The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

Canonised Father of the Church

Justin Martyr

Also known as Justin the Philosopher

A philosopher converted to Christianity who argued the faith to emperors and to a Jewish interlocutor, and whose description of Sunday worship is the earliest we have.

  • Received Orthodox teachingTaught consistently and received throughout the Orthodox Church, though not necessarily formulated in a conciliar definition. This is not a claim that no Father ever wrote differently.
  • Liturgical witnessAttested in the Church's worship — in a hymn, a prayer, a rite or a commemoration. Liturgical language is theological rather than casual, but a hymn is not a canon.
  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.
  • Individual patristic opinionThe view of a particular Father that the Church has not received as its own teaching. The Fathers are not individually infallible: some speculated, some changed their minds, some were later corrected.

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-08-29

What still needs checking (2)
  • Confirm the commemoration date against an official Orthodox source.
  • Add tier D scholarship on Justin's use of the memoirs of the apostles and what it implies about the Gospels in his period.

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Dates
around 100 - around 165 — Born at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria; martyred at Rome under the prefect Rusticus, conventionally around 165.
Region
Samaria, Ephesus, Rome
Language of composition
Greek
Commemoration
1 June (Orthodox Church in America and other Orthodox jurisdictions) — Julian-calendar jurisdictions observe the date thirteen days later on the civil calendar.

Life

Justin was born in Samaria to a pagan family and worked his way through several schools of philosophy before, as he tells it, an old man by the sea pointed him to the prophets. He continued to wear the philosopher's cloak after his conversion, and taught in Rome, where he was denounced and executed.

Three of his works survive: two Apologies addressed to the imperial authorities, and a Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, on the Scriptures and Christ.

Works

Generally accepted as authentic

Disputed, spurious or lost

  • On the Resurrection, the Discourse to the Greeks, and other works transmitted with his name — Attribution uncertain or rejected.

Theological and spiritual contribution

Justin's First Apology contains the earliest surviving description of Christian Sunday worship: the reading of the memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets, a sermon by the president, common prayer, the kiss, the bringing of bread and wine and water, the president's prayer of thanksgiving, the people's Amen, distribution by the deacons, and provision for the absent and the poor. The shape is recognisably that of the Divine Liturgy.

He also teaches that the eucharist is not common bread and drink but the flesh and blood of the incarnate Christ, and that only the baptised who hold the faith and live accordingly may receive it.

His theology of the logos — that the Word who became flesh in Christ was already at work as the seed of reason among all people, so that those who lived reasonably before Christ were in some sense his — is a genuine and influential contribution. It is also the kind of speculative argument that a Father may make without the Church thereby receiving it as its own teaching, and this site labels it accordingly.

In their own words

Every quotation below was located in the archived text of the edition named, at the locator given, by the build's own quotation check.

For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

The First Apology, Chapter LXVI, Of the Eucharist Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith — public domain Read this work in the archive

  • The Eucharist

    The Church's central act, and the earliest thing outsiders noticed about Christians.

    Theme

  • Orthodox worship

    Vespers, Matins, the Divine Liturgy, and the year that shapes them.

    Theme

  • Worship and the Divine Liturgy

    The shape of Christian worship in the second century, and the shape of it now.

    Lesson

  • Irenaeus of Lyons

    Bishop in Gaul who had heard Polycarp as a boy; the first great theologian of Tradition, of the fourfold Gospel, and of salvation as the recapitulation of all things in Christ.

    Father or writer

Your notes

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Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.); A. Cleveland Coxe (American ed.) The First Apology, Chapters LXV-LXVII translated edition of primary texts The eucharistic and Sunday-worship passages. Source record
  2. Tier C The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.); A. Cleveland Coxe (American ed.) Dialogue with Trypho translated edition of primary texts Archived in full. Source record
  3. Tier C Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (eds.); Arthur Cushman McGiffert (trans.) Eusebius, Church History, Book IV, Chapters 11-18 translated edition of primary texts On Justin's life, works and death. Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.