CHAPTER 4

Alexandria and Carthage:
The Development of
Christian Culture

(SECOND TO THIRD CENTURIES)

For over two millennia, the city of Alexandria has been famous for two things: its library, symbol of Hellenistic literary culture, and its lighthouse, the Pharos, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Pharos was built in the middle of the third century BCE to guide ships into the harbour. Vital for the economy of the eastern part of the Empire, Alexandria was the transit point for grain from the fertile Nile delta. Successive generations of powerful men (including, later on, Christian bishops) could control or even block this trade to the city’s or their own advantage. The city itself had been founded by Alexander in the early 330s BCE. When his successors divided his empire between them, Alexandria became the capital of an Egyptian kingdom, ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. Kings Ptolemy I and II in particular were enthusiastic patrons of intellectual life, encouraging many scholars to travel to Alexandria. The Museum – a religious and intellectual institution dedicated to the Muses – and the Serapeum were founded at this time.

The Ptolemies expanded the collections of texts in these locations into the famed library, motivated not only by genuine scholarly interest but also by a competitive urge to see Alexandria excel Antioch (capital of the Seleucid Empire) and Pergamon (the Attalid capital) as an intellectual centre. By the second century CE the great library was in decline; nevertheless, there was still a strong intellectual life in Alexandria which attracted visitors to its schools of philosophy, medicine and other disciplines.¹ Many of these scholars and students were from Greece. Greek became the language of administration and education, and eventually the language of most of Alexandria’s residents.² Ethnically and culturally, however, Alexandria remained a heady mix of Egyptian, Hellenic and other influences. Ptolemy I took as the patron god of his new dynasty and city a Hellenized version of the Egyptian god Osorapis (Sarapis) to whom the magnificent Serapeum temple was dedicated.³ The city had a large population of Egyptians and a significant community of Jews. This mix continued under Roman imperial rule.

Carthage had a similar double aspect: besides being the port which supplied the western part of the Empire with wheat, olive oil and wild beasts for the shows in Rome, Carthage also trained talented young men who worked in North Africa, Rome and further afield.⁴ For example, Apuleius, the author of the second-century novel The Golden Ass, moved from Carthage to Athens, Rome and back to North Africa again. He later praised Carthage, ‘where every citizen is a cultivated person and where all devote themselves to all fields of knowledge, children by learning them, young men by showing them off, and old men by teaching them’.⁵ Carthage itself had its origins as a Phoenician trading colony, and echoes of the worship of Baal remained for centuries in local names, in cults (later Romanized as the worship of Saturn) and even, it is sometimes claimed, in the violence of the Roman gladiatorial shows. The region had a tumultuous history: after the Punic Wars (first century BCE) North Africa became a Roman province and there was a new influx of settlers from Italy, but there was continual friction between Roman imperial forces and local African tribes. Rome was only a short sea passage away and the cultural interchange between Carthage and Italy was strong. By the second century, the language of administration, education and of many of the population was Latin, although this lingua franca overlaid a complex variety of ethnic, linguistic and religious connections, Phoenician, African, and Italian. In size and importance, Carthage neared (or, to its inhabitants, rivalled) Alexandria. In the western part of the Roman Empire it was clearly second only to Rome.⁶

Given their size and their position on important trade routes, it is not surprising, therefore, that Alexandria and Carthage, like Antioch and Rome, were home to important communities of Christians. Owing to their strong intellectual traditions, they were to give rise to two of the most articulate and influential Christian writers of the second and third centuries: Origen and Tertullian. In many ways these two can be regarded as the great fathers of Greek and Latin theology, respectively.

We know little about the origins of Christianity in either city. Like many Mediterranean churches, Alexandria claimed an apostolic tradition: Mark, the author of the Gospel, was held to have founded the church there.⁷ Eusebius reports that Philo (c.20BCE–c.50CE) ‘welcomed with whole-hearted approval the apostolic men of his day, who it seems were of Hebrew stock and therefore, in the Jewish manner, still retained most of their ancient customs’.⁸ The historian even claims that the ascetic community of therapeutae (‘healers’) which Philo describes in great detail and with great respect was in fact the community which Mark founded.⁹

There is no evidence for the Markan foundation and it is impossible to claim a Christian community was living there at the time of Philo (who was himself contemporary with Jesus of Nazareth). However, Eusebius does seem to have been correct in one assumption – that Alexandrian Chris-tianity first took root in its already large and vigorous Jewish population. Jews had probably been settling in Alexandria almost since its foundation; by the middle of the second century BCE they may have constituted as much as a third of the population. Jews were granted a certain degree of self-government and the right to follow their religious laws and traditions, but few Jews (and indeed few native Egyptians) were citizens of the city. Relations between Jews and their fellow Alexandrians were not necessarily easy; in particular under Roman rule Jews became caught up in the tensions between the Egyptian-Greek population and the imperial forces. On some occasions, as in 38CE, the Roman provincial governor in effect allowed a pogrom against the Jews in order to try to maintain his good standing with the rest of the population. Philo was one of those who travelled to Rome to protest on behalf of his community. On a later occasion, in 115CE, Jews in Alexandria revolted against the Roman authorities. In both cases, tens of thousands are said to have died, and from then on Alexandrian Judaism was never as vigorous as it had been.

Philo himself was a highly educated Jew, devotedly loyal to the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish customs, but keen to show that they were compatible with the Greek culture in which he had been educated. A Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible had been made in Alexandria in the third to second centuries BCE, and Philo, like many of his Jewish contemporaries, regarded this Septuagint translation as inspired and authoritative, and felt no need to consult the Hebrew. Philo clearly regarded himself more as an exegete than a philosopher, although equally clearly these terms for him were complementary not opposed.¹⁰ In his desire to interpret his ancient religion in terms of Hellenism, he argued that Greek philosophers’ ideas came to agree with those from the Pentateuch because they had copied or stolen them from Moses. He thus shared the dilemma of the Christian apologists (who borrowed some of his arguments): their particular argument for the harmony of Greek philosophical ideas and their religion implicitly asserted the priority and superiority of the latter.¹¹ Philo’s own particular philosophical influence was Platonism – his writing on the creation is influenced, for example, by Plato’s Timaeus. Because Clement of Alexandria and Origen broadly share this philosophical bias it has sometimes been assumed that Alexandria in the first three centuries CE was especially a seat of Platonic philosophy. The truth is that we know less than we would like to about the philosophical climate in this period of Alexandrian history, and that there is as much evidence for other philosophical influences as for Platonism.¹² Furthermore, Alexandria’s intellectual history was coloured at least as much by literary criticism and by medicine and other branches of science as by philosophy.

Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215) was a highly cultured Christian of Alexandria who seems to have been a lay teacher of the Christian faith. It used to be said that he was the head teacher of a Christian ‘catechetical school’ in Alexandria and that Origen was his successor, but the existence of such a school as a formal institution (for instance, with buildings) is now doubted. Furthermore, although Origen was clearly influenced by Clement, it is not known whether they met. Clement opposed both pagan criticisms of Christianity and the superstitions and determinist exclusivity of Gnostic groups in Alexandria, while borrowing concepts from both pagan and Gnostic writings. Like Philo, he was concerned to show that his religion was both true, moral and intellectually defensible in terms familiar to contemporary well-educated students of philosophy. From the Gnostics, Clement took the idea of a true gnosis, a true knowledge which Christians possessed. Unlike them, however, he argued that it was offered universally to all people. One idea that seems to have had a particular influence on Origen is that of the Christian life as a progressive journey, which depended on both grace and human effort.¹³ It may have been influenced by the Valentinian idea of three groups of Christians, Clement adapting this to suggest that all people could move up from the lowest rank to the highest.

Tracing Origen’s biography is made difficult by the fact that in later centuries his reputation was fought over by fans and opponents: both groups had reason to embellish or edit his life story to suit their case. The longest account comes from Eusebius, a favourable commentator; the general structure of this is generally accepted, although some of the details are very uncertain. Origen was born around 185CE.¹⁴ If he was born into a Christian family, as seems likely,¹⁵ he would probably have been educated in the Christian Scriptures at home alongside his training in the Greek curriculum at school. When Origen was in his late teens, his father died as a result of the persecution of Emperor Septimius Severus. Thereafter, Origen seems to have earned his living as a teacher, first of Greek literature, and perhaps also of the other subjects on the advanced curriculum for young men: mathematics, astronomy and music. Around this time he also began to be sought out as a teacher of the basics of Christian faith. Some Christian teachers had left Alexandria because of the persecutions; this, plus Origen’s reputation for clarity, wisdom and his care of his students, meant that his teaching was much in demand. Eventually, Origen gave up his teaching of the Greek literary curriculum and focused on teaching Christianity. To begin with, his role may have been similar to that of Justin Martyr in Rome – he certainly shared Justin’s interest in using philosophy to explain the Christian faith and his emphasis on Christianity as a moral and rigorous way of life. Later, he was given a more official role as teacher of catechumens (those preparing for Christian baptism) by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, and he may have assumed leadership of the Alexandrian ‘catechetical school’.

It was in this period that Origen began to write, composing, for example, commentaries on the Book of Lamentations, on Psalms 1–25, on Genesis and John’s Gospel. He also began work on the Hexapla, or ‘six-fold work’. This was a six-column compendium of versions of the Old Testament: the Hebrew, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew and four Greek translations including the Septuagint, which was the standard text of the Hebrew Bible for Christians as well as Jews. Although it was perhaps Origen’s greatest achievement, the Hexapla’s vast size meant that it was apparently never copied, and modern scholars can only reconstruct its context from traces left in works by Origen and his successors. Besides these works, which were directly focused on the task of reading Scripture, Origen also wrote On First Principles, which is a more systematic account of Christian doctrine and an explanation of the methods of reading Scripture. During this period Origen benefited from the patronage of a wealthy Alexandrian, Ambrosius, which allowed him to pay for secretaries, to whom he dictated his works, and scribes – both boys and girls – who made multiple copies available to his rapidly expanding audience, both in Alexandria and beyond.¹⁶

Unfortunately Origen’s relationship with Bishop Demetrius was made difficult by Origen’s enquiring approach to the Christian faith and his ambiguous role as a lay teacher with no formal ecclesiastical authority, but with increasing spiritual and intellectual influence. He began to travel further afield to teach and on one of his journeys was ordained priest in Caesarea in Palestine – which suggests that Demetrius had refused to ordain him. In around 234 Origen left to live permanently in Caesarea, taking his library with him. Here he continued to produce more commentaries and theological works, plus several series of sermons on biblical texts. Besides preaching and teaching the basics of Christian faith, Origen also took in students, both local and foreign, for a more specialized education which involved a rigorous philosophical programme and the detailed study of large amounts of pagan literature.¹⁷ In Palestine he got caught up in a new wave of persecutions under the Emperor Decius (249–51): although he was not killed, as the bishops of Rome and Jerusalem were, he was imprisoned, probably tortured and died later of ill health around 254.

Origen was from first to last a teacher. The earliest surviving piece of writing to mention him thanked him precisely for his teaching and praised his method which combined discipline with an inspiring example of moral and pious behaviour.¹⁸ It also pointed to Origen’s use of a penetrating but sympathetic method of Socratic questioning. The author remembered above all Origen’s sympathetic friendship and the enthusiasm which overcame his pupil’s initial reluctance. The direction of his life in Caesarea suggests that Origen viewed the roles of priest and teacher as very closely interconnected. Even the most notorious report about Origen – that he castrated himself – is perhaps connected to his sense of vocation as a teacher: historians normally repeat Eusebius’ explanation that Origen carried out this act from an overly eager ascetic urge to fulfil literally Jesus’ words, ‘there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God’ (Matthew 19.12); but Eusebius adds that a further motivation was Origen’s desire to protect himself from accusations of improper behaviour, because his pupils included women as well as men.

It is tempting to connect the importance of teaching in Origen’s life to his upbringing in Alexandria: the existence of a long-established tradition of textual scholarship and teaching of various kinds was probably a more important influence on Origen than the existence of any particular ‘school’, whether Christian or philosophical. But this influence did not just affect Origen’s sense of vocation; it seeped into his theology itself. Although the following account organizes and tidies up what is a rather varied and amorphous body of work, the concept of teaching and teachers is a useful lens through which to view Origen’s theology and one which can make sense of some ideas which otherwise seem alien, or even dangerous, to modern readers. The concept of education in play here is not that which applied to all school children, but a more specialized sense which would have applied to those (usually men) who chose to follow a master after their elementary schooling and professional training (e.g. in rhetoric) had been completed. The type of ‘higher education’ that most directly influenced Christianity was philosophical, but it was not the only sort: its essential characteristics would also have applied to the kind of specialist practical and conceptual training that a medic like Galen gave his pupils. This kind of specialized and elite education was understood as: the following of a specific teacher; as a movement from learning basic facts to asking more profound and probing questions; as a training in how to read texts; and finally as a life-changing experience.

Origen often characterized Jesus Christ as a teacher. For example, he began On First Principles:

All who believe and are convinced that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ and that Christ is the truth … derive the knowledge that calls men to lead a good and blessed life from no other source but the very words and teaching of Christ.

Origen shared with Justin the idea of the Logos (the divine Word or Son) as the expression or revelation of the truth of God. But he developed much more vividly than Justin the idea of the Incarnation as the means by which God enables humankind to receive this revelation. Against the arguments of the pagan Celsus, who assumed that if a divine being took on a human body and soul it would corrupt him, Origen argued that the Incarnation enabled the Word to ‘come down to the level of him who is unable to look upon the radiance and brilliance of the deity’. Like a teacher, Christ anticipates his pupils’ progress: he adapts himself to those who are beginners, ‘until he who has accepted him in this form is gradually lifted up by the Word and can look even upon, so to speak, his absolute form’.¹⁹ Like a teacher with pupils of different abilities, the Word allowed himself to appear to people in different ways according to their need. For example, some of the disciples saw the transfigured Christ, while others only his plain state. Origen thought that the Gospels showed that Jesus taught people in different ways, giving basic explanations of the parables to his wider audience, but deeper explanations to his close disciples.²⁰ Even the discrepancies between the four Gospels reflected the fact that ‘Jesus is many things, according to the [various] understandings of him, of which it is quite likely that the Evangelists took up different notions’.²¹ (Thus Origen, theologian and textual critic, deftly turns a textual problem to theological advantage!)

Origen explored Jesus’ role as teacher from different perspectives. Sometimes he viewed it generally as moral cleansing or spiritual healing.²² Sometimes he focused on one incident as if it demonstrated a specific teaching technique. For example, in interpreting the story of Jesus instructing the elders in the Temple, Origen attributes to the child Jesus a Socratic method of questioning! ‘He asked the teachers questions … not to learn something, but to instruct them by asking questions. Asking questions and answering wisely flow from the same source of teaching, and it belongs to the same knowledge to know what questions to ask and how to answer.’ ²³ According to Origen, the Christian was called to imitate Christ, morally and spiritually, even to the point of accepting martyrdom as Christ obediently accepted death on the Cross. Similarly, the Christian teacher was called to imitate Christ’s pedagogy, leading by moral and spiritual example, matching his teaching to the abilities of his pupils and leading each on constantly to higher things.

Greek education of children relied on a notoriously hard and dull method of memory and repetition, first of basic word forms and then of texts. For many people, of course, this was as far as their education went. Even the teaching of rhetoric (the art of public speaking and persuasion) to young men could be rather mechanical. A philosophical education, which encouraged able pupils to think for themselves and promised to change their lives, must have seemed scarily liberating. Although Origen would never have described the teaching of the essentials of Christian faith as boring, he did seem to draw a distinction between learning the basics, which was necessary for all Christians, and a more speculative approach which was only appropriate for the more advanced. Thus in the preface to his work On First Principles, he set out ‘a definite line and unmistakable rule’ regarding those doctrines which the Apostles thought ‘necessary’ and therefore taught ‘in the plainest terms to all believers, even to those who appeared to be somewhat dull in the investigation of divine knowledge’.²⁴ These doctrines were: that ‘God is one, who created and set in order all things’; that this God gave both the Prophets and the Gospels; that this God was Father of Jesus Christ ‘who was begotten of the Father before every created thing’ and who came to earth, took flesh, truly died, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven; that the Holy Spirit, who is ‘united in honour and dignity with the Father’, ‘inspired each one of the saints, both the prophets and the apostles’. In addition to this three-fold declaration (very similar to the kind of rule of faith asserted by Irenaeus²⁵), Origen also thought that the Apostles clearly taught that the immortal soul was freely responsible for its deeds in this life and would be punished or rewarded for them after death; that there would be a resurrection of the body; that the world began to exist at a definite time and at some time would cease to exist; and, finally, that ‘the scriptures were composed through the Spirit of God and that they have not only that meaning which is obvious, but also another which is hidden from the majority of readers’.²⁶

Origen described these as ‘elementary and foundation principles’: they were the basis for, but did not make up, a ‘connected/single body of doctrine’. Any student wanting to achieve that, and anyone who wanted answers for the uncertain questions which Origen also raised in the Preface, should proceed by ‘clear and cogent arguments’ and with ‘illustrations and declarations … in the holy scriptures’.²⁷ It is generally agreed that this is what Origen attempted to do in the rest of On First Principles – although commentators differ greatly as to whether they put the emphasis on Origen’s desire to systematize or on his desire to speculate on uncertain questions. Origen’s language suggested that he thought the ‘elementary and foundation principles’ were points which needed to be connected up to form a definite shape or ‘body of doctrine’ (as mathematicians might construct a form), or foundations on which a doctrinal ‘building’ could be constructed. Elsewhere he wrote of sketching out a picture, before painting in the colour.²⁸ All these images suggest – against his critics – that Origen thought that even his more speculative thought was still within the framework created by the canon of faith.

Origen is also criticized for his elitist attitude to Christian education: the idea that while all can know the basics, some can know more. At one level there is no denying this hierarchical structure to his theology, but it is moderated in several ways. First, and most importantly, Origen thought that all deficiencies in human knowledge would be made up in the future life. Using the metaphor of sketching and painting, he wrote: ‘It is clear, then, that to those who have now in this life a kind of outline of thought and knowledge there shall be added in the future the beauty of the perfect image.’ ²⁹ Origen explained the possibility of this future knowledge using the image of ‘a lecture room or school for souls’ in heaven.³⁰ He also quoted Paul’s hope that although ‘now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face’ (I Corinthians 13.12): this implies a recognition that, despite Origen’s enthusiasm for speculation, all human knowledge is dim by comparison with heavenly wisdom. This is the second way in which his elitism was moderated. Thirdly, he was countering an even more thoroughgoing elitism found in the theology of Valentinian Christians.³¹ Whereas they thought that humans were divided into three distinct groups – the elect people of the spirit (pneuma), the rejected people of the body (soma) and the intermediate people of the soul (psyche) whose fate was not determined – Origen in effect taught that humans could move from one category up to another. In the end, he believed that all created beings would become ‘spiritual’.

How did Origen explain and defend the ‘first principles’ of Christian theology? At the heart of his work was his belief that God is immaterial (not composed of matter) and invisible. God alone exists without a body.³² This Origen asserted not only against those Christians and Jews who read some biblical statements anthropomorphically but also against those Stoic philosophers who thought that divinity was a kind of material element which underlay and gave order to the other elements in the universe.³³ It is against the latter that Origen particularly emphasized that the Spirit is immaterial and was not some substance to be divided up amongst those who shared in him.

Having established this, Origen then explained that God the Father is the source of all that is and that everything in a sense reflects back on him. However, the way in which the Father was the source of the Son and the Spirit was carefully distinguished in Origen’s theology from the way in which the Father was the source of the created universe. Firstly, Origen asserted that the Son and the Spirit were – like the Father – immaterial, intellectual and spiritual. They share the nature of the Father. But, Origen insisted, this did not mean that the Father’s substance was divided up to make the Son and Spirit, for that would imply that the Father was material (for only that which is material can be split and divided). Nor was it the case that the Son and Spirit were accidental overspillings from the divine origin. (Origen was deliberately opposing various versions of the Gnostic myth here.) Rather, the Son was ‘begotten’ by the Father ³⁴: the biological metaphor stressed that the Son shared the Father’s nature and was begotten by his will, not by accident. But unlike any animal begetting, the Son was begotten timelessly and eternally by the Father, for it would be impossible to imagine that the Father was at any time without his Wisdom.³⁵

Much debate has been generated by the emphasis which Origen put on the idea that the Son is the ‘image of the Father’: did this imply the Son’s inferiority? For Origen ‘image’ was a biblical metaphor,³⁶ which was to be understood not in the sense in which a picture or a sculpture is an image of someone (an entirely material sense of imaging), but in the sense in which a son is the image of his father, sharing, for example, character traits and mental aptitudes:

This image preserves the unity of nature and substance common to a father and son. For if ‘all things that the Father does, these also does the Son likewise’, then in this very fact that the Son does all things just as the Father does, the Father’s image is reproduced in the Son, whose birth from the Father is as it were an act of his will proceeding from the mind.³⁷

Even when Origen stated that the Son is the ‘image of his [i.e. the Father’s] goodness’, again the metaphor is principally biblical (Wisdom 7.25) and intended to show that the Son’s goodness is derived from the Father and that it is one with the Father’s, i.e. that there are not two rival goodnesses, or that the Son’s true goodness is opposed to the Father’s merely apparent goodness (as Marcion claimed).

Critics of Origen, both in late antiquity and today, have claimed that he used ‘image’ language in a Platonic fashion, to suggest that the Son was merely an image of the Father, i.e. that he was merely an imprecise reflection, or an inferior copy of the Father’s goodness. (Part of the difficulty here is the uncertainty over the exact original Greek of Origen’s texts, some of which only survive in Latin versions which were translated either by followers – who may have ironed out some controversial features – or enemies – who may have heightened them).³⁸ On the whole, however, Origen guarded against this interpretation; his ontology (his understanding of what ‘being’ is) rested on a fundamental distinction between God the creator and that which is created. On this was superimposed another distinction between the immaterial (God and rational minds/souls) and the material. While Origen did think that immaterial things were superior to material ones, this distinction was not as important as the creator/created distinction: God is clearly superior to any created rational soul. Furthermore, in his theology there were to be no ontological distinctions between one uncreated person and another – that is, he did not think that any one of the three persons of the Trinity was more real than the others. Similarly, no created soul was more real than another, although, morally speaking, some were better and others were worse.

Origen thought that the Father was superior to the Son neither in the sense that he existed before the Son nor that he was more real or more good. Yet Origen did argue that the Son was begotten by the Father, or derived from him. In this sense there is an ‘order’ in the Trinity. This order is reflected in the roles of the three persons: the Son reveals the Father and this knowledge is made known to humankind by the Spirit. On this topic, Origen’s language did suggest that there was something about the Son which enabled him (but not the Father) to ‘empty himself’ in the Incarnation, in order to reveal something of God in a way which is fitted to humanity’s weak understanding. Conversely, in prayer there is an opposite ‘movement’ from Spirit, through Son, to Father. Origen suggested that people should pray ‘mingled with the Spirit of the Lord’, and partaking ‘of the Word of God, who stands in the midst even of those who do not know him, who is never absent from prayer, and who prays to the Father with the person whose Mediator he is’.³⁹ Obviously, the language of mediation and of Christ being High Priest was biblical,⁴⁰ and Christ’s mediatorial role was connected with his incarnation; nevertheless the paradox remained that for Origen the Word was not less than the Father, yet was somehow particularly fitted in some way to be the incarnate one who mediated between the world and God. It was in God’s dealings with the world, and not apparently in God’s eternal self, that the idea of God as source of the Son and the Spirit seemed most clearly to result in them being ordered beneath him in Origen’s theology.

By contrast, Origen thought that God’s role as source of the universe – as its creator – clearly set God not only above it but in a completely different order of reality from it. There appears to be no ‘great chain of being’ in Origen’s theology in which God the Father is at the top and the material world is at the bottom. A better analogy might be that of a sphere: the world is that which exists within the sphere, God is that which lies outside and surrounding it.

Origen’s cosmology is hugely controversial – again the unreliability of the texts is a problem. A central maxim for Origen was that ‘the end will be like the beginning’, but it is not at all clear what this meant.⁴¹ In On First Principles Origen described first a state of original peace and unity with God, secondly a ‘falling away’ from this state, and finally the reconciliation of the world again to the Father, in Christ. Some have taken this to mean a movement from immateriality (a state where rational souls alone existed with God) to materiality (the material world was a punishment for the souls’ fall) and then to an eschatologically perfected immateriality. But this account has been questioned on several counts.⁴² For example, Origen repeatedly argued that God alone can exist without a body: surely this ruled out the existence of souls which pre-existed and then fell into bodies? Secondly, it is now generally recognized that the claim of Methodius (a fourth-century critic of Origen) that Origen denied the resurrection of the body was based on a fundamental misreading of Origen’s work. Origen seems to have taken Paul at his word when he wrote of the resurrection of a ‘spiritual body’ and to have argued for a resurrection body composed in a different way from bodies in this life.⁴³ This may be rather different from the more literal defences of the resurrection of the body, atom by atom, found in the apologists before and the Cappadocians after Origen, but it does not amount to the denial of any resurrection body at all. Consequently, one might guess that if the ‘end will be like the beginning’ for Origen, souls did indeed exist with some kind of body.

As always, it is useful to bear in mind the theology that Origen was countering here: he opposed Gnostic and Valentinian denials of the resurrection of the body, but equally he opposed what he thought to be grotesquely materialistic predictions of the eschatological kingdom come to earth, in which the faithful would be rewarded with material goods for their perseverance.⁴⁴ Against both, Origen seems to have been trying to argue for the transformation and spiritualizing of the material world – including material bodies – however hard it was for him to articulate a way in which the material could be spiritualized without disappearing altogether. Underlying Origen’s thought here seems to have been not only the accounts of Christ’s resurrection but also those of his transfiguration, which suggested the possibility of humans’ transformation: Christ in his resurrection and incarnation is the one who reveals the possibility of and actualizes the transformation of all people.

This brings us to the final controversial aspect of Origen’s cosmology of salvation: his claim that all people would be saved. The question of whether he thought the devil himself would be saved is disputed (Origen appears to say so in one place and deny it in another – possibly indicating his awareness that the idea was controversial). The overall direction of his theology, however, pointed to the eventual salvation of the whole world and all humanity. The key term is ‘eventual’: Origen posited a system of purificatory punishment after death.⁴⁵ It was in this sense, above all, that the end would be like the beginning for Origen, when all creation – individually and as a whole – would be peacefully united with God in its love, knowledge and worship of the divine.⁴⁶ Typically for Origen, he often described this in intellectual terms, and he often used Platonic terminology to write of the rise of the soul towards God. But in Origen’s theology this rise indicated not the way in which the soul will eventually leave the body behind (as it did for Plato), but the rise of each individual as he or she was transformed, both in intellect and in body. It must be stressed, however, that unlike the doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that humans have rational souls and that there will be a resurrection of the body, Origen always expressed a reserve about the kind of resurrection body and the nature of the end-times – a reserve which indicates the distinction in his theology between the basic principles of Christianity (as expressed in the Preface to On First Principles) and the more speculative parts.

An important part of higher education in this period, whether one was training to be a rhetor, a philosopher or a doctor, was a training in how to read texts. This built on the more elementary stages of education which were also very text-based. Origen seemed to have wanted Christians to become trained in the reading of Scripture in the way that a philosopher trained his pupils to read Plato or Aristotle and a doctor trained his how to read Hippocrates. (A textual approach was not regarded as opposed to more practical education.) It has been suggested that certain late antique literary techniques can be traced in Origen’s concern to teach his pupils to establish the correct text (e.g. by using the Hexapla to find alternative translations when one is nonsensical); to read a text carefully (with particular attention to identifying who is speaking: Greek had no quotation marks); to interpret or understand a text (paying particular attention to obscure words, the structure of a narrative and the use of rhetorical or literary devices); and finally to judge or evaluate a text, bringing out a moral, for example.⁴⁷ Origen believed that every letter of the text of Scripture was directly inspired by the Spirit and that the reader – if also inspired by the Spirit – could draw something of spiritual worth out of every aspect of the text. In places where the apparent meaning of the biblical text was immoral or nonsense, Origen thought that the reader should seek for a deeper meaning. Usually this meant moving from a literal reading of the passage in question to a figurative or allegorical meaning. But it is worth noting that Origen thought that most parts of Scripture had a useful obvious meaning, and that in many places the text had both an obvious ‘surface’ and deeper allegorical meanings. Often he seems to have thought that the obvious meaning pointed to a real event in the past (e.g. the Passover), and that two further levels of meaning pointed to the moral application of that event (its meaning to the believer in the present) and to the eschatological perfection of the believer in the future.

Origen believed that not only learning about Christianity from a teacher, but indeed the very reading of Scripture, should be a life-changing experience.⁴⁸ His whole approach to Christian education assumed not only a dynamic progression from basic to more profound knowledge, but the idea that knowledge was transformatory. This is partly because knowledge, for Origen, was only one side of the coin, the other being love. The role of love in the spiritual journey is indicated with particular vividness and subtlety in his Commentary and his Homilies on the Song of Songs, in which the groom’s relationship with his wife is taken to symbolize the relationship of Christ with the soul (or, with human souls collectively as the Church). This approach to the Song of Songs, not to mention many of Origen’s interpretations of individual verses, became enormously influential in later Church Fathers and the medieval Church.⁴⁹

Although he is usually portrayed as a deeply intellectual and spiritual man, Origen was always also clearly alive to the practical consequences of Christian faith: besides frequently bringing out the ethical implications of Bible passages, he wrote treatises on martyrdom and on prayer, for example. The latter gives us some fascinating information about the practical aspects of Christian prayer in this period, for example the way in which Christians prayed with ‘hands outstretched and eyes lifted up’, except when asking for forgiveness, when they knelt.⁵⁰ Although he suggests that these outward physical attitudes represent inner spiritual attitudes (stretching one’s soul and lifting one’s mind to God), one should not think that Origen was unconcerned with physical posture. Like modern spiritual guides or liturgists, he seems to be suggesting that the physical posture aids and leads to a particular inner disposition. This is exactly parallel to the way in which he thought that the ‘body’ or historical meaning of the biblical text led one to the inner ‘spiritual’ meaning.

The origins of Christianity in Carthage are even more hazy than those of Christianity in Alexandria. There was a Jewish community in Carthage, as can be seen, for example, from the evidence of a Jewish cemetery to the north of the city.⁵¹ Some scholars have suggested that Christianity came to Carthage with Jews from the eastern Mediterranean who worshipped Christ as their Messiah and spread their belief among other Jews in the city. Another theory is that Christianity in Carthage came from Rome and was dominated, like the Roman congregations in the second century, by converts from paganism. The most likely conclusion is that North African Christianity rose from a number of different sources.⁵² Certainly in Tertullian’s writing one finds no obvious sense of descent from communities in Rome or elsewhere, and he treated Christianity as if it had been in Carthage for a good while. The best guess is that there were Christians in Carthage at least by the mid-second century. Apuleius’ The Golden Ass contains an ambiguous (and very scathing) description of a woman who ‘sacrilegiously feigned bold awareness of a deity whom she proclaimed to be the only God’; if this referred to Christianity, it would confirm this date.⁵³

The earliest secure evidence of Christianity in North Africa is the account of seven men and five women who were arrested in 180CE in the town of Scilli and brought to trial in neighbouring Carthage, where they were executed. Interestingly, one of them is described as carrying Latin copies of ‘books and letters of Paul’, which suggests that at least some of the leaders of the North African Christian community could not read Greek – setting them apart from nearly all other Christians leaders in this period, including those in Rome.⁵⁴ In 203CE another outbreak of persecution led to a small group of Carthaginian Christians being put to death in the arena. This event was recorded in the dramatic Martyrdom of Felicity and Perpetua (a text discussed in Chapter 2). Although Tertullian may not have actually been the editor of the latter text, it is unthinkable that these two groups of martyrs would not have made an impression on him: if he was born around 160CE, he would have been in his late teens or 20s when the Scillitan martyrs were killed and in middle age when Perpetua died. That the martyrs were revered by their contemporaries is shown by evidence that basilicas outside the city walls were built in their honour – possibly to contain their relics.⁵⁵

Tertullian’s description of the character and ceremonies of the Church in Carthage echoes Justin’s account of the community in Rome: he mentioned, for example, a common meal, the reading of Scripture, the sharing of goods (‘all things are common among us but our wives’), and voluntary collections for the support of the sick, the poor, orphans, the elderly, those who have suffered shipwreck and those Christians who have been imprisoned for their faith.⁵⁶ He put particular emphasis on the importance of common prayer:

We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with him in our supplications. … 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.⁵⁷

Two elements stand out slightly from Justin’s account. First, Tertullian indicated that the meeting for prayer and reading Scripture was also the context in which the elders ‘exhorted’, ‘rebuked’ and ‘censured’ members of the congregation. Whether this was general ethical instruction in the form of a homily or the censure of particular members of the congregation is not clear, although the emphasis on discipline fits Tertullian’s rigorous approach to ethics. Secondly, while Justin’s meal was called a Eucharist and he focused on the sharing of bread and wine, Tertullian described an agape, which seems to have been a full meal: ‘as much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste’; ‘with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy’.⁵⁸ The way Tertullian described the meal demonstrates nicely the difficult line which the apologists took in addressing their pagan contemporaries. On the one hand, he contrasted the drunken excess of pagan banquets with the modesty and moderation of the Christian agape (Christianity is better than paganism); on the other hand he implied that Christianity was no threat to the order of society because the agape was a normal Roman meal. The Christians first prayed, then reclined at the tables, eating a modest amount and talking as if God were overhearing them.

After washing their hands, and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one of his own composing – a proof of the measure of our drinking.⁵⁹

The invocation of gods, reclining whilst eating and talking, the washing of hands and music were all common features of Greek and Roman banquets (and of many Jewish celebratory meals as well). Although one might suspect Tertullian of working too hard to disabuse his audience of the fear that Christians were celebrating orgies, the description fits very well with the community meal celebrated by the Jewish therapeutae described by Philo.⁶⁰ It seems very likely that both Christians and Jews were adapting the practices of late antique culture, and that the order of their meals followed that of a Roman feast translated into a Christian or Jewish mode.

We have a large number of Tertullian’s writings, and his literary character leaps off the page: erudite, witty, satirical, caustic, by turns elegantly persuasive and fiercely stern. But we know little of the man himself and – as with Origen – recent research has tended to challenge what used to be accepted fact.⁶¹ We know from his own testimony that he lived and wrote in Carthage, was married and converted from paganism (probably in the late 190s, to judge from the date of his earliest extant works). He wrote in both Latin and Greek. His works are full of references to pagan philosophy and classical literature; they use the sophisticated techniques of contemporary rhetoric. Tertullian, we can conclude, had an excellent education; but although he may have received some legal training, he was probably not a lawyer by profession as once thought.⁶² He was extremely well versed in the Scriptures, both Old and New, and had read Justin and Irenaeus (at least, their works against heresy).⁶³ Despite later assumptions to the contrary, Tertullian’s own words imply that he was not a priest.⁶⁴ His education and cultural context affected not just his style but the kind of works he wrote. He appears to have written no commentaries or homilies (which again might suggest he was not a priest);⁶⁵ he did not write philosophical treatises, far less anything that might resemble systematic theology. Rather, his works are well understood as individual arguments, each defending the Christian position in a specific context or on a particular matter. In this sense all his works are ‘apologetic’ – they all argue a case for Christianity (although it has been traditional to divide his writings into ‘apologetic’, ‘doctrinal’ and ‘ethical’ works).⁶⁶ In a period when Latin prose was somewhat in the doldrums, Tertullian rejuvenated it, using rhetoric not for mere display but ‘to achieve its original objective, persuasion. … He did not describe, he advocated.’ ⁶⁷ Such argument and advocacy set a true case against a false one – either that of paganism (Tertullian’s ‘apologetic’ works), or of unorthodox Christians (‘doctrinal’ works), or of Christians in danger of lapsing (‘ethical’ works). Underlying them all was a profound conviction of a fundamental choice which the Christian had to make: for one God against the gods; for truth against falsity; for modest and plain living against show and excess. Another way of putting this is that throughout his work Tertullian was concerned with the question of Christian identity: what did it mean to be a Christian? In an era where this very question was made urgent by the threat of death and real choices had to be made, Tertullian sought to articulate the answer and to encourage his fellow believers to carry out its consequences.

The question of identity is perhaps most explicit in Tertullian’s Apology and in his ethical works, although the emphases are different. In the Apology he was keen to show the Roman authorities that Christians can be decent citizens – we have seen a typical strategy above in his description of Christian customs. In other works, Tertullian stressed the ways in which Christians were (or should be) a race apart from their contemporaries: their women should dress modestly and leave the house only when necessary; their men should pay no vain attention to the grooming of their hair or beards.⁶⁸ His ban on Christians attending gladiatorial shows was due not to a puritanical dislike of entertainment, nor even just to an abhorrence of the shows’ endorsement of sexual immorality and violence. Rather Tertullian’s main objection was to the pagan context: if shows were dedicated to the gods, anyone attending was guilty of idolatry.⁶⁹ A similar argument was used by Tertullian against many aspects of Carthaginian life, from an easily understandable ban on Christians assisting in the manufacture or selling of idols to the less obvious advice against borrowing money (which conventionally required swearing an oath).⁷⁰ Most striking perhaps were Tertullian’s arguments against military service. As with the gladiatorial shows, although he was concerned about violence – the ‘chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment’ – his fundamental objection was to the explicit or implicit demand for the soldier to be loyal to the Empire, the emperor and, therefore, their gods: ‘the line is crossed in transferring one’s name from the camp of light to the camp of darkness’.⁷¹ Even the wearing of a wreath in some military parades could signify an implicit dedication to the pagan gods, for the wreath ‘belongs to idols, both from the history of its origin and from its use by false religion … the very doors, the very victims and altars, the very servants and priests are crowned’.⁷² Tertullian’s solution was hard: a Christian cannot serve as a soldier; a soldier cannot become a Christian and not renounce his military service. As leaving the army was difficult and might lead to persecution and death,⁷³ this was no easy creed to follow. For Tertullian it was an unambiguous choice: ‘no one can serve two masters’.⁷⁴

Some of Tertullian’s ethical works seem to have been concerned in particular with arguments among the Christian community between those who took more and less rigorous lines. Tertullian was attracted by the movement he called the ‘new prophecy’, now commonly known as Montanism after its early leader Montanus. The movement emerged from Asia Minor and was characterized by an eager expectation of the end of the world, a belief in the continued prophetic inspiration of the Holy Spirit (which led to many claims of ecstatic and visionary experiences) and an extremely rigorous ascetic approach to Christianity. A version of the movement seems to have been very popular in North Africa in Tertullian’s day and the influence of Montanism does seem to have become increasingly prominent in Tertullian’s later writings – those on ethics became more rigorous on certain matters like remarriage and the question of whether the Church should forgive those who commit serious sin after baptism. Even in his earlier writings Tertullian argued that post-baptismal sin demanded deep penitence, demonstrated by such acts as prolonged prayer, weeping and fasting. Later, apparently riled by the claims of some clerics to have the authority to remit sin, Tertullian warned that God alone can forgive sin. While the Church could choose to admit sinners back into communion, there were some sins so serious that they should bar a Christian from church for the rest of his or her life (but no action from the Church predicted or foreclosed God’s divine judgement).⁷⁵ Although it has often been claimed that Tertullian left the Church under the influence of Montanism, the current consensus is that Montanism coincided with and encouraged/deepened views which Tertullian already held, and that Tertullian remained within the Church.⁷⁶

The question of identity emerged in two ways from Tertullian’s arguments about Christian doctrine: he was concerned with the true identity of the Christian believer, eager to refute Marcionite, Valentinian and other opponents. But his sharp mind also analysed and probed deep into the question of the identity of Christ: what did it mean to say that Christ was ‘man, of the flesh, of the spirit God’?⁷⁷ What did it mean to say that ‘The Father, Son and the Spirit are one and the same’?⁷⁸ In pressing both the simplicity and the paradoxes of Christian faith, Tertullian developed some of the most memorable formulations of doctrine and a subtle theological vocabulary.⁷⁹

As Irenaeus had done, Tertullian argued firmly against Marcion and Valentinus that the Word (Logos), the Son of God, had to have become truly human to save humanity.⁸⁰ He also seems to have shared the idea that Christ in some sense took on the whole of human nature in order to heal it: ‘for in putting on our flesh he made it his own; in making it his own, he made it sinless’.⁸¹ Furthermore, Christ had a human soul, so that he ‘could save the soul’.⁸² Indeed, Tertullian argued that through the Incarnation, all human souls could come to know Christ, and he set this true knowledge against the classical philosophical instruction to ‘know yourself’: ‘For it was through ignorance, not of itself but of the Word of God, that it was in peril of its salvation.’⁸³

Tertullian forcefully argued that in order to save human nature, body and soul, Christ’s humanity had to be of the same substance as all humanity: Christ did not evade a human birth (as Marcion supposedly taught); his body was not composed of some ethereal or astral substance (as Valentinus’ follower Apelles taught); he did not have a body composed of ‘soul’. For this reason, Tertullian put a great deal of emphasis on the virgin birth: although Christ’s conception by the Holy Spirit was unique, he had a normal human birth and his mother suffered the indignities, discomforts and pain of pregnancy and childbirth.⁸⁴ Although Tertullian did stress that Mary’s virginity both confirmed the divine parentage of Christ and explained the purity of his human nature, he explicitly rejected the idea that Mary was a perpetual virgin. This is because he thought that her miraculous intactness in labour would have denied Christ a normal human birth.⁸⁵ The implications of this for Tertullian’s view of women were quite startling: Christ received his entire humanity (both body and soul) from Mary, a woman – thus challenging a prevailing late antique pagan view that in human conception the woman provided the material and the man the rationality or soul, a view which could reinforce cultural stereotypes about the inferior ‘bodily’ nature of women.⁸⁶ Furthermore, Tertullian assumed that the genealogy in Matthew traced the descent from Adam to Mary (not Joseph): thus it was through Mary that Jesus summed up all of human nature from Adam and eradicated the sin which spread through humanity from Adam and Eve. Thus although Tertullian is notorious among feminists for announcing that Eve is the ‘gateway to sin’, he also asserted that Mary’s womb, in its normal, fully human fleshliness which gave rise to Christ’s human body and soul, was the gateway to salvation.⁸⁷ Furthermore, although Mary was chaste and virtuous, her giving birth to Christ was not presented as some kind of impossible ideal, entirely distant from any other experience of motherhood; rather, she bore in her own childbearing the labour and pain announced to Eve and all women as the result of the Fall.

Besides emphasizing Christ’s real human birth, Tertullian also stressed that Christ truly died and that his risen body was flesh in the normal human sense and would be preserved in heaven.⁸⁸ His work On the Resurrection of Christ was an impassioned defence of the resurrection of the body against pagan philosophy, Valentinians and others, and the linch-pin of his argument was that Christ’s true resurrection was the guarantee of the resurrection of all Christians. One needs to view the work in context in order to imagine the power of his argument to comfort and encourage his fellow Christians: it was written perhaps only two or three years after the martyrdoms of Perpetua and her companions in 203CE.⁸⁹ It is notable that he accuses the Valentinians not only of doubting the resurrection but of doubting the relevance of martyrdom.⁹⁰

While Tertullian argued at length for the reality of Christ’s human nature, he clearly felt less need to assert Christ’s true divinity, which was accepted by all who called themselves Christians.⁹¹ The questions at stake here were: how were Christ’s divinity and humanity related? and how was Christ related to the Father and Spirit?

Tertullian’s answer to the first question was expressed with typical economy and elegance: ‘the two substances acted distinctly, each in its own character. … Neither the flesh becomes Spirit nor the Spirit flesh. In one person they no doubt are well able to be co-existent. Of them Jesus consists – Man of the flesh; of the Spirit God.’ ⁹² Tertullian argues that the Gospels provide evidence of this in their witness to the different aspects of his earthly ministry:

Thus the nature of the two substances displayed him as man and God –in one respect born, in the other unborn; in one respect fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak, in the other exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. This property of the two states – the divine and the human – is distinctly asserted with equal truth of both natures alike. … The powers of the Spirit, proved him to be God, his sufferings attested the flesh of man. … If his flesh with its sufferings was fictitious, for the same reason was the Spirit false with all its powers. Wherefore halve Christ with a lie? he was wholly the truth.⁹³

This language of one person (persona in Latin) with two substances (substantiae) has been too easily associated with the later Chalcedonian formula of one person (prosōpon or hypostasis) and two natures (physeis). What is more important than the question of whether Tertullian’s Christology can meaningfully be said to be ‘Chalcedonian’ is that he represented an important stage in attempts to explain the paradox of the Incarnation – in this case by explaining that each substance had its own properties which remained distinct and evident in the unity of the one person. Tertullian was clear that neither substance was changed into (transfiguratus) or blended with (confusus) the other. He was more reticent in asserting what did happen at the Incarnation – did Christ ‘put on’ human nature, or was he conjoined with it? – which suggests that he was aware of the difficulty of grappling with these matters in any human language.⁹⁴

On the question of how Christ the Son or Word was related to Father and Spirit, Tertullian was arguing against not Marcion or the Valentinians but against the proponents of a view known as monarchianism or modalism, whom Tertullian addresses through an attack on a certain Praxeas.⁹⁵ This group called themselves ‘monarchians’ because they stressed the unity or single rule (monarchia) of God and were reluctant to admit any distinctions within God. They believed that Christ was worthy to be worshipped as God, and thus seemed to have concluded that Christ was to such a degree one with the Father that Father, Son and Spirit were merely successive aspects or modes of the one God – hence the modern term ‘modalism’. (The belief is also commonly known as Sabellianism, after a later teacher.⁹⁶) Tertullian pithily summed up his objection to the monarchians’ ideas: they ‘put to flight the Paraclete [the Holy Spirit] and crucified the Father’.⁹⁷ In other words, if one acknowledged no real distinction between Father and Son, it was the Father who died on the Cross (hence yet another term for the heresy – ‘patripassianism’, meaning ‘the-Father-suffered’). Furthermore, it denied a real distinct existence to the Holy Spirit who inspired the authors of Scripture, and, according to Tertullian, still continued to inspire prophets and prophetesses in his day. Tertullian’s insistence on the distinctive character and operation of the Spirit is surely connected with his interest in Montanism.

Tertullian’s response to the problem of expressing the reality of the Trinitarian God was not so much to offer a firm solution but to restate the paradox in a variety of persuasive ways, relying on a series of metaphors. Developing the language of Logos found in Justin and Irenaeus, he suggested that Reason (Logos) and Wisdom (the Spirit) are eternal (i.e. not successive) powers of the divine.⁹⁸ Tertullian here appealed to the presence of the Word and Wisdom in the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, he suggested that the way in which human monarchy is shared through various agents might explain how the divine power and nature is shared between the Father, Son and Spirit. He even used the very material metaphors of roots-tree-fruit and fountain-river-stream to suggest ways in which the three could be one. The latter metaphors in particular have been used to argue that Tertullian had a doctrine of the Trinity in which the Son and Spirit were subordinate to the Father. Tertullian also wrote the that Trinity flows down from the Father ‘in intertwined and connected steps’.⁹⁹ He seems to have asserted that the three were one in quality, substance and power, but three in sequence, aspect and manifestation.¹⁰⁰ As with Origen, the question of subordination is complex: both writers assert a basic unity within which there is a kind of distinction and order (taxis or gradus).

Tertullian summed up his faith in a ‘rule of faith’. The content of this seems familiar from the theology of Irenaeus and Origen, but its formulation seems more like one of the later creeds:

We … believe that there is one only God, but … that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her – being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. … This rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel.

But clearly for Tertullian Christian identity was not just about common belief: ‘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’.¹⁰¹ In this he is very similar to Origen: although each has a deeply intellectual side, both are certain that the basics of the Christian faith can be grasped by all, and their teaching about what it means to be a Christian was profoundly concerned with the ethical and spiritual as well as the doctrinal implications of the faith.

Sometimes Tertullian is contrasted with Origen on the grounds that Origen’s theology was very ‘Platonic’, while Tertullian purports to eschew philosophy (famously in the words ‘what of Athens and Jerusalem? What of the academy and the Church?’ ¹⁰²). Yet the account of Origen’s use of Platonism has in recent years become much more nuanced and there was much more to Origen’s theology than a philosophical restatement of Christian belief. Both Origen and Tertullian were essentially interested in the same questions: what did it mean to be a Christian? What lifestyle did Christianity entail? What did Christians hope for? Both articulated their answers against a background of persecution, and the idea of martyrdom deeply affects their writings. Both were extremely intelligent, well-educated professionals with a deep understanding of their contemporary culture. Each was a man not only of his time but of his particular place. Finally, both seem to have shared a passion for writing and their outputs mark the beginnings – in the Greek East and in the Latin West – of a really substantial literary culture within Christianity.