Tertullian
Tertullian Biography
Serious Defender of the Christian Faith
TERTULLIAN (c. 155—c. 222), whose full name was QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS TERTULLIANUS, is the earliest and after Augustine the greatest of the ancient church writers of the West. Before him the whole Christian literature in the Latin language consisted of the Bible in Latin (Vetus Itala), the Octavius of Minucius Felix (q.v.)—an apologetic treatise written in the Ciceronian style for the higher circles of society, and with no evident effect for the church as a whole, the brief Acts of the Scillitan martyrs, along with a list of the books recognized as canonical (the so-called Muratorian fragment). Whether Victor the Roman bishop and Apollonius the Roman senator ever really made an appearance as Latin authors is quite uncertain. Tertullian in fact greatly popularized Christian Latin literature; one might almost say that that literature sprang from him full-grown, alike in form and substance, as Athena from the head of Zeus.
Cyprian polished the language that Tertullian had made, sifted the thoughts he had given out, rounded them off, and turned them into current coin, but he never ceased to be aware of his dependence on Tertullian, whom he designated as "his master". Augustine, again, stood on the shoulders of Tertullian and Cyprian; and these three North Africans are the fathers of the Western churches.
Tertullian’s place in universal history is determined by (I) his intellectual and spiritual endowments, (2) his moral force and evangelical fervour, (3) the course of his personal development, and (4) the circumstances of the time in the midst of which he worked.
(1) Tertullian was a man of great originality and genius, characterized by the deepest pathos, the liveliest understanding, and the most penetrating keenness, and was endowed with ability to appropriate and make use of all the methods of observation and speculation, and with the readiest wit. His writings in tone and character are always alike, that is "rich in thought and destitute of form, passionate and hair-splitting, eloquent and pithy in expression, energetic and condensed to the point of obscurity." His style has been characterized with justice as dark and resplendent like ebony. His eloquence was of the vehement order; but it wins hearers and readers by the strength of its passion, the energy of its truth, the pregnancy and elegance of its expression, just as much as it repels them by its heat without light, its sophistical argumentations, and its elaborate hair-splittings. Though he is wanting in moderation and in luminous warmth, his tones are by no means always harsh; and as an author he ever aspired with longing after humility and love and patience, though his whole life was lived in the atmosphere of conflict. Tertullian seems to have had much in common with the apostle Paul.
(2) In spite of all the contradictions in which he involved
himself as a thinker and as a teacher, Tertullian was a compact ethical personality. What he was he was with his whole being. Once a Christian, he was determined to be so with all his soul, and to shake himself free of all half measures and compromises with the world. It is not difficult to lay one’s finger upon very many obliquities, self-deceptions and sophisms in Tertullian in matters of detail, for he ‘struggled for years to reconcile things that were in themselves irreconcilable; yet in each case the false doctrines and sophisms which he confronted - were rather the outcome of the peculiarly difficult circumstances in which he stood. It is easy to convict him of having failed to control the glowing passion that was in him. He can seem outrageously unjust in the substance of what he says, and in manner harsh to cynicism, scornful to gruesomeness; but in no battle that he fought was he ever actuated by selfish interests.
What he did was really done for the Gospel, as he understood it, with all the faculties of his soul. But he understood the Gospel as being primarily an assured hope and a holy law, as fear of the Judge who can cast into hell and as an inflexible rule of faith and of discipline. Of the glorious liberty of the children of God he had nothing but a mere presentiment; he looked for it only in the world beyond the grave, and under the power of the Gospel he counted as loss all the world could give. He well understood The meaning of Christ’s saying that He came not into the world to bring peace, but a sword: in a period when a lax spirit of conformity to the world’ had seized the churches he maintained the " vigor evangelicus" not merely against the Gnostics but against opportunists and a worldly-wise clergy. Among all the fathers of the first three centuries Tertullian has given the most powerful expression to the respect and earnestness due the true Gospel.
(~) The course of Tertullian’s personal development fitted him in an altogether remarkable degree to be a teacher of the church. Born at Carthage of good family—his father was a " centurio pro consularis "—he received a first-rate education both in Latin and in Greek. He was able to speak and write Greek, and gives evidence of familiarity alike with its prose and with its poetry; and his excellent memory—though he himself complains about it—enabled him always to bring in at the right place an appropriate, often brilliant, quotation or some historical allusion. The old historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, were familiar to him, and the accuracy of his historical knowledge is astonishing. He studied with earnest zeal the Greek philosophers; Plato in particular, and the writings of the Stoics, he had fully at command, and his treatise De Anima shows that he himself was able to investigate and discuss philosophical problems.
From the philosophers he had been led to the medical writers, whose treatises plainly had a place in his working library. But no portion of this rich store of miscellaneous knowledge has left its characteristic impress on his writings; this influence was reserved for his legal ‘training. His father, whose military spirit reveals itself in the whole bearing of Tertullian, had intended him for the law. He studied in Carthage, probably also in Rome, where, according to Eusebius, he enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most eminent jurists. This statement derives confirmation from the Digest, where references are made to two works, Dc Castrensi Feculio and Quaestionum Libr’i VIII., of a Roman jurist named Tertullian, who must have flourished about 180 A.D. In point of fact the quondam advocate never disappeared in the Christian presbyter. This was at once his strength and his weakness:
his strength, for as a professional pleader he had learned how to deal with an adversary according to’ the rules of the art—to pull to pieces his theses, to reduce his arguments, and to show the defects and contradictions of his statements,—and was specially qualified to expose the irregularities in the proceedings taken by the state against the Christians; but it was also his weakness, for it was responsible for his litigiousness, his often doubtful shifts and artifices, his sophisms and argumentationes, his fallacies and surprises. At Rome in mature manhood Tertullian became a Christian, under what circumstances we do not know, and forthwith he bent himself with all his energy to the study of Scripture and ‘of Christian literature.
Not only was he master of the contents of the Bible: he also read carefully the works of Tatian, Miltiades, Melito, Irenaeus, Proculus, Clement, as well as many Gnostic treatises, the writings of Marcion in particular (which he strongly objected to). In apologetics his principal master was Justin, and in theology proper and in the controversy with the Gnostics, Irenaeus. As a thinker he was not always original, and even as a theologian he has produced but few schemes of doctrine, except his doctrine of sin. His special gift lay in the power to make what had been traditionally received impressive, to give to it its proper form, and to gain for it new currency. From Rome Tertullian visited Greece and perhaps also Asia Minor; at any rate we know that he had temporary relations with the churches there. He was consequently placed in a position in which be could check the doctrine and practice of the Roman church (that is, the Christian Church in what is today Italy). Thus equipped with knowledge and experience, he returned to Carthage and there laid the foundation of Latin Christian literature. At first, after his conversion, he wrote Greek, but by and by he came to write in Latin almost exclusively.
The elements of this Christian Latin language may be enumerated as follows:—(i.) it had its origin, not in the literary language of Rome as developed by Cicero, but in the language of the people as we find it in Plautus and Terence; (ii.) it has an African complexion; (iii.) it is strongly influenced by Greek, particularly through the Latin translation of the VETUS ITALA and of the New Testament, besides being sprinkled with a large number of Greek words derived from the Scriptures or from the Greek liturgies; (iv.) it bears the stamp of the Gnostic style and contains also some military expressions; (v.) it owes something to the original creative power of Tertullian. As for his theology, its leading factors were—(i.) the teachings of the apologists; (ii..) the philosophy of the Stoics; (iii.) the rule of faith, interpreted in an anti-Gnostic sense, as he had received it from the Church of Rome; (iv.) the Soteriological theology of Melito and Irenaeus; (v.) the substance of the utterances of the Montanist prophets (in the closing decades of his life).
This analysis does not disclose, nor indeed is it possible to discover, what was the determining element for Tertullian; in fact he was under the dominion of more than one ruling principle, and he felt himself bound by several mutually opposing authorities. It. was his desire to unite the enthusiasm of primitive Christianity with intelligent thought, the original demands of the Gospel with every letter of the Scriptures and with the practice of the Roman church, the sayings of the Paraclete with the authority of the bishops, the law of the churches with the freedom of the inspired, the rigid discipline of the Montanist with all the utterances of the New Testament and with the arrangements of a church seeking to set itself up within the world. - At this task he toiled for years, involved in contradictions which it took all the finished skill of the jurist to conceal from him for a time.
In his more advanced years, Tertullian came out strongly against the signs of what appears to be Roman Catholic Teachings and their corrupted teachings and departure from Historic, true and authentic Christianity.
Not only did the great chasm between the old Christianity, to which his soul clung, and the Christianity of the Scriptures as juristically and philosophically interpreted by Roman Catholic teachigns remain unbridged; he also clung fast, in spite of his separation from the Catholic church, to his position that the true church possesses the true doctrine, that the bishops in succession are the repositories of the grace of the teaching office, and so forth. The growing violence of his latest works is to be accounted for, not only by his burning indignation against the ever-advancing secularization of the Catholic church, but also by the incompatibility between the authorities which he recognized and yet was not able to reconcile.
After having done battle with heathens, Jews, Marcionites, Gnostics, Monarchians, and the Catholics, he died an old man, carrying with him to the grave the last remains of primitive Christianity in the West, but at the same time in conflict with himself.
(4) What has just been said brings out very clearly how important in their bearing on Tertullian’s development were the circumstances of the age in which he laboured. He was a defender of the Christian Faith, and another example of those who have learned to earnestly contend as a faithful servant and authentic leader.
sources: Works of Tertullian/Ency. Brit., older editions