ON THE EXHORTATION TO CHASTITY: (De exhortatione castitatis) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

What does a Christian owe to the life that has been taken from him—and what does he owe to God afterward?

In On the Exhortation to Chastity (De exhortatione castitatis), one of the most forceful voices of early Latin Christianity confronts a question that is at once intensely personal and profoundly theological: should a Christian who has lost a spouse marry again?

Tertullian's answer is uncompromising—but his argument is more subtle than a simple condemnation of marriage. Addressing a widower, he develops a carefully constructed case for continence, widowhood, and monogamy, asking not merely what is permitted, but what represents the higher form of Christian discipline.

Drawing upon Genesis, Job, the Gospels, Paul, and the wider language of Scripture, Tertullian distinguishes between God's command, God's permission, human freedom, temptation, and the Christian's responsibility to choose what is spiritually superior. His discussion of “It is better to marry than to burn” reveals how aggressively he reads Paul's words, turning a familiar biblical sentence into a sophisticated argument about permission and perfection.

The work also contains a striking vision of Christian history. Tertullian contrasts the multiplication of humanity in the beginning with the “new discipline” introduced by Christ, arguing that what was permitted at the beginning of the ages does not necessarily define the highest Christian calling afterward. His argument moves through creation, the patriarchs, apostolic authority, monogamy, and the relationship between Christ and the Church.

This edition offers a new translation made directly from the Latin, preserving Tertullian's compressed vocabulary, sharp contrasts, rhetorical force, and deliberately difficult turns of thought rather than smoothing them into modern theological prose.

The accompanying notes and commentary are deliberately restrained. They clarify biblical allusions, Latin expressions, historical references, and interpretive difficulties while allowing Tertullian's own argument to remain at the center.

For readers of the Church Fathers, early Christianity, patristic theology, Christian asceticism, Latin literature, and the history of marriage and celibacy, this brief treatise offers something rare: a direct encounter with Tertullian's mind before later centuries softened, systematized, or simplified his questions.

Read him not to make him agreeable.

Read him to hear him.

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