Tertullian (; ; 155 – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature and was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against what he viewed as heresy, including Gnosticism.
Tertullian was the first theologian to write in Latin, and so has been called "the father of Latin Christianity", as well as "the founder of Western [Christian] theology". He is perhaps most famous for being the first writer in Latin known to use the term trinity (Latin: trinitas).
Tertullian enunciated new theological concepts and advanced the development of early Church doctrine. However, some of his teachings, such as the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, were later rejected by the Catholic Church. Tertullian later joined the Montanist sect, but today most scholars reject the assertion that he left the mainstream church or was excommunicated.
Life Scant reliable evidence exists regarding Tertullian's life; most knowledge comes from passing references in his own writings. Roman Africa was famous as the home of orators, and that influence can be seen in his writing style with its archaisms or provincialisms, its glowing imagery and its passionate temper. He was a scholar with an excellent education. He wrote at least three books in Koine Greek; none of them are extant.
Some sources describe him as Berber. The linguist René Braun suggested that he was of Punic origin but acknowledged that it is difficult to decide since the heritage of Carthage had become common to the Berbers. Tertullian's own understanding of his ethnicity has been questioned: He referred to himself as Poenicum inter Romanos () in his book De Pallio and claimed Africa as his patria. According to church tradition, Tertullian was raised in Carthage. Jerome claimed that Tertullian's father held the position of centurio proconsularis ("aide-de-camp") in the Roman army in Africa.Jerome, 'Chronicon' 16.23–24
Tertullian has been claimed to have been a trained lawyer and an ordained priest. Those assertions rely on the accounts of Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History, II, ii. 4, and Jerome's De viris illustribus (On famous men) chapter 53. Tertullian has also been thought to be a lawyer based on his use of legal analogies and on an identification of him with the jurist Tertullianus, who is quoted in the Pandects. Although Tertullian used a knowledge of Roman law in his writings, his legal knowledge does not demonstrably exceed what could be expected from a sufficient Roman education. The writings of Tertullianus, a lawyer of the same agnomen, exist only in fragments and do not explicitly denote a Christian authorship. The notion of Tertullian being a priest is also questionable. In his extant writings, he never describes himself as ordained in the church and seems to place himself among the laity.Tertullian, De Exhortatione Castitatis 7.3 and De Monogamia 12.2
His conversion to Christianity perhaps took place about 197–198 (cf. Adolf Harnack, Bonwetsch, and others), but its immediate antecedents are unknown except as they are conjectured from his writings. The event must have been sudden and decisive, transforming at once his own personality. He writes that he could not imagine a truly Christian life without such a conscious breach, a radical act of conversion: "Christians are made, not born" (Apol., xviii). Two books addressed to his wife confirm that he was married to a Christian wife.
In his middle life (about 207), he was attracted to the "New Prophecy" of Montanism, but today most scholars reject the assertion that Tertullian left the mainstream church or was excommunicated. By all accounts, he was highly regarded by St. Cyprian.
In the time of Augustine, a group of "Tertullianists" still had a basilica in Carthage, which within the same period passed to the orthodox church. It is unclear whether the name was merely another for the North African Montanists or that it means that Tertullian later split with the Montanists and founded his own group.
Jerome says that Tertullian lived to old age. By the doctrinal works he published, Tertullian became the teacher of Cyprian and the predecessor of Augustine, a key figure of western theology.
Writings
General character Thirty-one works by Tertullian are extant, together with fragments of more. Some fifteen works in Latin or Greek are lost, some as recently as the 9th century (De Paradiso, De superstitione saeculi, De carne et anima were all extant in the now damaged Codex Agobardinus in 814 AD). Tertullian's writings cover the whole theological field of the timeapologetics against paganism and Judaism, polemics, polity, discipline, and morals, or the whole reorganization of human life on a Christian basis; they gave a picture of the religious life and thought of the time which is of great interest to the church historian.
Like other early Christian writers Tertullian used the term paganus to mean "civilian" as a contrast to the "soldiers of Christ".Ernest Weekley, Etymological Dictionary of English, s.v. "pagan". The motif of Miles Christi did not assume the literal meaning of participation in war until Church doctrines justifying Christian participation in battle were developed around the 5th century. In the 2nd-century writings of Tertullian, paganus meant a "civilian" who was lacking self-discipline. In De Corona Militis XI.V he writes: Apud hunc [Christum] tam miles est paganus fidelis quam paganus est miles fidelis.De Corona Militis XI.V With Him [Christ] the faithful civilian is a soldier, just as the faithful soldier is a civilian.Ante-Nicene Fathers III, De Corona XI
Chronology and contents The chronology of his writings is difficult to fix with certainty. In his work against Marcion, which he calls his third composition on the Marcionite heresy, he gives its date as the fifteenth year of the reign of Severus (Adv. Marcionem, i.1, 15) – which would be approximately 208.
The writings may be divided according to their subject matter, falling into two groups: Apologetic and polemic writings, like Apologeticus, De testimonio animae, the anti-Jewish Adversus Iudaeos, Adv. Marcionem, Adv. Praxeam, Adv. Hermogenem, De praescriptione hereticorum, and Scorpiace were written to counteract Gnosticism and other religious or philosophical doctrines. The other group consists of practical and disciplinary writings, e.g., De monogamia, Ad uxorem, De virginibus velandis, De cultu feminarum, De patientia, De pudicitia, De oratione, and Ad martyras.
Among his apologetic writings, the Apologeticus, addressed to the Roman magistrates, is a most pungent defense of Christianity and the Christians against the reproaches of the pagans, and an important legacy of the ancient Church, proclaiming the principle of freedom of religion as an inalienable human right and demanding a fair trial for Christians before they are condemned to death.
Tertullian was the first to disprove charges that Christians sacrificed infants at the celebration of the Lord's Supper and committed incest. He pointed to the commission of such crimes in the pagan world and then proved by the testimony of Pliny the Younger that Christians pledged themselves not to commit murder, adultery, or other crimes. He adduced the inhumanity of pagan customs such as feeding the flesh of gladiators to beasts. He argued that the gods have no existence and thus there is no pagan religion against which Christians may offend. Christians do not engage in the foolish worship of the emperors, that they do better: they pray for them, and that Christians can afford to be put to torture and to death, and the more they are cast down the more they grow; "the blood of the Christians is seed" (Apologeticum, 50). In the De Praescriptione he develops as its fundamental idea that, in a dispute between the Church and a separating party, the whole burden of proof lies with the latter, as the Church, in possession of the unbroken tradition, is by its very existence a guarantee of its truth.
The five books against Marcion, written in 207 or 208, are the most comprehensive and elaborate of his polemical works, invaluable for gauging the early Christian view of Gnosticism. Tertullian has been identified by Jo Ann McNamara as the person who originally invested the consecrated virgin as the "bride of Christ".
Scholars in the past accepting the Montanist theory have also divided his work into earlier Catholic works and the later supposedly Montanist works (cf. Harnack, ii.262 sqq.), aiming to show the change of views Tertullian's mind underwent.
Manuscripts The earliest manuscript (handwritten copy) of any of Tertullian's works dates to the eighth century, but most are of the fifteenth. There are five main collections of Tertullian's works, known as the Cluniacense, Corbeiense, Trecense, Agobardinum and Ottobonianus. Some of Tertullian's works are lost. All the manuscripts of the Corbeiense collection are also now lost, although the collection survives in early printed editions.The Text Tradition: An Introduction to and Overview of the Manuscripts, from The Tertullian Project. It contains a complete list of known surviving and lost manuscripts of Tertullian.
Theology
Specific teachings Tertullian's main doctrinal teachings are as follows:
God Tertullian reserves the appellation God, in the sense of the ultimate originator of all things, to the Father, who made the world out of nothing through his Son, the Word, has corporeity, though he is a spirit (, vii.; , vii). However Tertullian used 'corporeal' only in the Stoic sense, to mean something with actual material existence, rather than the later idea of flesh.
Tertullian is often considered an early proponent of the Nicene doctrine, approaching the subject from the standpoint of the Logos doctrine, though he did not state the later doctrine of the immanent Trinity. In his treatise against Praxeas, who taught patripassianism in Rome, he used the words "trinity", "economy" (used in reference to the three persons), "persons", and "substance", maintaining the distinction of the Son from the Father as the unoriginate God, and the Spirit from both the Father and the Son (, xxv). At times, speaking of the Father and the Son, Tertullian refers to "two gods". He says that all things of the Father belong also to the Son, including his names, such as Almighty God, Most High, Lord of Hosts, or King of Israel. 17.
Though Tertullian considered the Father to be God (Yahweh), he responded to criticism of the Modalist Praxeas that this meant that Tertullian's Christianity was not monotheistic by noting that even though there was one God (Yahweh, who became the Father when the Son became his agent of creation), the Son could also be referred to as God, when referred to apart from the Father, because the Son, though subordinate to God, is entitled to be called God "from the unity of the Father" in regards to being formed from a portion of His substance.
The Catholic Encyclopedia comments that for Tertullian, "There was a time when there was no Son and no sin, when God was neither Father nor Judge."B. B. Warfield in Princeton Theological Review, 1906, pp. 56, 159. Similarly J. N. D. Kelly stated: "Tertullian followed the Apologists in dating His 'perfect generation' from His extrapolation for the work of creation; prior to that moment God could not strictly be said to have had a Son, while after it the term 'Father', which for earlier theologians generally connoted God as author of reality, began to acquire the specialized meaning of Father of the Son."J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Continual International Publishing Book, c. 1960, 2000, p. 112