Tatian

This episode presents the Address of Tatian to the Greeks, the first work by an Assyrian church father-turned-heretic. He has the dubious honor of being singled out by Irenaeus for inventing a system of deities and denying that Adam, the first man, was saved. According to Irenaeus, 

“He was a hearer of Justin’s, and as long as he continued with him he expressed no such views; but after his martyrdom he separated from the Church, and, excited and puffed up by the thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others, he composed his own peculiar type of doctrine.”

Primarily as a result of his fall from orthodoxy late in life, the work presented here is one of few surviving, and was likely written sometime between AD 110 and 172. Beyond this we also, from an Arabic translation, still have a copy of a book called the Diatessaron, which was a combination of the gospels in a single narrative.

In this work, Tatian appears to have carried forward in the spirit of Justin Martyr, defending the Christian faith over and against the secular philosophy of his day. In this address, Tatian writes to the Greeks in order to demonstrate the hypocrisy of their philosophy, the primacy of Moses as a prophet and historical witness, and the supremacy of the Gospel over all human philosophy. Additionally, through addressing the nature of the Logos, Jesus, the hope of a bodily resurrection, and the importance placed on living a virtuous life, Tatian helps identify some doctrines particularly important in the early Church. 

If you would like to read more of the writings of the Early Christian Fathers, please visit ccel.org to view the full collection.