CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX: Tertullian—Projector of Eternal-Torment Corollary

Latin Christianity had its birthplace in Africa. And it was there that the three leading lights of Northern Africa—Tertullian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo—brought Platonic Immortal-Soulism to triumph, but along sharply divergent paths. Omitting Greek—using Origen for the time, let us note the Latin school of North Africa—Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, and Augustine—characterized by the use of Latin instead of the Greek in which Christianity was first promulgated.CFF1 947.1

These men all shifted from emphasis on Greek metaphysics to the overshadowing atmosphere of Roman law. And the Latin Fathers, in contrast with the Greek, usually spoke less of the essential freedom of the will, and attached greater importance to the necessities of government, both human and divine, the foreordination principle in embryo. To the intensive and authoritarian teaching of this group, the dominance of the dogma of the Eternal Torment of the wicked is largely due.CFF1 947.2

Carthage, home of Tertullian, was one of the great cities of the time, a thriving Christian center, a noted commercial center and rival of Rome—and notoriously corrupt. From Carthage, Christianity spread out over all proconsular Northern Africa. Several councils were held at Carthage, each attended by not less than seventy bishops. But Carthage, it should be repeated, had little of the speculative spirit of Alexandria, home of Origen. And Tertullian was the direct opposite of Origen, stressing literalism instead of allegorism.CFF1 947.3

The East, fascinated with subtle questions concerning the Trinity and the person of Christ, never concerned itself overmuch with the problems of law, penalty, atonement, pardon, and retribution. But the Western school, from Tertullian onward, took its stand on eternal punishment as part of the system of law. Thus the foundations of Latin theology were laid, through which Augustinianism, as it came to be called, gained ascendancy in Europe, later giving rise to Calvinism and the systems springing therefrom. So it was in Africa, not Italy; at Carthage, not Rome; and from lawyers and rhetoricians, rather than speculative philosophers, that the Latin Church sprang.CFF1 948.1