Tertullian Writes Christian Theology in Latin

Most of what is told of Tertullian’s life comes from a short notice by Jerome, written almost two centuries later. It calls him a presbyter from Carthage, the son of a centurion, who was active under the emperors Severus and Caracalla, went over to the teaching of Montanus in middle life and is said to have lived to old age. Jerome ranks him as chief of the Latin Christian writers after Victor and Apollonius (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 53).

The Apology is addressed to the governors who tried Christians. It protests that they are condemned for a name, without the inquiry given to any other accused (Tertullian, Apology 1–2). “We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you” (Tertullian, Apology 37). It describes their meetings for prayer, including prayer for the emperors, for the reading of Scripture and for discipline, and a monthly voluntary collection for the poor, orphans, the aged and prisoners, so that outsiders remark “how they love one another” (Tertullian, Apology 39). Whatever disaster strikes, the cry is “Away with the Christians to the lion!” (Tertullian, Apology 40). Persecution defeats itself: “the blood of Christians is seed” (Tertullian, Apology 50). In a later appeal to the governor Scapula he argues that it is “a fundamental human right” for each person to worship as he is convinced, and that religion cannot be compelled (Tertullian, To Scapula 2).

Against rival teachers he argued from the churches’ descent from the apostles. Truth is what the churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ and Christ from God, and those outside that line have no claim on the Scriptures (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 21; 37). He sums up the “rule of faith” in a few lines (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 13) and asks, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 7)

His treatise Against Praxeas answers a teacher who, as Tertullian reports him, held that the Father himself was born and suffered (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 1). There is one only God, Tertullian writes, but under a “dispensation” (in Greek oikonomia) “which distributes the Unity into a Trinity”, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: three “not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 2). One is other than another “on the ground of Personality, not of Substance” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 12). His Latin words in these passages are trinitas, substantia and persona (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 2; 12 (Latin)).

By then he had parted from many of his fellow Christians. He says that he and his friends “withdrew” over their recognition of the Paraclete, the Spirit speaking in the New Prophecy (see the New Prophecy of Montanus) (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 1). By Jerome’s account he “lapsed to the doctrine of Montanus” and wrote books against the church (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 53).