Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/946

 trinally) and difficult in the Oratio, opens thus:

"In the beginning was God. We have been taught that the beginning is the power of the Logos. For the Lord of all, being Himself the substance (ὑπόστασις) of all, in so far that creation had not yet taken place, was alone; but in so far as He was Himself all power, and the substance of things visible and invisible, all things were with Him: (and thus) with Him by Logos-power (διὰ λογιχῆς δυνάμεως), the very Logos Himself, Who was in Him, subsisted (ὑπέστησε). By the simple will of God the Logos springs forth, and not proceeding forth without cause (κατὰ κενοῦ), becomes the first-begotten work of the Father. Him we recognize as the beginning of the world. He was born by participation, not by scission (κατὰ μερισμὸν οὐ κατὰ ἀποκοπὴν); for He Who proceeds by scission is separated from the first, but He Who has proceeded by participation and has accepted a part in the administration of the world (τὸ. ., οἰκονομίας τὴν αἵρεσιν προσλαβόν), hath not rendered Him defective from Whom He was taken. Just as many fires are lighted from one torch, but the light of the first torch is not lessened through the kindling of the many, so the Logos coming forth from the power of the Father hath not made Him Who begat Him without Logos (ἄλογον)."

Tatian upholds the belief in the resurrection of the body at the end of all things. His argument is briefly: "There was a time when I did not exist: I was born and came into existence. There will be a time when (through death) I shall not exist; but again I shall exist, just as before I was not, but was afterwards born [cf. Tertull. Apol. xlviii.]. Let fire destroy my flesh, let me be drowned, or torn to pieces by wild beasts, I am laid up in the treasure-chambers of a wealthy Lord. God Who reigneth can, when He will, restore to its pristine state that which is visible to Him alone." In c. vii. Tatian returns to the Logos, that he may demonstrate His work as regards angels and men.

The thoughts of the better land and of God's revelation by the prophets lead Tatian to God's revelation of Himself in the Incarnation. That doctrine he treats in a manner likely to be admitted by a Greek, if very differently from the way (e.g.) Justin Martyr presented it to the Jews. We are not mad, he says (c. xxi.), nor do we utter idle tales when we say that God was made (γεγονέναι) in the form of man. The mythology of the Greeks was full of such appearances—an Athene taking the form of a Deiphobus, a Phoebus that of a herdsman, etc., etc. Further, what did so frequent an expression as the origin of the gods imply but that they were mortal? The difficulty attendant upon the heathen belief was not removed by the tendency to resolve all myths and gods into allegory. Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise on Homer, invited men to believe that the Hera or Athene or Zeus, to whom they consecrated enclosures and groves, were simply natural beings or elemental arrangements. That, argues Tatian, was to surrender their divinity; a surrender he freely endorses, for he will not admit any comparison between the Christian God and deities who "wallow in matter and mud."

Tatian (c. xxii.) lashes with ridicule the teaching offered to and accepted by the Greeks, the teaching of the theatre and arena. It might be urged that such places were frequented and delighted in by the uncultured only. Tatian therefore places the philosophers also at the bar of judgment, and his contempt for their teaching is only equalled by his ridicule of their appearance (c. xxv.). He denounces them as tuft-hunters and gluttons, to whom philosophy was simply a means of getting money. No two of them agreed. One followed the teaching of Plato, a disciple of Epicurus opposed him. The scholar of Democritus reviled the pupil of Aristotle. Why, protests Tatian, do you who are so inharmonious fight us Christians who are at least harmonious? "Your philosophers maintain that God has a body: I maintain that He is without a body; that the world shall be often consumed by fire, I once for all; that Minos and Rhadamanthus will be the judges of mankind, I God Himself (cf. c. vi.); that the soul alone is immortal, I the body together with the soul." We, he continues, do but follow the Logos of God, why do you hate us? We are not eaters of human flesh; the charge is false. It is among you that Pelops the beloved of Poseidon is made a banquet for the gods, that Saturn devours his own children, and Zeus swallows Metis.

After all, the philosophers do but make a boast of language taken from others (c. xxvi.), like the jackdaw strutting about in borrowed plumes. The reading of their books is like struggling through a labyrinth, the readers must be like the pierced cask of the Danaids. Why should they affirm that wisdom was with them only? The grammarians were at the bottom of all this folly; and philosophers who parcelled out wisdom to this and that system-maker knew not God and did but destroy each other. "Therefore," Tatian concludes scornfully, "you are all nothing—blind men talking with deaf; handling builder's tools but not knowing how to build; preaching but not practising; swaggering about in public but hiding your teaching in corners. We have left you because this is your character. We can have nothing more to do with your instructions. We follow the word of God."

Tatian then explains (c. xxix.) how he became a Christian. It was not through want of knowledge of what he was leaving. He had been initiated into the (Eleusinian) mysteries, and had made trial of every kind of religious worship. The result had sickened him. Among the Romans he had found the Latiarian Jupiter delighting in human gore, Diana Aricina similarly worshipped, and this or that demon systematically urging on to what was evil. He withdrew to seek by some means to discover the truth. "As," he says, "I was earnestly considering this I came across certain barbarian writings, older in point of antiquity than the doctrines of the Greeks, and far too divine to be marked by their errors. What persuaded me in these books was the simplicity of the language, the inartificial style of the writers, the noble explanation of creation, the