The Opinions of Tatian.—(a) God (see c. iv.).—With Tatian, as with Justin, God, not contemplated as He is in His nature but as revealed in His works, is the starting-point of all Christian philosophy. Tatian's doctrine about the creation is in c. v. In the creation itself he recognizes two stages (c. ii.): (α) matter, shapeless and unformed, is put forth (προβεβλημένη) by God; and (β) the world, separated from this matter, is fashioned into what is full of beauty and order, though eventually to be dissolved by fire (c. xxv.).
(b) The Logos (see c. v.).—The relation between God (ὁ δεσπότης) and the Logos Who subsists in Him, the Hypostasis, is conceived from a different point of view, and set forth in different terms from those of Justin. With Tatian the Logos springs forth (προπηδᾶ) by the Will of God. The process of begetting, the relationships of Father and Son, and the worship due to the Son, are not brought forward. The inward communion between them which carries with it these truths is indeed expressed by the deep phrase σὺν αὐτῷ διὰ λογικῆς δυνάμεως αὐτὸς καὶ ὁ λόγος; but the outward exhibition of this communion—the "springing forth"—is suggestive of emanation rather than of begetting. The distinction between the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and the λόγος προφορικός, so strongly expressed by the apologist Theophilus (ii. 10), is more than visible. Tatian, in fact, presents the Logos as the personification of an abstraction.
(c) The Holy Spirit is evidently with Tatian a distinct personal Being. He does not, as Justin (Apol. i. 60), speak directly of His share in the creation; he rather leads up to His work and office as "the Minister of the suffering God" (c. xiii.), when he would present its bearing upon the nature of man. Starting from the initial positions, "God is Spirit," and the Logos "a Spirit born of the Father," Tatian recognizes two varieties of Spirit: (α) "the spirit which pervades matter, inferior to (β) the more Divine Spirit" (c. iv.). To the Spirit is attributed prophetic powers. Abiding with the just and locked in the embrace of the soul (συμβλεκόμενον τῇ ψυχῇ), He proclaims to other souls by means of prophecies that which is concealed. He uses the Prophets as His organ (cf. c. xx.). This action Tatian has also attributed to "the Power of the Logos" (c. vii.). Perhaps, as with Justin, this title of the Logos, ἡ δύναμις, defines for Tatian the meaning of the πνεῦμα (cf. II. Cor. iii. 17). The Spirit is the Divine Power of the Logos.
(d) Angelology and Demonology.—Of good angels Tatian says nothing; but he speaks as strongly as Justin of evil angels, though he presents their work and ways in different language and (in some respects) from a different point of view. When expelled from heaven the fallen angels or demons lived with animals. Some of these they placed—the dog, the bear, the scorpion, etc.—in the heavens as objects of worship. Of demons, Tatian recognizes two classes. Receiving alike their constitution from matter, and possessing the spirit which comes from it, few only turned to what was purer, the many chose what was licentious and gluttonous (c. xii.); they became the very "effulgences of matter and wickedness" (c. xv.). Though material, none of the demons possess flesh; their structure is spiritual like that of fire or air (ib.).
(e) Man.—Tatian recognizes the three parts of body, soul, and spirit. At the fall man lost the spirit or highest nature, which had in it immortality (c. vii.). As the angels were cast down from heaven, so man was driven forth from earth, "yet not out of this earth, but from a more excellent order of things than exists here now." Tatian would seem to place Paradise above our earth; he describes it (c. xx.) as one of the better aeons unaffected by that change of seasons which is productive of various diseases, as partaking of a perfect temperature, as possessing endless day and light, and as unapproachable by mortals such as we are. Man, though deprived of the spirit, must aim at recovering his former state. Body and soul are left him. The soul is composite: it is the bond of the flesh; yet also that which encloses the soul is the flesh. The soul cannot appear without a body, nor can the flesh rise again without the soul.
Faith is a necessity for knowledge of divine things; ὁ πιστεύων ἐπιγνώσεται (c. xix.); faith and knowledge together help towards the victory over sin and death. Men, after the throwing away (ἀποβολήν) of immortality; have conquered death by the death which is through faith (cf. c. xi.: "Die to the world! Live to God!"); and through repentance a call has been granted to those who (according to God's word) are but a little lower than the angels (c. xv.). Through faith, and as the object of faith, Tatian proclaims that "God was born in the form of a man" (c. xxi.), and speaks of the Holy Spirit as the minister of the God Who hath suffered (τὸν διάκονον τοῦ πεπονθότος θεοῦ, c. xiii.). If he never mentions the names Jesus or Christ, it is because the facts of the Incarnation and Passion would commend themselves independently of names to Gentiles, to whom such facts were illustrated by their mythology (cf. Justin, Apol. i. 21). Faith animates the famous passage on the soul (c. xiii.), and especially in connexion with the resurrection. "We have faith in this doctrine," he exclaims (c. v.); but he does not rest his reasons on the resurrection of Christ (as St. Paul), but on an argument which may have suggested the more elaborate reasoning of Tertullian (Apol. c. xlviii.): There was a time when as man he was not; after a former state of nothingness he was born. Again, there would be a time when he would die; and again there would be a time when he should exist again. There was nothing of metempsychosis or transmigration of souls in his conception. Though the flesh were destroyed by fire or wild beasts, or dispersed through rivers or seas, "I," says Tatian, "am laid up in the storehouses of a wealthy Lord. God the King will, when He pleases, restore to its former state my substance which is visible to Himself alone" (c. vi.).
As regards free will, Tatian uses even more emphatic language than Justin (e.g. Apol. i. 43). He opposes the Scriptural (and Platonic) belief in free will to the fatalism of philosophers (cc. viii.–x.), and while he pours scorn upon their views, pens a touching appeal to them as men "not created to die" (see c. xl. end).
