Customer Reviews

13. Tertullian: Treatises on Marriage and Remarriage: To His Wife, An Exhortation to Chastity, Monogamy (Ancient Christian Writers)

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Of course this is a valuable work, but let me speak of the merits of the translated works themselves.

Tertullian in his letter to his Wife is probably his best in this binding of the three given here.

His other two works are filled with frankly idiotic reasoning most especially concerning 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul exhorts the Christians to stay in whatever situation they are and says that virginity is better than marriage (but if virginity cannot be handled then marriage should be sort after). Tertullian takes this section of Scripture and applies some perversely strange logic to actually exegete the passage as Paul saying that marriage is evil. He likewise applies a ridiculous interpretation to the issue of second marriage after the death of a spouse which Paul clearly condones.

Very many sections especially between the latter two works very easily parallel each other not so far as to make one simply say that these are really two recensions of the same work but there are lots of similarities.

As usual I was pleased with my ACW edition of these works (not that I can judge the translation, I can't read Latin).