Against Faustus the Manichaean

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–3.6 · 4.1–6.1 · 6.2–6.8 · 6.9–10.3 · 11.1–11.8 · 12.1–12.15 · 12.16–12.35 · 12.36–13.2 · 13.3–13.15 · 13.16–13.18 · 14.1–15.1 · 15.2–15.8 · 15.9–16.12 · 16.13–16.23 · 16.24–16.33 · 17.1–19.3 · 19.4–19.17 · 19.18–19.29 · 19.30–20.10 · 20.11–20.21 · 20.22–21.9 · 21.10–22.8 · 22.9–22.21 · 22.22–22.34 · 22.35–22.51 · 22.52–22.66 · 22.67–22.78 · 22.79–22.90 · 22.91–22.98 · 23.1–23.10 · 24.1–25.2 · 26.1–28.5 · 29.1–32.1 · 32.2–32.17 · 32.18–32.22 · 33.1–33.9

1. 1.1Augustine introduces Faustus the Manichaean, whom he knew, and explains that he will answer his book point by point.
2. 1.2Faustus explains that, following Adimantus, he has written short answers to help Manichaeans reply to catholic questions.
3. 1.3Augustine answers that catholics who are imperfect should be built up, not misled, and turns Faustus’s jibe about the serpent back on the Manichaeans, who praised the serpent of Genesis.
4. 2.1Faustus argues that accepting the gospel does not mean accepting that Christ was born, since the genealogy in Matthew is not the gospel.
5. 2.2Augustine answers from Paul that Christ’s descent from David belongs to the gospel, and that Christ constantly calls himself the Son of Man.
6. 2.3Augustine mocks the Manichaean myth of the First Man, armed with five elements against the five elements of darkness, as incoherent.
7. 2.4Augustine sets Paul’s first man, Adam, and second man, Christ, against the Manichaean First Man, who fought by deceit.
8. 2.5Augustine contrasts the Manichaean Christ bound in stars and food with the star of the magi, which served Christ’s birth rather than ruling it.
9. 2.6Augustine argues that the account of Christ’s birth is good news, while the Manichaean myth of God’s captured and lost substance is bad news and false.
10. 3.1Faustus says the disagreement between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies led him to follow John and Mark, and that God should not be believed born from a womb.
11. 3.2Augustine replies that learned readers saw the difference between the genealogies but, trusting Scripture’s authority, sought and found its explanation.
12. 3.3Augustine explains the two genealogies by adoption: Joseph could have had a natural father and an adoptive father, as adoption is common in Scripture and is central to the Christian faith.
13. 3.4Augustine says the deeper meaning of the genealogies, their order, placing, and numbers, can be found only by devout catholic study.
14. 3.5Augustine concludes that the evangelists agree once adoption is understood, and calls on the Manichaeans to give way as Faustus promised.
15. 3.6Augustine answers that Christ was born of a woman in the form of a servant, not in his divine nature, and turns the charge back on the Manichaean doctrine of divine substance bound in all wombs.
16. 4.1Faustus rejects the Old Testament because its promises, the land of Canaan, belong to the Jews who keep its law, and are earthly.
17. 4.2Augustine answers that the Old Testament’s temporal promises were figures of the New, that the patriarchs and prophets looked to the New Testament, and that the Manichaeans deny the bodily resurrection and imagine a land of light of their own.
18. 5.1Faustus claims that his renunciation of family, property, and pleasure shows that he accepts the gospel better than his catholic questioner.
19. 5.2Faustus argues that keeping Christ’s commands is the harder and truer part of accepting the gospel, compared with confessing his birth.
20. 5.3Faustus argues from Christ’s sayings that the kingdom is promised to those who keep his commands, never to those who confess his birth.
21. 5.4Augustine answers that Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, promises eternal life to those who believe in him as he truly is, including as the Son of Man born of David’s line.
22. 5.5Augustine argues that Manichaean renunciation is worthless without true faith and love, and that Faustus himself lived in luxury, as the failed community of Constantius at Rome showed.
23. 5.6Augustine says Mani’s precepts are themselves false, since the elect may not pluck plants but live off the hearers who do it for them.
24. 5.7Augustine turns each beatitude Faustus claimed against him, showing how Manichaean doctrine contradicts poverty of spirit, meekness, peace, purity, mourning, and hunger for righteousness.
25. 5.8Augustine answers Faustus’s claim to suffer for righteousness by contrasting his light banishment with the deaths of catholic martyrs such as Cyprian.
26. 5.9Augustine points to catholic virgins, ascetics, and communities living in common, and insists that married and ordinary believers who serve the saints also belong to the kingdom.
27. 5.10Augustine mocks the Manichaean promise to hearers of rebirth as elect or as food eaten by the elect, by rewriting Christ’s words at the judgment to fit it.
28. 5.11Augustine concludes that the catholic church holds both great and little believers, while Manichaean faith is feigned and worships the visible sun.
29. 6.1Faustus argues that catholics, like Manichaeans, do not keep the Old Testament’s ceremonial laws, and accuses them of praising what they do not observe.
30. 6.2Augustine distinguishes moral precepts from precepts that signified future things, and argues from Paul that the latter were figures, to be read but no longer observed.
31. 6.3Augustine defends circumcision as a fitting figure of the circumcision of the heart and turns the charge of impurity against the Manichaean belief that God’s substance is bound in human flesh.
32. 6.4Augustine defends the sabbath as a figure of eternal rest and ridicules the Manichaean elect, who refuse to pick fruit yet cut, cook, and chew it, and whose fasting halts the supposed freeing of divine light.
33. 6.5Augustine explains that Old Testament sacrifices signified the one sacrifice of Christ, and contrasts them with the Manichaean belief that the elect’s food consists of living souls.
34. 6.6Augustine argues that Christ’s teaching that food does not defile, which Adimantus cited against the Old Testament, also refutes the Manichaean abstinence from meat.
35. 6.7Augustine explains that the Old Testament called some animals unclean by signification, not by nature, illustrating with the pig that does not chew the cud as a figure of those who do not ponder wisdom.
36. 6.8Augustine refutes the Manichaean reasons for holding meat more unclean than plants, including their myth that animals descend from aborted offspring of demons fallen from the sky.
37. 6.9Augustine explains each ceremonial law Faustus mocked as a figure once binding and now fulfilled in a spiritual meaning, and charges Faustus with a docetic Christ who deceived.
38. 7.1Faustus rejects the genealogy because Jesus never speaks of an earthly father and the evangelists were not eyewitnesses of his birth.
39. 7.2Augustine answers that Christ is Son of God and of David, that renouncing kin was an example to disciples, and that the apostles were better witnesses than Mani, born centuries later.
40. 8.1Faustus argues from the new patch on an old garment and from Galatians that Christians should not take up the Old Testament.
41. 8.2Augustine answers that catholics read the Old Testament in freedom as testimony, and turns the parable of the new patch against Manichaean fasting and myth.
42. 9.1Faustus argues that, born a Gentile, he should not take up the Old Testament, which the Jewish apostles themselves left.
43. 9.2Augustine answers with Paul’s olive tree: the Gentiles are grafted into the holy root of Israel, in which Christ was always preached, and the Manichaeans remain in the wild olive of paganism.
44. 10.1Faustus says the Old Testament’s earthly promises belong to the Jews who keep its law, and that the commandment against coveting forbids him to claim them.
45. 10.2Augustine answers that Christians keep the Old Testament’s moral precepts and hold its figurative precepts and earthly promises as testimony.
46. 10.3Augustine turns the question back: the Manichaeans cannot answer for the New Testament, which they claim is falsified, and their own God coveted the land of darkness.
47. 11.1Faustus argues that Paul’s statement that Christ was of David’s seed was either corrected by his later words in 2 Corinthians or is an interpolation.
48. 11.2Augustine rejects the Manichaean claim that inconvenient passages are interpolations, and describes how real textual questions are settled by manuscripts, the original language, and the church’s authority.
49. 11.3Augustine shows that Faustus rejects Paul’s teaching on Adam and Christ, on Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, and on the resurrection of the body, despite claiming to accept the apostle.
50. 11.4Augustine notes that all manuscripts and languages agree that Christ is of David’s seed, and rejects the idea that Paul corrected an earlier error.
51. 11.5Augustine distinguishes the canonical Scriptures, whose truth may not be doubted, from the writings of later authors, which readers may judge freely.
52. 11.6Augustine argues that since both Pauline statements are canonical and textually secure, the apparent contradiction must lie in the reader’s understanding.
53. 11.7Augustine explains that “flesh” in 2 Cor 5:16 means mortality and corruption, which Christ has put off in his resurrection and believers have put off in hope, not the substance of the body.
54. 11.8From the context of 2 Cor 5 and parallels in Ephesians and Romans, Augustine shows that Paul speaks of Christ’s risen, immortal state and of believers’ hope, not of a denial of Christ’s flesh.
55. 12.1Faustus argues that Christ needs no prophetic testimony, since the Father and his works testify to him, and that the Hebrew prophets lived unworthy lives.
56. 12.2Augustine sets out to show that the prophets foretold Christ, that their testimony helps faith, and that they lived worthily, beginning with Paul’s words in Rom 1:1–3.
57. 12.3Augustine argues from Rom 9:1–5 and 3:1–2 that the covenants, law, and oracles entrusted to Israel are praised by Paul and bear witness to Christ.
58. 12.4Augustine says the Manichaeans, like unbelieving readers of Moses, have a veil over their hearts, and, as Christ’s parable warns, do not believe in his resurrection because they reject Moses and the prophets.
59. 12.5Augustine argues from Paul that the law and the Israelite prophets bear witness to Christ, in whom all God’s promises are fulfilled.
60. 12.6Augustine points to the promise that all nations would be blessed in Abraham’s seed, which Paul applies to Christ and which is now visibly fulfilled.
61. 12.7Augustine says that all the prophetic books speak of Christ, much of it in figures, and that the figures taken together testify plainly to him.
62. 12.8Augustine reads the six days of creation as the six ages of the world, and Adam and Eve as figures of Christ and the church formed from his side.
63. 12.9Augustine reads Cain and Abel as a figure: Abel’s accepted sacrifice as the faith of the New Testament, and Cain, who killed his brother, as the unbelieving Jewish people who rejected Christ.
64. 12.10Augustine continues the figure: Cain’s denial that he knew where his brother was answers to the Jewish denial of Christ, and the voice of Abel’s blood to the “Amen” of the nations receiving Christ’s blood.
65. 12.11Augustine reads the curse on Cain as the church’s judgment on the unbelieving Jewish people, who keep the law’s outward observances without the grace of Christ hidden in them.
66. 12.12Augustine reads God’s protection of Cain as meaning that the Jewish people would not be destroyed but would survive, scattered, through all time as a witness.
67. 12.13Augustine reads the mark of Cain as the Jewish law, which has kept the Jewish people distinct and preserved under pagan and Christian rulers, and applies Cain’s wandering also to the Manichaeans.
68. 12.14Augustine reads Enoch and Noah’s ark, its timbers, dimensions, and pitch, as figures of Christ, baptism, and the church.
69. 12.15Augustine reads the clean and unclean animals, the sevens and twos, and Noah as the eighth as figures of the mixed church, the Holy Spirit, and Christ’s resurrection.
70. 12.16Augustine reads the ark’s single cubit at the top, its side door, and its lower stories as figures of the church’s unity, of baptism from Christ’s side, and of the nations.
71. 12.17Augustine reads the seven days before the flood, the destruction outside the ark, and the forty days of rain as figures of baptism within the church.
72. 12.18Augustine reads the hundred years of the ark’s building and Noah’s six hundredth year as figures of the sixth age, in which the church is built.
73. 12.19Augustine reads the dates and numbers of the flood (27, 7, 15, 150) as figures of the Trinity in the soul, of the saints’ rest and resurrection, and of baptism.
74. 12.20Augustine reads the raven and the dove as figures of those lost through rebaptism outside the church and of those brought back to unity, and of the final rest of the saints.
75. 12.21Augustine briefly lists further figures in the end of the flood narrative: the opened roof, the dry earth, the order of entering and leaving, and the clean sacrifices.
76. 12.22Augustine reads God’s blessing of Noah, the gift of animals for food, the command about blood, and the rainbow as figures of the church, adding that the sun signifies Christ only by likeness.
77. 12.23Augustine reads Noah’s drunkenness and nakedness as Christ’s passion, Shem and Japheth as the believing peoples, and Ham as the Jewish people, who now carry the Scriptures as witnesses for the church.
78. 12.24Augustine sees the blessing of Shem and Japheth fulfilled in the church of the nations dwelling in Israel’s heritage, and places Jews and heretics, including the Manichaeans, with Ham as unwilling servants of the church.
79. 12.25Augustine reads Abraham’s departure, Isaac carrying the wood, and the ram in the thicket as figures of Christ.
80. 12.26Augustine reads Jacob’s wrestling, the anointed stone, and the ladder as figures of Christ, citing Christ’s own words to Nathanael, with the angels as preachers who ascend to his divinity and descend to his humanity.
81. 12.27Augustine contrasts the delight of finding Christ throughout Scripture with the fables of the Manichaeans.
82. 12.28Augustine reads Joseph’s sufferings and exaltation and the rod of Moses turned into a serpent and back as figures of Christ’s passion and resurrection and of the church’s.
83. 12.29Following Paul, Augustine reads the exodus, the cloud, the sea, the manna, and the rock as figures of Christ and baptism.
84. 12.30Augustine reads the wilderness journey, the bitter waters, the springs and palms, Moses’ raised hands, the bronze serpent, the passover, and the giving of the law as figures of Christ, the cross, and the Spirit.
85. 12.31Augustine reads Joshua (in Latin “Jesus”), the cluster of grapes, Rahab’s scarlet cord, and the fall of Jericho as figures of Christ and the church.
86. 12.32Augustine reads Samson’s lion and honeycomb, Jael’s tent peg, and Gideon’s fleece as figures of Christ, the cross, and the passing of the gospel to the nations.
87. 12.33Augustine reads the changes of priesthood and kingship, David’s eating of the holy bread, and the division of the kingdom as figures of Christ, king and priest, and of the saved remnant.
88. 12.34Augustine reads the ravens feeding Elijah and the widow of Zarephath with her two sticks, flour, and oil as figures of Christ, the cross, and love.
89. 12.35Augustine reads the mockers of Elisha, the raising of the Shunammite’s son, and the floating axe head as figures of Christ’s cross, incarnation, descent, and resurrection.
90. 12.36Augustine reads the exile in Babylon, Jeremiah’s letter, the return after seventy years, and the high priest Joshua in Zechariah as figures of the church among the nations and its return to the heavenly Jerusalem.
91. 12.37Augustine defends figurative reading of the Old Testament on Paul’s authority, comparing its details to writing whose meaning one recognizes even before one can read it.
92. 12.38Augustine argues that details in the Genesis narratives that serve no practical necessity show that they were written to signify something.
93. 12.39Augustine contrasts Philo’s allegory of the ark as the human body, which failed at the door in its side, with the Christian reading of the door as the sacraments flowing from Christ’s side.
94. 12.40Augustine notes that pagans, who allegorize their own myths, cannot object to Christian figurative reading of Scripture.
95. 12.41Augustine cites the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all nations would be blessed in their seed as a plain prophecy now visibly fulfilled in Christ.
96. 12.42Augustine reads Jacob’s blessing of Judah (Gen 49:8–12) clause by clause as a prophecy of Christ: his birth, passion, resurrection, the coming of Herod, the calling of the nations, and the church washed in his blood.
97. 12.43Augustine lists plain prophecies of Christ needing no interpreter: Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Psalm 57, Psalm 2, and Baruch 3.
98. 12.44Augustine cites Daniel’s Son of Man and seventy weeks, the cessation of the temple sacrifice and anointing, and the Jewish expectation of the Messiah as proof that Christ was prophesied.
99. 12.45Augustine answers that faith in Christ always comes through human witnesses, and that prophecy protected the apostles’ preaching from being dismissed as magic.
100. 12.46Augustine explains that the simple faith catholics require includes believing the prophets, as milk before solid food, until the mind can understand.
101. 12.47Augustine answers Faustus’s charge against the prophets’ lives by pointing to Abraham, justified by faith and set by Paul as an example for believers.
102. 12.48Augustine closes Book 12, promising to answer Faustus’s specific charges against the patriarchs and prophets when he makes them.
103. 13.1Faustus argues that the Hebrew prophets are of no use to Gentile converts, who come to Christ through his own fame, not through Jewish testimony.
104. 13.2Augustine answers that the name “Christ” itself comes from the Hebrews, and that all nations in fact believe in Christ through Hebrew prophecy.
105. 13.3Augustine shows from Isaiah and Psalm 110, as used by Jesus, that Hebrew prophecy foretold Christ as God and not only as man.
106. 13.4Augustine asks on what authority the Manichaeans believe Mani, a late self-styled apostle, and notes that the apostles' books speak against him.
107. 13.5Augustine argues that report, if trusted, testifies against the Manichaeans and for the Christ of the scriptures, whose authority rests on the churches' succession and fulfilled prophecy.
108. 13.6Augustine says the Manichaean myth fails as reason at its beginning, middle and end, and calls them back to the Christ foretold through the Hebrew nation.
109. 13.7Augustine answers Faustus's imagined Gentile: the persecutions, the conversion of kings and the fall of idols, all foretold in the psalms and Jeremiah, make the prophets credible.
110. 13.8Augustine reads Jeremiah 17 as forbidding hope in a mere man yet declaring that Christ is man, so that hope rests in Christ as God made man.
111. 13.9Augustine notes that Gentiles now hide their idols from the imperial laws, as Isaiah foretold.
112. 13.10Augustine argues that the Jews, scattered everywhere and carrying the prophetic books, prove that the prophecies were not forged by Christians after the event.
113. 13.11Augustine says the Jews' rejection of the gospel was itself foretold, and that their blindness is a just punishment for hidden sins.
114. 13.12Augustine reads Jeremiah's partridge that gathers what it did not hatch as a prophecy of heretics who draw away Christians born of the church's gospel.
115. 13.13Augustine finds in Jeremiah and the Gospels that the true church is the one visible over the whole world, like a city on a mountain.
116. 13.14Augustine concludes that fulfilled prophecy makes the prophets the most credible witnesses to Christ's divinity.
117. 13.15Augustine allows that pagan seers' sayings about God may refute paganism, but says they carry no authority compared with the Hebrew prophets, whose whole kingdom was a prophecy of Christ.
118. 13.16Augustine describes how the convert, received into the Catholic Church, learns to bear with the wicked mixed in it until the harvest, as the prophets foretold, and not to follow heretics.
119. 13.17Augustine shows that Faustus could not convert his imagined Gentile either, since Manichaeans win only people already believing in Christ, by claiming Mani is the promised Paraclete.
120. 13.18Augustine replies that by Faustus's logic all books, including the gospel and Mani's own, would be useless, and mocks the Manichaean books as prisons of their god; Christians read both Testaments for faith, hope and love.
121. 14.1Faustus rejects Moses for cursing everyone who hangs on a tree, which he says curses Christ and the martyrs, and for cursing those who raise no offspring.
122. 14.2Augustine replies that, since the Manichaeans deny Christ had a real body and real wounds, the curse on hanging could not touch their Christ, and that charging Christ with deceit is worse than any curse.
123. 14.3Augustine explains that death, the punishment of sin, is itself called sin, and that Christ took on not our sin but our death, which was cursed and condemned on the cross.
124. 14.4Augustine argues that Christ, taking real flesh from Adam through Mary, took on the curse of death without guilt, to end both our guilt and our punishment.
125. 14.5Augustine cites Paul, who calls Christ's mortal flesh the likeness of sinful flesh and says Christ was made sin, so Moses may rightly call him cursed.
126. 14.6Augustine says Moses wrote “everyone” to forestall heretics who would deny Christ's true death by exempting him from the curse.
127. 14.7Augustine argues that Moses' word “cursed” affirms Christ's true death, which the bronze serpent also prefigured, and that the Manichaeans, refusing to look at it, are not healed.
128. 14.8Augustine rejects the unlearned Catholic solution that Moses' curse refers to Judas, since Paul applies it to Christ, and notes that such weak answers had once made him a prey of the Manichaeans.
129. 14.9Augustine notes that Faustus said Moses spared nothing “divine” rather than God or the gods, to avoid an open charge that would expose him to Christians while winning pagan sympathy.
130. 14.10Augustine calls the Manichaean teaching that Christ's suffering was unreal a doctrine of demons, and charges them with worshipping the creature.
131. 14.11Augustine says the Manichaeans worship the sun and moon and imaginary beings, while Moses rightly praised the sun and moon as God's creatures without making them parts of God.
132. 14.12Augustine answers Faustus's dilemma: a Christian forced to worship the sun should accept the curse of bodily death, from which the resurrection frees, rather than the soul's death by idolatry.
133. 14.13Augustine answers that Isaiah praises faithful eunuchs, and reads the curse on not raising seed as fleshly offspring under the Old Testament and spiritual offspring through preaching now.
134. 15.1Faustus says the Manichaeans reject the Old Testament because the church, Christ's bride, needs nothing from the God of the Hebrews, whom he portrays as a poor and deceitful lover.
135. 15.2Augustine replies that Paul himself joins the gospel to the prophets, that the new and old wine signify two hopes, not two testaments, and that the Old Testament rightly understood prophesies the New.
136. 15.3Augustine rejects the Manichaean claim to be Christ's chaste bride and, recalling his own years among them, urges the Catholic Church's little ones not to be drawn away.
137. 15.4Augustine defends the stone tablets of the law as prophetic of the church's heart of flesh, of Christ the stone, and of Pentecost, and as containing the two commandments of love in ten precepts.
138. 15.5Augustine turns on the Manichaean community, mocking its myth of Splenditenens and Atlas and its hymn to the flower-crowned king and twelve aeons as a worship of many gods.
139. 15.6Augustine contrasts the Trinity with the Manichaeans' many gods, explains that biblical images of delight are figures, and mocks the Manichaean claim that Mani spoke plainly while they believe in fantastic deities.
140. 15.7Augustine goes through the Ten Commandments to show how Manichaean teaching, on Christ, the Sabbath, parents, marriage, food, theft and oaths, contradicts each of them.
141. 15.8Augustine explains, from Romans 7 and 2 Corinthians 3, that the law is holy and good and that it kills only as letter without grace, while with the Spirit it is fulfilled in love.
142. 15.9Augustine explains Adonai and other Hebrew and Greek words the church uses, turns Faustus's hippocentaur against the Manichaean mixed world, and charges them with taking the serpent for Christ.
143. 15.10Augustine asks what promises the Manichaeans have seen fulfilled, and says that they were foretold by Paul's prophecy of those who forbid marriage and abstain from foods.
144. 15.11Augustine says the church trusts God's final promise of eternal praise because his earlier promises, such as the blessing of all nations and Psalm 45's bride, are fulfilled, and calls the Manichaeans to return.
145. 16.1Faustus says he would gladly accept any prophecy of Christ in Moses or elsewhere, as one takes fish from the sea, without accepting Moses' law.
146. 16.2Faustus says he found no prophecy of Christ in Moses, and so judges the saying “Moses wrote about me” to be a scribe's forgery rather than call Jesus a liar.
147. 16.3Faustus asks to be shown what Moses wrote about Christ, since appeal to Christ's word would not convince a Jew or Gentile.
148. 16.4Faustus rejects Deuteronomy 18:15 as a prophecy of Christ, since Christ is God and holy while Moses was a man and a sinner.
149. 16.5Faustus argues that Deuteronomy 28:66 refers to Israel's captivity, and that the curses and death penalty of the law cannot be about Christ without making Moses an enemy of Christ.
150. 16.6Faustus argues that Christ's teaching on the Sabbath, circumcision and clean foods contradicts Moses, so that Jews who believed Moses could not believe Christ.
151. 16.7Faustus notes that Catholics themselves keep none of the law of Moses, which shows that Christ and Moses taught contrary things.
152. 16.8Faustus rejects the reply that a Christian must believe the saying because it is in the Gospel, pointing to Christ's patience with Thomas.
153. 16.9Augustine replies that everything Moses wrote concerns Christ, and turns Faustus's image of fish and sea water against Manichaean food laws.
154. 16.10Augustine answers that temple, altar, priest and sacrifice appear in the New Testament too, as figures fulfilled in Christ and the church, while the Manichaeans' worship of the sun and moon is the true likeness to paganism.
155. 16.11Augustine undertakes to show that the very passages Faustus attacks foretell Christ, and argues that if the gospel is called falsified, nothing can be known of Christ at all.
156. 16.12Augustine replies that the Gospel which says “all who came before me were thieves” also says Moses wrote of Christ, and that “came before” means came unsent, as the Manichaeans did, not like Moses and the prophets.
157. 16.13Augustine answers that Christ's appeal to the law's two witnesses itself points to Moses' prophecy of the Father and the Son, and that the Jews' silence proves nothing.
158. 16.14Augustine says Faustus misses everything in Moses because he reads with hostility, and that by his own admission a professed Christian is bound by the gospel to believe Moses wrote of Christ.
159. 16.15Augustine defends Deuteronomy 18:15 as a prophecy of Christ, showing that likeness need not be in every respect and that Christ is both unlike and like Moses in different ways.
160. 16.16Augustine defends Moses: his wavering at the rock was a sin like Peter's, but he remained among the saints, as the Transfiguration shows, and his death will prove to foretell Christ.
161. 16.17Augustine reads Moses' doubt at the rock as a figure of the people under the law who doubted Christ crucified, and his death on the mountain as the death of fleshly unbelief in the exalted Christ.
162. 16.18Augustine says Christ is rightly called a prophet, and turns to answer the Jew who denies that Moses wrote of Christ.
163. 16.19Augustine argues that Moses' successor Joshua, whose name Moses changed to “Jesus” and of whom God said “my name is in him,” was a figure of Christ, the prophet foretold by Moses.
164. 16.20Augustine invites the Jew to see in Joshua a figure of the living Jesus, and argues that a Gentile too would be moved by Hebrew books that named Jesus so long before.
165. 16.21Augustine argues that the Jews, who keep the prophetic books while rejecting Christ, are unwilling witnesses that the prophecies were not forged by Christians, and that their unbelief was itself foretold.
166. 16.22Augustine defends Deuteronomy 28:66 as a prophecy of Christ, the life of men hung before unbelieving Jews, noting that prophetic curses are foreknowledge, not ill wishes.
167. 16.23Augustine argues that even Caiaphas prophesied Christ unknowingly through the priestly anointing, so Moses, who founded that anointing, certainly prophesied Christ knowingly.
168. 16.24Augustine answers that Christ did not turn Israel from its God, since he proclaimed the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, nor did he break Moses' commandments, but rebuked those who made them void.
169. 16.25Augustine reads the law's sentence of death on false prophets as a figure of the church slaying heresies, Mani's above all, with the two-edged sword of the two Testaments.
170. 16.26Augustine exposes the gap in Faustus's argument: he never showed that no other passages of Moses concern Christ, and many have been given, so the Gospel saying stands.
171. 16.27Augustine answers that the whole world now believes Moses and Christ together, so belief in both was not impossible for the Jews.
172. 16.28Augustine answers that the Sabbath, circumcision and food laws were figures for their time, and that Christ called his hungry disciples innocent, while Manichaean teaching counts plucking grain as murder and gives their god no rest.
173. 16.29Augustine reads Christ's Sabbath rest in the tomb and his rising on the eighth day as fulfilling the Sabbath and circumcision, which signifies the stripping off of mortality, and explains the woe on the proselyte as about imitating the Pharisees.
174. 16.30Augustine answers Faustus's mockery of the food laws: they figure those who are to be received into Christ's body or rejected, and the Manichaeans, who neither ruminate on wisdom nor rightly divide the two Testaments, are among the unclean.
175. 16.31Augustine refutes the claim that Christ forbade meat to his disciples, citing Christ's eating and drinking and quoting Matthew 15 in full, where he explains privately to the disciples that food does not defile.
176. 16.32Augustine concludes that Catholics observe all that Moses wrote in the realities the figures foretold, as a reader voices what was written, while the Jews neglected even the plain commands.
177. 16.33Augustine turns Faustus's appeal to Thomas against him: the scars Thomas touched prove Christ's true flesh, which the Manichaeans deny.
178. 17.1Faustus rejects Matthew 5:17 because Matthew was not present at the Sermon on the Mount, John does not record it, and the Gospel speaks of Matthew in the third person, as if written by someone else.
179. 17.2Faustus argues that Jesus' warning “do not think I came to destroy” implies he did destroy the law by his conduct, and that adding to the law would equally break Deuteronomy's command.
180. 17.3Augustine answers that Mani was present at nothing he says of Christ, that Matthew could learn from John or from Christ, that John omitted much, and that John's Gospel itself affirms the prophets.
181. 17.4Augustine shows that writers commonly speak of themselves in the third person, as Moses, John and Christ himself do, so Matthew's “he saw a man named Matthew” proves nothing.
182. 17.5Augustine answers that the Jews' misunderstanding explains Christ's warning, and that the following verses show he meant the very law the Pharisees taught but did not keep.
183. 17.6Augustine explains that Christ fulfils the law not by adding words but by giving the love that keeps its commands and by accomplishing what it prophesied.
184. 18.1Faustus argues that Catholics, who neither keep the law nor deny that Christ founded a New Testament, are as bound as Manichaeans to reject “I came not to destroy the law.”
185. 18.2Faustus asks whether Catholics would take up circumcision, the Sabbath, sacrifices and food laws, and concludes that Matthew 5:17 either means something else or was never said.
186. 18.3Faustus says Manichaean faith frees him to test Gospel sayings for tares sown by an enemy, while Catholics, believing everything, must either keep the law, reject the passage, or deny Christ.
187. 18.4Augustine repeats that the rites of the law were figures to be removed when their realities came, and that their removal, foretold by the prophets, is itself a fulfilment of the law.
188. 18.5Augustine answers the taunt of “Saturn's chains”: pagan names of days and months imply no worship, as the Manichaeans keep their Bema in March without worshipping Mars, and the Sabbath, meaning rest, was a shadow of things to come.
189. 18.6Augustine explains the animal sacrifices as concessions to the people that also prefigured Christ, the bull, ram and goat, whose blood cleanses.
190. 18.7Augustine answers that the tares are evil men, not interpolations, that Catholics use reason against Manichaean error, and that by love and fulfilled prophecy they keep the law Christ came to fulfil.
191. 19.1Faustus accepts that Jesus said he came not to abolish the law but to fulfil it, and argues that he said it to calm the Jews’ anger.
192. 19.2Faustus distinguishes three laws (Hebrew, natural, and the law of truth) and three kinds of prophets, asking which law Jesus meant.
193. 19.3Faustus argues that Jesus fulfilled the ancient moral precepts given before Moses but destroyed the specifically Mosaic ones, such as retaliation and divorce.
194. 19.4Faustus says only Jewish Christians who keep circumcision, sabbath, and food laws could press this text on him, and the catholic Christian keeps none of them.
195. 19.5Faustus says that taking the text literally nearly made him a Jew, but the Manichaean faith rescued him.
196. 19.6Faustus turns the objection back on catholics, who also neglect sabbath, circumcision, sacrifices, and food laws, and so must either deny the text or reinterpret it.
197. 19.7Augustine answers that Christ fulfilled the Mosaic law itself: the law made the proud aware of sin, and grace through the Spirit and Christ’s priestly sacrifice fulfils its righteousness.
198. 19.8Augustine argues that the prophecies were fulfilled in Christ, so the figurative rites that foretold him are rightly no longer performed.
199. 19.9Augustine explains that Christians do not practise circumcision or sabbath rest because Christ fulfilled what they prefigured: circumcision in his resurrection and baptism, the sabbath in the rest he gives.
200. 19.10Augustine shows how Christ fulfilled the food laws, sacrifices, unleavened bread, Passover, new moons, ritual washings, and the feast of tabernacles.
201. 19.11Augustine says the old rites ceased because they foretold Christ and he has come, and adds that every religion is held together by visible sacraments whose contempt is sacrilege.
202. 19.12Augustine notes that the wicked can have the sacraments without their power, citing Simon Magus and Peter’s words on baptism.
203. 19.13Augustine says the old sacraments were removed because Christ fulfilled them, and fewer, greater, and easier sacraments were instituted.
204. 19.14Augustine argues that if the faithful of old suffered for sacraments that only promised Christ, Christians should be readier still to suffer for baptism, the eucharist, and the sign of Christ, which show him come.
205. 19.15Augustine raises, but sets aside, the question whether faith in the coming Christ benefited the righteous of old as faith in Christ come benefits believers now.
206. 19.16Augustine compares sacraments to visible words: as verbs change tense when what was future has happened, so the sacraments changed when what they promised was fulfilled in Christ.
207. 19.17Augustine explains that the apostles let Jewish believers keep their ancestral rites for a time but forbade imposing them on Gentiles, and identifies the Nazarenes as those who refused this settlement.
208. 19.18Augustine distinguishes the moral precepts of the law, which Christians keep through grace, from its promissory sacraments, which passed away because Christ fulfilled them.
209. 19.19Augustine rejects Faustus’s division between pre-Mosaic precepts fulfilled by Christ and Mosaic ones abolished, holding that all were rightly given and fulfilled.
210. 19.20Augustine argues that the righteous before Moses must already have avoided anger and abuse, so Christ’s teaching on anger cannot have filled a gap in their law.
211. 19.21Augustine argues that the righteous before Moses did not commit adultery in their hearts, so Christ did not fill up a deficient law of theirs on adultery.
212. 19.22Augustine notes that Paul swore oaths, mocks Manichaean swearing by the light and by Mani, and plays on Mani’s name as meaning madness.
213. 19.23Augustine explains Christ’s sayings on murder, adultery, and oaths as clarifying the law, noting that Paul swore in his letters but not in his speeches.
214. 19.24Augustine reconciles “hate your enemy” with “love your enemies” by distinguishing the vice, which is hated, from the human nature, which is loved, and turns the precept against the Manichaean myth of the race of darkness.
215. 19.25Augustine argues that the law of retaliation set a limit to revenge and that Christ’s command not to retaliate keeps its purpose more safely, just as not swearing guards against perjury.
216. 19.26Augustine explains that the Mosaic certificate of divorce was meant to delay and discourage divorce by sending the husband to the scribes for counsel, and asks why Manichaeans, who reject procreation, object to divorce.
217. 19.27Augustine concludes that Christ fulfilled the law not by adding words but by giving through the Spirit the love that fulfils it.
218. 19.28Augustine shows that Christ’s precepts on anger, harsh words, lust, non-retaliation, and love of enemies are already found in the Old Testament books.
219. 19.29Augustine shows that Christ answered the question about divorce from the books of Moses, which teach that God joined male and female, and that Moses permitted divorce only because of hardness of heart.
220. 19.30Augustine sums up that Christ fulfilled the law by grace and truth, and notes that the Old Testament teaches eternal life and resurrection but never names the “kingdom of heaven,” which belongs to the New Testament.
221. 20.1Faustus takes up the charge that the Manichaeans worship the sun and are a schism of the pagans, promising to show that their religion has nothing in common with the Gentiles.
222. 20.2Faustus sets out the Manichaean creed: one deity, the Father in the highest light, the Son’s power in the sun and wisdom in the moon, the Spirit in the air, and the suffering Jesus hanging from every tree.
223. 20.3Faustus argues that the Manichaeans are a sect, not a schism, since they hold two principles (God and Hyle) and worship without altars, temples, images, or sacrifices.
224. 20.4Faustus retorts that catholic Christians and Jews are the true schisms of paganism, keeping its belief in one principle and its rites in altered form.
225. 20.5Augustine replies that the Manichaeans are not called pagans but are worse than pagans, since pagans worship real created things while the Manichaeans worship mere inventions.
226. 20.6Augustine ridicules the Manichaean teaching that the sun is a ship shining through a triangular window and denounces their myth of beautiful figures displayed to arouse the princes of darkness.
227. 20.7Augustine argues that the Manichaeans can only imagine bodily light, distinguishes the light of the mind from physical light and both from God, and objects that they divide the Trinity among four places.
228. 20.8Augustine mocks the placing of Christ’s power in the sun and his wisdom in the moon, arguing that it divides Christ and makes his wisdom weaker as the moon waxes.
229. 20.9Augustine says the Manichaeans are worse than pagans: pagans worship real things and interpret their myths allegorically, while the Manichaean gods (Splenditenens, Atlas, the First Man, the Mighty Spirit) do not exist at all.
230. 20.10Augustine answers Faustus’s claim that there are only two sects by showing that groupings shift with the criterion chosen: one God or many, divine providence or none.
231. 20.11Augustine turns the Manichaean “suffering Jesus” born of the earth against their denial of the virgin birth, and asks how many Christs they believe in and how a bodiless Christ could be crucified.
232. 20.12Augustine argues that Faustus’s profession of one deity under three names cannot stand, since the Manichaeans have many distinct gods with different works.
233. 20.13Augustine rejects Faustus’s comparison of the eucharist with Manichaean reverence for food: Christians’ bread and cup become a sacrament by consecration, while the Manichaeans think Christ is bound in all food.
234. 20.14Augustine argues that the Manichaeans misuse the Greek term hyle, which philosophers use for formless matter, by making it a forming mind and the principle of evil.
235. 20.15Augustine asks how a Manichaean can call himself God’s temple when he believes his body was built by the devil and imprisons part of God.
236. 20.16Augustine says the Manichaean mind is an altar of cruelty, since their rules forbid giving bread to a beggar and condemn as murder the disciples’ plucking of grain.
237. 20.17Augustine argues that Manichaean prayers cannot be pure, since their myth makes their God sacrifice his own members to his enemies, so that their prayers accuse him rather than ask forgiveness.
238. 20.18Augustine explains that pagan sacrifices imitate, and Hebrew sacrifices foretold, the one true sacrifice of Christ, which Christians commemorate in offering and receiving his body and blood.
239. 20.19Augustine replies that belief in one God did not come to Christians from the pagans; rather, pagan sages retained some knowledge of the one God but turned to worship of creatures, while the Manichaeans are worse still.
240. 20.20Augustine answers that Christian love feasts are works of mercy feeding the poor, and that the Manichaean refusal to kill animals resembles pagan belief in transmigration, only worse.
241. 20.21Augustine answers that Christians honor the martyrs with love and imitation, but offer sacrifice only to God at their shrines, tolerating but not approving drunkenness there.
242. 20.22Augustine denies that the Jews kept pagan worship minus idols: they offered sacrifice only to the one Creator, prefiguring Christ, unlike demons who feed on human error.
243. 20.23Augustine replies that Christians live differently from pagans because they believe, hope, and love differently, even when using the same things, and that the many bad catholics do not discredit catholic teaching.
244. 21.1Faustus denies that the Manichaeans believe in two gods: they hold two principles, God and Hyle (the demon), and call the latter “god” only as its worshippers do.
245. 21.2Augustine answers that 2 Cor 4:4 can be read of the true God, who in justice blinds unbelievers, citing Paul on God’s wrath and mercy.
246. 21.3Augustine says the Manichaeans invent an evil god because they cannot see that one God shows both mercy and judgment, goodness and severity.
247. 21.4Augustine argues that the Manichaean Hyle, as maker of bodies, is in effect a second god, and that they judge good and evil only by what pleases or offends the senses.
248. 21.5Augustine praises the Creator’s art even in the lowest mortal creatures and argues that every soul naturally loves its body, as even Manichaeans show by caring for their own flesh.
249. 21.6Augustine argues that the order, measure, and harmony of the body point to the true God as its maker.
250. 21.7Augustine cites Paul’s teaching that no one hates his own flesh, showing that all living things naturally love and cherish their bodies.
251. 21.8Augustine quotes in full Paul’s image of the body and its members, in which God is said to have arranged and tempered the body.
252. 21.9Augustine argues that “God tempered the body” must mean the true Creator, and allows that “the god of this world” may mean the devil only because of its qualifying phrase.
253. 21.10Augustine mocks the Manichaean myth that the creatures of darkness had harmonious bodies, marriages, and powers of speech before light was mixed with them, so that the mixture of good made them worse.
254. 21.11Augustine shows that Faustus’s pairs of opposites cannot be divided into good and evil, since black olives are sweet and heat brings fever.
255. 21.12Augustine shows that the Manichaean myth itself credits the race of darkness with health and plenty, which Faustus counted as goods.
256. 21.13Augustine argues that sweetness and poison depend on what suits each body, so Faustus’s comparison of God and Hyle to antidote and poison fails.
257. 21.14Augustine argues that by the Manichaeans’ own account the kingdom of darkness had real goods and their God had evils, so the two cannot be pure good and pure evil.
258. 21.15Augustine argues that the Manichaean God either lacked foreknowledge of the coming war or lived in constant fear, either of which is an evil in him.
259. 21.16Augustine argues that in the Manichaean myth their God harms his own members more than the race of darkness does, condemning part of himself to the final globe, so that the supposed antidote is worse than the poison.
260. 22.1Faustus denies that Manichaeans blaspheme the law and the prophets and argues that either the patriarchs were wicked or the writers who described them lied.
261. 22.2Faustus distinguishes the true moral law from the Jewish precepts of circumcision, sabbath, and sacrifice, which he calls blemishes added by the Hebrew writers.
262. 22.3Faustus says the Manichaeans only condemn deeds the patriarchs' own writers recorded, or else those writers slandered them and should be condemned.
263. 22.4Faustus lists Old Testament statements about God that he thinks unworthy of God and suggests that the same writers also slandered the patriarchs.
264. 22.5Faustus lists the patriarchs' sexual and violent deeds recorded in Scripture and says either the deeds or the records must be condemned.
265. 22.6Augustine replies that the precepts of the law are fulfilled through grace by love, and its sacramental figures are fulfilled by being removed when the truth they promised came.
266. 22.7Augustine compares the Manichaean critics of the law's figures to a deaf man faulting lips that speak and a blind man faulting the windows of a house.
267. 22.8Augustine answers that God did not dwell in darkness before creating light, distinguishing the light that God is from the light God made.
268. 22.9Augustine describes God as self-sufficient light, inaccessible to the ungodly and seen by the pure in heart, and contrasts him with the Manichaean phantasms of heavenly light.
269. 22.10Augustine says it is uncertain which light God made on the first day, but certain that created light was made by the creating light, who is God.
270. 22.11Augustine explains that the Spirit borne over the dark waters was above them in substance, not dwelling in darkness, just as wicked minds are far from God in affection, not place.
271. 22.12Augustine defends God's seeing that the light was good as his approval of his work, and contrasts it with the Manichaean god who veiled himself from his members in darkness.
272. 22.13Augustine notes that Scripture never says God marvelled at the light, but points out that Christ, whom the Manichaeans confess as God, marvelled at the centurion's faith.
273. 22.14Augustine shows that a pagan could attack the New Testament on the same grounds Faustus attacks the Old, citing Christ's words and deeds that resemble each accusation.
274. 22.15Augustine recalls his earlier answer to the Manichaean claim that whatever in the New Testament contradicts them was interpolated.
275. 22.16Augustine says he would answer a pagan critic from pagan authors themselves, who speak of a creator God rejoicing in his work, giving laws, and asking questions he knows the answers to.
276. 22.17Augustine explains animal sacrifices as figures of Christ's one sacrifice, whose pagan counterparts were demonic imitations, so that sacrifice is due to the true God alone.
277. 22.18Augustine explains that “jealousy” and “anger” are said of God by a loose use of words or a Hebrew idiom, meaning his watchful care for his people's fidelity and his just punishment.
278. 22.19Augustine argues that God's judgments that killed thousands presuppose divine providence, and that the offences punished, like refusing the wedding garment or Christ's reign, were not slight.
279. 22.20Augustine explains God's not sparing righteous or sinner as the pruning of the vine: the righteous are corrected by suffering, as Paul was by Satan's angel, while the wicked are punished.
280. 22.21Augustine sums up his answer to each of Faustus's charges about God and concludes that both Testaments must be defended against the Manichaeans as against pagans.
281. 22.22Augustine argues at length that even the god Faustus caricatures as the Catholics' is better than the Manichaean god, who sent his own members into darkness under necessity and then condemns them.
282. 22.23Augustine announces his defence of the patriarchs and prophets, addressed especially to those who misjudge them by the customs of the apostolic age.
283. 22.24Augustine states that the lives as well as the words of the prophets, and the whole Hebrew kingdom, were a prophecy of Christ and the church.
284. 22.25Augustine compares critics of the prophets to schoolboys who fault Virgil's licences, and warns that no one may excuse adultery by Abraham's union with Hagar.
285. 22.26Augustine proposes first to define sin and then to ask why Scripture records deeds of the saints that are sins or seem to be.
286. 22.27Augustine defines sin as anything done, said, or desired against the eternal law that preserves the natural order, in which body is subject to soul, and action to contemplation.
287. 22.28Augustine explains that sin is failing to restrain delight in what is unlawful, and places man between beasts that cannot sin and angels that will not.
288. 22.29Augustine says bodily pleasures are lawful only as far as needed to preserve the individual and the race; beyond that they are sins needing correction or, if defended, deserving condemnation.
289. 22.30Augustine answers that Abraham's union with Hagar aimed only at offspring, in keeping with the natural law of marriage, whereas Manichaean teaching commands the avoidance of offspring.
290. 22.31Augustine argues that Sarah, using the mutual authority of spouses over each other's bodies, gave Hagar to Abraham for offspring, not to satisfy his lust.
291. 22.32Augustine shows from Genesis that when Abraham took Hagar, God had promised him an heir from his own body but had not yet said it would be through Sarah.
292. 22.33Augustine defends Abraham's calling Sarah his sister as trust in God to guard her chastity, not a sale of her, noting that both kings returned her untouched.
293. 22.34Augustine considers the view that Abraham, like Peter, faltered from fear, but holds that he told no lie, since he called Sarah his sister without denying she was his wife.
294. 22.35Augustine argues that Sarah was Abraham's half-sister, as he told Abimelech, and that Scripture calls blood-relations brothers and sisters, as with Tobias, Lot, and the Lord's brothers.
295. 22.36Augustine argues that Abraham protected his own life by human means rather than tempting God, as Christ and Paul fled danger, and entrusted Sarah's chastity to God.
296. 22.37Augustine raises the question whether Sarah would have sinned had she submitted at Abraham's bidding, but rejects it because a wife may not have two living husbands, and holds that Abraham simply trusted God.
297. 22.38Augustine reads Sarah, kept pure among foreign kings, as a figure of the church, Christ's bride, persecuted by earlier emperors and honoured by later ones.
298. 22.39Augustine reads Sarah as Abraham's sister by the father, not the mother, as a figure of the church's kinship with Christ by heavenly grace rather than earthly descent.
299. 22.40Augustine explains that the church's marriage to Christ is a hidden mystery, while his brotherhood with the saints is openly told, as Christ's humanity was known but not his divinity.
300. 22.41Augustine reads Lot's rescue as a figure of the church saved from the final judgment, his wife as those who look back, and his drunkenness with his daughters as the law misused.
301. 22.42Augustine says that the incest of Lot's daughters, though prophetic as narrated in Scripture, remains a crime in the lives of those who did it.
302. 22.43Augustine argues that Lot's daughters acted wrongly but from a desire to preserve the human race, believing all other men destroyed, not from lust.
303. 22.44Augustine judges that Lot is to blame not for incest but for drunkenness, and considers what could have led a righteous man to become drunk.
304. 22.45Augustine says Scripture narrates the act of Lot's daughters without praising it, and that God made nations from that seed without approving the deed.
305. 22.46Augustine defends Isaac's calling Rebecca his sister like Abraham's case, and interprets his playing with her, by which Abimelech recognized them as married, as a figure of Christ's condescension to the church.
306. 22.47Augustine argues that Jacob's four wives were no crime because polygamy then violated neither nature, custom, nor law, though it is a sin now that custom and law forbid it.
307. 22.48Augustine argues that the patriarchs could have several wives without lust, just as the apostles enjoyed great fame without seeking praise, and that their wives too sought only children.
308. 22.49Augustine denies there was any rivalry of lust among Jacob's wives, explaining Leah's hiring of Jacob as Rachel's transfer of her turn under the mutual marital right.
309. 22.50Augustine argues that Jacob's yielding Rachel's night to Leah shows his self-control and that he sought only children, not pleasure, from his wives.
310. 22.51Augustine begins a figurative interpretation of Jacob's four wives, noting that it must differ from Paul's allegory of Sarah and Hagar.
311. 22.52Augustine interprets Leah as the laborious active life and Rachel as the contemplation of truth, explaining why Jacob had to take Leah first and serve seven more years for Rachel.
312. 22.53Augustine teaches that understanding must follow faith and righteous living, as Rachel was married after Leah, and that in this life contemplation always coexists with labour.
313. 22.54Augustine explains that the active life bears more spiritual children through simple preaching of Christ crucified, while contemplation, like barren Rachel, must use bodily images, as Rachel used her maidservant Bilhah.
314. 22.55Augustine interprets Leah's maidservant Zilpah as preachers whose mouths proclaim the gospel without their hearts, through whom nevertheless children of the kingdom are born.
315. 22.56Augustine reports having examined mandrakes himself and interprets Reuben's mandrakes as the good public reputation that those engaged in active church work win for the contemplative life.
316. 22.57Augustine interprets Leah's complaint to Rachel as the active life rebuking the contemplative for keeping men fit for church government in leisure while also seeking public honour.
317. 22.58Augustine applies the story to monks and scholars drawn by the church into ordained ministry, whose labour brings honour to the contemplative life they left.
318. 22.59Augustine concludes his defence of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob against Faustus's slanders.
319. 22.60Augustine distinguishes Lot from the three patriarchs and argues that Scripture, like a faithful mirror, records sins such as Judah's without approving them.
320. 22.61Augustine judges that Judah sinned in going to a supposed harlot and Tamar in conceiving outside marriage, though with a better motive, and that Judah's “she is more righteous than I” only compares them.
321. 22.62Augustine argues that Scripture often narrates sins without explicit judgment, as with Herod's massacre and the crucifixion, leaving readers to condemn them by its other teachings.
322. 22.63Augustine answers that Judah's place among the patriarchs is like Judas's among the apostles, and that Jacob's blessing after Judah's sin points beyond him to Christ.
323. 22.64Augustine suggests Faustus attacked Judah to discredit Christ's ancestry, and explains that Christ chose to be born of both good and bad ancestors, but of a virgin.
324. 22.65Augustine argues that Scripture, like a faithful mirror, records good deeds of bad men and bad deeds of good men, citing Saul, David, Pilate, and Peter.
325. 22.66Augustine lists David's virtues alongside his sins: repentance, mercy to Saul, patience under Shimei's curses, love for his people, reverence for the Lord's anointed, and grief for Absalom.
326. 22.67Augustine contrasts David's “I have sinned,” which God accepted, with Saul's same words, which he did not, because God saw their different hearts.
327. 22.68Augustine notes that the demons confessed Christ in the same words as Peter, and that sinners who repent, like Peter and David, may surpass those who never fell, as a cleared field can outyield one that never had thorns.
328. 22.69Augustine praises Moses as God's faithful servant, minister of the holy law and prophet of Christ, to be judged by God's testimony, not Faustus's slander.
329. 22.70Augustine judges that Moses sinned in killing the Egyptian without lawful authority, but sees in the deed, like Paul's persecution and Peter's sword, a misdirected zeal that God cultivated into virtue.
330. 22.71Augustine defends the spoiling of the Egyptians as God's just command, which Moses was bound to obey, whatever God's hidden reasons.
331. 22.72Augustine argues that only the true God knows what to command or permit, as Christ allowed the demons to destroy the swine, so the spoiling of the Egyptians was just.
332. 22.73Augustine argues that some acts, like Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, are wicked if done of one's own accord but praiseworthy if done at God's command, and so is the spoiling of the Egyptians.
333. 22.74Augustine defends Moses' wars as obedience to God and argues that what is evil in war is the love of violence, revenge, and domination, not war waged under God's or lawful authority, citing John the Baptist, Christ, and the centurion.
334. 22.75Augustine argues that the ruler has authority to declare war and soldiers must obey, that even under a wicked king a soldier may be innocent, and that war commanded by God is certainly just.
335. 22.76Augustine explains that the patriarchs waged wars to show that earthly kingdoms are God's gift, while Christ and the martyrs suffered without resisting to show that the heavenly kingdom is to be sought, and notes the victories of Christian emperors.
336. 22.77Augustine notes that Christ himself changed his commands about purse and sword, showing that God's precepts differ according to the times without inconsistency.
337. 22.78Augustine argues that God's providence orders all things, that only iniquity, the disordering of love and use, is truly evil, and that the outcomes of peace and war profit or harm by God's hidden judgment and mercy.
338. 22.79Augustine defends Moses' slaughter of the golden calf's worshippers as loving severity shown by his prayer for them, and turns against the Manichaeans the story in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas of the apostle cursing a man who struck him.
339. 22.80Augustine defends Hosea's marriage to a harlot as her conversion to chaste marriage and suggests the Manichaeans object because it led to childbearing.
340. 22.81Augustine says Scripture itself condemns Solomon, who had many wives from lust and fell into idolatry, which shows by contrast the chastity of the patriarchs.
341. 22.82Augustine turns from defending the patriarchs to their figurative meaning, summarizing how the sons of free women and maidservants figure good and bad members born in the church.
342. 22.83Augustine prefaces his reading of Judah and Tamar by arguing that evil deeds narrated in prophetic Scripture can signify good things, as Caiaphas unknowingly prophesied Christ's death.
343. 22.84Augustine interprets Tamar as the Jewish people, Judah's sons Er and Onan as harmful and useless kings, and Shelah as the time when no king came from Judah, under the foreign Herods.
344. 22.85Augustine interprets Judah's going to shear his sheep at Timnah with Hirah the Adullamite as Christ coming to the lost sheep of Israel when Judah's kingship had failed, with John the Baptist's testimony in water.
345. 22.86Augustine interprets Tamar's disguise and pledges as the church of the Gentiles, made fruitful through repentance and confession, sealed by calling, justification, and glorification.
346. 22.87Augustine interprets David's sin with Bathsheba as a figure of Christ loving the church, washed in baptism, and killing the devil, her former husband, while still condemning David's sin.
347. 22.88Augustine finds no good figure in Solomon's fall into idolatry, but suggests that his early goodness and later wickedness figure the good and bad mixed together in the church.
348. 22.89Augustine shows from Hosea's own prophecy and from Paul and Peter that Hosea's marriage to a harlot signified God's calling of the Gentiles, “not my people,” to be his people.
349. 22.90Augustine interprets Moses' killing of the Egyptian and burying him in sand as Christ killing the devil, who lies hidden in those built on sand.
350. 22.91Augustine recalls his interpretation in On Christian Teaching of the Egyptians' gold as pagan learning put to Christian use, and offers another reading as souls of Gentiles joining God's people.
351. 22.92Augustine interprets Moses' slaughter of the golden calf's worshippers as a figure of putting to death the vices that lead to idolatry.
352. 22.93Augustine interprets Moses' burning, grinding, and making the people drink the golden calf as Christ dissolving pagan idolatry by the fire of his power, the word, and baptism, incorporating Gentiles into his body.
353. 22.94Augustine concludes that all of Scripture speaks of Christ and his church, comparing passages without prophetic meaning to the frame of a lyre that holds the sounding strings.
354. 22.95Augustine says that even if his allegories are rejected, the patriarchs remain defended and Scripture remains blameless.
355. 22.96Augustine explains that Scripture usefully records both the falls of the good and the conversions of the bad, so that neither pride nor despair takes hold, and that seemingly superfluous details carry hidden meaning.
356. 22.97Augustine says that those who use David's sin as an excuse for sinning abuse a record meant to bring sinners to repentance, as madmen misuse medical instruments.
357. 22.98Augustine argues that even if the patriarchs were as wicked as Faustus claims, they would be better than the Manichaean god, whose particles are mixed into every sin and who finally condemns his own obedient members.
358. 23.1Faustus recounts a debate in which he pointed out that Matthew's genealogy calls Jesus the son of David, not the Son of God.
359. 23.2Faustus argues that Matthew presents Jesus as son of David by birth and Son of God only from his baptism, contradicting the Catholic creed, so either the gospel is not Matthew's or Catholics do not hold the apostolic faith.
360. 23.3Faustus argues that if Jesus was not begotten by Joseph, he cannot be called the son of David through Matthew's genealogy of Joseph.
361. 23.4Faustus claims Mary was of the priestly tribe of Levi, daughter of the priest Joachim, so her son could not be David's descendant.
362. 23.5Augustine replies that the apostolic faith confesses Christ as Son of God by divinity and son of David by the flesh, and points out that Matthew calls the virgin-born child “God with us” before the baptism.
363. 23.6Augustine recalls Faustus's misrepresentations of Scripture about the patriarchs and accuses him of now lying about Matthew's gospel.
364. 23.7Augustine argues that the voice at the Jordan, like that at the transfiguration, did not make Jesus Son of God, since Paul says God sent his Son made of a woman, both David's Lord and David's son.
365. 23.8Augustine explains that Matthew traces Christ's genealogy to Joseph because Joseph was truly Mary's husband by the union of souls though not of bodies, and that Mary too must have been of David's line.
366. 23.9Augustine holds that Mary was of David's line because canonical Scripture says Christ was of David's seed through a virgin, and that the apocryphal story of her father Joachim, even if true, could be reconciled with this.
367. 23.10Augustine answers that the incarnation does not confine the Son of God in Mary's womb, since the Word rules all things while taking a human body, whereas the Manichaeans confine their god in every womb from elephants to flies.
368. 24.1Faustus argues that God makes only the new, inner man born again in faith, not the old man born of bodily generation and lust.
369. 24.2Augustine answers that Paul’s inner and outer man are one man wholly made by God, whose whole nature, grown old through sin, is renewed now inwardly and at the resurrection outwardly.
370. 25.1Faustus argues that the Catholic prayer to the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” makes God limited, and that the existence of evil proves God is not infinite.
371. 25.2Augustine refuses to debate God’s finitude with those who think only in bodily terms, and turns the mockery of circumcision back on the Manichaean belief that God is mixed with all flesh.
372. 26.1Faustus argues that Jesus’ death no more proves him a man than Elijah’s escape from death proves Elijah was not one, and holds that Jesus only appeared to die.
373. 26.2Faustus adds that Jesus’ miracles were all against nature, so the question of nature cannot decide whether he could die, though he himself holds that Jesus did not die.
374. 26.3Augustine explains that God never acts against nature itself, only against the course of nature known to us, which is what we call a miracle.
375. 26.4Augustine holds that whatever happens is what God wills, and that what God foreknows as future will certainly happen.
376. 26.5Augustine explains that even God does not make the past not to have been, since that would make truth false, and that God’s omnipotence does not include dying, though he could change Elijah as he willed.
377. 26.6Augustine answers that God’s unchangeable nature cannot die, though Christ died in the flesh he took, and that Catholics believe Elijah’s translation and Christ’s real birth and death because Scripture testifies to them.
378. 26.7Augustine says Christ could have had true flesh without being born, but Catholics believe in his virgin birth, crucifixion, and death because the gospel, which is truth, says so.
379. 26.8Augustine argues that a Christ who feigned death would make Christ a liar, and that the gospel’s reports of his sleep, hunger, and sorrow are true, though he underwent them by his own will.
380. 27.1Faustus argues that if Jesus could be born without a father, he could also suffer without being born.
381. 27.2Augustine answers that Christ could have suffered without being born but did not, as the gospel shows, and that Mani’s claim of falsehood in the gospel deserves no credence.
382. 28.1Faustus argues that inference cannot settle Christ’s birth and that one must instead examine whether the Gospel genealogies agree.
383. 28.2Augustine appeals to the Church’s unbroken succession from the apostles as guarantee that Matthew’s Gospel, with its account of the birth, is Matthew’s, against Mani’s books and apocryphal writings.
384. 28.3Augustine refers back to his explanation that Joseph had a natural and an adoptive father, which reconciles the two genealogies.
385. 28.4Augustine argues that Christ’s own words are known only through the apostles, that the Church’s succession guarantees Matthew’s Gospel, and that even Paul gained authority only by agreement with the apostles.
386. 28.5Augustine replies that Faustus’s reasoning leads only to the Manichaean myth of God’s war, contamination, and damnation, and that apparent contradictions in Scripture arise from misunderstanding.
387. 29.1Faustus argues that the virgin birth is as contrary to nature as a passion without birth, and asks Catholics to admit that Christ’s birth too was only apparent.
388. 29.2Augustine answers that Christ could have had true flesh without birth, but chose to be born of a virgin, and that the Manichaean view of an apparent death makes his resurrection and wounds a deception.
389. 29.3Augustine asks why the Manichaeans grant Christ an apparent death but no birth at all, since the gospel attests both.
390. 29.4Augustine defends the dignity of the bodily members, the holiness of marital procreation and of Mary’s virginal childbirth, and says Christ chose to be born though he could have appeared otherwise.
391. 30.1Faustus replies to the charge from 1 Timothy 4 that Manichaean abstinence is a doctrine of demons by pointing to the food laws of Moses.
392. 30.2Faustus cites the abstinence of the three young men and Daniel’s fast as further cases the Catholic reading of 1 Timothy would condemn.
393. 30.3Faustus points to Catholic ascetics who abstain from meat and to the Lenten fast as practices that 1 Timothy 4, read as Catholics read it, would also condemn.
394. 30.4Faustus argues that Catholics, who urge virginity and honour Paul’s persuasion of Thecla and Christ’s praise of voluntary eunuchs, cannot charge Manichaeans with “forbidding to marry”, since they too only exhort and do not compel.
395. 30.5Augustine answers that the charge of 1 Timothy 4 falls on the Manichaeans because they abstain from meat as evil by nature and blaspheme its Creator, unlike the patriarchs and Catholic ascetics.
396. 30.6Augustine answers that Catholics praise virginity as better than good marriage, while the Manichaeans truly forbid marriage by condemning procreation, which also explains why they deny Christ’s birth.
397. 31.1Faustus argues that if “to the clean all things are clean” is Paul’s, then Moses, the prophets, Daniel, and the three young men were defiled in mind for observing food laws.
398. 31.2Faustus argues that no religion, including Catholic Christianity, holds that nothing is unclean, and so Titus 1:15 cannot be Paul’s.
399. 31.3Faustus says that if Peter’s vision means all foods are clean, Catholics must eat serpents too, and Moses and the prophets stand condemned.
400. 31.4Augustine explains that “to the clean all things are clean” concerns the goodness of created natures, while the food laws concerned signification, and that nothing at all is clean to the Manichaeans.
401. 32.1Faustus argues that Catholics accept only parts of the Old Testament, so Manichaeans may likewise accept only parts of the New.
402. 32.2Faustus claims the Gospels were written long after the apostles by unknown men under apostolic names and are full of contradictions, so Manichaeans accept only what suits their faith.
403. 32.3Faustus lists Old Testament laws—circumcision, sabbath, sacrifices, Passover rites, Pentecost offerings, food laws—that Catholics keep only in part or not at all.
404. 32.4Faustus lists sexual conduct of the patriarchs and the levirate law of Deuteronomy as Old Testament examples and laws that Catholics neither imitate nor condemn.
405. 32.5Faustus argues that Catholics do not really believe Old Testament curses on the hanged, the childless, the uncircumcised, and sabbath-breakers, which would condemn Christ and Christians.
406. 32.6Faustus claims that as Christ judges what to keep from the Old Testament, so the Paraclete teaches the Manichaeans what to keep from the New.
407. 32.7Faustus lists what Manichaeans reject in the Gospels—Christ’s birth, circumcision, sacrifice, baptism, and temptation—and what they accept: the mystic cross, his precepts, parables, and teaching on the two natures.
408. 32.8Augustine replies that Catholics hold all the Old Testament true and its unobserved precepts meaningful for their time, whereas the Manichaeans reject parts of the New Testament as false.
409. 32.9Augustine explains that the Old Testament itself foretold a new covenant, and that its rites, as shadows of things to come, are fulfilled rather than condemned.
410. 32.10Augustine interprets the levirate law of Deuteronomy as a figure of preachers who beget children for Christ, their dead brother, and of the shame of refusing that ministry.
411. 32.11Augustine explains that Christians commemorate Christ’s Passover on the Lord’s day and keep the unleavened bread of sincerity every day, the bitter herbs signifying the labour of the narrow way.
412. 32.12Augustine explains Pentecost as fulfilling the giving of the law fifty days after the first Passover, and why Christians commemorate the Passover differently from the Jews.
413. 32.13Augustine explains that Christians avoid food sacrificed to idols so as not to share with demons, and that the apostolic ban on blood was a temporary measure uniting Jews and gentiles which the Church no longer keeps.
414. 32.14Augustine states his principle that all the Old Testament is true and useful, its unobserved commands being fitting signs for their time, as a physician changes his prescriptions.
415. 32.15Augustine denies the parallel between Christ’s use of the Old Testament and the Manichaean Paraclete’s use of the New, since the true Paraclete was sent at Pentecost, as Acts records.
416. 32.16Augustine argues that the Manichaeans cannot prove their Paraclete from Gospels they call corrupt, and that the Scriptures could not have been corrupted since older copies and versions in many languages would expose any change.
417. 32.17Augustine argues that the Paraclete came immediately after Christ’s glorification, and that the Montanists, who used the same texts to condemn second marriage, show how any heresy can claim the Paraclete.
418. 32.18Augustine interprets the Paraclete texts of the Gospel and 1 Corinthians 13 of the Holy Spirit and of eternal life, and says the Manichaeans reject Gospel passages only because they dislike them.
419. 32.19Augustine charges that the Manichaeans make each man’s own mind the judge of Scripture, yet accept Mani’s fables on mere authority, and urges submission to the long-attested authority of the gospel.
420. 32.20Augustine says the Manichaeans judged good and evil in creation, as in Scripture, by what pleased or offended their senses, instead of reading creation as God’s book.
421. 32.21Augustine argues that the apostolic authorship of the New Testament is known through continuous succession, just as the Manichaeans know their books are Mani’s.
422. 32.22Augustine contrasts the apostles’ preaching of Christ’s birth, circumcision, sacrifice, baptism, and temptation with Mani’s myth of God’s divided and defiled substance.
423. 33.1Faustus concedes that the patriarchs may be in heaven through Christ’s mercy after release from the underworld, but holds that their lives were wicked and asks why the same is not said of gentile ancestors.
424. 33.2Faustus argues that because Matthew and Luke place the saying about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in different settings and tell the centurion story differently, it may not have been said by Christ at all.
425. 33.3Faustus claims the Gospels were compiled long after the apostles by disagreeing “Semi-Jews” who added words to Christ’s sayings, but says the passage does not harm the Manichaeans whether true or false.
426. 33.4Augustine answers that the Manichaean god, still defiled, fares worse than the patriarchs, and that the state of the righteous dead before Christ must be sought from Scripture, not from heretics.
427. 33.5Augustine points to Christ’s and Paul’s praise of Abraham in his own lifetime as proof that the patriarchs were righteous.
428. 33.6Augustine argues that the apostolic writings are known to be genuine by continuous testimony and the succession of bishops, just as the works of Hippocrates, Plato, and Cicero are known, and spurious works rejected.
429. 33.7Augustine argues that differences between the Gospels are like those between historians, one summarizing and another detailing, and that Matthew’s centurion “came” to Jesus through intermediaries, as common speech allows.
430. 33.8Augustine explains that the centurion “came” to Christ by faith more truly than his messengers, as the woman touched him while the crowd pressed, and that any honest narrator telling a story twice varies without contradiction.
431. 33.9Augustine closes by urging the Manichaeans to follow the authority of Scripture as handed down by apostolic succession, or at least to believe God’s nature unchangeable and incorruptible, and so cease to be Manichaeans.