SOURCE: "Tertullian of Carthage," in The Early Christian Apologists and Greek Philosophy, Van Gorcum & Comp. B. V., 1973, pp. 40-58.

In the following essay, Timothy explores the sustained antipathy toward Greek philosophy in the writings and thought of Tertullian.

Tertullian is a man clearly with a quarrel on his hands. Dispensing with preliminaries he throws down the challenge to his opponents with these words:

"Our contest lies against these things, the institutions of our ancestors, the authority of tradition"—by which he means, as the context shows, the tradition of paganism—"the laws of our governors and the reasonings of the wise."

The last-named come in particularly for the full brunt of his attack, for out of their own conjectures they have ingeniously composed their physical philosophy. Their systems which existed in a crude form in the apostolic times, though found of late in a somewhat polished form, are...