Justin Martyr on the Resurrection

For a while I'm going to cover a few of the significant players in the early church--people who are respected and acknowledged to this day by orthodox Christians (whether Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox) as the early church fathers. One of these was Justin Martyr, the second century apologist who eventually died for the faith.

Justin Martyr told of his life, how he was raised a pagan and studied under various philosophers, a Stoic, a Pythagorean and a Platonist. None of them satisfied him, and in the end he was won over to the church when he realized that the Christians he knew of, even those who didn't know anything about the great wisdom of the philosophers, were steadfast and strong in the face of death and suffering under Roman persecutions. This convinced him that Christianity was real, and he became Christian.

His significance in history is that he is the most obvious early example of a person who brought Greek philosophical thinking into Christian theology. And this, of course, is evidence of the wide and growing chasm between Christians and Jews, who by the second century are almost unknown in Christian history--the vast majority of Christians are now gentile, and Christianity has become markedly distinct from its Jewish roots.

So in what ways did Justin illustrate this further hellenization of Christianity? I think one excellent example is his treatise, On The Resurrection. It survives only in fragments, but the surviving portion is quite distinctively hellenistic in its line of thinking.

In this document Justin argues as Paul did, that the body must rise from the dead--a simple rejoining of a soul or spirit with God in heaven is insufficient to complete the ministry and purpose of Christ on earth, and Justin invokes Plato and other philosophers in some of his proofs of this assertion. He also addresses possible objections to the bodily resurrection of the saints of God. A quick summary of some of his main points in the treatise are:

1. How can a decayed body rise? Justin invokes Plato, the Stoics, and the Epicureans to show that even pagans agree that a body could in theory be reassembled and resurrected--they just didn't necessasrily realize it. Plato taught that the universe is matter and God. Thus, God can re-assemble God's matter. Epicurus taught that matter is atoms and the void. Atoms are basically building blocks, so God could gather the scattered blocks and reassemble them. Stoics taught that matter is earth, air, fire and water. Again, God can reassemble those components and reform a decayed body. End of discussion--the bodily resurrection is congruent with science.

2. Will the whole body be resurrected, every part? Yes. However, while sexual organs will exist, there will be no sex and no procreation. What's the point then? Well, Jesus had no sex, and there are people who naturally do not procreate (are infertile or who do not practice sexual intercourse for other reasons), and since Jesus said there'd be no marriage or giving in marriage, then it is clear that there will be some parts of the body that exist, but simply are not used. This argument makes little sense to me, but I think it may illustrate what an ancient thinker might have felt was a very logical line of thinking.

3. What about broken bodies, people with deformities or blind people? Will people be blind in heaven? Deformities will be healed. There will be no blind or maim or halt in heaven. Jesus healed on earth to demonstrate this simple fact that in the resurrection everyone will be healed of any illnesses or deformities.

4. Why would God raise the body? God created man in God's image, and in so doing God created us with a body. Justin doesn't go so far as to say God himself has a body, however--the point is merely that the body was an integral part of what comprises an image of God. This is evidence that the body is precious to God, important to God, and that is an indication that the body will be raised.

5. Further, Justin postulates that the body sins, and Jesus died for our sins. Therefore Jesus must have died for the sake of the body, and for that reason the body must be resurrected. He's careful to point out that sin is a collusion between both body and soul, and uses that to firm up his conclusion that both have sinned, both must be saved, therefore both will rise.

6. And of course he invokes the bodily resurrection of Christ as the foremost of his proofs that as Christ's body rose, so shall ours.


All of this is interesting in that it illustrates some of ways people thought in ancient times, how they approached logic and evidence, and what arguments they felt were most persuasive. Justin seems to have thought that he had arrived at a conclusive and final proof that yes, our bodies will be re-assembled at the end of time, and restored to God who made us, and that any and all objections to this have been answered satisfactorily.

This work was one of Justin's less well-known writings. His most important writing was no doubt the First and Second Apologies, and the Dialogue with Trypho, which is an argument with a Jew in the form of a classical dialogue, somewhat similar in style to the dialogues of Plato. I recommend you check these out at this website, EarlyChristianWritings.com.

-Jay-