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De Anima
The a Supplements to Vigiliae Christianaea (TM) series was launched in 1987 with the publication of Tertullianus, "De Idololatria," a critical text with translation and commentary by J.H. Waszink and J.C.M. van Winden (partly based on a manuscript left behind by P.G. van der Nat). It seems appropriate, therefore, that the 100th volume to appear in the a Supplements to Vigiliae Christianaea (TM) series should be an updated reprint of J.H. Waszinka (TM)s monumental and authoritative edition of Tertulliana (TM)s "De Anima." This volume contains the complete contents of the first edition, to which we have added a brief overview of J.H. Waszinka (TM)s scholarly career, an English translation of the greater part of the introduction to his German translation of "De Anima" of 1980 and a list of corrections authorized by him.
740 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 211
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About the author
Tertullian
552 books90 followersQuintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220 AD), was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" and "the founder of Western theology." Though conservative, he did originate and advance new theology to the early Church. He is perhaps most famous for being the oldest extant Latin writer to use the term Trinity (Latin trinitas), and giving the oldest extant formal exposition of a Trinitarian theology. Other Latin formulations that first appear in his work are "three Persons, one Substance" as the Latin "tres Personae, una Substantia" (itself from the Koine Greek "treis Hypostases, Homoousios"). He wrote his trinitarian formula after becoming a Montanist; his ideas were at first rejected as heresy by the church at large, but later accepted as Christian orthodoxy.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 22, 2012
A book like this, written less than 2 centuries after Christ, does nothing if not rattle your sense of what issues people wrestled with in the distant past and how they wrestled with them. Tertullian believed his world was well settled, grossly overpopulated, and taxed for resources (ch. 30). He believed it was important to contend that life began at conception (ch. 19, 25, 27, 37). He held that, for the Christian, there was nothing inherently shameful about sex and that the Flesh was much less to blame than the Inner Man for our problems (ch. 27, 40). And he sometimes reasoned from limited data about the horizontal (material-world) plane to spurious conclusions about the vertical (spiritual-world) plane--and, by golly, aren’t we all glad we’ve finished with that sort of error in the modern world?
Some portions of A Treatise on the Soul appear utterly pointless and ridiculous to modern eyes, while others are timeless and achingly beautiful. Tertullian spends a great deal of space refuting notions of the soul proposed by classical--mainly Greek--authors. And much of the rest of the book is given over to questionable speculation. Still, there are a good number of worthy nuggets here, awaiting the curious reader.
-=-=-=-
Below are some passages culled for topics of personal interest--the topics of human nature, original sin, and depravity. Taken as one example, Tertullian, I believe, proves that Augustine was not the originator of contention on these issues in the early church.
Chapter XVI – http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
Tertullian accepts Plato’s notion of the soul possessing both a rational (that is, godly and original) element and an irrational (fallen) element, though he does not share Plato’s opinion that this necessarily indicates two separate natures. He states:
“The irrational element, however, we must understand to have accrued later, as having proceeded from the instigation of the serpent—the very achievement of the first transgression—which thenceforward became inherent in the soul, and grew with its growth, assuming the manner by this time of a natural development, happening as it did immediately at the beginning of nature. . . . Now from the devil proceeds the incentive to sin. All sin, however, is irrational: therefore the irrational proceeds from the devil, from whom sin proceeds; and it is extraneous to God, to whom also the irrational is an alien principle. The diversity, then, between these two elements arises from the difference of their authors.”
At the end of the chapter he also refers to the irrational as “that second, later, and deteriorated nature.”
Chapter XXI – http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
Tertullian argues that human nature is changeable: “…it remains that the one only original element of [Adam’s] nature was what is called the animal (the principle of vitality, the soul), which we maintain to be simple and uniform in its condition. Concerning this, it remains for us to inquire whether, as being called natural, it ought to be deemed subject to change. The heretics whom we have referred to deny that nature is susceptible of any change. . . . If so, then “God will not be able any longer to raise up from the stones children unto Abraham; nor to make a generation of vipers bring forth fruits of repentance.”And if so, the apostle too was in error when he said in his epistle, “Ye were at one time darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord,” and, “We also were by nature children of wrath;” and, “Such were some of you, but ye are washed.” The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant with truth. A corrupt tree will never yield good fruit, unless the better nature be grafted into it; nor will a good tree produce evil fruit, except by the same process of cultivation.”
And: “Now that which has received its constitution by being made or by being born, is by nature capable of being changed, for it can be both born again and re-made; whereas that which is not-made and unborn will remain for ever immoveable. Since, however, this state is suited to God alone, as the only Being who is unborn and not-made (and therefore immortal and unchangeable), it is absolutely certain that the nature of all other existences which are born and created is subject to modification and change. . . .”
Chapter XL - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
“Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame.”
Chapter XLI - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
“. . . the corruption of our nature is another nature having a god and father of its own, namely the author of that corruption.”
Some portions of A Treatise on the Soul appear utterly pointless and ridiculous to modern eyes, while others are timeless and achingly beautiful. Tertullian spends a great deal of space refuting notions of the soul proposed by classical--mainly Greek--authors. And much of the rest of the book is given over to questionable speculation. Still, there are a good number of worthy nuggets here, awaiting the curious reader.
-=-=-=-
Below are some passages culled for topics of personal interest--the topics of human nature, original sin, and depravity. Taken as one example, Tertullian, I believe, proves that Augustine was not the originator of contention on these issues in the early church.
Chapter XVI – http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
Tertullian accepts Plato’s notion of the soul possessing both a rational (that is, godly and original) element and an irrational (fallen) element, though he does not share Plato’s opinion that this necessarily indicates two separate natures. He states:
“The irrational element, however, we must understand to have accrued later, as having proceeded from the instigation of the serpent—the very achievement of the first transgression—which thenceforward became inherent in the soul, and grew with its growth, assuming the manner by this time of a natural development, happening as it did immediately at the beginning of nature. . . . Now from the devil proceeds the incentive to sin. All sin, however, is irrational: therefore the irrational proceeds from the devil, from whom sin proceeds; and it is extraneous to God, to whom also the irrational is an alien principle. The diversity, then, between these two elements arises from the difference of their authors.”
At the end of the chapter he also refers to the irrational as “that second, later, and deteriorated nature.”
Chapter XXI – http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
Tertullian argues that human nature is changeable: “…it remains that the one only original element of [Adam’s] nature was what is called the animal (the principle of vitality, the soul), which we maintain to be simple and uniform in its condition. Concerning this, it remains for us to inquire whether, as being called natural, it ought to be deemed subject to change. The heretics whom we have referred to deny that nature is susceptible of any change. . . . If so, then “God will not be able any longer to raise up from the stones children unto Abraham; nor to make a generation of vipers bring forth fruits of repentance.”And if so, the apostle too was in error when he said in his epistle, “Ye were at one time darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord,” and, “We also were by nature children of wrath;” and, “Such were some of you, but ye are washed.” The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant with truth. A corrupt tree will never yield good fruit, unless the better nature be grafted into it; nor will a good tree produce evil fruit, except by the same process of cultivation.”
And: “Now that which has received its constitution by being made or by being born, is by nature capable of being changed, for it can be both born again and re-made; whereas that which is not-made and unborn will remain for ever immoveable. Since, however, this state is suited to God alone, as the only Being who is unborn and not-made (and therefore immortal and unchangeable), it is absolutely certain that the nature of all other existences which are born and created is subject to modification and change. . . .”
Chapter XL - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
“Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame.”
Chapter XLI - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03...
“. . . the corruption of our nature is another nature having a god and father of its own, namely the author of that corruption.”
April 3, 2019
Crítica y utiliza a toda la tradición para poder explicar y fundamentar las primeras ideas del cristianismo con respecto a Dios, el alma, el espíritu, etc.
May 3, 2021
It's interesting to see the contrast between the Early Christians who greatly respected the Greek philosophers and liked to speculate about whether or not they were saved, on the one hand, and then Tertullian, on the other. Tertullian laments the influence of Greek philosophy on other Christians, he thinks that Socrates was possessed by demons and that Plato believed only 'boy-lovers' went to heaven.
His views on the soul were bizarre and not at all what I expected, he makes arguments so similar to those given by modern physiscalists that you would think they were stealing from him:
"Whence could accrue such power to the soul, if it were incorporeal? How could an unsubstantial thing propel solid objects?" (Chapter VI)
However, this isn't to say that Tertullian was actually a proto-physicalist, since his view of the soul is far more strange. He seemed to think of it as being like a body within a body, "we shall not be at all inconsistent if we declare that the more usual characteristics of a body, such as invariably accrue to the corporeal condition, belong also to the soul—such as form and limitation; and that triad of dimensions—I mean length, and breadth and height." He even went so far as to use the analogy of a pregnant women to illustrate how one person could contain two bodies.
Another interesting thing was to see a kind of underdeveloped purgatory doctrine, Tertullian believed all souls to go to 'Hades' where the damned would suffer and the saved experience bliss. However, he also uses The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant to support his view that some will be tortured in Hades until the general resurection, at which point their suffering will cease.
He also considered Hades to be a literal place underground, which I found funny.
Fun read overall, I look forward to getting into more of his stuff.
His views on the soul were bizarre and not at all what I expected, he makes arguments so similar to those given by modern physiscalists that you would think they were stealing from him:
"Whence could accrue such power to the soul, if it were incorporeal? How could an unsubstantial thing propel solid objects?" (Chapter VI)
However, this isn't to say that Tertullian was actually a proto-physicalist, since his view of the soul is far more strange. He seemed to think of it as being like a body within a body, "we shall not be at all inconsistent if we declare that the more usual characteristics of a body, such as invariably accrue to the corporeal condition, belong also to the soul—such as form and limitation; and that triad of dimensions—I mean length, and breadth and height." He even went so far as to use the analogy of a pregnant women to illustrate how one person could contain two bodies.
Another interesting thing was to see a kind of underdeveloped purgatory doctrine, Tertullian believed all souls to go to 'Hades' where the damned would suffer and the saved experience bliss. However, he also uses The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant to support his view that some will be tortured in Hades until the general resurection, at which point their suffering will cease.
He also considered Hades to be a literal place underground, which I found funny.
Fun read overall, I look forward to getting into more of his stuff.
June 28, 2023
Tertullian offers a really useful critique of Platonic forms, and other false philosophical notions, and is really good in opposing abortion. He argued that life begins at conception and described how abortions were carried out by medics in his day, which seemed to be very similar to how they are carried out now.
April 17, 2019
Sur le sommeil, la mort, la nature de l'âme, ses opérations, le purgatoire (?). Interraction avec Platon, Aristote et la plupart des philosophes... que Tertullien est loin d'égaler !
October 30, 2024
A very nice, short book by Tertullian laying out his arguments for Christianity from the light of nature (as illuminating the soul).
October 14, 2024
This book is a response to Platonism and other Greek philosophies on the soul. He touches on the origin of the soul, how the soul relates to the body, death, and other issues. I was surprised to learn how different the Christian ideas of the soul were compared to the world around them.
The book is further evidence of Christian teaching on life beginning at conception. He is clear and explicit that the soul and body are created simultaneously. Interestingly enough, this contrasts with other philosophies that see the soul entering the body after birth.
He does have moments where he appears to be proclaiming some proto-purgatory idea. It is unclear what he truly thinks and believes about the intermediate state after death. It appeared to me like he is trying to affirm the resurrection that is coming and avoid the traps of Platonism. His ideas of Hades may simply be another way of describing heaven but it is unclear what he means. I will have to read his book on the resurrection to investigate further.
There are also hints of Tertullian's Montanism in the book. There are a few mentions here and there. I still am not sure what to make of his "heresy." But overall, this work is largely orthodox and helpful.
The book is further evidence of Christian teaching on life beginning at conception. He is clear and explicit that the soul and body are created simultaneously. Interestingly enough, this contrasts with other philosophies that see the soul entering the body after birth.
He does have moments where he appears to be proclaiming some proto-purgatory idea. It is unclear what he truly thinks and believes about the intermediate state after death. It appeared to me like he is trying to affirm the resurrection that is coming and avoid the traps of Platonism. His ideas of Hades may simply be another way of describing heaven but it is unclear what he means. I will have to read his book on the resurrection to investigate further.
There are also hints of Tertullian's Montanism in the book. There are a few mentions here and there. I still am not sure what to make of his "heresy." But overall, this work is largely orthodox and helpful.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews