Talk:Tertullian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page. | ||
| B | This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.) |
||
Latin unitas means "oneness, sameness, agreement." Thus, there seems to be a misunderstanding in the article, becuase tri + unitas = "three in agreement / three in oneness / three in agreement", unless this is what is meant by the phrase "tri (three) and unitas (one), tri-unitas (three in one) pointed to God as one God in substance and nature, but three in person — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. "
ISTM that this article gushes overmuch (for an encyclopedia article) when describing the qualities of Tertullian's writing. (Just a suggestion... I'm not watching the page.) — B.Bryant 23:53, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] POV rewording help
The following sentence seems POV and ackward and was wondering if anyone could rewrite it. I'm having a hard time trying to change it:
- "If Tertullian went to an unhealthy extreme in his counsels of asceticism, he is easily forgiven when one recalls his own moral vigor and his great services as an ingenuous and intrepid defender of the Christian religion, which with him, as later with Martin Luther, was first and chiefly an experience of his own heart. "
I fiddled with it a little. What do you think?--Okieinexile 20:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Married Presbyters
The phrase "In the church of Carthage he was ordained a presbyter, though he was married" (section: Life) suggests that presbyters should be celibate, which is counter to the doctrine prevalent over all christianity at his time (i.e. presbyters were required to be married as per 1Tim.3:2 and Tit.1:6)
[edit] Biographical Notes
This articles seems to ignore a lot of recent academic scholarship in favour of turn a distinct flavour of early 20th century theology. This is particularly pronounced concerning Tertullian's education in classical rheteoric (Sider 1971). The biographical information is very tradition rendition, it takes Jerome's claims about Tertullian much less critically than they should be. E.G. the title ascribed to Tertullians' father "Centurio Proconsularis" is rather dubious, it is not apparent if that ever was a legitimate roman military title. (Barnes 1971) In a similar way, we really can't say for certain about his being a presybter, his break with the Church or anything else mentioned in Jerome's 'biography'. We might think that Tertullian's own writing seem to be more authoritative on personal details in which case he was most likely married layman. (Dunn 2004)This article could really do with work over that takes into account the more recent information available.
[edit] Death penality
From [1]: "Even if conviction resulted, there could be no capital sentence, a practice dating back to Tertullian's fourth century belief that the church did not have the authority to impose the death penalty on believers." Other mentions of this? --Ann O'nyme 23:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
