Tertullian--kind of a jerk

Throughout my readin of Tertullian, I gritted my teeth in frustration. He unjustly attacked Socrates, God of philosophy, in an abrasive and fallacious manner.

In part I, Tertullian argues that we must turn to God, rather than to philosophers, for information about the soul. He proceeds to use an ad hominen circumstantial fallacy to discredit Socrates' arguments in the Phaedo. What an ad hominen circumstantial does, essentially, is argue that since the opponent has a certain inclination to argue in a certain way, his argument is invalid, all the while ignoring all the points of the opponents actual argument. Tertullian states that, "Socrates' constancy itself must have been shaken, as he struggled against the disturbance of the excitement around him," continuing on to write, "It is therefore not to be wondered at . . . in the face of death itself, [he] asserts the immortality of the soul by a strong assumption such as was wanted to frustrate the wrong (they had inflicted upon him). So that all the wisdom of Socrates, at that moment, proceeded from the affectation of an assumed composure rather than the firm conviction of ascertained truth." Wow. . . So basically, since Socrates was going to die, and because he was pissed off at people for sentencing him to his death, he was naturally inclined to argue that the soul is eternal. In fact, his whole argument is basically just a response to his desire to get back at people. . . This made me so mad. Socrates is the man.

The irony lies in the fact that this same tactic could so easily be reversed on Tertullian. People like to believe that life will continue after death, and that there is a nice place called heaven where Jesus, who saved us all from eternal damnation, is waiting with an open bar for all. Since Christian theology paints a pretty nice picture, i.e., since people like to believe in Christianity, then by Tertullian's own reasoning, Christianity is a hoax.

Furthermore, Tertullian's insistence that faith is the only path to truth is a questionable assertion at best. He argues this by claiming that all truth belongs to his religion, and therefore, is the product of this religion. God is the product of all truth, and therefore all those who have said something true were influenced by God. This is seriously messed up. This is like saying that the Native Americans lived in the United States. Tertullian is retroactively giving his religion credit for the achievements of thousands of years of "pagan" progress. Furthermore, how can faith possibly be more reliable than reason? To make any sort of determination, Tertullian must use reason. One cannot arrive at a conclusion, not even a conclusion that reason is inferior or insufficient or useless, without using reason.

Tertullian was writing rhetoric. He was fanatically and irrationally marketing a religion that deserved better.