Tertullian
Tertullian was born in Carthage in North Africa and is traditionally thought to have been trained as a lawyer. He was the first major Christian author to write chiefly in Latin rather than Greek, and so he is known as the father of Latin, or Western, theology. He wrote an Apology for the faith and polemical works such as Against Marcion, defending the unity of the Old and New Testaments.1
Tertullian was the first to use the Latin word “Trinity.” Against Praxeas, who made the Father, Son, and Spirit mere modes of one person, he taught that God is one in substance and three in person, una substantia, tres personae, a formula the church would later confirm.2 He firmly refused to blend the gospel with Greek philosophy:
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians?3 TertullianPrescription against Heretics 7
Late in life he joined the Montanists, a movement claiming new prophecy, which has made him a controversial figure.4
His Legacy
Tertullian’s Trinitarian language became the common inheritance of Rome and the Reformers alike. But his teaching that there was no remedy for sin after baptism except martyrdom sharpened the anxious question of post-baptismal sin, which the medieval church answered with the sacrament of penance and Luther with justification by faith alone.5
