In this post I quote noted Evangelical scholar and professor Michael F. Bird’s comments on the 2nd century Christian apologist Justin Martyr’s Christological views. All bold and capital emphasis will be mine:
There is an intensification of Logos Christology among the early apologists, including Justin martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras, and Epistle to Diognetus.
Justin makes no explicit mention of the Fourth Gospel, but it is far more likely than not that he knows of it and alludes to it,90 and his Logos theology is best understood in light of its Johannine heritage.91 Justin’s Logos is God’s instrument of revelation to humans (Dial. 128.2). The whole world came into being by a “Word of God” (Dial. 84.2; 1 Apol. 59.5; 64.5; 2 Apol. 6.3).92 The Logos goes under various names from Scripture such as “Glory of the Lord,” “Son,” “Wisdom,” “Angel,” “God,” “Lord,” “Logos,” and “Commander” (Dial. 61.1; cf. 126.1; 128.1). The Logos is the seed of reason93 by which philosophers and barbarians were able to know the truth (1 Apol. 5.4; 44.10; 46.1-6; 2 Apol. 13.3-6). The “divine Logos” moved the prophets to prophesy (1 Apol. 36.1). Jesus as the Logos is, then, that “rational power” (Dial. 61.1) or “rational principle” (2 Apol. 10.1), who “acquired physical form and became a human being” (1 Apol. 5.4; 23.2; 63.10) by taking on “flesh” (1 Apol. 32.10; 66.2; Dial. 45.4; 84.2; 100.2).94 Trypho sums up Justin’s view of God become human: “You say that this Christ existed as God BEFORE THE AGES, then that he submitted to be born and become man” (Dial. 48.1). Justin writes that Christ was “born from God … as Logos of God” (1 Apol. 22.2), born in a special manner from a virgin (Dial. 63-70; 1 Apol. 21.1-2; 22.2; 23.2; 32.10-33.9; 46.5; 63.16).
The center of gravity in Justin’s Christology is to argue for a God beside God the Father, a first Power, the firstborn and only begotten Son of unbegotten Father, the Logos who is Christ (Dial. 61.1-3; 1 Apol. 13.3; 21.1; 22.1-2; 23.2; 32.10; 46.2; 53.2; 60.7; 63.4, 10, 15; 2 Apol. 10.3, 8). To that end, we can detect a very strong sense of divinity attributed to the Logos. The “Logos is divine” ([ho logos theios] 1 Apol. 10.6; 36.1); he was preexistent before creation, and “already existed as God” (Dial. 61.1; 62.1-4; 87.2; 129.3; 2 Apol. 6.3). The Logos is “the son of the true God” (1 Apol. 13.3), and is worshipped (Dial. 38.1; 1 Apol. 6.2; 13.3-4; 2 Apol. 13.4). Even so, the Son is not the Father, but the “first-born of God, is also God” (logos prototokos on tou theou kai theou hyparchei; 1 Apol. 63.15). Justin’s analogies for Christ’s divinity vis-à-vis God the Father are like a thought from a mind or a fire kindling fire. Jesus is begotten from the Father, not an excision (apotome) of his essence (ousia; Dial. 61.2; 128.3-5). Jesus is distinct in number, but not in substance (Dial. 56.11; 128.4; 129.3), Eric Osborn summarizes Justin’s thought well enough: “The word is God’s first-born, GOD HIMSELF, second to him in number, but one with him IN ESSENCE.”95
Yet Justin also implies a certain subordination because God is unbegotten and everything after him is begotten and corruptive (Dial. 5.4), and the Son holds “second place” with the prophetic spirit “in the third rank” (1 Apol. 13.3-4; 60.7).96 Justin argues that the Logos is “another God and Lord under the Creator of all things, who is called an Angel, because he proclaims to man whatever the Creator of the world–above whom there is no other God–wishes to reveal to them” (Dial. 56.4; cf. 55.1; 56.17; 61.1; 128.4; 129.4). This angel is “called God, is distinct from God the Creator; distinct, that is, in number, but not in mind” (Dial. 56.11). A God beneath God is supported by way of citations to Ps 45:6-7 and 110:1 (Dial. 56.14). Justin identifies God with the Angel of the Lord, and this Angel with the pre-incarnate Christ, who appeared to Moses in the fire (Dial. 57-60; 127. 4; 1 Apol. 62.3-4; 63.7-8, 17).97 (Bird, Jesus Among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World [Baylor University Press, Waco, TX 2022], pp. 149-151)
95 Eric F. Osborn, Justin Martyr (BZHT 47; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1973), 28. Cf. Bousset (Kyrios Christos, 401), who summarized the apologists this way: “The Christians do not worship a man but the incarnate Logos, who belongs altogether to the very essence of deity.”
96 L. W. Barnard (Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967], 100) points out: “It was inevitable that his unsystematized language about the derivative nature of the logos should later be capable of an Arian interpretation. Yet it is equally clear that Justin believed in THE FULL DIVINITY OF THE SON.” Grillmeier (Christ in Christian Tradition, 1:110) sees Justin’s subordination in far more stark terms: “There is a deus inferior subordinate to the theos hypsistos” (italics original).
97 Justin frequently cites Gen 19:24 (LXX): “The Lord rained down fire from the Lord out of heaven,” in Dial. 56.23; 60.5; 127.5; 129.1. (Ibid., p. 151)
FURTHER READING
JUSTIN MARTYR ON THE NAMELESS GOD
Justin Martyr’s Witness to Christ’s essential and eternal Deity
AN ORTHODOX’S MISREADING OF JUSTIN
Revisiting Shabir Ally’s Distortion of Justin Martyr Pt. 1
Ante-Nicene Witness to Jesus’ Deity
Answering Islam Blog 