Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.16–12.35

That the ark is finished above, gathered to one cubit: as the church, the body of Christ, gathered into unity, raises up and perfects. Hence he says in the gospel: “Whoever does not gather with me scatters.” That its entrance is made in the side: for no one enters the church except through the sacrament of the remission of sins; and this flowed from the opened side of Christ. That the lower parts of the ark are built with two and three stories: as the church gathers from all nations a multitude either twofold, because of circumcision and uncircumcision, or threefold, because of the three sons of Noah, by whose offspring the world was filled. And therefore these are called the lower parts of the ark, because in this earthly life there is diversity of nations, but at the top we are all completed in one; and there is no such variety there, because Christ is all and in all, completing us above, as with one cubit, in heavenly unity.

That the flood came seven days after Noah had entered the ark: because we are baptized in the hope of future rest, which was signified by the seventh day. That outside the ark all flesh which the earth sustained was destroyed by the flood: because outside the fellowship of the church the water of baptism, though it is the same, not only does not avail for salvation but rather avails for destruction. That it rained forty days and forty nights: because all the guilt of sins committed against the ten commandments of the law throughout the whole world, which is contained in four parts—for ten taken four times make forty—whether that guilt was contracted from prosperity, which belongs to the days, or from adversity, which belongs to the nights, is washed away by the sacrament of heavenly baptism.

That Noah was five hundred years old when the Lord told him to make an ark for himself, and was in his six hundredth year when he entered it—from which it is understood that the ark was built over a hundred years—what else do the hundred years seem to signify here but the individual ages of the world? Hence this sixth age, which is signified from the completion of five hundred years to six hundred, builds the church in the manifestation of the gospel; and therefore whoever takes thought for his life, let him be like a squared timber, ready for every good work, and enter into the holy building; for the second month of the six hundredth year, in which Noah enters the ark, also signifies this same sixth age. For two months are comprised in the number sixty; and from the number six are named sixty, six hundred, six thousand, sixty thousand, six hundred thousand, and six hundred times, and whatever further number rises to infinite increase in larger sums by the same step.

And the mention of the twenty-seventh day of the month belongs to the meaning of the same squareness that has already been explained in the squared timbers. But here it is more evident, because the Trinity perfects us, ready for every good work, that is, in a sense squared: in memory, by which we remember God, in understanding, by which we know him, in will, by which we love him; for three times three, and this three times, makes twenty-seven, which is the “square” of the number three. That in the seventh month the ark settled, that is, rested: the meaning returns to that seventh rest; and because the perfect rest, the number of that squareness is repeated there as well. For this sacrament was commended on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, and again, on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month, the same commendation was confirmed, when the ark rested. For what is promised in hope is shown in reality. Further, since the seventh rest is joined to the eighth, the resurrection—for the rest which receives the saints after this life is not ended when the body is restored, but rather takes up into the gift of eternal life the whole man, renewed no longer in hope but in reality itself, perfected in every part, spirit and body, with immortal salvation—since, then, the seventh rest is joined to the eighth, the resurrection, this too is a high and deep mystery in the sacrament of our regeneration, that is, in baptism: the water rose fifteen cubits above the height of the mountains, that is, this sacrament transcends all the wisdom of the proud. For seven and eight joined make fifteen. And because seventy is named from seven and eighty from eight, with both numbers joined the water was exalted for a hundred and fifty days, commending and confirming to us the same height of baptism in consecrating the new man to hold the faith of rest and resurrection.

That the raven sent out after forty days did not return, either cut off by the waters or lured by some floating corpse, signifies that men most foul with the uncleanness of desire, and therefore too intent on things outside in this world, are either rebaptized or seduced and held by those whom baptism kills outside the ark, that is, outside the church. That the dove sent out, finding no rest, returned, shows that through the New Testament rest is not promised to the saints in this world. For it was sent out after forty days, a number which signifies the life led in this world. Then, sent out after seven days, because of that sevenfold spiritual working, it brought back a fruitful olive shoot, by which it signified that some baptized even outside the church, if they do not lack the richness of love, can at a later time, as in the evening, be brought in the dove’s mouth, as with the kiss of peace, to the fellowship of unity. That, sent out after another seven days, it did not return signifies the end of the world, when the rest of the saints will be no longer in the sacrament of hope, by which the church is joined together in this time as long as what flowed from Christ’s side is drunk, but in the very perfection of eternal salvation, when the kingdom will be handed over to God the Father, so that in that clear contemplation of unchangeable truth we may need no bodily mysteries.

It would be too long to touch on everything, even as briefly as I have run through these things: why, in the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, that is, when six hundred years were completed, the roof of the ark is opened, and the sacrament that was hidden is, as it were, revealed? Why the earth is said to have dried on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, as if the need for baptizing were now ended, in the number of the fifty-seventh day? For that is what the twenty-seventh day of the second month is, a number which, from that union of spirit and body, has seven times eight, with one added for the bond of unity. Why those who had entered separately go out of the ark together? For so it had been said: that Noah entered the ark, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives: the men are mentioned separately and the women separately. For in this time of this sacrament the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. But Noah goes out, and his wife and his sons and his sons’ wives, males and females now mentioned together, because at the end of the world and in the resurrection of the righteous the body will cleave to the spirit in complete and perfect peace, with no need or desire of mortality resisting. Why, though both clean and unclean animals were in the ark, after the exit from the ark only the clean are offered to God in sacrifice?

Next, what is meant when God speaks to Noah and, as if from the beginning again—because the same things had to be signified in many ways—commends the figure of the church: that his offspring is blessed to fill the earth; that all animals are given them for food, as is said to Peter in that dish, “Kill and eat”? That they are commanded to eat with the blood poured out: so that the former life may not be kept as if stifled in the conscience, but may have, as it were, an outpouring through confession? That God set as a covenant between himself and men and every living soul, that he would not destroy it by a flood, the bow which appears in the clouds, which never shines except from the sun: for those do not perish by the flood, separated from the church, who recognize the glory of Christ in the prophets and in all the divine Scriptures, as in the clouds of God, and do not seek their own glory. But lest the worshippers of this sun swell up the more, let them know that Christ is sometimes signified by the sun in the same way as by a lion, by a lamb, by a stone, because of some likeness, not as the property of his substance.

Now then, as for Noah’s becoming drunk from the vineyard he planted and being uncovered in his house, to whom is it not apparent that this is Christ suffering among his own nation? For then the mortality of his flesh was uncovered, to the Jews a scandal, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, as Shem and Japheth, the power of God and the wisdom of God; because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Accordingly, in the two sons, the eldest and the youngest, two peoples are figured, carrying one garment behind their backs—namely the sacrament of the Lord’s passion, now past and accomplished—and they do not look on their father’s nakedness, because they do not consent to the killing of Christ; and yet they honor it with a covering, as knowing from what they were born. But the middle son, that is, the people of the Jews—middle because it neither held the primacy of the apostles nor believed last among the Gentiles—saw his father’s nakedness, because it consented to the killing of Christ, and told it to his brothers outside. For through it what was secret in prophecy was made manifest and in a way published; and therefore it becomes the servant of its brothers. For what else is that nation today but a kind of librarian for the Christians, carrying the law and the prophets as testimony to the church’s claims, so that we honor by the sacrament what it announces by the letter?

But whom would it not stir, whom would it not either instruct or confirm in the faith, that those two who honored their father’s nakedness, though with faces turned away, as men displeased by the deed of the wicked vineyard, are blessed in this way? “Blessed be the Lord God of Shem,” he says. For although he is the God of all nations, yet in a certain way, by a proper name, he is called the God of Israel even among the nations themselves. And how did this come about, if not from the blessing of Japheth? For in the people of the Gentiles the church has occupied the whole world. This, precisely this, was foretold when it was said: “May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the houses of Shem.” Look, Manichaeans, look: see, the whole world is before your eyes. This is what you are astonished at, this is what you grieve over in our peoples, that God enlarges Japheth. See whether he does not dwell in the houses of Shem, that is, in the churches which the apostles, sons of the prophets, built. Hear what Paul says to the Gentiles who already believed: “You who were at that time,” he says, “without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants, having no hope of the promise and without God in this world.” These words show that Japheth did not yet dwell in the houses of Shem. But notice how he concludes a little later: “So now,” he says, “you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone.” See how Japheth is enlarged and dwells in the houses of Shem. And yet you hold, read, and preach the letters of the apostles in which all this is attested. Where should I count you, if not in that cursed middle, which does not have Christ as its cornerstone? For we do not recognize you in that wall which believed in Christ from the circumcision, from which the apostles also came, nor in this one which is from the uncircumcision, from which come all from the other nations, running together into the same unity of faith as into the peace of the corner. But also all who accept and read any books of our canon, in which Christ is shown to have been born and to have suffered as a mortal, and yet do not honorably cover that same mortality, laid bare in the passion, by joining in the sacrament of unity, but, without the knowledge of piety and love, publish that from which we were all born—although they disagree among themselves, the Jews with the heretics and the heretics themselves one with another—are nevertheless, in one condition of servitude, useful to the church, either for some attestation or for some testing. For of heretics too it is said: “There must be heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.” Go now and cast slanders on the ancient sacred writings; do this, servants of Ham; go, you to whom the uncovered flesh from which you were born is worthless. For there would be nothing from which you could call yourselves Christians in any way, unless Christ, as he was foretold by the prophets, had come into the world, had drunk from his vineyard that cup which could not pass, had slept in his passion as in the drunkenness of folly, which is wiser than men; and so the weakness of mortal flesh, stronger than men through the hidden counsel of God, was laid bare; and unless the Word of God had taken it up, the Christian name, in which you too boast, would not exist on earth at all. But do this, as I said: publish with mockery what we reverently honor; let the church use you as its subjects, so that those who are approved may be made manifest in it. So far did those prophets leave unsaid nothing that the church was to have or to suffer, that we find you too there in your places, in a vanity that is ruinous for catching the reprobate but useful for making the approved manifest.

You say that Christ was not foretold by the Israelite prophets, though all those pages keep watch to foretell him, if you would rather examine them with devotion than harass them with levity. Who else, in Abraham, goes out from his land and his kindred to be enriched and made wealthy among strangers, but he who, leaving the land and kindred of the Jews, from whom he was born according to the flesh, is so powerful and prevails among the Gentiles, as we see? Who else, in Isaac, carried the wood for his own sacrifice, but he who himself carried his cross to his passion? Who else was the ram to be sacrificed, caught by its horns in the thicket, but he who was fastened to the gibbet of the cross to be offered for us?

Who else, in the angel who wrestled with Jacob, when, as the weaker and the conquered, he partly blesses the one who prevailed over him, as the stronger and the conqueror, and partly makes the breadth of his thigh lame, but he who, having allowed the people of Israel to prevail against him, blessed some in them, those who believed? But the breadth of Jacob’s thigh limped in the multitude of the carnal people. Who else is the stone placed at Jacob’s head, which was even anointed, so that he might in a way be expressed by name, but Christ, the head of man? For who does not know that Christ is named from anointing? He himself also recalled this very thing in the gospel and testified most plainly that it was figured of himself: when he had said that a certain Nathanael was truly an Israelite in whom there was no guile, and when Nathanael, as if he had that stone at his head, confessed him to be the Son of God and King of Israel—by this confession in a way anointing the stone, that is, confessing that he was the Christ—there the Lord fittingly recalled also what Jacob had then seen, who by the blessing was called Israel: “Amen I say to you,” he says, “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” For Israel had seen this when he had that stone at his head: a ladder from earth to heaven, by which the angels of God ascended and descended; and by them are signified the evangelists, the preachers of Christ: ascending, certainly, when, to understand his most supereminent divinity, they go beyond all creation, to find him in the beginning, God with God, through whom all things were made; descending, to find him made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law. For in him is the ladder from earth to heaven, from flesh to spirit, because in him the carnal, advancing as if ascending, become spiritual; and to nourish them with milk, the spiritual themselves in a way descend, when they cannot speak to them as to spiritual but as to carnal people. So there is both ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. For the Son of Man is above, in our head, who is the Savior himself; and the Son of Man is below, in his body, which is the church. We understand him also as the ladder, because he himself said, “I am the way.” So one ascends to him, that he may be understood in the heights, and one descends to him, that the little ones may be nourished in his members; and one ascends and descends through him. For his preachers, following his example, not only raise themselves to look for him on high but also humble themselves to proclaim him with moderation. See the apostle ascending: “If we are beside ourselves,” he says, “it is for God”; see him also descending: “if we are sober,” he says, “it is for you.” Let him also say through whom he ascended and descended: “For the love of Christ,” he says, “compels us, judging this: that one died for all; therefore 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.”

Whom do these holy spectacles in the holy Scriptures not delight? He who does not endure sound doctrine turns to fables. And those fables indeed entice, with a varied kind of delight, souls that are childish at whatever age of the body. But let us, now the body of Christ, recognize our voice in the psalm and say to him: “The unjust have told me of delights, but not as your law, O Lord.” Christ meets me and refreshes me everywhere in those books, everywhere in those Scriptures, as I traverse them and pant in that sweat of human condemnation, whether openly or in hidden ways. He himself, even by some difficulty in finding him, inflames my desire, so that I may eagerly drink in what I have found and keep it, stored in my marrow, for my health.

He beckons to me in Joseph, who, persecuted and sold by his brothers, is honored in Egypt after his labors. For we have learned of the labors of Christ in the world of the Gentiles, which Egypt signified, through the various sufferings of the martyrs; and now we see the honor of Christ in the same world, as he subjects all things to himself by the distribution of his grain. He beckons to me in the rod of Moses, which, turned into a serpent on the ground, figured his death, which came from the serpent; but—which is signified by its being seized by the tail—afterward, when all things have been done, at the end of the action, it returns by rising again to what it had been, where, death being consumed by the restoration of life, nothing of the serpent appears. We too, his body, roll along in the same mortality through the slippery courses of time; but at the very end, as at the tail of the world, seized by the hand, that is, by the power of judgment, so that it may slip away no further, we shall be restored, and, the last enemy, death, being destroyed, we shall rise and be the rod of the kingdom in the right hand of God.

Now about the exodus of Israel from Egypt, let not me speak but the apostle: “I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” By explaining one thing, he brought understanding into the rest. For if the rock is Christ because of its firmness, why is the manna not also Christ, as the living bread that came down from heaven? Those who truly feed on it live spiritually; for those who received the old figure carnally died. But when the apostle says, “they ate the same spiritual food,” he shows that this too is to be understood spiritually in Christ, just as he disclosed why he had called the drink spiritual when he added, “and the rock was Christ”; and once this was disclosed, everything shone. Why then is not the cloud also Christ, and the pillar, because it is upright and firm and supports our weakness, shining by night and not shining by day, so that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind? The Red Sea too is red: baptism, surely, consecrated by the blood of Christ. The enemies pursuing from behind die: our past sins.

The people is led through the desert: all the baptized, not yet enjoying the promised homeland, but hoping for what they do not see and waiting for it with patience, are as it were in the desert; and there are toilsome and dangerous temptations there, lest they return in heart to Egypt. Yet even there Christ does not desert them; for that pillar too does not withdraw. And the bitter waters become sweet by wood, because hostile peoples grow gentle when the sign of Christ’s cross is honored. And the twelve springs watering seventy palm trees prefigure apostolic grace watering the peoples in the number seven multiplied by ten, so that through the sevenfold gift of the Spirit the decalogue of the law may be fulfilled. And the enemy, trying to block the way, is overcome by the sign of the Lord’s cross in the outstretched hands of Moses. And the deadly bites of the serpents are healed when the bronze serpent is lifted up and looked upon. This is declared by the words of the Lord himself: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Do not even these things cry out? Is there such deafness in hard hearts? The passover is made by killing a sheep: Christ is killed, of whom it is said in the gospel, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.” Those who keep the passover are forbidden to break the bones: the bones of the Lord are not broken on the cross, and the evangelist testifies that this is why it was said, “You shall not break his bone.” The doorposts are smeared with blood so that destruction may be driven away: the people are marked on their foreheads with the sign of the Lord’s passion for the protection of salvation. The law is given there on the fiftieth day after the passover was kept: the Holy Spirit came on the fiftieth day after the Lord’s passion. The law is said there to have been written by the finger of God: the Lord says of the Holy Spirit, “By the finger of God I cast out demons.” And Faustus, with his eyes shut, cries that he has found nothing in those writings that pertains to the foretelling of Christ! But what wonder if he has eyes to read and no heart to understand, who, standing before the closed door of the divine secret, does not knock with the faith of piety but insults it with the arrogance of impiety? Let it be so indeed, let it be done; for it is just. Let the door of salvation be shut to the proud; let the meek come, whom the Lord teaches his ways; let him see these things in those books, and the rest, whether all or some, such that he may believe the like to be in all.

Let him see Jesus leading the people into the land of promise. For he was not called so at random from the beginning, but by this very dispensation his name was changed and he was called Jesus. Let him see the cluster of grapes from the land of promise hanging on wood. Let him see in Jericho, as in this mortal world, the harlot—of such women the Lord says that they go before the proud into the kingdom of heaven—letting down through the window of her house, as through the mouth of her body, the scarlet cord, which is surely a sign of blood, to confess for salvation on account of the remission of sins. Let him see the walls of that city, as the fortifications of the mortal world, fall when the ark of the covenant was carried around seven times; as now, through the times which slip by in the succession of seven days, the covenant of God goes around the whole world, so that at the end of time death, the last enemy, may be destroyed, and from the destruction of the ungodly a single house, as the one church, may be set free, cleansed from the foulness of sexual immorality through the window of confession, in the blood of remission.

Let him see first the times of the judges and afterward those of the kings, as there will be first judgment and then the kingdom; and, in those very times of judges and kings, Christ and the church figured again and again in many and various ways. Who was it in Samson, killing the lion that met him when he was going to the foreigners to seek a wife, but he who, about to call the church from the Gentiles, said, “Rejoice, for I have overcome the world”? What is meant by the honeycomb built in the mouth of the slain lion, but that, see, we behold the very laws of the earthly kingdom, which before had raged against Christ, now, their fierceness slain, even providing defenses for the preaching of the gospel’s sweetness? What is that woman full of confidence, piercing the enemy’s temples with wood, but the faith of the church destroying the kingdoms of the devil by the cross of Christ? What is the fleece soaked with rain while the threshing floor was dry, and afterward the floor soaked while the fleece was dry, but that at first the one nation of the Hebrews had, hidden in its holy rites, the mystery of God, which is Christ, while the whole world was empty of that mystery; but now the whole world has it in manifestation, and that nation has been emptied?

And what of the times of the kings, to mention a few things from there too? Does not the priesthood, changed at the very beginning to Samuel when Eli was rejected, and the kingdom, changed to David when Saul was rejected, cry out that a new priesthood and a new kingdom were foretold, the old being rejected, which was a shadow of the future, to come in our Lord Jesus Christ? Did not David himself, when he ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for any but the priests to eat, figure both as future in one person, that is, kingship and priesthood in the one Jesus Christ? When ten tribes were separated from the temple and two were left, does this not sufficiently indicate what the apostle says of that whole nation: “A remnant has been saved by the election of grace”?

Elijah is fed in the time of famine by ravens bringing bread in the morning and meat in the evening: and the Manichaeans do not understand Christ in those books, Christ who in a way hungers for our salvation, and to whom sinners, by confessing, bring a faith which now has the firstfruits of the Spirit, but at the end, as in the evening of the world, also the resurrection of the flesh. Elijah is sent to be fed by a foreign widow, who wanted to gather two sticks before she died: here the sign of the cross is expressed not only by the word “wood” but also by the number of the sticks. Her flour and her oil are blessed: the fruit and the cheerfulness of love, which does not fail when it is spent; for God loves a cheerful giver.

The beasts devour the boys who mocked Elisha and cried, “Baldhead, baldhead!”: those who with childish folly deride Christ crucified in the place of Calvary perish, seized by demons. Elisha sends his staff by his servant upon the dead boy, and he does not revive; he comes himself, joins and fits himself to the dead body, and the boy revives: the Word of God sent the law through his servant, and it did not profit the human race, dead in sins; yet it was not sent without reason, for he sent it who knew that it must be sent first. He came himself, conformed himself to us, being made a sharer of our death, and we were made alive. When trees were being cut down with axes, the iron, flying off the wood, sank into the depth of the river, and returned to the wood that Elisha threw in from above: so, when the presence of Christ, working through the body, was cutting down the ungodly Jews as unfruitful trees—for John had said of him, “See, the axe is laid to the root of the tree”—through the passion they inflicted he left the body itself, descending into the depths of the underworld; and when the body had been laid in the tomb above, the spirit returned to it as to its handle, and he rose. How many things I pass over, constrained by the need for brevity, those who read know.