Who is tertullian

Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Mary Fairchild. Christianity Expert.

Mary Fairchild is a full-time Christian minister, writer, and editor of two Christian anthologies, including "Stories of Cavalry. Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter. Updated February 05, Died : After A. Cite this Article Format. Fairchild, Mary. Biography of Tertullian, Father of Latin Theology. Biography of Eusebius, Father of Church History.

Biography of Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Angels. Who Was Saint Augustine? John Chrysostom, the Golden-Tongued Preacher. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Skip to content. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading By whom, through whom, when and to whom has been handed down the discipline by which we are Christians?

The answer is plain: Christ sent His apostles, who founded churches in each city, from which the others have borrowed the tradition of the Faith and the seed of doctrine and daily borrow in order to become churches; so that they also are Apostolic in that they are the offspring of the Apostolic churches.

All are that one Church which the Apostles founded, so long as peace and intercommunion are observed [ dum est illis communicatio pacis et appellatio fraternitatis et contesseratio hospitalitatis ].

Therefore the testimony to the truth is this: We communicate with the apostolic Churches". The heretics will reply that the Apostles did not know all the truth. Could anything be unknown to Peter, who was called the rock on which the Church was to be built? But they will say, the churches have erred. Some indeed went wrong, and were corrected by the Apostle ; though for others he had nothing but praise.

Admitting this absurdity, then all the baptisms , spiritual gifts, miracles , martyrdoms , were in vain until Marcion and Valentinus appeared at last! Truth will be younger than error ; for both these heresiarchs are of yesterday, and were still Catholics at Rome in the episcopate of Eleutherius this name is a slip or a false reading. Anyhow the heresies are at best novelties, and have no continuity with the teaching of Christ.

Perhaps some heretics may claim Apostolic antiquity: we reply: Let them publish the origins of their churches and unroll the catalogue of their bishops till now from the Apostles or from some bishop appointed by the Apostles , as the Smyrnaeans count from Polycarp and John, and the Romans from Clement and Peter; let heretics invent something to match this. Why, their errors were denounced by the Apostles long ago.

Finally 36 , he names some Apostolic churches, pointing above all to Rome , whose witness is nearest at hand, — happy Church, in which the Apostles poured out their whole teaching with their blood, where Peter suffered a death like his Master's , where Paul was crowned with an end like the Baptist's , where John was plunged into fiery oil without hurt!

The Roman Rule of Faith is summarized, no doubt from the old Roman Creed, the same as our present Apostles' Creed but for a few small additions in the latter; much the same summary was given in chapter xiii, and is found also in "De virginibus velandis" chapter I. Tertullian evidently avoids giving the exact words, which would be taught only to catechumens shortly before baptism.

The whole luminous argument is founded on the first chapters of St. Never did he show himself less violent and less obscure. The appeal to the Apostolic churches was unanswerable in his day; the rest of his argument is still valid. A series of short works addressed to catechumens belong also to Tertullian's Catholic days, and fall between and It explains that the making of idols is forbidden, and similarly astrology , selling of incense , etc. A schoolmaster cannot elude contamination. A Christian cannot be a soldier.

To the question, "How am I then to live? We learn that baptism was conferred regularly by the bishop , but with his consent could be administered by priests , deacons , or even laymen. The proper times were Easter and Pentecost. Preparation was made by fasting , vigils, and prayers. Confirmation was conferred immediately after by unction and laying on of hands. Besides these didactic works to catechumens , Tertullian wrote at the same period two books, "Ad uxorem", in the former of which he begs his wife not to marry again after his death, as it is not proper for a Christian , while in the second book he enjoins upon her at least to marry a Christian if she does marry, for pagans must not be consorted with.

A little book on patience is touching, for the writer admits that it is an impudence in him to discourse on a virtue in which he is so conspicuously lacking. A book against the Jews contains some curious chronology , used to prove the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks. The latter half of the book is nearly identical with part of the third book against Marcion. It would seem that Tertullian used over again what he had written in the earliest form of that work, which dates from this time.

Tertullian reduces his view ad absurdum , and establishes the creation out of nothing both from Scripture and reason. The next period of Tertullian's literary activity shows distinct evidence of Montanist opinions, but he has not yet openly broken with the Church , which had not as yet condemned the new prophecy. Montanus and the prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla had been long dead when Tertullian was converted to belief in their inspiration. He held the words of Montanus to be really those of the Paraclete , and he characteristically exaggerated their import.

We find him henceforth lapsing into rigorism, and condemning absolutely second marriage and forgiveness of certain sins , and insisting on new fasts. His teaching had always been excessive in its severity; now he positively revels in harshness. We learn that Carthage was divided by a dispute whether virgins should be veiled; Tertullian and the pro-Montanist party stood for the affirmative.

The book had been preceded by a Greek writing on the same subject. Tertullian declares that the Rule of Faith is unchangeable, but discipline is progressive. He quotes a dream in favour of the veil. The date may be about Shortly afterwards Tertullian published his largest extant work, five books against Marcion. A first draft had been written much earlier; a second recension had been published, when yet unfinished, without the writer's consent; the first book of the final edition was finished in the fifteenth year of Severus, The last book may be a few years later.

This controversy is most important for our knowledge of Marcion's doctrine. The refutation of it out of his own New Testament , which consisted of St. Luke's Gospel and St. Paul's Epistles , enables us to reconstitute much of the heretic's Scripture text.

The result may be seen in Zahn's, "Geschichte des N. Kanons", II, A work against the Valentinians followed. It is mainly based on the first book of St. In the little book "De pallio" appeared. Tertullian had excited remark by adopting the Greek pallium , the recognized dress of philosophers , and he defends his conduct in a witty pamphlet.

A long book, "De anima", gives Tertullian's psychology. He well describes the unity of the soul ; he teaches that it is spiritual, but immateriality in the fullest sense he admits for nothing that exists, — even God is corpus. Two works are against the Docetism of the Gnostics , "De carne Christi" and "De resurrectione carnis". Here he emphasizes the reality of Christ's Body and His virgin-birth , and teaches a corporal resurrection.

But he seems to deny the virginity of Mary, the Mother of Christ , in partu , though he affirms it ante partum. He addressed to a convert who was a widower an exhortation to avoid second marriage, which is equivalent to fornication. This work, "De exhortatione castitatis", implies that the writer is not yet separated from the Church.

The same excessive rigour appears in the "De corona", in which Tertullian defends a soldier who had refused to wear a chaplet on his head when he received the donative granted to the army on the accession of Caracalla and Geta in The man had been degraded and imprisoned.

Many Christians thought his action extravagant, and refused to regard him as a martyr. Tertullian not only declares that to wear the crown would have been idolatry , but argues that no Christian can be a soldier without compromising his faith. Next in order is the "Scorpiace" , or antidote to the bite of the Scorpion, directed against the teaching of the Valentinians that God cannot approve of martyrdom , since He does not want man's death; they even permitted the external act of idolatry.

Because of it, we are counted a desperate, reckless race. But the very desperation and recklessness you object to in us, you exalt among yourselves as a standard of virtue in the cause of glory and of fame. Mucius of his own will left his right hand on the altar. What sublimity of mind! Empedocles gave his whole body at Catana to the fires of Etna. What resolution! The founder of Carthage gave herself away in second marriage to the funeral pile. What a noble witness of her chastity!

We all know how the Spartan lash, applied with the utmost cruelty under the very eyes of encouraging friends, confers honor on the young men who endure it in proportion to the blood which they shed. For such human glory, you count it neither reckless folly, nor desperate obstinacy to despise death and all kinds of savage treatment. You will endure this for your home country, for the Empire, for friendship, but not for God! You cast statues in honor of such people, you put inscriptions upon their images and carve epitaphs on their tombs, so that their names may never perish.

So far as you can by your monuments, you grant your sons the resurrection of the dead. But anyone who expects the true resurrection from God and so suffers for God, is insane! Go zealously on, good presidents! You will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice us, kill us, torture us, condemn us and grind us to dust, as they demand.

Your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. That is why God allows us to suffer. Did you not just recently condemn a Christian woman to be violated by men rather than thrown to the lions? In doing so, you showed that we consider a taint on our purity something more terrible than any punishment and any death. Your cruelty, however great, is more a temptation to us than a benefit to you.

The more we are mown down by you, the more we grow. The blood of Christians is seed. Many of your writers, such as Cicero and Seneca… exhort their readers to bear pain and death bravely, and yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, who teach not by word, but by deed.

For that secures the remission of all offenses. And this is why it is that we give you thanks, on the very spot, for your sentences on us. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the Highest.

It is quite shocking to hear the rumors about Christians that Tertullian seriously had to address.