Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 05:4 (Fall 1962)
Article: Tertullian: Victim Of Caricature
Author: Arthur W. Klem

BETS 5:4 (Fall 1962) p. 103

Tertullian: Victim Of Caricature

Arthur W. Klem

In the early days of New England the use of the pillory was not uncommon. Offenders were held up to public ridicule and abuse in order that the onlookers might be guided into right paths and avoid moral pitfalls. This practice has been discontinued for the most part, but it is certainly to be found in many branches of modern scholarship and pedagogy.

The worst feature of the use of the pillory lies in the feeling of superiority on the part of onlookers at the expense of the accused. What is still worse in the application of the pillory technique in scholarship is the fact that the accused is represented only by his accusers. Moreover, the accusers have a special purpose of their own in this: the placing of their own position in a better light by contrast to the hopelessness and sad inadequacies of the position being pilloried.

By way of illustration we shall consider Tertullian. In many studies in apologetics and philosophy of religion Tertullian receives attention as a horrible example of irrationalism, of opposition to philosophy and culture. The position that finds faith in opposition to reason is attributed to Tertullian. The usual procedure, then, is to refute this position and castigate Tertullian.

It is not difficult to find such treatment of Tertullian.

It is, however, a hard position (Tertullian’s) to maintain, for to open one’s mouth in rational speech is to involve religion in rational categories. The alternative is silence!1

He has no sympathy with the efforts of some Christians of his time to point out positive connections between their faith and the ideas of the Greek philosophers .... There is a tendency in the radical movement to use the word “reason” to designate the methods and the content of knowledge to be found in a cultural society; “revelation” to indicate that Christian knowledge of God and deity that is derived from Jesus Christ and resident in the Christian society. These definitions, then, are connected with the denigration of reason and the exaltation of revelation .... Tertullian, of course, is the stock example in history of the position that substitutes revelation for reason . . . . Human reason as it flourishes in culture is for these men not only inadequate because it does not lead to a knowledge of God and the truth necessary to salvation; but it is also erroneous and deceptive.2

Admittedly sympathy for Tertullian is not easy to generate. There is hardly a figure in the history of Christian thought more angular, more unattractive to the contemporary mind. On one count or another Tert...