Editing Tertullian (section)

== Moral principles ==

Tertullian was an advocate of discipline and an austere code of practise, and like many of the African fathers, one of the leading representatives of the rigorist element in the early Church. His writings on public amusements, the veiling of virgins, the conduct of women, and the like, reflect these opinions. His views may have led him to adopt [[Montanism]] with its ascetic [[rigor]] and its belief in [[chiliasm]] and the continuance of the prophetic gifts. Geoffrey D. Dunn writes that "Some of Tertullian's treatises reveal that he had much in common with Montanism ... To what extent, if at all, this meant that he joined a group that was schismatic (or, to put it another way, that he left the church) continues to be debated".<ref name="Dunn 2004 p. 4">{{cite book | last=Dunn | first=G.D. | title=Tertullian | publisher=Routledge | series=Early church fathers | year=2004 | isbn=978-0-415-28231-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kHYl6rhy4FkC&pg=PA4 | access-date=11 Jul 2023 | page=4}}</ref>

On the principle that we should not look at or listen to what we have no right to practise, and that polluted things, seen and touched, pollute (''De spectaculis'', viii, xvii), he declared a Christian should abstain from the theatre and the amphitheatre. There pagan religious rites were applied and the names of pagan divinities invoked; there the precepts of modesty, purity, and humanity were ignored or set aside, and there no place was offered to the onlookers for the cultivation of the Christian graces. Women should put aside their gold and precious stones as ornaments,<ref>''De cultu'', v–vi</ref> and virgins should conform to the law of St. Paul for women and keep themselves strictly veiled (''De virginibus velandis''). He praised the unmarried state as the highest (''De monogamia'', xvii; ''Ad uxorem'', i.3) and called upon Christians not to allow themselves to be excelled in the virtue of celibacy by [[Vestal Virgin]]s and Egyptian priests. He even labeled second marriage a species of adultery (''De exhortatione castitatis'', ix), but this directly contradicted the Epistles of the [[Apostle Paul]]. Tertullian's resolve to never marry again and that no one else should remarry eventually led to his break with Rome because the orthodox church refused to follow him in this resolve. He, instead, favored the Montanist sect where they also condemned second marriage.{{sfn|Bitel|2008|p=21}} One reason for Tertullian's disdain for marriage was his belief about the transformation that awaited a married couple. He believed that marital relations coarsened the body and spirit and would dull their spiritual senses and avert the Holy Spirit since husband and wife became one flesh once married.{{sfn|Bitel|2008|p=17}}

Tertullian has been criticised as [[misogynistic]], on the basis of the contents of his ''De Cultu Feminarum'', section I.I, part 2 (trans. C.W. Marx):<ref name="Amy Place 2020 p. 260">{{cite book | last=Place|first=Amy|chapter=Fashioning the Female in the Early North African Church|editor-last1=Harlow | editor-first1=M. | editor-last2=Michel | editor-first2=C. | editor-last3=Quillien | editor-first3=L. | title=Textiles and Gender in Antiquity: From the Orient to the Mediterranean | publisher=Bloomsbury Academic | series=Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs: Classics & Archaeology | year=2020 | isbn=978-1-350-14149-0 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a6IyEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA260 | access-date=11 Jul 2023 | page=260}}</ref><ref name="Ferguson 1999 p. 44">{{cite book | last=McKechnie|first=Paul|chapter="Women's Religion" and Second Century Christianity|editor-last=Ferguson | editor-first=Everett | title=Christianity and Society: The Social World of Early Christianity | publisher=Garland Pub. | series=Garland series | year=1999 | isbn=978-0-8153-3068-4 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=awAeGS_mnokC&pg=PA44 | access-date=11 Jul 2023 | page=44}}</ref> "Do you not know that you are [[Eve]]? The judgment of God upon this sex lives on in this age; therefore, necessarily the guilt should live on also. You are the gateway of the devil; you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree, and you are the first one to turn your back on the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting; you easily destroyed the image of God, [[Adam]]. Because of what you deserve, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die."

The critic [[Amy Place]] notes, however, that "Revisionist studies later rehabilitated" Tertullian.<ref name="Amy Place 2020 p. 260"/> This is discussed by other theorists such as Benjamin H. Dunning.<ref name="Dunning 2011 p. 126">{{cite book | last=Dunning | first=B.H. | title=Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought | publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated | series=Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion | year=2011 | isbn=978-0-8122-0435-3 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hy24NoIRLu8C&pg=PA126 | access-date=11 Jul 2023 | page=126}}</ref>

Tertullian had a radical view on the cosmos. He believed that heaven and earth intersected at many points and that it was possible that sexual relations with supernatural beings can occur.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://legacy.fordham.edu/campus_resources/enewsroom/archives/archive_1715.asp |title=Scholar Discusses the 'Bride of Christ' in the Early Church |website=Fordham.edu |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181118102358/https://legacy.fordham.edu/campus_resources/enewsroom/archives/archive_1715.asp |archive-date=November 18, 2018 }}</ref>