A question for Tatian

Matthias

Well-known member
I reread Tatian earlier this year. I see there is some interest in his writing on this forum.

Tatian writes in Address To The Greeks -

“God was in the beginning; but the beginning, we have been taught, is the power of the Logos. For the Lord of the universe, who is Himself the necessary ground of all being, inasmuch as no creature was yet in existence, was alone; but inasmuch as He was all power, Himself the necessary ground of things visible and invisible, with Him were all things; with Him, by Logos-power the Logos Himself also, who was in Him, subsists. And by His simple will the Logos springs forth; and the Logos, not coming forth in vain, becomes the first-begotten work of the Father. Him (the Logos) we know to be the beginning of the world. But He came into being by participation, not by abscission;

(Chapter 5)

Bold is mine.

The Logos came into being.

Here is my question:

Tatian, do you believe that God came into being?
 
Holy cow, Tatian posts here? Who knew?

But seriously I think these early fathers were wrestling with the fact that the Word is spoken of in a derivative sense, and that is hard to tackle for a limited human mind that feels bound to the temporal. There is such a thing as a logical derivation without it being in time, and in fact, to this day the forcing of God in time trips a lot of believers up with false theologies such as Open Theism.
 
Holy cow, Tatian posts here? Who knew?

It’s become popular on the forum in recent days to quote Tatian. (I like it!) Some are asserting that Tatian believed in ”the Deity of Christ”. Tatian, as we have seen, believed that the Logos came into being. Who among those who believe in “the Deity of Christ” believe that the Logos, the eternal second person of the Trinity, ever came into being? “Eternal” is an existence that is the opposite of coming into being / existence.

Tatian was neither a trinitarian nor a believer in “the deity of Christ”. So why is he being presented as someone who is?

That’s hard to say, but I don’t propose to speculate about it.

But seriously I think these early fathers were wrestling with the fact that the Word is spoken of in a derivative sense, and that is hard to tackle for a limited human mind that feels bound to the temporal. There is such a thing as a logical derivation without it being in time, and in fact, to this day the forcing of God in time trips a lot of believers up with false theologies such as Open Theism.
 
I like your point about them struggling @dizerner. They did. They shouldn’t have. Why did they? The Apostles didn’t.

You're 100% wrong here, and we should watch out for becoming too spiritually cocky.

Peter was humble enough to admit some things Paul said were "hard to understand" and he himself had to receive very sharp correction from Paul.

and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation-- as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
(2 Pet. 3:15-16 NKJ)
 
You're 100% wrong here, and we should watch out for becoming too spiritually cocky.

100% wrong? Then most books written by trinitarian scholars on the subject are 100% wrong.

The influence of Greek philosophy on Christian thought has been, and is, a major topic of discussion.

Peter was humble enough to admit some things Paul said were "hard to understand" and he himself had to receive very sharp correction from Paul.

and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation-- as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
(2 Pet. 3:15-16 NKJ)

The early Church Fathers wouldn’t have struggled with the issues that they did if they had not gone beyond what the Apostles taught. The Apostles didn’t use Greek philosophical concepts to understand and explain what they did about God.

Take only one word, for example: ousia. It occurs only one time in scripture, and has nothing whatsoever to do with God.

These problems came up when the Gentiles began coming into the Church. Many of the early Church Fathers were pagan philosophers themselves before they came into the Church, and others were great admirers of the pagan Greek philosophers. They brought that baggage with them. They thought about God in ways which the Apostles didn’t. That’s not even 0.1% wrong. It’s just historical fact.
 
One culture communicating with another culture is fraught with danger of misunderstanding.

This was a challenge (there were many, of course) that the early Church faced when the gospel was first being taken to the gentiles.

When people steeped in Hebraic thought encountered people steeped in Greek thought, two worlds, as it were, collided.

For example, the Hebrew word davar is the equivalent of the Greek word logos. But what the Jews (the earliest Christians were comprised almost exclusively of Jews who had become to believe that Jesus of Nazareth - himself a Jew - is the Messiah promised, raised up and sent by the God of the Jews) meant by logos is not what Neo-Platonism meant by logos. Same word, different ideas.

Hellenization spells trouble.
 
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