Life & Wisdom Quote by Tertullian

Marriage is supposed to be the vow; Tertullian’s sting is that in his world the vow has effectively migrated to its negation. Calling divorce “a religious vow” turns a legal or domestic rupture into a counterfeit sacrament, a parody of Christian seriousness. The line works because it treats cultural drift as liturgy: if society keeps doing a thing with enough ceremony and repetition, it starts to feel holy, even when it contradicts the faith’s demands.

“As if the proper offspring of marriage” sharpens the insult. Divorce isn’t merely common; it’s been normalized as the expected product, the child marriage reliably gives birth to. The metaphor is coldly biological: what should be fruitful (union, fidelity, household stability) has been reversed into a reproductive cycle of separation. Tertullian’s grammar carries a judge’s sneer, less lament than prosecution.

Context matters. Writing in a Roman world where divorce could be initiated relatively easily and remarriage was socially legible, Tertullian represents an early Christian counterculture trying to distinguish itself through sexual and marital discipline. He’s also a rigorist by temperament: his broader project is policing the borders of Christian identity against what he sees as pagan softness and Christian compromise. The subtext is political inside the church as much as moral outside it. If divorce is treated like a vow, then vows themselves are being trivialized; the community’s credibility is on the line. The attack isn’t only on couples, but on a society that’s learned to bless its own exit strategies.