Tertullian: Against Praxeas

Tertullian may or may not have been a lawyer. He certainly was good at arguing. God used that ability to help the church more clearly articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. Starting with the word Trinity. People may have used the word before he did. But it wasn’t because they found the specific term in the Bible. What they did find was the concept. They sometimes struggled to explain it however. Sadly, sometimes they got it wrong. An early church leader named Praxeas did. He seems to have repented. But, his errors continued to do damage. Tertullian responded. It’s good he did. In doing so, he helped believers take steps forward in more clearly communicating who God is.

Praxeas’ error was based on a truth. He was anxious to defend the unity of God. Good. He did so however by forming a heresy. Not good. According to Praxeas, if God is one, He cannot be three. “One cannot believe in the one and only God in any way other than by saying that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are the self-same person.” The Father is the Son. “He Himself…made Himself a Son to Himself.” In other words, there is no distinct Son. “In the course of time, then, the Father forsooth was born, and the Father suffered - God Himself, the Lord Almighty, whom in their preaching they declare to be Jesus Christ.” At times they identified the Son as the human nature of Jesus. Flesh is the Son, the man, and Spirit is the Father, that is the Christ. “All in one person, they distinguish two, Father and Son, understanding the Son to be flesh, that is man, that is Jesus; and the Father to be spirit, that is God, that is Christ.” However they put it, it’s blasphemous. But it was also tempting to second century believers. After all, they had turned from idols to God. “Their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world’s plurality of gods to the one only true God.” Without careful thinking, talk of “numerical order and distribution of the Trinity…” sounded like “a division of the Unity.” As a result, Tertullian says, “They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves preeminently the credit of being worshipers of the One God…”

But Tertullian would have none of it. “We, however, as indeed we have always done…believe that there is only God, but under the following dispensation…that this one only God also has a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made” and that this Son “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.” While Tertullian believed the fact that “this rule of faith has come down to us from beginning of the gospel” should have been enough given “whatever is first is true, whereas that is spurious which is later in date” he wrote Against Praxeas to explain how and why one can and must believe in one only God without saying that the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost are the very selfsame person. Beyond merely defending the doctrine, he aimed to turn the tables and demonstrate that the Trinity “rationally considered” actually is what protected and promoted the Unity.

At times, he is very clear. He is clear there is only one God. Divine unity is not divided but revealed in three persons. “I everywhere hold only one substance in three coherent and inseparable persons.” In other words, one can be three, so long as one and three are properly understood. What does one mean? Unity of substance. “These three are, one essence, not one person…in respect of unity of substance not singularity of number.” What is meant by three? “Three…not in condition, but in degree, not in substance, but in form, not in power, but in aspect, yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” These three persons are inseparably united and yet distinct. “Bear always in mind that this is the rule of faith which I profess: by it I testify that the Father, and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from each other…Now, observe, my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that they are distinct from each other.”

To prove his argument, he goes back to Scripture and primarily focuses on what it says about the Son. He starts before the world was created and clearly argues for the pre-existence of the Son. How he expresses the nature of His pre-existence seems a bit less clear. For example, He distinguishes between God’s Word and reason. He says “God had not Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning.” While I don’t know exactly why he makes this distinction, he is convinced God’s reason has always been with Him. “I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and inherent in reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself.” He makes strong statements about the deity of the Son. “I shall follow the apostle, so that if the Father and the Son, are alike to be invoked, I shall call the Father ‘God’ and invoke Jesus Christ as Lord. But when Christ alone is mentioned, I shall be able to call Him God, as the same apostle says, ‘Of whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever.”He demonstrates that the Word is a distinct person by looking at passages where the Father acknowledges the Son and the Son acknowledges the Father before creation. “Does not the very fact that they have the distinct names of Father and Son amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality?” He stresses as strongly as he can that the Son is not the Father. The Son is a “substantive being…in such a way that He may be regarded as an objective thing and a person, and so be able (as being constituted second to God the Father,) to make two, the Father and the Son, God and the Word.” He uses the word emanate to describe how the Son comes from the Father, and uses the illustration of a tree and its root. “Following, therefore, the form of these analogies, I confess that I call God the Father and HIs Son, two.” But of course, at the same time one. He looks to the Old Testament to demonstrate plurality and appears to think it was the Son who was the visible representation of God there. “It was the Son, therefore, who was always seen, and the Son who always conversed with men, and the Son who has always worked by the authority and will of the Father…” The Son and Father are clearly distinguished in the New Testament and so is the Spirit. “The connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent Persons, who are yet distinct One from Another.” Though he doesn’t spend as much time on the Spirit, when he does speak of Him, he makes very definite statements about His deity.. “Nothing which belongs to something else is actually the very same thing as that to which it belongs. Clearly, when anything proceeds from a personal subject, and so belongs to him, since it comes from him, it may possibly be such in quality exactly as the personal subject himself is from whom it proceeds, and to whom it belongs. And thus the Spirit is God and the Word is God, because proceeding from God, but yet is not actually the very same as He from whom He proceeds. Now that which is God of God, although He is actually an existing thing, yet He cannot be God Himself exclusively, but so far God as He is of the same substance as God Himself, and as being an actually existing thing, and as a portion of the Whole.”

At times I have questions about the way Tertullian articulates things. I am not sure I always would the exact same way he did. But I am grateful for the terms and concepts he gave the church to enable it to better communicate what the Scripture teaches about the Triune God. Having them is helpful. Understanding what they mean is even more important. Watching him explain how God can be both three and one to Praxeas reveals why it was a struggle in the early church, and appreciating that struggle can help us enjoy the solution more deeply.