Tertullian's Voice

Tertullian was the first major Christian author to write in Latin rather than Greek, which meant that a great deal of what he wanted to say had no words yet — so he made them. Trinitas, persona, substantia, sacramentum: the technical vocabulary Western Christians still use came substantially off his pen, and his formula of one substance in three persons became the standard Latin way of stating the doctrine of God. He wrote like the advocate he was trained to be: the Apology dismantling Roman slanders against Christians, Against Praxeas arguing that Father and Son are genuinely distinct, and On the Prescription of Heretics contending that heretics have no standing even to cite Scripture, since the Scriptures belong to the churches that received them. In his later years he grew steadily more rigorist — against remarriage, against flight in persecution, against what he saw as a church going soft. And aligned himself with the New Prophecy out of Phrygia, which is one reason the Latin church quoted him endlessly and never made him a saint.