Justin Martyr

Justin is the first Christian who looked at Greek philosophy and said 'this is ours too.' Before him, Christians wrote to other Christians. Justin wrote to the Roman emperor explaining why a man who studied Plato and Stoicism for years became a follower of Jesus. That move — engaging the surrounding intellectual culture rather than just denouncing it — is the founding move of every Christian university, every C.S. Lewis-style apologist, every theologian who takes secular thinkers seriously. He died for the experiment.