Reflections on the Faith of Justin Martyr A new week means a new Church Father. I’ve been blessed to be able to keep up with such a pattern thus far. I hope it continues. This week, I read through the First and Second Apologies of Justin Martyr. While I found plenty of material to write about in the first apology, I didn’t see as much in the second, so this article will only contain his First Apology. It’s rather lengthy, but it was a good read. I did find myself thinking that this Early Church Father — this brother in Christ — seems to have a faith that while built upon the same foundations as mine contains elements entirely different from what I’ve come to believe as biblical truth. This, I’ve been seeing, is a pattern as I read the earliest of the Fathers. It is something that I find rather disturbing, as I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I have a better knowledge of the truth than did the disciples of the first few Christian generations. To say that my mind has been assaulted by cognitive dissonance lately would be a tremendous understatement. I continue daily to wrestle with the differences between my Protestant convictions and the seemingly un-Protestant nature of the Fathers’ faith. That being said, there’s a number of categories into which I was able to place St. Justin’s Apology, and I’ll go through them each in turn.
An Unfamiliar Brother
An Unfamiliar Brother
An Unfamiliar Brother
Reflections on the Faith of Justin Martyr A new week means a new Church Father. I’ve been blessed to be able to keep up with such a pattern thus far. I hope it continues. This week, I read through the First and Second Apologies of Justin Martyr. While I found plenty of material to write about in the first apology, I didn’t see as much in the second, so this article will only contain his First Apology. It’s rather lengthy, but it was a good read. I did find myself thinking that this Early Church Father — this brother in Christ — seems to have a faith that while built upon the same foundations as mine contains elements entirely different from what I’ve come to believe as biblical truth. This, I’ve been seeing, is a pattern as I read the earliest of the Fathers. It is something that I find rather disturbing, as I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I have a better knowledge of the truth than did the disciples of the first few Christian generations. To say that my mind has been assaulted by cognitive dissonance lately would be a tremendous understatement. I continue daily to wrestle with the differences between my Protestant convictions and the seemingly un-Protestant nature of the Fathers’ faith. That being said, there’s a number of categories into which I was able to place St. Justin’s Apology, and I’ll go through them each in turn.