Alright, let's go ahead and start this evening with a word of prayer, and then we'll jump into our lecture for this evening. Father, we're grateful for these accounts that we have of these faithful men from years gone by. We pray you'd help us to be able to comprehend not just the dates and the names and the places, but so much more importantly that we would see what it was that these men believed and taught, that we'd be able to discern between where they were teaching truth and where there was already error creeping in, that we would never put any man on a pedestal with the Scriptures, but rather that we would recognize your sovereignty and your providence working through your church in all ages, and that we would learn from these things to be faithful and true in the culture and the time which You placed us without being carried about with every wind of doctrine. So help us this evening as we delve into another individual in a little bit later time period that we would again be faithful to these things to recognize truth from error and to learn from these godly men. We ask all this in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. All right, so tonight we're moving from. The apostolic fathers, remember that's what we said we called the men who were contemporary with the apostles, primarily Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna, who we actually didn't deal with individually. How many of you have seen the Polycarp movie? It came out a few years ago. Most of you all have seen it. I think it's in the church library. If you haven't seen it yet, For being a low-budget, independent film, it's really done well. It does a good job of telling the story of Polycarp, one of those early apostolic fathers. If you haven't seen that yet, I'd recommend you watch it. It does a good job, I think. But remember we said the apostolic fathers, in their writings, they were very pastoral. They were pastors, and in their letters you could tell they were pastors. They were dealing with heresies within the church, they were dealing with the Lord's Supper, they were dealing with the office of bishop or pastor, presbyters, deacons, these kind of things. All of their letters, pretty much, were either to other Christians or to the church. Now, the next group of influential Christian leaders, writers, pastors, we call the apologetic fathers. And not because they're always going around saying that they were sorry for where they'd messed up, but because they were apologists, because they were involved in apologetics, which means they gave a defense, they gave a reason. These men were writing to unbelievers. They were either writing to the Jews, or they were writing to the Romans, the Greek philosophies, and they were giving a reason for why Christianity was true. They were giving a defense for why Christianity was good and reasonable. They were defending Christianity against all kinds of false accusations that were being levied against Christians. We talked about these, I think, a week or two ago. when we said that among the Roman Empire, Christians were called atheists because they didn't serve the pantheon of the Roman and Greek gods. They only served the one true god. So since you don't serve our gods, well, I guess you don't serve any gods. This was the charge that was being levied against them. They were atheists. They were being charged with cannibalism. because they taught that you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So pagans from the outside in didn't understand the symbolic nature of that, so they accused them of cannibalism, they accused them of incest because of their terms of brother and sister, one to another, and greeting one another with the holy kiss and things of this nature. They were accused of insurrection, rebellion, because they'd meet together in these secluded cloisters of Christians that were kept close and many times quiet because of the severe persecution that was going on. And so people said, they must be planning something bad. How many times have you heard a statement made, something along the lines of, you know, if you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't mind whether anybody hears you. and things of that nature, and totally throwing out the amendments of the Constitution, which tells us that we have a right to privacy and a right to these things. And that was kind of the Roman ideology. Well, you're doing this in private. That must mean that you're doing something wrong. You're in rebellion against the government. And so these apologist fathers, apologetic fathers, were giving defenses against these things. They were explaining, here's the Christian position, here's what we mean by those things, here's why we do these things. And this was a battle of the minds even more than a battle of the flesh. And of course we know that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. Many times when we think of the early church and the affliction and persecution that it faced, we think of either the physical persecution by the Jews or the physical persecution by the Romans. But what many times we don't think about was that the Greek philosophies that had completely overtaken the then-known world, we're at such odds with true Christian thought that to be a Christian meant to really discount the worldview of everybody around you. Sound familiar? It's the same way it is today. It's the same way it's always been. Christianity is at odds with all worldly philosophies. With every way that the world looks at things, Christianity says, no, that's the wrong way of looking at it. The Bible gives us the right way. And so there were a lot of different schools of thought within Greek philosophy. Again, you don't have to know these things. I'm not going to put them on a test. I don't think it's critical that you know them. But it was Platonism, or the following of Plato, Aristotelianism, or the following of Aristotle. Stoicism, the teaching of the Stoics. I think their founder was named Zito, or something like that. And Epicureanism. These were the four main Greek philosophies floating around in the world. And they disagreed on a lot of things, but as long as you held one of them, you could be generally accepted in society. It's not an exact parallel, but just to kind of maybe bring it to our culture today, you know, if you just always fall in line with the Republicans, or you always fall in line with the Democrats, or maybe even if you always fall in line with the Libertarians or the Green Party, people understand where you're coming from. You're a normal person. But if you say, I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Libertarian, I follow King Jesus, Citizenship is not of this world. You're just a weirdo. We don't even know where you're coming from. It would be kind of like that. To say, I don't follow any of those Greek schools of thought. I follow the teachings of Jesus and the prophets. And that's kind of what was going on in the world at that day. I got a question, and it just shows my ignorance over the whole process, but I went to vote in a primary, and you had to say you were Republican or Democrat or something. Would they have let me vote if I said I'm nothing? No, because in a primary you only have those two. Everybody is either registered as a Democrat or a Republican, so you're voting for one or the other. If someone was running as a Christian, I don't even think there's a way to do that. You have to register as one of these main parties and in order to do that you have to get so many signatures on a petition and things of this nature. Yeah, on a primary, you have to pick one or the other. Now, in a general election, you can vote for whoever you want or even fill somebody in, you know, and you don't have to vote for the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian. And I know you and I have somewhat jokingly and somewhat seriously mentioned before that a lot of times we'll write in, you know, Paul Walsh or Edgar Michael or somebody on there because we don't like any of the options. But, but yeah, that's, That's kind of what I'm referring to here. People can't even think outside of the four mainstream ways of thinking. But it was much more than a political party. These Greek philosophies had to do with everything. What is good? What is evil? Where did the world come from? How does the material interact with the immaterial, the spiritual, the metaphysical? I mean everything about life from its purpose to its Practical application was dealt with in these philosophies. They were grappling with the meaning of life, and where it all came from, and where it's all going to. And so there was all these different schools of thought that were influencing the world at that time. Maybe more powerful than the chariots and horses and legions of soldiers sweeping the world were these Greek philosophies sweeping the world. Because it's what gave people purpose. It's what gave people meaning. It's how you interpreted everything you saw and heard and felt and knew. So during the second century, and I don't know about you, but this always confuses me. Second century means the 100s, right? We're in the 21st century, even though we're in the 2000s, because zero to 100 was the first century. So 100 to 200 is the second century, right? And so you always go back when we talk about which century it was. The second century, we're talking about the 100s. So during that time, during the 100s, God raised up men from his church to articulate the goodness and reasonableness of Christianity in the face of these many false accusations levied against Christians and these opposing worldviews that had been stewing for hundreds of years now. Plato and Aristotle and Socrates were talking about 400, 300, 200 BC. These things had been being taught and brewing for hundreds of years. So the apologist fathers wrote to the Jews to convince them of the unity of Christianity with what the Old Testament taught. They were saying, listen, we're not saying that the Bible is not true. We're actually following it, and you've stopped following it. So they were arguing to the Jews that, and they were writing to the Greeks to convince them that Christianity answered the same questions as the Greek philosophies, but with better answers. So they said, listen, all your schools of thoughts are trying to come to grips with what's good and what's evil. That's what Christianity is doing. Christianity is teaching you what's good and what's evil, only it's got a better answer than Epicureanism or Platonism or any of these others do. The Greek philosophers were obsessed, I say obsessed, they centered much of their thinking around the idea of the Logos, the Logos. I don't know how it was pronounced in ancient Greece, but I'm sure you've seen it. I think there's a computer software out there called Logos. And many of you have heard that that's what John's writing to. And he says, in the beginning was the word, the Logos, that's the Greek idea. But when the philosophers said it, here's what they meant by Logos. They meant the abstract, impersonal principle of reason and order in the universe. So they were trying to figure out what gives reason and order to the universe, and all of them believed it was something impersonal. They weren't saying, Zeus gives order to the world. They weren't ascribing it to a god. They were much more philosophical about it. So it's this impersonal, abstract, something that gives reason and order to the universe. And so the apologists, the apologetic fathers, jumped on this. They said, hey, you're always talking about the Logos, let me tell you about the Logos. You're always talking about the Word, let me tell you about the Word. And so they used what John had written, and the whole idea behind that, in the beginning was the Word. You think there is this abstract idea that gives order and reason to the universe outside of everything that we know. That's true. There is something outside of us that gives reason and order to the universe, and they jumped on that to show them that Jesus was the true word, was the true Logos, was the true principle that gave order and reason to the universe. Now, the man at the forefront of these apologetic fathers was a man by the name of Justin Martyr. Justin Martyr is what we call him today. Pastor Michael actually referenced him in his sermon last night. But he wasn't born to Mr. and Mrs. Martyr. That wasn't his last name. He was actually Justin the Martyr. And somewhere along the way, the got left out, and we all call him Justin Martyr now. And I was thinking through this, trying to figure out. I didn't actually do any research on this, so this is just me speculating here. But I thought, well, Clement was martyred. And Ignatius was martyred. And Polycarp was martyred. But we don't call any of them Clement Martyr, or Ignatius Martyr, or Polycarp Martyr. But we call this guy Justin Martyr. So how come he gets the title of martyr when none of these other martyrs did? And here's my off-the-cuff speculation on that. Clement was the pastor at Rome. Ignatius was the pastor at Antioch. Polycarp was the pastor at Smyrna. Justin was not a pastor. He was not a bishop, and he didn't live in one town his whole life. He was born in the area known as Samaria. He got a lot of his learning in Ephesus. He eventually built a school in Rome. So we couldn't really say Justin of Rome, or Justin of Ephesus, or Justin of Samaria. And so somewhere along the way, Justin, you know, the one who was martyred, that Justin. And that's my guess on why he gets to bear the title of martyr when so many of these other martyrs didn't. Yes, sir? You know the name or the word martyr means? Witness. Right. And I wonder, you know, when somebody was martyred, they were giving witness. But his whole life was a witness as an apologist. Maybe that played into it as well. That's as good a speculation as mine. But he was martyred as well, yeah. So when you hear someone talk about Justin Martyr, his birth certificate didn't say Justin Martyr on it. He was Justin's son, I forget what his father's name was, grandson of Bacchius, born in Samaria. But in the hundreds and thousands of years that have passed since then, we look back and we call him Justin Martyr. And when someone says, Justin Martyr, we're all talking about this Justin. And nobody's confused by that. So that's where his name comes from, is because he eventually was martyred. He was born to a wealthy Roman family. Very well-to-do Roman citizen, very influential in their community. It was a little town, and again, this isn't important. I don't want you to get too caught up on names and dates. I'm just trying to give you all the information. A little town called Flavia or Flavia Neopolis. And it was in Samaria, Samaritan Palestine. It's more popularly known as today. In the Bible you read of it as Samaria. That's where this little town was that he was born. And from the youngest of ages he was very well educated. He was part of an affluent influential Roman citizen family, and so he got the best education that money could buy. And so from a very young age, he was well-educated and well-versed in the empty Greek philosophies. And I call them empty because every form of thinking outside of Christianity and Jesus Christ is empty. It's vain. It leads to nothing. And this is what Justin started to realize. Even from a very young age, he seemed to be on a quest for truth. He wanted truth. He wanted to know what the truth really was. And so he went through all the best schooling money could buy at a young age. And then as he began to come of age, he went to all the best schools from every Greek school of thought that the world had to offer. So first he traveled to the best school of the Stoics and he studied all the philosophy of the Stoics. And he got done studying the Stoics and he thought, this doesn't work for me, this isn't truth, it's not adding up. And so he went to the best school of the Stoics. that taught the teachings of Aristotle, who was a student of Plato himself. But Aristotle kind of diverged away from Plato in his teachings. And so he went and learned about everything that Aristotle had taught. And after he'd learned everything he could about the teachings of Aristotle, he said, done that up, this doesn't work for me. So he went to the best school that there was in the world in the teachings of Plato. which was in Ephesus, for the teachings of Plato, who'd been influenced by Socrates. And so he went to each of these schools, and the Stoics taught that divine essence was in everything. So they were, you might say, pantheists, in a sense. They believed that everything had divine essence to it. The trees, you know, it's this whole Mother Earth idea today. except that everything physical is part of God. So sure, Jesus was God, and you're God, and the table's God, and the trees are God, and the clouds are God, and they believed everything had a divine essence to it. That was the Stoics. The teachings of Aristotle taught that man is capable of finding and choosing virtue without supernatural intervention. Man can choose what's good. He's capable of finding and choosing what real virtue is in the world. There's no need for a God, a personal God. Man is everything that's needed to find true virtue in the world. And then lastly, he moved to Ephesus and studied the teachings of Plato. And Plato taught that everything physical was transient and imperfect. And you and I kind of go, yeah, that's true. Everything physical is transient and imperfect. But everything, which means that if Jesus was physical, he was transient and imperfect. That's where Plato's teachings in that day and age had led to. If you say, well, I'm a Christian Platonist, well, then that doesn't work. Because if Jesus either couldn't really be physical, or else he was physical and he was transient and imperfect. And only a transcendent realm of ideas and forms was ultimately true. Nothing you can see is true. This is popular in a lot of this Eastern mysticism ideas even today. How do I know you're true? How do I know I'm true? We can't know anything's true. That's just a more modern form of what Plato taught. We can't know if anything's true in the physical. Only that which is external to us, in the ideas, in the abstract, can be true. So by this point, at the end of that, Justin had become completely disillusioned. He'd been to the best schools that were on the earth, the best schools money could buy, studied all the most popular and famous forms of Greek philosophy, and it just wasn't working for him. He knew it wasn't true. So one day he was walking along the beach and he records this account in one of his works called, we'll get to this later, but it was called A Dialogue with Trifo the Jew. It was his most lengthiest work. But in this he tells this story where he was walking on the beach one day and he met a man of ragged appearance. Take that for however you want to take it. And he got to talking with this man, and as the conversation turned to truth, and what is truth, and can we know the truth, this man told him that the truth could only be found in the Scriptures, and that he needed to search the Scriptures. He told Justin that the writers of the Bible, Moses and the prophets, long predated the Greek philosophers. You say, listen, you're going back to Plato and Socrates and Aristotle. I'll give you some writers who were before them. Moses and the prophets. And they had superior wisdom to the Greek philosophers. And we can know this because they had foretold things that objectively came to pass. So, you look at what Plato says, we can't know if anything's true. Well, then how do I know you're true? You're telling me I can't know if anything's true, so I can't know if what you're telling me that we can't know if anything true is true. I mean, it's self-contradictory. Whereas the prophet said, a virgin will conceive and bear a son. Oh wait, we can objectively see that happened. We can see this happened. So this is what this old man was telling Justin Martyr on the beach that day. He said, there's a form of truth that's the only real truth that predates all these Greek philosophers you've been studying. And so Justin began to devote himself to Scripture. He got some copies of the Law and the Prophets, and he began to read them and study them. And he records, "...my spirit was immediately set on fire, and an affection for the Prophets and for those who are friends of Christ took hold of me." So, he began to read the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit illumined his heart, opened his eyes, gave him understanding to the Scriptures. And under this influence of the Scriptures, the truth of Jesus Christ became evident to Justin, and he was converted to Christianity in his mid-thirties. So this was roughly 133 AD. So he was born around 100. He was born when those other men were dying. When Ignatius and Clement, they were dying around 100, 107, remember? Well, that's when Justin was born, and in the 130s he was converted when he followed this man's advice and began studying the Scriptures. After his conversion, Justin began traveling extensively again, teaching the way of salvation in Jesus Christ, and eventually, after several years of this traveling apologetic ministry, as it were, he settled down in Rome and started a school devoted to the teaching and defense of the Christian faith as the perfect philosophy. So he said, hey, there's a great school teaching the teachings of Plato. There's a wonderful school teaching the teachings of Aristotle, teaching Stoicism, teaching Epicureanism. I need to start a school for Christianity to tell people that there's a philosophy that's better than all these Greek philosophies. It's the perfect philosophy. And it's the way of Jesus Christ. And so he started I guess the first seminary, you might say, sorry, the first Christian college, a school teaching Christianity in Rome. As he proclaimed the Gospel both in the streets and in the school, he continued to wear the philosopher's robe. So in Rome and in the Roman Empire, these philosophers had their own way of marking themselves. They'd wear the philosopher's robe, and you knew if you saw them, oh, that's a philosopher, that's a thinker, that's a man who's thinking about the deep things in life. And so he wore this philosopher's robe, but he was teaching Jesus. Jesus and Christianity are the perfect philosophy. It was an outward display that he believed Jesus to be the wisdom of God, as the Scriptures tell us He is. If you want real wisdom, you turn to Jesus. This is what Justin Martyr was teaching. Now in the 160s, around 165, the emperor Marcus Aurelius heard about Justin. I say he heard about him. Justin wrote him a letter and defended Christianity to the emperor. And this was an emperor who was returning with a passion back to the Roman gods. His father, the emperor before him, was actually a little bit kindly favored toward Justin in particular and to the Christians. He gave him a little bit of a respite. And his son, when he became an emperor, he wanted the official religion to be the Roman gods again. And anyone who was opposed to that needed to be wiped out. So Marcus Aurelius had Justin and six of his cohorts, six other Christians there in Rome that were working with him, one of whom was a woman. He had them all arrested. They went before the Roman prefect there in Rome. They didn't go before the emperor himself, but they went before the magistrate, who was the head over Rome there. And the only thing they were charged with was being Christians. which at that time, under that emperor, was an illegal religion. Now, if you read Justin Martyr's works, which we're going to get to here in just a moment, that was his main thrust of the two letters that he wrote to the emperors was that, if you believe in truth, you can't try us just because we're Christians. You're trying us because we're Christians because you've heard that Christians believe in cannibalism. So try us for cannibalism. Put us on trial, call witnesses and see if we've actually been cannibals. You're trying us for insurrection. So don't try us as Christians, try us as insurrectionists. Put us on the block and see if we've actually been rebellious to the government and to the crown. And that was his point in the letters that he was writing to these Romans. Well, the emperor, almost as a slap in the face to his letters, only tried him as a Christian. He was found guilty of being a Christian, obviously. And so he and the other six that were arrested with him were sent to be beaten and then beheaded. And that's exactly what happened. Seven Christians were beaten. They didn't just want them to die a quick and easy death. First they beat them, and then they beheaded them. And so, Justin Martyr died as a martyr, became known as Justin the Martyr. Now, what do we know about his writings in his life? Although Justin was a prolific writer and teacher in his day, only three of his works have survived to this day. Now, we've gotten little bits and pieces from other old writers, you know, who came after him, who quoted his other works, and so we get little quotes and snippets from some of his other works, but as far as having the entire work, we only have Three, and really you might say two and a half, because one of them was just kind of a republication of the first. The first is his first apology. If you look up the first apology of Justin Martyr, you can read it free, PDF online, as Brother Ronnie was saying. I'm sure it's online in audio form as well. You can listen to it somewhere. It's very similar in length. to those epistles that Ignatius wrote, that Clement wrote. I went home last night after church, after we got ready for bed, put Titus down. Actually, Anna was in the middle of putting Titus down and I went to bed. And I pulled up his first apology and read it in one sitting. It's not extremely long. I don't know, it probably took me 35 minutes or an hour to read it late at night. So it's not a difficult read, it's not a long read. But it was an apology to the Roman Emperor as a defense of Christianity. And in it, he complains about the injustices meted out to Christians because of their association with Christ. As I said, he was complaining, listen, you're just trying us and persecuting us because we have a name. And that's unjust. No Greek philosophy says that you ought to persecute someone because of the name that they have. Nobody believes that. And so, if you're really educated, if you're really civilized, you shouldn't be persecuting us because of what we've been called. But actually try us on these accusations that are being leveled against us. The Emperor... What's that? Yeah, that would be a modern use of it. How many of you have heard of it? where we are in the United States and other places in the world too. They hate the gays, the phobia. They use these terms and these words and we're like, no, we actually don't hate them. We love them. We want them to believe the truth. We don't agree with them. That doesn't mean we hate them. So that's exactly the kind of thing that was being levied. They'd use other words to make Christians look like they were in a bad light, when it wasn't what the Christians believed at all. And so he was complaining about this to the emperor. He was saying, listen, if you're really believing in truth and justice, neither truth or justice is being needed out here. He argued that Christians are not a threat to the Roman Empire. He argued that Christianity alone had full truth. If you're really wanting to follow after truth, Give Christianity a fair shake." And he says, it's funny, there's this group of people who worship the sun and the moon and the stars, and you're not persecuting them. And there's this group of people who worship cats and dogs and cows and fishes, and you're not persecuting them. But we're worshipping our God, the Lord Jesus, and you persecute us because we're not worshipping the Roman gods. It's just not fair. You're treating us completely differently than you treat everyone else." So he was arguing that Christianity had the full truth, that paganism had been invented by demons. He calls out a lot of the Roman stories and fables, and he says these were just inventions by demons watered down the truths of Christianity. They saw in the prophets that it was foretold that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. So these demons came up with these stories about people who were born of virgins. And they saw that He would come on a foal. And so they invented the story of Pegasus taking the Roman God to heaven, because they didn't understand the fullness of what it meant. But they were getting all these parallels to the Old Testament prophets that aren't true. He argued that Christianity was a more consistent and comprehensive philosophy than any of the others. and that Christianity was not only innocent of the false charges levied against it, but also opposed such evils. When he was giving his defense that we don't believe these things that are levied against us, he said, put us on trial, not for being a Christian, but for being a cannibal. Put us on trial, not for being a Christian, but for being incestuous, or whatever it is. And if we're found guilty in a fair trial, a fair court of law, if you don't punish that person, we will. Because we're opposed to those things too. If this person is really a cannibal, if this person is really incestuous, you don't even have to punish them. We'll punish them. Because that's not what we're doing and that's not what we believe at all. Now, it's been suggested by some people that this first apology was inspired by the martyrdom of Polycarp. Polycarp was martyred around 155 AD. Again, the dates aren't as important as what's going on in the background here, but Polycarp was martyred by being burned alive. And several times in this letter, this apology that was being written by Justin, he mentions the fiery trials and persecution by fire and things of this nature. And it was written within a year or two of when Polycarp was martyred. So, people have suggested that maybe when Polycarp was burned alive, Justin wrote this letter to the Emperor saying, hey, why are you doing this? Why are you killing us? He never says that in the letter. He never calls out Polycarp by name or anything like that. So, it's not because of internal evidence, but there's some hints in there that maybe that's what had been going on. This letter was actually received positively by the emperor. He read it and he said, hey, this guy makes some good points. Now, we don't know that he was converted because of it or anything like that, but he said, yeah, I see what you're saying here. You've been treated unfairly. We'll dial it back a little bit towards you guys. However, as is always the case with men, Antoninus Pius was that first emperor's name. He died, and his son came to the throne, became emperor, and his son was Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius, who we mentioned earlier. And he was the one who was passionate about returning the official religion back to the pantheon of the Roman gods. And so this is where Justin's second extant work comes in, which is his second Apology. There's a hint there. He had his first Apology, so he writes his second Apology. Now, if you read his second Apology, it's very, very similar to his first Apology. Basically, what he did was he republished his first Apology, and he appendixed a few things onto it. broadened who it was written to. The first one was just written to the Emperor. The second one, he says, is written to the Emperor, the Senate, the soldiers, and the citizens of Rome. So he makes it a much more open letter, which maybe infuriated the Emperor a little bit more, that it was a little more public. I don't know. I'm just speculating there. But those were some of the major differences. He updated it a little bit. It was written 10 years after his first one, something of that. But it didn't differ largely in substance from his first one. He was, again, complaining about the injustices of the persecution toward the Christians and defending Christianity against these false claims that had been levied against it. His third work is his largest, and we're not sure exactly when it was written or if it was written over many years. It was written sometime in that same time frame that the Apologies were written, sometime between 155 and 167 AD. If you want to keep up with those dates, you can. It's not important. But in that time frame, he wrote this work called A Dialogue with Trifo the Jew, T-R-Y-P-H-O, if you're interested. a dialogue with Trifo, the Jew. And this was not a letter. This was actually a work that he wrote. And there's been some debate about whether this was actually a conversation that happened, and Justin recorded it later on, but most people believe it was written in a conversational form as a way to present truths. So, I don't even remember what the name of the book was now, but I remember last year, Tim Yarborough brought a book, and it was two men talking, and it was a teacher teaching his student. That's how the whole book was written. You'd read the question asked by the student, and then the teacher would give an answer. That was kind of modeled after the way Justin wrote. So this dialogue with Trifo the Jew that he wrote, most people believe it was just a book written to defend Christianity, to the Jews, but it may have actually been a conversation that happened. And so that's the way it was written. It's much, much lengthier than all these other letters that I've been telling you about. The letter that Clement wrote, and the letters that Ignatius wrote, and the first and second apology of Justin Martyr. This was different. This was actually like a book. Like sitting down and reading the screw tape letters, or something like that. It was written in that kind of a way. And this work, whereas his first and second apology was defending Christianity against paganism and the Roman gods, this is a work defending it against the claims of the Jews. That we're saying Christianity is full of blasphemy, and it's rejecting the Law and the Prophets. And so this was all about, no, we're standing firm on the Scriptures. We believe the Prophets. We believe the Law. And that's why we believe in Jesus Christ. In the book it says that this long and courteous debate took place at Ephesus, and you remember that's where Justin was converted. So, again, maybe it really happened, or maybe that was just a nod to that place where Justin first began thinking through these things, and being challenged by that Christian to go back and read the Law and the Prophets. So those three works, his first apology, his second apology, and a dialogue with Trifo the Jew, even though they're only a piece of his many works that we believe that he wrote, it's the most comprehensive volume of works that we have from any of these really early guys, just within the first couple hundred years after Christianity was established, there weren't many people writing as extensively as Justin Martyr was writing. And so with these three works we get amazing insight into what Christians believed, and what they were dealing with in the outside world, and how they were defending themselves against it in ways that we didn't get from the Apostolic Fathers. It proves, even these three works, that he was an able writer, he had a significant understanding of the Scriptures, and he had a powerful use of logic. You read these works and you see the logic as he debates these accusations being levied against him, and it's really humbling. It really kind of puts you in your place. You read these and you think, man, I wish I could think like this guy could think. The way he used his mind for the glory of God was just evident. He had the mind of an intellectual in the heart of an evangelist. He never allowed his intellectualism, from what we can tell in his writing and from his witness, to puff him up. But he wanted to use it to proclaim the glories of Jesus Christ, to be an evangelist, to teach both the pagans and the Jews the truths of Christianity. So what can we learn from his writings? Remember we said that with each class we want to kind of look at these things that we say these men wrote and say, if I was dealing with this or that particular topic, when would I want to go back and read what these guys wrote on it? The first that I would say, and I think this is what marked Justin Martyr's whole life, was that philosophy and intellectualism are not enemies to Christianity, but they're empty outside of the scriptures. So, Justin never said, well, since all the Greek philosophies and all those schools that we went to didn't give me the answers, I'm just going to throw out using my mind, and I'm going to say why. We just have to take it on faith. I don't understand it. I don't know. I'm just going to take it. That wasn't his response at all. But he engaged his mind. He brought every thought captive. He used the Scriptures to prove and to argue and to convince others of the truths of Scripture. He did like Paul, who went out and stood on the hill and used the altar to the unknown God to make arguments and to convince the pagans there of it. Yeah, he does. He's a classical apologist. And so any of these apologists that you're familiar with in more modern times, yeah, you'll see a lot of similarities there because they're using, most of them are using classical logic. And that's something that's being lost in a lot of today's writers and teachers. And so if you read someone like, or listen to someone like Ravi Zacharias or someone like that, yeah, it's going to be very similar to that. As I said, last night it was 9 o'clock at night. It had been a busy day for me. I had already been to church. I came home, changed my pajamas, was laying down in bed, and I had no problem reading that apology. It was just engaging to me. It wasn't a dry, hard read. It was really interesting. Don't go to Justin Martyr, and I'm going to get to what you do go to him for, but let me say this kind of as a caveat. Don't go to Justin Martyr to prove to someone God's sovereignty and providence and the overarching works of God in that way. Because, remember what I said in the very first class, That's not what he was dealing with. He wasn't arguing with Pelagians. He wasn't arguing with those who said man's will is over God's will. Really, he was arguing against the opposite. A lot of the pagans taught something called fatalism. which is that what will be, will be. And we can't help it. And so, I'm sorry I fornicated, it was the fates. I'm sorry I killed that person, it was the gods. It was meant to happen, and so it happened. And again, this kind of thing is Very strong still in our culture today when you hear people talk about, I don't know, I hear about it when I hear people talking about sports. The football gods just didn't want that one to go through. Just like, what will be will be, this idea. Well, that was very strong in Greek philosophy. And Justin was arguing against that. So he was arguing that Christians believe in moral responsibility. If you sin, you can't say, well, it was just fated to happen. I don't bear any responsibility for it. He was arguing, no, Christians believe if you do something, you're going to be held responsible by God for that. So if you're arguing with someone that Christians believe in moral responsibility, Justin Martyr would be a good one to read. You go and read his first and second apology, and he's going to make a strong argument for why Christians believe in moral responsibility. Yes, sir? Yeah, if you misunderstand the Scripture and the doctrines, you can twist it to... But then that's him that roams, he says. Then how can God condemn, right? That's always what I... I mean, I can't go anywhere else but there. If this is so, then how can God condemn you? Because God says you're responsible. And He says, yes, I ordained you. And He says you don't get to say why. What's that famous... Swallow the salt. So you ordained all these things, yet we can't. There's that verse in Acts that talks about these men with wicked hands took Christ and crucified Him according to the purpose and foreknowledge of God. So God ordered it to happen, and it was wicked of them to do that. Both are true. The Scriptures teach that both are true. So yeah, that's what... Justin Martyr was dealing with really strongly there, was that we do believe in moral responsibility. Thirdly, we get an extensive list, both in Apologies and in his dialogue with Trifo, we get an extensive list of the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Christ. If you're interested in seeing some prophecies that were fulfilled, go read Justin Martyr. He brought some out. that I hadn't seen before. He does a really good job. He talks about that verse in the Old Testament that says, I've stretched out my hands to a rebellious and stiff-necked people, and he said this was a foretelling of His crucifixion. because he stretched out his hands. Now, maybe you've seen the placard, How much do I love you? This much, Christ said, and he stretched out his arms and died, or something like that. But it's not like that. He's saying, here's a scripture that foretold the way Christ would die, and it was because he stretched his hands out. to a rebellious and stiff-necked people. There are some really interesting things like that that he brings out about the way. Some have suggested that maybe he stretches some of them too far. But I don't know, I love seeing Christ fulfilled in the Old Testament. I think it's important. And fourthly, and we're running out of time, I'd recommend Justin Martyr to you if you're trying to deal with the idea of the fact that Judaism, not the Judaizers, but the Jews, which is the Judaizers as well, but Judaism outside of Jesus Christ is the enemy of God. And some people have read his dialogue with Trifo the Jew and said it's anti-Semitic. Once again, like Ronnie was saying, it's hateful toward the Jews. But it's not hateful. He's simply arguing, you don't get some special place in God's favor because of what your bloodline is. If you're rebellious against Jesus Christ, then you're in rebellion to the true God. And so he makes a strong argument for that in that dialogue with Trifo the Jew. If you're trying to deal with, well, how do we deal with physical Israel versus spiritual Israel, how does that all fit in? Go read Justin Martyr's dialogue with Trifo the Jew, and he does a good job in dealing with that topic. Is there something you want to say? I'm always trying to grasp the understanding One time I understood the Talmud, which is after Christ, and it's really a very defensive thing for the Jews to say Jews, and they go overboard. Now the Torah is the law. That's different. That's where they're at today. It's the Talmud. Now, there was a Babylonian Talmud that was before Christ, and then another part of it that was after Christ? Every religion has their apologists, has their people who want to make a defense for why we believe this is the way it is. Do you know about the Talmud? Coming out of the Babylonian captivity, right? That's what I was thinking. That's the way I understood it. But it's hard to know. You have to be careful who you're reading to when you go back and read these things because there's people who want to place historical documents before Christ that really were probably after Christ and vice versa. Yes. That's who Trifo was. He was a Hellenistic Jew. That's who we're going to deal with next was the man who really fought with the Gnostics. Any other questions or comments? We're at 8.01 right now, so just take a minute or two if you need to to stretch your legs, use the bathroom, be right back for Pastor Michael's lecture.