Against Faustus the Manichaean 4.1–6.1

Faustus said: Do you accept the Old Testament? If there is an inheritance for me in it, I accept it; if not, I do not. For it is surely excessive impudence to lay claim to a will that testifies one has been disinherited. Or do you not know that the Old Testament promises the land of the Canaanites, but promises it to the Jews, that is, to the circumcised, to those who sacrifice, who abstain from pork and the other meats that Moses calls unclean, who keep sabbaths and the feast of unleavened bread and the rest of such things, which its testator himself commanded them to observe? Since none of these has pleased any Christian, for none of us keeps them, it is right that, having refused the inheritance, we also give back the will. This, then, is the reason why I think the Old Testament should be rejected, unless you teach me something wiser. The second reason is that its inheritance is so poor and bodily and so far from the benefits of the soul that, after that blessed promise of the New Testament, which promises me the kingdom of heaven and eternal life, I would disdain it even if its testator thrust it upon me for nothing.

Augustine replied: None of us doubts that the Old Testament contains promises of temporal things and is therefore called old, and that the promise of eternal life and of the kingdom of heaven belongs to the New Testament. But that in those temporal things there were figures of future things that would be fulfilled in us, upon whom the end of the ages has come, is not my conjecture but the apostle’s understanding, for Paul says, speaking of such things: “All these things were figures of us,” and again: “All these things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come.” So we accept the Old Testament not in order to obtain those promises, but in order to understand in them the foretellings of the New Testament; for the testimony of the Old wins faith for the New. Hence the Lord, after he rose from the dead and offered himself not only to be seen by the disciples’ eyes but also to be handled by their hands, lest they should still think that something deceptive was being done with their mortal and carnal senses, strengthened them rather by the testimony of the old books, saying: “Everything had to be fulfilled that is written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning me.” So our hope is not fixed on a promise of temporal things, since we do not believe that even the holy and spiritual men of that time, the patriarchs and prophets, were devoted to these earthly things. For they understood, the Spirit of God revealing it to them, what suited that time, and in what ways God decreed that future things should be figured and foretold through all those things done and said; and their desire was rather for the New Testament; but a present bodily service was rendered by means of the old promises in order to signify the new things to come. Thus not only the tongue of those men but also their life was prophetic. The carnal people, however, clung to the promises of the present life; yet through that people too future things were nonetheless signified. But you do not understand these things, because, as the prophet said, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” For you are not instructed in the kingdom of heaven, that is, in the true catholic church of Christ; if you were, you would bring out from the riches of the holy Scriptures not only new things but also old. For the Lord himself says: “Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure new things and old.” And so, while you think you hold only God’s new promises, you have remained in the oldness of the flesh and have brought in the novelty of error. Of this novelty the apostle says: “But avoid profane novelties of words; for they advance much toward impiety, and their talk creeps like a cancer. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have strayed from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and have overturned the faith of some.” Recognize that you flow from this vein of falsehood, you who say that there is now a resurrection of souls only, through the preaching of the truth, but deny the future resurrection of bodies which the apostles preached. And what can you think spiritually, according to the inner man, who is renewed in the knowledge of God, when, through the oldness of the flesh and through the images of carnal things in which your whole error is wrapped, you do not hold bodily things in possession but savor them in fantasy? For you boast that you despise and disdain the land of the Canaanites, which was visible and was visibly given to that people, as if you did not describe the land of light as split on one side by the land of the nation of darkness, as if by a wedge driven into it, so that it is not found in the reality of things and yet is believed in the falsehood of your thoughts; and so it does not sustain your life by being given, and yet it corrupts your mind by being desired.

Faustus said: Do you accept the gospel? You ask me whether I accept it, when my accepting it is evident from the very fact that I observe what it commands? Or should I ask you whether you accept it, when there seem to be in you no signs of one who accepts the gospel? I have left father and mother, wife, children, and the rest, as the gospel commands, and you ask whether I accept the gospel? Unless you still do not know what it is that is called the gospel. For it is nothing other than the preaching and command of Christ. I have thrown away gold and silver and have ceased to carry copper in my belt, content with daily food, not caring for tomorrow, nor anxious about how my belly is to be filled or my body clothed; and you ask me whether I accept the gospel? You see in me those beatitudes of Christ which make up the gospel, and you ask whether I accept it? You see me poor, you see me meek, you see me a peacemaker, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, enduring persecutions and hatred for righteousness’ sake, and you doubt whether I accept the gospel? It is no wonder, then, that John the Baptist, though he had seen Jesus and had also heard of his works, still asked whether he was the Christ; to whom Jesus, fittingly and deservedly, did not even deign to reply that he was, but sent back to him again the same works he had long since heard about: “The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead rise,” and the rest. I too might not undeservedly do the same with you, if, when you ask whether I accept the gospel, I say: I have left all that was mine, father, mother, wife, children, gold, silver, eating, drinking, luxuries, pleasures. Consider this a sufficient answer to your questions, and know that you will be blessed if you are not scandalized in me.

But, he says, accepting the gospel is not only doing what it commands, but also believing all that is written in it, the first of which is that Jesus was born. But neither, likewise, is accepting the gospel only believing that Jesus was born, but also doing what he commanded. So if you think that I do not accept the gospel because I pass over the generation, then you do not accept it either, and much more do you not accept it, because you despise the commands. And so for the present we are equal, until we also weigh the parts. Or if this contempt of the commands does not prejudice you against professing that you accept the gospel, why should a rejected genealogy prejudice me? But if accepting the gospel consists in these two things, as you say, believing the genealogies and keeping the commandments, why do you, imperfect, judge one who is imperfect? Each of us needs the other. But if, as is more certain, accepting the gospel consists solely in the observance of the heavenly commandments, you are doubly shameless, a deserter, as the saying goes, accusing a soldier. And yet, come, let us suppose, since you wish it, that these two are parts of perfect faith, of which one consists in word, that is, confessing that Christ was born, the other in deed, which is the observance of the commandments. You see, then, how arduous and difficult a part I have chosen for myself; and see how very light and easy a part you have chosen. It is no wonder that the common people flee to you and flee from me, not knowing that the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. Why then do you provoke me, if, having undertaken the harder part of faith, I have left you, as one who is weak, the easier? “But I,” he says, “think that the part of faith which you have left, namely confessing that Christ was born, is more effective and better suited to giving salvation to souls.”

Come then, let us ask Christ himself, and learn from his own mouth where the occasion of salvation chiefly arises for us. Who among human beings will enter your kingdom, O Christ? “Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven,” he says. He did not say: whoever professes that I was born. And elsewhere to the disciples: “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you.” He did not say: teaching them that I was born, but that they should keep the commandments. Again elsewhere: “You will be my friends if you do what I command you.” He did not say: if you believe that I was born. Again: “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,” and many other things. And when he taught on the mountain, saying, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger, blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake,” he nowhere said: blessed are those who confess that I was born. And when he separates the lambs from the goats at the judgment, he says that he will say to those on his right: “I was hungry, and you fed me; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink,” and so on; “therefore receive the kingdom.” He did not say: because you believed that I was born, receive the kingdom. And to the rich man who asked about eternal life he said: “Go, sell all that you have, and follow me.” He did not say: believe that I was born, so that you may live forever. See, then: to my portion, which I chose for myself out of the twofold faith, as you would have it, the kingdom, life, and blessedness are promised everywhere, but to yours nowhere. Or show where it is written that whoever has confessed that he was born of a woman is blessed, or will receive the kingdom, or will have eternal life. Meanwhile, even if this too is a part of faith, it has no beatitude. But when we prove that it is not even a part of faith, what will happen? Then you will be left empty, as will certainly be shown. But for the present it is enough for our purpose that this portion of ours is crowned with beatitudes. And to it is added that other beatitude as well, from the confession of speech, because we confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, as Jesus himself equally testifies with his own mouth, saying to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Therefore we hold not one part of faith, as you thought, but two, and both of them valid, and in both alike we are called blessed by Christ, since we practise the one by works and preach the other without blasphemy.

Augustine replied: I have already mentioned above how often the Lord Jesus Christ calls himself the Son of Man, and with what vanity the Manichaeans bring in the fable of their abominable error about some invented First Man, whom they preach as not earthly but clothed with deceitful elements, against the apostle, who says, “The first man was from the earth, earthly”; and with what care the same apostle warned us, saying, “If anyone announces to you anything other than what we have announced to you, let him be anathema.” So it remains for us to believe that Christ is the Son of Man in the way he is preached by apostolic truth, not in the way he is invented by Manichaean falsehood. Since, then, the evangelists announce that he was born of a woman of the house of David, that is, of the family of David, and Paul writes to Timothy, saying, “Remember that Christ Jesus rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel,” it is clear enough how we ought to believe that Christ is the Son of Man: he who is the Son of God, through whom we were made, also became the Son of Man by taking flesh, so that he might die for our offenses and rise again for our justification. And therefore he calls himself both, the Son of God and the Son of Man. Hence, not to go through very many passages, in one place in the Gospel according to John it is written: “Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has also given the Son to have life in himself; and he has given him power to execute judgment as well, because he is the Son of Man.” He said, “They will hear the voice of the Son of God,” and he said, “because he is the Son of Man.” For it is in that he is the Son of Man that he received the power of executing judgment, because he will come to judgment in that very form, so that he may be seen by both the good and the wicked. In that form he also ascended into heaven, and that voice sounded to the disciples: “He will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” For in that he is the Son of God, God equal to the Father and one with the Father, he will not be seen by the wicked; for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Since, then, he promises eternal life to those who believe in him, and believing in him is nothing other than believing in the true Christ, such as he preaches himself and as he is preached by the apostles, that is, both true Son of God and true Son of Man, you Manichaeans, who believe in a false and deceitful son of a false and deceitful man, while you also teach that God himself, terrified by the uproar of the hostile nation, sent his members to be tortured and not afterward to be wholly purified, see how far you are from the eternal life which Christ promises to those who believe in him. But, you say, he said to Peter when he confessed him as the Son of God, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona.” Did he therefore promise nothing to those who would believe in him as the Son of Man, since he himself is both Son of God and Son of Man? You have eternal life openly promised also to those who believe in the Son of Man: “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.” What more do you want? Believe, then, in the Son of Man, so that you may have eternal life, because he is also the Son of God, who can give eternal life, because he is the true God and eternal life, as the same John says in his epistle, where he also says that he is antichrist who denies that Christ has come in the flesh.

Why then do you boast as if of the perfection of his commandments, saying that you carry out what is commanded in the gospel? For what would those things profit where there is no true faith, even if you really fulfilled them? Have you not heard the apostle say: “If I distribute all my goods to the poor and hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing”? Why then do you boast as if of Christian poverty, when you lack Christian love? Even robbers have among themselves what they call love, since they owe one another a criminal and shameful complicity; but it is not the love the apostle commends. And to distinguish it from all the others that are to be disapproved and rejected, he says in another place: “But the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.” How then can you have true love, arising from a feigned faith? Or when will it shame you that your faith fights with lies, since you preach both that your First Man fought by changeable deceit against his enemies, who remained in the truth of their own nature, and you would persuade us that this Christ, who says, “I am the truth,” feigned the appearance of flesh, the death of the cross, the wounds of the passion, and the scars of the resurrection? Then you want to be put above your Christ, if you announce the truth while he lies. But if you want to follow your Christ, who would not be on guard against falsehood in you, suspecting that even in these commandments which you say you fulfil there is nothing but deceit? For Faustus dared to say that you do not carry copper in your belts—unless perhaps he spoke the truth because you keep not copper in your belts, but gold in your little chests and purses. Nor would these things be blamed in you, except that you profess one thing and live otherwise. That Constantius is still among the living, now our brother, a catholic Christian, who had gathered many of you into his house at Rome in order to fulfil the precepts of Mani, foolish and silly enough indeed, but which you think great; and when your weakness gave way before them, you scattered, each to his own way. Hence those who wished to persevere in them made a schism from your society, and because they sleep on mats they are called Mattarii. Very unlike their bedding were the feathers and goat-hair coverlets of Faustus, whose abundance of luxuries made him disdain not only the Mattarii but also the house of his father, a poor man of Milevis. Take away, then, this lost pretense, if not from your conduct, at least from your writings, so that your tongue may not seem to fight with your life, as that First Man fought with the nation of darkness, with lying, not elements, but words.

But lest anyone blame me for saying these things against men who do not fulfil what is commanded them, rather than against the sect of that most vain error itself, I say this: the precepts of Mani are themselves such that, if you do not keep them, you are deceivers, and if you keep them, you are deceived. For Christ did not command you not to pull up a plant lest you commit murder; he did not forbid his disciples, when they were passing through a grainfield and were hungry, to pluck ears of grain on the sabbath, so that he might refute both the Jews then present and the Manichaeans to come: the former because it was done on the sabbath, the latter because it was done at all. But Mani plainly commanded you to live, with idle hands, off other people’s murders. And those murders are false, but yours are real, when you slaughter wretched souls with such a doctrine of demons.

Yet there is in him that heretical arrogance and intolerable pride: “You see in me,” he says, “those beatitudes of Christ which make up the gospel, and you ask whether I accept it? You see me poor, you see me meek, you see me a peacemaker, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, enduring persecutions and hatred for righteousness’ sake, and you doubt whether I accept the gospel?” If being righteous were justifying oneself, this man would have flown to heaven on his own words when he said this. But I do not inveigh against the luxuries of Faustus, known to all the hearers of the Manichaeans and especially to those at Rome; I put forward the kind of Manichaean that Constantius was looking for when he demanded that those precepts be fulfilled, not the kind he did not want to see. And yet how do I see such a man as poor in spirit, when he is so proud that he believes his own soul to be God and is not ashamed of it being a captive? How meek, when he prefers to insult so great an evangelical authority rather than to believe it? How a peacemaker, when he thinks that the divine nature itself, by which God is whatever he is, who alone truly is, could not have had perpetual peace? How pure in heart, when so many and such sacrilegious fictions riot in it? How mourning, unless for God captured and bound until he is loosed and escapes, though cut short of a certain part, which will be bound by the Father in the globe of darkness and will not be mourned? How hungering and thirsting for righteousness, which Faustus did not add in his writings, I suppose, so as not to seem to lack it, if he admitted that he still hungered and thirsted for it? But what righteousness do these men hunger and thirst for, for whom perfect righteousness will be to triumph, besides, over their brothers condemned in the globe, who sinned through no fault of their own but were inexpiably infected by the hostile corruption into which the Father sent them?

How do you endure persecutions and hatred for righteousness’ sake, you for whom righteousness is preaching and urging these sacrileges? Why do you not consider how little, almost nothing, you suffer for this impious perversity, because of the gentleness of Christian times? But, as if speaking to the blind and foolish, you want it taken as a great sign of your righteousness that you endure reproaches and suffer persecution. Further, if each person is more righteous the more grievously he suffers—I pass over saying what is very easy to see, how much more grievous things than you are suffered by men defiled with one crime or vice after another—I say this: if whoever suffers persecution for the name of Christ, however that name is claimed and taken up, must at once be said to hold the true faith and righteousness, then grant that he is of a truer faith and a greater righteousness whom we can show to have suffered far more grievous things than you; and thousands of our martyrs meet you, and above all Cyprian himself, whose writings also teach that he believed in Christ born of the Virgin Mary. For this faith, which you detest, he went as far as the sword and death, along with flocks of Christians who then believed as he did and died as he did, or more grievously. But Faustus, convicted or having confessed that he was a Manichaean, was brought with some others before the proconsul’s court, and, at the intercession of the very Christians by whom they had been brought there, he was banished to an island, a very light penalty, if indeed it should be called a penalty: it is what servants of God do daily of their own accord, wishing to withdraw from the turbulent noise of the crowds, and it is a penalty from which the public vows of earthly rulers commonly release the condemned by an act of indulgence. In fact, not long afterward all of them were released from there by that same customary dispensation. So either admit that those held a truer faith and a more righteous life who were found worthy to endure far more terrible things for it than you, or stop boasting that you are detestable to many. But distinguish what it is to suffer persecution for blasphemy and to suffer persecution for righteousness; and for which of these you suffer, consider carefully again and again in your own books.

But how many in our communion truly carry out those more sublime precepts of the gospel, with the appearance of which you deceive the unskilled! How many people of both sexes are pure and untouched by any intercourse; how many, having experienced it, are afterward continent; how many distribute and leave behind their possessions; how many bring the body into servitude by fasts, frequent or daily or even incredibly prolonged! How many brotherly communities have nothing of their own but all things in common, and those only what is necessary for food and clothing, fusing one soul and one heart toward God in the fire of love! And in all these professions how many are found out to be deceitful and lost, how many also lie hidden, how many, walking rightly at first, soon fail through a perverse will! How many are found in temptations to have taken up such a life with another intention, under a shadowy appearance; and how many, keeping their holy purpose humbly and faithfully, persevere to the end and are saved! In their company, though they appear unequal, yet bound by the same love, are those who for some necessity, according to the apostle’s exhortation, have wives as though not having them, and buy as though not holding, and use this world as though not using it. To these are joined, according to the abundant riches of God’s mercy, those also to whom it is said: “Do not defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that you may be free for prayer, and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control; but I say this by way of concession, not of command.” To such the same apostle also says: “It is already altogether a fault that you have lawsuits among you.” And bearing with their weakness, he says a little later: “If then you have worldly lawsuits, appoint those who are despised in the church.” For it is not only those who, to be perfect, sell or leave all their possessions and follow the Lord who belong to the kingdom of heaven; but to this Christian army there is also joined, through a kind of exchange of love, a sort of tributary multitude, to whom it will be said at the end, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat,” and the rest. Otherwise those would have to be condemned whose households the apostle orders with such diligent and careful concern, admonishing wives to be subject to their husbands, husbands to love their wives; children to obey their parents, parents to bring up their children in the discipline and correction of the Lord; slaves to obey their masters according to the flesh with fear, masters to render to their slaves what is just and fair. But far be it from him to judge these strangers to the gospel commandments and to be separated from eternal life; for where the Lord says, “If anyone does not take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple,” exhorting the stronger to perfection, there he at once consoled these also, saying: “Whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward; and whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” Hence not only whoever gave a little wine to Timothy for his stomach and frequent illnesses, but also whoever offers a cup of cold water to a healthier and stronger man only in the name of a disciple, as follows there, will not lose his reward.

And why do you deceive your hearers, who serve you with their wives and children and households and houses and fields, if whoever has not left all these things will not accept the gospel? But since you promise them not resurrection but a return to this mortality, so that they may be born again and live the life of your elect, a life as vain and silly and sacrilegious as the one you live when you are most praised; or, if they are of better merit, that they may pass into melons and cucumbers or other foods that you are going to eat, so that they may be quickly purified by your belching: you rightly estrange them from the gospel commandments; but you ought most of all to separate yourselves from them, since you hold and urge such views. For if this vanity belonged to the gospel faith, the Lord ought not to have said, “I was hungry and you gave me to eat,” but, “You were hungry and you ate me,” or, “I was hungry and I ate you.” For according to your ravings no one will be received into the kingdom of God for the merit of that service, because he gave food to the saints, but because either he ate those whom he would breathe out, or he was eaten by those who would breathe him out into heaven. Nor would they say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you to eat?” but they would say, “When did we see you hungry, and you ate us?” And he would not answer them, “When you gave to one of the least of mine, you gave to me,” but, “When one of the least of mine ate you, I ate you.”

Holding and teaching these monstrosities, and living by them, you dare both to say that you keep the gospel precepts and to disparage the catholic church, in which there are so many little ones with the great, both of whom the Lord blesses, as they keep the gospel commandments according to their ranks and hope for the gospel promises. But a malicious error leads your eye only to the chaff of our crop; for you would quickly see the wheat there too, if you were willing for it to be there. Among you, however, both those who are feigned Manichaeans are bad and those who are not feigned are vain. For where the faith itself is feigned, he who uses it in pretense deceives, and he who thinks it true is deceived; nor can a good life arise from it, because each lives well or badly from his love. But if you burned with love for spiritual and intelligible good, and not with desire for bodily phantasms, then, to say quickly what is very well known about you, you would not worship this bodily sun as the divine substance and the light of wisdom.

Faustus said: Do you accept the Old Testament? How can I, when I do not keep its precepts? I think, indeed, that neither do you. For I have spurned circumcision as shameful, and, if I am not mistaken, so have you; the resting on sabbaths as superfluous, and I believe so have you; sacrifices as idolatry, and I do not doubt that so have you. As for pork, I certainly do not abstain from it alone, and you likewise do not eat it alone: I because I consider all flesh unclean, you because you consider nothing unclean; and by each of these the Old Testament is destroyed by each of us. The weeks of eating unleavened bread and the feast of tabernacles we have both despised as useless and vain. Not weaving purple into linen garments; counting a garment of linen and wool as adultery; counting it sacrilege to yoke an ox and an ass together, even if it is necessary; not appointing as priest a man who is bald or shaggy-haired or has some similar mark, because such men are unclean before God: all this we have both despised and laughed at, and have held it of no account, neither in the second rank nor in the first. Yet all these are precepts and ordinances of the Old Testament. So what you object against me you share with me, whether it is to be thought a crime or a right act; for each of us rejects the Old Testament. So if you ask what difference there is between my faith and yours, it is this: you like to lie and to act basely, praising in word what you hate in your mind; I have not learned to deceive. What I think, I say: I admit that I hate the teachers of such shameful things as much as the precepts themselves.