Note 574 — Chapter V

Footnote 574:

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Here also Irenæus keeps sin in the background; death and life are the essential ideas. Bohringer l.c., p. 484 has very rightly remarked: "We cannot say that Irenæus, in making Adam's conduct and suffering apply to the whole human race had started from an inward, immediate experience of human sinfulness and a feeling of the need of salvation founded on this." It is the thoughts of Paul to which Irenæus tried to accommodate himself without having had the same feeling about the flesh and sin as this Apostle. In Tertullian the mystic doctrine of salvation is rudimentary (but see, e.g. de anima 40: "ita omnis anima eo usque in Adam censetur donec in Christo recenseatur," and other passages); but he has speculations about Adam (for the most part developments of hints given in Irenæus; see the index in Oehler's edition), and he has a new realistic idea as to a physical taint of sin propagated through procreation. Here we have the first beginning of the doctrine of original sin (de testim. 3: "per diabolum homo a primordio circumventus, ut præceptum dei excederet, et propterea in mortem datus exinde totum genus de suo semine infectum suæ etiam damnationis traducem fecit." Compare his teachings in de anima 40, 41, 16 about the disease of sin that is propagated "ex originis vitio" and has become a real second nature). But how little he regards this original sin as guilt is shown by de bapt. 18: "Quaie innocens ætas festinat ad baptismum." For the rest, Tertullian discussed the relationship of flesh and spirit, sensuousness and intellect, much more thoroughly than Irenæus; he showed that flesh is not the seat of sin (de anima 40). In the same book (but see Bk. V. c. 1) he expressly declared that in this question also sure results are only to be obtained from revelation. This was an important step in the direction of secularising Christianity through "philosophy" and of emasculating the understanding through "revelation." In regard to the conception of sin Cyprian followed his teacher. De op. et eleem. 1 reads indeed like an utterance of Irenæus ("dominus sanavit illa quæ Adam portaverat vulnera"); but the statement in ep. 64. 5: "Recens natus nihil peccavit, nisi quod secundum Adam carnaliter natus contagium mortis antiquæ prima nativitate contraxit" is quite in the manner of Tertullian, and perhaps the latter could also have agreed with the continuation: "infanti remittuntur non propria sed aliena peccata." Tertullian's proposition that absolutely no one but the Son of God could have remained without sin was repeated by Cyprian (see, e.g., de op. et eleem. 3).