Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.24–16.33

As for the curse on the one who hangs on a tree, we have already said above as much as seemed enough. But that Moses did not command against Christ when he said that a prophet or ruler of the people was to be killed who wished to turn the children of Israel away from their God or to break any of the commandments, is clear enough from the many things we have already treated, and will become clearer and clearer to one who considers more and more the words and deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ: for Christ did not wish to turn any of them away from their God. For the God whom Moses had commanded them to love and worship is certainly the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, whom the Lord Jesus Christ mentions with the same commendation, and by whose authority he refutes the error of the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, where he says: “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God spoke to Moses from the bush: I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to him.” Fittingly, then, the Manichaeans are now refuted by the same voice by which the Sadducees were refuted then; for they too deny the resurrection itself, in a different way indeed, but still deny it. Again, when, praising the centurion's faith, he said, “Amen I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel,” he added and said: “And I tell you that many will come from east and west and recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will go into the outer darkness.” If then, as Faustus cannot deny, Moses commended to the people of Israel no God but the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Christ by these and other testimonies commends him without hesitation, he did not try to turn that people away from their God; rather he threatened that they would go into the outer darkness because he saw them turned away from their God, in whose kingdom he says the nations called from the whole world will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, for no other reason than that they had held the faith of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Hence the apostle too says: “The scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the Gentiles by faith, announced beforehand to Abraham, saying: In your seed all nations shall be blessed”; namely, that those should be blessed in the seed of Abraham who imitated the faith of Abraham. So Christ did not wish to turn the Israelites away from their God, but rather rebuked them because they were turned away from him. And whoever thinks that the Lord broke any of the commandments given through Moses, it is no wonder if he thinks what the Jews thought; but he errs for the very reason that the Jews too erred in this. Where Faustus mentions the commandment itself which he would have us believe the Lord broke, there we must show how he is deceived, as we have already shown above where it was needed. For now I say this: if the Lord had broken any of those commandments, he would not have rebuked the Jews on this very point. When they cavilled that his disciples ate with unwashed hands and so transgressed, not the commandment of God, but the traditions of the elders, he said to them: “Why do you too transgress the commandment of God in order to establish your traditions?” And he mentions the commandment of God itself, which we know was commanded through Moses. For he went on to say: “For God said, Honour father and mother, and, Whoever curses father or mother shall surely die. But you say: Whoever says to father or mother, May the gift that is from me benefit you, has not honoured his father; and you have made void the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” See in this how much he teaches us: both that he does not turn the Jews away from their God, and that he not only does not break his commandments but also rebukes those by whom they are broken, and that it was none other than God who commanded these things through Moses.

Therefore, since we believe that everything Moses wrote concerns the commending of Christ, and since we cannot demonstrate this in this work, we promised to show it in those things which Faustus picked out from that scripture to refute or find fault with. So it is rightly demanded of us as a debt that we show that this too, Moses' command that a prophet or ruler should be killed who wished to turn them away from their God or to break any of the commandments, concerns the keeping of the faith which is learned in the church of Christ. For by the prophetic Spirit, with God speaking to him, he saw that many heretics would arise, teachers of various errors, against the teaching of Christ, who would not preach the Christ who is the true Christ. For the true one is he who was foretold through the prophecies given out through the same Moses and the other holy men of that nation. So whoever wished to teach another, Moses commanded him to be killed. And what else does the Catholic tongue do now, but that, by the spiritual sword sharpened on both edges with the two testaments, all are slain who wish to turn us away from our God or to break any of the commandments? Among them falls above all Mani himself, when his error is destroyed by the assertion of the truth of the law and the prophets; for he wishes to turn us away from our God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, whom Christ commends, and wishes to break the commandments of the law, in whose very figures we know Christ was prophesied.

Now as for that argument, I do not know whether to call it most obtuse or most fraudulent; for Faustus had wit, so I rather think he wished to throw a mist over a less attentive reader than that he did not see what I shall say. For he says: “And if he wrote these things not at all about Christ, either you will give others or there will be none.” This proposition is true; but it was incumbent on him to show both that these things were not written about Christ and that others cannot be given. He did neither of these, for we have shown how these things can be taken of Christ, and above we gave many others which can have no meaning except of Christ. So there is no reason, Faustus, for you to conclude that nothing was written by Moses about Christ. For attend to what you say: “And if he wrote these things not at all about Christ,” you say, “either you will give others or there will be none.” You speak truly. So, since we have taught that these things were written about Christ or because of Christ, and have given many others, it is rather your argument that will be nothing. And these things which you mentioned you at least tried to show were not written about Christ, though you did not succeed; but as for what you added, “either you will give others or there will be none,” you ought first to have demonstrated that we cannot give others, so as to infer safely that there are none. But as it is, as if your little book were going to have hearers so deaf or readers so blind that no one would notice what you passed over, you rushed to say: “If there are none, neither could Christ assert what exists nowhere; so, if Christ did not assert it, that passage will be established as false.” O man who thinks of himself as speaker and does not think of another as contradictor! Where is your sharpness? Or could you not do otherwise in a bad cause? But the bad cause compelled you to talk emptily; yet no one compels you to have a bad cause. For what if we give others? Then certainly there will not be none, since there will be some. And if there are some, Christ could assert what is. So, if Christ could assert this, it is not established that that passage of the gospel is false. Go back, then, to your proposition, in which you said, “either you will give others or there will be none,” and see that you have not shown that we will give no others. See also how many others we have already mentioned above, and notice what follows from this: namely, that it is not false that we read in the gospel that Christ said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me too; for he wrote about me.” And the authority of the gospel is so eminent and its truth so well founded that, even if through the slowness of our understanding we found nothing written by Moses about Christ, we ought to believe not only that there are some things, but that everything he wrote concerns Christ, because he did not say, “and he wrote about me,” but “he wrote about me.” But as it is, even if this passage of the gospel were to be doubted (far be it!), all that doubt would be removed once so many testimonies about Christ have been found in the writing of Moses; and since the passage of the gospel is not to be doubted, even if those testimonies had not been found, it would still be necessary to believe that they exist.

For as to what you add, “that the tradition of Christ and of Moses was unlike, and therefore it was not likely that if they believed Moses they would believe Christ; rather it followed that if the Jews believed one, they would necessarily resist the other,” you would certainly not say this if you raised the eye of consideration a little and looked at the whole world, without the blindness of contention, in learned and unlearned men, Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, to whom the apostle said he was a debtor, believing Moses and Christ together. If, then, it was not likely that the Jews would believe Moses and Christ alike, it is much less likely that the whole world would believe Moses and Christ alike. But since we see all nations believing both, and holding his prophecy in agreement with this one's gospel with a most firm and widespread faith, one nation was not called to anything impossible when it was told, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me too”; rather the hardness of the Jews is to be marvelled at and rebuked more strongly, who did not do what we see the whole world has done.

For whatever you say about the Sabbath, about circumcision of the flesh, and about the distinction of foods, that the tradition of Moses was one thing and what Christians learned through Christ another, we have already shown above that, as the apostle says, all these things were figures of us. So it is not a different teaching, but a different time. For it was one time when these things had to be foretold through figurative prophecies, and it is another when they must now be fulfilled through the truth made plain and rendered. But what wonder if the Jews, understanding the Sabbath in a fleshly way, resisted Christ, who was now conveying it spiritually? Answer the apostle, if you can, who testifies that the rest of that day is a shadow of what was to come. But if they resisted Christ through not understanding the true Sabbath, do not you resist him, and understand true innocence. For in that very place where Jesus is chiefly thought to be a destroyer of the Sabbath, when his disciples, passing through the grainfield and hungry, plucked ears and ate them, he called them innocent, answering the Jews: “If you knew what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would never have condemned the innocent.” For they ought rather to have pitied the hungry, since these did this compelled by hunger. But among you, whoever plucks ears is reckoned a murderer, not by the tradition of Christ, who calls this innocence, but by the tradition of Mani. Or did the apostles perhaps show mercy to those ears, so as to purify the members of God by eating them, as your fable has it? Then you are cruel, who do not do this. But Faustus, it seems, knows how to destroy the Sabbath, because he knows that the power of God works always and tirelessly. Let those say this who understand that God makes all times without a temporal will. That is too much for you, who say that the rest of your god was shaken off by the rebellion of the race of darkness and disturbed by the sudden attack of enemies. Or did he, foreseeing from eternity that this would happen, never have rest, because he was never secure, thinking that he would wage so heavy a war with such ruin and loss to his members?

Moreover, that Sabbath which you ignorantly and impiously deride would not have been so attested by Christ, unless it too had its meaning among the prophecies written about Christ. For since he suffered of his own will, as you yourself put it in his praise, and therefore had the times of his passion and resurrection in his power, he brought it about that his flesh rested in the tomb on the Sabbath from all its works, so that, rising on the third day, which we call the Lord's day, and which is counted as the eighth after the Sabbath, he might declare that circumcision on the eighth day also belonged to prophesying him. For what does circumcision of the flesh signify? What, but the stripping off of the mortality which we bear from fleshly generation? For this reason the apostle says: “Stripping himself of the flesh, he made an example of principalities and powers boldly, triumphing over them in himself.” For when he says that he stripped himself of the flesh, we understand by flesh in that place the mortality of the flesh, according to which this body is properly named flesh. This mortality was properly called flesh because it will not be in that immortality of the resurrection. This is why it is written: “Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God.” With these words you are accustomed to slander our faith, by which we believe in the future resurrection of this body, which has already gone before in God himself; and you pass over what follows, in which the apostle plainly explains what he means. For, wishing to show what he called flesh in that place, he immediately added: “nor shall corruption possess incorruption.” For he says that this body, which because of mortality is properly called flesh, is changed in the resurrection, so that it is no longer corruptible and mortal. And lest this be thought said on our own conjecture, consult his very words that follow. “See,” he says, “I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.” So, to be clothed with immortality, it is stripped of mortality. This is the mystery of circumcision, which was commanded to be done on the eighth day, and on the eighth day, that is, the Lord's day after the Sabbath, was fulfilled now in truth by the Lord. Hence it is said: “Stripping himself of the flesh, he made an example of principalities and powers.” For through this mortality the devilish powers, envious of us, had dominion over us; and he is said to have made an example of them because in himself, our head, he gave an example of what will be accomplished in his whole body, that is, the church to be freed from the power of the devil, at the last resurrection. This is our faith. And since, as Paul recalls the prophetic testimony, the just man lives by faith, this is our justification. For even pagans believe that Christ died; but that Christ rose is the faith proper to Christians. “For if you confess with your mouth,” says the apostle, “that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Because, then, we are justified by this faith in the resurrection, this too is said apostolically of Christ: that he died for our offences and rose for our justification. And because this resurrection, which, when believed, justifies us, was prefigured by that circumcision on the eighth day, the apostle says of Abraham himself, to whom it was first given: “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith.” So among other prophetic figures Moses also wrote this circumcision about Christ, of whom Christ himself says: “For he wrote about me.” As for the Lord's saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel sea and land to make one proselyte; and when you have made him, you make him a son of gehenna twice as much as yourselves,” he did not say this because the proselyte is circumcised, but because he imitates their morals, from imitating which he restrains his own, saying: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on the chair of Moses: do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say, and do not do.” In these words of the Lord you ought to notice both things: how great honour was paid to the teaching of Moses, in whose chair even bad men sitting were compelled to teach good things; and how the proselyte became a son of gehenna, namely, not by hearing the words of the law from the Pharisees but by following their deeds. So what Paul says could have been said then to the circumcised proselyte: “Circumcision indeed is of value, if you keep the law.” But because he imitated the Pharisees in not keeping the law, he became a son of gehenna; and for this reason, I think, twice as much as they, because he neglected to fulfil what he had taken on of his own will, not born of Jews but having become a Jew by choice.

But what did you mean when you said, without regard and insultingly, that Moses sits as judge like a glutton, and orders some things to be licked up as clean and others as unclean not even to be touched? When it belongs rather to a glutton to distinguish nothing, or, if he does distinguish, to choose the tastier. Or do you say this so that your continence may seem admirable to the unlearned, as if from early youth, as though you did not know, or had already forgotten, how much more pleasantly pork tastes than mutton? But since Moses wrote these things too about Christ in prophetic figures, signifying by the flesh of animals men either to be incorporated into Christ's body, which is the church, or to be rejected, he has figured you too among the unclean, who do not agree with the Catholic faith for this reason, that you neither chew over the word of wisdom, nor have, as it were, the split hoof, since you do not distinguish the two testaments, the Old and the New, in harmony. And who could bear that you too were not ashamed to follow the deceit of your Adimantus?

For you too say “that Christ taught the indifference of foods in such a way that he removed all meats entirely from his own disciples, but generally allowed to worldly people everything that could be eaten, and asserted that nothing entering the mouth polluted them, because what comes out of the mouth thoughtlessly is all that pollutes a man.” These words of yours are all the more shameless as the lie with which they are produced and expressed is more open. First, because, according to Christ's sentence, if only the evil things that come out of the mouth pollute a man, why did not only these pollute Christ's disciples too, so that it was necessary to forbid them meats as unclean? Or are worldly men not polluted by what enters the mouth, but by what comes out of it? Then they are better protected against uncleanness than the saints, if both what enters and what comes out can defile the saints. I should like these men to tell me: what did Christ eat and drink, who, in comparison with John, who neither ate nor drank, said that he himself ate and drank? For when he rebuked the perversity of men seeking pretexts for slander on both sides, he said: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” And we know John's food and drink; for it was not said that he did not drink at all, but that he did not drink wine and strong drink: so he drank water. Nor was his food nothing at all, but locusts and wild honey. Why then was he said to be “neither eating nor drinking,” unless because he did not use the diet which the Jews used? So unless the Lord had used it, he would not have been called “eating and drinking” in comparison with him. Or perhaps because the Lord ate bread and vegetables, which John did not eat? It would be strange if he who ate locusts and honey were called not eating, and he who was content with bread and vegetables were called eating. But suspect what you like about the foods; certainly he would not have been called a drinker and a drunkard if he did not drink wine. Why then do you think this too unclean? For you do not forbid touching these things for the sake of continence and the discipline of taming the body, but because they are unclean; for you say they are the filth and gall of the race of darkness, against the apostle, who says: “All things are clean to the clean.” See, these men dare to say that Christ, the teacher of the indifference of foods, nevertheless forbade his disciples those things which they themselves think unclean. Show where he removed these things from his disciples, deceitful, wicked men; yet so blinded by the providence of God the avenger that you even remind us of the means by which you are refuted. My mind will not let me rest unless I insert the whole passage of the gospel which this man wished to set against Moses, for examination, so that we may see there how false it is, as first Adimantus and now Faustus said, that the Lord Jesus removed meats from his disciples as food and allowed them generally to worldly people. For when he had answered those who cavilled that they ate with unwashed hands, the gospel goes on thus: “And calling the crowds, he said to them: Hear and understand. Not what enters the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth defiles a man. Then the disciples came and said to him: Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” Here certainly, when addressed by the disciples, he ought, as these men would have it, to have taught them specially to abstain from all meats, so that what he said above, “Not what enters the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth,” might seem to have been said to the crowds. Let the evangelist go on, then, and say what the Lord answered, now not to the crowds but to the disciples. “But he answered and said: Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.” This, of course, because, wishing to establish their own traditions, they did not understand the commandments of God. But the disciples had not yet asked the master how they themselves should take what he had said to the crowds. See, this too happens; for the evangelist continues and says: “And Peter answered and said to him: Explain this parable to us.” From this we understand that Peter thought the Lord had not spoken literally and openly when he said, “Not what enters the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth,” but had wished, as he usually did, to signify something by the obscurity of a parable. Let us see, then, whether now, privately, to the disciples who asked, he says what the Manichaeans would have, that all meats are unclean and they ought not to touch any of them. What then? He rebukes them because they had not yet understood his open speech and thought what was said literally to be a parable. For it goes on thus: “But he said: Are you also still without understanding, and do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the drain? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and that defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; these are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”

Surely now the deceit, exposed, goes off refuted; surely it is now clear that the Lord did not teach the crowds one thing on this matter and the disciples another in private; surely it is seen without doubt that it is rather the Manichaeans who are liars and deceivers, not Moses, not Christ, not the teaching of the two testaments, figured there and revealed here, prophesied there and presented here. How then do they think that Catholics keep none of the things Moses wrote, when they observe absolutely all of them, no longer in figures but in the realities which those figures foretold by signifying them? For if the time of writing were one and the time of reading another, we would not rightly say that the reader does not observe that writing because he himself does not form those characters; since those were figures of sounds, while he now gives out the sounds themselves, not busied in forming those figures, but prompted by looking at them. And the Jews did not believe Christ for this reason, that they did not observe even those things which Moses had commanded, not figuratively but openly. Hence he says to them: “You tithe mint and cummin and leave the weightier things of the law, mercy and judgment, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel; these you ought to have done, without omitting those.” Hence too their teaching by their traditions how the commandment of God which had ordered honour to be paid to parents might be weakened; because of which pride and iniquity they deserved to be blinded, so as not to understand the rest, because they impiously despised what they understood.

You see how I do not say to you: “If you are a Christian, believe Christ when he says that Moses wrote about him; and if you do not believe, you are not a Christian.” You yourself must see what you think of yourself, who ask to be taught about Christ as a Gentile or a Jew; yet I have not shirked this either, and I have closed to you, as far as I could, every approach of error. Nor have I let that precipice lie open over which you blind men throw yourselves, saying that there are falsehoods in the gospel wherever your heresy finds no way out, so that nothing remains for you to return to, from which you might believe Christ, where this pestilent saying cannot be set against you. Indeed, you even wish to be taught as the Christian Thomas was, whom Christ did not spurn when he doubted about him, but, to heal the wounds of his mind, showed the scars of his body. These are your words. It is good that you demand to be taught in this way. For how I feared that you would contend that this too in the gospel is false! Believe, then, the scars of Christ; for if those scars were true, those wounds too had been true; and true wounds could only be had by true flesh. This truth overturns your whole error. Further, if Christ showed false scars to a doubting disciple, you call him deceitful in teaching so, and you wish to be deceived in learning so. But since there is no one who wants to be deceived, while many want to deceive, I understand that you would rather teach deceitfully, as if by the example of Christ, than learn deceitfully by the example of Thomas. So if you believe that Christ deceived the doubter with false scars, who would want to believe you when you teach, and not rather beware of you as a deceiver? But if that disciple touched the true scars of Christ, you are compelled to confess the true flesh of Christ too. So you will not remain a Manichaean, if you believe as Thomas did; but you will remain an unbeliever, if you do not believe even as Thomas did.