Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.9–10.3

Our fathers who pleased God kept their order in that very obedience, so as to observe whatever God, by commanding, assigned to suitable times, just as he assigned it. So it was not only that, at the time when it was commanded that certain meats not be eaten, they did not eat them, meats which, though all meats given for food were clean by nature, were unclean by some signification, so that the future manifestation of realities might be prefigured by such significations; but also as to unleavened bread and other such things, in which the apostle says there was a shadow of things to come, the people of that time and that nation would have been as guilty if they had scorned to observe them, when those things had to be done in that way and the things now revealed had to be foretold in that way, as we would be foolish if now, when the New Testament is manifest, we thought that those foretelling observances were of any profit to us; just as we would be sacrilegious and impious if we thought that those same books should be rejected, which were written for our sake, so that, recognizing that what has now been revealed to us and announced in manifestation was foretold so long before by those figures, we might hold it faithfully and firmly; rejected because the Lord commands us no longer to observe bodily what is written there, but to understand and do it spiritually. For they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come, as the same apostle also says: “For whatever was written before was written for our instruction.” Therefore, not eating unleavened bread for the appointed seven days was a sin in the time of the Old Testament, but in the time of the New Testament it is not a sin. But in the hope of the world to come, which we have in Christ, who renews us wholly, clothing our soul with righteousness and our body with immortality, to believe that we shall suffer or do anything from the necessity and want of the old corruption is always a sin, as long as these seven days roll on, by which time runs its course. In the times of the Old Testament this, hidden in figure, was understood by certain saints; in the time of the New Testament it is revealed in manifestation and preached to the peoples. Hence the same Scripture was then a precept, and is now a testimony. Not to celebrate the feast of tabernacles was once a sin; now it is not a sin. But not to be built into the tabernacle of God, which is the church, is always a sin. Then, however, the figure was enacted under precept; now the revelation is read as testimony. For what was made then would not be called the tabernacle of testimony unless, by a certain fitness of signification, it testified to some truth that was to be declared in its own time. To mix purple with linen garments and to be clothed in a garment of linen and wool was once a sin; now it is not a sin. But to live in a disorderly way and to want to mix professions of different kinds, so that a consecrated virgin wears the ornaments of married women, or a woman who married because she was not continent bears the appearance of a virgin, is a sin in every way; and so is anything unfittingly woven together from different kinds into anyone’s life. But what was then figured in garments is now declared in conduct; for that was the time of signifying, this of manifesting. So the same Scripture which then exacted works that signified is now a witness to the things signified; and what was then observed for foretelling is now recited for confirming. To yoke an ox and an ass together for work was not then permitted; now it is permitted. For this was made clear through the apostle when, recalling the Scripture that says the threshing ox is not to be muzzled, he said: “Is it for oxen that God cares?” Why then is it read now, when what it forbade is permitted? Because the same apostle goes on there to say: “For our sake Scripture says it.” And surely it is impious for us not to read what was written for our sake; for it was written for our sake, to whom it is made manifest, rather than for theirs, in whom it was figured. For anyone yokes an ox and an ass, if necessary, without harm to the work; but no one makes a wise man and a fool companions, not so that one may command and the other obey, but equally and with equal authority, to proclaim the word of God, without causing scandal. So we hold the same Scripture, which then by its power commanded that what would now be opened should be covered with shadows, and now by its authority testifies to what is opened in the light, which was then covered. As for the bald man and the shaggy-haired man, whom he says the law called unclean, Faustus had paid too little attention, or had come upon a faulty manuscript. But would that he had been willing to have a bare forehead and had not been ashamed to fix the cross of Christ on it! He would surely have believed that Christ, who cries, “I am the truth,” neither died with false wounds nor rose with false scars. Indeed he even says, “I have not learned to deceive; what I think, I say.” So he is not a disciple of his own Christ, who, he madly supposes, showed false scars to his doubting disciples; and he wants to be believed, as one who does not deceive, not only about his other vanities but even about the very deceit of Christ: either he is better than Christ, since Christ deceives and he does not; or by that very fact he is the disciple not of the truthful Christ but of the deceitful Mani, since he deceives even in that in which he boasts that he has not learned to deceive.

Faustus said: Why do you not believe in the genealogy of Jesus? There are many reasons, but the chief one is that he himself nowhere confesses with his own mouth that he has a father or a lineage on earth, but on the contrary that he is not of this world, that he came forth from God the Father, that he came down from heaven, that he has no mother and brothers except those who do the will of his Father who is in heaven. And besides, those very men who ascribe these genealogies to him do not seem to have known him before his birth, nor even immediately after he was born, so that they might be believed to have written what they saw done concerning him with their own eyes; but they joined him when he was already a young man and mature, that is, about thirty years old—if indeed age can be ascribed to divine beings without blasphemy. Therefore, since in all testimony to the truth it is always customary to ask whether one heard or saw, and these men neither claim to have heard from him this order of the generation, or even that he was born at all, nor to have seen it with their eyes, since they came to know him long afterward, that is, after his baptism, it seems to me, and to everyone who judges rightly, as foolish to believe this as if someone were to call a blind and deaf witness into court.

Augustine replied: As to what he calls the chief reason why he does not accept the genealogy of Jesus Christ, there he is shown to be most plainly defeated, to those who read what we said above about the Son of Man, as Christ so often testifies that he is, and about the Son of God, how he himself is also the Son of Man; how according to his divinity he has no lineage on earth, but according to the flesh is of the seed of David, as apostolic teaching testifies. Hence he must be believed and understood both to have come forth from the Father and to have come from heaven, and yet here, the Word made flesh, to have dwelt among human beings. But if they think that he had no mother or lineage on earth because he said, “Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?”, it remains for them to assert that his disciples too had no fathers, the disciples to whom he gave in himself this example, that they should despise the ties of earthly kinship for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, because he said to them, “Call no one your father on earth; for you have one Father, God.” So what he taught them about fathers he himself first did with regard to his mother and brothers, as with many other things in which he deigned to offer himself to us for imitation and to go before us so that we might follow. Therefore, since this man is so defeated in what he thinks his chief point, we must notice how he lies prostrate and entangled in the rest. For he says that the apostles should not be believed, who proclaimed not only his divine but also his human birth, because they joined him later as a young man, and neither saw him born nor said they had heard it from him. Why then do they believe John when he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made,” and the rest, which please them, though they do not understand it? Let them say where John saw this, or where he said he heard it from the Lord himself. For whatever they say about how John could know this, from that same source we believe that all who proclaimed Christ’s birth could know what they proclaimed. Next, I ask on what ground they believe the Lord said, “Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?” If it is because the evangelist narrated it, why do they not believe him also when he says that his mother and brothers were looking for him? But if he lied in what they will not believe, how do they believe him that Christ said what they will not understand? Next, if Matthew could not know that Christ was born, because he joined him when he was already a young man, how could Mani, born so many years later, know that Christ was not born? They will say: “The Holy Spirit, who was in Mani, knew this.” If he were indeed the Holy Spirit, he would have spoken the truth. But why should we not rather believe about Christ his disciples, who also clung to him bodily, who could know whatever was hidden in human affairs not only through the Holy Spirit imparted by him, but also, with memory so recent and present, could gather even by mere human sense the lineage of Christ according to the flesh and his whole origin? And yet the apostles are called blind and deaf witnesses. Would that you had been not only blind and deaf, so as not to learn such vain and sacrilegious things, but also mute, so as not to say them!

Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament? Because I have already been taken up by the New; and the old and the new do not go together, as Scripture testifies. For “No one,” it says, “sews a new patch on an old garment; otherwise a greater tear will be made.” So, because I take care not to make a greater tear, as you do, I do not mix Christian newness with Hebrew oldness. For who would not judge it even mean, having put on new clothes, not to give the old ones to inferiors? Therefore, even if I had been born a Jew, as the apostles were, it would still have been right for me, having received the New Testament, to repudiate the Old, as they did. But as it is, since by the kindness of nature I was not born under the yoke of slavery, and Christ met me at once with the full gift of freedom, how wretched and foolish, and ungrateful besides, I shall be if I hand myself over to slavery of my own accord! Indeed Paul reproves the Galatians because, sliding back into circumcision, they were returning to the weak and beggarly elements, which they wished to serve again. How then shall I admit what I see another rebuked for? It is shameful to return to slavery, but more shameful to go into it.

Augustine replied: We have already shown sufficiently above why and how we hold the authority of the Old Testament, not to imitate Jewish servitude but to testify to Christian freedom. For it is not my voice but the apostle’s: “All these things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come.” Therefore we do not do in servitude what was commanded in order to foretell us, but we read in freedom what was written in order to confirm us. Who then does not now understand from what the apostle calls the Galatians back: not from reading devoutly the Scripture about circumcision, but from wanting, in superstition, to be circumcised? So we do not sew a new patch on an old garment, but are instructed in the kingdom of heaven after the likeness of that householder whom the Lord mentions, who brings out of his treasure new things and old. He sews a new patch on an old garment who wants to have spiritual continence but has not yet laid aside carnal hope. For read carefully and see that the Lord, when he was asked about fasting, answered, “No one sews a new patch on an old garment.” For the disciples still loved the Lord carnally, since they even feared losing him if he were killed. Hence, when Peter tried to call him back from his passion, he calls him Satan, because he did not savor the things of God but the things of men. So pay attention to how carnal a hope you bear in that fantasy of yours about the kingdom of God, the reason you love and worship this light of the sun, visible to the flesh, as if it were set before you as a model; and you will find how your fasts are sewn onto the wisdom of the flesh as onto an old garment. Yet since a new patch does not suit an old garment, how could the members of your God cleave to the princes of darkness, not joined and sewn on, but, what is more violent, mixed and compacted with them? Or are both old, because both are false and both come from the wisdom of the flesh? Unless perhaps you want to prove from this that one was new and the other old, because a greater tear was made, so that a wretched patch was cut off from the kingdom of light and fixed to the globe of darkness in eternal punishment. And yet this filthy tailor of such fables, or beggarly patcher, thinks himself clever in pricking, as it were with the needle of his tongue, the firm foundations of the divine Scriptures.

Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament? If the apostles, who were born under it, were allowed to depart from it, why should I not be allowed not to lay claim to that under which I was not born? For we are all born Gentiles, not Jews, and certainly not Christians. But out of that same Gentile state the Old Testament draws some to itself and makes them Jews, and the New draws others and initiates them as Christians; as if two trees, a sweet one and a bitter one, by their roots drew into themselves the strength of the one soil, to be changed into their own qualities. So, since the apostles pass from the bitter to the sweet, how mad shall I be if I turn from the sweet to the bitter!

Augustine replied: Why then does the apostle, who you say left Judaism and passed from bitterness to sweetness, say rather that those of that people who would not believe in Christ were branches broken off from there, and that the Gentiles were grafted, like a wild olive, into the very root of the olive, that is, into the origin of the holy Hebrews, so that they might become sharers in the richness of the olive? For when he was warning the Gentiles about the fall of the Jews, so that they would not be proud, he spoke thus: “For I say to you Gentiles,” he says, “inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I will glorify my ministry, if somehow I may provoke my flesh to emulation and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the firstfruits are holy, so is the lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, though you were a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became a sharer in the root and richness of the olive, do not boast against the branches. If you do boast, it is not you who bear the root, but the root you. You will say, then, Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. Well: they were broken off through unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be high-minded, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. See, then, the kindness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but kindness toward you, if you remain in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off. And they too, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive and grafted, contrary to nature, into a good olive, how much more will those who are natural branches be grafted into their own olive? For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, so that you may not be wise in your own eyes: that blindness has come upon Israel in part, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved.” You see, then, that you who will not be grafted into this root are not indeed like the broken branches, as the carnal and impious people of the Jews is, but have remained in the bitterness of the wild olive. For what savors of the wild olive of the Gentiles more than worshipping the sun and moon? Unless perhaps you think you are no longer in the wild olive of the Gentiles because you have added thorns of a new kind, and a false Christ, whom, along with the sun and moon, you worship, fashioned not by a craftsman’s hand but by a perverse heart? Be grafted, then, into the root of the olive, to which the apostle rejoices that he was restored, who had been among the branches broken off through unbelief. For he says that he was freed from that state when he rejoices that he passed from Judaism to Christ, because Christ was always preached in that root and in that tree; and when he came, those who did not believe in him were broken off from it, and those who believed were grafted in there. To these, lest they be proud, it is said: “Do not be high-minded, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.” But lest the broken branches themselves despair, he says a little later: “And they too, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive and grafted, contrary to nature, into a good olive, how much more will those who are natural branches be grafted into their own olive?” See, this is why he himself glories, freed from the breaking off and restored to the richness of the root. So let those among you whom impiety has broken off from there return and be grafted in again; and let those who were never there come, cut away from their natural barrenness, to become sharers in its fruitfulness.

Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament? Because both from it and from the New we have learned not to covet what belongs to others. “But what,” you say, “does the Old Testament contain that belongs to others?” Rather, what does it contain that does not? It promises riches and a full belly and sons and grandsons and long life, and, along with these, the kingdom of Canaan; but all these to those who are circumcised, who keep sabbaths, who sacrifice to him, and who abstain from pork and other such things. Since I, and every Christian, neglect these things, as silly, of course, and not at all pertaining to the salvation of the soul, I recognize that what it promises is therefore no longer to be expected by me; and, mindful that the commandment is, “You shall not covet what belongs to others,” I have gladly and willingly allowed the Jews to keep their own goods, content, of course, with the gospel alone and the splendid inheritance of the kingdom of heaven. For just as, if a Jew claimed the gospel for himself, I would rightly rebuke him, saying, “Shameless man, what have you to do with that whose precepts you do not keep?”, so I fear that a Jew may rebuke me in the same way for holding the Old Testament, whose commandments I despise.

Augustine replied: He is not ashamed to repeat the same vain things often, but I am weary of often giving the same answers, true though they are. So whoever seeks an answer to these points too, let him read what we have said above. But to a Jew who says to me, “Why do you hold the Old Testament, whose precepts you do not keep?”, I answer that Christians do keep, even from those very books, the precepts for the conduct of life; while the precepts for signifying life were rightly observed then, when the things now revealed were being foretold. Therefore I do not observe even these as a matter of religion, yet in such a way that I hold them as testimony; just as with the carnal promises it contains, from which it is properly called the Old Testament: though eternal things to be hoped for have been revealed to me, I nevertheless read those too as bearing witness. These things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come. So, if you have heard what we answer the Jews, hear also what I object to the Manichaeans.

Faustus certainly said that we could be troubled if the Jews said to us, “Why do you hold the Old Testament, whose precepts you do not observe?” We answer them while venerating and preserving the authority of that Scripture. What do you answer when it is said to you: “Why do you hold the gospel books, whose followers you pretend to be in order to deceive the unskilled, while what is written there you not only do not believe but even attack with all the strength you can?” Surely you see that it is rather you who cannot answer objections about the New Testament, than we about the Old. For everything written in the Old we say is true, divinely commanded, and assigned to suitable times. But you, when things written in the books of the New Testament which you do not accept are brought against you, failing to answer, with your throats squeezed by manifest truth, say with wounded breath that they have been falsified. What else could the choked mouths of deceivers breathe out? Or rather, what else but stench could the pierced corpses of the dead give off? And yet Faustus confessed that he had learned not to covet what belongs to others not only from the New Testament but also from the Old; which he certainly could not have learned from his own God. For if he did not covet what belonged to others, why did he build new worlds upon the land of darkness, where they had never been? Or will he say: “First the nation of darkness itself coveted my kingdom, which did not belong to it”? Then did he imitate the nation of darkness, so that he too coveted what belonged to others? Or was the kingdom of light cramped before? Then war was to be wished for, so that breadth of rule might be acquired by victory. If that is good, it could have been coveted before as well; but he was waiting for the hostile nation to break out into war first, so that it might be attacked, as it were, more justly. But if it is not good, why, once the enemy was conquered, did he want his kingdom to grow over another’s land, when before, content with his own borders, he had lived in full happiness? But would that these men truly wished to learn from those writings these very precepts for the conduct of life, one of which is that we should not covet what belongs to others! They would surely grow gentle and, being meek, would understand also those precepts for signifying life, at which their offense barks: that they suited that time for observing and suit this time for understanding. And how do we covet the Old Testament as belonging to others, when we read the things which happened to them in figure, but were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come? I think that one who reads what was written for his own sake does not covet what belongs to others.