Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born at Carthage in North Africa around AD 155, son of a Roman centurion. He trained as a lawyer and had a razor-sharp mind. Little of his early life is known, but at about 40 he became a Christian. Immediately, he began to write - and Christendom hardly knew what had hit it!
He didn't ‘do’ much reasoned theology; he confronted. Wrong teachings, sloppy morals, lax leaders, cowardly faith, Tertullian laid into them all. His writing is passionate, with holy sarcasm - and at times still funny even today. You sense a 'wildness', a burning heart for integrity and justice, contemptuous of all compromise. Even so, Tertullian was deeply conscious of his personal failings; he wrote a piece on patience because he knew he had to learn it. Here are some examples:
At a time of fierce persecution, when many favoured fleeing, he wrote: The blood of the martyrs is [the] seed [of the church], adding that once you start fleeing, you will never stop fleeing!
Seeing the growing emphasis on education in church leadership, he cried: What has Athens [headquarters of Greek philosophy] got to do with Jerusalem!”
He took aim at worldly pursuits: All public entertainment damages the spirit.
He castigated the folly of persecutors: If the Tiber rises too high, or the Nile too low, the remedy is always to feed Christians to the lions.
He understood the fleshly human nature that he was confronting: The first reaction to truth is hatred.
Perhaps most biting of all is his judgement on self-centred living: Whoever lives only to benefit himself, benefits the world only when he dies!
In 202, at the height of his influence, Tertullian shocked everyone by joining a fringe movement called the Montanists. They spoke in tongues, prophesied, had dreams and visions, and promoted strict holy living. The mainstream Church immediately sidelined him but he didn't care. His prophetic heart chose spiritual life and movement before popularity.
Still his pen carried all before it. He defended celibacy; opposed military service; cried out against gladiator sports; promoted fasting and spiritual discipline; exhorted Church members to refuse any job carrying worldly prestige; and urged Christians not to accept any bishop who wasn't a spiritual man.
Tertullian died about 225. He stands out from the crowd as one who never lost his edge or his nerve. A colleague called him 'the first, the best, the incomparable'. Today, 1800 years on, his works are still read and valued by those who appreciate sharp-edged, confrontational writing and "aggressive" Christianity. Much of that confrontation, at least in his earlier writings, was against heretics, but Tertullian is also remembered as the first of the Church Fathers to formulate a doctrine of the Trinity.
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