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Messiah (

XY$M gw$Y dYBd

) upon the whole race of men" (Apol. 17.3). Unfortunately, this last phrase is

missing from the Greek version. If it is authentic, then we see here another example of God exercising
his judgment on the world by means of (

dYB

)

Jesus Christ.

*Summary: If we follow the Syriac version of Aristides, we are told that Christ--who is explicitly called
"God"--is the Son of the Most High God who came down from heaven to become incarnate (Apol. 2.4), and
who operates in submission to the Father's will (17.3). If we follow the Greek and Armenian versions,
however, Christ is still called "Son of the Most High God," but comes down from heaven "by the Holy
Spirit." In any case, the Son and the Spirit are seen functioning in submission to the Father.

Second Place and Third Rank: Justin Martyr (c. 150-160)

An understanding of Justin's concept of Christ begins with his view of God the Father,

illustrated

for us in Dialogue with Trypho 127.1-3:

You should not imagine that the Unbegotten God himself went down or went up from any place. For, the
ineffable Father and Lord of all neither comes to any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor arises, but always
remains in his place, wherever it may be, acutely seeing and hearing, not with eyes or ears, but with a power
beyond description. Yet he surveys all things, knows all things, and none of us has escaped his notice. Nor is
he moved who cannot be contained in any place, not even in the whole universe, for he existed even before
the universe was created. How, then, could he converse with anyone, or be seen by anyone, or appear in the
smallest place of the world?

Justin's answer to this philosophical dilemma was not to remove these attributes of transcendence

from God, but to complement them with the mediation of "another God"--God the Son--who reveals
all that the Father is. Continuing in that same chapter (Dial. 127:4-5), Justin wrote:

Thus, neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any other man saw the Father and ineffable Lord of all
creatures and of Christ himself, but [they saw] him who, according to God's will, is God the Son, and his
angel because of his serving the Father's will; him who, by his will, became man through a virgin; who also
became fire when he talked to Moses from the bush. Unless we understand the Scriptures in this manner, we
would have to conclude that the Father and Lord of all was not in heaven when what Moses thus described
took place.

This entire section is important in that it demonstrates Justin's concern to preserve God's

The

(d-) prefixed to the preposition

dYB

is a relative pronoun referring to the coming judgment.

Although there are several extant writings falsely attributed to Justin, the writings generally regarded as authentic today are 1

Apology and 2 Apology (though these actually comprise two parts of one work) and Dialogue with Trypho (Craig D. Allert,
Revelation, Truth, Canon and Interpretation: Studies in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae,
vol. 64 [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 32). The English translation used for the Apologies is Leslie W. Barnard, ed., St. Justin Martyr: The
First and Second Apologies, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 56 (New York: Paulist, 1997). The Greek text of Apologies is Miroslav
Marcovich, ed., Iustini Martyris Apologiae pro Christianis, ed. Kurt Aland and E. Mühlenberg, Patristische Texte und Studien, vol.
38 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994). For Dialogue, the English translation is Thomas B. Falls, Michael Slusser, and Thomas P. Halton,
eds., St. Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, Selections from the Fathers of the Church (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 2003). The Greek text for this work is from Miroslav Marcovich, ed., Iustini Martyris Dialogus cum Tryphone, ed.
H. Christian Brennecke and E. Mühlenberg, Patristische Texte und Studien, vol. 47 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1997).

I part ways with Barnard when he states, "Justin's starting point is that the logos is the personal reason of God in which all

men partake" (Leslie W. Barnard, Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic, Théologie historique, vol. 18
[Paris: Beauchesne, 1972], 95. Goodenough rightly urges that Christianity did not begin with philosophical speculation, but with a
religious experience of Jesus Christ, Erwin R. Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr: An Investigation into the Conceptions
of Early Christian Literature and Its Hellenistic and Judaistic Influences, reprint ed. (Amsterdam: Philo, 1968), 140. Given Justin's
self-confessed philosophical background in his pursuit of true philosophy (Dial. 18), it seems most likely that his speculation about
the Logos and Christ as the immanent representative of the Godhead leaned heavily on his philosophical and theological notion of
the transcendent God (cf. Allert, Revelation, Truth, Canon and Interpretation, 79-84).