Chapter 2

So that from this Apology alone, though addressed to the heathen, we learn that Justin cordially accepted every supernatural element in Christianity. He thoroughly believed in the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Logos, the miraculous Conception, Birth, Life, Miracles, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. He firmly believed in the predictive element in prophecy, in the atoning virtue of the Death of Christ, in the mysterious inward grace or inward part in each Sacrament, in the heart-cleansing power of the Spirit of God, in the particular providence of God, in the resurrection of the body, in eternal reward and eternal punishment.

Whatever, then, was the source of his knowledge, that knowledge made him intensely dogmatic in his creed, and a firm believer in the supernatural nature of everything in his religion.

The Second Apology is of the same nature as the first. A single short extract or two from it will show how firmly the author held the supernatural:--

"Our doctrines, then, appear to be greater than all human teaching; because Christ, who appeared for our sakes, became the whole rational being, both body, and reason, and soul.... These things our Christ did through His own power. For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine; but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word Who is in every man, and Who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in His own Person when He was made of like passions, and taught these things); not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artizans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a Power of the ineffable Father, and not the mere instrument of human reason." (Apol. II. ch. x.)

The dialogue with Trypho is the record of a lengthy discussion with a Jew for the purpose of converting him to the Christian faith. The assertion of the supernatural is here, if possible, more unreserved than in the First Apology. In order to convert Trypho, Justin cites every prophecy of the Old Testament that can, with the smallest show of reason, be referred to Christ.

Having, first of all, vindicated the Christians from the charge of setting aside the Jewish law or covenant, by an argument evidently derived from the Epistle to the Hebrews, [15:1] and vindicated for Christians the title of the true spiritual Israel, [15:2] he proceeds to the prophetical Scriptures, and transcribes the whole of the prophecy of Isaiah from the fifty-second chapter to the fifty-fourth, and applies it to Christ and His Kingdom. (Dial. ch. xiii.) Shortly after, he applies to the second Advent of Christ the prophecy of Daniel respecting the Son of Man, brought before the Ancient of Days. (Ch. xxxi.) Then he notices and refutes certain destructive interpretations of prophecies which have been derived from the unbelieving Jews by our modern rationalists, as that Psalm cx. is spoken of Hezekiah, and Psalm lxxii. of Solomon.

Then he proceeds to prove that Christ is both God and Lord of Hosts; and he first cites Psalm xxiv., and then Psalms xlvi., xcviii., and xlv. (Ch. xxxvi., xxxvii., xxxviii.)

Then, after returning to the Mosaic law, and proving that certain points in its ritual wore fulfilled in the Christian system (as the oblation of fine flour in the Eucharist--ch. xli.), he concludes this part of his argument with the assertion that the Mosaic law had an end in Christ:--

"In short, sirs," said I, "by enumerating all the other appointments of Moses, I can demonstrate that they were types, and symbols, and declarations of those things which would happen to Christ, of those who, it was foreknown, were to believe in Him, and of those things which would also be done by Christ Himself." (Ch. xlii.)

Then he again proves that this Christ was to be, and was, born of a virgin; and takes occasion to show that the virgin mentioned in Isaiah vii. was not a young married woman, as rationalists in Germany and among ourselves have learnt from the unbelieving Jews. (Ch. xliii.)

To go over more of Justin's argument would be beside my purpose, which is at present simply to show how very firmly his faith embraced the supernatural.

I shall mention one more application of prophecy. When Trypho asks that Justin should resume the discourse, and show that the Spirit of prophecy admits another God besides the Maker of all things, [17:1] Justin accepts his challenge, and commences with the appearance of the three angels to Abraham, and devotes much space and labour to a sifting discussion of the meaning of this place. The conclusion is thus expressed:--

"And now have you not perceived, my friends, that one of the three, Who is both God and Lord, and ministers to Him Who is [remains] in the heavens, is Lord of the two angels? For when [the angels] proceeded to Sodom He remained behind, and communed with Abraham in the words recorded by Moses; and when He departed after the conversation Abraham went back to his place. And when He came [to Sodom] the two angels no longer converse with Lot, but Himself, as the Scripture makes evident; and He is the Lord Who received commission from the Lord Who [remains] in the heavens, i.e. the Maker of all things, to inflict upon Sodom and Gomorrah the [judgments] which the Scripture describes in these terms: 'The Lord rained upon Sodom sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.'" (Ch. lvi.)

It is clear from all this that Justin Martyr looked upon prophecy as a supernatural gift, bestowed upon men in order to prepare them to receive that Christ whom God would send. Instead of regarding it as the natural surmising of far-seeing men who, from their experience of the past, and from their knowledge of human nature, could in some sort guess what course events are likely to take, he regarded it as a Divine influence emanating from Him Who knows the future as perfectly as He knows the past, and for His own purposes revealing events, and in many cases what we should call _trifling_ events, which would be wholly out of the power of man to guess or even to imagine.

I am not, of course, concerned to show that Justin was right in his views of prophecy; all I am concerned to show is, that Justin regarded prophecy as the highest of supernatural gifts.

Such, then, was the view of Justin respecting Christ and the Religion He established. Christ, the highest of supernatural beings, His Advent foretold by men with supernatural gifts to make known the future, coming to us in the highest of supernatural ways, and establishing a supernatural kingdom for bringing about such supernatural ends as the reconciliation of all men to God by His Sacrifice, the Resurrection of the body, and the subjugation of the wills of all men to the Will of God.

SECTION IV.

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.--THE SOURCES OF HIS KNOWLEDGE RESPECTING THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.

The question now arises, and I beg the reader to remember that it is the question on which the author of "Supernatural Religion" stakes all,--From what source did Justin derive this supernatural view of Christianity?

With respect to the Incarnation, Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, he evidently derives it from certain documents which he repeatedly cites, as "The Memoirs of the Apostles" ([Greek: Apomnêmoneumata tôn Apostolôn]). These are the documents which he mentions as being read, along with the Prophets, at the meetings of Christians.

On one occasion, when he is seemingly referring to the [bloody] sweat of our Lord, which is mentioned only in St. Luke, who is not an Apostle, he designates these writings as the "Memoirs which were drawn up by the Apostles _and those who followed them_." [19:1] Again, on another occasion, he seems to indicate specially the Gospel of St. Mark as being the "Memoirs of Peter." It is a well-known fact that all ecclesiastical tradition, almost with one voice, has handed down that St. Mark wrote his Gospel under the superintendence, if not at the dictation, of St. Peter; and when Justin has occasion to mention that our Lord gave the name of Boanerges to the sons of Zebedee, an incident mentioned only by St. Mark, he seems at least to indicate the Gospel of St. Mark as being specially connected with St. Peter as his Memoirs when he writes: [20:1]--

"And when it is said that he changed the name of one of the Apostles to Peter; and when it is written in his Memoirs that this so happened, as well as that He changed the names of two other brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means 'sons of thunder;' this was an announcement," &c. (Ch. cvi.)

With the exception of these two apparent cases, Justin never distinguishes one Memoir from another. He never mentions the author or authors of the Memoirs by name, and for this reason--that the three undoubted treatises of his which have come down to us are all written for those outside the pale of the Christian Church. It would have been worse than useless, in writing for such persons, to distinguish between Evangelist and Evangelist. So far as "those without" were concerned, the Evangelists gave the same view of Christ and His work; and to have quoted first one and then another by name would have been mischievous, as indicating differences when the testimony of all that could be called memoirs was, in point of fact, one and the same.

According to the author of "Supernatural Religion" Justin ten times designates the source of his quotations as the "Memoirs of the Apostles," and five times as simply the "Memoirs."

Now the issue which the writer of "Supernatural Religion" raises is this: "Were these Memoirs our present four Gospels, or were they some older Gospel or Gospels?" to which we may add another: "Did Justin quote any other lost Gospel besides our four?"

* * * * *

I shall now give some instances of the use which Justin makes of the writings which he calls "Memoirs," and this will enable the reader in great measure to judge for himself.

First of all, then, I give one or two extracts from Justin's account of our Lord's Nativity. Let the reader remember that, with respect to the first of these, the account is not introduced in order to give Trypho an account of our Lord's Birth, but to assure him that a certain prophecy, as it is worded in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah--viz., "He shall take the powers of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria," was fulfilled in Christ. And indeed almost every incident which Justin takes notice of he relates as a fulfilment of some prophecy or other. Trifling or comparatively trifling incidents in our Lord's Life are noticed at great length, because they are supposed to be the fulfilment of some prophecy; and what we should consider more important events are passed over in silence, because they do not seem to fulfil any prediction.

The first extract from Justin, then, shall be the following:--

"Now this King Herod, at the time when the Magi came to him from Arabia, and said they knew from a star which appeared in the heavens that a King had been born in your country, and that they had come to worship Him, learned from the Elders of your people, that it was thus written regarding Bethlehem in the Prophet: 'And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art by no means least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall go forth the leader, who shall feed my people.' Accordingly, the Magi from Arabia came to Bethlehem, and worshipped the child, and presented him with gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh; but returned not to Herod, being warned in a revelation after worshipping the child in Bethlehem. And Joseph, the spouse of Mary, who wished at first to put away his betrothed Mary, supposing her to be pregnant by intercourse with a man, _i.e._ from fornication, was commanded in a vision not to put away his wife; and the angel who appeared to him told him that what is in her womb is of the Holy Ghost. Then he was afraid and did not put her away, but on the occasion of the first census which was taken in Judea under Cyrenius, he went up from Nazareth, where he lived, to Bethlehem, to which he belonged, to be enrolled; for his family was of the tribe of Judah, which then inhabited that region. Then, along with Mary, he is ordered to proceed into Egypt, and remain there with the Child, until another revelation warn them to return to Judea. But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia, found Him. 'I have repeated to you,' I continued, 'what Isaiah foretold about the sign which foreshadowed the cave; but, for the sake of those which have come with us to-day, I shall again remind you of the passage.' Then I repeated the passage from Isaiah which I have already written, adding that, by means of those words, those who presided over the mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that in a place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by him. 'So Herod, when the Magi from Arabia did not return to him, as he had asked them to do, but had departed by another way to their own country, according to the commands laid upon them; and when Joseph, with Mary and the Child, had now gone into Egypt, as it was revealed to them to do; as he did not know the Child whom the Magi had gone to worship, ordered simply the whole of the children then in Bethlehem to be massacred. And Jeremiah prophesied that this would happen, speaking by the Holy Ghost thus: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and much wailing, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.'" (Dial. ch. lxxviii.)

Now any unprejudiced reader, on examining this account, would instantly say that Justin had derived every word of it from the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, but that, instead of quoting the exact words of either Evangelist, he would say that he (Justin) "reproduced" them. He reproduced the narrative of the Nativity as it is found in each of these two Gospels. He first reproduces the narrative in St. Matthew in somewhat more colloquial phrase than the Evangelist used, interspersing with it remarks of his own; and in order to account for the Birth of Christ in Bethlehem he brings in from St. Luke the matter of the census, (not with historical accuracy but) sufficiently to show that he was acquainted with the beginning of Luke ii.; and in order to account for the fact that Christ was not born in the inn, but in a more sordid place (whether stable or cave matters not, for if it was a cave it was a cave used as a stable, for there was a "manger" in it), he reproduces Luke ii. 6-7.

Justin then, in a single consecutive narrative, expressed much in his own words, gives the whole account, so far as it was a fulfilment of prophecy, made up from two narratives which have come down to us in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in these only. It would have been absurd for him to have done otherwise, as he might have done if he had anticipated the carpings of nineteenth century critics, and assumed that Trypho, an unconverted Jew, had a New Testament in his hand with which he was so familiar that he could be referred to first one narrative and then the other, in order to test the correctness of Justin's quotations.

Against all this the author of "Supernatural Religion" brings forward a number of trifling disagreements as proofs that Justin need not have quoted one of the Evangelists--probably did not--indeed, may not have ever seen our synoptics, or heard of their existence. But the reader will observe that he has given the same history as we find in the two synoptics which have given an account of the Nativity, and he apparently knew of no other account of the matter.

We are reminded that there were numerous apocryphal Gospels then in use in the Church, and that Justin might have derived his matter from these; but, if so, how is it that he discards all the lying legends with which those Gospels team, and, with the solitary exception of the mention of the cave, confines himself to the circumstances of the synoptic narrative.

The next place respecting the Nativity shall be one from ch. c.:--

"But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her; wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God: and she replied, 'Be it unto me according to Thy word.'"

Here both the words of the angel and the answer of the virgin are almost identical with the words in St. Luke's Gospel; Justin, however, putting his account into the oblique narrative.

We will put the two side by side that the reader may compare them.

[GREEK TABLE]

Pistin de kai charan labousa | Maria hê parthenos euangelizomenou | autê Gabriêl angelou, hoti pneuma | Pneuma hagion epeleusetai epi kyriou ep' autên epeleusetai, | se, kai dynamis hypsistou kai dunamis hypsistou episkiasei | episkiasei soi, dio kai to gennômenon autên, dio kai to gennômenon | hagion klêthêsetai Hyios Theou. ex autês hagion estin Hyios Theou, | * * * * * apekrinato, Genoito moi kata to | Genoito moi kaia to rhêma sou. rhêma sou. |

Now of these words, _as existing in St. Luke_, the author of "Supernatural Religion" takes no notice. Was he, then, acquainted with the fact that Justin's words _in this place_ so closely correspond with St. Luke's? We cannot say. We only know that he calls his readers' particular attention to a supposed citation of the previous words of the angel Gabriel, cited in another place:--

"Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Ghost, and shalt bear a Son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest, and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." (Apol. I. ch. xxxiii.)

The ordinary unprejudiced reader would say that Justin here reproduces St. Matthew and St. Luke, weaving into St. Luke's narrative the words of the angel to St. Joseph; but our author will not allow this for a moment. He insists that Justin knew nothing, or need have known nothing, of St. Luke. He shows that the words of the angel, "He shall save his people," &c., which seem to be introduced from St. Matthew, "are not accidentally inserted in this place, for we find that they are joined in the same manner to the address of the angel to Mary in the Protevangelium of St. James."

But how about those words which succeed them in answer to the question of the Virgin, "How shall these things be?" I mean those quoted in the "Dialogue" beginning "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee," &c. If ever one author quotes another, Justin in this place quotes St. Luke. They cannot be taken from the Protevangelium, because the corresponding words in the Protevangelium are very different from those in St. Luke; and the only real difference between Justin's quotation and St. Luke is that St. Luke reads, "shall be called the Son of God;" whereas Justin has "is the Son of God." Now in this Justin differs from the Protevangelium, which reads, "Shall be called the Son of the Highest;" so the probability is still more increased that in the quotation from the "Dialogue" he did not quote the Protevangelium, and did quote St. Luke. However, we will make the author a present of these words, because we want to assume for a moment the truth of his conclusion, which he thus expresses:--

"Justin's divergencies from the Protevangelium prevent our supposing that, in its present form, it could have been the actual source of his quotations; but the wide differences which exist between the extant MSS. of the Protevangelium show that even the most ancient does not present it in its original form. It is much more probable that Justin had before him a still older work, to which both the Protevangelium and the third Gospel were indebted." ("Supernatural Religion," vol. i. p. 306.)

Assuming, then, the correctness of this, Justin had a still older Gospel than that of St. Luke; and we shall hereafter show that St. Luke's Gospel was used in all parts of the world in Justin's day, and long before it. Now Justin himself lived only 100 years after the Resurrection; and this is no very great age for the copy of a book, still less for the book itself, of which any one may convince himself by a glance around his library. We may depend upon it that Justin would have used the oldest sources of information. A book so old in Justin's days may have been published at the outset of Christianity. The author himself surmises that it may have been the work of one of St. Luke's [Greek: polloi]. Anyhow it is an older and therefore, according to the writer's own line of argument all through his book, a more reliable witness to the things of Christ, and its witness is to the supernatural in His Birth. Are we, then, able to form any conjecture as to the name of this most ancient Gospel? Yes. The author of "Supernatural Religion" identifies it with the lost Gospel to the Hebrews, in the words:--

"Much more probably, however, Justin quotes from the more ancient source from which the Protevangelium and perhaps St. Luke drew their narrative. There can be little doubt that the Gospel according to the Hebrews contained an account of the birth in Bethelehem, and as it is, at least, certain that Justin quotes other particulars from it, there is fair reason to believe that he likewise found this fact [28:1] in that work." (Vol. ii. p. 313.)

If, then, this be the Gospel from which Justin derived his account of the Nativity, it seems to have contained all the facts for which we have now to look into St. Matthew and St. Luke. It combined the testimonies of both Evangelists to the supernatural Birth of Jesus.

SECTION V.

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.--HIS TESTIMONY RESPECTING THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST.

The next extract from Justin which I shall give is one describing our Lord's Baptism. This account, like almost every other given in the dialogue with Trypho, is mentioned by him, not so much for its own sake, but because it gave him opportunity to show the fulfilment, or supposed fulfilment, of a prophecy--in this case the prophecy of Isaiah that the "Spirit of the Lord should rest upon Him."