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As I have been researching the Deity of Christ, I have noticed many Arians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims claiming that the Early Church Father Tertullian. The one that coined the name “Trinity” supposedly taught that Jesus was not God. This article attempts to shed light on these supposed Arian passages in the writings of Tertullian.

#1) “The Son did not exist”

 Because God is in like manner a Father, and He is also a Judge; but He has not always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. In this way He was not Lord previous to those things of which He was to be the Lord. But He was only to become Lord at some future time: just as He became the Father by the Son, and a Judge by sin, so also did He become Lord by means of those things which He had made, in order that they might serve Him.

Against Hermogenes, Chapter 3

It is funny since right above this passage that is quotemined, Tertullian explains what he means by “God not always having the title Lord”.

We affirm, then, that the name of God always existed with Himself and in Himself — but not eternally so the Lord. Because the condition of the one is not the same as that of the other. God is the designation of the substance itself, that is, of the Divinity; but Lord is (the name) not of substance, but of power. I maintain that the substance existed always with its own name, which is God; the title Lord was afterwards added, as the indication indeed of something accruing. For from the moment when those things began to exist, over which the power of a Lord was to act, God, by the accession of that power, both became Lord and received the name thereof.

Against Hermogenes, Chapter 3

Tertullian is explaining how these Titles of Lord are given to God within the scope of action in time. This does not mean that God was not God before these actions of time. Rather these titles (being subject to time) are separate from the essence of God (timeless). Tertullian explains God as being a mind, within the mind there is reason. Until that reason is summoned out (via speech), then it is given the title speech. The title speech is relative to it being summoned, however the speech was still in the mind prior to it being summoned. Tertullian explains in Against Praxeas;

But since they will have the Two to be but One, so that the Father shall be deemed to be the same as the Son, it is only right that the whole question respecting the Son should be examined, as to whether He exists, and who He is and the mode of His existence. Thus shall the truth itself secure its own sanction from the Scriptures, and the interpretations which guard them. There are some who allege that even Genesis opens thus in Hebrew: In the beginning God made for Himself a Son. As there is no ground for this, I am led to other arguments derived from God’s own dispensation, in which He existed before the creation of the world, up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone — being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. Yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought (or Consciousness) which the Greeks call λόγος, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason, which it thus proves to have been the prior existence as being its own substance. Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter through His Word. Now, while He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. And that you may the more readily understand this, consider first of all, from your own self, who are made in the image and likeness of God, Genesis 1:26 for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature, as being not only made by a rational Artificer, but actually animated out of His substance. Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever you conceive, there is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even then 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.

Against Praxes, Chapter 5

#2) The Father is greater than the Son

 For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: My Father is greater than I. John 14:28 In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being a little lower than the angels. Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another. 

Against Praxeas, Chapter 9

If this is quoted, there is obviously confusion from the one quoting this passage of Tertullian on the Monarchia of the Father.

Even Christians get stumped on John 14:28, where Jesus says “The Father is greater than I”. In Orthodox Christianity, the understanding of this has been that in position the Father is greater than the Son but not in essence. As Tertullian clearly explains in Against Praxeas;

As if in this way also one were not All, in that All are of One, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons— the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, 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. How they are susceptible of number without division, will be shown as our treatise proceeds.

Against Praxeas, Chapter 2

In conclusion, Tertullian taught that the Son (Logos, consciousness, Word) was always with God even before creation. However the title of Son and Lord indicate a certain act in time (namely creation).

Sam Shamoun makes the point that Tertullian on the contrary did not teach what the JW’s teach. In the sense that Jesus is created;

“A final point of Tertullian’s Christology which needs to be emphasized is his express denial of Jesus being an angelic being. Tertullian wrote that Christ assumed the role and function of an angel, but wasn’t an angel by nature:”

Chapter 14. Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save

But Christ, they say, bare (the nature of) an angel. For what reason? The same which induced Him to become man? Christ, then, was actuated by the motive which led Him to take human nature. Man’s salvation was the motive, the restoration of that which had perished. Man had perished; his recovery had become necessary. No such cause, however, existed for Christ’s taking on Him the nature of angels. For although there is assigned to angels also perdition in the fire prepared for the devil and his angels, Matthew 25:41 yet a restoration is never promised to them. No charge about the salvation of angels did Christ ever receive from the Father; and that which the Father neither promised nor commanded, Christ could not have undertaken. For what object, therefore, did He bear the angelic nature, if it were not (that He might have it) as a powerful helper wherewithal to execute the salvation of man? The Son of God, in truth, was not competent alone to deliver man, whom a solitary and single serpent had overthrown! There is, then, no longer but one God, but one Saviour, if there be two to contrive salvation, and one of them in need of the other. But was it His object indeed to deliver man by an angel? Why, then, come down to do that which He was about to expedite with an angel’s help? If by an angel’s aid, why come Himself also? If He meant to do all by Himself, why have an angel too? He has been, it is true, called the Angel of great counsel, that is, a messenger, by a term expressive of official function, NOT OF NATURE. For He had to announce to the world the mighty purpose of the Father, even that which ordained the restoration of man. But He is not on this account to be regarded as an angel, as a Gabriel OR A MICHAEL. For the Lord of the Vineyard sends even His Son to the labourers to require fruit, as well as His servants. Yet the Son will not therefore be counted as one of the servants because He undertook the office of a servant. I may, then, more easily say, if such an expression is to be hazarded, that the Son is actually an angel, that is, a messenger, from the Father, than that there is an angel in the Son. Forasmuch, however, as it has been declared concerning the Son Himself, You have made Him a little lower than the angels how will it appear that He put on the nature of angels if He was made lower than the angels, having become man, with flesh and soul as the Son of man? As the Spirit of God, however, and the Power of the Highest, Luke 1:35 can He be regarded as lower than the angels — HE WHO IS VERILY GOD, and the Son of God? Well, but as bearing human nature, He is so far made inferior to the angels; but as bearing angelic nature, He to the same degree loses that inferiority. This opinion will be very suitable for Ebion, who holds Jesus to be a mere man, and nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God; although He is, to be sure, in one respect more glorious than the prophets, inasmuch as he declares that there was an angel in Him, just as there was in Zechariah. Only it was never said by Christ, And the angel, which spoke within me, said to me. Zechariah 1:14 Neither, indeed, was ever used by Christ that familiar phrase of all the prophets, Thus says the Lord. FOR HE WAS HIMSELF THE LORD, who openly spoke by His own authority, prefacing His words with the formula, Verily, verily, I say unto you. What need is there of further argument? Hear what Isaiah says in emphatic words, It was NO ANGEL, nor deputy, but the Lord Himself who saved them. Isaiah 63:9 (On the Flesh of Christ; bold and capital emphasis mine)

DID TERTULLIAN DENY THE ETERNAL NATURE OF CHRIST?, Sam Shamoun