TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE
Tertullian was very different from Clement. He seems to have been a native of the North African city of Carthage. Although he spent most of his life there, it was in Rome that he was converted to Christianity when he was about forty years old. Having returned to Carthage, he wrote a number of treatises in defense of the faith against the pagans, and in defense of orthodoxy against various heresies. Many of his works are important for a number of different reasons. For instance, his treatise On Baptism is the oldest extant treatise on that subject, and is an important source for our knowledge of early baptismal practices. And his work To His Wife gives us an interesting glimpse into marriage among second-century Christians.
Tertullian was a lawyer, or at least had been trained in
rhetoric, and his entire literary output bears the stamp of a legal mind. In an
earlier chapter, we have quoted his protest against the “unjust sentence” of
Trajan, ordering that Christians should not be sought out, but should be
punished if brought before the authorities. Those lines read like the argument
of a lawyer appealing a case before a higher court. In another work, On the
Witness of the Soul, Tertullian places the human soul on the witness stand
and, after questioning it, comes to the conclusion that the soul is “by nature
Christian,” and that if it persists in rejecting Christianity this is due to
obstinacy and blindness.
The treatise where Tertullian’s legal mind shines is Prescription
against the Heretics. In the legal language of the time, a Prescription could
mean at least two things. It could be a legal argument presented before the
case itself was begun, in order to show that the trial should not take place.
If, even before the actual case was presented, one of the parties could show
that the other had no right to sue, or that the suit was not properly drawn, or
that the court had no jurisdiction, the trial could be canceled. But the same
word had a different meaning when one spoke of a “long-term prescription.” This
meant that if a party had been in undisputed possession of a property for a
certain time, that party became the legal owner, even if at a later time another
party claimed it.
Tertullian uses the term in both senses, as if it were a case
of a suit between orthodox Christianity and the heretics. His aim is to show,
not simply that the heretics are wrong, but rather that they do not even have
the right to dispute with the church. To this end, he claims that scriptures
belong to the church. For several generations the church has used the Bible,
and the heretics have not disputed its possession. Even though not all of
scripture belonged originally to the church—for a large part of it was written
by the Jews—by now it does. Therefore, the heretics have no right to use the
Bible. They are latecomers who seek to change and to use what legally belongs
to the church.
In order to show that scripture belongs to the church, it
suffices to look at the various ancient churches where scripture has been read
and interpreted in a consistent manner since the days of the apostles. Rome,
for instance, can point to an uninterrupted line of bishops joining the present
time—the late second century—to the apostles Peter and Paul. And the same is true
of the church in Antioch as well as of several others. All of these apostolic
churches agree in their use and interpretation of scripture. Furthermore, by
virtue of their very origin the writings of the apostles belong to the
apostolic churches.
Since scripture belongs to the churches which are the heirs
to the apostles, the heretics have no right to base their arguments on it. Here
Tertullian uses the term prescription in the other sense. Since heretics
have no right to interpret scripture, any argument with them regarding such
interpretation is out of place. The church, as the rightful owner of scripture,
is the only one that has the right to interpret it.
This argument against the heretics has repeatedly been used against various dissidents throughout the history of Christianity. It was one of the main arguments of Catholics against Protestants in the sixteenth century. In Tertullian’s case, however, one should note that his argument was based on showing continuity, not only of formal succession, but also of doctrine, through the generations. Since this continuity of doctrine was precisely what was debated at the time of the Reformation, the argument was not as powerful as in Tertullian’s time.
But Tertullian’s legalism goes beyond arguments such as this.
His legal mind leads him to affirm that, once one has found the truth of
Christianity, one should abandon any further search for truth. As Tertullian
sees the matter, a Christian who is still searching for further truth lacks
faith.
You are to seek until you find, and once you have found, you
are to believe. Thereafter, all you have to do is to hold to what you have
believed. Besides this, you are to believe that there is nothing further to be
believed, nor anything else to be sought.[1]
This means that the accepted body of Christian doctrine
suffices, and that any quest for truth that goes beyond that body of doctrine
is dangerous. Naturally, Tertullian would allow Christians to delve deeper into
Christian doctrine. But anything that goes beyond it, as well as anything
coming from other sources, must be rejected. This is particularly true of pagan
philosophy, which is the source of all heresy, and is nothing but idle
speculation.
Miserable Aristotle, who gave them dialectics! He gave them
the art of building in order to tear down, an art of slippery speech and crude
arguments . . . which rejects everything and deals with nothing.[2] In short, Tertullian
condemns all speculation. To speak, for instance, of what God’s omnipotence can
do is a waste of time an a dangerous occupation. What we are to ask is not what
God could do, but rather what has God in fact done. This is what the church
teaches. This is what is to be found in scripture. The rest is idle and risky
curiosity.
This, however, does not mean that Tertullian does not use
logic against his adversaries. On the contrary, his logic is often inflexible
and overwhelming, as in the case of the Prescription. But the strength
of his arguments is not so much in his logic as in his rhetoric, which
sometimes leads him to sarcasm. For instance, in writing against Marcion he
tells his opponent that the God of the church has made this entire world and
all its wonders, whereas Marcion’s god has not created a single vegetable. And then
he goes on to ask, what was Marcion’s god doing before its recent revelation?
Is the divine love that Marcion touts an affair of the last minute? Thus,
through a unique combination of mordant irony and inflexible logic, Tertullian
became the scourge of heretics and the champion of orthodoxy.
Yet, around the year 207, that staunch enemy of heresy, that
untiring advocate of the authority of the church, joined the Montanist
movement. Why Tertullian took this step is one of the many mysteries of church
history, for there is little in his own writings or in other contemporaneous
documents that tells us of his motives. It is impossible to give a categorical
answer to the question of why Tertullian became a Montanist. But it is possible
to note the affinities between Tertullian’s character and theology, on the one
hand, and Montanism on the other.
Montanism is named after its founder, Montanus, who had been
a pagan priest until his conversion to Christianity in 155. At a later time he
began prophesying, declaring that he had been possessed by the Holy Spirit.
Soon two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, also began prophesying. This in itself
was not new, for at that time, at least in some churches, women were allowed to
preach or prophesy. What was new, and gave rise to serious misgivings, was that
Montanus and his followers claimed that their movement was the beginning of a
new age. Just as in Jesus Christ a new age had begun, so was a still newer age
beginning
in the outpouring of the Spirit. This new age was
characterized by a more rigorous moral life, just as the Sermon on the Mount was
itself more demanding than the Law of the Old Testament. At least some
Montanists affirmed that this more rigorous law included celibacy.
The rest of the church opposed the preaching of the
Montanists not because they prophesied, but because they claimed that with them
the last age of history had dawned. According to the New Testament, the last
days began with the advent and resurrection of Jesus, and with the giving of
the Holy Spirit in Pentecost. As years went by, this emphasis on the last days
being already here was progressively forgotten, to the point that in the
twenty-first century many find it surprising. But in the second century the
conviction of the church was very much alive, that the last days had already
begun in Jesus Christ. Therefore to claim, as the Montanists did, that the end
was beginning then, with the giving of the Spirit to Montanus and his
followers, was to diminish the significance of the events of the New Testament,
and to make of the gospel one more stage in the history of salvation. These
were the consequences of Montanism that the church could not accept.
Tertullian seems to have been attracted by Montanist
rigorism. His legal mind sought perfect order, where everything was properly
done. In the church at large, in spite of all its efforts to do the will of
God, there were too many imperfections that did not fit Tertullian’s frame of
mind. The only way to explain the continuing sin of Christians was to see the
church as an intermediate stage, to be superseded by the new age of the Spirit.
Naturally, such dreams were doomed to failure, and some ancient writers tell us
that toward the end of his days Tertullian was sufficiently disappointed with
Montanism to found his own sect—which those ancient writers call the Tertullianists.
Even after he became a Montanist, Tertullian continued his
campaign against doctrinal error. Probably the most significant of the works
that he wrote during this period is his brief treatise Against Praxeas, where
he coined formulas that would be of great importance in later trinitarian and
christological debates.
Little or nothing is known of Praxeas. Some scholars believe
that there never was such a person, and that Praxeas was another name
for Calixtus, the bishop of Rome, whom Tertullian prefers to attack under a
fictitious name. Whoever Praxeas was, it is clear that he was influential in
the church of Rome, and that there he had sought to explain the relationship
between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a manner that Tertullian found
inadmissible. According to Praxeas, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
were simply three modes in which God appeared, so that God was sometimes
Father, sometimes Son, and sometimes Holy Spirit—at least, this is what may be
inferred from Tertullian’s treatise. This is what has been called Patripassianism
(the doctrine that the Father suffered the passion) or Modalism (the
doctrine that the various persons of the Trinity are “modes” in which
God appears).
Since Praxeas had also curtailed Montanist influence in Rome,
Tertullian opens his treatise with typical mordancy: “Praxeas served the Devil
in Rome in two ways: expelling prophecy and introducing heresy, evicting the
Spirit and crucifying the Father.”[3] But Tertullian then moves
on to explain how the Trinity is to be understood. It is in this context
that he proposes the formula “one substance and three persons.” Likewise, when
discussing how Jesus Christ can be both human and divine, he speaks of “one person”
and “two substances” or “natures,” the divine and the human. The manner in
which he explains the meaning of the terms “person” and “substance” is drawn
mostly from their legal use. Later theologians would explicate the same words
in metaphysical terms. In any case, it is significant that, in both the
trinitarian and the christological questions, Tertullian coined the formulas
that would eventually become the hallmark of orthodoxy. For all these reasons,
Tertullian is a unique personality in the story of Christianity. A fiery
champion of orthodoxy against every sort of heresy, in the end he joined one of
the movements that the church at large considered heretical. And, even then, he
produced writings and theological formulas that would be very influential in
the future course of orthodox theology.
Furthermore, he was the first Christian theologian to write
in Latin, which was the language of the Western half of the empire, and thus he
may be considered the founder of Western theology.
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