Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Continue 'A treatise on the soul' by reading Chapters 17 to 33.
My summary
Today Tertullian continues to teach us about the soul.
Tertullian argues against pagan philosophers for their views on:
(i) the untrustworthiness of the senses;
(ii) the relationship of the intellect to the senses;
(iii) the uniformity of the soul;
(iv) the eternal nature of the soul;
(v) the introduction of the soul to the body after birth;
(vi) the movement of the soul out of the body and its return;
(vii) reincarnation.
What grabbed me
I think Tertullian made a powerful argument against Plato's view of the soul as eternal: 'In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of divine quality as to put it on a par with God. He makes it unborn, which single attribute I might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then adds that the soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal—since he believed God to be the same—invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to the soul, if he wanted to call it God?'
Plato has the same problem that Adam and Eve had in the garden and that we all suffer with - we want to make ourselves God.
Next week's reading
Conclude 'A treatise on the soul'.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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