Renouncing the world
Tertullian never forgot the baptismal pledge in which he renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels; and, for his part, he never showed any tendency to make compromise with them – when he recognized them, for sometimes he seems not to have penetrated their disguises. Again and again his pledge comes back to him. What has the Christian to do with circus or theatre, who has renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels, when both places are specially consecrated to these, when there, above all, wickedness, lust and cruelty reign without reserve?[1089] How can the maker of idols, the temple-painter, etc., be said to have renounced the devil and his angels, if they make their living by them?[1090] We have seen the difficulty of the schoolmaster here. The general question of trade troubles Tertullian – its cupidity, the lie that ministers to cupidity, to say nothing of perjury.[1091] Of astrologers, he would have thought, nothing needed to be said – but that he had "within these few days" heard some one claim the right to continue in the profession. He reminds him of the source of his magical information – the fallen angels.[1092] One must not even name them – to say Meditis fidius is idolatry, for it is a prayer; but to say "I live in the street of Isis" is not sin – it is sense.[1093] Many inventions were attributed by pagans to their gods. If every implement of life is set down to some god, "yet I still must recognize Christ lying on a couch – or when he brings a basin to his disciples' feet, or pours water from the jug, and is girded with linen – Osiris' own peculiar garb."[1094] In fact, common utility, and the service of ordinary needs and comforts, may lead us to look upon things (to whomsoever attributed) as really due to the inspiration of God himself "who foresees, instructs and gives pleasure to man, who is after all His own."[1095] Thus common sense and his doctrine of Nature come to his aid. "So amid rocks and bays, amid the shoals and breakers of idolatry, faith steers her course, her sails filled by the Spirit of God."[1096]
The Apology
Tertullian had been a lawyer and a pleader, as we are reminded in many a page, where the man of letters is overridden by the man of codes and arguments; and a lawyer he remained. The Gospel, for instance, bade that, if any man take the tunic, he should be allowed to take the cloak also. Yes, says Tertullian, if he asks – "if he threatens, I will ask for the tunic back."[1097] A man, with such habits of mind, will not take violent measures to repel injustice, but he may be counted upon to defend himself in his own way. Tertullian, accordingly, when persecution broke out in the autumn of 197 in Carthage, addressed to the governor of the province an Apology for the Christians. It is one of his greatest works. It was translated into Greek, and Eusebius quotes the translation in several places. It is a most brilliant book. All his wit and warmth, his pungency and directness, his knowledge and his solid sense come into play. As a piece of rhetoric, as a lawyer's speech, it is inimitable. But it is more than that, for it is as full of his finest qualities as of his other gifts of dexterity and humour. It shows the full grown and developed man, every faculty at its highest and all consecrated, and the book glows with the passion of a dedicated spirit.
He begins with the ironical suggestion that, if the governors of provinces are not permitted in their judicial capacity to examine in public the case of the Christians, if this type of action alone their authority is afraid – or blushes – to investigate in the interests of justice, he yet hopes that Truth by the silent path of letters may reach their ears. Truth makes no excuse – she knows she is a stranger here, while her race, home, hope, grace and dignity are in heaven. All her eagerness is not to be condemned unheard. Condemnation without trial is invidious, it suggests injustice and wakes suspicion. It is in the interests of Christianity, too, that it should be examined – that is how the numbers of the Christians have grown to such a height. They are not ashamed – unless it be of having become Christians so late. The natural characteristics of evil are fear, shame, tergiversation, regret; yet the Christian criminal is glad to be accused, prays to be condemned and is happy to suffer. You cannot call it madness, when you are shown to be ignorant of what it is.
Christians are condemned for the name's sake, though such condemnation, irrespective of the proving of guilt or innocence, is outrage. Others are tortured to confess their guilt, Christians to deny it. Trajan's famous letter to Pliny, he tears to shreds; Christians are not to be hunted down – that is, they are innocent; but they are to be punished – that is, they are guilty. If the one, why not hunt them down? If the other, why punish? Of course Trajan's plan was a compromise, and Tertullian is not a man of compromises. If a founder's name is guilt for a school, look around! Schools of philosophers and schools of cooks bear their founders' names with impunity. But about the Founder of the Christian school curiosity ceases to be inquisitive. But the "authority of laws" is invoked against truth —non licet esse vos! is the cry. What if laws do forbid Christians to be? "If your law has made a mistake, well, I suppose, it was a human brain that conceived it; for it did not come down from heaven." Laws are always being changed, and have been. "Are you not yourselves every day, as experiment illumines the darkness of antiquity, engaged in felling and cutting the whole of that ancient and ugly forest of laws with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts?"[1098] Roman laws once forbade extravagance, theatres, divorce – they forbade the religions of Bacchus, Serapis and Isis. Where are those laws now? "You are always praising antiquity, and you improvise your life from day to day."[1099]
In passing, one remark may be made in view of what is said sometimes of Tertullian and his conception of religion. "To Tertullian the revelation through the Christ is no more than a law."[1100] There is truth in this criticism, of course; but unless it is clearly understood that Tertullian drew the distinction, which this passage of the Apology and others suggest, between Natural law, as conceived by the Stoics, and civil law as regarded by a Propraetor, he is likely to be misjudged. He constantly slips into the lawyer's way of handling law, for like all lawyers he is apt to think in terms of paper and parchment; but he draws a great distinction, not so familiar to judges and lawyers – as English daily papers abundantly reveal – between the laws of God or Nature and the laws of human convention or human legislatures. The weak spot was his belief in the text of the Scriptures as the ultimate and irrefragable word and will of God, though even here, in his happier hours, when he is not under stress of argument, he will interpret the divine and infallible code, not by the letter, but by the general principles to be observed at once in Nature and the book. Legis injustæ honor nullus est[1101] is not the ordinary language of a lawyer.
The odious charges brought by the vulgar against the Christians then, as now in China, and used for their own purposes by men who really knew better, he shows to be incredible. No one has the least evidence of any kind for them, and yet Christian meetings are constantly surprised. What a triumph would await the spy or the traitor who could prove them! But they are not believed, or men would harry the Christians from the face of the earth (c. 8). As to the idea that Christians eat children to gain eternal life – who would think it worth the price? No! if such things are done, by whom are they done? He reminds his fellow-countrymen that in the reign of Tiberius priests of Saturn were crucified in Africa on the sacred trees around their temple – for the sacrifice of children. And then who are those who practise abortion? "how many of those who crowd around and gape for Christian blood?" And the gladiatorial shows? is it the Christians who frequent them?
Atheism and treason were more serious charges. "You do not worship the gods." What gods? He cannot mention them all – "new, old, barbarian, Greek, Roman, foreign, captive, adoptive, special, common, male, female, rustic, urban, nautical and military" – but Saturn at any rate was a man, as the historians know. But they were made gods after they died. Now, that implies "a God more sublime, true owner (mancipem), so to speak, of divinity," who made them into gods, for they could not of course have done it themselves; and meanwhile you abolish the only one who could have. But why should he? – "unless the great God needed their ministry and aid in his divine tasks" – dead men's aid! (c. 11). No, the whole universe is the work of Reason; nothing was left for Saturn to do, or his family. It rained from the beginning, stars shone, thunders roared, and "Jove himself shuddered at the living bolts which you put in his hand." Ask the spiders what they think of your gods and their webs tell you (c. 12). To-day a god, to-morrow a pan, as domestic necessity melts and casts the metal. And the gods are carried round and alms begged for them —religio mendicans– "hold out your hand, Jupiter, if you want me to give you anything!"[1102] Does Homer's poetry do honour to the gods (c. 14) – do the actors on the stage (c. 15)?
Christians are not atheists. They worship one God, Creator, true, great, whose very greatness makes him known of men and unknown.[1103] Who he is, and that he is one, the human soul knows full well —O testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ! But God has other evidence —instrumentum litteraturæ. He sent into the world men "inundated with the divine spirit" to proclaim the one God, who framed all things, who made man, who one day will raise man from the dead for eternal judgment. These writings of the prophets are not secret books. Anyone can read them in the Greek version, which was made by the seventy elders for Ptolemy Philadelphus. To this book he appeals, – to the majesty of Scripture, to the fulfilment of prophecy.
Zeno called the Logos the maker of all things – and named him Fate, God, mind of Jove, Necessity. Cleanthes described him as permeating all things. This the Christians also hold to be God's Word, Reason and Power – and his Son, one with him in being, Spirit as He is Spirit. This was born of a Virgin, became man, was crucified and rose again. Even the Cæsars would have believed on Christ, if Cæsars were not needful to the world, or if there could be Christian Cæsars.[1104] As for the pagan gods, they are dæmons, daily exorcised into the confession of Christ.
But the charge of Atheism may be retorted. Are not the pagans guilty of Atheism, at once in not worshipping the true God and in persecuting those who do? As a rule they conceive, with Plato, of a great Jove in heaven surrounded by a hierarchy of gods and dæmons.[1105] But, as in the Roman Empire, with its Emperor and its procurators and prefects, it is a capital offence to turn from the supreme ruler to the subordinate, so "may it not involve a charge of irreligion to take away freedom of religion, to forbid free choice of divinity, that I may not worship whom I will?" Every one else may; but "we are not counted Romans, who do not worship the god of the Romans. It is well that God is God of all, whose we are, whether we will or no. But with you it is lawful to worship anything whatever – except the true God."
But the gods raised Rome to be what she is. Which gods? Sterculus? Larentina? Did Jove forget Crete for Rome's sake – Crete, where he was born, where he lies buried?[1106] No, look to it lest God prove to be the dispenser of kingdoms, to whom belong both the world that is ruled and the man who rules. Some are surprised that Christians prefer "obstinacy to deliverance" – but Christians know from whom that suggestion comes, and they know the malevolence of the dæmon ranks, who are now beginning to despair since "they recognize they are not a match for us" (c. 27).
For the Emperor Christians invoke God, the eternal, the true, the living. They look up, with hands outspread, heads bared, and from their hearts, without a form of words, they pray for long life for the Emperor, an Empire free from alarms, a safe home, brave armies, a faithful senate, an honest people and a quiet world (c. 30). They do this, for the Empire stands between them and the world's end. (It was a common thought that the world and Rome would end together.) Christians however honour Cæsar as God's vice-gerent; he is theirs more than any one's, for he is set up by the Christians' God. They make no plots and have no recourse to magic to inquire into his "health" (c. 35).[1107] In fact "we are the same to the Emperors as to our next-door neighbours. We are equally forbidden to wish evil, to do evil, to speak evil, to think evil of anyone." So much for being enemies of the state (c. 36).
Christians do not retaliate on the mob for its violence, though, if they did, their numbers would be serious. "We are but of yesterday, and we have filled everything, cities, islands, camps, palace, forum," etc.; "all we have left you is the temples." But "far be it that a divine school should vindicate itself with human fire, or grieve to suffer that wherein it is proved" (c. 37). Christians make no disturbances and aspire to no offices. They are content to follow their religion and look after the poor, the shipwrecked, and men in mines and prisons. "See how they love each other!" say the heathen.[1108] They are not, as alleged, the cause of public disasters; though if the Nile do not overflow, or if the Tiber do, it is at once Christianos ad leonem! But they are "unprofitable in business!" Yes, to pimps, poisoners and mathematicians; still they are not Brahmans or solitaries of the woods, exiles from life, and they refuse no gift of God. "We sail with you, take the field with you, share your country life, and know all the intercourse of arts and business" (cc. 42, 43). They are innocent, for they fear God and not the proconsul. If they were a philosophic school, they would have toleration – "who compels a philosopher to sacrifice, to renounce, or to set out lamps at midday to no purpose?" Yet the philosophers openly destroy your gods and your superstitions in their books, and win your applause for it – and they "bark at your princes." He then points out how much there is in common to Christians and philosophers, and yet (in a burst of temper) how unlike they are. No, "where is the likeness between the philosopher and the Christian? the disciple of Greece and of heaven? the trafficker in fame and in life? the friend and the foe of error?" (c. 46). The Christian artisan knows God better than Plato did. And yet what is knowledge and genius in philosopher and poet, is "presumption" in a Christian! "Say the things are false that protect you – mere presumption! yet necessary. Silly! yet useful. For those who believe them are compelled to become better men, for fear of eternal punishment and hope of eternal refreshment. So it is inexpedient to call that false or count that silly, which it is expedient should be presumed true. On no plea can you condemn what does good" (c. 49).
Yet, whatever their treatment, Christians would rather be condemned than fall from God. Their death is their victory; their "obstinacy" educates the world; and while men condemn them, God acquits them. That is his last word —a deo absolvimur (c. 50).
Such, in rough outline, is the great Apology – not quite the work of the fuller or baker at whom Celsus sneered. Yet it has not the accent of the conventional Greek or Latin gentleman, nor that of the philosophic Greek Christian. The style is unlike anything of the age. Everything in it is individual; there is hardly a quotation in the piece. Everything again is centripetal; Tertullian is too much in earnest to lose himself in the endless periods of the rhetorician, or in the charming fancies dear to the eclectic and especially to contemporary Platonists. Indeed his tone toward literature and philosophy is startlingly contemptuous, not least so when contrasted with that of Clement.
For this there are several reasons. First of all, like Carlyle, Tertullian has "to write with his nerves in a kind of blaze," and, like Carlyle, he says things strongly and sweepingly. It is partly temperament, partly the ingrown habit of the pleader. Something must be allowed to the man of moods, whose way it is to utter strongly what he feels for the moment. Such men do a service for which they have little thanks. Many moods go in them to the making of the mind, moods not peculiar to themselves. In most men feelings rarely find full and living expression, and something is gained when they are so expressed, even at the cost of apparent exaggeration. The sweeping half-truth at once suggests its complement to the man who utters it, and may stir very wholesome processes of thought in the milder person who hears it.
The philosophers
In the next place the philosophers may have deserved the criticism. Fine talk and idle talk, in philosophic terms, had disgusted Epictetus;[1109] and for few has Lucian more mockery than for the philosophers of his day – Tertullian's day – with their platitudes and their beards, their flunkeyism and love of gain. Clement of Alexandria, who loved philosophy, had occasional hard words for the vanity of its professors.[1110] For a man of Tertullian's earnestness they were too little serious. Gloriæ animal[1111] is one of his phrases – a creature of vainglory was not likely to appeal to a man who lived in full view of the lion and the circus. He had made a root and branch cleavage with idolatry, because no men could die like the Christians unless they had the truth. The philosophers – to say nothing of their part now and then in stirring the people against the Christians – had made terms with polytheism, beast-worship, magic, all that was worst and falsest in paganism, "lovers of wisdom" and seekers after truth as they professed themselves to be. Ancient Philosophy suggests to the modern student the name of Heraclitus or Plato; but Tertullian lived in the same streets with Apuleius, philosopher and Platonist, humorist and gloriæ animal. But even Plato vexed Tertullian.[1112] The "cock to be offered to Æsculapius" was too available a quotation in a world where the miracles of the great Healer were everywhere famous. The triflers and the dogmatists of the day used Plato's myths to confute the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. And of course Plato and Tertullian are in temperament so far apart, that an antipathy provoked by such causes was hardly to be overcome.
Again, Tertullian remarks frequently that heresy has the closest connexion with philosophy. Both handle the same questions: "Whence is evil, and why? and whence is man and how? and whence is God?"[1113] Marcion, for instance, is "sick (like so many nowadays and, most of all, the heretics) with the question of evil, whence is evil?"[1114] and turns to dualism. Or else "the heretics begin with questions of the resurrection, for the resurrection of the flesh they find harder to believe than the unity of the Godhead."[1115] What Celsus, a typical product of contemporary philosophy, thought of the resurrection of the flesh we have seen – a "hope of worms!" Lastly, there was a strong tendency in the church at large for re-statement of the gospel in the terms of philosophy; and in such endeavours, as we know, there is always the danger of supposing the terms and the philosophy of the day to be more permanent and more valid than the experience which they are supposed to express. In Tertullian's century there seemed some prospect that every characteristic feature of the gospel would be so "re-stated" as to leave the gospel entirely indistinguishable from any other eclectic system of the moment. Jesus became a phantom, or an æon; his body, sidereal substance, which offered, Clement himself said, no material resistance to the touch of St John's hand. God divided, heaven gone, no hope or faith left possible in a non-real Christ even in this life – Christians would be indeed of all men most miserable, and morality would have no longer any basis nor any motive. What in all this could tempt a man to face the lions? It was not for this that Christians shed their blood – no, the Gnostics recommended flight in persecution. It is easy to understand the sweeping Viderint– Tertullian's usual phrase for dismissing people and ideas on whom no more is to be said – "Let them look to it who have produced a Stoic and Platonic and dialectic Christianity. We need no curiosity who have Jesus Christ, no inquiry who have the gospel."[1116]
It was natural for Clement and his school to try to bring the gospel and philosophy to a common basis – a natural impulse, which all must share who speculate. The mistake has been that the church took their conclusions so readily and has continued to believe them. For Tertullian is, on his side, right, and we know in fact a great deal more about Jesus than we can know about the Logos.
The Præscription of heretics
Accordingly a large part of Tertullian's work, as a Christian, was the writing of treatises against heresy. He has in one book —de Præscriptionibus Hæreticorum– dealt with all heretics together. The Regula Fidei, which is a short creed,[1117] was instituted, he says, by Christ, and is held among Christians without questions, "save those which heretics raise and which make heretics." On that Regula rests the Christian faith. To know nothing against it, is to know everything. But appeal is made to Scripture. We must then see who has the title to Scripture (possessio),[1118] and whence it comes. Jesus Christ while on earth taught the twelve, and they went into the world and promulgated "the same doctrine of the same faith," founding churches in every city, from which other churches have taken faith and doctrine – he uses the metaphors of seed and of layers (tradux) from plants. Every day churches are so formed and duly counted Apostolic. Thus the immense numbers of churches may be reckoned equivalent to the one first church. No other than the Apostles are to be received, as no others were taught by Christ. "Thus it is established that every doctrine which agrees with those Apostolic mother-churches, the originals of the faith, is to be set down to truth, as in accordance with what the churches have received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God."[1119] But have the churches been faithful in the transmission of this body of doctrine? Suppose them all to have gone wrong, suppose the Holy Spirit to have been so negligent – is it likely that so vast a number should have wandered away into one faith? Again let Marcion and others show the history of their churches. Let their doctrines be compared with the Apostolic, and their varieties and contradictions will show they are not Apostolic. If then Truth be adjudged to those who walk by the Regula, duly transmitted through the church, the Apostles and Christ from God, then heretics have no right of appeal to the Scriptures which are not theirs. If they are heretics, they cannot be Christians; if they are not Christians, they have no right (ius) to Christian literature. "With what right (iure) Marcion, do you cut down my wood? By what licence, Valentinus, do you divert my springs? … This is my estate; I have long held it; I am first in occupation; I trace my sure descent from the founders to whom the thing belonged. I am the heir of the Apostles."[1120]
In this, as in most human arguments, there are strands of different value. The legal analogy gave a name to the book —præscriptio was the barring of a claim – but it is not the strongest line. Law rarely is. But Tertullian was not content to rule his opponents out of court. He used legal methods and manners too freely, but he knew well enough that these settled nothing. As a rule he had much stronger grounds for his attack. He wrote five books against Marcion to maintain the unity of the Godhead and the identity of the Father of Jesus, the God of the Old Testament and the God of Nature. His book against the Valentinians has a large element of humour in it – perhaps the best rejoinder to the framers of a cosmogony of so many æons, none demonstrable, all fanciful, – the thirty of them suggest to him the famous Latin sow of the Æneid.[1121] Against Hermogenes he maintains the doctrine of the creation of the world from nothing. The hypothesis that God used pre-existing matter, makes matter antecedent and more or less equal to God. And then, in legal vein, he asks a question. How did God come to use matter? "These are the three ways in which another's property may be taken, – by right, by benefit, by assault, that is by title, by request, by violence." Hermogenes denies God's title in this case; which then of the other means does he prefer?[1122]
The incarnation of Christ
His best work in the controversial field is in his treatises, On the Flesh of Christ, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, and On the Soul. The first of these, above all, will appeal to any reader to whom the historic Jesus is significant. Much has changed in outlook and preconceptions since Tertullian wrote, but his language on the reality of Jesus, as an actual human being and no sidereal or celestial semblance of a man, on the incarnation, and the love of God, still glows and still finds a response. "Away," he pictures Marcion saying, "Away with those census-rolls of Cæsar, always tiresome, away with the cramped inns, the soiled rags, the hard stall. Let the angelic host look to it!"[1123] And then he rejoins, Do you think nativity impossible – or unsuitable – for God? Declaim as you like on the ugliness of the circumstances; yet Christ did love men (born, if you like, just as you say); for man he descended, for man he preached, for man he lowered himself with every humiliation down to death, and the death of the cross. Yes, he loved him whom he redeemed at so high a price. And with man he loved man's nativity, even his flesh. The conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the discipline of justice, of purity, of pity, of patience, of all innocence – these are not folly, and they are bound up with the truth of the Gospel. Is it unworthy of God? "Spare the one hope of all the world, thou, who wouldst do away with the disgrace of faith. Whatever is unworthy of God is all to my good."[1124] The Son of God also died – "It is credible because it is foolish. He was buried and rose again; it is certain because it is impossible." And how could all this be, if his body were not true? "You bisect Christ with a lie. The whole of him was Truth."[1125] The gospel narrative from beginning to end implies that Christ's body was like ours – "he hungered under the devil, thirsted under the Samaritan woman, shed tears over Lazarus, was troubled[1126] at death (for, the flesh, he said, is weak), last of all he shed his blood." How could men have spat in a face radiant with "celestial grandeur"? Wait! Christ has not yet subdued his enemies that he may triumph with his friends.
Jesus is to come again, as he was, as he is, sitting at the Father's right hand, God and man, flesh and blood, the same in essence and form as when he ascended; so he shall come.[1127] And men will be raised in the flesh to receive judgment. A storm overhangs the world.[1128] What the treasure-house of eternal fire will be, may be guessed from the petty vents men see in Etna and elsewhere.[1129] There will be white robes for martyrs; for the timid a little portion in the lake of fire and sulphur.[1130] All that Gibbon thought would "offend the reason and humanity of the present age" in the last chapter of the de Spectacutis may recur to the reader. But, continues Tertullian in that passage, my gaze will be upon those who let loose their fury on the Lord himself – "'This,' I shall say, 'is he, the son of the carpenter or the harlot, Sabbath-breaker, Samaritan, demoniac. This is he whom you bought from Judas; this is he, whom you beat with the reed and the palms of your hands, whom you disfigured with your spittle, to whom you gave gall and vinegar. This is he whom his disciples stole away, that it might be said he had risen, – or the gardener took him away, that his lettuces might not be trodden by the crowds that came.'" "A long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms," is Gibbon's judgment.
A mind less intent on polemic will judge otherwise of Tertullian and his controversies. There is, first of all, much more of the philosophic temper than is commonly supposed. He does not, like Clement and other Greeks, revel in cosmological speculations as to the Logos, nor does he loosely adopt the abstract methods of later Greek philosophy. But in his treatment of the Soul, of moral order and disorder, and of responsibility, he shows no mean powers of mind. He argues from experience, and from the two sources, from which he could best hope to learn most directly the mind of God, Nature and the Scriptures. The infallibility of the Scriptures is of course a limitation to freedom of speculation, but it was an axiom of the early church, and a man of experience might accept it, bound up as it was with sound results in the martyr-death and the changed life. Tertullian will get back to the facts, if he can; and if he judges too swiftly of Nature and too swiftly accepts the literal truth of Scripture, – while these are drawbacks to our acceptance of his conclusions, there is still to be seen in him more independence of mind than in those Greek Fathers for whom Greek philosophy had spoken the last word in metaphysics. It is psychology that interests Tertullian more, and moral questions, and these he handles more deeply than the Stoics. He stands in line with Augustine and Calvin, his spiritual descendants.