Tertullian and Disneyanity

An honest reader of biblical literature cannot avoid the impression that the god of Abraham, Isaac, Ismail, and Jacob is a human, all-too-human deity: by turns irascible and cruel, loving and merciful. This is the god that the majority of the world's religious practitioners (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) worship.

In the modern period, however, human beings began to anchor some of their understandings of the world in physical evidence: alchemy gave way to chemistry and other disciplines of modern science. This innovation, when applied to history, allowed for distinctions to be made between religious faith and credulity.

Not all modern practitioners of religion find such distinctions welcome; they cling, instead, to the notion that faith is credulity and that their god will reward their credulity with paradise.

Given the human, all-too-human deity of biblical literature, this view is not untenable. If it is true, are we not at the mercy of a strange god?

When the church father Tertullian (d. 220 CE) wrote in De Carne Christi, V, 4, "Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est" ("It is wholly believable, because it is incongruous"), he may have been arguing for the credibility of improbable claims--a not unreasonable position to take (just because something is unlikely does not render it necessarily impossible). Of course, the burden of proof increases with the relative improbability of the particular claim in question (e.g., the bodily resurrection of Christ).

But Tertullian is not usually remembered to have made so reasonable an argument. Instead, he is typically quoted: "Credo quia absurdum" ("I believe [it] because it is absurd"). This view, perhaps inaccurately attributed to the famous church father, reflects well the essential position of Disneyanity--a modern religious counter-innovation that delivers all of humanity into the hands of a strange, unpredictable, and anti-rationalist deity.