Disciplinary, Moral, and Ascetical Works

Foreword

FOREWORD This volume contains seven of Tertullian's works which deal with disciplinary, moral, and ascetical questions.1 The first five (To the il1artyrs, Spectacles, The Apparel of HIomen, Prayer, and Patience) belong to the author's Catholic period; the two remaining (The Chaplet; Flight in Time of Persecution ) were written after he had broken with the Church and given his intellectual adhesion to Montanism. Considering Tertullian's moral writings as a whole, we cannot help admiring the sincerity, earnestness, and zeal with which he sets forth the ideals of Christian life. The imitation of God and Christ is, as it were, the leitmotif of his moral teachings. All that, man is and possesses is a free gift of God's grace; having lost his supernatural union with God through the fall of the first parents, he was restored to God's friendship and love by the Redemption. The thought Volume 10 of this series contains a selection of Tertullian's apologetical works. Since its publication in 1950, the task of the translator has been made easier by the appearance of the critical edition of Tertullian's ojiera omnia in the CorjJUs Christianorum, Series Latina, vols. 1-2 (Turnhout, Belgium, 1954). Special mention must also be made of the second volume of J. Quasten's Patroiogy (\Vestminster, Md. 1953) which, in its section on Tertullian (pp. 246-340), contains a comprehensive and detailed bibliography on this African writer and his works. 7 8 TERTULLIAN of God's infinite mercy and of the Redemption must impel the Christian to bear witness to God and Christ in the world, without himself being of the world. No compromise, therefore , is allowed with idolatry. For, this would mean forsaking God and Christ again, and giving allegiance to God's rival, the perverter of man and all things created by God, Satan. The trials of life must be borne with patience whose origin is found in God, the Creator Himself and Christ being the prototypes of this virtue. Even martyrdom is a gift of God, a noble contest whose crown is eternal life, a storm that separates the chaff from the wheat. The Christian should be spurred on by the exceeding joy awaiting him in the life to come. Being of predominantly practical disposition, Tertullian is not content with stating general principles. He is always eager to give minute rules not only for the Christian's behavior in daily life, especially in his contacts with the pagan world, but also for such minute liturgical details as the tone, the gestures, and the attitudes to be observed in prayer. In view of Tertullian's uncompromising attitude toward everything that, in his opinion, was related to idolatry, it is hardly surprising that his treatise, SPectacles, contains an out-and-out indictment of the performances given in the circus, theater, stadium and amphitheater, such entertainments being absolutely incompatible with the faith and moral discipline of Christianity. Equally strong language is found in his two books on The Apparel of Women. There is a certain serenity in the treatises, Prayer and Patience, and a gentle and tender charity in the address To the Martyrs. But, at times, even there the harshness of his asceticism pierces through, rejecting what seems to him a compromise or even a toleration. FOREWORD 9 After his contact with 1'1ontanism, this harshness increases steadily and brings him into conflict with the authorities of the Church. Exasperated by this opposition, he stubbornly clings to his own private judgment, pushing his principles to the extreme and trying to convince by the pressure of invective rather than by the attraction of an ideal. In the treatise, The Chaplet, he declares unlawful not only military service, but also the acceptance of any public office. In the treatise, Flight in the Time of Persecution, he brands as disguised apostasy every attempt to elude persecution. Bishops who, in time of persecution, govern their dioceses from a place of safety are to him not shepherds of their flocks, but hirelings who flee when the wolf comes and attacks the sheep. The Catholic brethren who place themselves beyond the reach of the persecutors he calls moral cowards who are afraid of losing the comforts of life. To be sure, Montanism did not bring about a radical change in Tertullian 's moral teaching, because his asceticism was marked with a certain rigor and inflexibility from the beginning. Since his contact with...