Monday, March 18, 2024

Johannes Quasten on Tertullian's Mariology

  

In his eagerness to defend the real humanity of Christ, Tertullian stresses the point that His body is not heavenly but really born of the very substance of Mary, ex Maria, to such a degree that he denies the virginity of Mary in partu and post partum. Thus he states ‘Although she was a virgin when he conceived, she was a wife when she brought forth’: Virgo quantum a viro: non virgo quantum a partu and et si virgo concepit, in partu suo nupsit (De carne Chr. 23). He understands the ‘brethren of Jesus’ as children of Mary according to the flesh (ibid.; cf. also De carne Chr. 7; Adv. Marc. 4, 19; De monog. 8; De virg. vel. 6). Tertullian’s authority in this matter was later invoked by Helvidius. Jerome (Adv. Helv. 17) rejected it answer: ‘As to Tertullian I have nothing else to say except that he was not a man of the Church.’ The apparent hesitation of the earliest patristic writers to speak out clearly on this subject is owning to the same reason as led Tertullian to deny the virginitas in partu and post partum, namely, the heresy of the Docetes. The claim of a perduring virginity seemed to him a most welcome confirmation of their false belief that Christ had no real human body, that He was only apparently conceived and born. (Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc., 1992], 2:329)