Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack

“ He was diligent in the cure of souls, labouring hard and successfully for the conversion of the numerous Gnostic communities and other heretical sects which still maintained a footing within the diocese. He himself claims to have brought more than a thousand Marcionites within the pale of the church, and to have destroyed many copies of the Diatessaron of Tatian, which were still in ecclesiastical use; and he also exerted himself to improve the diocese, which was at once large and poor, by building bridges and aqueducts, beautifying the town, and similar works. ”

“ Tatian soon returned from Greece to Rome, and came into close relations with the famous apologist Justin, whom he reverenced greatly. He himself established a school, to which the afterwards celebrated ecclesiastical writer Rhodon belonged for a time. So long as Justin lived (i.e. till 166) Tatian's doctrines excited no feelings of offence in the Christian community, although even in his Oratio there are germs of questionable and unorthodox views. These germs, however, he continued to develop until about 172 ”

“ But his inquiring disposition and his earnest spirit remained unsatisfied alike with the religions and the philosophies he encountered, while the doings of men, their greed for amusement and pleasure, their vanity and treachery, disgusted him. ”

“ Theodoret's chief importance is as a dogmatic theologian, it having fallen to his lot to take part in the great monophysite-Nestorian controversy and to be the most considerable opponent of the views of Cyril and Dioscurus of Alexandria. ”

“ But the ecclesiastical use made of his work in Syria shows that Tatian intended it for the church, and, as we are informed further by Eusebius that Tatian also edited the Pauline epistles, we are entitled to conclude that, like Marcion, he wished to frame a special New Testament canon. (2) It is of importance for the Gospels as we now have them. We learn from the Diatessaron that about 160 A.D. our four Gospels had already taken a place of prominence in the church and that no others had done so; that in particular the Fourth Gospel had taken a fixed place alongside of the three synoptics. ”

“ It is distressing, therefore, to find him in his subsequent Epitome classing Nestorius as a heretic, and speaking of him with the utmost hostility. Some of Theodoret's dogmatic works are no longer extant: of his five books Περἱ ἑνανθρωπήσεως, for example, directed against Cyril after the council of Ephesus, we now possess fragments merely. A good deal of what passes under his name has been wrongly attributed to him. ”

“ This discourse is distinguished from the other apologies of that century by the brusqueness with which its author repudiates the culture of the Greeks; his scorn, however, does not forget to avail itself of the resources of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. His polemic often reminds the reader of the Cynics and of such scoffers as Lucian ”

“ In this the Logos only supported the man Christ Jesus, but was not essentially connected with him; the Logos dwelt in him (evoiittlv) , but any such thing as /eohuman nature. The same sober and thoughtful way of looking at things, and the same tendency to give prominence to the moral element, which characterize the commentaries of Theodore appear also in his dogmatic. ”

“ A brother of Theodore, Polychronius by name, bishop of Apamea, also achieved fame as an exegete, and expounded the theology of the school of Antioch. [4]
Literal are. Mlgne, Patrol., ser. Gr., Ixvi. The Greek fragments of Theodore's New Testament commentaries have been collected by Fritzsche (Theod. Mops, in N. T. Comm., Turin, 1847) . The commentaries on the Pauline epistles (Pitra, Spic. Solesm., i. 49 sq.) have been recognized by Jacobl (Ztschr. /. christl. Wissensch., 1854) and Hort (Journ. Clast. and Sacr. Pfiilol., iv., 1859, p. 302 $q.) ”

“ Specht, Theod. v. Mops. u. Theodoret, Munich, 18~f; Kihn in the Tub. Quarlalschr., 1879; Nestle in Theol. Stud, aus Wurtemb.,i. 210 sq.; and Batiffol, " Sur une Traduction Latino de Th. de Mops.," in Ann. de Philos. ”