TERTULLIAN
ON CHRIST’S INVISIBLE FORM AND HEAVENLY CORPOREALITY
It was in the context of his
debates against the Docetic and Gnostic positions concerning a purely spiritual
Jesus that Tertullian developed a doctrine of the Form of God (e.g., Carn.
Chr.) In order to defend the corporeal condition of the incarnate Christ,
Tertullian assumed that even Christ’s pre-incarnate status involves body and
form. Adversus Praxean 7, a passage elaborating on the generation of the
Son from the Father, is one of the most evident witnesses. We are informed that
the Word takes a glorious form (specia) while being divinely (and most
likely from eternity) generated by God the Father:
Then, therefore does the Word (sermo)
also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb (speciem et ornatum).
How own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, “Let there be light” (Gen
1:3). This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God—formed
(conditus) by Him first to devise and think out of al thinks under the
name of Wisdom)—“The Lord created or formed me as the beginning of His ways (condidit
me initium uiarum)” (Prov 8:22) (Tertullian, Prax. 7)
Tertullian defends the idea of
Divine Form by means of an argument for God’s substance. Assuming the
metaphysical principle that nothing can come from nothing, the author maintains
that the Son possesses a substance because he comes from the Father who is a
substance, and also because he produces all things of the world not from void but
from his own substance (Prax. 7). In the next step of his argument
Tertullian adopts another metaphysical principle, namely, that a body always needs
a form. Since God is Spirit and the Spirit presumes a body, a bodily substance,
God necessarily possesses a body and, therefore, a form (effigia).
Tertullian expressly quotes here Phil 2:6, εν μορφη θεου
In that Word of God, then, a void
and empty thing, which is called the Son, who Himself is designated God? “The
Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is written, “Thou shalt not take God’s
name in vain.” This for certain is He “who being in the form of God (in
effigie Dei constitutes), thought it not robbery to be equal with God”
(Phil 2:6). In what form (effigie) of God? Of course he means in some
form, not in none (utique in aliqua, non tamen in nulla). For who will
deny that God is a body (quis enim negabit Deum corpus esse), although “God
is a Spirit (etsi Deus spiritus est)?” (John 4:24). For Spirit has a
bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form (spiritus enim corpus sui
generis in sua effigie). (Prax. 7)
In the last passage of the
chapter, Tertullian tackles the epistemological facet of the topic by affirming
that invisible things—which are invisible only from the limited perspective of
the human sight—are actually visible and possess body and form from God’s
perspective:
Now, even if invisible things (invisibilia
illa), whatsoever they be, have both their substance and their form in God (habent
apud Deum et suum corpus et suam formam), whereby they are visible to God
alone (soli Deo uisibilia sunt), how much more shall that which has been
sent forth from His substance not be without substance (quod ex ipsius
substantia emissum est sine substantia non erit)! Whatever, therefore, was
the substance of the Word that I designate a Person, I claim for it the name of
the Son; and while I recognize the Son, I assert His distinction as second to
the Father. (Prax. 7)
Proclaiming straightforwardly the
corporeal nature of Christ endowed with spiritual body and form, Tertullian
shares the same understanding of the concept of relative “invisibility” with
Irenaeus, Clement, and Hippolytus, namely that Christ’s spiritual form is invisible,
only for the ordinary eye but visible for the Father, prophets, and apostles.
The apostles, for instance, were able to see the wonderful glory of the Son on
the Mount of Transfiguration. What they saw was the glory “of the visible Son,
glorified by the invisible Father (gloriam . . . Filii, scilicet uisibilis,
glorificati a Patre inuisibili)” (Prax. 15. The Son’s visibility does
not have to be understood in an absolute way but from the Father’s perspective.
As seen above in Prax. 7, there are even other objects which are
invisible. The distinction invisible Father-visible Son [cf. Novatian, On
the Faith 18.1 and 31] is one from human perspective: while the Son
manifests himself in theophanies, the Father remains unmanifested).
His doctrine on spiritual bodies,
as exposed for instance in Adversus Marcionem 5.10, is also Pauline
theology quoted directly; namely, 1 Cor 15:40 (corpora caelestia) and 1 Cor
15:44 (corpus spiritale). The spiritual corporeality is one of an
extraordinary essence, since it is not perceptible through the earthly and
sensible power of seeing. To the contrary, it pertains to the noetic and spiritual
realm, and it is visible from the Father’s perspective, as Adversus Praxean 7
clearly implies. Using Tertullian’s terminology, it is of a different quality (qualitas),
as he states in an analysis regarding the corporeal natures of the soul and
resurrected body (Marc. 5.10.3; 5.15.7) Thus, Tertullian acknowledges
the reality of the invisible bodies and describes the soul as such a substance.
According to him, corporeality—whether visible or invisible—is a sine qua
non condition of existence. Not having a body simply implies non-existence:
If it has this something, it must
be its body (Si habet aliquid per quod est, hoc eric corpus eius).
Everything which exists is a bodily existence sui generis (Omne quod est,
corpus est suit generis). Nothing lacks bodily existence but that which is
non-existent (nihil est incorporale, nisi quod non est). If, then, the
soul has an invisible body (inuisibile corpus) . . . (Carn. Chr.
11.3-4)
In the process of the incarnation which
should be described, according to Tertullian, as clothing with flesh rather
than transfiguration into flesh, the Logos remains unchanged in his Divine Substance
and form:
And the Word of God abideth for
ever, evidently by continuing in his own form (perseuerando scilicet in
sua forma). And if it is not feasible for him to be conformed (to something
else) (non capit transfigurari), it follows he must be understood to
have been made flehs in the sense that he comes to be in flesh (fit in carne),
and is manifested (manifestatur) and seen (uidetur) and is
handled by means of the flesh: because the other considerations also demand
this acceptation. (Prax. 27. Evan’s translation is preferable to the ANF
in this case, since ANF 3:623 enders informabilem through “incapable of
form,” a solution coming in complete contradiction with the next lines which
affirm that, in his incarnation, the Logos does not loose his form, and more
generally with Tertullian’s doctrine according to which God has a form. Evans’s
solution “untransformable” makes much more sense, because the idea is that the
Divine Form of the Word is not changed through incarnation)
Tertullian inserts the concept of
form even within the Trinitarian doctrine. According to him, the Trinity
possesses a unity of substance and subsists in three different forms:
[W]hile none the less is guarded
the mystery of that economy (oikonomiae sacramentum) which disposes the
unity into trinity, setting forth Father and Son and Spirit as three, three
however not in quality but in sequence (non statu sed gradu), not in
substance but in aspect (nec substantia sed forma), not in power but in (its)
manifestation (nec potestate sed specie), yet of one substance and one
quality and one power, seeing it is one God from whom those sequences and
aspects (formae) and manifestations are reckoned out in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Tertullian, Prax. 2. Cf. Prax.
8 and 11-13 for his further discussions on the unity and distinction in the
Trinity. It is worth mentioning that Tertullian affirms in Carn. Chr.
3.8 that that the Spirit did not put an end to his substance [substantia]
when he descended at the Baptism and took a different substance [SC 216:220]) (Dragoş
Andrei Giulea, Pre-Nicene Christology in Paschal Contexts: The Case of the
Divine Noetic Anthropos [Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae Texts and
Studies of Early Christian Life and Language 123; Leiden: Brill, 2014], 323-26)
