TRANSLATIONS 
OF 

CHRISTIAN UTERATURE 



TERTULLIAN 

AGAINST 

I RAXEAS 



ALEXANDER SOUTER, 



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 



OF 
;RATUKE. SERIES II 

LATIN TEXTS 



TERTULIAN 
AGAINST^ 
PRAXEAS 




A SOUTER,D.LITT. 



SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING 
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. London Jill 
The Macmillan Companu. Newark |||, 
1919 l 



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IN 
LOVING MEMORY 

OF 
MY DAUGHTER 

BETH 

SUDDENLY 

CALLED TO HIGHER SERVICE 

IN HER SIXTEENTH YEAR 

DECEMBER 15, 1918 



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 difficulty of interpreting Tertullian is an old 
story. There is no Latin writer for whose study 
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 



viii PREFACE 

Vienna edition, preserved in Munich for the sake 
of the great Thesaurus Linguae Latinae,3J\& 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 sub s tantia^ 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 to, and excisions from, the text of the 
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 y vo\. xiv. (1912-1913) 
PP- 55^-564. The monograph of d Ales, La 
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 my translation, before I had 
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- 
lian s birth, but if we place it about A.D. 160, we 
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. 

The strongly ascetic vein in Tertullian led him 
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 the bosom 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 

is the 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 vocabulary is curiously com 
pounded of technical legal language, Grecisms 
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 list of 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 Harnnck, 
Gesch. altchr. Lift,, II. 2. (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 295 f. 



INTRODUCTION 



xv 



Ad Martyras 

Ad Nationes 

Apologeticus 

De Testimonio Animae 

De Spectaculis 

De Praescriptione Haereti- 

corum .... 
De Oratione 
De Baptismo 
De Patientia . . 
De Paenitentia . . 
De Cultu Feminarum . 
Ad Uxorem 
Adversus Heruwgenen 
Adversiis Indaeos 
De Virginibus Velandis 
Adversus Mardonem, Libri 

I.-IIII 

De Pallia . . . - . 
Adversus Valentinianos 
De Anima .... 
De Carne Christi 
De Resurrectione Carnis 
Adversus Marcionem, Liber 

V 

De Exhortatione Castitatis . 
De Corona .... 
Scorpiace . . . , 
De Idohlatria . 
Ad Scapulain . , , 



Feb. or March 197. 
after Feb. 197. 
autumn 197. 
between . 197 and 

200. 
about 200. 

about 200. 



between 200 and 206. 



about 206. 

207-8. 
209. 



between 208 and 21 



211. 

211 or 212. 
211 or 212. 
end of 212. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

The following are definitely Montanist : 
De Fuga in Persecutione . 213. 
Adversus Praxean . . \ 
De Monogamia . . .) after 21 3, 
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 Ecclesiasticoruin Latinorum, 
Vols. XX. and XLVII. (Vindobonae et Lipsiae), 
1890, 1966) : De Spectaculis ; De Idololatria y Ad 
Nationes, De Testimonio Aniinae, Scorpiace, De 
Oratione, De Baptismo, De Pudicitia^ De leiunio, 
De Anima, De Patientia, De Carnis Resurrect ione, 
Adversus Hermogenen, Adversus Valentinianos, 
Adversus O nines Haereses^- Adversus Praxean 
Adversus Marcionem. The best work on the 
language of Tertullian is H. Hoppe, Syntax und 
Stil des Tertullian (Leipzig, 1903) ; on his theology, 
A. d Ales, La Theologie de Terttillien (Paris, 1905); 
on his New Testament citations, H. Ronsch, Das 
Neue Testament Tertullian s (Leipzig, 1871). 

1 This book is perhaps the work of Victorinus of Pettau (f 303). 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

2. ADVERSUS PRAXEAN 1 

Of the life of 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 
his exposure 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 its import 
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 
paraphrased " the doctrine that the Father suffered (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" (oeconomia, 
dispensatid] of the Trinity. God is one, but His 
activities are exercised by Father, Son and Spirit. 
There is one Son of God, His Word, incarnated 
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 it is with the hierarchy of heaven. The 
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 is Son of the Father, and has the highest 
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 is copiously illustrated, especially from 
St. John s Gospel. The relation of Father to Son 
is compared 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 is greater than^the Son. 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 
ing one speaking to another, 1 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. 
6-8) is taken, with Irenaeus, 3 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 Prax. II. 2 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 in supposing that He acted in the 
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 i. 35), would indicate the Son. 
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 those who 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 xxiii 

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 is not 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 suffer for God, thanks to the Divine Spirit 
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 cries to an impassible and in 
flexible God. These words are the effect of the 
inexorable sentence which delivers His human 
nature to death. He delivers up His human soul 
into His Father s hands, and expires. Raised by 
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" p 
. . 1 

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 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [i 

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" 

vm - 44 w ho "has been a liar" "from the 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 soil, a restless being in other 2 respects, and 
puffed up besides with boasting about his martyr 
dom, which consisted merely in an ordinary brief, 
if irksome, 3 period in prison ; whereas, even if he 

cf i Cor. had " surrendered his body to be burnt up," it 
would have " profited him nothing," as he had not 

cf. i Cor. " 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 Thesatirus 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. 



xiu. 25 
etc. 



i] TERTULLTAN AGAINST PR AXE AS 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 
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 in whose 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 tide of "the Paraclete" 
(Euseb., Hist. Eccl., v. 14). 

2 /. e. probably a reference to Tertullian himself. 

3 For traductae thus used cf. Lofstedt, Krit. Bemerkungen zu 
Tertullian s Apologeticutn (Lund, 1918), p. 72. 

4 Reading with Turner presbiter istornm : there is no adverb 
pristinum. Yet Hoppe, p. 1 8, 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 [i, 2 

cf. Matt, at that time everywhere " choked " the seed. For 
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 ; 
if the Lord wills, in this present age ; l but if 

cf. Matt, not, "at their proper season" all the corrupt crops 

ctVau. "will be gathered together," and "along with all 

cf^Matt 41 other stum bling-blocks " will u be burnt by un- 

iiil 12 quenchable fire." 2 

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 
before, 3 as being better instructed by " the Para- 

cf.John clete,""who" of course "leads us into all truth," 

cT NiiLne " believe " indeed " in one God," but subject to 
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 i. 3 " through Whom all things were made, and with 
out Whom nothing was made " 4 ; that it was He 

cf. various who was put by the Father into "the virgin," and 
" born from " her, both man and God, son of man 

cf. Matt, and Son of God, and surnamed "Jesus Christ"; 

1 For this sense of commeatns, see the Thesaurus s.v. Iloppe 
p. 120, d Ales, p. 68. 

- For other examples of the ending _r ^ -_ - ^ , see Iloppe 
PP.- 155 f- 

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 suffered, died, and was cf. vaiious 
buried" "according to the Scriptures," and was cf^Cor 
raised again by the Father, and being taken back xv. 3, 4 
" into heaven * is seated at the right hand of the cf. various 
Father, and will come to judge the living and the creeds 
dead"; who afterwards, according to His promise, 
sent from the Father the Holy " Spirit, 2 the cf. John 
Paraclete," the sanctifier of the faith of them who xiv l6 
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 
exactly the same way " against all heresies," 3 so let c f. Teit. 
us from the present case also derive the preliminary {J^ sct \ 
judgment that whatsoever is first is true, while 
whatsoever is later is corrupt. But without pre 
judice, however, to this " preliminary declaration," 4 ibid. 

1 For the abl. caelo = ace. caelitiu, see Hoppe, pp. 40 f. 

2 It is surely not fanciful to suppose that in what has just 
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 
journal of Theological Studies, vol. i. , pp 3 ff. " Recent Research on 
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 uerum quod sit prius traditum, 
id nutem extraneum et falsnm 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). 



3 o TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [2 

room for revision of judgment 1 must also be 
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 
as if, nevertheless, the mystery 2 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 
office, but in appearance ; 3 but of one nature 4 and 
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 sitbstantia (= nature) recurs cc. 5, 8, 12, 26, 27 : see 
Dean Strong in Journal Theol. Sttidies, vol. iii. pp. 38^40, Dr. 
J. F. Bethune-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 realite." 

5 Yoi the indicative in indirect questions, see Hoppe, p. 72. 



2,3] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 31 

number and are yet not divided, these expositions 
will make clear as they advance. 

3. All simple people, not to say the unwise and 
unprofessional l (who always constitute the majority 
of believers), since even the rule of faith 2 itself 
removes them from the plurality of "the gods" of cf. i Cor. 
this world to " the one true God," become greatly SJjoLn 
terrified through their failure to understand that, *vii. 3 
while He must be believed to be one, it is along 
with His economy, because they judge that 
economy, implying a number and arrangement 
of trinity, is really a division 3 of unity, whereas 4 
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 " Unprofessional " : possibly " uninitiated " would be better. 

2 Kegula Jideij a regular expression in the early writers for the 
official creed. 

3 Hoppe (p. 168) takes dispositioncm and diuisionem, as an in 
stance of alliteration, a rhetorical device. 

4 For this sense of qttando, see Hoppe, pp. 78 f. 

5 Edam opifices with Kigalt and C. II. Turner, for the impossible 
et tarn optfice of MSS. and editors. 



32 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [3 

anxious to preach l " 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 is held together by two who are so united. 
Therefore, if the divine monarchy also is admin 
istered by so many " legions " and armies " of 
c f . Matt, angels," as it is written : " a hundred thousand 
nan! vu. 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). 

2 "Agents." Personas in theology seems to be derived from 
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 l 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 undoing of 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 
is it evil, when it leads to the dethronement of the 
Creator ; when a number are introduced, as by 
the Valentini and Prodici, 2 then it leads to the 
overturning of monarchy ; (4) but how can I who 

1 For many such examples of time as diuisionem et dispersionem 
in Tertullian, see Hoppe, 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. Ircnaeus passim, and Tertullian, 
Aduersus Valentinianos. ) 

C 



34 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [4 

derive the Son from nowhere else, but from the 
cf. John substance of the Father, "doing" nothing without 
S John " th e " Father s " will," obtaining " all power " from 
xvii. 2 the Father, how can I be supposed 1 to be breaking 
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 
else than " from the Father " through the Son. 2 
Beware then lest it be rather you who are breaking 
up monarchy, in overturning its arrangement and 
management, 3 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 
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 

1 Reading with C. II. Turner uideri for de fide of MSS. and edd. 
De fide, however, might conceivably mean "from the 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). 

a 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 will be restored to the Father by the Son. So 
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. By this one passage 1 of the Apostle s 
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. 
kingdom " and He to whom it was handed over, xv> 24 
and likewise " He who subjected " and He to whom cf. i Cor. 
He was subjected, are of necessity two. 3 xv- 28 

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 = ostendere, see Hoppe, pp. 52-54, who furnishes 
many 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 

~~ 



36 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [5 

made for Himself a Son." 1 That this is not 
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 

etc! 24> 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. 

* 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 omnia of MSS. and 
edd. 

6 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 God " had " 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 2 
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 has reason in Himself even when silent, and 

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 
Trov. viii. to wisdom also created as the second person : " At 
22, 23, 25 fi rs ^ ^ e L orc j coated 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 
present with 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 ccnseri 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, ipsiiis operationi, for ipsa separationc 
of the MSS. (in ipsa operatione, Kroymann). 



6, 7] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 39 

Him constructing, 1 I it was in whom He rejoiced ; 
and daily was I delighted 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 itself, having in itself its own in 
separable reason and wisdom, that everything 
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 
substances. 3 

7. It is then, therefore, that even the word itself 4 
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 first created by Him as far as thought 
is concerned, under the name of wisdom " the rrov. viii. 
Lord created me as a beginning of ways," then p^. ov viii 
begotten to actuality " when He was preparing 27 
heaven, I was with Him," thereafter, making as 

1 For the periphrastic conjugation eram conpingens, see Hoppe, 

PP; 59 f- 

2 This passage is compared with passages from the Greek 
Apologists in d Ales, pp. 87 f. 

3 The same metrical ending as in chapters I, 5, and 7, etc. (see 
Hoppe, p. 156). 

4 The relation of the first part of this chapter to the Greek 
Apologists is set forth by d Ales, pp. 90 ff. 



40 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [7 

Father 1 for Himself Him from whom He proceeds 
cf. Col. i. and thus becomes His Son, He was made " first- 
I5) 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 
L^eiV) be g tten thee," 2 and: "Before the morning star 
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 it was nothing made/ 3 even 
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 parem 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. 



7] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 41 

ginning of ways for the works " of God, and which 
" established the heaven " " through which all ?s. xxxii. 
things were made, and without which nothing was j h n j 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. 

" Then," you say, " you argue that the word is 
some material, built up of spirit and wisdom and 
reason ? " l Certainly : for you do not want it to be 
regarded as in itself material through the inde 
pendence of its matter, lest it 2 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 ^ Ij 
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 

A The true readings were pointed out by C. H. Turner, namely 
sophia et rations (instead of sophiae traditione] and haberi in se (for 
habere in re). 

2 Read ne ut with Kroymann for MSS. tit simply. 



42 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [7 

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." 
Deut v That is assuredly He who " being in the image of 

ii) God thought it not robbery to be equal to God." 

Phil. ii. 6 _ . . . f ^ j , / 11 

In what image of God ? Assuredly in some image, 

not in none at all. For who will deny that God is 
John iv. body, 1 even though "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 Tei tullian 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 in Jon> <n. TheoL Studies, vol. iv. 
pp. 441 f. 

3 See the note at the end of chap. 6. 



8] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 43 

8. If any one thinks that herein I am intro 
ducing some probole} that is, projection of one 
thing from another, as Valentinus 2 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 
question is who uses a certain thing 4 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 c f. Matt. 
Father," and He Himself "has revealed the bosom Jj^Vit 
of the Father " and " He has heard " and " seen " all cf. John 
things with the Father and " what things He was * John v. 

1 For prolatio as a Latin rendering of Greek probcle, 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 gradient figere in Hoppe, 
p. 208, n. I. 

4 For the two question clauses without connective, a Latin and 
Greek idiom, cf. Hoppe, p. 74. 



44 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [8 

cf. John commanded by the Father, these He also speaks " ; 

cf!john an d it was "not His own will, but "the Father s 

- 49 that He accomplished, that will which He knew at 

cf. John 

vi. 38 close quarters, nay from His inmost soul. "For 

Cor< who knows what is in God but the Spirit who is in 



11. ii 



Himself? " The word, moreover, is equipped 1 with 
the spirit, and if I may say so, the word s body is 
spirit. 2 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 1. i Word was with God," and never separated from 
the Father or different 3 from the Father, because : 
" I and the Father are one." This will be the pro- 
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 
parent, 4 and all that is brought forth from the 
origin is offspring, 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 struct us = instructus, cf. Iloppe, pp. I38f. 

2 With this passage d Ales, p. 86, compares passages in the Greek 
Apologists. 

3 For the a (ab] after a/ius, cf. chaps. 9 (quater], 1 8 (Hoppe, p. 36). 

4 D Ales, p. 92, compares this passage with some in the Greek 
Apologists. 



8] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 45 

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 root and the shrub are also two things, but 
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 the Son, even as the fruit from the 
shrub is third from the root, and the channel 
from the river is third from the source, and the 
point l where the ray strikes something is third 2 
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 
together, 3 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 f., by " terminating point." 

2 The repetition of the word tertius (anaphora) is a rhetorical 
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 ( ^ i=d=r ) is one of the rarer types in 
Tertullian ; occurring in about thirteen per cent, of the cases only 
(Hoppe, pp. 156 f.) 



46 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [9 

9. Everywhere remember that I have announced 
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 
it is meant. 1 Understand then ; I say that the 
Father is one, the Son another, and the Spirit 
another every untrained or perverse person takes 
this saying wrongly, as if it expressed 2 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 
is a 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 angels." 4 

(Hptf ii So also the Father is other than the Son > since He 
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). 

a For a/tus, 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, TO] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 47 

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 l 
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 will represent. "Yea, yea, nay, Matt. v. 
nay ; for what is more than yea and nay is from 37 
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. If they 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 dicimits, cf. Hoppe, p. 145. 

2 Here C. H. Turner is followed as to arrangement, reading and 
translation : ita et pater et filius " esf." 



48 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [10 

for Himself." Nay, rather a father makes a son 
and a son a father, 1 and those who come from one 
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 father must needs 
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 patrem in c. 7. 



ID] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 49 

also a son, I no longer have a father, but I am 
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 will not be a son. So do they hold to 
monarchy, who hold together at the same time 
neither Father nor Son. But " nothing is difficult job xiii. 2 
to " God : who does not know it ? and, " what is ^iii?i4) 
impossible with the world is possible with God " : Lu .k. e 
who is ignorant of this ? and " God chose the JTcorfi. 
foolish things of the world to put the wise things 2 ? 
to confusion": we read all this in Scripture. 
" Therefore," they say, " it was not difficult for cf. Job 
God to make Himself both Father and Son xliL 2 
against the law handed down to human circum 
stances. For it was not difficult for God either cf. Job 
that a barren woman should bear contrary to *[ u G 2 al i v 
nature, or that a virgin either should do so/ 27 (Isa. 
Clearly, "nothing is difficult to" God, but if we c ^ Matt, 
take such inconsiderate advantage of this thought ?3 

Job xlu 

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 [10,11 

cf. Sap. to believe that because " He can do all things," 
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 2 both 
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 will have to prove as clearly from the 
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, 
PP. 35, 66. 

2 For the perfect infinitive after posse, where the present infinitive 
would be expected, cf. Hoppe, p. 53. 

3 For the comparison with kites here, see Hoppe, p. 199. 



n] 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 Father and 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, like my own, that is that the Scriptures 
indicate the same to be Son and Father in the 
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. 
so that it should be Himself who both gave forth xhv 2 
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. ii. 7 
art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." If^ ukeiii> 
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. 
son, I have this day begotten myself" ; in like $.22)* 
manner also : " Before the morning star I begat cf. Ps. cix. 
myself" ; and : " I the Lord created myself as a ;? f ProVm 
beginning of ways for my works, yea, before any viii - 22 > 2 5 
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 
person of His Son, since 3 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 
reads ueritatis auctorem for tieritm an fern : "one thing nevertheless 
he did fear, that the Author of Truth should falsify himself and his 
truth." 

2 Fides (abstract) *= fables (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 will preach judgment to the 
nations." Take this also addressed to Himself: 
" It is a great thing for thee, that thou shouldest Isa. xlix. 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 i sa .i x i. z) 
anointed me to give the good news unto men." 
Likewise to the Father in the psalm : " Lord God, Ps. ixx. 
forsake me not, till I preach of thine arm to all l{ 
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 x 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 on my right hand, 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. 
report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord : ~ 2 
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 rcpraesentat e is in d Ales 
356-36o. 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 its make 
man in our image and likeness," when He ought 
to have said : 4 " Let me make man in my image 
and likeness," inasmuch as 5 He is one individual? 

Gen. iii. But also in .what follows : " Behold, Adam was 
made like one of its" 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 pat re defilio ltd ad filium, nunc 
afilio de pat re uel ad patrein, nunc a spiritu. 

3 For the rare ending ( ^ ^ ^ ), see Iloppe, 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 utputa and utpote, not uncommon in MSS. 



12] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 55 

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; 
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. 
the other hand, who was to hallow man as with 7> etc> 
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.ii, 
likeness " of reality. But even in the case of the f Ge ^ . 
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. 96). 



56 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [12 

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 by Him and carrying out His 
behests, 2 God willed creation, and God created : 

Gen. i. 6. 7 "And God said : Let there be a firmament, and 

Gen. i. 14, God made a firmament"; "and God said: 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 
declared, " other " in respect of role, not of nature ; 4 
by way of distinction, not of division. But 
although I hold, 5 everywhere to one being in three 

1 The true Cyprianic reading, as Turner points out, is ueniens, 
i.e. fp\6^vov is made to agree with (pus. Doubtless it was so 
taken by Tertullian also. I should also insert the omnem omitted 
by scribal inadvertence before the almost identical hominem. The 
passTge would then read: ipse statim sermo "uera lux quae 
nluminat omnem hominem ueniens in hunc mundum." ihe 
mundialis lux is the sun. 

2 The alliteration adsist. admin, is an intentional rhetorical 
device (Hoppe, p. 149). 

3 Perhaps pant should be read for fiat, corresponding better to 
facta sunt. 

4 On this passage see Dean Strong, Journ. Theol. Stud., III. p. 38. 

5 Teneam is potential : the construction is paratactic. The 
parallels in Hoppe, p. 83, show that there is no need to insert 
etsi, as Kroymann does. 



i 2 , i 3 ] 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 say, "if God spoke 
and God acted, if God spoke and another 
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 
still more, 2 listen to the mention of two gods 
even in a psalm : " Thy throne, God, is for ever- p s . xliv. 
lasting ; (a rod of uprightness is) 3 the rod of Thy 7) 8 
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 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. 



58 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [13 

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 1 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 W T ord was God " : One 
who was, and another with whom He was. But I 
also read that the name of the Lord was used in 

Ps. 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 
stood. Also there is the still 3 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. II. 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 adhuc with the comparative, see Hoppe, p. no, who 
suggests pleonasm here. 



i 3 ] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 59 

in allegories or similitudes, but in sure and simple 
definitions? But if you be of the number of those 
who would not then endure l the Lord s declaring cf. Juhn x. 
Himself the Son of God, lest they should believe 33 
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 x . 34) 
the gods," in order that, if Scripture did not fear to Ps. ixxxi. 
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 Qal ... 
rightly conferred upon the true and only Son of 26 
God the name both of God and of Lord. 2 " There 
fore," you say, " I will challenge you to preach 
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 
do indeed lay down two, Father and Son, and xvu I3> 
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 lips utter the expressions " two 
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, Hoppe compares the use of 
anechesthai in Greek, and gives other examples, p. 58. 

2 Following Turner and reading et dei et domini nomen. 



60 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [13 

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 Lord "but" one and the Father Himself would 
cf. Eph. be thought " to have descended/ because they read 
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 Art s xv 9 an< ^ comm g 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 Th * This, I think, is the right way to take this sentence. The 

Vt scriptural language latent in it has not, I think, been hitherto 

pointed out. This -is the only passage in Tertullian where it has 

been suggested to take quia in a final sense ( = ut} (Iloppe, p. 76, 

n. 3), the ut in the text being regarded as consecutive. 



13, 14] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 61 

" to shine " in the world, worshipping and naming 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 all the expressions "gods" or "lords," 
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, 
Moreover, I shall be able to speak of Christ as etc- 
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 its ray 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. 156 f. Note that the final syllable of patrem is elided. 



62 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [14 

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, 
13 revea j Thyself unto me, that I may see Thee and 
know Thee," He said : " Thou canst not see my 
xxxiii. 20 f ace f or no one will see my face and live," that is : 
he who sees it will die. But we find that God was 
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 
X " Gen God, for example Abraham and Jacob, and the 
xxviii. 13; prophets, as Isaiah and Ezekiel, and yet they did 
cfHtsafvj. not die. Therefore, either they must have died if 
1 they had seen Him " for no one will see "God "and 

cf Ezdc 

i i live " or, if they saw God and did not die, Scripture 

xxxifi 20 ls ^ se * n statm & tnat God said : " If a man see my 

ibid. face, he shall not live." Or if Scripture does not 

cf. John. He, either in declaring God to be invisible, or in 

i. 1 8, etc. stating that He has been seen, it must therefore be 

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 

with the measure of a secondary l nature ; just as 

1 " secondary," i. e. not inferior, hut 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. 



14] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 63 

we may not view the sun, so far as the sum-total of 
its matter 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 x will seek 
to maintain that even the Son is invisible, like a 
word, like breath, and in claiming one state 2 for 
Father and Son, to establish that Father and Son 
are rather one and the same. But we have said c f. c. 14 
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 
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 3 """ 11 XI 
Jacob also says : " I have seen God face to face." Gen. 
" Therefore the same being is visible and invisible ; XXXIU 3 
and because he is both, therefore also the Father 
Himself is invisible, but being also the Son, He is 
visible." As if, indeed, the explanation of the 
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. Iloppe, pp. 98 ff. 

2 "one state," z. e. the state of invisibility. 



64 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 
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 , ri r . . -Jill 

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 
cf V1 Matt we rea d in the Gospel that " Moses was seen 
xvii - 3; conversing with Him " l it is clear that previously 

\ T U 1 Y /I 

Luke ix. God that is, the Son of God had always been 
3?- seen " in a mirror " and " riddle " and " vision " and 

cf. Numb. 

xii. 8; cf. "dream," as much by prophets and patriarchs as 

r^f Gen also tiH tnat time ty Moses himself, and the Lord 

xxviii. 13, Himself indeed perchance spoke face to face, 2 yet 

not in such a way that a man might see his face, 

Numb. xii. except perhaps " in a mirror, in a riddle." For if 

u 

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. 



14] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 65 

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. Exol. 
also equally declares that His face cannot be seen, xxxiii - 20 
which He had already shown, if He really had 
shown it ? But what is that " face " of God, the ibid. 
" sight " of which is refused ? If it was that which 
was seen " I saw God," says Jacob, <; face to face, Gen. 
and my soul was saved " that " face " must be xxxu< 3 
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 xiL .?. ; 

xxvin. 13, 

cannot be seen except in an imaginary form and etc. 
does he mean by his " face " 2 the invisible Father ? %^ mb 
Who is the Father ? WiH not the Son s face be Exod. 
His by virtue of the authority which He obtains 
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. 
I." Therefore the Son s face will be the Father. 28 
For, besides, what is it the Scripture says ? " The Lam. iv. 
spirit of His face (///. mask), Christ the Lord." 320 

1 The sentence would gain in clearness if, with C. H. Turner, we 
inserted itisa esf, alia quae tfterfacies 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 



66 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [14, 15 

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 in explaining this part of 

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 1 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. 18 removed all question as to time by saying that 

" God has never been seen." And the Apostle also 

confirms this as regards God : " whom no human 

jbid. 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 

" rjohn is koth Father and Son, how was He both seen 

i. i 

place of eitts (his) LXX has T\pS>v (ours). It looks as if he had 
falsified the text for his own purpose. R. V. : " The breath of our 
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. 



15] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 67 

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 is He found to have been seen 
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 

o 

fully visible by flesh, namely, " the Word," who j ohn j , 4 

" was " also " made flesh," and it was another whom 

" no one ever saw," the Father, of course, whose the John i. is 

Word is ? For let us examine who it was the 

Apostles saw. " What we have seen," says John, i John 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. r, 

Father, not the Father with Himself. 2 For 2 

although " the W T 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 MSS. with C. H. Turner. 

2 Read seniet ipsum with C. H. Turner for sennonem of MSS. 



68 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [15 

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, 
xvh. 4, ^ nd it was f or t hat reason (since he had called 
John i. i " the Word " of God " God "), lest he should en 
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 
ohn i 18 Word," " the onl y begotten Son, who Himself de- 
cf- Tjohn dared 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 
L l Paul saw, but yet he did not see the Father, 

i Cor. ix. "Have I not," he said, "seen Jesus?" But he 
1 ix 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 
16 one of men hath seen, nor indeed can see," ampli- 

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

1 ex abundanti: see Thesaunis s. v. abundo and Hoppe, p. 101. 
It is very common in Tertullian. 



15] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PR AXE AS 69 

he had also said earlier : " And to the King of the i Tim. i. 
ages, immortal, invisible, the only God," that we i; 
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 " 3 c 
" light," of course and yet even it neither he 8 
himself could experience without danger to his j[ \^ im 
sight nor could Peter, John and James, without cf - z Cor - 
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 xxxlli - 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 I 7 olin v 
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 anientiae for et amentia with C. H. 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. 



70 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [16 

1 6. And you are not 1 to suppose that it was 
cf. John i. only the works 2 of the universe that were done 
by the" Son; He also performed all that were 
subsequently performed by God. For " the Father " 
John iii, who " loves the Son and hath given over all things 
into His bosom/ 3 " loves," of course, from the begin 
ning and a gave over" from the beginning, from 
John i. i that beginning 4 when "the Word was with God 
Matt. and the Word was God." To whom " has been 
18 ll powcr >, by the p ather in h eaven anc ] 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" 

jolm ii v. I 22 and " a11 judgment" and that "all things were 

John i. 3 made by Him" and that "all things have been 

111 handed over into His hand," he allows no exception 

in time, because it will not be a case of "all," if 

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 

cf Gen and destroying the tongues, punishing the whole 

vii. 10 world with violent waters, " raining fire and 

xi*. 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 nee 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. 
(<:) of the Gospels. For abl. =acc., see Hoppe, pp. 40 f. Pamelius 
altered stnu to vianu, and this is accepted by Krojmann. Senszi 
in the apparatus to Kroymann s smaller edition is a misprint. See 
c. 21 for the regular reading. Ronsch, Das N. T. Teitullians has 
strangely overlooked this difference. 

4 Omit the a of MSS. with C. H. Turner. 



i6] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 71 

down to the patriarchs and prophets, " in vision," cf. Numb. 
"in dream," "in a mirror," "in a riddle," building ^or. xiii. 
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 l 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 
in the past. For it was " for us " that they were i Cor. x 
also done even as "they were written" ; "unto us !I 
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, 2 when He asked Adam as if ignorant: 
"Where art thou, Adam?" "regretting that He Gen. iii. 9; 
had made man," as if not foreseeing his character ; c{ : ? en * 
"trying Abraham," as if He did not "know what cf. Gen. 
was in man " ; when hurt, reconciled to them again, cfjohn 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. 
itself, having on this account been "made" by the jf. ; a f att 

John xi. 

1 For the metaphorical uses of sterna in Tertullian. see Hoppe, 35? Matt.i. 
p. 191. 16; xxvu. 

For parallels to this in Teitullian, see d Ales, p. 102. 5> etc - 



TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 



[r6 



cf. Ps. viii. 
6 (Heb. ii. 
7) 



Ibid. 
Ibid. 



i Tim. vi. 
16 

Acts xvii. 

24 

Ps. xcvi. 

4.5 

Isa. x. 14 

I-a. Ixvi. i 
cf. Gen. 
iii. 8 
cf. Gen. 
vii. 1 6 
cf. Gen. 
xviii. 4, 8 
cf. Exod. 
iii. 4 
cf. Dan. 
iii. 92 
cf. Numb. 
xii. 6, 8 ; 
i Cor. xiii. 

12. 



Father 1 " a little less than the angels." But you 
thrust upon 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 
that one "was made less" by another, not Himself 
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, 
the invisible, " whom no man hath seen nor can 
see," He who " dwelleth in light unapproachable," 
He who "dwelleth not in what is made by the 
hand 2 of man," " in whose presence the earth 
trembles, the mountains melt like wax," " who seizes 
the whole world with his hand like a nest," whose 
" throne is heaven and his footstool earth," in whom 
is all space while He himself is not in space, who 
is the farthest boundary of the universe, the Most 
High, "walked in the garden till the evening" 
seeking Adam, and "shut the ark" after Noah s 
entrance, and " rested " 3 with Abraham " under an 
oak," and " called Moses from the " burning " bush," 
and appeared with three others " in the furnace " of 
the Babylonian king ! Although He was called 
Son of God in " image " and " mirror " and " riddle," 



1 When Tertul Han 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 P^or plur. neut. of participle following a preposition, see Hoppe, 
pp. 97 f. 

3 For refrigerare intransitively used, see Hoppe, p. 64. 



i6, 17] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 73 

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 j^ hn xix 
clear their mistake. Not knowing that from the 13 
beginning the whole course of the divine system XX vii. 5 g } 
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 will not thirst nor hunger at all " : 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 came 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- 6 
ture says in agreement : 4 " Blessed is He that PS. cxvii. 
cometh in the name of the Lord," meaning, of 26 
course, the Son in the Father s name. " But the Rev. xix. 
name of the Father," they say, is " God all- 6 

1 Here Tertullian is only giving a paradoxical turn to his 
argument. 

a From this reference it is obvious that Tertullian, or the version 
of Scripture used by him, took e/ca0i<rei/ 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. 

* For this use of condico in Tertullian, see Hoppe, p. 127. 



74 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [17 

isa. i. 9, powerful," "Lord of hosts," "King of Israel," "I 

Exoc^iii am -" Because 1 so the Scriptures teach, we say 

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, you read of " God all-powerful " and 

6; Numb. t h e Most High" and "God of Hosts" and "King 

xxiv. 16 

Isa. i. 9, of Israel" and "I am," consider whether the Son 
Exo d jjj also be not indicated by these terms, being in his 
14, etc. own right " God," as " the Word of all powerful 
xix. 6 (13) God" and as having " received power over every- 
cf. Matt, thing"; "Most High," as "raised by God s right 
xxviii! 18; hand," even as Peter says in his speech in Acts ; 
S^-H."! " Lord of Hosts >" because " everything has been 
cf. Actsii. made subject to Him" by the Father; "King of 
H I cor. Israel," because the lot of that race fell 4 especially 
xv. 28 to him ; also " I am," because many " are named 

cf. Deut. 7 

xxxii. 8, 9 sons, and are not sons. But if they will have it 
cf. i John that the F at her s 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 
Rev. i. 8 Apocalypse : " I am the Lord who is, and who 

1 Qtiateiius "because" ; see Iloppe, pp. 82 f. 

2 Reading eitni 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. lunins 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 is one God only, as if it has not also set 
forth two Gods and Lords, as we showed above, cf. c. 13 
"Therefore," they N 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 Redoes 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 tiw porro = seel, etc., see Hoppe, p. 113. 



76 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [18 

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 is not, except my beam " ; would you not 
have stigmatised its folly, as if the beam also were 
cf. Isa. nt 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 alius a, see the notes on cc. 8, 9 above. 



i8, 19] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 77 

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. 

19. If any will snatch even at this saying of His xllv - 24 
to prove His individuality, He uses the words, " I i sa . xliv. 
alone stretched out the heavens " as meaning 24 
" 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. 
stretched out the heavens " in the way in which x 
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- ^"prov. 7 
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 heretics intended are such as Simon Magus, Apelles, 
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. 



78 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [19 

the wisdom and power of God " according to the 
Apostle, " who " alone " knows " the Father s mind. 

i Cor. ii. For 4< 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 it says 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. i- strength." But " the Word," " power and wisdom 
3;iCor.i. of God ,, win be the Son Himself> If; thenj all 

cf. Isa. things are through the Son, in " stretching out 
xhv. 24 the heavens" a i so through the Son He did not 
ibid. " stretch them out alone," except in the way in which 

He did it apart from all others (but the Son). 

And, besides, He immediately speaks about the 
Isa. xliv. Son : " Who else cast down the signs of the ven- 
25> 2( triloquists and divinations from the mind, turning 

back the wise and making their counsel of none 

effect, 2 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 
xhv. 24 heavens," namely, alone with His Son, even as 

He is one with the Son. Similarly, also, the Son 

1 On this punctuation, cf. the note on c. 2. 

2 This passage is closely parallel to Adv. Marc. iv. 22 (p. 217, 
Oehler ; p. 494, 1. 21, Kroymann). 



i 9 ] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 79 

will utter the words : " I alone stretched out the isa. xliv. 
heavens," because " by the Word the heavens were JJjj?g 
strengthened," because when "wisdom stood by " cf. Prov. 
in the Word, " the heavens were prepared " and V1 
"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 j! 4 Prov 
as servant to the operation of the Father. He also viii. 27 
it will be that says : " I am the first, and I am for j sa . x ii. 4 
the time that is to come." " The Word," of course, c f. i sa . X H. 
is " first " of all : " In the beginning was the Word," 4 

John i. I 

in which beginning He was brought forth by the 
Father. But the Father as " having no beginning/ c f. n e b. 
as brought forth by no one, as unborn, cannot be vu * 3 
seen. He who was always " alone," could have no isa. xliv. 
order in time. 

Therefore if they thought that the same being 
was to be believed to be both Father and Son, with 
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 
repression of their reasonings, 1 if they pick any 
thing out from the Scriptures to support their view, 
refusing to look upon everything else which in 
itself keeps the rule, 2 and indeed without danger to 
the unity of divinity ancUhe 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 is none," so in the Gospel they defend the 
John. x. Lord s answer to Philip : " I and the Father are 
3> X1V - 9 onej " anc i . He who hath seen me, hath seen also 
John. xiv. the Father," and : " I am in the Father and the 
I0> " Father in me." To these three passages 4 they 
would have the whole charter 5 of both Testaments 
to yield, although it is proper that the fewer 
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 heie to the 
refill a Jidei. 

3 Reading stalu with Kroymann for the not impossible MSS. 
reading sonilti (sonalu), "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, Beitrcige, Bd. vi. 

pp. 137 ff. 



2o, 21] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 81 

the forest 1 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 how many passages 3 lay down 
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 j hni ,_ 
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 ] bn 
other " God "although " the Word is " also " God," 
but as God s Son, not as Father one " through cf.joLn i. 
whom " are all things, the other " from whom " are 3 

. * "forest" (silua), a graphic way of describing the immense 
sue and complexity of Scripture : cf. Apol. c. 4 (p. 16 1 27 ed 
Mayor), totam illam neterem et squalentem siluctm legum 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 Th V e f is doubtful here ; I translate Ursinus /" (MSS 
paiiaoribns). 



Ho io = O SC- ca ua cf - 

4 For this punctuation of the verse, see the note on c. 2. 



82 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS [21 

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 He whose " Word " he was ; it was 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 

cf^Matt 36 also i1: is that is termed b y J hn " the Lamb of 
iii. 17, etc. God," not He whose " Beloved " l 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 

16 himself, too, proves that they were right in this 
judgment, by answering Nathanael indeed thus : 

Johni. 50 "Because I said, I saw thee under the fig-tree, there- 
Matt, xvi. fore thou believest," by maintaining, however, that 

17 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 " 
16,17 w ho had "revealed" to Peter what Peter had 

1 Dilectus (Gk. agapetos) : see Dean Robinson, " The Beloved" 
as a Messianic title, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the 
Ephesians, pp. 229-233. 



21] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PR AXE AS 83 

recognised, namely, that " Christ was the Son of Matt. xvi. 
God." When He entered " into the temple," He, as j^ hn }i> 
Son, called it His " Father s house." When He 14, 16 
addresses Nicodemus, He says : " God so loved the {^ m 
world that He gave His only Son, that every one 
who believed in Him, should not perish, but should 
have everlasting: life." And ae;ain : " For God sent J ohn i- 

1 7 1 8 

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 
" The Father loveth the Son and hath given all j^n 
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. 
Himself of course as the Son, not the Father, who 25 2i 
elsewhere also was called " Christ, Son of God," Matt. xvi. 
not the Father. Later He says to His disciples : l6 etc< 
" It is mine to do the will of Him that sent me, John iv. 
that I may complete His work." And to the Jews 34 
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 tineret, Kroymann s skilful 
emendation of the MSS. reading, CUDI interrogaretur quid de lesu 
contingeret. 



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 Pi is Father, 
thus making Himself equal to God." Then, there- 
John v. fore, He said to them : " The Son can do nothing 
19-27 of 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 l 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 
all may 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 belie veth 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 demonsirabit Kroymann, for MSS. dtnionstrauit. 



2i] TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS 85 

He adds further: "But I have greater testimony John v. 
than that of John ; for the works that the Father 36 > 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. 
they ought to do," He answered : " To believe in * 8 > 2 9 
Him whom God hath sent." He declares that He 
"is also the bread which the Father offered from 3? 35 * 
heaven " ; therefore that " everything which the c f 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 c f. John vi. 
that he who saw the Son and believed in Him, 4 
should attain life and resurrection " ; that " no cf. John 
one," further, "could come to Him unless the vi- 44 
Father drew him"; "that every one who had cf. John 
heard and learnt from the Father, came to Him, vit 45 
adding here also : "not as if any one has seen the j ohn vi 
Father," to show that it is the Father s word that & 
makes men learned. But when " many are depart- cf . John 
ing" from Him and He puts the question to His vi - 6 6 

J See above, c. 17, 



86 TERTULLIAN AGAINST PR AXE AS [21, 22 

cf. John apostles " whether they also wish to depart," what 

John 7 vi. " does Simon Peter answer " ? " Whither are we to 

68, 69 go ? jhou hast the words of life, and we believe 

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 

i": 26 " 27 not the Father, but the Son), He said: "And me, 

John vu. i T i r 

28, 29 ye know whence I am ; and I have not come ot 
myself, but He is true, who sent me, whom ye 
know not; I know Him, because I was with Him." 
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 little while," said He, " I am with you and I go to 
cf. John Him who sent me." And when He denies that 
viii. 16 j_f e i s a ione " " But I," he says, " and He who sent 
l6* n 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 
I7 l8 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. imposes faith on "the testimony," not of one, but 

xvii. 6) 

cf.