Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.3–13.15

A Christ such as was foretold by the Hebrews displeases you; and yet all the peoples of the Gentiles, among whom you think Hebrew prophecy has no weight of authority, believe in such a Christ as was foretold by the Hebrews, receiving, that is, the gospel which God had promised beforehand, as the apostle records, through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh. Hence the prophet Isaiah says: “There shall be the root of Jesse, who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope,” and: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted, “God with us.” Let these men not think that Christ was foretold by the Hebrew prophets only as a man; for Faustus seems to have touched on this when he says, “our Christ, the Son of God,” as if the Hebrews did not call their Christ the Son of God. See, we show from Hebrew prophecy that Christ, the son of the virgin, is God. For indeed, so that the carnal Jews too should not think that Christ was only this, that for our sake he was made man from the seed of David, the Lord himself admonishes them from the prophecy of that same David, asking them what they thought of the Christ, whose son they said he was. When they answered, “David's,” then, so that this alone should not be thought, as I said, and they should not fail to look to Emmanuel, which is interpreted “God with us,” he said: “How then does David himself in the Spirit call him Lord: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet’?” See, I say, we show from Hebrew prophecy that Christ is God; you show some prophecy of yours from which you learned the name of Christ.

For your Mani was not a prophet of a Christ to come: he calls himself his apostle, with a most shameless falsehood indeed; for it is established that this heresy arose not only after Tertullian but even after Cyprian. Yet all his letters begin thus: “Mani, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” Why did you believe him about Christ? What witness of his apostleship did he bring you? And the very name of Christ, which we know only as instituted in the kingdom of the Jews, in priests and kings, so that not only this or that man but the whole nation itself and the entire kingdom became a prophecy of Christ and of the Christian kingdom: why did this man seize it, why did he usurp it, he who forbids you to believe the Hebrew prophets, so that a false and deceitful apostle might make you deceitful disciples of a false Christ? Finally, so that no one should say to him, “You lie,” suppose he had produced for you some prophets who, by his account, foretold Christ: what will you do with someone like the man Faustus proposed as an example for instruction, who would believe neither them nor him? Or will he call our apostles as witnesses for himself? He will not, I think, produce men, but he will open books; and he will find them opened not for him but against him. For there we read and teach that Christ was born of the virgin Mary, there that the Son of God was made from the seed of David according to the flesh. If he says these books have been falsified, he will be attacking the credibility of his own witnesses; but if he produces other manuscripts which he claims are our apostles', how will he himself give them an authority which he did not receive through the churches of Christ founded by the apostles themselves, so that it might pass on from there to later generations with a firm commendation? How does a man whom I do not believe bring me scriptures through which I am to believe about him, and himself try to give them authority, when I do not believe him?

But if you believed report about Christ (for Faustus, hemmed in by great difficulties, touched on this too in passing, so as not to be forced either to produce those books which have no authority, or to be bound to those whose authority is against him), if, then, you believed report about Christ, see whether it is a fit witness; consider carefully where you are throwing yourselves. For report spreads many evil things about you, which you do not want believed. What reason is there, then, to want report to be truthful about Christ, when you want it to be lying about you? What of the fact that you even contradict the report of Christ? For the report that is clearer and more powerful, that holds the ears and minds and tongues of all nations, is the one which, as Christ from the seed of David is spread abroad according to the Hebrew scriptures, fulfils what is written there as promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: “In your seed all nations shall be blessed.” What then do you answer: whom did you believe about Christ, you who do not like foreign witnesses? Moreover, the authority of our books, strengthened by the agreement of so many nations through the successions of apostles, bishops and councils, is against you; while yours has none, since it is put forward by so few, and by those who worship a lying God and Christ. Hence it tells against their own lying doctrine, unless they too are held to be liars as imitators of their God and Christ. And report itself, if consulted, both proclaims you to be very bad men and does not cease to preach against you a Christ from the seed of David. You did not hear the voice of the Father from heaven; you did not see the works of Christ, by which he testified about himself; the manuscripts in which these things are written you pretend to accept, so as to deceive under a Christian appearance; yet so that they may not be read against you, you say they are falsified. You quote from them Christ saying, “If you do not believe me, believe the works,” and, “I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me,” and you do not want quoted against you from them: “Search the scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life; they bear witness about me,” and, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me too; for he wrote about me,” and, “They have Moses and the prophets there; let them hear them,” and, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead.” Where did you come out from? On what do you rely? You reject scriptures confirmed and commended by such great authority; you do no miracles. And if you did them, we should beware of them too in you, since the Lord forewarned us, saying: “Many false christs and false prophets will arise and will do many signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect; see, I have told you beforehand.” So far did he wish nothing to be believed against the confirmed authority of the scriptures, which proves its credibility by the facts themselves, which shows these things fulfilled and accomplished through the succession of times, which foretold them so long before they happened.

It remains for you to say that you offer a reason so certain and unanswerable that, the truth being made plain by itself, it needs no authority of a witness, no truth of a miracle. What do you say? What do you bring forward? What reason, what truth? That fable is long and empty, a childish game, a woman's pastime, an old wife's raving, with a maimed beginning, a rotten middle and a ruinous end. For when you are asked, from its beginning: “What was the race of darkness going to do to the immortal, invisible, incorruptible God, if he had not chosen to fight with it?” and from its middle: “How is God incorruptible and undefilable, whose members you crush in fruits and vegetables by eating and digesting them, in order to purify them?” and from its end: “What did the wretched soul do, that it should be punished in the globe of darkness with a perpetual bond, when, stained by another's fault and not its own, it could not be cleansed because its God failed it, by whose sending it was defiled?”, then, while you hesitate and find nothing to answer, your so many and so large and so costly manuscripts are looked upon, and one grieves much for the labours of the copyists, the purses of the wretched and the bread of the deceived. If, then, neither the antiquity of the scriptures' authority, nor the power of miracles, nor soundness of morals, nor the truth of reason supports you, go away confounded, and come back confessing that he is the Christ, the Saviour of all who believe in him, whose name and whose church the present times display just as past times announced them; not through any man coming out of cavernous hiding places, but through a certain nation and a certain kingdom extended and established for this purpose: that there all things concerning him should be foreshadowed in figures, which are now recognized as expressed in fact, and that there should be written, foretold by the prophets, what is now made good as preached by the apostles.

So then, set before us some Gentile to be instructed, in whose case Faustus laughed at us as failing, where it is he himself who has failed, to be lamented rather than laughed at. For if we say to a Gentile, “Believe in Christ, because he is God,” and he answers, “On what ground do I believe?”, and, when the authority of the prophets is brought forward, says that he does not believe them, because they are Hebrews and he is a pagan, we show the credibility of the prophets from the things which they sang of as to come and which are seen to have come. For I believe it would not escape him what great persecutions the Christian religion first endured from the kings of this world; or if it did escape him, it would easily be proved to him from the history of the nations itself and from the imperial laws committed to writing and to memory. When he learned that this had been foretold so long before by the prophet who says: “Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ” (and that this was not said of David himself is easily seen in that same psalm, for there is also said what confounds men however stubborn by the plain evidence of the facts: “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”; which no one doubts was not granted to the nation of the Jews, in which David reigned, but has been fulfilled with the name of Christ occupying all nations far and wide), then, I believe, he would be moved, when he heard from here many other things too from the prophets which it would take long to go through now. He would see also the very kings of the earth now salutarily subjected to Christ's rule and all nations serving him, and there would be read to him from the psalm what was foretold so long before: “All the kings of the earth shall worship him; all nations shall serve him.” And if he chose to read that whole psalm, which is spoken figuratively as of Solomon, he would find Christ truly the peaceful king (for this is what the name Solomon means), in whom he would recognize fulfilled all that is said there, things far removed from that man Solomon, king of Israel. Likewise that psalm where God is said to be anointed by God, and Christ is certainly declared by that very anointing, and the same Christ is most plainly shown to be God, when God anointed is spoken of: if he chose to consider what is said there of Christ and what of the church itself, which he would read foretold there and see fulfilled throughout the world; he would see also the very idols of the Gentiles perishing so from the world through the name of Christ, and would learn that this very thing was foretold by the prophets; he would hear Jeremiah saying: “Thus shall you say to them: Let the gods who did not make heaven and earth perish from the earth and from under heaven.” Again, when he heard the same prophet in another place saying: “Lord, my strength and my help and my refuge in the day of evils, to you the nations shall come from the end of the earth and shall say: How false were the idols our fathers possessed, and there is no profit in them! Shall a man so make gods, and they are not gods? Therefore, behold, I will show them in that time; I will show them my hand, and they shall know my power, for I am the Lord”: hearing these things from prophetic scripture and seeing what I describe over the whole earth, how he would be moved to faith, when we prove this too by the facts themselves, since we know that the hearts of the faithful are strengthened in this way by prophecy written before the times and fulfilled in these times!

And so that he should not think Christ a man, as some great men have been, the same prophet would shake this out of his thinking. For there it follows, and he says: “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man, and makes flesh his arm's strength, and whose heart departs from the Lord; and he shall be like the tamarisk that is in the desert; he shall not see when good things come, and he shall dwell among the wicked in a desert land, in a salt land which shall not be inhabited”; and: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his hope; and he shall be like a fruitful tree beside the water, and he shall send out his roots into the moisture; he shall not fear when the heat comes, and there shall be leafy shoots on him; in the year of drought he shall not fear and shall not fail in bearing fruit.” Here, certainly, since he called cursed the one who puts his hope in man, and unfolded that curse in prophetic likenesses, and called blessed the one who trusts in the Lord, and wove that blessing likewise in fitting likenesses, our man might perhaps be troubled at how, so that he should not put his hope in man, we announce Christ to him as God, and on the other hand call him man, not from his own nature but from our mortality which he took up. For so some erred by believing Christ God and denying him man; and again some, by thinking him man and denying him God, either despised him or, putting their hope in a man, fell into that curse. If then this Gentile were troubled, and said that this prophet had spoken against our faith, because we, following the apostolic teaching, call Christ not only God, so that hope may be placed in him most securely, but also the mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, whereas the prophet spoke only of God and made no mention of human nature: in the same place he would hear the voice of the same prophet admonishing and correcting him: “The heart is heavy in all things, and he is man, and who shall know him?” He is man precisely so that those heavy of heart might be healed by faith through the form of a servant, and might know him as God who for their sake was made man, so that their hope might not be in a man but in the man who is God. And yet, “the heart is heavy in all things, and he is man,” taking the form of a servant; “and who knows him?” who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. “And he is man,” because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; “and who knows him?” because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And truly the heart is heavy in all things; for even in his disciples that heart was heavy, when he said to them: “Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me?” For what does “I have been with you so long” mean, but what is said here: “and he is man”? And what else does “and you have not known me” mean, but what is said here: “and who knows him”? Whom, but him who says: “He who has seen me has seen the Father too”? So that our hope may not be in man, because of that curse proclaimed through the prophet, but in the man who is God, that is, in the Son of God, the Saviour Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and men; both he than whom the Father is greater because of the form of a servant, and he who is equal to the Father because of the form of God.

Isaiah also says: “The insolence of men shall be humbled and shall fall, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day; and they shall hide all things made by hands in caves and in clefts of the rocks and in caverns of the earth, from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the majesty of his power, when he rises to shatter the earth. For in that day man shall cast away the abominations of gold and silver which they made, to worship vain and harmful things.” And perhaps this Gentile whom we are instructing, whom Faustus said would declare with a laugh, “I do not believe the Hebrew prophets,” has himself hidden some idols made by hand in a cave or in a cleft of a rock or in a cavern of the earth, or knows that some friend of his has done so, or knows that it has been done in his city or on his estate, from the face of the fear of the Lord, who, through the kings of the earth who, according to the same prophecy, now serve and worship him, shatters the earth with very severe laws, that is, breaks the boldness of the earthly heart. How then can he say, “I do not believe the Hebrew prophets,” when he perhaps recognizes fulfilled in himself what was foretold long ago by the Hebrew prophets?

There was more reason to fear that, surrounded by such evidence of the facts, he might perhaps say that the Christians composed these writings after these things began to happen throughout the world, so that they might be thought to have been foretold beforehand by God and not be despised as done rashly by human means. This would be something to fear, were it not that the people of the Jews is widely scattered and widely known: that Cain who received a mark so that no one should kill him, and that Ham, the servant of his brothers, loaded with carrying the books by which they are taught. For by their manuscripts we prove that these things were not written by us as men prompted by the outcome of events, but were foretold long ago in that kingdom and preserved, and are now made plain and fulfilled. In them, too, the things that are less clear there, because they happened to those people in figure, but were written for our sake, on whom the end of the ages has come, are now illuminated and resolved; and what was darkened by the shadows of things still to come is now made plain by the light of things accomplished.

Perhaps he might also say that he was disturbed by this: that those very people in whose books these things are found foretold, which are now seen fulfilled, do not share the fellowship of the same gospel with us. But when he was taught that this too was foretold by the same prophets, who is so mad as not to see how much he would be moved toward faith? Who so shameless as to pretend not to see it? For who would doubt that this was prophesied of the Jews, when Isaiah says: “The ox knew its owner and the ass its master's manger; but Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood me”; or what the apostle recalls: “All day long I stretched out my hands to a people that does not believe and contradicts”; and above all: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear and not understand,” and many things of this kind? And if he said, “What then did the Jews sin, if God blinded them so that they should not know Christ?”, we would show him, as far as we could in instructing an untaught man, that the just punishment of this blindness comes from other hidden sins known to God. We would demonstrate not only that the apostle said of certain people, “For this reason God handed them over to the desire of their hearts,” or “to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting,” wishing to show that certain open sins come as the punishment of certain hidden ones, but also that the prophets themselves did not pass this over in silence. For, not to go further, the same Jeremiah, in that very place where he says, “and he is man, and who knows him?”, so that the Jews should not be excused by this very fact that they did not know him (for if they had known, as the apostle says, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory), goes on to show that it was due to their hidden desert that they did not know him. For he says: “I am the Lord, who search the hearts and test the reins, to give to each according to his way and according to the fruit of his pursuits.”

Again, if that Gentile were disturbed by this, that even those who are called Christians break away into many and various heresies, we would teach him that this too was not passed over by the Hebrew prophets. For as though it followed that, once the Jews had been shown in their blindness, it would come into his mind that many under the Christian name also stray from the Christian fellowship itself, Jeremiah himself, as if showing us the order of instruction, immediately added: “The partridge cried out; it gathered what it did not hatch, making its riches not with judgment.” For it is well known how the partridge, an exceedingly quarrelsome creature, runs into the snare out of sheer eagerness for the quarrel. For heretics do not love to debate, but to win in any way at all by the most shameless obstinacy, so as to gather, as he said here, what they did not hatch. For the Christians whom they chiefly lead astray by the name of Christ they find already born through the gospel of Christ himself, and they make them their riches, not indeed with judgment, but with thoughtless rashness. For they do not understand that the true and saving and, in a sense, genuine and rooted Christian fellowship is there from which they separated those whom they gathered to their riches. And since the apostle says of such men: “For as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth, men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; but they will not go further, for their madness will be plain to all, as theirs also was,” this prophet too goes on and says of the partridge which gathered what it did not hatch: “In the middle of its days they will forsake it, and at its end it will be a fool.” That is, he who at first led astray as if by the promise and display of excellent wisdom will be a fool, that is, will appear a fool. For to those for whom he was at first wise, he will then be a fool, when he appears so, because his madness will be known to all.

And as though the man we are instructing were to ask and say: “By what plain sign, then, while I am still a little one and not yet able to discern the clear truth among so many errors, by what plain mark shall I hold to the church of Christ, in whom I am now compelled to believe by so plain a fulfilment of things foretold?”, the same prophet goes on and, as if taking up the movements of his mind in perfect order, teaches him that the church of Christ which was foretold is the very one which stands out and is visible to all. For it is the seat of glory, of which the apostle says: “The temple of God is holy, which you are.” Hence the prophet says: “But the seat of glory is exalted, our sanctification.” For because of these movements of little ones, who can be led astray by men, the Lord too, foreseeing the manifestation of the church's brightness, says: “A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden,” since indeed the seat of glory is exalted, our sanctification, so that those may not be listened to who draw people into religious schisms, saying, “See, here is the Christ; see, there.” For they point to parts, saying, “See here, see there,” whereas that city is on a mountain. What mountain, but the one which, according to the prophecy of Daniel, grew from a little stone and became a great mountain, so that it filled the whole earth? Nor let those be listened to who, in the name of a supposedly secret and hidden truth of a few men, say, “See, in the inner rooms; see, in the desert,” because a city set on a mountain cannot be hidden, because the seat of glory is exalted, our sanctification.

When, therefore, this Gentile saw, by these and other such testimonies of the prophets, things foretold and now fulfilled concerning the persecution by kings and peoples, the faith of kings and peoples, the abolition of idols, the blindness of the Jews, the evidence of the manuscripts kept by them, the madness of the heretics, the excellence of the holy church of true and genuine Christians, what would he find more worthy of belief than those prophets, so as to choose to believe them about the divinity of Christ? For if, before these things happened, I were to press the Hebrew prophets on a Gentile, so that he should believe from them that things would come which he did not yet see accomplished, he might perhaps rightly say: “What have I to do with these prophets, when I am not shown how I am to prove them truthful?” But when so many great things which they foretold have already been brought to effect and made manifest, plainly, if he did not wish to be perverse, he would in no way despise either these things, which deserved to be commended as foreseen and foretold so long before and with such great preparation, or those by whom they could be foreseen and foretold. For there are none whom we more wisely believe, whether about past things that happened long ago or about future things that have not yet happened, than those who have proved to us the truth of their words by so many and such great things foretold by them which have now come to pass.

As for the Sibyl, or the Sibyls, and Orpheus, and some Hermes or other, and any other seers or theologians or sages or philosophers of the Gentiles who are said to have foretold or told true things about the Son of God or about God the Father, this has some value for refuting the vanity of the pagans, but not for embracing their authority; since we show that we worship that God about whom even those could not keep silent who partly dared to teach their fellow Gentile peoples to worship idols and demons, and partly did not dare to forbid it. But those holy authors of ours, with God commanding and helping, extended and governed that people, that commonwealth, such a kingdom, in which what was religion to these men would have been sacrilege. So if any there slipped into the worship of images and demons, they were either struck by punishment under the very laws of their commonwealth or restrained by the free thunder of prophetic voices. For one God was worshipped by them, who made heaven and earth, with a prophetic rite indeed, that is, one signifying things to come, a rite to be abolished when those things had come which it signified were to come; since that kingdom itself was one great prophet, in which king and priest were anointed with a mystical meaning. And this was not taken away, even from the Jews themselves, who did not understand and were therefore unwilling, until there came he who was anointed with spiritual grace, God above his fellows, that holy of holies, who is both the true king by caring for us and the true priest by offering himself for us. Therefore, as great as is the difference, concerning Christ's coming, between the preaching of the angels and the confession of the demons, so great is the difference between the authority of the prophets and the curiosity of the sacrilegious.