Christian Life and Worship

At the center of the First Apology Justin sets a portrait of how Christians actually live — the moral transformation worked in them by the teaching of Christ, whose own words he quotes at length on chastity, love of enemies, almsgiving, truthfulness without oaths, and obedience to lawful authority. This ethical apologetic is the human face of his legal argument: he answers the charge that Christians are criminals by simply describing what they are. This file treats that portrait of Christian life and the conduct that frames the liturgical chapters of Section 04.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

“We Who Once Delighted in Vice”

Justin’s most powerful answer to the slander against Christians is not an argument but a description of change. Having once been like their accusers, he says, Christians have been transformed: “We who formerly delighted in fornication, but now embrace chastity alone; we who formerly used magical arts, dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to every one in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavour to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live conformably to the good precepts of Christ” (First Apology 14; ANF 1). The conversion of life is offered as evidence: a teaching that turns the licentious chaste, the grasping generous, and the violent peaceable cannot be the criminal cult of rumor. The transformed community is itself the apology.

Justin and the Text of the Gospels

Justin’s long quotation of the sayings of Jesus in these chapters is, incidentally, one of the most valuable early witnesses to the text and circulation of the Gospels in the mid-second century. He calls them “the memoirs of the apostles” (apomnēmoneumata tōn apostolōn) and says elsewhere that these are “called Gospels” and were composed by the apostles and those who followed them — placing the written Gospels at the center of Christian memory by around 150 (First Apology 66–67; ANF 1). His manner of quoting is distinctive: the sayings are often harmonized, drawn together from parallel passages (especially Matthew and Luke) into a single conflated form, which has led scholars to ask whether Justin used a harmony of the Gospels, a collection of the Lord’s sayings, or simply quoted from memory in the loose manner of his age. His pupil Tatian would shortly produce exactly such a harmony, the Diatessaron (see The School at Rome), which may reflect a tendency already present in the master. Whatever the explanation, Justin’s quotations show that by his time the words of Jesus, drawn from the written Gospels, were the recognized moral charter of the Christian community — which is precisely how he deploys them here, as the source and warrant of the transformed Christian life he is describing.

The Words of Christ

To show the source of this change, Justin does something striking for so early a writer: he quotes the moral teaching of Jesus directly and at length, weaving together sayings drawn chiefly from the Sermon on the Mount and other Gospel material (First Apology 15–17; ANF 1). He cites Christ on chastity of the heart — that whoever looks with lust has already committed adultery — and on the radical excision of occasions of sin (First Apology 15). He cites the commands to love enemies, to bless those who curse, to give to all who ask, and to lay up treasure in heaven rather than on earth (First Apology 15–16). He cites the demand for deeds and not words only — “Not every one who saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father” (First Apology 16; ANF 1). These chapters are, incidentally, among the earliest external witnesses to the text of the Gospel sayings, and Justin’s manner of quoting them — often harmonized, as if from a unified collection of the Lord’s words — is of great interest for the history of the Gospel text (Barnard, Justin Martyr, ch. 5; Minns & Parvis, Apologies, pp. 18–21).

Oaths, Truthfulness, and the Coin of Caesar

Justin draws out two practical consequences that bear directly on the Christian’s relation to the state. First, on oaths: Christians do not swear, because Christ forbade it, commanding instead simple truthfulness — “Swear not at all; but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (First Apology 16; ANF 1). The Christian’s word is to be reliable without the prop of an oath, which makes him, Justin implies, more trustworthy than the oath-bound pagan, not less. Second, on civic obligation: Justin cites the Lord’s answer about the tribute coin — “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (First Apology 17; ANF 1) — and builds on it the Christian’s double loyalty. Christians pay their taxes “readily and everywhere” and honor the emperor as the appointed ruler, while reserving worship for God alone; they pray for the sovereign even as they refuse to call him a god (First Apology 17; ANF 1). This is the seed of the long Christian doctrine of the two loyalties: scrupulous obedience to the state in all that is Caesar’s, scrupulous refusal in the one thing that is God’s.

A Reasonable and Sober People

The cumulative effect of Justin’s portrait is to present Christians as the most rational and sober of the empire’s inhabitants — people governed not by passion or fear of human punishment but by the conviction that God sees all and will judge all. Their morality is not a code imposed from without but the fruit of a teaching received and a life changed; their refusal of the gods is not impiety but the worship of the true God in spirit; their hope is not sedition but a kingdom with God (First Apology 11–12; ANF 1). The very ordinariness and decency of the Christian life is, for Justin, the unanswerable rebuttal of the charges, and the natural prelude to the description of Christian worship that crowns the work.

Wealth, Almsgiving, and the Common Life

Among the most striking features of Justin’s portrait is the Christian transformation of attitudes toward wealth. Where Christians once “valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions,” they now “bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to every one in need” (First Apology 14; ANF 1). This is not a theory of property but a description of practice, and it is borne out by the liturgical chapters, where Justin describes the weekly collection deposited with the President for the relief of orphans, widows, the sick, prisoners, strangers, and “all who are in need” (First Apology 67; see The Earliest Liturgical Witness). The care of the poor is, for Justin, not an optional charity bolted onto Christian worship but woven into it — the Sunday Eucharist and the Sunday collection are a single act, the offering to God and the offering to the needy belonging together. This binding of worship to mercy, of the altar to the care of the poor, is one of the most characteristic and enduring features of the Christian life that Justin describes, and it answered directly the pagan suspicion that the Christian assemblies were secret cabals: they were, on the contrary, the most openly charitable bodies in the city.

The Hope That Shapes the Life

Underlying the whole moral portrait is a particular hope, and Justin is careful to name it, because it explains the conduct. Christians live as they do because they believe in the resurrection of the body, the judgment of all human deeds, and the rewards and punishments of the age to come — and because they hold that nothing escapes the eye of God (First Apology 11–12, 18–20; ANF 1). The man who truly believes he will give account for every deed before an all-seeing Judge has a motive for virtue stronger than any human law can supply, for human law can be evaded and human courts deceived, but God cannot. Justin presses this on the emperor as a civic argument: such a people, governed by the fear of God rather than the fear of the magistrate, are the most reliable of subjects, honest when no one is watching, peaceable when they could rebel, truthful without the compulsion of an oath (First Apology 12, 17; ANF 1). The Christian ethic, in Justin’s presentation, is not a free-floating moralism but the visible fruit of a definite faith about God, judgment, and the world to come — which is why the portrait of Christian life leads so naturally to the description of Christian worship and belief that crowns the work.

From Conduct to Worship

It is no accident that Justin moves from this account of Christian conduct directly to the account of Christian initiation and worship that closes the First Apology (chapters 61, 65–67). Having shown how Christians live, he shows how they are made Christians and how they assemble — the baptism that washes and regenerates, and the Sunday synaxis at which they hear the Scriptures, pray, and share the Eucharist. The moral portrait of this file and the liturgical description that follows are a single apologetic gesture: this is what we are, and this is what we do. Because of their unique value as the earliest detailed description of Christian baptism and the Eucharist, those closing chapters are treated on their own (see The Earliest Liturgical Witness). The point to carry forward is that Justin presents worship not as an esoteric mystery to be hidden but as the open, intelligible practice of a transformed people — which is exactly why he was willing to describe it to an emperor.

References

Justin, First Apology 11–17. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
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.