Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be reading together the famous apology of Tertullian. This is perhaps the most often quoted work of the entire pre-Nicene period from AD 100 to AD 325. It is in this work that Tertullian coined the well-known phrase" the blood of the martyrs is seed." I've been saying for years that Christians need to read the early Christian writings for themselves and not simply rely upon secondary sources.
So this recording is being made for that very purpose, that you can hear one of the early Christian writings for yourself. Now, what I'm reading tonight is a condensed version of Tertullian's apology. And that's because to read the entire work would take several hours. So what I've done is omit everything that's either repetitious or is not of great importance. And what we'll be reading tonight are all of the important passages, the essence of the apology.
Now, the plan is to divide this reading into 10 parts, each of which will be about 7 minutes long. And each of these will be a separate track on the CD when this is made into a compact disk. Now at the beginning of each part, I'm going to give you a brief introduction explaining the topic or topics that Tertullian discusses in that section, and also what chapters it covers in his apology. Now, Tertullian wrote his apology around the year 195. This was before his association with the Montanists.
So everything he expresses in his apology represents what Christians as a whole believed and practiced in His day. In fact, what He says is corroborated by other apologies and by various writings of other early Christians. Now, as I think most of you know, an apology in the sense that we're using it here tonight is not an expression of remorse or guilt for having done something wrong. Not at all. Rather, an apology in a literary sense is a defense.
Tertullian in his work is explaining to the unbelieving Romans what all Christians in his day believed and practiced. He also refuted the various false accusations that were being made about Christians, and he does all of this in an attempt to persuade the authorities to stop their horrible persecution of the Christians. Now, I'm not reading this tonight merely to satisfy someone's intellectual curiosity about the beliefs and practices of the Second Century Church.
Now, I first read this apology nearly 20 years ago, and it dramatically impacted my Christian life at that time. That was because the Christianity that Tertullian describes in his apology differs in many ways from the Christianity that we see today. And I had read the Scriptures enough to know that the things that Tertullian is saying are right out of the Scriptures. So my prayer tonight is that this work will have a similar impact on your life.
Well, now we begin with part one, which is taken from chapters 1 and 2 of the apology. In these chapters, Tertullian addresses the Roman authorities and explains why he is writing this work. He also discusses the horrible but popular accusations that were being made about the Christian love feast. He writes," Rulers of the Roman Empire, when you are seated for the administration of justice on your lofty tribunal under the gaze of every eye, and occupying there all but the highest position in the state.
You are afraid to openly inquire into and sift before the world the real truth in regard to the charges made against the Christians. In this instance alone, you are afraid or ashamed to exercise your authority in making public inquiry with the carefulness which becomes justice. Finally, and the extreme severities that are inflicted on our people in recent private judgments seem to stand in the way of our being permitted to defend ourselves before you.
Yet surely you cannot forbid the truth to reach your ears by the secret pathway of this silent book. Truth has no appeals to make to you in regard of her condition, for that does not excite her wonder. She knows that she is but a sojourner on the earth and that among strangers she naturally finds enemies. And more than this, that her origin, her dwelling place, her hope, her recompense, her honors are above.
Nevertheless, there is one thing that truth anxiously desires of earthly rulers, and that is not to be condemned unknown. What harm can it do to the laws supreme in their domain to give her a hearing? When men dislike something, simply because they are entirely ignorant of its nature, may it not possibly turn out that it may be precisely the very sort of thing that they should not dislike.
That we are persecuted out of ignorance is proved by this, that those who once hated Christianity, because they knew nothing about it, no sooner come to know it than they at once lay down their enmity. From being haters of Christianity, they become its disciples. By simply getting acquainted with it, they begin now to hate what they had formerly been, and to profess what they had formerly hated. And their numbers are as great as are laid to our charge.
The outcry is that the state is filled with Christians, that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands. People make lamentation as for some calamity that both sexes, every age and condition, even high rank, are passing over to the profession of the Christian faith. And yet for all this, their minds are not awakened to the thought of some good that perhaps they have failed to notice in it. Nature throws a veil over all evil, either out of fear or out of shame.
But what is there like this in the Christian's case? The only shame or regrets a Christian feels is at not having been a Christian earlier? If he is pointed out, he glories in it. If he is accused, he offers no defense. Interrogated, he makes voluntary confession. Condemned, he renders thanks. What sort of evil thing is this, which lacks all the ordinary characteristics of evil, fear, shame, subterfuge, penitence, lamenting.
If, again, you are so certain that we are the most wicked of men, why do you treat us so differently from other wicked people? That is from other criminals. It seems only fair that the same crime should get the same treatment. When the charges made against us are made against others, they are permitted to use both of their own lips and of hired defenders to show their innocence. They have full opportunity of answer and debate. In fact, it is against the law to condemn anybody undefended and unheard.
Christians alone are forbidden to say anything in defense of themselves, or in defense of the truth, to help the judge to a right decision. All that is cared about is having what the public hatred demands. Now we begin part two of tonight's reading, taken from chapters 3 through 7 of Tertullian's apology. In this section, Tertullian points out the inconsistencies in the public opinion about Christians, and he states that Tiberius Caesar had actually supported the Christians during his reign.
Tertullian also shows that so many of the accusations against Christians were merely rumors not to be believed.
He writes," What do we think of it that most people so blindly knock their heads against the hatred of the Christian name, such that when they bear favorable testimony to a Christian, they always mingle it with abuse of the name that he bears." For example, someone will say," Gaius Seius is a good man, only that he's a Christian." Or another will say," I'm astonished that a wise man like Lucius should have suddenly become a Christian." Nobody thinks it necessary to consider whether Gaius is not good and Lucius wise
on the very account that he is a Christian, or that he's a Christian for the reason that he is wise and good.
Well, having made these remarks, as it were, by way of an introduction, that I might show in its true colors the injustice of the public hatred against us, I shall now take my stand on the plea of our innocence. Tiberius, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world, having himself received information from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ's divinity, brought the matter before the Senate, with his own decision in favor of Christ.
However, the Senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his proposal. Caesar held to his opinion, threatening wrath against all accusers of the Christians. Consult your histories. You will find there that Nero was the first one who assailed the Christian religion with the imperial sword, which was making great progress then, particularly at Rome. But we glory in having our condemnation hallowed by the hatred of such an animal.
I would now have these most religious protectors and vindicators of the law and institutions of their fathers, tell me in regard to their own faithfulness and the honor and submission that they themselves show to ancestral institutions if they have departed from nothing themselves, if they have not put aside whatever is most useful and necessary as rules of virtuous life. Where is that happiness of married life ever so desirable, which distinguished our earlier manners?
And as a result of which, for about 600 years, there was not among us Romans a single divorce. Yet now women having every member of the body heavy laden with gold, wine bibbing is so common among them that the kiss is never offered with their will. And as for divorce, they long for it as though it were the natural consequence of marriage. Let me now discuss some of the accusations made against us.
We are accused of observing a holy rite in which we kill a little child and then eat him, in which after the feast, we practice incest. This is constantly laid to our charge, and yet you take no pains to elicit the truth of what we have been so long accused. We are daily beset by foes. We are daily betrayed. We are oftentimes surprised in our meetings and congregations. Yet, has anyone happened upon an infant wailing, according to the common story? You see, this is all based solely on rumor.
And everyone knows what sort of thing rumor is. It is one of your own sayings that among all evils, none flies so fast as rumor. Why is rumor such an evil thing? Is it because it is swift? Is it because it carries information? No. It is evil because it is the very law of its existence, that it continues only so long as it lies, and it lives only so long as there is no proof. For when proof is given, rumor ceases to exist.
And as having done its work of merely spreading a report, it delivers up a fact and is henceforth held to be a fact and called a fact. And then no one says, for instance, they say that it took place at Rome, or there is a rumor that he has obtained a province, but rather they say he has received a province, or it took place in Rome. Rumor the very designation of uncertainty has no place when a thing is certain. Does anyone but a fool put his trust in rumor?
This brings us to part three, taken from chapters 8 through 16. In these chapters, Tertullian utterly refutes the popular accusation that Christians slaughtered and ate babies at their love feasts and then practiced incest. He then briefly clears up some other accusations, such as that Christians were sun worshippers.
He writes," But now, suppose for a moment, let's just pretend that these accusations against us are true." Let's suppose that we're going to set before you the reward that you would receive from committing these atrocious acts. We'll promise you eternal life. Now suppose that this is your belief that you will receive eternal life if you will kill a baby and eat it, and then commit incest with your mother and sister.
I ask you that even if you believed doing those things would receive eternal life, do you think it would be worth it having to live with your conscience the rest of your life? Come plunge your knife into the baby, enemy of nobody, accused of nobody, child of all. Or if we're going to suppose that that's another's job to actually do the killing, simply take your place beside a human being dying before he has really lived. Await the departure of his lately given soul and then receive his fresh young blood.
Saturate your bread with it and freely partake and enjoy. And then while you're reclining at the table, take notice of the place where your mother and sister are sitting so that when the darkness has fallen on you, you won't make any mistake in lying with them, for you will be guilty of disobedience unless you perpetrate a deed of incest. Now, initiated and sealed into things like this, you have eternal life. Tell me, I pray you, would eternity be worth it? If it is not, then such rumors are not to be believed.
How could others do it if you yourself cannot? If you cannot do it, you shouldn't believe it of others, for a Christian is a human, just as you are. We are so far from killing babies that in our case, murder of every kind is forbidden. In fact, we may not even destroy the fetus while it is still in the womb. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier form of murder. It doesn't matter whether you take away a life that is born or destroy one that is coming to birth. He is a man who is going to be one.
You already have the fruit in its seed. And as far as drinking the blood of babies, we Christians do not even have the blood of animals in our meals of simple and natural food. We abstain from things strangled and things that die a natural death. We do this for no other reason than that we may not be polluted.
To clench the matter with a single example, you tempt Christians with sausages of blood, just because you are perfectly aware that the thing by which you thus try to get them to transgress, they hold to be unlawful. So how reasonable is it to believe that those of whom you are already convinced that they regard with horror the idea of tasting the blood of oxen, that they're eager to taste the blood of humans?
And as far as the rumor about committing incest, for us Christians, there is a persevering and steadfast chastity that has always protected us from anything like this. We keep ourselves from all adultery and all post-marital unfaithfulness. But now take a look at yourselves.
Everybody knows and everyone will readily admit it to be a fact that in your temples adulteries are arranged, that at the altars, pimping is practiced, that often in the houses of the temple keepers and priests under the sacrificial fillets and the sacred hats and the purple robes amid the fumes of incense, deeds of licentiousness are done. I am not sure, but your gods have more reason to complain of you than of Christians.
It is certainly among the votaries of your religion that the perpetrators of sacrilege are always found, for Christians do not enter your temples even in the daytime. Perhaps they too would be spoilers of them if they worshiped in them. What then do they worship, since their objects of worship are different from yours? Already indeed it is implied as the corollary from the rejection of the lie that they render homage to the truth. Perhaps like some others, you're under the delusion that our God is a donkey's head.
Cornelius Tacitus first put this notion into people's minds. Others, again, perhaps more believably, believe that the sun is our God. The idea of this no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the East in prayer. But you, many of you also under pretense, sometimes of worshiping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sunday to rejoicing, it's for a far different reason than worship of the sun.
Perhaps we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways of which they indeed are ignorant. These things I have discussed abundantly that I might not seem willing to pass by any rumor against us unrefuted. Now we begin part four of tonight's reading, taken from chapters 17-20 of Tertullian's apology. In these chapters, Tertullian begins his explanation of what Christians do believe and practice.
He begins by discussing God the Father. Then he explains and defends the authority of Scripture and narrates how the Greek Septuagint translation came about. He writes," Having thoroughly cleared ourselves, I now turn to an explanation of what our religion really is." The object of our worship is the one God. He who by His commanding Word, His arranging wisdom, His mighty power, brought forth from nothing this entire mass of our world, with all its array of elements, bodies, spirits, for the glory of His Majesty.
The Greeks have bestowed on this universe the name of cosmos. The eye cannot see our God, though He is visible spiritually. He is incomprehensible. Though in grace, He is manifested. He is beyond our utmost thought. Though our human faculties can conceive of Him. He is therefore equally real and equally great. But that which, in the ordinary sense, can be seen and handled and conceived is inferior to the eyes that see it, and the hands that touch it, and the mental faculties by which it is discovered.
But that which is infinite is known only to itself. This is which gives notion of God. While yet beyond all our conceptions, our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is. He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness as at once known and yet unknown.
But that we might attain a fuller and more authoritative knowledge of Him and of His counsels and will, God has added a written revelation for the benefit of everyone whose heart is set on seeking Him, that seeking they may find and finding believe and believing obey. For from the first he sent messengers into the world, men whose stainless righteousness made them worthy to know the Most High and to reveal Him.
Men abundantly endowed with the Holy Spirit that they might proclaim that there is one God only who made all things. We Christians are of your same stock and nature. Men are made, not born Christians. The preachers of whom we have spoken are called prophets from the office which belonged to them of predicting the future. Their words, as well as the miracles which they performed, that men might have faith in their divine authority, we have still in the literary treasures they have left, and which are open to all.
Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, the most learned of his race, a man of vast acquaintance with all literature, applied to the Jews for their writings. I mean the writings peculiar to them and in their language, which they alone possessed, for from themselves as a people dear to God for their Father's sake, their prophets had ever sprung, and to them they had ever spoken. Now in ancient times, the people we call Jews bore the name of Hebrews, and so both their writings and their speech were called Hebrew.
But that the understanding of their books might not be wanting. This also the Jews supplied to Ptolemy, for they gave him 72 interpreters. Men whom the philosopher Menedemus, the well-known asserter of a providence, regarded with respect as sharing in his views. This same account is given by Aristeas. So the king, that is Ptolemy, left these works unlocked to all in the Greek language. To this very day at the Temple of Serapis, the libraries of Ptolemy are to be seen, with the identical Hebrew originals in them.
Furthermore, the Jews read them publicly. They are in the habit of going to hear them every Sabbath. Whoever gives ear will find God in them, whoever takes pains to understand, will be compelled to believe. Well, first of all, the high antiquity of these writings claims authority for them. Secondly, of even greater importance, we point to the majesty of our scriptures, not only to their antiquity. If you doubt that they are as ancient as we say, we offer proof that they are divine.
And you may convince yourself of this at once and without going very far. Because your instructors are the world, the age, the events around us, all these things before you. All that is taking place around you was announced ahead of time. All that you now see with your eyes was previously heard by the ear.
The swallowing up of cities by the earth, the theft of islands by the sea, wars bringing external and internal convulsions, the collisions of kingdoms with kingdoms, famines and pestilences and local massacres, and widespread desolating mortalities, the exaltation of the lowly and the humbling of the proud, the decay of righteousness, the growth of sin, the slackening interest in all good ways. The very seasons and elements going out of their ordinary course. monstrous portents taking the place of nature's forms.
It was all foreseen and predicted before it came to pass. While we suffer these calamities, we can read of them in the Scriptures. As we examine the Scriptures, they are proved. Well, the truth of a prophecy, I think, is demonstration of its having come from above. Hence, there is among us an assured faith in regard to coming events, as things already prove to us. For they were predicted along with what we have day by day fulfilled.
They are uttered by the same voices, they are written in the same books, the same Spirit inspires them. All time is one to prophecy foretelling the future. Among men, it may be a distinction of times is made while the fulfillment is going on. From being future, we think of it as present, and then from the present, we count it as belonging to the past. So how are we to be blamed, I pray, that we believe in things to come as though they already were, with the grounds we have our faith in these two steps.
But having asserted that our religion is supported by the writings of the Jews, we fully admit that Christianity dates from a comparatively recent period. No further back indeed than the reign of Tiberius. So a question may perhaps be raised on this ground about the standing of Christianity, as if it were hiding something of its presumption under shadow of an illustrious religion, I mean that of the Jews, one which has at any rate undoubted allowance and permission of the law.
Or because apart from the question of age, we neither accord with the Jews and their peculiarities in regard to food, nor in their sacred days, nor even in their well-known bodily sign. The common people have now some knowledge of Christ and think of him as but a man, one indeed such as the Jews condemned, so that some may naturally enough have taken up the idea that we are worshippers of a mere human being.
But we are neither ashamed of Christ, for we rejoice to be counted as His disciples and to suffer in His name, nor do we differ from the Jews concerning God. We must therefore make a remark or two as to Christ's divinity. In former times, the Jews enjoyed much of God's favor when the fathers of their race were noted for their righteousness and faith. So it was that as a people, they flourished greatly, and their kingdom attained to a lofty eminence.
And so highly blessed were they that for their instruction, God spoke to them in special revelations, pointing out to them beforehand how they could merit His favor and avoid His displeasure. But how deeply they have sinned, puffed up to their fall with a false trust in their noble ancestors, turning from God's way into a way of sheer impiety. Though they themselves should refuse to admit it, their present national ruin would afford sufficient proof.
Scattered abroad, a race of wanderers, exiles from their own land and climate, they roam over the whole world without either a human or a heavenly king, not possessing even the stranger's right to set so much as a simple footstep in their native city.
The sacred writers, in giving previous warning of these things, all with equal clearness ever declared that in the last days of the world, God would, out of every nation and people and country, choose for Himself more faithful worshippers, upon whom he would bestow His grace, and that indeed in fuller measure, in keeping with the enlarged capacities of a nobler dispensation. Accordingly, he appeared among us, whose coming to renovate and illuminate man's nature had been announced ahead of time by God.
I'm speaking of Christ, the Son of God. And so the supreme head and master of this grace and discipline, the enlightener and trainer of the human race, God's son, was born. But first, I shall discuss his essential nature, so the nature of his birth will be properly understood. I've already asserted that God made the world and everything in it by His word and reason and power. This brings us to part 5 taken from chapters 20 through 24.
Here Tertullian explains the person of Jesus Christ, His divinity, His birth as a man, his rejection by the Jewish religious leaders, and His death. He then goes on to explain that the gods the Romans worship are actually demons. He writes," We have been taught that the Son of God proceeds forth from God, and in that procession He is generated so that He is the Son of God and is called divine from unity of substance with God. For God too is a Spirit.
Even when the ray is shot from the Sun, it is still part of the parent mass. The Sun will still be in the" ray" because it is a ray of the Sun. There is no division of substance, but merely an extension. Thus Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, as light is kindled from light. So too, that which has come forth out of God is at once deity, and the Son of God, and the two are one.
In this way also, as He is Spirit of Spirit and God of God, He is made second in manner of existence, in position, but not in nature. And he did not withdraw from the original source, but went forth. This ray of God, then as it was always foretold in ancient times, descended into a certain virgin and made flesh in her womb. He, in his birth, is both deity and man united. The flesh formed by the Spirit is nourished, grows up to manhood, speaks, teaches, works, and is the Christ.
But the Jews were so exasperated by His teaching, by which their rulers and chiefs were convicted of the truth, chiefly because so many turned aside to him, that at last they brought him before Pontius Pilate, who was at that time Roman governor of Syria. And by the violence of their outcries against him, they extorted a sentence giving him up to be crucified. He himself had predicted this, which, however, would have signified little had not the prophets of old done it as well.
And yet nailed upon the cross, he exhibited many notable signs by which his death was distinguished from all others. The light of day was withdrawn when the sun at the very time was in its midday blaze. Those who were not aware that this had been predicted about Christ no doubt thought it was an eclipse. You yourselves have the account of the wonders still in your archives.
Then when his body was taken down from the cross and placed in a sepulchre, the Jews in their eager watchfulness surrounded it with a large military guard, lest as he had predicted since he had predicted His resurrection from the dead on the third day, they feared His disciples might remove His body by stealth and thereby deceive even the skeptical.
But Lo, on the third day there was a sudden shock of earthquake, and the stone which sealed the sepulchre, was rolled away, and the guards fled off in terror without a single disciple nearby. The grave was found empty of all, but the clothes of the buried one. All these things Pilate did to Christ. And now, in fact, a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Christ to the reigning Caesar, who was at that time Tiberius.
Yes, and the Caesars too would have believed on Christ if either the Caesars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Caesars. His disciples also spreading over the world did as their divine master told them. And after suffering greatly themselves from the persecution of the Jews, and with no unwilling heart, as having faith undoubting in the truth, at last by Nero's cruel sword, they sowed the seed of Christian blood at Rome. Well, thus far, I have carried out the plan I laid down.
I have set forth the origin of our religion and its name with the account of the founder of Christianity. From now on, let no one charge us with infamous wickedness. Let no one think that it is otherwise than as I have presented it. We say, and before all men we say, and torn and bleeding under your tortures, we cry out, we worship God through Christ. Search then and see if the divinity of Christ is true, if it is of such a nature that the acceptance of it transforms a man and makes him truly good.
Now we also affirm indeed the existence of certain spiritual beings, nor is their name unfamiliar. The philosophers acknowledge that there are demons. Socrates himself waited on a demon's will. Moreover, if sorcerers call forth ghosts and even make what seemed the souls of the dead to appear, if they put boys to death in order to get a response from the oracle. If with their juggling illusions they make a pretense of doing various miracles.
If they put dreams into people's minds by the power of the angels and demons, whose aid they have invited, by whose influence too, goats and tables are made to divine. How much more likely is this power of evil to be zealous in doing with all its might, of its own inclination, and for its own objects, what it does to serve the ends of others. Mock as you like, but get the demons, if you can, to join you in your mocking.
Let them deny that Christ is coming to judge every human soul which has existed from the world's beginning, clothing it again with the body it laid aside at death. Let them deny that because of their wickedness, they are condemned already, and that they are kept for that very judgment day along with all their worshippers.
Why all the authority and power that we Christians have over them comes from the name of Christ and recalling to their memory the woes with which God threatens them at the hands of Christ as judge and which they expect one day to overtake. Fearing Christ in God and God in Christ, they become subject to the servants of God in Christ.
So at our touch and breathing, overwhelmed by the thought and realization of those judgment fires, they leave at our command the bodies they have entered, unwilling and distressed and before your very eyes put to an open shame. If you believe them when they lie, give credit to them when they speak the truth about themselves.
This whole confession of these beings, in which they declare that they are not gods, and in which they tell you that there is no God but one, the God whom we worship, is quite sufficient to clear us from the crime of treason chiefly against the Roman religion. For if it is certain the gods have no existence, there is no religion in this case. If there is no religion, because there are no gods, we are assuredly not guilty of any offense against religion. Instead of that, the charge recoils on your own head.
Worshiping a lie. You are really guilty of the crime you charge us with. Not merely by refusing the true religion of the true God, but going the further length of persecuting it. Now we begin part six, taken from chapters 24 through 30 of the apology. In these chapters, Tertullian pleads for religious liberty. He also refutes the popular notion that the Romans had become so powerful because of their devotion to religions.
Finally, he explains that Christians pray daily for the emperor and for the welfare and safety of the empire. He writes:" See to it that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion by taking away religious liberty and forbidding free choice of deity so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it." Not even a human being would care to have unwilling homage rendered him.
And so the very Egyptians have been permitted the legal use of their ridiculous superstition, liberty to make gods of birds and beasts, in fact, to condemn to death anyone who kills a god of their sort, every province even, every city has its God. The truth is, we alone are forbidden of having a religion of our own. We give offense to the Romans. We are excluded from the rights and privileges of Romans because we do not worship the gods of Rome.
It is well that there is a God of all to whom we all belong, whether we want to or not. But with you, liberty is given to worship any God but the true God, as though he were not rather the God all should be worshiping Him to whom all belong. Well, I think I've offered sufficient proof upon the question of false and true divinity, having shown that the proof rests not merely on debate and argument, but on the actual witness of the very beings whom you believe to be gods, so that the point needs no further handling.
Nevertheless, having been led thus naturally to speak of the Romans, I'm not going to avoid the issue which is invited by the groundless assertion of those who maintain that the Romans have been raised to such heights of power as to become masters of the world as a reward of their singular homage to religion. The claim is made that the Romans prosper beyond all others because they give honor to the deities beyond all others. And this proves that their deities are in fact divine beings.
However, the truth is that the Romans were not distinguished for their devotion to the gods before they attained a greatness. And so their greatness wasn't a result of their religion. Indeed, how could religion make a people great who have really owed their greatness to their irreligion? For, if I'm not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars and are extended by victories. More than that, you can't have wars and victories without the taking and often the destruction of cities.
And that is a thing in which the gods share calamity along with the population. Houses and temples alike suffer. There's indiscriminate slaughter of priests and citizens. The hands of plunder is laid equally upon sacred treasure as well as common treasure. Thus, the sacrileges of the Romans are as numerous as their trophies. They boast as many triumphs over the gods as over the nations. As many spoils of battles they have still as there remain images of captive deities.
Certainly you can never believe that devotion to religion has evidently advanced to greatness of people who, as we have seen, have either grown by injuring religion or have injured religion by their growth. Those too whose kingdoms have become part of the one great Roman Empire, they weren't without religion when their kingdoms were taken from them. Investigate and see if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of him under whose sovereignty, the human race, once existed without states at all.
How do you allow yourselves to fall into such error? The realm of rural simplicity is older than some of her gods. Rome reigned before her proud collection of temples, the capital, was built. The Babylonians too exercised dominion before the days of the pontiffs. So the truth is, when we Christians are called to sacrifice, we resolutely refuse relying on the knowledge we possess by which we are well assured of the real objects to whom these services are offered.
The demons under profaning of images and the deification of human names. Some indeed think it is a piece of insanity that when it is in our power to offer sacrifice at once and go away unharmed, that we hold as ever to our convictions. But we prefer an obstinate persistence in truth rather than safety.
For though the whole power of demons and kindred spirits is subject to us, yet nevertheless as the same way that ill-disposed slaves sometimes join insubordination with fear and who delight to injure those of whom they are at the same time they stand in awe. So it's the same in this situation. For fear also inspires hatred. But we resist the demons and contend against them by persevering in the very thing that they attack.
And our triumph over them is never more complete than when we are condemned for resolute adherence to our faith. This then is the ground in which we are charged with treason against the state, that we do not offer a mere mock service on behalf of the emperors because we do not believe their safety rests in hands made of lead. Rather, we offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal God, the true God, the living God, whose favor beyond all others, they themselves desire.
Without ceasing, we offer prayer for all our emperors. We pray for life prolonged, for security to the empire, for protection to the Imperial House, for brave armies, a faithful Senate, a virtuous people, the world at peace. Whatever as man or Caesar, an emperor would wish.
These things I cannot ask from any, but the God from whom I know I shall obtain them, both because He alone bestows them and because I have claims upon Him for their gift, as being a servant of His, rendering homage to Him alone, persecuted for His teachings, offering to Him at His own requirement that costly and noble sacrifice of prayer sent forth from a chaste body. I don't offer the few grains of incense that a small coin can buy.
With our hands thus stretched out and up to God, go ahead, rend us with your iron claws, hang us up on crosses, wrap us up in flames, take our heads from us with the sword, turn loose wild beasts on us. The very attitude of a Christian praying is one of preparation for all punishment. Let this good rulers be your work. Wring from us the soul beseeching God on the emperor's behalf. Upon the truth of God and devotion to His name, go ahead, label it a crime.
This brings us to Part 7, covering chapters 36 and 37 of the apology. In these chapters, Tertullian describes the revolutionary teachings of Jesus and the incredible growth of Christ's followers. He writes," Genuine deeds of goodness from the heart are due from us to everyone, not just to emperors. We never do good with respective persons. We take no payment of either praise or reward from man, but only from God. That is because God Himself requires it, and He gives His benevolence impartially.
Likewise, we are equally forbidden to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, or even to think ill of anyone. The thing we must not do to an emperor we must likewise not do to anybody else. As I have remarked above, we are commanded to love our enemies. So whom do we have to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves. So who can suffer injury at our hand?
In regard to this, recall your own experience, how often you inflict gross cruelties on Christians, how often, too, the hostile mobs, paying no regard to you, taking the law into their own hands, and attack us with stones and flames. They do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them, now sadly changed, no longer entire from the rest of the tomb, cutting them in pieces, rending them asunder.
Yet banded together as we are, ever so ready to sacrifice our lives, what single case of revenge for injury are you able to point to? Though I might say if it were held right among us to repay evil by evil, a single night with a torch or two could achieve an ample vengeance, but away with the idea of a divine people avenging themselves by human fires or shrinking from the sufferings in which they are tried.
We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place among you, cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, the very camps, tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum. We have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay another.
Without arms even and raising no insurrectionary banner, but simply an enmity to you, we could carry on the contest with you by an ill-willed secession alone. For such multitudes of men were to break away from you and take themselves to some remote corner of the world, why the very loss of so many citizens, whatever sort they were, would cover the empire with shame. No one in the very forsaking vengeance would be inflicted.
While you would be horror struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves at such an all-prevailing silence, and that stupor as of a dead world. You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would have more enemies than citizens remaining. For now, it is the immense number of Christians which makes your enemies so few. Almost all the inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ. Yet you choose to call us enemies of the human race.
We are not enemies of the human race, but rather enemies of human error. No, who would deliver you from those secret foes ever busy both destroying your souls and ruining your health? Who would save you, I mean, from the attacks of those spirits of evil, without which reward or hire, we exorcise. This alone would be revenge enough for us that you were henceforth left free to the possession of unclean spirits.
But instead of taking into account what is due to us for the important protection we afford you, and though we are not merely no trouble to you, but in fact necessary to your well-being, you prefer to hold us as enemies. Ought not Christians, therefore, to receive not merely a somewhat milder treatment, but to have a place among the law-tolerated societies, seeing that they are not chargeable with any crimes that are commonly dreaded from societies of the illicit class. Now we come to part 8 of tonight's reading.
It's taken from chapters 38 and 39 of the apology. In this section, Tertullian describes further how Christians in his day were living out the teachings of Jesus Christ. He describes what Christian worship services were like in that day, and also gives us one of the most complete descriptions we have of the Christian love feast.
He writes:" But as those in whom all ambition in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead, we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings, nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state?" We acknowledge one all-embracing Commonwealth, the world. We renounce all your spectacles.
Among us, nothing is ever said or seen or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theater, the atrocities of the arena, and the useless exercises of the wrestling ground. Why do you take offense at us because we differ from you in regard to your pleasures? If we will not partake of your enjoyment, the loss is ours. If there is any loss in the case, it's not your loss. We reject what pleases you. You, on the other hand, have no taste for what is our delight.
So what harm is there in that? Well, I shall at once go on then to demonstrate the unique characteristics of the Christian society that as I have refuted the evils that are charged against us, I may point out the positive good that exists among Christians. We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope.
We meet together as an assembly and congregation so that offering up prayer to God with a united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray too for the emperors, for their ministers, and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the delay of the final consummation of all things. We assemble to read our sacred writings.
With the sacred words, we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, and we make our confidence more steadfast. At our meetings, also exhortations are made, rebukes, and sacred censures are administered. For with a great seriousness, the work of judging is carried on among us, as befits those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God.
And you have the most notable example of judgment to come when anyone has sinned so grievously as to require His severance from us in prayer, in the congregation, and in all sacred matters. The tried men of our elders preside over us. They obtain that honor not by purchase, but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God. It's true that we have our treasure chest, but it is not made up of purchase money, as if it were a religion that had its price.
Rather, on the monthly day, if he likes, each one puts in a small donation. But only if it's his pleasure and only if he is able, for there is no compulsion. All is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, the deposit fund of holiness. For these funds are not taken and spent on feasts or drinking bouts, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the needs of boys and girls who are without parents and who are destitute of means.
They're used to take care of old persons who are confined to their houses and for those who suffer shipwreck. And if there are any who are in the mines because of their faithfulness to God's church, or maybe banished to the islands or shut up in prisons, well, they become the nurselings of their confession. But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many of you to put a brand upon us. See people say how they love one another. And I guess that's because they themselves are animated by mutual hatred.
People say, how they are so ready to die for one another. And they're angry with us, too, because we call each other brethren. But we are your brothers as well. At the same time, how much more fittingly we are called and counted brothers, we who have been led to the knowledge of God as our common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of a common ignorance, have agonized to be born into the same light of truth.
One mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. Now, a great ado is made about the modest supper room of the Christians, so I want to explain to you what really happens. Our feast really explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it agape, love. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast, we bless the needy. If the object of our feast is good, in light of that, consider its further regulations.
As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness and no immodesty. The participants at our love feasts, before reclining, first taste of prayer to God before they taste anything else. And they only eat as much as satisfies the cravings of hunger. Only as much is drunk as befits the chaste. And then they say," That's enough." And those who remember that even during the night they have to worship God, they talk as those who know that the Lord is one of their listeners.
After we wash our hands and lights are brought in, each one is asked to stand up and sing as he can a hymn to God, either one from the Holy Scriptures or one of His own composing, which proves how little that we actually drink. And as the feast began with prayer, so it is closed with prayer. We go from it not like troops of mischief doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out into licentious acts.
Rather, we have as much care of our modesty and chastity as we would have if we had been at a school of virtue rather than at a banquet. Give the congregation of Christians its due, and hold it unlawful if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort. By all means, let it be condemned if any complaint can be validly laid against it. But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregation just what we are when we are separated from each other.
We are as a community the same as when we are individuals. We injure nobody, we trouble nobody. This brings us to part nine, covering chapters 42 through 45 of Tertullian. Here he answers the charge that Christians are useless to society and that they bring no benefit to the empire. He writes," But now we are called to account as harm doers on another ground.
That is, we are accused of being useless in the affairs of life." Now, how in all the world can that be the case with people who are living among you, eating the same food, wearing the same clothing, having the same habits, under the same necessities of existence. We are not Indian Brahmins or gymnosophists who dwell in woods and exile ourselves from ordinary human life. Yet at any rate, you say that the temple revenues are everyday falling off. How few are now throwing in contributions to the temples.
In truth, we are not able to give alms both to your human and your heavenly beggars, nor do we think that we are required to give any, but to those who ask for it. Let Jupiter then hold out his hand and he will receive from us. For our compassion spends more in the streets than yours does in the temples. But your other taxes will acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Christians. For in the faithfulness which keeps us from fraud upon a brother, we also make conscience of paying all of our taxes.
So that by ascertaining how much is lost by fraud and falsehood in the census declarations, and the calculations may easily be made, it can be seen that the grounds of complaint in one department of revenue against us is compensated by the advantage which other departments derive, that is, in the payment of taxes. Yes, and no one considers what the loss is to the common good. A loss as great as it is real, no one estimates the injury entailed upon the state.
When men of virtue, as we are, are put to death in such numbers, when so many of the truly good people suffer the ultimate penalty. And here we call your own acts to witness you who are daily presiding at the trials of prisoners and passing sentence upon crimes. Let me ask you, in your long list of those accused of many and various atrocities, has any assassin, any person, any man guilty of sacrilege, anyone guilty of seduction or stealing bather's clothes?
Have any of them had their name entered as also being a Christian? On the other hand, when Christians are brought before you on the mere ground of their name, do you ever find among them any criminal of the sort I've just described? It is from your people that the exhibition of gladiator shows always get their herd of criminals to feed up for the occasion. You find no Christian there unless he's there for simply being a Christian.
Or if one is there as something else other than a Christian, a Christian he is no longer. We then alone are without crime. And is there anything surprising in that if it is a very necessity with us? For a necessity, indeed it is laid upon us by God. This brings us to the conclusion of Tertullian's apology. In Part 10 that I'm about to read, Tertullian concludes his work with a bold and stirring address to the Roman authorities, telling them that Christians will never disown their Lord, no matter what the Romans do.
Furthermore, he tells the Romans that they'll never be able to defeat the Christians, because the more they slaughter the Christians, the more the church grows. The blood of the martyrs is seed. He writes," You forget that all you can do to us depends upon our own willingness. It is certainly a matter of my own inclination being a Christian." Your condemnation then will only reach me, in that case, if I wish to be condemned.
All you can do to me, you can do only at my will, because I can decide to deny Christ or to acknowledge Him. So the joy that the masses have in our persecution is totally without reason. For it is our joy that they appropriate to themselves, since we would far rather be condemned than to be apostasizers from God. So our haters really should feel sorry rather than rejoicing after we have obtained the very thing that we have chosen ourselves.
Well, in that case, you may say," Why are you complaining about persecution? You should be grateful to us for giving you the sufferings you want." Well, it's quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it's in the way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict both fights with all his strength, and when victorious, he rejoices in the battle because he reaps from it glory and spoil.
It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals that there under fear of execution we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained. This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing God and the reward of life eternal. But we are overcome, yes, when we have obtained our wishes. Therefore, we conquer in dying. We go forth victorious at the very time that we are subdued. Bound to a half-axle stake, we are burned in a circle heap of faggots.
This is the attitude in which we conquer. It is our victory robe. It is for us a sort of triumphal car. Naturally enough, therefore, we do not please the vanquished. On account of this, indeed, we're considered to be a desperate, reckless group of people. But the very desperation and recklessness that you object to in us, you lift it high among yourselves as a standard of virtue when it's done in the cause of glory and of fame. How unreasonable that glory is considered legitimate when it is done for a human cause.
And in that instance, it is not counted either as being reckless, foolhardiness, nor desperate obstinacy, even to despise death itself and all sorts of savage treatment. A person may do for his native country, for the empire, for friendship, all sorts of things that he's forbidden to do for God. And you make statues in honor of persons such as these, and you put inscriptions upon images, and you cut out epitaphs on tombs, so that their names may never perish.
Yet he who expects the true resurrection from God is considered insane if he suffers for God. But go zealously on, good presidents. You will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish. Go ahead, kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust. Your injustice is the very proof that we are innocent, nor does your cruelty, no matter how exquisite, avail you at all, the more often we are cut down by you, the more in number we grow. The blood of Christians is seed.
And as the divine and the human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the highest.