The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

The article reveals the structure and main content of Tertullian’s catechetical preaching. It is shown that in order to analyze the teaching part of the North African catechesis in the late 2nd — early 3rd centuries, along with the treatises “Spectacles”, “On Penitence”, “On Baptism” and “On Prayer”, Tertullian’s works such as “On Idolatry”, “On Patience” and “To the Martyrs” should be studied. Additionally, the written testimony of the same period to the martyrdom of catechumens — “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity” whose editor may have been part of Tertullian’s circle, is considered. It is suggested that, typologically, Tertullian’s sermon “On Patience” is similar to one of the examples of the pre-catechetical sermons of St. Augustine in his work “On Catechizing Beginners”, while liturgical allusions in “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity” help to complete the missing information about the interpretation of the Eucharist for catechumens. The author of the article assumes that the Lord’s Prayer and the sacrament of baptism were briefly mentioned in the final stage of pre-baptismal preparation, as was the case in North Africa later in the times of St. Augustine. 
Tertullian spoke with catechumens about God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, about Christ, the Law, and the prophets, the Church, the resurrection from the dead, and, what is typical for pre-Nicene Christianity in North Africa, he spoke about faithfulness and patience in times of persecution. Important for Tertullian’s catechetical preaching was the call to repentance and a change of lifestyle, which implied, in the first place, the rejection of idols. Tertullian interpreted idolatry broadly as any worship of whatever instead of God the Creator and believed that it implicitly contains other deadly sins (murder, adultery, debauchery, etc.). Throughout the catechesis there was a sermon on following the example of Christ: His patience and love, manifested in His voluntary death on the cross, must be transformed into the patience and love for Christ of the faithful Christians and their willingness to suffer for the potential of joining Him and staying with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven.