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
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being proclaimed all over the world.
“" Paul, in like manner, everywhere speaks of "God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ." When writing to the Romans, he gives thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.
“So that both the gospel and Christ must be His, to whom appertain the law and the nature which are to be vindicated by the gospel and Christ-even at that judgment of God which, as he previously said, was to be according to truth.”
you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?
“Hence his invective against the transgressors of the law, who teach that men should not steal, and yet practise theft themselves.”
As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
“There is a blasphemy which we must avoid completely, viz., that any of us should give a pagan good cause for blasphemy by deceit or injury or insult or some other matter justifying complaint.”
No, a man is a Jew because he is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.
“Now it is quite within the purpose of the God of the law that circumcision should be that of the heart, not in the flesh; in the spirit, and not in the letter.”
He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
“'" Such and so great futilities of theirs wherewith they flatter God and pander to themselves, effeminating rather than invigorating discipline, with how cogent and contrary (arguments) are we for our part able to rebut,-(arguments) which set before us warningly the "severity" of God, and…”
Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too,
“Tell me, is not all mankind one flock of God? Is not the same God both Lord and Shepherd of the universal nations? Who more "perishes" from God than the heathen, so long as he "errs?”
But sin, seizing its opportunity through the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead.
“But how high an encomium of the law (do we obtain) from this fact, that by it there comes to light the latent presence of sin! It was not the law, therefore, which led me astray, but "sin, taking occasion by the commandment."”
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
“Who can draw a distinction, and say that there are two gods, one just and the other good, when He ought to be believed to be both one and the other, whose commandment is both "just and good?”
In that case, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“"For the law," says he, "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death," -that, surely, which he previously mentioned as dwelling in our members.”
And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and through sin condemned sin in the flesh " -not the flesh in sin, for the house is not…”
For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death.
“For even if he has affirmed that "good dwelleth not in his flesh," yet (he means) according to "the law of the letter," in which he "was: "but according to "the law of the Spirit," to which he annexes us, he frees us from the…”
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
“For we are persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."”
But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?”
“In the same way the potter, too, has it in his power, by tempering the blast of his fire, to modify his clayey material into a stiffer one, and to mould one form after another more beautiful than the original substance, and now possessing both…”
Why not? Because their pursuit was not by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone,
“And, of course, it had been meet that the mystery of the passion itself should be figuratively set forth in predictions; and the more incredible (that mystery), the more likely to be "a stumbling-stone," if it had been nakedly predicted; and the more magnificent, the…”
I ask then, did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Certainly not! However, because of their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous.
“Much more aptly would they have matched the Christian with the elder, and the Jew with the younger son, "according to the analogy of faith," if the order of each people as intimated from Rebecca's womb permitted the inversion: only that (in that case) the…”
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Carefully consider what is right in the eyes of everybody.
“(That) we all know; provided, however, we remember what the same (God) has said through the apostle: "Let your probity appear before men."”
And once more, Isaiah says: “The Root of Jesse will appear, One who will arise to rule over the Gentiles; in Him the Gentiles will put their hope.”
“But when the same prophet represents to us even nations sometimes estimated as "the small dust of the balance," and as "less than nothing, and vanity," and sometimes as about to hope and "trust in the name" and arm of the Lord, are we at…”