Socrates died four centuries before Christ was born. He thought with a righteousness that spanned history, questioned himself and others to the last consequences, and never heard of the Gospel. The question this raises is an uncomfortable one, and most would rather not ask it: Was he just wrong? Was the entire life dedicated to thinking well, from a Christian point of view, a waste?
A second-century man faced this question head-on, and his answer is one of the most audacious the Church has ever produced.
A philosopher who remained a philosopher after being baptized
His name was Justin. He was a philosopher by trade before converting, someone who had traversed different schools of thought in search of truth. After his conversion, he did something that no one had done: he continued wearing the philosopher's cloak, the attire that publicly identified his profession, now as a Christian. He was martyred wearing it, which gave him the name by which history knows him, Saint Justin Martyr.
Justin did not abandon reason when embracing faith. He took his reason with him, and it was precisely this gesture that prepared him to give the answer that the Greeks who died before Christ expected, without knowing they were expecting.
The seed spread throughout humanity
Justin's central thesis is in the Second Apology, 13. In it, he maintains that the lógos, the reason and the word that became flesh in Christ, were not kept waiting for the Gospel to arrive. It was sown, in pieces, throughout humanity, since forever.
Every man who reasoned righteously, at any time and in any place, participated, without knowing it, in that same Word. Not as someone who invents the truth alone, but as someone who receives a fragment of it, planted before even knowing the name of the person who planted it.
Whoever lived according to reason, even before Christ, was already in some way his.
Those who lived according to reason are Christians
In a different work, the First Apology, 46, Justin takes the thesis to an even bolder point. He writes that those who lived according to reason are Christians, even if they were called atheists. And, to leave no doubt about who he had in mind, he names two Greek examples: Socrates and Heraclitus.
It is worth highlighting a correction that the source material of this class contains on purpose, because it is a common error: the doctrine of the seeds of the Word and the phrase about those who lived according to reason are different passages, in different works. The first comes from the Second Apology, the second from the First Apology. It is common to see both attributed to the same text, which is not true.
Notice the real boldness of Justin's statement, which is greater than it seems at first glance. He is not saying that Socrates was a good pagan, a moral exception. He is saying that the reason that operated in that Athenian square was already participation in the Word that later became flesh. Socrates' entire life was neither a waiting room nor a waste. It was sowing.
Philosophy as a pedagogue
Clement of Alexandria, writing after Justin, takes the next step. He calls Greek philosophy pedagogue: that which prepared the Greek for Christ, in the same way that the Law prepared the Jewish people. Two different paths, one destination.
It's an image that changes the weight of the question from the beginning. If philosophy was a pedagogue, then the effort to think well, even outside of revelation, even without the name of Christ, does not run parallel to faith, waiting to be discarded. It runs toward it.
What remains
The Greeks who died before Christ, thinking righteously, were not just wrong, and the square where they thought was not a waste. It was, in the reading that Justin left to the Church, the place where the seed of the Word was already planted, waiting for the time to blossom.
The complete lesson of the channel goes all the way until it reaches Justin: why the Greek square needed an alphabet and a place without an official guardian of the truth to exist, and how that same Greek reasoning, centuries later, found in Justin someone who recognized him as a seed.
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Who was Saint Justin Martyr?
Saint Justin was a philosopher by profession from the 2nd century who converted to Christianity and continued to wear the mantle of philosopher after being baptized, having been martyred with it. He is the author of the First and Second Apologies, works that defend the Christian faith in the face of Greco-Roman culture.
What is the doctrine of the seeds of the Word?
It is Saint Justin's thesis, in the Second Apology, 13, that the lógos was not kept waiting for the Gospel: it was sown, in pieces, throughout all humanity. Every man who reasoned righteously, even before Christ, participated without knowing that same Word.
Did Justin call Socrates a Christian?
In the First Apology, 46, a different work from the previous one, Justin writes that those who lived according to reason are Christians, even though they were called atheists, and names Socrates and Heraclitus. It is common to attribute this phrase to the Second Apology, but the two passages come from different works.
Continue into the cluster: Is doubting what I was taught a lack of faith? · The truth left the temple and went to the square · Paideia: training is not instruction · Truth as coherence
Source class (YouTube): O Nascimento da Pergunta na Grécia (NousCast)