One of the earliest (surviving) apologetic writers of the early church, Justin Martyr was born to a pagan family in Samaria during the early second century. Seeking wisdom, he studied a variety of philosophical schools before becoming a variety of Middle Platonist–though he still retained principles from his training in Stoicism, Pythagoreanism, and the Peripatetic school–just as that philosophy was beginning to wane (to be supplanted largely by Neoplatonism, which retained much of Middle Platonism in a more systematic form and in more explicit dialogue with Christianity).

Not content with Platonism (we might see shades of Augustine here), he abandoned pagan philosophy for Christianity which he took to be the true, divine philosophy (more on his conversion to come). His spirited defenses of the faith and philosophical rabble-rousing appears to have made him a number of enemies, particularly among the Cynics. He mentions one of these, Crescens, as a particular adversary, and, likely at the instigation of Crescens, he was tried by the prefect of Rome and Stoic philosopher Rusticus sometime around 165 AD and was beheaded for his faith shortly thereafter.

I’ve always found Justin interesting, a window into a time period and a certain sort of philosophical Christianity that would shortly after be eclipsed as the Christian community grew and the aforementioned more synthesized philosophical schools gained ascendancy. Having recently completed a reread of his three extant works, the First and Second Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho, I hope to spend a few posts exploring his worldview and theological outlook.

First up, demons!

The world, for Justin, is awash in spirits implacably opposed to Christ, and it is these demons who are responsible for the majority of the world’s ills and the most common pagan objections to Christianity. Indeed, paganism itself is a creation of demons:

For the truth shall be spoken; since of old these evil demons, effecting apparitions of themselves, both defiled women and corrupted boys, and showed such fearful sights to men, that those who did not use their reason in judging of the actions that were done, were struck with terror; and being carried away by fear, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods, and gave to each the name which each of the demons chose for himself.

Justin Martyr, First Apology

These demons are the product of angelic rebellion. Following the world’s creation, angels were given a supervisory role over the earth and humanity:

But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions; and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness. Whence also the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels and those demons who had been begotten by them that did these things to men, and women, and cities, and nations, which they related, ascribed them to god himself, and to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to the offspring of those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their offspring. For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and his children, by that name they called them.

First Apology

Note, by the way, the identification of God with Jupiter. Justin doesn’t dwell on it, and in that not-dwelling reveals what must be a more pervasive understanding of Jupiter’s nature that he is so easily identified with the God of Christianity. Worth keeping in mind when thinking about the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity.

Another interesting facet of the passage is Justin’s differentiation between rebel angels and demons, the latter being the offspring of derelict angels and human women. He’s obviously drawing on Genesis 6:1-4 here, the mysterious “nephilim” passage, and it signals a sort of hierarchical demonology that Justin does not fully articulate, but would be fascinating to explore further. Does the distinction neatly map on to the god/demi-god distinction or is there more complexity, matching the similarly bewildering complexity of Greco-Roman divine genealogies? What does he make of deified ancestors (and deified emperors for that matter)? Were they the offspring of demons or rebel angels? Or elevated to divine status due to demonic subversion? It’s not clear.

Also interesting is his claim that, having been enslaved by the passions, the angels and their offspring required libations and sacrifice. The idea appears to be, and this is reinforced elsewhere, that subjugation by the passions drags us down, towards the material, while subjugating the passions elevates us to the spiritual. This pull is so strong that it degrades even angelic nature to the degree that they require earthly sustenance (here we see the seeds of the ascetic ideal that the holy man does not require, or only requires the barest bit, of material goods to sustain himself).

While the birth of some demons was a mere consequence of lust, demons also mated with human women in order to anticipate and thus thwart Christ by making stories about him seem like fairy-tales.

For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets.

First Apology

Justin doesn’t make this point, but I can imagine an argument that this imitation also signals the demons’ inability to truly create and the ultimate futility of their efforts to frustrate God’s purpose. For, he argues elsewhere, the stories about the sons of Jupiter, far from making Christian teachings about Christ ridiculous, accomplish precisely the opposite, demonstrating that Christians do not preach absurdity. More, demonic attempts to set up false Christs inevitably prefigure him and point to the superiority of Christ as one who embodies all the positive characteristics of these “sons of Jupiter” without their foibles.

Note also how the demons find out about Christ, from the prophets. In this hearing, they prove more perceptive than the Jews or any others not enlightened by faith, as Justin argues in the Dialogue with Trypho (the titular interlocutor is a Jew fleeing the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt). This ability to recognize Christ is also an echo of His recognition by demonic powers in the Gospels, cf. Matthew 8:28-34.

Against the demonic host are arrayed the forces of Reason. Notice that in the first passage quoted above, the fear engendered by demons, and consequently their worship, is due to a failure to rationally evaluate their claims. Elsewhere, he notes that reason allows us to overcome the moral confusion sown by evil forces. Appropriately for a philosopher who came to Christianity via rational investigation, for Justin it is the abdication of reason that grants the demonic a foothold in our minds and societies.

However, there is something deeper going on here. Reason is not a mere human faculty, but the continuous operation of the logos in creation. And the logos is, of course, Christ. This principle is central to Justin’s understanding of Christ, of history, of philosophy, and, indeed, all his thought as we shall explore. In the context of his demon-haunted world, it means that Christ has been perpetually opposed to and working against demons, through those committed to reason and the truth. Justin’s favorite example is Socrates, who he takes to be a sort of proto-Christian and proto-martyr:

And when Socrates endeavoured, by true reason and examination, to bring these things to light, and deliver men from the demons, then the demons themselves, by means of men who rejoiced in iniquity, compassed his death, as an atheist and a profane person, on the charge that “he was introducing new divinities;” and in our case they display a similar activity. For not only among the Greeks did reason (Logos) prevail to condemn these things through Socrates, but also among the Barbarians were they condemned by Reason (or the Word, the Logos) Himself, who took shape, and became man, and was called Jesus Christ; and in obedience to Him, we not only deny that they who did such things as these are gods, but assert that they are wicked and impious demons, whose actions will not bear comparison with those even of men desirous of virtue.

First Apology

Socrates emerges as a type of Christ, murdered for his opposition to demonic powers, just as Christians in Justin’s time (and, of course, Justin himself) were being murdered, and leaving behind a legacy (albeit a corrupted one) oriented toward the coming of the incarnate logos and against the demonic.

Reason also allows us to overcome the moral confusion that demons engender:

And if one object that the laws of men are diverse, and say that with some, one thing is considered good, another evil, while with others what seemed bad to the former is esteemed good, and what seemed good is esteemed bad, let him listen to what we say to this. We know that the wicked angels appointed laws conformable to their own wickedness, in which the men who are like them delight; and the right Reason, when He came, proved that not all opinions nor all doctrines are good, but that some are evil, while others are good.

First Apology

Thus, the shape of the world is made clear: it is a battleground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, reason and the demons, who wage perpetual war against the partisans of the Incarnate Word. Against these forces we must remain vigilant, attached to Christ, and always wary of their deceptions:

For we forewarn you to be on your guard, lest those demons whom we have been accusing should deceive you, and quite divert you from reading and understanding what we say. For they strive to hold you their slaves and servants; and sometimes by appearances in dreams, and sometimes by magical impositions, they subdue all who make no strong opposing effort for their own salvation.

In the next post, we’ll look more closely at the operations of the logos in history and the purpose behind its incarnation.