Voices and influences
Tertullian
The Carthaginian lawyer who gave the church the word Trinity and told Rome the blood of martyrs is seed.
Summary
This site quotes Tertullian 402 times across 40 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 220.
- Quoted here most in Luke: 65 of 402.
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Tertullian
- Lived
- died 220
- Tradition
- Early Church
5 of 402 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Tertullian died in 220 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
Why, even now the followers of Simon [Magus] are so confident of their art that they undertake to bring back the souls of the prophets from hell. And this, I believe, because their power lies in their ability to deceive.
The rest of the quotation
This power was actually granted to the witch of Endor, who brought back the soul of Samuel after Saul had consulted God in vain. Apart from that case, God forbid we should believe that any soul, much less a prophet, could be called forth by a demon.
1 Samuel 28:14 “What does he look like?” asked Saul. “An old man is coming up,” she replied. “And he is wearing a robe.” So Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed facedown in reverence. BSB
In a manner most germane to this parable, He said by Jeremiah: "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and ye shall walk in all my ways, which I have commanded you."
The rest of the quotation
This is the invitation of God. "But," says He, "they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear." This is the refusal of the people. "They departed, and walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart." "I have bought a field-and I have bought some oxen-and I have married a wife."
Jeremiah 7:23–26 but this is what I commanded them: Obey Me, and I will be your God, and you will be My people. You must walk in all the ways I have commanded you, so that it may go well with you. Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. From the day your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent you all My servants the prophets again and again. Yet they would not listen to Me or incline their ear, but they stiffened their necks and did more evil than their fathers. BSB
Look here then, say you: I discover a self-incriminating case in the matter of the Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, "And God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not."
The rest of the quotation
In accordance with which Jonah himself says unto the Lord, "Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil."
Jonah 3:9 Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.” BSB
Such eye-witnesses the Lord in infancy found; no different ones had He in adult age. Peter alone do I find-through (the mention of) his "mother-in-law" ,-to have been married.
Mark 1:29 As soon as Jesus and His companions had left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. BSB
How, if there can be a threat without its accomplishment, can you have in a threatening god, one that executes also, and in both, one that is a judicial being?
The rest of the quotation
So, again, He commands that the dust be shaken off against them, as a testimony,-the very particles of their ground which might cleave to the sandal, not to mention any other sort of communication with them. But if their churlishness and inhospitality were to receive no vengeance from Him, for what purpose does He premise a testimony, which surely forbodes some threats?
Luke 10:11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off as a testimony against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.’ BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Tertullian 402 times across 40 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born at Carthage around 155, trained in Roman law and rhetoric, and converted as an adult. Jerome says his father was an officer of the proconsul and that Tertullian himself became a presbyter; modern scholars doubt both details, and Tertullian never mentions either. What is beyond doubt is the training. Everything he wrote reads like a brief. He was the first major Christian author to write in Latin, and because he was first he had to build the vocabulary. He is the earliest writer known to use trinitas — Trinity — of God, and he supplied the formula the church has used ever since: one substance in three persons, substantia and persona, both terms taken straight out of Roman law where they meant an estate and a party to a case. Sacramentum, satisfaction, merit — a great deal of the working language of Western theology comes out of this one man's desk. His Apology, written about 197 and addressed to the governors of the empire, is the most aggressive defense of Christians ever written. He argues the trials are illegal on Rome's own terms, that Christians are convicted for a name and not an act, that the same magistrates enforce laws they privately despise. Then he turns it: kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to powder — your cruelty proves nothing except our innocence, and the more you mow us down the more we grow. The blood of Christians is seed. He wrote against Marcion, who had cut the Old Testament and most of the New out of the Bible, in five books. He wrote against Praxeas, who taught that the Father suffered on the cross. He wrote On the Prescription of Heretics, arguing that heretics had no right even to appeal to Scripture since the Scripture belonged to the churches the apostles founded — and asked the question that has been quoted ever since: what has Athens to do with Jerusalem, the Academy with the Church. He wrote on baptism, on prayer, on patience, on the dress of women, on the soldier's crown, on whether a Christian may run from persecution. His answer to that last one was no. Around 207 he joined the New Prophecy, the movement called Montanism, which held that the Spirit was still speaking and demanded a stricter discipline than the bishops would enforce. He never came back. The church that took his vocabulary never canonized him. He died about 220, an old man, still writing. Sources: Tertullian, Apology, Against Marcion, Against Praxeas, On the Prescription of Heretics (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vols. 3–4); Jerome, On Illustrious Men 53; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2.
402 quotations across 40 books
Where this voice is quoted
Are not the angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?
“But when the comparison is challenged with an angel, I am compelled to maintain that the head over all things is the stronger of the two, to whom the angels are ministers, who is destined to be the judge of angels, if he shall stand…”
You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor
“And we saw Him, and He had not attractiveness or grace; but His mien was unhonoured, deficient in comparison of the sons of men," "a man set in the plague, and knowing how to bear infirmity: "to wit as having been set by the Father…”
and was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
“For whence was Noah "found righteous," if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted "a friend of God," if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law?”
Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to reteach you the basic principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food!
“What was the subject-matter which led the apostle to write such (words)? The inexperience of a new and just rising Church, which he was rearing, to wit, "with milk," not yet with the "solid food" of stronger doctrine; inexperience so great, that that infancy of…”
and then have fallen away—to be restored to repentance, because they themselves are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to open shame.
“Therefore the apostate withal will recover his former "garment," the robe of the Holy Spirit; and a renewal of the "ring," the sign and seal of baptism; and Christ will again be "slaughtered; " and he will recline on that couch from which such as…”
Such a high priest truly befits us—One who is holy, innocent, undefiled, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
“For to this end had He come, that, being Himself pure from sin, and in all respects holy, He might undergo death on behalf of sinners.”
But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God.
“He is seen by Stephen, at his martyrdom by stoning, still sitting at the right hand of God [Acts 7:55] where He will continue to sit, until the Father shall make His enemies His footstool.”
And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds.
“There is, too, that will of God which the Lord accomplished in preaching, in working, in enduring: for if He Himself proclaimed that He did not His own, but the Father's will, without doubt those things which He used to do were the Father's will…”
For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge His people.”
“He who counselled that an injury should be forgotten, was still more likely to counsel the patient endurance of it. But then, when He said, "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay," He thereby teaches that patience calmly waits for the infliction of vengeance.”
By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous when God gave approval to his gifts.
“Therefore, since God originated Adam uncircumcised, and inobservant of the Sabbath, consequently his offspring also, Abel, offering Him sacrifices, uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, was by Him commended; while He accepted what he was offering in simplicity of heart, and reprobated the sacrifice of…”
By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in godly fear built an ark to save his family.
“For what wonder if He extends a discipline who institutes it? if He advances who begins? In short, before the Law of Moses, written in stone-tables, I contend that there was a law unwritten, which was habitually understood naturally, and by the fathers was habitually…”
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.
“-" Have you seen," says Scripture, "a brother? you have seen your Lord; " -especially "a stranger," lest perhaps he be "an angel.”