fulfilled Cf the truth of this he assured himself by his own investigationD and the daily life of the Christians and the courage of the martyrs convinced him that the charges against them were unfounded :o he sought to spread the 6nowledge of Christianity as the true philosophy Justin had, li6e others, the idea that the Gree6 philosophers had derived, if not borrowed, the most essential elements of truth found in their teaching from the Cld !estament But at the same time he adopted the :toic doctrine of the Bseminal word,B and so philosophy was to him an operation of the 9ordGin fact, through his identification of the 9ord with Christ, it was brought into immediate connection with him !hus he does not scruple to declare that :ocrates and =eraclitus were Christians &Apol., i #", ii 1,* =is aim, of course, is to emphasi8e the absolute significance of Christ, so that all that ever e<isted of virtue and truth may be referred to him !he old philosophers and law(givers had only a part of the Hogos, while the whole appears in Christ 9hile the gentile peoples, seduced by demons, had deserted the true God for idols, the Jews and :amaritans possessed the revelation given through the prophets and awaited the .essiah !he law, however, while containing commandments intended to promote the true fear of God, had other prescriptions of a purely pedagogic nature, which necessarily ceased when Christ, their end, appearedD of such temporary and merely relative regulations were circumcision, animal sacrifices, the :abath, and the laws as to food !hrough Christ the abiding law of God has been fully proclaimed ;n his character as the teacher of the new doctrine and promulgator of the new law lies the essential nature of his redeeming wor6 !he idea of an economy of grace, of a restoration of the union with God which had been destroyed by sin, is not foreign to him ;t is noteworthy that in the B$ialogueB he no longer spea6s of a Bseed of the 9ordB in every man, and in his non(apologetic wor6s the emphasis is laid upon the redeeming acts of the life of Christ rather than upon the demonstration of the reasonableness and moral value of Christianity, though the fragmentary character of the latter wor6s ma6es it difficult to determine e<actly to what e<tent this is true and how far the teaching of ;renaeus on redemption is derived from him

Justin was confident that his teaching is that of the Church at large =e 6nows of a division among the orthodo< only on the 7uestion of the millennium and on the attitude toward the milder Jewish Christianity, which he personally is willing to tolerate as long as its professors in their turn do not interfere with the liberty of the Gentile convertsD his millenarianism seems to have no connection with Judaism, but he believes firmly in a millennium, and generally in the primitive Christian eschatology 9e change a little our direction at the end of our treatment and discuss about the Hogos in the conception of :aint Justin Justin2s use of the idea of the logos has always attracted attention ;t is probably too much to assume a direct connection with Philo of Ale<andria in this particular !he idea of the Hogos was widely familiar to educated men, and the designation of the :on of God as the Hogos was not new to Christian theology !he significance is clear, however, of the manner in which Justin identifies the historical Christ with the rational force operative in the universe, which leads up to the claim of all truth and virtue for the Christians and to the demonstration of the adoration of Christ, which aroused so much opposition, as the only reasonable attitude ;t is mainly for this justification of the worship of Christ that Justin employs the Hogos(idea, though where he e<plicitly deals with the divinity of the ?edeemer and his relation to the 4ather, he ma6es use of the Cld !estament, not of the Hogos(idea, which thus can not be said to form an essential part of his christology B!here is, and that there is said to be, another God and Hord subject to the .a6er of all things who is also called an Angel, because =e announces to men whatsoever the .a6er of all things, above whom there is no other God, wishes to announce to them ; shall endeavour to persuade you, that =e who is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to .oses, and who is called God, is distinct from =im who made all things, ; mean numerically, not in willA &Dialogue with Trypho, '"* !his te<t is undoubtfully tal6ing about the second person in the trinity, the Hogos !he aim of our project is not only to accomplish a better understanding and interpretation of the @$ialogue with !ryphoA, but also to try a putting into our days as an e<ample for an ecumenical relation Cur presentation is of course just a very short plan for a possible future project, which would be changed according to the new theological e<periences and lectures Besides the wor6s of :aint Justin and mainly @!he $ialogue with !ryphoA, our main secondary bibliography for such a project would firstly consist of0 (@Gree6 and latin authors ),, $ C( 1,,, A $A (Archibald ?obertson, @The Origins of Christianity,1I"3 (Heslie 9illiam Barnard, @Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought, 1I"(A:t Justin .artyrA, 5ncyclopedia of 9orld Biography. Tho son !ale. "##$ %J.C.M. &an 'inden, An early (hristian )hilosopher: Justin Martyr*s Dialogue with Trypho, +,-+