First Apology

Justin Martyr, one of Christianity’s earliest theologians and apologists (born c. AD 90–100; died c. 165), was born into a Greek family in Flavia Neapolis, near the biblical city of Shechem. He pursued truth in the philosophical schools of Stoicism, Peripateticism, Pythagoreanism, and eventually Platonism, but found all of man’s philosophies sorely lacking. Then one day, perchance he stumbled upon an old man by the seashore—a Syrian Christian—who persuaded him that supreme truth is found only in Christ, the incarnate Word, who merely 100 years earlier had died and risen again in the very region in which Justin had been born and raised. Justin placed his faith in Christ and dedicated his life to the truth. He founded a philosophical school in Rome to further the Gospel, but the stoic philosopher Crescens denounced him to the Roman authorities, and Justin and six of his friends were martyred for their faith via beheading, valiantly refusing to deny the Name of Christ. His most famous extant works are his two Apologies, the first addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius, his sons, and the Senate; and the second to the Roman Senate alone. The First Apology was written in about AD 155.