The basic reason why Justin Martyr is unable to set the Christ of Scripture clearly as a challenge over against Greek philosophy lies in the fact that he has, himself, no adequate biblical view of man. The Greeks assumed that man is free, i.e., autonomous. Justin should have challenged this idea in terms of the biblical teaching with respect to man's creation by God. But Justin is afraid to do this. The Greeks will then, he fears, charge him with holding to determinism or fate. So he virtually admits that he, as well as the Greeks, starts with the idea of man's freedom as the ability to act or not act, to act rightly or wrongly, without regard to the plan of God. Virtually committing himself to the same sort of freedom as that to which the principle of discontinuity as that to which the Greeks are committed, i.e., pure contingency.
Cornelius Van Til — Christian Theory of Knowledge
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