Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.36–13.2

Now the deportation to Babylon itself, where the Spirit of God, through the prophet Jeremiah, commands them to go and to pray for those very people in whose kingdom they are sojourning, since in their peace would be the peace of these as well, and to build houses and plant new vineyards and plant gardens: who does not recognize what it prefigured, if he considers that the true Israelites, in whom there is no guile, passed over through the apostolic dispensation, with the sacrament of the gospel, into the kingdom of the Gentiles? Hence the apostle, as if repeating Jeremiah, says to us: “I desire, then, first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and for those who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and love. For this is good and acceptable before God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” From this, indeed, when they too believed, dwellings of peace were built, the basilicas of Christian congregations; and new vineyards were planted, the peoples of the faithful; and gardens were planted, where among all the herbs that grain of mustard seed reigns, under whose shade, spread far and wide, even the high-flying pride of the Gentiles finds refuge and rest, like the birds of the sky. And as for the return from captivity after seventy years, according to the prophecy of the same Jeremiah, and the renewal of the temple, what believer in Christ does not understand that, after the times have rolled by which run their course by the repetition of the sevenfold number of days, we too, that is, the church of God, must return from the pilgrimage of this world to that heavenly Jerusalem? Through whom, but through Jesus Christ, the true high priest, whose figure was borne by that Jesus who was the high priest of that time when the temple was built after the captivity? The prophet Zechariah saw him in filthy clothing, and, when the devil who stood to accuse him had been defeated, the filthy garment was taken from him and a garment of honor and glory was given him: as the body of Jesus Christ, which is the church, when the adversary has been overcome by judgment at the end of time, is taken up from the mourning of pilgrimage into the glory of everlasting salvation. This is also sung most plainly in the psalm of the dedication of the house: “You have turned my mourning into joy for me; you have torn off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, so that my glory may sing to you and I may not be pierced.”

Who could touch, however briefly, in the course of another work, on everything in those old books of the law and the prophets that announces Christ figuratively? Unless perhaps someone thinks it is done by ingenuity, that things which ran their course in the order of events in their own times are turned by interpretation to signify Christ. Jews or pagans might perhaps say this; but on those who want to be thought Christians apostolic authority presses its yoke, saying, “All these things happened to them in figure,” and, “All these things were figures of us.” For if Ishmael and Isaac, two men who were born, signify the two covenants, what is to be believed of so many deeds that were done from no natural custom and no necessity of business? Do they signify nothing? If any of us who do not know Hebrew letters, that is, the very characters of the sounds, saw them written on a wall in some honored place, who would be so senseless as to think the wall was painted that way, and not rather understand that it was writing, so that, even if he could not read it, he would not doubt that those marks signified something? So, first of all, everything in the old instrument of the holy Scriptures ought so to move anyone who reads it without a perverse mind that he does not doubt that it signifies something.

For example: if a woman had to be made as a helper for the man, did any necessity force, or any utility suggest, that she be made from the side of a sleeping man? If an ark had to be built to escape the flood, what need was there for its measurements to be precisely these, or even to be recorded in writings to be handed down to posterity for religion? If animals had to be shut in to restore their kinds, what need was there for that particular number, seven of the clean and two of the unclean? Necessity surely required that an entrance to the ark be made; but what required that it be made in the side, or even that this be committed to memory in writing? Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son: let him have been commanded this so that his obedience, proved by such a test, might become known to posterity; let the son more fittingly have carried the wood, so that his old father should not carry it; let him afterward not have been permitted to strike his son, so as not to strike himself with the heaviest bereavement: would Abraham have been less proved if they had returned without any blood shed? Or if the sacrifice now had to be completed, did it add anything to the victim that the ram should appear caught by its horns in the thicket? So all these things, when they are considered and found to be woven, as if superfluous, together with what was necessary, admonish the human mind, that is, the rational mind, first that they signify something, and then to seek what they signify.

So even the Jews themselves, who deride the Christ whose passion we have recognized there, though they refuse to see that he was foretold by such figures, not only of things said but also of things done, are forced to tell us what these things signify; for unless they admit that they signify something, they do not defend books of such divine authority from the disgrace of silly fables. A certain Philo saw this, a man of very liberal learning, one of them, whose eloquence the Greeks do not hesitate to rank equal with Plato’s; and he tried to interpret some things, not in order to understand Christ, in whom he had not believed, but, as it turned out, so that it might appear the more clearly how great a difference it makes whether you refer everything to Christ, for whose sake it was truly said so, or pursue any conjectures you please apart from him with whatever sharpness of mind, and how much force there is in what the apostle says: “When you pass over to the Lord, the veil will be taken away.” For, to mention one thing of this same Philo: wishing the ark of the flood to be understood as built according to the proportions of the human body, he treated everything member by member. And as he consulted most subtly even the rules of numbers, everything fitted, in a way that did not at all hinder understanding Christ, since the Savior of the human race also appeared in a human body, and yet did not compel it, since the human body is certainly that of other men too. But when he came to the door made in the side of the ark, every conjecture of human ingenuity failed. Still, in order to say something, he dared to believe, dared to say, dared to write that the lower parts of the body, where urine and dung are expelled, were signified by that door. No wonder that, not having found the door, he went so astray. But if he had passed over to Christ, the veil being taken away, he would have found the sacraments of the church flowing from the side of that man. For because it was foretold, “The two shall be in one flesh,” therefore in the ark too some things are referred to Christ and some to the church, which is the whole Christ. So also in the other interpretations of figures throughout the whole text of divine Scripture one may consider and compare the meanings of those who understand Christ there and of those who try to twist these things to anything else apart from Christ.

Nor do the pagans clamor against us in this; for they do not dare to object to our interpreting these things, not only said but also done, as taken figuratively for the understanding of Christ, especially since we also show fulfilled what we understand to have been foretold; while they, in order to commend their own fables in some way, try to refer them by interpretation to some physiologies or theologies, that is, natural or divine accounts—in part showing clearly enough what sort of things those fables are, in part concealing it, while they laugh in the theaters at what they venerate in the temples, too free in shamefulness, too slavish in superstition.

But whoever says to us that these things were not done or written in order that Christ might be understood in them will be struck—apart from that great harmony of things prefigured and now fulfilled—by other open and manifest prophetic predictions, such as this: “In your seed all nations shall be blessed.” This was said to Abraham, this to Isaac, this to Jacob. Hence not without reason he says, “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” intending, of course, to fulfil in the blessing of all nations what he promised from their seed. Nor without reason did Abraham himself, when his servant swore to him, order him to place his hand under his thigh, knowing that from there would come the flesh of Christ, in whom we do not now foretell that all nations are blessed, but see now what was then foretold.

I should like to know—or rather, I had better not know—with what blindness of mind Faustus read the passage where Jacob called his sons and said: “Gather together, that I may tell you what will befall you in the last days; gather together and hear, sons of Jacob; hear Israel your father.” Here surely no one doubts that the person of one prophesying is made plain. Let us hear, then, what he says to his son Judah, from whose tribe Christ came, of the seed of David according to the flesh, as apostolic teaching testifies. “Judah,” he says, “your brothers shall praise you; your hands shall be on the backs of your enemies; the sons of your father shall worship you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the shoot, my son, you have gone up; lying down, you slept like a lion and like a lion’s whelp; who will raise him up? A ruler shall not be lacking from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until the things laid up for him come; and he is the expectation of the nations, binding his colt to the vine and the foal of the ass with sackcloth; he will wash his robe in wine and his garment in the blood of the grape; his eyes gleam from wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk.” Let these things be false, let them be obscure, if they have not shone forth in Christ with most evident light: if his brothers the apostles and all his co-heirs do not praise him, seeking not their own glory but his; if his hands are not on the backs of his enemies; if whoever still oppose him are not pressed down and bowed to the ground as the Christian peoples grow; if the sons of Jacob have not worshipped him in the remnant that was saved by the election of grace; if he himself is not a lion’s whelp, since by being born he became a little child—this is why it was added, “from the shoot, my son.” For the reason is given why he is a whelp, in whose praise it is written elsewhere, “A lion’s whelp stronger than beasts of burden,” that is, though little, stronger than the greater; if he did not go up on the cross lying down, when with bowed head he gave up his spirit; if he did not sleep like a lion, because even in death itself he was not conquered but conquered, and like a lion’s whelp—for he died by the same nature by which he was born; if he did not raise him from the dead whom no man has seen or can see—for by saying, “Who will raise him up?” a reference to one unknown is sufficiently expressed; if a ruler was lacking from Judah and a leader from his thighs before the things promised, as if laid up, came at the opportune time. For there are most certain historical writings of the Jews themselves, by which it is shown that Herod, a foreigner, was the first king in the nation of the Jews, at the time when Christ was born. So a king from the seed of Judah was not lacking until the things laid up for him came. But because what was promised did not profit the believing Jews alone, see what follows: “and he is the expectation of the nations.” He bound his colt to the vine, that is, his own people, preaching in sackcloth and crying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” And we recognize the people of the Gentiles, made subject to him, as compared to the foal of the ass, on which he also sat, leading it into Jerusalem, that is, into the vision of peace, teaching the meek his ways. If he does not wash his robe in wine: for that robe is the glorious church, which he presents to himself without spot or wrinkle; to which it is also said through Isaiah, “If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” From what, but from forgiven sins? In what wine, then, but that of which it is said that it will be poured out for many for the remission of sins? For he is that cluster which hung on the wood. Therefore see here too what he adds: “and his garment in the blood of the grape.” And as for his eyes gleaming from wine, those members in his body recognize it to whom it is given, by a certain holy intoxication of a mind withdrawn from the temporal things that glide past below, to behold the eternal light of wisdom. Hence we mentioned a little earlier the words of Paul: “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.” These are the eyes gleaming from wine. But because there follows, “if we are sober, it is for you,” the little ones who still need to be nourished with milk are not left behind either, because here too there follows: “and his teeth whiter than milk.”

What do you answer to this, madmen? Surely these things are plain; surely they drive away not only the slanders of contradiction but even the fogs of doubt. Look first for such things in those books; believe such things first. I can mention them now neither all, since that is too much, nor many, since that takes long; nor would I want to mention only a few, lest those who do not read the books think they are the only ones, and lest a faithful and careful reader, when he has found many more evident ones, blame me for setting down these in particular, which happened to occur to me at present. For you will find many things which do not even need such a pointer as I used with the words of Jacob. For who now looks for an interpreter when he reads, “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,” and everything that is said there in many ways and plainly: that by his bruise we are healed, that he bore our sins? Who would not think the gospel is being sung: “They dug my hands and feet; they numbered all my bones; they looked and stared at me; they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots”? Who, unless excessively blind, does not now see fulfilled: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him”? What of that in the gospel, “My soul is sorrowful even to death,” and, “Now my soul is troubled”? Did it not first sound in the psalm: “I slept troubled”? And how did it come about that he slept? By whose voices was it shouted, “Crucify, crucify”? Does not the psalm too go on to foretell: “The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword”? But what did they do, what harm did they do to him who was to rise and ascend above the heavens and possess the whole world with the glory of his name? See whether the psalm kept silent about this beforehand; for there follows: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory over all the earth.” Who has ever doubted that this was said of Christ: “The Lord said to me, You are my son; today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession”? Who has been permitted to understand anyone else where Jeremiah says, of wisdom no doubt: “He gave her to Jacob his servant and to Israel his chosen one; after this he was seen on earth and lived among men”?

Who would not recognize the same Savior in Daniel, when the Son of Man is presented to the Ancient of Days and receives a kingdom without end, so that all nations may serve him? And indeed, if that passage which the Lord mentioned from the prophecy of the same Daniel—“When you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel, standing in the holy place; let the reader understand”—if, with the times of the weeks also computed, that number is examined, not only Christ but also the time when he had to come to suffer is found. And yet even without computing times we usually press the Jews with the manifest outcome of events, since our dispute with them is not whether our salvation is in Christ, but whether he has already come and suffered. And they are refuted by the most evident facts themselves: not only by the faith of all nations, which the same Scripture to which they are forced to yield foretold would serve him, and which so shines throughout the whole world that it strikes the eyes of all who evade it, but also by what has already happened in the Jewish nation itself: that the sanctuary was overthrown, that the sacrifice and the priest and the former anointing ceased—all of which Daniel then foretold would happen, when he clearly prophesied that the holy of holies would be anointed. Since, then, all these things have already happened, the anointed holy of holies is also demanded of them, and they find nothing to answer. And how would they dispute with us not about the Christ but only about his coming, unless they knew well that he was prophesied in their books? Why do they ask John whether he is the Christ? Why do they say to the Lord himself, “How long will you take away our soul? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly”? Why do Peter and Andrew and Philip say to Nathanael, “We have found the Messiah, which is interpreted Christ,” unless because this name was both known and expected in that nation through those writings? For no other nation had kings and priests as its christs and called them so, and their significative anointing could not rightly cease until he came who was foretold in them. For the Jews so knew those christs of theirs that they nevertheless hoped for one through whom at last they would be freed; but, blinded by the hidden justice of God, while they think only of his power, they did not understand the weakness in which he died for us. Hence we recognize as foretold of them those words in the book of Wisdom: “Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for there will be regard to his words. If he is truly the son of God, he will take him up and free him from the hands of his adversaries. These things they thought, and they erred; for their malice blinded them.” This can also be said most truly of these men, who, in so great a multitude of testimonies, so great an arrangement of things foretold, so great a manifestation of things fulfilled, still say that Christ was not prophesied in those Scriptures. If they say it again and again, we can bring proofs again and again, with the help of him who has supplied so great an abundance against the slanders of human error that we need not repeat what we have already mentioned.

Now as for another evasion of Faustus, which, I believe, when he too was struck by the most brilliant light of prophecy, he thought he had found to be very clever: I am reluctant even to refute it, lest he be thought to have said something because it was thought worth answering. For who but a complete madman would say that it is a sign of feeble faith not to believe in Christ without a witness? I should like these men to answer me: whom did they themselves believe about Christ? Or did they hear that voice from heaven, “This is my Son”? For Faustus, who will not have us believe human witnesses about Christ, bids us rather believe that voice; as if knowledge of that very voice had reached us without a human witness, when it is plain that it reached us in just that way, and the apostle says: “But how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? Or how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who announce peace, who announce good things!” You surely see how prophetic testimony accompanies the preaching of apostolic teaching. For so that what the apostles announced might not be despised or taken as fabulous, it was shown that these things had been foretold by the prophets; because, even though miracles attested them, there would not have been lacking—as some still mutter even now—those who would attribute all those things to magical power, unless such a thought were overcome by prophetic testimony. For no one, surely, would say that by magic arts they had appointed prophets for themselves, long before they were born, by whom they would be foretold. But, of course, Faustus forbids us to believe in the true Christ on the testimony of the Hebrew prophets, he who believed in a false Christ on the errors of the Persians.

But catholic teaching holds that the Christian mind must first be nourished by simple faith precisely in order to make it capable of understanding things above and eternal. For so the prophet also says: “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” And this is the very simple faith by which we believe, before we know the surpassing knowledge of the love of Christ, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God, that the dispensation of his humility, in which he was born and suffered as a man, was foretold so long before by the prophets, through a prophetic nation, a prophetic people, a prophetic kingdom, not without reason, but because in that foolishness which is wiser than men and in that weakness which is stronger than men something great lies hidden for our justification and glorification. And there all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, which are opened to no one who despises the food passed to him through a mother’s flesh, that is, the nourishment of milk through the apostolic and prophetic breasts, and who, disdaining it as infant fare, as if he were of great age, rushes into the poisons of heretics before the food of wisdom, for which he rashly thinks himself fit. So our saying that simple faith is necessary is not contrary to our saying that the prophets are to be believed; rather, it belongs to this very thing, that the prophets be believed before he who spoke through the prophets can be understood by a purified and strengthened mind.

“But if they prophesied Christ, they did not live in a way worthy of, or in keeping with, their prophesying.” How do you know this? Or can you judge what it is to live well or badly, you whose righteousness is that a melon which feels nothing should rather be helped, so that you may eat it, than that a hungry beggar should be given something to eat? But for the catholic little ones, before they know what the perfect righteousness of the human soul is, and how great a difference there is between that righteousness for which we sigh and this by which we live here, it is enough to think of those men what the soundness of apostolic teaching commends: that the righteous lives by faith. “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. For Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the Gentiles by faith, announced beforehand to Abraham, saying, In your seed all nations shall be blessed.” These are the apostle’s words. If at his voice, so clear and so well known to all, you would wake up from your most deceitful dreams, you would follow the footsteps of our father Abraham and be blessed in his seed with all nations. For he received, as the apostle says, the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith that he had in uncircumcision, so that he might be the father of all who believe in uncircumcision, that it might be reckoned to them also as righteousness; and the father of circumcision to those who are not only of the circumcision but who also follow the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham, which he had in uncircumcision. Since, then, the righteousness of his faith is set before us as an example to imitate, so that we too, justified by faith, may have peace with God, we ought to understand how he lived, not find fault with it, lest we slip out of the womb of mother church by miscarriage before we are formed by a stable conception and born perfect.

This is my brief answer to Faustus on behalf of the conduct of the patriarchs and prophets, in the voice of our little ones, among whom I would count myself as well, so long as I do not find fault with the life of the ancient saints, even if I do not understand how mystically they lived; whose life the apostles praised and preached to us in their gospel, as they in their prophecy foretold the apostles to come, so that the two Testaments might cry to one another, like the two seraphim: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.” But when Faustus begins to accuse the patriarchs and prophets, not with a general and indefinite censure, as he has done here, but by recounting their particular deeds, the Lord their God, who is also ours, will help me to answer each point fittingly and aptly. For now, Faustus the Manichaean blames those men, but the apostle Paul praises them; let each choose whom to believe.

Tenth. Faustus said: “How do you worship Christ when you reject the prophets, from whose predictions it is gathered that he was to come?” I do not know whether anyone could prove, once the matter came to be examined, that any prophets of the Hebrews announced our Christ, that is, the Son of God. Yet even if this were so, what is it to us? This reproach falls on those who, having perhaps been converted from Judaism to Christianity under the testimonies of the prophets, as you claim, afterwards neglected them, as men ungrateful for benefits. But we are Gentiles by nature, that is, what Paul calls the uncircumcision, born under another law and other foretellers, whom the Gentile world calls seers. And from these we were afterwards converted to Christianity, without first becoming Jews, so that we should rightly follow the faith of the Hebrew prophets in coming to Christianity; we were roused solely by the fame and the reputation for mighty works and the wisdom of our liberator Jesus. So if, while I was still lingering in my ancestral religion, a preacher had come and tried to commend Christ to me from the prophets, I should at once have thought him mad, for trying to support doubtful things by things more doubtful to me, a Gentile and a man of a very different religion. What then would he have had to do, but first persuade me that I must believe the prophets, and then believe Christ through the prophets? And for that very thing to happen, other prophets would likewise have been needed, to vouch for these. Therefore, if you think Christ is to be accepted through the prophets, through whom will you accept the prophets? Or will you say, “Through Christ in turn,” so that each commends the other, Christ the prophets and the prophets Christ? But a pagan, free from the claims of both, would neither believe the prophets speaking about Christ nor Christ speaking about the prophets. So whoever becomes a Christian from among the Gentiles owes the whole to nothing but his own faith. And to make what we say clearer by an example, let us suppose that we are now instructing some Gentile as a catechumen. Sitting with him, we say: “Believe in Christ, because he is God.” He says: “How do you prove this to me?” And we answer: “From the prophets.” When he asks again, “Which prophets?”, we answer, “The Hebrew ones.” And he says with a smile: “But I do not believe them at all.” And we answer: “What? Christ confirms them.” And he, laughing much more, says: “What? I do not believe him either.” What will happen when things have gone this way? Shall we not be stuck, and will he not laugh at us as foolish and go back to his own? So, as I said, the testimonies of the Hebrews contribute nothing to the Christian church, which consists more of Gentiles than of Jews. Certainly, if there are, as report has it, any predictions about Christ by the Sibyl, or by Hermes whom they call Trismegistus, or by Orpheus and other seers among the Gentiles, these could help us somewhat toward faith, who become Christians from among the Gentiles; but the testimonies of the Hebrews, even if true, are useless to us before faith and superfluous after faith, because before it we could not believe them, and now we believe them needlessly.

Augustine replied: Here the very long reply given earlier may help us to answer briefly. For I think that anyone who has read it already laughs at this man raving such things and still saying that the Hebrew prophets did not foretell Christ the Son of God, when it was in that nation alone that the very name “Christ” was most sacred, in king and in priest, and was not taken away from there before he himself came who was prefigured in them. Let them answer, moreover, where they learned the name of Christ. If from Mani, I ask how they themselves believed Mani, Africans believing a Persian, not to mention others; while Faustus blames Romans and Greeks or other nations if they believed the Hebrew prophets about Christ as foreigners, and says that the oracles of the Sibyl and of Orpheus, or of any other Gentile seers there may be, are better suited to them for believing in Christ. Nor does he notice that those are recited in no churches, while the Hebrew prophets are renowned among all nations and bring such swarms of believers to Christian salvation. To say that Hebrew prophecy is not fit for the Gentiles to believe in Christ, when he sees all nations believing in Christ through Hebrew prophecy, is laughable madness.