"It is certain because it is impossible"
About this Quote
A line like "It is certain because it is impossible" isn’t trying to win an argument on logic’s home turf; it’s trying to flip the board. Tertullian, an early Christian polemicist writing in a Roman world that prized rhetorical polish and philosophical coherence, weaponizes paradox to redraw the rules of credibility. If pagan critics scoff at Christian claims as irrational, he leans into the scoff and turns it into a badge: precisely because the claim offends common sense, it can’t be dismissed as convenient fabrication.
The intent is less mystical than strategic. Tertullian is arguing that the Gospel’s central scandal (a crucified God, resurrection, the humiliating particulars of incarnation) lacks the glossy plausibility of a made-up myth engineered to please elites. The subtext: human storytelling tends toward the flattering and the probable; Christianity advertises itself through the awkward, the costly, the socially unmarketable. That ugliness becomes a kind of evidentiary fingerprint.
It also functions as a loyalty test. By making certainty hinge on the impossible, Tertullian pushes faith into the realm of commitment rather than opinion. You don’t dabble in a belief like this; you submit, and in submitting you separate yourself from the empire’s prestige economy of reason, status, and “respectable” religion.
Modern readers often mistake it for anti-intellectualism, a slogan for shutting down questions. In context it’s closer to a dare: if salvation arrives as a contradiction, then God isn’t auditioning for philosophy’s approval - and the believer’s confidence is meant to be felt as defiant, not naive.
The intent is less mystical than strategic. Tertullian is arguing that the Gospel’s central scandal (a crucified God, resurrection, the humiliating particulars of incarnation) lacks the glossy plausibility of a made-up myth engineered to please elites. The subtext: human storytelling tends toward the flattering and the probable; Christianity advertises itself through the awkward, the costly, the socially unmarketable. That ugliness becomes a kind of evidentiary fingerprint.
It also functions as a loyalty test. By making certainty hinge on the impossible, Tertullian pushes faith into the realm of commitment rather than opinion. You don’t dabble in a belief like this; you submit, and in submitting you separate yourself from the empire’s prestige economy of reason, status, and “respectable” religion.
Modern readers often mistake it for anti-intellectualism, a slogan for shutting down questions. In context it’s closer to a dare: if salvation arrives as a contradiction, then God isn’t auditioning for philosophy’s approval - and the believer’s confidence is meant to be felt as defiant, not naive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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