Tertullian Delphi Complete Works of Tertullian (Illustrated)

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78877-923-4
Verlag: Delphi Classics Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 1556 Seiten

A second century theologian from Carthage, Tertullian was an important early Christian writer, who produced an extensive corpus of literature. As the initiator of ecclesiastical Latin, he was instrumental in shaping the vocabulary and thought of Western Christianity. Tertullian has been described by some as the father of Latin Christianity and the founder of Western theology. Delphi's Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Latin texts. This comprehensive eBook presents Tertullian's complete extant works, with illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Tertullian's life and works
* Features the complete extant works of Tertullian, in both English translation and the original Latin
* Translations by Sydney Thelwall, Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis
* Concise introductions to his life and works by Peter Holmes
* Includes translations of rare spurious works
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Easily locate the sections you want to read with individual contents tables
* Features two bonus biographies - discover Tertullian's ancient world
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
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CONTENTS:
The Translations
Introductory Note by Peter Holmes
De Paenitentia (On Repentance)
De Oratione (On Prayer)
De Baptismo (On Baptism)
Ad Uxorem (To His Wife)
Ad Martyras (To the Martyrs)
De Patientia (On Patience)
Adversus Judaeos (Against the Jews)
De Praescriptione Haereticorum (On the Prescription of Heretics)
Apologeticus pro Christianis (Apology for the Christians)
Ad Nationes (To the Nations)
De Testimonio animae (On the Witness of the Soul)
De Pallio (On the Ascetic Mantle)
Adversus Hermogenem (Against Hermogenes)
Adversus Valentinianus (Against the Valentinians)
Ad Scapulam (To Scapula, Proconsul of Africa)
De Spectaculis (On the Games)
De Idololatria (On Idolatry)
De cultu Feminarum (On Women's Dress)
Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion)
De Anima (On the Soul)
De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ)
De Resurrectione Carnis (On the Resurrection of Flesh)
Adversus Praxean (Against Praxeas)
Scorpiace (Antidote to Scorpion's Bite)
De Corona Militis (On the Soldier's Garland)
De velandis Virginibus (On Veiling Virgins)
De Exhortatione Castitatis (On Exhortation to Chastity)
De Fuga in Persecutione (On Flight in Persecution)
De Monogamia (On Monogamy)
De Jejuniis, adversus psychicos (On Fasting, against the materialists)
De Puditicia (On Modesty)
Spurious Works
Against All Heresies
The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas
A Strain of Jonah the Prophet
A Strain of Sodom
Genesis
A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord
Five Books in Reply to Marcion
The Latin Texts
List of Latin Texts
The Biographies
Tertullian by Henry Palmer Chapman
Tertullian by Henry Wace
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Autoren/Hrsg.

Tertullian

Leseproben

Introductory Note by Peter Holmes
From ‘Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume III: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian’ WHEN OUR LORD repulsed the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv. 22) with apparent harshness, he applied to her people the epithet dogs, with which the children of Israel had thought it piety to reproach them. When He accepted her faith and caused it to be recorded for our learning, He did something more: He reversed the curse of the Canaanite and showed that the Church was designed “for all people;” Catholic alike for all time and for all sorts and conditions of men. Thus the North-African Church was loved before it was born: the Good Shepherd was gently leading those “that were with young.”  Here was the charter of those Christians to be a Church, who then were Canaanites in the land of their father Ham.  It is remarkable indeed that among these pilgrims and strangers to the West the first elements of Latin Christianity come into view. Even at the close of the Second Century the Church in Rome is an inconsiderable, though prominent, member of the great confederation of Christian Churches which has its chief seats in Alexandria and Antioch, and of which the entire Literature is Greek. It is an African presbyter who takes from Latin Christendom the reproach of theological and literary barrenness and begins the great work in which, upon his foundations, Cyprian and Augustine built up, with incomparable genius, that Carthaginian School of Christian thought by which Latin Theology was dominated for centuries. It is important to note (1.) that providentially not one of these illustrious doctors died in Communion with the Roman See, pure though it was and venerable at that time; and (2.) that to the works of Augustine the Reformation in Germany and Continental Europe was largely due; while (3.) the specialties of the Anglican Reformation were, in like proportion, due to the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian. The hinges of great and controlling destinies for Western Europe and our own America are to be found in the period we are now approaching. The merest school-boy knows much of the history of Carthage, and how the North Africans became Roman citizens. How they became Christians is not so clear. A melancholy destiny has enveloped Carthage from the outset, and its glory and greatness as a Christian See were transient indeed. It blazed out all at once in Tertullian, after about a century of missionary labours had been exerted upon its creation: and having given a Minucius Felix, an Arnobius and a Lactantius to adorn the earliest period of Western Ecclesiastical learning, in addition to its nobler luminaries, it rapidly declined. At the beginning of the Third Century, at a council presided over by Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, there were present not less than seventy bishops of the Province. A period of cruel persecutions followed, and the African Church received a baptism of blood. Tertullian was born a heathen, and seems to have been educated at Rome, where he probably practiced as a jurisconsult. We may, perhaps, adopt most of the ideas of Allix, as conjecturally probable, and assign his birth to a.d. 145. He became a Christian about 185, and a presbyter about 190. The period of his strict orthodoxy very nearly expires with the century. He lived to an extreme old age, and some suppose even till a.d. 240. More probably we must adopt the date preferred by recent writers, a.d. 220. It seems to be the fashion to treat of Tertullian as a Montanist, and only incidentally to celebrate his services to the Catholic Orthodoxy of Western Christendom. Were I his biographer I should reverse this course, as a mere act of justice, to say nothing of gratitude to a man of splendid intellect, to whom the filial spirit of Cyprian accorded the loving tribute of a disciple, and whose genius stamped itself upon the very words of Latin theology, and prepared the language for the labours of a Jerome. In creating the Vulgate, and so lifting the Western Churches into a position of intellectual equality with the East, the latter as well as St. Augustine himself were debtors to Tertullian in a degree not to be estimated by any other than the Providential Mind that inspired his brilliant career as a Christian. In speaking of Tatian I laid the base for what I wished to say of Tertullian. Let God only be their judge; let us gratefully recognize the debt we owe to them. Let us read them, as we read the works of King Solomon. We must, indeed, approve of the discipline of the Primitive Age, which allowed of no compromises. The Church was struggling for existence, and could not permit any man to become her master.  The more brilliant the intellect, the more dangerous to the poor Church were its perversions of her Testimony.  Before the heathen tribunals, and in the market-places, it would not answer to let Christianity appear double-tongued. The orthodoxy of the Church, not less than her children, was undergoing an ordeal of fire.  It seems a miracle that her Testimony preserved its unity, and that heresy was branded as such by the instinct of the Faithful. Poor Tertullian was cut off by his own act. The weeping Church might bewail him as David mourned for Absalom, but like David, she could not give the Ark of God into other hands than those of the loyal and the true. I have set the writings of Tertullian in a natural and logical order, so as to aid the student, and to relieve him from the distractions of such an arrangement as one finds in Oehler’s edition.  Valuable as it is, the practical use of it is irritating and confusing. The reader of that edition may turn to the slightly differing schemes of Neander and Kaye, for a theoretical order of the works; but here he will find a classification which will aid his inquiries. He will find, first, those works which connect with the Apologists of the former volumes of this series: which illustrate the Church’s position toward the outside world, the Jews as well as the Gentiles. Next come those works which contend with internal differences and heresies. And then, those which reflect the morals and manners of Christians. These are classed with some reference to their degrees of freedom from the Montanistic taint, and are followed, last of all, by the few tracts which belong to the melancholy period of his lapse, and are directed against the Church’s orthodoxy. Let it be borne in mind, that if this sad close of Tertullian’s career cannot be extenuated, the later history of Latin Christianity forbids us to condemn him, in the tones which proceeded from the Virgin Church with authority, and which the law of her testimony and the instinct of self-preservation forced her to utter. Let us reflect that St. Bernard and after him the Schoolmen, whom we so deservedly honour, separated themselves far more absolutely than ever Tertullian did from the orthodoxy of Primitive Christendom. The schism which withdrew the West from Communion with the original seats of Christendom, and from Nicene Catholicity, was formidable beyond all expression, in comparison with Tertullian’s entanglements with a delusion which the See of Rome itself had momentarily patronized. Since the Council of Trent, not a theologian of the Latins has been free from organic heresies, compared with which the fanaticism of our author was a trifling aberration. Since the late Council of the Vatican, essential Montanism has become organized in the Latin Churches: for what are the new revelations and oracles of the pontiff but the deliria of another claimant to the voice and inspiration of the Paraclete? Poor Tertullian! The sad influences of his decline and folly have been fatally felt in all the subsequent history of the West, but, surely subscribers to the Modern Creed of the Vatican have reason to “speak gently of their father’s fall.” To Döllinger, with the “Old Catholic” remnant only, is left the right to name the Montanists heretics, or to upbraid Tertullian as a lapser from Catholicity. From Dr. Holmes, I append the following Introductory Notice: (I.) Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, as our author is called in the mss. of his works, is thus noticed by Jerome in his Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum: “Tertullian, a presbyter, the first Latin writer after Victor and Apollonius, was a native of the province of Africa and city of Carthage, the son of a proconsular centurion:  he was a man of a sharp and vehement temper, flourished under Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, and wrote numerous works, which (as they are generally known) I think it unnecessary to particularize.  I saw at Concordia, in Italy, an old man named Paulus. He said that when young he had met at Rome with an aged amanuensis of the blessed Cyprian, who told him that Cyprian never passed a day without reading some portion of Tertullian’s works, and used frequently to say, Give me my master, meaning Tertullian. After remaining a presbyter of the church until he had attained the middle age of life, Tertullian was, by the envy and contumelious treatment of the Roman clergy, driven to embrace the opinions of Montanus, which he has mentioned in several of his works under the title of the New Prophecy.…He is reported to have lived to a very advanced age, and to have composed many other works which are not extant.” We add Bishop Kaye’s notes on this extract, in an abridged shape: “The correctness of some parts of this account has been questioned. Doubts have been entertained whether Tertullian was a presbyter, although these have solely arisen from Roman Catholic objections to a married...