We did it first
Month: January 2012
Who’s your daddy? St. Justin Martyr
In the JP2 Group we’re doing a mini-series on Christian worship in the Early Church. It is for this reason that I recently posted several blog entries about St. Justin Martyr, an Early Church Father and one of the first great Christian apologists.
However, I realized as I was finishing up yesterday’s post that I haven’t actually written an introductory post about this great man. I had done this previously when we were studying St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp of Smyrna. So today I’m going to remedy this, providing a little bit of information about St. Justin’s life.
Who was this man whose writings we’ve been studying?
Searching For Truth
What we know about St. Justin mainly comes from his own writings. He was born in about AD 103 to Pagan parents in Flavia Neapolis, modern day Nablus on the West Bank. He had a great love of philosophy and studied various philosophical systems:
“…I surrendered myself to a Stoic Philosopher…but when I had not acquired any further knowledge of God (for he did not know himself, and said such instruction was unnecessary)…I left him…
A Peripatetic Philosopher… asked me for money. For this reason I left him, believing him to be no philosopher at all….
I came to a Pythagorean Philosopher, very celebrated – a man who thought much of his own wisdom… He said, ‘What then? Are you acquainted with music, astronomy, and geometry?’ Having commended many of these branches of learning, and telling me that they were necessary, he dismissed me.
In my helpless condition it occurred to me to have a meeting with the Platonists, for their fame was great. I thereupon spent as much of my time as possible with one who had lately settled in our city…and I progressed, and made the greatest improvements daily. And the perception of immaterial things quite overpowered me, and the contemplation of ideas furnished my mind with wings, so that in a little while I supposed that I had become wise; and such was my stupidity, I expected forthwith to look upon God, for this is the end of Plato’s philosophy.
– Dialogue With Trypho, Chapter 2
Jesus = Religion
The following question is asked by the artist on the YouTube video “Why I hate religion but love Jesus”:
“What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?”
Hmmm…well, I guess I’d probably tut and then roll my eyes.
Next, I think I’d open my Bible to Matthew’s Gospel:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” – Matthew 5:16-18
I think I then might flip over to the Epistle of St. James:
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world – James 1:27
Friday Frivolity: Weirdo!
My friend Ashley is entering the convent tomorrow, so to mark the occasion, here’s a cartoon from Sword of Peter:
Justin Time!
Yesterday I identified some of the common features recognizable by Catholics in St. Justin’s description of the Second Century liturgy. There were two other comments I wanted to make about the extract we studied last night in the JP2 Group from Justin’s First Apology.
Accept no imitations
It is popular these days to assert that Christianity just stole ideas from all the other religions around it. It is fortuitous, therefore, that we have the testimony of Justin asserting that it was the Mithras cult which imitated the Christian Eucharist and not the other way around:
“This the wicked devils have imitated, commanding the same thing to be done in the mysteries of Mithras. There, in the mystic rites of initiation, bread and a cup of water are placed amid certain incantations. This you already know or can discover”
Now, whether you choose to believe Justin’s assertion is another matter, but it is significant that we have a Christian writing to a Pagan Emperor trying to set the record straight.
This all sounds so familiar…
Yesterday I published a blog entry which contained the text which we are going to study tonight at the JP2 Group. We’re going to read this document as part of our three-week series looking at worship in the Early Church.
The text I posted yesterday was a substantial extract from a work by Justin Martyr. St. Justin was a Christian in the 2nd Century and he wrote an apologetic work addressed to the Emperor known as his First Apology. In this ancient document he provides a defense of the Christian faith, but he also describes in some detail the Christian worship of his era.
Justin wrote his First Apology in around AD 150 and, despite the nascent state of the Church at this time, the liturgy has a clear structure. Catholics and all those who attend “liturgical” churches should be able to recognize many things in Justin’s description which are present in their own worship:
1. Sunday Worship
Groups such as the Seventh Day Adventists say that Christians should worship on the Sabbath (Saturday), but it’s clear from St. Justin that in the Second Century Christian worship was on Sunday:
“And on the day called ‘Sunday’, all who live in cities or in the countryside gather… We hold our assembly on Sunday because it is the first day, on which God brought forth the world from darkness and matter. On the same day, Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead”
Justin Martyr’s Worship
For the next three weeks in the JP2 Group we’re going to be looking at the worship in the Early Church.
The following text is an extract from the writing of Justin Martyr (c AD 100 – 165). The document is known as his First Apology, which was written to the Emperor Antionius Pius around AD 150-155. Various English translations were used in the rendering of this extract.
We will be studying this text as a group tomorrow. At the weekend I’ll do another post about this text, together with a little bit of commentary…
Chapter 65: Baptism & Eucharist
After we have washed someone who has been convinced and has accepted our teaching, we bring him to the place where those who are called “brethren” are assembled. Together, then, we offer hearty prayers: for ourselves, for the illuminated person, and for all others in every place. We pray that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation.
Having ended the prayers, we greet one another with a kiss. Then bread and a cup of wine mixed with water are brought to the president of the brethren. Taking them, he gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and he offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things.
And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying “Amen”, the Hebrew for “so be it”. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called “deacons” give to each person present a portion of the bread and the wine mixed with water, over which the thanksgiving was pronounced. To those who are absent, they carry away a portion.