Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) - XI - A treatise on the soul commenced

Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Commence 'A treatise on the soul' by reading Chapters 1 to 16.

My summary
Today Tertullian continues to teach us about the soul.

Tertullian compares the teaching of the pagan philosophers with his own understanding and explains that the soul:
(i) is not unborn or unmade, it has a beginning;
(ii) is corporeal (primarily due to its experience of bodily senses and the witness of a Montanist sister);
(iii) does not have a spirit within it;
(iv) is different from the mind;
(v) is superior to the mind;
(vi) resides in the body of man;
(vii) is made up of rational and irrational parts.

What grabbed me
Not a pleasant read today. 

I think Tertullian is rather off track in a number of areas, particularly with his teaching that the soul has a corporeal nature.

I also did not appreciate where Tertullian went for his authority on such a doctrine: ' We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord’s day in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord; she both sees and hears mysterious communications; some men’s hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether it be in the reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, in all these religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing visions. It may possibly have happened to us, whilst this sister of ours was rapt in the Spirit, that we had discoursed in some ineffable way about the soul. After the people are dismissed at the conclusion of the sacred services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision (for all her communications are examined with the most scrupulous care, in order that their truth may be probed).  “Amongst other things,” says she, “there has been shown to me a soul in bodily shape, and a spirit has been in the habit of appearing to me; not, however, a void and empty illusion, but such as would offer itself to be even grasped by the hand, soft and transparent and of an etherial colour, and in form resembling that of a human being in every respect.” This was her vision, and for her witness there was God; and the apostle most assuredly foretold that there were to be “spiritual gifts” in the church.'

How do you know, Tertullian, that her witness was God?

Next week's reading
Read 'A treatise on the soul' by reading Chapters 17 to 33.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.