Re: The Early Christians: Self-Portraits and Portrayals

I must admit it is the object of all my prayers and earnest endeavors to be

found a Christian. Not that the teachings of Plato are alien to those of 
Christ, but what I mean is that they are not equivalent in all things; 
neither are those of the others, the Stoics, the poets, and historians. 
Each of them spoke admirably in as far as he was endowed with the seed of 
the divine Logos disseminated everywhere and saw what is related to its 
nature. They contradicted each other in important issues however, showing
a 
lack of far-sighted knowledge and clear, infallible understanding. 
Everything which was said by them rightly belongs to us Christians. For 
next to God we worship the Logos, who came from this same unbegotten and 
ineffable God, and we love him because he became man for our sakes and
even 
took part in our suffering that he might heal us. All these writers could 
see only a demon-like glimpse of the truth through the indwelling, innate 
seed of the Logos, for the seed of something, and its imitation, given 
according to one’s receptivity, are always quite different from the thing 
itself.	

Justin, Second Apology 13.