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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