tertullian was one of the most powerfu personalities in early church history,
and one of the most forcible and voluminous writers.
he introduces us in africa to an entirely new phase of church lif and thought.
and was also the founder of western theology and of ecclesiastical latin.
the influence of the african church was great on christianity generally, but especially on the west,
till the fifth century;
but when and by whom it was first planted no one knows;
(note: the ethiopian eunuch who was reading isaiah uncomprehendingly,
who philip led to Christ and baptized in the countryside as he was headed for home?)
suddenly it comes into history, fully organized and under many bishops,
towards the close of the second century.
africa, as we must now consider it, was not the whole northern seaboard of africa,
but the roman provice of africa, which in a general way
corresponded with the modern seaboards of tunis and tripoli.
the african chuch, therefore, was distinct from the church of egypt
which centered at alexandria and was greek.
the centre of the african church was carthage, which had been destroyed and ploughed up in 146 b.c.
but was colonized afresh by julius caesar in 46 b.c.
and in the second and third centuries was a prosperous trading colony;
without an aristocracy or a distinctive school of philosophy
and therefore with no great interest in the metaphysical questions which troubled the eastern mind;
eminently practical and so far as it was christianized,
profoundly interested in all that concerned the moral and spiritual welfare of mankind.
..the gifts of prophesying and of tongues were among the earliest features of the church;
but what either exactly meant is involved in some obscurity.
prophesying was apparently a kind of extempore preaching'
and those who had the gift formed something like an order,
instructing and edifying being a work rather assigned to them than to the presbyters.
that is comparatively simple. the speaking in tongues is more difficult to understan'
but what is most important to observe in it is that it was connected with ecstasy or trance.
it was recognized by irenaeus, who says,
'we have many brethren in the Church having prophetical gifts
and by the spirit speaking all kinds of tongues.'
by the fourth century, however, the speaking with tongues had disappeared;
for chrysostome says of it,
'this whole topic is very obscure;
but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts described,
which are such as then used to appear, but now no longer take place'.
to some extent, however, it reappeared in the prophesyings of the 15th century,
in Quietism in the 17th, among the quakers in the 17th and 18th and the irvingites in the 19th.
montanus, therefore, in the middle of the second century..
was not striking out any new line;
the innovation lay in the way he used his gift.
he was himself a phrygian, and had been a priest of cybele,
and was altogether a weak minded person.
after his conversion he commenced prophesying
and associated with himself two deaconesses, maximilla and priscilla,
who like him gave utterances 'in the spirit';
the essential condition being, that the mind was absolutely passive
and that they spirit swept over it, like the plectrum over the lyre
-a condition, in fact, of trance or ecstasy.
montanus called himself, and was called by his followers, the Paraclete;
not that he claimed to be the Holy Ghost Incarnate,
but that through him and his equally inspired and spiritual followers the Spirit
made fresh and suplementary revelations...
tertullian, writing as a montanist, calls the old testament dispensation Infancy, the New Youth,
and the days of the paraclete Maturity.
these parts of the christian dispensation, he teaches, which relate to the life and conversation,
admit to change and improvement.
on this very account our Lord sent the paraclete, to the end that,
as the weakness of man's nature rendered him incapable of bearing the whole truth at once,
the christian rule of life might be carried to perfection by the Holy Spirit substituted in the place of our Lord.
here, then, is the first sign of the roman catholic doctrine of development.
cardinal newman admits and in fact claims this, saying in his essay on development,
'the very foundation of montanism was development, though not of doctrine, yet of discipline and conduct.
and T, he adds, understood even the process of it.
...montanism..forerunner of development, ..was also of puritanism..in its most extreme form.
it tried to raise an impossible standard for humanity.
fasting a was carried to an impracticable point.
marriage was undesirable.
second marriage, which the church only dicouraged, was adultery.
military service was barred.
amusement of all kind was sinful.
profane learning was forbidden.
only those who could realize these high ideals were true christians and these were called the Spiritales;
the ordinary Catholics were only Psychichi, possessing souls, but not spirits;
sometimes they were only Carnales, mere bodily existences.
rule in the church depended on spiritual endowments and not on church order.
they exaggerated the idea of the priesthood of the laity.
they distinguished between venial and mortal sins.
..no doubt they were confronted with a growing worldliness in the church,
and there was some good in their aim;
but the effect on character was to produce gloominess, acerbity and spiritual pride.
this at any rate was the effect produced on tertullian.
they held firmly to orthodox doctrine; so did he.
indeed his most splendid doctrinal works were of the montanist period.
...his relation to tradition is seen in the praescription of heretics written when a catholic.
praescriptio was a legal term, putting the other side out of court before the cause was tried..
..because they do not obey the rule of faith;
which is that 'which prescribes the belief that there is only one God
and that He is none other than the creator of the world,
who produced all things out of nothing through His own word first of all sent forth
that the word is called His Son,
and under the name of God was seen in divers manners by the patriarchs;
heard at times by the prophets;
at last brought down by the Spirit and power of the Father into the Virgin Mary;
was made flesh in her womb and being born of her went forth as Jesus Christ
thenceforth preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven and worked miracl3es.
having been crucified, He rose again the third day
then having been caught away into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father
sent in His place the power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe
will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of eternal life and the heavenly promises,
and to condemn the wicked to eternal fire,
after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened together with the restoration of their flesh.
this rule, as ti will be proved, was taught by Christ.
..this is again substantially the apostles creed, as stated by irenaeus, but now in quite different words...
..here are a few famous sayings of T-
'what greater pleasure is there than to despise pleasure?the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
a christian must be made, not born.
Christ is truth, not custom.
it is contrary to religion to compel religion.
marcion...T was his principal refuter
..some account must be given of him
since, however much we may doubt
whether the other Gnostics were heretics or simply teachers of a rival philosophy,
marcion, the son of a bishop of sinope, started entirely from a christian standpoint
always sought to be restored to communion
founded a church of his own, which claimed to be christian in the fullest sense
but to explain his own peculiar views borrowed largely from the Gnostics.
he was ..a heretic, and the most dangerous of the gnostics
therefore polycarp called him 'the firstborn of satan'.
..T..devoted 5 books to him.
m came to rome to promulgate his views, but the Roman church refused him communion.
by this time all the heretical teachers had invaded rome.
..now the church there likewise partook of the words of tacitus..
'rome was a sink into which flowed all the crimes and baseness of the world'.
when M was refused communion, he asked the meaning of 'putting new wine into old bottles''
and made this the keynote of his teaching.
the new testament was not a completion or fulfilment of the old, but antagonistic to it.
the old..was to be entirely repudiated
and so much of the new as well,
as did not support his own view
which was that Christ was not the jewish messiah, who had yet to appear,
but the Son of the supreme God, who came to redeem the world form the imperfect deity of the old ..
-the demiurge in fact.
he said that Christ never came in the flesh at all, but only as a spirit:
so he is docetic-indeed more than all of them.
M's theology was a dualism.
there was a good God and a just God, meaning by just, inexorable (eye for eye and tooth for tooth)
the latter did not emanate from the former, but was a separate First Principle
...his just god was opposed to his good God, not as evil to good, but as imperfection to perfection.
he accepted just so much of the new testament as he could conveniently argue from;
10 of pau's epistles, and a mutilated edition of st luke (as paul's companion),
arranged by himself to suit the requirements of what he thought was the gospel according to paul,
whom he recognized as his great mater, but whose teaching he twisted and exaggerated.
the rest of the new testament he considered was written by judaizers.
T replied to the dualism of M
that if both his Gods were equal, possessing supreme power, duration and self existence,
they were really one
if unequal, only the higher was God at all
and if two, why not thirty?
how could material things be evil, or the work of imperfect deity,
if Christ used them in His sacraments?
since Christ has now come, why is Matter still allowed to continue?
why was Chris's redemption so long delayed?
why was all this unknown till marcion discovered it?
the antagonism between the testaments he refuted from paul's writings, which M had embodied
in his doctored bible.
the cavils against the old testament were met by showing, partly that he had misrepresented facts,
partly that he had drawn wrong inferences.
...T is said to have trampled on gnosticism,
as later athanasius did on arianism.
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