 However, the conception of Tertullian as anti-rational is not supported by contemporary scholarship. Contrary to popular belief, what Tertullian said is not credo quia absurdum but credible est quia ineptum est. Tertullian’s point seems to have been that the incarnation represents a paradox: salvation requires both that God become human and that God remain wholly other. His quarrel was not with reason per se, but with philosophical hubris. Eric Osborne writes, “Not only did he never say ‘credo quia absurdum’, but he never meant anything like it and never abandoned the claims of Athens upon Jerusalem” (28). Tertullian, Osborne concludes, was a “most improbable fideist” (29).