TCL - Tertullian, Against Praxeas PDF

LITERATURE
LIAN
I
TRANSLATIONS OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE
SERIES II
LATIN TEXTS
GENERAL EDITORS: W. J. SPARROW-SIMPSON, D.D.,
W. K. LOWTHER CLARKE, B.D.
TERTULLIAN
AGAINST PRAXEAS
o
IIKI LITERATURE.
LATIN TEXTS
T
I TERTULLIAN
AGAINST
PRAXEAS
A SOUTER,D.LITT.
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING

I CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. London I
The Macmillan. Companu.Ne\v\ork|

1920
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PREFACE
BY common consent the Against Praxeas of
Tertullian is one of its author's most important
works. Like many other writings which have
sprung out of controversy, it possesses a positive
and historic significance also, as the earliest sur-
viving formal statement of the doctrine of the
Trinity. It is true that the argument, at least so
far as it is based on passages from the Greek
version of the Old Testament, or on a Latin
translation of that Greek, is not so convincing to
the modern student of Scripture as it must have
been in Tertullian's own day. Yet the knowledge
of the Bible shown is amazing, and such as to
shame most modern readers. At the same time
the sheer brain power which the work exhibits
would render it notable in any age.
The an old
difficulty of interpreting Tertullian is
story. There no Latin writer for whose study
is
an exhaustive concordance or special lexicon is so

necessary, and yet there are few for whose Latinity
so little of a comprehensive nature has been done.
With the exception of the complete vocabulary
of the works edited in the two volumes of the
vii
viii PREFACE
Vienna edition, preserved in Munich for the sake
of the great Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, and Henen's
published index to the Apologeticus, no complete

record of the vocabulary of a single work of Ter-
tullian is known to me. The translator has there-
fore to depend on the incomplete indexes of words
in the various editions and the useful, if necessarily
partial, treatment of the vocabulary in Hoppe's
Syntax und Stil des Tertullian. It is fortunate,
however, for the translator of the Adversus Praxean
that his difficulty arises more from individual
terms of theological import like substantia, than
from the build of clauses or sentences.
Here, too, as in the case of Tertullian's works
generally, we are faced with a scanty manuscript
tradition of somewhat questionable value. Grati-
tude is due to Dr. Emil Kroymann for the fresh
record of manuscript variants in his two editions
(Vienna, 1906; Tubingen, 1907). I have not been
able to adhere, however, either to his or to any

other single text. In particular I would depre-
cate the theory underlying Kroymann's frequent
additions and excisions from, the text of the
to,
manuscripts. Words do get lost and added in the

course of transmission, but if I may venture to say
so, hardly in the way Kroymann postulates. I have
consulted in addition to Kroymann, the complete

editions of De la Barre (Paris, 1580), Rigault
(Paris, 1634), and Oehler (Leipzig, 1854). I have
also profited by the notes on the text of chapters
1-17, contributed by Dr. C. H. Turner to the

PREFACE ix
Journal of Theological Studies vol. xiv.

(1912-1913)
,
pp. 556-564. of d'Ales, La

The monograph
Theologie de Tertullien (Paris, 1905), has proved
most valuable to one who is no theologian. I
have not seen any previous English translation,
but I was glad to accept the kind offer of my
assistant, Mr. James H. Baxter, M.A., of Glasgow
University, to revise translation, before I had
my
revised it myself. I have been at pains to record
the Biblical quotations and references with greater

fulness than the editors. My book is not intended
for the expert in Tertullian ;
he may, however,
find something in the notes to interest him. The
general reader is expected to use the translation
along with the original, but I hope it will be
intelligible even to readers for whom the original
is a closed book.
A. SOUTER.
Aberdeen,
February 8, 1919.
INTRODUCTION
i. ON TERTULLIAN'S LIFE AND WORKS
OF Tertullian, as of many another who has
rendered pre-eminent service to humanity, almost
nothing is known. His full name was Quintus
Septimius Florens Tertullianus, and he was a
native of the Roman
province of Africa, which
corresponded roughly in area to the modern Tunis.
He was of pagan parentage, and underwent a
complete training as a lawyer. He appears to
have visited Italy, but he spent the greatest part
of his life in the city of Carthage, which had been
refounded by Julius Caesar about a hundred years
after the younger Scipio had laid it waste. The
city had become once again a great centre, and
Christianity must have reached it at an early
period, probably direct from Italy. In Africa the
new religion found a favourable soil, a fact not
altogether undue to the Semitic origin of the old
Punic stock, which found something akin to itself
in the daughter of Judaism. The number of
churches in Africa in Tertullian's time probably
greatly exceeded the total of Italy itself. And
this Christianity seems to have been more Latin
than Greek. The most highly educated of the
xii INTRODUCTION
provincials in Africa were acquainted with Greek,

but the proportion of such persons was far less
than would have been found in Italy.
We
have no evidence as to the date of Tertul-
but if we place it about A.D. 160, we
lian's birth,
shall probably not be far wrong. The date of his

conversion is equally unknown, but it may be
assigned to the period of mature manhood. He
was a man of ardent temperament, unbounded
energy and great creative faculty. In such a man
conversion was sure to be followed at the earliest
possible interval by active work on behalf of the
Faith, and for him the pen was the obvious instru-
ment. All his knowledge of law, literature and
philosophy was at once enlisted on the side of the
persecuted religion. Like a later convert from
paganism, St. Ambrose, he must have taken up
the study of the Scriptures as eagerly as he had
followed his earlier pursuits. We have no satis-
factory evidence that he held any office in the
Church. It is safest to regard him as an early
forerunner of a succession of Christian laymen,

men like Pelagius, Marius Mercator, Junilius and
Cassiodorus, who have had their share in building
up the body of Christian doctrine.
strongly ascetic vein in Tertullian led him

The
later to adopt the doctrines of the Montanists.
This sect took its name from Montanus of Pepuza
in Phrygia, and among its tenets was the assertion
of prophetic gifts in opposition to the regularly
constituted ministry millenarism, and abstinence
;
INTRODUCTION xiii
from every sort of union between the sexes. The

influence of Montanism spread gradually in the
West, and reached Africa almost certainly from
Italy, but it is improbable that it had become
associated with a declared sect in Africa in Ter-
tullian's time. It represented rather a tendency
within thebosom of the Church. But that tend-
ency gained more and more power with Tertullian
himself, and in his later works he accepts the
doctrine of the new prophecy, and inaugurates the
arbitrary rule of individual spiritual gifts, thus
undermining the authority of the Old and New
Testaments as well as that of the Church. He
contradicts Scripture in urging the Christian to face
persecution, in depreciating marriage, in making

regulations for fasting, and other minor matters.
But these and other exaggerations, though they
have deprived Tertullian of canonisation, in no
way affect his importance as the earliest of the
Latin Fathers. His great learning, his obvious
sincerity and his burning eloquence are to be set
over against such excesses, as well as against the
occasional coarseness which will break out in the
writings of a Tertullian, a Jerome and an Augustine,
who have in their unregenerate days become too
familiar with uncleanness. In originality he is
inferior to none of these. In doctrine and in
language alike he is a pioneer of Western

Christianity. To him we owe the first formulation
of the doctrine of the Trinity to him we owe a
;
great part of the Christian Latin vocabulary. He

xiv INTRODUCTION
isthe earliest Latin writer to quote Scripture with
any freedom, and he is the first of that roll of
noble names, Tertullian, Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose)
Jerome, Augustine, which no Christian literature in
any language can match.
Yet here, also, we have our treasure in earthen
vessels. Tertullian is the most difficult of all Latin
prose writers, outdoing the fully developed Tacitean
style in that brevity which inevitably becomes
obscurity. His curiously com-
vocabulary is
pounded of technical language, Grecisms

legal
and colloquialisms, and in the absence of a special
lexicon or a concordance to his works it is a task
of extreme difficulty at times to ascertain precisely
what shade of meaning to assign to a word. The
importance of Tertullian is becoming so widely
recognised now that the task of compiling such a
lexicon may be commended to a patient scholar as
one of the most urgent requirements of Latin
scholarship. But we shall never know his vocabu-
lary and idiom in the way that it is possible to
know that of Jerome, Augustine or Gregory. The
comparative neglect of his works in the Middle
Ages has resulted in the survival of a pathetically
scanty listof good manuscripts. Much of his text

will, in consequence, never be restored with absolute
certainty.
The list of his surviving works, with the dates
now generally 1 assigned to them, is as follows :
1
I follow d'Ales, pp. xiii. ff.. slightly different from Harnack,
Gfsch. altchr. Litt.> II. 2. (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 295 f.
INTRODUCTION xv
Ad Marty ras Feb. or March 197.

Ad Nattones after Feb. 197.
Apologeticus autumn 197.

De Testimonio Animae between 197 and
200.
De Spectaculis about 200.
De
De Oratione
....
Praescriptione Haereti-
corum
. .
about 200.
De Baptismo
De Patientia
De Paenitentia .
between 200 and 206.

De Cultu Feminaruin .
Ad Uxorem
Adversus Hermogenen
Adversus* ludaeos
De Virginibus Velandis about 206.
Adversus Marcionem, Libri
De
I.-IIII
Pallio .... 207-8.
209.
De Anima ....
Adversus Valentinianos
De Came Christi
De Resurrectione Carnis between 208 and 211,
Adversus Marcionem, Liber
V
De Exhortatione Castitatis .
>
De Corona . 211.
Scorpiace 211 or 212.
De Idololatria . 211 or 212.
Ad Scapulam end of 212.
xvi INTRODUCTION
The following are definitely Montanist :
De Fuga in Persecutione .
213.
Adversus Praxean . . 1
De Monogamia . .
.Rafter
2 13.
De leiunio . . . .
'
De Pudicitia . . . between 217 and 222.
Besides these, several works by him have been

lost. It is also to be noted that he issued the
Apologeticus (probably) and the De Spectaculis

(certainly) in Greek, as well as a Greek work on
Baptism.
Of annotated editions of Tertullian's complete
works, the best is that by Franciscus Oehler
(Lipsiae, 3 Vols., 1853, 1854). The best text of
the following works is to be found in the Vienna
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum,
Vols. XX. and XLVII. (Vindobonae et Lipsiae),
1890, 1906)De Spectaculis, De Idololatria, Ad
:
Nationes, De Testimonio Animae, Scorpiace, De

Oratione, De Baptismo, De Pudicitia, De leiunio,
De Anima, De Patientia, De Carnis Remrrectione,
Adversus Adversus Valentinianos,
Hermogenen,
Adversus Omnes Adversus Praxean
HaeresesJ-
Adversus Marcionem. The best work on the
language of Tertullian is H. Hoppe, Syntax tind
Stil des Tertullian (Leipzig, 1903) on his theology, ;
A. d'Ales, La Theologie de Tertullien (Paris, 1905);

on his New Testament citations, H. Ronsch, Das
Neue Testament Tertulliaris (Leipzig, 1871).
1
This book is
perhaps the work of Victorinus of Pettau (f 303).
INTRODUCTION xvii
2. ADVERSUS PRAXEAN 1
Of the lifeof Praxeas almost nothing is known.
We may safely argue that he was a Greek, for the
name is Greek and not Latin. He lived and
taught at Rome early in the third century, sharing
the views of a contemporary, Noetus of Smyrna.
He gained some reputation in the metropolis for
hisexposure of the Montanist prophets, and would
thus be far from acceptable to an adherent of their
views like Tertullian. But Praxeas' services in
this connexion were counterbalanced by heresy
in another. He insisted on divine unity to such
a degree that he destroyed the Trinity. Crudely
expressed, his position was that the Father alone
was God, and that all the experiences undergone
by Jesus in His earthly life were undergone by the
Father. The other two Persons in the Trinity
were reduced to mere modality. Praxeas later
recanted, but his heresy was to spring up later
with Sabellius, from whose name it comes to be
called Sabellianism. 2
Tertullian does not find it difficult to make a
very vigorous defence of the doctrine of the
Trinity, a defence which loses none of import- its
ance and value from the fact that the author was
1
In this section I am greatly indebted to d'Ales, pp. 67-81.
Compare also Bp. Kaye, The Ecclesiastical History of the Second
and Third Centuries (cheap edition), pp. 260-280; Blunt, On the
Right Use of the Early Fathers (London, 1857), pp. 485-517.
2
It is also, of course, known as Patripassianism, which may be
" the doctrine that the Father suffered
paraphrased (on the Cross)."
B
xviii INTRODUCTION
a Montanist at the time he wrote it. He points
out Praxeas' contention that it was the Father
Himself who was incarnated in the Virgin, that
it was He who was born and suffered, that the
Father is Jesus Christ. The Christian tradition,

however, without surrendering the unity of the
Godhead, maintains the "economy" (peconomia^
dispensatio} of the Trinity. God is one, but His
activities are exercised by Father, Son and Spirit.
There one Son of God, His Word, incarnated
is
by Him, who in His turn sent the Holy Spirit or

Paraclete who comes from the Father, to sanctify
in the faith those who believe in the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the faith of
the Gospel, the creed of the Church. Tertullian
does not, however, rest content with this statement.
He proceeds to elaborate a proof of it, and he
begins by pointing out that divine unity is not
in question, because the Church admits one divine
substance in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. They are one substance they differ only
;
in degree, form, aspect. The rest of the treatise
(chap. 3 to the end) is only a development of this

thesis.
Ordinary Christians hold fast to the idea of

"
monarchy," from fear of polytheism. Tertullian
analyses the idea of monarchy and points out how
in the case of an earthly monarchy the power of
the sole ruler is not impaired by devolution of
certain powers to his subordinates. It is his power
all through, and they are the essential instruments

INTRODUCTION xix
of it. So with the hierarchy of heaven. The

it is
Son must restore His kingdom to the Father

(i Cor. xv. 24, 25, 28). A full study of all the
Scripture references to the Son is, however, neces-
sary. God existed alone at the beginning of the
world, but He already carried His thought (ratio,
sensus) within Himself; this is what the Greeks
mean by Logos, which the Latins have repre-
sented by Sermo. In His thought was His Word,
which by mental effort He made distinct from
Himself.
This same divine thought is called Wisdom
(Sophia) in the Book of Proverbs (viii. 22 ff.),
1
where we find the second person carrying out the
plan of God's works. This thought is developed

through a synthesis of a number of passages of
Scripture. The Word is substance, He is person,
He Son of the Father, and has the highest
is
position after Him. A possible confusion with

Valentinus the Gnostic's doctrine is here eluci-
dated, by showing clearly the difference between
his position and that of the true thinker, in
particular the real union between the Father and

Son, which copiously illustrated, especially from
is
St. John's Gospel. The relation of Father to Son

iscompared to that of the tree and its branch, the
source and the river, the sun and a ray of the sun.
Keeping the analogy, he compares the Holy Spirit
to the fruit on the branch. We must hold fast
to the indissoluble union of Father, Son and Holy
1
Prax. 6.
xx INTRODUCTION
Spirit. Yet the Father and the Son are different,

in that the Father greater than the Son.
is The
Holy Spirit is also other than the Son, for the Son
promised to send Him. A father implies a son,
and a son a father
to fail to recognise this is
;
to destroy the Father as well as the Son. God

can do everything, but He did not will everything,
and with Him to will is to do. Scripture proves
separate identity of the three Persons by introduc-
1
ing one speaking to another, as well as by the
occasional use of the plural number. 2
Tertullian then meets the accusation that these
passages prove the existence of two gods.

Scripture has often given the name God to the
three Persons taken separately, but Christians are
" "
careful never to speak of gods in the plural, lest
they should be charged with polytheism. The

distinction between the Divine Persons is also
proved by the divine appearances in the Old

Testament. The Son as God is as invisible as
the Father the Son is visible only as Man.
;
The
theophanies of the Old Testament imply a created
mediator, namely the Son. The reference to God
appearing to Moses "face to face" (Numb. xix.
3
6-8) is taken, with Irenaeus, as referring to the
Transfiguration by anticipation and in Old ;
Testament times the Son appeared only "in an

image or enigma."
In the New Testament we find it stated more
1 2
Prax. ii. Prax. 12.
3
Adv. Haer. V. 20, 9.
INTRODUCTION xxi
than once that no one has seen the Father, yet

there we find equally definite statements that the
Son has been seen and even touched. And it
was not only after the incarnation that this took
place the Divine appearances of the Old Testa-
:
ment are appearances of the Son. There is no

difficulty supposing that He acted in the
in
Father's name, for the Father shares everything

with Him.
The Monarchians appeal, however, to some
passages where monotheism is strongly insisted
on, for example, Deut. xxxii. 39 John x. 30 ; ;
xiv. 9-11. But they are

really founding their
doctrine on a few obscure passages to the exclusion
of many others that are perfectly clear. To these
few passages Tertullian opposes in detail a large
number from the Gospels, which represent two
distinct Persons. He points out how a passage
like John x. 30, instead of supporting their view,
actually tells against it. There is moral and
dynamic union between the three Persons, but
unity of substance is also clearly affirmed with
reference to the Paraclete (John xvi. 7, 14), who
receives His substance from the Son, as the Son
receives His from the Father. The
story of the
childhood of Jesus equally proves the distinction
between the Father and the Son. According to
Tertullian, the expressions spiritus dei, virtus
altissimi (Luke 35), would indicate the Son.
i.
Spiritus dei and Sermo dei would be in effect two

names, the one referring to substance, the other to
xxii INTRODUCTION
activity, to indicate the one Person of the Word

Son of God.
But the Monarchians, even when compelled by
Scripture to distinguish the Son from the Father,
destroy the effect of their admission by finding in
the one person of Jesus Christ both the Son (that
is, the human being Jesus) and the Father (that is,
the spiritual being God who is also the Christ).

But the Acts of the Apostles establishes that Jesus
is surnamed the Christ because He is the anointed
of the Father, which is another proof that the

Father is not the Christ (Acts iv. 27). St. Peter,
St. John, and St. Paul are also cited in evidence
that the Father and Son are to be distinguished.
The most decisive texts are those that mention the
death of Christ, Son of God l (i Cor. xv. 3). Christ
being composed of two substances, the one divine

and immortal, the other human, could die accord-
ing to the flesh alone. And here appears the error
of thosewho make the Father die on the cross.
The Father being God only, could not die, nor
could He bear the curse attached to crucifixion.
This fact condemns the Patripassians and even the
Patricompassians. For, being unable to prove that
the Father suffered, some try to make out that He
was a fellow-sufferer. But this view after all implies
suffering on the Father's part, and the principle
must be laid down that the Father is impassible.
And the Son also is impassible as far as His divinity

is concerned. He suffered as man, but the man
1
Prax. 29.
INTRODUCTION xxili
in Him was separated from the Father, while the

God in Him was still united with the Father. To
trouble the water of a stream isnot necessarily to
trouble the source yet : it is the water from the
source that flows in the bed of the stream, and the
stream is not separated from the source. Even if
the divinity in the Son had suffered, this suffering
could not have flowed back to the Father. But
there is no need to dwell on this supposition, for
the divine spirit as such did not suffer. Although

the Son suffered in His flesh, the Father was in
Him, but did not suffer. Similarly, in proportion,
we can God, thanks to the Divine Spirit
suffer for
which is in us yet the Divine Spirit does not suffer.
:
Tertullian's last argument is perhaps his most
powerful a reference to the words of Christ dying

on the cross " My God, why hast thou forsaken
:
me?" It is not the God we are listening to here,

but the man who an impassible and in-
cries to
flexible God. These words are the effect of the
inexorable sentence which delivers His human
nature to death. He
up His human soul
delivers
into His Father's hands, expires. Raised by and
God's power, He ascended to heaven, where Stephen
saw him on the Father's right hand. One day He
will come on the clouds. Meantime, He has sent
the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity,
for the full revelation of the Christian mystery.
To refuse to believe in the Trinity, is to become
a Jew. It is this doctrine alone that separates us
from the Jews : it is the work of the Gospel, the

xxiv INTRODUCTION
kernel of the New Testament. God who revealed
Himself but obscurely in the Old Testament, pre-
served for these later days this great light on His
real being. He who will have life, must believe on
the Son of God.
TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS
i. MANIFOLD are the ways in which the devil has
shown his enmity to the truth. He has at length
striven to shatter it by defending it. He claims
that there is but one God, the all-powerful Creator
of the universe, in order to make a heresy even out

of that one. He says that the Father Himself
descended into the virgin, that He likewise was
born of her, and Himself suffered even that He ;
Himself is Jesus Christ. The serpent forgot

himself; for when trying Jesus Christ after He had
been baptised by John, he approached Him as Son
of God, knowing full well that God had a Son,
even from the very Scriptures out of which he was
"
then building up the temptation. 1 If thou art the Matt. iv. 3
Son of God, speak that these stones become
"
loaves" ; again : If thou art the Son of God, cast Matt. iv. 6
thyself down hence; for it is written, that He" |
that is, the Father "hath given His messengers

charge over thee, to uphold thee by their hands
lest anywhere thou shouldst strike thy foot against
a stone." Or shall he upbraid the Gospels with
"
falsehood, and say : It is Matthew's and Luke's
1
For the missing present participle of sum to be supplied with
cert us> cf. Hoppe, pp. 144 f.
25
26 TE2TULLJAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [i
L
concern, not mine? It was God Himself that I
approached, the All-powerful Himself whom I
assayed hand to hand it was ;

for that reason
that I approached, it was also for that reason that
I attacked. But if He had been merely the Son
of God, I should never have deigned to tempt
cf. John Him." In truth, however, it is rather "he himself"
viii -44
W h has k een a liar from t he beginning/' he
and any man he has privily sent of his own accord,

such as Praxeas. For it was Praxeas who first,
from Asia, 1 imported this kind of perversity to
Roman a restless being in other 2 respects, and
soil,
puffed up besides with boasting about his martyr-

dom, which consisted merely in an ordinary brief,
3
ifirksome, period in prison whereas, even if he
;
"
cf i Cor. had surrendered his body to be burnt up," it
xm "
profited him nothing," as he had not
-
3 would have
" " " "
cf. Cor.
i the love of God, whose gifts he even violated.
xn. 4, etc.
p- or ^ w hen the then bishop of Rome 4 was now
recognising the prophecies of Montanus, Prisca and
Maximilla, and as the result of that recognition
1
Asia means, of course, the Roman province of the name,
roughly the western third of what we call Asia Minor.
2
For the post-classical use of alias =
aliter, see Thesattrus s. v. ,
and Hoppe, pp. no f.

3
For the hypallage here, see Hoppe, p. 87.
4
The bishop referred to was either Victor (so Allix, Oehler) or
his predecessor Eleutherus (so Blondel, Neander). For the tradi-
tional lists of these bishops see C. H. Turner in Journ. Theol.
Studies, vol. xviii. pp. 108, 118. The date of Victor's accession is
put at M. Aurelius XVII (=A.D. 163), cf. Turner, p. 115, but
the true date appears to be 189. Montanus founded Mon'anism in
Phrygia about the middle of the second century. Prisca and
Maximilla were women followers of his. All prophesied and
maintained the superiority of spiritual gifts over official position in
the Church. See d'Ales, chap. ix.
i] TERTULLTAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 27
was seeking to introduce peace to the churches of

Asia and Phrygia, it was he who did, by making
false statements about these very prophets and
their churches, and by defending the authoritative
acts of his predecessors, compel him both to recall
the letters of peace that had been already
despatched and to give up his project of welcoming

their gifts. So Praxeas managed two pieces of the
devil's business at Rome he drove out prophecy
;
and brought in heresy, he put the Paraclete 1 to

"
flight and crucified the Father. Praxeas' " tares cf. Matt
" 25
have borne fruit here too, having been sown *[".'
" " "
above the pure teaching " while many " slept ;
thereafter through him whom God willed, 2 they

seemed to have been revealed and even pulled up
by the roots. 3 Furthermore, the presbyter
4
who
taught them had given sureties for his reform, and
his signed promise remains in the possession of the
carnal men inwhose presence the transaction took
place at the time. Ever since there has been
silence. As for ourselves, the recognition and
defence of the Paraclete afterwards separated us
from these carnal men. 5 Those tares 6 had, however,
1
Remember that Montanus accepted the tiileof
" the Paraclete"
(Euseb., Hist. EccL, v. 14).
2
/. e. probably a reference to Tertullian himself.
3
For traductae thus used cf. Ldfstedt, Krit. Bemerkungen zu
Tertulliaris Apologeticum (Lund, 1918), p. 72.
4
Reading with Turner prcsbiter istoruvi : there is no adverb
pristinum. Yet Hoppe, p. 18, explains pristinum doctor as
=
qui pristinum docet.
5
The "carnal" men (psychici) are the Catholics, as opposed to
the Montanists, who are spiritual. Cf. d'Ales, pp. 453 f.
6
For the similes of Tertullian, see Hoppe, pp. 193-220 (this
one, p. 197).
28 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [1,2
" "
cf. Matt. at that time everywhere choked the seed. For
cm "
7
some time that fact lay hidden through hypocrisy,
such was its cunning vitality, and now it has burst
forth again. But it will also be again uprooted ;
l
if the Lord wills, in this present age but if ;
" "
cf. Matt, not, at their proper season all the corrupt crops
"
be gathered together," and "along with all
wil1
xiii. 40, 41 other stumbling-blocks" will "be burnt by un-
cf. Matt. , ,
.
c 2
'
iii. 12 quenchable fire.

2. Therefore after a time the Father that was
born and the Father that suffered, God Himself

" "
cf. various the all-powerful Lord is preached as Jesus
Christ. But we both always and now more than
3 "
before, as being better instructed by the Para-
cf.John clete,""who" of course "leads us into all truth,"
"
"
SVicene believe indeed " in one God," but subject to
Creed this arrangement, which we call economy, that to
the one God there should also belong a Son, His
own Word, who has come forth from Him,
John 3 "through Whom all things were made, and with-
i.
"
out Whom nothing was made 4 that it was He ;
"
cf. various who was
put by the Father into the virgin," and
" "
her, both man and God, son of man
born from
"
cf. Matt, and Son of God, and surnamed " Jesus Christ ;
i. 16
1
For this sense of commeatus, see the Thesaurus s.v., Hoppe,
p. 1 20, d'Ales, p. 68.
2
For other examples of the ending JL ^, *- -^ , see Hoppe,
f.
pp. 155
3
On the relation of this passage to the official creed of the churches
of North
Africa, see the important section in d'Ales, pp. 254-261.
4
The invariable, or almost invariable, punctuation of this verse
down to the latter part of the fourth century see the evidence set :
forth in my critical apparatus to Novum Testamentum Graece, and

add W
(the Freer- Washington codex) to the uncials there cited.
2] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 29
"
that it was He who and was
suffered, died, cf. vaiious
c
buried" "according to the Scriptures," and was ^\ ^ or>
raised again by the Father, and being taken back *v. 3 4
"
into heaven x is seated at the right hand of the cf. various
cr
Father, and will come to judge the living and the
"
dead who afterwards, according to His promise,
;
" 2
sent from the Father the Holy Spirit, the cf. John
xlVt I(
Paraclete," the sanctifier of the faith of them who
believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit. That this rule (of faith) has run its course
from the beginning of the Gospel, even before the
days of all the earlier heretics, and much more
before the days of Praxeas, who is but of yesterday,
will be proved as much by the very succession of
all the heretics as it will be by the very modernity
of the Praxeas of yesterday. Just as was done in
" 3
exactly the same way against all heresies," so let c f. Tert.
us from the present case also derive the preliminary

{J*^
judgment that whatsoever is first is true, while
whatsoever is later is corrupt. But without pre-
" 4
judice, however, to this preliminary declaration," ibid.
1
For the
abl. caelo =
ace. caelum, see Hoppe, pp. 40 f.
surely not fanciful to suppose that in what has just
2
It is
preceded Tertullian has had some creed in view. He quotes in a

fuller form than the Apostles' Creed, and curiously anticipates
certain later forms. The reader should consult Dr. Sanday in
" Recent Research on
Journal of Theological Studies, vol. i., pp. 3flf.
the Origin of the Creed."
3
This must be a reference, as C. II. Turner points out, to the
passage in the De praescripiione haereticornm : "ex ipso ordine
manifestatur id esse dominicum et uerura quod sit prius traditum,
id autem extraneum et falsum quod sit posterius immissum."
* 4
The word praescriptio is borrowed from Law, where it means
"a preliminary declaration, by which one cuts the arguments of the
"
opposite party short (d'Ales, p. 201).
30 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [2
room for of judgment 1 must also be

revision
everywhere given, for the instruction and fortifica-

tion of certain people, if only to prevent each single
perversity from the appearance of condemnation,

not after, but before it has been judged. And this
applies especially to the perversity that thinks it
possesses the undiluted truth, in holding the view
that it must not believe in one God in any other
way than by saying that this selfsame God is both

Father and Son and Spirit. As if by parity of
reasoning one of these were not all, since all come
from one, of course through unity of nature, and
2
as if, nevertheless, the mystery of the economy
were maintained. This economy arranges unity in
trinity, regulating three, Father, Son and Spirit

three, however, not in unchangeable condition, but
in rank not in substance, but in attitude not in
; ;
but in appearance 3 but of one nature 4 and

office, ;
of one reality and of one power, because there is

one God from whom these ranks and attitudes and
appearances are derived in the name of Father and
Son and Holy Spirit. How they are subject
5
to
1
Hoppe, p. 138 n., classes the meanings of retractatus in
Tertullian.
2
On the word sacramentum in Tertullian there has been much
discussion : see d'Ales, pp. 321 ff.
3
This clause appears to indicate an unequal share of divinity
between the Three.
4
The word substantia (=
nature) recurs cc. 5, 8, 12, 26, 27 see
:
Dean Strong in Studies, vol. iii. pp. 38-40, Dr.

Journal Theol.
J. F. Bethu tie- Baker, ibid., vol. iv. pp. 440-442, both cited by
d'Ales, p. 81, n. 2, who in n. 3 defines status in Tertullian as
" nature ou realitt"
5
For the indicative in indirect questions, see Hoppe, p. 72.
2,3] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 31
number and are yet not divided, these expositions

willmake clear as they advance.
All simple people, not to say the unwise and
3.
1 constitute the majority
unprofessional (who always
2
of believers), since even the rule of faith itself
removes them from the plurality of "the gods" of cf. i Cor.

" 5
this world to the one true God," become greatly ^j hn
through their failure to understand that,
xvii. 3
terrified
while He must be believed to be one, it is along
with His economy, because they judge that
economy, implying a number and arrangement
3 4
of trinity, is really a division of unity, whereas
unity, deriving trinity from itself, is not destroyed
by it, but made serviceable. Therefore they now
circulate the statement that two and three are
preached by us, while they judge that they are
worshippers of one God, just as if the irrational
contraction of unity did not produce heresy and
the rational expansion of trinity did not establish
truth. We hold to monarchy," they say, and
"
even Latins, even artisans, 5 give such character to

the word itself with their voices, that you might
suppose they understand "monarchy" as well as
they articulate the word. But the Latins are
1 " " " uninitiated " would be better.

Unprofessional : possibly
2
Regtila fidei) a regular expression in the early writers for the
official creed.
3
Hoppe (p. 168) takes dispositionem and diuisionem as an in-
stance of alliteration, a rhetorical device.
4
For this sense of quando, see Hoppe, pp. 78 f.
5
Etiam opifices with Kigali and C. H. Turner, for the impossible
et tint opifice of MSS. and editors.
anxious to preach 1 "monarchy," while even the

Greeks are unwilling to understand "economy."
But I, if I have culled any knowledge of both
" "
languages, know that monarchy means nothing
else but the rule of one single person but that ;
monarchy, nevertheless, does not for the reason

that it belongs to one, lay it down that he to
whom it
belongs should either not have a son or
should have made his very self into a son for
himself, or should not manage his monarchy
through whom he will. Further I affirm that no
sovranty belongs so to one in himself, is so
individual, is so much monarchy, that it cannot
also be administered through other agents 2 in
contact with it, whom it has itself looked out to
perform services for itself. If, moreover, he to
whom the monarchy belongs, has also had a son,
you would not at once say that it was divided and
ceased to be a monarchy, if the son also were
taken to share in it, but that it was just as before
chiefly his by whom it is shared with his son, and
while it is his, it is just as much monarchy, since
it istogether by two who are so united.
held
Therefore, if the divine monarchy also is admin-
" " "
istered by so many legions and armies of
"
c f Matt, a hundred thousand
.
angels," as it is written :
Dan. vn. times a hundred thousand were standing by Him,

10 and a thousand times a hundred thousand were
1
Sonare = praedicare, significare, is for the most part post-
classical(Hoppe, p. 15).
"Agents." Personas in theology seems to be derived from
2
personas in law, where persona has the meaning "civil personality."

3,4] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 33
in attendance upon Him," and if it did not there-

fore cease to belong to one, so as to cease to be
a monarchy, because its affairs are managed by
so many thousands of powers, what sort of an idea
is it that God should seem to suffer division and
dispersal
1
in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, who
have obtained respectively the second and the
third place, and who are such partners in the
Father's substance, a division and dispersal which
He does not suffer in the angels who are so many
in number, who are moreover no part of the
Father's substance ! Do you consider that the
parts and pledges and tools and the very power

and the whole origin of monarchy are its undoing?
That is wrong. I would rather you schooled your-
self to understand the thing than to utter the
word. The undoingof monarchy you must under-
stand to take place when another sovranty is
superimposed on its circumstances and its own
special condition, and thus becomes hostile. When
another god is introduced against the Creator, then
when
is it evil, it leads to the dethronement of the
Creator when a number

;
are introduced, as by
2
the Valentini and Prodici, then it leads to the
overturning of monarchy ; (4) but how can I who
1
For many such examples of time as diuisionem et dispersionein
in Tertullian, seeHoppe, pp. 162 ff. (especially p. 163).
2
That is, people like Valentinus and Prodicus, the Greek
Gnostics. The former was an Egyptian Greek who lived from
about A.D. 135 to A.D. 160 in Rome. Prodicus was less important,
and of him little or nothing is known. Their doctrine set forth
a plurality of divinities. (Cf. Irenaeus passim^ and Tertullian,
Aduersus Valmtinianos. )
C
derive the Son from nowhere else, but from the

" "
cf. John substance of the Father, doing nothing without
" " " " "
cf!
the Father's will," obtaining all power from
John
xvii. 2 the Father, be supposed 1 to be breaking
how can I
up monarchy, which, as handed over by the Father

to the Son, I preserve in the Son ? May I say
this too with regard to the third grade, that I do
cf. John not regard "the Spirit as coming" from anywhere
xv 26 *
" " 2
else than from the Father through the Son.
Beware then lest it be rather you who are breaking
in its arrangement and
up monarchy, overturning
3
management, established as they are in as ,many
names as God willed. To such a degree, more-
over, does it remain in its established condition,
though trinity be introduced, that it has even to

be restored to the Father by the Son, even as the
"
i Cor. xv. Apostle writes about the final end When He has :
24 25 handed over the kingdom to His God and Father.

For He must reign till God put His enemies under
"
His feet," of course according to the psalm Sit :
Ps. cix. i at my right hand, till I make thine enemies

" "
i Cor. xv. a footstool to thy feet when, moreover, all
1 27
things are subjected to him save Him who sub-
jected all things unto Him, then He Himself also
will be subjected unto Him who subjected all
Reading with C. H. Turner uideri for defide of MSS. and edd.

1
De " from the

however, might conceivably mean
fide> vantage
ground of faith."
2
Note this careful statement, taken perhaps from the Greeks (cf.
d'Ales, p. 96). The first definite statement in a creed of Procession
of the Spirit from the Son as well as the Father is in the Fourth
Council of Toledo (A.D. 589).
3
Note this case of rime : cf. Hoppe, p. 163.
4, 5] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 35
things unto Him, that God may be all things in

all." We see therefore that monarchy is not
harmed although it be to-day with the Son,
because it is both in its established condition with
the Son and along with its established condition
it be restored to the Father by .the Son. So
will
no one will break it up in this way, that is, by
admitting the Son, to whom it is well known that
it was handed over by the Father and by whom
it is well known it will one day be restored to the

Father. one passage 1 of the Apostle's
By this
letter we have already been able to show 2 that
the Father and the Son are two, because, apart
from the fact of the names Father and Son, there
"
is the other fact that He who handed over the cf. i Cor.
" x
He whom
^
kingdom and to it was handed over,

and likewise " He who subjected " and He to whom cf. i Cor.
He was subjected, are of necessity two. 3

5. But because they make out that the two are
one, so that the Father and Son are regarded as the

same, we must weigh also the whole subject of the
Son, whether He exists and who He is and how He
comes to be, and thus the fact itself will vindicate its
outward expression which protects the Scriptures
and their translations. Some say that even Genesis
"
in the Hebrew begins thus : In the beginning God cf. Gen. i.
1
Capitulum indicates a section, usually longer than a modern
verse, but considerably shorter than a modern chapter.
2
For ostendisse =
ostendcre, see Hoppe, pp. 52-54, who furnishes
imny parallels.
3
If we assume synaloepha, as Hoppe does (p. 154 n. 3), this
is an instance of the commonest type of ending in Tertullian
made Himself a Son."

for That this is not 1
reliable I am
induced to believe by other argu-
ments drawn from God's arrangement itself which
cf. John He followed from " before the foundation of the
?4>
etc! world" down to the begetting of a Son. 2 For at
the first God. was alone, He was to Himself both
universe and place and everything, alone, more-
over, because there was nothing outside but Him-
self.
3
But even at that time He was not alone ;
for He had with Him what He had in Himself,
namely, His reason. For God is rational, and reason

was first in Him, and thus it is that from Him it
comes into all things. 4 This reason is His own
"
John i. i
thought this is what the Greeks call
; Logos,"
"
which word we translate also by speech," and
therefore it is now our (Latin) custom by a simple
"
John i. 2 translation to declare that the Word was in the
beginning with God," although it is more fitting

that reason should be regarded as the older, because
a God rational even before the beginning is not
from the beginning given to speech, 5 and because
even speech itself, since it depends on reason,
shows that the latter is earlier, as being its founda-
tion. Yet for all that there is no difference. For
1
Oehler compares Hil. in Ps. ii. 2, Hier. Quaest. Hebr. in Gen.
torn. II. p. 507, ed. Bened.
2
The teaching here is derived from the Greek Apologists : the
parallels are set out in detail by d'Ales, pp. 86 f.
3
For a Hippolytean parallel, see d'Ales, p. 89.
4
Reading in omnia with C. H. Turner, for onmia of MSS. and
edd.
5
The word sermonalis appears to be a coinage of Tertullian to
correspond with rationalis (Hoppe, p. 1 16). Note the rime between
the two (Hoppe, p. 166),
5]
TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 37
"
although Godhad not yet " uttered His word," Ps. cvi. 20
"
all the same He had it both with and in reason
itself within Himself, while silently meditating and
arranging with Himself what He was afterwards to

state in word. For meditating and arranging in
company with His reason, He made that into word
which He was dealing with by word. To under-
stand it more easily, take knowledge from yourself,
I pray you, as from "the image and likeness" ofcf. Gen. i.
God, that you also have in yourself reason, being a

rational living being, not only made as you are,
of course by a rational Creator, but also given life cf. Gen. ii.
from His own nature. See, when you silently meet

with yourself in the process of thinking, that this
very process goes on within you by reason meeting
you along with word at every movement of your
thought, at every beat of your understanding.
Whatsoever, you think is word whatsoever you;
understand is speech. 1 You must speak that within

your mind, and while you speak, you experience
in conversation with you the word which contains
this very reason. By means of reason you think

in company with word, and speak, and when you
speak through word, you are thinking. So some-
how there is in you a second word, through which
you speak when meditating and through which
you meditate when speaking the word itself is
:
different. With how much more completeness,
1
Reading oratio with Kroymann ;
for the corruption, cf. the
variants in Ep. Phil. iv. 17, where certain Pelagian MSS. read
orationem (cf. comment), where the Vulgate has ratione.
38 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [5, 6
cf. Gen. i.
then, does this take place in God, whose "image
and likeness " you also are deemed to be 1 ! Since
He Himself even when silent, and
has reason in
in having reason has word also, it may be, therefore,
that I have not made a rash beginning by laying
cf. John down that even then " before the foundation of
'
etc. the universe" God was not alone, having in Himself

alike reason and word in reason, which (word) He
had made second to Himself by exercising it within
Himself. 2
6. This power and this arrangement of divine
understanding is indicated in the Scriptures also
under the name " wisdom." For what could be wiser
than the reason or word of God ? Therefore listen
"
Prov. viii. to wisdom also created as the second person : At
22, 23, 25
^ st t ^ e L orcj crea t e d me as a beginning of ways
for his works, before He made the earth, before the
mountains were set ; yea, before all the hills He
begat me," creating and begetting me in His under-

standing of course. Then take knowledge of her
standing by at the time when He Himself worked
3
:
"
Prov. viii. When He was preparing heaven," she says, "I was
27, 2 30
,
p resent W jtj1 Him at the time; and how strong He

made the clouds that are overhead, above the
winds, and how securely He placed the sources of
that quarter which is under heaven I was with !
1
A good collection of examples of ecnseri as used by Tertullian
in Thes. s.v., also in d'Ales, pp. 366 f.
2
Observe the ending -^ - ~ ^
(without synaloepha),
frequent in Tertullian (Hoppe, p. 156).
3
Read, with C. H. Turner, ipsius operationi, for ipsa separations
of the MSS. (in ipsa operatione, Kroymann).
Him constructing,
1
in whom He rejoiced
I it was ;
and daily was Idelighted before His face." Then,

as soon as God had willed to put forth into
His own matter and form that which He had in
company with the reason and word of wisdom
arranged within Himself, he first brought forth
the word having in itself its own in-
itself,
separable and wisdom, that everything

reason
might be made through the very (word) by which
all had been planned and arranged, or rather
already made, so far as God's thought was con-
cerned. 2 For this they still lacked they had yet :
to become known and remembered before the
eyes of each person in their appearances and

3
substances.
4
7. It is then, therefore, that even the word itself
takes its own appearance and vesture, namely

sound and expression when " God says Let
;
:
'
Gen. i.
"
there be made light.' This is the complete
birth of the word, since it proceeds out of God.
Having been created by Him as far as thought

first
"
is concerned, under the name of wisdom the Trov. viii.
Lord created me as a beginning of ways," then pôv viii

"
begotten to actuality when He was preparing 27
heaven, I was with Him," thereafter, making as
1
P'or the periphrastic conjugation eram conpingens, see Hoppe,
PP- 59 f -
2 from the Greek

This passage is compared with passages
Apologists in d'Ales, pp. 87 f.
3 and
The same metrical ending as in chapters I, 5, 7, etc. (see
Hoppe, 156).
p.
4
The relation of the first part of this chapter to the Greek
Apologists is set forth by d' Ales, pp. 90 ff.
Father for Himself Him from whom He proceeds

1
cf. Col. i. and thus becomes His Son, He was made " first-
15* etc.
begotten," as having been begotten before every-
"
cf. John i.
thing, and only-begotten," as having been alone
14, etc.
begotten from God, in a real sense from the
womb of His own mind, according as even the
Ps. xliv. 2 Father Himself testifies: "My mind hath given
forth a good word." Rejoicing, He thereupon ad-
dresses Him, who in like manner rejoices in His
Ps. ii.
7 presence Thou art my Son, this day have I
:
'
be g tten thee," 2 and: "Before the morning star

1 '
Mêfc!)
Ps. cix. 3 was, I begat thee." Even so the Son from His
own person declares the Father under the name
Prov. viii. of wisdom " The Lord created me as a beginning
:
22 2 5
of ways for His works; yea, before all the hills
were, He begat me." And if here indeed wisdom
seems to say that she was created by the Lord for
His works and ways, elsewhere, however, it is
John i.
3 shown that "all things were made through the
Word, and without was nothing made," 3 even
it
"
Ps. xxxii. as again we have the words By His word were :
the heavens established, and by His spirit all their

"
strength by that spirit, of course, which was in
:
the word. It is clear that it is one and the same

power that passes now under the name of wisdom,
Prov. viii. now under the title " word," which received " a be-
22
1
Patrem : d'Ales (p. 90) saw that parent of the editions was
wrong, and conjectured patrem ; Kroymann found the latter in
MSS. and rightly reads it in his editions. There is no reference to
equality here, but only to paternity.
2
Luke iii. 22 as read by Western documents for the most part :
see my apparatus to N. T. Gr. ad hoc.

3
See the note on chap. ii. p. 28.
"
ginning of ways for the works of God, and which
" " "
established heaventhe through which all Ps. xxxii.
things were made, and without which nothing was j h n i 3
made." Let us dwell no longer on this subject, as
if the word itself were not meant when we find the
names " wisdom," " reason," and the whole divine

"
mind " and " spirit," which was made the Son of
God, from which he proceeded and was begotten.
"
you argue that the word is
<l
Then," you say,
some material, built up of spirit and wisdom and
" l
reason ? Certainly for you do not want it to be
:
regarded as in itself material through the inde- -
2
pendence of its matter, lest it might appear as a
sort of object and person and, being second to
God, might thus be able to make two, Father and
Son, God and Word. For what," you say, " is
"
word, but voice and a sound of the mouth, and as

the school teachers teach, a striking against air, cf. Dona-
*' '
intelligible to the hearing, but something empty e"^

and vain and bodiless?" But I say that nothing
could have gone forth from God vain and empty,
since the source from which it is brought is neither
vain nor empty, and that what came forth from so
great a material and made such great materials,
cannot be immaterial ;
for He it was who also
made what was made through Him. What sort
"
of a notion is it that He without Whom nothing
was made," should Himself be nothing, that an
1
The true readings were pointed out by C. H. Turner, namely
sophia et ratione (instead of sophiae traditione] and haberi in se (for
habere in re).
2
Read ne tit with Kroymann for MSS. tit simply.
unsubstantial person should have worked what was

solid,an empty person what was full, an incorporeal
person what was corporeal For although some- !
times a thing can come into being different from that

through which it comes into being, yet nothing can
come into being through that which is empty and
vain. Is the word of God an empty and shadowy
thing which was called the Son ? which was sur-

John i. i named God Himself? "And the Word was with
God, and the Word was God/' It is written :
Exod. xx. "Thou shalt not take the name of God in vain."
"
That assuredly He who
*
Deut. v.
is being in the image of
") God thought it not robbery to be equal to God."
In what image ofr/~j5A
Phil. ii. 6 i .
ji
God ? Assuredly in some image,
not in none at all. For who will deny that God is
John iv.
body, even though
1 "
God is spirit " ? For spirit
is a particular kind of body in its own image.
cf. Rom. i.
But if even those " invisible things," whatsoever
they are, have with God both their body and their
shape, by means of which they are visible to God
alone, how much more will that which has been
put forth from His own being, have being? 2 For
whatsoever the being of the Word was, I call it a
person and I claim the name "Son" for Him, and

in recognising Him as Son, I claim that He is
second to the Father. 3

1 " " "
Body," render perhaps rather by substance passages illus- :
trating the uses of this word in Tertullian are given by d'Ales, p. 62.
2
This thought is paralleled in the early Greek Apologists see :
the evidence in d'Ales, p. 92. The sentence is explained in some

detail by Dr. J. F. Bethune-Baker \r\Jonrn. Theol. Studies, vol. iv.
pp. 441 f.
3
See the note at the end of chap. 6.
any one thinks that herein I am intro-

8. If
ducing some probole^- that is, projection of one

2
thing from another, as Valentinus does, when he
brings forth from an Aeon one and another Aeon,
in the first place I will tell you this : truth does
not refrain from using this word and the thing
and the origin it represents, for the reason that
heresy also uses it :
nay rather heresy got from
the truth the materials for constructing its own
falsehood. Was the word of God brought forth
or not? Here plant your step with me. 3 If it
was brought forth, learn of the projection belong-
ing to the truth, and it is heresy's look out if it

has imitated anything from the truth. Our present
4
question is who uses a certain thing and how he
uses it and the word describing it. Valentinus
distinguishes and separates his projections from
the Creator, and places them so far from Him, that
the Aeon does not know the Father; for he longs
to know Him, and cannot, nay he is almost swal-
lowed and broken up into the remaining material.
But amongst us it is only "the Son that knows the cf. Matt.
Father," and He Himself "has revealed the bosom
" " " jj^V
of the Father and " He has heard and " seen all cf. John
"
things with the Father and what things He was S'john
1
For prolatio as a Latin rendering of Greek probole, see Hoppe,
p. 123, n. i.
2
Valentinus, the Gnostic : see the note on chap. 3 fin. The
doctrine of Aeons was one of the most characteristic parts of the
Gnostic system.
3
Other examples of the metaphor gradum figere in Hoppe,
p. 208, n. i.
4
For the two question clauses without connective, a Latin and
Greek idiom, cf. Hoppe, p. 74.
"
cf. John commanded by the Father, these He also speaks ;
cf"john
a d it was "not His own will, but "the Father's
xii.49 that He accomplished, that will which He knew at
"
vi. 38 close quarters, nay from His inmost soul. For
cf. i Cor.
ii. II
who knows what is in God but the Spirit who is in
"
Himself? The word, moreover, is equipped 1 with
the spirit, and if I may say so, the word's body is
2
spirit. The word, therefore, was both always in
the Father, even as He says " I in the Father," :
John xiv. and always with God, as it is written " And the :
John i. i
Word was with God," and never separated from
the Father or different 3 from the Father, because :
"
I and the Father are one." be the pro- This will
John x. 30 jection of truth, the guardian of unity, by which

we say that the Son was brought forth from the
Father, but not separated. For God brought forth
the Word, even as the Paraclete also teaches,
as the root does the shrub, the source the river,
and the sun the ray. For these forms too are pro-
jections of the natures from which they proceed.
Nor should I hesitate to call the Son both the
shrub of the root and the river of the source and
the ray of the sun, because every origin is a
4
parent, and all that is brought forth from the
origin isoffspring, much more the Word of God,

which also in a real sense received the name of
Son. And yet the shrub is not distinguished from
1
For stmctus = imtructus, cf. Hoppe, pp. 138 f.
2
With this passage d'Ales, p. 86, compares passages in the Greek
Apologists.
3
For the a (ab] after alms, cf.chaps. 9 (qiiater), 18 (Hoppe, p. 36).
4
D'Ales, p. 92, compares this passage with some in the Greek
Apologists.
the root, nor the river from the source, nor the ray
from the sun, even as the Word is not distinguished
from God either. Therefore according to the pat-
tern of these examples I declare that I
speak of
two, God and His Word, the Father and His Son.
The and the shrub are also two things, but
root
joined together the source and the river are two

;
forms, but undivided the sun and the ray are

;
two forms, but they cleave together. Everything

that proceeds from something, must be second to
that from which it proceeds, but it is not therefore
separated. Where, however, there is a second,

there are two, and where there is a third, there
are three. The Spirit is third with respect to
God and Son, even as the fruit from the
the
shrub from the root, and the channel
is third
from the river is third from the source, and the
point where the ray strikes something is third 2
1
from the sun. Yet in no respect is it banished

from the original source from which it derives its
special qualities. Thus the Trinity running down
from the Father through stages linked and united
3
together, offers no obstacle to monarchy and con-
serves the established position of the economy. 4
1
My rendering of apex is cumbrous: Blunt, Right Use, etc.,
p. 504, renders by "sparkle," Kaye, Eccles. Hist, (cheap edition),
pp. 265 by "terminating point."
f.,
2 word tertius (anaphora) is a rhetorical
The repetition of the
device used for effect cf. Hoppe, pp. 146 f.
:
3
The alliteration consertos conexos is an intentional rhetorical
device: Hoppe, pp. 148 ff.
4
This ending ( ^ -^ ) is one of the rarer types in
Tertullian ; occurring in about thirteen per cent, of the cases only
(Hoppe, pp. 156 f.)
Everywhere remember that I have announced

9.
this rule by which I testify that Father and Son
and Spirit are unseparated from one another, and
thus you will recognise what is meant and how
1
it is meant. Understand then I
say that the ;
Father is one, the Son another, and the Spirit

another every untrained or perverse person takes
2
thissaying wrongly, as if it expressed difference,
and as the result of difference meant a separation
of Father, Son and Holy Spirit but it is of ;
necessity that I say this, when they contend that

Father, Son and Spirit are the same person,
fawning on monarchy at the expense of economy
but that it is not by difference that the Son is
other 3 than the Father, but by distribution, and it
is not by division that He is other, but
by dis-
tinction, because Father and Son are not the same,
being different one from the other even in
measure. For the Father is all being, but the Son
isa tributary of the whole and a portion, as He
John xiv. Himself declares " Because the Father is greater

:
than 1." In the psalm He is sung of as being

cf. PS. "made" by Him "a little lower than the 4
angels/'
^ a so îe Father is other than the Son,
^ since He
(Het? ii
7) is greater than the Son, since it is one that begets,

1
For the double question, without connective, cf. Hoppe, p. 74.
2
sonet =
signified (Hoppe, p. 15).
3
For alius, a, here and thrice below in this chapter, cf. Hoppe,
p. 36
4 ;
Cf. cc. 14, 26, which like this passage favour subordinationism ;
but the passages must be read in conjunction with others of contrary
tendency in cc. 9, ii (cf. d'Ales, pp. 100 f.).
9, ic] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 4?
another that is begotten, since it is one that sends,

another that is sent since it
;
is one that acts,
another through whom action takes place. It is
well that the Lord also, using this word in
reference to the person of the Paraclete, indicated

"
not division, but arrangement for, He said I John ;
: xiv.
will ask the Father, and He will send you another

' '
advocate, the Spirit of reality," meaning a Paraclete

other than Himself in the same way as we also mean
a Son other than the Father, 1 to show the third
stage in the Paraclete, as we show the second in
the Son because of our regard to economy. Does
not the very fact that Father and Son are named,
mean that the one thing is different from the
other ? For certainly all things will be what they
are called, and what they shall be, that they will be
called, and the difference in the names cannot be
at all mixed up, any more than the difference in
the objects they \vill represent. "Yea, yea, nay, Matt. v.
more than yea and nay is from

for what * ' ' '
37
nay ;
is
the evil one." 10. So both the Father "is" and

"
the Son " is 2 (just as day is and night is) and ;
neither is day the same as night, nor Father the

same as Son. ITthey were, both would be one and
either of the two would be both, as these foolish
Monarchians make out.
" "
He Himself," they say, made Himself Son
1
For the omission of dicit and dicimus, cf. Hoppe, p. 145.
2
Here C. H. Turner is followed as to arrangement, reading and
translation : ita et paler et filius " est."
for Himself." Nay, rather a father makes a son

1
and a son a and those who come from one
father,
or other, cannot in any way be made by themselves
for themselves, so that a father should make
himself a son for himself and a son should offer
himself as a father to himself. What God created,
God Himself also maintains. A
must needsfather
have a son, to be a father, and a son must have
a father, to be a son. It is one thing to have,
another to be. For example, to be a husband I

must have a wife I shall not be myself a wife to
;
myself. So also to be a father, I must have had a

son I myself shall not be a son to myself; and to
;
be a son, I shall have a father; I myself shall not

be a father to myself. If I have what makes me
so, then I shall be so a father, if I have a son
;
a ;
son, if I have a father. Further, if I shall myself

be any of those, I no longer have that which I shall
myself be neither a father, because I shall myself
;
be a father, nor a son, because I shall myself be a

son. In so far as I must have one of those two,
and be the other, just in so far, if I am both, I
shall not be one of the two, as long as I do not
possess the other. For if I myself shall be a son,
who am also a father, I no longer have a son, but I
am myself a son. But if I have not a son, while
I am myself a son, how shall I be a father ? For I
must have a son to be a father. I am therefore

not a son because I have not a father, who makes
a son. Equally if I myself am a father, who am
1 This sentence supports the new reading patreni in c. 7.
IQ] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 49
also a son, no longer have a father, but I am

I
myself a father. But if I have not a father, while

I am myself a father, how shall I be a son ? For
I must have a father, to be a son. I shall therefore
not be a father, because I have not a son, who
makes one a father. This will all be a contrivance
of the devil to shut out the one from the other,
while by enclosing both in one under the support
he gives to monarchy, he causes neither to be
possessed, so that he should not be a father who
of course has not a son, nor should he be a son
who equally has not a father for while he is a ;
father, he So do they hold to

will not be a son.
monarchy, who hold together at the same time
neither Father nor Son. But "nothing is difficult Job xiii. 2
" " c
to God : who does not know it ?
and, what is
x v iii. ^Jj
" Lu H e
impossible with the world is possible with God :
xviii. 27
"
who is ignorant of this ? and God chose the r Cor. i.
foolish things of the world to 27
put the wise things
to confusion": we read all this in Scripture.
" " '
Therefore," they say, it was '

not difficult for cf. Job
xlii> 2
God to make Himself both Father and Son
against the law handed down to human circum-
'
stances. For it was not difficult for God either
'
cf. Job
' U 2
that
'
a barren woman should bear contrary to *f
'
G al iv.
'
either should do so/'
'
nature, or that a virgin 27 (Isa.

'
Clearly, "nothing is difficult to" God, but if we c Matt,

take such inconsiderate advantage of this thought *3 ... l -
Job xlii
in our assumptions, we shall be able to imagine
anything we like about God, as if He acted simply

because He had the power to act. But we are not
D
50 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [10, n
"
cf.Sap. to believe that because He can do all things,"
XK 23
therefore He did even what He did not do, but
we must ask whether He did it.
1
He could, if He
had wished, have provided 2
man
with wings to fly,
as He did for kites ;
nevertheless He did not at
once proceed to do it simply because it was in His
power. He could have at once put to death both
2
Praxeas and all other heretics alike yet simply ;
because He had the power He did not do so.

cf. i Cor. For " it was meet that there should be " both kites 3
and "heretics," it was also meet that the Father
should be crucified ! In this way there will be
" "
cf. Job something even difficult to God, namely, whatso-
ever He has not done, not because He could not,
but because He willed not. For God's power is
His will, and His inability is His unwillingness.
What He willed, He was both able and ready to
do. Therefore because, if He willed to make
Himself into a son for Himself, He could have
done it, and because if He could, He did it you
will prove that He both could and willed, if once
you prove that He did it.
ii. You
have to prove as clearly from the
will
Scriptures as we prove it, that He made His word

a son for Himself. For if He names His Son (and
there will be no Son other than He who came
forth from Himself, but the Word proceeded from
1
Note the reasonableness of the view just expressed ; cf. d'Ales,
>.
35, 66.
2
For the perfect infinitive after posse, where the present infinitive
mild be expected, cf. Hoppe, p. 53.
3
For the comparison with kites here, see Hoppe, p. 199.
u] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 51
Himself), that will be the Son, not Himself, from

whom He proceeded. For He did not Himself
proceed from Himself. Moreover, you who say
that the Fatherand the Son are the same, argue
that the same both brought forth and proceeded
from Himself. Though God could have done 1 this,
yet He did not do it. Or set forth the proof I
demand, own, that is that the Scriptures
like my
indicate the to be Son and Father in the
same
same way as with us the Father and Son are
indicated differentially differentially, I say, not
;
"
separately. Just as I produce God's saying my : Ps. xliv. 2
mind has given forth a good word," do you retort

with the statement that God has somewhere said :
"
my mind has given forth myself, a good word," cf. PS.
x lv 2
so that it should be Himself who both gave forth
'
and was that which He gave forth, and Himself

who brought forth and who was brought forth, if
He Himself is both Word and God. Again I :
"
point out that the Father said to the Son Thou Ps. H. 7 :
Ukciii '
art my Son, this day have I begotten thee."

If)
you should want me to believe that the Father
Himself is also the Son, show me this declaration
elsewhere " The Lord said to Himself: I am my cf. Ps.
: ii.
e
son, I have this day begotten myself"; in like Jj; 2 ^
"
manner also : Before the morning star I begat cf. Ps. cix.
"
myself" ;
and : I the Lord created myself as a
^f. p rov .
viii - 22 2 5
beginning of ways for my works, yea, before any >
of the hills were, I begat myself," and any other

1
For the perfect infinitive after posse = present infinitive, cf.
Hoppe, p. 53.
52 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [u
passages after this likeness. Whom was God, the

Lord of all things, afraid thus to proclaim, if such
was the fact ? Was He afraid He should not be
believed, if He declared Himself in plain language
to be both Father and Son ? Nay one thing,
:
however, He did fear ;

falsehood being afraid of
Himself and His own truth ;
l
and therefore be-
lieving God truthful I know that He has not
declared differently from what He arranged, and
has not arranged differently from what He declared.
But you would make Him untruthful and false,
and a deceiver of these believers, 2 if, although
Himself a son to Himself, he gave to another the
3
person of His Son, since all the Scriptures make
the Trinity clear and the distinction within it, from
which Scriptures our objection is also taken, namely
that He who speaks and He about whom He speaks
and He to whom He speaks, cannot be regarded as
one and the same, because neither perversity nor
deception befits God that although it was Himself
;
to whom He was speaking, He should be speaking

rather to another, and not to Himself. Listen,
therefore, also to other words of the Father touching
the Son, spoken through the medium of Isaiah :
"
Isa. xlii. i Behold my Son whom I have chosen, my beloved,
in whom I am well pleased ;
I will put my spirit
1
C. H. Turner's view merits mention, and may be right. He
" one
reads ueritatis auctorem for ueritui aittem : thing nevertheless
he did fear, that the Author of Truth should falsify himself and his
truth."
2
Fides (abstract) =fideles (concrete) : cf. Hoppe, p. 93, who
gives parallels.
3 For quando = "since," cf. Hoppe, p. 78.
n] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 53
upon Him, and He preach judgment to the

will
nations." Take this also addressed to Himself:
"
a great thing for thee, that thou shouldest
It is Isa. xiix. 6
be called my son to raise up the tribes of Jacob

and to turn back the scattering of Israel ;
I have
set thee as a light to the nations, that thou mayest
be salvation to the ends of the earth." Take now
"
also words of the Son touching the Father The Luke : iv.
Spirit of the Lord is upon me; wherefore He hath } sa .i x'i. ^

anointed me to give the good news unto men."
Likewise to the Father in the psalm " Lord God, : Ps. Ixx.
18
forsake me not, till I
preach of thine arm to all
"
that shall be born ;
likewise in another " Lord, : PS. iii.
wherefore are they multiplied that seek to crush

me?" But almost all the psalms look forward to
Christ's person, and set forth 1 the Son speaking
to the Father, that is, Christ to God. Observe also
the Spirit speaking as the third person about the
Father and the Son " The Lord said unto my : Ps. cix. i
Lord : Sit
right hand, on my till I make thine
enemies a footstool to thy feet." Likewise through
"
Isaiah : Thus saith the Lord to my Lord the Isa. xlv. i
Anointed likewise through the same to the Father

:"
regarding the Son " Lord, who hath believed our Isa.
: liii.
l ~2
report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord
been revealed ? We
have preached about him :
even as a young boy, even as a root in thirsty

ground, and he had no beauty nor glory." These
1
The fullest discussion of the word repraesentar e is in d'Ales
>
356-360. Cf. also Prof. H. B. Swete in Journ. Theol Stud.
I., pp. 161-177. It is used in a moral sense here.
54 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [11,12
are but few passages out of many. For we are

not striving to go through all the passages of
Scripture, since by calling in the testimony of the
full majesty and authority in individual passages,
we find greater opportunity for attack in reviewing
them. 1 By these passages, therefore, few as they
are, the distinction within the Trinity is yet clearly
set forth for there is He who declares, the Spirit,
:
and the Father to whom He declares, and the Son

about whom He declares. So also with all other
things that are uttered now by the Father about
the Son 2 or to the Son, now by the Son about the
Father or to the Father, now by the Spirit they :
establish each person in His own proper self. 3

12. If you still find the number of the Trinity
a stumbling-block, as if it were not knit together
in a single unity, I ask you how is it that one
:
"
Gen. i. 26 individual speaks in the plural Let us make :
man in He ought
our image and likeness," when
"
to have said Let me make man in my image
:
4
and likeness," inasmuch as 5 He is one individual?

Gen. iii. But also in .what follows " Behold, Adam was :
made like one of us" He is either deceiving or

making fun of us, speaking as if He were a number,
when He is one and alone and individual. Or
1
For the senses of retractatus in Tertullian see Hoppe, p. 138,
n. i.
2
Reading, with C. H. Turner, a patre defilio uel adfiHitm^ nunc
afilio de patre tiel ad patrem, nunc a spiritu.
3
For the rare ending ( ^ ^ ^ ), see Hoppe, p. 157.
4
For the perfect infinitive here, where present infinitive would be
expected, cf. Hoppe, p. 54.
6
Utpote should be read utpute (Kroymann) is a vox nihili,
:
being a cross between utyutQ, and utpote, not uncommon in MSS,

was He addressing the angels, as the Jews under-

stand, because they too fail to recognise the Son ?
Or was it because He was Himself Father, Son,
Spirit, that for that reason, showing Himself to
be plural, He spoke in a plural way to Himself?
Nay, it was because the Son, the second person,
His own Word, was already cleaving to Him, and
the third, 1 the Spirit in the Word, that for that
reason He made the announcement in the plural :
"Let us make" and "ours" and "us." For He Gen. i. 26;

U1
was speaking to those in conjunction with whom
He was making man and in whose likeness He
was making him with the Son on the one hand,
who was to put on " man," with the Spirit, on c f. Phil. ii.
7j etc>
the other hand, who was to hallow man as with
servants and eyewitnesses, in accordance with the
unity of the Trinity. For the following passage
of Scripture distinguishes between the persons :
"
God made man, in the image of God He made Gen. i. 27
"
him." Why not His own" (image), if there was
one who made, and there was no one in whose
image to make him ? But there was One in
whose image He made him, namely the Son,
who, destined to be a surer and truer man, had
caused His image to be called man, who then was
to be "formed" out of "mud," "the image and c f. Gen.iL
" 7
likeness of reality. But even in the case of the cf Gen
.
preceding works of the universe how is it written ? 26
At first, while as yet the Son did not show

1
There is something of a confusion here with regard to the three
Persons, such as occurs in other writers also (cf. d'Ales, p. 0,6),
Gen. i.
3 Himself: "And God said,
'
Let there be light/ and
" "
it was made immediately the Word Himself, the
Jolmi. 9 true light that comes 1 into the world and lightens
"
cf. John. i.
every man," and through Him the light" of the
universe also. Thereafter, too, in the Word
Christ, standing carrying out His
by Him and
behests, God willed creation, and God created
2
:
Gen. 1.6.7 "And God said 'Let there be a firmament,' and

:
" "
Gen. i.
14, God made and God said
a firmament Let ;
:
'
there be lights,' and God made a greater and a less

light." But the rest also were of course made by
the same power as made what went before, namely
"
John i.
3 by the Word of God, through whom all things
were made and without whom nothing was made."
John i. i If he was God Himself (according to John "The :
Word was God "), you have two, one saying it

should be done, the other doing it.
3
And how
you ought to regard "the other," I have already
" " 4
declared, other in respect of role, not of nature ;
by way of distinction, not of division. But

5
although I hold, everywhere to one being in three
1
The
true Cyprianic reading, as Turner points out, is ueniens,
i.e. made to agree with <^ws.
fpx6/j.evov is Doubtless it was so
taken by Tertullian also. I should also insert the omnem omitted
by scribal inadvertence before the almost identical hominem. The
passage would then read: ipse statim sermo "uera lux quae
nluminat omnem hominem ueniens in hunc mundum." Ihe
mundialis lux the sun.
is
2
The alliteration adsist. admin, is an intentional rhetorical
device (Hoppe, p. 149).
3
Perhaps fiant should be read for fiat, corresponding better to
facta sunt.
4
On this passage see Dean Strong, Journ. Theol. Stud. III. p. 38. ,
6
Teneam is
potential : the construction is paratactic. The
parallels in Hoppe, p. 83, show that there is no need to insert
ptsi, as Kroymann does.
i2, 13] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 57
that cleave together, yet the need of expressing
my meaning makes me speak of the one who

orders and the one who carries out the order, as
different. For besides, He would not give the order,
if He Himself were to act while giving it, that it
should be done by him to whom He then gave

the order He would either have given the com-
;
mand 1 to Himself, if He were One only; or He

would have done it without command, because He
would not have waited to give the command to
Himself.
13. "Therefore," you
spoke say, "if God
and God spoke and another
acted, if God
acted, you are proclaiming two gods." If you
are so obtuse, keep your opinion for the time
being and to make you hold this opinion

;
2
still more, listen to the mention of two gods
"
even in a psalm Thy throne, God, is for ever-
: rs. xliv.
3 7 8
(a rod of uprightness the rod of Thy
'
lasting ; is)
kingdom Thou hast loved

; righteousness and
hated iniquity ;
therefore God, Thy God, hath
anointed Thee." If it is "God" he is addressing,
and he says that " God has been anointed by
God," here too he avows two gods. In virtue
of " the rod of thy kingdom." 4 Hence it is that
"
Isaiah also refers to the person of Christ : And isa. xlv.
14, 15
1
For iubeo with the dative, on the analogy of impero, cf.
Hoppe, p. 29.
2
On adhuc with the comparative, see Hoppe, p, no.
3
Uirga directionis has doubtless been omitted by homoeoarcton.
'
4 Pro 5
perhaps means "instead of, "in place of." The whole

phrase sounds like a gloss, out of its place :
clearly there is a
corruption of some kind.
the Seboin, lofty men, will cross to Thee and

follow after Thee with hands bound, and will
worship Thee, because God is in Thee for Thou ;
art our God, and we knew it not, the God of

Israel." Here too by saying "
God in Thee " and
"Thou God," he sets forth two, namely, Him who
was in Christ and Christ l himself. There is more
that you will find in the Gospel so many times ;
"
John i. i In the beginning was the Word, 2 and the Word
was with God, and the
T
ord was God
"
W : One
who was, and another with whom He was. But I
also read that the name of the Lord was used in
"
Ts. cix. i reference to two : The Lord said unto my Lord :
'Sit at my right hand.'" And Isaiah says this:

"
Isa. liii. i
Lord, who hath believed our report, and to
whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed ? "
For he would have said "thine arm," not "the
arm of the Lord," if he had not wished the Lord
the Father and the Lord the Son to be under-
3
stood. Also there is the still older book of
"
Gen. xix. Genesis : And the Lord rained on Sodom and
24 Gomorrah sulphur and fire from heaven from the
Lord." Either deny that this is in the Bible, or
who are you to hold the opinion that the words
are not to be taken in the sense in which they are
written, especially those whose meaning lies not
1
Read Christum for spiritum with C. H. Turner. The
corruption (spm for xpm) is found elsewhere also.
2
This passage is illustrated from Greek Apologists by d'Ales,
pp. 86 f.
3
On adhucwith the comparative, see Hoppe, p. no, who
suggests pleonasm here.
but in sure and simple

in allegories or similitudes,
definitions you
? be of the number of those
But if
who would not then endure l the Lord's declaring cf. John x
33
Himself the Son of God, lest they should believe
Him God, recollect that He is included with them
"
in these words : I said :
*
Ye are gods and sons of Ps. ixxxi.
" "
the Highest,' and God stood in the assembly of
:
l^/
the gods," in order that, if Scripture did not fear to Ps lxxxi - -
"
declare that men, made sons of God by faith," c f.
j hn i.
gods, you may know that Scripture much more were 1
J GaJ ...
rightly conferred upon the true and only Son of 26

God the name both of God and of Lord. 2 " There-
"
fore," you say, you to preach
I will challenge
consistently even to-day two gods and two lords in

accordance with the authority of these Scriptures."
God forbid For we who by God's grace examine
!
both the times and the motives of the Scriptures,

as pupils especially of the Paraclete, not of men, cf. John
xvl I3
do indeed lay down two, Father and Son, and
* '
even three including the Holy Spirit according

to the method of economy which produces the
number, lest, as your perversity smuggles it in,
the Father Himself should be believed to have
been born and suffered, which it is not allowable
to believe since it has not so been recorded yet
we never with our the expressions " two
lips utter
" "
gods and two lords," not because the Father
is not God and the Son is not God and the
Spirit
1
For sustinere with the participle, Iloppe compares the use of
(inechesthai in Greek, and gives other examples, p. 58.
3
Following Turner and reading ef dei et domini nomen.
is not God and each one

of them is not God, but
since in the past two gods and two lords were
preached simply in order that when Christ had
come, he might be recognised as God and also
called Lord, because he was the Son of God and
the Lord. For if there were found in the Scrip-
tures only one being both of God and the Lord,
Christ would deservedly have been refused ad-
mission to the name of God and that of Lord
" "
cf. Exod. for it was preached that there was no God and
Deut'v 7
^ or d "but" one and the Father Himself would
cf. Eph. be thought " to have descended," because they read
10
iv.
of one God and one Lord, and His whole economy
would have been overshadowed, which was planned
and administered as subject-matter for belief.
But when Christ came and we learned about Him
that He Himself who had in the past caused the
(plural) number, having been made second to the

Father, and one of three if the Spirit be included,
being also the Father, who was more fully mani-
fested by Him, the name of God and Lord was
now reduced to an unity, 1 in order that because
" "
c f. i
the nations were leaving a multitude of " images
" "
cf Actsxv
9 anc* conm S to the one
God," there might also
19, etc. be established a difference between the worshippers
of a single and of a multiple divinity. Besides,
"
John xii. it was the duty of Christians, as sons of light,"
36; Eph.
v x
This, I think, is the right way to take this sentence. The
U
I %j,,' ess. v.
scr jpf ura { latent in it has not, I think, been hitherto
language
5
pointed out. This is the only passage in Tertullian where it has
been suggested to take quia in a final sense ( ut) (Hoppe, p. 76,
n- 3), the ut in the text being regarded as consecutive,
13, i4] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 61
" "
to shine worshipping and naming
in the world, c f. Matt.
"
the light of the world," one God and Lord. But
if we had named gods and lords in virtue of that 12
knowledge which tells us that the name of God

and Lord fits Father and Son and Spirit, we
should have extinguished our torches and shown
cowardice also in giving our testimony we should ;
have found everywhere open before us an oppor-

tunity to escape this, and at once proceeded
to swear by gods and lords, as certain heretics
do who have a number of gods. Therefore I will
" "
not use at the expressions "gods or lords,"
all
but I will follow the Apostle, and if I have to

name the Father and Son together, I will call the
Father "
God " and name Jesus Christ " the Lord." Rom. i.
7,
etc '
Moreover, I shallbe able to speak of Christ as

God, only in the way that the same Apostle does :
" "
From whom is Christ, who is," he says, God Rom. ix. 5
over all, blessed throughout all time." For I shall

" "
also call a ray of the sun by itself sun ;
but
in naming the sun whose ray it is, I shall not
straightway call a ray "the sun." For I am
not going to make out that there are two suns.
Nevertheless, I will just as much count the sun
and itsray two things and two aspects of one
indivisible material, as I do God and His Word,
as I do Father and Son. 1
14. Further, there comes to our support in
1
This ending ( ^ ^- ^ ^
^) is one of the rarer types,
occurring in about thirteen per cent, of the cases, cf. Hoppe,
pp. I56f. Note that the final syllable of patrem is elided.
claiming two, Father and Son, the rule that

defined God as invisible. For when Moses in
Egypt had longed for a sight of the Lord, saying :
Exod. "If therefore I have found grace in thine eyes,

xxxiu. 13
revea Thyself unto me, that I may see Thee and
i
"
Exod. know Thee," He said : Thou canst not see my
xxxin. 20 face
.
for no one w ju see m y face ancj ii ve)
"
that is :
he who But we find that God was

sees it will die.
seen by many, and yet none of those who had seen
Him, died He had, of course, been seen as far as
:
men's powers served, not in the fullness of His

cf. Gen. divinity. The
patriarchs are related to have seen
cf Gen God, for example Abraham and Jacob, and the
xxviii. 13; prophets, as Isaiah and Ezekiel, and yet they did
cfTlsafvi. not die. Therefore, either they must have died if

" "
they had seen Him for no one will see God "and
1
"
live or, if they saw God and did not die, Scripture
ls ^ se m stating that God said :
"
If a man see my
ibid. face, he shall not live." Or ifScripture does not
cf. John. He, either in declaring God to be invisible, or in
stating that He has been seen, it must therefore be

i. 18, etc.
some one else who was seen, because he who was

seen, the same cannot be defined as invisible, and
it will follow that we must understand the Father
as invisible in virtue of the fullness of His majesty,

while we recognise the Son as visible in accordance
1
with the measure of a secondary nature ; just as
1 "
secondary," i. . not inferior, but derived, deduced from the
other, as an irrigation canal is "deduced" from a river. But
Tertullian seems here (cf. c. 26) to come perilously near to sub-
ordinationism, cf. d'Ales, p. 101. On p. 102 he gives parallels
to the general argument of the chapter.
we may not view the sun, so far as the sum-total of

itsmatter in the sky is concerned, but we can bear
a ray of it with our eyes, as that is only a portion
toned down, projected from it on to the earth.
Here some one from the opposite side 1 will seek
to maintain that even the Son is invisible, like a
2
word, like breath, and in claiming one state for
Father and Son, to establish that Father and Son
are rather one and the same. But we have said c c. 14 f.
above that Scripture supports a difference by its pr>

distinction between the visible and the invisible.
They will then add this point to their reasoning,

that if it was the Son who then spoke to Moses, He cf ?.xod - -
Himself declared His face to be visible to no one,

because, of course, the invisible Father Himself was
(present) under the Son's name. By this means
they will have the same being regarded as both
visible and invisible, even as the same is both
Father and Son, since a little earlier also, before He
refuses to show His face to "Moses, it is written that
"
the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as if one Exod.
were speaking to his friend," and in like manner """ Ir 3 11 '
"
Jacob also says : I have seen God face to face." Gen.
" xxxll> 3
Therefore the same being is visible and invisible ;
and because he is both, therefore also the Father

Himself is invisible, but being also the Son, He is
visible." As indeed, the explanation of the

if,
Scripture passage we are now giving were suited

1
ex diuerso ex diuersa parte : Tertullian is very fond of this
type of phrase, where a preposition is used with the neuter of an
adjective, cf. Hoppe, pp. 98 ff.
a
"one state," i. e. the state of invisibility.
TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [14
to a Son separated from the Father in His visibility !
For we say that even the Son in His own name is

invisible to the same extent as the Word and
Spirit of God are, in virtue of the state of His

being, even now also because He is God and Word
and Spirit of God, but that He was visible before
He took flesh, in the way to which He refers in
"
Numb, speaking to Aaron and Miriam And if there be :
xii. 6-8
a prophet among you, I shall be known of him in
a vision, and in a dream shall I speak to him, not
"
in the way he described to " Moses I will speak to :
him mouth to mouth, in my visible form," that is,

in reality, "and not in a riddle," that is, not in
"
i Cor. a phantom even as also the Apostle says
;
Now :
xiii. 12
we see as if by means of a mirror in a riddle, but
then face to face." Therefore, when in Moses' case
He keeps the sight of Himself and face to face con-
verse for a future date for this was afterwards
"
cf. Matt, fulfilled in the retirement on the mountain," since
xvii. i
cf. Matt. we read in the Gospel that "Moses was seen

"
conversing with Him
1
xvii. 3; it is clear that previously
Mark ix_4;
Luke ix. God that is, the Son of God had always been
30. seen "in a mirror" and "riddle" and "vision" and
cf. Numb,
xii. 8; cf. "dream," as much by prophets and patriarchs as
Gen. xii.
cf. Gen. also till that time by Moses himself, and the Lord
7 ;
xxviii. 13, Himself indeed perchance spoke face to face, 2 yet

etc.
not in such a way that a man might see his face,
"
Numb. xii. except perhaps in a mirror, in a riddle." For if
1
See d'Ales, p. 171, for the connexion between the Transfigura-
tion and the promise made to Moses.
2
Kroymann's punctuation is wrong here: si forte, as often in
Tertullian and elsewhere ^fortasse ; see Mayor, Tert. ApoL index.
the Lord had spoken to Moses in such a way that

even Moses knew his face at close quarters, how
does he immediately and on the very spot long to
see His face, which he would not long to see,
because he had seen it ? How is it that the Lord c f. Exo i.
also equally declares that His face cannot be seen, xxxm 20 -
which He
had already shown, if He really had
shown But what is that " face " of God, the
it ? Ibid.
"sight" of which is refused ? If it was that which

was seen " I saw God," says Jacob, " face to face, Gen.
XXX11 3
and my soul was saved "that " face " must be
'
different which, if seen, slays. 1 Or was the Son

indeed seen "
although face to face," yet this very
"
sight occurred " in vision and " dream " and c f. Gen.
"
mirror and riddle," because Word and Spirit Zs
cannot be seen except in an imaginary form and etc.
" c
does he mean by his " face 2 the invisible Father ?
Who is the Father ? Will not the Son's face be E *od.
TT-I r TT t
His by virtue of the authority which He obtains
i
xxxiii. 20
i i t-
as begotten by the Father? Is it not fitting to
use the expression about some greater being :
"
That man is my face," and " he countenances :
me " ? " The Father," He says, " is greater than John xiv.
28
I." Therefore the Son's face will be the Father.
"
For, besides, what is it the Scripture says ? The Lam. iv.
320
spirit of His face (lit. mask), Christ the Lord."
1
The sentence wouldgain in clearness if, with C. H. Turner, we
inserted uisa est, alia quae after fades quae.
2
On this passage and the scriptural use of'fades in this connexion,
see Thes. vol. vi. (1913), p. 49, 11. 26 ff.
3
The MSS. must be followed here as agreeing with LXX.
Kroymann alters to spiritus (gen. ) eius persona . . .
persona paterni
spiritus. But Tertullian's agreement with LXX in not perfect. In
E
Therefore, if "Christ is the spirit of the Father's

face," it follows that He proclaimed His own face
(as the result of their unity, of course), to be

that of the Spirit whose face He was, namely
that of the Father. It is matter for wonder
whether the Son's face can be taken as the
"
Father, who is His head." For "God is Christ's
head."
i Cor. xi. 15. If I do not succeed
explaining this part of in
my subject by investigations of the Old Scripture, I

will take from the New Testament the confirmation
of my interpretation, lest whatever I attribute to
the Son, you should in like manner claim for the
Father. For observe, both in the Gospels and
in the Apostles l I find that God is visible and
invisible, with a clear and personal difference

between the two states. John, as it were, shouts
aloud " No one hath seen God at any time," and
:
therefore, of course, not in the past for he has ;
John i. 1 8 removed question as to time by saying that

all
"
God has never been seen." And the Apostle also
confirms this as regards God " whom no human :
ibid. being hath seen, nor indeed can see," assuredly

i Tim. vi. because he who does see Him will die. These
"
very same Apostles testify that they have both
cf. Exod. seen and handled" Christ. But if Christ Himself
XX
cf
** both Father and Son, how was He both seen
ij'ohi
i. i
place of eius (his) LXX has TJ/J.UV (ours). Itlooks as if he had

falsified the text for his own R. V. " The breath of our
purpose. :
nostrils, the anointed of the Lord." Cf. d'Ales, pp. 98, 237.
1
For the terms used by Tertull an to indicate Scripture or parts
of Scripture, see d'Ales, p. 223 ff.
and invisible? Some opponent of ours will now 1

argue, with the view of combining this distinction of
visible and invisible in a unity, that both statements
are correct, that He was visible indeed in the
flesh, but invisible before He became flesh, with
the result that the Father, invisible before He
became flesh, is the same as the Son who is visible
in the flesh. But if the same was invisible before
becoming flesh, how He found to have been seen

is
even in the past before He became flesh ? Like-

wise, if the same was visible after becoming flesh,
how is He
even now declared invisible by the
Apostles, except because it was one who even in the
" "
past was seen in a riddle and was made more Numb, xii
"
fully visible by flesh, namely, the Word," who ohn
j j
I4
"
was " also " made flesh," and it was another whom
"
no one ever saw," the Father, of course, whose the John i. 18
Word is ? For let us examine who it was the

"
Apostles saw. What we have seen," says John, John i i. i
"
what we have heard, what we with our eyes have
seen, and our hands have handled of the Word
of life." For "the Word" "of life" "was made John i. 14
"
flesh was heard and seen and handled, because
flesh who before the Incarnation was merely
"the Word in the beginning with God" the John i. i,
2
2
Father, not the Father with Himself. For
"
although the W'ord was God," yet, because God John i. i
"
springs from God, it was with God," because in
company with the Father means " with " the
1
For ex diuerso, see the note on chap. 14, p. 63. Read mine
for non of the MSvS. with C. H. Turner.
2
Read semet ipsum with C. H. Turner for sermonem of MSS.
"
John i. 14 Father. And we saw His glory, as of the only
begotten of the Father," assuredly the Son, of
" "
cf. John course visible, glorified by the invisible Father.
etc"'
4>
^ nc ^ * was * r ^ at
ne na d called reason (si nce
" " "
John i. i the Word he of God
should en- God "), lest
courage the assumption of his enemies, that he

claimed to have seen the Father Himself, that in
order to distinguish between the invisible Father
"
John i. 18 and the visible Son he adds over and above l God :
no one hath seen at any time." Which God ? The

i
John i. i Word ? Nay " we have seen and heard and handled
:
"
of the Word of life preceded. But what God ?
"
cf. John i. The Father, of course, with whom was God the
John i 18 Word," "the only begotten Son, who Himself de-

"
cf. i John clared the Father's bosom." He Himself was both
heard and seen," and lest He should be believed to
"
cf. i John be an apparition, was even handled." Him also
le l
Paul saw, but yet he did not see the Father,
i Cor. ix. "Have I not," he said, "seen Jesus?" But he
" "
*
K.om.
.
ix. 5
,.
also surnamed
"
Christ God " " Of whom were :
the fathers and from whom was Christ according to

the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for
ever." He also showed that God the Son was
" "
John i. 14 visible, that is, the Word of God, because he
" "
who was made flesh was called Christ. But
i Tim. vi. about the Father he says to Timothy
"
Whom no :
one of men hath seen, nor indeed can see," ampli-

i Tim. vi.
fying further
"
Who alone hath immortality and
:
inhabiteth unapproachable light," concerning whom

1
ex abundanti : see Thesaurtis s. v. abnndo and IIoj pe, p. 101.
It is very common in Tertullian.
"
he had also said earlier : And to the King of the i Tim. i.
I7
ages, immortal, invisible, the only God," that we
might also ascribe the contrary qualities to the Son
Himself, mortality, accessibility, who, he testifies,
"died according to the Scriptures" and "was last i Cor. xv
"
seen by himself," by means of " approachable
^ Cor
"
light," of course and yet even it neither he 8
"
himself could experience without danger to his î \e
cf T Cor
sight nor could Peter, John and James, without
- -
having to reckon the chance of loss of reason, who, John xx'i.

if they had seen, not the glory of the Son that was
to suffer, but the Father, would, I believe,have ix. 6

"
straightway died.
1
For no one shall see God and Exod.
live." If these things are so, it is certain that He xxx> 20
who was seen at the end, was always seen from the
beginning, and that He was not seen at the end
who was not seen from the beginning, and that
thus the seen and the unseen are two. Therefore
the Son was always seen and the Son always
moved about and the Son always " worked," by cf. John v.
the authority and will of the Father, because " the hn v l

j
Son can do nothing of Himself, unless He see the
Father doing it," that is, of course, doing it in
thought. For the Father acts by thought, the Son,

who is in the Father's thought, sees and accom-
plishes.
2
Thus " all things were done by " the Son John i.
3
"
and without Him nothing was done." 3
1
Reading amentiae for et amentia wilh C. II. Turner. For
ibidem (like ilico] of time, cf. Hoppe, p. 112.
2
C. H. Turner compares Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians, 3,
but I am inclined to suggest sinu for the second sensu (cf. John i. 18).
3
"On this punctuation of John i. 3, see note on c. 2.
1 6. And you are not 1

to suppose that it was
2
cf. John i.
only the works of the universe that "were done
"
by the Son ;
He also performed all that were
" "
subsequently performed by God. For the Father
"
John Hi, who loves the Son and hath given over all things
"
into His bosom," 3
loves," of course, from the begin-
ning and "gave over" from the beginning, from
John i.
that beginning 4 when "the Word was with God
i
Matt. and the Word was God." To whom " has been
xxviu. i "
gj ven a ]| p 0wer by the Father "in heaven and on
John v. 22earth" "the Father does not judge any one, but
;
He has given all judgment to the Son," from the

Matt. beginning, however. For in saying "all power"
and " al1 Judgment" and that "all things were
johnVL
John 3 made by Him" and that "all things have been
i.
111
35
handed over into His hand," he allows no exception
in time, not be a case of "all," if
because it will
they have not belonged to all time. Therefore it

is the Son who has judged from the beginning
cf Gen. xi. also,dashing to the ground the disdainful tower

cflien
and destroying the tongues, punishing the whole
"
vii. 10 world with violent waters, raining fire and
xix/24
brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah," being God
from God. It was He himself, too, who always
condescended to converse with men, from Adam
1 For me in a prohibitive clause, see Hoppe, p. 107.
2
The works of the original creation (Gen. i.).
3
I follow the MSS. here, with Oehler and the Colbertine MS.
(c] of the Gospels. For abl. =

ace., see Hoppe, pp. 40 f. Pamelius
altered sinu to rnamt, and this is accepted by Kro}mann. Seimi
in the apparatus to Kroymann's smaller edition is a misprint. See
c. 21 for the regular reading. Ronsch, Das N. T. Tertullians has
strangely overlooked this difference.
4
Omit the a of MSS. with C. H. Turner.
" Numb.
down to the patriarchs and prophets, in vision," cf.
*l
"in dream," "in a mirror," "in a riddle," building on xiiii
always from the beginning His course which He 12; Numb.
was to maintain at the end. Thus it was that

" "
even " God was always learning the lesson to c f. Bar. iii.
live on the earth with men," being none other than
"the Word," which was to "become flesh"; more- 14
over He was learning to pave 1 the way of faith

for us, that we might more easily believe that the
Son of God had descended into the world and
learn that something of the kind had been achieved
For it was " for us that they were
''
in the past. i Cor. x
ll
also done even as "they were written" "unto us ;
have the ends of the ages run down their course."

Even then He had actually such knowledge of
human feelings, as He was about to take upon
himself even the very materials of man, flesh and
mind, when He asked Adam as if ignorant
2
:
"Where art thou, Adam?" "regretting that He Gen. 9; iii.
had made man," as if not foreseeing his character ^ ^ en ;

*
"trying Abraham," as if He did not "know what cf. Gen.

was in man " when hurt, reconciled to them again,
;
ctjohn ii.
and any such qualities as heretics snatch at, as if 2 5

they were unworthy of God, for the dethronement
of the Creator, not knowing that these were suited
to the Son, who was to endure even the sufferings ,
cf hn
of men, thirst, hunger, tears, birth itself and death iv. 7; xix.
att
? 8;
'
itself, having on this account been "made" by the v 2 f

John xi.
1 Matt. i.
For the metaphorical uses of sterno in Tertullian, see Hoppe, 35>
p. 191.
i6;xxvn.
2 etc -
For parallels to this in Teitullian, see d'Ales, p. 102. 5
1
cf. PS. viii. Father "a little less than the angels." But you
6 (Heb. 11.
t h rus t U p 0n the Father Himself what the heretics
indeed will not consider suitable even to the Son
of God, namely, the degradation of Himself by
Himself for our sakes, although the Scripture says
ibid. that one "was made less" by another, not Himself
Ibid. by Himself. And if it was One who " was crowned
with glory and honour," it was Another who
crowned Him that is, the Father the Son. And
yet what an idea it is, that the all-powerful God,
i Tim. vi. the invisible, " whom no man hath seen nor can
see," He who <(
dwelleth in light unapproachable,"
"
Acts xvii. He who dwelleth not in what is made
by the
2 "
na nd man," in whose presence the earth
of
PS xcvi
4, 5 trembles, the mountains melt like wax," " who seizes
*
the whole world with his hand like a nest," whose
"
Isa. Ixvi. i throne is heaven and his footstool earth," in whom
6n
iii. 8
i s a ^ s P ace while He
not in space, who himself is
cf. Gen. is the farthest boundary of the universe, the Most
cf. Gen. High, "walked in the garden till the evening"

xviii.4 8 the ark" after Noah's
cf. Exod. seeking Adam, and "shut
" "
iii. 4 entrance, and rested
3
with Abraham " under an
n
oak >" and called Moses from the " burning " bush,"
"
'
m.^2 "
cf. Numb, and
"
appeared with three others in the furnace of
i Cor! xi'ii.
the Babylonian king Although He was called !
I2 " " " " "

-
Son of God in image and mirror and riddle,"
1
When Tertullian refers to this verse, it is rather the abased con-
dition than the human nature of Christ he is thinking of: cf.
d'Ales, p. 101 (p. 100 n. 3).
2
For plur. neut. of participle following a preposition, see Hoppe,
pp. 97 f.
3
For refrigerare intransitively used, see Hoppe, p. 64.
these things, besides, would really not have been

believed even about the Son of God, if they had
not been in Scripture, and are perhaps not to be
believed about the Father, 1 even though they are
in Scripture whom those people bring down into
;
Mary's "womb" and " set upon" Pilate's "tribunal"

2
c f. Matt. i.
and bury in "Joseph's tomb." This, then, makes

|^hn xix
clear their mistake. Not knowing that from the 13
beginning the whole course of the divine system XX vii. 5g }

took its way through the Son, they believe that 6o
the Father Himself was seen, met with men,
worked, and endured thirst and hunger in contra-
"
diction of the prophet's statement : The eternal Isa. xl. 28
"
God not thirst nor hunger at all
will :how much
more will He neither die nor be buried and that !
thus one God, namely the Father, had always done

what was done through the Son. 3 17. They deemed
it easier for the Father to come in the Son's name
than for the Son to come in the Father's, although
"
the Lord Himself says I caTne in my Father's John
: v. 43
name," likewise to the Father Himself: "I have John xvii.
made Thy name manifest unto men," while Scrip-

"
ture says in agreement
4
Blessed is He that
: Ps. cxvii.
26
cometh in the name of the
Lord," meaning, of
"
course, the Son in the Father's name. But the Rev. xix.
" 6
name of the Father," they say, is God all-
1
Here Tertullian is only giving a paradoxical turn to his
argument.
2
From this reference it is obvious that Tertullian, or the version
of Scripture used by him, took eKaQurev transitively here, with Pilate
as subject. So also did the author of the Gospel of Peter (Turner).
3
For this ending, see the note at the end of c. 8.
4
For this use of condico in Tertullian, see Hoppe, p. 127.
Tsa.i.9, powerful," "Lord of hosts," "King of Israel," "I

"
i
am> so the Scriptures teach, we say
Because 1
14, etc. that these also suited the Son, and that in these
the Son came, and that in these He always acted,
and that in this way He 2 made Himself clear unto
John xvi. men. " All things belonging to the Father," he
"
15
says, are mine." 3
Why not also names ? When
Rev. xix. therefore, youGod all-powerful " and
read of "
Numb.
6;
xxiv. 1 6 '
t h e Most
High" and "God of Hosts" and "King
isa. i.
9,' of Israel" and "I am," consider whether the Son
a so ^ e not indicated by these terms, being in his
^
Exod iii
14, etc. own right " God," as " the Word of all powerful
V
xix. 6 (
1
3)
God" and as having "received power over every-
Matt,
thing"; "Most High," as "raised by God's right
cf.
xxviii'. 18; hand," even as Peter says in his speech in Acts ;
h "
x^2 Lord of Hosts," because "everything has been
{
cf. Actsii. made subject to Him" by the Father; "King of
4
cl i Cor. Israel," because the lot of that race fell especially
xv. 28 him also I am," because many " "
to ; * are named
cf. Deut. "
xxxii. 8, 9 sons, and are not sons. But if they will have it
cf. John that the Father's
i^
name belongs also to Christ, they
will get their answer in its proper place. Mean-
time let me have at this point an answer ready
to that which they produce also from John's
"
Apocalypse : I am the Lord who is, and who
Quatemts =
1 " because " see
Hoppe, pp. 82
;
f.
2
Reading enm for ea in, with C. H. Turner.
8 Cf.
with d'Ales, p. 100, cc. 2, 22, for the equality of honour
between the three Divine Persons.
4 For various
meanings and constructions of excido in Tertullian,
see Hoppe, p. 131. He regards the meaning here as doubtful ; pos-
sibly accidit, which Fr. lunius read here, while Latini suggested
exiuit. Yet the MS. reading is genuine see passages from Livy ;
in the lexica s. v. excido.

17, i8] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 75
was, and who comes with all power," and any

other passages where they think that the title 'all-
"
powerful God is not suited also to the Son, as if
He who is to come is not "all-powerful," although
the Son of the "all-powerful" is also as "all-

"
powerful as God the Son of God. 1
1 8. But to prevent them from easily under-
standing this partnership in the Father's names

which the Son enjoys, there is the confusion Scrip-
ture causes them, whensoever it lays down that
there one God only, as if it has not also set
is
forth two Gods and Lords, as we showed above, cf. c. 13

" "
Therefore," they say, because we find two and
one, therefore both are one and the same, both
Son and Father." But 2 Scripture is not in such
danger that you need come to its help with your
reasoning, lest it should seem inconsistent with
itself. It is quite right both when it lays down
that there is one God and when it shows that there

are two, Father and Son, and it is self-sufficient.
It is well known that the Son is named by it. For
without prejudice to the Son it can quite rightly
have defined God as one, whose the Son is. In
having a Son He does not Himself cease to be One,
in His own name, of course, as often as He is named
apart from His Son. And He is named without

the Son when He is defined in His supreme
aspect as the chief being, which had to be put
forward before the Son's name, because the Father
1
For the ending, see the note on c. 8.
2
'$w porro sed, etc., see Hoppe, p. 113.
becomes first known, and after the Father the Son.

" "
Isa. xlv. 5 One God the Father, therefore, is named, " and
"
other apart from Him " there is none." When He
Himself states this, He is not denying the Son, but
any other god. Further, the Son is not other
than the Father. 1 For examine what follows such
announcements, and you will find that their
teaching is generally connected with makers and
worshippers of images, that the unity of divinity
may drive out the multitude of false gods, a unity
which nevertheless comprises the Son, who is as
much to be reckoned in the Father as He is un-
divided and unseparated from the Father, though
He is not named. Nay, if He had named Him, He
would have separated Him, in these words "There :
is none other but Me except My Son." For He

would have made even the Son other, whom He
would have excepted from the others. Suppose
"
that the sun says I am the sun, and other than
:
me there not, except my beam " would you not

is ;
have stigmatised its folly, as if the beam also were

cf. Isa. not reckoned in the sun? Therefore it is that
xlv 5
-
He said there was no other God but Himself.
This word was uttered on account of the idolatry
of the heathen as much as of Israel also on account ;
of the heretics who, even as the heathen fashion

images with their hands, so also themselves
fashion them with words, namely another God and
another Christ. Therefore, even when He pro-
claimed Himself as one, the Father was acting in
1
For alms a, see the notes on cc. 8, 9 above.
the Son's interests, lest Christ should be believed

to have come from another God, rather than from
"
Him who had before said : I am God and other isa. xlv. 5
than I there is none," who signified that He was

one, but in company with the Son, with whom
"
He alone stretched out the heavens." c f. Isa.
xllv> 24
19. any If snatch even at this saying of His
will
"
to prove His individuality, He uses the words, I i sa . xliv.
" 24
alone stretched out the heavens as meaning
" "
alone in regard to all other powers, building
beforehand against the conjectures of heretics 1 who
maintain that the universe was constructed by
various angels and powers, who also either make
the Creator Himself into an angel or represent ,
Him as having been engaged by some other ex-

ternal power, even without His knowledge, to pro-
duce the works of the universe. Or, if He "alone cf. Isa.
" x lv '
24
stretched out the heavens in the way in which
these heretics perversely imagine, as an individual,
that "wisdom" would not be admitted, saying : Prov. viii.
"
When He was preparing the heavens, I was with p rov viii
Him." Isaiah 2
also said :
"
Who hath learned the 27
Lord's mind and who advised Him;" except, of

" " "
course, Wisdom," which was present with Him cf. Prov.
and yet was within Him and " with Him con- ^plovJ
"
structed all things, though He did not know what viii. 30
He was doing? "Apart from the wisdom," how-
" "
ever, means apart from the Son," who is Christ, i Cor. i.
24
1
The intended are such as Simon Magus, Apelles,
heretics
Menander, and others: cf. d'Ales, pp. no, 155, who refers to
o'her passages also where they are attacked.
1
Esaias Engelbrecht ; si MSS.
"
the wisdom and power of God according to the
Apostle,
"
who " alone " knows " the Father's mind.
i Cor. ii.
"
For who knows what is in God save the Spirit that
is in Him"? not that which is outside Him. There
was therefore one who made God by Himself,
only in the sense of apart from all others (but the
Son). But let the Gospel also be rejected because
"
John i.
3 itsays that all things were made by God through
the Word and that without Him nothing was
made." 1 Unless I am mistaken, it is also else-
"
Ps. xxxii. where written :
By His Word the heavens were
strengthened and by His Spirit comes all their
John i-
strength."
i. But " the Word," " power and wisdom
3MCor.i. of God win be the Son Himself< If> t hen, aU
"
cf. Isa. things are through the Son, in stretching out
xliv. 24 the heavens" also through the Son He did not
"
Ibid. stretch them out alone," except in the way in which
He did it apart from allothers (but the Son).
And, besides, He immediately speaks about the
"
Isa. xliv. Son : Who else cast down the signs of the ven-
25> 26
triloquists and divinations from the mind, turning
back the wise and making their counsel of none
2
effect, establishing the words of His Son "? saying,
Luke ix. of course " This is my beloved Son, hear Him."

:
"
35
By thus adding the Son" He Himself explains
"
cf. Isa. the manner in which He alone stretched out the
xliv. 24
heavens," namely, alone with His Son, even as
He is one with the Son. Similarly, also, the Son
On this punctuation, cf. the note on c. 2.

1
2
This passage is closely pa-allel to Adv. Marc. iv. 22 (p. 217,
Oehler; p. 494, 1. 21, Kroymann).
i9
]
TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 79
"
will utter the words : I alone stretched out the isa. xliv.
S
heavens," because "by the Word the heavens were Jxiii. 6
"
strengthened," because when "wisdom stood by cf. Prov.
" V1
"
in the the heavens were prepared
Word, and
"all things were done by the Word." It is fitting, John i. 3
also, that the Son "by Himself should have stretched isa. xliv.
out the heavens," since it was He alone who acted ^ 4 Prov
as servant to the operation of the Father. He also viii. 27
it willbe that says " I am the first, and I am for i sa X H. 4
:
.
the time that is to come." " The Word," of course, c i sa x n. f. .
" "
is first of all " In the beginning was the Word," 4
: .
in which beginning He was brought forth by the

Father. But the Father as " having no beginning/' c f. n eb.
Vli -
as brought forth by no one, as unborn, cannot be 3
seen. He who was always " alone," could have no isa. xliv.
order in time.
if they thought that the same being
Therefore
was be believed to be both Father and Son, with
to
the object of asserting God to be one, His unity is
unimpaired who, though He is one, has also a Son,
who is Himself also in like manner included in the
same Scriptures. If they refuse to consider the
"
Son as second to the Father, lest " second should
bring about the mention of two gods, we have
shown two Gods mentioned in Scripture also, and c. 13
two Lords and yet, lest this prove a stumbling-

;
block to them, we explain why we should not

speak of two Gods or Lords, but of two who stand
in relation of Father and Son, and this not as the
result of separation of being, but of arrangement,
since we declare the Son to be undivided and
8o TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [19, 20
unseparated from the Father, and different not in

permanent condition, but only in rank, who
although He is called God, when He is named by
Himself, does not therefore imply two gods, but
only one, by this very fact that He can be called
God also from the unity of the Father.
20. But we must devote ourselves to the further
1
repression of their reasonings, if they pick any-
thing out from the Scriptures to support their view,
refusing to look upon everything else which in
2
itself keeps the rule, and indeed without danger to
the unity of divinity and^the established position 3 of
monarchy. For as in the Old Testament they
"
Isa. xlv. 5 remember nothing but I am God and other than
I there
none," so in the Gospel they defend the
is
John. x. Lord's answer to Philip " I and the Father are :
30, xiv. 9
one ^, and .
He who hath seen me ^
ha( h seen alsQ
.
"
John. xiv. the Father," and : I am in the Father and the
I0> I]
Father in me." To these three passages they
4
5
would have the whole charter of both Testaments
to although it is proper that the fewer
yield,
passages should be understood in the light of the
more numerous. But this is a characteristic of all
heretics. Since there are few that can be found in
1
For examples of the dative of the gerundive and gerund in
Tertullian, see Hoppe,pp. 55 f.
2
regulam seruant "keeps the rule," that is, upholds the general
teaching of Scripture. Probably there is no reference here to the
regulajidei.
3
Reading stattt with Kroymann for the not impossible MSS.
reading sonitu (sonant), "meaning."
4
Cf. d'Ales, p. 243.
5
One of the various expressions used by Tertullian to indicate
Scripture: cf. d'Ales, p. 224; Harnack, Beitrdge^ Bd. vi. (1914),
pp. 137 ff.

2o, 2 1] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 81
1
the forest of instances, these few they defend
against the majority, and they take up the cause
of the later against the earlier. But the rule that
has been fixed for everything from the beginning, if
valid in the earlier cases, gives directions also for

the later, and of course also for the fewer. 2
21. Look therefore lay down
how many passages 3
a rule for you even in the Gospel before Philip's
consultation and earlier than any reasoning of
yours. And in the first place the very preface of
the evangelist John at once points out what He
who was to " become flesh," was in the past " In cf. John : i.
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

johni .1-3
with God and the Word was God He was in the ;
beginning with God all things were made

; by
Him and without Him nothing was made." 4 For
if these words may not be taken otherwise than as
they are written, beyond doubt one is indicated

"
who was from the beginning," another " with cf. John i.
"
whom He was the one " the Word " of God, the \bij
;
"
other " God "although " the Word is also " God,"
but as God's Son, not as Father one " through cf. jol.n i.
whom " are all things, the other

"
from whom " are 3
1
"forest" (silua), a graphic way of describing the immense
size and complexity of Scripture : cf. Apol. c. 4 (p. 16, 1.
27, ed.
Mayor), totam illant iietereni et squalentem sihuim legtim, etc., of
the mass of the ancient Roman jurisprudence. It might be rendered
"multitude" simply. For this type of metaphor, see Hoppe,
pp. 194 f., especially p. 195 n. I.
2
The text is doubtful here ; I translate Ursinus' pauciora (MSS.
paucionbus).
quanta here, as often in late Latin, = quot (sc. capitula) cf.
3
:
Hoppe, p. 106.
4
For this punctuaiion of the verse, see the note on c. 2.
F
all things. But in what sense we use the word

"other," we have already often announced; by
" "
other we must mean not the same but not as
"
if we meant separated by arrangement :
other," not
"
John i.
14 by division. He, therefore, it was that was made
Ibid. Flesh," not I le whose "
Word " he was ;
itwas his
"glory that appeared, as of the only one from the
John i. 18 Father," not as of the Father. "He" alone "ex-
plained the Father's bosom," the Father did not
explain His own bosom. For the statement pre-
Ibid. cedes " God no one ever saw at any time." He
:
36
cf^Matt also it is tnat is termed by John "the Lamb of
iii. 17, etc. God," not He whose "Beloved" 1
He is, who is
John i.
49; certainly always called "Son of God," but not
cf. johni. identified with Him whose Son he is. Nathanael
perceived at once that He was this, even as else-
Matt, xvi. where also Peter " Thou art the Son of God." He
:
himself, too, proves that they were right in this
judgment, by answering Nathanael indeed thus :
"
John i.
50 Because said, I saw thee under the fig-tree/there-
I
'
Matt. xvi. fore thou believest," by maintaining, however, that

Peter " was happy, since neither flesh nor blood had
levealed" what he had thought, "but the Father
who is in heaven." By this saying he established
the distinction between the two persons that of the :
Son on the earth whom Peter had recognised as

" " "
Matt. xvi. Son of God," and that of the Father in heaven
165 I7
who had "revealed" to Peter what Peter had
The Beloved"" "

1
Dilecttts (Gk. agapetos) see Dean Robinson, :
as a Messianic title, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the

Ephesians, pp. 229-233.
"
recognised, namely, that Christ was the Son of Matt. xvi.
God." When He entered " into the temple," He, as j^hn H
Son, called it His
"
Father's house." When He 14, 16
addresses Nicodemus, He says
"
God so loved the:
^ n
world that He gave His only Son, that every one

who believed in Him, should not perish, but should
"
have everlasting life." And again For God sent John
:
iii.
'
not His Son into the world to judge the world, but
that the world through Him might be saved he ;
who has believed in Him, is not judged he who ;
has not believed in Him, has been already judged,

because he has not believed in the name of the
only Son of God." John, too, when some one was
"
asking about Jesus why He baptized," 1 said : cf.
John
" *6
The Father loveth the Son and hath given all
jj| h iiL
things into His hand ;

he that beiieveth in the Son, 35 36
hath everlasting life he that beiieveth not in the

;
Son of God, shall not see God, but God's anger

shall abide upon him." As what, indeed, did He
show himself to the Samaritan woman ? If as
"
the Messiah, that is called Christ," He showed John iv.
25 2
Himself of course as the Son, not the Father, who '
elsewhere also was called " Christ, Son of God," Matt. xvi.
l6 etc '
not the Father. Later He says to His disciples :
'
"
It is mine do the will of Him
to that sent me, John iv.
that I may complete His work." And to the Jews ^

about the healing of the paralytic: "My Father John v. 17
worketh hitherto, and I work." The Son says
1
cum interrogaret qui de lesu, cur tinêret, Kroymann's skilful
emendation of the MSS. reading, cum interrogaretiir quid de lesu
contingerel.
84 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PR AXE AS [21
"
John v. 18 the Father" and "I." For "on this account
were the Jews the more desirous to kill Him, not
only because He sought to do away with the
Sabbath, but because He called God His Father,
thus making Himself equal to God." Then, there-
"
John v. fore, He said to them : The Son can do nothing
19-27 O f Himself, save He see the Father doing it for the :
things that He doth, the Son also doeth. For the

Father loveth the Son and hath pointed out to
Him all that He himself doeth, and greater works
than these shall He point out 1 to him, that ye may
wonder. For as He raiseth the dead and maketh
them alive, so also the Son maketh alive those
whom He will. Nor indeed does the Father judge,
but He hath given all judgment to the Son, that
allmay^honour the Son even as they honour the
Father. He that doth not honour the Son, doth
not honour the Father, who sent the Son. Verily,
verily I say unto you that he who heareth the
word and believeth Him that sent me, hath ever-
lasting life and shall not come into judgment, but
hath passed from death into life. Verily I say
unto you that the hour shall come in which the
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and
when they have heard it, shall live. For even as
the Father hath everlasting life of Himself, so also
He hath given to the Son to have everlasting life
in Himself, and hath given Him to do judgment in
power, because He is the Son of man," by the flesh,
of course, even as He is Son of God by His spirit.
1
demonsirubit Kroymann, for MSS. demonstrauit.
2 i] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 85
"
He adds further But I have greater testimony John v.
:
6
than that of John for the works that the Father 3 37
;
>
hath given me to complete will themselves bear

witness concerning me, that the Father sent me ;
and the Father that sent me, Himself bore testi-

mony concerning me." Moreover, in adding: "Ye John v. 37
have never heard His voice, nor yet have ye seen His
shape," He
proves that in the past it was not the
Father, but the Son that was seen and heard. For
He says " I came in my Father's name, and ye John
: v. 43
received me not." Thus the Son was always in
the name of God and King and All-powerful Lord
and Most High. 1 Further, when they asked "what John vi.
" *8' 29
they ought to do," He answered To believe in :
Him whom God hath sent." He declares that He T , .
" John M.
is which the Father offered from
also the bread 32, 35
" "
heaven therefore that
; everything which the cf John vi.
Father gave Him, was coming to Him, and that He 37> 3 8
would not reject Him, because He had come down

from heaven, not to do His own, but the Father's
will"; that it was, moreover, "His Father's will cf. John vi.
that he who saw the Son and believed in Him, 4

"
should attain and resurrection
life that " no cf. John ;
V1 44
one," further, "could come to Him unless the
'
" "
Father drew him that every one who had cf. John
;
V1 45
heard and learnt from the Father, came to Him,
'
adding here also: "not as if any one has seen thej h nv i.
6
Father," to show that it is the Father's word that 4
"
makes men learned. But when many are depart- c j h n f.
ing" from Him and He puts the question to His

vi 6 ^ -
1
See ^.bove, c. I/,
John apostles "whether they also wish to depart," what

cf.
"
John vi.
"
does Simon Peter answer ? " Whither are we to
69 Thou life, and we believe
68} hast the words of
go ?
that thou art the Christ." Did they believe that

He was the Father or the Father's Anointed ?
John v. 28 22. Whose teaching does He mean that they
"wondered at"? His, or the Father's? When
they were equally in doubt among themselves as to
"
cf. John whether l He Himself were " the Christ (of course
"
7
not the Father but the Son )> He said
>
And me, :
John v'ii?
28, 29 ye know whence I am and I have not come of

;
myself, but He
is true, who sent me, whom ye
know not; know Him, because I was with Him."

I
He did not say " Because I am He " and " I my-

:
"
self sent myself," but He sent me." Also, when
John vii. "the Pharisees had sent to attack Him": "Yet a
32 33 "
He, I am with you and I go to
'
little while," said
cf. John Him who sent me." And when He denies that
"
Heisalon e" "But I," he says, "and He who sent
Johnfiii
16 me, the Father" does He not indicate two, as
much two as inseparable? Nay, this was His
whole teaching, that the two are inseparable, since
also in setting forth the law confirming "the evi-
John viii. dence of two men," He adds " I give testimony :
concerning myself, and the Father who sent me

testifies concerning me," But if He were one, pro-
vided the Son and Father were the same, He would
John viii.
not use the defence furnished by that law which
17 (Deut.
xvii. 6)
imposes faith on "the testimony," not of one, but
c n l
.:.J~ For this ne interrogative in an indirect clause, cf,
Hoppe,
vllu " and Mayor on 4tol. c. 3 (p. 1.
p. 72, 12, 25),
" "
of two." Also, when asked where the Father c f. John
was," in "answering that neither He nor the Father !' IQvui.
...
John
was known to them," He mentioned two unknowns, 19
"
because, if they knew Him, they would know the
Father," not indeed implying that He Himself was
Father and Son, but because through their indi-
visibility the one could neither be recognised nor
unknown without the other, while quite another
passage of Scripture explains that they had not
learned what He had said about the Father " He John viii.
who sent me," l He said, " is true, and what I have 26

heard from Him, that I also speak to the world"
when, of course, they ought to have learnt that
the Father's words are in the Son, from reading in
"
Jeremiah : And the Lord said unto me,
Behold '
Jer. i.
9
"
I have put my words in thy mouth,' and in
"
Isaiah : The Lord gives me the tongue of learn- isa. I.
4
ing to apprehend when

ought to speak a word,"
I
even as He Himself also says: "Then shall ye John viii.

learn that I am and that I speak nothing of my- 28> 29
self, but even as He taught me, so also I speak,

because He also that sent me is with me," and this,
2
too, is evidence of two inseparables. Likewise in
his dispute with the Jews, upbraiding them because
"
they wanted to kill him," He said
'
I
speak what cf. John
:
I saw with
my Father," and: "Ye do that which
"
ye saw with your father," and Now ye wish to 38 :
n
slay a man who hath spoken to you the truth ^
which He heard from God," and: " If God had John viii.
2
given by the MSS. after the end of the clause 4
1
The quotation is
in line 8, hut Kroymann has

transposed it to its present position.
2
For the ellipsis of adtinet or pert'in et here, see Iloppe, p. 146,
:
been your Father, ye would have loved me for I :
proceeded and came from God," and yet we do not

"
John viii. separate Him, although He said He proceeded,"
42 in the way that certain people seize the chance
"
Ibid. offered by this utterance ;
for He proceeded from"
the Father like a beam from the sun, a stream
"
John viii. from its source, a shrub from its seed. I have
49 not an evil spirit, but I honour my Father," and :
"
John viii. Were I to
glorify myself, my own glory is no-
54, 55
thing : there is He that glorifieth me, the Father,
who you say is your God and ye know Him not ;
but I know Him, and if I were to say: I know

c
Him not,' I shall be, like you, a liar but I know ;
Him and I keep His word." And when He adds :
John viii. "Abraham saw my day and rejoiced," of course

He indicates that the Son had been seen of Abra-
ham in the past, not the Father. Also over the
"
cf. John blind man He says that He must do the Father's
restoring his eyes He says
lx> 4
works," to whom after :
" "
cf. John Dost than believe in the Son of God ? and when
"
Tohn'ix
^ e as ked who He was," He pointing to Himself, of
35 course pointed out the Son, who He had said should
" Later He He "is
ii 36*37 be believed." declares that
cf. John
known to the Father and that the Father is known
IX. "}C
"
cf. Johnx. to Him," and that therefore is He loved by the
Father because His life," because " He
He lays down
cf John x
17 had received this command from the Father." And
'
having been asked by "the Jews" "whether He

1
jg
cf. Johnx. was Hi ms elf the Christ" of course of God, for
24
even to the present day the Jews hope, nqt for the
; see Iloppe, p. 73,
Father Himself, but for the Christ (i.e. Anointed)

of God, because it is never written that Christ the
" "
Father will come speak," He says,
I to you, John x. 25
and ye believe not ;
the works which I do in the
Father's name, they themselves give evidence con-
cerning me." Evidence of what? Assuredly that

He is Himself the very one about whom they were
asking that is, the Christ of God. With regard
to his
"
own sheep " also He says that " no one will cf. John x.
" "
seize them from his hand for what the Father
j^, m x ^
:
hath given me is greater than all," and " I and the John x.
'
Father are one." Here, then, fools, or rather the

blind, wish now to take a stand, because they do
"
not see, first, that " I and the Father is an indication John x. 30
"
of two second, that we are," at the end, being ex-
;
pressed in the plural, cannot come from one person

only; third, that the expression is "we are one
"
thing," not we are one person." For if He had
said :
"
We are one person," He could have sup-
" "
ported their view for;
one (person) appears to
be an indication of the singular number. But as
matters are, when He says that two of the mas-
culine gender are one in the neuter, 1 which is
not connected with individuality but with unity,
likeness, connexion, love of the Father who loves
the Son, and the obedience of the Son who obeys
"
the Father's will, in saying I and the Father: ibid.
are one thing," He shows that they are two whom

2
He makes equal and joins together. He further
1
On this passage, see d'Ales, p. 82.
8
Ibid., p. loo,
"
cf. John x. adds that He had shown also many works from
the Father, not any of which deserved stoning,"
and lest they should suppose that they ought to
stone Him for the reason that He had desired Him-
cf.joiuix. self to be understood "as God Himself" that is,
John x 30
^ e Father, because He had said :
"
I and the Father
are one thing," indicating God as Son of God, not
"
as God Himself He says If in the Scripture it
:
"
John x. is written :
(
I said : Ye are gods," and the Scrip- '
ture cannot be done away with, do ye contend

that He whom the Father made holy and sent into
the world, is a speaker of abusive language, be-
He I am the Son of God ?
* '
cause said : If I do
not the works of my Father, do not believe but ;
if do them and ye will not believe me, pray

I
believe on account of the works and know that I ;
am in the Father and the Father in me." Through

the works, therefore, the Father will be in the Son,
and the Son in the Father ;and thus through the
"
cf. John x. works we know that the Father and Son are one
30
thing." He
continued to impress upon
All this
them to the end that there might be believed to
be two, though one power only, because other-
in
wise the Son could not be believed, unless two

were believed.
cf.Johnxi. 23. this, too, "Martha" in
After confessing
27 "
Him Son
of God," was no more in error than
cf. Matt. Peter and Nathanael although, even if she had ;
V
in error, she * have learned
would immediately
!
T }'
? been
John i. 49
the truth. For, lo ! when with a view to raising
'
4j her brother from the dead the Lord "looked up to

heaven and his Father," He said (the Son, of

u
course) : thank Thee that Thou dost ever hear
I John xi.
4I> 42
me ;
for the sake of these crowds standing around
I spoke that they might believe that Thou didst
send me." But also 'midst "confusion of soul" c f. John

He said: "And what shall I
say? Father, save j hn
27
xii
me from this hour purpose came 27, 28
?
Nay, for this
I into this hour but, Father, glorify Thy name," the
;
name in which the Son came. " I," says He, " came in John v. 43
my Father's name," therefore 1 for, of course, the
voice of Son to Father had been enough 2 lo the !
Father gives a superabundant answer from heaven,

He witnesses to the Son " This is
fully :
my Matt. x\ii.
beloved Son, in whom lam well pleased, hear

5
" I have
Him," and so also in this word glorified j hn xii.
:
and will glorify again." How many persons do you 28

think there are, most perverse Praxeas, if not as
many as there are voices ? You have the Son on
earth, you have the "Father in heaven." This is Man. vi.
not a separation, but a Divine arrangement. But 9> etc
'
we know that God is even amidst the depths and c Ps. f.
cxxxvin 8
is present everywhere, but in force and power, and
-
the Son being inseparable is with Him every-

where. Yet in the economy itself the Father
wished the Son to be possessed on earth, but Him-
self in heaven, to which place also the Son Himself cf. John
xl> 4I
looking up both prayed and besought the Father,
to which place He taught us, too, to raise ourselves
1
For inde in causal sense ( =
"therefore"), a use rare even
in. Tertullian, see Hoppe, pp. in f., who does not consider what
follows inde here to be in parenthesis.
* "
"had, been enough ; that is, to secure the Father's agreement,
"
Matt. vi. 9 and pray :
1
Our Father who art in heaven."
Since He is also everywhere, this was His own
"
isa. ixvi. i seat that the Father desired : To Me a throne."
6 "
WdML He made" Son "a little less than the
His
" 2
7) angels by letting Him down to earth, but He
Ibid. was to "crown Him with glory and honour" by
taking Him back into heaven. This distinction He
John xii. was already offering to Him, saying " I have both :
glorified and will glorify." The Son requests from

the earth, the Father promises from heaven. Why
do you make both the Father and the Son liars ?
If either the Father was speaking from heaven

to the Son, although He Himself was the Son in
the earth, or the Son was praying to the Father,
"
cf. Matt, although He Himself was the Father in the
3 4
heavens," what sort of situation is it that the Son
should likewise beg of Himself in begging of the
Father, if the Son was the Father or again, that ;
the Father should Himself promise to Himself in

promising to the Son, if the Father was the Son !
As our speaking of two, divided from one

for
another, in the way you gabble, it were more

endurable to proclaim two divided than one God
that changes His form. Therefore it was to these
"
Tohn xii. that the Lord then proclaimed : It is not on my
30 account that this voice has come, but on your
1
Cf. De
Orat, 2, d'Ales, p. 302.
2
on c. 16, also d'Ales, pp. 101, 155.
Cf. the note Man is here
considered on the material side only.
3
Reading pater apud caelos with Kroymann, for the fiHus apud
caelosol the MSS.
4
For this phrase, qnak esl Ht (where ut }s consecutive) cf,
Jlpppe, p. 63 ; it is cominon in late authors,

account," that these also may believe that both

the Father and the Son are each present in His
"
own name and person and place. But Jesus" John xii.
" 4 '
further 1
proclaims, saying He that believeth in
:
'
me, believeth not in me, but believeth in Him who

sent me
'
because it is through the Son that
'
people believe in the Father, and the Father is

the authority for believing in the Son "and he John xii.
t
who looks at me, looks at Him who sent me."

How? "Since," of course, "of myself I did not John xii.
4
speak, but He who sent me, the Father, Himself
'
gave me commandment what to say and what to

speak;" for "the Lord gives me a tongue oflsa. 1. 4
"
learning to learn the proper season for speech
" the
things that I speak, even as the Father told John
xii.
me, so also do I speak." How these things were

"
said, the evangelist and, of course, so beloved a cf. John
" 26
knew Praxeas, and
'
disciple as John better than *{*;
therefore he himself out of his own understanding

said: "But before the festival of the Passover John xiii.
Iy 3
Jesus, knowing that all things had been handed
over to Him by the Father and that He had gone
out from God and was on His way to God." But
"
Praxeas will have it that the Father Himself went cf. John
3
out from" Himself and "went away to" Himself,
jo hn xiii .
"
with the result that the devil put into the mind 2
" "
of Judas the betrayal not of the Son, but of the
Father Himself, with good result neither for the
devil nor for the heretic, because not even in
the case of His good Son did the devil work
1
For adhuc insuper, praetcrea, see Hoppe, p. 1 10.
betrayal. was the Son of God that was

For it
betrayed, who was

in the Son of Man, even as the
"
John xiii
Scripture adds Now is the Son of Man glorified,
:
and God is glorified in Him." What God ? Cer-

tainly not the Father, but the of the Father, Word
who was in the Son of Man, that is in the flesh.
In the flesh both when already glorified but in
power and word and previously, Jesus said : "And
John xiii. God Him in Himself," that is, the Father,
will glorify
the Son whom He "having Him in Himself," though

He has been sent forth to earth, will later glorify
1
by resurrection, after the defeat of death.
There were clearly some who even then did
24.
not understand, since even Thomas was for some
John xiv. time unbelieving. For he said: " Lord, we do not
know whither thou goest, and how can we know
the road ? And Jesus said : I am the road, the
reality and the life : no one cometh to the Father
except through me if ye had come to know me, ;
ye would have come to know the Father also but ;
from now ye know Him and have seen Him."

And now we have reached Philip who, uplifted
with the hope of seeing the Father and not under-
standing how he should see the Father he had
"
John
o
xiv. heard of, said : Show us the Father, and it is
"
John xiv. enough for us." And the Lord said :
Philip,
9 .have been so long time with you, and yet have
I
"
ye not come to know me? And as for Him who,
He s lys, ought to have become known by them
for this is the only point that ought to be con
1
For this type of metrical ending, see note on c. I.
24 ] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 95
sidered was it as Father, or as Son? If as
Father, let Praxeas teach us that Christ who had

" "
for so long a time lived with them, could ever John xiv.
have been, I do not say understood, but even 9

considered as Father. For us all the Scriptures,
both Old and New, define the Christ (Anointed)
of God as the Son of God. This was preached
also in the past, this was proclaimed also by Christ
Himself, nay already even by the Father Himself,
"
who, before His face, avowed His Son from the Matt. iii.
"
heavens and glorified His Son " This is my Son," ;
and: "I have glorified and will glorify"; this was 28
also believed by the disciples, this was also dis-

believed by the Jews. Desiring them to hold this
belief about Himself, 1 every hour He named the
Father and set forth the Father and honoured
the Father. If that is so, therefore it was not the
"
Father who had lived with them
so long a time" John xiv.
and whom "they had not known," but the Son 9 ;
and the Lord, when upbraiding them for not

recognising Himself to be Him of whom they had
been ignorant, wished, of course, to be recognised as
one whose non-recognition " for so long a time " He ibid,
had reproved, namely the Son. And it can now

be clear how it was that the words were uttered :
"
He who seeth me, seeth the Father also," of Ibid.
course in the same way as above "
I and the John : x. 30
"
Father are one"; why? Because I went forth John xvi.
and came from God "and " I am the road, no :
one cometh to the Father but by me " and " No 6 ;

:
a verb of " willing/'

1
For ace. and infin. after cf. Hoppe, p. 50.
John vi. one cometh to me unless the Father hath drawn

cf. Matt. h im " and "
>'
The Father hath handed over all
:
xi. 27 things to me" and " Even as the Father makcth

;
:
"
cf. John Son
alive, so also the and " If ye have come to ;
:
xw> 7 know me, ye have come to know the Father also."

According to these words He had presented Him-
self as the Father's substitute,through whom the
Father might be seen in works and heard in words
and His character learned in a Son who carried out
the deeds and words of the Father, because the
Father is invisible, a fact which Philip had learned
in the Scripture and ought also to have remem-
"
Exod. bered : ".No one shall see God "and live." And
X
therefore he reprimanded for his desire to see
is
cf Tohn
xiv. 9 the Father, as if He were visible, and he is
cf. John informed that He becomes visible in the Son by
deeds of power, not by the visible manifestation of
His person. For if he wished the Father to be
understood as identical with the Son, in saying :
John xiv
"
He that seeth me, seeth the Father," how did He
Tohn xiv
ac ^ :
"
Dost thou not believe that I am in the
10 Father and the Father in me"? For He ought to
f T I*
xiv 10 have added l " Dost thou not believe that I am the
:
"
Father ? Or to what purpose did He amplify the
argument, if He did not make that clear which
He had wished to be understood, namely that He
"
John xiv. was the Son ? Further, in saying Dost thou :
not believe that I am in the Father and the Father

in me ? " He preferred to amplify the argument for
1
For the perf. infin. after debtterat, where we should expect the
present, see Hoppe, pp. 53 f.
"
the reason lest, because He had said He who hath j hn :
xiv.
seen me, hath also seen the Father," He might be 9

deemed to be the Father, a thing He never wished
to be deemed, since He always declared Himself to
be the Son and "to have come from the Father." John xvi.
For this reason also He made clear the unity of the

two persons, lest the Father should be desired by
Himself as visible and face to face, and in order
that the Son might be regarded as representing
the Father, 1 and nevertheless He explained this
also, namely how the Father was in the Son and
"
the Son in the Father The words," He says, John
:
xiv.
"
which I speak unto you, are not mine " of I0
course because they are the Father's "but the
"
Father abiding in me doeth the works." The
" "
Father," therefore, abiding in the Son through
" " "
the works of power and " the words of teach-
ing, is seen through those things through which
" "
He abides," and through Him in whom He
abides," and the special quality of each of the two
persons shows itself from this very fact namely, ;
His saying " I am in the Father and the Father John

: xiv.
in me." And further He says "Believe."

"
"Believe"^
:
what ? " That I am the Father ? I do not think

that is in Scripture, but " That I am in the Father Ibid.
:
and the Father in me otherwise, believe even on

;
account of the works," those works, of course,

through which the Father was seen in the Son,
not by sight, but by thought. 2
Literally "as the presenter of the Father to
1
us" (in a moral
aspect, cf. d'Ales, p. 359).
2
For this metrical ending, see the note on c. I.
9S TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [25
l
Philip and the whole
25. After dealing with
compass of this enquiry which continues till the
end of the Gospel, in the same tenor of con-
versation, in which Father and Son are each
distinguished in His special quality, He promises
John xiv. that "He will ask a Paraclete also from the
I2) l6 "
Father," after He has ascended to the Father," and
that He will send Him, and indeed "another (Para-
c. 13 clete)." But we have already explained how it is
"
John xvi. He is "another." 2
Further He says: He will
eft
ta ^ e fr m
mine," even as He Himself " took from"
John
xvi - 15- the Father's. Thus the link with the Father in
the Son and of the Son in the Paraclete makes
three cleaving together, each to his neighbour,
"
i
John v. These three are one thing," not one person, as it
"
? , is put
* : I and the Father are one thing," in
John x. 30
respect to unity of nature, not regards the as
singular number. Run farther over the Gospel

and you will find that He whom you believe to
" 3
John xv. i be the Father, is called the Father's vine," and
"the Father" "the husbandman," as
is called
being He who you suppose was on the earth and

cf. John was at the same time recognised by the Son " in the
"
heavens, when looking up there He commended
" But even
cf.
John His disciples to the Father."
if it is
11 ' IJ>
not in this Gospel that these revelations are made :
j^
" "
Matt. My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? and :
46 "
Luke Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit," yet
xxiii. 46
1
P'or thispregnant use of post, cf. Hoppe, p. 141.
2
For parallel passages, see d'Ales, pp. 81, 82, 96.
3
uilem Kroyu ann for the MSS. nice, very neatly.
after the resurrection and the glory of overcoming

death, when the need for any humility was cast
off,
1
when now He could have shown Himself as
Father to so faithful a woman, who ventured to
touch Him
out of love, not out of curiosity or
unbelief like that of Thomas, He said "Do not John : xx.
touch me, I have not yet ascended to my Father I7 ;
"
but go to my brethren because in this, too, He
showed Himself the Son; for He would have
called them "sons," if He had been the Father
"
and you will say 2 to them, I go up to my Father
and your Father, and my God and your God."
Father to Father, and God to God ? or Son to
Father, and Word to God ? For what purpose
does even the very conclusion 3 of the Gospel
confirm these writings except " That ye may :
j hn xx.
"
believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God ? 31
Therefore, whatever of these words you think

can benefit you in your effort to prove the
identity of Father and Son, you will be striving
4
against the final verdict of the Gospel. The
words " " "
were not written with the purpose Ibid.
"
that you should believe Jesus Christ to be the
Father, but that you should believe Him to be
5
"the Son."
1
exposita =deposila: see Oehler's note <3n De Orat. 15.
2
For the future indicative, implying a command, see Hoppe,
pp. 65 f.
a
unsafe to conclude from this expression that Tertullian was
It is
unacquainted with the twenty-first chapter of St. John's Gospel

(d'Ales, p. 230, n. 7, and Ronsch, p. 290.)
4 " final "
that is, from which there is no appeal.
:
5
For the metrical ending, see the note on c. 8.
ioo TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [26
26. On account of the speech of Philip alone

and the Lord's answer to him we seem to have
run through John's Gospel, lest so many clear
pronouncements, both of an earlier and a later date,
should be overturned by one utterance, 1 which is to
be interpreted rather according to, than against,
everything, even against its own meaning. Tut to
insert passages from other Gospels at this stage, 2
which confirm belief in the Lord's origin, it is
enough that He who was to be born of a virgin,
Luke i.
35 was named by the announcing 3 angel himself " Son
Ibid. of God " :
"
The Spirit of God will come upon
thee, and the power of the Most High will over-
shadow thee wherefore the holy thing that will be
:
born from thee, shall be called the Son of God."

They will want, of course, to argue here too ;
but
"
i Esdr. iv. "the truth will prevail." 4 Of course," they say,
"
Son of God
'
God, and
' '
f! Luke i.
tne the power of the is
35 Most High' is the Most High." Nor are they

ashamed to foist on those 5 words what, if it were
true, would have been written. For of whom was
he to stand in awe that he could not openly
1
Elsewhere, also, Tertullian says we must proceed from the
known to the unknown : cf. d'Ales, p. 242 f.
2 non of the MSS.

Reading mine with Kroymann
"
for but it is
;
possible that alia means other than the one I am going to cite,"
and that the non should^be retained.
8 adnuntiatt :
Kroymann's palmary emendation for adnuntiari
of MSS.
4
Note that the original has the present praeualet : Tertullian is
curiously in agreement with the popular way of quoting the
expression.
5 illis with Kroymann, for illos (illo] of MSS.; but
Reading
I feel sure neither about the reading nor about the interpreta-
tion.
26] TERTULLIAN AGAINST P&AXEAS 101
"
declare, God will come upon thee, and the Most c f. Luke i.
35
High will overshadow thee"? But 1 by saying
" God
the Spirit of God," although the Spirit of is
God, yet by not explicitly naming God, he wished

2
a portion of the whole to be understood which was

to pass into the Son's person. Here "the Spirit
" 3
of God will be the same "Word." For just as John i.
14
"
when John says : The Word was made Flesh," we
understand "the Spirit" also in the mention of
" "
the Word," so also here we recognise the
" "
Word also in the For name of the Spirit."
besides, spirit is the foundation of speech, and
speech is the working of spirit, and the two are
one. But John would declare 4 that one " was ; hn i.
14;
made flesh," the angel would say that the other cf Luke K
;
would become flesh, if spirit is not also word, and

word spirit. Therefore, even as the Word of God
is not the
very Person whose word it is, so also the
5
Spirit, even if it be spoken of as God's, is yet not
the very person whose it is said to be. Nothing
belonging to a person will be the very person
whose it is. Clearly, when something is from a
person himself, and is (thus) his, provided it comes
from himself, something can be such in character
1
Cf. cc. 9, 14, and d'Ales, p. 101.
~
I venture to suggest that dens est has slipped out after spiritus
det.
3
Here Tertullian seems to identify Son and Spirit, cf. d'Ales,
pp. 96 ff. 194, 252, and contrast cc. 4, 8, 25. Justin had previously
,
expressed the view taken in this chapter.

4
For the future indicative used =
potential subjunctive, cf.
>e,pp. 64 f.
leading del with Kroymann for MSS. dens.
as he himself also is from whom it comes and

"
whose it is, and therefore " Spirit is God and
" "
Word is God, because from God, but, never-
theless, not Himself from whom it comes.
1
But if
a God belonging God, so to speak, a self-existent
to
thing, will not be God Himself, but only so far

2
God as it comes from the being of God Himself,

which is also a self-existent thing, and as some
Luke i.
35 portion of the whole, much more "the power of
the Most High" will not be the "Most High"
Himself, because it is not a self-existent thing
either, because it is spirit, just as neither wisdom nor
providence is. These things, too, are not sub-

stances, but accidental attributes of each substance,
and power is an accident of spirit but will not be
spirit itself. These things, therefore, whatsoever
" " "
they are, the Spirit of God and " the Word
"
and the power," having been brought together
Ibid. i nt the virgin, " what is born of her is Son of
God." That He was this He Himself testifies
"
Luke ii.
'right from boyhood in these Gospels also.
Do
"
ye not know," He said, that I must be in my
"
Father's house ? Satan, also, in his trials of Him
Matt. iv. knows that He is this: "If Thou art the Son of
3,6, etc.
Q O J t hi s a j so the ev ji S pi r its afterwards admit:
.
"
cf. Mark i. W'e know who Thou art, Son of God." He also
24* etc.
Himself worships the Father. When recognised
cf.
xvi.
Matt,
1
by Peter as "God's Christ" (Anointed), He does
6, 17
1
Tertullian's view is in error here, cf. c. 28, etc. and d'Ales,
p. 84.
2
hactenus . . .
qua: an excellent instance of the original force
othactenus, cf. Hoppe, p. in, n. i.
not deny it.

"Exulting in spirit" before the Luke x. 21
Father, says
"
He praise :
Thee,
I offer 1
to O
Father, that Thou hast hidden these things from
" "
the wise here also He asserts that the Father Luke x.
22j etc-
is known
no one save the Son." It is the Son
to
of the Father who "will before the Father confess c f. Matt,
*' 32 ' 33>
knowledge of those that confess Him, and will c
"
deny knowledge of those that deny Him who ;
"introduces" the parable of "the Son," not the cf. Matt.

u
"
Father, who is sent into the vineyard after some
slaves have been sent, and is slain by wicked
JJ e ^
rustics," and defended by the Father; who "even cf. Mark
xm> 32
Himself is ignorant of the last day and hour, which
are known only to the Father" who "arranges the ;
cf. Luke
" " XX1I> 29
kingdom for His disciples in the way" He
says
"
it has been arranged for Himself also by the
Father"; who "has the power to ask legions of c f. Matt,
angels
will who " ;
"
to His help " from the Father," if he
calls aloud that God has abandoned xxvii. 46,
"^
" " C
Him who ; places His spirit in the Father's cf. Luke
hands"; and who after His resurrection binds x xi 4
f j| u] ^
"
himself to send to His disciples the Father's X xiv. 49
promise"; and who at the last gives them com-
"
mand to baptise into the Father and the Son cf. Matt.
x '
and the Holy Spirit," not into one only. For it

is not once only, but thrice that we are, at the
utterance of each of the names, baptised into each

of the Persons. 2
1
Or "thanks." The meaning of fofj.o\oyovfj.ai is a well-known
crux. The translator's Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament
may be consulted.
2
For the metrical ending, see the note on c. 8.
27. But Why should I

delay over such evident
facts, when I
ought to attack the
arguments by
which they seek to obscure the evident ? For,
refuted 1 on all sides by the distinction between the
Father and the Son, which we set forth without
disturbing the union, as in the case of the sun
and the ray, the source and the streim, by what
is
yet the undivided number of two and three,
they attempt nevertheless to explain it otherwise
in accordance with their own view, so as to dis-
tinguish both alike in one person, Father and Son,
saying that the Son is flesh (that is, man that is, ;
Jesus), while the Father is Spirit (that is, God ;

that
is, Christ). And those who contend that Father
and Son are one and the same, presently begin to
separate them rather than to unite them. For if
Jesus is different from Christ, the Son will be
different from the Father, because the Son is Jesus
and the Father is Christ. A monarchy of this kind
2
they, perchance, learned about in Valentinus. But
cf. c. 26 this objection 3 of theirs also, the
making of Jesus
and Christ into two, 4 has already been parried by
our previous discussion, which was to the effect
that "the Word of God" or "the Spirit of God"
and "the power of the Most High" are names
given to Him whom they make out to be the
1
For obduco = "refute," "convict," see Oehler or Mayor on
Tert. Apol. 46, etc.
2
Cf. Adv. Valent., cc. 19. 27 (Oehler).
3
iniectio =Greek eisbdle in Tertullian, see Hoppe, p. 121.
4
Kroymann's transference of duos facere lesum et Christum
from their position in the MSS. after didicerunt, appears to be
right.
Father. Himself 1 whose

For they are not He
they are said to be, but they are from Himself
and belong to Himself. However, they will be
refuted in another way, also, in the present chapter.
" " 2 "
Lo," they say, it was proclaimed by the angel :
"Wherefore the holy thing that will be born, shall Luke i 35

be called the Son of God." "What was born,"
" "
therefore, was flesh therefore the Son of God
;
will be flesh. Nay, rather, it was with reference

to the Spirit of God that the statement was
made. For certainly it was " from the Holy Spirit Creeds
that the virgin conceived," 3 and what she con-
ceived, that she bore; that therefore was to be
born which had been conceived, and was to be
borne that is, spirit, whose " name also will p f Matt - -
be Emmanuel, which is translated 4 'God with :
"
us.' Flesh, moreover, is not God, that it should
be about it:
said "The holy thing shall be Luke 1.35
called Son of God," but He who was born in it,
is God, concerning whom also the psalm says 5 :
Since "man was born God in and built it by p s .lxxxvi.

it,
"
the Father's will." What God was born in it"? 5
" "
the Spirit who with the Word John
The Word," and i
13
6
was born of the Father's will." Therefore, since
1
ipse with Kroymann ; ipsae MSS.
2
In such cases it is tempting to alter to praedictum ; but see
the index to Mayor's Tertullian Apologeticus (Cambr. Press, 1917)
s. v. On the thought, cf. c. 26, and d'Ales, p. 194.
3
On this passage see d'Ales, p. 97, and cf. c. 26.
4 For
interpretari passive, see Hoppe, p. 62.
5
This quotation (repeated below, p. 107), is very free, and
Tertullian's exegesis is unwarrantable.
6
Perhaps the most important Christological passage in Tertullian ;
see d'Ales, p. 198.

io6 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [27
the Word is in the flesh, 1 we must enquire also

"
John i. 14 into this, how the Word became flesh," whether
as having been changed to the form of flesh or as
2
having put on flesh as a covering. Certainly the
latter. But it must be believed that God is un-
changeable and incapable of outward form, as
being everlasting. Moreover, change of form
3 For
implies the destruction of the original form.
everything that is altered in shape to become
something else, ceases to be what it has been, and
begins to -be what it was not. God, however,
neither ceases to be, nor can be anything else.
" " "
John i. i But the Word is God and the Word of the
Isa. xl. 8 L orc l abideth for ever," continuing, of course, in
its own shape. And if it is not possible that the
Word should be changed in shape, it follows that
cf. John i.
He must be understood to "have been made flesh"
J
4 in this sense, namely by being made in flesh and
" "
cf. i John
manifested and seen and handled by means of
1 I
flesh, because other considerations also demand
that it should be understood in this way. For if
John i. 14
"
the Word " by a change in the form and a change
in substance " became flesh," Jesus will then be
one substance composed of two, flesh and spirit,
a sort of mixture, like electrum made from gold
and silver, and it begins to be neither gold (that is,
1
D'Ales, p. 87, sets forth parallels between this passage and early
Greek Fathers. Here I translate Kroymann's order dum sermo in
came for the MSS. order sermo in carne dum.
2
For utrumne . . .
aw, cf. Hoppe, p. 73.
3 This passage has a bearing on
Cf. Lucretius, I. 670-671, etc.
the doctrine of transubstantiation, cf. d'Ales, p. 363, n. I.
spirit)nor silver (that is, flesh), since one element

is interchanged with the other, and a sort of third
substance is the result. Therefore Jesus will

neither beGod for " the Word " ceased to exist, cf. John i.
"being made flesh" nor man. He who was 14

" " " "
Word is not flesh in a real sense. So neither
comes from both, and the third is far different
from both. But in truth we find him definitely
explained as both God and man, and this is sug-
gested by the psalm itself: Since "man was Ps. Ixxxvi.
" 5
born God in it, and built it by the Father's will ;
certainly everywhere Son of God and Son of

Man, as being both God and man, differing un-
doubtedly His own special character according
in
to both natures, because neither is "the Word"

other than " God," nor the flesh other than man.
So also the Apostle teaches about both his
natures : "Who was made," he says, "of the seed Rom. *
3
"
of David ;
He will be man and the Son of Man,
" who
was marked as Son of God according to Rom. i. 4
"
the spirit he will be God and the Word, the
:
Son of God. We
see two natures, not mixed,
but joined together in one person, God and man,
1
Jesus I
postpone speaking and so of Christ
unimpaired is the special quality of both natures,
that on the one hand spirit carried out its own
operations in Him that is, deeds of power and

works and signs and on the other hand flesh cf. Matt,
experienced its own sufferings, "starving" in ^ l> 2>
the devil's company, thirsting in the company of cf. John

1
For the ellipsis of the verb of saying, cf.
Hoppe, p. 146.
io8 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [27
"
cf.
John "the Samaritan woman," weeping" for Lazarus,
d" Matt "anxious even unto death," and finally died. But if
xxvi. 38, there were some third thing, a mixture of both, like
cf. Matt, electrum, no such clear proofs of two natures would
xxvii. 50, s how themselves, but on the one hand the spirit
would have acted carnally, and on the other the

flesh would have acted spiritually as the result
of the change, or neither carnally nor spiritually,
but after some third pattern, as the result of the
c<~.
John i. mixture. Nay, rather, either
"
the Word " would
"
cf John i
h ave died or " the flesh would not have died, if
14 "the Word" had been turned into "flesh"; for
" "
either the flesh would have been immortal or
" "
the Word mortal. But because both natures, each
in its own established condition, acted separately,
therefore both their works and their outcomes
corresponded to them. Learn, therefore, with
John iii. 6 Nicodemus that " what is born in flesh is flesh,
and what is from spirit is spirit." Neither does
flesh become spirit nor does spirit become flesh.
But they can, to be sure, 1 be present in one. Of
these Jesus consisted, as man, of flesh, as God, of
spirit. In respect of that part which was spirit,
"
Luke i.
35 the angel then declared Him Son of God," keep-
Matt, viii.
f the flesh t h e name Son of Man." So
20, etc.
i Tim. ii. also the Apostle by calling him " mediator be-
tween God and men," established his double
"
nature. Lastly you who explain
: the Son of
" "
God as flesh, show me who is the Son of
Man." Can He be the Spirit? But you wish
1
For plane in this sense (often ironical), cf. Hoppe, p. 1 12.
the Spirit to be regarded as the Father Himself,

"
because God is a spirit," as if there were not also John iv.
a "Spirit of God," just as there is both a "God" J^f^j '
who is
"
Word " and a "
Word of God." l
16, etc.
28. Therefore you make Christ the Father,

you fool, who do not even examine the force of
this name, if indeed "Christ" is a name, and not
rather an appellative : for it means " anointed."

"
Anointed," moreover, is no more a name than
"
clothed," than " shod," something which is an
accidental quality of a name. If as the result
of some argument Jesus were to be called also
"clothed," just as Christ gets his name from the
"
mystery of anointing, would you call Jesus Son
of God " same way, but believe " clothed "
in the
to be the Father? Apply this now to Christ. If

the Father is Christ, the Father was anointed, and
of course by some one else, or if by Himself, prove
it. But this is not the teaching of the Acts of the
"
Apostles in that cry of the Church to God For Acts iv. :
27
all, yea, Herod and Pilate with the nations, have
assembled in this city against Thy holy Son,
2
whom
Thou didst anoint. So they testified that Jesus
was both "
Son of God " and "
Son anointed "
by
the Father. Therefore Jesus will also be Christ who
" "
was anointed by the Father, and not the Father
1
For the metrical ending, see the note -on c. i.
2
Kroymann is wrong in adding lesum here. Tertullian omits it
also at Bapt. 7. Besides MS. gigas of Acts quoted by Wordsworth
and White, a quotation in the eighth-century Spanish compiler
Beatus, in Apoca/ypsin, omits (ed. E. S. Buchanan, Sacred Latin
Texts, iv. London, 1916).
no TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [28
"
who anointed the Son." So also Peter teaches :
"
Acts ii. 36 Let the whole house of Israel therefore learn with
absolute certainty that God made Him, this Jesus,
"
whom crucified, both Lord and Christ
ye have
that is, anointed.' John, moreover, even brands him
'
"
John ii. as a liar, who denies that Jesus is Christ," but, on
"
John v i
the con trary, every one who believes that
says
Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." For this
t
John iii. reason he also exhorts us " to believe in the
name of His Son Jesus Christ," in order, of course,
"
i
John i.
3
that we may have communion with the Father
and His Son Jesus Christ." So also Paul every-
cf. i Cor. where puts " God the Father and our Lord Jesus
V>
Kom.
3> et.c -
i. a
Christ." When he writes to the Romans, he
" "
gives thanks to God by our Lord Jesus' Christ
1
;
when he writes to the Galatians, he declares he is

"
Gal. i. i an apostle not from men nor through a man, but
through Jesus Christ and God the Father." And
you have his whole body of writings, which pro-
cf. i Cor. claim after this fashion and set forth two, " God
i.
3, etc. t h e Father" and "our Lord Jesus Christ," Son of
the Father, and that Jesus Himself is the Christ,

Luke i. who is also, under another name, " Son of God."
35, etc.
-p or j t f u ows ât, by the right by which both
names belong to one, namely, to the Son of God,

even one of the two without the other belongs
to the same. And if on the one hand Jesus
alone is mentioned, Christ also is understood,
because Jesus was anointed, and if on the other
1 " our Lord "
seems to be absent from all other authorities for
the text of this verse.
28] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PR AXE AS HI
hand Christ alone is He is the same
mentioned,
as Jesus, because Jesus was anointed. Of these
names the one is His own, which was conferred by cf. Matt. i.
21
the angel, an accidental attribute,
the other is
which comes from anointing, so long, however,

as Christ is Son, not Father. Finally : how blind
is he who does not understand that in the name
of Christ another God is set forth, if he attribute
the name of Christ to the Father For if Christ !
isGod the Father who says " I ascend to my :

John xx.
I7
Father and your Father, and to my God and your
God," of course He points to another Father
and God above Himself. If, further, Christ is the
"
Father, it is some one else who stablishes the Amos iv.
thunder and creates the wind and preaches His
Christ (Anointed) among men." And " if the Ps. 2 ii.
kings of the earth have stood by and the rulers

have been assembled together against His own
Christ (Anointed)," it will be another Lord
"against whose Christ (Anointed) the kings and cf. Ps. 2 ii.
rulers have been assembled." And if "the Lord Ps cix - - l
"
says this to my Lord Christ (Anointed), it will
be another Lord who speaks to the Father of
Christ. And when the Apostle writes: "That Eph. i. 17
the God
of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you
a spirit of wisdom and knowledge/' it will be
another God of Christ Jesus who giveth liberally
of spiritual endowments. Assuredly, not to wander
"
away altogether, He who raised Christ, and who ii
1 r'
will raise our mortal bodies also," will be a sort J^ .
"
of different raiser from the Father who died and Creeds
ii2 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [28, 29
was raised," if so be that Christ who died, is the

Father. 1
29. Silenced, I say silenced be this evil-speak-
ing enough
;
that Christ, the Son of God, is spoken
of as dead, and that too because it is so written.
For the Apostle also, in declaring not without
i Cor. xv. sorrow that " Christ died," added 2
:
"according to
the Scriptures," in order to soften the harshness of
the declaration by the authority of the Scriptures
and to destroy an obstacle in the hearer's path.
And two natures present 3
yet, since there are in
Christ Jesus, a divine and a human, and it is
certain that the divine is immortal, while the

human is mortal, it is clear how far he speaks
"
of him as dead," namely, so far as He was flesh
and man and Son of Man, not in so far as He was
"
Spirit
"
and "
Word " and " Son of God." Finally,
" Christ died "
that the Anointed
in saying :
is,
4
(died) he showed that what was anointed died
" "
that is, the
Therefore," you say, we, too, in
flesh.
speaking of the Son in the same way as you do,
speak no evil against the Lord God for it is not ;
as regards his divine, but as regards his human

5
nature that we^ speak of him as dead." But yet
For the metrical ending, see the note on c. n.

1
The better MSS. read adicit, which may be right, in spite of

2
the following molliret and euerteret. On such sequences see

Hoppe, p. 67.
Ccnseantur: on the meanings of this word in Tertullian see
3
Thes. s.v. or d'Ales, pp. 366 f.

d'Ales, p. 363 n. 3 (p. 364), on this passage, and its bearing
4 See
on the Eucharistic doctrine of Tertullian.

5
I translate Kroymann's at tamen, but I am by no means ceitain
that it is
right ; the MSS. read at ctim.
you speak evilly, not only because you say that

the Father died, but also because you say He was
crucified. For you are speaking against the
Father when you turn the curse l of the crucified,
which according to the Scripture belongs to the
Son because " Christ was made a curse for you," Gal. iii 13
not the Father when you turn the curse, which is

Christ, upon the Father. But we, when we speak
of " Christ as crucified," do not speak evil of Him, i Cor. i.
we are only recalling the curse in the law; for

the Apostle when he said this, did not speak evil
either. Just as no evil-speaking is employed in
speaking of one of whom something can be truly
said, so it is evil speaking, if what is said cannot be
said with truth. Therefore the Father did not
suffer even
in company with the Son. It is, of
course, because they are afraid of explicit evil-

speaking against the Father that they hope it will
be lessened in this way allowing now that Father
and Son are two if the Son indeed suffers, but
the Father suffers with him. They show them-
selves fools in this as well. For what is fellow-
2
sliffering but
to suffer along with another?
Again, if the Father cannot suffer, assuredly He

cannot be a fellow-sufferer or if He can be a
;
fellow-sufferer, He can, of course, suffer. You

confer nothing on Him even by your fear. You
fear to speak of Him as able to suffer who, you
1
Reading maledictionem with Kroymann for makdictio of the
MSS.
-
quant nisi after a suppressed alms : cf. Hoppe, p. 77.
H
ii4 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [29
say, can be a fellow-sufferer. But the Father is

just as incapable of being a fellow-sufferer as the
Son also is incapable of suffering, as regards that
nature which makes him God. 1 But how did the
Son suffer, if the Father did not also suffer with
Him ? He is separated from the Son, but not from
the God. If a river, 2 too, is polluted by some dis-
turbance, although one material only runs down

from the source and is not separated from the
3
source, yet the pollution of the stream will have
nothing to do with the source and although it is ;
the source's water that suffers in the stream, since

4
it suffers, not in the source, but in the stream, it is
not the source that suffers, but the stream which
comes from the source. So also the Spirit of God,
5
although it might suffer in the Son, because it
would not suffer in the Father, but in the Son,
would not seem to have suffered as the Father.
But enough that the Spirit of God suffered
it is
nothing in its own name, because if it suffered

6
anything in the Son, this would really mean
that the Father suffered with the Son in the flesh.
This is a matter for reconsideration. Nor will
any one deny it, since we also cannot suffer for

God, unless the Spirit of God be in us, who also
1
See d'Ales, pp. 98 f. on this passage.
2
The parallel here explained by Hoppe, p. 198.
is
3
iniuria is sometimes found in late authors in the passive sense
of "damage," "harm": cf. Hoppe, pp. 121 f.
4
For non ne in this phrase, cf. Hoppe, p. 79.
Keep qui of the MSS. here, and take it concessively
5
: see also
d'Ales, p. 97.
6
Supposing hoc omitted after filio. The text here is corrupt.
I have tried to make some sense out of the MSS. reading.
2 9 , 30] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 115
speaks concerning us what belongs to confession,

not that He Himself suffers, but that He gives the
power to suffer.
30. If in spite of what I have said you mean

1
to proceed farther, I shall be able to answer you
more harshly and to put you in conflict with the
declaration of the Lord Himself, so as to say :
"Why do you enquire about this subject?" You

"
have Himself " crying aloud at the passion :
"
My xxvii
Matt.
46
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" '
Therefore, either the Son was suffering, having

been abandoned by the Father, and it was not the
Father who suffered, who forsook the Son or if ;
itwas the Father who was suffering, to what God

did He cry aloud ? But this speech of flesh and
soul (that of man), not an utterance of Word or
is,
Spirit (that is, not of God) was uttered for the

purpose of showing that God could not suffer, who
thus forsook the Son in "handing over" his human i sa . liii. 12
nature "to death." The Apostle also was of this
"
opinion when he wrote If the Father spared not Rom.
: viii.
the Son"; this also Isaiah earlier proclaimed: 32

"And the Lord handed Him over for our sins." isa. 6 liii.
He "forsook" Him in "not sparing" Him, He Matt, cf.

xx 46
"forsook" Him in "handing Him over." But the ^!;
Son was not " forsaken" by " the Father in whose li- 12
hands the Son placed His spirit." For He placed X xiii. 4 6
it there and immediately died for if the spirit ;
ibid.
remains in the flesh, the flesh cannot die at all.

" "
So to be forsaken by the Father meant death cf. Matt.
xxvii. 46
1
Reading perges with Kroymann, for pergens of the MSS.
n6 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [30,31
"
cf. i Cor. for the Son. The Son therefore both " dies and
xv. 4 "
by the F at her
3,
j s raised again according to the
"
cf. Scriptures," the Son tl
ascends to the topmost
Eph.
"
8, 9
regions of heaven, who also descends into the
iv.
"
cf. Mark lowest 1 parts of the earth." It is He that sits at
cfTXcfs ii.
tne Father's right hand," not the Father who sits
34 at His own. It was He whom Stephen saw, when

cf. Acts he was being " stoned," still " standing at God's
5
c"'p s.'dx. right hand," as one who would thereafter "sit,
1
until the Father should put all His enemies under
" "
cf. Acts i. His feet for Him. It is He also who is " to come
" " "
cf. Luke again on the clouds of heaven in such wise as
xxi. 27 He also ascended." It was He that meantime gave
forth the gift he had received from the Father,
"
cf. Acts ii. the Holy Spirit," the third name of divinity and
the third stage of majesty, the preacher of one
monarchy, but also the expounder of economy, if
2
any one receive the words of his new prophecy,
Johnxvi. and "the leader into all truth," which is in the
Father and Son and Holy Spirit according to the
Christian mystery. 3
31. But this attitude of yours belongs to the
Jewish faith, I mean the belief in one God in such
a way Son along with
as to refuse to count the
Him, and after the Son the Holy Spirit. For

what will there be between us and them except
this difference? What need is there of the Gospel,
v
1
Reading inferiora, as the contrast with suferiora requires, even
apart from the undoubted allusion to Eph. iv. 9. The confusion of
interior, inferior and infra, infra occurs elsewhere also in MSS.
* On
this passage in Tertullian, see d'Ales, p. 450, n. 2.
3 For
the metrical ending here, see the note on c. I.
which is the foundation of the New Testament,

"
laying it down that the Law and the Prophets Luke xvi.
1 l6
were until John," if the Father and Son and
Holy "three" objects of belief, do not
Spirit, cf. i
John
v 8
thereafter one God ?
establish God wished to '
make the mystery new in such a manner that He

should be believed to be One in a new way through
the Son and the Spirit, that He should now come
to be known as God His own special
face to face in
names and persons, who though preached in the
past also through the Son and the Spirit, was not
understood. " The antichrists," therefore, had better i
John ii.
look out, " who deny Father and Son." For they 22
deny the Father in saying that the Son is identical

with Him, 2 and they deny the Son in believing
that the Father is identical with him, offering them
what they are not and taking away from them
what they are. But " he who confesses 3 that Christ i
John iv
"
is the Son of God," not the Father, God remains I5
in him and he himself in God." We believe

" "
God's testimony in which Hegave evidence cf. i
John
"
concerning His Son : He who hath not the Son, ^'
hath not life either." But he too " hath not the 12
Son," who believes him other than the Son." 4

1
Tertullian refers to this verse elsewhere see Ronsch, das N. T.
:
TerlullianS) ad loc., d'Ales, p. 174, n. 6.

2
For dum with indie, here coincident cum, see Hoppe, p. 79
3
The future perfect (or perfect subjunctive) here is an exact
translation of the original Greek taken as Latin, such a use sup-
:
ports the contention that originally the fut. perf. expressed absolute
(not relative) futurity. It certainly occurs frequently where, accord-
ing to our feeling, the ordinary future, or even the present, would
suit the context : cf. Hoppe, p. 66.
4
For the metrical ending here, see the note on c. i.
INDEX OF QUOTATIONS AND REFERENCES
OLD TESTAMENT (SEPTUAGINT)
120 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS
INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 121
122 INDEX OF QUOTATIONS
INDEX OF QUOTATIONS 123
INDEX OF LATIN WORDS
dbundare : ex dbundanti, 68 iniuria (= "damage,"
n. i "harm"), 114 n. 3
adhuc :
(wilh comparative), 57 interpretari (passive), 105 n. 4
n- 3, 58 n. 3 iubere (c. dat.), 57 n. 2
(
= insuper, praeterea), 93
n. i we (indirect interrog.), 86 n. I
adnuntialis, 100 n. 3 nee (in prohibitive clause), 70
adtinet (omitted), 87 n. 2 n. i
alias ( =
aliter), 26 n. 2 wow (= ne), 114, n. 4
alius alius a (ab), 44 n.
:
3, 46
n. 4,76 n. i obducere, 104 n. i
apex, 45 n. i oratio (confused with ratio], 37
n. i
capitulum, 35 n. i
censere, 38 n. i, 112 n. 3 persona, 32 n. 2
commentus, 28 n. i pertinet (omitted), 87 n. 2
condicere, 73 n. 4 plane, 108 n. i
=
om? ( sed), 75 n. 2
dicere (omitted), 47 n. i, 107 >os (pregnant use), 98 n. i
n. i
praedicare, 105 n. 2
dilectus (= agapetos), 82 n. i praescriptio, 29 n. 3
diuersus : ex diuerso, 63 n. i , prolatio, 43 n. i
67 n. i
dum ( = cum), 1 1 7 n. 2 est ut, 92 n. 4
=quale
:
qualis
quam ( nisi), 113, n. 2
esse : missing participle of, 25 quando ("whereas"), 31 n.
n. i
4; (= "since"), 52 n. 3
excidere, 74 n. 4 quanti ( = quot), 81 n. 3
exponere (
= deponere), 99
"
qualenus (= because "), 74
n. i n. i
= wtf), 60 n. i
fades, 65 n. 2
fides ( fideles), 52 n. 2 refrigerare (intians.), 72 n. 3
repraesentare, 53 n. i
hactenus, 104 n. 2 retractatus, 30 n. i, 54 n. i
ibidem (of time), 69 n. i sacramentum, 30 n. 2

inde ( = "therefore"), 91 n. i
sermonalis, 36 n. 5
iniectio, 104 n. 3 si ( =
num), 88 n. i
124
INDEX OF LATIN WORDS
si forte (fortasse), 64 n. 2 substantia, 30 n. 4
silua, 81 n. i sustinere (with participle), 59
sonare (
= praedicare, signifi- n. i
care), 32 n. i, 46 n. 3
sonitus " 80
.
(= meaning "),
traducere, 27 n. 3
n- 3
sternere (metaphorically), 71
n. I utpote, 54 " 5
struere, 44 n. i utrumne an, 106 n. 2
NOTES ON THE TEXT

Pp. 34 n. i, 37 n. i,54 n. 5, 56 nn. i, 3, 57 n. 4, 58 n. i, 60
n. i, 64 n. 2, 66 n. i, 69 n. 2, 70 n. 3, 74 n. 4, 80 n. 3, 81 n. 2 r
100 nn. 2, 5, 101 n. 2, 105 n. 2, 109 n. 2, 112 n. 5, 114 nn. 5, 6,
116 n. i.
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LITERATURE

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING

The Macmillan. Companu.Ne\v\ork|

an exhaustive concordance or special lexicon is so

published index to the Apologeticus, no complete

able to adhere, however, either to his or to any

manuscripts. Words do get lost and added in the

consulted in addition to Kroymann, the complete

1-17, contributed by Dr. C. H. Turner to the

Journal of Theological Studies vol. xiv.

pp. 556-564. of d'Ales, La

the Biblical quotations and references with greater

provincials in Africa were acquainted with Greek,

shall probably not be far wrong. The date of his

forerunner of a succession of Christian laymen,

up the body of Christian doctrine.

strongly ascetic vein in Tertullian led him

from every sort of union between the sexes. The

persecution, in depreciating marriage, in making

inferior to none of these. In doctrine and in

language alike he is a pioneer of Western

great part of the Christian Latin vocabulary. He

pounded of technical language, Grecisms

scanty listof good manuscripts. Much of his text

Ad Marty ras Feb. or March 197.

Apologeticus autumn 197.

between 200 and 206.

De Pudicitia . . . between 217 and 222.

Besides these, several works by him have been

Apologeticus (probably) and the De Spectaculis

Nationes, De Testimonio Animae, Scorpiace, De

A. d'Ales, La Theologie de Tertullien (Paris, 1905);

Father is Jesus Christ. The Christian tradition,

by Him, who in His turn sent the Holy Spirit or

in degree, form, aspect. The rest of the treatise

(chap. 3 to the end) is only a development of this

Ordinary Christians hold fast to the idea of

all through, and they are the essential instruments

of it. So with the hierarchy of heaven. The

Son must restore His kingdom to the Father

where we find the second person carrying out the

plan of God's works. This thought is developed

position after Him. A possible confusion with

particular the real union between the Father and

St. John's Gospel. The relation of Father to Son

Spirit. Yet the Father and the Son are different,

to destroy the Father as well as the Son. God

passages prove the existence of two gods.

they should be charged with polytheism. The

proved by the divine appearances in the Old

Testament times the Son appeared only "in an

than once that no one has seen the Father, yet

ment are appearances of the Son. There is no

Father's name, for the Father shares everything

xiv. 9-11. But they are

Spiritus dei and Sermo dei would be in effect two

activity, to indicate the one Person of the Word

the spiritual being God who is also the Christ).

of the Father, which is another proof that the