In the closing decades of the second century, the literary voice of the Western Church began to sound in a new tongue. It did not first rise from the imperial capital of Rome, but from the African coast, in Carthage—Rome’s ancient rival and still a city of fierce independence. Here, amid the vigor of Punic temperament and the discipline of Roman law, Latin Christianity found its earliest great architect in Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. Lawyer, rhetorician, moralist, polemicist, and eventually Montanist, Tertullian forged the theological language of the Latin West, stamping it with his own passionate and paradoxical genius.
The African Context of Latin Christianity
The early Western Church produced no such continuous line of speculative theologians as the East. The apostolic age was largely Jewish, the ante-Nicene era dominantly Greek, and the post-Nicene period Roman. Even the Roman Church was first nourished by Greek speech and thought, with its earliest writers—Clement, Hermas, Irenaeus, Hippolytus—composing exclusively in Greek. Latin Christian literature emerged at the end of the second century, not in Italy but in North Africa, and not from philosophers-turned-Christians but from advocates and rhetoricians, whose minds were trained in the courts and their language sharpened for forensic combat.
From North Africa also came the earliest Latin Bible—the “Itala”—which formed the foundation for Jerome’s Vulgata, still the standard Roman text. By the time of Tertullian, several Latin translations of Scripture were already circulating in the West, though often in partial or regional forms.
Life of Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, born around A.D. 150 in Carthage, was the son of a Roman army officer serving under the African proconsul. He received a comprehensive Graeco-Roman education, mastering historical, philosophical, poetic, antiquarian, and legal knowledge. Before his conversion, he likely practiced law or pursued public affairs, either in Carthage or Rome. Eusebius called him “a man accurately acquainted with the Roman laws,” and some identify him with the jurist Tertyllus, fragments of whose legal writings survive in the Pandects.
He embraced Christianity toward the close of the second century, whether through intellectual conviction or spiritual crisis we cannot say, and did so with uncompromising zeal. He lived as he exhorted: “Christians are made, not born.” Married, he celebrated Christian domestic life yet placed celibacy above it, urging his wife to remain unmarried should he predecease her, and later condemning remarriage as akin to adultery.
Tertullian entered the ministry, probably in Carthage and perhaps briefly in Rome, though he never rose beyond the rank of presbyter.1517 Around 199–203, he joined the Montanists, drawn by their moral rigor, ascetic discipline, martyr-spirit, and eschatological fervor, and repelled by what he saw as the Roman Church’s moral laxity and its temporary flirtation with the Patripassian error of Praxeas. With characteristic bite, he accused Praxeas of having “driven out prophecy and brought in heresy; having turned away the Holy Spirit and crucified the Father.”
Even as a Montanist, Tertullian remained a stalwart defender of Catholic doctrine against heresy, especially Gnosticism. His schism lay in matters of discipline rather than core belief. In Carthage, he continued to write and minister until his death—variously dated around 220 or as late as 240. His followers, known as “Tertullianists,” persisted into the fifth century, until they were absorbed into the Catholic Church under Augustine. The notion of his return to Catholic communion is without foundation.
Character and Disposition
Tertullian was a man of volcanic originality: intense, angular, and often combative. His nature was rich in imagination, wit, and moral earnestness, yet deficient in moderation and balance. Like Luther in his vehemence—but without Luther’s geniality—he combined fierce convictions with a penchant for paradox. He could exalt the “divine foolishness” of the Gospel while mining it for acute philosophical argument. He disdained pagan philosophy as the “patriarch of heresies” and demanded, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”—yet he drew freely on logic and rhetoric against his opponents. His aphorism “Credo quia absurdum est” captures both his distrust of worldly wisdom and his willingness to provoke.
He was a staunch champion of Church authority and tradition against heresy, but as a Montanist he claimed the prophetic liberty to oppose ecclesiastical laxity. He was profoundly conscious of human corruption and the need for grace, yet could declare the soul “naturally Christian,” bearing innate testimony to God. In theology, he stood at the headwaters of Latin anthropology and soteriology, paving the way for Augustine’s more measured system. In controversy, he was merciless—pursuing opponents into every corner, entangling them in contradictions, and often reducing them to ridicule. His polemics “left marks of blood.”
Style and Literary Contribution
Tertullian’s style was as distinctive as his thought—compressed, abrupt, epigrammatic, bristling with legalisms, African provincialisms, and coined expressions. It could be rough, even barbarous, but also vivid, energetic, and memorable. His pages pour forth like a torrent, mingling precious insight with jagged irregularities. In forging Latin Christian theology, he had to create a vocabulary capable of expressing new realities in the idiom of Roman law and rhetoric. His language became the foundation of the Western Church’s theological discourse, even if Italian literati later found it coarse.
He embodies the ferment of a new Christian culture—vigorous, imaginative, and militant—still bearing the marks of the old Roman world, yet pressing toward a distinctly Latin Christian identity.
Notable Sayings
- Semen est sanguis Christianorum – “The blood of Christians is seed” (Apol. 50).
- Testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae – “The testimony of the soul is naturally Christian” (De Test. Anim. 2).
- Fiunt, non nascuntur Christiani – “Christians are made, not born” (Apol. 18).
- Christus veritas est, non consuetudo – “Christ is truth, not tradition” (De Virg. Vel. 1).
- Nonne et laici sacerdotes sumus? – “Are we not all priests, even we laymen?” (De Exhort. Cast. 7).
- Humani juris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere – “It is a human and natural right that each person should worship according to his own conviction” (Ad Scap. 2).
Historical Assessment
Protestant, Catholic, and secular historians alike acknowledge Tertullian’s towering influence. Neander portrays him as a man of deep feeling and fierce devotion, whose mind was a crucible of new Christian thought, though still rough in form. Hase calls him a fiery Carthaginian who gave Christianity a Latin literature marked by wit, juridical clarity, and moral rigor. Hauck sees in him both attraction and repulsion: moral earnestness and intellectual vitality, yet a chronic lack of measure. Hergenröther emphasizes his concise, often harsh style and his achievements in doctrinal exposition despite his Montanism. Pressensé lauds him as Christianity’s most eloquent early African defender, whose words still throb with the life of their author’s soul.
Tertullian remains one of the most paradoxical figures of Christian antiquity: the father of Latin theology, the teacher of Cyprian, a schismatic who strengthened Catholic orthodoxy, and a literary force whose passionate sentences still flash across the centuries.
