Download Tertullian Against Heresies

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Tertullian. Jerusalem and Athens.
From Prescriptions against the Heretics
5. Again, when he blames party strife and schism, which are unquestionably evils, he at once adds
heresy (1 Cor 11:18-19). What he links with evils, he is of course proclaiming to be itself an evil. Indeed
in saying that he had believed in their schisms and parties just because he knew that heresies must
come, he makes heresy the greater evil, showing that it was in view of the greater evil that he readily
believed in the lesser ones. He cannot have meant that he believed in the evil things because heresy is
good. He was warning them not to be surprised at temptations of an even worse character, which were
intended, he said, to "make manifest those who are approved," that is, those whom heresy failed to
corrupt. In short, as the whole passage aims at the preservation of unity and the restraint of faction,
while heresy is just as destructive of unity as schism and party strife, it must be that he is setting heresy
in the same reprehensible category as schism and party. So he is not approving those who have turned
aside to heresy. On the contrary, he urges us with strong words to turn aside from them, and teaches us
all to speak and think alike (1 Cor 1:10). That is what heresy will not allow.
6. I need say no more on that point, for it is the same Paul who elsewhere, when writing to the Galatians
(Gal 5:20), classes heresy among the sins of the flesh, and who counsels Titus to shun a heretic after the
first reproof (Titus 3:10) because such a man is perverted and sinful, standing self-condemned. Besides,
he censures heresy in almost every letter when he presses the duty of avoiding false doctrine, which is
in fact the product of heresy. This is a Greek word meaning choice, the choice which anyone exercises
when he teaches heresy or adopts it. That is why he calls a heretic self-condemned; he chooses for
himself the cause of his condemnation. We Christians are forbidden to introduce anything on our own
authority or to choose what someone else introduces on his own authority. Our authorities are the
Lord's apostles, and they in turn chose to introduce nothing on their own authority. They faithfully
passed on to the nations the teaching which they had received from Christ. So we should anathematize
even an angel from heaven if he were to preach a different gospel (Gal 1:8)…
7. These are human and demonic doctrines, engendered for itching ears by the ingenuity of that worldly
wisdom which the Lord called foolishness, choosing the foolish things of the world to put philosophy to
shame. For worldly wisdom culminates in philosophy with its rash interpretation of God's nature and
purpose. It is philosophy that supplies the heresies with their equipment. From philosophy come the
aeons and those infinite forms—whatever they are—and Valentinus's human trinity. He had been a
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Platonist.1 From philosophy came Marcion's God, the better for his inactivity. He had come from the
Stoics.2 The idea of a mortal soul was picked up from the Epicureans, and the denial of the restitution of
the flesh was taken over from the common tradition of the philosophical schools. Zeno taught them to
equate God and matter, and Heracleitus comes on the scene when anything is being laid down about a
god of fire. Heretics and philosophers perpend the same themes and are caught up in the same
discussions. What is the origin of evil, and why? The origin of man, and how? And-Valentinus's latest
subject-what is the origin of God? No doubt in Desire and Abortion!3 A plague on Aristotle, who taught
them dialectic, the art which destroys as much as it builds, which changes its opinions like a coat, forces
its conjectures, is stubborn in argument, works hard at being contentious and is a burden even to itself.
For it reconsiders every point to make sure it never finishes a discussion.
From philosophy come those fables and endless genealogies and fruitless questionings, those "words
that creep like as doth a canker." To hold us back from such things, the Apostle testifies expressly in his
letter to the Colossians that we should beware of philosophy. "Take heed lest any man circumvent you
through philosophy or vain deceit, after the tradition of men," against the providence of the Holy Spirit
(1 Tim 1:4; 2 Tim 2:17; Col 2:8). He had been at Athens where he had come to grips with the human
wisdom which attacks and perverts truth, being itself divided up into its own swarm of heresies by the
variety of its mutually antagonistic sects. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the
Academy, the Christian with the heretic? Our principles come from the Porch of Solomon,4 who had
himself taught that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. I have no use for a Stoic or a Platonic
or a dialectic Christianity. After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of
research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by
believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe.
8. I come then to the point which members of the Church adduce to justify speculation and which
heretics press in order to import scruple and hesitation. It is written, they say: "Seek, and ye shall find"
(Mt 7:7; Lk 11:9). But we must not forget when the Lord said these words. It was surely at the very
beginning of his teaching when everyone was still doubtful whether he was the Christ. Peter had not yet
1
Most Gnostics spoke of aeons, emanations of deity. On Valentinus’ human trinity, man's threefold constitution as
materialis, animalis, and spiritalis, see Tertullian, Adversus. Valentinus, 1 7, 25, 26, itself based on Irenaeus,
Adversus Haereses, I, i, 11 (ed. Harvey) .
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In his Adv. Marcionem, Tertullian taunts Marcion because his good God had cared nothing about the world
before the sending of Christ. But Marcion's teaching about God had nothing to do with Stoic apatheia.
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De enthymesi et ectromate, Greek Gnostic terms. Desire was cast forth shapeless from the Pleroma and
afterwards gave birth to the Demiurge, the creator God, cf. Adversus. Valentinus, 17, 18.
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Cf. 2 Cor 6:14. Solomon's Porch (John 10:23; Acts 3:11; 5:12) is contrasted with the Porch (Stoa) of the Stoic Zeno.
The allusion to Wisdom 1:1 (simplicity) strengthens the link with Solomon.
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pronounced him to be the Son of God, and even John had lost his conviction about him. It was right to
say: "Seek, and ye shall find," at the time when, being still unrecognized, he had still to be sought.
Besides, it applied only to the Jews. Every word in that criticism was pointed at those who had the
means of seeking Christ. "They have Moses and Elijah," it says; that is, the law and the prophets which
preach Christ. Similarly he says elsewhere, and plainly: "Search the Scriptures, in which ye hope for
salvation, for they speak of Me" (Lk 16:29; John 5:39). That will be what he meant by "Seek, and ye shall
find."
The following words, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you," obviously apply to the Jews. At one time
inside the house of God, the Jews found themselves outside when they were thrown out because of
their sins. The Gentiles, however, were never in God's house. They were but a drop from the bucket,
dust from the threshing-floor (Isa 40:15), always outside. How can anyone who has always been outside
knock where he has never been? How can he recognize the door if he has never been taken in or thrown
out by it? Surely it is the man who knows that he was once inside and was turned out, who recognizes
the door and knocks? Again, the words, "Ask, and ye shall receive" (Jn 16:24; Mt 7:7), fit those who
know whom to ask and by whom something has been promised, namely the God of Abraham, of Isaac,
and of Jacob, of whose person and promises the Gentiles were equally ignorant. Accordingly he said to
Israel: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt 15:24). He had not yet begun to
cast the children's bread to the dogs nor yet told the apostles to go into the way of the Gentiles. If at the
end he ordered them to go and teach and baptize the Gentiles, it was only because they were soon to
receive the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who would guide them into all truth. This also supports our
conclusion. If the apostles, the appointed teachers of the Gentiles, were themselves to receive the
Paraclete as their teacher, then the words, "Seek, and ye shall find," were much less applicable to us
than to the Jews. For we were to be taught by the apostles without any effort of our own, as they were
taught by the Holy Spirit. All the Lord's sayings, I admit, were set down for all men. They have come
through the ears of the Jews to us Christians. Still, many were aimed at particular people and constitute
for us an example rather than a command immediately applicable to ourselves.
9. However, I shall now make you a present of that point. Suppose that "Seek, and ye shall find" was said
to us all. Even then it would be wrong to determine the sense without reference to the guiding
principles of exegesis. No word of God is so unqualified or so unrestricted in application that the mere
words can be pleaded without respect to their underlying meaning.
My first principle is this. Christ laid down one definite system of truth which the world must believe
without qualification, and which we must seek precisely in order to believe it when we find it. Now you
cannot search indefinitely for a single definite truth. You must seek until you find, and when you find,
you must believe. Then you have simply to keep what you have come to believe, since you also believe
that there is nothing else to believe, and therefore nothing else to seek, once you have found and
believed what he taught who bids you seek nothing beyond what he taught. If you feel any doubt as to
what this truth is, I undertake to establish that Christ's teaching is to be found with us. For the moment,
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my confidence in my proof allows me to anticipate it, and I warn certain people not to seek for anything
beyond what they came to believe, for that was all they needed to seek for. They must not interpret,
"Seek, and ye shall find," without regard to reasonable methods of exegesis.
10. The reasonable exegesis of this saying turns on three points: matter, time, and limitation. As to
matter, you are to consider what is to be sought; as to time, when; and as to limitation, how far. What
you must seek is what Christ taught, and precisely as long as you are not finding it, precisely until you do
find it. And you did find it when you came to believe. You would not have believed if you had not found,
just as you would not have sought except in order to find. Since finding was the object of your search
and belief of your finding, your acceptance of the faith debars any prolongation of seeking and finding.
The very success of your seeking has set up this limitation for you. Your boundary has been marked out
by him who would not have you believe, and so would not have you seek, outside the limits of his
teaching.
But if we are bound to go on seeking as long as there is any possibility of finding, simply because so
much has been taught by others as well, we 'shall be always seeking and never believing. What end will
there be to seeking? What point of rest for belief? Where the fruition of finding? With Marcion? But
Valentinus also propounds: "Seek, and ye shall find." With Valentinus? But Apelles also will knock at my
door with the same pronouncement, and Ebion and Simon5 and the whole row of them can find no
other way to ingratiate themselves with me and bring me -over to their side. There will be no end, as
long as I meet everywhere with, "Seek and ye shall find," and I shall wish I had never begun to seek, if I
never grasp what Christ taught, what should be sought, what must be believed.
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From the Ebionite sect ("the Poor") Tertullian wrongly supposes a personal founder called Ebion. Simon Magus
(Acts 8) is the conventional "founder" of Gnosticism.