Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol 4) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'On modesty'.
My summary
Today Tertullian's objective is to prove that there is no repentance possible for Christians who commit adultery.
Most of the discussion centres on Biblical exposition from:
(i) the Decalogue;
(ii) the teachings of Christ, particularly the parables of the lost sheep, coin and son;
(iii) the apostolic council in Acts 15;
(iv) Paul's letters to the Corinthian church about the incestuous man;
(v) Paul's other epistles;
(vi) John's first epistle and Revelation;
(vii) Hebrews;
(viii) apocryphal writings.
Tertullian also analyses the power held in the church for discipline and whether martyrs can intercede for adulterers.
What grabbed me
Of course I do not agree with pretty much most of today's reading - both Tertullian's thesis and his exegesis. I believe repentance is possible for adulterers.
One of the worst examples of Tertullian's exegesis would have to be John 4 and the Samaritan woman: 'From the side of its pertinence to the Gospel, the question of the parables indeed has by this time been disposed of. If, however, the Lord, by His deeds withal, issued any such proclamation in favour of sinners; as when He permitted contact even with his own body to the “woman, a sinner,”—washing, as she did, His feet with tears, and wiping them with her hair, and inaugurating His sepulture with ointment; as when to the Samaritaness—not an adulteress by her now sixth marriage, but a prostitute—He showed (what He did show readily to any one) who He was;—no benefit is hence conferred upon our adversaries, even if it had been to such as were already Christians that He (in these several cases) granted pardon. For we now affirm: This is lawful to the Lord alone: may the power of His indulgence be operative at the present day! At those times, however, in which He lived on earth we lay this down definitively, that it is no prejudgment against us if pardon used to be conferred on sinners—even Jewish ones. For Christian discipline dates from the renewing of the Testament, and (as we have premised) from the redemption of flesh—that is, the Lord’s passion. None was perfect before the discovery of the order of faith; none a Christian before the resumption of Christ to heaven; none holy before the manifestation of the Holy Spirit from heaven, the Determiner of discipline itself.'
The Lord was willing to forgive the Samaritan woman, but for some reason doesn't forgive other adulterers?
No one was perfect before Christ's passion? Through faith, Abraham was declared righteous, was he not?
Next week's reading
Read 'On fasting'.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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