Justin Martyr was an early church father who was seen as a trailblazer because he was among the first to engage the Greco-Roman culture with the Christian message. He was born in Samaria around the year AD 100 near the site where Jesus had met the woman at the well. He was eventually martyred by being tied to a pole, whipped and beheaded.
He is considered to be the church's first Christian philosopher because of his attempts to correlate the claims of Christ and the Scriptures to the philosophical principles of the time. Unlike Ignatius, whose writings were warm and aimed at the church, Justin's audience was the pagan world around him, and thus his writings had a very stern emphases and were extremely intellectual. Unlike the heretical sects all around him, he was able to do it in such a way that the Christian faith was uncompromised. His First and Second Apologies are still considered to be the greatest examples of Christian apologetics in the history of the church.
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