St. Justin Martyr: The Spermatikos Logos and the Natural Law

ST. JUSTIN MARTYR'S CONCEPT OF THE NATURAL LAW should be understood within his broader understanding of man. Like many Christians influenced by neo-Platonism, St. Justin Martyr viewed the nature of man to be composed of three distinct parts: body (σώμα, soma), soul (ψυχή, psyche), and spirit (πνεύμα, pneuma). His view of the natural moral law is therefore colored by this tripartite notion of man. In speaking about the pneumatic life, the vital spirit, in man St. Justin Martyr uses the term ζωτικόν πνεύμα (zotikon pneuma) (in Latin, spritus vitalis). St. Justin also appears to understand this ζωτικόν πνεύμα as the divine principle in man, the distinguishing feature of his nature, his unique dignity. He views this ζωτικόν πνεύμα as a participation in the very life of the Logos, and so he denominates it the "seed of the word" or reason in man, the σπερματικός λόγος (spermaticos logos; in Latin, ratio seminalis). Goodenough, 214. Man was to govern his soul and body by virtue of this ζωτικόν πνεύμα, this σπερματικός λόγος, "which never became an integral part of the soul, but which imparted life and true reason to it." Goodenough, 212. This ζωτικόν πνεύμα or σπερματικός λόγος constituted a divine element in man which "imparted reason as well as life to the soul." Goodenough, 212.

This divine principle in man had an intimate relation with the Divine Logos, the Word of God. "In every man," St. Justin Martyr believed, "there is a divine particle, his reason, which at least before Christ's coming was man's best guide in life." Goodenough, 214 (citing Ap. II 10.8) It is man's burden to live in accordance with reason, μέτα λόγου (meta logou), and not against or without reason, ἄνευ λόγου (aneu logou). It was thus living in accord with right reason, which was participation in divine reason, that was man's fundamental law.

Neo-Byzantine Styled Icon of St. Justin Martyr

According to St. Justin Martyr, the use of reason by men, even in men without express faith in Christ, is already Christ the Logos at work. “We have been taught," St. Justin declared, "that Christ is the First-born of God, and we have declared . . . that he is the Word of whom every race of men were partaken, and those who lived reasonable are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists.” Apol. I, 46.1-4. "All right principles that philosophers and lawgivers have discovered and expressed they owe to whatever of the Word they have found and contemplated in part. The reason why they have contradicted each other is that they have not known the entire Word, which is Christ." Apol. II, 10.1-3. "The seeds of truth" St. Justin states, "are the formative principle of right knowledge and right living." Apol. I, 44. And all men have these "seeds of truth," or "seeds of reason." As part of St. Justin Martyr's view of natural man and natural morality, we confront the fascinating Justinian concept of the logos spermatikos, σπερματικός λόγος .

Scholars debate the precise nature of the term logos spermatikos as used by St. Justin Martyr. Indubitably, the term, which St. Justin imports into a Christian context, has a Hellenic philosophical pedigree. It is certain that it is not used by St. Justin Martyr in its original pagan sense, but it is not clear how precisely St. Justin uses it in its Christian sense. Certainly, he was intending to engraft this Stoic concept and term into the greater bole of Christian revelation.

From whence did Justin Martyr take the term? Did he borrow it from Stoic philosophy generally and adapt to the Christian revelation (perhaps under the influence of the Matthean evangelical parable of the sower)? Or did he borrow it from the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo? Or did he take it from the Neopythagorean Numenius of Apamea?

And if the question from whence St. Justin obtained the term could be answered, perhaps the more difficult one remains. What exactly does Justin Martyr mean by the term? It would seem highly unlikely that St. Justin Martyr used it in a cosmological-pantheistic sense of the Stoic such as advocated by J. M. Pfätisch. This would seem too far a departure from the Christianity to which he devoted his life. Accordingly, St. Justin Martyr would not have viewed these logoi spermatokoi, these divine sparks in men, as being of the same substance (homoousios) as the divine Logos itself, though they clearly share in his mind, in some insubstantial, created, and relatively distance sense, in the divinity of the Logos (homoiousious). In is consequently more likely that St. Justin Martyr re-worked or adapted the Stoic physical and pantheistic notion into a notion distinctively Christian and consonant with the Trinitarian revelation contained in Scripture, and this would exclude a purely pantheistic or material interpretation.

The term logos spermatikos as used by St. Justin Martyr might therefore be viewed as a re-interpretation of this Stoic term which had indicated the primal and vital principal of fire, into a term essentially synonymous with human reason (as advanced by H. Meyer). It might be viewed as an adaptation of the Stoic ethical semina virtutum; in other words, it might mean those moral dispositions contained in the soul naturally subject and subject to organic or cultural development (paideia). Perhaps the term as used by St. Justin Martyr is something more supernatural in connotation, influenced and referent to the Scriptural parable of the sower of seeds [Matt. 13:3-9], as a grace of sorts which God sows in the heart. (M. Pohlenz). Perhaps it is the intellectual fruit derived from the combination of the doctrine of the Logos of the Gospel of John, God as verbum Dei, λόγος θεοῦ, (logos theou), with the revelation in Genesis that man is made in imago Dei, εἰκόν᾽ θεοῦ (eikon theou) [Gen. 1:26, 27]. In this view, the logos spermatikos is therefore the image of the Logos in man. Perhaps the term is broad enough to cover natural and supernatural meanings both since Christ is at work both naturally and supernaturally in man. Maybe St. Justin Martyr intended it as a spiritual-ethical principle, something close to the Ciceronian semina justiae, itself a development of the “seed-forces of the Stoa with the seeds of justice, so given them an ethical, rather than metaphysical, interpretation” (Andresen). Perhaps Holte is right: "[t]he logos spermatikos theory, terminologically an innovation, is nothing but an attempt to translate St. Paul’s doctrine on natural revelation, to the language of contemporary philosophy." See generally Leslie William Barnard, St. Justin Martyr: The First and Second Apologies (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1997), 196-200.

Whatever the precise sense of St. Justin Martyr's use of the term, it seems certain that the spermatikos logos in each man provides a common, non-confessional basis in each man, whether as a natural or supernatural gift from God (or both), by which he is called to participate in God’s Reason or Logos, from which he obtains a dignity over the brute creation, and out of which he discovers and obtains normative judgments of right and wrong. As H. R. Rommen, a historian on the natural law succinctly put it, the Stoic notion of the that natural law and its principle of the "seeds of the Word" or spermatikos logos was used by the Church Fathers, and in particular St. Justin Martyr, "to proclaim the Christian doctrine of the personal Creator-God as the Author of the eternal law as well as of the natural moral law which is promulgated in the voice of conscience and in reason." (Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, trans., Thomas R. Hanley).

Doctrinally, there is a problem in adopting St. Justin Martyr's trichotomous view of man. The Church appears to have insisted on a dichotomous view of man, a body with a spiritual soul, and has insisted on a spiritual soul. Properly understood as part of the spiritual soul of man (anima, psyche), though distinguishable from that part of man's soul he shares with the animal creation, and not, in its Platonic sense, as a fully separate substance from the anima or psyche, St. Justin Martyr's insight is useful and valuable. This faculty of the logos spermatikos may be viewed as a faculty that is to govern man's lower nature. Man is to follow the promptings, the voice of this divine spark, this logos spermatikos in him, this zotikon pneuma, and in doing so he is already living the law of God in Christ. Following it, he is led to Christ. For in following it, he has already heard Christ's seminal word, and he will recognize his posture of subordination before his Creator, and his need for his Creator's grace, in view of the concupiscent and recalcitrant nature of his impulses, to follow the guidance of that faculty. He will recognize that he has failed in conforming to that inner standard, that inner compulsion, that inner law. In failing to follow it, he will recognize that he has sinned against his Maker, and will thus confront the need for forgivness for mercy, and this will lead him directly to Christ and his Church.

Plato's Chariot Allegory of the Soul

To explain St. Justin Martyr's concept, one may use Plato's chariot allegory of the soul. In his dialogue Phaedrus (sections 246a - 254e), Plato uses the allegory of a chariot to explain his view of the human soul. Plato describes the inner workings of man as charioteer governing a chariot pulled by two horses, one white and one black. The white horse is white, long-necked, well bred, well behaved, and runs without a whip. The black horse is short-necked, poorly bred, and undisciplined, requiring constant guidance. St. Justin Martyr would make his logos spermatikos his zotikon pneuma the charioteer charged with the task of using intellect and reason, that is, logos, to guide the white horse of the soul (psyche), and its rational moral impulses, and the black horse of the body (soma), with is irrational and concupiscent nature, to the true and the good. To St. Justin, the governing principle in us, the spermatikos logos or zotikon pneuma, is the source faculty of the natural moral law, the law that God has placed in the heart of man and which distinguishes him from the beasts. It is what makes him a child of the one only God, and makes him brother with all those of his kind. It is the ruler, the pilot, of his lesser natures, part rebellious, part docile.

This symbiosis between the Stoic philosophy and the Christian Gospel, so marked in the area of natural law, is perhaps not suprising. That reason and faith should intermingle, engage, as it were, in a dialogue in this area is to be expected. The Church has always insisted that grace builds on nature, that faith builds upon reason, and that the moral life is both natural and supernatural. God is the author of both.

St. Justin Martyr: The Natural Law in Dialogue with Trypho

OUTSIDE OF ST. PAUL HIMSELF, ST. JUSTIN MARTYR (100-165 A.D.) may be one of the earliest Christian witnesses of the Church's doctrine on the natural law. Our Justin Martyr, Flavius Iustinus, was born (as he puts it in his Apology) the "son of Priscos, grandson of Baccheios, of Flavia Neapolis, in Palestinian Syria," and died in Rome, a victim by flogging and beheading of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius's persecution of the Christians. Born a pagan, educated in the pagan schools in philosophy, Justin Martyr converted to Christianity in his early thirties. He was moved to Christianity, he says, by the insufficiency of philosophy, Christianity's moral beauty and truth, and the courage of its martyrs. It was this Faith that satisfied his yearning heart and desire for truth, and to which he devoted the remaining thirty five years of his life. Of his works, perhaps his most important were his First Apology (addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, his sons, and the Roman Senate), his Second Apology (written when Marcus Aurelius was Emperor), his Discourse to the Greeks, and his Dialogue with Trypho. His works evidence the influence of Platonic and Stoic philosophy, and are deeply centered around the notion of the Logos. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that they are, as it were, an appendix to, or an extended commentary on, the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John. In the Dialogue with Trypho, a work which documents his dispute with the learned Jewish scholar Trypho--perhaps merely a fictitious character, a "straw man," or perhaps the historical, anti-Christian Rabbi Tarphon--St. Justin Martyr tries to show that Christianity is the new law for mankind.

Modern Icon of St. Justin in neo-Byzantine Style

In the Dialogue with Trypho, St. Justin Martyr responds to a question of Trypho: "Tell me, then, shall those who lived according to the law given by Moses, live in the same manner with Jacob, Enoch, and Noah, in the resurrection of the dead, or not?" During the course of his answer, St. Justin Martyr points to the essential kernel of the Mosaic Law--that which "is naturally good, and pious, and righteous"--as what has bound all men commonly, including those before the law, such as Noah, Enoch, and Jacob, as well as those "who have known this Christ, who was before the morning star and the moon, and submitted to become incarnate." It is the fulfillment of "that which is universally, naturally, and eternally good," which makes men--across the board--pleasing to God. This is a clear reference to a universal natural law embedded within the Mosaic Law and within man himself, a law that was known to mankind before the Mosaic Law, which constituted its heart, and which continued in validity and bound all men, including those who followed Christ. Christians are not released from doing that which is universally, naturally, and eternally good.

For what in the law of Moses is naturally good, and pious, and righteous (ἐν τῷ Μωυσέως νόμῳ τὰ φύσει καλὰ καὶ εὐσεβῆ καὶ δίκαια), and has been prescribed to be done by those who obey it; and what was appointed to be performed by reason of the hardness of the people’s hearts (σκληροκαρδίαν δὲ τοῦ λαοῦ) was similarly recorded, and done also by those who were under the law (οἱ ὑπὸ τὸν νόμον). Since those who did that which is universally, naturally, and eternally good are pleasing to God (ἐπεὶ οἳ τὰ καθόλου καὶ φύσει καὶ αἰώνια καλὰ ἐποίουν εὐάρεστοί εἰσι τῷ θεῷ), they shall be saved through this Christ in the resurrection equally with those righteous men who were before them, namely Noah, and Enoch, and Jacob, and whoever else there be, along with those who have known this Christ, Son of God, who was before the morning star and the moon, and submitted to become incarnate, and be born of this virgin of the family of David, in order that, by this dispensation, the serpent that sinned from the beginning, and the angels like him, may be destroyed, and that death may be contemned, and for ever quit, at the second coming of the Christ Himself, those who believe in Him and live acceptably,—and be no more: when some are sent to be punished unceasingly into judgment and condemnation of fire; but others shall exist in freedom from suffering, from corruption, and from grief, and in immortality.

Dial. Tryph., xlv. Earlier in his dialogue with Trypho, St. Justin had spoken of this universally-binding natural law, a law, indeed, which was incarnate in a person, Christ. It may be said that just as St. Justin taught that the Logos, or Word, of God had become flesh, so, too, did the law become flesh in Christ. "[A]n eternal and final law," "has been given to us," St. Justin tells his Jewish interlocutor, "namely, Christ." Dial. Tryph.xi

"There will be no other God, O Trypho, nor was there from eternity any other existing” (I thus addressed him), "but He who made and disposed all this universe. Nor do we think that there is one God for us, another for you, but that He alone is God who led your fathers out from Egypt with a strong hand and a high arm. Nor have we trusted in any other (for there is no other), but in Him in whom you also have trusted, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. But we do not trust through Moses or through the law (οὐ διὰ Μωυσέως οὐδὲ διὰ τοῦ νόμου); for then we would do the same as yourselves. But now (for I have read that there shall be a final law, and a covenant, the chiefest of all, which it is now incumbent on all men to observe (τελευταῖος νόμος καὶ διαθήκη κυριωτάτη πασῶν, ἣν νῦν δέον φυλάσσειν πάντας ἀνθρώπους), as many as are seeking after the inheritance of God. For the law promulgated on Horeb is now old (ὁ γὰρ ἐν Χωρὴβ παλαιὸς ἤδη νόμος καὶ ὑμῶν μόνων), and belongs to yourselves alone; but this is for all universally (ὁ δὲ πάντων ἁπλῶς· νόμος). Now, law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it (νόμος δὲ κατὰ νόμου τεθεὶς τὸν πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἔπαυσε), and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous one (καὶ διαθήκη μετέπειτα γενομένη τὴν προτέραν ὁμοίως ἔστησεν); and an eternal and final law—namely, Christ—has been given to us (αἰώνιός τε ἡμῖν νόμος καὶ τελευταῖος ὁ Χριστὸς ἐδόθη), and the covenant is trustworthy (ἡ διαθήκη πιστή), after which there shall be no law, no commandment, no ordinance (μεθ' ἣν οὐ νόμος, οὐ πρόσταγμα, οὐκ ἐντολή). Have you not read this which Isaiah says: 'Hearken unto Me, hearken unto Me, my people; and, ye kings, give ear unto Me: for a law shall go forth from Me, and My judgment shall be for a light to the nations. My righteousness approaches swiftly, and My salvation shall go forth, and nations shall trust in Mine arm?' (Isa. 51: 4, 5) And by Jeremiah, concerning this same new covenant, He thus speaks: 'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt.' (Jer. 31: 31, 32) If, therefore, God proclaimed a new covenant which was to be instituted, and this for a light of the nations, we see and are persuaded that men approach God, leaving their idols and other unrighteousness, through the name of Him who was crucified, Jesus Christ, and abide by their confession even unto death, and maintain piety. Moreover, by the works and by the attendant miracles, it is possible for all to understand that He is the new law, and the new covenant, and the expectation (ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ καινὸς νόμος καὶ ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη καὶ ἡ προσδοκία) of those who out of every people wait for the good things of God. For the true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and blessed by God on account of his faith, and called the father of many nations), are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ . . .

Dial. Tryph., xi.

Icon of St. Justin Holding Martyr's Crown and Wearing Philosopher's Robe

In short, one finds in St. Justin Martyr the concept of a law within the Mosaic law that defines what is essentially good and right. That law preceded the Mosaic law, and was the instrument of righteousness for all men who were not subject to the Mosaic law, either because of history (Moses had not yet come) or because of their condition (they were Gentile, and not Jew), or because the Logos had become enfleshed, abrogated the Mosaic law in its ceremonial particularities and universalized the natural law heart of the Mosaic law. As Erwin Goodenough summarizes it: "Though God undoubtedly gave the law, justification throughout Jewish history has been a matter of moral integrity and purity of heart, not a matter of legal observance" of the Mosaic law. Erwin Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr (BiblioLife 2009), 89. That essential kernel of "moral integrity and purity of heart" is what Christ universalized in his Golden Rule, in his teachings on the Beatitudes, and his other moral teachings. This is the natural law, that law "which is universally, naturally, and eternally good," and which Christ personified, as foretold by the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. The natural moral law--ever ancient, ever new--is a "law placed against law," a law that abrogated the Mosaic law, and indeed, was also before, and even within, that Mosaic law. It is an eternal law (αἰώνιός νόμος), and a final law (τελευταῖος νόμος ). Thus, this one stream of law existed before, parallel to, and within the stream of Mosaic law, and flowed with ever greater current and ebullience in the one natural moral law now universally binding all men, the end of which, the fulfillment of which, the epitome of which, the personification of which, is Christ. There is no other law that will ever be given, "no law, no commandment, no ordinance," but this one, "namely Christ." Dial. Tryph., xi.