His style is exceedingly characteristic, and corresponds with his thought. It is terse, abrupt, laconic, sententious, nervous, figurative, full of hyperbole, sudden turns, legal technicalities, African provincialisms, or rather antiquated or vulgar latinisms. [1525] 526 It abounds in latinized Greek words, and new expressions, in roughnesses, angles, and obscurities; sometimes, like a grand volcanic eruption, belching precious stones and dross in strange confusion; or like the foaming torrent tumbling over the precipice of rocks and sweeping all before it. His mighty spirit wrestles with the form, and breaks its way through the primeval forest of nature's thinking. He had to create the church language of the Latin tongue. [1526] 527
In short, we see in this remarkable man both intellectually and morally, the fermenting of a new creation, but not yet quite set free from the bonds of chaotic darkness and brought into clear and beautiful order.
Notes.
I. Gems from Tertullian's writings.
The philosophy of persecution:
"Semen Est Sanguis Christianorum." (Apol. c. 50.)
The human soul and Christianity (made for Christ, yet requiring a new birth):
"Testimonium Animae Naturaliter. Christianae." (De Test. Anim. c. 2; see the passages quoted § 40, p. 120.)
"Fiunt, non, nascuntur Christiani." (Apol. 18. De Test. Anim. 1)
Christ the Truth, not Habit (versus traditionalism):
"Christus Veritas Est, Non Consuetudo." (De Virg. vel 1.)
General priesthood of the laity (versus an exclusive hierarchy):
"Nonne Et Laici Sacerdotes Sumus? "(De Exhort. Cast. 7.)
Religious Liberty, an inalienable right of man (versus compulsion and persecution:
"Humani Juris Et Naturalis Potestatis Est Unicuique Quod Putaverit Colere." (Ad Scap. 2; comp. Apol. 14 and the passages quoted § 13, p. 35.)
Dr. Baur (Kirchengesch.I. 428) says: "It is remarkable how already the oldest Christian Apologists, in vindicating the Christian faith, were led to assert the Protestant principle of freedom of faith and conscience "[and we must add, of public worship], "as an inherent attribute of the conception of religion against their heathen opponents." Then he quotes Tertullian, as the first who gave clear expression to this principle.
II. Estimates of Tertullian as a man and an author.
Neander (Ch. Hist. I. 683 sq., Torrey's translation): "Tertullian presents special claims to attention, both as the first representative of the theological tendency in the North-African church, and as a representative of the Montanistic mode of thinking. He was a man of an ardent and profound spirit, of warm and deep feelings; inclined to give himself up, with his whole soul and strength, to the object of his love, and sternly to repel everything that was foreign from this. He possessed rich and various stores of knowledge; which had been accumulated, however, at random, and without scientific arrangement. His profoundness of thought was not united with logical clearness and sobriety: an ardent, unbridled imagination, moving in a world of sensuous images, governed him. His fiery and passionate disposition, and his previous training as an advocate and rhetorician, easily impelled him, especially in controversy, to rhetorical exaggerations. When he defends a cause, of whose truth he was convinced, we often see in him the advocate, whose sole anxiety is to collect together all the arguments which can help his case, it matters not whether they are true arguments or only plausible sophisms; and in such cases the very exuberance of his wit sometimes leads him astray from the simple feeling of truth. What must render this man a phenomenon presenting special claims to the attention of the Christian historian is the fact, that Christianity is the inspiring soul of his life and thoughts; that out of Christianity an entirely new and rich inner world developed itself to his mind: but the leaven of Christianity had first to penetrate through and completely refine that fiery, bold and withal rugged nature. We find the new wine in an old bottle; and the tang which it has contracted there, may easily embarrass the inexperienced judge. Tertullian often had more within him than he was able to express: the overflowing mind was at a loss for suitable forms of phraseology. He had to create a language for the new spiritual matter,--and that out of the rude Punic Latin,--without the aid of a logical and grammatical education, and as he was hurried along in the current of thoughts and feelings by his ardent nature. Hence the often difficult and obscure phraseology; but hence, too, the original and striking turns in his mode of representation. And hence this great church-teacher, who unites great gifts with great failings, has been so often misconceived by those who could form no friendship with the spirit which dwelt in so ungainly a form."
Hase (Kirchengesch. p. 91, tenth ed.): "Die lateinische Kirche hatte fast nur Übersetzungen, bis Tertullianus, als Heide Rhetor und Sachwalter zu Rom, mit reicher griechischer Gelehrsamkeit, die auch der Kirchenvater gern sehen liess, Presbyter in seiner Vaterstadt Karthago, ein strenger, düsterer, feuriger Character, dem Christenthum aus punischem Latein eine Literatur errang, in welcher geistreiche Rhetorik, genialer so wie gesuchter Witz, der sinnliches Anfassen des Idealen, tiefes Gefühl and juridische Verstandesansicht mit einander ringen. Er hat der afrikanischen Kirche die Losung angegeben: Christus sprach: Ich bin die Wahrheit, nicht, das Herkommen. Er hat das Gottesbewusstsein in den Tiefen der Seele hochgehalten, aber ein Mann der Auctoritaet hat er die Thorheit des Evangeliums der Weltweisheit seiner Zeitgenossen, das Unglaubliche der Wunder Gottes dem gemeinen Weltverstande mit stolzer Ironie entgegengehalten. Seine Schriften, denen er unbedenklich Fremdes angeeignet und mit dent Gepraege seines Genius versehen hat, sind theils polemisch mit dem höchsten Selbstvertraun der katholischen Gesinnung gegen Heiden, Juden und Haeretiker, theils erbaulich; so jedoch, dass auch in jenen das Erbauliche, in diesen das Polemische für strenge Sitte und Zucht vorhanden ist "
Hauck (Tertullian's Leben und Schriften, p. 1) Unter den Schriftstellern der lateinischen Christenheit ist Tertullianeiner der bedeutendsten und intressantesten. Er ist der Anfänger der lateinischen Theologie, der nicht nur ihrer Sprache seinen Stempel aufgeprägt hat, sondern sie auch an die Bahn hinwies, welche sie lange einheilt. Seine Persönlichkeit hat ebensoviel Anziehendes als Abstossendes; denn wer könnte den Ernst seines sittlichen Strebens, den Reichthum und die Lebhaftigkeit seines Geistes, die Festigkeit seiner Ueberzeugung und die stürmische Kraft seiner Beredtsamkeit verkennen? Allein ebensowenig lässt sich übersehen, dass ihm in allen Dingen das Mass fehlte. Seine Erscheinung hat nichts Edles; er war nicht frei von Bizzarem, ja Gemeinem. So zeigen ihn seine Schriften, die Denkmäler seines Lebens Er war ein Mann, der sich in unaufhörlichen Streite bewegte: sein ganzes Wesen trägt die Spuren hievon "
Cardinal Hergenröther, the first Roman Catholic church historian now living (for Döllinger was excommunicated in 1870), says of Tertullian (in his Kirchengesch. I. 168, second ed., 1879): "Strenge und ernst, oft beissend sarkastisch, in der, Sprache gedrängt und dunkel der heidnischen Philosophie durchaus abgeneigt, mit dem römischen Rechte sehr vertraut, hat er in seinen zahlreichen Schriften Bedeutendes für die Darstellung der Kirchlichen Lehre geleistet, und ungeachtet seines Uebertritts zu den Montanisten betrachteten ihn die späteren africanischen Schriftsteller, auch Cyprian, als Muster und Lehrer "
Pressensé (Martyrs and Apoloqists, p. 375): "The African nationality gave to Christianity its most eloquent defender, in whom the intense vehemence, the untempered ardor of the race, appear purified indeed, but not subdued. No influence in the early ages could equal that of Tertullian; and his writings breathe a spirit of such undying power that they can never grow old, and even now render living, controversies which have been silent for fifteen centuries. We must seek the man in his own pages, still aglow with his enthusiasm and quivering with his passion, for the details of his personal history are very few. The man is, as it were, absorbed in the writer, and we can well understand it, for his writings embody his whole soul. Never did a man more fully infuse his entire moral life into his books, and act through his words."
[1515] H. E. II. 2. He adds that Tertullian was "particularly distinguished among the eminent men of Rome," and quotes a passage from his Apology, which is also translated into the Greek."
[1516] De Resurr. Carn. c. 59, he confesses: "Ego me scio neque alia carne adulteria commisisse, neque nunc alia carne ad continentiam eniti." Comp. also Apolog., c. 18 and 25; De Anima, c. 2; De Paenit., c. 4 and 12; Ad Scapul., c. 5.
[1517] This fact, however, rests only on the authority of Jerome, and does not appear from Tertullian's own writings. Roman Catholic historians, with their dislike to married priests, have made him a layman on the insufficient ground of the passage: "Nonne et Laici sacerdotes sumus? "De Exhort. Cast., c. 7.
[1518] De Cultu Femin., c. 7. Comp. Euseb. II. 2.
[1519] De Vir. illustr., c. 53: "Hic [Tert.] cum usque ad mediam aetatem presbyter ecclesia epermansisset, invidia et contumeliis clericorum Romanae ecclesiae ad Montani dogma delapsus in multis libris novac prophetiae meminit."
[1520] Adv. Prax. c. 1.
[1521] B.C. 264-146,
[1522] Comp. his own painful confession in De Patient. c. 1: "Miserrimus ego semper aeger caloribus impatientiae."
[1523] In a similar manner Luther, though himself one of the most original and fruitful thinkers, sometimes unreasonably abuses reason as the devil's mistress.
[1524] In this apparent contradiction Luther resembles Tertullian: he fought Romanism with private judgment, and Zwinlianism, Anabaptists, and all sectarians ("Schwarm - und Rottengeister" as he called them) with catholic authority; he denounced "the damned heathen Aristotle," as the father of Popish scholaisticism, and used scholastic distinctions in support of the ubiquity of Christ's body against Zwingli.
[1525] According to Niebuhr, a most competent judge of Latin antiquities. Provinces and colonies often retain terms and phrases after they die out in the capital and in the mother country. Renan says with reference to Tertullian (Marc-Aurèle, p. 456) La 'lingua volgata' d'Afrigue contribua ainsi dans une large part à la formation de la langue ecclésiastique de I' Occident, et ainsi elle exerça une influence décisive sur nos langues modernes. Mais il résulta de là une autre conséquence; cest que les textes fondamentaux de la littérature latine chétienne furent écrits dans une langue que lettrés d'Italie trouvèrent barbare et corrompue, ce qui plus tard donna occasion de la part des rhéteurs à des objections et à des épigrammes sans fin."Comp. the works of Rönsch, Vercellone, Kaulen, Ranke, and Ziegler on the Itala and Vulgata.
[1526] Ruhnken calls Tertullian "Latinitatis pessimum auctorem" and Bishop Kaye the harshest and most obscure of writers," but Niebuhr, (Lectures on Ancient History, vol. II. p. 54), Oehler (Op. III. 720), and Holmes (the translator of Tert. against Marcion, p. ix.) judge more favorably of his style, which is mostly " the terse and vigorous expression of terse and vigorous thought."Renan (Marc Aurèle, p. 456) calls Tertullian the strangest literary phenomenon "un mélange inouï de talent, de fausseté d'esprit, d'éloquence et de mauvais goût grand écrivain, si l'on admet que sacrifier toute grammaire et toute correction à l' effet sois bien écrire."Cardinal Newman calls him " the most powerful writer of the early centuries "(Tracts, Theol. and Eccles., p. 219).