La salvació de l'home segons la teologia de Tertul·lià de Cartago

Tertullian of Carthage set out his soteriological thought in his conflicts with variousadversaries. Before both Jews and Gentiles, the North-African theologian demonstratedthat Christ is God made man (it is no myth), and that he accomplished inthe world a divine mission which had previously been announced in the holy booksof the Jewish people: to deliver the human race from the evil brought about bysin. The sine qua non condition to achieve this salvation is three-fold: 1) Christ thesalutificator is truly man, with a body of flesh and a spiritual soul; 2) Christ is theSon of God Creator of the world; 3) the Son of God, made man and condemned tosuffering and death on the cross, is a divine person distinct from God the Father.This article sets out how Tertullian, rooted in the Asiatic tradition as representedby Irenaeus of Lyons and Melito of Sardis, was able to develop a certain numberof new theological ideas compared with his Asiatic predecessors, with respect tohis reflections on the dispensation or execution of the historico-salvific plan, or toanthropological and moral aspects of the work of salvation, or to the Christologicaldimension of human salvation.