you through philosophy or vain deceit, after the tradition of men," against the providence of the Holy Ghost.19 He had been at Athens where he had come to grips with the human wisdom which attacks and perverts truth, being itself divided up into its own swarm of heresies by the variety of its mutually antagonistic sects. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic? Our principles come from the Porch of Solomon, 20 who had himself taught that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart. I have no use for a Stoic or a Platonic or a dialectic Christianity. After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel no need of research. When we come to believe, we have no desire to believe anything else; for we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe. 8. I come then to the point which members of the Church adduce to justify speculation and which heretics press in order to import scruple and hesitation. It is written, they say: "Seek, and ye shall find."21 But we must not forget when the Lord said these words. It was surely at the very beginning of his teaching when everyone was still doubtful whether he was the Christ. Peter had not yet pronounced him to be the Son of God, and even John had lost his conviction about him. It was right to say: "Seek, and ye shall find," at the time when, being still unrecognized, he had still to be sought. Besides, it applied only to the Jews. Every word in that criticism was pointed at those who had the means of seeking Christ. "They have Moses and Elijah," it says; that is, the law and the prophets which preach Christ. Similarly he says elsewhere, and plainly: "Search the Scriptures, in which ye hope for salvation, for they speak of me." 22 That will be what he meant by "Seek, and ye shall find." The following words, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you," obviously apply to the Jews. At one time inside the house of God, the Jews found themselves outside when they were thrown out because of their sins. The Gentiles, however, were never in God's house. They were but a drop from the bucket, dust from the threshing-floor, 23 always outside. How can anyone who has always been outside knock where he has 19 I Tim. 1:4, etc.; II Tim. 2:17; Col. 2:8. 20 Cf. II Cor. 6:14. Solomon's Porch (John 10:23; Acts 3:11; 5:12) is contrasted with the Porch (Stoa) of the Stoic Zeno. The allusion to Wisdom 1:1 (simplicity) strengthens the link with Solomon. 23 Isa. 40:15. 21 Matt. 7:7; Luke 11:9. 22 Luke 16:29; John 5:39. never been? How can he recognize the door if he has never been taken in or thrown out by it? Surely it is the man who knows that he was once inside and was turned out, who recognizes the door and knocks? Again, the words, "Ask, and ye shall receive," 24 fit those who know whom to ask and by whom something has been promised, namely the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, of whose person and promises the Gentiles were equally ignorant. Accordingly he said to Israel: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 25 He had not yet begun to cast the children's bread to the dogs nor yet told the apostles to go into the way of the Gentiles. If at the end he ordered them to go and teach and baptize the Gentiles, it was only because they were soon to receive the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who would guide them into all truth. This also supports our conclusion. If the apostles, the appointed teachers of the Gentiles, were themselves to receive the Paraclete as their teacher, then the words, "Seek, and ye shall find, were much less applicable to us than to the Jews. For we were to be taught by the apostles without any effort of our own, as they were taught by the Holy Spirit. All the Lord's sayings, I admit, were set down for all men. They have come through the ears of the Jews to us Christians. Still, many were aimed at particular people and constitute for us an example rather than a command immediately applicable to ourselves. 9. However, I shall now make you a present of that point. Suppose that "Seek, and ye shall find" was said to us all. Even then it would be wrong to determine the sense without reference to the guiding principles of exegesis. No word of God is so unqualified or so unrestricted in application that the mere words can be pleaded without respect to their underlying meaning. My first principle is this. Christ laid down one definite system of truth 26 which the world must believe without qualification, and which we must seek precisely in order to believe it when we find it. Now you cannot search indefinitely for a single definite truth. You must seek until you find, and when you find, you must believe. Then you have simply to keep what you have come to believe, since you also believe that there is nothing else to believe, and therefore nothing else to seek, once you have found and believed what he taught who bids you seek nothing 24 John 16:24, used as an equivalent to Matt. 7:7. 25 Matt. 15:24. 26 A great deal of Tertullian's argument depends on this. beyond what he taught. If you feel any doubt as to what this truth is, I undertake to establish that Christ's teaching is to be found with us. For the moment, my confidence in my proof allows me to anticipate it, and I warn certain people not to seek for anything beyond what they came to believe, for that was all they needed to seek for. They must not interpret, “Seek, and ye shall find," without regard to reasonable methods of exegesis. 10. The reasonable exegesis of this saying turns on three points: matter, time, and limitation. As to matter, you are to consider what is to be sought; as to time, when; and as to limitation, how far. What you must seek is what Christ taught, and precisely as long as you are not finding it, precisely until you do find it. And you did find it when you came to believe. You would not have believed if you had not found, just as you would not have sought except in order to find. Since finding was the object of your search and belief of your finding, your acceptance of the faith debars any prolongation of seeking and finding. The very success of your seeking has set up this limitation for you. Your boundary has been marked out by him who would not have you believe, and so would not have you seek, outside the limits of his teaching. But if we are bound to go on seeking as long as there is any possibility of finding, simply because so much has been taught by others as well, we shall be always seeking and never believing. What end will there be to seeking? What point of rest for belief? Where the fruition of finding? With Marcion? But Valentinus also propounds: "Seek, and ye shall find." With Valentinus? But Apelles also will knock at my door with the same pronouncement, and Ebion and Simon 27 and the whole row of them can find no other way to ingratiate themselves with me and bring me over to their side. There will be no end, as long as I meet everywhere with, "Seek and ye shall find," and I shall wish I had never begun to seek, if I never grasp what Christ taught, what should be sought, what must be believed. II. We may go astray without harm if we do not go wrong -though to go astray is to go wrong; we may wander without harm, I mean, if no desertion is intended. However, if I once believed what I ought to believe and now think I must seek something else afresh, presumably I am hoping that there is 27 From the Ebionite sect ("the Poor") Tertullian wrongly supposes a personal founder called Ebion. Simon Magus (Acts 8) is the conventional "founder" of Gnosticism. For both cf. c. 33. something else to be found. But I should never have hoped that, unless I had either never believed, though I seemed to, or else had stopped believing. So in deserting my faith I am shown up as an apostate. Let me say once for all, no one seeks unless there is something he did not possess or something he has lost. The old woman in the parable had lost one of her ten pieces of silver, and so she began to seek it. When she found it, she stopped seeking. The neighbour had no bread, so he began to knock. When the door was opened and he was given the bread, he stopped knocking. The widow kept asking to be heard by the judge because she was not being granted an audience. When she was heard, she insisted no longer. 28 So clear is it that there is an end to seeking and knocking and asking. For to him that asketh, it shall be given, it says, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened, and by him that seeketh, it shall be found. I have no patience with the man who is always seeking, for he will never find. He is seeking where there will be no finding. I have no patience with the man who is always knocking, for the door will never be opened. He is knocking at an empty house. I have no patience with the man who is always asking, for he will never be heard. He is asking one who does not hear. 12. Even if we ought to be seeking now and always, where should we seek? Among the heretics, where everything is strange and hostile to our truth, men we are forbidden to approach? What slave expects his food from a stranger, let alone his master's enemy? What soldier hopes to get bounty or pay from neutral, let alone hostile, kings? Unless of course he is a deserter or a runaway or a rebel! Even the old woman was seeking the piece of silver inside her own house. Even the man who was knocking hammered at his neighbour's door. Even the widow was appealing to a judge who, though hard, was not hostile. Instruction and destruction never reach us from the same quarter. Light and darkness never come from the same source. So let us seek in our own territory, from our own friends and on our own business, and let us seek only what can come into question without disloyalty to the Rule of Faith. 13. The Rule of Faith 29-to state here and now what we 28 Luke 15:8; 11:5; 18:3. 29 Regula Fidei, a summary of the apostolic preaching, preserved-one might almost say, instinctively-in the tradition of the churches and used as a test of all teaching. It is similar to baptismal creeds, but not used liturgically nor fixed verbally. Irenaeus gives it in two forms, Haer., I, ii (see maintain-is of course that by which we believe that there is but one God, who is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced everything from nothing through his Word, sent forth before all things; that this Word is called his Son, and in the Name of God was seen in divers ways by the patriarchs, was ever heard in the prophets and finally was brought down by the Spirit and Power of God the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, was born of her and lived as Jesus Christ; who thereafter proclaimed a new law and a new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles, was crucified, on the third day rose again, was caught up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father; that he sent in his place the power of the Holy Spirit to guide believers; that he will come with glory to take the saints up into the fruition of the life eternal and the heavenly promises and to judge the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both good and evil with the restoration of their flesh. This Rule, taught (as will be proved) by Christ, allows of no questions among us, except those which heresies introduce and which make heretics. 14. Provided the essence of the Rule is not disturbed, you may seek and discuss as much as you like. You may give full rein to your itching curiosity where any point seems unsettled and ambiguous or dark and obscure. There must surely be some brother endowed with the gift of knowledge who can teach you, someone who moves among the learned who will share your curiosity and your inquiry. In the last resort, however, it is better for you to remain ignorant, for fear that you come to know what you should not know.30 For you do know what you should know. "Thy faith hath saved thee," 31 it says; not thy biblical learning. Faith is established in the Rule. There it has its law, and it wins salvation by keeping the law. Learning derives from curiosity and wins glory only from its zealous pursuit of scholarship. Let curiosity give place to faith, and glory to salvation. Let them at least be no hindrance, or let them keep quiet. To know nothing against the Rule is to know everything. p. 65) and Epideixis, 6; Tertullian in three, here and in Virg. Vel., 1 and Prax., 2. For Tertullian's forms see E. Evans, Tertullian's Treatise against Praxeas (S.P.C.K., 1948), and for the subject in general, D. van den Eynde, Les normes de l'enseignement chrétien (Paris, 1933) and J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Longmans, 1950). 30 The text is corrupt here. 31 Luke 18:42. |