Athens and Jerusalam Revisited: Reason and Authority in Tertullian

Abstract

Very few ancient Christian writers have been as maligned by posterity as Tertullian has been. This is understandable, for Tertullian made little effort to endear himself to either his contemporaries or his future readers. His conversion to—many still say “lapse into”—Montanism was not calculated to make him popular with Catholic historians. His so-called legalism has become a favorite straw man for Protestant writers. The disappearance of both Montanism and the ancient African church destroyed the two logical communities where his name might have been venerated. In the sixteenth century a number of scholars became sufficiently interested in him to produce editions of his works; but although his rhetorical ability attracted some attention from the humanists, they found his manner and spirit too uncouth. Protestant rigorists who ought to have welcomed his stringency rejected him because of his emphasis on tradition. Catholic polemicists who could be expected to welcome such an emphasis ignored him because of his apparent denial of the authority of tradition in becomeing a Montanist. Rationalist scholars who ought to have enjoyed his wit and his unflinching logic were unable to sympathize with the seemingly illogical consequences of that logic. The result of these various biases has been a surprising agreement on a generally negative evaluation of Tertullian as a thinker and as a person.

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