MYSTERY REVEALED

evidence for the existence of one God after his chapter on revelation. Revelation is our
true guide, but it is not devoid of rational grounds. This example shows very well
Athenagoras’ irenic way of reasoning. He found no foundational conflict between
Church and Empire or between faith and philosophy. The conciliatory message of
Athenagoras was that God has entrusted us with both entities.
Ad Diognetum and the Oratio of Tatian
Tatian’s Oratio, or Oration to the Greeks 150 is not really an apology at all. 151 It is
rather a polemic attack on Greek culture. It stands in sharp contrast to Athenagoras’
irenic approach. Maybe we should understand Tatian’s work as a logos syntaktikos, a
farewell discourse, 152 but it also has a strong exhortative tendency. Traditionally he is
reckoned among the apologists, and he certainly shows some apologetic traits. Tatian’s
Oratio could have been written in connection with the martyrdoms in Gaul A.D. 177, or
178. 153 The emperor Marcus Aurelius, confirmed the death sentences of convinced
Christians. 154 The slaughter resulted in the loss of many innocent lives, and the list of
martyrs included forty-eight names. 155 This brutal massacre of Christians in spite of
some apologists appeal to imperial justice, could have been the likely historical
background for Tatian’s oration and at least in part it explains the hostile tone that
and therefore the “logical” conclusion is that “God, the Maker of the world is from the beginning one and
alone” (Athenag.leg.8). This argumentation seems to presuppose the theses that God is independent and
indivisible and that there are only two categories of being: Eternal Being and temporal being (in one sense
non-being) and two categories of space: Inside or outside spherical creation.
150 .
151 Richard A. Norris, “The Apologists,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, eds.
Frances Young, Lewis Aures and Andrew Louth, Cambridge History Online (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), p.43.
152 Grant, Greek Apologists, p. 115.
153 According to Grant, Tatian in 19.1 probably referred to a celebration in Athens in the autumn of
A.D. 176 that accompanied the Emperors donation of four professorships in philosophy and one in
rhetoric, each with a stipend of 400 aurei. Tatian comments that “your philosophers are so far from that
practice that some receive 600 gold coins a year from the Roman Emperor for no useful purpose but that
they may even be paid for letting their beards grow long”. (Grant, Greek Apologists, pp.113-114). An
aureus was a Roman gold coin.
154 Grant, Greek Apologists, p.113.
155 Ibid.
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