So many people have learned so much from Tertullian, even despite his eventual capitulation to an early heresy. So many people also regard him as the foremost representative of the irrational and the fideist in Christianity. It is easy to see him in bad light, but suppose we give him the benefit of the doubt, just for a moment.
When a great writer such as Tertullian writes something patently absurd, I can think of just two explanations:
1: The "great" thinker is not so great.
2: The great thinker is exploiting paradox or hyperbole for rhetorical purposes.
Consider that Tertullian may be doing something profound with language.
We can certainly say he did not try to preserve an absolute philosophic consistency, sentence by sentence, as if he were practicing mathematics. Suppose furthermore that Tertullian wrote as he pleased, always in the moment, trading away a literal consistency with his past words for something he valued more: the dramatic potential of exaggeration. Nietzsche would agree. And as Adam Smith wrote, if a bow is bent one way it is necessary to bend it too much in the opposite way in order to make it straight. Could this be what Tertullian is doing?
The allegation that he is a fideist originates in two things. First, there is Tertullian's tendency to speak against the pretensions of the philosophers. For example, he excoriates Greek philosophy. Yet he quotes Aristotle often and relies on Aristotelian distinctions. Tertullian was well-read and uses rational argumentation despite his stated disavowal of Greek rationalism. What is going on here? Perhaps it is that someone who understands Greek philosophy very deeply can also understand its limitations. Or, if you are not willing to give up philosophy, consider this: Even if the flight of the intellect is unlimited, as Platonists believe, one may still excoriate Greek philosophy for how commonly it is abused. Greek philosophers were fond of proposing grand and rather silly systems—all is earth, all is water, all is change, etc. Given how well read and how indebted to philosophy Tertullian was, he was aware of these abuses.
Second the claim he is a fideist also originates from his quotation that Christianity "is to be believed because it is absurd." I find the phrase interesting to contemplate because of how absurd it is itself! It proposes we are to believe things that are absurd, that is, unbelievable. This phrase is itself absurd. So there is no contradiction in taking its advice! But due to its self-consistency, could it also be reasonable? Take as an assumption... this is a big one. But take as an assumption that a mind left to its own devices, without the light of the divine Logos, will fall inevitably into despair and madness. Perhaps it is a big assumption but it has precedence, for it is what Nietzsche predicts. Since the mind left by itself will ultimately produce nothing good, in order to identify what is good we ought therefore to believe the opposite of what it thinks of—namely what is absurd! I think Tertullian is providing us a more interesting "food for thought" than some of our contemporary theologians. If you read him thusly, namely if you see him as someone who was well-educated in philosophy, but someone who has lost faith in it and therefore tests its limits at the margins of language, you might see him here not as claiming we should believe what is absurd but rather trying to awaken us from our dogmatic rational slumber through irony and overstatement.
When a great writer such as Tertullian writes something patently absurd, I can think of just two explanations:
1: The "great" thinker is not so great.
2: The great thinker is exploiting paradox or hyperbole for rhetorical purposes.
Consider that Tertullian may be doing something profound with language.
We can certainly say he did not try to preserve an absolute philosophic consistency, sentence by sentence, as if he were practicing mathematics. Suppose furthermore that Tertullian wrote as he pleased, always in the moment, trading away a literal consistency with his past words for something he valued more: the dramatic potential of exaggeration. Nietzsche would agree. And as Adam Smith wrote, if a bow is bent one way it is necessary to bend it too much in the opposite way in order to make it straight. Could this be what Tertullian is doing?
The allegation that he is a fideist originates in two things. First, there is Tertullian's tendency to speak against the pretensions of the philosophers. For example, he excoriates Greek philosophy. Yet he quotes Aristotle often and relies on Aristotelian distinctions. Tertullian was well-read and uses rational argumentation despite his stated disavowal of Greek rationalism. What is going on here? Perhaps it is that someone who understands Greek philosophy very deeply can also understand its limitations. Or, if you are not willing to give up philosophy, consider this: Even if the flight of the intellect is unlimited, as Platonists believe, one may still excoriate Greek philosophy for how commonly it is abused. Greek philosophers were fond of proposing grand and rather silly systems—all is earth, all is water, all is change, etc. Given how well read and how indebted to philosophy Tertullian was, he was aware of these abuses.
Second the claim he is a fideist also originates from his quotation that Christianity "is to be believed because it is absurd." I find the phrase interesting to contemplate because of how absurd it is itself! It proposes we are to believe things that are absurd, that is, unbelievable. This phrase is itself absurd. So there is no contradiction in taking its advice! But due to its self-consistency, could it also be reasonable? Take as an assumption... this is a big one. But take as an assumption that a mind left to its own devices, without the light of the divine Logos, will fall inevitably into despair and madness. Perhaps it is a big assumption but it has precedence, for it is what Nietzsche predicts. Since the mind left by itself will ultimately produce nothing good, in order to identify what is good we ought therefore to believe the opposite of what it thinks of—namely what is absurd! I think Tertullian is providing us a more interesting "food for thought" than some of our contemporary theologians. If you read him thusly, namely if you see him as someone who was well-educated in philosophy, but someone who has lost faith in it and therefore tests its limits at the margins of language, you might see him here not as claiming we should believe what is absurd but rather trying to awaken us from our dogmatic rational slumber through irony and overstatement.
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