The Works of Justin

Justin has left us a great many monuments of a mind trained in learning and devoted to divine things, full of every kind of profit. To these we will send the studious, noting for their use the ones that have come to our knowledge. There is a discourse of his in defense of our teachings, addressed to Antoninus, called the Pious, to his sons, and to the Roman senate. Another contains a second defense of our faith, which he made to the successor of that emperor, who bore the same name, Antoninus Verus, whose times we are now describing. [a] There is another, Against the Greeks, in which he argues at length on most of the questions in dispute between us and the Greek philosophers, and discusses the nature of the demons. There is no pressing need to set any of it out now. [c] Another work of his against the Greeks has also come down to us, which he entitled Refutation; and besides these another, On the Sole Rule of God, which he establishes not only from our Scriptures but also from the books of the Greeks. [d] Besides these there is a work entitled The Psalmist, and another, a school treatise On the Soul, in which he puts forward various questions about the problem under discussion and sets out the opinions of the Greek philosophers, promising to speak against them and to give his own view in another work.

He also composed a dialogue against the Jews, which he held in the city of Ephesus with Trypho, the most distinguished of the Hebrews of that day. In it he shows how the grace of God urged him on to the teaching of the faith, how earnestly he had pursued the studies of philosophy before that, and how ardent a search he had made for the truth. [e] In the same work he records of the Jews that they had laid a plot against the teaching of Christ, putting this very charge to Trypho: “Not only did you not repent of the evil you had done, but you then chose picked men and sent them out from Jerusalem into all the land, saying that a godless heresy of the Christians had appeared, and repeating the things that all who do not know us say against us. So you are the cause of wrongdoing not only to yourselves but simply to all other people as well.” [f] He writes too that even down to his own time prophetic gifts shone out in the Church. He mentions the Revelation of John, saying plainly that it was the apostle’s. He also cites certain prophetic passages, charging Trypho that the Jews had cut them out of the Scripture. A great many other works of his are still in the hands of many of the brothers. [g]

The man’s writings were thought so worthy of study even by the ancients that Irenaeus quotes his words. In the fourth book of his work Against Heresies he says this: “And Justin rightly says in his treatise against Marcion: ‘I would not have believed the Lord himself, if he had proclaimed another God besides the Creator.’” And in the fifth book of the same work he says: “And Justin rightly said that before the Lord’s coming Satan never dared to blaspheme God, since he did not yet know his condemnation.” [h] I have thought it necessary to say this to urge the studious to take up his writings, too, with diligence. So much for him.