Lessons in Manly Living

Why St. Justin Martyr was masculine

Pride Month started with the feast day of St. Justin Martyr (c.100-165 A.D), the first Christian philosopher and the first great Christian apologist. He defended the Faith to the death in far more dangerous times than ours. Here’s what he can teach us about masculinity.

Win minds

Justin’s First Apology says Christians must give “the strongest and truest evidence” for their religion. “We do not make mere assertions without being able to produce proof.”

We need reasons to believe. Faith is about believing what God has revealed, but first we need to know He exists and has revealed it.

Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho says that studying Plato’s philosophy prepared his conversion to Christianity. This also involved Aristotle’s argument for an Unmoved Mover of the world.

To the polytheistic pagans, Justin proved the existence of God as the Necessary Being: uncaused, unchanging, transcendent, and the cause of everything other than Himself.

That approach was standard before Vatican II. Becoming intellectually softer since has meant many lost souls, especially men.

Call out error

Justin tried to reason with his opponents, not just abuse them. But he did call the pagan idols “wicked and impious demons” and ridiculed them as “soulless and dead.”

He also condemned sexual immorality and infanticide, calling moral relativism “the greatest impiety and wickedness.” When people were wrong, he told them — good and hard.

And the whole point of Justin’s Dialogue with his Jewish interlocutor Trypho was to convert Trypho.

Save souls

Justin wanted to convert pagans to the truth to save their souls.

His First Apology warns his readers that not repenting means “everlasting punishment.”

Using the arguments of the best pagan philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato, he proved the immortality of the soul. And he explained what Christ taught about Hell.

Much closer in time to Christ and the Apostles than we are, he did NOT teach that we can be optimistic that all are saved.

Don’t fear death

Why did Justin die for the Faith?

As he writes in his First Apology,

‘If we looked for a human kingdom, we should also deny our Christ, that we might not be slain… But since our thoughts are not fixed on the present, we are not concerned when men cut us off.’

In his Second Apology, he says that Christian fortitude in martyrdom impressed him when he was a pagan:

‘For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure.’

Think about how uninspiring the man is who’s unwilling to be torn apart by a pink-haired Twitter mob for saying sodomy is wrong.

But Justin was inspired by men willing to be torn apart by actual lions or be boiled in oil while still preaching.

Justin’s words to the Roman emperor reigning at the time of the First Apology show his brass balls: “You can kill us, but you cannot harm us.”

Fortitude vs. Effeminacy

Justin was rational. We are sentimental.

Justin wanted conversions. We want “conversations.”

Justin preached Hell. We preach happiness.

Justin didn’t fear death. We fear mere disgrace.

The martyrs’ courage converted their persecutors. Our compromises only earn contempt from ours.

Justin wanted this life hard so that the next would be easy. And he warned that having it easy now would make the next Hell.

In sum, Justin’s fortitude shames our effeminacy.