Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Of course we will not deny that the philosophers have sometimes thought along the same lines as we do; even the outcome itself is a kind of testimony to the truth. Sometimes, in a storm, with the tracks of sky and sea both scrambled, some harbor is struck upon by a lucky mistake; sometimes, too, in the dark, some entrance or exit is found by blind good fortune; and besides, a great deal is simply supplied by nature, as if from some common sense which God saw fit to endow the soul with. [2] Once philosophy got hold of this, it puffed it up for the glory of its own craft, out of sheer eagerness — no wonder, if I put it this way — for eloquence, trained as it is to build up and tear down whatever it likes, persuading more by speaking well than by teaching. It imposes shapes on things, now leveling them out, now stripping them bare; it prejudges the uncertain from the certain; it appeals to precedents as though everything were comparable; it lays down the law on everything, even where the properties differ among things otherwise alike; it reserves nothing to God's own prerogative; it has turned the laws of nature into its own opinions. I could bear that, if philosophy itself were natural enough to be proved a partner in nature's own condition. [3] Philosophy has indeed fancied that it drew even from what it takes to be sacred writings, since antiquity reckoned most of its authorities as gods outright, not merely as divine figures — Mercury the Egyptian, for instance, whom Plato in particular attended closely; Silenus the Phrygian, to whom Midas, once led to him by shepherds, surrendered his own enormous ears; Hermotimus, honored with a shrine raised by the citizens of Clazomenae once he had died; Orpheus; Musaeus; Pherecydes, the teacher of Pythagoras. But what does it matter if the philosophers also raided those writings which we, by our own confession, condemn as apocryphal, when we are certain that nothing is to be accepted that does not agree with the genuine prophetic equipment already brought forth in its own proper age — remembering, as we do, the false prophets, and long before them the apostate spirits, who furnished the whole face of the age with cunning of just this kind of talent? [4] Finally, even if it is credible that every seeker after wisdom, driven by mere curiosity, approached the prophets themselves too, you would still find more disagreement among the philosophers than agreement — since even within their agreement their disagreement can be caught out, seeing that whatever is true in them and consonant with the prophets they commend on other grounds, or twist to other ends, doing the truth the gravest injury by making it look either propped up by falsehoods or dependent on their patronage. [5] So this, on this subject especially, is what has entangled us with the philosophers: that sometimes they dress up opinions we hold in common in arguments of their own devising, arguments that in places run contrary to our rule; and sometimes they buttress opinions that are entirely their own with arguments we hold in common, arguments that in places agree with our rule — so that truth is almost squeezed out of philosophy by philosophy's own poisons worked upon it. And so, under both headings of this partnership with truth's adversary, we are pressed to free the shared opinions from the philosophers' arguments and to separate the shared arguments from their opinions, calling the questions back to God's own writings — excepting, of course, whatever can be taken up as simple testimony without the snare of any prejudicial baggage, since even from rivals a testimony is sometimes necessary, provided it does not serve the rivals' cause. [6] Nor am I unaware how vast a forest of material this subject makes among the philosophers, given even just the number of their commentators — how many varieties of opinion, how many wrestling-grounds of argument, how many offshoots of questions, how many tangles of resolutions. But I have also looked into medicine, philosophy's sister, as they call it, which lays its own claim to this same territory. And why not? The theory of the soul might well seem to belong to it even more, through its care of the body. Hence it also frequently contradicts its sister, on the grounds that, by dealing with the soul face to face in its own dwelling, it knows the soul better. But let the two of them fight out their rival claims to superiority between themselves. Philosophy had the freedom of pure intellect, and medicine the compulsion of its craft, both stretching out their inquiries into the soul: uncertainties are hunted far and wide, and presumptions argued still more widely. As great as the difficulty of proving, so great the labor of persuading — so that the shadowy Heraclitus himself, rightly noting the vaster darkness closing in on those who examine the soul, declared out of sheer weariness with the questions that he had not found the limits of the soul by traveling every road. [7] The Christian, however, needs only a few things to gain knowledge of this matter. For certainty always lies in the few, and it is not permitted him to seek further than what may lawfully be found — for the apostle forbids endless questionings. Further still, it is not permitted to find more than what is learned from God; and whatever is learned from God is the whole of it.