Tertullian Prided Himself in Believing Because it Was "Absurd"?

Do Christians pride themselves in believing absurdities? More specifically, did the Church Father Tertullian embrace Christianity because it was irrational? For a long time, critics of Christianity have claimed Tertullian said, "I believe [in Christianity] because it is absurd."

But Dr. Peter Harrison at the University of Queensland disagrees. In an article for Aeon, Harrison points out that this famous line is a myth — Tertullian never actually wrote it. What Tertullian did say, in reference to Christ's death and resurrection, was that it was "certain, because it is impossible."

Harrison argues that this is a very different claim than the one usually attributed to Tertullian. Rather than celebrating irrationality for its own sake, Tertullian appears to be drawing on a much older idea from Aristotle's Rhetoric: that an event's sheer improbability can actually count as evidence for its truth, since someone inventing a false story would typically choose something more believable, not less. Harrison notes that Tertullian, who was almost certainly familiar with Aristotle's work, was likely making a similar move — arguing that the very strangeness of the resurrection account is itself a reason to think it wasn't fabricated. On this reading, Tertullian isn't asking anyone to believe without reason; he's making the case that the resurrection's improbability is precisely what makes it credible.

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Reference

Peter Harrison, “‘I Believe Because It Is Absurd’: Christianity’s First Meme,” Aeon, April 9, 2018, https://aeon.co/ideas/i-believe-because-it-is-absurd-christianitys-first-meme.