Jean Danielou Explains Tatian's Anthropology

The source used for this entry is Jean Danielou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture: A History of Early Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicea, Vol. 2. Trans. John Austin Baker. London: Darton, Longman & Todd & Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973.

Tatian (120-173 CE) apparently believes that humans share in "a portion of divinity" (Oratio ad Graecos 7) by virtue of their distinctive creative origins (see Danielou 2:390). God made us free but we do not possess the Good as such: only God is Good in the strictest sense.

This church father argues that two differentiable spirits were present in the first man: the soul and one spirit greater than the soul. Thus, originally, man was partially matter but somewhat transcended matter (Oratio 12). The second spirit (pneuma) is the ruah YHWH of the Hebrew Bible (2:390). It is also the "Pauline concept of the divine life in which men share through Christ" (Ibid.).

Oratio 13 stresses the ostensibly anthropological dualism of Tatian (2:391). The soul is "darkness" and from below; the realm of matter might be metaphysically or inherently evil for Tatian; conversely, spirit is light and from God. Matter and spirit were originally united, but the first man abandoned God by forsaking the divine spirit. Humankind is now confined to the material realm wherein idolatrous acts transpire with alacrity. See Oratio 13.

While Middle Platonism contends that man is a rational being by nature as does Stoicism, Tatian denies this type of philosophical anthropology. He argues that humankind is the image of God by virtue of the fact that man participates in the divine life (2:392). Compare Oratio 20; Phaedrus 7 (246a-250c, Jowett translation) concerning the anthropological loss of "wings." Cf. Danielou 392-93.

For Tatian, Paradise originally belonged to another world (i.e., it was celestial). Tatian's anthropology therefore sounds Gnostic in some respects, but it is probably due to the intellectual climate in which both the Gnostics and Tatian originated. On the other hand, his anthropology seems to be more Platonist in nature than Gnostic. See Danielou 2:393-94. Also consider the Essene notion of two spirits or a similar concept found in the Shepherd of Hermas. Vide Danielou 2:396-97 for a contrast and similarities between Tatian's views and the ancient Gnostics.