The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

The incarnation of Christ

His best work in the controversial field is in his treatises, On the Flesh of Christ, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, and On the Soul. The first of these, above all, will appeal to any reader to whom the historic Jesus is significant. Much has changed in outlook and preconceptions since Tertullian wrote, but his language on the reality of Jesus, as an actual human being and no sidereal or celestial semblance of a man, on the incarnation, and the love of God, still glows and still finds a response. "Away," he pictures Marcion saying, "Away with those census-rolls of Cæsar, always tiresome, away with the cramped inns, the soiled rags, the hard stall. Let the angelic host look to it!"[1123] And then he rejoins, Do you think nativity impossible – or unsuitable – for God? Declaim as you like on the ugliness of the circumstances; yet Christ did love men (born, if you like, just as you say); for man he descended, for man he preached, for man he lowered himself with every humiliation down to death, and the death of the cross. Yes, he loved him whom he redeemed at so high a price. And with man he loved man's nativity, even his flesh. The conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the discipline of justice, of purity, of pity, of patience, of all innocence – these are not folly, and they are bound up with the truth of the Gospel. Is it unworthy of God? "Spare the one hope of all the world, thou, who wouldst do away with the disgrace of faith. Whatever is unworthy of God is all to my good."[1124] The Son of God also died – "It is credible because it is foolish. He was buried and rose again; it is certain because it is impossible." And how could all this be, if his body were not true? "You bisect Christ with a lie. The whole of him was Truth."[1125] The gospel narrative from beginning to end implies that Christ's body was like ours – "he hungered under the devil, thirsted under the Samaritan woman, shed tears over Lazarus, was troubled[1126] at death (for, the flesh, he said, is weak), last of all he shed his blood." How could men have spat in a face radiant with "celestial grandeur"? Wait! Christ has not yet subdued his enemies that he may triumph with his friends.

Jesus is to come again, as he was, as he is, sitting at the Father's right hand, God and man, flesh and blood, the same in essence and form as when he ascended; so he shall come.[1127] And men will be raised in the flesh to receive judgment. A storm overhangs the world.[1128] What the treasure-house of eternal fire will be, may be guessed from the petty vents men see in Etna and elsewhere.[1129] There will be white robes for martyrs; for the timid a little portion in the lake of fire and sulphur.[1130] All that Gibbon thought would "offend the reason and humanity of the present age" in the last chapter of the de Spectacutis may recur to the reader. But, continues Tertullian in that passage, my gaze will be upon those who let loose their fury on the Lord himself – "'This,' I shall say, 'is he, the son of the carpenter or the harlot, Sabbath-breaker, Samaritan, demoniac. This is he whom you bought from Judas; this is he, whom you beat with the reed and the palms of your hands, whom you disfigured with your spittle, to whom you gave gall and vinegar. This is he whom his disciples stole away, that it might be said he had risen, – or the gardener took him away, that his lettuces might not be trodden by the crowds that came.'" "A long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms," is Gibbon's judgment.

A mind less intent on polemic will judge otherwise of Tertullian and his controversies. There is, first of all, much more of the philosophic temper than is commonly supposed. He does not, like Clement and other Greeks, revel in cosmological speculations as to the Logos, nor does he loosely adopt the abstract methods of later Greek philosophy. But in his treatment of the Soul, of moral order and disorder, and of responsibility, he shows no mean powers of mind. He argues from experience, and from the two sources, from which he could best hope to learn most directly the mind of God, Nature and the Scriptures. The infallibility of the Scriptures is of course a limitation to freedom of speculation, but it was an axiom of the early church, and a man of experience might accept it, bound up as it was with sound results in the martyr-death and the changed life. Tertullian will get back to the facts, if he can; and if he judges too swiftly of Nature and too swiftly accepts the literal truth of Scripture, – while these are drawbacks to our acceptance of his conclusions, there is still to be seen in him more independence of mind than in those Greek Fathers for whom Greek philosophy had spoken the last word in metaphysics. It is psychology that interests Tertullian more, and moral questions, and these he handles more deeply than the Stoics. He stands in line with Augustine and Calvin, his spiritual descendants.

If he speaks more of hell than certain Greeks do, it is not unnatural. The man, who saw such deaths in the amphitheatre as he describes in the Passion of Perpetua, who remembered the expressions he had then seen on the faces of the spectators, who knew too well the cruelty that went with Roman lust, could hardly help believing in hell. What was the origin of evil? asked philosopher and heretic. What is its destiny? and what are you to do with it now? asked Tertullian; and, in all seriousness, the answer to the former question is more likely to be found when the answers of the latter are reached. At any rate the latter are more practical, and that adjective, with what it suggests of drawback and of gain, belongs to Tertullian.

On conduct

His application of the test of utility to belief is obviously open to criticism. "It is expedient," said Varro, "for men to be deceived in religion." No, Tertullian would have said, it is more expedient for them to know the truth; and he backed his conviction by his appeal to Nature, on the one hand, Nature, rational through and through, and ever loyal to law, to fixity of principle, and on the other hand by reference to the verification of his position yielded by experience – once more the martyr-death and the transformed character. These fundamental ideas he may have misused in particulars, if not in matters more essential; but, if he is wrong from the beginning in holding them, human knowledge, progress and conduct become fortuitous and desultory at once. Nature and verification from life are substantially all we have. To these of course Tertullian added revelation in a sense distinct.

From the question of conduct we pass naturally to the great cleavage of Tertullian with the church. A change had come in church practice and government since the days when the Teaching of the Apostles represented actual present fact, – perhaps even since the Apology of Aristides. The church had grown larger, it had developed its organization, and it was relying more on the practical men with a turn for administration, who always appear when a movement, begun by idealists, seems to show signs of success. The situation creates them, and they cannot be avoided. They have their place, but they do not care for ideas. Thus in the church the ministry of the Spirit, the ministry of gifts, was succeeded by the ministry of office, with its lower ideals of the practical and the expedient. The numbers of the church swelled, and a theory began to spread, which Cyprian took up later on, and which was almost inevitable on his principles, that the church was an ark, with beasts clean and beasts unclean within it. This theory answered to the actual facts, hardly to the ideal, and Tertullian rejected it.[1131] Conduct at once suggested the theory, and responded to it. Christians fell into adultery and apostasy, and while at first this meant "delivery to Satan," restoration became progressively easy. The Shepherd of Hermas extended second chances, till Tertullian fiercely spoke of "that apocryphal shepherd of adulterers.[1132]"

From Phrygia came the suggestion of reformation. Our evidence as to the history of Montanism in its native land is derived from hostile sources, and the value of it must partly depend on the truth of the witnesses and partly on their intelligence, and of neither have we any guarantee at all. That they are clearly hostile is plain from the fragments in Eusebius. That they understood the inner meaning of what they condemned, we have no indication. Montanus, however, asserted Christ's promise of the Paraclete – his enemies allege that he identified himself with the Paraclete, a statement which might be used to show how quotation may lead to suggestio falsi. But the coming of the Paraclete was not in fact a synonym for fanaticism and the collection of money, as the enemies of Montanus hinted. It meant the bracing of Christian life and character, and the restoration of prophecy, new revelation of truth, power and progress. It appealed to the Christian world, and the movement spread – probably with modifications as it spread. The oracles of Montanus and of two women, Prisca and Maximilla, became widely known, and they inculcated a stern insistence on conduct, which was really needed, while they showed how reformation was to be reached. To use language of more modern times, involves risk of misconception; but if it may be done with caution, we may roughly say that the Montanists stood for what the Friends call the Inner Light, and for progressive revelation – or, at any rate, for something in this direction. The indwelling of God was not consistent with low living; and earnest souls, all over the world, were invested with greater power and courage to battle with the growing lightness in the church and to meet the never-ceasing hostility of the world – the lion and the cruel faces of the amphitheatre.

Ecstacy

Yet Montanism failed for want of a clear conception of the real character of primitive Christianity. Aiming at morals, Montanists conceived of life and the human mind and God in a way very far from that of Jesus. They laid a stress, which is not his, on asceticism and on penance, and they cultivated ecstasy – in both regions renouncing the essentially spiritual conception of religion, and turning to a non-Christian view of matter. They thus aimed at obtaining or keeping the indwelling spirit of Jesus, known so well in the early church, but by mechanical means; and this, though the later church in this particular followed them for generations, is not to be done. Still, whatever their methods and their expedients, they stood for righteousness, and here lay the fascination of Montanism for Tertullian.

Throughout his later life Tertullian, then, was a Montanist, though the change was not so great as might be expected. Some of his works, such as that On Monogamy, bear the stamp of Montanism, for re-marriage was condemned by the Montanists. Elsewhere his citation of the oracles of Prisca suggests that a book belongs to the Montanist period; or we deduce it from such a passage as that in the work On the Soul where he describes a vision. The passage is short and it is suggestive.

"We have to-day among us a sister who has received gifts (charismata) of the nature of revelations, which she undergoes (patitur) in spirit in the church amid the rites of the Lord's day falling into ecstasy (per ecstasin). She converses with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and sees and hears mysteries, and reads the hearts of certain persons, and brings healings to those who ask. According to what Scriptures are read, or psalms sung, or addresses made, or prayers offered up, the matter of her visions is supplied. It happened that we had spoken something of the soul, when this sister was in the spirit. When all was over, and the people had gone, she – for it is her practice to report what she has seen, and it is most carefully examined that it may be proved – 'amongst other things,' she said, 'a soul was shown to me in bodily form and it seemed to be a spirit, but not empty, nor a thing of vacuity; on the contrary, it seemed as if it might be touched, soft, lucid, of the colour of air, and of human form in every detail."[1133]

Such a story explains itself. The corporeity of the soul was a tenet of Stoicism, essential to Tertullian, for without it he could not conceive of what was to follow the resurrection. He spoke of it and we can imagine how. It would hardly take a vision to see anything of which he spoke. The sister however was, what in modern phrase is called, psychopathic, and the vision occurred, controlled by the suggestion that preceded it.

Conclusion

It must be admitted that there is in some of his Montanist treatises, particularly where he is handling matters of less importance, such as re-marriage, fasting, and the like, a bitterness of tone which is not pleasant. As long as his humour and his strong sense control his irony, it is no bad adjunct of his style, it is a great resource. But it declines into sarcasm, and "sarcasm," as Teufelsdröckh put it, "is the language of the devil"; and we find Tertullian, pleading for God and righteousness, in a tone and a temper little likely to win men. But the main ideas that dominate him still prevail – conduct, obedience, God's law in Nature and in the book, the value of the martyr-death.

Little is to be got by dwelling on his outbursts of ill temper; they hardly do more than illustrate what we knew already, his intensity, his sensibility, his passion. They form the negative side of the great positive qualities. Let me gather up a few scattered thoughts which come from his heart and are better and truer illustrations of the man, and with them let chapter and book have an end.

Conduct is the test of creed (de Præscr. Hær. 43). To lie about God is in a sense idolatry (de Præscr. 40). Security in sin means love of it (de Pudic. 9). Whatever darkness you pile above your deeds, God is light (de Pænit. 6). What we are forbidden to do, the soul pictures to itself at its peril (de Pænit. 3). Truth persuades by teaching, it does not teach by making things plausible (adv. Valent. 1). Faith is patience with its lamp lit —illuminata (de Pat. 6). Patience is the very nature of God. The recognition of God understands well enough the duty laid upon it. Let wrong-doing be wearied by your patience (de Pat. 3, 4, 8). There is no greater incitement to despise money than that the Lord himself had no wealth (de Pat. 7). Love is 'the supreme mystery (sacramentum) of faith (de Pat. 12). Faith fears no famine (de Idol. 12). Prayer is the wall of faith (de Or. 29). Every day, every moment, prayer is necessary to men… Prayer comes from conscience. If conscience blush, prayer blushes (de exh. cast. 10). Good things scandalize none but the bad mind (de virg. vel. 3). Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's – his image on the coin; give to God what is God's – his image in man, yourself (de Idol. 15).

But to this there is no end, and an end there must be. By his expression of Christian ideas in the natural language of Roman thought, by his insistence on the reality of the historic Jesus and on the inevitable consequences of human conduct, by his reference of all matters of life and controversy to the will of God manifested in Nature, in inspiration and in experience, Tertullian laid Western Christendom under a great debt, never very generously acknowledged. For us it may be as profitable to go behind the writings till we find the man, and to think of the manhood, with every power and every endowment, sensibility, imagination, energy, flung with passionate enthusiasm on the side of purity and righteousness, of God and Truth; to think of the silent self-sacrifice freely and generously made for a despised cause, of a life-long readiness for martyrdom, of a spirit, unable to compromise, unable in its love of Christ to see His work undone by cowardice, indulgence and unfaith, and of a nature in all its fulness surrendered. That the Gospel could capture such a man as Tertullian, and, with all his faults of mind and temper, make of him what it did, was a measure of its power to transform the old world and a prophecy of its power to hold the modern world, too, and to make more of it as the ideas of Jesus find fuller realization and verification in every generation of Christian character and experience.

1

Cic. ad fam. x, 16, 2, Ipse tibi sis senatus.

2

Georgic i, 505-514 (Conington's translation, with alterations).

3

Polybius, vi, 56, Shuckburgh's Translation.

4

Polybius, xviii, 35.

5

Sextus Empiricus, Adv. mathematicos, ix, 54.

6

Cicero, N.D. i, 42, 118.

7

Diodorus Siculus, i, 2.

8

Quoted by Augustine, C.D. iv, 27; vi, 5; also referred to by Tertullian, ad Natt. ii, 1.

9

Suetonius, Augustus, 31, 75, 93; Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 344.

10

Suet. Aug. 90, 92.

11

Horace, Odes, iii, 24, 9-20, Gladstone's version.

12

Horace, Odes, iii, 6, Delicta maiorum.

13

De Haruspicum Responsis, 9, 19; N.D. ii, 3, 8.

14

E.g. Apol. 25, with a serious criticism of the contrast between Roman character before and after the conquest of the world, – before and after the invasion of Rome by the images and idols of Etruscans and Greeks.

15

Augustine C.D. vi, 2.

16

On Æneid, xi, 785.

17

Propertius, v, 1, 69.

18

Ovid, Fasti, i, 7.

19

Livy, i, 19.

20

Livy, iv, 30.

21

Plutarch, Romulus, 21; Cæsar, 61, Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 310 f.

22

Suetonius, Aug. 31, Warde Fowler, op. cit. p. 190.

23

Mommsen, History, i, p. 231, who translates the hymn.

24

Quintilian, i, 6, 40. See specimen in Varro, L.L. vii, 26.

25

Epp. ii, 1, 20-27, 86.

26

Cicero, ad fam. xiv, 4, 1.

27

Hor. Sat. i, 9, 69: Porphyrion is the authority for the comedies.

28

Prudentius, contra Symmachum, i, 197-218.

29

Tibullus, i, 10, 15.

30

C.D. iv, 8. "To an early Greek," says Mr Gilbert Murray, "the earth, water and air were full of living eyes: of theoi, of daimones, of Kêres. One early poet says emphatically that the air is so crowded full of them that there is no room to put in the spike of an ear of corn without touching one." —Rise of Greek Epic, p. 82.

31

de Spect. 5; cf. de Idol. 16; de cor. mil. 13, gods of the door; de Anima, 39, goddesses of child-birth.

32

Lucr. iv, 580 f. Virg. Æn. viii, 314.

33

Cic. N.D. ii, 2, 6: cf. De Div. i, 45, 101. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 256 ff. on the Fauni.

34

Pliny, N.H. viii, 151; xxx, 84.

35

Plutarch, Numa, 15; de facie in orbe lunæ, 30; Ovid, Fasti, iii, 291.

36

Horace's ode attests the power of the Fauns over crops and herds.

37

Dionys. Hal. v, 16.

38

Pliny, N.H. xii, 3.

39

Ovid, Fasti, iii, 267. Licia dependent longas velantia sæpes, et posita est meritæ multa tabella deæ.

40

Virgil, Æn. x, 423.

41

Horace, Odes, iii, 13.

42

W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 240.

43

Cf. Tertullian, de Baptismo, 5. Annon et alias sine ullo Sacramento immundi spiritus aquis incubant, adfectantes illam in primordio divini spiritus gestationem? Sciunt opaci quique fontes, et avii quique rivi, et in balneis piscinæ et euripi in domibus, vel cisternæ et putei, qui rapere dicuntur, scilicet per vim spiritus nocentis. Nympholeptos et lymphaticos et hydrophobos vocant quos aquæ necaverunt aut amentia vel formidine exercuerunt. Quorsum ista retulimus? Ne quis durius credat angelum dei sanctum aquis in salutem hominis temperandis adesse.

44

Ovid, Fasti, vi, 155 f.

45

Cf. (Lucian) Asinus, 24. poî badixeis aôría talaipôre; oudè tà daimónia dédoikas.

46

Pliny, N.H. xxxvi, 204.

47

Lampridius, Alex. Sev. 29. 2.

48

Fasti, v. 145. Cf. Prudentius, adv. Symm, ii, 445 f.

49

Odes, iii, 23. Farre pio.

50

On Georgic i, 302, See Varro, ap. Aug. C.D. vii, 13. Also Tert. de Anima, 39, Sic et omnibus genii deputantur, quod dæmonum nomen est. Adeo nulla ferme nativitas munda, utique ethnicorum.

51

Hor. Ep. ii. 2, 187 f. Howes' translation. Cf. Faerie Queene, II, xii, 47.

52

See J. H. Moulton in Journal of Theological Studies, III, 514.

53

Burkitt, Early Eastern Christianity, p. 222.

54

Fasti, iii, 57; Seneca, Ep. 18. 1, December est mensis: cum maxime civitas sudat, ius luxuries publicæ datum est … ut non videatur mihi errasse qui dixit: olim mensem Decembrem fuisse nunc annum.

55

Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, lect. xi.

56

Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 106 f.

57

Ovid, Fasti, ii, 409 f. Warde Fowler, op. cit. pp. 306 f.

58

Ovid, Fasti, v, 490.

59

De Divinatione, i, 1, 2.

60

ib. i, 3, 5.

61

ib. i, 39, 84.

62

De Divinatione, i, 38, 82, 83. Cf. Tertullian, de Anima, 46. Sed et Stoici deum malunt providentissimum humanæ institutioni inter cetera præsidia divinatricum artium et disciplinarum somnia quoque nobis indidisse, peculiare solatium naturalis oraculi.

63

Panaetius and Seneca should be excepted from this charge.

64

Cic. de Div. ii, 72, 149, 150. Cf. de Legg. ii, 13, 32. Plutarch also has the same remark about sleep and superstition.

65

Cf. Odes, iii, 27.

66

Tusculans, i, 21, 48.

67

Hor. Ep. ii, 2, 208; Howes.

68

Tertullian, de Idol. 9, seimus magiæ et astrologiæ inter se societatem.