Judged by a Name

To the Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Caesar; to his son Verissimus the Philosopher; to Lucius, by birth the son of Caesar the Philosopher and by adoption the son of Pius, a lover of learning; to the sacred Senate; and to the whole people of Rome — on behalf of people of every race who are unjustly hated and abused: I, Justin, son of Priscus, son of Bacchius, from Flavia Neapolis in Syria Palaestina, myself one of them, have drawn up this address and petition. [a]

Reason tells those who are truly pious and truly philosophers to honor and love only what is true, and to refuse to follow the opinions of the ancients when those opinions are worthless. Sound reason does not merely direct us not to follow people who did or taught anything unjust; the lover of truth must choose, by every means and ahead of his own life, to say and do what is right, even if death is the threat. [c]

Now you are called pious and philosophers, guardians of justice and lovers of learning — you hear it said everywhere. Whether you really are such will be shown. We have not come to flatter you with this writing, nor to speak so as to please you, but to demand that you reach your verdict by exact and searching reason: not held fast by prejudice, or by the wish to please superstitious people, or by unreasoning impulse and an evil rumor that has held the field a long time, and so cast your vote against yourselves. As for us, we reckon that no one can do us any harm unless we are convicted as wrongdoers or shown to be wicked men. You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.

But so that no one thinks this a reckless and unreasonable thing to say, we ask that the charges brought against them be examined, and that if the charges are shown to hold, they be punished as it is fitting to punish men who are convicted. But if no one can prove anything, true reason forbids you to wrong innocent people because of a wicked rumor — or rather to wrong yourselves, when you see fit to handle matters by passion instead of judgment. [e]

Every sober-minded person will declare that this is the only fair challenge: that the ruled give an account of their own life and teaching that cannot be faulted, and that the rulers likewise deliver their verdict by piety and philosophy, not by force and tyranny. That way both rulers and ruled would come off well. As one of the ancients said somewhere: “Unless the rulers take up philosophy, and the ruled as well, cities cannot be happy.”

So it is our task to lay our life and our teaching open to everyone’s inspection, so that we do not ourselves bear the penalty for the offenses committed in blindness by people who choose to know nothing about us. And it is your task, as reason requires, to prove good judges once you have heard us. For if you have learned the truth and still do not do what is just, you will have no defense before God.

Attaching a name to something decides nothing, good or bad, apart from the actions that go with the name — though as far as the name we are accused of goes, we are the most excellent of men. But since we would not think it just to ask to be let off on account of the name if we are convicted as bad men, so equally, if we are found to be doing nothing wrong either in calling ourselves by that name or in our conduct as citizens, it is your business to take great care that you do not incur a just punishment yourselves by unjustly punishing people who have been convicted of nothing. [h]

Praise or punishment could not reasonably come out of a name, unless something fine or base can be shown by deeds. In your own courts you do not punish any of the accused before they are convicted; but in our case you take the name itself as the proof — though as far as the name goes it is our accusers you ought to be punishing. For we are accused of being Christians, and it is not just that what is good should be hated.

Again: if one of the accused denies it in words and says he is not a Christian, you let him go, since you have nothing to convict him of; but if a man admits that he is one, you punish him for the admission. You ought instead to examine the life of the man who admits it and the life of the man who denies it, so that his actions show what sort of person each of them is. For just as some, who learned from the teacher, Christ, not to deny him, urge others on when they are questioned, so in the same way people who live badly probably give a handle to those who choose to charge all Christians indiscriminately with impiety and injustice.

That is not right either. Some men take on the name and the dress of philosophy and do nothing worthy of what they profess; and you know that among the ancients men who held and taught completely opposite opinions are all addressed by the one name, philosopher. Some of them taught that there are no gods, and the poets of old proclaim Zeus a debauchee, with his own children beside him. Yet you do not stop those who take up such teachings; instead you set out prizes and honors for men who insult these gods in fine-sounding verse.

Why should this be? In our case, when we promise to do nothing wrong and not to hold these godless opinions, you do not examine the charges. You are driven on by unreasoning passion and by the lash of evil demons, and you punish us without a hearing and without a thought. [j]

The truth must be told. Long ago evil demons showed themselves in visible form, committed adultery with women, sexually corrupted boys, and displayed terrifying sights to people, so that those who did not use reason to judge what was being done were struck with panic. Carried away by fear, and not knowing that these were evil demons, they called them gods and addressed each one by the name that each demon had given himself.

When Socrates tried by true reason and honest examination to bring these things into the open and to draw people away from the demons, the demons themselves worked through men who delight in wickedness and had him put to death as an atheist and an impious man, saying that he was bringing in new divinities. And they are at work against us in the same way. For it was not only among the Greeks that these things were refuted by reason, through Socrates; among the barbarians they were refuted by Reason himself, who took shape and became a man and was called Jesus Christ. It is he we have believed. And so we say that the demons who did these things are not only not upright, but are wicked and unholy demons, whose deeds do not even bear comparison with those of people who merely long for virtue.

This is why we are called atheists. And we admit that we are atheists where these so-called gods are concerned — but not where the truest God is concerned, the Father of righteousness and moderation and the other virtues, in whom there is no mixture of evil. Him, and the Son who came from him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow him and are made like him, and the prophetic Spirit — these we revere and worship, honoring them in reason and in truth, and handing on freely to everyone who wants to learn, just as we were taught. [n]

But someone will say: “Some people have already been arrested and convicted as criminals.” [p]

Yes — and again and again you condemn many people, each time after examining the life of the individual accused, and not on the strength of those convicted before him. In general we grant this too: just as among the Greeks the men who taught whatever pleased them are all addressed by the one name of philosophy, however opposed their teachings are, so among the barbarians the name that is now piled up as a charge belongs in common to those who are wise and to those who only seem to be. For all of them are called Christians. So we ask that the deeds of everyone denounced to you be judged, so that the man convicted of wrongdoing may be punished as a wrongdoer and not as a Christian; and that if a man is shown to be innocent, he be acquitted as a Christian who has done nothing wrong. We will not ask you to punish our accusers: the wickedness they already carry, and their ignorance of what is good, are punishment enough.

Consider that we have said all this for your sake, since it lies with us to deny that we are Christians when we are examined. But we do not want to live by telling a lie. We long for the eternal and pure life, and we lay claim to a life spent with God, the Father and Maker of all; and we are eager to confess, since we are persuaded and believe that those who have persuaded God by their deeds that they followed him, and loved the life lived with him — where evil puts up no resistance — can obtain these things. That, put briefly, is what we expect and have learned from Christ, and what we teach. [q]

Plato said much the same thing when he said that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the unjust who came before them. We say the same thing will happen, but at the hand of Christ, and to the wicked in the same bodies, joined again to their souls, and punished with everlasting punishment — not for a thousand-year cycle only, as he said. And if anyone calls that unbelievable or impossible, then this error of ours concerns us alone and no one else, so long as you cannot convict us of actually doing anything wrong.

Nor do we honor with many sacrifices and woven garlands of flowers the things that people have shaped and set up in temples and called gods. We know that they are lifeless and dead and do not have the form of God — for we do not think God has the sort of form that some say they are copying in his honor — but that they carry the names and shapes of those evil demons who appeared. [s]

Why need we tell you what you already know: how the craftsmen work the material, scraping and cutting and casting and hammering? Often they take vessels held in no honor at all, change only the shape by their craft, give them a form, and call them gods. We consider that not only unreasonable but an outrage against God, whose glory and form cannot be spoken, and whose name is fastened onto corruptible things that need constant care.

And you know perfectly well that the craftsmen who make these things are debauched and — not to go through the whole list — practice every vice; they even corrupt the slave girls who work beside them. What madness! That dissolute men should be said to shape and remake gods to be worshiped, and that you should appoint such men as guards of the temples where the gods are set up — without seeing that it is a lawless thing even to think or say that men are the guards of gods.

But we have received the teaching that God does not need material offerings from people, since we see that he himself provides everything. And we have been taught, and are convinced, and believe, that he accepts only those who imitate the good things that belong to him — moderation and righteousness and kindness toward people, and whatever else is proper to God, who is called by no given name. [t]

We have been taught that in the beginning, being good, he shaped all things out of unformed matter for the sake of human beings; and that if they show by their deeds that they are worthy of his purpose, they are counted worthy — so we have received — of living in his company and reigning with him, having become incorruptible and beyond suffering. For as in the beginning he made us when we did not exist, so we consider that those who choose what pleases him are, because of that choice, counted worthy of incorruption and of his company. Coming into being at first was not up to us; but as for following the things he loves, choosing them by the rational powers he himself gave us — in that he persuades us and leads us to faith.

And we think it is to everyone’s good that people not be kept from learning these things, but be urged toward them. What human laws could not accomplish, the Word, being divine, would have accomplished — if the evil demons had not scattered abroad many false and godless accusations, taking as their ally the evil craving that is in every person, drawn by nature toward every sort of thing and in many directions. None of those accusations attaches to us.

And when you hear that we look for a kingdom, you assume without inquiry that we mean a human one. We mean the kingdom that is with God — as is plain from the fact that when you question us we confess that we are Christians, knowing that death is the penalty laid down for anyone who confesses it. If we were looking for a human kingdom, we would deny it, so as not to be killed, and we would try to escape notice so as to obtain what we hope for. But since our hopes are not set on the present, we are not troubled when men kill us, since dying is a debt that must be paid in any case. [u]

More than anyone else we are your helpers and allies for peace, because we hold this view: that it is impossible for a criminal, a greedy man, a plotter — or a virtuous man — to escape God’s notice, and that each person goes to everlasting punishment or salvation according to what his actions deserve. [v]

If everyone knew this, no one would choose wickedness even for a little while, knowing that he was going to everlasting condemnation by fire; he would hold himself in by every means and dress himself in virtue, so as to obtain the good things that come from God and be clear of the punishments. Those who try to escape notice when they do wrong, because of the laws and penalties you have laid down, do wrong knowing that it is possible to escape your notice, since you are only men. If they had learned and been convinced that nothing can escape God — not what is done, and not even what is planned — they would be decent by every means, if only because of what hangs over them. You yourselves will agree.

But you seem to be afraid that everyone might start acting justly and you would have no one left to punish. That would be the concern of public executioners, not of good rulers. We are convinced that these things too, as we said before, are the work of evil demons, who demand sacrifices and service even from people who live without reason. But we do not suppose that you, who reach after piety and philosophy, will do anything unreasonable. And if you too honor custom above truth, as the senseless do, then do what you have power to do — but rulers who honor opinion above truth have just as much power as robbers in a wilderness.

That you will get no good omen out of it, the Word declares; and after God who begot him we know no ruler more kingly or more just than he is. For as everyone tries to avoid inheriting a father’s poverty or sufferings or disgrace, so a sensible man will not choose whatever the Word tells him not to choose. All of this, I say, was foretold by our teacher, Jesus Christ, who is Son and apostle of God the Father of all and Master; and from him we have the name Christians. This makes us all the more certain of everything he taught us, since whatever he foretold before it happened is seen in fact to be happening. This is God’s own work: to say a thing before it comes to be, and then to show it happening just as it was foretold.

We could have stopped here and added nothing more, reckoning that what we ask is just and true. But since we know that a soul held fast by ignorance is not easily changed in a moment, we have set ourselves to add a little for the sake of persuading those who love truth, knowing that it is not impossible to put ignorance to flight when the truth is set beside it.

What sober-minded person, then, will not admit that we are not atheists? We revere the Maker of this universe. We say, as we were taught, that he has no need of blood offerings and drink offerings and incense. We praise him with all the power we have by word of prayer and thanksgiving over everything we are given, having received this as the only honor worthy of him: not to burn up in fire what he made for our nourishment, but to bring it to ourselves and to those in need, and, in gratitude to him, to send up processions and hymns made of words — for our having come into being, for every means of health, for the qualities of the different kinds of things, and for the changing of the seasons — and to send up requests that we may come to be again in incorruption, through faith in him. [x]

Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who was born for this very purpose and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, who was procurator in Judea in the time of Tiberius Caesar. We will prove that we worship him with reason, having learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, holding him in second place and the prophetic Spirit in third rank. This is the point at which they declare us mad, saying that we give second place, after the unchanging and eternal God who fathered all things, to a crucified man. They do not know the mystery in this. As we set it out for you, we urge you to give it your attention.