Athens, Jerusalem, and Gerald Lewis Bray

By Charles G. Dennison

804 7th Avenue, Coraopolis, Pennsylvania 15108

Gerald Lewis Bray, Holiness and the Will of God: Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979).

Reformed and Presbyterian orthodoxy in its American expression bears a questionable legacy as far as its competency in the patristic period is concerned. To blame are not the early spokesmen for the Reformed church. Calvin, for example, was extraordinarily well-versed in the Fathers. Most likely the difficulty arises from an Americanization of an originally broad-visioned perspective. Fear of Catholicism, historical short-sightedness, and evangelical preoccupation with the instantly relevant have taken their toll. Also, it has not been uncommon to hear Reformed and evangelical scholars depreciate the ancient church for its general disregard of Pauline doctrine, e.g., justification by faith.

Despite the general mood, notable attempts have been made to grasp at the larger picture. For instance, both Warfield and Van Til worked in more than a cursory way with the Fathers. One figure particularly fascinating to them was Tertullian.[1] This is not without reason since Tertullian is thought to have anticipated many Reformed convictions.

Modern study of Tertullian may seem unconcerned with either Warfield’s or Van Til’s assessment. A major work has appeared, however, which offers Reformed orthodoxy no little encouragement and much food for thought. The book is Gerald Lewis Bray’s Holiness and the Will of God. Some interaction with the contemporary study of Tertullian will help us appreciate Bray’s contribution.

I. History and Method

Until the last century, there had been agreement about the general features of Tertullian’s life. The chief source for the portrait was Jerome’s De viris illustrious. This was supplemented by bits and snatches from Eusebius together with what could be surmised from Tertullian’s writings.

His story began as early as AD 150 and ended as late as 240. He was raised a pagan in Carthage, his father being an officer in the Roman army. In his youth he rebelled against his family’s militarism; eventually he went to Rome and studied law. During the last decade of the second century, he became a Christian. As part of the church he returned to Carthage and was ordained a priest. Before long, however (maybe shortly after the turn of the century), he parted ways with the ecclesiastical authorities and consequently gave himself to the sectarian Montanists. But he even outgrew them and, before his death, gathered about him a group of disciples which came to be known as the Tertullianists. Augustine took credit for reconciling the Tertullianists to the Church of Rome.[2]

1. Timothy David Barnes

Presently almost every detail of this biographical sketch is under review. One man important to the discussion is Timothy Barnes. His study appeared in 1971.[3] As a classics scholar, Barnes admits dependence upon his teachers, Ronald Syme and Fergus Millar.[4] He hopes to accomplish “for a Christian writer something of what they…achieved for Tacitus and Cassius Dio.”[5] He shares the modern skepticism toward ancient attempts at historiography and he judges impossible the production of a “full biography of Tertullian.”[6] The best we can hope for is a plausible reconstruction based on “rational speculation.”[7] But since the tradition is itself unreliable, where do we turn when developing our portrait?

To begin with, Barnes charges modern scholars with skirting the necessary task through a self-satisfied preoccupation with “peripheral problems [and] isolated aspects of Tertullian’s thought and writing.”[8] After demolishing [his term] conventional pictures of Tertullian and projecting his own,[9] he turns to a detailed study of the spiritual and cultural environment in which he lived.[10] Of interest are the remnants of evidence concerning the philosophical climate of Northern Africa in the second and third centuries, the type of education offered in that setting, the general attitude of pagans towards Christians and the extent of Christian suffering at that time. Barnes believes a cultural analysis of Tertullian’s age will yield confirmation of the influence which each of these areas had on him. Building from the culture through the writings, Barnes claims to unravel Tertullian’s intellectual and literary development.

A new Tertullian emerges, reinforced by a new chronology for his works and a new chronological frame for his biography. According to Barnes, he lived a relatively brief life, from about 170 to not many years after 212. Beyond question is his descent into Montanism; maybe in keeping with the passions of that sect, he died a martyr. However, he almost certainly never visited Rome, never practiced law or entered the priesthood, nor was his family involved in the military. More likely, his entire life was spent in Carthage; he was raised in the literary and cultural circles of his day. His adroit use of paradox was due not to legal training but the profound influences of Sophistic and rhetorical movements.[11]

But this reconstruction is not all that interests Barnes. While penetrating what he considers the myth to the more probable reality, he always has an eye on a fundamental question: “How does Tertullian illuminate the obscure world of early Christianity?”[12] Thus, Barnes believes his study will help us look at the ancient world and early Christianity with greater confidence of understanding them. Such understanding, it seems, is predicated upon a recognized affinity between developing Christianity and classical culture.

At this point, one cannot help but wonder how much personal conviction and predisposition is at play. The old Tertullian is gone and the new Tertullian, having been reconstructed from within the culture, appears as a man very much at home in his world. Even the traditional all-important antithesis between Jerusalem and Athens is softened if not dissolved. In fact, Barnes suggests a resolution by way of a refined cultural sensitivity. After proving Tertullian a master of literary and rhetorical art,[13] he concludes:

Tertullian shows that a Christian can take his pagan intellectual inheritance with him into his new faith. The antithesis between Athens and Jerusalem, between the academy and the church, has been resolved.[14]

Thus Tertullian becomes much more the servant of his cultural milieu.[15] Despite his devotion to the Bible and the purity of the Christian life, he was helping to integrate Christianity into the classical setting. To be sure, he was at odds with the Carthaginian ecclesiastical hierarchy,[16] but he must no longer be thought of as an ancient fundamentalist principally dissenting to the influences of classical culture upon the developing western church.

2. Gerald Lewis Bray

Reaction to Barnes initially took two directions. On the one hand, J. Daniélou registered surprise and insisted on the accuracy of the tradition.[17] Others agreed with Barnes; they debated minor aspects of his study but serious reservations dealt with his attitude, not his scholarship or conclusions.[18]

It was not until 1979 that an extensive challenge to Barnes and his method appeared. This was the year Gerald Lewis Bray’s work was published. Not that Bray did not appreciate Barnes. On the contrary, both are accomplished classical scholars[19] and both share the twentieth-century attitude toward the methodology of the last century which sought to penetrate Tertullian’s writings by way of his personality.[20] Too many questions surround the man; too little is certain.

But Bray goes farther than Barnes. He doubts that Tertullian became a Montanist or organized his own separatist party.[21] His most fundamental disagreement rises when assigning value to Tertullian’s intellectual and cultural environment. With Barnes’ approach, says Bray, we are left walking around Tertullian, not getting inside of him. His criticism runs like this:

Barnes has used Tertullian’s writings as a quarry from which to extract material suitable for building a framework of his own design; he has not illuminated the inner structure of Tertullian’s own thought. The result is that the texts have been plundered in what (to an outside observer) is a haphazard fashion.[22]

Bray then presents his own methodology. The man, he says, is discovered in his ideas and the chief idea was derived from Scripture; namely, that he be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness, but that which is through faith in Christ (Phil 3:9). Life’s purpose for Tertullian was “the pursuit of holiness in the presence of the living God.”[23]

Bray’s thesis and his reaction to Barnes must be seen as the outworking of his aversion to “contextualization,” as represented in such figures as Bernard Lonergan.[24] Therefore, the battle is for more than just an alternative assessment of Tertullian. Bray seems to direct his study in such a way so as to preserve unique Christian identity before the closing gates of cultural regimentation and uniformity. Lonergan, on the other hand, had decided that every age has standards valid to itself. But such standards are invalid when the context of a particular age has been superseded. Consequently, we are not to suppose we have found the eternally valid norm within any particular cultural context. This construct is then used in the interests of relativizing imagined absolutes and dispelling the naive claims for the church’s cultural immunity.

Obviously there are advantages to such an approach. Bray is not without a good word for Lonergan. His brilliance, says Bray, is especially evidenced in the alternative he presents to Walter Bauer and James D. G. Dunn.[25] While Dunn appears to be the more responsible scholar, both he and Bauer have failed to account for the rise of dogma and orthodox consensus. Instead, they have judged orthodoxy an innovative and revolutionary movement “bent on the destruction of primitive pluralism.”[26] Lonergan, however, insists that, although the early church was involved in a progressively self-conscious dogmatic task, the reality of the church’s confession only intensified in clarity, i.e., “from one kind of clarity to another.”[27]

Undoubtedly this is far superior to the negative judgments upon orthodoxy so common today. Still, Bray wishes to correct Lonergan. Too much room is left to an unconscious mental evolution in the development of dogma. “We must be wary,” Bray writes, “of a view which makes so many great thinkers unconscious participants in an historical process beyond their comprehension and contrary to their wishes.”[28] Also, Bray asks if Lonergan has done “justice to the religious character of the Bible as Scriptura.”[29] The Bible is directed to the intellect, which Bray asserts both Jew and Christian saw as seated in their hearts. Christianity especially is unique in its belief “that the Spirit of God speaks through the mind of man to touch and renew the whole of his being.”[30] This primacy of individual intellect within the Scriptures does not substantiate Lonergan’s delay of differentiated dogmatic consciousness until later church history. Rather, that consciousness has already received testimony in the Bible and subsequent dogmatic development can only be seen as “setting out the teaching of Scripture in a systematic way.”[31]

It can be argued that Lonergan’s approach to contextualization contains adequate safeguards against cultural isolation. But again, we are face to face with his understanding of evolving history and consciousness.[32] Bray locates the check to this in God’s relationship to man and judges, in the end, that whatever advantages there are to Lonergan’s method, they are greatly outweighed by the liabilities. Contextualization inevitably reads the individual from within the culture and greatly restricts the ability to read him over against it. In Tertullian’s case, this means, as has been demonstrated by Barnes’ study, the tendency to dissolve or at least trivialize his antithetical posture. Lost are both man and message.

But for Bray, neither Tertullian nor any other Christian is walled up in a cultural environment, the inherent processes of which speak to him of transcendence. Liberation comes in conversion as the heart finds its proper orientation alone in relationship to the written Word of God. The Christian, therefore, faced another environment, that declared in the text of Scripture, the ultimate realization of which was the eschatological presence of God. As a child of God, Tertullian stood in his own day as a living testimony to the holy and antithetical character of the kingdom of heaven. The struggle between Jerusalem and Athens must be approached with the understanding that, in the final analysis, Tertullian was the quintessential enemy of synthesis. As Bray concludes:

Tertullian was the first major Christian writer…to perceive clearly and attempt to put into practice the fact that Christianity was a complete intellectual system independent of pagan philosophy…. Only Christianity could plausibly claim…an authentic divine revelation.[33]

II. Assessment and Questions

Bray’s study is bold. In it he has registered his dissent to the prevailing and increasingly sociological models of historiography. These models are pervasive and presently their influence is being felt in biblical studies. They tend to discover certainty in something of which the text is an example more than in anything of which the text speaks. Interaction between culture and text supplies the canon, if not creed, to this system. Charges of relativism are, in one sense, irrelevant since this approach is not without its absolutes. Absolutes, however, are not found in the ideas or testimony expressed in the text; rather they are distilled from the absoluteness of the cultural dynamics of which the text and author are a part. This method moves from cultural context to the man and message. Truth is more the process than anything the man may say.

Bray dares to reverse the direction: he moves from text to context from the man to his world. This he does in the interests of allowing Tertullian “to speak as far as possible on [his] own terms.”[34] It would seem that Tertullian is not simply a good choice but the perfect choice for his purposes. Has he not been traditionally thought the epitome of what Bray wishes to establish methodologically? Who better signals within the classical world Christian resistance to enculturation?

Yet it is precisely this point that has been steadily losing ground during this century. To be sure, Rome still views Tertullian as a priest gone wrong, clever but unreliable.[35] In the end, he was the enemy of true Christian philosophy, rejecting as he did the synthesis of the faith and classical culture.[36] In addition, many classicists have viewed him the enemy of culture.[37] Modern existentialists claim a friend in Tertullian but precisely because they see him as a patriarch of irrational paradox.[38] Others in liberal style judge him a master of confusion and contradiction, not paradox.[39] He has even been charged with deliberately portraying himself more anti-Hellenistic than he actually was.[40]

Nevertheless, since about the turn of the century, momentum has gathered for the thesis that “far from rejecting classical culture, Tertullian sought a way to integrate it with Christianity.”[41] Therefore, it is contended that he attempted to fuse pagan philosophy and Christianity. Invariably, in the hands of scholars like Barnes, this does not mean mere awareness of culture, but its dominance.

In light of these developments, Bray’s position approaches the heroic. Freely admitting Tertullian’s use of and interaction with pagan culture and philosophy, he refuses to grant it anything but a subordinate role. “[Tertullian] recognized,” he writes, “that in the realm of the intellect…paganism had nothing to offer the Christian.”[42] Dealing with the complicated question of Tertullian’s relationship to Roman law, Bray says, “Tertullian did not adapt Christianity to Roman law, but the reverse.”[43] According to Bray, Scripture and the regeneration of man held preeminence for Tertullian.

Therefore, to the degree synthetic elements appear, they are subordinate to an essential antithetical posture, At times the synthetic element will be an inconsistency. This is particularly true in the treatment of the soul. But no subject proved more difficult for the early church in her attempt to present the biblical teaching.[44] We should not be surprised, at this point, to find the influence of certain Greek thinkers. But possibly more basic than even Bray allows,[45] Tertullian was not blind to the limited, if not negative, value of the philosophers.[46] They were all guilty of holding to improper dualisms and false antitheses. Reason in the service of Christ and the believer drew the lines in the proper place—between Athens and Jerusalem. the academy and the church. Even the philosophers became effective witnesses against themselves in repositioning the line of demarcation.

To this point our admiration of Bray has been unqualified. He appears to labor from evangelical and maybe Calvinistic convictions. We are not without questions, however. Does Bray read too much of himself into Tertullian and thus become a victim of his own agenda? For example, he resists what seem to be overwhelming historical and textual pressures which finally submerge Tertullian in a fanatical Montanism. Thus Tertullian appears to be a much more useful figure for conservative twentieth-century Christianity. But has Bray been successful? At present, the best we can say is that the position is extremely well presented and intriguing. Needed is more study of the crucial texts.

Another question arises in connection with Bray’s individualism. Tremendously helpful has been his insight into Tertullian’s doctrine of holiness. But has he stopped short of what that holiness properly modifies? Does it describe the individual man with regard to his personal ideology or piety? Or might it not be descriptive of the church in which the believer finds his identity and direction? Is Tertullian’s passion the relentless pursuit of the church’s holiness?[47] If this is true, Tertullian, with his corporate concern, has as much to say to evangelicalism as he does to its opponents. Indeed, we reed a thorough study of Tertullian’s doctrine of the church.

Finally, and not unrelated, is Bray’s commitment to the individual intellect. According to him, the intellect defines the biblical notion of the heart.[48] But is this true? was it true for Tertullian? Answers to these questions are important in light of the arguments surrounding apologetics in this century. Reason’s value and place for the church remains a critical problem and Bray’s categorical assertion will be less than satisfactory to many. The objection raised is that the isolation and exaltation of the intellect within man violates the biblical witness to man’s essential wholeness as the image of God. The tendency is to look even at God, whose image man is, in terms of the primacy of the intellect. Such a direction is a throwback to classical apologetics and, to the extent that this is Bray’s position, he is judged in need of further refinement.[49]

No one should think the questions raised restrict the enthusiasm with which this book is recommended. Hopefully we all are making progress in the ongoing effort to be more thoroughly biblical and responsible in our scholarship. Bray has outdistanced most, if not all, in Reformed orthodoxy in dealing with the ancient church. Maybe those of us proficient in a more biblical apologetic could place him in our debt as he has placed us in his.[50]

Notes

1. See B. B. Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930) 3–109; Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (n.p.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969) 83–109.
2. The traditional overview of Tertullian’s life is found in many places; cf. Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1883) 3.283f; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1957) 1334f; contrast the Oxford Dictionary’s second edition (1974), 1352f.
3. Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
4. Ibid., vii.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 1.
7. Ibid., 56. Barnes says that “rational speculation” is the foundation of the historian’s craft. This is presumably distinguishable from “idle speculation” for which Barnes assails many modern scholars (p. 64).
8. Ibid., 1.
9. Ibid., 3-59.
10. Ibid., 60ff.
11. Ibid., 57-59.
12. Ibid., 2.
13. Cf. ibid., chap. 14.
14. Ibid., 231; cf. p. 210.
15. Ibid., 211ff esp. p. 231. Barnes has much in common with that group of scholars which has concentrated on the rhetorical influences upon the Fathers as the key to understanding the structure of their thought. Direction for this type of study is found in F. H. Colson, “Two Examples of Literary and Rhetorical Criticism in the Fathers,” JTS 25 (1924) 364–77; Robert Dick Sider, Ancient Rhetoric and the Art of Tertullian (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). Barnes, however, has shifted the focus to the culture as a whole, rather than to one isolated segment of it.
16. Barnes believes Tertullian’s disparaging remarks against the “bishop of bishops” in De pudicitia are referring to the Bishop of Carthage, not of Rome (ibid., 30f, 247).
17. Daniélou’s review appears in RSR 61 (1973) 254–56.
18. Cf. the reviews of Robert M. Grant, CH 42 (1973) 277–78; Gerald Bonner, JEH 24 (1973) 197; J. F. Matthews, JTS 24 (1973) 245–49.
19. Bray studied at McGill University and the Sorbonne.
20. In mind is the work of August Neander, Antignostikus, or, Spirit of Tertullian; from vol. 2 of History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851). The original German edition appeared in 1825.
21. Bray, Holiness, 54-63.
22. Ibid., 31.
23. Ibid.; cf. p. 63.
24. Ibid., ix-x.
25. Ibid., 49ff. In view are Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971; 1st German edition, 1934) and Dunn’s Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977).
26. Ibid., 49.
27. Lonergan himself says, “The emergence of the very notion of dogma, grounded in the word of God as true, was a movement from obscurity to clarity; on the other hand, the doctrine of the Christian Church concerning Jesus Christ advanced not from obscurity to clarity, but from one kind of clarity to another” (The Way To Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976] 13).
28. Bray, Holiness, 51.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 52.
32. For critiques of Lonergan, cf. Greg Bahnsen’s review of Method in Theology in WTJ 36 (1973–74) 96–101, and Cornelius Van Til’s unpublished study paper, “Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J.” (Westminster Theological Seminary).
33. Bray, Holiness, 153.
34. Ibid., xi.
35. Cf. Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971) 42–43.
36. Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Scribners, 1938) 5–10.
37. E.g., Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1944) 227.
38. Cf. L. Harold DeWolf, The Religious Revolt Against Reason (New York: Harper & Row, 1949) 40ff; Richard Kroner, Speculation and Revelation in the Age of Christian Philosophy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, n.d.) 57ff; William Barrett, Irrational Man (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1962) 94–95; Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968) 45–46.
39. Cf. H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970) 1.102ff.
40. Cf. H. B. Timothy, The Early Christian Apologists and Greek Philosophy (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973) 84.
41. Sider, Ancient Rhetoric, 128; for a full history of the synthesis position, cf. pp. 127ff and Bray, Holiness, 33ff.
42. Bray, Holiness, 134.
43. Ibid., 98.
44. Cf. Tertullian’s De anima and Bray’s discussion (ibid., 73ff).
45. Cf. Bray’s description of Tertullian’s method (ibid., 79ff).
46. Important is Tertullian’s scathing denunciation of the philosophers (De perscriptione haereticorum, chap. 7).
47. This thesis fits well with what W. H. C. Frend says, “Two concepts of the Church were emerging in the West at this time: the one representing the majority of Christians in Africa that stressed its role as witness to the truth amid a hostile world; the other representing the majority in Rome, emphasizing its all-embracing character as the ‘school for sinners’ guided by its clergy” (“Their Word to Our Day: IX. Tertullian,” ExpT 81 [1970] 141).
48. Cf. pp. 150-51 above.
49. The seriousness of this problem registers when we recognize that Bray’s criticism of contextualization depends upon his commitment to the primacy of the intellect and the intellect’s identification with the biblical “heart.” If he is wrong at this crucial point, then the whole matter of contextualization demands a much more radical critique than he is able to deliver.
50. The apologetics of Cornelius Van Til are most instructive. As representative of Reformed orthodoxy, he has endeavored to maintain the basic antithetical perspective of Scripture in his devotion to the covenant and the Creator/creature distinction. Geerhardus Vos, another spokesman for Reformed orthodoxy, is not without significance in this regard; he laid bare the antithetical structure of the Apostle Paul’s writings in terms of his eschatology; i.e., “this present age” and “the age to come” (The Pauline Eschatology [Princeton: published by the author, 1930]). A study, which seeks to understand the apologetical task from the perspective of Pauline antithesis and thus bring together Van Til and Vos, is William David Dennison’s “Paul’s Two-Age Construction: Its Significance for Apologetics” (unpublished Th.M. thesis: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1980).