Tertullian’s question, “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens” has become a famous phrase often referred to in the history of Christian philosophy and apologetics. It sets forth an antithesis not merely between two important cities in classical thought, but between two different epistemologies. Jerusalem represents a revelational epistemology founded squarely on the Christian scriptures. Athens, on the other hand, represents unbelieving thought encapsulated in Hellenistic philosophy. Such an antithesis can be seen in the writings of the apostle Paul who contrasted righteousness and lawlessness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, believer with unbeliever and God’s temple with idols in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16. At the end of 1 Corinthians 2 Paul also contrasts the natural man with the spiritual.
In The Prescriptions against the Heretics, Tertullian is primarily writing against heresy, specifically that of Gnostic relation. His principal targets are Valentinus and Marcion. According to Tertullian, pagan thought has corrupted both of them. Earlier in chapter seven, Tertullian catalogues the influences on their respective thought. He calls these influences “human and demonic doctrines,” “worldly wisdom” and “foolishness.” In sum, “Worldly wisdom culminates in philosophy with its rash interpretation of God’s nature and purpose. It is philosophy that supplies the heresies with their equipment.”
Platonism specifically influenced Valentinus with its aeons and forms. From this philosophical perspective, Valentinus developed a doctrine of the “human trinity.” Marcion was influenced by a number of philosophical schools including Stoicism and Epicureanism. The former influenced his view of the soul’s mortality while the latter his denial of the “restitution of the flesh.” Marcion was also influenced by Zeno’s equation of God and matter and Heraclitus’ view of fire as the ultimate metaphysical reality. In his list of other philosophical influences on both heretics Tertullian adds Aristotle’s dialectic, “the art which destroys as much as it builds, which changes its opinions like a coat, forces its conjectures, is stubborn in argument, works hard at being contentious and is a burden even to itself. For it reconsiders every point to make sure it never finishes a discussion.”
Tertullian quotes from the apostle Paul in Colossians 2:8 who admonished his readers to beware of philosophy and vein deceit that follows after the traditions of men. Paul would have been familiar with classical philosophy first hand as evinced in his confrontation with the thinkers in Athens (Acts 17). Here Paul “had come to grips with the human wisdom which attacks and perverts the truth, being itself divided up into its own swarm of heresies.”
Here then Tertullian offers his famous question: “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens, the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic? Our principles come from the Porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord is to be sought in simplicity of heart.”
S.L. Greenslade, in the footnote for this quote notes the relation of the word “porch” in the Porch of Solomon to the porch of Zeno the Stoic. Tertullian is here making a further epistemological contrast, between Solomon’s wisdom and Zeno’s foolishness. This is particularly striking when one understands Tertullian’s own philosophical background having been influenced by Stoicism. Here he makes a clean break with his previous way of thinking, though scholars have noted that Stoicism creeps into his thought from time to time.
For Tertullian, the prime goal of belief is Jesus Christ, of whom there is no need to speculate because he has been revealed. The Lord is to be sought in “simplicity” rather than in the complex dialectic of the philosophers. Standing in the stream of the “faith seeking understanding” school, Tertullian says, “For we begin by believing that there is nothing else which we have to believe.”
This sets the parameters for the rest of his discussion in The Prescriptions against the Heretics. For the duration of the treatise he contrasts biblical faith with that of the heretics, showing that there is no commonality between the two. They do not have a right to the scriptures and therefore own a worldview that is inherently corrupt. He goes to great pains to show the arrogance of unbelieving thought whose attempts at interpreting the scriptures were empty and irrational. Later in the work Tertullian claims that heresy is useful because it makes manifest the elect over and against the reprobate and says, “For without Scripture there can be no heresy” (39).This antithesis is founded primarily in the Old and New Testament scriptures and worked itself out through the thinking of theologians like Tertullian and Augustine, down through Luther and Calvin, even to recent days in Kuyper and Van Til. The antithesis is fundamental and will stretch into eternity where the city of God will revel in unending bliss and the city of man will writhe in eternal agony.

Labels: apologetics, patristics, philosophy, presuppositionalism, tertullian