Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline
Chapter One
TERTULLIAN'S PARADOX
Non pudet, quia pudendum est ... prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum
est ... certum est, quia impossibile.
-Tertullian, de carne Christi, v.
(1) This paper does not deal directly either with Tertullian or with his
paradox. In considering the most famous and most widely misquoted of
Tertullian's paradoxes, I do not try to explain it, still less to explain
it away; but take it as the starting-point and end of a discussion of
religious language and of its relations to theology and to the kind of
philosophical inquiry with which this book* is principally concerned. In
particular, I try to bring out a certain tension, a pull between the
possible and the impossible, a sort of inherent and necessary
incomprehensibility, which seems to be a feature of Christian belief, and
to locate this point of tension more exactly within the structure of the
belief. This tension Tertullian seems to have felt very strongly, and
characteristically proclaimed it with vigour; but it is only by this
rather thin string t ... read full excerpt from Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline ebook
