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Irenaeus attacks Tatian for denying that Adam, the first man, was saved. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus already takes that side, saying Adam was not worthy and so tasted death.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Gospel of Thomas 1:85
Nag Hammadi
84 Jesus said, “When you see your likeness you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor are revealed, how much you will have to bear!” 85 Jesus said, “Adam came from great power and great wealth, but he did not become worthy of you. For had he been worthy, [he would] not [have tasted] death.” 86 Jesus said, “The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and rest.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.28
Early Christian
1 Many offshoots of numerous heresies have already been formed from those heretics we have described. This arises from the fact that numbers of them — indeed, we may say all — desire themselves to be teachers, and to break off from the particular heresy in which they have been involved. Forming one set of doctrines out of a totally different system of opinions, and then again others from others, they insist upon teaching something new, declaring themselves the inventors of any sort of opinion which they may have been able to call into existence. To give an example: Springing from Saturninus and Marcion, those who are called Encratites (self-controlled) preached against marriage, thus setting aside the original creation of God, and indirectly blaming Him who made the male and female for the propagation of the human race. Some of those reckoned among them have also introduced abstinence from animal food, thus proving themselves ungrateful to God, who formed all things. They deny, too, the salvation of him who was first created. It is but lately, however, that this opinion has been invented among them. A certain man named Tatian first introduced the blasphemy. He was a hearer of Justin's, and as long as he continued with him he expressed no such views; but after his martyrdom he separated from the Church, and, excited and puffed up by the thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others, he composed his own peculiar type of doctrine. He invented a system of certain invisible Æons, like the followers of Valentinus; while, like Marcion and Saturninus, he declared that marriage was nothing else than corruption and fornication. But his denial of Adam's salvation was an opinion due entirely to himself.
Date: 175-190 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... 85.2 For if he had been worthy, he would not have tasted death. On ‘tasted death’, see comments and bibliography ad GTh 1. Probably more than Adam’s physical death is envisaged here, since mere biological death (something experienced by Jesus as well—no doubt—as some of the Thomas movement: cf. 55.2) would probably not indicate unworthiness. An allusion to Adam’s death as penalty or Unheil is probably in evidence; Adam not only experienced physical death but expulsion from paradise (cf. GTh 19), and therefore forfeited the state of primeval innocence. Hence Thomas probably participates in the second-century discussion of whether Adam was to be saved, taking the negative position of Tatian which was so strongly to be condemned by Irenaeus (AH 1.28.1; cf. Irenaeus’s own view in AH 3.23.8). This is interesting in the context of the second century, when Adam became a subject of discussion in his own right in Christian texts, rather than simply as a type of Christ (only mentioned by name 9 × in the NT; cf. the depiction in Paul in Rom. 5.12–19; 1 Cor. 15.22, 45). He is not an object of any speculation in the Apostolic Fathers. ...”
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