What does Tertullian say about the Trinity?

At times, speaking of the Father and the Son, Tertullian refers to “two gods”. He says that all things of the Father belong also to the Son, including his names, such as Almighty God, Most High, Lord of Hosts, or King of Israel.

Was Tertullian a Trinitarian?

216: Tertullian Tertullian’s trinity [was] not a triune God, but rather a triad or group of three, with God as the founding member’.

When did the Holy Spirit become part of the Trinity?

The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early 3rd century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against “Praxeas”, though he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine.

What was Tertullian famous for?

Tertullian emerged as a leading member of the African church, using his talents as a teacher in instructing the unbaptized seekers and the faithful and as a literary defender (apologist) of Christian beliefs and practices. According to Jerome, a 4th-century biblical scholar, Tertullian was ordained a priest.

What does Tertullian say about the Trinity of God?

The Church … has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith in one God, the Father … in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit. (Against Heresies I:10:1) I will use Tertullian’s response to modalism as a basis for what follows. Tertullian is well-respected.

What does Tertullian say about father and son?

On this point, for example, Tertullian exposits John 10:34-38, [4] where Christ says that He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him, “…it must therefore be by the works that the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father; and so it is by the works that we understand that the Father is one with the Son.” [5]

What was Tertullian’s concept of divine oikonomia?

Tertullian also significantly developed the concept of a divine oikonomia , God’s plan to create and redeem the world. The Son and Spirit are emissaries of the Father’s will—not ontologically inferior to him, yet ranked lower in the way that the sent are always subordinate to the sender.

Why did Tertullian reject the eternal generation theory?

For this reason, Tertullian denied that a Father/Son relationship was eternal within the Trinity, seeing it rather as a new development emerging from God’s plan to make the world. Such temporal paternity and filiation distances Tertullian from the eventual Nicene consensus, which accepted instead the eternal generation theory of Origen.