03 — The First Apology
Justin’s First Apology, addressed around 155 to the emperor Antoninus Pius and his adopted sons, is the most important and best-organized of the second-century defenses of Christianity: a reasoned plea that Christians be judged by their conduct and not condemned for the mere name, a refutation of the charges of atheism and immorality, the great argument from fulfilled prophecy, and — uniquely — a deliberate, open description of how Christians actually live and worship. These files treat the work as a defense and as a portrait of the Christian community.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
The First Apology is the centerpiece of Justin’s surviving work and one of the founding documents of Christian apologetics. It is cast as a legal petition to the highest authority in the empire, arguing that the persecution of Christians is unjust by Rome’s own standards — that they are punished for a name without a crime — and it backs that argument with a positive exposition of Christian belief, ethics, and practice designed to show that there is nothing in the faith to fear. Its closing chapters, describing baptism and the Sunday Eucharist, are treated separately in Section 04 because of their unique value; this section treats the defense as a whole and the picture of Christian life it paints.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Defense to Antoninus | The First Apology (c. 155) addressed to Antoninus Pius; the legal and moral defense against persecution; the demand for trial by conduct; the rebuttal of atheism and immorality; the argument from prophecy. |
| Christian Life and Worship | The portrait of the Christian community: ethical transformation, the teaching of Christ, attitudes to wealth, oaths, and the state — the moral apologetic that frames the liturgical chapters. |
See Also
- The Earliest Liturgical Witness — the closing chapters treated in their own section
- The Shorter Apology — the companion Second Apology
- The Logos Spermatikos — the theology that underlies the defense
- The Divine Liturgy — the worship the Apology describes
References
- Justin, First Apology. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1; and Minns & Parvis, Apologies (OECT, 2009).
- Barnard, L. W. Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
- Minns, Denis, and Paul Parvis. Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.