TERTULLIAN , QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS
resources and loose control over the country, to have
done in three weeks what it was not able to accomplish
after several years? Similar and even more telling ques-
tions can be raised about the decision to go to war against
Iraq as a response to the threat of terrorism.
Terrorism, whether practiced by states, substate
groups, or individuals, has a long and varied history.
Whereas the practice can be generally condemned, many
who condemn it most strongly are themselves engaged in
terrorism or support for terrorism. More significantly, in
order for responses to terrorism or the threat of terrorism
to be morally justified, they must meet the requirements
of the just war theory by first exhausting nonbelligerent
correctives, and frequently, this is not done.
See also Just War Theory.
Bibliography
Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror Out of Zion. New York: St, Martin’s Press,
1977.
Bickerton, Ian, and Carla Klausner. A Concise History of the
Arab-Israeli Conflict. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
2002.
Byrnes, James F. Speaking Frankly. New York: Harper, 1947.
Crenshaw, Martha, “The Logic of Terrorism.” In Origins of
Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind.
Edited by Walter Reich. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1990.
Henderson, Harry. Terrorism. New York: Facts on File, 2001.
Kameel Nasr. Arab and Israeli Terrorism. London: McFarland,
1997.
Laquer, Walter. The Age of Terrorism. Boston: Little, Brown,
1987.
Malley, Robert, and Hussein Agha, “Camp David: The Tragedy
of Errors.” New York Review of Books 48 (13), 2001.
Nash, Jay Robert. Terrorism in the 20th Century. New York: M.
Evans, 1998.
Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Patterns of
Global Terrorism-2000, 2001.
Rappoport, David. “Religion and Terror: Thugs, Assassins, and
Zealots.” In International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes,
Controls. Edited by Charles Kegley, 147–149. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1990.
Simon, Jeffrey. The Terrorist Trap. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2001.
Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars, 2nd ed. New York: Basic
Books, 1992
James P. Sterba (2005)
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition
tertullian, quintus
septimius florens
(c. 160–c. 220)
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, the African Church
Father, was born in Carthage and was converted to Chris-
tianity about 193. He made early use of his training in
rhetoric and Roman law in two apologetic works, Ad
Nationes and Apologeticum, written in 197. These owe
much to earlier Greek Christian apologies and to the
writings of Varro, an Augustan polymath who analyzed
religion along Stoic lines; Ad Nationes seems to have been
a first draft of the Apologeticum. Tertullian was the first
Christian theologian to write in Latin, and most of his
works deal with moral and theological issues; all contain
elements of polemic either against various aspects of
Greco-Roman culture or against Christian heresies. Ter-
tullian’s works can be dated by cross-references, allusions
to current events, and by his gradual movement toward
the ascetic-apocalyptic sect of the Montanists, advocates
of the “new prophecy”; he became a Montanist about 206
and later became the leader of a Montanist group in
Carthage. Nothing is known of his life after the time of
his last literary work, written about 220.
His writings are vigorously, even violently, individu-
alistic in style and often in content; he loved paradox and
contradiction, going so far as to claim in De Carne Christi
(Ch. 5) that the incarnation of Christ “certum est quia
impossibile” (“is certain because impossible”). This claim
seems to be based on a line of argument found in Aristo-
tle’s Rhetoric (Book 2, Ch. 23, Sec. 22): It is likely that
unlikely things should happen. Tertullian’s philosophical
theology is derived largely from his Greek Christian pred-
ecessors (St. Justin Martyr, Tatian, St. Theophilus, Ire-
naeus); his own contributions are chiefly Stoic in origin.
For him philosophy is partly, or sometimes, an enemy of
religion (“What does Jerusalem have to do with
Athens?”), sometimes an ally (“Seneca is often one of
us”).
Only two of Tertullian’s nonapologetic works are pri-
marily concerned with philosophical themes. One is the
early treatise Adversus Hermogenes, in which he attacks
the doctrine that matter is eternal and claims that Her-
mogenes derived this belief from Platonic and Stoic
sources. His own arguments against the eternity of mat-
ter are partly a revision of a lost book by Theophilus, as
the common Genesis text indicates. Hermogenes argued
that the immutable God cannot have created the world
from himself or have begun to create it ex nihilo; there-
fore he must have made it from matter, to which its
• 399
TESTIMONY
imperfections are to be ascribed. God continually “cre-
ates,” influencing matter as a magnet influences iron. In
reply, Tertullian insisted primarily on God’s freedom
from “necessity.” God created by his free will and there-
fore was not limited by matter.
His other work of philosophical interest is the Mon-
tanist treatise De Anima (c. 210–213), which is intended
to prove that Platonic teaching is false. The soul is actu-
ally corporeal and originates from a “soul-producing
seed” at the moment of conception. It is not preexistent
and does not transmigrate—an argument directed not
only against Platonists but also against Christian heretics,
chiefly Gnostic. Tertullian also discusses the human
embryo and other related topics. His work is largely based
on a treatise on the soul by the Greek physician Soranus,
who wrote at Rome early in the second century. From
Soranus, Tertullian derives most of his discussions of
Plato, the Stoics, Aristotle, Heraclitus, and Democritus.
Tertullian’s importance thus lies in his mediation of ear-
lier conceptions, Christian and pagan alike, and for his
translation of Greek ideas into Latin.
See also Apologists; Aristotle; Heraclitus of Ephesus; Leu-
cippus and Democritus; Plato; Platonism and the Pla-
tonic Tradition; Stoicism.
Bibliography
TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
First modern edition by F. Oehler, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1853–1854;
A Reifferscheid et al. (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum
Latinorum XX, XLVII, LXX. Vienna, 1890–); and E. Dekkers
et al. (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, I–II, Turnhout:
Brepols, 1954–).
English translations in Ante-Nicene Christian Library VII, XI,
XV, XVIII. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1868–1870.
Castorina, E., ed. De spectaculis. Florence, 1961.
Evans, E., ed. Adversus Praxeam. London, 1948.
Evans, E., ed. De carne Christi. London 1956.
Evans, E., ed. De resurretione carnis. London 1960.
Pollmann, K. Das Carmen adversus Marcionitas: Einleitung,
Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1991.
Refoulé, R. F. De praescriptione haereticorum. Sources
Chrétiennes XLVI. Tübingen, 1910; Frankfurt: Minerva,
1968.
Schneider, A., ed. Ad nations. Rome, 1968.
Waszink, J. P., ed. De anima. Amsterdam, 1947.
STUDIES
Aziza, Claude. Tertullien et le judaïsme. Paris: Belles Lettres,
1977.
Barnes, T. D. Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1971; rev. ed., 1985.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
400 • 2nd edition
Braun, R. et al., ed. Chronica Tertullianea et Cyprianea,
1975–1994: Bibliographie critique de la première littérature
latine chrétienne. Paris, 1999.
Bray, G. Holiness and the Will of God: Perspectives on the
Theology of Tertullian. London; Atlanta: John Knox Press,
1979.
Dekkers, E. Tertullianus en de Geschiednis der Liturgie.
Münster, 1947.
Dunn, Geoffrey. Tertullian. London: Routledge, 2004.
Fredouille, J. C. Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique.
Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1972.
Moingt, J. Théologie trinitaire de Tertullien. Théologie 68–70.
Paris: Aubier, 1966.
Nisters, B. Tertullian: Seine Persönlichkeit un sein Schicksal.
Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie 25 (1950).
O’Malley, T. P. Tertullian and the Bible. Latinitas
Christianorum Primaeva 21. Utrecht: Dekker & Van de Vegt,
1967.
Osborne, E. F. Tertullian, First Theologian of the West.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Questen, J. Patrology, II. pp. 246–340. Utrecht: Spectrum
Publishers, 1953.
Rankin, D. I. Tertullian and the Church. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, U.K., 1995.
Säflund, G. De Pallio und stilistische Entwicklung Tertullians.
Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Rom VIII, Lund: C.
W. K. Gleerup, 1955.
Sider, D. Ancient Rhetoric and the Art of Tertullian. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1971.
Vecchiotti, I. La filosofia di Tertulliano. Un colpo di sonda nella
storia del cristianesimo primitivo. Urbino: Argalìa, 1970.
Robert M. Grant (1967)
Bibliography updated by Scott Carson (2005)
testimony
The term testimony in contemporary analytic philosophy
is used as label for the spoken or written word, when this
purports to pass on the speaker’s or writer’s knowledge,
conveying factual information or other truth. Testifying,
or giving testimony, is a linguistic action, and testimony is
its result, an audible speech act of telling or more
extended discourse (perhaps recorded), or a legible writ-
ten text. Interest in the topic has grown rapidly since the
publication of C. A. J. Coady’s Testimony: A Philosophical
Study (1992). Testimony in this broad sense includes the
central case of one person telling something to another in
face-to-face communication, as well as a range of other
cases, from public lectures, television and radio broad-
casts, and newspapers to personal letters and e-mails, all
kinds of purportedly factual books and other publica-
tions, and the information recorded in train timetables,
birth registers, and official records of many kinds.