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Heresy then and Now: Reflection on a Treatise of Tertullian

"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? From North Africa at the start of the third century, Tertullian's rhetorical question resounds to us in North America at the start of the third millennium: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? The implication is that Jerusalem should have as little as possible to do with Athens, that the teaching of the church should remain uncontaminated by human philosophy for the gospel was "foolishness to the Greeks," but of course "the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men" (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). "What has the Academy to do with the Church?" Tertullian elaborated, dismissing Plato. Our instruction derives not from the Athenian Stoa but rather, Tertullian declared, "from the Porch the Stoa of Solomon," the spot in the Jerusalem Temple where the apostles taught (Acts 3:11-26). "Away with those who propose a Stoic or Platonic or dialectical [Aristotelian] Christianity! We have no need of speculative inquiry after we have known Christ Jesus; nor of search for the truth after we have received the Gospel." Greek secular, pagan philosophy was not merely useless, it was actually harmful: it was historically, according to Tertullian, the source of the heresies that were distorting Christian faith and thinking in his day. His position challenges us to ask whether our own case may be analogous today. But first, a word about Tertullian himself, and the writing from which the question he put to us comes: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"