Against Faustus the Manichaean 11.1–11.8

Faustus said: Do you accept the apostle? Most certainly. Why then do you not believe that the Son of God was born of the seed of David according to the flesh? I would certainly not believe that the apostle of God could write things contrary to himself, and hold now this view, now that, about our Lord. But since it so pleases you, who never hear without irritation that something in the apostle has been adulterated, know that not even this is against us, if indeed this appears to be Paul’s old and earlier opinion of Jesus, when he too, like the rest, thought him the son of David. But when he learned that this was false, he revises and weakens it, and, writing to the Corinthians, he says: “We know no one according to the flesh; and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him.” So you must consider how great a difference there is between these two passages, of which one affirms that Jesus is the son of David according to the flesh, while the other says that he now knows no one according to the flesh. If both are Paul’s, either it will be for the reason I have given, or one of them will not be Paul’s. Then he goes on: “So if there is any new creature in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” You see, then, that he calls that former faith old and transitory, that is, having believed that Jesus was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and this second one new and permanent, that he now knows no one according to the flesh. Hence elsewhere too he says: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.” If this is so, what wrong do we do if, holding Paul’s new and better confession, we throw away that old and worse one? Or if you are determined to believe according to what he writes to the Romans, why should we not be permitted to hold doctrine according to what he writes to the Corinthians? Though I have answered thus to suit your obstinacy; otherwise, far be it from the apostle of God ever to destroy what he built, lest he make himself a transgressor, as he testified. Still, if that former statement is his, it has now been corrected; but if it is not right to say that Paul ever said anything that needed correcting, it is not his.

Augustine replied: This is what I said a little before: when these men are so choked by manifest truth that, hemmed in by the clear words of the holy Scriptures, they can find no way out for their deceit in them, they answer that the testimony brought forward is false. O voice fleeing from the truth, stubborn in madness! So invincible are the things brought against you from the divine books that you have nothing to say but that they have been falsified. What authority of writings can be opened, what sacred book unrolled, what document of any writing brought forth to refute errors, if this answer is admitted, if it is thought of any weight? It is one thing not to accept the books themselves and not to be held by any bond of theirs, as the pagans do with all our books, as the Jews do with the New Testament, and as we ourselves do with yours and those of other heretics, if they have any of their own, or with those which are called apocryphal—not because they are to be held in some secret authority, but because, made clear by no light of testimony, they have been brought forth from who knows what secret place by the presumption of who knows whom. It is one thing, then, not to be held by the authority of certain books or persons, and another to say: “This holy man wrote all things truly, and this letter is his, but in it this is his and that is not his.” Then, when you hear from the other side, “Prove it,” you do not take refuge in more correct copies, or in more numerous or older manuscripts, or in the original language from which this was translated into another language, but you say: “I prove that this is his and that is not his from this: this speaks for me, that against me.” Are you, then, the rule of truth? Is whatever is against you not true? What if another, with a similar madness, but one by which your obstinacy would be broken, stood up and said: “On the contrary, what speaks for you is false, and what is against you is true”? What will you do? Unless perhaps you will bring forward another book, in which whatever you read can be understood according to your view. If you do this, you will hear someone contradicting not some part of it but the whole, and crying, “It is false.” What will you do? Where will you turn? What origin of the book you produce, what antiquity, what series of succession will you cite as witness? For if you try to do this, you will both achieve nothing and see in this matter what the authority of the catholic church is worth, which is established from the most firmly founded seats of the apostles to this present day by the series of bishops succeeding one another and by the agreement of so many peoples. So if a question arose about the reliability of copies, as in some differences of reading, which are few and very well known to students of the sacred writings, our doubt would be settled from the manuscripts of other regions from which the teaching itself came; or, if the manuscripts varied there too, the more numerous would be preferred to the fewer, or the older to the more recent; and if the variation were still uncertain, the original language from which it was translated would be consulted. This is how those inquire who, about what troubles them in the holy Scriptures established by such authority, want to find something to be instructed by, not something to quarrel about.

But this passage brought forward against your impiety from the letter of the apostle Paul, that the Son of God is of the seed of David according to the flesh, all manuscripts, new and old, contain; all churches read it; all languages agree. Take off, then, the cloak of deceit in which Faustus was clothed when, having set before himself someone questioning him and saying, “Do you accept the apostle Paul?”, he answered, “Most certainly.” Why did he not rather answer, “Not at all,” unless because, being a deceiver, he could answer nothing but what was false? For what of the apostle Paul did he accept? Not the first man, whom Paul calls from the earth, earthly, of whom he also says, “The first man Adam was made a living soul”; Faustus proclaims some first man or other, neither from the earth, earthly, nor made a living soul, but existing from the substance of God, the very thing that God is, who sank his members or his garments or his weapons, that is, the five elements, though they too were nothing other than the substance of God, in the nation of darkness, so that they were captured and defiled. Not the second man, whom Paul calls from heaven, whom he also calls the last Adam, made a life-giving spirit, whom he says was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law; of whom he says to Timothy, “Remember that Christ Jesus rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel”; and by whose example he also preaches our resurrection, saying: “For I delivered to you first of all what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures.” And a little later he adds why he said this: “But if Christ is preached as risen from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” But this man, who, when asked whether he accepts the apostle Paul, answers, “Most certainly,” denies all this. He will not accept Jesus as of the seed of David, nor as made of a woman—whom Paul calls a woman not because she was corrupted by intercourse or by childbirth, but because he speaks in the manner of the Scriptures, which are accustomed to call the sex itself so; as it is written in Genesis of Eve, “He formed her into a woman,” when she had not been united to a man. Nor does he accept the very death of Christ and his burial and resurrection, since he says that Christ neither had a mortal body, in which that death would be real, nor were those scars real which he showed to the disciples after the resurrection, when, as Paul also mentions, he appeared to them alive; nor that our flesh itself will rise, changed into a spiritual body, as the same apostle most plainly says: “It is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body.” Then, distinguishing between the animal and the spiritual body, he connects what I have already mentioned about the first Adam and the last Adam, and then adds: “This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God.” And lest anyone should believe that the very form and substance of flesh cannot rise, wishing to express what he here called flesh and blood, since he wanted corruption itself to be understood, which will not exist then in the resurrection of the righteous, he immediately connected: “nor will corruption possess incorruption.” And lest anyone should still think that what was buried will not rise, but that, as it were, one tunic is laid aside and another, better one taken up, wishing to declare most plainly that this very thing will be changed for the better—just as the garments of Christ on the mountain were not laid aside and others taken up, but those very ones he had were glorified for the better—he goes on and connects, saying: “Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed.” And lest it still be uncertain who they are who will be changed: “In an atom,” he says, “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed.” Perhaps they will still say that in the resurrection we are changed not as to this mortal and corruptible body, but as to the soul, though the apostle did not propose that as his subject, but spoke about the body from the very beginning of the question, as his own proposition shows: “But someone will say,” he says, “How do the dead rise? And with what body do they come?” Here, however, he then points out as with a finger what he was speaking about, and adds: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.” Since, then, this man denies these things, and since he preaches that God himself, of whom Paul says, “To the immortal, incorruptible, only God be honor and glory, amen,” is corruptible—for their detestable and abominable fable dreams that his substance and nature feared as a whole lest it be corrupted by the nation of darkness, and that, to protect the rest, it was corrupted in part—why does he try even in this to deceive the unskilled and those less learned in the divine Scriptures, so that, asked whether he accepts the apostle Paul, he answers, “Most certainly,” and is found to mean “Not at all”?

“But there is a sure argument,” he says, “by which I will show that the apostle Paul either changed his view as he advanced and, writing to the Corinthians, corrected what he had written to the Romans, or did not write at all what is brought forward as his, that the Son of God is of the seed of David according to the flesh.” By what argument, then, does he show this? “Because,” he says, “both cannot be true: what is in the letter to the Romans, ‘concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh,’ and what he says to the Corinthians, ‘So from now on we know no one according to the flesh; and even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him.’” It remains, then, for us to show how both can be true and how these two are not contrary to each other. For we can in no way say that one of them is not Paul’s, since no manuscript authority varies on it. For although in some Latin copies we read not “made” but “born of the seed of David,” while the Greek copies have “made,” so that the Latin translator, by saying “born,” chose to translate not word for word but by sense, still the authority of all books and languages agrees that Christ is of the seed of David according to the flesh. But far be it from us to say that Paul once erred in this and changed his view as he advanced. Faustus himself felt how shamelessly and impiously this would be said, and preferred to say that Paul’s letter had been corrupted by the falsification of others rather than flawed by his own error.

For it can be said of those books which are written by us, not with the authority of commanding but as an exercise in making progress, that they contain something perhaps not in harmony with a truth that is more hidden and harder to discern, something that has either remained so or been corrected in later books. For we are among those to whom the same apostle says, “And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” This kind of writing is to be read not with the obligation of believing but with the freedom of judging. Yet so that room should not be shut off for it, and the most wholesome labor of tongue and pen in treating and turning over difficult questions not be taken from posterity, the excellence of the canonical authority of the Old and New Testaments has been distinguished from the books of later writers. Confirmed in the times of the apostles, through the successions of bishops and the spread of churches, it has been set on high, as in a kind of seat, and every faithful and devout understanding is to be subject to it. There, if anything troubles you as absurd, it is not permitted to say, “The author of this book did not hold the truth,” but: “Either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator erred, or you do not understand.” But in the works of later writers, which are contained in innumerable books but in no way equal that most sacred excellence of the canonical Scriptures, even in whichever of them the same truth is found, the authority is nevertheless far unequal. So in them, if some things are perhaps thought to be out of harmony with the truth because they are not understood as they were meant, the reader or hearer still has free judgment there, to approve what pleases him or disapprove what offends him. And therefore all things of this kind, unless they are defended either by sure reasoning or from that canonical authority, so that it is shown that what is argued or narrated there either is wholly so or could have happened, are not blamed if someone dislikes them or refuses to believe them. But in that canonical eminence of the sacred writings, even if only one prophet or apostle or evangelist is declared, by the very confirmation of the canon, to have put something in his writings, it is not permitted to doubt that it is true; otherwise there will be no page by which the weakness of human ignorance may be guided, if the most wholesome authority of these books is either despised and wholly abolished or left undefined and confused.

Therefore, whoever you are who have been troubled by these apparent contradictions, that it is written in one place, “the Son of God of the seed of David,” and elsewhere, “even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him”: even if both were not brought forward from the writings of one apostle, but Paul had said one of them and Peter or Isaiah or some other of the apostles or prophets the other, it would not be permitted to doubt either, because in the canonical authority all things so agree with one another that, with most just and prudent piety, they are believed as if spoken by one mouth, are found to be so by most serene understanding, and are shown to be so by most skilful diligence. Since, then, both are brought forward from the canonical, that is, the truly Pauline, letters of the apostle Paul, and we cannot say either that the manuscript is faulty—for all the corrected Latin copies have it so—or that the translator erred—for all the corrected Greek copies have it so—it remains that you do not understand, and that I am asked for an account of how neither is out of harmony with the other, but both agree in the same rule of sound faith. For if you too inquired devoutly, you could find how these things become clear when examined.

For that the Son of God was made man of the seed of David the same apostle says in more than one place, and other holy Scriptures proclaim it most plainly. But as for his saying, “Even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him,” the very context of that passage of Scripture shows clearly enough what the apostle is speaking of. For in his manner he contemplates our future life, which has already been fulfilled in the man himself, the mediator Christ Jesus, our head, who has risen, with sure hope, as if it were already here and held as present. That life will certainly not be according to the flesh, just as the life of Christ is now not according to the flesh. For by “flesh” in this passage he wants us to understand not the very substance of our body—which the Lord calls flesh even after his resurrection, saying, “Handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see that I have”—but the corruption and mortality of the flesh, which will not then be in us, just as it is now not in Christ. For this is what he properly called flesh even when he was speaking quite plainly about the resurrection itself and said what I have already mentioned above: “Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption.” When, then, what he says next there has come about—“Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed, in an atom”—that is, in a moment—“in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed; for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality”—then, in the sense in which he calls flesh not the very substance of the body but the very corruption of mortality, it will certainly not be flesh, because, being changed, it will not have the corruption of mortality. But according to the origin of its substance and of the body it will be the same flesh, because it will itself rise and itself be changed; for both are true: what the Lord said after he had risen, “Handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see that I have,” and what the apostle says, “Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God.” The former was said according to the substance itself, which will exist then too, because it is this that will be changed; the latter was said according to the carnal quality of corruption, which will no longer exist then, because the changed flesh will not be corrupted. So we had known Christ according to the flesh, that is, according to the mortality of the flesh, before he rose; but now we no longer know him so, because, as the same apostle says, Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him. For if you hold to the strict meaning of words, he lied when he said, “We had known Christ according to the flesh,” if Christ was never according to the flesh; for no one had known what did not exist. And he did not say, “We thought Christ was according to the flesh,” but, “We had known.” However, not to press the word, lest anyone assert that the apostle spoke loosely, saying “we had known” for “we thought,” I am surprised that blind men do not notice—or rather I am not surprised that the blind do not see—that, if Christ had no flesh because the apostle said that he no longer knew Christ according to the flesh, neither did those have flesh of whom he says in the same passage, “So from now on we know no one according to the flesh.” For he could not say, “we know no one according to the flesh,” wishing it to be understood of Christ alone; but because he was contemplating as present the future life of those with him who, rising, will be changed, he says, “From now on we know no one according to the flesh,” that is: we hold so sure a hope of our future incorruption and immortality that from now on we already rejoice in the very knowledge of it. Hence he says in another place: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; savor the things that are above, not those on earth.” We have certainly not yet risen as Christ has, yet according to the hope we have in him he testified that we have already risen with him. Hence he also says, “According to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration.” And who does not understand that in the washing of regeneration we were given the hope of future salvation, not yet the salvation itself that is promised? And yet, because the hope is sure, he says, “he saved us,” as if that salvation had already been given. For in another place he says most clearly: “We groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” So, just as here he did not say, “we shall be saved,” but that we have already been saved, yet not yet in reality but in hope—“for in hope,” he says, “we have been saved”—so too what is said there, “From now on we know no one according to the flesh,” will be understood as not yet in reality but in hope, because our hope is in Christ, because in him what we hope for as promised to us has already been fulfilled. For he has already risen, and death will no longer have dominion over him. Even if we had known him according to the flesh, when he was still to die—for there was in his body that mortality which the apostle properly calls flesh—yet now we no longer know him so; for that mortal part of him has already put on immortality, so that according to its former mortality it can no longer be called flesh.

So let us consider the context of the passage itself where this statement stands, about which these men raise their false charges, so that what I say may shine out more clearly. “The love of Christ,” he says, “compels us, judging this: that if one died for all, then all died; and he died for all, so that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. So from now on we know no one according to the flesh; even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him.” Surely it is now apparent to anyone that the apostle said this because of the resurrection of Christ, since these words were preceded by this: “so that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.” For what is “that they live not for themselves but for him,” except that they should not live according to the flesh, in the hope of earthly and corruptible goods, but according to the spirit, in the hope of the resurrection, which has already taken place in Christ, one of their own? So of those for whom Christ died and rose, and who live no longer for themselves but for him, the apostle knew no one according to the flesh, because of the hope of future immortality in expectation of which they lived; which in Christ was no longer hope but reality. Though he had known him according to the flesh, when he was still to die, yet now he no longer knew him so, because he knew that he had risen and that death would no longer have dominion over him. And because we all are this in him, though not yet in reality, yet already in hope, he goes on and says: “So if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new; and all things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.” So every new creature—that is, the people renewed through faith, so as to have meanwhile in hope what will afterward be perfected in reality—already has in Christ what it hopes for in itself. So now the old things have passed away according to hope, because it is now no longer the time of the Old Testament, when a temporal and carnal kingdom was expected from God; and all things have become new according to the same hope, so that we hold as promised the kingdom of heaven, where there will be no death or corruption. But in the resurrection of the dead, no longer according to hope but according to reality, the old things will pass away, when the last enemy, death, is destroyed; and all things will become new, when this corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, which has already been done in Christ, whom Paul in reality no longer knew according to the flesh. But of those for whom he died and rose, he knew no one according to the flesh not yet in reality but in hope, because it is by his grace, as the same apostle says to the Ephesians, that we have been saved. For that passage too bears witness to this statement: “But God,” he says, “who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved.” What he said here, “made us alive together with Christ,” he said to the Corinthians as “so that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.” And when he says here, “by whose grace we have been saved,” he speaks as though what he holds in hope were already accomplished; for, as I mentioned a little before, he says most plainly elsewhere, “For in hope we have been saved.” And so here too he goes on and lists as accomplished what is future: “And he raised us up together,” he says, “and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” For certainly Christ already sits in the heavenly places, but we do not yet; but because by sure hope we already hold what is to come, he said that we sit together in the heavenly places, not yet in ourselves but already in him. For lest you think that what is said in hope as if accomplished is already accomplished now, and so that you understand that it is still to come, he goes on and says: “so that he might show in the ages to come the overflowing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” From this comes that saying too: “For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” For he said, “when we were in the flesh,” as if they were no longer in the flesh. This is understood thus: when we were in the hope of carnal things, when the law, which cannot be fulfilled except through spiritual love, was over them for this purpose, that through transgression sin might abound, so that afterward, when the New Testament was revealed, grace might superabound through forgiveness. Similarly he says elsewhere, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” And lest anyone think that this was said of those who have not yet died, he immediately added, “But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit”; that is: those who are in the hope of carnal goods cannot please God; but you are not in the hope of carnal things but in the hope of spiritual things, that is, of the kingdom of heaven, where even the body itself, which is now animal, will by that change be spiritual in its own kind. “For it is sown an animal body,” as the same apostle says to the Corinthians, “it will rise a spiritual body.” If, then, the apostle already knew according to the flesh none of those who were said not to be in the flesh because they were not in the hope of carnal things, though they still bore corruptible and mortal flesh, how much more expressly would he say of Christ that he no longer knew him according to the flesh, in whose body what they held as promised in hope had already been accomplished in reality! How much better, then, how much more devout it is to treat the divine Scriptures in such a way that, when everything has been examined, they are found to agree, than, when a man fails at a question he cannot solve, to accept them as true in part and condemn them as false in part! For even when the apostle was a child and savored the things of a child—though he said this by way of likeness—he was not yet spiritual as he already was when he wrote the things that would not be handled by students as an exercise in progress, but would be read in the church’s canon with the authority of commanding.