The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Tatian

Chapter XIII: Theory of the Soul’s Immortality

I don´t understand this. Is he saying. Was he a conditionalist or a ECT supporter?

Tatian appears to be arguing that –

The soul’s of human beings are not inherently immortal – that is they did not pre-exist this life and there is no necessity for them to exists in the life to come (so he’s arguing against pagan ideas of immortality)

We are raised to immortality only on condition of God’s power – and not because of the intrinsic power of our own immortality.

Some will be raised to immortal misery but their punishment will be less severe than that of devils – because Devils are immortal by nature. The i conclusion of this part of his argument should be that devils deserve everlasting punishment because they have always been immortal so their sin is very great. However, human beings whose lives are of only a brief span, never deserve everlasting punishment . Tatian does not follow through his argument at this point – perhaps he was a bit of a muddled thinker. Well that’s how it seems to me.