"Christians are made, not born"
About this Quote
Tertullian’s line lands like a rebuttal to fate. In a Roman world where identity was largely inherited - citizenship, cult, class, household gods - “Christians are made, not born” insists that this new community is elective, engineered, and therefore threatening. It’s also a quiet flex: Christianity isn’t a tribal badge you receive at birth; it’s a transformation you endure, a discipline you submit to, a conversion that has to be performed in public and tested under pressure.
The intent is partly apologetic and partly strategic. Tertullian is defending a movement accused of being antisocial and illicit by reframing it as morally serious formation. If Christians are “made,” then the church isn’t just recruiting bodies; it’s producing a particular kind of person through catechesis, ritual, and the reshaping of daily habits. That word choice casts faith as craft: an artisan’s process, not an accident.
The subtext is sharper: Rome can’t solve Christianity by policing bloodlines. There is no ethnic boundary to enforce, no family tree to sever. Persecution, paradoxically, becomes part of the manufacturing process - the pressure that proves authenticity. Tertullian’s broader oeuvre circles this idea: conviction is validated by cost.
Context matters because early Christianity was still defining itself against both pagan religiosity (often transactional and civic) and inherited Jewish identity. The sentence draws a bright line around belonging: not ancestry, not mere admiration, but formation. It’s an early statement of Christianity’s portability - and of its power to disrupt the social order precisely because it can be taught, chosen, and remade.
The intent is partly apologetic and partly strategic. Tertullian is defending a movement accused of being antisocial and illicit by reframing it as morally serious formation. If Christians are “made,” then the church isn’t just recruiting bodies; it’s producing a particular kind of person through catechesis, ritual, and the reshaping of daily habits. That word choice casts faith as craft: an artisan’s process, not an accident.
The subtext is sharper: Rome can’t solve Christianity by policing bloodlines. There is no ethnic boundary to enforce, no family tree to sever. Persecution, paradoxically, becomes part of the manufacturing process - the pressure that proves authenticity. Tertullian’s broader oeuvre circles this idea: conviction is validated by cost.
Context matters because early Christianity was still defining itself against both pagan religiosity (often transactional and civic) and inherited Jewish identity. The sentence draws a bright line around belonging: not ancestry, not mere admiration, but formation. It’s an early statement of Christianity’s portability - and of its power to disrupt the social order precisely because it can be taught, chosen, and remade.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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