Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 22–28

On the man whom God commanded to be stoned because he was found gathering wood on the Sabbath. When the Lord in the gospel healed a man's withered hand on the Sabbath day, he did a divine work, not a human one; nor did he depart from rest, he who commanded and it was done. And so this deed is not like that of the man gathering wood, who, when he was found doing it on the Sabbath day, was stoned by God's command. Much has already been said about the servile observance of the Sabbath and about the punishment of temporal death. For just as in the time of love the goodness of God is chiefly commended, so in the time of fear his severity is. And since it was not yet fitting, before the Lord's coming, to lay bare to the people the sacraments of the figures of the law, those people were not invited to understand what was signified, but were compelled to fulfill what was commanded; for they did not yet cling to God through the Spirit, but served the law through the flesh. But I wonder that these people lament the man stoned by God's command because he gathered wood against the command of the law, and do not lament the tree withered by Christ's word, which had done nothing against any command, since they believe that a tree has the same kind of soul as a human being.

On the text: “Let your wife be like a flourishing vine and your children like young olive shoots around your table, and you will see your children's children; and you will know that thus is blessed the man who fears the Lord.” The Manichaeans do not understand that this, said figuratively through the prophet, refers to the signification of the Church, and they think that what the Lord says in the gospel about eunuchs who castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is contrary. But we have already discussed husband and wife and eunuchs, as much as was sufficient, in the third chapter.

On the text in Solomon: “Imitate the ant and look at its diligence, for from summertime until winter it gathers food for itself.” The Manichaeans do not understand that this too must be taken spiritually, and they think it is a command that we should store up treasure on earth, or even take care of those barns which people hasten eagerly to fill without any command. And so Adimantus says that the gospel passage where the Lord says, “Do not think about tomorrow,” is opposed to this saying. But neither do they understand that this refers to our not loving temporal things, nor fearing that necessities may fail us, nor serving either God or human beings for the sake of acquiring them. For if it was said so that bread should not be kept until tomorrow, this is fulfilled rather by the vagrants of Rome whom they call pasgivi, who, once their belly is filled with the daily ration, either give away at once what is left or throw it away, than by the Lord's disciples, who, walking on earth with the very Lord of heaven and earth, had a money box, or by the apostle Paul, who, though he despised all earthly things, still managed what was necessary for the present life in such a way that he even gave a command about widows, saying: “If any believer has widows, let him provide sufficiently for them, so that the Church may not be burdened, so that it may suffice for real widows.” But that text about the ant is set down so that, just as it gathers in summer what will feed it in winter, so every Christian, in a time of calm, which summer signifies, may gather the word of God, so that in adversity and tribulations, which are signified by the name of winter, he may have something by which to live spiritually. For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And if they are disturbed that the ant hides what it gathers in the earth, let them be angry also at that treasure which the Lord says was found in a field.

On the text in Hosea: “Give them an empty womb and dry breasts; put to death the seed of their womb, so that they may not give birth.” This prophetic utterance too is certainly figurative. For they do not understand a fleshly belly in the gospel either when they read: “Rivers of living water will flow from his belly.” And the apostle had certain breasts when he said, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food,” and again, “I became a little one among you, like a nurse cherishing her children.” And he is in labor again with the Galatians, who were turning aside to other things, until Christ is formed in them. And so what Adimantus set down from the gospel does not conflict with this prophetic saying: that in the resurrection from the dead they will neither marry nor take wives nor die, but are like the angels of God. For this is certainly what the eunuchs too receive, of whom Isaiah speaks: “A renowned place, much better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name,” he says. So let these people not think that such a reward is promised to the saints only in the gospel; and let them understand that the empty womb and dry breasts and the seed put to death so that they may not give birth were said of those of whom the apostle says: “For as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these too oppose the truth, men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; but they will not progress further, for their folly will be plain to all, as theirs also was.” When, then, they will not progress further, then they will have an empty womb and dry breasts and their seed put to death. Let these people deign to look at themselves in this saying as in a mirror.

On the text in the prophet Amos: “Can it happen that two walking on the road do not know each other at all, and that a lion returns to its cub without prey? Will a bird fall to the ground without a fowler? Do they set a trap without cause, to catch nothing? Will the trumpet sound in a city and the people not be afraid? So too no evil is done in a city which the Lord will not do.” Evil in this passage is to be understood not as sin but as punishment. For evil is spoken of in two ways: one that a person does, the other that he suffers. What he does is sin; what he suffers is punishment. So the prophet was speaking of punishments when he said this. For since divine providence regulates and governs all things, a person does evil willingly in such a way that he suffers evil unwillingly. These people accuse the prophet who says this as if they had not read in the gospel: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them falls to the ground without the will of your Father?” So God does evil in the sense that it is not evil to God himself, but to those on whom he takes vengeance. So he himself, as far as he is concerned, does good, because everything just is good, and that vengeance is just. And so what Adimantus objects that the Lord said is not contrary: “A good tree makes good fruit, but a bad tree makes bad fruit.” For although hell is evil to the one condemned, the justice of God is nonetheless good, and it is itself fruit from a good tree. That man, by the evils of his sins, has stored up wrath for himself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will repay each according to his works. Yet these two trees are most plainly set as a likeness of two kinds of people, that is, the just and the unjust, because unless someone changes his will, he cannot do good. That this has been placed in our power he teaches in another place, where he says: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.” For he says this to those who thought they could speak good things while they were bad, that is, bear good fruit while they were bad trees. For he adds: “Hypocrites, how can you speak good things when you are evil?” So a bad tree cannot bear good fruit; but from bad it can become good, so as to bear good fruit. “For you were once darkness,” he says, “but now light in the Lord.” As if he said: you were once bad trees, and so then you could bear only bad fruit; but now you are light in the Lord, that is, having now become good trees, yield good fruit. This is what follows, when he says: “Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light is in all righteousness and truth), testing what is pleasing to the Lord.” For in that very chapter of the gospel, if Adimantus had not raged with zeal for ill will, he could have noticed in what sense God is said to do evil. For there the Lord says, as this man too cited: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” These are the evils which God does, that is, punishments for sinners: that he will throw into the fire trees which, persisting in wickedness, refused to become good, since this is evil for the trees themselves. But God, as I have often said, does not yield bad fruit, because the punishment of sin is the fruit of justice.

On the text written in the prophet Isaiah: “I am God, who make peace and establish evils.” This too is resolved by the same rule. For Adimantus does not find fault with God's saying, “I make peace,” but with his saying, “I establish evils.” Yet the apostle Paul treated these two things in the same way in one place, and more fully, saying: “See, then, the goodness and the severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but goodness toward you, if you remain in goodness; otherwise you too will be cut off. And they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again.” In this apostolic discourse there clearly appears both the goodness of God, according to which Isaiah said, “I am God, who make peace,” and the severity, according to which he said, “I establish evils.” At the same time he shows that it is in our power whether we deserve to be grafted in by his goodness or cut off by his severity. So the gospel is not contrary to Isaiah, as Adimantus thinks, or rather wants it to be thought, where the Lord says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” For from that very part he ought to have recognized that Isaiah too knew that peacemakers are sons of God, since God said through him: “I am the one who makes peace.” But while he fixes his eye on the other part so as to understand it wrongly, he blinded himself to this one. And if someone else, similarly blind, wished to say that the Old Testament is good, where the Lord says, “I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as that he turn and live,” but that the New Testament is evil, where Christ says, “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels”: would he not, falling into the pit, drag down with him into the blindness of ignorance, with doubled malice, all the untaught and those ignorant of the Scriptures who followed him? But one who reads with a devout eye finds in the New Testament too what these people accuse in the Old, and in the Old what they praise in the New.

On the text in Isaiah: “And it happened in the year in which King Uzziah died: I saw the Lord sitting on a most high throne; and the house was full of his glory, and around him stood Seraphim having six wings each, and with two they covered his face and with two his feet.” Against this passage Adimantus sets what the apostle says: “To the invisible King of the ages be honor and praise forever.” In this question we must ask what led him both to leave out, in that vision of Isaiah, the two wings with which the Seraphim flew, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,” and not to quote the apostle's words in full. For the apostle said: “To the King of the ages, invisible, incorruptible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” Was he perhaps afraid that the mention of the Trinity would commend the prophet to the reader, and that the reader would suspect something great was hidden there? For “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” is said three times. And in the apostle he perhaps saw that, if he had said “to the incorruptible God,” the reply would be made to him which we now make to these people: what then was the race of darkness going to do to an incorruptible God if he had refused to fight with it? Or perhaps he had read faulty manuscripts, or the copy in which we read Adimantus himself is faulty; one need not argue longer about a doubtful matter. But now we must ask how both the prophet said that he saw God on a most high throne, and the apostle Paul spoke truly in calling God invisible. So I ask these people whether invisible things can be seen. They say they can: why then do they raise a false charge if the prophet saw the invisible God? But if they say they cannot, let them rather raise a false charge against the apostle himself, if they dare, who says: “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are seen, being understood through the things that have been made.” He himself said that they are invisible, and he himself in turn said, “they are seen.” Are they not compelled here to admit that they are invisible to bodily eyes but visible to the mind? So too the prophet saw God, who is invisible bodily, not bodily but spiritually. For many kinds of vision are found in the holy Scriptures. One is according to the eyes of the body, as Abraham saw three men under the oak of Mamre, and Moses the fire in the bush, and the disciples the Lord transfigured on the mountain between Moses and Elijah, and other such things. The second is according to the spirit, by which we imagine the things we perceive through the body; for when this part of us is taken up by God, many things are revealed to it not through the eyes of the body or the ears or any other fleshly sense, but things similar to them, as Peter saw that dish let down from heaven with various animals. Of this kind is also this vision of Isaiah, which the ungodly most ignorantly find fault with. For no bodily form bounds God; but just as many things are said figuratively, not properly, so also many things are shown figuratively. The third kind of vision is according to the gaze of the mind, by which truth and wisdom are seen when understood; without this kind, the two I explained before are either fruitless or even lead into error. For when the things divinely shown either to the bodily senses or to that part of the soul which receives images of bodily things are not only perceived in these ways but also understood by the mind, then the revelation is complete. Of this third kind is that vision which I mentioned when the apostle says: “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are seen, being understood through the things that have been made.” That God may be seen by this vision, hearts are cleansed by the devotion of faith and by God's action of the best morals. For what did it profit King Belshazzar that he saw before his eyes a hand writing on the wall? Since he could not add the gaze of the mind to that vision, he still sought to see what he had seen. But Daniel, endowed with that keenness of light by which these things are understood, saw with his mind what the king had seen with his body. Again, with that part of the soul which receives images of bodies King Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream; and since he did not have an eye of the mind fit to see better what he had seen, that is, to understand what he had seen, he sought another's sight, namely that of the same Daniel, to interpret his vision; yet from him, as he revealed it, he demanded that the dream itself be told him too, so that he might give him sure belief. Daniel, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, saw both what the king had seen in dreams, with that part by which images of bodies are received, and what it signified, with his mind. But he is not a prophet of the true and highest God who sees visions divinely presented either with the body alone or with that part of the spirit by which images of bodies are received, and does not see with the mind. Yet in the Scriptures they are mostly found set down as they were seen, not also as they were understood, so that the vision of the mind, in which the whole fruit lies, might be kept for the exercise of readers. But from many things that are written openly it is made clear to us how they understood the things which they set down in their books as they were shown to them figuratively. For figurative showings belong to those two kinds of vision; but to the vision of the mind, that is, of understanding, belongs the simple and proper revelation of things understood and certain. Yet all these kinds the Holy Spirit of the highest and unchangeable Wisdom presents and regulates by wonderful and inexpressible distributions. But wretched are these people who raise a false charge against the prophet for saying that he saw God, objecting the apostle's saying in which he called him invisible. For if someone else set against this apostolic word the word of the gospel, since the Lord says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” how will they answer that the invisible can be seen? For they press the unskilled with a word, and even if they know in what sense God is called invisible, they fear that it may become known. So great is the ruin of minds which, when they want to defeat a person, are defeated by error.