Tertullianus, QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS, a great theologian of the Western Church, was born of heathen parents at Carthage about 160. His father was a Roman centurion under the proconsul of Africa. The details of his life are little known, but the strongly marked character of the man comes out in every page of his numerous writings. He had a liberal education, and shows extensive acquaintance with poetry, history, and law, and considerable knowledge of philosophy and science, though he calls the philosophers 'the patriarchs of heretics' and the learning of secular literature 'folly with God.' He speaks of the delight he once had in the indecent profanities of the public plays, and confesses that he had fallen into the greatest sins. He nowhere says much about his personal religion, but calls himself 'a sinner of all brands, and fit only for penitence, and asks his readers to remember in their prayers Tertullian the sinner.' He had sufficient command of Greek to write in that language his earliest treatises, all of which are lost. Jerome mentions that he was a presbyter of the Catholic Church, whether at Rome or Carthage is unknown. Tertullian himself speaks of his having lived at Rome. Eusebius says 'he was accurately acquainted with the Roman laws, and one of the most distinguished men in Rome.' It is possible that before his conversion he had practised there as an advocate or rhetorician. He did not become a Christian till about 190, and he has not recorded the history of his conversion. That he was married is shown by his two books Ad Uxorem, in which he argues against second marriages. Some time between 199 and 203 his opposition to the spirit of worldliness in the church culminated in his becoming a leader of the Montanist sect. According to Jerome, this was owing to 'the envy and insults of the clergy of the Roman Church,' but the chief causes were doubtless the uncompromising character of his natural disposition, and his repugnance to the laxity of the Roman clergy in their reception of the Lapsi, and very probably the favour shown to the Patipassian heresy by the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus. He died between 220 and 240, 'in decrepit old age' (Jerome). Augustine says that he at last withdrew from the Montanists, and 'propagated conventicles of his own,' which is rendered less likely by the fact that the Montanist sect survived in Africa till the 5th century, under the name of 'Tertullianists.'
Tertullian was a man 'of an eager and vehement disposition' (Jerome), who threw all his great gifts of learning, imagination, eloquence, and wit into the religious controversies of his time for thirty years (190-220). Along with the Roman love for substantiality and strength, he had the 'bitter, stern, and harsh temper' which Plutarch ascribes to the Carthaginians. He wanted the sweet reasonableness and calmness, the feeling for harmonious form, and the instinct for speculative thought that distinguish the greatest Greek fathers of the church. He had the heart of a Christian with the adroit intellect of an advocate. His aim is always to make his adversaries appear ridiculous and contemptible. He pours unsparingly upon them a fiery stream of strong argument and satire, mixed with the sophisms, insinuations, and hyperboles of a special pleader. His style is most vivid, vigorous, and concise, abounding in harsh and obscure expressions, abrupt turns, and impetuous transitions, with here and there bursts of glowing eloquence, reminding the reader at one time of Carlyle, at another of Lamennais. What appear to be African provincialisms Niebuhr contends are only words and expressions taken from the ancient Latin writers. He was the first to give such words as persona, liberum arbitrium, trinitas, satisfactio, sacramentum, substantia, &c. the place they hold in Christian theology. Many sentences of Tertullian's, as, for example, 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church;' 'Christ is truth, not custom;' 'It is absolutely credible because absurd—it is certain because impossible;' 'the human race has always deserved ill of God;' 'the unity of heretics is schism;' 'it is contrary to religion to compel religion;' 'how wise an arguer does ignorance seem to herself to be,' have become proverbial. 'Who can sufficiently extol the eloquence of Tertullian!' exclaims Vincentius of Lerinum; 'almost every word conveys a thought, every sentence is a victory. He is among the Latins what Origen is among the Greeks—the greatest of all.' Like Origen, Tertullian was a man of great genius, sincerity, and zeal, a vigorous ascetic, and an indefatigable worker, and, though yielding great influence over his contem- poraries, was never more than a presbyter. Like him, too, this champion of the Christian faith against all opponents, Jews, heathens, and heretics, was himself a heretic to the majority of the Christians of his time. Both show the same contempt of the world and enthusiasm for martyrdom. But in the tendency of their views the contrast between them is as striking as in their natural temper and their literary style. Tertullian is an intense realist, with leanings towards materialism, Origen a pure idealist. Origen, like Justin, holds that Greek philosophy was 'a preparation for the Gospel,' 'a fragment of eternal truth from the theology of the ever-living Word.' Tertullian thinks that 'philosophers are blockheads when they knock at the gates of truth,' and that 'they have contributed nothing whatever that a Christian can accept.' 'The eloquence of the one,' says Pressensé, 'is broad and transparent like his genius: it is a noble, full, majestic river: that of the other is a turbid mountain-torrent. Origen speaks to philosophers as a Christian philosopher: Tertullian is a tribune of the people passionately haranguing the crowd in the forum or at the cross-roads; he is the ancient orator, with his vehement gestures, his vivid images, his grandiose pathos.'
His writings have been called 'Tracts for the Times.' Most of them are short. They are a rich mine of information as to the relations between Christians and heathens in his time. Though perhaps not the first of the Latin Christian writers, Tertullian was the creator of ecclesiastical Latinity, and impressed upon the language a new character, as he bent it to the service of Christian ideas. His works are divided into three classes: (1) Controversial writings against heathens and Jews. His Apologeticus (ed. by Woodham, 1843; by Bindley, 1891), addressed to the Roman authorities, is an attempt to establish the Christians' right to toleration. A popular edition of this work is presented in his two books Ad Nationes, possibly, as Uhlhorn and Hauck believe, of earlier date. Ad Scapulam is a bold rebuke of the persecuting Roman consul Scapula. In his De Testimonio Animæ he acutely develops the thought that Christianity responds to the religious necessities and postulates of human nature. The treatise Adversus Judæos is to prove that prophecy is fulfilled in Christ.
(2) Against heretics. Against these Tertullian takes his stand, as Irenæus did before him, on the old apostolical tradition as the fixed foundation of belief. He formulates this position juridically in his De Prescriptione Hæreticorum. Against the Gnostic attempts to volatilise Christianity in Gnostic spiritualism he maintained its reality as a practical form of life in his De Baptismo, Adversus Hermogenem, Adversus Valentiniandos, De Anima (in which he contends that even the soul is material), De Carne Christi (against Docetism), De Resurrectione Carnis, and the five books Adversus Marcionem. Against the Patipassian heresy he wrote the book Adversus Præcean.
(3) Practical and ascetic treatises. It is especially in these writings relating to Christian life and discipline that we can trace Tertullian's increasing hostility to the church and adoption of the Montanist views, which had great influence among African Christians. He hailed the testimony of 'free prophecy' as God's witness against the laxity which the Catholic Church had shown in dealing with the sensual weaknesses of the great multitude within her pale. Hence the division of these treatises into Pre-Montanist and Montanist. To the former class belong De Baptismo, De Pænitentia, Ad Martyres, De Spectaculis, De Idolatria, De Cultu Feminarum, De Oratione, De Patientia, and Ad Uxorem; to the latter, De Corona, De Fuga in Persecutione, Scorpiace, De
Exhortatione Castitatis, De Monogamia, De Pudicitia, De Jejunio, Adversus Psychicos, and De Pallio; while De Virginibus Velandis marks the transition stage.
Tertullian had a greater influence on the Latin Church than any theologian between Paul and Augustine. His Montanism indeed prevented it from being exercised directly, but Cyprian, who called Tertullian 'his master,' was the interpreter who gave currency to his views. The following is a summary of Harnack's estimate of Tertullian (3d vol. of his Dozmengeschichte), whom he calls 'the founder of Western Christianity.' Tertullian's Christianity was moulded by the enthusiastic and strict faith of the early Christians on the one hand, and by the anti-Gnostic regula fidei on the other. A trained jurist, he sought to express all religion in legal formulas, and conceived the relation between God and man as one of civil law. 'God appears always as the powerful partner, who watches jealously over his rights.' Further, his theology shows a syllogistic-dialectic stamp; it does not philosophise, it reasons, using now the argument ex auctoritate, now the argument c ratione. He shows striking power of psychological observation. Finally, his writings have a strong practical evangelic tendency; with their vivid appeal to the reader's will, and their simple concrete expression of the Gospel, they appealed not to theologians only, but to all. In these characteristics, and their union, Tertullian became the type of the Christianity of the Western Church.
The best complete edition of Tertullian's works is still that of Oehler (3 vols. Leip. 1853-55). A complete critical edition is being published in the Vienna Corpus Script. ecclesiast. Lat. (part i. by Reifferscheid and Wissowa, 1890). The most important studies are those of Kaye (Eccles. Hist., 3d ed. Lond. 1845), Neander (Antignosticus, 2d ed. Berlin, 1847; Eng. trans. by J. E. Ryland, 2 vols. 1851), Pressensé (in his Histoire des Trois Premiers Siècles de l'Église Chrétienne, 1858-77; Eng. trans. 4 vols. 1879), Böhringer (Biographien, vol. iii. 2d ed. Leip. 1875), Möhler (in his Patrologie, vol. i. Regensburg, 1840), Grote Meyer (Kempen, 1863-65), Freppel (Paris, 1864), Hauck (with a selection of characteristic extracts, Erlangen, 1877), J. M. Fuller (in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, 1887), Farrar (Lives of the Fathers, vol. i. 1889), and Ernst Noeldechen (Gotha, 1890). See also Harnack, Dozmengeschichte (2d ed. 1888-90), N. Bonwetsch, Die Schriften Tertullians (1878); Koffmane, Geschichte des Kirchenlebens (vol. i. Berlin, 1879); Van der Vliet, Studia ecclesiastica. L. Tertullianus (Leyd. 1891). Translations of nearly all Tertullian's works are included in Clark's Ante-Nicene Christian Library.