"We define that there are two, the Father and the Son, and three with the Holy Spirit, and this number is made by the pattern of salvation . . . [which] brings about unity in trinity, interrelating the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are three, not in dignity, but in degree, not in substance but in form, not in power but in kind. They are of one substance and power, because there is one God from whom these degrees, forms and kinds devolve in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit." (Adv. Prax. 23; PL 2.156-7).
Reply: Finally we have the word "trinity" though oddly enough, unlike the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the word was not capitalized. This leads me to think that he viewed the trinity differently that later trinitarians.
We can see this by looking at the wikipedia entry on Subordinationism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subordinationism) where Tertullian is listed as a Subordinationist:
Tertullian (AD 165-225): professed that the Father, Son, and Spirit "are inseparable from each other." His "assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other. This statement," according to Tertullian, "is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated [...] a separation among the Father, [...] Son, and [...] Spirit." Tertullian said "it is not by [...] diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division [...] but by distinction; [...] they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, [...] Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He [...] who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He [...] who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another." Moreover, "their names represent [...] what they are [...] called; and the distinction indicated by the names does not [...] admit [...] confusion, because there is none in the things which they designate."[22]
Also: "Next came Tertullian, one of the most eminent and mighty of the Fathers, a Latin, who lived in Carthage about A.d. 192, who taught that the Logos, having existed from eternity with the Father, came down to earth and inhabited the person of Jesus, so that he was an eternal though subordinate being. But he did not say for an instant that the New Testament teaches the equality of Jesus. He takes those passages where Jesus says, "I and my Father are one," and interprets them just as I should to-day in connection with the passage immediately by it, where Jesus says that he is one with his disciples in the same manner that he is one with his Father, — that this only means oneness of purpose, affection, heart." Minot Savage 1891
https://newworldtranslation.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-problem-of-trinity-by-minot-savage.html
Tertullian writes, A.d. 200, "That God was not always a Father or a Judge, since he could not be a Father before he had a Son, nor a Judge before there was sin, and there was a time when both sin and the Son were not."
https://newworldtranslation.blogspot.com/2018/09/uncomfortable-thoughts-and-facts-on.html
Justin quotes from the Septuagint version the passage in Proverbs, in which Wisdom, by which he supposes is meant the Son, is represented as saying, "The Lord created me the beginning of his ways to his works: before the ages he founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth or the abyss, before the hills, he begat me." [Prov. viii. 22-36: "The Lord created me the beginning of his ways," etc. So Origen and Tertullian, as well as Justin, understood the passage. See Otto, in he., notes 1 and 12. Tertullian (Adv. Hermog., c. 8) saye expressly, "There was a time when the Son was not."] This Wisdom Justin regarded as God's offspring, produced as above described; and him, this first of his productions, he supposes God to address, when he says (Gen. i. 26), "Let us make man in our own image." [Dial., pp. 158, 159; Thirlby, pp. 266, 268; Otto, c. 62.]
https://newworldtranslation.blogspot.com/2018/04/justin-martyr-on-logos-and-trinity.html
In the beginning of the third century, we find Tertullian saying: "If the Father and the Son are to be named together, I call the Father God, and Jesus Christ, Lord; though I can call Christ God, when speaking of himself alone." "The Son is derived from the Father," he adds, "as the branch from the root, the stream from the fountain, the ray from the sun." [Adv. Prax. c. 8; c. 13.]
https://newworldtranslation.blogspot.com/2018/03/trinitarianism-and-unitarianism-in.html
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