MILTIADES, mil-tai's-ft: A philosopher who,
having become a Christian, made a name for him.
self about 160 or 170 throughout the
whole Church
by his writings not only against pagans and hers.
tics but also as an anti-Montanist at the outset of
that controversy. The unknown anti-Montanist
writer of Asia Minor from whose work, written in
192 or 193, Eusebius gives extracts (
Hist.
eccl., V., xvi. sqq.) cites a Montanist work written in answer
to one by "brother Miltiades." The thesis of the
latter was apparently that a prophet should not
speak in an ecstasy. In the so-called "Little
Labyrinth" the Roman author (Hippolytus?) names
Miltiades among the early witnesses for the divinity
of Christ; and at the beginning of the third
century Tertullian ("Against the Valentinians," chap.
v.,
ANF, iii. 506) mentions him, under the title of
"Militiades, the sophist of the churches," between
Justin and Irenaeus as one of his own predecessors
in the opposition to the Valentinians. The thesis
quoted above as to prophecy is the first
instance of this view in the Gentile Church. Miltiades must
have been one of the new theologians who
determined the great change in theological views marked
by the outbreak of the Montanist controversy (see
Montanism). His Christological position was also
considered noteworthy by the later generation in
opposition to the dynamistic view of the indwelling
of God in
Jesus. The name of "sophist," not
necessarily a term of reproach, has nevertheless in
Tertullian's mouth an unflattering ring. His book
De ecstasi apparently continued the polemic against
Miltiades begun in Asia Minor. Eusebius, who had
himself handled books of Miltiades, is the last to
mention him, attributing to him exhaustive
treatises against both Jews and pagans, and an apology
for his faith addressed "to the rulers of the world,"
by which phrase is to be understood the emperors--
either Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, or
the latter and Lucius Verus, or less probably Marcus
Aurelius and Commodus. There are reasons for
thinking that he wrote a special treatise against the
Valentinians which was unknown to Eusebius;
there is an illegible name in the Muratorian
Fragment which might easily be Miltiades, and
Richardson has advanced the theory that four works of his
are drawn upon in the pseudo-Clementine
literature.
(Adolf Harnack.)
Bibliography:
A. Harnack, in TU, i (1882), 278-282;
We.., uaeracwr, x.143, 239-240, 255-256, ii. 1, pp. 381-382, 2, pp. 228, 283; idem, Dopnw, ii. 190, 237, 243;
O. Otto, in Corpus apotopetarum CArist~norum, ix.
384-373, Jena, 1872; T. Zahn, Forerhungen sur Geschichte des
. . Kamm, v. 237-240, Leipsic, 1892; lis'fer, Hiaforv,
pp.121-122.