Mondays with Tertullian
If Nero hated you, then you must be good!
Tertullian (ca. 155 – c. 220 AD) was a prolific Christian author from North Africa. He was the first great Latin theologian of the church, known for his apologies, treatises, and anti-heresiological works.
So I am starting a series of “Mondays with Tertullian” where I’ll provide a series of quotes from the great Latin writer.
Consult your histories. There you will find that Nero was the first to rage with the imperial sword against this school in the very hour of its rise in Rome. But we glory - nothing less than glory - to have had such a man to inaugurate our condemnation. One who knows Nero can understand that, unless a thing were good - and very good - it was not condemned by Nero. Domitian too, who was a good deal of Nero in cruelty, attempted it; but, being in some degree human, he soon stopped what he had begun and restored those he had banished. Such are ever our persecutors - men unjust, impious, foul-men whom you yourself are accustomed to condemn; and those whom they condemn, you have become accustomed to restore.
(Apol. 5.3-4).
Tertullian here demonstrates the lasting memory of both Nero and Domitian as among the worst persecutors of the church even in the corporate memory of Christians in North African in the late second and early third century. This is precisely why the Book of Revelation is often reckoned to be set against persecutions of Christians under Domitian (90s) or Nero (60s).
Dear Rev. Dr. Bird,
Thank you for your interest in Tertullian. He is an important and complicated figure I look forward to learning more about. How do you assess his relationship with Montanism? Was his prescient description of the Trinity ignored because of it? I understand he wrote in Latin instead of Greek, but was travel within the Roman Empire so arduous that knowledge and translation of his writings could not have informed the councils of Nicea and Constantinople?