Places Where Tertullian of Carthage Refers to God the Father As "Creator"

Adversus Praxean 3: "I prefer your exercising yourself on the meaning of the thing rather than on the sound of the word. Now you must understand the overthrow of a monarchy to be this, when another dominion, which has a framework and a state peculiar to itself (and is therefore a rival), is brought in over and above it: when, e.g., some other god is introduced in opposition to the Creator, as in the opinions of Marcion; or when many gods are introduced, according to your Valentinuses and your Prodicuses. Then it amounts to an overthrow of the Monarchy, since it involves the destruction of the Creator."

The context shows that he is referring to the Father.

Adv Prax 19: "But this very declaration of His they will hastily pervert into an argument of His singleness. I have, says He, stretched out the heaven alone. Undoubtedly alone as regards all other powers; and He thus gives a premonitory evidence against the conjectures of the heretics, who maintain that the world was constructed by various angels and powers, who also make the Creator Himself to have been either an angel or some subordinate agent sent to form external things, such as the constituent parts of the world, but who was at the same time ignorant of the divine purpose. If, now, it is in this sense that He stretches out the heavens alone, how is it that these heretics assume their position so perversely, as to render inadmissible the singleness of that Wisdom which says, When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him? (Proverbs 8:27) — even though the apostle asks, Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor? (Romans 11:34) meaning, of course, to except that wisdom which was present with Him. (Proverbs 8:30) In Him, at any rate, and with Him, did (Wisdom) construct the universe, He not being ignorant of what she was making. Except Wisdom, however, is a phrase of the same sense exactly as except the Son, who is Christ, the Wisdom and Power of God, (1 Corinthians 1:24) according to the apostle, who only knows the mind of the Father. For who knows the things that be in God, except the Spirit which is in Him? (1 Corinthians 2:11) Not, observe, without Him. There was therefore One who caused God to be not alone, except alone from all other gods. But (if we are to follow the heretics), the Gospel itself will have to be rejected, because it tells us that all things were made by God through the Word, without whom nothing was made. (John 1:3) And if I am not mistaken, there is also another passage in which it is written: By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by His Spirit. Now this Word, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, must be the very Son of God. So that, if (He did) all things by the Son, He must have stretched out the heavens by the Son, and so not have stretched them out alone, except in the sense in which He is alone (and apart) from all other gods."

Adv Herm 22: "He confirms (by that silence our assertion) that they were produced out of nothing. In the beginning, then, God made the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1) I revere the fullness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and the creation. In the gospel, moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word. (John 1:3) But whether all things were made out of any underlying Matter, I have as yet failed anywhere to find. Where such a statement is written, Hermogenes' shop must tell us. If it is nowhere written, then let it fear the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the written word. (Revelation 22:18-19)"

Cyril Richardson Explains Tertullian's Christology

Cyril C. Richardson professes that the basis of "Christian conviction" is God’s oneness and the revelation of God "in Jesus Christ" (44). Richardson continues: "When the early Christians found it necessary to consider the implications of this conviction they did not find it difficult to suppose that the God qui est super omnia allowed his monarchy to be administered by the Son, who was dependent upon Him for immortality and a relative divinity" (Page 45). At this point, Richardson has Tertullian of Carthage in mind. In fact, he explicitly writes: "This is the basis of the argument of Tertullian against Praxeas. The popular idea of the relative divinity of the 'created gods' can be found in Plato (Tim. 41), and, in Stoicism, man is called hO QEOS because he possesses reason, or part of the essence of the Godhead" (ftn 70, page 98). See C.C. Richardson. The Christianity of Ignatius of Antioch. New York: AMS Press, 1967.

Article about Richardson: https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/richardson-cyril-c

Danielou and Tertullian's Christology

Jean Danielou tellingly writes these words about Tertullian's doctrine of God and Christ:

"The Son and the Spirit are distinguished, therefore, from the Father in that they have their own subsistent being, which is not, however, based on their eternal specific individuality, but rather on their function in relation to God's creation. Tertullian does not manage to get beyond the combination of a modalism with regard to the distinctness of the individual persons and a subordinationism with regard to their existential plurality" (Danielou, The Origins of Latin Christianity, 364).