"It is certain because it is possible"
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A sentence this small shouldn’t be able to pick a fight with reason, but Tertullian manages it. “It is certain because it is possible” flips the usual ladder of proof: we don’t know something is true because evidence compels us; we’re invited to trust it because the door isn’t locked. The line isn’t trying to win a debate on logic’s terms. It’s trying to relocate the arena.
Tertullian, a fierce early Christian polemicist writing in a Roman world that prized rhetorical cleverness and philosophical coherence, is often linked (sometimes loosely) to the tradition behind “I believe because it is absurd.” The aim is similar: faith as a deliberate refusal to let plausibility be the final judge. “Possible” here doesn’t mean statistically likely. It means metaphysically open: if reality includes a God who can intervene, then the resurrection, miracles, and the whole scandal of Christian doctrine aren’t contradictions; they’re options. And once they’re options, certainty becomes a moral posture, not an inference.
The subtext is combative. Tertullian is drawing a boundary between communities: those who demand the world be tidy enough to be proven, and those willing to wager themselves on a truth that arrives as revelation. The line works because it compresses a whole apologetic strategy into a paradoxical jolt. It doesn’t soothe doubt; it weaponizes it, turning the gap between what can be proven and what can be lived into the very space where conviction is born.
Tertullian, a fierce early Christian polemicist writing in a Roman world that prized rhetorical cleverness and philosophical coherence, is often linked (sometimes loosely) to the tradition behind “I believe because it is absurd.” The aim is similar: faith as a deliberate refusal to let plausibility be the final judge. “Possible” here doesn’t mean statistically likely. It means metaphysically open: if reality includes a God who can intervene, then the resurrection, miracles, and the whole scandal of Christian doctrine aren’t contradictions; they’re options. And once they’re options, certainty becomes a moral posture, not an inference.
The subtext is combative. Tertullian is drawing a boundary between communities: those who demand the world be tidy enough to be proven, and those willing to wager themselves on a truth that arrives as revelation. The line works because it compresses a whole apologetic strategy into a paradoxical jolt. It doesn’t soothe doubt; it weaponizes it, turning the gap between what can be proven and what can be lived into the very space where conviction is born.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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