e that his text is meant to answer heretical competitors for orthodox standing.
Thus from the very first words of Tertullian's text it becomes clear that he understood its historical, doctrinal, cultural, and contextual importance. For if the emerging religion was to have coherence, stability, and authority, it was important for its fundamental beliefs to be clarified and to be consistent with its foundational texts and traditions. That need is in the background of the hostility to heresy, as well as hostility to other significant ethical traditions and worldviews. For the Christians, the principal competitors in that arena were Judaism on one hand and Hellenism, or Graeco-Roman culture, on the other. If Christianity were to seize the hearts and minds of its adherents, therefore, it had to articulate doctrine with one voice, and Tertullian's text is aimed at facilitating that project.
The evidence of the New Testament gospels and the letters of Paul is (and was, in Tertullian's time) that a core concept of Christianity was that Jesus Christ embodi
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