Tertullian

Dates

around 155 - around 220 — Both dates are estimates. Much of the biography once attached to him — that he was a lawyer, a priest, the son of a centurion — rests on Jerome and is now doubted.

Region

Carthage, in Roman North Africa

Language of composition

Latin

Life

Tertullian wrote at Carthage around the turn of the third century, in a Latin of extraordinary force. He is the first substantial Christian author in that language, and much of the West's theological vocabulary — including the Latin words behind 'trinity', 'person' and 'substance' — is shaped by his usage.

In later life he associated himself with the New Prophecy, the rigorist movement usually called Montanism, and his writing turned against the wider Church's discipline as too lax. He appears to have died outside its communion.

Works

Generally accepted as authentic

• The Apology
• The Prescription Against Heretics

Disputed, spurious or lost

• Several works transmitted in the Tertullianic corpus — Authorship of a number of shorter pieces is contested.

Theological and spiritual contribution

The Prescription Against Heretics makes an argument that Irenaeus had made in Greek and that the West would use for centuries: the Scriptures belong to the Church, and those who bring novel teaching have no standing to argue from them. It is a legal argument in form and a theological one in substance.

The Apology is one of the most effective defences of Christians against the charges of the day — atheism, incest, cannibalism, disloyalty — and an important source for how Christians were regarded and treated.

Controversy and reception

Tertullian is a clear case for the classification this site uses. He is not a canonised saint of the Orthodox Church and is not counted among the Fathers, because he did not end within the Church's communion. His writings are nevertheless read, quoted and valued, and the Church's later vocabulary is indebted to him.

Quoting Tertullian therefore requires care in two directions. His earlier and later works do not always say the same thing, and the archived edition does not mark the division. And a striking sentence of his is the opinion of a brilliant and difficult writer, not the teaching of the Church — which is why every citation of him here carries the label for individual patristic opinion.