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| The Heresy of Tatian. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XXIX.—The Heresy of Tatian.1323
1323 From his Oratio (chap. 42) we learn that Tatian was born in
Assyria, and that he was early educated in Greek philosophy, from which
we may conclude that he was of Greek parentage,—a conclusion
confirmed by the general tone of the Oratio (cf. Harnack,
Ueberlieferung der Griech. Apol. p. 199 sq., who refutes
Zahn’s opinion that Tatian was a Syrian by race). We learn from
his Oratio also that he was converted to Christianity in mature
life (cf. chap. 29 sq.). From the passage quoted in the present chapter
from Irenæus, we learn that Tatian, after the death of Justin
(whose disciple he was; see also chap. 16, above), fell into heresy,
and the general fact is confirmed by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, and others. Beyond these meager notices we have
little information in regard to Tatian’s life. Rhodo (quoted in
Bk. V. chap. 13, below) mentions him, and “confesses” that
he was a pupil of Tatian’s in Rome, perhaps implying that this
was after Tatian had left the Catholic Church (though inasmuch as the
word “confesses” is Eusebius’, not Rhodo’s, we
can hardly lay the stress that Harnack does upon its use in this
connection). Epiphanius gives quite an account of Tatian in his
Hær. XLVI. 1, but as usual he falls into grave errors
(especially in his chronology). The only trustworthy information that
can be gathered from him is that Tatian, after becoming a Christian,
returned to Mesopotamia and taught for a while there (see Harnack,
ibid. p. 208 sq.). We learn from his Oratio that he was
already in middle life at the time when he wrote it, i.e. about 152
a.d. (see note 13, below), and as a
consequence it is commonly assumed that he cannot have been born much
later than 110 a.d. Eusebius in his
Chron. (XII. year of Marcus Aurelius, 172 a.d.) says, Tatianus hæreticus agnoscitur, a quo
Encratitæ. There is no reason to doubt that this represents
with reasonable accuracy the date of Tatian’s break with the
Catholic Church. We know at any rate that it did not take place until
after Justin’s death (165 a.d.). In
possession of these various facts in regard to Titian, his life has
been constructed in various ways by historians, but Harnack seems to
have come nearest to the truth in his account of him on p. 212 sq. He
holds that he was converted about 150, but soon afterward left for the
Orient, and while there wrote his Oratio ad Græcos; that
afterward he returned to Rome and was an honored teacher in the Church
for some time but finally becoming heretical, broke with the Church
about the year 172. The arguments which Harnack urges over against Zahn
(who maintains that he was but once in Rome, and that he became a
heretic in the Orient and spent the remainder of his life there) seem
fully to establish his main positions. Of the date, place, and
circumstances of Tatian’s death, we know nothing.
Eusebius informs us in
this chapter that Titian left “a great many writings,” but
he mentions the titles of only two, the Address to the Greeks
and the Diatessaron (see below, notes 11 and 13). He seems,
however, in §6, to refer to another work on the Pauline
Epistles,—a work of which we have no trace anywhere else, though
we learn from Jerome’s preface to his Commentary on Titus that
Tatian rejected some of Paul’s epistles, as Marcion did, but
unlike Marcion accepted the epistle to Titus. We know the titles of
some other works written by Tatian. He himself, in his Oratio
15, mentions a work which he had written On Animals. The work is
no longer extant, nor do we know anything about it. Rhodo (as we are
told by Eusebius in Bk. V. chap. 13) mentioned a book of
Problems which Titian had written. Of this, too, all traces have
perished. Clement of Alexandria (Strom. III. 12) mentions an
heretical work of Tatian’s, entitled περὶ τοῦ
κατὰ τὸν
σωτῆρα
καταρτισμοῦ, On Perfection according to the Saviour, which has
likewise perished. Clement (as also Origen) was evidently acquainted
with still other heretical works, especially one on Genesis (see below,
note 7), but he mentions the title only of the one referred to. Rufinus
(H.E. VI. 11) says that Tatian composed a Chronicon,
which we hear about from no other writer. Malalas calls Tatian a
chronographer, but he is evidently thinking of the chronological
passages in his Oratio, and in the absence of all trustworthy
testimony we must reject Rufinus’ notice as a mistake. In his
Oratio, chap. 40, Tatian speaks of a work Against those who
have discoursed on Divine Things, in which he intends to show
“what the learned among the Greeks have said concerning our
polity and the history of our laws and how many and what kind of men
have written of these things.” Whether he ever wrote the work or
not we do not know; we find no other notice of it. Upon Tatian, see
especially Zahn’s Tatian’s Diatessaron and
Harnack’s Ueberlieferung, &c., p. 196; also
Donaldson’s Hist. of Christ. Lit. and Doct. II. p. 3 sqq.,
and J. M. Fuller’s article in the Dict. of Christ.
Biog. |
1. He
is the one whose words we quoted a little above1324 in regard to that admirable man, Justin, and whom we
stated to have been a disciple of the martyr. Irenæus declares
this in the first book of his work Against Heresies, where he writes as
follows concerning both him and his heresy:1325
1325 Irenæus, Adv. Hær. I. 28. 1. |
2. “Those who are called
Encratites,1326
1326 ᾽Εγκρατεῖς, a word meaning “temperate” or
“continent.” These Encratites were heretics who abstained
from flesh, from wine, and from marriage, not temporarily but
permanently, and because of a belief in the essential impurity of those
things. They are mentioned also by Hippolytus (Phil. VIII. 13),
who calls them ἐγκρατῖται; by Clement of Alexandria (Pæd. II. 2,
Strom. I. 15, &c.), who calls them ἐγκρατηταί; by Epiphanius (Hær. 47), who agrees with
Hippolytus in the form of the name, and by others. The Encratites whom
Irenæus describes seem to have constituted a distinct sect,
anti-Jewish and Gnostic in its character. As described by Hippolytus
they appear to have been mainly orthodox in doctrine but heretical in
their manner of life, and we may perhaps gather the same thing from
Clement’s references to them. It is evident, therefore, that
Irenæus and the others are not referring to the same men. So
Theodoret, Hær. Fab. I. 21, speaks of the Severian
Encratites; but the Severians, as we learn from this chapter of
Eusebius and from Epiphanius (Hær. XLV.), were Ebionitic
and anti-Pauline in their tendencies—the exact opposites,
therefore, of the Encratites referred to by Irenæus. That there
was a distinct sect of Encratites of the character described by
Irenæus cannot be denied, but we must certainly conclude that the
word was used very commonly in a wider sense to denote men of various
schools who taught excessive and heretical abstinence. Of course the
later writers may have supposed that they all belonged to one compact
sect, but it is certain that they did not. As to the particular sect
which Irenæus describes, the statement made by Eusebius at the
close of the preceding chapter is incorrect, if we are to accept
Irenæus’ account. For the passage quoted in this chapter
states that they sprung from Marcion and Saturninus, evidently implying
that they were not founded by Tatian, but that he found them already in
existence when he became heretical. It is not surprising, however that
his name should become connected with them as their founder—for
he was the best-known man among them. That the Encratites as such
(whether a single sect or a general tendency) should be opposed by the
Fathers, even by those of ascetic tendencies, was natural. It was not
always easy to distinguish between orthodox and heretical asceticism,
and yet there was felt to be a difference. The fundamental distinction
was held by the Church—whenever it came to self-consciousness on
the subject—to lie in the fact that the heretics pronounced the
things from which they abstained essentially evil in themselves, thus
holding a radical dualism, while the orthodox abstained only as a
matter of discipline. The distinction, it is true, was not always
preserved, but it was this essentially dualistic principle of the
Encratites which the early Fathers combated; it is noticeable, however,
that they do not expend as much vigor in combating it as in refuting
errors in doctrine. In fact, they seem themselves to have been somewhat
in doubt as to the proper attitude to take toward these extreme
ascetics. | and who sprung from Saturninus1327
1327 On Saturninus and on Marcion, see chap. 7, note 6, and 11, note
15. On their asceticism, see especially Irenæus, Adv.
Hær. I. 24. | and Marcion, preached celibacy, setting
aside the original arrangement of God and tacitly censuring him who
made male and female for the propagation of the human race. They
introduced also abstinence from the things called by them animate,1328
1328 τῶν
λεγομένων
ἐμψύχων:
i.e. animal food in general. | thus showing ingratitude to the God
who made all things. And they deny the salvation of the first man.1329
1329 Cf. Irenæus, Adv. Hær. III. 23, where this
opinion of Tatian’s is refuted at considerable length. The
opinion seems a little peculiar, but was a not unnatural consequence of
Tatian’s strong dualism, and of his doctrine of a conditional
immortality for those who have been reunited with the Holy Spirit who
took his departure at the time of the fall (cf. especially his
Oratio, chap. 15). That Adam, who, by his fall, brought about
this separation, which has been of such direful consequence to the
race, should be saved, was naturally to Titian a very repugnant
thought. He seems, moreover, to have based his opinion, as Donaldson
remarks, upon exegetical grounds interpreting the passage in regard to
Adam (1 Cor. xv. 22) as meaning that Adam
is and remains the principle of death, and as such, of course, cannot
himself enjoy life (see Irenæus, ibid.). This is quite in
accord with the distinction between the psychical and physical man
which he draws in his Oratio. It is quite possible that he was
moved in part also by the same motive which led Marcion to deny the
salvation of Abraham and the other patriarchs (see Irenæus,
Adv. Hær. I. 27 and IV. 8), namely, the opposition between
the God of the Old Testament and the Christ of the New Testament, which
led him to assert that those who depended on the former were lost. We
learn from Clement (Strom. III. 12) and from Origen (de
Orat. chap. 24) that among Tatian’s heretical works was one
in which he discussed the early chapters of Genesis and perhaps it was
in this work that he developed his peculiar views’ in regard to
Adam. |
3. But this has been only
recently discovered by them, a certain Tatian being the first to
introduce this blasphemy. He was a hearer of Justin, and expressed no
such opinion while he was with him, but after the martyrdom of the
latter he left the Church, and becoming exalted with the thought of
being a teacher, and puffed up with the idea that he was superior to
others, he established a peculiar type of doctrine of his own,
inventing certain invisible æons like the followers of
Valentinus,1330
1330 On
Valentinus, see chap. 11, note 1. That Tatian was Gnostic in many of
his tendencies is plain enough not only from these words of
Irenæus, but also from the notices of him in other writers (cf.
especially Hippolytus, Phil. VIII. 9). To what extent he carried
his Gnosticism, however, and exactly in what it consisted, we cannot
tell. He can hardly have been a pronounced follower of Valentinus and a
zealous defender of the doctrine of Æons, or we should find him
connected more prominently with that school. He was, in fact, a decided
eclectic, and a follower of no one school, and doubtless this subject,
like many others, occupied but a subordinate place in his
speculations. | while, like Marcion and Saturninus,
he pronounced marriage to be corruption and fornication. His argument
against the salvation of Adam, however, he devised for himself.”
Irenæus at that time wrote thus.
4. But a little later a certain
man named Severus1331
1331 That the Severians, whoever they were, were Encratites in the wide
sense, that is, strict abstainers from flesh, wine, and marriage,
cannot be denied (compare with this description of Eusebius that of
Epiphanius in Hær. XLV., also Theodoret’s
Hær. Fab. I. 21, who says that Apolinarius wrote against
the Severian Encratites,—a sign that the Severians and the
Encratites were in some way connected in tradition even though
Theodoret’s statement may be unreliable). But that they were
connected with Tatian and the Encratitic sect to which he belonged, as
Eusebius states, is quite out of the question. Tatian was a decided
Paulinist (almost as much so as Marcion himself). He cannot, therefore,
have had anything to do with this Ebionitic, anti-Pauline sect, known
as the Severians. Whether there was ever such a person as Severus, or
whether the name arose later to explain the name of the sect (possibly
taken from the Latin severus, “severe,” as Salmon
suggests), as the name Ebion was invented to explain the term
Ebionites, we do not know. We are ignorant also of the source from
which Eusebius took his description of the Severians, as we do not find
them mentioned in any of the earlier anti-heretical works. Eusebius
must have heard, as Epiphanius did, that they were extreme ascetics,
and this must have led him, in the absence of specific information as
to their exact position, to join them with Tatian and the
Encratites,—a connection which can be justified on no other
ground. | put new
strength into the aforesaid heresy, and thus brought it about that
those who took their origin from it were called, after him,
Severians.
5. They, indeed, use the Law and
Prophets and Gospels, but interpret in their own way the utterances of
the Sacred Scriptures. And they abuse Paul the apostle and reject his
epistles, and do not accept even the Acts of the Apostles.
6. But their original founder,
Tatian, formed a certain combination and collection of the Gospels, I
know not how,1332
1332 οὐκ οἰδ᾽
ὅπως. Eusebius clearly
means to imply in these words that he was not acquainted with the
Diatessaron. Lightfoot, it is true, endeavors to show that these
words may mean simply disapproval of the work, and not ignorance in
regard to it. But his interpretation is an unnatural one, and has been
accepted by few scholars. | to which he
gave the title Diatessaron,1333
1333 τὸ διὰ
τεσσ€ρων. Eusebius is the first one to mention this Diatessaron,
and he had evidently not seen it himself. After him it is not referred
to again until the time of Epiphanius, who in his Hær.
XLVI. 1 incorrectly identifies it with the Gospel according to the
Hebrews, evidently knowing it only by hearsay. Theodoret (Hær.
Fab. I. 20) informs us that he found a great many copies of it in
circulation in his diocese, and that, finding that it omitted the
account of our Lord’s birth, he replaced it by the four Gospels,
fearing the mischief which must result from the use of such a mutilated
Gospel. In the Doctrine of Addai (ed. Syr. and Engl. by G.
Phillips, 1876), which belongs to the third century, a Diatessaron is
mentioned which is without doubt to be identified with the one under
consideration (see Zahn I. p. 90 sq.). Meanwhile we learn from the
preface to Dionysius bar Salibi’s Commentary on Mark (see
Assemani, Bibl. Or. I. 57), that Ephraem wrote a commentary upon
the Diatessaron of Tatian (Tatianus Justini Philosophi ac
Martyris Discipulus, ex quator Evangeliis unum digessit, quod
Diatessaron nuncupavit. Hunc librum Sanctus Ephraem commentariis
illustravit). Ephraem’s commentary still exists in an
Armenian version (published at Venice in 1836, and in Latin in 1876 by
Mœsinger). There exists also a Latin Harmony of the Gospels, which
is without doubt a substantial reproduction of Tatian’s
Diatessaron, and which was known to Victor of Capua (of the
sixth century). From these sources Zahn has attempted to reconstruct
the text of the Diatessaron, and prints the reconstructed text,
with a critical commentary, in his Tatian’s Diatessaron.
Zahn maintains that the original work was written in Syriac, and he is
followed by Lightfoot, Hilgenfeld, Fuller, and others; but Harnack has
given very strong reasons for supposing that it was composed by Tatian
in Greek, and that the Syriac which Ephraem used was a translation of
that original, not the original itself. Both Zahn and Harnack agree, as
do most other scholars, that the work was written before Tatian became
a heretic, and with no heretical intent. Inasmuch as he later became a
heretic, however, his work was looked upon with suspicion, and of
course in later days, when so much stress was laid (as e.g. by
Irenæus) upon the fourfold Gospel, Christians would be naturally
distrustful of a single Gospel proposed as a substitute for them. It is
not surprising, therefore, that the work failed to find acceptance in
the Church at large. For further particulars, see especially
Zahn’s monograph, which is the most complete and exhaustive
discussion of the whole subject. See also Harnack’s
Ueberlieferung der Griech. Apologeten, p. 213 ff.,
Fuller’s article referred to in note 1, the article by Lightfoot
in the Contemporary Review for May, 1877, and those by Wace in
the Expositor for 1881 and 1882. | and
which is still in the hands of some. But they say that he ventured to
paraphrase certain words of the apostle,1334
1334 i.e. of Paul, who was quite commonly called simply ὁ ἀπόστολος. This seems to imply that Tatian wrote a work on
Paul’s epistles (see note 1, above). | in order to improve their
style.
7. He has left a great many
writings. Of these the one most in use among many persons is his
celebrated Address to the Greeks,1335
1335 λόγος ὁ
πρὸς
῞Ελληνας: Oratio ad Græcos. This work is still extant, and is
one of the most interesting of the early apologies. The standpoint of
the author is quite different from that of Justin, for he treats Greek
philosophy with the greatest contempt, and finds nothing good in it. As
remarked in note 1, above, the Oratio was probably written after
Tatian had left Rome for the first time, but not long after his
conversion. We may follow Harnack (p. 196) in fixing upon 152 to 153 as
an approximate date. The work is printed with a Latin translation and
commentary in Otto’s Corp. Apol. Vol. VI.
The best critical
edition is that of Schwartz, in v. Gebhardt and Harnack’s
Texte und Untersuchungen, IV. 1 (Leipzig, 1888), though it
contains only the Greek text. An English translation is given in the
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II. p. 59–83. | which also
appears to be the best and most useful of all his works. In it he deals
with the most ancient times, and shows that Moses and the Hebrew
prophets were older than all the celebrated men among the Greeks.1336
1336 Tatian devotes a number of chapters to this subject (XXXI.,
XXXV.–XLI). Eusebius mentions him, with Clement, Africanus,
Josephus, and Justus, in the preface to his Chron. (Schöne,
II. p. 4), as a witness to the antiquity of Moses, and it is probable
that Julius Africanus drew from him in the composition of his
chronological work (cf. Harnack, ibid. p. 224). Clement of
Alexandria likewise made large use of his chronological results (see
especially his Strom. I. 21), and Origen refers to them in his
Contra Cels. I. 16. It was largely on account of these chapters
on the antiquity of Moses that Tatian’s Oratio was held in
such high esteem, while his other works disappeared. | So much in regard to these
men.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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