Around the year 208, in Carthage, a North African writer named Tertullian was already using a phrase about God that the councils of 325 and 381 would later make the church’s confession: one substance, three persons. The dating comes from Dr. David Wilhite, who teaches early Christian history at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary and has written a technical study of Tertullian. Tertullian stands near the top of the list of church fathers most Christians learn, followed by Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine. That list is accurate. It is also a list of men.
Tertullian’s own writings show the list is incomplete. He cited a woman martyr’s visions as though her voice carried weight in worship, and he wanted women to prophesy in church. Read in order, the record from Galilee to Constantinople names women who taught Scripture, held the office of deacon, paid for missions, kept an exiled bishop going, and preached in villages during the dispute over who Jesus is. The early church had mothers as well as fathers. What the record mostly lacks is their own account of their lives, and that gap explains the familiar list far better than any shortage of women does.
The women survive mostly inside documents other people wrote: a brother’s memorial, a bishop’s letters, a theologian’s treatise, a collection of sayings. Recovering them means following those documents through time and asking at each stage three questions: