Tertullian — Commentary on Scripture

1 Corinthians 12:8

You have at hand, no doubt, some learned brother gifted with the grace of knowledge, some one of the experienced class, some one of your close acquaintance who is curious like yourself; although with yourself, a seeker he will, after all, be quite aware that it is better for you to remain in ignorance, lest you should come to know what you ought not, because you have acquired the knowledge of what you ought to know. "Thy faith," He says, "hath saved thee" not observe your skill in the Scriptures.

The Prescription Against Heretics

1 Corinthians 12:12

This, too, I may confidently say: he who has likened the unity of our body throughout its manifold and divers members to the compacting together of the various gifts of the Spirit, shows also that there is but one Lord of the human body and of the Holy Spirit.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 12:23

He will love the flesh which is, so very closely and in so many ways, His neighbour-(He will love it), although infirm, since His strength is made perfect in weakness; although disordered, since "they that are whole need not the physician, but they that are sick; " although not honourable, since "we bestow more abundant honour upon the less honourable members; " although ruined, since He says, "I am come to save that which was lost; " although sinful, since He says, "I desire rather the salvation of the sinner than his death; " although condemned, for says He, "I shall wound, and also heal.

On the Resurrection of the Flesh

1 Corinthians 12:26

brethren and fellow-servants, where there is common hope, fear, joy, grief, suffering, because there is a common Spirit from a common Lord and Father, why do you think these brothers to be anything other than yourself? Why flee from the partners of your own mischances, as from such as will derisively cheer them? The body cannot feel gladness at the trouble of any one member, it must necessarily join with one consent in the grief, and in labouring for the remedy.

On Repentance

1 Corinthians 12:27

And, accordingly, why excuse it on the ground of pristine precedent? It did not bear the names of "body of Christ," of "members of Christ," of "temple of God," at the time When it used to obtain pardon for adultery.

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 12:31

This Spirit, (according to the apostle's showing, ) meant not that the service of these gifts should be in the body, nor did He place them in the human body); and on the subject of the superiority of love above all these gifts, He even taught the apostle that it was the chief commandment, just as Christ has shown it to be: "Thou shalt love the Lord with all thine heart and soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thine own self.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 13:1

This Spirit, (according to the apostle's showing, ) meant not that the service of these gifts should be in the body, nor did He place them in the human body); and on the subject of the superiority of love above all these gifts, He even taught the apostle that it was the chief commandment, just as Christ has shown it to be: "Thou shalt love the Lord with all thine heart and soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thine own self.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 13:3

For he was the first to import into Rome from Asia this kind of heretical pravity, a man in other respects of restless disposition, and above all inflated with the pride of confessorship simply and solely because he had to bear for a short time the annoyance of a prison; on which occasion, even "if he had given his body to be burned, it would have profiled him nothing," not having the love of God, whose very gifts he has resisted and destroyed.

Against Praxeas

1 Corinthians 13:5

Are we to paint ourselves out that our neighbours may perish? Where, then, is (the command), "Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself? " "Care not merely about your own (things), but (about your) neighbour's? " No enunciation of the Holy Spirit ought to be (confined) to the subject immediately in hand merely, and not applied and carried out with a view to every occasion to which its application is useful.

On the Apparel of Women Book II

1 Corinthians 13:11

"When I was a child," he says, "as a child I spake, as a child I understood; but when I became a man, those (things) which had been the child's I abandoned: " so truly did he turn away from his early opinions: nor did he sin by becoming an emulator not of ancestral but of Christian traditions, wishing even the precision of them who advised the retention of circumcision.

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 13:12

We declare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself (as the Son), is invisible, in that He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God; but that He was visible before the days of His flesh, in the way that He says to Aaron and Miriam, "And if there shall be a prophet amongst you, I will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream; not as with Moses, with whom I shall speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, that is to say, in truth, and not enigmatically" that is to say, in image; as the apostle also expresses it, "Now we see through a glass, darkly (or enigmatically), but then face to face." Since, therefore, He reserves to some future time His presence and speech face to face with Moses-a promise which was afterwards fulfilled in the retirement of the mount (of transfiguration), when as we read in the Gospel," Moses appeared talking with Jesus" -it is evident that in early times it was always in a glass, (as it were, )and an enigma, in vision and dream, that God, I mean the Son of God, appeared-to the prophets and the patriarchs, as also to Moses indee…

We declare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself (as the Son), is invisible, in that He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God; but that He was visible before the days of His flesh, in the way that He says to Aaron and Miriam, "And if there shall be a prophet amongst you, I will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream; not as with Moses, with whom I shall speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, that is to say, in truth, and not enigmatically" that is to say, in image; as the apostle also expresses it, "Now we see through a glass, darkly (or enigmatically), but then face to face." Since, therefore, He reserves to some future time His presence and speech face to face with Moses-a promise which was afterwards fulfilled in the retirement of the mount (of transfiguration), when as we read in the Gospel," Moses appeared talking with Jesus" -it is evident that in early times it was always in a glass, (as it were, )and an enigma, in vision and dream, that God, I mean the Son of God, appeared-to the prophets and the patriarchs, as also to Moses indeed himself.

Against Praxeas

1 Corinthians 14:15

We are the true adorers and the true priests, who, praying in spirit, sacrifice, in spirit, prayer,-a victim proper and acceptable to God, which assuredly He has required, which He has looked forward to for Himself! This victim, devoted from the whole heart, fed on faith, tended by truth, entire in innocence, pure in chastity, garlanded with love, we ought to escort with the pomp of good works, amid psalms and hymns, unto God's altar, to obtain for us all things from God.

On Prayer

1 Corinthians 14:20

The apostle, too, bids us to "become children again" towards God, " to be as children in malice" by our simplicity, yet as being also "wise in our practical faculties." At the same time, with respect to the order of development in Wisdom, I have admitted that it flows from simplicity.

Against the Valentinians

1 Corinthians 14:21

When he mentions the fact that "it is written in the law," how that the Creator would speak with other tongues and other lips, whilst confirming indeed the gift of tongues by such a mention, he yet cannot be thought to have affirmed that the gift was that of another god by his reference to the Creator's prediction. In precisely the same manner, when enjoining on women silence in the church, that they speak not for the mere sake of learning (although that even they have the right of prophesying, he has already shown when he covers the woman that prophesies with a veil), he goes to the law for his sanction that woman should be under obedience.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 14:25

Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets, such as have not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have both predicted things to come, and have made manifest the secrets of the heart; let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer -only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him; let him show to me also, that any woman of boastful tongue in his community has ever prophesied from amongst those specially holy sisters of his.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 14:26

Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets, such as have not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have both predicted things to come, and have made manifest the secrets of the heart; let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer -only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him; let him show to me also, that any woman of boastful tongue in his community has ever prophesied from amongst those specially holy sisters of his.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 14:32

To be sure, an amender of that Gospel, which had been all topsy-turvy from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone-so long looked for by Christ, who was all along regretting that he had been in so great a hurry to send out his apostles without the support of Marcion! But for all that, heresy, which is for ever mending the Gospels, and corrupting them in the act, is an affair of man's audacity, not of God's authority; and if Marcion be even a disciple, he is yet not "above his master; " if Marcion be an apostle, still as Paul says, "Whether it be I or they, so we preach; " if Marcion be a prophet, even "the spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets," for they are not the authors of confusion, but of peace; or if Marcion be actually an angel, he must rather be designated "as anathema than as a preacher of the gospel," because it is a strange gospel which he has preached.

Against Marcion Book IV

1 Corinthians 14:34

By the Romans, however, the rudiments of learning are wont to be called elements.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 14:34

It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church; but neither (is it permitted her) to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim to herself a lot in any manly function, not to say (in any) sacerdotal office.

On the Veiling of Virgins

1 Corinthians 14:34

For how credible would it seem, that he who has not permitted a woman even to learn with over-boldness, should give a female the power of teaching and of baptizing! "Let them be silent," he says, "and at home consult their own husbands."

On Baptism