What could be more delightful than to have God the Father and our Lord in peace with us, than revelation of the truth, than confession of our errors, than pardon of the innumerable sins of our past life?
A Patristic Treasury: Early Church Wisdom for Today, edited by James R. Payton, Jr.
Except as noted, all cited passages from Tertullian.
The Trinity
Tertullian would write on “The Rule of Faith”: there is but one God, the Creator who produced everything from nothing through His Word; the Word is called His Son, who was seen by the patriarchs in diverse ways; and the Holy Spirit, who brought this Word into the Virgin Mary and who guides believers.
Provided the essence of the Rule [of Faith] is not disturbed, you may discuss as much as you like.
Which leaves a lot of room for dialogue among Christians of good faith.
Jesus Christ
After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the gospel no need of research.
As will come to be seen, Tertullian felt strongly about the idea of searching for truth anywhere outside of here. He didn’t like it.
Christ laid down one definite system of truth which the world must believe without qualification….
Something must be a given. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
“It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”
Man
Satan did not force our first parents to choose sin. The opposite is true, since they were not acting against their own wills, nor were they ignorant of what it was that God did not want them to do.
Something I could say a dozen times in each one of these posts: I hadn’t thought about it this way before. Whatever one believes about free will, man’s choosing, etc., it is quite clear that Adam and Eve chose sin. They chose it because they were in no way tainted by it; there was not “total depravity” before eating the fruit, no “we are all fallen.” They purposely and willingly and actively chose to do the one thing that God did not want them to do.
So, there is just one thing the devil does; he makes trial of you, to see whether you will choose what is in your power to choose – if you will!
Trials come; temptations come. I don’t get too hung up on the questions: are these from God? From Satan? Does God allow it or does He permit it?
What I have learned: it is through trials that I have seen my weaknesses. It is through trials where I have failed and have discovered where and how I must grow. It is through trials where I have grown. Whether these come from God or Satan, I have found benefit.
[Regarding God]: And this is the crowning guilt of human beings, that they will not recognize one of whom they cannot possibly be ignorant.
Human error worships everything but the very Creator of everything.
We look around us and come up with every answer to the “how” and “why” of it other than the only answer that fully satisfies the question.
And humanity being given over to death on account of sin, the entire human race, tainted in their descent from our first parents, were made a channel for transmitting his condemnation.
We are all fallen, and every aspect of our being is tainted.
You ought to choose things that are good for you rather than things which are merely not bad for you.
This is one area where compromise comes very easily. I recently had an opportunity where I was almost forced to change some of my routines – stopping things that weren’t necessarily bad for me, but that were not the best of what would have been good for me.
In this change, I had more time to read and write for this blog than I have had in a long time: not because I had more time, but because of what I did with the time I had.
To resist temptation is to prove one’s mettle.
God conversed with humanity, that humanity might learn to act like God.
Sanctification. What else can this mean other than learning to act like God? Yes, we never can or will be God. But we are to grow, always.
God has bestowed a written revelation to help all those whose heart is set on seeking Him – that seeking they may find, and finding believe, and believing obey.
For us it is clear, life does not begin until we begin to believe.
We are to believe, to understand what we observe through this belief.
Repentance
Where there is no fear, there is likewise no conversion, and where there is no conversion, repentance is in vain.
For all sins…He who has appointed that chastisement follow upon judgment, has also promised that pardon will also follow upon repentance.
A change of mind. Finally recognizing that the path you are on is a path that, in one way or another, physically or mentally or emotionally, is destructive to you and others and therefore deciding that your life must change. Repentance.
Baptism
The act of baptism itself is physical: we are plunged in water; but the effect is spiritual: we are freed from sins.
Water was the first to produce that which had life, that it might be no wonder if waters know how to give life in baptism.
Church Authority and Tradition
Tertullian spends much time on this idea of Church authority and tradition. What was certainly to some degree true in his time, I know longer find as convincing in ours. However, I present these here, to go along with some (rather terse) observations reflecting my view on this topic.
We Christians are forbidden to introduce anything on our own authority or to choose what someone else introduces on his own authority. Our authorities are the Lord’s apostles, and they in turn chose to introduce nothing on their own authority. They faithfully passed on to the nations the teaching which they had received from Christ.
How do we know that what is being passed on to us is what was faithfully passed on from Christ to the apostles – fifty generations later? I know of only one sure way, but it is a way that upsets many Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians when it is stated.
Yet even in this one sure way, interpretation and understanding can be confounded, which is the reason I respect these early understandings of the Church Fathers. In other words, not at all that I dismiss tradition and Church authority. But something must be senior, absolute. I don’t like how sola scriptura is normally caricatured by its antagonists and even often defended by its protagonists; for me, prima scriptura works much better as a guiding rule.
Is it likely that so many churches would have erred into one faith?
It is truly amazing how quickly the Christian gospel spread. But there were errors that also spread; errors that were dealt with in the early centuries even in Tertullian’s time and for centuries to come.
Where uniformity is found among many, it is not error but tradition.
More certainly, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Tradition is subject to fallen man; guidance by the Holy Spirit is not.
Are we to believe that those who learned from the apostles preached something different [than the apostles]?
We know with certainty that this chain has been broken, in multiple ways and multiple times. If for no other reason (and there are other reasons) than the differences that have resulted in the two main branches that claim that they are preaching what they have learned from the apostles.
No other teaching has the right to be received as apostolic, than what is at present proclaimed in the churches of apostolic foundation.
What…comes down from the apostles…has been kept as a sacred deposit in the churches of the apostles.
I can accept these proclamations in Tertullian’s time; he was just a couple of generations removed from the apostles. I don’t believe that there is an institutional church on earth that can make such claims today – at least not with the arrogance and confidence made by many.
We have the teaching from the apostles that God chose to preserve. This is in writing and in the New Testament. It is the most certain teaching we have.
Against Heresies
So, for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking what was prior, afterwards chose out for himself something which did not previously exist.
Heretics…can be refuted even without considering their doctrines; they are shown to be heretical by the novelty of their opinions.
When dealing with heretics, to shorten the discussion, we follow the practice of laying down a peremptory rule based on the lateness [of their appearance].
I agree with all of this. I consider this in our time, and offer three examples: Jehovah’s Witnesses, the LDS church, and followers, knowingly or not, of Scofield. To the extent I have studied these – and some more, others little – I find no meaningful arguments for this beyond the early Church debates / heresies regarding the nature of Jesus Christ and the Trinity.
I am certain that I have caricatures built into the following: Jehovah’s Witnesses find the earliest Church Councils corrupt, being called by emperors; yet, as I have highlighted throughout this series, even before these councils, the idea of God in three persons was strongly evident.
The LDS church, to the extent I understand any of it, in fact required a new revelation to get to their beliefs – sidestepping any need to wrestle with the early Church.
As to Scofield…somehow, for 1900 years, Christians found a way to be faithful and find hope in Christ’s second coming (as many of these Patristics have written) without selling out for a state for the Jewish people.
You ask: yes, but what of Protestants – Lutheran and Reformed? This is why I have worked through Matthew Barrett’s book (posts found here). The Western Church, from which they protested, certainly needed reform, and many in the earliest parts of these movements did look back to the early Church Fathers.
As to further Protestants movements…I say what I say about all Trinitarian-based churches: ultimately…prima scruptura. The ultimate arguments have to be based on Scripture.
Philosophy
There is nothing as old as the truth.
It is philosophy that supplies the heresies with their equipment.
A plague on Aristotle, who taught then [heretics] dialectic, the art which destroys as much as it builds.
What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic?
The patriarchs of the heretics are the philosophers.
We despise the teachings of secular literature as foolishness in God’s eyes.
All truth is God’s truth. I find this sentiment in other early Church Fathers, and it completely rings true for me. Therefore, I cannot agree with Tertullian’s overall sentiment here. The lenses offered by Plato and Aristotle, for example, do offer a means by which we can better understand God’s creation.
Other Comments
It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that everyone should worship according to his own convictions…. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion.
Amen.
In the [Lord’s] Prayer is comprised an epitome of the whole gospel.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev make a very similar point.
We do not take the parables as a source of doctrine; rather, we take doctrine as a norm for interpreting the parables.
I have two books on Jesus’s parables waiting on my shelf; I will get to these eventually and write on them at this blog.
If need be, we prefer an incomplete to an incorrect understanding of the Scripture.
This, to me, is one of the most important statements made by Tertullian. If believed, and lived, it would minimize what are labeled as heresies and it would reduce schisms in the Church.
What isn’t clear from Scripture and as understood in the earliest Church by the disciples of the apostles is perhaps best left to God. We will have eternity to explore these, and even then, we will never fully fathom God’s mind.
It is cowardly to keep quiet in order to escape recognition as a Christian.
Even more so in our time and place, where the consequences are nothing like what was faced in the early Church – or even elsewhere today.
Biographies / Sources
Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 220) lived in North Africa, and was trained in rhetoric and law. He was a brilliant defender of the Christian faith against heresies. He would later embrace Montanism, a movement that came to challenge a perceived laxity in Christian practice; this led to his being deemed schismatic.