Tertullian, First Theologian of the West

Page i

Page ii

Tertullian of Carthage was the first western Christian to write an extended theology. A vigorous and humorous apologist, he defended Christians against the hostility of the Roman state. Within the church he gave great attention to the rule of faith or criterion of truth which he found in the gospel. His controlling canon declared the perfection of the divine plan for human salvation, in Jesus Christ, son of God, crucified saviour, but when this was applied to the lives of believers he was disappointed by Christian mediocrity. Consequently he turned to an account of original sin, the necessary fear of God, and apocalyptic hope.

A complex thinker, he has in modern times been rejected by both liberal Christianity and its secular critics, who in fealty to the Enlightenment believed that a passion for reason should lead to a quasi-mathematical system. The destruction of this belief by Gödel, Wittgenstein, Rorty and many others opens the way for an understanding of Tertullian's passion for opposites, contingency and rational argument.

Misquoted and misused, Tertullian now calls for sustained analysis and interpretation. This book offers a major reappraisal of his theology and its influence on the shape of the western Christian tradition, particularly on Augustine.

Page v

Tertullian, First Theologian of the West

Eric Osborn

Page vi

PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING) FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge

CB2 IRP

, United Kingdom

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge

CB2 2RU

This edition © Eric Osborn 2001

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1997

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeset in Baskerville 11/12 1/2 pt

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

ISBN

1720.

0 521 59035 3 hardback

eISBN 0-511-00282-3 virtual (netLibrary Edition)

Page vii

Page ix

Contents

Preface

page xiii

Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations

xviii

The Simple Beginning. Intricate Apologetic. Divine Unicity. Perfection in Dishonour: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'. Problems of Recapitulation. Perfection in God.

A Four Solutions to the Puzzle. (i) Psychoanalysis of a Puzzled Mind. (ii) Cultural History. (iii) Tertullian As Philosopher. (iv) Clarity through Disjunction. (v) Common Ground. B The Perfect and the Imperfect. (i) The Rule of Faith. (ii) Summing up All Things in Christ. (iii) Discipline of Reason. C Finality of Christ As a Solution to the Puzzle.

A Irrationalist Interpretations. (i) Neurotic Fideism. (ii) God-talk and World-talk. (iii) Mystery and Reason. B Rationalist Interpretations. (i) Improbability and Certitude. (ii) Context, Scripture and Particularity. (iii) Paradox, Scripture and Syllogism. C Tertullian's Argument. (i) Marcion Disproved. (ii) God's Unique Transcendence. (iii) Correction through Opposites. (iv) Folly and Wisdom. (v) Two Natures. (vi) Correction As Final Clue to Paradox. D Supporting Arguments.

A The Strife of Opposites. (i) The Balance of Justice. (ii) The Divine Economy. (iii) The Triumph of the Cross. B Recognizing the Well-known God. C Tertullian As Apologist. (i) Respect for Rome. (ii) Selective Monotheism.

Page x

A One Good and Rational God. (i) Why There Is One God. (ii) Why There Is One World, a Harmony of Opposites. (iii) Why the Same God Creates and Redeems. (iv) Why God's Goodness Must Be Eternal and Rational. (v) Why a Good God Must Be Just. B Knowledge, Humanity, Justice and Salvation. (i) How Humanity Knows God. (ii) How God's Goodness Is Shown in the Creation and Freedom of Mankind. (iii) How Divine Justice Responds to Man's Sin. (iv) The Argument from Retrospective Indignity. (v) Antitheses in God. C Prophecy Fulfilled. (i) Is Christology Redundant? (ii) Why the Father Comes First. (iii) Can We Make Sense of Miracles and Metaphors? (iv) Why Truth Demands an Incarnation. (v) How Prophecies Are Fulfilled in Truth. D The Christ of the Creator. (i) On Recognizing the True Antitheses. (ii) On Identifying the Gospel. (iii) Against Separation: Division and Detail. (iv) On Not Being Ashamed of the World. E Pauline Paradox.

116

A Trinity a New Faith in One God. (i) Jewish Controversy. (ii) Marcion. (iii) Praxeas. B Trinity: The Mystery of the Economy. (i) The Necessity of the Economy. (ii) Relative Disposition and Substantial Relation.(iii) Redaction into One, from Plurality to Unity. (iv) Substance and Persons. (v) Criticisms of Tertullian. (vi) Persona. C Christology. (i) Two Natures. (ii) A Modern Postscript.

144

A Prayer As Combat. (i) The New Prayer. (ii) Practice of Prayer. B Reading the Bible. (i) Concentration in Antithesis. (ii) Elaboration. (iii) Uncertain Victory. (iv) Alien Text.

163

A Sin As Contradiction. (i) One Soul, Two Natures. (ii) Free Will and God's Indulgence. (iii) Blame. (iv) Penance. B A Sordid Church. (i) Was Tertullian a Schismatic? (ii) Images of the Church. (iii) Marks of the Church. (iv) Ministry.

183

Herm

Page xi

Herm

209

A Montanism. B Apocalyptic Exuberance. C Apocalyptic System.

225

A Love and Fear. (i) Love As Ultimate Command and Christian Perfection. (ii) Love Replaced by Fear and Hope? (iii) From Fear to Obedience and Love. B Denial and Affirmation of the World. (i): World-denial: Martyrdom, Virginity, Modesty, Fasting. (ii) World-affirmation: Loyalty to Creator, Marriage Made in Heaven, Finality of the Flesh. C Natural Law and Apocalypse. (i) Natural Law: Conscience, Law and Nature, Discipline. (ii) Apocalypse: Renewal of Lost Image, Last Adam, Idolatry As Reversal of Assimilation, End and Beginning.

Conclusion

246

Select Bibliography

259

Subject Index

269

Citations from Tertullian

272

Citations from the Bible

283

Page xiii

Preface

Newness is more than a matter of timing. It is not enough, says Tertullian, to arrive early and stand at the head of a queue, as people did each day outside the baths in Carthage. An originator has to be original. The new miracles of Christ were followed by a long line of imitators; but the novelty of Christ was his uniqueness rather than his priority in time. In a humbler way, Tertullian himself is not merely first in an occidental queue. He is 'astonishingly original and personal'

and is able to do theology, that laminated fusion of argument and scripture, in a way which breaks new ground. Strikingly, he wrote his own kind of Latin. He liberated Christian thought from its Greek beginnings by analysing and developing biblical concepts.

Thinkers are 'divided according to traditions, each member of which partially adopts and partially modifies the vocabulary of the writers whom he has read'. Traditions begin from 'the people with poetic gifts, all the original minds with a talent for redescription'.

Tertullian was an innovator, and, in length of influence, he has outstripped the modern creators, like Darwin and Freud, by nearly two millennia. It is therefore useful to elucidate his final vocabulary, the words and meanings which continually recur in his arguments.

Most of his words were not new, but the way he arranged them was. He purified a dialect, by framing a vocabulary which enabled him to challenge the opponents of his kind of Christianity.

A history of early Christian doctrine before the Council of Nieaea

The origins of Latin Christianity

Contingency, irony, and solidarity

Deus Christianorum

Page xiv

He did not see himself as an innovator, but as the defender of a gospel which had come through the apostles from God. Swept off his feet by the Christian scriptures (Clement of Alexandria had compared them with the songs of irresistible Sirens), he came to grief when he denied friction between his final vocabulary and any part of scripture. His writing was part of the effective history, as Gadamer puts it, of the bible. He makes it easy for his reader to find his final vocabulary by calling it the 'rule' and expressing it in a variety of striking terms: 'What in the end is for you the total disgrace of my God, is the mystery of mankind's salvation' ('Totum denique dei mei penes vos dedecus sacramentum est humanae salutis').

There were three reasons why he was able to write such a sentence. First, he possessed the intellectual virtues of clarity and economy. He gave reasons and set out arguments. Interpreters with wide knowledge of early Christian thought

have singled out his intellectual quality as pre-eminent. To this strength he added the rarer gifts of paradox, metaphor and wit, all necessary for a thinker who fashions a language. Second, he had a sense of the power of words, because Jesus Christ was for him a word-event; the living voice of the gospel carried him along. At creation, God who had always been rational became verbal and the place had never been quiet since. Theology was a lively matter, displaying 'the limitless wealth of the word of God in its interpretation in the world during its passage through history'.

Third, he was engaged in vigorous controversy, where a kind of brilliance was needed. Most of what he wrote was directed against someone. He took on the Roman establishment, Marcion, Praxeas, indulgent bishops, Hermogenes and Valentinians; indeed he took on the world itself and insisted that things were going to be very different at the end. He did this because, like Paul, he was Heraclitean in mind and temperament a message from God could not count on security but only on strife. To that divine Heraclitean word which ruled

Four Quartets

Marc

The word of God and tradition

Page xv

through all things he was committed; the possessive adjective 'my' preceded 'God' and 'lord' in his decisive statements.

ratio

Meteors make few friends, so Tertullian presents a challenge to his reader. Since the Enlightenment, no ancient Christian writer has attracted more hostility.

Many have been repelled by the rhetorical force with which he led his readers from theory to practice. This won his contests in the second century and loses them today. Few have seen how his metaphors created a new language. There is no alternative to extended analysis and the demands of analysis are severe. We begin from the claim that 'if we want to understand others, we must count them right in most matters'.

This is a strategy for getting hold of people's fundamental beliefs, for learning their language, identifying their common concepts and the use to which they put them.

There is no way in which we can understand what any writer is saying if we neglect his final vocabulary, if we isolate a proposition from the arguments which define its meaning. If (as most have done) we take the proposition 'it is credible, because inept' away from the argument where it occurs, we cannot but reject it and play the common game of 'telling men of straw that they have no brains'.

Latin Christianity

Marc Aurèle et la fin du monde antique

Inquiries into truth and interpretation

Meaning and context, Quentin Skinner and his critics

HThS

Page xvi

Philosophers have continued to show, from Wittgenstein onwards, that meaning is inaccessible without context, language-game, final vocabulary, verbal constellation, dialect, universe of discourse or whatever imperfect name we choose to call it. The more useful theologians have said the same.

That is why this book seeks to identify the final vocabulary which Tertullian created and used in different arguments. Such an analysis assumes that Tertullian is talking sense and sets out the way in which he arranges words.

The book begins with Tertullian's canon of truth, the perfection of all things in Christ. Then, before going further in exploration of his arguments, it examines those slogans which have classified him as an opponent of rationality: 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' and 'Credible because inept.' There is little point in struggling with his arguments if he set no value on reason. These puzzles resolved and his predilection for reason established, his apologetic reveals an Heraclitean respect for opposites and a Stoic confidence in every soul's innate awareness of God. His longest dispute was with Marcion, who separated the just God of the Old Testament from the good God who sent Jesus. His conflict with Praxeas produced the first extended statement of trinitarian doctrine. The brief account of prayer indicates the central themes of his thought and his use of the bible is decisive and only rarely disastrous. His account of sin runs into his account of the church which he claimed should be the spotless bride of Christ. The marked difference between his treatment of Hermogenes' argument and Valentinian theosophy is worth investigation. His eschatology is highly developed and his expectation of the end is colourful and coherent. From his theology and his Stoicism comes an austere and provocative ethic.

Interpretation requires us, as Gadamer put it, to project our prejudgements against a text which destroys some and lets others stand. The process continues and nothing is secure. Fifteen years ago, I wrote that Tertullian 'never stops to think what his opponent

Gospel message and Hellenistic culture

Page xvii

might mean'.

apologeticum

Our limited conquest of conceptual parochialism will depend on the range of our prejudgements, a respect for the text and the stamina of friends. Beyond La Trobe University and Melbourne, I am grateful to colleagues in Cambridge and Tübingen, Lille, Paris, Strasbourg, Leiden and Pamplona, who have asked different questions. Especial thanks are due to those who read and criticized the penultimate draft: Luise Abramowski, Michel Spanneut and Albert Viciano. Michel Spanneut has, in his books and articles, kept the Stoic influence before patristic scholars over the last forty years. Andrew Lenox-Conyngham and David Rankin have helped at many points. Margot Hyslop, senior reference librarian at La Trobe University, has found many books and articles. Ruth Parr of Cambridge University Press has guided the manuscript through the process of publication with understanding and intelligence. Once again, I am indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for the generosity which brought me back to Tübingen.

Adversus Marcionem

Since it is forty years from the appearance, at Cambridge, of my first book on second-century Christian thought, it is my privilege to thank Henry Chadwick and to remember with deep gratitude A. Boyce Gibson and William Telfer, who first set my fallible feet on the way of exploration.

The beginning of Christian philosophy

Page xviii

Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations

Text

Opera

Tertullian's Works

de anima

apologeticum

bapt

de baptismo

carn

de carne Christi

cast

de exhortatione castitatis

cor

de corona

cult

de cultu feminarum, libri II

fug

de fuga in persecutione

Herm

adversus Hermogenem

idol

de idololatria

iei

de ieiunio

Jud

adversus Judaeos

Marc

adversus Marcionem, libri V

mart

ad martyras

mon

de monogamia

nat

ad nationes, libri II

de oratione

paen

de paenitentia

pall

de pallio

pat

de patientia

Page xix

pat

de patientia

praescr

de praescriptione haereticorum

Prax

adversus Praxean

pud

de pudicitia

res

de resurrectione mortuorum

Scap

ad Scapulam

scorp

scorpiace

spect

de spectaculis

test

de testimonio animae

ad uxorem, libri II

Val

adversus Valentinianos

virg

de virginibus velandis

Abbreviations

ACW

Ancient Christian Writers

AKG

Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte

ANCL

Ante-Nicene Christian Library

ANRW

Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt

Apoll

Apollinaris

APQ

American Philosophical Quarterly

Aug

Augustinianum

BVSGW.PH

Etudes Augustiniennnes

Ephemerides Liturgicae

GCS

Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderten

Greg

Gregorianum

HTh

History and Theory

HThS

History and Theory, Supplement

JAC

Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum

JRH

Journal of Religious History

JThS

Journal of Theological Studies

LCC

Library of Christian Classics

Page xx

LCL

Loeb Classical Library

LongSedley

Museum Helveticum

MThZ

Münchener theologische Zeitschrift

NAWG

NThT

Nieuw theologisch tijdschrift

Orph

Orpheus

Patrologia Cursus Completus . . . series Graeca

PhJ

Philosophisches Jahrbuch

PhP

Philosophia Patrum

REA

Revue des études augustiniennes

REG

Revue des études grecques

RET

Revista española de teologia

RevSR

Revue des sciences religieuses

RHE

Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique

RHPhR

Revue de histoire et de philosophie religieuse

RIPh

Revue internationale de philosophie

Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde

RSLR

Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa

RSR

Recherches de science religieuse

RThPh

Revue de théologie et de philosophie

Sources chrétiennes

Schol

Scholastik

SCO

Studi classici e orientali

StPatr

Studia Patristica

StTH

Studia Theologica

SVF

Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta

ThPh

Theologie und Philosophie

ThR

Theologische Rundschau

TRE

Theologische Realenzyklopädie

Texte und Untersuchungen

TWNT

Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament

TyV

Teología y vida

Page xxi

Vigiliae Christianae

ZKG

Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte

ZNW

Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

ZThK

Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Abkürzungsverzeichnis

'We also are religious and our religion is simple', objected the Roman proconsul to the martyr Speratus, at his trial near Carthage on 17 July 180. 'If you will listen calmly', replied Speratus, 'I shall tell you the mystery of simplicity.'

Tertullian was not the only African who liked paradox.

Tertullian's lust for simplicity, supported by superlatives, persists throughout his work and is a good place to begin a study of his thought. A fine exposition, which begins 'Tertullien déconcerte', goes on to insist that Tertullian took a simple and total choice when

Passio sanctorum Scillitanorum

Acta Martyrum

The acts of the Christian martyrs

Paradoxa Stoicorum

Encyclopedia of Philosophy

he became a Christian and that his complexity comes from his earlier intellectual formation; whether a study of his thought begins from either simplicity or complexity, it will discover a profound unity.

acris et vehementis ingenii'

virg

Marc

an.

test

cult

Val

res

The Simple Beginning

bapt

ibid

res

Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique

vir. illust

simplices

ne dixerim imprudentes et idiotae

Prax

scorp

spect

praescr

A heretical viper

bapt

praescr

apertus et simplex, pat

carn

bapt

Marc

paen

Ratio

ap.

cult

Simplicity, in Tertullian, sometimes exacts its price and affects his arguments. The sudden enunciation of God's name is, for most, not the testimony of a soul which is naturally Christian, but the testimony of a soul which is not very Christian. The appeal to lines of episcopal succession is controversial rather than an end to controversy and, in any case, Tertullian always wants to obey conscience rather than bishop. In his case the two rarely agree.

Above all, Tertullian seems to fail in his account of divine justice and love. In his rejection of Marcion, he claims that only retributive justice can discourage sin.

These matters will be dealt with again later. The points to note at this stage are three. First, we must expect that a passion for simplicity might induce errors. Theology, like philosophy, is a

L'année canonique

complex matter and those who cut corners suffer accidents.

Second, those who turn every corner arrive nowhere. Debate differs from argument. The orator who silences his opponent rarely uses adequate argument. Against the plea for fear as an essential deterrent against sin, Marcion simply shook his head and said 'Absit'; he was silent but not convinced. Third, theologians and other exponents of rational argument commonly make a few bad mistakes. By far the best example is Augustine, who dominated a culture for a thousand years, and whose argument for the liquidation of schismatics through the severity of love

is only matched, for unconvincing barbarity, by his accounts of predestination and original sin. These three dangers make an exploration of Tertullian's arguments obligatory.

Intricate Apologetic

Tertullian's defence of simplicity will always have a twist of paradox, and qualifications of fundamental force. There are his own deep conflicts. How complicated was he? One writer

produced a book to probe the disorder of his personality, another composed a large tome to show the perversity of his ethics.

Many have followed the verdict that he is a troubled fideist.

More disconcerting is the praise of his admirers. Even a sober scholar could write: 'Roman restraint, legal clarity and military discipline were transmuted into an intellectual and moral force in the ardent, aspiring mind and heart of Tertullian.'

Enthusiasm gallops away with another:

Ardent in temperament, endowed with an intelligence as subtle and original as it was aggressive and audacious, he added to his natural gifts a

On the Epistle of John

Ethical patterns in early Christian thought

Tertullian, seine Persönlichkeit und sein Schicksal

Tertullien face aux morales des trois premiers siècles

The fathers of the Latin church

It is regrettable that some scholars want to award prizes rather than to understand what is alien to them.

A recent and restrained assessment, which touches lightly on the ideas of Tertullian in favour of his history and his literary achievement, calls him a 'Christian Sophist'.

This is helpful, but uncomfortably ambiguous, since Tertullian spent much time attacking and repudiating what is commonly regarded as sophistry.

How complex is Tertullian? There is no lack of intricate argument, however forcefully it may be presented; worse still, in the interests of simplicity and speed, steps are often omitted and details which have appeared earlier are not repeated. We might call this 'Tertullian's Trick'; because often, when we think we have found a fallacy and caught him out, we find that he has answered our objection elsewhere. A good orator does not repeat detail. For his interpreters today, this should be less of a difficulty after fifty years of philosophical analysis; but some still look for systems and the fun of deconstructing them. Many manage to ignore the truth that conclusions are ambiguous without the argument which leads to them. In order to understand an author we must remember the cards he has already played.

To a remarkable extent, Tertullian respected conventional rhetorical forms which made his work more accessible to his contemporaries.

Tertullian faced a complex situation, where the culture of Greece and Rome, the religion of Israel and the new faith in Jesus came together in a mixture of conflict and agreement. Each component had internal diversity within which Tertullian had to choose. A critical eclecticism was characteristic of all parties. The importance of Tertullian for cultural history is immense, and

Studies in Tertullian and Augustine

Tertullian, A historical and literary study

Ancient rhetoric and the art of Tertullian

he may rightly be called the 'first theologian of the West', provided this does not limit his influence to the West or obscure his massive debt to Irenaeus.

Justin had anticipated him, by his move to Rome, and it is remarkable how much had been achieved. But Justin still writes in Greek and his ideas are difficult because undeveloped. His interest is that of an originator whose ideas are taken up and developed by others who add, alter and diverge. As a result, his own meaning is frequently uncertain.

Tertullian's achievement was not merely cultural and linguistic, but above all intellectual. For, 'despite his obvious originality, he displays those characteristics which are to be found throughout Latin Christianity: a realism which knows nothing of the Platonist devaluation of matter; a subjectivity, which gives special prominence to inner experience; and a pessimism which lays more stress on the experience of sin than on transfiguration'.

res

strom

He began as an apologist and apologetic displays the contingency of theology and philosophy.

It begins from a faith to which objections are made by opponents or experiences of widely diverse kinds. Faith's defender must answer the several objections of A, B, C and D, with groups of arguments. Against A he must prove

abg

, against B he must prove

adez

, against C he must prove

ghq

will conflict with

with

, and so on. Romans wzill not like his higher loyalty to Christ, radical Christians will not like his political conformism, some will find him too indulgent and others will find him too ascetic; either they will not dance when they hear

God in patristic thought

Latin Christianity

APQ

the pipes or they will not lament with those who mourn. When the Baptist neither eats nor drinks, he is demonic and when Jesus eats and drinks he is a glutton and a winebibber (Matt. 11.1619).

However consistent the position of the apologist is, it will not appear consistent until there has been careful analysis and then it may look too complex.

To meet apparent inconsistencies, like Tertullian's denigration and exaltation of marriage and philosophy, apologetic needs linking argument (for which it may not have enough time) as well as a few general concepts (economy of salvation, logos) which maintain a scattered presence.

Tertullian goes further, so that these concepts embrace fundamental questions of theology. The remarkable thing is that, for all his vehemence, his ideas do hold together. He had a deep, abiding concern. As a Stoic, he began with an undefined consciousness of God.

As a Christian, he filled that concept with the gospel, the story of salvation which ran from creation to apocalypse. The golden thread which runs through his thought is the recapitulation of all things in Christ.

Apologetic presents an extreme case of the tensions faced by all philosophy and theology. Today, theologians are reluctant to distinguish historical from systematic theology because every theology is marked by its historical situation and specific questions. This move is mirrored in a wider reaction against the scientific

Ad Diognetum

The Second Century

positivism which was the last gesture of Enlightenment epistemology. In a wide-ranging review of the human sciences, we find one common feature: 'a willingness to emphasise the local and contingent, a desire to underline the extent to which our own concepts and attitudes have been shaped by particular historical circumstances, and a correspondingly strong dislike amounting almost to hatred in the case of Wittgenstein of all overarching theories and singular schemes of explanation'.

An apologist, like Tertullian, is more likely to be understood in such an intellectual climate. For we have all learnt that within the most carefully argued and tidy system, there are polarities and contradictions which cannot be ignored. What Gödel showed for mathematics (that there is no self-sufficient, consistent autonomy) seems true of all rational systems.

What did Tertullian write? His many writings show the range of his apologetic.

mart

nat., ap

test

Jud

praescr

Herm

spect

cult

bapt

pat

paen

During his middle period (2078) when signs of Montanist

Against Marcion

Marc

owes its present form to this period, but builds on earlier work. Valentinians are attacked both in the short work which bears their name

The return of grand theory to the human sciences

Deus Christianorum

Val

carn., res

cast

virg

cor., scorp

Scap

idol

During the final period of his writing (21322), Tertullian is plainly at odds with catholic, 'psychic' (unspiritual)

fug

mon

iei

pud

Prax

pall

apologeticum

pall

Prax

1 apol

sent

Marc

virg

We have already noted some reasons for brevity. As an orator and a preacher, Tertullian leaves a lot out, so that he will not lose his

Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique

med

saepe noster

Marc

Divine Unicity

Marc

that, for Tertullian as for other second-century theologians, the way to one God is through the son and the spirit.

Marc

But Marcion, says Tertullian, is a great muddler and his higher god has produced nothing which might give ground for believing in his existence. How can he be superior when he can show no work to compare with, for example, the human being produced by the inferior god? The question 'does this god exist?' is answered from what he has done and the question 'what is this god like?' is determined by the quality of his work. Marcion's uncreative god does not pass the first test, so the second does not apply.

In the alleged interests of unity, Marcion multiplies. He may begin from two gods, but he finishes with many more and his account is far from simple.

Marc

Here Tertullian is drawing his own polemical conclusions from Marcion's views and does not help his case; but there is more than caricature because, once mediators are introduced, multiplication sets in.

There are also historical confusions for Marcion. His god turned up at his destined time, because of certain astrological complexities, which Marcionites enjoy, even if the stars were made by the lesser god; for the greater god may have been held back by the

strom

God in patristic thought,

Marc

This argument suggests again the cost of simplicity and the apparent naïveté of Tertullian in the interests of apologetic. By itself, the argument has no force whatever. Marcion claimed that he was a reformer who went back to the original gospel and apostle.

Marc

There are now perverse and muddled objections made against the almighty God, lord and founder of the universe,

Marc

pall

Marc

pud

unica spes

necessarium dedecus

carn

Behind the fish ('Jesus Christ, son of God, saviour')

lay the even simpler confession of Jesus as Messiah or Christ (Matt. 27.17, 22; John 1.41; Acts 9.22; 1 John 5.1). When the gospel moved from its

Jewish context into the Greek world, this title meant less and 'Christ' became a surname for Jesus. The basic confession then became 'Jesus Christ is Lord' (parallel to the 'Emperor is Lord' of the imperial cult)

or Jesus Christ is son of God'. Christians had their own answer to pagan and Jewish acclamations, such as 'one is Zeus-Serapis', 'great is Diana of the Ephesians', or even 'Hear O Israel . . .'. This simple formula was used as a confession of faith at baptism, being expanded first into a twofold faith in father and son, then into a threefold faith in father, son and spirit, and receiving various supplements. The simplicity of the fish remained. There was one lord, one faith, one baptism.

'Jesus Christ, son of God, saviour' points to the economy of salvation and the recapitulation of all things in Christ, who is Christus Victor.

Recapitulation is chiefly linked with Irenaeus;

but it also dominates the New Testament and the theology of Ignatius, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Athanasius. It includes three sets of motifs: Christ corrects and perfects all that is; as Christus Victor he is the climax of the economy of saving history; and as the perfection of being, goodness and truth, he gives life to the dying, righteousness to sinners and truth to those in error.

Tertullian describes the work of salvation as continuous with creation.

The human race is summed up, 'that is to refer back to

mart. Pol

TWNT

sobr

immut

somn

leg. all

TWNT

Christus Victor

Cristo Salvador y liberador del humbre

Marc

pat

fug

carn

sequester

res

Prax

Marc

Jud

pat

pall

scorp

Marc

Jud

Marc

iei

Marc

Jud

It is evident that

no gate or city is closed to him, his sound is gone out into all the earth, gates of brass are opened and he reigns over all.

But Christ's name reaches out everywhere, is believed everywhere, is worshipped by all the nations we have listed, rules everywhere, is

Ibid

Die apologetischen Grundgedanken Tertullians

Kurios

Jud

Christ is the bull who, in fulfilment of Joseph's blessing,

Jud

Marc

Justin Martyr

et al

Jewish and Christian self-definition

Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman period

Marc

procuratio

Marc

Recapitulation is both retrospective and prospective, both fulfilment of the past and promise of the future. Because of his preoccupation with Marcion, Tertullian seems more concerned with fulfilment than with promise. Furthermore, the miracle of new life through baptism did not do as much as he hoped. Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus celebrate more vividly the present glory of new life in Christ. In this difference some have seen the contrast between Greek and Latin Christianity.

Prax

Latin Christianity

Marc

res

Problems of Recapitulation

Vexilla regis prodeunt

Ein' feste Burg

Christos Niketes

is equally secure. It found its strongest statement in

Beginning of Christian philosophy

Prax

Christus Victor

De Incarnatione

For as when the sun is up darkness no longer prevails, but if there is any left anywhere it is driven away; so now, when the Divine Manifestation of the Word of God is come, the darkness of the idols prevails no longer, but every part of the whole earth is everywhere illuminated by his teaching . . . and men, looking to the true God, the Word of the Father, abandon idols, and themselves come to a clear knowledge of the true God.

de inc

The triumphal claims of this passage concerning the destruction of evil do not fit reality then or now. There does not appear to have been a change of government. Indeed, from the beginning there were difficulties with recapitulation. Death, despite the sting of martyrdom, may have been destroyed; but sin was still clearly present. Christians were not displaying the climax of divine and human history, for mediocrity spread widely in the early church. Laodiceans were neither hot nor cold, but drastically indigestible (Rev. 3.15f.).

mediocritas nostra

paen

From such disappointment, two types of perfectionism emerged apocalyptic and Gnostic. Irenaeus and Tertullian both viewed with sympathy the New Prophecy of the followers of Montanus. Clement of Alexandria gave critical recognition to some elements of Valentinianism. Irenaeus had wonderful millenarian expectations. If all was summed up in Christ, what remained had to be sensational a thousand branches on every vine and a thousand grapes on every twig. Lions normally eat only the best of animal steaks.

Yet in the last days, says Irenaeus, we know from the scriptures that lions will eat straw. They cannot

The sovereignty of good

eat the lambs with whom they lie down. If the straw is so good as to be attractive to lions, we shall truly feast on what is provided for us.

supergredi

The relevance of Gnosticism for Tertullian is first, its reaction against mediocrity in favour of perfection and second, its movement from argument to story. Unlike Clement of Alexandria, he neither appreciated its abstract tendency nor offered a higher competitive gnosis.

Perfectionism had emerged as a problem very early in Christian history. The Letter to the Ephesians affirmed strongly that all has been summed up in Christ and that the church is the eschatological miracle which rises from earth to heaven. There is no way in which this miracle can be surpassed. The believer must simply hold to the one faith within the one body, walk in the light and stand firm in the whole armour of God.

Apologists claimed evidence for finality in the moral excellence of Christian lives and in the spread of the gospel. Such moral excellence was the ground for Justin's conversion, and Tertullian made much of it. He pointed to the chastity and integrity of Christians, the courage of the martyrs and the mutual love of the community. This claim caused his discontent with the church universal. He remained within the community of the church at Carthage;

but he certainly expressed dissent. When his bishop offered absolution for the sins of adultery and fornication, Tertullian was outraged, because this controverted his claim that

Tertullian and the church

Christians were eschatological paragons of virtue. Tertullian wrote off the majority of Christians as psychics or carnal, in contrast to the spiritual Christians of whom he was one.

The spread of the gospel was a second proof of recapitulation. We are of yesterday, Tertullian said, but we fill the forums and the towns. We are in every country, growing from seed which is the blood of martyrs. The world, too, is a better place; marshes are drained and roads are better.

eschaton

Perfection in God

City of God

Eph

Christology moved to the centre. How could God be both father and son? Recapitulation might remove distinctions in God. Tertullian spoke of the entire dishonour of his God; but he attacked the monarchianism of Praxeas for crucifying the father, and proposed a doctrine of trinity. The christological debates were

inevitable. Before they finished, recapitulation no longer had to do with history and Christus Victor, but with the trinity which summed up the divine being.

This was not, as some have thought, a mistake. The history of the councils of the fourth century is no more elevating than the history of councils in any century: 'After Constantine, there is not much that is not humiliating the long period of dogmatic squabbling while the Empire was falling to pieces; the destruction or loss of most of the irreplaceable treasures of antiquity; the progressive barbarisation of Europe; we need not follow the melancholy record.'

Arius did miss the point of the whole early tradition, that faith in one God is only possible if that God redeems the world which he first made; but his lack of perception sparked off a genuine advance. For faith in divine redemption can never rely on fulfilled prophecy, external plan or natural evidences, but only on the being of God.

This profound move is apparent in the theology of Gregory Nazianzus.

orat

Tertullian anticipates this move from recapitulation to incarnation and trinity. Christus Victor reflected the prophetic apocalyptic

The Platonic tradition in English religious thought

Logos, FS for L. Abramowski

unica spes

necessarium dedecus

sacramentum oikonomiae

Simplicity and recapitulation, which dominated early Christian theology, including that of Tertullian, found their place in one God, father, son and spirit. Tertullian's ideas persist into the fourth century and indeed into the twentieth century, where a metaphysical poem ends:

Four Quartets

Before a detailed study of Tertullian's arguments may proceed, it is wise to consider his reputation as the enemy of argument and the apostle of unreason.

praescr

carn

disciplina rationis

One by one the common opinions concerning Tertullian have fallen. Barnes

has shown the improbability of his being the jurist Tertullian, the son of a centurion, or a priest. Hallonsten

has shown that his accounts of satisfaction and merit do not anticipate later legalism. Rankin has challenged the view that he was a schismatic.

It is equally necessary to show that Tertullian was not a

Tertullian, A historical and literary study

Satisfactio bei Tertullian

Meritum bei Tertullian

Tertullian and the church

fideist.

credo quia absurdum

Tertullian's question,

Marc

The most recent perpetrator of the misunderstanding

avoids analysis and explicitly interprets Tertullian in terms of thirteenth-century theology and the first Vatican Council. A more puzzling conclusion

sacrificium intellectus

Christian philosophy

Marc

Christian Philosophy

The Philosophy in Christianity

Psychologische Typen

his intellectual formation; philosophy remains both his seducer and his enemy. Tertullian deserves something better than anachronistic psychoanalysis.

Tertullian said much the same about Marcion who claimed Christ had no human body. One thing is clear for Tertullian: it would be harder to find a man born without a body than to find one, like Marcion, born without heart and brains (Marc. 4.10.16). This kind of invective, which may amuse modern readers, can make it harder for them to follow Tertullian's intricate argument; within the tradition which Plato and Tertullian helped to form, invective is today seen as a substitute for argument.

As a Stoic, Tertullian, like Seneca, revelled in the reproof of others.

brevitas

The psychological explanation

is reached only after investigation. Tertullian's conflict is not unique. Most early Christian writers compromised with their classical heritage. They thought in one way and lived in another. They both rejected and accepted

The lives of the philosophers

ANRW

Ibid

philosophy. Tertullian is important because he tried to hold to a 'position pure'

praescr

apologeticum

de praescriptione

de anima

conf

de praescriptione

praescr

Philosophers hold some true opinions; but they derive them from a different source and apply them in a different way. Truth is harmed when it is linked with false origins or false results.

On the one hand, philosophers take opinions which they share with Christians and join them with their own arguments which contradict the rule of faith. On the other hand, they defend their distinctive opinions with arguments which Christians would accept

as valid and consistent. This means that truth does not have a chance and it is therefore necessary to separate common opinions from philosophers' arguments and to separate common arguments from philosophers' opinions.

Therefore Tertullian does not reject or accept philosophy as a whole. He knows his philosophers better than do most Greek fathers.

test

Marc

praescr

Val

res

pall

The proposed solution

sacrificium intellectus

As a believer, he rejected philosophy; but his own training in philosophy and rhetoric could never be discarded.

Die Stoa

ibid

Psychologischen Typen

RevSR

Der Apologet Tertullianus in seinem Verhältnis zu der griechisch-römischen Philosophie

Tertullian als Apologet

A more extensive account comes from cultural history. It begins from the bewildering mass of secondary material, which derives from Tertullian's appeal for different modern groups: philologists, theologians and historians.

Puzzlement is enhanced by the different concerns of these three groups: one sticking to isolated texts and ignoring connections, the next bothered by apologetic concerns, the last driven to simplification within the wider range of general history.

From New Testament times, Christians began, at conversion, with a renunciation of their former ways, and the pagan world accepted this rejection long after Christians tried to modify it. Before Constantine

there were already Christians who, like Tertullian, were highly cultured but opposed to the pagan world. The tension between faith and culture must not be lessened

by minimizing Tertullian's learning or placing him on the analyst's couch; his polemic against classical culture is not merely rhetorical but theological.

Ancient Paideia was a way of education and culture, an attitude to fundamental problems. Its anthropocentric rationality

clashed head on with the Christian faith. Tertullian's antithesis between Athens and Jerusalem demonstrates this clash;

but his writings show technical dependence on classical Paideia

apologeticum

Das Verhältnis Tertullians zur antiken Paideia

Paideia

Ibid

Glaube und Kultur

apologeticum

Paideia

Ibid

include Silver Age writers like Pliny, Tacitus and Seneca. Still further, Homer and Herodotus are fundamental, while his extensive knowledge of Plato's writings is seen as a late growth from his controversy with Gnostics.

apologeticum

ad nationes

His corpus of citations goes well beyond the requirement of style and exceeds that of any other early Christian writer. He is reluctant to acknowledge his debts, especially his supreme debt to Cicero; but unacknowledged citation was a common convention of his time. His debt to Paideia was far more profound than has been recognized.

Tertullian held the Roman state in high regard, as the classical tradition required. It troubled him that, as a Christian, he had to qualify this evaluation.

melior philosophia

sapientiae auctores

sapientiae professores

Marc

mira sapientia, nat

Christianity remained the better philosophy, partly because it could point to an historical manifestation of the truth to which earlier development was subordinate.

Tertullian's description of Justin as 'philosopher and martyr' is not antithetical but complementary.

In the end, the historian cannot harmonize all that Tertullian

Ibid

Conversion

JAC

Paideia

oikonomia

Paideia

apologeticum

An older account

Marc

spect

nat

praescr

Marc

Herm

There is a more favourable view of philosophy: just as by good luck, ships, in a storm, find a harbour and men in total darkness

Ibid

Der Einfluss der stoischen Philosophie auf die Lehrbildung Tertullians

Antignostikus. Geist des Tertullianus und Einleitung in dessen Schriften

paen

cor

paen

Tertullian constantly uses the Stoic terms: body, spirit, substance, nature and word.

As a result, his concepts of being, soul, knowledge, God and goodness bear clear marks of Stoic influence.

The same reason which is applied to natural questions must also be applied to the intelligent exploration of God. Because Tertullian sees the need for rational theological inquiry, he has been placed among the first philosophical Christians.

More and more work reveals the extent to which Tertullian is marked by classical culture.

Marc

virg

test

pall

res

Einfluss

corpus, spiritus, substantia, natura

sermo. Ibid

Le stoïcisme des pères de l'église

Rauch, Einfluss

Geschichte der Philosophie

Einfluss

Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique

There are initial objections against taking the Athens-Jerusalem formula literally. Twenty-six imitations of 2 Cor. 6:1416

point to a still wider love of antithesis.

Nevertheless the puzzle remains.

Tertullian's hostility to philosophy begins at a superficial level, where he attacks the personal deficiencies of philosophers and follows the satirical tradition of Aristophanes, Horace, Petronius and especially Lucian. He goes on to more serious objections against philosophers: their mutual contradictions, inconsistent behaviour and dialectical display. The first criticism had been answered by Posidonius who claimed that disagreement is a part of life, not just a part of philosophy; to avoid it one would have to give up life as well as philosophy.

dialectici

Hermotimos

cult

tic

praescr

ibid

Lives

Phoenissae

All four solutions recognize the depth of the puzzle.

The first confesses that a rational solution is not to be found and falls back on Tertullian's psychology. The second establishes the claims of classical culture on Tertullian, shows that the problem is theological rather than psychological, but retires with a tribute to Tertullian's personal complexity and the confused world to which he belonged. The third solution makes Tertullian a philosopher in his own right, so that it is proper for him to handle insoluble problems. The final solution shows that disjunction is Tertullian's way of clarifying things. This is the best of the four solutions; but I think there is another important element.

de praescriptione

Much Hellenistic philosophy is directed against the infinite regress of Sceptics who deny the possibility of knowledge. What Tertullian dislikes about Gnostics and sceptical Sophists is their endless

Tertullian und die römische Antike

Dictionnaire des philosophes

Acad

1. Assent is a voluntary act.

fides

scientia

inscientia

Acad

fides

fidelis

6. Antiochus of Ascalon accepted this as an indication that the Stoics developed rather than rejected the tradition of Plato and Aristotle.

Clement's summary of the argument is brief and he wrongly (because of Antiochus) attributes it to Aristotle: the judgement concerning the truth of a presentation decides whether it is faithful and this verdict is reached by faith, using faith's own criterion. Everything begins from the rule of faith as the Stoic/Platonic criterion of truth.

The criterion, canon (or rule), of truth is the central point at

The criterion of truth, FS George Kerferd

NAWG: Phil. hist. Klasse

which Tertullian assimilates Greek philosophy into Christian theology.

From Antiochus to Alcinous, dogmatic Platonism began its fight against Scepticism with the Stoic teaching of the criterion and certainty.

Antiochus found certainty in the cognitive impressions which he identified (contrary to Stoic materialism) with the ideas of Plato.

did

praescr

difficulties were bound to arise from such a wide range of meanings.

praescr

(a) that there is only one God, and that he is not other than the creator of this world who produced all things out of nothing through his word,

The making of Orthodoxy, FS H. Chadwick

strom

The Middle Platonists

Ibid

fides, veritas, doctrina, disciplina, institutio

sacramentum

Kerygma und Dogma

potestas

potestas, JRH

whom he sent forth first of all, (b) that this word is called his son and under the name of God was seen in different ways by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, (c) at last brought down by the spirit and power of the father into the virgin Mary, he was made flesh in her womb, and being born of her went forth as Jesus Christ; from then on he preached the new law and new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; (d) having been crucified, he rose again the third day; taken up into the heavens he sat at the right hand of the father; he sent in his place, the power of the Holy Spirit to lead believers; he will come with glory to take the saints to their enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after they have both been raised to life with their flesh restored.

This rule came from Christ, and only heretics will question it.

Here the perfection of the son of God implies that his power, presence, truth and reality are universal. There is nothing which can be added to him. The son of God completes creation, restores what had fallen away, redeems what was lost.

In modern terms, just as the universe has been 'fine-tuned'

to produce humanity, so humanity has been 'fine-tuned' to produce Jesus Christ.

For Tertullian as for Irenaeus

recapitulation consists of three groups of concepts. First there are totality, perfection and correction, secondly, history and Christus Victor, and thirdly the divine activity in being, goodness and truth. The many combinations and permutations of these eight concepts preclude the possibility of comprehension without analysis.

Recapitulation comes as the climax of history, of the economy which runs from the Alpha to the Omega, and which declares the triumph of Christus Victor.

In God's universe, sin must be

adversus haereses

pref

The emergence of Christian theology

Pléroma, FS, A. Orbe

corrected by going back to the first transgression, reversing it and then bringing everything to the proper and perfect end which God intended. Perfection is the goal for any world made by God. Tertullian's rule of faith covers these three points. Totality (all things were created by God through his word who was heard at all times in the prophets), correction (Jesus preached a new law and a new promise) and perfection

(the son and word was at the last brought down into the Virgin Mary, was crucified, risen and ascended to the right hand of the father, whence he will return to take his saints to the heavenly fulfilment of all the promises) enable the son to finish the work which the father has given him to do. All must be corrected and perfected in recapitulation. In Tertullian's puzzle, perfection has priority; in his paradox, we shall see that correction is the theme.

The rejection of Athens occurs within an extended argument against heresies; second-century Christian writers commonly talk and argue about truth in the context of heresy.

To learn what they thought about truth and reason, we have to read their disputation with heresy.

praescr

we were told to expect them (Matt. 7.15 and 24.4, 11,24;1 Thess. 3.13 and 2 Pet. 22.1).

praescr

Heilsgeschichte

haer

Aug

de praescriptione haereticorum

praescr

Tertullian's objections against his philosophers concentrate on their inconsistency and interminability. Dialectics build up and then pull down. They are evasive, wildly conjectural, harsh in argument, troublesome, infinitely retractable and inconclusive. They produce endless genealogies (1 Tim. 1.4) by means of the bureaucratic fallacy which introduces p to relate x and y, then q to relate x and p, then r to relate p to y, useless questions (Titus 3.9), cancerous words (2 Tim. 2.17) and vain deceit (Col. 2.8).

praescr

nihil ultra credere

praescr

when there was still doubt as to who he was. There is

praescr

gravitas honesta

praescr

pud

43.5). The same gospel is the rule which runs from Alpha to Omega and never changes. The judge whom all must face is not going to withdraw his original doctrines in order to spare those who must stand before him.

Tertullian closes by saying that this treatise is a preface and a general refutation of all heresies, without using scriptural argument on points of detail.

praescr

de finibus

Following the chosen criterion of truth, Clement of Alexandria was able to select, from different schools, the right kind of philosophy to form an eclectic whole which he called 'philosophy'. Further, if by philosophy is meant the practice of argument, as when Clement claims the necessity of philosophy because one would have to argue to prove it superfluous, then all second-century Christian thinkers (even Tatian) were disciples of Athens. Indeed, Christian theology came into existence and European thought began, because of the practice of argument, which was learnt from Athens and used according to the rule of faith or canon of truth.

There is no place for curiosity after Christ and there is no need for inquiry after the gospel. In the centre of his argument stands the

caput fidei

praescr

claim of Tertullian for the perfection of Christ. Like Justin, who saw seeds of logos in all human beings (especially in philosophers and prophets) so that Socrates was a Christian before Christ, Tertullian believed that the whole logos had come in Christ. He could encourage philosophers to move on to perfection in Christ. To suggest that anything should be added to Christ was to deny the criterion of the gospel.

For Tertullian there are three stages in the development towards the Christian gospel: natural religion, philosophy and Judaism. These may all be recognized; the chief error is to take one of them as the final stage.

saepe noster

paidagogos

praescr

de praescriptione haereticorum

praescr

Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne

Tertullien et les origines

The final perfection of Christ solves each confrontation which Tertullian presents.

carn

res

carn

Marc

Prax

Tertullian's acceptance of the concept of rule or criterion of truth leaves him open to some of the objections, ancient and modern, against this concept. It should be noted, however, that the most influential modern apology for Christian faith

takes Tertullian's view of faith as rational choice, and that he and his pagan predecessors were concerned to limit faith to make room for reason. Literalist unease over different verbal forms of the rule may be removed by the distinction between sense and reference.

His move also elucidates the tiresome problem of whether he and Clement should be called 'philosophers' today; there is no doubt that they philosophized or argued. Both took the Christian rule of faith and the scriptures which that rule summarized as their criterion of truth. This was a philosophical move in that philosophers at that time worked with a canon of some kind. It was a strikingly different kind of canon, however, so that it created a new

Cristo Salvador

Existiert Gott

Does God exist

Sinn

Bedeutung

language. The contrast between perception as the criterion of truth and scripture or rule as criterion of truth could hardly be greater. Tertullian, we shall see, breaks down that paradigm shift when he speaks of the scriptures as presenting a cognitive impression which compels belief.

Further, the use of literature in the ancient world, where poetry served as an encyclopedia of ethics, politics, history and technology, a vast storehouse of wisdom and knowledge,

made the use of the bible less shocking. However, the move is violent and the first centuries of Christian thought present the assimilation of this strange body of truth into philosophy, so that by Augustine the difference between philosophy and theology no longer makes sense. When Clement and Tertullian speak of a Christian philosophy, their speech is metaphorical; when we come to Augustine the metaphor has died to become part of the language.

Finally, Tertullian's theme derives from scripture. The warning against philosophy and vain deceit according to the tradition of men (Col. 2.8) is justified by the claim, 'For in Christ the perfection of the godhead dwells embodied and you have been brought to perfection in him, who is the head of every first-principle and power' (Col. 2.9, 10).

praescr

strom

Preface to Plato

Inquiries into truth and interpretation

Others have been less fortunate, because their fruitful investigations produced clear, but false, results which have encouraged irrational piety.

carn

which is commonly misquoted and seen as the archetype of irrational faith.

Yet his most assiduous modern editor and translator writes, 'This is one of the most lucid sections of Tertullian's work, in which his Latin flows with unwonted ease and perspicuity.'

Is this claim, asks another, 'unconscious humour'?

Some writers take the passage by itself and find irrationalism, while others look at the context and

The unabridged Edgar Allan Poe

non pudet quia pudendum

History of interpretation

Credo quia absurdum est

Tertullian's treatise on the incarnation

Conversion

carn

Tertullian's paradox is a cruel test for sorting out those who analyse arguments from those who do not. Most error is caused by the attempt to use the paradox in settings where it does not belong.

Tertullian wrote that:

Y. All this can only be true if he had flesh which could die, be buried and rise again.

carn

What have scholars made of the paradox? One group has interpreted it as irrational; the other has seen it as rational.

We shall look first at the main irrationalist interpretations: psychological, empiricist and medievalist.

Because of his psychological problem,

Tertullian opposes the one irrational truth of the gospel to the many rational accounts

carn

This is Tertullian's 'position pure' in

Philosophy in history

Position pure

Ibid

which he is able to settle questions by citation of scripture without any argument.

In contrast to Clement, there is no trace of a Christian philosophy.

Tertullian's exclusive fideism is linked with his environment in two ways. First, he was opposed to Gnosticism which falsely affected a philosophical position and showed the dangers of possible confusion. Secondly, in the West, philosophy never had the priority which it held in the East. Cicero was an orator and politician first and only a philosopher second insofar as an orator needed some philosophy. Tertullian could more easily link philosophy with rhetoric and sophistic.

At his conversion Tertullian sacrificed his fundamental drive towards rationality. He became a 'man of feeling', with his faith fixed on that irreducible irrationality of the incarnation, which the paradox declares. However, it is one thing to renounce one's past and another to be free from it. Tertullian's rationality was too deeply ingrained and he could not resist its claims.

The conflict is evident in the exaggerated claims of the paradox. The weakness of this interpretation is that Tertullian does not universalize the paradox. He finds a credible ineptitude in the incarnation and not elsewhere.

The empiricist account gives due weight to the several components of the argument. Against Marcion's rejection of a real incarnation Tertullian argues: God can do anything except what he does not wish to do; God can become incarnate without a change in his essential nature; and the shame of incarnation is necessary.

How do paradoxes work? The strength of paradox is that an objector is like someone who has missed the point of a joke and looks foolish. Whatever the dangers of this way of talking, Tertullian's paradox should be taken seriously as a striking

Position pure

Ibid

formulation of an essential Christian belief.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

How

This leads to a clear discussion of the problems which face any analysis of religious language and of the special difficulties which face a defence of the incarnation of a changeless God.

These are genuine problems, but they are not the problems which Tertullian faced, and they do not offer an accurate analysis of what he said. First, he was concerned to refute someone who claimed that a human body and crucifixion were inconsistent with a divine person and that therefore a simulated body must be preferred. Tertullian replied that an unreal body would not be a real incarnation and that the shame of the incarnation was a test of its reality.

He is further concerned that present denial of the shameful cross will lead to final rejection by Christ, and to denial of the salvation of mankind, besides which there is nothing more appropriate for God. God's dishonour is necessary for man's safety.

Secondly, it is wrong to claim as a corollary: 'because it is inept it is not credible'.

Tertullian does not universalize his claim for ineptitude; it is the test of a true incarnation. There would be no paradox if ineptitude were not normally a pointer to falsehood.

New essays in philosophical theology

Ibid

paed

de carne Christi

The discussion concerns the relation of reason to mystery. The archetypes are taken from a thousand years before the medieval debate. Tertullian and Augustine both discuss the relation between authority, faith, reason and understanding. The contrast, it is claimed, could not be greater. For the latter accepted and the former denied 'the application of reasoning to religious truth'.

It is unfortunate for this interpretation that Augustine's claim that human reason has an affinity with God,

praescr

Christian philosophy

Along with the link with heresy, there was a more important reason for rejecting philosophy: essential Christian doctrines were inaccessible to reason and must be accepted 'as certain on the basis of divine authority alone, or perhaps on no basis at all'.

These doctrines are treated, we are told, as divine 'mysteries'.

Christian Philosophy

ibid

The philosophy in Christianity

conf

idea

Ibid

Under the theme of 'Reason in Mystery', the rejection of classical foundationalism by Reformed epistemology is seen as a challenge to the usefulness of Aquinas and medieval philosophy.

Tertullian's wholesale 'repudiation' of philosophy is contrasted with the views of Peter Lombard, Aquinas and Bonaventure. All of which might well be in order if it were not tied to Tertullian as a type. Bonaventure's claim for the consummation of the innate light of reason by the infused light of revelation is remarkably close to the position of Tertullian.

The first and third irrationalist interpretations of the paradox depend on a doxographical (one word one meaning) approach while the second presents a useful but incomplete analysis. The third position uses Tertullian to fight a contemporary battle about medieval usefulness.

A brief note

Rhetoric

The examples, given by Androcles of Pitthus, when he claimed that the laws need a law to set them right, are that fish need salt and olive-cakes need oil.

Faith and Rationality

JThS

Rhetoric

The complete works of Aristotle: the revised Oxford translation

Acad

Another rationalist interpretation of the paradox begins with the exegesis of scripture. The author recognizes, while other interpreters ignore, that the major source of Tertullian and his contemporary Christians is always the New Testament. He rejects the irrationalist interpretation of the paradox on three grounds: it neglects the context of the argument, it ignores the two basic texts of scripture (1 Cor. 1 and 2; Mark 8.38 with Luke 9.26 and Matt. 10.32), and confuses a particular case with a universal rule.

The writer acknowledges the wide range of interpretations, from provocative rationalism to absolute irrationalism: one account rightly reminds us that a rational Tertullian is speaking to heretics who need to be recalled to the rule of faith,

while another discerns the superior certainty of faith and rightly doubts whether even an individualist like Tertullian would place the criterion of truth in absurdity.

Tertullian begins with God's folly and shame. The 'stupidities which belong to the abuse and suffering of God'

indignum deo

inconveniens

carn

Cristo salvador

La théologie de Tertullien

La philosophie au Moyen-Age

Bijdrage tot de psychologie van Tertullianus

(materiae

impudens, stultus

carn

Credo quia absurdum

The third rationalist interpretation of the paradox

We cannot see God, but we cannot deny the evidence of his works. His transcendence and intelligibility are inseparable. Tertullian here opposes the irrationalism of the unknown God of the Gnostics with the rationalism of the Christian God who is creator of the world. But the paradox is clear. Three

Conversion

times Tertullian states the antinomy of intelligibility and transcendence, three times he resolves it.

Jud

bapt

is joined to divine omnipotence, at once a biblical (Job 42; Matt. 19.26; Luke 1.37) and a Stoic

Marc

credibile quia ineptum

1. The divinely true scriptures have in different ways announced the foolishness of the cross.

2. This folly implies incarnation and crucifixion.

3. Therefore the incarnation and the crucifixion are necessary and true.

All three rationalist interpretations emphasize context and argument. An analysis of the argument which surrounds the paradox provides the only firm basis for interpretation.

Marcion denies the flesh and nativity of Christ. Certainly the creator's prophet talks of a virgin birth; but this is not relevant

de natura deorum

Conversion

because Marcion's creator never knows what he is talking about. Christ comes suddenly, without the proofs of his flesh which the birth provides, and indeed birth is either impossible or inappropriate for God. Nothing, replies Tertullian, is impossible for God, except what he does not will. Further, since God willed to appear as a man, he must have willed to be a man, because he would never have willed to seem what he was not.

According to Marcion, others could have wrongly supposed him to be a man; but Christ would not have exhibited himself as that which he knew he was not.

Marc

carn

God loves and redeems what he has made. While nature is an object of reverence to others, Marcion, who hates all humans including himself, spits on it in contempt.

de praescriptione haereticorum

perfection

de carne Christi

correction

carn

As Paul says, in paradox, God has chosen the foolish things of his humiliation to confound the wise. Tertullian demands a reassessment of the foolish things which include conversion to worship of the true God, rejection of error, and moral progress in righteousness, chastity, mercy, patience and innocence. They are true wisdom.

The rejection of Christ's birth means rejection of his cross and sufferings; yet Paul is clear that Christ and him crucified constitute the whole content of faith.

Indeed our only hope is the necessary dishonour of our faith. Whatever is unworthy of God is to our gain. Tertullian is not ashamed of the crucifixion of God's son because it is inescapably shameful. The death of God's son is an essential belief because it is inept His burial and resurrection are certain because they are impossible.

The point of the argument is plain. If God, who is wholly other, is joined to mortal man in a way which is not inept, then either God is no longer God or man is no longer man, and there is no true incarnation. Truth on this issue can only be achieved by ineptitude. Tertullian does not universalize his claim; most ineptitude is false. This argument is put into paradox, to imitate Paul and to make it more striking and provocative. Paradoxes are useful because they are wonderful and against common opinion.

The correction of our need could only take place if Christ had flesh which could die, be buried and rise again. Therefore he had two

Paradoxa Stoicorum

carn

Here we have in a nutshell the development of early christology.

Prax

Tauschformeln

Das Dogma vom Kreuz

Gott als Geheimnis der Welt

heaviness' (Isa. 61.5). For Tertullian the ineptitude of the change is important.

haer

pref

Tauschformel

haer

dem

aptum

ineptum

carn

The sufferings of Christ prove that his flesh was not a celestial substance. No one would have dared to lay a finger on his body, let alone spit on it, if it had not borne the signs of physical weakness.

aptum

Heilsgeschichte und Heilswissen, Eine Untersuchung zur Struktur und Entfaltung des theologischen Denkens im Werk 'Adversus Haereses' des hl. Irenäus von Lyons

His hunger, tears, trembling and spilt blood point to the earthiness of his incarnation.

carn

The parallel is clear. A virgin (like untouched earth) is the medium of the new dispensation of divine nativity. The Second Adam, as Paul says, is a life-giving spirit out of the ground, i.e. out of unstained flesh. God regained his image and likeness in the same way as he had been robbed by the devil.

carn

This account of flesh and virgin birth is invaluable because it shows the numerous truth conditions with which Tertullian connects the incarnation. Those truth conditions enable us to understand what he says.

We return to our summary of the paradox.

Y. All this can only be true if he had flesh which could die, be buried and rise again.

Z. Christ had two substances: divine and human, two states, two natures. This may be proved: 'The powers of the Spirit proved him to be God, his sufferings proved his human flesh.'

Therefore 'Why halve Christ with a lie? He was wholly the truth.'

The paradox may be analysed:

God is wholly other, and differs from man and from all else. If he is joined to man in a way which is not shameful, inept and impossible, then either God is no longer God or man is no longer man. If God is joined to man in a way which is shameful, inept and impossible, then God is truly God and man is truly man.

haer

mon

Alpha is not Omega and Omega is not Alpha. Therefore Alpha/Omega will be Alpha/not-Alpha, which is inept. Beta/Omega or Alpha/Psi would modify the ineptitude by moving the terms closer together, but would not be true because Beta is not God (Alpha) and Psi is not man (Omega). What is at

issue here is not whether God somehow became man, but whether he did it in a way which is apt and therefore untrue, or in a way which is inept and therefore true. The paradox requires that ineptitude commonly implies falsehood but does not imply falsehood in this special case.

There are supporting arguments for the analysis which has been put forward. They make the popular picture of Tertullian as an apostle of unreason even less probable.

(i) Tertullian claims to follow the discipline of reason against Marcion who, he says, is brainless. While many rationalists say things which are not rational, they neither intend to do so nor do they confess their departure from reason. Tertullian's paradoxes here are to be understood together with all his other cryptic sayings. 'Blood is seed' is an equally enigmatic but perfectly reasonable and evangelical (John 12.24) claim. For Tertullian almost anything worth saying can be expressed in a paradox.

(ii) This was both a personal habit and part of his Stoicism. Cicero had set out six paradoxes:

paradoxa

The six paradoxes

are:

1. Only what is morally good is noble.

2. Possession of virtue is sufficient for happiness.

3. Transgressions are equal and right actions are equal.

4. Every foolish man is mad.

5. Only the wise man is free and every foolish man is a slave.

Paradoxa Stoicorum

Ibid

6. The wise man alone is rich.

These are in no way a denial of reason; they are truths which derive from Socrates and which persist into Stoicism because they are most true.

(iii) Today, fideism is most commonly linked with that rejection of the Enlightenment proposed by Dialectical Theology. Whereas the Enlightenment opposed faith and reason and enthroned the latter, Barth, or at least some Barthians, accepted the opposition but deposed reason. Barth's evaluation of Tertullian is therefore interesting. He sees him as having understood the distinctive Christian claims and yet having failed to modify his apologetic appropriately. Tertullian is not a true believer. All the apologists present a sorry picture of competition with the existing religions, a competition which they regrettably won. 'How strangely did a man like Tertullian see the danger which threatened at this point, and at the same time never really see it at all, but actually help t o increase it.'

(iv) Against irrationalist interpretation stands Tertullian's anthropology which finds the divine image in human rationality, his opposition to Marcion's irrational god and his Stoic priority for all that is according to nature.

Church dogmatics

apologeticum

Apology

The first general principle is that the world is governed by the strife of opposites of light with darkness, of good with evil. Following this axiom, three points are made. First, within universal conflict, justice or reason must balance all things, suppress evil and encourage good. Secondly, God is present from beginning to end, from first to last. His economy runs without faltering from creation through all his dealings with mankind, until the coming of the man Jesus in whom all is brought to perfection. Thereafter Jesus is present in the varied virtues of the church and in the seed of the martyrs, so that nothing lies outside his rule which is to be plainly declared in his final judgement. The third theme is the persistence of the cross. The worship of Christ as God comes from those who are tortured and afflicted. Out of the depth of their suffering, they proclaim salvation and out of their seed the gospel grows.

logos spermatikos

In the strife between good and evil, hatred for the Christian name springs from ignorance which always hates the wrong thing. Nature has stamped on every evil the qualities of fear and shame: evil hides itself and does not offer a defence. In contrast, Christian faith overcomes fear, shame, false denial, regret and despair.

Now follows a refutation of those charges against Christians,

fama

Aeneid

Tertullian's central idea is that the universe is made of opposites which must be harmonized and held together by reason. The persecution of Christians destroys this harmony and is therefore fundamentally wrong and due to demonic perversion. The balance of ethical opposites is necessary and anticipates God's final justice which will restore all things. The persecution of Christians undermines the moral fabric of the world. Tertullian's claim is strengthened by an insistence that the justice of the world is always proleptic and imperfect, whereas the final justice of God initiates the eschaton now.

alumni

quanto dignius fratres

has

That same reason which constructed the universe out of diversity, so that all things from their antithetical substances agree in a unity empty and solid, animate and inanimate, comprehensible and incomprehensible, light and darkness, even life and death has also so disposed the whole

Met

de anima

in Phys

Physics

Ref

strom

adv. math

in Phys

Ref

adv.math

Ref

Ecl

Second, there are successive opposites which are 'different stages in a single invariable process'.

Between life and death, waking and sleeping, youth and age, there is change and interchange. Things are brought together and held apart, are whole and not whole, are in and out of tune.

Ref

Cels

Ref

apud Eusebium Praeparatio Evangelica

de E apud Delphos

strom

de E

Ref

Meteor

Ibid

de mundo

de exil

Lives

strom

adv. Colotem

Lives

Ecl

Hymn

SVF

per consilium naturae

per adfinitatem contrariam

SVF

Diss

nat. quaest

ex diversis compositus

de ira dei

SVF

Hellenistic philosophy

The justice of Zeus

contraria inter se

furor

ratio

ira

Quaest. Gen

As usual, Philo finds a deeper meaning in the relevant verse (Gen. 8.22 (

LXX

)). Seed and harvest are beginning and end, which are both causes of salvation. Beginning needs end and end needs beginning. Philo interprets cold and heat as fear and anger, day and night as reason and folly. All of which shows the presence of opposites in man as in the cosmos.

So Heraclitean opposites persist in Hellenistic and Roman thought.

Just as language may be riddling, ambiguous, paradoxical, so in the world opposites coexist, unity is a product of diversity, harmony a consequence of strife . . . the world is a unity of opposites, a harmony of opposing forces

As the providence of God runs on, he deals impartially with all

Hellenistic philosophy

In his concluding paragraphs Tertullian pleads that, however foolish Christian claims may seem, they are necessary for the defence of virtue which flourishes under threat of punishment and promise of eternal bliss. Such foolish things are useful. 'It is therefore never expedient to declare as false or to hold as foolish what it is expedient to regard as true.'

A witness of such obstinacy will be moved to inquire about its doctrines, become convinced

and himself go on to martyrdom, winning forgiveness for all his sins. Paradox has the last word. When condemned by earthly rulers, Christians are acquitted by God.

For Tertullian, as for Justin,

the cross has a persistent place. Pagans treat Christians as they treat their idols! They place them

2 apol

Both Justin and Tertullian point back to the theme of the Fourth Gospel, where a grain of wheat must fall into the ground to die and bear much fruit (John 12.24). The law of creation and the law of redemption are one law; here again Heraclitus is useful.

Tertullian's account of conflict between good and evil, the divine economy of a God who is first and last, and the persistent seed of the cross, all point to a unifying ethic and metaphysic which needs to be kept in mind if his argument is to be understood. Christians are not accidental victims; they are part of God's total plan, for divine reason established the world and came

Though it is forever denied.

Murder in the cathedral

apologeticum

Christians do not worship the Roman gods who are merely glorified men, have created nothing and are guilty of wicked crimes. Those who follow pagan deities insult them, multiply them and trade in them. The gods are cheated in rites of worship, ridiculed in literature, laughed at in theatres. Their temples are polluted by their own followers and not by the Christians who stay outside. Christians do not worship the head of an ass, but pagans worship many kinds of animals.

a refusal to recognize or recollect the God whom he cannot fail to know.

Tertullian uses proofs of God's existence, when other apologists had considered them unnecessary.

Antiquity, it is objected, cannot be claimed when the Christians have rejected so many of the ancient ways of the Jews. Are they simply hiding under the protection of a distinguished religion which is sanctioned by the law? Most people, replies Tertullian, know something of Christ but regard him simply as a man; a few statements about his divinity are therefore required ('necesse est igitur pauca

Beiträge zur Geschichte des christlichen Altertums und der Byzantinischen Literatur, FS A. Ehrhard

As with a ray of the sun, there is extension, but no division of substance. Spirit of spirit, God of God, he entered the womb of the Virgin and was born as God and man. So he was expected and is still expected by the Jews who do not believe that he has come; but he was always to come twice, once in human form and a second time in divine majesty. The Jews, in their blindness, did not see him as word and power of God and assigned his miracles to magical powers.

ipsa urbanitas

recognizes

Tertullian's argument here expounds, with great subtlety, an epistemology of recognition or recollection. The testimony of the soul which is naturally Christian is completed in the recognition of the universal God at the climax of his dispensation in Christ. Faith recalls God as one God at different stages of his economy. Tertullian is able to write to Romans because they are human and all humans know God and should be able to recognize him in Christ.

recognize

To this natural evidence, God has added the document of scripture.

Tertullian does not separate the natural order from the divine, nor reason from faith, in his account of Christian faith as recognition.

recognoscere

praescr

Jud

Val

Marc

nat

Marc

Val

RET

Marc

agnitio

dispositio

praedicatio

Marc

Tertullian's account of faith as recognition and recollection is not an apologetic improvisation. It fits his theology of divine unicity, the goodness and magnificence of creation, the identification of Christ as son of the father, the salvation and responsibility of humanity. It is part of a Stoic conviction of divine providence and

sensibus

res

natales agnitionis

Marc

test

Since Tertullian's apologetic (strife of opposites and faith as recognition) has turned out to have a more complex argument than was expected, a general evaluation is appropriate. Was Tertullian an effective apologist? This may be divided into two questions Did he respect his Roman audience? Did he shape his message for this audience and thereby endanger the central theses of his theology?

Marc

All early Christian theologians believed that history had a purpose and that it was summed up in Christ. This goes for Clement of Alexandria as much as for Irenaeus. What is notable in Tertullian is that he found a place for the Roman empire in the divine purpose.

This meant that he could extol and share the Roman virtues of Mucius Scaevola and others, assimilating them with the ancient Spartan ideals. The heroic Roman virtues lent respect to reckless Christian desperadoes who conquer in death. Mucius Scaevola plunged his hand into fire. Empedocles jumped into Mount Etna. Tertullian also puts public-minded Christians into the life of the community and contrasts them with pale Eastern mystics who escape from the world.

Tertullian's relation to Rome has been handled impressively by many writers.

One recent work

idol

cor

legio fulminata

Scap

Tertullian und das römische Reich

La vision de Rome chez Tertullien

idol

cor

bellare

militare

paen

cor

scorp

cor

maiestas

nat

even if there have been good (friendly to Christians) and bad (hostile to Christians) emperors.

Behind his respect for Rome and the emperor lay Tertullian's positive anthropology

res

It is not lawful for me to fight, Early Christian attitudes toward law, violence and the state

Conversion

REA

Stoïcisme

Ibid

scorp

Scap

Did Tertullian adapt his message to his readership? Certainly he did. The variety of Tertullian's work shows how specific he was in defining his target. An apologist cannot apologize to everyone at once. The logic of apologetic is a logic of specific objection and specific rebuttal. Simplification was essential. Pagan religion was complex, despite a general similarity in purpose. Christianity with its exclusive, universal claims could only collide with it. How was the opposition to be understood? Christianity was defined in contradiction to polytheism as monotheism pure and simple.

Tertullian's first concern is to attack polytheism

Apology

idol

This 'selective monotheism'

was necessary and obvious to every defender of Christian faith. Tertullian's other writings show

La vision

Ibid

that his theology went further. As an apologist 'the African genius' displayed, we are told, his superior refinement over other apologists; but like them he put a rational monotheism in the centre.

Did this impoverish his theology? He talks about 'deus' everywhere and the idea of God dominates his writing. It is claimed

cor

Apology

Ibid

There were several reasons for the length and care of Tertullian's reply to Marcion.

Dualism was the foremost threat to emerging Christian theology. Marcion gave a negative answer to the first question of that theology: 'Is there one God good and true who is creator of this world of evil and chaos?'

Since Marcion produced the strongest case against one God, and supported his argument from scripture, his work required careful discussion. Deeper still, Marcion's denial went to the central contention of the common response. He denied the economy of salvation, centred on Christ, which was the theme of the early Christian answer. For Marcion, God's total disgrace could not be the sacrament of man's salvation.

Paradox was unacceptable to Marcion because it contradicted the primary pledge to simplicity which Marcion and Tertullian shared. In God there could be no change nor shadow cast by turning. All that contradicted perfect love must be denied. In this Marcion followed a common view of God. For Plato, the form of the good was above all contradiction; dialectic was the way to reach the summit where all conflict ceases and there is an everlasting loveliness that neither flowers nor fades. For Aristotle, the first cause of all, like a magnet in an armchair, needed to do nothing.

Tertullian contra Marcion, Gotteslehre in der Polemik

adversus Marcionem

Marcion, Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott

The Second Century

For the Epicureans, the chief attribute of gods was their remoteness and their lack of invement in human affairs. Even for Paul, there was no contradiction in God whose promises were not 'yea and nay' but in Christ were all 'yea and amen' (2 Cor. 1.1920). Only Stoicism, following Heraclitus, saw the need for paradox in God; to this opinion Tertullian readily turned.

Marcion was a serious threat because he was completely right in discerning the critical centre of Pauline theology.

God was, in a way which bewildered all believers, a God of mercy and love. Confirmation of this theme is found in nineteenth-century Liberal praise for and sympathy with Marcion. For Harnack, a child of the Enlightenment, had asked the critical question about the essence of Christianity and came up with an answer similar to that of Marcion. Harnack had no hesitation in disowning the Old Testament, which had been necessary for the early church and inevitable for the Reformation, but was now a part of the Protestant canon only because of the religious paralysis of its readers.

Marcion, of course, went further and combined theodicy with his rejection of the created world which reflected the weakness and wickedness of its maker.

The same dualism was characteristic of the Gnostics with whom Marcion has often been classed.

praescr

Antitheses

Marcion: on the restitution of Christianity. An essay on the development of radical Paulinist theology in the second century

ThR

Marcion

Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte

merely different from but opposite to the God of the gospel. Gnostics were above the need for argument, which could never reach ultimate truth. Their claim for vision could only be met by aesthetic considerations, which showed that their claims were countered.

Against Marcion

Gospel and Pauline texts.

To understand the intricate argument of these two books, we shall first go to their conclusion.

bonitas, justitia

Antitheses

and

Tertullian sums up: 'I shall by means of these antitheses recognize in Christ my own jealous God. He did in the beginning by his own right, by a hostility which was rational and therefore good, provide beforehand for the maturity and fuller ripeness of

JThS

Marc

God's antitheses are reflected in his own world which consists of opposite elements regulated in perfect proportion; but the antithesis (like the economy) belongs first in God and not merely in his world.

The reader must hold on to this central theme through all the twists and turns of Tertullian's argument.

Marc

The bad tree is the creator who creates evil (Isa. 45.7), while the good tree is a strange new divinity of pure and unmixed benevolence. This heresy embitters the whole of faith and gives double vision to those of feeble sight. One god has been overthrown as evil, another has been fabricated on a scaffolding of goodness.

Marc

summum magnum

supreme in form, reason, strength and power and therefore unique.

The first objection asks why there cannot be

Dichtung und Wahrheit

Gott als Geheimnis der Welt

Marc

haer

dem

Tertullian

Zur Erklärung und Textkritik des ersten Buches Tertullians 'Adversus Marcionem

Marc

It was widely debated whether names were natural to or imposed on things.

Marc

Why did God make one world, with man at its centre? Everything which exists must produce something. Nothing can exist to which nothing belongs.

Everything belongs to the creator, so there is no room left for another god. Marcion's god should have produced at least a chickpea, in order to be credible. His lack of works shows him to be impudent because he still wants to be believed, and malicious because he has given no reason for belief.

The world, made for man, is not divine as philosophers have claimed;

but it is worthy of God. 'Will one tiny flower from a hedge (I do not say the meadow) one tiny shell from whatever sea (I do not say the Red Sea)one tiny wing from a moorfowl (I do not speak of a peacock), pronounce for you the meanness of the

Tertullian

FThS

substantia

Tertullian

Ancient rhetoric and the art of Tertullian

Inst

Tertullian

Contra superstitiones

Tertullian

Marc

Here it is clear that Tertullian falls into the common error of polemic which distorts the views of an opponent by amalgam, generalization and arbitrary deductions.

A style of argument which gained him support in his own milieu, it would be counter-productive today.

However, it is important to note that he is justified in his general claim that once intermediaries are called in, there is always reason to add to them.

Even if there be an invisible world as well as a visible world, there is no need to invent another god to explain it. The existence of the invisible world is proved from God's action on the visible world. All things come from God, who always produces opposites.

He makes things corporeal and incorporeal, animate and inanimate, vocal and silent, mobile and static, productive and sterile, dry and wet, hot and cold. Man mirrors this diversity with his parts which are strong and weak, beautiful and ugly, double and single, like and unlike, and with his emotions which include joy and anxiety, love

Die Stoa

Tertullian

haer

Ecclesia orans, Mélanges Hamman

Marc

and other Stoics. In such a world, we should expect a creator to command and forbid, to smite and to heal.

Marc

Creation proves God's existence; redemption proves his nature. The world demonstrates that he is; the gospel demonstrates what he is.

Marc

nat. quest.

haer

De anima

Marc

pud

de deo nemo

How good is Marcion's God? Marcion's case depends on his god being better than the creator; this calls for precise argument. How can one evaluate the goodness of a god? It must be natural and ingenerate, so that it would come to help as soon as need occurs. Perennial and ever-flowing, it would know in advance the time for action.

Why then was Marcion's divine goodness not active from the beginning? If such a god had existed, he could not have kept his goodness hidden; if he restrains his attributes, they are not natural, for nature cannot deny itself; if it ceases to act, it ceases to exist. The first objection against Marcion's god is that since at one time he did not act, his goodness cannot be natural, and if not natural, then not eternal;

Marc

fug

Goodness has to be rational.

It must love both neighbour and enemy, and not love enemy to exclusion of neighbour. The kindness which is due takes precedence over that which is not due, the latter underlining the former. Rational goodness looks to its own first and then overflows to others. Rationality cannot be attributed to a goodness which overflows without fulfilling its primary function, by creating

Timaeus

de caelo

Tertullian

totus ratio

haer

Marc

humanity. Nothing which is in itself irregular can be rational.

Goodness towards strangers presupposes goodness to those to whom it is due. Without this primary goodness it is unjust, irrational, like being kind to another's slave so as to make him hostile to the master under whose roof he remains. Marcion's god breaks into a world which is not his own, stealing man from God and son from father. Marcion and his followers, with irrational presumption, use one God's water to baptize for another god, raise their hands to one God's sky to worship another god, indeed use many gifts of the one god to worship the other.

God must be eternal, rational and entirely perfect.

Marcion's god is none of these, because he is not universal since there can be no Jewish Christians, and he does not save humans entirely since he abandons the human body. Man was made of dust and moulded by God into flesh, not spirit. The flesh, which does so much for God and is an essential part of every human being,

is excluded from salvation. If we rise without our flesh, then resurrection life will be inferior to this present life.

Marc

Is simple goodness good enough for God? From the inadequate goodness of the god whose goodness is neither ingenerate nor rational nor perfect, we move to the question of whether goodness

Marc

haer

Phaedo

Tertullian

SCO

Tertullian

is a sufficient attribute for God. Is God a being of pure goodness, free from all other attributes, sensations and affections?

For Epicureans, the gods are remote, listless and imperturbable. In contrast, Christ troubled the Jews by his teaching and brought trouble on himself. Ever inconsistent, Marcion never fulfilled the transcendent Epicurean ideal.

His god willed and desired

aemulatio

Marc

adversus Marcionem

apol

Vom Zorne Gottes

Tertullian

Lives

de rerum natura

de natura deorum

praescr

De voluntarii notione platonica et aristotelea

Tertullian

unique and perfect, good and rational. Within the argument of this first book, we may distinguish detailed objections (which require, for example, that God exact retribution for sin) from the central Stoic arguments that God's goodness should be perfect and rational.

God was never hidden, as Marcion claimed, but shone like the sun, being proved by his works, his name and the laws of his being. Yet there were difficulties because of imperfect human vision,

Marc

optimum ministrum

Marc

Rep

Adversus Marcionem

Marc

Then he continued to bless and make good things so that his entire being is commended by good speech and good action. His word neither spoke nor did any evil.

Marc

It is hard to imagine a more optimistic account of human origin than that of Tertullian. Only God's image was worthy to have the works of God as his home. He was created by a specially effective goodness with a kind hand and a gentle word: 'Let us make man!'

The divine goodness was active supremely in the making of man. Goodness spoke persuasively, formed nobly, breathed life, gave dominion and delights, so that no good thing was absent from the crown of God's creation. The law was given to hold man to God and raise him above the level of animals, subjecting him as rational and free to God alone, while all else was subject to him. Goodness warned of the penalty for disobedience, hoping that it would not be necessary. God's goodness is evident from his works and words, and his gracious admonitions.

Marc

God limits himself to allow this freedom, while retaining his long-term providence.

afflatus

Marc

Afflatus

spiritus

The divine breath in man is not sinful in substance;

Marc

immut

Tertullian

Recherches sur les Confessions de S. Augustin

Epitome

Enn

Tertullian

afflatus

spiritus

haer

leg. all

De anima

pall

imago

veritas

praescr

conf

Recherches

Tertullian

Marc

While there is one unchanging goodness, evil (as Isa. 45.7 declares) takes two forms:

mala culpae

mala poenae

Marc

God himself died

Marc

Remarkably, this final proposition rescues Tertullian from disaster.

Marc

lex talionis

Marc

haer

Tertullian

Marc

Tertullian

Moysis

haer

Marc

Die Stoa

Unveränderlichkeit Gottes

Tertullian

Marcion

Tertullian

Tertullian's argument in the first two books may be briefly assessed. Setting aside rhetorical excesses, how does he measure up besides Marcion? His arguments are uneven, and some readers have found in Marcion's favour. While the interpreter does not give prizes, there are times when it helps to enter the argument. It seems that Tertullian wins by linking the goodness of creation and the love of the cross. Yet Marcion wins on the interval between creation and cross because Tertullian's jealous God who smites and heals, kills and makes alive, humbles and exalts and creates evil and makes peace, does not reflect the love of the cross which is, for Tertullian, the world's sole hope. Of course, Marcion was extreme in his condemnation of the creator and Tertullian makes many good points for the humaneness of the law. But Tertullian's victory on the creation and the cross is also fragile. Today, the Third World population lives in a kind of hell and many have difficulty in seeing the second person of the blessed trinity nailed to a tree. Tertullian's inevitable reply 'So much the worse for the blessed trinity!' is convincing but controversial.

Marc

pusillitates

Marc

In order to save mankind God took those human limitations, which culminated in the humiliation of the cross. The reply to Marcion is the same as that given in the defence of the flesh of Christ.

God's total disgrace is the secret sign and pledge of man's salvation.

In fact the whole of that which in my God is dishonourable in your sight, is the sacrament of man's salvation. God entered into converse with man, so that man might be taught how to act like God. God treated on equal terms with man so that man might be able to treat on equal terms with God. God was found to be small so that man might become very great.

Marc

The weakness of Tertullian's argument is that the cross might explain the more ancient condescension of God. It will not explain the barbarities of the Deuteronomic God of battles; these were as much a part of Marcion's case as were the foolish indignities.

Do not the antitheses point to man's salvation rather than to God's discredit? This question brings us to Tertullian's conclusion, from which, indeed, we began. All the antitheses at which Marcion falters are paradoxes, capable of rational solution and united in one God. In contrast, it is claimed, Marcion's position has many contradictions which he does not recognize. Yet another clue to the conclusion comes when Tertullian puts forward some rival antitheses to Marcion who claimed that Tertullian's God knew no one above him. Balance that, says Tertullian, with the fact that Marcion's God knew no one beneath him. The road up is the same as the road down Tertullian quotes from Heraclitus who is closer

carn

to him than are other ancient philosophers. There is nothing wrong with antitheses provided they are kept within one God.

Marc

and embraces a conflict of opposites.

After the accumulated argument of Books 1 and 2, we anticipate a change of gear in Book 3 which, like Books 4 and 5, is largely concerned with scriptural evidence. However, Tertullian begins with a priceless comment and argues on the need for the kind of order which requires promise to precede fulfilment, father to precede son and the sender to precede the one sent.

Book 3 is concerned with christology and begins with an argument for its own redundancy.

Since the first two books have established the unicity of God who by his disgrace worked the salvation of men, the elaboration of christology is superfluous or gratuitous. Why is this comment so important? Because it offers a clue to the Christian claim that one God was credible, only if he had in Christ redeemed what he had created, perfected what he had begun and corrected

Theologie der Hoffnung

Against Marcion

ipso facto

apologeticum

what had gone wrong. This means that the relation of father to son and their relation to morals and reason was already settled by belief in one God. Christ belonged to the creator, as the apostolic rule had always asserted.

Marc

Tertullian has two main arguments here: first, there is a general rule that the original should take precedence; second, that miracles are not enough to prove an unpredicted Christ. The general rule implies that the father should declare the son before (as with Marcion) the son declares the father and that the sender should precede the one sent: God orders and arranges everything so that sudden irruptions into the world are excluded (as any Stoic knows).

A fortiori

Marc

The second argument is that Christ's miracles were not enough to prove that he was the son sent by the father. For Christ himself spoke of many false christs who would work signs and wonders to confuse God's chosen people; what if he were merely the first in a queue of wonder-workers and, like the early arrivals at the baths, simply got in first? This will not do because the creator had already worked miracles and can claim unrivalled priority. He worked the

Marc

Marcionites deny that Christ was predicted in scripture and line up with Jews who, for different reasons, declare the scriptural strangeness of Christ. The Jews treated him simply as a magician who taught false doctrines rather than as someone unique. Tertullian's classification of Marcion with the Jews would have been unpleasant for the Marcionites who despised Jews as the people of the creator.

Marc

children of men girds on his sword in glory and majesty (Ps. 45.2f.), one lower than the angels is crowned with glory and honour (Ps. 8.5f.), while those who pierced him will mourn their lack of perception (Zech. 12.10). Joshua (Jesus) comes first in filthy clothes which he exchanges for priestly robes and diadem (Zech. 3.4f.). The two goats of the great day of atonement point to the 'two natures of Christ' (Lev. 16.5ff.).

Marc

need

Marc

Finally, Tertullian speaks with precision of the millennium promised to Christians in the new Jerusalem.

Marc

Antitheses

Tertullian offers, in response to Marcion, his own antitheses. There was a dispensation of the creator and there is now a dispensation of

Marc

He moves on to Marcion's Gospel which avoids opposites and aims at an inaccessible principle of uniformity. What matters for a Gospel is its apostolic origin and its agreement with an apostolic rule. Conflict over narrative sequences is of no consequence; what matters is agreement on the essence

Marc

Luke lies behind Marcion's Gospel and Tertullian's attack is directed, first against this exclusive choice for an elusive uncontaminated Gospel,

second against its lack of antiquity and third against the implausibility of its long-postponed heretical emenda-

caput

Phil

Brut

Marc

Tertullian's detail moves from the demons of Capernaum and Nazareth, to fishing for men,

to the conclusive title of Son of Man, to fulfilment of prophecies and to the Sermon on the Mount.

Marc

When Peter saw the miracles and confessed the creator's Christ, he drew the wrong conclusion and rejected a suffering messiah. For this error he was told to be silent. Tertullian has always a passion

Marc

caput

Marc

Yet again Marcion misses the point when he deals with the institution of the Eucharist. 'This is my body' speaks figuratively of

Marc

When Tertullian moves to Marcion's account of Paul, it is evident that he avoids the strength of Marcion's case. A good example is his initial objection against Paul's beginning.

Marc

per naturae dissimulationem

Marc

The folly of the cross must be the creator's work (Isa. 29.14 and 1 Cor. 1.19), bringing salvation to some, and perdition to others. Marcion implicitly argues that the hostile creator destroyed the wisdom of men so that they would share his hostility to the cross, yet nevertheless predicted the cross of which he was ignorant. Tertullian sees both Jews and Greeks justly punished by the jealous God who made them foolish. The cross and death of Christ are God's folly. The birth and flesh of Christ are his weakness. What is mean and ignoble on the human scale gains nobility and grandeur in the divine order. One might, as Marcion does, ridicule the creator's old testament with its sacrifices and cleansings. This distortion of Paul is turned by Tertullian against Marcion. If it is foolish then it is God's way of confounding worldly wisdom, of confusing things with their opposites

Marc

Tertullian works through all ten letters of Paul, showing how Marcion has misused them. For example, 'the likeness' of sinful flesh (Rom. 8.3) refers to the likeness of sin not to the flesh which

Marc

Against Marcion

praescr

Marc

homoousion

This is an impressive claim; but ideas rarely enjoy such unambiguous triumph.

Tertullian's achievement may even be embarrassing in a climate of anti-trinitarian debate. Through him and other theologians, it is wrongly claimed that Christians lost their belief in God as 'one without further qualification', for the understanding of trinity requires such 'well informed and highly sophisticated powers of thought' that many Christians are effectively tritheist rather than monotheist. Today, 'the contrast between the apparent simple clarity of Jewish and Muslim monotheism and the apparent complexity of Christian monotheism remains a stumbling-block to Christianity's detriment'.

Prax

An introduction to the early history of Christian doctrine

Explorations

Trinity is never a mere multiplication of heavenly beings; there must be one God. Trinity is the faith of the gospel.

Prax

Like all early Christian theology, Tertullian's first question sprang from theodicy: Is there one God, good and true, who is creator and ruler of this world of evil and chaos? The constant answer was that such a God was credible, if he had, in Jesus Christ, redeemed the world which he had made. To this answer there were two main objectors, the Jews and Marcion. Tertullian's trinitarian ideas may best be understood as third in a logic of apologetic, where his answer to the Jews made it necessary to argue with Marcion, while the answer to Marcion made it necessary to argue with Praxeas,

who had identified father and son.

It is difficult to win one argument without starting another.

Jud

RevSR

1 apol

et al

Spätantike und Christentum

Jud

Tertullian shows a remarkable change in Christian attitude to Jews. The New Testament fights against fear of Jews. 'They will expel you from synagogues. He who kills you will think that he does God a service' (John 16.2). 'Fear not those who kill the body and are not able to hurt the soul. Fear him who is able to cast soul and body

into hell' (Matt. 10.28). In Justin there is still timidity, when he pleads with Jews not to ridicule the crucified Christ because by his wounds and stripes many have been healed. Tertullian is not afraid of Jews. The triumphant spread of Christian faith proves that a new covenant and a new law have been given and that in Christ and his people all promises have been fulfilled.

The strength of the argument against the Jews made it necessary to answer Marcion who drove the dichotomy between Jew and Christian to extremes. Marcion could not affirm one God as both the father of Jesus Christ and the creator of this world; his dualism declared two Gods, one of law and another of gospel, one of Jewish scripture and the other of Jesus and Paul. At the deepest level, Marcion's denial opposed the central affirmation of Christian faith, which was that one God was only credible if he had, in Christ, redeemed the world which he had made. Marcion rejected that economy of salvation which was the theme of early Christian theology. For Tertullian and Irenaeus, God's total disgrace was the pledge of man's salvation, for it joined the end to the beginning, man to God.

To understand Tertullian's detailed argument,

bonitas, justitia

Antitheses

and

Marc

Antitheses

Marc

Just as the refutation of the Jewish argument led on to the Marcionite dichotomy, so the unity of God made it necessary to answer Praxeas. If God ceases to be God when he loses his unity, then the nature of that unity will dominate Christian theology. Behind the monarchian teaching of Praxeas, Tertullian sees the devil, who is clever enough to attack truth by pretending to defend it and who delivers an 'overkill' on dualism,

Marc

Tertullian is incensed

Prax

Treatise against Praxeas

Christian doctrine

Hippolytus and the Roman church in the third century

Elenchus

Contra Noetum

ibid

monarchia

Marc

Yet the alleged crucifixion of the father points to Praxeas' fatal fault and heresy. For it is the cross which declares the divine economy and makes the doctrines of trinity and incarnation essential. All things are summed up in Christ only through the divine economy. God reconciles mankind because on the cross father and son are distinct and the forsaken son is within God.

unica spes

vice versa

status, substantia, potestas

gradus, forma, species

Prax

and Tertullian to see economy in God.

The trinitarian problem is clarified

by Tertullian through a

Geheimnis

Mysterium Salutis, Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik

Geheimnis

dem

edere

decurrere, derivatio

apologeticum

sermo, ratio, fatum, deus, animus Iovis, necessitas omnium

spiritus

sermo, ratio, virtus

to whom is ascribed the substance of spirit. To this very substance of God belong the word which proclaims, the reason which disposes and the power which perfects God's work.

Christians say that the word is extended from God, born by projection, so that 'God's son is also called ''God" from unity of substance'.

Visual metaphors are now added to the intellectual account. When a ray is directed from the sun, 'it is a part from the whole, but the sun will be in the ray', because the ray belongs to the sun. There is an extension rather than a separation of substance, as light is kindled from light, while the material source remains whole and undiminished. In the same way, what comes from God is perfect: 'at once God and son of God, and the two are one'.

So spirit comes from spirit and God from God, in a sequence without change of being, never receding but rather proceeding from the source.

Continuing the metaphor, Tertullian says that this ray of God, as foretold of old, descended on a certain virgin 'and, made flesh in

Prax

logos

sophia

Prax

vis

vacuum, inane, incorporeale

substantia

paid

her womb is born man mixed with God. The flesh formed by the spirit, is nourished, grows to maturity, speaks, teaches, works and is the Christ'.

Many interpreters have gone wrong because they have forgotten that the intellectual metaphors come first and are not supplanted by the visual metaphors. Spirit is material but it is a very intellectual sort of matter. Visual metaphors are useful for those who think in pictures, but they must never hold first place.

adversus Praxean

apud Patrem

The word (sermo) is always in the father and with the father (John 14.11 and John 1.1). 'I and the father are one' (John 10.30).

Prax

oikonomiae sacramentum

status, substantia

potestas

gradus, forma

species

Prax

Antichthon

For some, says Tertullian, monarchy excludes trinity, yet a moment's thought will show that, at a human level, sole rule is often exercised through agents. The solid meaning of the word must be preferred to its sound,

and the pluralism of Valentinus as well as the dualism of Marcion are to be rejected. There is no monarchy without trinity and no trinity without monarchy; they are mutually dependent.

There exists no way to one God except through trinity and no way to trinity except through one God. Those who deny the son, deny the monarchy to the father, for it is the son who restores the monarchy to the father, when he delivers up the kingdom to him (1 Cor. 15.248). God cannot be God without the son and the spirit. The son is even now putting the enemies under the father's feet, making them his footstool and subduing all things so that God may be all in all. The son is the source rather than a hindrance to the monarchy, which is in his hands,

who will restore it to the father.

Who then is the son and was he always part of the divine economy? Here we have the 'intelligent exploitation'

Prax

Augustinianum

REA

Stoïcisme des pères

Prax

The necessity of the economy is reinforced by the genre of relative disposition. This is Tertullian's chief argument, which was taken up and developed by Augustine,

but has been overshadowed by the formulae which passed into fourth-century debate. Trinity is a matter of substantial relations, which require distinctness and mutual necessity between the three members of the divine economy.

Stoics listed four categories or genres: substance, quality, disposition and relative disposition.

They are tools for handling the diversity and unity of things.

Substance is applied to everything which exists as a material object. It is 'the prime matter of all existing things'.

As matter it cannot change. Every existing

On Aristotle's categories

SVF

RIPh

Enn

Ces quatres concepts n'indiquent pas des états ou des niveaux de l'être, ils permettent d'articuler, à des niveaux différents l'unité et la multiplicité, l'identité et la différence, le corps et l'incorporel, à l'intérieur ou à propos de chaque être . . . ce sont des concepts opératoires grâce auxquelles se resolvent les problèmes de l'un et du multiple. Ils sont au service d'une ontologie qui relie chaque être à l'essence unique que constitue la matière première. (243f.)

strom

ecl

SVF

thing is made up of substance and quality, two material components which cannot exist alone. This means, says Plutarch, that we are all double with two substrates, substance and quality. Stoic metaphysics deals thus with particulars, individually qualified entities.

The categories of disposition and relative disposition may seem elusive

because of the paucity of evidence concerning them. The former 'was used to describe conditions of the qualitative substrate, not of the existential (category one) substrate of the particular'.

At any time, everything is in some kind of disposition and, if we wish to go beyond generalization to the particular, we need the genre of disposition.

relative

relatively disposed

without internal change

without any internal change

L'Osservatore Romano

Stoic philosophy

Tertullian: 'If, then, despite being unaffected in themselves they change because of something else's disposition relative to them, it is clear that relatively disposed things have their existence in their disposition alone and not through any differentiation.'

Prax

LXX

) or, 'I the lord possessed myself the beginning of my ways for my own work; before all the hills too did I beget myself' (Prov. 8.22).

The truth of God implies that he declares nothing to exist outside his disposition or arrangement, and that he has arranged nothing contrary to his declaration. For all his monarchy, there must be a

On Aristotle's categories

SVF

Prax

redactum

in unionem

This makes the issue plain for the nations who now convert from many idols to one God and for us when we face martyrdom because we refuse to swear by many gods and lords.

The son is visible and the father is invisible.

Prax

ZNW

Visibile patris filius. A study of Irenaeus' teaching on revelation and tradition

Prax

trin

In answer to the objection that father and son are said to be unbegotten in relation to themselves, not in relation to one

trin

A son is a son because he is begotten and begotten because he is a son.

trin

Augustine draws together talk of relations

ipsam praestantissimam trinitatem

trin

For Tertullian, God is unique and of three divine persons.

monarchia

and

Enn

Prax

yet

without limit

Prax

Tertullian supplies the enduring terminology of trinitarian theology. What did he mean by one substance and three persons? Fragments of recent discussion may help. If Tertullian provided the terms for later debate, he did not supply definitions to resolve that debate, partly because that debate cannot be resolved.

substantia

There has been a general acceptance of Tertullian's appropriation of the Stoic view of substance as 'stuff'. While Tertullian may use the term for a particular thing, his more exact use points to the constitutive material of a thing. This Stoic definition is always behind the concept of God's substance and is not purely material in the commonly accepted sense of today.

corpus

spiritus

pud

Prax

spiritus

Ibid

Deus Christianorum

the pluralistic theology which he adopted from the earlier Apologists and developed for the purposes of controversy'.

Prax

While for Tertullian 'substance' means 'stuff' or 'material', 'one physical thing',

stoffloses Stoff'

substantiae

tota trinitas

Body was also necessary to persons. Tertullian makes the divine spirit corporeal enough to render the divine persons distinct from one another. While there is a difference between a human and a divine body,

he insists that God be a reality which can be displayed. The body of spirit is the thing itself, a unity of being and action. Yet Tertullian, like many others, never succeeds in defining his concept of being.

Against Praxeas

species, gradus, forma, proprietas

persona

either

persona

Ibid

ZKG

Théologie trinitaire de Tertullien

Substantialité et individualité

Ibid

Persona

'Substance' refers to the unitive element, while 'person' designates the distinctive elements in the inner life of God.

It would be a mistake to think that, in the eyes of Tertullian, the two terms completely dissolve the tension between the three and the one; that tension points to the relative disposition which requires both father and son for either of them to be.

Criticism of Tertullian's doctrine of the trinity has measured him against later formulations and either applauded or bewailed his achievement.

To many he seems to have anticipated Nicaea and later developments, to others he has succumbed to extreme subordinationism.

We must take some samples of this criticism, to show that it falls short of finality as much as does Tertullian.

substantia, status

potestas

Prax

Marc

res

gradus, forma

species

Prax

Ibid

Deus Christianorum

La théologie de Tertullien

Dogmengeschichte

plurality in the Godhead and was later discarded when Arians found it advantageous. As with the similes, many arguments, when placed in a different controversy, can have their meaning inverted.

logos

Perhaps we have here another example of the logic of apologetic which answers diverse objections from a store of arguments which may not be coherent with one another. The Stoic distinction between inner and uttered logos had already served Christian apologetic in the different interpretation of Theophilus of Antioch.

Any sound appreciation of Tertullian must place him in his historical context where he had to respond to monarchianism and other challenges. His trinitarian response was of value to subsequent theologians, but it could not anticipate the problems which the Greek fathers had thrust upon them. When we claim the lasting value of a contingent response, we need not forget its contingency.

Tertullian's achievement was twofold. First, he realized the strength of the monarchian position, with its insistence on the unity of the divine being; for the centre of his own faith was the necessary dishonour of God in Christ. Second, he stated more clearly than any other early Christian writer the central significance of relative disposition. God was one God; but father and son were mutually necessary to each other and never identical. Identity would destroy them; their difference was the ground of their unity. As in other debates, Tertullian grasped the main logical issue.

Among recent discussion, different ways ahead have been suggested. We may concentrate on individual, stuff or spirit. An attempt at greater precision was made by one scholar who established that divine substance was necessarily one, indivisible and incommensurable.

Substantia

All of which

Die Gottes- und Logoslehre Tertullians

Théologie

Treatise against Praxeas

Ibid

Prax

This more useful approach pays due respect to the concept of substance and its dominant place in Christian theology.

It begins from the two notions of absolute being and unique stuff, then moves to the basic question of the existence of God. God has been held to be either pure being or beyond being. Substance may be a category, or may apply to all categories. God may be substance and yet be held to be unique in the same way as Christian theology begins from one God. Substance without accidents is unthinkable, but a substance can remain what it is through different determinations. God as substance can make sense if the notion of a Platonic ideal or a Stoic simple source of different energies be admitted.

A third possibility takes 'spirit' not 'substance' as the dominant notion. Tertullian, with his enthusiasm for prophecy, might approve. Through the concept of indwelling spirit, sense can be made of 'God's continuing creative relationship towards human persons and of his active presence in Jesus as the central and focal point within this relationship.'

Christ as indwelling divine presence is not distinguishable from spirit. Fellowship in the holy spirit is no more separable from the grace of Christ than it is from the love of God. Spirit is not a second divine being who coexists with Christ nor a second divine mediator between the father and his creatures.

Divine substance

God as spirit

Ibid

Jesus'.

This recent account has value for contemporary apologetic.

Tertullian's achievement is his use of the category of relative disposition, in his persistent concern with economy or dispensation

de inc

persona

substantia

Ibid

Histoire des dogmes

Persona

Substantia

Persona

persona

res substantivae

res

substantivae

homoousion

Persona

substantia

persona

sermo

Persona

substantia

sermo

res, species, forma

gradus

persona

Substantialité

Dogmengeschichte

Histoire des dogmes

persona

Substantialité

ZNW

Tertullian, involves a combination of individuality and relationality.

persona

hypostasis

persona

hypostasis

What then did Tertullian achieve? He handed on a form of discourse, which opened the way to further development, and above all a formula, 'one substance in three persons'.

Prax

At creation, God

Der Personbegriff der Trinitätstheologie in Ruckfrage von Karl Rahner zu Tertullians Adversus Praxean

Persona in teologia. Alle origini del significato di persona nel cristianesimo antico

Substantialité

persona

hypostasis

ThPh

Substantialité

redactum in unionem

Prax

Stoics distinguished three different sorts of mixtures. In the first, things were simply juxtaposed with one another. In the second kind, they were so joined as to disappear into a third substance. The third kind of mixture was a total blending,

when certain substances and their qualities are mutually coextended through and through, with the original substances and their qualities being preserved in such a mixture; this kind of mixture he (Chrysippus) specifically calls 'blending'; . . . for the capacity to be separated again from one another is a peculiarity of blended substances, and this only occurs if they preserve their own natures in the mixture.

The different mixtures are common conceptions which provide different expressions for juxtaposition, fusion which destroys and blending which preserves the natures which unite.

The persistence of the blended constituents was proved from the fact that they could be separated artificially. An oiled sponge, when placed in a blend of water and wine, will absorb water and leave the wine.

Splendid debate followed from Arcesilaus who described a severed

On mixture

SVF

ecl

SVF

leg, thrown into the sea and dissolved, so that the Persian and Greek fleets could fight a battle within it.

Prax

monarchia

electrum

not

Prax

There is an identity of essence between

On common conceptions

Stoic philosophy

La cristologia di Tertulliano

father and son. The word of the Gospel, 'I and the father are one', is absolute.

The two-nature formulae are equally striking: flesh-spirit, word-flesh, son of God-son of man, God-man, human standing-divine standing, inner substance-outer substance, substance of flesh-substance of spirit, human substance-divine substance, as each substance. There are two substances, twofold quality, two natures.

The insistence on unity ('twofold quality . . . conjoined in one person . . . flesh and spirit can be in one')

is sustained through a Stoic concept of interpenetration of physical bodies, by which each retains its specific qualities and is not replaced by a third thing. For Tertullian, as for all Stoics, the phrase 'two in one' means the interpenetration of two bodies, their physical union in 'total blending'.

He takes his version of two natures from scripture (in particular Rom. 1.3f. and John. 1.14) and rejects both Gnostic dualism and Marcion's docetism.

Tertullian's account is necessary to clarify later christological controversy. Platonism, after absorbing Stoicism, was to play a role in trinity and christology. The terms 'combination' and 'unconfused union'

were appropriate to the two natures as they were to the trinity.

However it is not Porphyry's 'unconfused union' of body and soul but Proclus' account of the unity of the ideas in Nous which is influential.

The concept may be found in Philo, Plutarch

Ibid

Drei christologische Untersuchungen

and above all in Plotinus.

Plotinus anticipates both the 'unconfused union' of the 'intelligible' and the decisive phrase of the Tome of Leo 'for each form does what is proper to it'. This Stoic idea is taken over by Porphyry. Syrian, the teacher of Proclus, unites the divine forms in 'unconfused union' and 'unbroken partnership'.

The clearest statement is in Proclus,

100

however, where the forms are both separate from and inherent in each other, and the intelligibles are one in the appropriate manner which is through 'unconfused interpenetration'.

anath

coniungere, cohaerere

Prax

coniunctae

indivisae

cohaerentes

Prax

unum

Prax

Tertullian is the first to use technical terms for the trinity and also the first to use a similar vocabulary in christology.

101

102

orat

Untersuchungen

100

in Parm

Opera inedita

101

Untersuchungen

102

Ibid

Now we come to a recent problem. Concern has been expressed that Augustine and Chalcedon depend on the Neoplatonic view of the hypostatic unity of soul and body

103

and that they are therefore vulnerable when Neoplatonism is rejected. However, there is no basis for this uncertainty.

104

All of which adds to the interest of Tertullian.

105

The 'twofold quality' does not allow for the subordination of one member to the other. Rather the unity of God and man in Christ establishes that all that can be said of Christ is said of one who lived and suffered as we do.

106

Despite the universal Greek insistence on an unchangeable God, this extreme claim persists. And this claim is identical with the paradox for which Tertullian is chiefly known and which proves, not the eccentricity, but the catholicity of his thought. It is the cross which declares the divine economy and which makes the doctrines of trinity and incarnation essential. What God did on the cross is the most concise account of the trinity.

107

103

definitio fidei

104

Untersuchungen

105

Ibid

106

Ibid

107

Geheimnis

ein

After the God who gives, we come to the God who forgives. There is no point in being fed each day if we are on our way to

mora finis

destruction.

After explaining the essence of prayer, Tertullian gives equal space to the practice of prayer. Christians may agree on one common prayer; but they characteristically disagree on all related practices: washing, wearing coats, sitting, standing, shouting, kissing, fasting, veiling, clothing and the time and place of prayer. Many practical problems of prayer find a solution through evangelical thinking.

Another strange custom has spread widely. Those who are fasting do not offer the kiss of peace after they have prayed together

everyone

stationes

or half-fasts which end at 3.0 p.m. Some claim that the sacrificial prayers and reception of the Eucharist

Times of prayer may also be considered. The third, sixth and ninth hours were clearly important times of prayer for the apostles and we should pray not less than three times a day, because we pray

cor

praescr

cult

Marc

spect

fug

Tertullian's theology of prayer is built from every part of the bible and reflects his understanding of an economy of salvation which finds its consummation in Christ. The Lord's Prayer sums up prayer as Christ sums up the course of salvation. The Christian who prays is still a pilgrim, and prayer reflects his conflicts and anticipates his end in final peace with God. So there is combat and completion everywhere. The new prayer both sums up and corrects the Law and the Prophets. In calling God 'father' we recognize the son who has made us sons of God. When we hallow the name of God, it is our holiness which is at stake. When we pray for the coming of the kingdom, we are concerned with our obedience, with his kingdom in us, and we already anticipate the kingdom which is to come. When we pray for bread to eat from day to day, we are chiefly concerned with Christ our heavenly bread. As we beg forgiveness, we ourselves forgive others. We both ask not to be tempted, yet expect temptation and ask for deliverance from evil.

Therefore Tertullian's treatise on prayer reflects the central themes of his theology (strife of opposites and perfection in Christ) and offers the clearest window on his world. While he does not apply these two principles mechanically to each subject on which he writes, his Christian soldier finds thought-provoking paradox and perfection at every point.

Since we are able to dig so deep into Tertullian's mind in his short work on the prayer which sums up the gospel, it is useful to compare his ideas with contemplative Christian spirituality. In the tradition of Alexandria, prayer is concerned not with conflict, but with knowledge and mystical entry into God. Despite similar ideas, all drawn from a common biblical source, Clement's account of prayer is philosophical, while that of Tertullian is practical. Prayer

Stromateis

strom

Clement stresses two things: prayer as the growing knowledge of God and prayer as entry into a divine, spiritual world. Clement's account of prayer as entering into God

is less restrained than Origen's, partly because it is a defence against philosophers and a competitive alternative to Gnosticism. However, the tradition is the same and the contrast with Tertullian is clear. Tertullian looks to future fulfilment in the coming of God's reign on earth. Clement and Origen look to present enjoyment of the vision of God, to life as continual conversation with God who, for all his unspeakable transcendence, is known directly.

Jud

conf

figurae

sacramenta

Tertullian presents, extensively in his work against Marcion, his further development of Christian exegesis in which four moves are evident: concentration, elaboration, uncertain victory and an alien text. The wealth of scripture is concentrated in the rule of faith which is reciprocally dependent on scripture. It is elaborated in all the detail of prophetic prediction and fulfilment. It is exaggerated in a literalism which claims that nothing can be discarded and insecurely reconciles every part of scripture with the rule. Finally there is an irreducible strangeness in scripture.

spect

Antitheses

Marc

Biblia y Hermeneutica

dispensation of the creator from that of Christ. Between dispensations, there is a difference in language, ethical precepts and law; but all the diversity is ordered and arranged by one God who foretold what changes would come.

His law would go out of Zion and his word from Jerusalem. This new law of the gospel and new word of the apostles would bring peace on earth and light to the nations. It would perfect and abbreviate the old law into a new and spiritual covenant. This antithesis is not accidental but essential to the creator who is 'always at variance with himself'. The inhabitants of Pontus

Marc

Antitheses

In short, from among the apostles the faith is introduced to us by John and by Matthew, while from among apostolic men Luke and Mark give it renewal (all of them) beginning with the same rule of faith, which relates to the one only God, the creator and to his Christ, born of a virgin, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.

Marc

The consistent mysteries of the creator coincide with the essence of the New Testament faith. Tertullian argues from the essence of the New Testament which ignores differences of narrative detail. As an apologist he needs clear answers. The New Testament teaches creation by a good creator whose goodness is never unjust. There is continuity between Old and New Testaments which tell of the same God's action at different times. His central claim that there is antithesis in God needs more elaboration to exclude all that

Marc

he does not mean and to show that the secure answers are still available.

Jud

In contrast, the finality of Christ's universal kingdom is evident to all. 'But Christ's name is being extended everywhere, believed everywhere, worshipped by all the nations whom we have listed above,

Jud

habitus

Jud

Marc

Antitheses

Marc

which the reader must keep in mind as he follows the rest of the argument of the book. Marcion can be shown to be logically incompetent because he left behind, in the one Gospel he uses, many things which destroy his case.

pactum, praescriptio

Marc

But how should we understand new wine and old wineskins, new patches on old clothes? Surely, here Marcion is right. No, says Tertullian and offers an intriguing argument. No one can put new wine into old skins if he does not possess the old skins nor a new patch on an old garment if he does not own an old garment. In separating new gospel from old law, Christ made it clear that both belonged to him.

Marc

All of which depends on how much you can take from a parable, and what you can infer from Christ's use of parables. Just as you can prove a speaker's nationality from his use of foreign idioms so you can prove that Christ's native speech of parable links him with the Psalmist (Ps. 78.2).

Marc

lex talionis

Marc

which is abbreviated in them.

Marc

consonantia, dispositio

In this second aspect of Tertullian's exegesis, the remarkable thing is the logical directness of his argument. He does not merely quote texts and precedents; he tries to show how isolation of a text from its context is as fatal to understanding as is the neglect of its own logic.

Together with all his argument, Tertullian indulges in rampant literalism and exuberant polemic. His exegesis fails to convince when he defends the letter of the Old Testament against Marcion. This is as much a matter of his bondage to the sacred letter

praescr

Marc

parvuli

pueri

Deus Christianorum

God could not spare disrespectful boys, but demanded honour for their elder. Yet in his kindness to children God had spared the midwives in Egypt, as he later showed the kindness of Christ to little ones.

Jewish legend

claims that Elisha's healing of the waters of Jericho caused anger among those who made their living by selling good water. Elisha cursed them, a forest sprang up and bears devoured the murmuring traders. Elisha was punished for his passion by a sickness. According to the Haggadah, Elisha's mockers were not boys but adults who 'behaved like silly boys'. The leaders of Jericho were also to blame, because if they had accompanied Elisha, no one would have dared to insult him. There is little to choose between the two accounts; both sacrifice divine morality to secure the sacred text.

Marc

Exuberant polemic takes over. There were more Egyptians living in houses built by Israelites than there were Egyptians who had lost their silver. Which is greater, the loss of the Egyptians or the gain of the Israelites? What would happen if the Hebrews brought a legal action against the Egyptians for injury in slavery? If the scarred shoulders of the Israelites were displayed in court, they would be granted the whole of the rich men's property, augmented

Sotah

The legends of the Jews

Mos

by the contributions of the rest of the population. If the Hebrews had such a strong case, then the creator had an equally strong case.

He told his people to take less than was their due; their male children should also have been returned.

So we may see in Tertullian both critical and biblicist strains. Critically he identifies the central meaning and argues for continuity at every point. Yet reverence for the whole text drives him to biblicist hyperbole, in polemical exuberance.

Tertullian's sensitive use of the bible, determined by his different adversaries and areas of conflict, has attracted a careful study,

sophia, sermo, moechia, fornicatio, caro, sanguis, cor, adpretiatus

problemata

cor

He uses almost every rhetorical skill and persistently practises literary analysis, especially in the New Testament where Jewish exegesis is of no help.

Tertullian sees the need for explanation of two strange sets of

Tertullian and the bible

Ibid

terms.

portare, parabola, problemata, adpretiati, filius hominum

ascendit in sublimitatem

nat

Val

res

Figura

gravis, mediocris

attenuata

de orat

figura

in hominis figura

pat

Marc

Prophecy must be real and the vision of Ezekiel (37.114) must declare a physical resurrection, in order to foretell Christ's resurrection or the return of Israel. What is not real cannot reveal. A figure must have a basis in history in order to prefigure something. Here again the term is chiefly used to declare the continuity of the Old Testament with the Christ of Marcion's Luke and Marcion's Paul; but there is also a new use where Tertullian uses it to express the shape of Christian living as prefigured in Old and New Testaments.

How does Tertullian's lust for simplicity

affect his use of the bible? First, he has a preference for simple, over against laboured,

Ibid

Archivum Romanicum

ibid

carn

bapt

Marc

pud

Conflict remains. Tertullian can see problems in the exegesis of scripture which is not as plain as he suggests. His philosophical and rhetorical skills were needed to unravel obscurities and ambiguities. Did Montanism provide the refuge of simplicity which he could not find in the biblical text?

I do not think so. The whole of this investigation has pointed to Tertullian's need for both simplicity and conflict. Like Heraclitus, he found both simplicity and conflict in his world and felt remote from reality when both were not present. This saved him from the hermeneutical error, on the brink of which interpreters from Origen to Bultmann hover: that there could be one method to guide all exegesis of scripture.

Prax

mon

res

Tertullian and the bible

simplicitas

If Tertullian finds antithesis in the world and God, he will have no trouble finding it in human beings. Everyone had found contradictions in the human person, which was racked by every kind of tension soul/body, reason/passion, saint/sinner and free/enslaved. A part of European culture, east and west, is the history of Paul's struggle ('the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do'),

narrowly anticipated in Ovid ('I see and approve better things, but follow worse')

and repeated in Augustine ('What shall wretched man do?).

res

was the supreme contradiction, for it denied God and destroyed humanity. Platonists like Clement could doubt the ultimate reality of evil. Heraclitean Stoics like Tertullian could only face reality when evil and sin were taken seriously. Tertullian, like Paul, thought and wrote a lot about sin. He made the first moves toward a doctrine of original sin and his views on the forgiveness of

Metamorph

Conf

Evoluzione del pensiero di Tertulliano sulla dottrina del peccato

sins caused conflict with the hierarchy of the church. Dissenting on behalf of the New Prophecy, he continued to affirm the church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic,

so that sin played a role in his ecclesiology. As well as affirming a concept of original sin, he vigorously defended freedom of will and thereby claimed a twofold origin for sin. Sin comes from a soul which is corrupt but responsible.

bapt

test

afflatus

auctor naturae

extraneum, alienum

Tertullian will not diversify the soul (as Plato did) into two

tota trinitas

Tertullian and the church

Stoïcisme des pères

16.4).

vitium originis

The faculties

As Paul taught, one Christian parent could sanctify the birth, by Christian seed as much as by Christian discipline. The children of believers are not, says Paul, unclean, but destined for holiness and salvation. 'For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her husband. If it were not so, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are are holy' (1 Cor. 7.14). This hope enabled Paul to defend the integrity of marriage, to which he was entirely committed. At the same time, he could never forget the need for a second birth through water and the spirit, a new beginning of which his lord had unambiguously spoken (John 3.5).

Since every soul possesses the nature of Adam until it is born again in Christ, it is unclean and spreads, to the flesh, contamination by association. However, although the flesh is exuberantly sinful, 'nevertheless it is not shameful on its own account. For it is not of itself that it thinks or feels anything which serves to advocate or command sin'.

ministerium

de anima

unhuman) ministry. It is but the cup from which we drink if we choose. Flesh is earthly and neither distinctively human nor a faculty of the soul nor a person. Made over like a slave for the soul to use,

praeses

Marc

cult

alia natura

This shines as a light, rarely visible, from behind the thick barrier of obscuring sin. For while humans may be very bad or very good, there is always some good

de anima

test

Marc

bapt

However, he links original sin with physical continuity and with the soul. He does this through his materialism, which could not make a clear distinction between spirit and matter. Later writers did not share this materialism; but they accepted the consequences which Tertullian had drawn from it as the elements of a doctrine of original sin.

mon

paen

test

Stoïcisme des pères

tradux

Probleme altchristlicher Anthropologie

ibid

paen

mala culpae

mala poenae

cast

In this way, God's will came to be a matter of obedience, and so it remains whenever we freely choose the downhill path from God. The devil wants us to sin, but he does not diminish our volition, force us or impose ignorance of God's will on us. God's will was

clear when he imposed death as the punishment consequent upon disobedience. The devil's work is equally clear: he puts our wills to the test. Only when we have willed to disobey God do we pass under the control of the devil; he has not caused our volition but simply taken advantage of it.

cast

indulgentia

cast

The point may be grasped if we drop the comparison. Who would be rash enough to claim 'It is better to marry'? What is not 'better' cannot be 'good' when only the comparison with personal combustion provides a ground for its goodness. The comparison between marriage and burning is logically similar to that between

cast

voluntarius

invitus

pud

nemo nolens

nemo volens

ad nationes

nat

This paradox is followed by the puzzle of the incurious pagans who complain about the overwhelming expansion of Christian numbers

yet never open their minds to the possibility of goodness in what is so successful. They do not allow themselves to be rightly suspicious; they do not want to examine too closely. This quiescent curiosity is unique ('hic tantum curiositas humana torpescit'). 'You love to be ignorant of what others rejoice they have found. You prefer not to know, because you hate and seem to know that

nat

pat

paen

contrectas

exoras

paen

pud

according to which there were three sins which were not re-

paen

Tertullian the Puritan and his influence

missible: adultery, idolatry and murder. According to Acts, Paul and 1 John, Tertullian explains, penance cannot cure these sins.

pud

res

In that same flesh he will face his lord.

His doctrine of baptism, with its fearful weight and responsibility, excluded sin from the life of the believer. The gospel began from the simplicity and finality of baptism.

The church, we shall see, must be the spotless bride of Christ.

It would be foolish to link Tertullian's own fornications to his intransigence on this point. The solid reasons, which he has given, render a psychological explanation superfluous. Unlike Augustine, he does not dwell on his early guilt in order to exalt the grace of

God. An English poet, Lord Byron, and a French scholar, Louis Bertrand, have blamed the climate. Byron wrote,

Bertrand was even more persuasive.

pud

Secondly, a warmer climate was beneficial to the soul, which became torpid and incapable of active thought in colder climates.

ingenia expeditiora

omnibus . . . mente torpentibus

ad uxorem

bapt

nullius boni

pat

paen

Don Juan

Saint Augustin

But the supple and treacherous city knew the secret of enchaining the will. She tempted him by the open display of her amusements. Under this sun which touches to beauty the plaster of a hut, the grossest pleasures have an attraction which men of the North cannot understand. The overflowing of lust surrounds you. This prolific swarming, all these bodies, close-pressed and soft with sweat, give forth as it were a breath of fornication which melts the will. Augustin breathed in with delight the heavy burning air, loaded with human odours, which filled the streets and squares of Carthage.

Scouting for boys

Sin is both universal and particular. Tertullian accepts totally the common duplicity of human souls. All are siblings under the skin, torn between natural goodness and original sin. Worship of fallible emperors and obedience to erring bishops are equally impossible to one of his temperament and beliefs. Everyone faces his own flawed choices with perpetual penitence.

ecclesia sordida

mediocritas nostra

ordo decurionum

Tertullian has suffered chiefly in the history of the church because of his polemic against bishops in general and the bishop of Rome in particular.

Most Christians have said negative things about bishops; but Tertullian said them extremely well and has

JAC

Hippolytus and the Roman church in the third century

paid the penalty for his verbal violence. The ground of his attack was episcopal handling of second repentance or the remission of sins, as it emerged in Rome and in Carthage about 220.

Callistus, bishop of Rome, was prepared to restore penitents for certain secret sins, among which fornication was specified. For Tertullian, such a sinner should be encouraged to confess, should be commended to the just mercies of God and then be expelled from the communion of Christ's body on earth.

Tertullian does not deny that bishops may pardon certain sins; but their authority is sufficiently new for him to be able to restrict this pardon to minor faults. He also recognizes that, in times of persecution, martyrs will be besieged by penitents who beg their intercessions. Perhaps, it has been suggested, a certain realism caused bishops to take upon themselves this enlarged power. Under persecution there was a persistent danger that expelled sinners might be arrested and, in despair, deny Christ and inform on other Christians. 'With such a prospect before his eyes, a bishop might well take any step that would put courage and confidence into the weaker brethren, while peace lasted, so that, when the shock of persecution came, it might find them in such solidarity with the Church that they would stand firm'.

Tertullian's doctrine of the church

presents a different kind of puzzle from that found in other parts of his thought. There is no need to reconcile opposing views; rather the consistency of his account is excessive. With one who gradually distanced himself from the rulers of the church, some evidence of change should be expected. The puzzle is one of fact: the common account of Tertullian's Montanist defection has an insecure basis. It is probable that he remained within the catholic church, despite (or because of) his allegiance to the New Prophecy. Further, his ideas on the church, its discipline and morals did not change with his increased opposition to the rulers of the empirical church which he

The forgiveness of sins

Ibid

Tertullian and the church

faced. Eschatological expectation may have grown more intense; but this simply emphasized that the bride of Christ must be fit to meet her lord. There was no substantial change in his view of the church which he derived from Paul and Matthew.

Opinion concerning Tertullian's relation to the church has been divided. Some claim that Montanism brought little change to Tertullian's theology. Others maintain that Montanism profoundly affected his understanding of spirit and church. An attempt at reconciliation claims that Tertullian's theology is a consistent whole, which finally found its home within Montanism which supported his rigorist practices and principles.

Indeed, Tertullian's theology of the spirit followed from his own theology and was not adopted from Montanism.

His tone and style became more strident in his later writings; but there was no change in his theological outlook.

Montanism was already two generations old, before Tertullian embraced it. It may have been a negative response to the increased organization of the church catholic, which was partly a response to the challenge of Gnosticism. It is important that Montanus and his followers did not call themselves a 'church' and that they remained loyal to the church universal.

Their ministry shared with other churches a threefold structure; they had patriarchs for metropolitans and elders who supervised finance.

iei

Cyprian would not have followed Tertullian so assiduously had Tertullian been schismatic.

Tertullian and the bible

Holiness and the will of God

Das Heilswirken Gottes durch den Sohn nach Tertullian

La crise montaniste

StPatr

Tertullian and the church

Ibid

bapt

idol

bapt

pud

cor

pud

praescr

apol

bapt

Marc

paen

ecclesia vero Christus

paen

pud

mart

mon

Marc

mon

pud

scorp

pall

For Tertullian, these images point to the holiness (ark, ship, camp, mother, bride and virgin), apostolicity (sect and school) and unity (body) of the church.

The holiness of the church derives from the

Ibid

praescr

pud

praescr

pud

praescr

Marc

praescr

potestas

apostolic teaching were marks of the true church. The movement from an early concern for apostolic doctrine to a later concern for apostolic discipline points to the decisive move in early Christian ecclesiology. In the face of the problems of penitential discipline, the question of doctrine became secondary to the question of power. 'The question ''To whom has Christ, through his chosen apostles, given his teaching?" receded into the background of Tertullian's thought. An alternative, "To whom did he give the power?", becomes the critical question.'

praescr

bapt

mon

virg

una ecclesia sumus

virg

praescr

bapt

Tertullian and the church

present historical reality. To sum up, it may be convincingly argued that, while he does not use the later formula, Tertullian confesses the church to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

Tertullian's theology of ministry affirms a threefold structure of bishops, presbyters and deacons. Here he takes a decisive step which was to be established within the western church from that time forward. For Irenaeus, churches were apostolic if, through their members and their ministry, they handed on the authentic apostolic faith.

The practical value of this doctrine was obvious.

Apart from the three offices, Tertullian describes at least six other positions within the church widow, virgin, doctor, lector, prophet and martyr.

The distinction between clergy and laity is clear. 'Office as a formally constituted rank or position, bearing a function or authority by virtue of such rank, is in Tertullian's thought applied almost exclusively to the clergy, and only rarely to the minor offices of lector, doctor and the two female "orders".'

The priestly class provides a pattern for other offices and deserves submission and respect.

Ibid

The office of a bishop

Tertullian and the church

Ibid

Just as, while criticizing philosophy, Tertullian did as much as anyone for the use of philosophy in Christian thought, so, while abusing the multitude of bishops, Tertullian indicated the most decisive step in early Christian ecclesiology. In him the church has acquired the magnitude which Cyprian was to expound in the classic catholic doctrine which has endured to the present. He accepted this, not in spite of his prophetic eschatological tendencies, but because of them. Since the end was near, the church must be ordered on lines parallel to Roman provincial government,

so that it could take over earthly rule when Christ had come. As the apostles were to sit on twelve thrones as judges (Matt. 19.28; Luke 22.30) so their faithful successors were to judge. 'By anticipation, and among the people of God, they were already seen to sit on thrones as judges . . . So in this shadow-empire, the Church, the bishops are seen to answer to the senatorial rank in the secular order.'

In ecclesiology as elsewhere Tertullian shaped the future of western christianity, affirming episcopal power and rebuking its misuse; as ever, he did this because he was able to handle ambiguous reality.

Antichthon

Bishop

To argue or not to argue? The two targets of this chapter share a common dualism. Yet there is a striking difference in the way Tertullian confronts them. Hermogenes is met with exposition and argument; Valentinians are offered exposure and ridicule. The difference is of first importance. Like Marcion, Hermogenes presented argument; Valentinians offered fable and vision which was immune from argument. Tertullian's two diverse approaches respond to this difference. They are not explained by placing one work early in Tertullian's career, and claiming Montanist influence on the second.

The contrast is in logical method. For Tertullian, the laughing Stoic, his argument and his satire are equally philosophical.

Herm

Hermogenes argued that:

Herm

Now, is this too subtle for Hermogenes? The bible offers simpler proof: God is called 'God' until he has completed creation. Then and only then, is he called 'lord' (Gen. 2.15). An even more obvious rebuttal is offered for the more obtuse: if, as Hermogenes claims, matter is neither born nor made, then matter must be free and God could not be its lord. In contrast, from Tertullian's position, matter experienced God as lord only from the moment of creation, when he exercised the lordly power which he had held proleptically all along.

Herm

There is reason, claims Tertullian, for saying that Hermogenes' matter is superior to God, because it provided God with the material necessary for his work. Whatever one uses one needs, and whatever one needs is superior to one. Matter, rich, opulent and generous, lent itself to the God who needed it to make what he could not make out of nothing. Matter did God a great service by enabling him to be known as God and called 'Almighty'; yet by virtue of this service, it denied the omnipotence of God. Further, at the same time as performing this service, it performed an even greater service to itself by making itself God's equal and assistant.

Hermogenes has achieved this knowledge through the philosophers who are the patriarchs of the heretics. Certainly the prophets and apostles did not know all of this any more than did Christ. Tertullian's sarcastic aside is important because it shows the source of his ideas. It is from the prophets and apostles that Tertullian learns the account of God which he follows. There he finds an unqualified monotheism and this unqualified monotheism is the heart of his gospel. As for Paul, so for Tertullian, God is the God who justifies the ungodly, raises the dead and creates from nothing.

There is a further possibility that God used matter, which was evil, to achieve something for which he lacked the resources; but if he had been lord and a good God he would have transformed the

evil matter into something good before he used it. If the good God used evil matter, which he owned, to make a universe, which thereby contained evil, he was not a free lord. If God, according to Hermogenes, drew on a foreign substance to make a world in which evil exists, then God is responsible for the evil which he has permitted. If he had no alternative way to make a world, he could have refrained from creation. It was stupid for him to make a world for his own glory, when the method of creation showed his debt to an alien and evil substance.

. 1016)

Herm

appears

Herm

. 1932)

Herm

3540)

Herm

subjaciens deo

Herm

Other contradictions arise from the way in which matter

Herm

413)

Herm

How did creation happen? Hermogenes rejects the Stoic idea that God pervades matter and he sees creation as the effect of divine beauty, either through its appearance to matter or as the effect of a divine magnet on scattered particles. If, as Tertullian

Herm

To the modern reader, Hermogenes' account has its strength. God was always lord, which meant that God was always creator, which implied that he ordered a part of matter and produced a cosmos.

Herm

The point of Hermogenes' position is that matter is not shaped in its entirety but only in its parts:

Herm

Ref

designing hand. In all the order of the cosmos, some of the original chaos remains.

At first sight, Tertullian seems unreasonable, because he denies the propriety of contradiction in matter after having insisted that there is antithesis in all things.

However, he is arguing for the inconsistency of Hermogenes, for whom as a Platonist contradiction implies non-existence and whose matter is ideal and transcendent. As a Stoic, Tertullian could give a different account and still preserve the unicity of God and the transcendence of a creator. The immanence of divine seed in the world did not preclude the independence of the creator from his creation.

This short work raises problems for the modern reader who has access to many Gnostic works. The library of Nag Hammadi is more abstract than the Valentinian story which Tertullian discusses, although Nag Hammadi writings are still descriptive rather than argumentative.

Gospel of Truth

Antignostikus

Treatise against Hermogenes

ACW

Republic

Gospel of Thomas

The Nag Hammadi Library in English

movement as the Valentinianism of Irenaeus and Tertullian the phase of extension is followed first by a phase of concentration and then by a phase of dispersion and return to unity through the saviour.

There is no ground for dissociating popular Gnosis from its great leaders.

In any case, it was popular Gnosticism which troubled Tertullian and Irenaeus. There is much to learn from this short work, although modern Gnostic investigators find it distressing, because it does not cover the wide scope of the Gnostic movement as it continues to emerge today.

dial

Val

rather than logical considerations made them vulnerable to humour. Fourthly, this kind of theosophy arises for those who can handle story or picture, but not logic. It offers entry into a higher world. Feigned superiority masks deficiency and should therefore not be taken seriously. Finally, incarnation was foolishness to the Gnostics because it mixed language about the pleroma with language about the world, God-talk with world-talk. Tertullian wanted to show that if you stayed in the transcendent realm, it was even easier to talk nonsense.

La gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de saint Irénée

Die Polemik der Gnostiker gegen das kirchliche Christentum

Gnostic truth and Christian heresy

Herrlichkeit, eine theologische Ästhetik

The glory of the Lord

At the same time, Valentinians could not be ignored, because they were partly right. They had put the divine economy into the being of God, which is exactly what Tertullian did. They did not see how far it had to be demythologized

strom

haer

narratio

Syllogisms

carn

Psalms

carn

Gospel of Truth

carn

Syllogisms

Val

Scorpiace

Latin Christianity

Rhét. Hér

carn

res

Gospel of Philip

Epistle to Rheginos

demiurgus

substantivus, substantivalis

innascibilis

unicus

unigenitus

prolatio

trinitas

persona

substantia

Val

adversus Praxean

narratio

handles humour with care, so as to preserve dignity and gravity. The form follows similar demands of decorum.

Narratio

narratio

historia, fabula

argumentum

sets the limits and ensures Tertullian's originality and success. He treats the myth as a 'drame bourgeois' and provides not a parody, but 'une adaptation romancée' which is convincing and not a piece of buffoonery.

narratio

Tertullian is more concise and precise than Irenaeus was in his

Deus Christianorum

Ibid

Théologie trinitaire de Tertullien

de oratore

Contre les Valentiniens, SC

ibid

Rhét. Hér

de invent

Apocolocyntosis

Rhét. Hér

attack on Valentinianism. He tells a better story with a sustained and lively rhythm.

de carne Christi

de resurrectione mortuorum

de anima

scorpiace

adversus Praxean

Valentinians have abandoned truth, he says, in order to indulge their gift for telling stories; they lack a controlling discipline which might give order to their doctrines or practices; and their solemn secrecy underlines the guilt which lies behind their practice. Tertullian compares their teachings with those of the Eleusinian mysteries where secrecy is a cover for shame, the five-years period of initiation and the subsequent vow of silence place beliefs beyond scrutiny, the mystery of the sealed tongue signifies virility.

Val

Contre les Valentiniens

Val

haer

Valentinus Gnosticus

The logic is, however, suspect since it can be twice as hard to move A-X and X-B than to move A-B. Two relations have to be proved instead of one. I have called this 'the bureaucratic fallacy' and it explains why some later Platonists lapsed into silence. Who has not, in modern times, been reduced to helpless silence by an interminable bureaucracy?

haer

The Gnostic substitution of myth for dialectic was equally abhorrent to Clement of Alexandria, for whom dialectic was the highest way to truth. In the end, logic gave way to vision and participation; but it was not permissible to opt out of the logical process at the beginning rather than the end of the quest. Clement produced a handbook of logic which has historical significance in the development of Christian theology and European thought.

The Cambridge History of later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy

Epigrammata dedicatoria

Message évangélique et culture hellénistique

Heresiography in context

The failure of Gnosticism was in irrational method more than in false conclusions.

We may note, in passing, that any modern account of Gnosticism, Christian theology and philosophy must take account of three insecure dichotomies. The first concerns the dichotomy between speculation and argument. For idealists of the early twentieth century, philosophy was a matter of system and speculation, while for the analytic philosophy which has dominated recent thought, philosophy is a matter of argument. This argument may be dug out of writings which are not normally considered philosophical;

but it has to be argument. For logical analysts, Gnosis is theosophy not philosophy, whereas idealists find a system of thought in Gnosticism and put it alongside philosophy.

While following an analytic position, it remains possible to see the point which idealists were making, partly because some argument is usually found in speculative systems and partly because there is always some continuity across the most drastic philosophical change. Gnostics mixed philosophical and biblical terms to produce a speculative system.

The question of definition is reflected in the approach to Gnosis in different parts of the world. In England, there has with notable exceptions been less enthusiasm because of the empirical and logical concerns of philosophy. In North America, there has been real enthusiasm because of a phenomenological approach, the heritage of nature mysticism from Thoreau and Emerson,

and the flight from authority.

Religionsphilosophie

Shame and Necessity

Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik

Gnosis und Philosophie: Miscellanea, Elementa

The flight from authority

Le Origini dello Gnosticismo

Gnosis und spätantiker Geist

Gnosis als System

as a speculative extension of theology, in contrast to philosophical analysis or natural theology.

Republic

the relation between Gnostics and theologians is hard to elucidate. Tertullian saw the difference and that is why he treats Gnosis as inaccessible to argument and vulnerable at the point where it believed itself to be secure.

The third dichotomy is historical. Gnostic writings include little argument; but Tertullian classes them with the philosophers who discuss endlessly the problem of evil and nature of man. Basilides is explicit in his argued objection to Christian faith on the grounds of Christian suffering. It is clear from Hippolytus that there was a connection between Gnosis and philosophy. Gnostic commentaries on Presocratic philosophers were important in the decades prior to Plotinus: we may 'make a picture' of their account of the beginning of things and of the ideas. Even at this sophisticated level, there is a speculative rather than a logical approach.

Finally there is the downward slide of later Platonism in the theurgy of Iamblichus and others, where thought is replaced by magic as the way to the gods.

PhJ

Herrlichkeit

Drei christologische Untersuchungen, 56

Against the Gnostics

The elements of theology

Val

After all, it is a multiplication of names without reality and there is no controlling reference to fact.

First, we shall examine Tertullian's jokes in the light of philosophy. A useful account concludes that the universal characteristic of humour is that it points to something inappropriate.

Argument of laughter

(footnote continued on next page)

While much that is inappropriate is not funny, all that is funny is inappropriate. The variety of incongruity is great and there are many useful theories proposed by Hobbes, Leacock, Bergson, Kant ('frustrated expectation'), Schopenhauer, Eastman ('collapse of a pattern'), Freud and others. The inappropriate element in humour smashes stereotypes, offers relief from monotony and opens up new possibilities of thought. It also destroys by satire, offers relief from restraint, unmasks pretence in favour of humaneness and may relish the misfortune of others. Tertullian presents almost every variety of humour in his examination of Valentinian doctrine.

enjoys

Val

Buthos

Val

(footnote continued from previous page)

funny. It is not merely a question of something intruding where it does not belong, but of something which plainly does belong, but is not allowed for by our pre-existing attitude' (255).

Val

(5) Satire, which is common in Tertullian, may be of two kinds: conservative or radical. In each, A is followed by a satirical comment B, and the satire may be directed against either A or B. Conservative satire implies that B is wrong and A is sound. Fifty years ago, an American teacher of English was asked what he did for a living and was alleged to have replied, 'Look, man, my bag is, I'm into teaching English.' Here the structure and practice of teaching English is unassailed; a particular way of describing it is shown to be absurd. Radical satire implies that A is wrong and B is sound. When Winston Churchill was rebuked for finishing a sentence with a preposition, he replied: 'This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.' Here the comment B revealed the inappropriateness of the stultified syntax A against which it was directed. In some cases satire can work both ways. The Englishman may ridicule the foreigner who shoots a fox for sport; the critic of blood-sport will see inappropriateness in the preference of one form of animal butchery before another. Paul uses radical satire against the legalist Galatians; if circumcision is a necessary addition, let the trouble-makers go further and practise castration (Gal. 5.12). The satire 'rises naturally and inevitably from the humour'

from which it can only be distinguished in theory.

Val

frigidissimus

Val

Ibid

Val

(8) From all humour, a wider human view may be gained,

Val

(9) The misfortunes of the aeons play a small part in Tertullian's account. Perhaps we might mention the tears and fever of Sophia.

But there is little 'custard-pie' comedy in Tertullian. He lacks the crudity of Irenaeus' discussion of Sophia's watery emissions.

We may conclude that Tertullian's humour covers a wide range of this genre and is used with remarkable persistence and acumen. He enjoys burrowing into the detail of the Gnostic myth. While he disowns it as a truth possibility, he applies his mind to every twist and turn. It is fun; but it is also philosophy 'throwing on a ravaged and distorted world those saving and unsparing Socratic search-lights a touch of humour and a turn for irony'.

It is entirely predictable that Tertullian's most serious philosophical comment should come in humorous form. We all need critics to jolt us out of private reveries and self-indulgent fantasy.

The link between humour and argument is further illuminated by a comparison with Irenaeus, whose humour was rougher and more obvious.

incredibile, fatuum, impossibile

inconstans

haer

credibile, acceptabile

constans

incomtum

intempestivum

incongruens

haer

The relation of logic to aesthetics is complex. Plato was dedicated to following the wind of logical argument wherever it led him and to a love of truth. Yet for all his logical stringency he used

Should philosophers be kings?

haer

Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei Irenäus von Lyon

Ibid

myths and imagery of great power and beauty. He banished the poets from his city because they were a bad influence and worked in counterfeit; yet his own account of beauty has inspired many across the centuries since he wrote. His message was a simple one. Logic and aesthetic must not be confused and one must not be abandoned to leave the other alone. The whole Greek heritage tells a similar story. Philosophers wrestle with the problems of human destiny, freedom and evil; yet what they have to say cannot replace the truth conveyed by the great tragedies of Sophocles. Each genre must be allowed to do its own work; neither is adequate by itself. Within philosophy argument is prior; but there has to be something to hold the long strings of argumentation together and to make a philosophic life possible. Aesthetic underlines and unites what logic has established.

Plato left this dual heritage and when later Platonists abandoned reason for the occult, they were false to their tradition. The Platonic underworld of the second century contained the Gnostics who were the chief target of Tertullian and Irenaeus. They abandoned discursive reason at the beginning of their deliberations, rather than, like Plato, at the summit.

It could well be, as a recent critic of theism has suggested, that religious belief might be seen as a 'subjective passion'; but this claim can best be made after nearly four hundred pages of argument.

The Gnostic alternative bypasses dialectic. The powerful attraction of theosophy has waxed and waned. Platonism continued until the fifth century with some allegiance to logic. Then, for a time, it gave way to magic and silence. The transcendent One was declared by physical silence, like a student expecting a first-class honour for a blank paper.

Philosophical silence is much more complex than physical silence.

Logic had needed a negative kind of aesthetic, which would move the intellectually inert. The point of Tertullian's and Irenaeus' use of humour is that their opponents were not vulner-

The fire and the sun

On the nature and existence of God

From word to silence

able to reason. Argument was necessary for the wavering believer but quite irrelevant to the hard-line Gnostics who claimed to be at a deeper level.

Therefore humour was the only way to keep others from sloppiness and sentiment. Since their orientation was aesthetic, humour could challenge their position. It became the negative aesthetic which backed a positive logic.

In Tertullian

there was also a positive aesthetic which, unlike Gnosticism, was joined to endless argument. Having attacked mechanical encrustations and shattered Gnostic formulae and stereotypes, it set in its place a world accessible to reason, imagination and faith, a world where all things were made new by the inversion of what had been there before. So the move from the comic inversions of phrase

ineptum

aptum

To achieve a 'god's-eye' view, we need to see new links, delight in what is new and discover hidden proprieties. All these are as

much a part of humour as they are of theology for Tertullian. We see new links: 'Our laughter expresses, often enough, the simple joy of exploration. It pleases us to find, or to play at finding, these unexpected links between apparent disparates.'

This imaginative exploration is central to Christian theology which is about the death and resurrection of Christ who by dying destroyed death, about Adam, Christ and a new creation. Belief in one God (Rom. 4) implies the justification of the ungodly, the resurrection of the dead and creation out of nothing, for God can need no second thing to do his work.

dial

The delight in the new and the rejection of the tedious are parts of humour and of theology; Clement of Alexandria described Christian life as a perpetual springtime and Christ as the one who had turned sunsets into sunrises. However, 'Humour upsets the pattern by abruptly introducing something inappropriate. But it must not be wholly inappropriate. There must be some hidden propriety as well.'

The impropriety of Tertullian's satire points to the propriety of rejecting Gnostic pretensions and irrationality in favour of the folly which is, for him as for Paul and Irenaeus, the wisdom of God.

We may conclude that the initial thrust of Tertullian's logic against Gnostic irrationalism is supported in two ways by aesthetics, one negative and the other positive. Humour shows where the

Argument of laughter

Ibid

Gnostic myth is inappropriate. Recapitulation shows how the gospel has the last laugh through the divine comedy of all things in Christ. This is the alternative vision which Tertullian offers.

The New Prophecy emerged in Asia Minor in 157 or perhaps as late as 172. Our chief accounts of the movement derive from fourth-century sources (Eusebius and Epiphanius) which are marked by later orthodoxy. Earlier in the second century, Papias (130) preached a colourful chiliasm and Christian Asia Minor was strong in prophetic tradition and practice. According to Eusebius, Montanus was only a recent convert, when, in a village of Phrygian Mysia, he was seized with ecstasy and prophesied strange things which were not consistent with the tradition of the church.

Some rejected him as a false prophet, but others were aroused and turned from the true faith. Two prophetesses joined him in enthusiastic frenzy and their influence spread, until, says Eusebius, their sayings were examined and they were expelled from the church.

Pan

H.E

Ibid

to new heights of spiritual excellence when even the little ones would shine brighter than the moon.

Maximilla declared herself to be word, spirit, power and not a wolf who destroyed the flock.

Pan

cast

Pan

fug

mon

Psychics

claim that single marriage is an heretical innovation.

Ibid

mon

ipse castratus

mon

iei

Further, the New Prophecy denies the forgiveness of sins to certain offenders. The church is able to forgive all sins but does not do this lest such indulgence should encourage further sin. The paraclete does not forgive fornicators because of the harm such forgiveness will bring on most believers. The right to forgive sins belongs to the church under God; 'but it is the church of the spirit, by means of a spiritual man, not the church which is a number of bishops'.

pud

Tertullian's relation to New Prophecy and the catholic church raises historical questions which cannot be settled without remainder.

He had shown ascetic tendencies in his earliest writings but these tendencies were not strengthened by the New Prophecy before 207. Probably Tertullian had no personal contact with Montanists from Asia Minor or from Rome and when he encountered their ideas in Carthage they were already modified by their African setting.

As we have seen reason to doubt Tertullian's supposed 'schism' under the 'New Prophecy', much more should we doubt his supposed break from the Montanists to form his own sect.

From the beginning, he had stressed the transcendent spiritual nature of

RSLR

de haer

Tertullian

bapt

corpus trium

corpus sumus; pud

ecclesia spiritus

virg

Marc

cast

Marc

Tertullian was indeed a theologian of hope.

unica spes

apologeticum

praescr

virg

Prax

Tertullian's anthropology for all its complexity

pat

mart

res

Yet the two substances are not separable,

Marc

apologeticum

La escatología en el siglo II

ibid

La escatología

substrata

test

Marc

de anima

res

test

praescr

Jud

spect

Scap

haer

res

Ibid

suscitare, resuscitare, vivificare, restituere

restitutio

res

nat

Marc

res

iei

res

Marc

virg

Prax

praescr

Marc

Herm

Jud

Marc

then the world will be destroyed in conflagration, all shall be changed into incorruptible, angelic substances and translated into the kingdom of heaven. The purpose of the millennium is to provide the reward of joy in the presence of God.

res

mart

cor

res

Scap

scorp

pat

Prax

cast

paen

praescr

mon

Marc

Scap

scorp

mart

mon

locus

divinae amoenitatis

Marc

Tertullian seems even surer of hell than he is of heaven and writes with passion of the punishment of persecutors and of those who have denied the true faith. His ground is optimism. Unless God is an avenging God who will set right and balance the evils of this present age, he cannot be truly God omnipotent, just and good. The hardest evidence against a good God is the present persecution of his righteous people. Tertullian repeats terrifying descriptions of what he calls 'gehenna', 'eternal torture', 'endless sorrow', 'inextinguishable fire', 'punishment of eternal death', suffering 'in the house of the devil', 'death', 'bondage' and 'eternal condemnation'.

Here all evil is consumed. Tertullian invents nothing, but draws on the whole range of biblical imagery, because of an optimism that can only believe good of a God who, for the present, allows so much evil to prevail in his world.

spect

scorp

fug

praescr

cast

nat

paen

idol

Marc

La escatología

Marc

paen

pat

paen

pud

test

scorp

mon

spect

It should here be evident why Tertullian has so few friends. His New Prophecy and millenarianism, like his apologetic theme of the balance of justice, all spring from a confidence in the goodness of God and commend that goodness to his readers. Yet the pain and cruelty of persecution drove him to extremes of melancholy optimism, which may be justified from scripture but not by the subsequent history of Christian thought and practice.

The exuberance of Tertullian's eschatology is a response to objections of psychics, heretics and philosophers. In rebutting the catholic objections to New Prophecy, Platonic and Marcionite objections to creation and resurrection and docetic objections to incarnation, he sets out a detailed account of soul, death and resurrection, judgement, heaven, hell and millennial bliss. Apocalyptic vision is the last place for the modern reader to expect systematic thought. Yet it is precisely in this area of Tertullian's thought that a distinguished theologian found what he calls 'Tertullian's System'.

Tertullian, it is claimed, 'is astonishingly original and personal' yet displays the qualities which are to mark Latin Christianity: a respect for matter, concern for the inner life of the soul and pessimism in the battle against sin. His individual genius showed less in 'its cultural or linguistic contribution than in a certain intellectual quality'.

These comments are important because they, in turn, came from an imaginative and penetrating mind and because they challenge the common disjunction between apocalyptic and systematic thought. Since the purpose of the study of other thinkers is the overcoming of conceptual parochialism, it is here that we are likely to learn something fresh. Tertullian's system moves through six consecutive parts: trinity, creation, soul, incarnation, intermediate state and resurrection.

His account of the trinity, as we have seen, finds plurality in the inner organization of one divine substance and also in a plurality of existents which depend upon the will of the father. The divine wisdom is found in three states: first in undifferentiated unity with God, secondly as constituted within God with a view to the work of creation, and thirdly as articulated and proceeding from God.

The creation of the world is described in Tertullian's criticism of Hermogenes' uncreated matter,

Herm

Latin Christianity

Ibid

Greg

flatus

gradus

spiritus

sol

Against Marcionites and Valentinians, Tertullian defends the flesh of Christ. Here Alpha is joined to Omega, the beginning to the end.

carn

inferi

solatium

requies

refrigerium

requies

refrigerium

The resurrection of the dead is Tertullian's final theme. In his treatise on this subject, he uses earlier terminology with greater clarity and confidence.

Against Marcionites, he concentrates on Pauline theology and identifies God's goodness with his justice.

Latin Christianity

Ricerche sul 'De resurrectione' di Tertulliano

Epistle to Rheginos

res

Tertullian shows originality in this coherent account, following the tradition of Asia Minor rather than the Greek Apologists, drawing on scripture and philosophy, but defining everything in his own way. While his conclusions sound strange in a secular world, they indicate the working of an original mind, which met the objections of different groups with more coherence than apologetic can usually maintain.

Two problems remain to be noted: the vividness of Tertullian's imagery which is never remote from reality and the severity of a loving God toward sin. The vivid imagery can be defended, for

there is no other way of describing unearthly realities;

however, Tertullian's language is too readily linked to earthly reality, because he cannot abandon the creator. The severity of divine judgement is intensified in Tertullian for two reasons. First, because the greatest barrier to belief in an omnipotent, good God is the suffering of innocent people, especially, for Tertullian, the horror of martyrdom. If God be God, he must reward and punish in a way that will presume to wipe out this wrong. Secondly, for Tertullian, as was seen in his argument against Marcion, it is important that the one God dispense good and evil to the just and the unjust. God is not God if he be not both good and just. God is not just if he does not punish evil. On each of these points, Tertullian is describing divine realities in terms of his rule of faith or final vocabulary. Most people would judge him to be wrong in the severity of his God. The important thing for our understanding is to see all these elements as coherent with the vocabulary which he uses.

de resurrectione

res

Kerygma and Myth

res

The great plan of redemption comes home to each human life. A modern Christian and Heraclitean poem celebrates the same mystery of recapitulation:

A selection

We began with Tertullian's twin claims for simplicity and perfection. Simplicity did not last long in the apologetic battle against diverse opponents. Athens turned out to have a lot to do with Jerusalem, and the Christian message of credible ineptitude made demands on understanding. Antitheses in God and a divine trinity left the 'simplices ne dixerim imprudentes et idiotae' well behind. Prayer took place in conflict and the demands of the bible could not be reduced to uniformity. The simplicity of baptism did not produce transformed lives. Not even sin was straightforward: Tertullian the sinner disagreed with bishops on the fate of exuberant sinners. Those who rose above this confused world, as Valentinians did, finished with greater confusion and muddled fantasies. Even death did not solve all puzzles, for the resurrection of the flesh was contradictory and essential.

mediocritas nostra

haer

This final mystery was simple and inseparable from conflict.

Tertullian was determined to live by this simplicity in a complex and conflicting world. His ethics will be considered under three paradoxes: love and fear, denial and affirmation of the world and natural law and apocalypse.

The early apologists found a powerful argument for Christian truth in the excellence of Christian lives. Atheism was, for ancient Romans, a moral rather than a theological failing; disbelief in the gods made people unreliable and a danger to the state. Tertullian paints a glowing picture of Christian morals and reports that he and others were first converted by observing the courage and faithfulness of Christians. If pagans encountered unimpressive Christians, the apologetic enterprise was subverted and a main apologetic argument destroyed.

pat

fug

Jud

Marc

Scap

spect

iei

res

cult

Marc

1 apol

strom

For the other side of Tertullian's paradox, we may conveniently turn to a modern critique, which attacks the negative aspects of his ethics.

praescr

cult

praescr

They had their critics. Celsus had maintained that there was nothing in scripture which had not already been said by the Greeks, who had not needed the promises of a god or son of god.

Cels

The crunch of the criticism is that Tertullian speaks statistically less about love than does the New Testament. While the question is, we are rightly told, too complex to settle by counting words, there is a puzzle in Tertullian's comparative neglect of love when benevolence was highly praised in his cultural environment. Rambaux notes that the controversy with Marcion sets Tertullian in opposition to the solitary divine ideal of love; he does not see that this could be enough, given Tertullian's belligerence in debate, to explain the whole phenomenon. Such a conclusion would have been correct but might have deprived us of the remaining four

Tertullien face aux morales des trois premiers siècles

Cels

hundred pages, and would have bypassed a problem which is essential to the understanding of Tertullian. What is clear is that Tertullian's chief concern is devotion to one God.

fug

nat

res

paen

mart

pud

paen

nat

test

Marc

spect

pat

Another 'word-count'

shows that fear does much better in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. Yet it is claimed that Tertullian does not say anything new about God's anger; he simply omits the qualifications which his environment had introduced.

He is indeed consistent in his rejection of the glories of this world. His humility is offered to God alone with none of the horizontal, communal consequences which the New Testament requires.

Fear destroys love. On marriage, Rambaux claims that Tertullian sets himself against scripture, Judaism, catholic Christianity and most philosophers, lining up together with Jewish sects, Christian heresies, Neoplatonists and devotees of Isis.

But Tertullian's position is better understood from his own arguments which derive from one God who wills our sanctification. 'For he wills that we who are his image become also his likeness, that we may be holy as he is holy'. There are different kinds of sanctification virginity

Tertullien

Ibid

cast

pud

paen

pat

Marc

mart

scorp

fug

mart

pat

This final verdict has, I think, returned to the centre of Tertullian's ethic. The clarity of this perception is lost in the concluding pages where it is claimed that Tertullian has introduced new elements and omitted central parts of the New Testament.

As a result, his conversion and that of those who followed him from

Ibid

paganism was more illusion than reality. They were able to go on living as before but under a different label.

This has not been substantiated by the earlier evidence which indicates that Tertullian was at logger-heads with most of his contemporaries. The verdict of 'innovatory conformism' is a tribute to his achievement, his sense of paradox and the untidiness of a creative mind. While he begins as a zealous monotheist who tried to hold on to both Old and New Testaments, especially the Old which Marcion wanted to take away, his acceptance of Stoic values represents another dimension of conflict and enrichment.

Monotheism is the key but not the whole answer. The paradox of love and fear is linked with the paradox of goodness and justice in God, which is the stuff of the argument against Marcion. It is not simply a matter of contradictory sources in Old and New Testaments. Nor is it a surrender, as has been claimed, of the New to the Old. Above all, a paradox is never simply the juxtaposition of contrary claims. If God be God, he is to be feared. If he is to be feared, he must be obeyed; but his one command is to love. Love springs from the fear which perfect love casts out.

Love and fear are linked by the concept of shame. In Tertullian's best-known paradox,

shame is the dominant spur to Tertullian's choice. We considered two clauses of the great paradox: epistemological ('credibile quia ineptum') and metaphysical ('certum quia impossibile'). Discussion of the ethical clause ('non pudet quia pudendum') was postponed until we came to Tertullian's ethics; but, as the first clause, it sets the tone for the earlier discussion and indicates the orientation of Tertullian's life. The necessary dishonour of faith is the hope of the world. Whatever is unworthy of God is to our benefit. We are safe if we are not confused about our lord, who said that he would be ashamed of those who had been

Ibid

RevSR

ashamed of him. Through his lord's disgrace Tertullian is 'shameless in a good sense and felicitously foolish' ('bene impudens, feliciter stultus'). For the son of God is crucified; 'I am not ashamed because it must be a shameful thing' ('non pudet, quia pudendum est'). The intellectual subtlety, which the earlier chapter explored is not the ultimate part of Tertullian's claim. Rejection of divine shame could only end in human perdition. Behind all that Tertullian wrote lay the fear that, if he were now ashamed of Jesus, on that last day, the only day that mattered, Jesus would be ashamed of him. Here again Tertullian was as classical as he was evangelical, for

fug

Tertullian explains to martyrs why they are better off in a gaol which separates them from the world which is the true prison. For many reasons, the world is a darker place than gaol: it blinds human hearts not eyes; it chains souls not bodies; its air is fouler

Shame and necessity

mart

cor

eschaton

cast

mon

nubere deo

speciosae puellae

cast

cult

cult. passim

cult

Gravitas

Orph

Ibid

cult

pud

virg

nobis

pat

iei

spect

saeculum

de contaminatis, contaminamur

spect

Marc

mon

res

Once again Tertullian's paradox says something important. The paradox of world-denial and world-affirmation reflects the divine

res

The final paradox in Tertullian's ethics is between natural law and apocalypse, between creation and consummation, between beginning and end. 'It is a long way', writes Spanneut, 'from conscience and law to the revelations of the paraclete . . . However, if the truth of prophecy gains an ever larger place through Tertullian's growing adherence to Montanism, conscience and nature keep their force to the end.'

eschaton

We have seen that Stoicism formed both Tertullian and the world which he sought to convert. He did not have to pretend to be Roman. Metaphysics of spirit and a Stoic logic of relative disposition and paradox defined his thought. Ethics were a special concern to Stoicism and we must expect to see strong influence here. Stoic ethics are ruled by the concepts of conscience, law and nature.

Tertullien et les premiers moralistes africains

Ibid

res

cult

Marc

iei

paen

cult

nat

cult

spect

res

test

res

Marc

test

Jud

Marc

cast

pud

Tertullien

pud

nat

dial

cor

Jud

cult

spect

cor

disciplina

pud

cult

Marc

virg

cor

fug

cast

Discipline

virg

disciplina

disciplinae

virg

cor

virg

cor

iei

virg

How does natural law, primitive and universal, join with the particularity and promise of the gospel? The perfection of all things in Christ, the dominant theme of early Christian theology, pointed to the one goal: that what humankind had lost in Adam might be regained in Christ. Ethical renewal meant a return to the image and likeness of God as found and then lost in Adam, and finally found again in Christ. Every ethical issue was seen in this perspective. Our maker is our remaker. All must be fulfilled in each life, where the whole economy of salvation runs its course. In the

Tertullien

RHE

end we must find our beginning. Montanism claimed that the final stage of the divine dispensation, the outpouring of the spirit, was a present event. Through the spirit, believers could complete their journey to the end which, in Christ, was a new beginning. They could recapture the innocence of Adam, and be formed anew in the image and likeness of God.

Tertullian's optimistic account of the beginning

Marc

pat

nat

dominus

res

Marc

There is a distinction, never easily maintained in any language, between image and likeness.

form

eternal quality

bapt

cast

Marc

fug

res

Idolatry As Reversal of Assimilation

Such assimilation to God is driven by fear as well as by love. God commands what is good; our obedience follows not from the

virg

cult

Marc

cor

spect

pat

paen

pud

metus integer

paen

cast

idol

This claim brings Tertullian close to the negative theology of Clement of Alexandria.

idol

End and Beginning

To return to the chief puzzle of Tertullian's ethics: it is a long way from conscience and natural law to the revelations of the paraclete; but however strong the power of prophecy grows, conscience and natural law never lose their force.

mon

restitutor

institutor

mon

Tertullien

mon

What is new and true is necessarily old, since the truth, which is Christ, is eternal. The rule of faith is one and unalterable, but discipline is always renewed and revised as the grace of God leads on to the end. The paraclete makes all things new, directs discipline, illuminates scripture, reforms the mind and leads on to better things. Everything has its stages of growth: from seed to shoot to sapling to tree. Tertullian, like Irenaeus, has both a catastrophic and an evolutionary view of human history.

virg

The paraclete regains paradise by perfecting the divine dispensation.

The paradox of natural law and apocalypse restates the oldest puzzle in ethics: is there a natural law and are there natural virtues? For Plato every virtue must be connected to the Good before it can be valid. For Aristotle and for Aquinas natural virtues could be recognized as inferior to those perfect virtues which are connected to the End or God. There is no simple account of the relation between natural and perfect virtues. Continuity and disjunction are both arguable. Virtue may be evident in those who deny the Good. Yet that were

Tertullian has grasped this point and links natural law with knowledge of the End which is also the beginning, through the summing-up of all things in Christ.

On the one hand, Tertullian appeals to nature, conscience and

Murder in the cathedral

the divine image in which humanity was made. On the other hand, martyrdom and the paraclete bring him to the last days. His Heraclitean solution is that in the end is our beginning. We begin from and end with God; when we see him we shall be like him.

Four Quartets

Conclusion

Marc

Durability in disputation clarified his opinions, for propositions are understood from the proofs which support them. Like his contemporaries in philosophy, he chose a criterion or rule of truth and used ideas which were consistent with it.

We note first the limits of his achievement. Tertullian's loyalty to his rule and to scripture,

together with his desire to destroy his opponents, brought mistakes. These came when he felt a need for answers which left no remainder, a need which derived from his logic of apologetic,

and from the pressures of controversy and persecution. His answer to Marcion, that justice and goodness were united in one God, pointed back to the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount and is confirmed in the universal Christian plea for divine mercy. However, in loyalty to this answer, he went further and felt obliged to argue that only a God who inspired fear could keep sinners from sinning; love could not conquer all. Even the notorious case of the bald Elisha and the brutal bears came down to this. For any advocate could prove a difference between

the badness of boys and the innocence of infants; unlike Augustine, he does not condemn the latter for original sin.

mala culpae

mala poenae

spect

Nor is there any doubt in the Apocalypse (Rev. 16.5f. and 19.1f.) about that divine retribution for the deaths of martyrs to which Tertullian looks. A modern theologian indicates a better answer. While 'It is necessary to remember the martyrs, so as not to become abstract'

the true God is 'not recognised by his power and glory in the world and in the history of the world, but through his helplessness and his death on the scandal of the cross of Jesus'.

Were Tertullian's dubious answers the result of impatience, to which he confesses, or insensitivity to the wider implications of his words? His Stoic world made it easier for him to write austerely to his wife or martyrs. For an apologist, indeed, impatience can be a virtue. Philosophers elucidate problems; apologists have to come up with some kind of an answer. Tertullian cannot luxuriate at length in problems. In order to get on with the business of living, his people need the best answers he can find. Theology never loses this tension and contingency. Many objections to Christian belief, like

The fathers of the Latin church

Messiah

The crucified God

Ibid

praescr

As an apologist, Tertullian has frequently to give answers and destroy objections, not mounting, like the Platonists, ever closer to ultimate truth. His Heraclitean task is one of horizontal strife, in the name of the logos which flows through all things.

However, we cannot overlook his mistakes, since they resemble the kind of short-cut which he attacks in others and they are not consistent with his dominant claim for a suffering, compassionate God.

Do his errors have a common pattern? They occur when his final vocabulary or rule of faith conflicts either with the scripture he proudly claims as exclusive Christian property or with reality as he knows it. He cannot afford to renounce either scripture or his rule. He refuses to see that the jealous, vindictive God of the Deuteronomist is not the helpless, compassionate figure on the cross, and he could never disown the latter. In his loyalty to the rule, he was, strangely, too systematic for his own good. He could not say, with William Blake, 'Thinking as I do that the Creator of this world is a very cruel being, and being a worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying "The Son, O how unlike the Father." First God almighty comes with a thump on the head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it.'

A thinker's mistakes often indicate his central concern more clearly than do his extended arguments. Tertullian's anxiety is that either the Marcionite subdivision or the monarchian 'identification' of God will remove the divine disgrace which is mankind's salvation. He therefore goes on to clarify the rule of faith or the gospel. Christian theology is concerned with the being of God.

cor

Marc

The portable Blake

Divine substance

Nothing else provides a basis for faith. Tertullian, like others, came to faith through the moral excellence of Christians, the fulfilment of all things in Christ and the spread of the gospel. Each of these grounds he found to be flawed: Christians do bad things, another parousia is needed and falsehood as well as truth spreads over the face of the earth. Faith must rest on the being of God, without abandoning its three beginnings.

The first question of Christian theology is therefore about God: 'Is there one God, good and true, who is creator of this world of sin and evil?' and its answer concerns divine being: 'Only if that God acted in Jesus Christ to redeem the world which he had made.' Consequented (and still follow) Tertullian's path. They began with simplicity and perfection with a simple faith in one saving God and the particularity and universality of Jesus Christ, son of God, saviour.

Their criterion of truth was God's saving work from creation to the summing-up of all things in Christ. There was no diminution in its claims as it joined the end to the beginning and united humanity with God. Recapitulation ends in the being of God. When he spoke to pagans, Tertullian began from a sense of God, which, like the Stoics, he found in all humans. When humans heard the scriptures and the gospel message, they recognized Jesus as the God they all had dimly known. What looks like paradox (a soul naturally Christian still has to become Christian) is a common path for believers. The awareness of one God found content in the story of salvation.

Tertullian owed most to his two great opponents. How, challenged Marcion, could Jewish scripture and Christian gospel be fitted into one God? Tertullian followed the lead of the antitheses of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. There werreal antitheses between the Old and the New, but they belonged within one God, just and good, creator and saviour, judge and father. The theme of

The conflict of religions in the early Roman empire

sacramentum oikonomiae

homo futurus

Punch

mind. The same God had joined end to beginning on the cross and would be all in all when the son handed over the kingdom to the father. The entire dishonour of God was the Christian's only hope. Tertullian's mystery of the economy in God anticipates Gregory the Theologian's summing up of the trinity in one God.

This makes sense of the other things Tertullian wrote. A similar inclusiveness is expressed in prayer which is the heart of the Christian's life. Here the believer has a prayer which sums everything up; Tertullian describes the Lord's Prayer as an epitome of the gospel. Sin presented no surprise for one who lived with Heraclitean and Pauline tension. Tertullian clarified the problem of free will, of self-determined yet compulsive sin, through Adam's free choice and original sin. Yet sin within the church presented difficulties which he could not handle. The fulfilment of all things in Christ and the effectiveness of baptism required the absence of deadly sins from Christian lives. Won to Christianity by the heroism of Christian virtue, delivered from serious sin by baptism, he was driven to despair by the abundance of Christian sin. Forced to distinguish between sins which disproved the gospel and sins which did not, he found himself at variance with episcopal direction. This estrangement was no passing problem; in every age there have been as many repelled by a 'sordid' church as by the folly of faith.

Did he leave the church? It seems better to say that he did not.

Yet when Cyprian took up his ideas and made the classic pattern of the catholic church, Tertullian had to appear on the outside. Tertullian never looked like a statesman; nothing came easier than the promotion of his future disqualification. Yet present disagreements were temporary; all would be set right in the coming kingdom which the paraclete was bringing. He depicted the world to come with the detail and fearful imagery of the Apocalypse. When he came to ethics, he sought to reconcile love and fear, contingency and perfection.

tota

trinitas

Marc

orat

unica spes

Choice is tied to vulnerability. Apologetic finds faith in no tranquil haven but in a world governed by the strife of opposites. Christian theology emerges to cope with vulnerability and to disarm false claims for immunity. All the people whom Tertullian attacks are concerned to vaccinate a vulnerable faith in a way which, he thinks, removes its ultimacy. The disciples of Athens want a Platonic or Stoic Christianity. Docetists want to soften the

Geheimnis

Kerygma and Myth

One God, one Lord: Early Christian devotion and ancient Jewish monotheism

contradiction of an incarnate God. Marcion wants to remove the conflict between creator and redeemer, law and gospel, by attributing the two parts of the antithesis to two different gods: Tertullian replies that God is not God if he be not one and that the antitheses must be contained in one God. Praxeas argues that father, son and spirit are identical in one God who acts in each capacity: Tertullian argues that the mystery of the divine economy is hidden within the triune God, who alone deserves worship. Only a creator who is also redeemer is credible. Gnostic determinism separates, at birth, sinners and saints. Tertullian argues for human freedom tainted only by the sin which was chosen after Adam left his maker's hands. Indulgent bishops dispensed forgiveness to sinners within a sordid church: Tertullian protested, since it was the moral excellence of believers which had first turned him in the direction of faith. Hermogenes' matter explained the imperfection of the world: Tertullian claimed that it introduced a second god. Valentinians proposed a knowledge immune from rational attack: Tertullian claimed that such immunity made possible all kinds of nonsense. Spiritual resurrection or immortal souls might have answered objections to the vivid detail of Christian apocalyptic; but Tertullian found no hope in a God who abandoned his creation. Christian ethics were vulnerable because of their contradiction between affirming and denying the world; but this and other tensions were inevitable for right living.

Theologians have long looked for continuity in the development of doctrine from the New Testament to the creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries. They have ignored the fact that discontinuity is equally evident in any tradition of thought and have submitted to the desire for 'fictive concords with origins and ends'.

Immersion in the New Testament and second-century writers can breed a dislike for councils and creeds, with a readiness to reject 'the long period of dogmatic squabbling while the Empire was falling to pieces'.

This is a reasonable reaction to the almost universal

in medias res

in mediis rebus

The sense of an ending

Platonic tradition

attempt to interpret a putative middle in terms of a putative end, or to the assumption that second-century writers were unsuccessfully trying to answer fourth- and fifth-century questions, or to the belief that Chalcedon might be interpreted from the New Testament without thought for what has come between. The history of ideas functions neither by following the same agenda nor by building bit-by-bit a final scheme. Discontinuity outstrips continuity. To take a rough analogy, from Bach to Messiaen is as far as from the New Testament to Chalcedon. César Franck is not a bridge or stepping stone between these two points any more than Tertullian is a bridge from the New Testament to Chalcedon. Yet what the mid-term says is the way to understand the continuity and discontinuity between the two extremes. In a word, the middle is never merely a revision of the beginning and never simply an anticipation of the end, but a statement in its own right which may enable the move between the two designated extremes to be understood.

The assimilation of classical thought into Christian theology is to be understood in the same way. It is not present in the New Testament. By the time we reach the fourth century it is there.

Indeed, there is no evidence of positive interaction between philosophy and Christianity in the first half of the fourth century. If we are to understand the process, it will be through understanding the second century (Clement and Tertullian are the key figures) in its own right, neither as an afterthought nor as a prelude. If we are to understand the movement of European music, we have to treat César Franck and others in the same way.

No book should try to say everything. This study has taken Tertullian's arguments as exposition of his vocabulary and found that many common readings of his thought are questionable. Three points have emerged which need to be followed up elsewhere.

First, his argument was commonly creative, through metaphor, paradox and wit. Like all innovators he used old ways of arguing together with new ways of metaphor which broke the moulds. Second, his Stoic materialism has interest because of the

Philosophy in Christian antiquity

non-reductive physicalism which is so plausible at present and the common assumption that Christianity can be identified with Platonism.

Thirdly, Tertullian, more than Augustine, is the innovator.

As we rediscover Tertullian today, we acknowledge his historical importance, his alien setting and his strongly individual mind. It is plain that in him the Western mind ('der abendländische Geist') finds its first Christian expression. 'In Western Christianity everything seems to commence with Tertullian: the technical language of Christians, theology, interpretation of scripture and other manifestations of a religion which is in part already settled and in part still on the move.'

This continuity is qualified by our estrangement from his world, where a surfeit of gods gave him a setting which is alien to our secular scene.

florilegia

Marc

pall

Objectivity, relativism and truth

Compostellanum

Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte

nat

This means that he does not always bring out the inner unity of his own position, because he is too concerned to set out a problem and to discuss every point.

bapt

gave him courage and the ability to grasp a complex of ideas and to bring from each detail something which was useful to his case. The anxiety derived from the ease with which Christians compromised their unique hope. His Heraclitean love of opposites is a complex thing, ranging from a stylistic tic, which may infect those who read him, to his wide, inclusive humanity. Conflict is his life; opposites are his reality; and paradox is his intellectual delight. The poet, Robert Browning, captured a small part of this,

Thirdly, there is the coherence provided by one theme: the perfection of the divine economy in the crucified Christ. A profound unity springs from his final vocabulary or rule of faith.

Ibid

Bishop Blougram's Apology

For the simple mystery of human salvation, God's economy, the summing-up of all things in Christ joins his prolific intellectual adventures. The superiority of Jerusalem over Athens derives from the order of the divine economy and recapitulation joins Alpha to Omega in credible ineptitude. To the soul naturally Christian, the long story of salvation brings recognition of the well-known God. Divine disgrace unites Marcion's antitheses or the divine trinity within the being of God. Saving history is summarized in the Lord's Prayer or extended in the bible. The church cannot allow post-baptismal sin which denies the sovereign power of Jesus Christ, son of God, saviour. The divine comedy is obscured by Valentinian fables. Apocalyptic affirms the coming kingdom of Christus Victor. Christian morals point to the mystery which at the end restores the divine likeness given in creation.

For us today, Tertullian's overarching theme raises different problems for different people. From the beginning the reconciliation of all things in Christ (Eph. 1.10, 4.1316) meant conflict for believers fighting (Eph. 6.1020). The antithesis of Athens and Jerusalem confirms and questions the exclusiveness of any monotheism. The paradox of incarnation is central but unacceptable to that total metaphysic,

for which God is not in the world. The strife of opposites suggests the pointlessness of progress and the 'God-shaped blank' grows blanker for some in a secular world. Antitheses in God raise questions about the ultimacy of evil and Christian use of the Old Testament. Since only a crucified God answers the primitive claim for divine credibility (a creator must redeem), how does this reinforce trinitarian belief? Do prayer and the bible exacerbate or illuminate problems of belief? Can the force of evil in human life be reconciled with human freedom and divine goodness? Why is the church itself so often an obstacle to faith? Where does Christian nonsense begin and how is reason important? What is the future of Jesus Christ? In morals can we reconcile world-affirmation and world-denial, fear and love of God, the natural and the new? All these questions are enlarged and better understood through Tertullian's argument.

His originality and openness made him an ecclesiastical failure,

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

for the church was offended by much that he wrote, even if it could never forget him because he so clearly belonged within its life.

That same originality remains his claim on our attention today, for we have learnt, from the pragmatists, that the one worth-while intellectual enterprise is to speak as though we are not rehearsing a previously written script.

Contingency, irony, and solidarity

Select Bibliography

Texts and Translations

Acta Martyrum

The acts of the Christian martyrs

Die ältesten Apologeten

De philosophia libri

Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross

De Anima

Metaphysics

Physics

The complete works of Aristotle: the revised Oxford translation

GCS

Clément d'Alexandrie, text and trans. S.C., ed. C. Mondésert

Le Pédagogue: 70 (1960), 108 (1965), 158 (1970)

Protreptique: 2 (1949)

Stromate I: 30 (1951)

Stromate II: 38 (1954)

Stromate V: 278, 279 (1981)

Extraits de Théodote: 23 (1948)

Alexandrian Christianity

LCC

ANCL

Diognetus, To, A Diognète

Against heresies

Contre les Hérésies

I: 263, 264 (1979)

II: 293, 294 (1982)

III: 210, 211 (1974)

IV: 100 (1965)

V: 152, 153 (1969)

Démonstration

Against heresies

ANCL

The demonstration of the apostolic preaching

Des heiligen Irenäus Schrift zum Erwies der apostolischen Verkündigung in armenischer Version entdeckt herausgegeben und ins Deutsch übersetzt von K. Ter-Mekerttschian und E. Ter-Minassiantz, TU

Opera

Justin and Athenagoras

ANCL

Apologies

The dialogue with Trypho

First Apology

LCC

Saint Justin, Apologie pour les Chrétiens

Contra Celsum

GCS

Philo, text, eds L. Cohn and P. Wendland, 6 vols. (Berlin, 18961915)

LCL

Plato, text, J. Burnet, 5 vols. (Oxford, 19007)

Plotinus, text, P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer, 3 vols. (Paris, Brussels, 19519)

Plotinus, text, P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer (edn minor), 3 vols. (Oxford, 1966, 1977, 1988)

LCL

Plotinus, text and trans. E. Bréhier, 7 vols. (Paris, 192438)

Plotinus, text and trans. R. Harder, R. Beutler and W. Theiler, 12 vols. in 8 (Hamburg, 195671)

Plotinus, trans. S. Mackenna, 2nd edn London, 1956)

Moralia

et al., LCL

Moralia

et al

Posidonius, text, E. Bake (Leyden, 1820)

Elements of Theology

de anima

Tertullian, text and trans. E. Evans:

Adversus Marcionem

Homily on baptism

Treatise against Praxeas

Treatise on prayer

Treatise on the incarnation

Treatise on the resurrection

A son épouse

La chair du Christ

Centre les Valentiniens

De la patience

De la prescription contre les hérétiques

De la pudicité

Exhortation à la chasteté

Le mariage unique

La pénitence

Les spectacles

La toilette des femmes

ANCL

Treatises on marriage and remarriage, ACW 13

Treatises on penance, ACW

Treatise against Hermogenes, ACW

Xenocrates, text, R. Heinze (Leipzig, 1892)

Secondary Works

Drei christologische Untersuchungen

et al

Spätantike und Christentum

ThPh

La vision de Rome chez Tertullien

REG

La théologie de Tertullien

Der Kirchenbegriff Tertullians

Homo vivens, Incorruptibilité et divinisation selon Irénée de Lyon

Logos und Nomos, Die Polemik des Kelsos wider das Christentum, AKG

ZNW

Christus Victor

Language, logic and reason in the church fathers: A study in Tertullian, Augustine and Aquinas

Tertullien et le Judaïsme

Herrlichkeit, Eine theologische Ästhetik

The glory of the lord

Tertullian, A historical and literary study

Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity

Römisches Recht bei Tertullian und Cyprian. Eine Studie zur frühen Kirchengeschichte

Heilsgeschichte und Heilswissen, Eine Untersuchung zur Struktur und Entfaltung des theologischen Denkens im Werk 'Adversus Haereses' des hl. Irenäus von Lyons

Saint Irénée, introduction à l'étude de sa théologie

Liberté et grâce suivant la théologie d'Irénée de Lyon

Le Origini dello Gnosticismo

zur Erklärung und Textkritik des ersten Buches Tertullians 'Adversus Marcionem

Approches de Tertullien

Deus Christianorum

RSLR

Holiness and the will of God

Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei Irenäus von Lyon

Ecclesiastical authority and spiritual power

The formation of the Christian bible

La cristologia di Tertulliano

Early Christian thought and the classical tradition

The Second Century

Tertullian the Puritan and his influence

Gospel message and Hellenistic culture

The origins of Latin Christianity

The theology of Jewish Christianity

Storia della teología

Epoca patristica

The Middle Platonists

der heilige Fisch in den antiken Religtonen und im Christentum

RIPh

Les normes de l'enseignement chrétien, dans la littérature patristique des trois premiers siècles

Die Terminologie der Jenseitsvorstellungen bei Tertullian; ein semasiologischer Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte des Zwischenzustandes

Dictionnaire des philosophes

Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique

REA

Martyrdom and persecution in the early church

TRE

Should philosophers be kings?

The legends of the Jews

The Early Christian Doctrine of God

Gods and the one God

StTh

Meritum bei Tertullian

Satisfactio bei Tertullian

JThS

The search for the Christian idea of God

Origène et la fonction révélatrice du verbe incarné

Marcion, Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott

Militia Christi

BVSGW.PH

Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchenge-schichte

StTh

JThS

RHPhR

It is not lawful for me to fight, Early Christian attitudes towards law, violence and the state

The criterion of truth, FS George Kerferd

One God, one Lord: Early Christian devotion and ancient Jewish monotheism

The Platonic tradition in English religious thought

Gnosis und spätantiker Geist

Gott als Geheimnis der Welt

Probleme altchristlicher Anthropologie

Schrift und Geist bei Tertullian

Essays on New Testament themes

Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen

Jesu Letzter Wille nach Johannes

New Testament Questions of Today

The testament of Jesus

JThS

Tertullian und das römische Reich

Tertullian und die römische Antike

Studien zur frühchristlichen Trinitätstheologie

Die Gotteslehre des Irenaeus

Neutestamentliche Aufsätze

et al

La crise montaniste

Promotion de l'homme en Jésus Christ d'après Irénée de Lyon

Die apologetischen Grundgedanken Tertullians

Gnostic truth and Christian heresy

Hellenistic philosophy

Beiträge zur Geschichte des christlichen Altertums und der Byzantinischen Literatur, FS A. Ehrhard

Tertullian als Apologet

Unveränderlichkeit Gottes

Gnosis und Philosophie: Miscellanea, Elementa

Valentinus Gnosticus

The Second Century

ThR

Schöpfung aus dem Nichts

Das Gottesbild im Menschen nach Clemens von Alexandrien

Tertullian contra Marcion, Gotteslehre in der Polemik

TyV

Persona in teologia. Alle origini del significato di persona nel cristianesimo antico

Irenaeus

JThS

RevSR

Théologie trinitaire de Tertullien

The crucified God

Theology of hope

Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne

Tertullien et les origines

Clément d'Alexandrie. Introduction à l'étude de sa pensée religieuse à partir de l'Écriture

Argument of laughter

Aquinas

RHE

Compostellanum

SCO

Essays in New Testament interpretation

RevSR

L'apologie de saint Justin philosophe et martyr

Ecclesia orans, Mélanges Hamman

Petite vie de Tertullien

La structure litteraire de l'Apologie de Justin, RevSR

Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique

L'année canonique

RET

The fire and the sun

Metaphysics as a guide to morals

Tertullian and the bible

Antropología de San Ireneo

The beginning of Christian philosophy

The emergence of Christian theology

Ethical patterns in early Christian thought

Justin Martyr

The philosophy of Clement of Alexandria

'Natura' und 'Dispositio', Untersuchung zum Naturbegriff und zur Denkform Tertullians

MThZ

Die Stoa

Vom Zorne Gottes

Evoluzione del pensiero di Tertulliano sulla dottrina del peccato

REA

God in patristic thought

Justin et l'ancien testament

Schol

Romanitas et Christianitas, FS J. H. Waszink

De Bronnen van Tertullianus' Adversus Marcionem

NThT

Tertullien face aux morales des trois premiers siècles

et al., Masculinidad y feminidad en la patristica

Tertullian and the church

potestas, JRH

Der Einfluss der stoischen Philosophie auf die Lehrbildung Tertullians

RevSR

Phronesis

Plotinus, the road to reality

ANRW

Stoic philosophy

Contingency, irony, and solidarity

Objectivity, relativism and truth

Philosophy in history

Runia, D. T., Philo and the church fathers (Leiden, 1995)

Philo in early Christian literature: a survey

Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato

Recapitulatio Mundi

Der Apologet Tertullianus in seinem Verhältnis zu der griechischrömischen Philosophie

ZKG

Early Christian literature and the classical intellectual tradition, FS R. M. Grant

Apoll

JAC

The influence of philosophy on the mind of Tertullian

Ancient rhetoric and the art of Tertullian

RThPh

RSLR

HTh

The Jews under Roman rule. From Pompey to Diocletian

Permanence du Stoïcisme

Le stoïcisme des pères de l'église

Tertullien et les premiers moralistes africains

Divine Substance

JThS

Das Verhältnis Tertullians zur antiken Paideia

Die Gottes- und Logoslehre Tertullians

Glaube und Kultur

Eschaton und Historie

NAWG: Phil. hist. Klasse

JAC

The forgiveness of sins

The office of a bishop

Orph

Irénée de Lyon 'L'empreinte des doigts de Dieu'

La manifestation et la vision de Dieu selon Saint Irénée de Lyon

Meaning and context, Quentin Skinner and his critics

RSR

RevSR

Cristo salvador y liberador del hombre

ThGl

Biblia y Hermeneutica

ZThK

Der Begriff,

im Werk des Irenäus und seine Vorgeschichte

ZThK

Heraklit bei Klemens von Alexandrien

The Christians as the Romans saw them

Shame and Necessity

New essays in philosophical theology

PhP

Das Heilswirken Gottes durch den Sohn nach Tertullian

Die christliche Platonaneignung in den Stromateis des Clemens von Alexandrien

Subject Index

Alcinous, 39

allegory, 161, 222

angels, 57, 107

anthropology, 85, 16475, 214

Antiochus, 39

antitheses, 13, 90. 103, 109, 119, 175, 191, 246

apocalyptic, 20924, 23845

apologetic, 511, 837, 110, 134, 220, 225, 248, 252

argument, 5, 45, 115, 1602, 183, 199200, 2067

Aristotle, 38, 53, 88

assent of faith, 38

assimilation to God, 147, 164, 225, 242

Athanasius, 22, 136

Augustine, 5, 24, 30, 12930, 163, 173, 221, 247, 255

balance of justice, 66

baptism, 23, 165, 180, 171, 225, 251

bishops, 42, 1757, 179, 1812, 212

brevity, xiv, 1011, 29

bureaucratic fallacy, 12, 42, 93, 197

categories, Stoic, 125, 135

celibacy, 211, 233

Chalcedon, 143, 254

chiliasm, 109, 209, 21317

Christian soldiers, 76, 85, 14950, 233

christology, 2, 16f., 59, 1049, 13943, 187

Christus Victor, 4, 1621, 25, 40, 76, 136, 257

church, 43, 1489, 17582, 258

Cicero, 38, 54, 63, 75

classical culture, 6, 27, 34, 84, 232, 254

Cleanthes, 72, 79, 122, 167

Clement of Alexandria 7, 47, 51, 702, 193

cognitive impression, 39, 47

confession, 172

conscience, 2389

Constantine, 25, 32

creation, 91104, 18391, 2202, 2368, 242

criterion of truth, 11, 379, 246, 249

cross, 16, 656, 76, 102, 112, 114, 192

curiosity, 34, 42, 170

Cyril of Alexandria, 142

denial of world, 2326

Deuteronomic triumphalism, 1003, 248

devil, 1819, 101, 144, 166, 201

dialectic, 42, 90, 213

Diogenes, 29

discipline, 4, 68, 165, 180, 195, 21112, 235, 2401

discipline of reason, 27, 32, 41, 43, 63, 198, 257

doxography, 53, 55

eclecticism, 6, 44, 2557

economy of salvation and divine being, 1, 17, 21, 3741, 578, 65, 746, 1219, 150, 213, 220, 2501

Elisha and the bears, 112, 1589, 246

Epicureans, 38, 44, 89, 97

Epiphanius, 20910

epistemology, 389, 80

evil, 65, 101, 115, 18691

exchange formulae, 5960, 2068

faith, 11, 38, 66, 82, 24950

fasting, 212, 216, 227, 235

fear, 22932, 246

femininity, 99

fideism, 28, 49

final judgement, 216, 218, 232, 247

first question of theology, 11, 24, 88

fish as symbol, 3, 17, 26, 249

flesh, 46, 49, 5863, 1079, 1657, 212, 2224, 2368

fornication and adultery, 23, 170, 173, 211, 219, 239

free will, 1679, 247

fulfilment, 106, 111, 156, 24951

gluttony, 216, 2356

Gnostics, 23, 89, 191208

goodness and justice, 4, 20, 99101, 112, 223

gravitas, 43, 75, 234

Gregory Nazianzus, 25, 252

hell, 218

Heraclitus, 7, 37, 714, 89, 103, 110, 224, 245, 251, 256

heresy, 3, 34, 41, 88, 184, 192, 221, 229

holiness, 146, 213, 2346

humanity, 98100, 242

Iamblichus, 250

idolatry, 84, 165, 173, 236, 243

image and likeness of God, 2423

incarnation, 49, 5663, 107, 122, 128, 143, 214

intermediate state, 218, 221

Irenaeus, 60, 62, 193, 196, 204, 215, 225

irrationalism, 4953

Jews, 18, 456, 7880, 11719, 192

Justin, 7, 10, 76, 128, 148, 192, 207, 240

knowledge, 379, 98

Latin Christianity, 7, 220, 255

law, 856, 211, 226, 23841

liberty, 86

love, 67, 68, 171, 22532

love of enemies, 225, 239

Lucian, 36

Marcion, 45, 1215, 201, 557, 88115, 158, 24950

marriage, 169, 21213, 224, 2335, 239

martyrs, 1, 767, 210, 218, 223, 2323, 247

matter, 18391

mediocrity, 22, 175, 225

metaphors, 1057, 1223

ministry, 181

miracles, 1056

modesty, 2345

monarchianism, 120, 124, 131, 134, 250

monogamy, 212, 2367, 239

monotheism, 867, 912, 11719, 183, 24951

Montanism, 1767, 20913, 238

mystery, 1, 121, 250

natural law, 118, 23840

nature, 34, 144, 165, 244

New Prophecy, 20913

opposites, 3, 60, 6576, 91, 103, 110, 1445, 150, 222, 252

Origen, 228

original sin, 22, 1657, 251

paraclete, 2103, 238, 243

paradise, 19, 218

paradox, 1, 3, 4864, 88, 106, 112, 130, 171, 226, 249

patience, 171, 230

penance, 1711, 230

perfection, 126, 45, 65, 968, 169, 241, 249, 251

persecution, 65, 2323, 236

persons, 1303, 1368

Philo Judaeus, 73, 159

philosophy, 2741, 183

Plato and Platonism, 7, 31, 34, 389, 45, 88, 1413, 164, 191

Pliny the Younger, 66

Plotinus, 142, 250

Plutarch, 36

Posidonius, 36, 140

probability, 534

proofs of God's existence, 78

psychics, 21011, 220, 235

psychology of Tertullian, 2931, 4950

rational choice, 46

reason, 2, 279, 41, 65, 83, 119, 183, 1912, 205

recapitulation, 8, 1626, 3941, 456, 5762, 121, 145, 156, 2068, 2234, 225, 23845, 249, 252

recognition, 7783

relative disposition, 12530, 250

resurrection, 21424, 237

retaliation, 20, 101, 157, 225

Roman state, 33, 836

rule of faith, 3847, 105, 115, 152, 158, 188, 211, 215, 223, 248

rumour, 67

Scepticism, 37

scripture, 54, 801, 10415, 15162

second advent, 106, 209, 215

seed, 35, 45, 63, 65, 76

Seneca, 31, 33, 45, 723, 75, 94

Sextus, 10

shame, 2312

simplicity, 111, 26, 86, 164, 196, 249

sin, 16375, 219

Socrates, 34, 37

Sophists and sophistry, 6, 29

soul, 80, 83, 1637, 175, 214

spirit, 35, 100, 125, 1312, 135, 145, 21214

Stoic, 34, 78, 27, 34, 39, 42, 45, 56, 634, 78, 82, 89, 119, 1257, 1312, 135, 13941, 163, 1678, 191, 232, 238, 247

substance, 35, 59, 79, 12138

sum (caput), 15, 112, 153

system, 59, 90, 220, 2478

testimony of the soul, 4, 8, 7783

theodicy, 1112, 1415, 216, 656, 8891, 98101, 17680, 183, 208, 214, 218, 2234, 249

total blending, 13941

tradition, 324, 17881

transcendence, 55, 57, 912

transmigration, 216

trinity, 24, 59, 11741, 144, 220, 250

truth, 1112, 15, 345, 49, 5564, 62, 1079

two natures, 59, 13941, 224

unicity of God, 1112, 912, 1034, 134, 1834, 2334, 249

Valentinians, 89, 183, 191205

veil, 235

virgin birth, 57, 61, 154

virginity, 2334

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 9, 51, 257

Zeno, 1, 38, 79, 122

Citations from Tertullian

De Anima

13 30

1.4 30, 34

1.5 34

1.6 30, 57, 178

2.1 35

2.2 30, 34

2.4f. 30

2.5 228

2.7 10, 34

3.1 34

3.3 11

4.1 164

5.3 164

6 164

7.14 215

8 164

9.4 213

10.1 164

14 132

14.3 164

16.1 164, 175, 241

16.2 34, 164

16.4 165

16.7 166

17.11 85

18.7 2

19.1 241

20.1 31

21.5f. 32

21.7 57

22.2 221

23.5 31

25.7 174

25.9 167

26.1 11, 255

27.9 167

33.9 242

33.11 229

36.4 167

37.1 214

39.3 34

39.4 165, 167

3941 167

40 166

40.2f. 166

40.4 166

of. 167

41.1 166

41.3 167

55.1f. 18

55.5 210

57 214

Apologeticum

1.12 66

2.9 66

2.14 85

2.18 179

2.19 85

3.1 36

4.5 85

4.13 67

5 67

5.4 84

5.7 35

7.3 11

7.8 67

8.1 239

8.4 217

9 67, 85

9f. 239

11.5 74

11.11 219

12.35 76

14 67

14.7 35

16.8 76

17.1 77, 86

17.13 55

17.3 80, 81

17.5f. 78

17.6 77, 80, 83

1721 80

18.13 74

18.2f. 217

18.3 218, 229

18.4 77, 78, 83

18.9 80

18.30 229

19.2 78

19.3 33

20 74, 81, 83

20.2 78

20.3 81

20.3f 74

21 74, 87

21.3 78

21.4 34

21.5 80

21.7 79

21.1013 122

21.11 79

21.17 46

21.22 79

21.25 76

21.28 76, 87

21.30 79

22.5 214

23 67

23.7f. 2

30.1f. 86

30.4 85

30.6 239

3032 85

32f. 86

33 85

33.1 86

33.2 85

35 67, 85

36 67

36.1 84

36.2 86

37.4 74, 85

37.7 74

37.8 67

37.10 227

38.1 74

39 68

3948 67

39.1 178, 213

39.16 68

39.3 81

39.4 179

39.6 178

39.7 226

39.9 227

40.1f. 68

40.2 67

40.10 68

40.11 81

40.13 65, 77

40.14 69

40.15 66

41.2f. 75

41.3 77

42 69, 75

42.3 84

42.4 4

43 69

44.1 69

44.3 179

45 67, 69, 75, 77

45.1 228

46f. 34

46.7 34

46.8 52

46.9 31

46.17 179

46.18 31, 34, 36

4650 30

47.3 34

47.4 2

47.5 15

47.9 34

47.11 18

47.12 218

47.12f. 219

47.13 215

8.4 215

48.5f 69

48.9 242

48.11 69

48.12 70

49.2 229

49.6 75

50.2 76, 217

50.3 75

50.13 75, 76

50.14f. 228

50.15 75

De Baptismo

1.1 2

1.3 3

2.1 3

2.13 56

2.3 3

5.7 164, 242

6.2 178, 213

8.4 178

11.2 162

12 256

12.7 178

15.1 180

18.5 167

20.5 174

De Carne Christi

1.3 193

3.5 57

3 55

3.26 54

4 55

4.4 58

5 49, 55

5.3 16

5.4 27, 48, 52

5.48 49

5.7f. 59

5.10 3, 46

7.11 60

8.1 60

10.1 49

12.6 46

14.3 18, 46

15.3 193

16 61

17 61

17.1 193

17.3 221

17.46 61

18.1 162

18.7 61

20.3 193

De Exhortatione Castitatis

1 233

1.3 243

1.3f. 230

2.3 168, 218

2.5 168

3 241

3.1 169

3.2f. 239

3.7 169

3.8 169

3.10 170

8.1 239, 241

10 213, 233

10.2 234

10.5 210, 217

13.3f. 234

De Corona

3f. 241

4.1 35

4.5 85

4.7 241

5.1 240

5.4 240

6 240

7.1 240

8.25 160

10.9 241

11 84

11.4 85, 178

11.5 233

14.f. 217

15.2 87

De Cultu Feminarum

1.1.3 234

1.2.1 234

1.2.4 2

1.2.5 234

1.4.2 234

1.7.1 234

1.8 240

1.8.2 166, 234

2.1.2 234, 239

2.1.3 228

2.2.2 239

2.2.5 227

2.4.1 234

2.4.2 234

2.8.1 235

2.11.2 36

2.11f. 235

2.13.3 4, 239

2.13.6 235

De Fuga in Persecutione

14 230

4.1 95

7.1 218

9.4 210

11.3 210

12.2f. 18

12.10 242

13.2 240

14.2 226, 232

14.3 210

Adversus Hermogenem

1 183

13 183

3.3 216

3.4 184

4.1 220

5.3 184

6.1 185

7.2 185

7.3 220

7.4 185

8.3 34

10.1 186

1016 186

11 186

1214 186

1332 187

3540 1889

38.1 188

38.3 190

39.2 190

40 189

40.2 190

414 18990

42.3 190

44.1 190

45.5f. 190

De Idololatria

2.1 243

4.1 243

5.2 218

6.3 243

7.1 243

15.1 243

19 84

19.3 85

24.3 86

24.4 178

De Ieiunio

1 212

1.1 235

2.8 227

3.1 241

3.2 235

68 235

6.1 239

iei 10.9 241

11.1 177

12.3 235

13 212

15 212

16.3 177

16.8 236

17.7 216

17.9 236

Adversus Judaeos

1 117

2 118

2.3 226

2.4 240

2.7 154, 240

2.10 239

3 118

3.3 154

3.7 154

4 118

6.1 154

7.1 18

7.5 154

7.9 216

7.98.1 19

713 118

8.1 154

9 81

9.7f. 56

9.8 154

1013 154

10.1 19

10.12 19

11.12f. 155

14 155

14.110 215

14.8 18

14.11 155

Adversus Marcionem

1.1.5 31

1.2.1 91, 162

1.2.3 21

1.3 120

1.3.1 11, 91

1.4.1 57

1.7.4 92

1.8.3 57, 92

1.9.4 92

1.9.7 11

1.9.10 11

1.10.13 83

1.10.1f. 92

1.10.3 239

1.12.2f. 81

1.13.1 34

1.13.2 242

1.13.3 33f.

1.13.414.1f. 236

1.13.5 93

1.14.13 93

1.15.6 12

1.15 93

1.16 94

1.17.1 12, 94

1.17.4 239

1.18 81

1.18.1 13

1.18.2 34, 81, 94

1.19.3 94

1.19.4 13

1.20.1 13

1.20.16 94

1.21 81

1.21.3 13, 21

1.22.8 167

1.22.9 95

1.23.1 95

1.23.5 227

1.24.4 14

1.24.7 14, 96

1.25.6 246

1.26.5 97

1.27.5 97

1.28f. 97

1.29.5 213

2.2 92

2.2.1 14

2.2.46 56

2.2.6 14, 56, 98

2.2.7 98, 167

2.2.3 98

2.4.1f. 99

2.4.3 99

2.4.5 4

2.4.6 14

2.5f. 100

2.6.2 95

2.7.3 14

2.8.3 19

2.9 100

2.9.4 242

2.10.6 19, 100

2.11.1 229

2.11.2 20

2.11.36 219

2.11.3f. 216

2.11.4 100

2.12.2 94

2.12.3 100

2.13 101

2.13.2 20, 229

2.14.1 101

2.14.3 15

2.15.1 101

2.16.3 101, 115, 252

2.17.3 101

2.18.1 101

2.1921 101

2.20.3 159

2.23 101

2.24.8 101

2.25.1 239

2.25.2 11, 101, 162

2.27 102

2.27.1 56

2.27.6 35

2.27.7 16, 46, 242

2.27.7f. 103

2.27.8 229

2.28.3 10

2.29 119

2.29.1 104

2.29.3 20

2.29.4 91, 120, 246

3.1.2 105

3.2.3f. 105

3.2.4 81f.

3.3 106

3.4 106

3.5.1 106

3.6.1 106

3.7 106

3.7.8 21

3.8 107

3.8.5 107

3.8.7 107

3.9 107

3.9.5 18

3.10 108

3.10.9 108

3.11 108

3.13 108

3.14.6 19

3.19.3 19

3.20 108

3.20.1f. 155

3.20.2 108

3.20.3 108

3.20.10 21, 108

3.21.3 109

3.24.1 218

3.24.36 216

3.24.5 109

3.24.6 213, 217

3.24.13 109

4.1 81

4.1.1 152

4.1.6 21

4.1.10 110

4.1.11 110, 153

4.2.2 15, 110, 153

4.3.4 155

4.4.5 111

4.5 111

4.5.1 155

4.5.13 179

4.5.7 155

4.6.4 111, 155

4.7 156

4.7.13 229

4.8.3f. 156

4.9 156

4.9.1 162

4.10.6 156

4.10.12f. 216

4.10.16 29, 255

4.11.8 178

4.11.10 111

4.11.11 156

4.13.3 162

4.1317 156

4.16 111

4.16.3 230

4.16.4 20

4.16.47 157

4.16.5 239

4.16.15 239

4.16.17 157

4.17.12 239

4.18.1 157

4.19.6 162

4.19.12f. 157

4.204 18

4.20.5 18

4.21.1 111

4.21.5 20, 111

4.21.6 81

4.21.8 112

4.21.10 157

4.21.12 112

4.22.1 21

4.22.5 213

4.23.5 112, 158

4.24.5 159

4.25 133

4.25.15 112

4.32.2 157

4.34.12f. 215, 218

4.40.3 113

4.40.5 113

4.43.9 20, 113

5.1 114

5.1.1 28

5.2.1 114

5.3.12 114

5.5.510 114

5.5.46 166

5.8.1f. 240

5.8.9 226

5.8f. 178

5.9.3 214

5.10.2 216

5.12.6 18, 178

5.13.7 239

5.14.1 115

5.16.3 82

5.17.1 17

5.18.9 178

5.19.5 18

5.19.6 178

5.19.8 2

5.20.3 161

Ad Martyras

1.1 178

2.3 229

2.6 214

3 233

3.1 230

3.3 217

3.3f. 230

De Monogamia

1.1 233

1.16 210

1.2 236

2.13 211

2.4 211, 243

3.1 211

3.1012 211

4.1 211

4.2 243

4.5 243

5.2 62

5.3 243

5.7 178, 180, 244

7.9 178

10.4 219

10.5 218

10.6 217

11.2 178, 180

14.47 211

14.7 167

Ad Nationes

1.1.1 170

1.1.3 256

1.1.4 171

1.1.14 240

1.4.2 34

1.7.29 229

1.10.11 81

1.16.13 81

1.17.2 85

1.19.4 216

1.19.6 218

2.1.5 239

2.2.1 33

2.5.18 242

2.7.8 239

2.12.17 161

De Oratione

1 20, 145

1.1f. 240

1.6 146

2f. 146

3.4 227

4.4 146

4.5 144

5.4 146

6.2 146

7.3 147

8.1 147

9.1 10

9.3 147

10 147

11.3 147

13.2 148

1416 148

16.2 162

17.5 148

18.1 241

18.6 149

19.3 149

20.1 149

21f. 149

247 149f.

25.5 162

28.1 144

28.4 145

29 145

29.4 144

40 151

De Paenitentia

1 4, 35

1.1 171

1.2 35

3.2 167

3.9 229

3.16 239

4.4 168, 229

4.6 243

5 171

5.2 230

5.4 229

5.11 219

6 230

6.1 22, 171

6.4 230

6.5 219

6.6 217

6.17 243

7 171

7.2 230

7.7 85

7.10 230

7.14 172

8.7f. 219

9.1 230

9.4 230

9.6 172

10.5 178

10.6 172, 178

10.9f. 172

12.1 229

12.2f. 218

12.9 172, 174

De Pallio

1.1 15

4.7 15

5.1 16

5.3 16

5.4 16, 255

6 15

6.2 16, 18, 33, 35, 178

De Patientia

1 171

1.1 174

1.7 230

2.1 171

3.1 171

4.1 171

4.1f. 229

4.3 242

5.2 171

5.7 171

5.1113 171

6.1 171

10.6 230

11.7 217

12 219

12.4 18

12.8 171, 226

13.13 214

13.6 214

14.3 214

14.4 230

15 235

15.1 18

15.2 230

15.6 3

16.2 214

16.5 171

De Praescriptione Haereticorum

1.1 41

2.1 41

3.4 42

3.6 179

4.1 42

5 180

7 30, 42, 52

79 30

7.2 34

7.5 42

7.6 30

7.7 47

7.9 27, 36, 42

7.10 3

7.12 34, 47

7.1113 45

8.2 42

9 30

9.5 43

10.1f. 43

10.7 43

13 30, 39

13.1 218

13.16 214

13.4 217

13.5 216

13.15 215

14.5 39

15.4 43, 158

16.2 43, 115, 158

17.1 158

17.15 43

17.3 158

19.1 158

19.2 43

20.68 180

20f. 179

21 179

21.7 180

27.6 81

28.3 180

37.5 179

38.4 228

41.3 3

41.5 31

41.7 178

43.2 228

43.5 43, 180

44.8 45

44.13 44

Adversus Praxean

1 120

2 123, 133, 135

2.1 46, 214

2.4 121

2.14 216

3 123

3.1 116

3.2 130

4.2 46

5 124

7.3 131

7.7 47

7.12 47

8 123

8.1 124, 194

8.5 123

8.6 142

8.7 123

9 133

9.2 131

9.3 125

10 127

11 127

12 128

12.3 18, 128

12.6 142

14 128, 133

14.6 133

14.10 131

16 129

16.7 46

18 129

18.5 117, 138

19.5 117, 138

215 129

22.11 117, 138, 142

23.4 217

25.1 142

26 129

26.34 131

27 13940

27.11 142

Pra.29.3 46

30.3 46

31 117

31.1 132

De Pudicitia

1.1 235

1.5 243

1.6 235

1.8 178

2.10 230

2.12f. 219

4.4 240

4f. 240

9.3 162

9.10 229

12.3f. 239

13.20 178

13.25 179

14 16

14.17 178

18.11 178

19 179

19.25 179

21.16 131, 213

21.16f. 178

21.17 212

22 173

22.13 170, 174

De Resurrectione Mortuorum

2.8 216, 239

2.11 2, 35

2.12 237

3.1 239

3.12 83

5 238

5.1 2, 31

5.8 237

6 133

6.3 242

7.7 242

7.9 237

8.2 46, 222, 237

8.5f. 237

9.2 222, 227

11.3 215

11.9 215

11.10 21, 222

12 7

12.6 216

12.10 216

13.3 216

14.2 222

15.3 222

15.8 229

17.9 216

29.7 215

29.15 215

31.4 216

32.6 217

34.5f. 215

35.2 215

35.5 214

40.9 217

45.15 237

49.7 237, 242

49.11 222

50.2 216

51.2 18

52.10 215

56 223

56.1 237

56.3 239

57.2 237

59 223

59.1f. 237

59.3 163, 173, 223

59.3f. 237

60.9 237

60 f. 224

63.1f. 224

63.3 237

Ad Scapulam

1.1 217

1.3 227

2.2 86

2.6 215

4.1 84

Scorpiace

27 230

5.8 18

6.4f. 217

6.7f. 217

9.813 218

10.46 218

11.2 219

12.1 178

13.8 217

14.1 86

De Spectaculis

1 236

3.1 152

8.10 236

12.2 219

16.6 227

23 240

28.4 34

29.2 239

30 247

30.17 215, 218

30f. 229

De Testimonio Animae

1.2 31

1.5 229

1.6 2

3.2 164, 167

4.1 219

4.18 35

4.2 215

4.911 35

5.1 2, 83, 239

5.7 35

6.1 239

Ad Uxorem

1.3 234

1.4.4 234

1.4.4f. 234

1.5.4 234

1.6 233

1.7.1 234

2.7.3 241

2.8.69 237

Adversus Valentinianos

1.1 201

1.3 161

1.4 195, 201, 203

23.1 192

2.2 195

2.4 203

3 81

3.1 195

3.2 81, 196

3.3 203

3.5 2

4 196

4.2 194

4.4 196, 203

5.1 196

6.1 196

6.2f. 200

6.3 201

7 200

7.1 202

7.3 194, 201

7.5 194

7.8 201

8.3f. 200

8.4 202

9.4 203

10.1 201

11.2 193

12.2 203

13.2 202

14.3 201

15 201

16.2 202

17 201

19.2 203

20.3 202

21.2 201

22 202

23.3 203

24.1 31

257 201

27.2 201

28.1 201

30.3 203

31.2 202

32.5 203

35.2 203

38.1 203

De Virginibus Velandis

1.1 2

1.1 244

1.1f. 241

1.3 214, 216

1.57 213

1.911 213

2.1 241

2.2 180

3.4 235

4.4 10

8.1 240

11.6 35

16.1 235, 241

Citations from the Bible

Genesis

1.1 187, 220

1.2a 187

1.2b 187

1.28 213

2.15 184

Exodus

17.816 19

Leviticus

16.5ff 107

Deuteronomy

32.39 110

2 Kings

2.24 158

Job

42 56

Psalms

2.4 247

2.7f. 118, 127

8.5 106

8.5f 107

19.4 118

22.7 106

45 108

45.1 127

45.2f 107

45.24 19

59.8 247

78.2 156

110.3 127

Proverbs

8.22 127

Isaiah

1.7f. 118

1.11 144

1.18 156

2.2f. 109, 118

7.1315 154

8.14 106

29.14 114

35.3 156

45.5, 18 129

45.7 91, 110

45.18 129

53.3f 106

53.6 46

61.5 60

63.1 113

Jeremiah

4.3f. 118

9.23f. 114

11.19 113

31.31f 118

Ezekiel

48.305 216

Daniel

3.21 148

4.25ff. 172

7.13f. 106

9.247 154

Zechariah

3.4f. 107

12.10 107

Wisdom

1.1 42

Matthew

7.15 41

10.28 119

10.32 54

11.1619 8

11.27 123

19.12 211

19.26 56

19.28 182

22.14 232

24.4 41

24.11 41

24.24 41

27.17 16

27.22 16

Mark

8.38 54

Luke

1.37 56

9.26 54

9.33 213

22.30 182

John

1.1 62, 123

1.14 62, 141

1.18 123

1.41 16

3.5 165

6.38 123

6.68 252

8.38 123

10.30 123

12.24 76

14.11 123

14.31 123

16.2 118

19.30 252

Acts

9.22 16

16.25 149

27.35 149

Romans

1.3f. 141

4.207

8.3 114

8.32 46

11.33 190

11.34 14

13.1 85

1 Corinthians

1 54

1.19 114

1.2931 114

2.11 123

2 54

3.22 223

15.5 179

17.7 211

17.14 165

7.29 211, 213

11.3f. 148

11.17f. 180

12.12f. 180

15.318 107

15.2428 46, 124

15.35 216

2 Corinthians

1.19 89

1.20 89

2.511 179

6.1416 36

Galatians

3.1014 207

3.13 46

Ephesians

1.10 257

3.9 1, 24, 250

3.10 1

4.46 180

4.1316 257

5.32 1

6.1020 257

6.18 149

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