Tertullian, Prescription of Heretics

A prolific theologian, Tertullian wrote both apologetic and polemical works. In his apologetic works he defends and explains early Christianity to cultured critics. In his writing for Christians, he maintains that Christianity is conducive to good citizenship and salutary for the state. Writing for Christians he urges a rigorous and disciplined Christianity. In his programmatic early work, Prescription of Heretics, Tertullian argues that the Catholic Church alone possesses truth and the proper interpretation of Scripture. This need not, he maintains, be argued but only asserted. Tertullian anticipates many leading themes of western theology in his writing, including the strong western emphasis on original sin. He also anticipates the concepts eventually used to settle the Trinitarian and Christological controversies addressed at the Council of Nicea I (325) and Chalcedon (451). At the end of his life, the rigorist and puritanical strain in Tertullian's theology and his criticism of what he took to be Catholic laxity led him to the Montanist heresy.