Tertullian: the Courage to Stir Up, part 2

Christians are called to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. They are also part of the "Church militant", engaged in a spiritual conflict against dark forces, both spritual and institutional. To break through these, and to pierce the dullness and oppression which can sometimes settle on Christians, requires "breakthrough people". This is primarily, but not exclusively, the work of 'the apostles and prophets' [1 Corinthians 12:28]. Tertullian was certainly one of these. He saw what was dulling the Church's edge and confronted it, appealing to each heart to part with its idols. Away with mottled Christianity! , he wrote; in other words, be one thing or the other.

Some recent commentators have called Tertullian a bigot. He was indeed no lamb, and we may wince at some overblown stances, e.g. his almost gleeful account of the torments of the lost in hell. But we must understand the debating codes of his time and not judge solely by today's. For example, Tertullian was fond of paradox. He will often push an issue to its purest form, in order to see the real nature of the thing under examination. He did not value the 'fruitful ambiguity' of the heretic. For him, something is true if Christ taught it, the apostles passed it on, and it is found in the Scriptures. It is therefore fixed and pretty much non-negotiable. One of his works (none of which is especially long) has 186 references to the word 'truth'.

In our day, it is not uncommon among Protestants in the West to look with grudging admiration at the Pope for knowing exactly where the Roman Catholic Church stands and not deviating from it, however great the flak, while liberals in other denominations seek to nuance and reinterpret things. Bigotry? More likely, the same dogged commitment to truth as Tertullian held. He too laid down the express rule that no speculation outside the ‘Rule of Faith’ was permissible.

We see this most starkly in Tertullian's writings against heretics, which did a lot to strengthen the cause of orthodoxy. One writing is called, rather opaquely, "The Prescription of Heretics." This is an older meaning of 'prescription'. It meant the cutting short of a question by the refusal to hear the adversary's arguments, on the ground that key points are already in place which cut the ground from under his feet. So, for Tertullian, it is of no use to listen to heretics' arguments or refute them, for we have a number of antecedent proofs that they do not deserve a hearing.

This, then, is 'permitted bigotry,' and it gives him the solid ground and the confidence to lay into any who deviate from it or hold unbiblical opinions. In our day, scientific atheism insists that any and every point of belief should be proven, and many Christians perform various contortions to try to do so. There is something refreshing in Tertullian's assurance, for example about the Resurrection: it is true precisely because it is impossible. The end of the matter.