Tertullian uses the notion of a common human nature. His principle of discontinuity would not entitle him to this. According to it, he should attribute to each man afresh a total independence of his fellows. But must maintain some slender connection between all men. This slender connection by way of common human nature presupposes at the back of it a commonality between man and God. And it is this assumption of a common nature or being which, since it is participant in divinity, is said in some measure to be always good even in the midst of evil. The result of all this for Tertullian's view of the nature of sin is that its biblical character of ethical alienation from God is not fully appreciated. Tertullian's notion of sin is still largely controlled by the idea that sin is the metaphysical opposite of the good. It is, as it were, lower in the scale of being than is the good. Sin is however inevitably, or almost inevitably, present in human nature on account of the slenderness of being that is man's character.
Cornelius Van Til — Christian Theory of Knowledge
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