Writings of Tertullian Volume 3

Other Writings

De: Tertullian

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Before Christian Life Was Systematized, It Had to Be Lived
The practical and devotional writings of Tertullian, modernized for today’s reader and focused on prayer, discipline, suffering, and daily Christian conduct.

• Christian devotion under pressure: repentance, baptism, and prayer in a hostile world
• Martyrdom and endurance: faith tested in prison, suffering, and death
• Moral discipline and public identity: dress, modesty, chastity, and daily witness
• Marriage and self-control: rigor, fidelity, and the ordering of the Christian household

This volume gathers Tertullian’s most important writings on Christian life and discipline from the Ante-Nicene Fathers, presented in clear, contemporary English for today’s reader. Here theology moves from formal argument to lived obedience, tracing how early Christians learned to pray, repent, suffer, endure temptation, and bear public witness under constant social and political pressure.

At the foundation of this lived theology stand the great acts of Christian devotion. On Repentance confronts the reality of sin after conversion and the costly seriousness of restoration. On Baptism offers one of the earliest sustained Christian reflections on the meaning, power, and obligation of the sacrament of initiation. On Prayer explores the daily discipline by which believers sustained their faith amid hardship and fear.

The cost of confession is brought into sharp focus in To the Martyrs, written to Christians awaiting execution. That reality reaches its most vivid narrative expression in The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, one of the most powerful surviving martyrdom accounts of the early church.

The demands of Christian character shape the middle of the collection. On Patience reflects on endurance as a central Christian virtue. De Fuga in Persecutione confronts the moral limits of flight in times of danger, probing the tension between prudence and confession.

Other writings turn to identity, modesty, and the ordering of daily life. On the Pallium uses a change of dress as a symbolic rejection of cultural conformity. On the Apparel of Women and On the Veiling of Virgins explore appearance, discipline, and public testimony. To His Wife and On Encouragement to Chastity address marriage, widowhood, remarriage, and sexual restraint with striking rigor, showing how closely bodily life and spiritual conviction were joined in early Christian ethics.

The volume concludes with an appendix of poetic and rhetorical biblical compositions on Jonah, Sodom, Genesis, and the Judgment of the Lord, alongside additional material responding to Marcion.

Modernized for today’s reader, these writings preserve the severity, tenderness, and uncompromising devotion of early Christianity at the level of daily life. They reveal a faith not only to be defended and defined, but to be endured, practiced, and embodied.

This volume includes:
On Repentance
On Baptism
On Prayer
To the Martyrs
The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas
On Patience
On the Pallium
On the Apparel of Women
On the Veiling of Virgins
To His Wife
On Encouragement to Chastity
De Fuga in Persecutione
Appendix:
A Strain of Jonah the Prophet
A Strain of Sodom
Genesis
A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord
Five Books in Reply to Marcion

This revision was prepared through an AI-assisted process, combining digital tools with traditional editorial work.