How Do I Find the Christ?

Tertullian stands before us as a Roman of no particularly high literary standing, but as a writer with a magnificent power of language at his command. It can truly be said that Tertullian was the one who in his writings forced the Latin language for the first time into doing justice to Christianity. He was the first who succeeded in imbuing this most prosaic, unpoetical language, this purely rhetorical Latin language, with such temperamental fire, such impassioned ardour, that intense vitality of soul is manifest in his works. This is especially so in his De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ), and also in other works where he sets out to repudiate all the charges brought against the Christians. These works are written with a holy fervour and a magnificent eloquence. Although he was a Roman, Tertullian was absolutely unbiased by his own citizenship, as is clearly evident in De Came Christi. His defence of the Christians against the persecutions of the Romans is couched in words of tremendous forcefulness. With the utmost vehemence he condemns the tortures to which the Christians were subject in order to compel them to deny their adherence to Christ Jesus. Is not your behaviour as judges of the Christians, he wrote, proof enough of your injustice? You are obliged to alter the whole of your wonted judicial procedure when you judge the Christians. In the case of others you force a witness by torture, not to deny, but to avow the truth, to confess his real belief. With the Christian you do the reverse.—You torture him in order to make him deny his belief. As judges, your behaviour to the Christians is exactly contrary to your behaviour to others. In their case you try to get at the truth through torture; in the case of the Christians you try by torture to get at a lie.[^6]