The early Christian church, in its struggle against the deviationist Gnostic movement which aimed at substituting rationality for faith, produced two great men, Tertullian and Origen. The author concludes from an examination of the work and lives of these two men that the manner in which they dealt with the Gnostic movement was determined by their respective unresolved Oedipal problems. Tertullian sacrifices his intellect out of fear of gnosis and becomes a man of feeling, while Origen, a sensualist, becomes a scholar. The mechanism involved in both cases is one of symbolic self-castration.