Tertullian Sentence Examples

Nay, in the Roman church a practice of fasting on Saturday as well as on Friday was current before the time of Tertullian.

This was the only authoritatively prescribed fast known to Tertullian (De jejunio, 2, 13, 14; De oratione, 18).

Next come the great Alexandrians, Clement, Origen, Dionysius; the Carthaginians, Tertullian and Cyprian; the Romans, Minucius Felix and Novatian; the last four laid the foundations of a Latin Christian literature.

The reader to whom the study is new will gain some idea of the bulk of the extant patristic literature, if we add that in Migne's collection ninety-six large volumes are occupied with the Greek fathers from Clement of Rome to John of Damascus, and seventysix with the Latin fathers from Tertullian to Gregory the Great.2 For a discussion of the more important fathers the student is referred to the articles which deal with them separately.

The evidence of Tertullian is good for Africa.

Cyprian had none of that character which makes the reading of Tertullian, whom he himself called his magister, so interesting and piquant, but he possessed other qualities which Tertullian lacked, especially the art of presenting his thoughts in simple, smooth and clear language, yet in a style which is not wanting in warmth and persuasive power.

Like Tertullian, and often in imitation of him, Cyprian took certain apologetic, dogmatic and pastoral themes as subjects of his treatises.

An erroneous derivation of the word pascha from the Greek ircthx iv, " to suffer," thus connected with the sufferings or passion of the Lord, is given by some of the Fathers of the Church, as Irenaeus, Tertullian and others, who were ignorant of Hebrew.

In that case, all who accept a revelation without professing to understand its content would require to be ranked as mystics; the fierce sincerity of Tertullian's credo quia ab-' surdum, Pascal's reconciliation of contradictions in Jesus Christ, and Bayle's half-sneering subordination of reason to faith would all be marks of this standpoint.

A still more extended an elaborate monograph than either of the preceding followed in 1822, Der Heilige Johannes Chrysostomus and die Kirche, besonders des Orients in dessen Zeitalter, and again, in 1824, another on Tertullian (Antignostikus).

A similar story appears in the Book of Enoch, and Tertullian has much to say about the wicked angels who revealed to men the knowledge of gold and silver, of lustrous stones, and of the power of herbs, and who introduced the arts of astrology and magic upon the earth.

Thus the pseudo-Democritus, who was reputed the author of the Physica et Mystica, which itself concludes each of its receipts with a magical formula, was believed to have travelled in Chaldaea, and to have had as his master Ostanes l the Mede, a name mentioned several times in the Leiden papyrus, and often by early Christian writers such as Tertullian, St Cyprian and St Augustine.

The title "To the Ephesians" is found in the Muratorian canon, in Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, as well as in all the earliest MSS.

It purports to be by Paul, and was held to be his by Marcion and in the Muratorian canon, and by Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, all writing at the end of the 2nd century.

The earlier fathers, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, believed in chiliasm simply because it was a part of the tradition of the church and because Marcion and the Gnostics would have nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, the Roman functionaries, the army and the colonists from Italy soon brought the Latin element into Africa, where it flourished with such vigour that, in the 3rd century, Carthage became the centre of a Romano-African civilization of extraordinary literary brilliancy, which numbered among its leaders such men as Apuleius, Tertullian, Arnobius, Cyprian, Augustine and many others.

The genuineness and inspiration of Enoch were believed in by the writer of the Ep. of Barnabas, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria.

Thus the Gelasian Decree includes the works of Eusebius, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, under this designation.

These were written, according to Tertullian (De Baptismo, 17) by a presbyter of Asia, who was deposed from his office on account of his forgery.

We may compare the common use of the word ordo in profane writers, who refer, e.g., to the ordo senatorius, ordo equester, &c. It is true that the evidence of Tertullian does not carry us back farther than the close of the znd or opening of the 3rd century A.D.

But a little before Tertullian, Irenaeus, though he does not use the word ordo, anticipates in some measure Tertullian's abstract term, for he recognizes a magisterii locus, " a place of magistracy " or " presidency " in the church.

Here we pause to remark that in Tertullian's view the church as a whole possesses the power of self-government and administration, though in the interest of discipline and convenience it delegates that power to special officers.

Anselm's motto, Credo ut intelligam, marks well the distance that has been traversed since Tertullian's Credo quia absurdum est.

In the and century a much greater name appears among the methodists, that of Soranus of Ephesus, a physician mentioned with praise even by Tertullian and Augustine, who practised at Rome in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.

The brevity of the note and its lack of doctrinal significance prevented it from gaining frequent quotation in the early Christian literature, but it appears in Marcion's canon as well as in the Muratorian, whilst Tertullian mentions, and Origen expressly quotes it.

It is practically synonymous with the word council (q.v.); concilium is used in the same technical sense by Tertullian c. 200, and auvoSos a century or so later in the Apostolic canons.

Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen quote it as Scripture, though in Africa it was not held in such high consideration, as Tertullian speaks slightingly of it.

The early church Fathers use the word most frequently in the restricted sense, although an effort has been made to read the wider meaning in Tertullian.

It was here that Christian Latin literature took its rise, and to this province belong the names of Tertullian and Cyprian, of Arnobius and Lactantius, above all of Augustine.

While severely condemning, both Irenaeus and Tertullian distinguished schismatics from heretics."

As long as the Christian Church was itself persecuted by the pagan empire, it advocated freedom of conscience, and insisted that religion could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius); but almost immediately after Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman empire the persecution of men for religious opinions began.

Estimates of Pilate's attitude at this point have varied infinitely, from Tertullian's, that he was " already in conviction a Christian " - jam pro sua conscientia Christianus- to Bacon's " jesting Pilate," who would not stay for a reply.

Some of the writings of Tertullian (c. 200), e.g.

It was at this juncture that Tertullian, the most famous theologian of the West, left the Church whose cause he had so manfully upheld against pagans and heretics.

The writings of Tertullian afford the clearest demonstration that what is called Montanism was, at any rate in Africa, a reaction against secularism in the Church.

Tertullian exhausted the resources of dialectic in the endeavour to define and vindicate the relation of the spiritualists to the "psychic" Christians; but no one will say he has succeeded in clearing the Montanistic position of its fundamental inconsistency.

In place of an intense moral earnestness, we find in Tertullian a legal casuistry, a finical morality, from which no good could ever come.

Other influences tending to diversity were the rise of later prophets and visionaries, the personality of prominent members of the sect (like Tertullian himself, who gave to Montanism much more than he received from it), and the power of local environment.

This Old Roman Creed may be traced back in the writings of Bishops Felix and Dionysus (3rd century), and in the writings of Tertullian in the 2nd century.

There are many references in Tertullian to the teaching of the Gnostic Marcion, whose breach with the Roman Church may be dated A.D.

The invectives against idolatry of the early Jewish and Christian apologists, of Philo, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius and others, are very good reading and throw much light on the question how an ancient pagan conceived of his idols.

Hence the conflict which made Trajan appear in the eyes of Christians like Tertullian the most infamous of monsters.

Amongst the chiliasts were Cerinthus, Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian and Victorinus.'

Difference of opinion as to the absolutely "irremissible" character of mortal sins led to the important controversy associated with the names of Zephyrinus, Tertullian, Calistus, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Novatian, in which the stricter and more montanistic party held that for those who had been guilty of such sins as theft, fraud, denial of the faith, there should be no restoration to church fellowship even in the hour of death.

Tertullian (c. 160-240) uses it in both senses, of an oath, as in the passage of his treatise About Spectacles, where he says that no Christian " passes over to the enemy's camp without throwing away his arms, without abandoning the standards and sacraments of his chief."

Their trial and execution took place in Carthage under the Pro-consul Vigellius Saturninus, whom Tertullian declares to have been the first persecutor of the Christians in Africa.

Echoes of it are found in Tertullian and in Minucius Felix, and then it lay forgotten until Origen gave it new life.

The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is traceable to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long-lived Asian presbyter.

Tertullian (c. 200) had long before condemned this as a heathen custom; none the less, it was insisted on in later ages, and is a survival of the pagan lustrations or -repcppavTiipca.

It is still a disputed point whether Tertullian's quotations may be regarded as evidence for a Latin version or as independent translations from the Greek, nor is it certain that this version is African in an exclusive sense; it was undoubtedly used in Africa and there is no evidence that it was known elsewhere originally, but on the other hand there is no proof that it was not.

Bonwetsch, p. 242; [Tertullian], adv.

This Saturninus was the middle one of the three governors of Syria named above, and as his successor Varus must have arrived by the middle of 6 B.C. at latest (for coins of Varus are extant of the twenty-fifth year of the era of Actium), his own tenure must have fallen about 8 and 7 B.C., and his census cannot be placed later than 7 or 7-6 B.C. The independence of Tertullian's information about this census is guaranteed by the mere fact of his knowledge of the governor's name; and if there was a census about that date, it would be unreasonable not to identify it with St Luke's census of the Nativity.

In them Tertullian is the source of inspiration.

It was first taught, in the interests of the "monarchia" of God, by Praxeas, a confessor from Asia Minor, in Rome about 190, and was opposed by Tertullian in his wellknown controversial tract.

In Carthage Praxeas for a time had some success, but was forced by Tertullian not only to desist but to retract.

As early as Tertullian prayers for the dead, who were named, were offered in the rite; but there was as yet no idea of the sacrifice of Christ being reiterated in their behalf.

Their method and aim were entirely congenial to the rising Catholic Church, and one is not surprised to find from writers in the East (Theophilus of Antioch, Justin Martyr) and West (Irenaeus, Tertullian and the author of 2 Clement) that they were widely read and valued.

Tertullian, while speaking of readers and exorcists, says nothing about acolytes; neither does St Augustine.

Tertullian in fact created 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.

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, (4) the circumstances of_ the time in the midst of which he worked.

Tertullian both as a man and as a writer had much in common with the apostle Paul.

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 perversities and sophisms were rather the outcome of the peculiarly difficult circumstances in which he stood.

Among all the fathers of the first three centuries Tertullian has given the most powerful expression to the terrible earnestness of the Gospel.

His father, whose military spirit reveals itself in the whole bearing of Tertullian, to whom Christianity was above everything a " militia," had intended him for the law.

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.

From Rome Tertullian visited Greece and perhaps also Asia Minor; at any rate we know that he had temporary relations with the churches there.

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.

The same Tertullian who had fortified the Catholic church against Gnosticism was none the less anxious to protect it from becoming a political organization.

Although Tertullian's extant works are both numerous and copious, our knowledge of his life is very vague.

The works of Tertullian, on the chronology of which a great deal has been written, and which for the most part do not admit of being dated with perfect certainty, fall into three classes - the apologetic, defending Christianity against paganism and Judaism; the polemical dogmatic, refuting heresies and heretics; and the ascetic or practical, dealing with points of morality and church discipline.

Respecting its relation to the Octavius of Minucius Felix much has been written; to the present writer it seems unquestionable that Tertullian's work was the later.

The De spectaculis and De idololatria show that Tertullian was already in a certain sense a Montanist before he formally went over to that creed; on the other hand, his De poenitentia proves that his earlier views on church discipline were much more tolerant than his later.

Apelleiacos (lost), De paradiso (lost), De fato (lost), De anima (the first book on Christian psychology), De carne Christi, De resurrectione carnis, and De spe fidelium (lost), were all written after Tertullian had recognized the prophetic claims of the Montanists, but before he had left the church.

The latest extant works of Tertullian (all after 217) are his controversial writings against the laxity of the Catholics, full of the bitterest attacks, especially upon Calixtus, the bishop of Rome; these are De monogamic, De jejunio, De pudicitia, and De ecstasi Libri VII.

It is quite possible that Tertullian was the author of the Acta perpetuae et felicitatis, but he did not write the Libellus adv.

The "soldiers" of Mithras, says Tertullian, were signed or sealed on their foreheads.

The earliest African tradition, on the other hand, preserved by Tertullian l (De pudicitia, c. 20), but certainly not invented by him, ascribed the epistle to Barnabas.

All that was done or taught in Rome was immediately echoed through all the other Churches; Irenaeus and Tertullian constantly lay stress upon the tradition of the Roman Church, which in those very early days was almost without rivals, save in Asia, where there were a number of flourishing Churches, also apostolic in origin, forming a compact group and conscious of their dignity.

To these regions came St Louis and Raimon Lull, and one may in passing remember the strength of Christianity in Proconsular Africa in the days of Tertullian and Cyprian, and in Egypt under Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Athanasius.

The last of the great Latin Fathers and the first representative of medieval Catholicism he brings the dogmatic theology of Tertullian, Ambrose and Augustine into relation with the Scholastic speculation of later ages.

At the beginning of the 3rd century, if we are to believe Tertullian, they had no spiritual authority of their own, at any rate as far as the sacraments are concerned.

The little book was perhaps used by Justin Martyr in his own Dialogue with Trypho, and probably also by Tertullian and Cyprian, but it has not been preserved.

The earliest direct witness is Tertullian, who definitely states that Peter suffered under Nero by crucifixion.

As Tertullian relates of his contemporaries in the 2nd century, so the Cathars would reserve part of their bread of blessing and keep it for years, eating of it occasionally though only after saying the Benedicite.

The other works of Lord Hailes include Historical Memoirs concerning the Provincial Councils of the Scottish Clergy (1769); An Examination of some of the Arguments for the High Antiquity of Regiam Majestatem (1769); three volumes entitled Remains of Christian Antiquity (" Account of the Martyrs of Smyrna and Lyons in the Second Century," 1776; " The Trials of Justin Martyr, Cyprian, &c.," 1778; The History of the Martyrs of Palestine, translated from Eusebius," 1780); Disquisitions concerning the Antiquities of the Christian Church (1783); and editions or translations of portions of Lactantius, Tertullian and Minucius Felix.

Irenaeus regards as heretical the opinion that the souls of the departed pass immediately into glory; Tertullian, Cyprian, the Acts of St Perpetua, Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil, Gregory of Nyassa, Ambrose, Chrysostom and Jerome, all speak of prayer for the dead and seem to imply belief in a purgatory, but their view seems to have been affected by the pre-Christian doctrine of Hades or Sheol.

Credo, quia absurdum was applied, notably by the popular writers of the French Second Empire, in a fashion grotesquely literal enough to scandalize Tertullian himself.

Both groups had their scientific theologians who sought to vindicate their characteristic doctrines, the Adoptianist divines holding by the Aristotelian philosophy, and the Modalists by that of the Stoics; while the Trinitarians (Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Novatian), on the other hand, appealed to Plato.

Or the relation between the inferior deities and the most exalted may be conceived politically and explained by Tertullian's formula, " Imperium penes unum, officia penes multos."

Vigilantius, a presbyter of Barcelona, still occupied the position of Tertullian and Lactantius in this matter.

Tertullian believed that an angel was sent down, when God was invoked, like that which stirred the pool of Bethesda.

From all this we conclude that what is poetry to us - akin to the folk-lore of water-sprites, naiads, kelpies, river-gods and water-worship in general - was to Tertullian and to the generations of believers who fashioned the baptismal rites, ablutions and beliefs of the church, nothing less than grim reality and unquestionable fact.

It lingered on as applied to the Seventy 2 - by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origenand even to Clement of Rome, by Clem.

To make the scene more grim they wore black dresses (Tertullian, De Pallio) from head to foot.

Tertullian is fond of alluding to Simon Magus.

The word used for the Thought of the first Father, which in Justin is €vvoca, and which the translator of Irenaeus renders by conceptio and Tertullian by injectio, is in Hippolytus E7rtvota.

The practice is not a primitive one; Tertullian simply advises Christians to avoid vanity in dressing their hair, and Jerome deprecates both long and closely cropped hair.

Her name does not appear in Tertullian's list of the indigetes di, and Juvenal contrasts her worship unfavourably with the old Roman Numa' ritual.

Tertullian (2nd century) uses processio and procedere in the sense of "to go out, appear in public," 1 and, as applied to a church function, processio was first used in the same way as collecta, as the equivalent of the Greek vuva es, i.e.

Such are the leading features of the rite in Tertullian, and they reappear in the 4th century in the rites of all the orthodox churches of East and West; Tertullian testifies that the Marcionites observed the particulars numbered one to six, which must therefore go back at least to the year 150.

Tertullian, however, in his work On Baptism, holds that even that is not always enough.

Tertullian replies that " We must beware of giving the holy thing to dogs and of casting pearls before swine."

Tertullian's scruples were not long respected in Carthage, for in Cyprian's works (c. 250.) we already hear of new-born infants being baptized.

And yet Justin Martyr, Tertullian and other apologists of the 2nd century had found nothing to conceal from the eye and ear of pagan emperors and their ministers.

But before his time and within a hundred years of Tertullian this symbolism in its original significance had become heretical, and the orthodox were thrown back on another explanation of it.

Tertullian and others attest this custom among the followers of Cerinthus and Marcion.

The process of public confession or penance (exomologesis, Greek for public confession) was as follows (see Tertullian, De paenitentia IX., and other writers).

One can hardly be surprised that Tertullian says that few faced such an ordeal.

Thus Calixtus, bishop of Rome 219 -223, decided to admit adulterers to exomologesis and so to communion; and Tertullian, now become a Montanist, pours out his scorn on him.

But neither Tertullian nor any other of the fathers seems to have been aware of the existence of any such institution among the Jews; and very probably the story about it may have been a comparatively late invention.

As early as the time of Tertullian it was also usual for communicants to prepare themselves by fasting for receiving the eucharist.

The right of bishops to ordain special fasts, "ex aliqua sollicitudinis ecclesiasticae causa " (Tertullian), was also recognized.

The Church's first creed had been " the Fatherhood of God and the Messiahship of Jesus " (A Ritschl); but the " Rule of Faith " (Irenaeus; Tertullian, who uses the exact expression; Origen)- that summary of religiously important facts which was meant to ward off error without reliance on speculations such as the Logos doctrine - built itself up along the lines of the baptismal formula of Matt.

Tertullian's legal training as a lawyer was a curious coincidence, if nothing more, and those legal concepts which show themselves strongly in him have done much to mould the Western type of Christian theology.

Thus, for example, the anti-secular tendencies of the new creed, to which Tertullian (160-220) gave violent and rigid expression, were exaggerated in the Montanist heresy which he ultimately joined; on the other hand, Clement of Alexandria, in opposition to the general tone of his age, maintained the value of pagan philosophy for the development of Christian faith into true knowledge (Gnosis), and the value of the natural development of man through marriage for the normal perfecting of the Christian life.

The power which they had been the first to invoke having thus declared so emphatically and persistently against them, the Donatists revived the old world-alien Christianity of the days of persecution, and repeated Tertullian's question, "What has the emperor to do with the church ?"

The same source seems to have been used by 1Vlinucius Felix and Tertullian, and Eusebius in his Praei.

There was a second chapel of Semo Sancus on the island in the Tiber with an altar, the inscription on which led Christian writers (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius) to confuse him with Simon Magus, and to infer that the latter was worshipped at Rome as a god.

The explanation that he offers is that the Diatessaron of Tatian was widely used and corrupted all extant texts, so that the Old Syriac, the Old Latin, the quotations of Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian and others may be regarded as various combinations of the Tatianic text and I-H-K.

Tertullian, who is sometimes called an anthropomorphist, stood for the Stoical doctrine, that all reality, even the divine, is in a sense material.

Earlier on, Tertullian had borrowed from the stoics the doctrine of the soul's corporeality as well as God's own corporeality.

Clement wished the name to be reserved for the eucharist, because the love-feasts of the church had degenerated, as Tertullian too discovered, as soon as he turned Motanist.

Too often the primitive "heresy of the Phrygians" has been studied in the light of the matured system of Tertullian.

An ingenious conjecture by Zahn enables us to add the words " holy Church " to our reconstruction of the creed from the writings of Tertullian.

And as to Christians, Tertullian about 210 tells how the presbyter who, in proconsular Asia, had " composed the Acts of Paul and Thecla" was convicted and deposed, for how could it be credible that Paul should confer upon women the power to "teach and baptize " as these Acts averred ?

Written sources from the 1st and 2nd centuries are relatively few, comprising, in addition to some scattered allusions by outsiders, the New Testament, the Apostolic Fathers, the Greek Apologists, Clement of Alexandria, the old Catholic Fathers (Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus) and a few Gnostic fragments.

Their point of view was better expressed in the scruples of priests, who, as Tertullian (c. 200) records (De Corona, iii.), were careful lest a crumb of the bread or a drop of the wine should fall on the ground, and by such incidents the body of Christ be harassed and attacked!

This statement derives confirmation from the Digest, where references are made to two works, De Castrensi Peculio and Quaestionum Libri VIII., of a Roman jurist named Tertullian, who must have flourished about 180 A.D.

These writings were used as a quarry by the compilers and dilettanti of later times, such as Pliny, Plutarch, Gellius, Festus, Macrobius, and by Christian champions like Tertullian, Arnobius and Augustine, who did not disdain to seek in heathen literature the means of defending their faith.

An extreme result of this influence is shown in Tertullian's view, that no Christian could properly hold the office of a secular magistrate in which he would have to doom to death, chains, imprisonment; but even more sober writers, such as Ambrose, extend Christian passivity so far as to preclude self-defence even against a murderous assault.