History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

altogether foreign to the latter. Tertullian dwells enthusiastically on the divine foolishness of the

gospel, and has a sublime contempt for the world, for its science and its art; and yet his writings

are a mine of antiquarian knowledge, and novel, striking, and fruitful ideas. He calls the Grecian

philosophers the patriarchs of all heresies, and scornfully asks: "What has the academy to do with

the church? what has Christ to do with Plato—Jerusalem with Athens?" He did not shrink from

insulting the greatest natural gift of God to man by his "Credo quia absurdum est." And yet reason

does him invaluable service against his antagonists.

1523

524 He vindicates the principle of church

authority and tradition with great force and ingenuity against all heresy; yet, when a Montanist, he

claims for himself with equal energy the right of private judgment and of individual protest.

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525

He has a vivid sense of the corruption of human nature and the absolute need of moral regeneration;

yet he declares the soul to be born Christian, and unable to find rest except in Christ. "The testimonies

of the soul, says he, "are as true as they are simple; as simple as they are popular; as popular as

they are natural; as natural as they are divine." He is just the opposite of the genial, less vigorous,

but more learned and comprehensive Origen. He adopts the strictest supranatural principles; and

yet he is a most decided realist, and attributes body, that is, as it were, a corporeal, tangible

substantiality, even to God and to the soul; while the idealistic Alexandrian cannot speak spiritually

enough of God, and can conceive the human soul without and before the existence of the body.

Tertullian’s theology revolves about the great Pauline antithesis of sin and grace, and breaks the

road to the Latin anthropology and soteriology afterwards developed by his like-minded, but clearer,

calmer, and more considerate countryman, Augustin. For his opponents, be they heathens, Jews,

heretics, or Catholics, he has as little indulgence and regard as Luther. With the adroitness of a

special pleader he entangles them in self-contradictions, pursues them into every nook and corner,

overwhelms them with arguments, sophisms, apophthegms, and sarcasms, drives them before him

with unmerciful lashings, and almost always makes them ridiculous and contemptible. His polemics

everywhere leave marks of blood. It is a wonder that he was not killed by the heathens, or

excommunicated by the Catholics.

His style is exceedingly characteristic, and corresponds with his thought. It is terse, abrupt,

laconic, sententious, nervous, figurative, full of hyperbole, sudden turns, legal technicalities, African

provincialisms, or rather antiquated or vulgar latinisms.

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526

 It abounds in latinized Greek words,

and new expressions, in roughnesses, angles, and obscurities; sometimes, like a grand volcanic

eruption, belching precious stones and dross in strange confusion; or like the foaming torrent

1523

In a similar manner Luther, though himself one of the most original and fruitful thinkers, sometimes unreasonably abuses

reason as the devil’s mistress.

1524

In this apparent contradiction Luther resembles Tertullian: he fought Romanism with private judgment, and Zwinlianism,

Anabaptists, and all sectarians ("Schwarm - und Rottengeister" as he called them) with catholic authority; he denounced "the

damned heathen Aristotle," as the father of Popish scholaisticism, and used scholastic distinctions in support of the ubiquity of

Christ’s body against Zwingli.

1525

According to Niebuhr, a most competent judge of Latin antiquities. Provinces and colonies often retain terms and phrases

after they die out in the capital and in the mother country. Renan says with reference to Tertullian (Marc-Aurèle, p. 456) La

’lingua volgata’ d’Afrigue contribua ainsi dans une large part à la formation de la langue ecclésiastique de I’ Occident, et ainsi

elle exerça une influence décisive sur nos langues modernes. Mais il résulta de là une autre conséquence; cest que les textes

fondamentaux de la littérature latine chétienne furent écrits dans une langue que lettrés d’Italie trouvèrent barbare et corrompue,

ce qui plus tard donna occasion de la part des rhéteurs à des objections et à des épigrammes sans fin."Comp. the works of

Rönsch, Vercellone, Kaulen, Ranke, and Ziegler on the Itala and Vulgata.

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History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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tumbling over the precipice of rocks and sweeping all before it. His mighty spirit wrestles with the

form, and breaks its way through the primeval forest of nature’s thinking. He had to create the

church language of the Latin tongue.

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527

In short, we see in this remarkable man both intellectually and morally, the fermenting of

a new creation, but not yet quite set free from the bonds of chaotic darkness and brought into clear

and beautiful order.

Notes.

I. Gems from Tertullian’s writings.

The philosophy of persecution:

"Semen Est Sanguis Christianorum." (Apol. c. 50.)

The human soul and Christianity (made for Christ, yet requiring a new birth):

"Testimonium Animae Naturaliter. Christianae." (De Test. Anim. c. 2; see the passages

quoted § 40, p. 120.)

"Fiunt, non, nascuntur Christiani." (Apol. 18. De Test. Anim. 1)

Christ the Truth, not Habit (versus traditionalism):

"Christus Veritas Est, Non Consuetudo." (De Virg. vel 1.)

General priesthood of the laity (versus an exclusive hierarchy):

"Nonne Et Laici Sacerdotes Sumus? "(De Exhort. Cast. 7.)

Religious Liberty, an inalienable right of man (versus compulsion and persecution:

"Humani Juris Et Naturalis Potestatis Est Unicuique Quod Putaverit Colere." (Ad Scap. 2;

comp. Apol. 14 and the passages quoted § 13, p. 35.)

Dr. Baur (

Kirchengesch.

I. 428) says: "It is remarkable how already the oldest Christian Apologists, in

vindicating the Christian faith, were led to assert the Protestant principle of freedom of faith

and conscience "[and we must add, of public worship], "as an inherent attribute of the conception

of religion against their heathen opponents." Then he quotes Tertullian, as the first who gave

clear expression to this principle.

II. Estimates of Tertullian as a man and an author.

Neander (Ch. Hist. I. 683 sq., Torrey’s translation): "Tertullian presents special claims

to attention, both as the first representative of the theological tendency in the North-African

church, and as a representative of the Montanistic mode of thinking. He was a man of an

ardent and profound spirit, of warm and deep feelings; inclined to give himself up, with

his whole soul and strength, to the object of his love, and sternly to repel everything that

was foreign from this. He possessed rich and various stores of knowledge; which had been

accumulated, however, at random, and without scientific arrangement. His profoundness

of thought was not united with logical clearness and sobriety: an ardent, unbridled

imagination, moving in a world of sensuous images, governed him. His fiery and passionate

disposition, and his previous training as an advocate and rhetorician, easily impelled him,

1526

Ruhnken calls Tertullian "Latinitatis pessimum auctorem" and Bishop Kaye the harshest and most obscure of writers," but

Niebuhr, (Lectures on Ancient History, vol. II. p. 54), Oehler (Op. III. 720), and Holmes (the translator of Tert. against Marcion,

p. ix.) judge more favorably of his style, which is mostly " the terse and vigorous expression of terse and vigorous thought."Renan

(Marc Aurèle, p. 456) calls Tertullian the strangest literary phenomenon "un mélange inouï de talent, de fausseté d’esprit,

d’éloquence et de mauvais goût grand écrivain, si l’on admet que sacrifier toute grammaire et toute correction à l’ effet sois

bien écrire."Cardinal Newman calls him " the most powerful writer of the early centuries "(Tracts, Theol. and Eccles., p. 219).

513

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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