On the Prescription of Heretics
Tertullian's c. 203 'De Praescriptione Haereticorum' — apostolic-rule polemic against heretics
Tradition: North African Latin patristics / proto-orthodox heresiology
Tertullian's c. 203 'De Praescriptione' — apostolic-rule polemic against heresy, refusing to debate Scripture with heretics
Composed in Carthage c. 203, before Tertullian's full break with the institutional Catholic Church into Montanism (c. 207), 'De Praescriptione Haereticorum' (On the Prescription Against Heretics) uses a Roman-legal 'praescriptio' argument (a procedural-legal objection that prevents an opposing party from making their substantive case) to deny heretics the right to argue from Scripture. The legal-procedural framework: in Roman civil procedure, a 'praescriptio' could be entered before the substantive case began, to demonstrate that the opposing party lacks standing to bring the case at all. Tertullian applies this to the heresy disputes: the heretics have no right to argue from Scripture, because Scripture belongs to the Church that possesses the apostolic rule of faith; the heretics are outside the apostolic succession and therefore cannot legitimately use the Church's Scripture for their arguments. The treatise is the founding text of patristic Latin heresiology and a major source for the second-century apostolic-tradition argument. The treatise's most-quoted question — 'Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? quid Academiae et Ecclesiae?' ('What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?', De Praescriptione 7.9) — encapsulates Tertullian's wariness about philosophical accommodation to the gospel. The treatise's most-influential passage on apostolic succession ('That which is most ancient is most apostolic; that which is most apostolic is most true' — chapters 21-22) became the founding charter of the Catholic argument for the apostolic-succession criterion of orthodoxy. The treatise was extensively used in subsequent Latin-Christian heresiology (Irenaeus had developed similar arguments earlier in the second century; Tertullian's contribution is the rigorous legal-procedural formulation).
Editions cited
- De Praescriptione Haereticorum, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina vol. 1, ed. R. F. Refoulé (Brepols, 1954)
- Critical edition with French translation: Pierre de Labriolle (ed.), Tertullien, De praescriptione haereticorum (Sources Chrétiennes 46, Cerf, 1957)
- English translation: Peter Holmes, in Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 3, ed. Roberts and Donaldson (Edinburgh, 1885)
- Critical commentary: Eric Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (Cambridge, 1997); David Rankin, Tertullian and the Church (Cambridge, 1995)
School Embodiments
Founding-patristic-Latin heresiology.
"What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?" (De Praescriptione, ch. 7)
Strict Scripture-and-rule-of-faith methodology.
"Where the truth is found, there is also the true Scripture and the true exposition." (De Praescriptione, ch. 19)
Proto-Catholic ecclesiology — Church as bearer of apostolic rule.
"The apostolic Churches are the matrix and source of the truth." (De Praescriptione, ch. 32)
Defining patristic anti-philosophical stance — pagan philosophy as the source of heresy.
"The philosophers and heretics ask the same questions, give the same answers." (De Praescriptione, ch. 7)
Roman-legal-argumentative methodology — 'prescription' as legal-rhetorical device.
"The legal 'prescription' against the heretics." (De Praescriptione, ch. 13-19)
Internal Tensions
Founding text of Christian heresiology; locus classicus of 'Athens vs Jerusalem'. The treatise's apostolic-succession argument became the founding charter of the Catholic argument for the apostolic-succession criterion of orthodoxy; the 'Athens vs Jerusalem' formulation has been continuously cited (sometimes with sympathy, sometimes critically) across two millennia of Christian-philosophical engagement.
I. Time
c. 203. Tertullian was in his mid-40s, before his Montanist break.
Attributes
II. Space
Carthage (Roman North Africa).
Attributes
III. Matter
Single polemical treatise (~80 pages in standard translation). Form is sustained legal-rhetorical argument: introduction setting up the praescriptio framework, then application to specific heretical positions.
Attributes
IV. Observer
Pre-Montanist Tertullian. The observer is the leading Latin-Christian theologian of his generation, articulating the proto-Catholic position on the apostolic-succession criterion.
Attributes
V. Energy
Patristic-heresiological energies. The treatise is the most concentrated Tertullian work on the question of heresy.
Attributes
VI. Information
Single treatise (~44 chapters). The 'Athens / Jerusalem' question (ch. 7) and the apostolic-succession argument (chs. 21-22) are the most-cited individual passages.
Attributes
Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How On the Prescription of Heretics resolves each dilemma
48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.