The Prescriptions against the Heretics

THE TEXT

1. The times we live in provoke me to remark that we ought not to be surprised either at the occurrence of the heresies, since they were foretold, or at their occasional subversion of faith, since they occur precisely in order to prove faith by testing it. To be scandalized, as many are, by the great power of heresy is groundless and unthinking. What power could it have if it never occurred? When something is unquestionably destined to come into existence, it receives, together with the purpose of its existence, the force by which it comes to exist and which precludes its non-existence.

2. Fever, for example, we are not surprised to find in its appointed place among the fatal and excruciating issues which destroy human life, since it does in fact exist; and we are not surprised to find it destroying life, since that is why it exists. Similarly, if we are alarmed that heresies which have been produced in order to weaken and kill faith can actually do so, we ought first to be alarmed at their very existence. Existence and power are inseparable.

Faced with fever, which we know to be evil in its purpose and power, it is not surprise we feel, but loathing; and as it is not in our power to abolish it, we take what precautions we can against it. But when it comes to heresies, which bring eternal death and the heat of a keener fire with them, there are men who prefer to be surprised at their power rather than avoid it, although they have the power to avoid it. But heresy will lose its strength if we are not surprised that it is strong. It happens either that we expose ourselves to occasions of stumbling by being surprised, or else that in being made to stumble we come to be surprised, supposing the power of heresy to spring 1 Matt. 7:15; 24:4, 11, 24; I Cor. 11:19, the foundation text for this introduction, cf. c. 4.

from some inherent truth. It is surprising, to be sure, that evil should have any strength of its own-though heresy is strongest with those who are not strong in faith! When boxers and gladiators fight, it is very often not because he is strong or invincible that the victor wins, but because the loser is weak. Matched subsequently against a man of real strength, your victor goes off beaten. Just so, heresy draws its strength from men's weakness and has none when it meets a really strong faith.

3. Those who are surprised into admiration are not infrequently edified by the captives of heresy-edified to their downfall. Why, they ask, have so-and-so and so-and-so gone over to that party, the most faithful and wisest and most experienced members of the Church? Surely such a question carries its own answer. If heresy could pervert them, they cannot be counted wise or faithful or experienced. And is it surprising that a person hitherto of good repute should afterwards fall? Saul, though good beyond all others, was afterwards overthrown by jealousy. David, a good man after the Lord's heart, was afterwards guilty of murder and adultery. Solomon, whom the Lord had endowed with all grace and wisdom, was led by women into idolatry. To remain without sin was reserved for the Son of God alone. If then a bishop or deacon, a widow, a virgin or a teacher, or even a martyr, has lapsed from the Rule of Faith, must we conclude that heresy possesses the truth? Do we test the faith by persons or persons by the faith? No one is wise, no one is faithful, no one worthy of honour unless he is a Christian, and no one is a Christian unless he perseveres to the end.

You are human, and so you know other people only from the outside. You think as you see, and you see only what your eyes let you see. But "the eyes of the Lord are lofty."3 "Man looketh on the outward appearance, God looketh on the heart."4 So "the Lord knoweth them that are his" 5 and roots up the plant which he has not planted. He shows the last to 2 A cryptic sentence, and clumsy in my translation. The text is uncertain. I read miriones, the lectio difficilior, not infirmiores; and I link it with the frequent "surprise" of c. 2. Perhaps it should be rendered more bluntly, "some gaping fools". Aedificari in ruinam is a play on words, with allusions to Matt. 7:26; I Cor. 8:10.

3 IV Esdras 8:20, elevati in Vulgate. Perhaps Tertullian understands alti as "going deep" into men's hearts.

I Sam. 16:7.

5 II Tim. 2:19.

be first, he carries a fan in his hand to purge his floor. Let the chaff of light faith fly away as it pleases before every wind of temptation. So much the purer is the heap of wheat which the Lord will gather into his garner.

Some of the disciples were offended and turned away from the Lord himself. Did the rest at once suppose that they too must leave his footsteps? No, convinced that he is the word of life, come down from God, they persevered in his company to the end, although he had gently asked them whether they also wished to go. It is of less consequence if some, like Phygelus and Hermogenes, Philetus and Hymenaeus, deserted his apostle. It was an apostle that betrayed Christ. Are we surprised that some desert the Church when it is our sufferings after Christ's example that show us to be Christians? "They went out from us," the Bible says, "but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us." 7

4. Instead of dwelling on such things let us keep in mind the Lord's sayings and the apostles' letters, which warned us that heresies would come and ordered us to shun them. Feeling, as we do, no alarm at their occurrence, we need not be surprised at their ability to perform that which compels us to shun them. The Lord teaches that many ravening wolves will come in sheep's clothing. What is this sheep's clothing but the outward profession of the name "Christian"? The ravening wolves are the crafty thoughts and impulses lurking within to attack Christ's flock. The false prophets are the false preachers, the false apostles the spurious evangelists, the antichrists, now as ever, the rebels against Christ. Today heresy plays this part. The assaults of its perverse teaching upon the Church are no whit less severe than the dreadful persecutions which the antichrist will carry out in his day. In fact they are worse. Persecution at least makes martyrs: heresy only apostates.

There had to be heresies so that those who are approved might be made manifest, those who did not stray into heresy as well as those who stood firm in persecution, in case anyone should want those who change their faith into heresy to be counted as approved simply because he says somewhere else: "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," 8 words which they misinterpret to suit themselves. As if it were not possible to "prove all things" wrongly, and so fasten erroneously upon some evil choice!

6 II Tim. 1:15; 2:17. 3-E.L.T.

7 I John 2:19.

8 I Thess. 5:21.

5. Again, when he blames party strife and schism, which are unquestionably evils, he at once adds heresy. What he links with evils, he is of course proclaiming to be itself an evil. Indeed in saying that he had believed in their schisms and parties just because he knew that heresies must come, he makes heresy the greater evil, showing that it was in view of the greater evil that he readily believed in the lesser ones. He cannot have meant that he believed in the evil things because heresy is good. He was warning them not to be surprised at temptations of an even worse character, which were intended, he said, to "make manifest those who are approved," that is, those whom heresy failed to corrupt. In short, as the whole passage aims at the preservation of unity and the restraint of faction, while heresy is just as destructive of unity as schism and party strife, it must be that he is setting heresy in the same reprehensible category as schism and party. So he is not approving those who have turned aside to heresy. On the contrary, he urges us with strong words to turn aside from them, and teaches us all to speak and think alike.10 That is what heresy will not allow.

6. I need say no more on that point, for it is the same Paul who elsewhere, when writing to the Galatians,11 classes heresy among the sins of the flesh, and who counsels Titus to shun a heretic after the first reproof12 because such a man is perverted and sinful, standing self-condemned. Besides, he censures heresy in almost every letter when he presses the duty of avoiding false doctrine, which is in fact the product of heresy. This is a Greek word meaning choice, the choice which anyone exercises when he teaches heresy or adopts it. That is why he calls a heretic self-condemned; he chooses for himself the cause of his condemnation. We Christians are forbidden to introduce anything on our own authority or to choose what someone else introduces on his own authority. Our authorities are the Lord's apostles, and they in turn chose to introduce nothing on their own authority. They faithfully passed on to the nations the teaching which they had received from Christ. So we should anathematize even an angel from heaven if he were to preach a different gospel.13 The Holy Ghost had already at that time foreseen that an angel of deceit would come in a virgin called Philumene, transforming himself into an angel of

9 I Cor. 11:18-9.

11 Gal. 5:20.

10 I Cor. 1:10.

12 Titus 3:10. Tertullian's text omits "and second," cf. c. 16, n. 33. 13 Gal. 1:8.

light, by whose miracles and tricks Apelles was deceived into introducing a new heresy.14

7. These are human and demonic doctrines, engendered for itching ears by the ingenuity of that worldly wisdom which the Lord called foolishness, choosing the foolish things of the world to put philosophy to shame. For worldly wisdom culminates in philosophy with its rash interpretation of God's nature and purpose. It is philosophy that supplies the heresies with their equipment. From philosophy come the aeons and those infinite forms-whatever they are-and Valentinus's human trinity. He had been a Platonist.15 From philosophy came Marcion's God, the better for his inactivity. He had come from the Stoics.16 The idea of a mortal soul 17 was picked up from the Epicureans, and the denial of the restitution of the flesh was taken over from the common tradition of the philosophical schools. Zeno taught them to equate God and matter, and Heracleitus comes on the scene when anything is being laid down about a god of fire. Heretics and philosophers perpend the same themes and are caught up in the same discussions. What is the origin of evil, and why? The origin of man, and how? And-Valentinus's latest subject—what is the origin of God? No doubt in Desire and Abortion! 18 A plague on Aristotle, who taught them dialectic, the art which destroys as much as it builds, which changes its opinions like a coat, forces its conjectures, is stubborn in argument, works hard at being contentious and is a burden even to itself. For it reconsiders every point to make sure it never finishes a discussion.

From philosophy come those fables and endless genealogies and fruitless questionings, those "words that creep like as doth a canker." To hold us back from such things, the Apostle testifies expressly in his letter to the Colossians that we should beware of philosophy. "Take heed lest any man circumvent 14 For Philumene and Apelles see c. 30. He was Marcion's chief disciple. 15 Most Gnostics spoke of aeons, emanations of deity. On Valentinus see c. 33, and for his human trinity, man's threefold constitution as materialis, animalis, and spiritalis, see Tert., Adv. Valent., 17, 25, 26, itself based on Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I, i, 11 (ed. Harvey).

16 In his Adv. Marcionem, Tertullian taunts Marcion because his good God had cared nothing about the world before the sending of Christ. But Marcion's teaching about God had nothing to do with Stoic apatheia. 17 Marcion's disciple, Lucanus, taught this, cf. Tert., Res. Carn., 2. 18 De enthymesi et ectromate, Greek Gnostic terms. Desire was cast forth shapeless from the Pleroma and afterwards gave birth to the Demiurge, the creator God, cf. Adv. Valent., 17, 18. Kroymann reads ektenoma. Arte inserunt Aristotelem. I translate the received Miserum Aristotelem.